Daily Progress

This blog, of late, has become a bit of a log about our latest house projects. Not what I originally intended but, alas, this is what is taking a lot of my energy right now.... sooooo... for those of you who are interested, here's the latest. For those not so interested, sorry check back in a couple of weeks... I should be onto other things by then (maybe). OK. Scatch that. I'll try to blog about something else before then. I do have many of other things going on that I could be blogging about.

So, for now....... Here goes with the pics. Aaron, Ben and Brett have been working on the porch enclosure project (which will become and extention of our bedroom). It is down to the last few things. I can see it coming into being now. Glen has been working on the outside soffits (sorry, no recent pics to post). Will is begining to work on the bathroom stuff but we ran into a leaky shut off and 2 rotting boards so that process has a few new steps added to it. Also, the other day UPS delivered 4 big boxes with 4 new living room chairs. No pics of the chairs yet..but.. the boxes seen here filled the whole dining area. Surely the cat was delighted with them and was not at all pleased when I flattened them for recycling. That's it for tonight.

Week In Review

Been a busy week here....work on the new room (former porch) was accomplished by Aaron, Ben and Brett. Aaron also gutted the bathroom vanity and sanded the bathroom floor. All of the new windows are in and Glen has been working on the outside eaves and soffits. Hopefully tomorrow Will is coming to work on a sill and repair a leaky cold water shut off. All this despite the snow storm Monday. Ben and Brett actually worked that day and Cowls delivered lumber, despite the 8"+ of white stuff. Another 3" fell tonight...beautiful..but with significant outside work to be done, I am still hoping no major storm hits for just a bit longer.

Learned Something New Today

In the spirit of always stretching myself and gaining knowledge to apply to my life (and to share with others) allow me to share something I learned just today: you cannot take the Target carts out into the mall. There is some funky mechanism that trips when you go over the threshold and it locks the wheels, thereby stopping you straightaway or catapulting you into your cart if you are cruising. No kidding!

I thought I would share this fact with all of you so that you can avoid the embarassment of hurling yourself into a cart laden with cases of Coke.

Oh yeah.. I went to a conference in Washington DC this past weekend called : Politics and Spirituality. There were tons of great things to chew on and share from that too.... but I have to gather my scattered thoughts first and have not had a chance to do so. One thing I recall: "We are the ones we have been waiting for!" WE ARE ?! Wow... seems WE have a lot to do then!

Masked Men

Anybody know these masked men?

Ha! Well..all 4 of them were here today and as a result we have 3 more new windows installed (only 1 to go) and the "porch" has insulation all around and one wall sheetrocked. Another week and we should be "looking good."

Meanwhile, I am off to DC with Laura D to hear Jim Wallis and Anne Lamott expound upon Politics and Contemplation. Nice!

Hmong

Teaching a January Dean's Book is a new experience for me in a few ways. First of all it is crammed into 3 weeks. Second, it is all three levels of the course in one class. Yikes! Third, I was allowed to choose my own book.

We are doing The Spirit Comes and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. I found out after choosing it that she lives locally, and teaches creative non fiction (?) writing at Smith and maybe My Holyoke on occasion. Hmmm.

Anyway, the book gives the reader a lot to think about. It follows 2 related tracks. One is about a Hmong refugee family living in CA. Their baby has epilepsy. There is a long and complicated thread of difficulty and misunderstanding and conflict over her treatment. Very disquieting and sad as she ends in a vegatative state, cared for by her dedicated, loving parents in their traditional way (as the medical community has finally given up..no more they can do). According to the publisher's web site, now 20 some years laler, she continues to survive, living with her mother in their home. Her father died 2 years ago.

The second track of the book (every other chapter) deals with the history of the Hmong people. In the 60's they were living in Laos, separate unto themsoleves, mostly in the Plain of Jars. This was a key area in the Vietnam War as the supply route for the North Vietnamese, the Ho Che Min Trail, went thru there. Hence, in secret, the CIA recruited thousands of Hmong to fight for us. They died in huge numbers (many more than US soldiers!) and when we lost the war, the Hmong were driven out by the communists. They walked 30-40 days to Thailand and lived in refugee camps. Many came to the US....believing they had been promised by the CIA that they would be taken care of if we lost the war. Of ocurse...we were never going to loose so one wonders how sicere suchg apromise ecver was. We airlifted very few of them out. The rest half killed themselves escaping to Thailand (many did die trying to escape and many were saughtered).....

Many themes are raised in this book. Too many to enumerate here.... but for one thing the Hmong are a people group extremely resistant to assimilation. Their community, their families, their traditions, their religion play a huge role in their life and they are not interested in giving that up, at least. This has produced many difficulties over the years. We, as Amercians, tend to assume (expect) that our ways are preferable (perhaps evne superior) and that immigrants and refugees will want to adopt our culture and will subscribe to our definitons of success, etc. The Hmong resistance to this, as well as their "otherness" has apparently been exasperating to many Americans with whom they have come into contact.

It is not clear to me, at this time, how this may be changing with second or third generation Hmong but, at least for the first generation, some of their ways & their values combined with the fact most of them suffered from multiple and severe trauma experiences provide a compelling and intensely soul searching text.

House Project Updates

Pics in order: trench dig in process taken thru kitchen window, porch at present, the day's siding trash pile, view of land after trench filled back in, and a shot of the house project as it stands today.

OK..here is the update from the past few days:

1. The well is now connected to the house...but in a temporary fashion. Our well guy has to come back to complete it early this week (we hope).

2. So, right now our water is still a bit brackish, smells a little...and tastes yucky. We are told it needs to settle a bit. It cannot even be tested for 3 weeks. That was news to us.

3. Glen did not work at the house this week. It was his brother-in-law's funeral and all. So, between that and the snow this week, the outside siding and window job is slowed down quite a bit. Will got a couple of days in and is well on the way to having the porch walls framed up for the 2 new windows and siding. It will become our expanded bedrooom. The windows for that space are ready to be picked up.

4. Insulation and sheet rock for the inside of the new porch/bedroom wall got delivered this AM, along with 2 x 3's for framing out the new closet along the west wall in that new room. The pickwick pine to finish off the walls in the bedroom is on order. It is just like the rest of the "porch" walls and the living room walls. Sounds like the son and son-in-law (Elarsix and Shnitzle) are going to be able put in some time up here this week (maybe some next week too??) working on the bedroom and the bathroom.

5. Bathroom?? Yup, I picked out a new vanity, sink and faucet yesterday. It is a cherry cabinet with a while porcelain sink and a curvaceous chrome faucet. :-) We are planning to rip out the old vinyl floor in there, then sand and poly the nice fir flooring and put in a new vanity....perhaps a new toilet too.

That's about it. Hopefully the next 3 weeks (Jan. "break") will see a lot of this completed. I cannot wait!! It will certianly call for another party.

OMG!!

I got a call this AM that the excavators and well guy were coming today to tie in the pump. I got things ready and ran off to work. A couple hours later, I got a call on my cell that they would not be able to use the existing water line as planned. It wasn't really clear what all he was talking about. I was supposed to be at work all day, but, I had a cancellation adjacent to lunch time so I came home for an hour or so to see what was up. Boy was I surprised!! They had discovered the old water line was not up to snuff and so they had begun digging a 5' deep trench from the well to the addition coming thru the foundation there (under my kitchen oven). The trench goes from the old chicken coop, up in front of the old goat shed and behind the wood shed, over the hillside and across my kitchen patio. AAAhhhhhhh..... What a mess! And.... this also means they moved stuff in Baird's workbench area in the cellar... which was a mess even before they came. I can't even imagine what that looks like now. I have not gone down there yet b/c they are drilling a hole in the foundation right now. Eek! Guess we'll have plenty of Spring landscaping work to do...and Baird will have an unexpected reason to clean up his cellar work space.

Show and Tell

Welcome to the New Year! Here are a few shots to close out 2005 in Shute-Ho.

Pics: The work on the windows and siding, the pipe coming out of our new 200' hole which constitutes the new well and the stainless steel pump which sits at the bottom of that hole. This week we are sitll waiting for the well to be tied into our water line, the pump to be wired in and more windows to be installed. Exciting progress!