Fall Fatigue

Ask anyone who lives in the upper Midwest, and they will tell you that this has been a very strange fall season.  We had temperatures in the 90's in September, balmy 70's last week, and a sudden cold snap -- but more seasonable temperatures -- this week.

Even Mother Nature is confused.  The trees did not turn the vivid golds and reds that we usually see in the fall.  Instead, we see more muted oranges, rusts, and browns this year.  The trees also are not dropping their leaves at the usual rates.  While our cottonwood tree, thankfully, has shed most of its foliage, most of the maple trees in the neighborhood are still fully in bloom.  They should be bare by now.  Our new little maple in front has not lost a leaf yet, and our Japanese lilac also retains all of its still-green foliage. Strangely, the first major blizzard of the year hit the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Upper Michigan yesterday.  Stephanie, in Rochester, MN, said they received their earliest snowfall on record, getting 2" of wet snow.

We had hoped since we are returning late to Florida that we would be able to get all of the fall clean-up finished and not have to pay someone to do a "final raking" of the yard before winter.  Since the birch trees in the back are just starting to drop their yellow leaves, we may have to pay yet this year.

In an attempt to get as much to the curb as possible, Rick and I worked all morning doing what we could to clean up the yard.  He used the leaf blower while I handled a rake.  Once we got all of the leaves to the front curb for pick-up next week, I took the lawn mower with a bagger and cut the whole lawn one last time.  I was surprised how long the grass still was in the front.  The backyard cutting was good just to pick up the remnants of the leaves that we were not able to capture on our raking spree.

Our raking and mowing efforts clearly define the boundaries of our yard.
Note, however, the leaves ready to blow back onto our property from the
neighbors' yards.

The result is a beautifully raked and mowed yard that, sadly, will not stay clean for long since our new neighbors to the north do not seem to understand the use of a lawn mower or a rake.  If the wind blows in the wrong direction, their mess will be in our yard.  Perhaps it is time to build that fence after all...

As we worked this morning, however, I became aware of two things.  First, I am getting older, so each year the yard seems to be larger than last year.  I can still handle it, but keeping it neat takes more effort than doing so has done in the past.

But that is OK, because the other thing I became aware of was how blessed we are to have a home and a yard in which to work.  So many people this year, due to hurricanes or fires, have no homes left.  Their yards are either mud pits as a result of flooding or are charred wastelands as the wildfires that consumed their homes also ravaged the yards.  At least I have green grass that needs cutting and standing trees that have golden leaves falling to the ground.  So I will not complain of the weather or of the work.  Instead, I will count my blessings and be thankful for everything I have.

Why?

I just don't understand.  We awoke this morning to learn that a lone gunman last night had killed 58 people and wounded over 500 by opening fire with semi-automatic weapons on a concert crowd in Los Vegas.   Then he turned the gun on himself and fired.

Mass casualties. The worst massacre in US history.  Not terrorist related. Just terrible, senseless death and destruction. But why?  To what end did killing and wounding all of those innocent strangers have?  Did he promote a cause? Was he angry at someone?  Why take out frustration and anger on those who had nothing to do with the causes and reasons for such hatred and anger? His actions destroyed lives and families, yet changed nothing.

The gunman was 64 years old with no history of mental illness.  The concert-goers were country western music fans, mostly between the ages of 10 and 35.  The worlds of the gunman and the concert-goes probably never crossed, yet we know that with his arsenal and his choice of hotel rooms from which he acted that he had planned this horrific crime in detail.

His family is stunned.  His brother says that he never has seen his brother even draw a weapon, and certainly not shoot one on a regular basis.  Yet the gunman was well-armed with several semi-automatic rifles and mountains of ammunition.  How has our country become so lax that we allow someone to accumulate such a store of weapons regardless of his mental or emotional state? Why is there no limit on what a person can buy within a certain period of time?  Why are there no checks on who can own weapons in this country? And why is there no registry on who does and does not own such weapons.

When our Constitution was written, it gave people the right to bear arms.  At the time, in the late 18th century, bearing arms had a very practical reason: to feed one's family.  With no handy-dandy corner grocery store with a well-stocked meat counter, going to out kill a deer, pheasant, turkey, buffalo, or bear was a way to survive.  Yet those hunters of yesteryear would never have dreamed of using a semi-automatic weapon to bag their prey; doing so would have destroyed the very meat they were trying to harvest.  People had the right to bear arms to feed themselves and to defend themselves against wild animals that may have freely roamed near their homesteads.

And I believe that people still should have the right to own a weapon with which they can hunt game, be that birds, bear, deer, or other animals they would choose to put on the dinner table.  I understand the reasoning behind keeping herd size in check, and I find nothing wrong with the sportsman who wants to hunt.

However, I see no sense in allowing anyone the right to own -- and to use -- semi-automatic weapons outside the realm of the military.  No-one needs a semi-automatic rifle at home.  No one needs a weapon that, through instructions readily available on the Internet, can be turned into a fully automatic weapon.  Law enforcement agencies decry the law that allows these weapons in the hands of the general public, and I see no reason why anyone would need one.  If you want to shoot targets, do so with a weapon that fires single shots and actually shows what skill you have. If you want to hunt, do so with a single-shot rifle specially suited with ammunition for the type of animal you seek. Semi-automatic weapons have no business in the sports field since their only purpose is that of mass destruction.

Had the gunman not had semi-automatic fire power, hundreds of people would not have been injured, and I would venture to guess that the death toll would be much less.  Allowing people these weapons makes no sense to me.  Nor does shooting randomly into a crowd of innocent strangers.  Their deaths serve no purpose and, sadly, probably will not cause any changes.

Perhaps the only good that could possibly come out of this tragedy is if enough people actually become enraged enough to contact their Legislators and to demand that the laws be changed to protect the innocent.  We need stronger gun laws that allow the sports hunter the right to bear arms while keeping weapons of mass killing off the streets and out of the hands of those who are not mentally or emotionally able to know right from wrong.

Yet I fear that nothing will be done.  We have the power to change what is wrong, yet no one will do so.  And that, I do not understand.

Good News on a Day of Mourning

Today is September 11, a day of perpetual mourning in America for all of the innocent lives we lost to senseless terrorist attacks 16 years ago.  It is a day of remembrance, and ceremonies across America commemorated those civilians lost and those brave first responders who gave their lives trying to help.

Yet today also was a day of good news for us.  We learned, first of all, that our nephew and his wife were safe, having lost just a few shingles from the roof of their house.  We learned that our church members and pastor and his family also were safe.  Apparently our aging church withstood the winds and the rains and came out intact.  Some of that is due to the fact that the storm, at the last minute, drifted east, sparing our area from the worst of the rains and the winds.  Some of that is due to the architecture of the church being low and having the buildings protect one another from the way they are configured.  And part of that is because people prayed for deliverance, and they were granted that grace.

We learned that our sister-in-law's sister, who fled Naples and drove north, was safe. The fate of her home is still unknown, but we know that she was out of harm's way when the winds and the water invaded her city.

We learned, thankfully, that the time and money we spent putting in hurricane resistant windows, doors, garage doors, and roofing materials paid us back in full.  We reportedly have no damage to our house, and even the vinyl fence (complete with its concreted-in posts) remains standing.  We are so relieved to hear that our home and property are intact.

Sadly, we also learned that our neighbor who has been watching our home for us did not fair as well.  She had a huge back porch with jalousy windows that worried her.  Thankfully, she took shelter with a neighbor to the north, only to return today to find that her porch was totally gone.  She said that she could not even find the pieces of it in the neighborhood.  When the porch blew off, it also took part of her roof on the house, so she had to scramble today to try to get tarps on the roof and across the back to protect the interior of her house.  We have not heard from her again, but I have thought of her often today and pray that she was about to secure her property.  If we had been there, we gladly would have helped her tarp the house to keep it safe.

Yesterday, Florida took the worst weather beating of the last 96 years, and recovery in some parts of it will take months.  Power is still out in over half the state; crews may need days if not weeks to get it all functional again.  No power is all right with us as long as the house stays enclosed.  With no one going in or out, the air conditioned, dry interior air will stay somewhat cool and dry, so we are not worried.  When power is restored, the air conditioner should start again with no trouble.

Now the healing begins.  Yes, we probably will get a $600 bill from our insurance company to help with the claims from people who have lost everything.  Somehow, that seems a small price to pay.  Our preparation was worth the time and expense to keep our property safe.  We are fortunate that we do not have to travel down to Florida to take care of downed trees or missing roofs. We are grateful that we did not lose any family members or friends.  We will stay here, out of the way for now, to let Rick's hand and our adopted state both begin the healing process.

Big, Bad Irma

Seven years.  That's how many years of loving labor we have invested in our Florida home to make it the comfortable, safe, bright retirement home of our dreams.  When we first laid eyes on the house during an open house one fine March day, Rick did not want to even go inside to see it.  So I went in alone, took a look around, and saw great potential.  I finally persuaded Rick to take a look.  All he saw was lots of work.  We went back with Steve and Chris after the open house to peek in the windows.  They, too, saw the potential buried under all of the dirt and neglect.  All Rick saw was lots of work, but he was willing to give me what I wanted.  We closed on that house on June 6, 2010.

On the day we closed, Rick wanted to sleep that night in a hotel.  I wanted to save the money, so we moved in that same day.  The house was built in 1960, and it had not been updated since that time.  It was filthy.  While Rick cleaned the disgusting toilet (he would not even use it standing up!), I set about sweeping dog hair and dirt from the Florida room.  I scrubbed enough of the floor to set down an air mattress -- which would be our bed for the next two summers -- so we would have a place to sleep.  Since we both were still teaching in Wisconsin, we had just a few precious weeks each summer to start the transformation process on the house.

Like many crazy people do with inanimate objects, we personified the house.  Because of her location, we called her Gladys, and I immediately began to think of her as a sad, tired, achy, neglected old woman who was just crying out for some love and attention.  She needed some new clothes, a little bit of patching up and boosting up, a ton of cosmetics, a new hairdo (roof) and a few flowers to make her beautiful again. We had our work cut out for us.

The kitchen was so disgusting that we tore everything out of it within the first week.  For the next two years, we survived with a metal rack from Sam's Club to hold all of our dishes, pots and pans, and other kitchen necessities.  We started with just a microwave which we had brought from Wisconsin and a refrigerator that took me four hours to clean out and to sanitize.  Rick built a 2 x 4 frame to hold a Lowe's countertop and a sink.  Part of the time, I was doing dishes in a dishpan in the bathtub.

Our living room consisted of folding lawn chairs, orange plastic storage tubs for tables, and old lamps on the floor.  We didn't have a dining room table, so the plastic tubs also served as dining tables the first year.

Then we started to do everything to the house, as money, time, and energy would allow. Each summer until we both retired, we would come down to intensely work on Gladys. We evicted the rats in the attic, and took out all of the old insulation.  We added new, fresh insulation to guard the house against the intense Florida sun. We replaced the electrical service, the HVAC, and almost all of the plumbing inside. After we retired, we switched the hot Florida summers for the mild Florida winters.  We spent thousands of dollars replacing every window and outside door with 130 mph hurricane-resistant materials.  We replaced the garage door with a hurricane-resistant door also. We replaced every interior door in the house with solid core doors, adding new woodwork to match.

Through the years, we worked from room to room, renovating each in turn.  We built an all new kitchen with new, clean cabinets, new appliances, and new lights.  Fresh paint covered every inch of the interior, and new closet systems were installed throughout.  We expanded the master bath, adding a new shower and sink.  We had all of the terrazzo floors throughout the house ground down and re-polished until they shined line new.

And just this last year we took out a loan to refinish the last of the house.  We gutted the last untouched room -- the 1960's pink-tiled bathroom -- and brought that room up to date with a new tub and tub surround, new walls and a fan, new lighting fixtures and electrical, and a new sink and vanity top.  We spent thousands of dollars on a new roof and roof fan.  We had a new cement front walkway poured, and we added pavers on the north side and back around the new patio slab to help with the drainage of torrential rains that sometimes visit Florida.

Seven years, thousands of dollars, and more cuts, bruises, injuries, aches, and pains than I care to count.  And now we may lose it all.

Hurricane Irma has taken a turn, and instead of going up the center of Florida, it has now drifted to the west coast.  The last time the west coast of Florida saw a hurricane was in 1921.  Now Irma is on a course to make landfall in Naples and to travel up the coast.  The eye of the hurricane, with its most destructive winds, is scheduled to pass directly over Dunedin and Tampa.  We will get the worst the storm has to offer.  The one saving grace is that it may be downgraded from a Category 4 to a Category 3 hurricane by the time it gets that far north.  Storm surges probably will not reach Gladys, but sustained winds over 100 miles per hour still may cause complete devastation of the entire town.

Gladys has withstood countless storms throughout her 57 years, but Irma may bring her to her knees. The eye of the hurricane is supposed to hit her about 8:00 p.m. and will last until approximately 8:00 a.m. on Monday.  Seven years, and it all may be gone in twelve hours.

Yet, as I have said earlier, if Gladys is seriously injured, she can be replaced.  The people of Florida are the real concern.  We are scared to death for them. The people we have met, enjoyed, cared for, and learned to love in the past seven years are irreplaceable.  We have lost one dear friend from church already this year, and we do not want to lose any more. We worry about our family members who live just a few miles away.  We worry about our neighbors, and we worry about our friends in our weaving group and in our church.

Sitting here watching the news and waiting is extremely difficult.  We are scared.  We feel helpless.  All we can do is to watch, wait, and pray that we have something left in Florida when tomorrow dawns.

Nasty Weather

With sick hearts, we have witnessed the devastation that Hurricane Harvey has caused to cities in Texas, Louisiana, and other places in the Gulf region.  Thousands of people have lost everything, and the recovery for those losses will cost the nation trillions of dollars.  More devastating, however, is the loss of life caused by this horrific storm, and the nation is not finished with this type of weather yet.

Here in Wisconsin we have watched the weather patterns do some unusual things also.  The spring was mild and warm, the summer was unusually wet (we had no "brown out" of lawns this July), and now September dawns wet and cold.  "Early winter" and "harsh winter" are predictions starting to populate conversations.

The wet weather, along with Rick's hand surgery and subsequent recovery time, both have hampered our progress in getting the rest of the porch painted.  If the weather is not too cold or too wet to paint, then our calendar is filled or we just do not want to face the task.  For all of those reasons, I seriously doubt that we will finish painting the porch this year.  And that's OK.  It has a prime coat on the parts that we scraped off, and it can wait until next year if need be.

Of greater concern, however, is the weather that now is heading toward Florida.  Rick said just yesterday, "Aren't you glad that we finished all of the remodeling of Gladys this past year?  Now when we return, we will have just a little gardening to do.  Maybe we can actually relax and enjoy Florida and all it has to offer."  He voiced this opinion partially because when we return to Florida, he still will not be able to lift more than 5 or 10 pounds with his left hand.  He will not be able to physically do a lot of manual labor until the hand continues to heal.  Sightseeing and relaxing on the beach sounded like reasonable, ideal pastimes.

Yet we know that Hurricane Irma is heading straight toward Florida, and this time Dunedin might not be able to dodge the bullet.  Dunedin has not had a direct hit from a hurricane since 1921.  Irma is predicted, in one model, to skim the northern part of Cuba and then to slam into Florida.  More than one model have it traveling straight up the center of Florida like a zipper, thus affecting nearly every county in the state.  If those models hold true, even Dunedin could see both destructive winds and torrential rains with possible flooding.

Governor Scott has declared an emergency for every county in Florida for the storm that is not supposed to hit until three or four days from now, and storm provisions already are sold out in most southern Florida locations. Evacuation of the Florida Keys has started. At last report, Irma was a Category 5 storm with winds of 185 miles per hour.  We know that Gladys has a brand new roof, 130 mph impact windows and doors, and a 130 mph wind resistant garage door.  What worries us is that although the windows in the double front doors are hurricane resistant, we are not so sure the frame and the pegs that secure the doors closed will hold in hurricane-level winds. And if those winds reach 185 miles per hour, nothing is safe in its path.

We also worry that the three plastic sheds in the back and side yards (and their contents) could end up in another county, as could our garbage cans, our park bench on the front porch, and our flower pot of flowers that our neighbor has so lovingly been watering for us.

Of course, the two large trees in the back yard also could cause considerable damage to our fence -- if the fence even surrounds the yard when we return -- and to our house.

 If Irma really rips up Florida, our homeowner's insurance will be useless because Citizen's insurance will not have enough funds to cover the cost of the damage statewide. Forecasters show that Phase 2 -- a tropical storm called Jose -- is lining up right behind Irma, and that it has the potential of turning into a hurricane and following the same path also. And those are just material concerns.

Of far greater concern is our nephew and his wife who live just a few miles south of us, our friends at church, and our neighbors on our street.  They are all dear to us, and they all are in harm's way.  We pray that the storm takes a less destructive path and goes out to sea east of Florida, and that our family, friends, and neighbors all remain safe.

If Gladys takes a direct hit, we may be driving down to Florida much sooner than we thought to see what we can salvage from the storm.  At this point, all we can do is watch, wait, and pray.

Porch - Day 2

One would think that after all of these years, we would learn that if paint is over two years old, it is no good.  However, we had to learn that lesson all over again this morning when we opened a can of Kilz paint to touch up some "bad" spots on the back porch.  Yup, the can opened.  Yup, the oil and liquids were all floating on top.  Yup, the base was so thick that it would have taken a major earthquake to shake the can enough to mix the two components together. So off to Home Depot we drove to buy a new pint of Kilz.

 Once home, Rick started by going around the base of the porch and drilling holes for Tapcons to refasten the structure to the cement patio.  Over the years, both sides had worked their way loose.  Then we draped the porch and Rick started to work on the boards that we either scraped the loose paint off yesterday or the ones that showed signs of water or rust damage.

Rick drills holes for Tapcons to resecure the
porch to the cement floor.

We probably should have replaced the board on the north side of the house, but neither of us was in the mood to do so.  Instead, I freely admit that we put a bandage on it by liberally slathering it full of Kilz paint.

The rafter ends needed some serious attention.

The rafter ends that were on the outside of the porch also were in pretty bad shape.  I had scraped them yesterday, and today Rick put on two coats of Kilz to try to protect them from further damage.  The good news is that the porch is not a major structural component of the house, so we are not terribly concerned about walls falling down or ceilings caving in.  For now, the boards are protected for another year or two.

We would love to put in a new roof, but the solid roof that we like is both too expensive, and it would be so solid that it would make both the dining room and the kitchen very dark.  For now, we will take the cheap way out and just stay with the translucent roof on the porch.

The rafter tails look much better now that they
are primed with Kilz.  A fresh coat of paint will
be added on Thursday if we don't see rain.

The Kilz in various places on the porch was as far as we could go today.  It has to dry at least 24 hours, and tomorrow we will be out of town all day.  We will have to see if the weather cooperates with us on Thursday because that is the next day we will have free to work on the porch.

For right now, that paint must dry while I go to wash the kitchen floor and to cut the grass.  The joys of home ownership just never end!

Scrub-a-Dub-Dub

If I had my hands around the neck of the person who built the roof joists for our back screened patio, I would squeeze that neck until he turned purple!  He caused us a great deal of work today, with more work to follow tomorrow.

The roof joists are a pain when they need washing
or painting.  Unfortunately, they need both this year.

The roof joists are set up in a lattice pattern so that the support for the fiberglass roof above is in various places.  This helped the builder because he could stagger the joists when nailing them into place.  The staggered joists also provide more support to carry the snow load on the roof in the winter time.

OK, OK, I get it.  I understand why the joists are positioned that way, but that does not make dealing with them any easier.

The vertical support columns are easy to paint, but the
roof supports certainly are not.

We knew that one of our tasks this summer was to wash and to paint the support posts and the roof joists on the back porch.  We spent this morning doing nothing but washing the dirt off of those surfaces.  A little TSP with warm water was the mixture of the day, but the porch was so dirty that each of us went through at least three bucketsful to keep the water relatively usable.  What a pain each little square of joists is to clean!  The corners are nearly impossible to get clean, and having everything overhead certainly did not make the job faster or easier.

Once we got to the outer parts of the joists and the rain gutters, the job did not get any better. In fact, the outside was almost dirtier than the inside.  Rick also took the gutter guards off and found a royal muddy mess inside the gutters which he had to clean.

We scraped the paint where necessary; tomorrow we'll add the prime coat where needed and perhaps a little Kilz in certain areas.  Painting this vertical posts is not difficult, but the joists of the ceiling are more difficult to paint than they are to wash.  Neither of us is looking forward to our job tomorrow.

I just hope the final result of our efforts will protect the porch for a few more years and will be worth the effort in the end.  Even then, I still would have murder on my mind if the designer ever came onto the back porch.

Green, Green Grass of Home

My watch tells me that the time is 3:27 p.m., and other than a small break at lunchtime, this is the first time today that I have had a chance to rest.  Needless to say, this has been another productive day.

The before and after pictures below show how the morning was spent:

The rest of the former garden, awaiting sod.

The side yard as it looks after 20 rolls
of sod. 

We had to go out to the fields where the men were cutting the sod in order to purchase 20 more rolls.  I guess we could not get sod more fresh than that!  We were home by 9:30 and able to lay down the next part of the sod.

We were surprised that we actually had enough to fill in the main mud patch section of the yard.  We still need to do a third trip to pick up sod, though.  We would like to lay down one more strip where the creeping-charlie weeds currently live.  Technically that area is on the neighbor's property, but since our trees grew out over that area (which allowed the weeds to grow) we feel we have the responsibility to remove the weeds and to add some grass.

Our front yard has a couple of places also that would benefit from new sod, and our back yard has the same.  These areas are all depressions in the yard that mark where trees once grew.  We need to add some dirt on top, and then so new sod to get rid of these ankle-turners.  Since driving 45 miles takes gas, we will wait until we know how much sod Lindsay and Chris will need for their yard, and then we will get all of the sod at once.

The afternoon has been spent with the usual Friday cleaning chores and laundry, plus a run to the automatic vehicle wash because our trips to the dump have left the truck filthy.  We are preparing to drive the truck to Milwaukee tomorrow, so we cleaned the inside, restocked it with snacks and water, and Rick filled the tank with gas.  We also made a run to the bank to keep the finances accurate.  Whew!

Once again the weather cooperated so we did not die of heat stroke.  We are both happy to see the major part of that task complete.  Now all we have to do is to add water.