Cleaning House

Now that we have decided to keep This Old House, at least for a while, we have become obsessed with fixing all the things that didn't bother us in the least when we thought they would become someone else's problem. 

Today we have a tree trimmer coming to cut the limbs in the backyard through which our main power supply is running. The power line has been hanging precipitously since the ice storm of 2001.  Though it may seem incredibly irresponsible that we have let this much time pass withouth fixing it, understand that I have actually been calling the power company every six months for the past four years. They just never explained until this last time that THEY would not cut the limbs, but that WE had to do things like that. Then they FINALLY explained how to go about coordinating such a task.

I grew up in small-town Iowa, where one either a) owned a chainsaw or b) had a relative with not only a chainsaw, but probably a cherrypicker as well. The sheer effort and knowledge of the Yellow Pages one needs in a city to accomplish the task of limb removal blew my mind.  Oh, and you have to coordinate the entire thing with the power company, keeper of all things unscheduled and difficult. 

We finally got it worked out, I think, and there should be a guy named Tim arriving at 9 a.m., just as I am leaving for Bowels of Corporate Telecom, to fix the problem. He swears he will make the power company stay so that I do not have to coerce them to return and turn back on my power after he is finished with his work.  We shall see how that turns out.

Next, we need to have significant electrical rewiring done to make all the outlets in the house work, as well as adding fancy features like outdoor outlets.  Apparently there was little need for Christmas lights when This Old House was built before WWII.  This requires shutting down all the power in the house for at least eight hours the first day and sporadically for the next two days.  After much research, I landed three locations where I could do my work (my beloved seemed to space off for a while that I now work from home and kind of need things like power).  He came to his senses when he realized that the power being out not only inconvenienced me but also meant the refrigerator would be shut down.  I begged him to wait until after my big deadline to banish me to Barnes & Noble for a day.  He is now thinking a generator, which we have intended to buy ever since the first ice storm, might be a better solution.  Who knows - men and power have never ceased to amaze me as a bad combination.

The third project will be terracing this weird weed patch we have growing in the front. After many arguments over who would actually do this work, we are tentatively investigating hiring a handyman to help us out. The handyman seems a better use of the money inevitably spent on a babysitter so that I can help my beloved.  The little angel is not YET up to hard manual labor.

Ah, spring - the season in which you realize everything you own is slightly sub-par.