Well, maybe more than a couple.
They built - finished building - the new beach access across the street. We even got new trash and recycling cans near it. But they didn't put benches on the deck. We used to have benches on the deck. It was nice to sit up there of an evening, and watch the colors change. No mas. Ya gotta stand, anymore. The "new normal." It sucks.
The train this morning got within walking distance of Penn Station, and stopped. It stayed stopped in the freaking tunnel for about 20 minutes. Which of course made me late for work. Worse, tho, it made me claustrophobic, sitting in the tunnel so extra long. Bad enough we sometimes (usually in the morning) take the "long tunnel" instead of the "short tunnel." (Please note, there is only ONE actual tunnel, containing two whole tracks.) But just sitting there in the total darkness is excruciating.
My current favorite lunch place, Dali Deli (I'm not kidding, that's really its name) didn't have shrimp on the cold bar today. I had shashimi instead. Probably tipped my sodium level over the limit. I compensated, tho, by not having time to buy a bag of chips on my way to the evening train (of which I was two trains later than usual, partially due to the tunnel thing this morning, and partially due to other work issues). Which in turn resulted in my not having enough singles for parking tomorrow, so I have to do quarters again. At some point I run out of quarters. Twelve a day is heavy business. Literally.
And one thing I really can't stand, after a four hour round trip commute and more than eight hours of grueling mental labor, not to mention getting up and down from my aero chair numerous times with an aching back (from doing too much heavy lifting over the weekend, I suppose), is having someone meet me at the door when I get home and chat my ears off for a half hour or so. One, I haven't eaten for over 7 hours, and my blood sugar level is bottoming out; two, I REALLY need to use the bathroom; and three, I really can't stand someone gabbing my ears off when I just pull in the driveway. I need some time to unwind before I can deal with people. So now that I don't have a husband (thank god), my son has his own house in another state, and I no longer have a roomie of any description, what happens? My mother has to deliver the dog, and hangs around to chat. She has ten times the social life I have, yet she needs to tell me everything that went on all day.
Sigh. Thanks for listening, folks. Much better price per hour than my shrink.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
down time (again)
Ok, so now I'm really depressed. Back when we were all in the same boat, so to speak, and everyone in the neighborhood who had stayed thru the storm was cleaning up, and sharing stories and pizza and laborers, electricians and plumbers, we had all thought we ought to have a block party to celebrate surviving Sandy.
The party never happened, of course. The camaraderie sort of dried up as the basements did, and washed away with the mold. The neighborhood went back to the way it was, everybody sort of knows each other, but is too busy to get together about anything much.
I've discovered lately that everyone ELSE knows each other rather well, but I'm still the outsider, having lived here only 15 years. But that's another story, I suppose.
The real story is, other than the renters who have not come back at all, and a house or two that are now for rent that used to be owner-occupied, and one guy who has not yet been back to his summer cottage, but I can understand since he lives in Hoboken and probably has issues there as well, the "regulars" are here. So make that seven households out of the 18 or so homes on the block. I'm guestimating, don't feel like going out and counting, it's dark out and I'm not quite over thinking we have an after-dark curfew (which disappeared easier than the mold did, when summer started). Oh, and I'm not counting the new people who bought just before the storm and I, at least, don't really know at all.
And of those seven households, as of Saturday, two of the nominal heads of household have died since the storm. Tony and George, both 64, both born in July, so neither one quite made his 65th birthday. They knew each other forever, it seems they all grew up around here and never left.
Tony learned, just after the storm, that what was initially diagnosed as pneumonia was actually lung cancer, which aggressively spread thru every part of him almost before anyone understood what was going on. George had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. They had thought initially that he also broke his neck, when he collapsed, but that was disproven. However, he went into the hospital and never came home. Apparently he had been out for too long, and had minimal brain activity, and so it went. Better, in my opinion, to have taken only a couple of weeks, rather than 9 months, like the husband of a friend of mine in Canada. Just thinking of the financial impact (not to mention stress on the other members of the family) of an extended, hopeless, hospital ordeal.
Still, and I guess this is the point of this discourse, two of our very local Sandy survivors are now dead, and I really think their deaths can be attributed at least in part to Sandy. They were strong, but maybe not strong enough, and I think the added strain of having their houses and lives wrecked helped them along, not in a good way.
Each of them was basically a good man, depending on the context in which one knew them. And George was one of only two people who knew how to keep my boiler going long past its use-by date (the other one is in jail for killing his son-in-law - maybe it's something about that boiler, but it died in the storm and is now sitting in the basement inert and waiting for a metal scrapper to want to work hard enough to remove it).
Yes, I knew them from around the neighborhood, but not very well. And both men had sons who gave my son a hard way to go when we first moved here, and were a large part of why I spent an awful lot of money I really didn't have to send my son to private high school.
But even with a mixed history, I feel their loss. It's like another tear in the fabric of life here, which was already in tatters. We'd all been stitching it back together, bit by bit, but now the stitches have burst, again.
The party never happened, of course. The camaraderie sort of dried up as the basements did, and washed away with the mold. The neighborhood went back to the way it was, everybody sort of knows each other, but is too busy to get together about anything much.
I've discovered lately that everyone ELSE knows each other rather well, but I'm still the outsider, having lived here only 15 years. But that's another story, I suppose.
The real story is, other than the renters who have not come back at all, and a house or two that are now for rent that used to be owner-occupied, and one guy who has not yet been back to his summer cottage, but I can understand since he lives in Hoboken and probably has issues there as well, the "regulars" are here. So make that seven households out of the 18 or so homes on the block. I'm guestimating, don't feel like going out and counting, it's dark out and I'm not quite over thinking we have an after-dark curfew (which disappeared easier than the mold did, when summer started). Oh, and I'm not counting the new people who bought just before the storm and I, at least, don't really know at all.
And of those seven households, as of Saturday, two of the nominal heads of household have died since the storm. Tony and George, both 64, both born in July, so neither one quite made his 65th birthday. They knew each other forever, it seems they all grew up around here and never left.
Tony learned, just after the storm, that what was initially diagnosed as pneumonia was actually lung cancer, which aggressively spread thru every part of him almost before anyone understood what was going on. George had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. They had thought initially that he also broke his neck, when he collapsed, but that was disproven. However, he went into the hospital and never came home. Apparently he had been out for too long, and had minimal brain activity, and so it went. Better, in my opinion, to have taken only a couple of weeks, rather than 9 months, like the husband of a friend of mine in Canada. Just thinking of the financial impact (not to mention stress on the other members of the family) of an extended, hopeless, hospital ordeal.
Still, and I guess this is the point of this discourse, two of our very local Sandy survivors are now dead, and I really think their deaths can be attributed at least in part to Sandy. They were strong, but maybe not strong enough, and I think the added strain of having their houses and lives wrecked helped them along, not in a good way.
Each of them was basically a good man, depending on the context in which one knew them. And George was one of only two people who knew how to keep my boiler going long past its use-by date (the other one is in jail for killing his son-in-law - maybe it's something about that boiler, but it died in the storm and is now sitting in the basement inert and waiting for a metal scrapper to want to work hard enough to remove it).
Yes, I knew them from around the neighborhood, but not very well. And both men had sons who gave my son a hard way to go when we first moved here, and were a large part of why I spent an awful lot of money I really didn't have to send my son to private high school.
But even with a mixed history, I feel their loss. It's like another tear in the fabric of life here, which was already in tatters. We'd all been stitching it back together, bit by bit, but now the stitches have burst, again.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Mixed bag
It's finally raining, not hard, but wet nonetheless. I'll take it, my tomatoes look dreadful from too much hot and not enough water.
Pablo is not pleased about the rain, but he is happy that his terrible towel is back, now that the kitchen floor is done. I fold the towel and leave it in a particular spot for him, and he moves it wherever he wants to move it, then lays down for a nap. At the moment, it's in the middle of the floor, so you have to walk around it no matter where in the kitchen you need to go.
This picture was early in the process. The towel has spread and formed a circle, with an indentation just the right size for a dog like Pablo. He builds dog circles (or nests) on my bed, too, out of whatever blankets happen to be available.
Before the rain, I got a picture of the flowers on what was supposedly a butterfly bush which my Mom planted in my back yard.
Much as I don't care for bennies parking here to use the beach for free (and then dumping their trash here before they leave), they have been coming and parking here even without the stairs, using people's private accesses, and leaving their messes anyhow. So maybe this will get them off private property (and thus end the liability the owners might have if someone has an accident), and MAYBE we'll get our trash cans back (they used to live under the stairs, but I guess they floated away in the storm, they're probably at the bottom of the river somewhere now). And if we have trash cans, MAYBE people will pick up after their dogs? Is that too much to ask? And MAYBE some of the food trash these slobs dump all over the street will wind up in a proper receptacle for a change?
More importantly, I will once more have a quick way to get onto the beach, so if there's a particularly interesting phenomenon happening - like sunrises or cloud pattens or rainbows or whatever - I will actually be able to get over there with my camera before it goes away. Plus, get better pictures, since there are no obstructions (like electric wires) once you're on top of the wall.
And having the public access right across the street means I don't need to build a deck myself, and have the maintenance and liability issues that go with. So, mostly good, all around.
Pablo is not pleased about the rain, but he is happy that his terrible towel is back, now that the kitchen floor is done. I fold the towel and leave it in a particular spot for him, and he moves it wherever he wants to move it, then lays down for a nap. At the moment, it's in the middle of the floor, so you have to walk around it no matter where in the kitchen you need to go.
This picture was early in the process. The towel has spread and formed a circle, with an indentation just the right size for a dog like Pablo. He builds dog circles (or nests) on my bed, too, out of whatever blankets happen to be available.
Before the rain, I got a picture of the flowers on what was supposedly a butterfly bush which my Mom planted in my back yard.
Doesn't look like a butterfly bush to me. Hibiscus, maybe? Very pretty anyway, and maybe since the blossoms are pink the butterflies might like them in spite of them not being "official."
And in other news of a very local nature, work has commenced on our new stairs and deck over the sea wall. We get a public access due to being one of the few places in town a non-resident (aka bennie) can park, and the old one got totally washed away in the storm (a chunk of it landed in my back yard). They laid the platform the other day, stopped work because it got too hot, and resumed today (until the rain started). If there isn't too much rain, maybe we'll have easier beach access by the weekend.
More importantly, I will once more have a quick way to get onto the beach, so if there's a particularly interesting phenomenon happening - like sunrises or cloud pattens or rainbows or whatever - I will actually be able to get over there with my camera before it goes away. Plus, get better pictures, since there are no obstructions (like electric wires) once you're on top of the wall.
And having the public access right across the street means I don't need to build a deck myself, and have the maintenance and liability issues that go with. So, mostly good, all around.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Sunday nite, still no rain
Last evening's rumbling was just an empty threat. Cooler today, but still no rain, and the humidity is still way up there in the stratosphere.
Laundry is back together and got a good workout today, four loads, which is a lot for me. Made several bags of trash, and filled my recycling can to the rim. Still have a bag full of catalogs and magazines to go, but I can tie those up separately, they don't have to fit in the can.
Don't I have an exciting life? No wonder I get depressed on Sunday nite...something about looking forward to another week of the sos. That's same old stuff, for those who don't know. Can I be bored now?
OTOH, I'm still cleaning up after the last time we had some real excitement around here - Oct 29. So maybe being bored isn't so awful.
Laundry is back together and got a good workout today, four loads, which is a lot for me. Made several bags of trash, and filled my recycling can to the rim. Still have a bag full of catalogs and magazines to go, but I can tie those up separately, they don't have to fit in the can.
Don't I have an exciting life? No wonder I get depressed on Sunday nite...something about looking forward to another week of the sos. That's same old stuff, for those who don't know. Can I be bored now?
OTOH, I'm still cleaning up after the last time we had some real excitement around here - Oct 29. So maybe being bored isn't so awful.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
distant thunder
Sounds like the name of a movie? No, it's actually been rumbling for a while now. Everyone has had their dogs out for a last pee before something breaks, now we just sit and wait for weather to happen. Pablo is barking his brains out, I did my rain dance, now sitting with fingers crossed that it actually does rain. Noticing that it's hard to type with your fingers crossed.
Friday, July 19, 2013
hot, hotter, hottest
Last nite when I got in my car at the train station, it told me it was 106F. By the time I got home twenty minutes later, it was 89F. While it's true I live north of the train station, it's only 7 miles, so it ought not to make such a huge difference. How hot it is seems to depend on exactly where you are standing, and yes, it really is cooler at the shore. Most of the time, anyhow.
My alarm clock has a temp reading on it, but it's stuck on Celsius. I'm sort of learning how to correlate 32C to too hot F. An hour of the a/c and it was down to 28C, which is much better.
Did I mention I don't get along very well with air conditioning? I try not to use it unless it's literally hotter than hell.
I remember when my Dad was alive, he would always drink hot coffee when it was hot out. He said it made him sweat, which made him feel cooler. Not sure I subscribe to that logic, but ok.
The thing that amazes me is, with all this heat, we haven't had a thunderstorm all week. I'm waiting. Probably happen Saturday, when I need to get some work done outdoors. Never fails.
My alarm clock has a temp reading on it, but it's stuck on Celsius. I'm sort of learning how to correlate 32C to too hot F. An hour of the a/c and it was down to 28C, which is much better.
Did I mention I don't get along very well with air conditioning? I try not to use it unless it's literally hotter than hell.
I remember when my Dad was alive, he would always drink hot coffee when it was hot out. He said it made him sweat, which made him feel cooler. Not sure I subscribe to that logic, but ok.
The thing that amazes me is, with all this heat, we haven't had a thunderstorm all week. I'm waiting. Probably happen Saturday, when I need to get some work done outdoors. Never fails.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
the bridges, for Millie
These are pictures I took up on 125th St when we went to the Cotton Club for On Site Opera's presentation of Gershwin's Blue Monday.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
kitchen floor is almost done
It needs details finished, and the closets, and we decided to do the laundry area while we're at it. But the bulk of the work is done. We all got sorta silly from the glue fumes this afternoon....
Here is is with the new sub-floor installed. Even that looked a lot better than the old carpet. Who on earth puts carpet in a kitchen?
The new floor. I think it makes the space look bigger. My mother says if I get rid of the clutter, it will look even bigger. Well, I can only do so many things at one time, so the clutter is staying until after the work is all done.
Pablo approves. And no, I didn't choose it because it matches the dog. Purely a coincidence. Honest.
Friday, July 12, 2013
got the flooring for the kitchen
With a little bit of luck, it ought to be installed tomorrow, my handy dudes will be here bright and early to get on the case. It will be nice to be able to walk in the kitchen without sticking to the floor. And to put my kitchen back together, so I can cook and actually sit down to eat there again. Right now it looks like a tornado hit it.
I'm tired of having people working on my house. I just want to be left alone. We're close to done with the first floor, one more bedroom to paint, and reassembling the kitchen. Then there's the upstairs. I don't even want to think about that yet.
And when it's all done, we need to paint the stairs. I think if we do that first, it'll get mucked up when we do the upstairs work. Gotta get the ducks in order. So the stairs are the last thing on the list.
Still trying to run out of projects before I run out of money. Fingers crossed.
I'm tired of having people working on my house. I just want to be left alone. We're close to done with the first floor, one more bedroom to paint, and reassembling the kitchen. Then there's the upstairs. I don't even want to think about that yet.
And when it's all done, we need to paint the stairs. I think if we do that first, it'll get mucked up when we do the upstairs work. Gotta get the ducks in order. So the stairs are the last thing on the list.
Still trying to run out of projects before I run out of money. Fingers crossed.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
can I be pissed off now?
This is what PART of my kitchen floor looks like, once the sticky tile remnants are peeled off. The operative word is PART. If the whole floor was made of this wood, I'd just have it refinished and be done with it. But no. Nothing in this house is ever so easy. Part is like this, part is the yellow stuff (also some sort of wood) you can see to the left, and a whole lot of the floor is plywood and cheap luan board. Grrrr.....damn cheap 80's construction. It looks like they ripped off some other construction sites and made the floor out of whatever they could steal.
hot hot hot
Ok, so there's a breeze here, we are kind of near the water. But it's hot, and sticky, and I'm sweating after just getting out of the shower. I don't expect my hair to dry any time today. Summer at da shore.
Dug a path thru the kitchen disorder to reach the laundry, so at least I will have something clean to wear to work this week. Sticking to the floor....I am tempted to peel up all those sticky old tiles, but I'm sure the floor underneath will be just as sticky. Maybe if I get too bored....I have my handy putty knife right here, ready to go at it. And I have enough trash bags to accommodate the entire contents of the house. Which is my ultimate goal - tossing everything. Trouble is, I need to look at it piece by piece before I can throw anything away. PITA.
At least I found a pair of shorts yesterday, so I don't need to overheat myself entirely by wearing jeans. And my original Crocs, which have a groove worn into the soles from wearing them while riding my bike. They're light blue, streaked with chain grease. I've somehow always found it silly to wear special clothes for doing something I've been doing since I was big enough to get on a bike.
Speaking of bikes, I need to get a new tire pump. I have the chain grease here somewhere - in the kitchen, of course, which means I'll never find it, unless Mom put it in the wine rack next to the gunk I used to clear the plastic back window of my Miata (which thank goodness was sold and moved to Pennsylvania before the storm wrecked everything here)....she has a unique filing system. But even she has no idea where my broom went. It's yellow - one might think it would be hard to miss - and stood in the living room near the door for eight months as we put the front part of the house back together. And now, it's gone. We even looked in the back of my handy dude's truck yesterday, but no luck. I'm sure it'll turn up right after I go out and buy a new one.
Dug a path thru the kitchen disorder to reach the laundry, so at least I will have something clean to wear to work this week. Sticking to the floor....I am tempted to peel up all those sticky old tiles, but I'm sure the floor underneath will be just as sticky. Maybe if I get too bored....I have my handy putty knife right here, ready to go at it. And I have enough trash bags to accommodate the entire contents of the house. Which is my ultimate goal - tossing everything. Trouble is, I need to look at it piece by piece before I can throw anything away. PITA.
At least I found a pair of shorts yesterday, so I don't need to overheat myself entirely by wearing jeans. And my original Crocs, which have a groove worn into the soles from wearing them while riding my bike. They're light blue, streaked with chain grease. I've somehow always found it silly to wear special clothes for doing something I've been doing since I was big enough to get on a bike.
Speaking of bikes, I need to get a new tire pump. I have the chain grease here somewhere - in the kitchen, of course, which means I'll never find it, unless Mom put it in the wine rack next to the gunk I used to clear the plastic back window of my Miata (which thank goodness was sold and moved to Pennsylvania before the storm wrecked everything here)....she has a unique filing system. But even she has no idea where my broom went. It's yellow - one might think it would be hard to miss - and stood in the living room near the door for eight months as we put the front part of the house back together. And now, it's gone. We even looked in the back of my handy dude's truck yesterday, but no luck. I'm sure it'll turn up right after I go out and buy a new one.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
productive Saturday
Kitchen painting is almost done, just needs another coat on the ceiling. The smelly, crummy, stained old carpet is gone! Yippee! Two to three layers of old old linoleum under the carpet, and it's sticky - I'm afraid Pablo will lay down on it and get stuck, I'll be prying him off with a crowbar or something. At best, the floor will get hairy.
So I need to go find a new kind of floor to put down, and my handy dudes will come do it next weekend. Had three of them here today, so lots of stuff got done. I can see a glimmer at the end of the tunnel, finally.
Meanwhile, yesterday the a/c guy came and finished whatever it was he had to do to finish the install. He also attached the attic fan, finally, so that now works, too. And he checked out the heat/hot water system and confirmed that his company services those, so I can get one stop shopping for maintenance on all the systems.
Debating whether we'll redo the backsplash behind the stove. The one that's there goes with the new color scheme (cocoa and sea glass), so I'm undecided. Guess I can look at tile while I'm looking at flooring.
One of these days, this might actually start looking like a house again, instead of a construction zone. Right now it's just a disorganized work in progress - everything is all over the place, and I can't find anything. This too shall pass. I hope.
Fingers crossed that I run out of projects before I run out of money.
So I need to go find a new kind of floor to put down, and my handy dudes will come do it next weekend. Had three of them here today, so lots of stuff got done. I can see a glimmer at the end of the tunnel, finally.
Meanwhile, yesterday the a/c guy came and finished whatever it was he had to do to finish the install. He also attached the attic fan, finally, so that now works, too. And he checked out the heat/hot water system and confirmed that his company services those, so I can get one stop shopping for maintenance on all the systems.
Debating whether we'll redo the backsplash behind the stove. The one that's there goes with the new color scheme (cocoa and sea glass), so I'm undecided. Guess I can look at tile while I'm looking at flooring.
One of these days, this might actually start looking like a house again, instead of a construction zone. Right now it's just a disorganized work in progress - everything is all over the place, and I can't find anything. This too shall pass. I hope.
Fingers crossed that I run out of projects before I run out of money.
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