Derelict Property
Check out this derelict property in my neighborhood. Some people just have no sense of pride. They just stack used lumber all over the place, have trash bags laying around the yard, and put furniture outdoors. Just look at those shingles falling off the house, and the paint flaking around that window. What's the deal with that washtub full of dirt over there? And that ladder's been leaning up against the back of the house for at least two weeks with no visible progress. It's terrible. It just shouldn't be allowed in a historic neighborhood.
Hey, wait a minute....that's my back yard! Oh well, at least the shed's gone...
The Doors
Karen Anne asked if I still have the original doors and transoms from the ends of my side porch and if I knew why they closed in those doors. The short answer is no to both, but here's the better answer:
Last summer when my friend Larry and I were taking the shingles off the side porch (and I was freaking out over the mud dawber nests) we uncovered those trim pieces side by side and then uncovered a threshold. Once we started scraping off the tar paper and the flaking white paint, we saw ghosts of small scalloped hinges on one of the trim pieces and realized there must've been a screen door there. We found similar hinge ghosts and construction on the other end of the porch, too. (By the way, the photos of those marks are among the photos I lost when my hard drive crashed and you can't see the marks as clearly now that I've painted the trim. Darnit.) Originally there must have been doors at either "short" end of the side porch. Larry's thinking is that with the doors and transoms open, as well as the windows in the house, there would have been a nice cross-breeze throughout the house. The door on the south end of the porch would've opened into the second parlor and the door on the north end would've opened into a bedroom. It must have been really pretty as well as being cool in the summer.
As I was standing there last summer lamenting the loss of those doors, Larry was frowning, deep in thought. "What's on the other side of this wall, kid?" he asked me. Closets, in both rooms. So he carefully took off a clapboard in order to see inside the wall. We were both hoping that the doors and transoms were encased in the newer wall. No such luck. The back wall of both closets is drywall, and although I've been tempted to hack into it and see if the interior door trim still exists underneath it, I haven't done so yet. I doubt it's there, and unless and until I replace those original doors, I don't want to go sawing big holes in my closet walls. We think the addition of those two closets is probably the reason the doors were closed in. I'd rather have the doors, myself.
Without the original doors, obviously I can't know for sure that they had transoms; however, since every other original door in my house (except for the one between the dining room and the kitchen) has a transom window above it, I'm making an educated guess that those porch doors did, too. Mentioning original doors brings me to this:
Last summer when my friend Larry and I were taking the shingles off the side porch (and I was freaking out over the mud dawber nests) we uncovered those trim pieces side by side and then uncovered a threshold. Once we started scraping off the tar paper and the flaking white paint, we saw ghosts of small scalloped hinges on one of the trim pieces and realized there must've been a screen door there. We found similar hinge ghosts and construction on the other end of the porch, too. (By the way, the photos of those marks are among the photos I lost when my hard drive crashed and you can't see the marks as clearly now that I've painted the trim. Darnit.) Originally there must have been doors at either "short" end of the side porch. Larry's thinking is that with the doors and transoms open, as well as the windows in the house, there would have been a nice cross-breeze throughout the house. The door on the south end of the porch would've opened into the second parlor and the door on the north end would've opened into a bedroom. It must have been really pretty as well as being cool in the summer.
As I was standing there last summer lamenting the loss of those doors, Larry was frowning, deep in thought. "What's on the other side of this wall, kid?" he asked me. Closets, in both rooms. So he carefully took off a clapboard in order to see inside the wall. We were both hoping that the doors and transoms were encased in the newer wall. No such luck. The back wall of both closets is drywall, and although I've been tempted to hack into it and see if the interior door trim still exists underneath it, I haven't done so yet. I doubt it's there, and unless and until I replace those original doors, I don't want to go sawing big holes in my closet walls. We think the addition of those two closets is probably the reason the doors were closed in. I'd rather have the doors, myself.
Without the original doors, obviously I can't know for sure that they had transoms; however, since every other original door in my house (except for the one between the dining room and the kitchen) has a transom window above it, I'm making an educated guess that those porch doors did, too. Mentioning original doors brings me to this:
That, with slight variations in the trim, is what all my interior doors look like. All of the original circa 1887 doors have been sawed in half vertically. This might be even more of an indignity to my poor house than the shingles. At least I could right that wrong. I fear the only fix for this is to buy doors salvaged from another old house. Not only did they saw the doors in half, they apparently threw away most of the original hardware. (They did re-use the steeple hinges, although not on this particular door.) I mean, seriously, what kind of misguided idiot does something like that?! Oh...the answer's in the question.
As Requested
I want y'all to know that I wouldn't show just anyone these first two photos. My backyard is my secret shame. And here it is, in all its junky glory.... First up, the carport roof. Note the big holes in it, which really don't look as bad in this photo as they do in real life. Note the cinder block on the corner of the roof. I'm not sure what it's purpose is, but it was like that when I bought the house and so it's staying there. For now, anyway. If my money situation and the weather hold, this carport will have a new roof before winter. Just to the left of my carport is my neighbor Martha's garage. I heart her garage.
And here's a photo of my teeny back yard, as Jan requested. Carport in the alley, shed roof in the lower right corner. Dresser with raccoon doody on it next to the sidewalk. (Photo taken from the roof of the house, by the way, and aren't I brave?) My son and his wife decided they didn't want the shed, so for the past two days I've been wondering what the heck I was gonna do with it. That's no longer a problem. As I was posting these photos, a guy showed up on my front porch to ask if he could have the stuff stacked up in the alley. (Window screens, tomato cages, some ancient and rusted tools, a trunk made of plywood and a wall cabinet covered in orange contact paper, all of which came out of the shed. See it there behind my car, next to the far right carport post?) "Take all of it," I said, "And hey, you wouldn't want a metal shed, would ya?" He would. He'll be back this afternoon to tear it down. Yay!
And on a brighter note, the side porch. Now completely painted. Well, except for the floor and the temporary steps. I think I mentioned that the porch floor has some wood rot. It's mostly along the outer edge of the porch and I think it was caused from years of the porch gutter being full and rain overflowing onto the edge of the porch. The outdoor carpeting that was glued to the porch helped trap in some of that moisture, too. I cleaned out the gutter and the downspout so the rain now flows out into the yard and got rid of that carpet. I still need to shore up the edges of the floor with wood filler and put some primer on it. (The rest of the porch floor still has a pretty good coat of paint on it.) At one time this porch had a little railing along it and some decent steps. It also had lattice behind the steps instead of plywood. Apparently the previous owner had possums living in the basement and was convinced they made access underneath the side porch, so she had the bottom of the porch encased in plywood. My neighbors can't remember if they just nailed the plywood over the lattice or threw it away. I'm planning to find out next spring/summer when I finish fixing up the side porch. If I win the lottery between now and then, I'll put back the two doors and transoms that were originally at each short end of the porch. See those two green trim pieces side by side on the short end of the porch? The one on the right was originally the door jamb and still has marks from the screen door hinges on it, and if you look real close you can see the threshold, too.)
When I look real close at that side porch photo, I see that the gutter and downspout need to be painted, and so does that window on the left. I think I'll go get started on that...
Suitable For Framing
Round here, we aim to please. I'll get to the rest of your photo requests tomorrow, because I didn't have time to take photos before I left for work tonight. But in the meantime, here's a photo of our beloved WTB which somehow just happened to be on my laptop when I went to pick it up from his house today.
More Good News
At long last, this afternoon I'll get my laptop back! Hooray! I would've gotten it back yesterday, but WTB discovered that Best Buy had sold me the wrong hard drive, so he had to drive all the way up to The City to exchange it for the right one and didn't get back before I left for work. No matter. This afternoon my laptop and I will be happily reunited! Hooray, hurrah, yippee!!
No more going to the library and waiting in line to use the internet...no more craning my neck at work because the monitor's mounted on the wall...no more kicking things and saying "darnit, darnit!" at home over not being able to look something up instantly...and best of all...no more blog posts without photos.
Expect photos on Saturday and/or Sunday. I'm taking requests, so comment with any photos you'd like to see. I'm thinking y'all will come up with something better than the pile of junk and the hulking dresser (sans drawers and covered with raccoon doody) that I hauled out of the shed.
No more going to the library and waiting in line to use the internet...no more craning my neck at work because the monitor's mounted on the wall...no more kicking things and saying "darnit, darnit!" at home over not being able to look something up instantly...and best of all...no more blog posts without photos.
Expect photos on Saturday and/or Sunday. I'm taking requests, so comment with any photos you'd like to see. I'm thinking y'all will come up with something better than the pile of junk and the hulking dresser (sans drawers and covered with raccoon doody) that I hauled out of the shed.
Negative
After nearly a week of fear and worry, my bestie got a phone call from the lab. "Your biopsy came back negative."
She called to tell me and after I whooped, kissed the nearest cat, and danced around the kitchen, I said, "But the doctor said you have cancer. She told us it was one of three kinds, that it might be bad or not, that it wasn't in your lymph nodes. She discussed radiation and treatment options and survival rates, for God's sake."
Apparently that doctor was wrong. I say we go kick her butt.
She called to tell me and after I whooped, kissed the nearest cat, and danced around the kitchen, I said, "But the doctor said you have cancer. She told us it was one of three kinds, that it might be bad or not, that it wasn't in your lymph nodes. She discussed radiation and treatment options and survival rates, for God's sake."
Apparently that doctor was wrong. I say we go kick her butt.
The C Word
My bestie has breast cancer.
There. I said it. Or at least, I typed it. And I want y'all to know that although I have a big lump in my throat from typing it, I'm not crying. Not yet. There's too much we don't know yet. Maybe later I'll cry, if further developments warrant it. My bestie's not crying yet either. "Maybe I should be more upset about this than I am," she said tonight. How the hell do I know? This is territory that neither of us has wandered into before.
What I do know is this: for maybe only the fourth or fifth time since Sean died in April, I prayed. See, me and God haven't been on real good terms since He looked away for a moment that Easter weekend, say to check on the famine in Africa or something, and Sean's blood sugar bottomed out while he was driving home to get his insulin. My bestie knows this about me. "You will pray again," she said in her calm way, "when you feel like you need to." Well, guess what? Now I feel like I need to.
So I prayed a cobbled-together little prayer in the parking lot at work tonight. It went something like this: Hey God, I know you're busy and all and you have better things to do than sit up there drummin' your fingers on your celestial table and waiting for me to get my head out of my butt—oh, sorry—but if you were maybe tryin' to get my attention with this thing you let happen to my bestie...well, it worked. I'm payin' attention now. And I'd really appreciate it if you could see your way clear to not take her from me, not just yet. If you could maybe strike her with some weak little cancer that curls up and dies right away like that big spider in my bathroom, if you could do that, that'd be really cool. Because I need her, okay? And also, you know how she worries. Well, if you could make it so she doesn't worry so much, that'd be awesome, too. I don't want her to worry and be afraid, okay? Because it might really be an itty-bitty-spider kind of cancer, right, like the doctor said. I mean, you got some leeway here, you know? And me and my bestie, we're kinda big on signs, so if you could send us some kind of sign that, you know, sorta points us in the right direction here, we could use it. That's all. For now, I mean. Thanks for listening.
And then I got all settled in at work and logged onto Facebook, and right there at the top of the page was my friend Angela's status: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." John 14:27 Oh. A sign already. I just had to laugh. Here I am, praying my little heart out for a sign, and God goes and hits me right upside the head with one. I figure He's not much on subtlety with a lost sheep like me.
And that's all for now. I just wanted to throw this out there so y'all would know, in case someone who prays with more faith than I have might want to say a little word or two about my bestie to God or your Higher Power or whoever or whatever you believe makes the world and everything in it tick along. So thanks for that.
There. I said it. Or at least, I typed it. And I want y'all to know that although I have a big lump in my throat from typing it, I'm not crying. Not yet. There's too much we don't know yet. Maybe later I'll cry, if further developments warrant it. My bestie's not crying yet either. "Maybe I should be more upset about this than I am," she said tonight. How the hell do I know? This is territory that neither of us has wandered into before.
What I do know is this: for maybe only the fourth or fifth time since Sean died in April, I prayed. See, me and God haven't been on real good terms since He looked away for a moment that Easter weekend, say to check on the famine in Africa or something, and Sean's blood sugar bottomed out while he was driving home to get his insulin. My bestie knows this about me. "You will pray again," she said in her calm way, "when you feel like you need to." Well, guess what? Now I feel like I need to.
So I prayed a cobbled-together little prayer in the parking lot at work tonight. It went something like this: Hey God, I know you're busy and all and you have better things to do than sit up there drummin' your fingers on your celestial table and waiting for me to get my head out of my butt—oh, sorry—but if you were maybe tryin' to get my attention with this thing you let happen to my bestie...well, it worked. I'm payin' attention now. And I'd really appreciate it if you could see your way clear to not take her from me, not just yet. If you could maybe strike her with some weak little cancer that curls up and dies right away like that big spider in my bathroom, if you could do that, that'd be really cool. Because I need her, okay? And also, you know how she worries. Well, if you could make it so she doesn't worry so much, that'd be awesome, too. I don't want her to worry and be afraid, okay? Because it might really be an itty-bitty-spider kind of cancer, right, like the doctor said. I mean, you got some leeway here, you know? And me and my bestie, we're kinda big on signs, so if you could send us some kind of sign that, you know, sorta points us in the right direction here, we could use it. That's all. For now, I mean. Thanks for listening.
And then I got all settled in at work and logged onto Facebook, and right there at the top of the page was my friend Angela's status: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." John 14:27 Oh. A sign already. I just had to laugh. Here I am, praying my little heart out for a sign, and God goes and hits me right upside the head with one. I figure He's not much on subtlety with a lost sheep like me.
And that's all for now. I just wanted to throw this out there so y'all would know, in case someone who prays with more faith than I have might want to say a little word or two about my bestie to God or your Higher Power or whoever or whatever you believe makes the world and everything in it tick along. So thanks for that.
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