Thursday

2:00 pm

Today I am exiled from the house. I spent some time in Starbucks yesterday, (free WiFi!) and the head of the plumbing crew told me the water would be off most of the day today. I'm back at Starbucks and I'm freezing.

It was 102 degrees on Monday and Tuesday, yesterday it was in the 80's, and today its cloudy and cool. I could've used a sweater, but I didn't get one before the plumbers moved in and covered my bedroom with plastic. And of course the AC is on inside Starbucks.

I had breakfast out, ran some errands. My feet were cold, so I bought some socks at Target. I was thinking of going to Chico's to buy a sweater - life is so tough, I know. I've been nursing a cappuccino for a couple of hours now.

I guess its time to go home and see how big the holes in the walls are. The one above the couch in the family room is much bigger than I imagined. I now have the motivation to finally remove the wallpaper in the family room and kitchen, and get it repainted. It is the only room we still haven't repainted after 15 years in the house. . .

4:00 pm

the answer is: the holes are quite large. They cut a rectangle out of the drywall large enough to give them access to the shower heads in the bathrooms, then they screw the cut piece back into the wall with drywall screws. One bathroom backs on the family room, above the couch, and the other one backs on the corner of our bedroom. What needs to be done now is to patch the seam, sand it, and repaint the wall. I don't think we still have the paint from our bedroom, and, as I said, the family room is probably 30 year old wallpaper.

I can't think about repainting our bedroom, or the kid's bathroom; although I now see I've been in denial about the need to do these things after a re-piping. I think I'll stay there - denial - for another couple hours until Irv gets home.

Here's what I have to tell myself: with the sewer line and the re-piping done, we shouldn't need any major plumbing work for the rest of our lives, provided we stay in this house till they cart us away. Once we get these rooms repainted, we won't have to paint for another several years.

"But then," a little voice says in my head, "it will soon be time to paint the outside again, and we're still planning to re-do the front yard this year; and the carpets are ALL getting old. . ." What's that screaming I hear?

Oh, it's me.

Re-piping and Earth Day

Wednesday

Today is one of those days when the title of this blog is a misnomer. I'm not weaving daily, or at all for the past few days. We are having the house re-piped with copper. We had the sewer line replaced earlier this year. The house is 50 years old, these things must be done.

And its also Earth Day, so as an ecoartist, I'm supposed to be celebrating the life giving diversity in all nature. But there has been entirely too much natural diversity in our house recently. By my way of thinking, there are only three species allowed to live here: human, fish, and canine (and the canine we have is going to be the last of his kind in my house).

First there are the ants. They are repeat visitors, they come in a couple times a year and I have to try to make them go away. This week it got hot, and that's one of the times they like to come inside looking for water. Yesterday I was wrangling ants. This means moving everything on the counter behind the sink, cleaning the tile, and spraying raid as sparingly as I can get away with. We have a wide swath of counter under the window behind the kitchen sink, and we have an elephant cookie jar, a ceramic dog water pitcher, a beaded giraffe, various dishes and bowls, and a jade plant. The ants like to come in through cracks in the grout at the corner of the counter and the back splash. I also have some little pellets I sprinkle outside along their trails that are supposed to be carried back and destroy the nest. I don't really like all this poisoning, but I don't know any effective, eco-friendly ways to get rid of them.

Second, we've been having little visitors in the night. And they're invisible, you can not see them. Only their droppings are visible. One night I heard an awful ruckus in the kitchen. I got up and tip-toed out to the kitchen. Tip-toeing did not render my movements silent. The floor creaks, even under the carpet. I didn't find the intruders, only a box of cookies with a hole chewed in the side. A friend lent us some traps, and we caught four of the little devils. Last week I went looking for how they're getting in. I found some holes above the suspended light panels and covered them up with hardware cloth. I looked behind the couch in the family room, and I can't even describe the horror I found there among a very thick carpet of dust.

Now the plumbers are under the house, and they're going to make sure all the foundation vents are covered with hardware cloth by the time they're done. Then if the furry mammalian squatters aren't gone, I'm calling an exterminator.

The third species I had to evict are little moths. They've been flying around for a couple months, and I didn't know where they were coming from. That's actually why I moved the couch in the first place. I thought the moths were laying their eggs behind the couch. But after I had vacuumed under all the furniture in the family room, moths were still flying about. At this point I should explain that the family room is next to the kitchen, and the couch is within a few feet of the stove and some cupboards.

Last Sunday evening, I went to make rice and discovered we didn't have enough of the white left. I dug to the bottom of the cabinet and got out the brown. It had been in there for a long time, and I found little moth cocoons in the creases on the outside of the plastic bag. So the next day I went back to look deep into the cabinet, and what I found is even more indescribable than what was behind the couch.

But I'll try. It was explained to me many years ago that sometimes these little moths get into flour and other dry food products and lay eggs. After the eggs hatch, the larvae have a food source. My friend and neighbor who told me this then went on to say that's why sometimes you open the flour and a moth flies out. That had never happened to me, but after this I always kept my flour in an airtight container. Supposedly, if you keep your flour and grain products in an airtight container, the eggs can't hatch, they're so tiny you'll never know they were in there - lovely.

I had this conversation over 25 years ago, and it all came back to me on Monday as I began pulling out the boxes of nuts, rice and pasta I keep in that cabinet. I found a few bug parts in some old risotto and threw it away. There wasn't any evidence of them in the open box of matzoh ball mix, or the matzoh meal. These are apparently goyish moths. I found a few more cocoons on some more plastic bags, and threw them away. Then I found the thing you should never have to find in your cabinet. It was a plastic container of pepitas, apparently not so air tight. I opened it and a moth flew out. I didn't take a long look at what was in there and I closed it right away. I threw the whole container away - it was Tupperware, and I threw it away. I don't throw plastic in the trash, and I threw it away.

Then I finished cleaning out the cabinet. I discovered something interesting about little grain-eating moths: they don't poop where they eat. How very civilized, they choose a corner and all use it. It's totally gross, I'm sorry.

On Tuesday I started to move things so the plumbers can work (read: put holes in the walls). What I discovered shocked me once again. Really, our clothes hamper could be moved to vacuum under once every two weeks. The dressers that stand on 6" high legs could be vacuumed under, really.

Ok, so there's a pattern here. I have clearly not been vigilant about the cleaning. Changes will have to be made.