Saturday, September 20, 2008

A Big Day

Thursday revisited:
Thursday after Fred was released my Quaker electrician came again. He's a great guy. He fixed a bunch of stuff including; rewiring the third and second floors, consolidating the first and second floors, he added a light sensor to the light on the porch on the side of the house, brought the third floor kitchen up to code so that hopefully the third floor circuits will not be over loaded and the tenant will not trip the circuit, and lastly he fixed the vestibule light: Yippee! This is the same light that the dorks from Generation 3 electric told me they could not replace, nor could they rewire, and they were ready to ruin the original roundel in order to install the ugly IKEA light. Lee came in and said, "What? - this is original to the house!" I said "I know! Can you fix it?" he said, "of course!" - bada bing - bada boom - light fixed. Oh, and the doorbells work now too. Hot digity.
Lee did, however, put a few nasty vibes in the air - by mentioning them to me. Now, I do appreciate this but, sometimes when things are not actually uttered, they don't exist. Case in point: On Thursday he told me that squirrels could get into the third floor. This had never occurred to me or, as far as I know, actually happened. Last night at 3am, what did Jacques and I wake up to? ka-thunk, ka-thunk and clakity clak, of something that sounded and awful lot like a squirrel running across the third floor kitchen which is right above my bed. Thanks Lee.
While Lee and his assistant were working like crazy to get everything done, I was working in the studio. The usual report: slowly things are getting to where they should be. I put two more shelves up, and unpacked about 7 boxes of books; about half. I'm in complete disbelief that I had all of this stuff(!) in my tiny apartment. Here I have six rooms at my disposal and I can't put everything away. This helped, and I have two more shelves I need to put up so that I can put artist books away.
So today - Saturday - we had a big day. It was a beautiful day, cool temperatures, no sweating, and the Philly Blues Festival was a block away - I could hear the whole thing. What a great day to be outside so - Jacques went outside for the first time…

and loved it. You can possibly see all of the dirt and cobwebs on him in the photo? It was very exciting. So much to sniff and smell. And to calm the fearful me - he stayed in the yard and only in the back. When dogs next door spotted him and went crazy, he hid. :)
I had a nice long conversation with my cousin and I was working on some more artwork. This morning I listened to Mike McGrath on the NPR program "You bet your Garden". If you have a garden, and you get NPR - this is such a great show. Mike is a super dork, but soOo knowledgeable, I can't WAIT to have my own garden. He was talking about winter gardens today and I was very tempted to go to Home Depot to start making plots. But I decided not to support the economy this weekend. It hasn't done much good lately, and I got my credit card statement on Friday. I'd like the FederalGov't to give me $700 billion to bail me out. I could be quite comfy thank you very much! - Oh - I digressed - the artwork - well, the NPR show inspired me to at least go outside and attack some more weeds. Which I did. And while Jacques was exploring I washed off some of the more interesting roots. They make a nice metaphor for my life at the moment. Not sure what I'm going to do with them, we'll see. Mr. El stuck his head out of his door as I was hanging them on the laundry line - I'm sure he thinks I'm crazy.
I was waiting for Jacques to discover the Juniper tree - he got about three feet up, and decided this was not for him. Then he was confused about how to get out of the tree. He finally made it down, and tried to shake the pitch off of his paws. He didn't like that.
After having stuffed bell peppers and a plate of collard greens (from my Amish Farmer) I went to scan some of the roots. Not sure what I think of them yet. While I was doing that, Jacques decided he could fit into this shoe box. Well - we can all fantasize, can't we?

1 comment:

McD said...

I like Jack! (that's what I am calling him, he should be happy I even acknowledge him since he is a cat) Him fitting into a shoe box was a great shot, him climbing into the tree only to realize he didn't like reminds me of the our city roots.
I really need to see your house. I think we need to talk the female in the house to agree to a trip.