Sunday, September 13, 2009

Moldy Basement, Sunflowers, Runaway Bus, Artwork, and stuff, oh My!

Well, where to begin?
It's been a strange week in my little house. Rainy and gray. Completely unheard of for September. The annual UArts BookArts party came around and for the first time I can every remember it was not sweltering. Today we finally had a beautiful day of sun. Jacques and I both took advantage of that. But before that there was a lot of other stuff to deal with.
Firstly, my moldy basement. Yes - while I was gone - I don't know what happened, but everything is covered with mildew - ew. I trotted off to my favorite store, Home Depot and purchased the necessaries: dehumidifier, trash bags, neoprene gloves, bleach, and spray bottle. The smell in the basement is overpowering and I don't want it to spread to the rest of the place.
This is the main culprit - what in the heck is that anyway?
This is a pile of wood that is original to the house but that sadly is now in the trash. It grew this interesting ecosystem that I am not interested in cultivating any further. I sprayed it with bleach, scooped up the wood and the mold and set up the dehumidifier in that space. The dehumidifier filled up in one night. I talked with Lee the electrician this afternoon for something else, and he says there is a way to have it drain directly into the drain in the basement. THAT would be simply fabulous. He also thinks my moisture problem is due to bad gutters. After some thought, I think so too. This is really too bad because I've just gotten the hang of placing some buckets under the eve where the water really gushes off. But I think it's time to break down, get a rain barrel and get the gutters hooked up correctly. Ah, the joys of living on the east coast!

I did have time for some artwork:
Not sure what I think yet.

And besides the awful weather it was a little bit of emotional stress this week. On Wednesday night just after midnight, I woke up to sirens, screaming and Jacques very upset. I got out of bed to see what was going on, it was Wednesday night after all. I looked out the front window to see a bus on the side walk almost directly across the street from my house. I still don't know what happened, but the feeling was one of an altered universe. It appeared that the bus had driven straight down the sidewalk. I couldn't see up the street to the left because of the way the neighbor has "altered" the house but I could see flashing lights. Then I heard someone coming from the bus shouting, "He had a heart attack!" But I don't think so, they eventually walked the driver out of the bus and got onto a stretcher by himself. Something happened though, maybe he had a seizure? The bus had hit two other cars it seemed and I couldn't tell anything more than that. By morning, only the damaged shrubbery was left from what happened. But I have to keep thinking, what if he had swerved the other way? He would have hit my neighbors house and I don't know what kind of damage that would have caused since we are essentially one building, or he could have ended up in my yard, or ? something worse. At any rate it was a freaky thing to see and a freaky feeling which left me wondering...

Then of course there was the greyness to contend with. And before the greyness went away we had some of the weirdest weather. Friday was really bad. I pretty much stayed in bed and watched a marathon of my new favorite TVshow, The Big Bang Theory, from Netflix. If you haven't seen it - these are my people and I love them.

It rained almost all day on Friday and in the morning it was so windy, it blew all of my sunflowers over. Most of them recovered once I propped them back up (under the watchful eye of The Inspector), but a few of them didn't really make it.


And look what else I spied in the garden...
Some friskiness!

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