"Ya Hear Me?"

Saturday

Now for a little on my lodging. It is Nancy's house that I am staying at, an old three story house, that had a massive fire in it many years ago. Nancy has rebuilt the house, though much of it is still in disarray. You know those people that have tons of things in different unorganized piles but know exactly where everything is? This house isn't like that. There are random things all over the house, but as many people as have come in and out of the house over the years, a lot of the junk is unaccounted for. On the first floor what might have been the family room has been converted into a woodshop. In the back is a two-room apartment that Rick stays in, and on the side is a kitchen and a living room with a piano. The second floor has an office, and a sort of an apartment with a common space and two bedrooms, one of them being mine, and Nancy lives upstairs (I haven't been up there yet). Everywhere are books and screws and pennies and scraps of hardware and tools and pieces of furniture. Five cats and a small dog roam the house. The basement is another woodshop, and all around the outside of the house are piles of lumber that Nancy uses for the benches that she builds to put around the city (Seats of Consciousness), and other wood projects. When I get a chance I try to arrange or fix up bits and pieces of the space (it really wasn't until Wednesday that I had finished moving into my room.

Today I took a break after the first delivery site, so I got home around 2:30. Nancy had a project for me though; she is building a clubhouse fort for the Riddles' kids (2 and 5). She had me put the back and roof on, then build a ladder on the side, build a seat inside, put the front on, add a top to the roof, cover the windows, then move lumber, dismantle a large wooden crate, and denail the boards. Time off isn't time off if Nancy knows you're around.



Jim