I'll tell you the end result before I get lost in the detail: I did not get killed by a tumbling calcified giant water heater today!
It is a beautiful (though cold!), sunny day. The kind you love from early wake up til sunset. Your energy levels soar. You know you'll have no problem reaching your 10,000 step goal.
Hello, farmette lands!
(A rare survivor of October frost: alyssum, in a pot by the house)
Ed, breakfast is ready! Said with a smile. A regular 1950s moment, where woman wipes hands with dishtowel and invites her guy to sit down to a lovely meal.
And now I just want to tidy up a few details, thinking -- I'll get stuff done early and we'll go out for a walk and isn't this day just so beautiful? And then Ed asks -- when do you want to help me lift the old water heater up the basement steps?
Well, never, actually! But most certainly not today! It so beautiful outside...
Okay... Ed is anything if not agreeable.
Maybe Sunday, when it's windy and cold...
Okay...
Fine. We can do it now. (He knows that the best way to get me to do something is to leave me alone with it for a few minutes. Inevitably I will want to get odious chores out of the way. They otherwise pollute my head.)
It is, in fact, possibly the most odious chore we've ever done together at the farmhouse. The monster heater is huge, clumsy, dirty (years of mice!), awkward and exceptionally heavy. Our steps up from the basement are rickety, wooden planks. Nothing more. Ed has figured out that he'll have to keep tilting the monster one way then the next, while placing strategic bricks underneath to lift it slowly to the next step, where it will teeter under Ed's grip while I place the next set of bricks, continuing in this manner all the way to the top of the stairs.
You know that if that thing falls, it will kill me -- I offer.
Just step out of the way. -- his advice.
I trust Ed with my life and I know that he'll be careful. There is no choice. We have to get this done.
It takes forever, but eventually, one inch at a time and many beads of sweat later, we manage to heave that thing up the steps and out the door. No one is hurt, there's not even a scratch on the mud room tiles. We do lose the outdoor mat in the process, but that's fine -- it was worn, it needed to be replaced and I am happy to go on a mat shopping trip (on the internet) after the moving job is behind us.
Hmmm, what should we put by the door? (It is the one we all use to come inside.) None of this "welcome" stuff. We're two reclusively isolated for 231 days now human beings. I laugh at the less welcoming options. How about a mat that says "Beet it!" -- with a drawing of a beet? Or the one that says "You Better Have Tacos!" Then there's the one that simply says "Go Away!" My goodness people can be unfriendly.
In the end I pick one with a tree. If past experience is a guide, after a few days of cats, cheepers, boots, and Ed's shoes, you wont be able to see much of a design anyway.
Later, much later, we contemplate the possibility of a walk. That's as far as we get! Ed is distracted with cutting up wood trunks, and me, I watch the movie Coco. It's Primrose's favorite film and the little girl chose to dress up as Miguel for this Halloween. I owe her a viewing of it. And in doing this for her, I of course am amply rewarded with a beautiful story. Timely, enduring. (Read just one review of Coco here, in the New Yorker.)
Evening. I cook up a Jamaican style salmon fillet and roast cauliflower in the oven. An end of the week meal. House is warm, food is good. Staying home is so much our pattern now that I almost can't imagine not staying home anymore. I mean, eventually, Ed will ask me -- want to go out for dinner? I'll probably say no, let's stay home. Out of habit. But, it will be fabulous to have that choice again. Someday.
