progress

Good morning! Beautiful day out there! Typical September in Madison weather -- stunning and for the outdoor pleasure seekers -- just right.

Right at the outset, we take our bikes out for a lovely loop. To the lake, to the park -- it's all so splendid in the golden color of this month.

And home again. For breakfast on the porch.

And now to face one of those life's dilemmas: how can you make progress when solutions seems so out of reach? Two steps forward, one step back? Or is it often two steps back, no steps forward? Some problems are just tough to fix. How should you proceed? And some problems are fixable, but you have to strip yourself of any feelings of fairness and deservingness to fix them and some of us just do not want to go down that road.

Those were my thoughts this morning as Ed once again tackled the leaky shower pipe that has been dripping water into our kitchen for nearly a year now (and into the cavity of the ceiling far longer). At the beginning, we merely observed the stain. It grew larger. We penciled it and watched. Still larger.

Eventually Ed cut a hole in the ceiling and worked his fingers in around the pipe. It was wet. He was sure he found the place of the leak. But no. Further probing had him thinking that it was up closer to the shower handle. Today, having borrowed a nifty little camera at the end of a line (which you then connect to your laptop), he found the trouble spot weaving the line through the hole from the shower fixture. It's a weirdly worked over joint that the plumbers put in when we paid them to put in a shower upstairs just before I moved in here (in 2011). Here, you want to see it? The tiny camera eye snapped a picture!

Not surprisingly, the plumbers have refused to take responsibility for it, even though Ed is confident that it was a faulty installation. How is that fair?? On the other hand, he wont hand over the job now to anyone else, since his trust  -- usually quite low in the work of hired help -- is rockbottom at the moment. But to replace that piece of pipe? Oh, it's going to be a huge project! I foresee many more months of steadily dripping water from the ceiling in the kitchen.

In the afternoon I dig out weeds. I'm paying for summertime weed neglect. There are going to be many days that have that clause in them ("today, I dug out weeds").

You ask -- but what about ballet? Did I start in on my tendus and releves? Well no. You see, our climbing vine -- the one I planted in a pot in spring (a noninvasive morning glory that produced not a single flower all summer long but instead gave us a mass of vines and leaves) -- fell off the porch. The string supporting it could not support the weight of all those leaves. Ed climbed up on the roof to throw down a stronger rope and we attached it once more. There, it looks like this:

The image of Ed on the roof reminded me that it had been a full year since I was up there myself. The glass panes are covered with pollen film. Rain wont wash it off. You have to climb out the window, work the hose up there, then get down on your knees (well yes, in that there is a problem!) and scrub the stuff off, with the help of a rag and a strong spray of water. 

If I'm going to do this, it has to be now, when it's still reasonably warm. You get wet and the wooden strips holding the panes down are covered with slippery moss, so you need to go barefoot and grip the strips with your toes and hang on for dear life. 

It took me over an hour to (more or less) wipe down that glass roof. By the end I was so totally spent  (bending, to avoid getting on my knees, and scrubbing) that, despite the arrival of my beautiful ballet shoes, despite the careful selection of stretch pants and a pink top this morning that I thought would be perfect for my debut workout, ballet seemed like the last thing I was primed to do. Besides, Monday begins a new week. Should it not also begin a new hobby?

In the evening the young family is here for dinner. Loving, sweet, chaotic, delightful.

(Sparrow was sure Sandpiper would knock down his structure. Instead, Sandpiper joined in the play...)

(Sparrow had his first violin lesson last week. He's demonstrating his newfound skills. Sandpiper dances.)

After dinner  my daughter expressed an interest in getting some goldenrod for her home. We are on it!

And there you have it!

I had not problem closing my watch rings. It was a full day!