I’m A Bitch

Tangible. Today's blog show is brought to you by the word: Tangible. As in results. I may yet be free and not gain status as A Guest of The Great State of New Mexico, as it appears that I will be moving into the master suite by the end of the month! I may not have hot or running water and there will be no stove, or refrigerator, but I won’t be buffeted by high winds. I guess there’s something inherently good about that.

To start, the kitchen is mudded and I'll order the cabinets and countertops next week, when I have money again.Aren't those ladders, all set up for a Ladder Family portrait the cutest? And they were left that way, I didn't even set it up. Cracks me up!

We put in a 'truth window', too. It's a thing that straw bale homes have to prove that the walls really are made from straw bales. I like the idea, and since the lava block is a new and unique building material, I decided I wanted a truth window, too. My friend Pam in Tucson will be making the decorative pieces for the truth window frame using her metallic clay expertise (she's a Master Metal Clay artist) as soon as I give her the dimensions of the truth window. Women's art will be throughout the house, just in case anyone had any doubts about that.

The master bedroom now has mudded interior walls. I’m not fond of the color it showed itself to be when the mud dried, however. The crew and I will have to discuss what to do about that.
The master bathroom now has a tiled shower, the tub is installed and tiled in its custom-built box
and all that remains to do in there is to connect the water up to a water source, which I have, and to mud those walls, tile the floor and buy a door. And a door knob. Oh! and a toilet. And a water heater as well as a boiler for the radiant heat. And build a stand for the copper sink. (I have the sink and faucets.)

I’m telling you, there are so many frikkin’ details to this build-a-house experience. I will not be returning to THIS school of learning, of this I’m sure.

Monday should see the radiant floor tubing installed and the mud floors getting poured. They’ll need a week or two to dry.

I’m naturally going into my mental reminder banks realizing what moving into the house entails and trying not to feel the frustration and fatigue that comes with the reality of going to storage and loading up the necessary accoutrements that one requires when one is living in a house vs The Tin Can. I’d better go out and make some more friends☺

Since we went with un-pigmented adobe for most of the interior walls (cost restrictions) we’re using the arroyo dirt au natural. I was kind of worried about so much brown and dark tones in the house, but as I said in the last posting, it feels like a cave. A ‘kewl’ (modern spelling of ‘cool’ for those of you who are showing your age) cave! It has more intimacy to it; almost womb-like, albeit a womb with posts and beams. There will be some areas of color on the walls, but they’ll be more like small visual relief splashes. Much of the floors will be colored, so that'll help, too.

Last Sunday had me painting the upper clerestory walls. I figured it would take about 4 hours. It took five. Not nearly so bad as it could’ve been, but ladder work sucks. I discovered that there still is muscle mass in my gastrocs; my calves were killing me after the 3,478 trips up and down the 3 ladders I had to use to complete the task. But the clerestory now has the correct color upon its walls above 8 feet. And it looks good.

We had another burp in the scheduling when the plumber made the point that we should probably mud the wall of the garage that will be behind the boiler and water heater. “Yup. I guess so,” was all we could muster. One wall in the garage got a nice cement stucco layer upon it today. I guess it really doesn’t matter about order or sequencing at this stage of the build—just getting it done is sometimes the best we can hope for.

Putting down tile before the tub goes in and installing the toilet flange before installing the toilet are good steps to complete in the proper sequence, however. And we’ve done a pretty good job overall with those niggling bits.

Coming home from work one day this past week I came across a huge hole dug out in front of Donna & Ed’s house, and their fence ripped up. Orange tags from Qwest Communications and orange spray paint marks on the dirt belied who was behind the digging. Ed was out looking at the wrecked fence and I told him I’d go get my camera (I’ve learned to take photos of EVERYTHING!) When I got to the ranch road to turn in to my parcel of land, the offending backhoe, backhoe operator and his assistant were digging a good sized hole across the road from my house.
“Whaddya guys digging for?” sez I.
“Putting in a phone line for this new house,” sez they.
“But I don’t WANT a phone line,”
“We have an order to put one in.”
“ Well, if you’d’ve done this a year ago, I would’ve been thrilled, but not now.”
“The engineer said to run one.”
“THE OWNER says no!”
--They show me their paperwork, I reiterate my refusal, they make a (cell) phone call.—

“The engineer says…” they start again.
“You’re a year too late.”
“Well…”
“Look, guys, Qwest has told all of us in Tierra Grande that no phone lines would be added, and we should just depend on our cell phones AND I waited a year for your engineer to decide that I COULD have a phone line. Uhhh…NO! Qwest can kiss my ass. Fill the hole in, or do whatever you have to do, but you aren’t digging a trench OR putting in a phone line to my house,”
“Are you the owner?”
“Yup!”
--another (cell) phone call—

“OK,” says they. “We’ll just finish this up tomorrow.”
“You’ll finish up WHAT tomorrow?”
“We’ll leave a junction box here for future growth. That’s what the engineer says to do.”
“And you’re not going to run a line to my house, right?”
“We can…”
AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!

They didn’t run a line to my house. I stayed there until they packed up to leave. The guys asked to park the backhoe on my land overnight.
“No. I’m not your fairy godmother,” I sez. “Leave it where it is, ain’t nobody gonna mess with it over night.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” (I’m guessing the evil twinkle in my eye slpped by this pair of Brain Trust inductees.)

Then I got on Booger and went with my camera down to Donna & Ed’s to take pictures of the damaged fence. The backhoe guys stopped by when they saw us all gathered there and said they’d be back manana.

They never said they were going to fix the fence manana, and they didn’t. They came back to get their backhoe and we didn’t see ‘em for a whole ‘nother day. They ran the line to D&E’s. D&E had only waited 6 months for their request to have a landline run to their house. Guess I’m a bitch. But their fence still isn’t fixed.

I got a phone call from the secretary at the school that night of the Great Qwest Run-in. She, teasingly, harassed me for picking on her ‘baby’. I told her I’ll pick on any damn person I want to and who the hell was her baby?

Y’all got it—he was the backhoe operator. He went home and squealed to his mama about me “yellin’” at him! I thought I’d recognized him, I just couldn’t place him since I’d only ever seen him at the bar bummin’ drinks from his mom and cigs from me.

She then asked me if I needed any backhoe work at the house. I said I would, in a month or so, but it was more like Bobcat work. Why?
“Jerimiah will do it for you.”
“How much does he charge?”
“It depends on the job.”

I asked her if she knew that he tore up my neighbors’ fence.
“Jerimiah! Did you tear….” I heard her call him out. I said ‘bye and hung up.

Another day in The Land of Manana, y’all…