Oddities of Nature

I’m sure some of you are thinking that I’m going to talk about myself, given the title for this posting. Nice. Not 100% true. It’s still (almost) all about The House. Yes, still.

I’ve reviewed, reflected, been pressured by The-Man-In-Underoos-From-the-Bank and double-checked with Norbert, and my mental meanderings still hold up: There ain’t a whole lot left to do with the house.
The checklist:
--Pay the balance for countertops and cabinets in kitchen, get them installed.
--Buy major kitchen appliances
--Tile backsplash & window ledges in kitchen
--Master bath vanity doors to be installed
--Tile the access panel on the tub
--Paint the formally purple wall in master bedroom
--Finish building the banco seats around fireplace
--Tile fireplace footing
--Install the fireplace
--Wait for hallway floor to dry
--Keep picking straw seedlings out of wet floors
--Wait for lighting fixtures to be fabricated, pay for them, pick them up, & have them installed.
--Electrician to do final wrap up, install rest of lights, fix a bad wire, and pay him AFTER I’m 100% satisfied, and the house hasn’t burned down.
--Plaster Monkey Powder Room (garage bathroom)
--Install & trim out door to MPR
--Apply final coat of sealant to small portals
--Get propane line run & tank filled
--Final hookup of boiler for Radiant Floor Heat
--Test RFH system
--Find cause of reduced water pressure
--Buy garage door opener and have installed
--Get closet shelving
--Get clothes out of dryer!
--Wait for 2 new air chambers to be delivered and set up bed.
--Move into The House.
--SELL THE TIN CAN!!
--Move stuff out of storage.

Ninety percent of that list will be completed by next Friday, Y’all! Looks like I’ll be ready to hand out candy on Halloween; if the critters around here actually EAT candy;) That must mean it’ll be time to have a ‘cold opening’ of The House for the locals.

Let me go get the clothes out of the dryer. One sec…. ☺

That checklist is only 26 items long! That’s incredibly short, considering. I’d give you the list of what got done this past week, but I don’t want yours snapping off your necks and flying to parts unknown. So hold on to ‘em, ‘cause it’s coming up!

Aside from the BIG items listed (electrical, lighting, appliances, cabinets and countertops) this here tunnel has a light that is not a train at the end of it. I can’t tell you how anticlimactic it’s feeling. How sad, huh?

I’m sure that will change after I sign my life away to the mortgage bankers. My life for a house—think of what I have to look forward to!

OK, enough trademark cynicism. Here’s the ‘haps’ from this past week:

--The plumbing is done except what is listed above (the boiler and propane stuff)
--The last floor pour happened yesterday (I can now ask for the rest of the construction loan monies from the bank.)
--I found, and bought, a wood burning stove to serve as the fireplace. (I’m never going to live the motif on the sides of it down, but it makes me laugh, and was the right price and size, so phuck it!)
--The guest bathroom is done. (The pic shows a shocking shade of green. No fear, it will calm down to a nice sage color when dry.)
--All the trim work is done. (Save, of course, for the kitchen cabinets.)

--The hatch to the roof is done.
--All the interior doors and their hardware are done. (Save the MPR, as noted above.)
--Custom banco seating is built.
--Closet doors in guest bedrooms are installed.
--Trim work between beams and ceilings is done.
--Tile work in bathrooms and on step wall btwn guest rooms and the Ventana Room (living room) is done.
--Toilets and sinks are all installed. Only one sink needs to be hooked up, and one toilet needs to have water line switched so it doesn’t flush hot water. (Don’t ask!)
--Window ledges are all installed.
--Two out of three utilities are operational. (Propane is the exception.)

Not bad for a week’s worth of work, eh?

As it should be!!


Critters are loving living outside of the house. Little ones, like the little spiders (baby tarantulas?) pictured here. One bouncy critter sort was pounding underneath TTC this past week, unsettling me enough that I ventured out in the middle of the night with a flashlight and big-ass walking stick to scare it away from TTC and towards one of the other trailers in the trailer park.

I didn’t see what it was, but I told my snake phobic friend, Jane, that it was a snake that made an Anaconda look like a blade of grass. She’s still having trouble sleeping, and she’s in Minnesota! She still doesn’t believe me that snakes are dormant now, and that they don’t bounce off the bottoms of trailers, given how they stay pretty close to the ground and all.


Speaking of blades of grass, I wasn’t joking when I said in my list of things-left-to-do that we have to keep plucking straw seedlings out of the wet floors. We REALLY do! (My pictures don’t lie!)

Landscaping around The House is going to be necessary, but I’ll do that once the crew heads back home. I’ve got enough road base and clay to do around the doorways, which need it the worst, but flagstone will be needed sometime when the funds aren’t already dedicated to other details that the building inspectors deem more important. I may even indulge in some fencing (necessary to keep the cows from scratching on the house edges, and keeping coyotes from eating Lego and Monster when they come to visit.) After the lengthy power outage of two weeks ago, I think it’s time to buy that gas generator, too.

I’ve been having some scrumptious restaurant meals lately, too. The pic is of me with a white pizza @ The California Pizza Kitchen—kinda brand new to Albuquerque, and across from BORDER’S Bookstore—and a demo shot of their gyoza, a personal favorite. I have some good chefs in my life. I’m kept well-fed, when the chef’s around.

I’m heading to the post office this week to apply for a passport. For some reason, perfectly good and decent pirates like me need to have one to travel back to their olde haunts; archaic, Byzantine laws!

So it seems that y’all can start planning your trips to New Mexico. The Day of the Big Bird in November is ok, I’ll be here with Lego and Monster. Christmas is out—I’ll be drinking rum and running sails up the masts somewhere where it’s warm, sandy and has unlimited views of ocean waters. But, after that, you’re free to visit.

I’d say pinch me so I can realize it’s all true, but I do have that pesky last name o’mine, so I’m not gonna let out a holla’ until I get the Certificate of Occupancy. Then y’all can pinch me ‘til I’m black and blue, Awwight? Awwight!!

Siete mananas from now…