curling ferns —
fractal green echoes
of living lace

The rain came down in buckets this weekend, and with it came something akin to an Autumn chill, as though winter was sullenly pouting at having been flouted, thus missing out on being given its full frigid due.

There may yet be some advantage to this global warming trend, depending upon where you are . . . even if it is just a cyclical bump and not an apocalypse — not that I’m taking sides.

The rain, however, is just as bad as — if not worse than — three feet of snow on a weekend where I was constantly running between the house and garage for two straight days, unable to put anything warm on my feet because the only thing I can get around comfortably in are my new flip-flops . . . and so with some muscular issue as yet unidentified and unaddressed in my left foot I found myself on my feet all day, for three straight days as we worked on renovating this downstairs bathroom.

Needless to say, my foot does not feel any better this week.

We did, however, make great strides. in the tear-down the weekend prior to this past, I was forced to flip an outlet around to the opposite plaster-on-lath wall; to re-plumb a new shower drain from scratch in order to replace the ancient copper waste pipe that had been eaten away by time and drain cleaner; re-solder the shower water supply pipes to accomodate the new faucet handle; not to mention the dozen or so runs to the home improvement store to get this fitting or that valve.

After that weekend was over, all I could have told anyone was that we managed to tear the bathroom down to almost nothing.

This past weekend was better, though, and continues to improve as we do a little each day. We drywalled, taped, and mudded the walls. We put down cement board and tiled the floor. Last night we grouted the tile.

And through all this, all I can think of is having a toilet ten feet from my office door again. Like how inconvenient is it to have to have to ascend and descend two flights of stairs every time I gotta take a whiz, especially when I drink enough coffee in the morning to justify hiring an in-home barista?

It’s enough to put a guy off his joe.

And I’m wondering too, whether I can build up the steam to keep going after it’s done, to pursue this or that home improvement project so that this place can eventually be sold at a massive profit, perhaps that can get us into a nice little place in the Pacific Northwest — only time will tell but I’m on a mission to keep the ball rolling in that direction.

Like Sisyphus.

And I’m keeping the faith alive . . .

(Header image by Alan Levine)