Beginning Anew!

So a year has passed, and so much has happened. Val and I have moved to Maryville, TN, where Val is working for a man who has done so much for flat-picking guitar playing, Steve Kaufman. There has been a lot to do for our transition, but Val is settling in.

The ride up was tough. The boys and I took the biggest U-Haul truck on the planet and drove for 12 hours. Allowicious cried for the first 3 hours straight. It broke my heart, but there was nothing to do but drive. So I did. He finally quieted down--until I hit a disjointing bump, of which there were a lot!

I had a grand plan to unload the truck; we would put each thing in its place in the proper room. Yeah, that lasted about half of the truck because we have stuff. Even though I am a purger, we still have stuff. So we just put it where we could until we got the proper rooms ready.

Did I tell you that we bartered a lower rent in trade for fixing up the house. I understood that to mean that we'd have to clean--a lot!--but I don't think Val had the concept in her mind. There were times that she was ready to crack, so I had to stay strong. And there were times when I was worn thin and screaming, but she was there to fill me with love.

What do we have to do the house? On the night I arrived after having driven for 12 hours I ripped all of the carpet out because it stank like
dog, dog pee, and cigarettes. Plus it was just old. I mean mid '70s old. The owner was going to steam clean it, but we said no way!

So I ripped it up before Val got in because when she was in the house before her throat started to close up. I want her to breath. So we have to do two rooms upstairs and two rooms downstairs. The master bedroom includes the bathroom, so I guess it is three rooms upstairs.

We started on the master bedroom because, well, we need a place to sleep. We've been sleeping on the sofa and futon. But we ripped out the baseboards, nailed down all of the nails in the floor, removed all of the millions of staples from the padding, painted the walls, vacuumed the ceilings, and laid tile down in the bedroom and the bathroom and put on the new baseboards Last night we finally finished putting our bedroom together, and we got to sleep in the same bed!

The bedroom in the master bedroom was a wreck. I'm sorry I don't have pictures of the original junk. I do have some of the hideous wallpaper and the really pretty wallpaper under the hideous stuff. It was not terrible taking the paper off, but it was a day's worth of work.

I've never redone a bathroom before, but I was willing to try. I had to replace the vanity and vanity light, new shower head, remove and then replace the toilet and strip everything off of the walls. The tenants before us had ripped the TP holder and towel rack off of the wall, so I had a lot of holes to fill. There were even holes under the wallpaper! But after a lot of hard work--never try to put a toilet in by yourself--I got the job done. And it really looks good.

This will be Val's bathroom--insert master of the house jokes here. I wish there was more space, but there are no wall stretchers at Lowes.

It is amazing to me how others can live. Not where they live or what they do or do not have. I'm talking about how they live. Every room in this house, including this bathroom, had only one lightbulb that worked. I'm not saying that we need forty lightbulbs in a room, and as you can see there is only one bulb in the final fixtures. But they just left the old, not working bulbs in the sockets. I guess I shouldn't be surprised given the condition of the rest of the house. But I've lived in third-world countries where the abodes were kept in better condition than this house was when we moved in. I know Americans are rich because of how much we waste.

There was the same hideous wallpaper in the kitchen as there was in the bathroom. But someone had scored all of the paper in the kitchen as if they were going to remove the paper. And then they left the paper! Val worked really hard to get the paper off, and then she decided to just paint over it. Did you know that wall paper can bubble when it gets painted with water-based paints. We do now. Make sure to use an oil base paint when painting over wallpaper.

Val and Patty painted the kitchen, and I scrubbed the floor, which, after a layer of stuff was removed, turned out to be really pretty. Once our table was put in the kitchen looks great. There are still some small things to be done, and Val wants the table to be somewhere else. We'll see.

All of the appliances are different brands, which leads us to believe that the owner just got them out of model homes--she's a realtor. There is a small problem with each one, so... And there is not one knob in the kitchen. They are all gone. All of them.

Okay, time out for a Patty and Phil break. Val met Patty a few years ago, Patty is really one of the reasons we moved up. But since we have been here--and even before we got here--Patty and her husband, Phil, have been doing for us. Just yesterday Phil brought his mower over and did our yard because we don't have a mower or time to mow. He said that in Maryville people like to do their yards on Friday so that they look good for the weekend. He did it in the rain. Phil even hand drew some maps so that we can get around. And they are so concerned, as am I, that I will miss the water too much that he made me a map to his favorite swimming hole, and it has a swing. I love those guys!

There is a lot more to say about the house, but that will have to come later. I've just left on the Greyhound Bus for my next adventure, which is an apprenticeship in Rochester, NY. I'll be gone for a month--I'm going to miss so much summer swimming in Phil's favorite hole. The program is six months or so, but I'm doing it with breaks so that I can visit my new home. I cannot wait to see what Val does to it to make it ours--even if it is only ours for a year.

Dwain Wilder, the guy that I'm apprenticing with, makes mountain dulcimers (his web site), which happens to be the only stringed instrument I can play. I will build one this month, as I learn the tricks and gain the skills of lutherie. Who knew my art would bring me to this. It only makes sense that my love of wood helped to set me on this path, but it is my relationship with Val that brought me to music.

When I worked at Eckerd College I would carpool with a music teacher. She earned a Ph. D. in music from Columbia. She would laugh when I would tell her music had no place in my world. As the year passed, though, and we spent much time in conversation about music and life I came to realize that music is important. But it wasn't until I met Val that I started exploring with making instruments sing.

A Greyhound bus stop.

Okay, there are two "Occupiers" (they are calling themselves that) sitting a couple of seats behind me. They've just met on the bus because one guy saw the other looking at a left-of-left web site. They've gone through all of their political beliefs--all of them. I can tell that they are living what they believe--one is going to do a horticulture thing. But how can you have community anarchism? Now they've moved on the drugs that they've taken. I cannot help but smile as I listen to them.

I get to Cleveland and stay over the night there, and then the trip starts again at 5:05am tomorrow. Then I'm in Rochester, NY, to begin my study!