Big Job

 

Mike and I tackled a big job this week, a job we’ve been dreading.

“What’s that, Peg?” you ask.

Our floors buckled this past summer. It hadn’t happened until we had the pet-proof carpet installed. We’d taken every step we could think of to reduce the humidity in the house. Dry Lock painted on the concrete, a layer of tar paper, then an aluminum sheeting on top of that. Nothing should have gotten through all of that!

But it did.

When we put the subfloor down, we probably didn’t screw the center of the sheets and they buckled becoming a rollercoaster of hills and valleys.

Once winter hit and we started heating the house, the floor flattened back out.

How I wish we could go back in time! We sure would’ve done it differently!

It was time to pull the carpet up and add more Tapcons.

Mike called the installer at least three times, maybe four, but he won’t return our calls. We called the place we bought the carpet from.

“Don’t cut it yourself. If you don’t do it right, it’ll be a mess and he may not be able to seam it right and you’ll hate it,” we were advised. “I’ll have him call you.”

We waited another week and Mike called again.

“He’s in Florida.”

Oh well. Mike took matters into his own hands and cut the carpet.

“We gotta get it done before it starts buckling again,” Mike said to me. “We’ll cut it and live with whatever we have to live with.”

The first thing we had to do was move all the furniture from that side of the room. Mike cut the carpet and pulled it out from under the baseboards.

We rolled it back.

Mike had measured where the hills were so we had an idea of where we needed to screw the floor better. 

He got out the Hilti and drilled the holes for the Tapcons.

Mike suffered.

His back hurts nearly all of the time and any little chore can cause more pain. When it’s something that has to be done, he powers through. We just take more breaks.

It took us three days to do this job. Partly because we had an appointment in Sayre on our second day of work, so we didn’t work very long that day.

The first day I kenneled the girls to keep them from getting under our feet. The second day they both just went to the kennels without being told. The doors are wide open and they stayed until we were done for the day.

I was so proud of them!

We put the carpet back down and stapled it at the cuts.

“I thought about screwing it down,” Mike said, “but this way we can pull it back up if we see we need to put more screws in.”

Gee. I hope we don’t have to do that.

On a side note, and one that will be pertinent to the story, I must mention that I love the advice my handsome neighbor gave to a newly married coworker. “He’s supposed to take the trash out, but he doesn’t do it,” she told Lamar.

“If it’s his job, then don’t you do it,” he advised.

“But what if it’s full?” she asked.

“Keep stacking it on top.”

“What if it starts falling over?”

“Let it. Because once you do it, it’ll be your job forever.”

We put the furniture back in place and Mike vacuumed. He did it once and now it’s his job.

“It makes my back hurt,” he said when he first started doing it.

“Take a break. Watch a little TV then go back to it,” I said. “I don’t care how long it takes.”

I’ll cook and wash dishes. I’ll do the laundry and scrub the toilets. Dusting and vacuuming? I hate both of those jobs and did them as little as I could get away with.

“You’ve gotta be kicking your way through the dirt and dust bunnies before I vacuum,” I joke. Although, it was more truth than joke.

Mike will vacuum the living room, and rest. He’ll vacuum the dining room and maybe part of the bedroom, and rest. He’ll finish the bedroom and may or may not take another break before tackling the bathroom and hall closet.

I always make sure he knows that I really, really appreciate his pain and hard work. I thank him and tell him how nice it looks. I know it hurts his back, but everything hurts his back. And it’s the one household chore he can and will do.

We had to go to Sayre this week. I’m always sad when I see there was a fire. They got this one out pretty quick because it’s only the front corner that burned — at least on the outside.

These things are huge!

Coming back down toward home, we pass the eagle’s nest.

I knew it was time for them to be nesting, so I was watching for the nest.

“There’s an eagle sitting on the nest!” I exclaimed. “Turn around,” I said, then remembered my manners. “Pleeeeeeaaase! You know I love the eagles and we don’t see them very often,” I begged

Mike loves me and turned around.

There’s an eagle cam someplace that showed the eaglets hatching out already!

Even though we did a little shopping while in Sayre, we made a second shopping trip later in the week. This time to Tunkhannock.

On the evening news, they did a segment on the Metcalf Mansion in Tunkhannock. “Is that the one Diane and I went into?” If you don’t know, Diane is my cute little redhaired sister. “Let’s drive by tomorrow and see if it is.”

The next morning, in my morning love note, I told my peeps, “We’re going to take the dogs for a ride and get fish sandwiches. McDonald’s puts them on sale during Lent.”

“I also get reeled in by that deal,” replied beautiful Jenn Kipp.

Raini doesn’t get car sick anymore, but she’s still a whiner. We don’t take them very often and more likely than not, when we do, it’s to the vet or to get nails clipped — which I do that myself now. It’s too hot to take them in summer. It’s too cold to take them in winter. And when the weather is conducive to a car ride, we might be planning to shop and would be gone too long. I don’t like taking Raini any place because I don’t like to hear her whine. Eventually, I get fed up and yell at her. But I try to take her as often as we can. I keep hoping she’ll get over it.

“Do you think she thinks she’s going to vet?” I mused. “Or maybe she doesn’t feel well when she rides in the car.”

I don’t remember how to get to the mansion, but Mike’s unerring truck driving skills kicked in and took us right to it. I snapped a picture of this one as we went past. There are lots of big beautiful houses in Tunkhannock.

Then we saw it. It is the same house Diane and I went into!

The people who bought it are going to turn it into a B&B and host events. I scrolled through their Facebook page and saw videos of the house. It had really deteriorated since Diane and I were inside. I thought it was interesting that there are headstones lying on the ground out in the weeds behind the house. One was for the sister of the man who built the house in 1895.

           We went through the drive through at McDonald’s. Even though Mike really wanted a fish sandwich, he’s trying to watch what he eats. Instead of two fish sandwiches, he opted for chicken nuggets instead.

I ordered a McDouble and ordered it plain so I could share it with the dogs. They’re not crazy about pickles, catsup, or mustard, and they can’t have onions.

When we got our order, we got the ten-piece Mike ordered, but I got two sandwiches!

“Extra pickles!” I read the special-order tag. “No ketchup or mustard.” I unwrapped it and realized they were double cheeseburgers. Do you know the difference? McDouble has one slice of cheese, double cheeseburger has two. “We can’t take them back because they’ll just throw them away.”

“Did we get the order for the person behind us?” Mike wondered.

“It’s weird that they ordered almost the same thing we did.”

I got to thinking about it and I think maybe it might’ve been a half and half mistake. Whoever packed it started out reading our order, the ten-piece chicken nuggets, and when they looked back up to the screen, they gave us the two special order double cheeseburgers of the car behind us.

I scraped off the extra pickles and onions and the girls were pretty happy about the mix up.

It's hard to find new things to photograph when we’ve been on these roads so often.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these on the horizon.

We were almost back to Wyalusing when I spot an eagle sitting in a tree near the old nursing home.

“Would you turn around, please?” I asked. Mike didn’t say anything but I saw him sigh. I hoped that meant he’d turn around, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t beg. He’d already turned around once for me this week. A little ways down the road, we get to Wyalusing and the truck in front of us slowed to turn into the gas station. Mike followed.

“YES!” I said. “Thank you!”

Mike was able to take a road that took us close to the tree the eagle was sitting in. The eagle turned to look at us but didn’t fly away and I got a bunch of shots of him.

I didn’t do much in the art department this week. Between running, working on the floor, updating and printing the church directory, there wasn’t a lot of time. I did do a quick painting in my sketchbook.

 Trish, my best old friend in West Virginia, send me a photo.

“This is our new walk bridge that Bowie, Ben, and Haven put in. We won't be stranded now,” she said.

You may remember that the recent flood took out the bridge, stranding Trish and seven other families. You may not have known that it took out the walk bridge, too.

“Beautiful!” I told her.

“Yes, it is. It's metal so it will be there a long time.”

I thought, for no good reason, that it was made from wood. A metal bridge! That couldn’t’ve been cheap. I wondered if the residents had to pay for it, so, I asked her. Before she had a chance to answer me, I fired off another question.

“I know Bowie is your brother, and Ben is your son, but who’s Haven?”

“Haven is Bowie's son that moved a trailer up on the lower part of the property. The bridge was installed several years ago at an elderly woman's property when her bridge became unsafe. She passed away 2 years ago and the house is empty. One of our holler people has control of the property and when the last flood pulled it loose, Bowie asked him about getting it. He said if we can get it out of the creek, we can have it.”

“When did they fix the drive bridge?” you wonder.

Near as I can tell, they were stranded for four days. But, and thank God, they have a caring community and someone was able to get supplies across to them until the bridge was replaced.

 

Lastly, let me tell on myself. This is my shelf where I keep my craft supplies. I sometimes use a flexible tape measure to measure things. I haven’t used it in a while and I needed it. I was almost sure it was in my supplies someplace! I looked in all my bins and boxes at least twice, with no luck finding it. Then, when I wasn’t even looking for it, I found it! I had to laugh. Can you find it?

Let’s call this one done!