Another week gone by...

...and we're nearly at the end of August. Ouch. How did that happen?

The air-conditioning guys are gone, gone, gone. No more hammering, no more power tools. Just cool and quiet air coming through the vents.  The new system for the second and third floors must be all-powerful and most efficient because the thermostat is set on 77 degrees---- any lower and both my husband and I are freezing.  I guess the thermostat wars are history as well, even though I have figured out how to work the new digital glow-in-the-dark thermostat that's hanging up in the hallway.  All you see at night is this little neon green glow coming from the thermostat box, like a magical portal into NeverNever Land.

Our young Miss C was here for two days this week, along with her friend C.  They stayed in the guest rooms over the barn, with various scorpions and bees for company.  The wet Spring weather we had a few months ago was a population boom to everything crawling and flying.  Not to mention the fact that the entire state of Texas was established on top of the largest ant colony on this planet.  Miss C told us that they found dead scorpions and slow-moving honey bees up in the barn rooms.  No matter how much we spray, and no matter how tight-as-a-drum sealed you think everything is, these little creepy crawly creatures manage to find their way inside. Life in the country. The insect world is just never-ending.  Hard to believe I don't get totally nuts over scorpions anymore... I just whack them with a shoe (without my foot inside of it) and then scoop them up with a little dustpan.  When we first moved here, I would run out of the room and scream for my husband.

Miss C has an extremely high tolerance for bugs.  I watched her walking around the side yard yesterday and she stopped to pick up a huge black cricket that was in the grass.  She put her finger down in front of the cricket, it crawled up on her finger and just hung on there while she talked to it and tried to convince me to come down from the porch for a closer look.  Not a chance, said I.  "But this one could be Jiminey Cricket!" she told me.  If he's not wearing a top hat and coat and carrying a cane, then it's just a plain old cricket!  (Needless to say, it was just a plain old cricket, and I stayed on the porch.)

We're trying to get in touch with the carpenters who did the work on the third floor.... we need them to come back now to put on the finishing touches up there, now that the new air-conditioning system has been installed.  Of course, now that we would like the carpenters here, they are  nowhere to be found.  How does an entire crew just disappear? And where do they go?  Away to the cooler north for the hottest part of the Texas summer?  We keep calling.......... no answer........... no call-backs.  When all of this work started, I made a joke that we'd be lucky to have the third floor turned into a library by Christmas-time.  By the looks of it now, I may not be too far off.  It's the Texas way:  If it doesn't get done today, then it will get done tomorrow. Unless it's too hot. Or unless it's raining too hard. Or unless the fish are biting.

My pile of books that are waiting to be read seems to have grown quite a bit here.  I wasn't reading very much while the air-conditioning work was going on--- too much noise, too many interruptions from the back door slamming and dirty footprints going back and forth across my kitchen floor.  So now I've got to get serious about this pile of books.... everything from a biography of King George VI to a vintage copy of  Alice in Wonderland.  And there's a few copies of Michener's books waiting for me, as well as a copy of No Ordinary Time (a book about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt).  Two books that were on that pile have already been rejected this morning... a memoir called "Father Joe" and "Look Homeward, Angel."  One of them just got listed on eBay, the other is in the give-away basket for our parties.  Someone else will rescue them, and that's two books that will never see the shelves of our third floor library. (If it ever becomes a library.)   I expect to have better luck with King George VI and the Roosevelts.

Cool this....

The air-conditioning crew has left...... as of late yesterday afternoon, we won't see them back here till late October, when they come to test out the new heating systems that were installed with the cooling units.  We now have new systems in this house, two systems, two thermostats, and I've cleaned thousands of foot-prints on the floors of the kitchen and hallways, and up and down the staircases.  Those guys worked hard, in 100-degree temperatures...... however....... they began their day between 9:30 and 10:00, even though we suggested they could start at seven o'clock in the morning.

Starting at 10:00 gave them a lunch-hour beginning at 2:00, which got them back here at 3:30...... working in the blessed heat of the day.... which gave them a quitting time of 6:00.  What would have taken our old air-conditioning crew in Clear Lake one day to complete, this crew took three days. Three solid days of the screen door slamming shut, footprints all over the floors (the Clear Lake guys had plastic booties that they slipped over their shoes)....... and such disorganization that left tools all over the kitchen, hallway, and I don't even know what the third floor looked like when they were up there because I refused to even look. Ignorance is indeed sometimes bliss.

But..... on the bright side.... we have two nicely working systems that will keep the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter. One can only hope.  We also have a new thermostat on the wall of the second floor hallway that looks like it could be on the control panel of a supersonic jet.  The a/c guy (the Gomer Pyle sound-alike) wanted to install one of those new thermostats downstairs and I told him no..... the thermostat for the first floor works just fine.  "But don't y'all want something new and high-tech?"  I reminded Gomer that we're living in a house built in 1907...... high-tech is not up there on my list of priorities.

I cleaned up all the footprints yesterday....... and the day before, and the day before that....... and last week I did the same when they were here working on the downstairs unit for three days.   My husband and I found little screws and pieces of metal in the driveway, and the a/c crew spent nearly an hour looking for the square metal cover that goes on the face of the downstairs system.  Of course, Gomer told me that the "ghost up in y'all's attic done stole that thing."  I just looked at him.  He told me he would order a new cover and bring it right over when it came in.  I can hardly wait.

Now that the new a/c systems are in, we can call the carpenters back to finish up the trim and the window-seats on the third floor.  That should be an interesting phone call.  I'm anticipating them telling us that it will be two or three weeks until they can fit us into their schedule.  But even that has a bright side.......... when the carpenters were here for the first part of that job, they taped brown paper on the stairs and the hallway and the floors....... they walked on that paper, never putting a foot onto my floors.  When they were done and picked up that brown paper, all their footprints went with them.

The 'thermostat wars' on the second floor of this house will now be history. Gone are the days when I could tip-toe to the thermostat and move the little lever just an itty-bitty tad to the right, making the temperature one or two degrees warmer up here.  Now I'm faced with a neon green touch-pad thermostat that came with a 200-page instruction booklet. By the time I figure out how to use that thing, my husband will discover me shivering in the hallway, wrapped up in blankets and mittens with my teeth chattering because Gomer set the temperature to 65 degrees.

Give me a blessed break.......

Repairs R Us.

What happened to those peaceful, quiet, serene country days?

On Monday, there was a repairman here changing out the windshield of my car.  My poor little car, who doesn't go out in the rain, who doesn't get driven over 60mph, who gets washed if it gets too much country dust on it..... a pebble or small rock got kicked up from a truck who sped past me in the left lane of a two-lane highway, and that teeny little rock hit my windshield and cracked it.  At first, it was just a star-shaped crack, but it broke my heart.  Not to mention that the sound was so loud that it scared me to death as I was driving.

My husband's car is the one that goes back and forth on the interstate, gets driven to all sorts of places during our weekly travels.......... and it's my car who gets the rock.  As we used to say up in NY: "Go figure."   The little star-shaped crack didn't stay little too long...... within 24 hours, it had spread halfway across the windshield.  I had thoughts of having to leave my car at a dealership for two weeks while they ordered the correct windshield.

Wonder of wonders....... the insurance company gave me the name of an auto glass service that comes to the house...... the windshield gets changed right in the driveway.  There is a god after all.  Not only did they do what they said they were going to do, but the man who came was clean, polite, careful, and on time.  Truly amazing.  Both myself and my car are feeling much better.

As I type, the air-conditioning guy is downstairs, putting the finishing trim on the closet doors that hide the air-conditioning and furnace unit.  He and his crew were here all day yesterday, fitting a new and larger unit into the space where the older and smaller system was. They made it work, and did a great job.  The new unit is quiet, and I'm sure more efficient than the 15-yr-old one that they took away.  Good riddance to that one, which was hanging on by a wing-nut and a prayer.

Next week, the air-conditioning crew will be back to install the new system for the upstairs.  That one is also hanging on by a wing and a prayer, with a thread attached because the outside part of that system is a 'loaner' from the a/c guy..... it's been a loaner for the past three weeks, waiting for them to have the time in their schedule to fit us in.

The work on the 3rd floor has been at a standstill now for two months.... waiting for the air-conditioning work to be completed up there before we get the carpenter back to finish the trim and the window-seats, and then the carpet store has to get here to install the carpeting.   The third floor is still just a third floor...... on the day that I start carrying my books up those stairs, then and only then will it be a library.  Bringing those books up there will be a privilege, not a chore.  I can see in my mind's eye how the shelves will look, and how I will categorize the books.

Until then, it's just more hammering, nailing, sanding.... and dust. Dust, with a capital D.

"84, Charing Cross Road"

My cousin F just recently celebrated her birthday, and one of the gifts I sent her was a vintage copy of Helene Hanff's "84, Charing Cross Road," along with its sequel "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street."  I was lucky enough to find both books in an old bookstore.  If there is one thing I love more than old books, it's old bookshops filled with wooden shelves and cozy little alcoves.

After cousin F opened her gifts the other day, I took out my own copies of "84" and "Bloomsbury Street" and started reading them, for the umpteenth time.  I love both of those books, especially "84."  That entire book consists of letters mailed from Helene Hanff in NYC to a book seller in an old bookshop in London. They exchange books, dollars and pounds, and subsequently Miss Hanff sends the bookstore staff packages of food that they cannot get in London because of the rationing during WWII.  What started out as "Would you have a copy of......" ended in a friendship that lasted for years.  Truly a beautifully done little book.

I finished reading "84" in a day's time.... I think I know some of those letters by heart now.  I started "Bloomsbury Street" yesterday, the bittersweet (mostly sweet) account of Miss Hanff's trip to England.... years in the making, planning, saving, hoping, praying...... and when she does arrive in London, it's everything that she expected it to be. (When one travels to London, one finds exactly what one is looking for.)

I have all of Miss Hanff's books, but "84" is her classic volume, in my opinion.  A movie was made of "84," starring Anne Bancroft as Miss Hanff.  I have watched the video from time to time, but honestly, I'd rather sit down with the book.  I checked the book web-sites for a biography of Miss Hanff, and was happy to find one.   I was tempted to quickly click on that 'Buy!' key, but I thought to check the Amazon site and look at the reviews.  Without fail, every review of the book was ghastly. (There's a British adjective for you.)  Every review rejected the book and insulted its author.  Shame on that man for not doing justice to Miss Hanff..... and it does make me wonder why someone else hasn't made it their literary business to put together a decent and "84"-worthy biography of Helene Hanff.

As much as I enjoy re-reading these two books, I can't wait for my cousin F to finish both of them so we can discuss Miss Hanff, the books, and London.   I know she will love "84" and I also know that as she reads "Bloomsbury Street," she will get a first-hand account of a literary New Yorker's view of London..... and it will transport her there, courtesy of the memories of Miss Hanff.

Books.  How can anything in this technological world ever replace books.....