Get it together

I overcame my fear of heights about 10 years ago by climbing the exterior of the elevator shaft on the roof of the building I was working at. I thought I was cured … till I decided to waterproof the garden side of our new house. I’m scared as hell up there … just 2 floors up.

Perks

House is gradually moving from deconstruction towards construction. One good thing, we are a fifteen minute walk to Prospect Park.

distractions

I wanted a break from breaking open walls and started reading about the Collatz conjecture on Wikipedia, which led me to the Primitive Root modulo n.
I don't get it, but it kind of excites me ...
"In modular arithmetic, a branch of number theory, a primitive root modulo n is any number g with the property that any number coprime to n is congruent to a power of g (mod n). That is, if g is a primitive root (mod n), then for every integer a that has gcd(a, n) = 1, there is an integer k such that gk ≡ a (mod n). k is called the index of a. That is, g is a generator of the multiplicative group of integers modulo n."

Don't look back

I just can’t seem to drink this off my mind.

The house stripped bare

Today I felt something close to despair … all the ceiling on the 2nd floor were torn down … we took refuge in the garden to eat bread and cheese. No electric, no heat, no internet and no more cash after this next set of renovations. I ended the day chipping plaster … uncovering a fireplace and listening to Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses … everything felt great again.

Out damned spot

Baby arrives tomorrow. I’ve bleached down the bathroom and kitchen … sterilized them. I haven’t fixed much yet … just breaking things down … opening walls. My crown achievement has been replacing the front door handle. I feel like I’m in a race somehow to take over this house … and if I’m too slow the previous tenants will overtake the house again. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it feels. There is a refrigerator downstairs that is still full of food … its amazing … I want to take a photo of it but it’s too dark. There are glass containers where the metal top has disintegrated. You can’t smell it unless you open the door, and when you do its pretty rank. I emptied a closet yesterday … an old trunk full of belts, blankets, Pepto-Bismol and things. I started putting my foot out the door just in case some ghost force shut the door on me and trapped me in the closet.

Verdantless

I met our neighbor today. I’d been a little concerned by him … the last time I saw him … and I’m sure about this … he was wearing some kind of kitchen pot on his head like a hat. He’s either a brilliant eccentric, or he’s been on the wrong medication so long the damage is irreversible. While we chatted he was perfectly lucid and personable … a creative genius perhaps … he just might be my kind of guy. He mentioned I have to do something about the yard … he’s right.

No rest for the wretched

I had an idea to record the progress of our work here, but I’d forgotten how tiring physical work is. Baby arrives in 4 days … I’m trying to prepare her … telling her to imagine the worst case scenario. This is addictive … a project … a long-term project. My body feels great though … I walk down the street, all dusty and taught, like I could kill anyone. What hurts most, interestingly, are my forearms and hands.