Tag Archives: The Squire

Try to Act Surprised, Part Two

3 Nov

I mentioned in late October that The Squire and I had just finished the latest book in David Weber’s Safehold series. Since the first book was published in 2007, I thought I’d go to the library and start over from the beginning, reading the series from start to finish without a one year break between them.

The library no longer carries the actual books. Everything is audio, now. Well, rats.

So, I went off to Abebooks and ordered the first four in the series. Off Armageddon Reef, By Schisms Rent Asunder, By Heresies Distressed, and A Mighty Fortress. They arrived yesterday. Heresies is the shortest book, with 618 pages, and Fortress is the longest, just shy of 1,100 pages.

These will be his Christmas gift, if I can keep them out of his hands until then. He probably won’t come up for air until mid-March.

Try to act surprised.

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Try to Act Surprised!

30 Oct

For quite a while, The Squire and I have pretty much ceased giving each other gifts for Christmas or birthdays.  As I often said of my dad, there’s a limit to the bottles of wine and pairs of socks you can give a man who doesn’t smoke or wear neckties, and The Squire doesn’t drink.  I have all the jewellery I could ever wear (I’ve even begun “downloading” stuff), and it would be hard to find a vegetarian cookbook I don’t already own.

However, a few years ago The Squire gave me a pair of bedroom slippers that are just the best I’ve ever owned. They much resemble an Ugg boot, with an ivory knitted cable stitch top and a drawstring to tie them securely at the ankle. They are fleece-lined and have a sturdy sole. I have worn them to the point that both toes are well-mended with duck tape.

About a week ago, we got another holiday gift catalogue to add to the already tottering pile on top of the stereo, and they had MY slippers.  I folded back the page, circled the slippers, and laid the magazine on The Squire’s keyboard.  He was as pleased as I was, and dutifully ordered them for me.

As he tapped the last key, he reminded me that I was to act surprised on Christmas Day. “Oh! Wonderful! How did you know this was just what I wanted?”

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Not as Bad as We Thought

17 Oct

The Godson came over this morning, and he and The Squire began to remove the sheet rock from the Big Room. As it turned out, the situation wasn’t nearly as bad as we had feared. There was water damage under both the window that had been professionally installed, and the window where the a/c unit had been. (That was our fault.) There was also an unholy mess where the original part of the house joined the dormer we put on when we bought the place, but no black mold or other ickiness. They only had to remove a total of about four feet, instead of the 30 feet we had been told. Whew! The contractor wanted to pull down all twenty feet of the long wall, and the ten feet on the short side, which turned out to be totally unnecessary.

Wainscoting

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The Squire can install the insulation and replace the sheet rock by himself, but we will need to bring in a contractor to redo the ceiling. The ceiling in the TV room is interlocking square tiles, which the contractor had originally wanted to pull down and replace, until The Squire took him into the attic and showed him the poured-in fiberglass insulation that would come cascading down on his head if he did so. As that point, the man grasped the logic of simply putting sheet rock over the existing ceiling. It’ll make the ceiling a half an inch lower, but whoop, whoop.

One thing I have always wanted to do in there was put bead board over the lower half of the walls, with a narrow shelf of some sort along the top edge. The only picture I could find was this stock photo of a bathroom, with what appears to be window sill for the shelf. I just think bead board is so “country chic” – I love the look! The stuff comes in 4 x 8 sheets, so we will make it four feet high, just to save cutting. Not sure what colour will go on the walls; possibly a dark green. We’ll see.

And, new carpet, since I bought what is in there when I was still at Blue Cross; I left in 1983, so it is probably due for replacement. No need to rush into these things.

I had toyed with the idea of replacing the double bed with a queen, but even going the IKEA route would be very expensive, and getting a queen-sized box spring up those stairs is physically impossible.

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Lost in Space

15 Oct

The Squire is  great fan of science fiction, which I do not usually enjoy, but we have stumbled upon a series written by David Weber, about an earth-like planet called Safehold, many light-years away from our galaxy, which pleases us both. A combination of space age technology and a pre-Industrial Revolution society.  It is all too complicated to go into here, but it is essentially an alternative history of the time of the Inquisition, which even  the staunchest Catholic will admit was not the church’s finest hour. I should warn you that Mr Weber is very Protestant in his views.  The books are huge – over 600 pages each – and very, very complicated. You really need to take notes, especially as the characters have rather odd names, and there are a bunch of people involved in this story. Fifteen pages worth in this book, but most of them are also in the other books.

The first book in the series, if you are interested, is Off Armageddon Reef and you really do need to read them in order.

The eighth book in the series was just recently published, and I picked it up at the library Tuesday.  I joked to the woman who brought me home (I’m still not able to drive) that once I gave the book to The Squire, I probably wouldn’t see him for about 48 hours. “I just hang a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign around his neck, hand him a sandwich once in a while, and dust him off, but there’s no point in talking to him. He gets so engrossed that either he won’t hear me at all, or I’ll startle him.”

Now, for the first eight years we had Blazer he was perfectly content to sleep on the floor, but last winter he decided he had enough seniority to claim The Squire’s recliner for his own. I got a chair cover and put it over the seat and sides, but the dog usually claws it down in to a heap on the chair seat, and sleeps there.bookmark

With this new book in hand, The Squire carefully folded the cover and put in on the floor next to the chair and settled in to read. Blazer about had a fit. He tried to get into the chair with The Squire, and when that didn’t work, he tried a plan of attrition, pacing back and forth around the recliner, trying to bother The Squire out of “his” chair.

So – I have no idea what time The Squire came to bed Tuesday night, but by 1:30 yesterday he had read over 300 pages.  He read most of yesterday, and after a short argument with the dog this morning, he read steadily from the time he got home from PT until 7:25. He finished the entire 627 pages in slightly more than 48 hours.

Now, it’s my turn.

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Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jog

28 Sep
Just to let you that know I am, as a former rector used to say, upright and taking nourishment. Got home shortly after noon, went to the bathroom while The Squire fixed the sofa bed, and fell asleep on the commode. He fixed me a cup of coffee, and tucked me into bed. My hearing is very, very sharp, but I slept through the long-case clock beside the living room door striking every fifteen minutes, so I must have been just plain dead to the world.
I slept until Brian, my boss, came over around 3:15 with a bouquet of pink roses, ferns, and ornamental grasses from their garden. Sweet of him. Nobody can sleep through the doorbell and Blazer barking!
The surgeon went in through the front, so I have a huge bandage between my Adam’s apple and my chin. Because he was cutting so close to my spinal cord, there was a lady doing a constant EMG on my scalp, arms, and legs to make sure things were still working as they should. Plastic disc to replace the mashed “real” one, with a titanium plate – all MRI compatible, so they tell us. One nice thing this hospital does is ask you how you’d like to be addressed, rather than automatically calling you by you bare-nekkid first name. I just find being called “Anne” by somebody young enough to be my grandchild patronising.  So, Mrs Rice is was.
Being pampered by The Squire, bothered by the cat, and observed by the dog. Sofa bed is low enough he can poke me with his nose. Fortunately, he couldn’t reach my face. Took a pain pill about ten minutes ago, and it has hit bottom.
Oh, and I can’t talk. As you can imagine that is a problem. We have a dinner bell (don’t ask) and The Squire can’t hear high-pitched sounds, so if something goes wrong I’ll have hope Blazer remembers how to Go Get Poppa. He claimed he was going to watch TV, but I have the feeling he is checking his eyelids for pinholes. We got up at 5AM to be at the hospital by 6, and while I got a nap, of sorts, he’s been on his feet all day.
Speaking of the dog – normally when I come home after the shortest of trips, he is all over me. If not jumping on me, he is pawing at my legs, whompping my legs with his tail, and generally getting underfoot, but today, other than a few very thorough sniffs, he has been very gentle and “non-invasive”. How do dogs know these things? The cat, on the other hand…

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Now They Tell Us

14 Sep

So – The Squire and I spent several days completely emptying the TV and guest rooms, removing the book cases that separated them, and generally disrupting our lives.

The fellow who is supposed to do the construction work came down and caulked all the windows. We had one good rainstorm, and the porch roof didn’t leak but the TV room window did, so he came back and redid that one. When the water was coming in around the window, The Squire tried mopping it up with a rag. I took a long piece of button twist, thumb-tacked one end in the middle of the puddle, and ran the thread into the trashcan. The water simply followed the path of least resistance, and dribbled into the plastic bucket. You would have thought I’d just invented the wheel, or something.

Today, the man who will be in charge of tearing out both exterior walls came down to take a look at the job. He hesitated a bit about leaving the old ceiling in place in the TV room until The Squire took him into the attic and showed him what would come raining down when he removed the tiles. “Gotcha, boss. You are exactly correct.” You just have to explain things very clearly to some people.

And then he dropped the little bombshell that nothing else could be done until we have another hard rain, the make sure the outside is properly sealed before we start working on the inside. That makes perfect sense, but we could have left some of that stuff in there until we were ready to roll.

Great. There’s no rain in the forecast until the 20th.

Maybe I can get my sewing machine back into the room and the ironing board set back up. Speaking of rolling, the contractors will remove the old rug, but they are not sure what they will find under there, and it is entirely possible we have mold to contend with.

Lovely.

Once we get it all painted, we can call the carpet man and have him come down to install new wall-to-wall.  In the meantime, we are camping out in the upstairs.

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More Than We Can Desire Or Pray For

11 Sep

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, we have discovered extensive damage in the TV and sewing rooms from incomplete repairs done when Hurricane Floyd came to town. As a result, The Squire and I have had to completely empty both rooms, moving everything into what is jokingly called his workshop, or stuffing things into odd corners of our own room, so the men can come in and tear down walls and ceiling.

The ceiling especially should be a classic “fun job”, as the TV room ceiling is those old, old fashioned interlocking square tiles, which are attached to furring strips. You can’t take down one without taking down the entire business. Insulation was poured in on top of the tiles. We put down a plywood floor in the attic after one of us missed our step and put a foot through the ceiling. (Yeah, that spot over there with the tacks in it.) We are going to have to put down plastic sheets to catch the insulation when they remove the ceiling. Good thing we plan on installing a new carpet, too.

We have been packing books, putting stuff on Freecycle, dismantling book shelves, and laughing as if neither of us has good sense. Honestly, you’d think we were having a party, instead of presiding over what may be the Last Rites of our own home.

Last night, as we fell into bed, we both remarked – as we often do – just how fortunate we are. My parents, in spite of my mother’s odd ways, had a good marriage, but I don’t ever remember hearing them giggle and carry on the way we do.  Neither The Squire nor I had very good first runs around the block, and I don’t think either of us (I certainly didn’t!) knew this sort of joy existed.

We wouldn’t have even been able to dream what lay ahead of us, almost forty-one years ago. We have truly been given, as the Prayer Book says, “more than we could desire or pray for”.

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Backing Up

9 Sep

I have never understood the male habit of backing into parking spaces, but I have been assured by a friend (who is in a position to know) that this must be a thing only straight men do. The Squire once spent enough time trying to back into a parking space he could have hit very easily head in that we were late for a meeting. I needed a Band-Aid for my tongue by the time we got out of the car.

Today I was at a local grocery store, where, due to space constraints, one row of parking slots is only one space deep. While I was unloading my cart, a fellow drove past me, and then backed into the space next to me.

I don’t get it. He could have driven in from the other side.

And people think women are hard to understand.

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Latin For Our Times

7 Sep

The Squire just wandered into the den and asked me, “What does ‘Sic semper tyranus’ mean?”

Without looking up from the book I reading, I replied, “Your dinosaur isn’t feeling well”.

He may never speak to me again.

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It’s The Medium, Not The Artist

24 Aug

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On Saturday, The Squire had The Godson come over to help him rebuild the lawn cart, so it would be ready to haul leaves, come fall.  This morning, he began searching under the workbench for a can of exterior paint he was positive he had stashed away.

He ended up dragging out enough stuff to fill the back of the van, and ran it to the dump, rather than put it out for the trash men. Most of it was paint or other unidentifiable “stuff”. I think he went with the approach that if it sloshed it was still good, and if it clunked it needed to be tossed out.

So, he finally found his bucket of white paint. He assures me he gave it a fair amount of shaking before he started to paint his wagon, but the left hand panels illustrate he didn’t shake it as well as he thought.  The paint is hanging in globs. Put the lid back on and do the Hokey-Pokey.  I came outside while he was dancing madly around on the patio, and just about fell on the ground laughing.  Actually, he thought it was pretty funny, too.

At any rate, the second part of the job went much more smoothly, as you can see. I just wish I could have gotten a shot of the brush he was using, as the bristles were about as long as his moustache. He was practically painting with the ferrule!

 

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