the start of spring cleaning

and the regular weekly crap I almost never do on weeknights.

april to-do list

Still to do:

may to-do list

june to-do list

Stuff I'll actually do:

june to-do list

Stuff I'll actually do:

July to-do list

August to-do list

September to-do list

october to-do list

House:

November to-do list

House:

December to-do list

House:

January to-do list

House:

adventures in home-ownership

Wednesday I broke from scraping the watercloset because I had to do some particular reorganizing in the furnace room right immediately then and no later. This led to an observation: "RDC, there's a leak in the hot water heater."

There wasn't a single leak in the heater. There were several. So much for the hot water, on New Year's Eve, with a prime rib and oven-roasted potatoes and chocolate mousse and wine and champagne to serve and clean up after.

(It did mean that we went to the gym right on New Year's Day, though only to shower.)

The plumber arrived Friday morning, zounds, with a new heater. He told us a few unwelcome things:

When we moved into the house, RDC added a pipe to the hot water heater. A gasket meant to vent in case of...something...was placed at eye level, so the escaping steam would boil your face off. The pipe meant only your toes would come off. Home Depot suggested a certain metal pipe to RDC as more cost effective, but the first thing the plumber said was that code required copper.

Denver code also requires combustion air to the furnace. He looked greedily at the outside wall--the one whose masonry we just had repaired this summer. Instead RDC suggested the coal chute. Now we are vaguely "Brazil"ian and have six-inch aluminum pipe from the coal door, strapped to the ceiling of the coal cellar, piercing the wall between coal cellar and furnace room, and basically facilitating cold air in and warm air out. Also fresh air for safer and more efficient burning in the furnace and heater, if you're into that.

The defunct heater had sprung leaks because the water pressure, as coming in from the outside, was too high, was the third thing. So the plumber also installed a pressure-reducing valve. Which I suppose will reduce our consumption, which is good, though I noticed the difference in the shower and I haven't even washed my hair yet. Watering will take longer, which is not so good, especially since I have to be much, much more assiduous about the trees if they're to stand a chance, according to the tree-trimmers.

This fall I added a curtain to the doorway between the den and the laundry room, which made it cozier-looking and -feeling, but does just about nothing to combat a six-inch aperture in an otherwise not at all airtight house. We closed the door between laundry room and workroom--the door I meant at first sight to remove but then opened against a wall and forgot about for the past nearly four years except insofar as to hang laundry from it--and rolled towels against its sill, but still. We hung a tarp in the furnace room doorway too, but we need a weather-stripped door. Soon.

So that was Friday.

Today An Official Measurer from Home Depot appeared to calculate the kitchen. Blake was upset at not meeting the plumber yesterday and today did meet the measurer, who was charmed (of course), and chatted with Blake on his shoulder: "I don't know what you're saying but I see you've got a lot to say anyway." We talked about vents and cabinetry and deepening the north countertop and narrowing the south one and what to do about the lighting and so forth. On his way out, the measurer noticed the plethora of cards on the mantel and said, "Your friends certainly don't neglect you," which made me happy. He touched the tree softly--yeah, I liked him--and put on his shoes to go. Blake squawked with abandonment and I told the measurer that he likes to be told goodbye; the measurer did so readily, understanding that the little things are important.

Then I took down the tree. All the ornaments to the couch, to be dealt with last. Streamer-garland down, lights unwound, skirt unhooked. I got the tree outside, the needles swept and vacuumed from inside and the needles swept though not vacuumed from the porch. (The tree will become mulch, courtesy of the city.) I had a mess of boxes from shipping this year, so I reorganized everything, which was fun. (The measurer paused in his work to observe of the Fractured Proverbs magnets on the fridge, "very tidy, all lined up." Yes indeed: the subject phrases are right- and the predicates left-aligned making a neat part down the line.)

I went through the cards, cutting pictures from greetings to fit in an album and writing on their backs, tearing fronts (images for homemade cards or gift-tags) from backs (greetings and new addresses). Then I went through the albums, adding all the photographs from the past four years, since we went digital.

Meanwhile RDC was devising and rethinking the breakfast nook. There was much sitting in dining chairs side by side to determine length of bench and facing one another to decide that only one bench would fit (two facing would leave no knee space) and sitting on a length of board propped on crates in the sun room to decide how deep a seat should be. The woodworking book says 15", which is not comfy. Eighteen in more like it.

Anyway, the hot water's back. Blake's cage is dismantled in the dishwasher, laundry's in the clothes washer, and I need to get back into the watercloset with a bucket of warm water and TSP substitute cocktail. Whee.

February to-do list

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march to-do list

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march to-do list

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April to-do list

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may to-do list

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june to-do list

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july to-do list

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august to-do list

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september to-do list

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october to-do list

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november to-do list

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december to-do list

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january to-do list

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february to-do list

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march to-do list

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april to-do list

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long-term plans for formigny

may to-do list

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june to-do list

House and garden:

july to-do list

House and garden:

august to-do list

House and garden:

october to-do list

House and Garden

november to-do list

House and Garden

december to-do list

House and Garden

january to-do list

House and Garden

things to do in denver

Good heavens, three weeks until my father and notstepmother arrive. SMW said, "Don't clean!" Shyeah. It's bad enough my father will see the state of the backyard and the house not yet jacked up; the least I can do is scrub the house. A lot of this counts as spring cleaning anyway.

the library

UConn's library, Homer, didn't fall over into the swamp, but its face did fall off. Precipitation leaked behind the brick facade, froze, and popped bricks right off. From 1987 to 1995 the building was swathed in plastic to protect passersby before eventual correction. Snopes says no architect ever did forget to account for books in the weight of a structure--though it does say that Homer's floors are sagging. As are Formigny's.

RDC observed, or at least suspects, that the house continues to settle: has the dining room floor sunk, or was there always that much space between the oak planking and the floor molding? does the porch roof continue to pull away from the house? Are those two bookcases with 42 feet of shelving altogether compressing the flooring? The answer to the last is yes. So this weekend I emptied them and brought the books downstairs, where they can weigh on the cement foundation as heavily as they like.

In August, I bought a larger bookcase for the nonfiction. The 36x36x12 bookcase that that displaced has been in a corner behind the closet door and held only Ann Lauterbach and D.H. Lawrence so far. One of the upstairs bookcases could fit there, 84x36x12, the only spot in the basement with high enough ceilings--my study is sunken but still has walled-in ducts in some bits. I removed one of the shelves from the standard-and-bracket ones we installed on the wall to the right of my desk and from beneath them removed the little chest of drawers and the little bookcase, so the shorter bookcase now fit in their spot; and I added its last shelf to another case (a step I avoided because it results in two short shelves).

Neither of us has used the NordicTrack or Total Gym in ages. The latter has been collapsed and away at least half of those ages, and the skier merely collects dust. RDC says he can't imagine our not belonging to a gym, and so they're both going to go live on the farm. The skier's absence frees the west back wall for two pieces of furniture from the sunroom, where RDC has begun to build the breakfast nook--the gateleg table and the cookbookcase.

The table in the den has been pieces of board left over from building the drawers in my closet (under the hanging shirts) supported on two crates. I removed one crate and one board and put the little chest of drawers in its place with the little bookcase on top.

So much for arrangement of furniture: now to arrange the books. Forty-two feet of shelving, but once all the books were downstairs, only about 35' of books, into 30 additional feet of cases.

The standard-and-bracket shelves by my desk had had a shelf each for writing books, favorite authors, favorites, and kids' books in pulp, and the little bookcase had had my reference books. I purged some reference books--I don't need the Merriam-Webster dictionaries of law and etymology at my fingertips--and some writing books--Annie Dillard and Sue Hubbell could join general fiction--and the favorite authors--Atwood and Byatt, except for Possession, also could join general fiction. Reference and writing merged, favorites (including Possession) remained, and bracket height dictated that pulp books remain as well.

Some of RDC's particularly favorite fiction--DeLillo, Hemingway, Kerouac, Tim O'Brien, Pynchon, Gary Snyder--had been upstairs but the bulk was cultural, literary, and information theory. Fiction would be easier to categorize than nonfiction, as well as beginning at the far left of the available shelf space. It all had to come down, case by case, beginning with A for Atwood. I emptied the first case, Edwin Abbott to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and filled it again, Abbott to Don DeLillo. I emptied the second, Penelope Fitzgerald to Wally Lamb, and filled it again, Dickens to Ken Kesey. From there to the end of the alphabet was faster because I didn't have to empty before filling. Fiction now ends on the second shelf of the second case, with the fixed third shelf of impractical height holding a Riverside Chaucer and one Riverside Shakespeare and one Pelican, and Shakespearean and Chaucerian criticism. The third case is all fixed shelves, but only the top one is a silly height, at slightly less than trade. It had held my Penguin medieval and Renaissance collection, but now the pulp-sized Penguin is on the pulp-sized shelf and the trade-size is at the end of general fiction (I'll work the latter into general fiction but I forgot during the main project) but now it holds whatever nonfiction is short enough to fit. I dislike arranging books by height, but so it goes. Other than first three feet of short books to hand, I kept some groupings--women's studies, history, cultural studies--but otherwise arranged the non-facetious non-fiction alphabetically by author or editor. Not by LOC, because RDC prefers to go by author and because I am not going so far as to label the books. Yet. Facetious non-fiction--Cynthia Heimel, Uppity Women of Medieval Times, Al Franken--and a slew of Norton anthologies end the hoard.

Cullings: Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi in pulp, since we have them in a Twain collection, vast but more readable than pulp. A duplicate collected Yates. One Riverside Chaucer. Ellen Tebbits, even though it was a gift, because it is not a Beverly Clearly I grew up with. James Howe's The Watcher. Yellowed pulp versions of texts that are readily available online, like Malthus and Veblen. Pulp Dreiser, since neither of us will ever read him again for pleasure and Sister Carrie, though not An American Tragedy, is available through Project Gutenberg. Learn Downhill Skiing in a Weekend.

Next, the cookbookcase will leave its temporary quarters in the bedroom for the den. Because we digitized the music collection, the CDs don't need to be easily accessible. Cramming rather than shelving them will free up space for how-to books in the television shrine, and eventually the sunroom will take back the cookbooks--another whole new bookcase! And then I will have to go on methadone. Or we'll have to decide that we don't need two different editions of the two-volume Norton collection of American literature, or perhaps not the one-volume version at all.

august to-do list

House
Before midnight on the 3rd:

Cooking

october to-do list

House and Garden

november to-do list

House and Garden