It's Memorial Day Weekend, but we're
not off work. In fact, Neal did the work of three men today.
It started on Thursday, with a fun
field trip to the Anacortes pool and parks for Uma and Neal, part of
a school field trip. Neal put his truck in line, thinking he'd pick up
building materials after the kids got on the bus to head back to
Lopez. Not to be. Due to mis-loading on the ferry, he was
overloaded. He had to park the truck suddenly and run to the boat.
He only made it because of the ruckus caused by the other parents and
students, alerting the crew and captain (our Lopez dock attendant
chose to ignore him. She's so helpful.) So he was off-island
without a vehicle.
I was at work during all this, and went
home at 1:00 for a late lunch, thinking I'd head back to finish the
day with Lindsey. I walked in, checked the mail, thought about what
to make for lunch, and then realized I'd better check messages.
There were four from Neal. He had the cell phone, and was trying to
contact me to figure out how to get the truck to him. I looked at
the clock: it was 1:25. The only boat that could get it to him on
time was the 1:35.
I grabbed the extra truck key and ran
for my car, not sure what to do, but heading for the ferry. On the
way there, I realized that it was Memorial Day Weekend (wacky ferry
scene), and that we needed the materials for the excavator that was
coming tomorrow.
When I got near the ferry, the last
three cars were loading. I made a split second decision: I parked
the car next to Neal's truck, got in the truck, and drove it on the
ferry just as the gate was closing. In my 12 years on Lopez, this was
my least meditated ferry trip ever.
I'm glad I did it: I met up with the
school bus with no trouble, and surprised Neal. We found most of
what we needed in Anacortes at Frontier (right before they closed for
3 days), and they turned us on to an electrical supply. We made it
there 10 minutes before closing, and bought the huge wire needed to
connect our power supply to the house. Big gratitude to North Sound
Communications, who will be doing our electrical work. They really
helped us out with this phase of the work.
Our luck had turned from the morning,
and we made it on the 6:35 ferry back to the island, with our load of
materials.
Friday morning, we woke knowing we had
work to do before Buck came with the excavator. First we laid 4”
perf pipe around the foundation for a perimeter drain. Then we
pulled out our drawing of downspout locations (done ahead of time,
how about that!), and connected 4” pvc pipe to drain the roof water
out toward the landscaped area.
We started the excavation day with
another dump truck: this time, 10 yards of drain rock. They put it
around the foundation, over the piping we had just laid.
When I came home at the end of the day,
they had backfilled the foundation and cut the final grade at the
north side. Our house looks like it belongs on the land again! Very
exciting, to stand at floor level and imagine our finished space.
On Saturday, the site jumped back two
steps. Time for more trenching. Two, in fact. One for
power/water/phone, and another to the septic. Even knowing that,
with luck, they would be filled in on Monday, it is disconcerting to
see the trenching and mounding.
Which brings us to Sunday, the day
between excavator days. Neal has this one day to lay all of wiring
and piping in the two trenches. As he said at the end of the day,
“this is too much for one person in one day”. Yes. It was. But
he did it, my SUPERman.
ha ha ha ha ha ha (Laurie Anderson,
1981)
 |
| Uma and Milo, playing skee-ball septic |
David and Kelly come to help, and David brings his sun-watching set-up.
We started the excavation day with
another dump truck: this time, 10 yards of drain rock. They put it
around the foundation, over the piping we had just laid.
On Saturday, the site jumped back two
steps. Time for more trenching. Two, in fact. One for
power/water/phone, and another to the septic. Even knowing that,
with luck, they would be filled in on Monday, it is disconcerting to
see the trenching and mounding.
