Oy, what a year.
The Good Bits
The children grew in leaps and bounds. Julia learned to ride a bike this Fall and Ben showed great interest in Batman, LEGOs and jigsaw puzzles. They are healthy and beautiful.
We had a tremendous time visiting Disney World, despite Benny having to have his chin glued after a pool mishap and Julia developing walking pneumonia (which didn’t manifest, thankfully, until a few days after arriving home). The success of the trip was in large part to my wife’s efforts in frugal planning, including a superb bit of customer service negotiation (which saw that we got an amazing rate at the Port Orleans Riverside) and genius notion to carry 90% of our meals down with us in giant, zippable $2 IKEA bags that we able to check on SouthWest (we only lost the milk and veggie dogs when the hotel room fridge crapped out on us on the second day, but we were merrily compensated). While I’d never go down there in June again (my God, the heat), the trip was worth it. My plan is to do it again in five years and then, maybe, a third time when I have grandkids of my own.
I’ve kept my job in a horrible economy and, while I didn’t get nearly as much done outside of the worksphere, it wasn’t a BAD year in total.
Be It Ever So Crumble…
It hasn’t been a great year for Stinkbug Manor. Last winter, the garage roof blew off and we couldn’t properly repair it until November. There is still a gaping hole in the backyard fence where the tree fell through in the Spring of 2010 (!). Admittedly, we kept that open to ease access to Deadman’s Ditch (the traditional name for the wooded lot behind our home as per Jenkintown’s underage drinking community) and, hence, the garage roof. That proved a good thing, however, since it allowed the owners of the lot better access to clean it out after the Great Flood of ’11.
Hurricane Irene merely wet the basement floor. Tropical Storm Lee, however, opened the floodgates, as it were. We had about 18 inches in the basement, but thanks to the valiant efforts of yours truly (and the Jenkintown Fire Company, whom I owe gratitude and a donation) we were able to pump most of it out, using four quarter-horsepower utility pumps (and Pioneer company’s full-horsepower pump) within the first day or so. Similar events happened up and down the street, which led my darling wife to figure out something was amiss. She’s a civil engineer you see, and quite a good one to my admittedly-biased eye. We spent a good deal of time this fall searching for old maps that could shed some light onto our (and our neighbor’s) problems.
Now, we’ve known that Greenwood Avenue used to feature a small stream that ran down to the Tookany Creek, by the Jenkintown train station. We also knew that the football field next door used to hold a small lake. What was new to me, at least, was the notion that in the field about 40 feet above (and 100 yards behind) our home there was a natural spring an pumping station. Fun.
The rains of Tropical Storm Lee resurrected the Greenwood Underground River to dramatic effect, flooding basements and washing out the railway near where the stream traditionally met the mighty Tookany. I didn’t see it myself, having been busy pumping the basement, but I’ve been told that five feet of dirt and stone had been washed out beneath the track, which remained hanging in mid-air over a 5 to 10-foot gap. Impressive.
Through my wife’s efforts to rally the neighborhood and our Borough Council, Deadman’s Ditch (a natural drainage route) and the school’s much neglected drainage system (which it would seem runs parallel to our property line) have been cleaned out. The drainage system, which collects water from the upper fields, had been impressively backed-up, with weeds growing out of the three five-foot deep drains and dirt compacted far back into the pipes. The basement has been dry since, but let’s see if all parties involved can hold up to their parts in this. I may add a sump to the basement for added protection.
The garage roof finally did get repaired, after I finally got on the ball and re-framed the garage wall. Originally, we had just planned to re-side the garage, as the stucco was coming undone. Turns out that the only thing holding up the garage wall was either the stucco or the stucco in combination with the inside paneling. We knew that the garage had been treated for termites. What we didn’t know is that they created some considerable damage that the previous owners either didn’t know about or neglected to fix. Not a single stud was intact…or even touch the ground. They all sort of hovered there–neither touching the roof sill nor the concrete floor–supported entirely by nails from the interior paneling. Our garage was held up by magic.
After a few weekends, I managed to fix it (with considerable help–and tools–from my brother and father). I sprained an elbow, blackened a fingernail and, ultimately, contracted pneumonia…perhaps from inhaling all the mouse poop, as my better half believes.
That brings me to…
The Great Sick of 2011
In 1980 or so I contracted osteomyelitis following a bought of chicken pox (boo opportunistic infections). I spent a month in the hospital and temporarily lost the use of my legs for a time. I remember not walking, receiving a landspeeder for my birthday, and nightly needles. Its one of the reasons my kids get the chicken pox vaccine. It was the sickest I can ever recall getting and it probably set me on a somewhat sedentary life-path that I wasn’t able to correct until college.
This was a close, close second. I wasn’t hospitalized, thankfully, but I’m still trying to shake the after-effects nearly two months later. It was a nifty reminder of mortality. Pneumonia still tends to kill a lot of people.
The night I finished work on the garage wall, I developed a fever, which lingered for a few days. Since Thanksgiving was coming, I figured I ought to get checked out before possibly infecting elder relatives with some sort of bug. It was pneumonia, which my doctor confirmed with an X-ray. Strangely, I hadn’t so much as a cough…that would come later with a terrible ferocity. I have never coughed so hard as to gag on the actual cough. The muscles responsible for coughing were so worn out that I could barely hack out a bark.
Then came the vomiting. Whether it was from the pneumonia itself, the postnasal drip (which had the effect of draining down my through and inducing nausea, much like when you start swallowing your own spit precedes vomiting when you’re drinking too much), the antibiotics, or some bonus infection, I just don’t know. I barfed so hard, I blew out the blood vessels in each eye to ghastly effect.
Even after the pneumonia cleared up (as proven in a second x-ray), the coughing continued (continues!) likely due to lingering inflammation. The human immune system isn’t a genie that can be easily put back in its bottle. An inhaler helps with that and I’m finally able to sleep through the night and without the help of a bed-full of pillows to keep me upright.
Still, I took the non-shaving recovery time to regrow my goatee (properly a van dyke, I’m told), so…you know, bonus.
Plans for 2012
Housewise
Finish the damn garage. As I mentioned, I finished re-framing the garage wall just before my illness (and the arrival of the contractor). Now I need to put up the siding, which I’ve already bought. (I want someone else to do it, but I’m well enough and the weather is nice enough that I might take a crack at it this weekend. Crom help me.)
Replace the damn fence. And hopefully add to it all those birdhouses currently sitting atop my bookcase. I bought a bunch of cheep birdhouses as a craft project, but we have yet to install them outdoors.
Add a damn pergola. This Spring, I dream of topping my homemade slate patio with a nice pergola. It’ll add some definition to the backyard and hopefully make it more inviting.
Give the boy his own damn room. The house isn’t getting any bigger, and nothing of decent size or location has come onto the market in Jenkintown. So the missus must give up her spacious office for the good of the family. Ben will get a big boy bed and, if luck holds, most of the toys will leave the general living area.
Grg-wise
We are all works in progress, aren’t we? Well, let’s just leave it at that for now.