The Next Phase

Some interesting things have happened on the work front in the past few weeks.  As I shared in a recent post, the funding for my position was due to expire on June 30th, and although a potential new funding source had been found and I had all but the final approval, the position was in jeopardy because of cuts in the new state budget.  I was in danger of again being cut adrift.

The first seredipitous happening was that I received a text message from my old manager at the design company I had worked for two years ago.  Business is once again on the rise, and they are considering hiring again.   Would I be interested in coming back?  I told them I will consider all offers.  They are watching economic indicators and not quite ready to hire, but will be in touch.

As the days ticked away and the 30th approached, it looked as if I would be signing up for unemployment benefits in the very office I have worked in for the past eighteen months...how bizarre.  And how troubling, because I could not get by on what those benefits would pay each week, now that we own a home. 

Human resources sent along my exit package with emergency health insurance info. A letter from the agency arrived in the mail thanking me for my service and expressing regret that I was being terminated.

Then at the eleventh hour, an email arrived stating that I had final approval as a permanent hire.  I felt relief, tempered with a little anger that I had been left to dangle for so long, not knowing whether I had a job or not.  For now, I will continue in my present job...close to home, good health insurance but low pay.  If my old company comes back with an offer I will have a lot to consider.

Once again, my faith has been rewarded and I have not been forsaken.

I am getting ready to visit the island again with my sister and her family.  I will take the ferry over tomorrow morning and stay for two or three days.  I'm looking forward to some sunshine, swimming and good food.  Hope you enjoy the Fourth of July holiday!
  

Expanding Their Range

I am sitting here having a glass of wine, watching the rain and listening to the thunder rumble and the Gray Tree Frogs call. The area around the old swimming pool is a haven for frogs, and especially for these vocal tree dwellers.

I started thinking about all the creatures we take for granted around here that we never knew when we were kids... Eastern Gray Tree Frogs included.
I grew up a few miles from here in Southern New England. As a kid, I was familiar with the Eastern American Toad, Leopard Frog and Bullfrog.   It was not until years later, in my early twenties that I first heard the plaintive call of the Spring Peeper, and later still when I first heard the Gray Tree Frog.
Back then, summer nights echoed with the sounds of Katydids, toads, crickets and maybe the occasional night calling bird, but the noises are different now.
Speaking of night calling birds, I had read "To Kill A Mockingbird" before I had actually seen a live Mockingbird.  Back then I thought of them as birds of the south - never saw one up here until I was an adult.
We had Gray Squirrels everywhere in those days, but no Red Squirrels. Even the Northern Cardinal was a rare sight for me back in the sixties and seventies.

Today in our new yard, I see blazes of brilliant red among the deep green leaves as male Cardinals vie for prime nesting spots.  Red Squirrels chase each other in and out between the trees in the early morning, and the sound of the dueling Gray Tree Frogs is deafening on a warm, humid night.

 It seems to me that these critters are all relative newcomers to our part of New England.  It makes me wonder what factors converge to cause a species to expand it's range.   Is it a result of population explosion, or do various species just adapt to slightly different conditions?

The Karma Wheel Turns Again

Employment drama has again reared it's ugly head, friends. You might remember that I was cut adrift from my beloved admin job in an international design company back in December of 2008, sparking the creation of my first blog, "Deedee, Cut Adrift!".  Eight months later, after a harrowing and dreary stint of unemployment, the president of that company called and asked me to come back and serve as his executive assistant, which I happily did.  In the interim however, I had applied for a state job in the office where I had gone for unemployment services, and eventually, they offered me a job.  I accepted because the benefits and health insurance were much better, plus it was a shorter drive from home.  That new position was funded by the Obama Stimulus (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) and as such, was a temporary position. 

In the meantime, my new operations manager decided that they really, really needed me as a permanent part of their team, so she set out to find a new funding source for me.  She found one, and at the beginning of this year,  I had to apply and interview all over again for my own job.  Early in March of this year, I was told that I had been chosen, approved and signed off on every level to stay as a permanent part of my office team as front desk receptionist and office clerk.  I was a virtual sure thing, and I have just been waiting these past few months for the final approval.  Then, a few weeks ago, the recession era state budget hit.

Now it seems they have less funding than last year and are rethinking how to distribute it.  All pending appointments are in Limbo.  There is a very real chance my position will be eliminated, after all.
 The ARRA funding which has been paying my wages in my state job thus far, expires on June 30th.  If the word does not come down that I have final confirmation before then, I will be unemployed again. Now that I have a mortgage, I could not live on what I would receive on unemployment benefits. We will be in financial trouble very quickly if that happens.

 I am not freaking out yet.  As I read recently on an inspirational webpage,  I believe that I will either be given a firm place to stand, or be taught how to fly.  I believe I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  I am now waiting for a sign.

A Mini Tour

I have not had much free time to write lately because trying to put the house together while working full time keeps me pretty busy. We still have a lot of boxes around and no idea where to put the contents.  My daughter, when visiting recently, asked how it was possible to move from an apartment into a house and actually have less room. Not sure, but apparently we did it!   Actually it's because we had a lot of storage at our former dwelling place - a full attic, two story garage and two story barn out back.   Here at the new place we have no out-buildings at all, an attic with no floor (just insulation above the ceiling) and there were only two closets in the whole house, one downstairs and one upstairs. So, the first thing Mac did was build a closet in the master and one in my son's room.

As I write this, he is outside constructing a small shed to keep the recycling bins and the lawnmower in to keep them out of the rain. It hasn't solved the whole problem but we've made a start.  Here is what the upstairs looks like right now.  Scroll down a few posts to see the pictures from a couple of months ago for comparison.




Here is what the hallway Mac built looks like now. He still has to put the window trim and the radiator cover on.

Here's the new half bath.

This is the little bedroom where my daughter will stay when she visits. We were calling it the office until we realized there won't be room for a desk if we keep the bed in it, and of course we want her to have someplace to sleep when she comes to stay over. And there is a small stand of shelving and a T.V. as well.
We had to take space from the two smaller bedrooms to carve out the half bath and the hallway.

This is the master bedroom.  The skylight has not gone in yet - that has to wait until Mac does the roof.  But it will be right over the bed.  Here too we still have to do all the window trim.

Although most of the work we have done has been upstairs, as you can see it is still a work in progress. 
The downstairs is another matter entirely.  We really have not done anything to it.  Because the frame of the house needed such extensive repairs, we didn't have nearly enough money to do what we needed to.  There is still much that needs to be done and because of time and financial constraints, it will take years.  But at least it is livable.
Here are some shots of the kitchen.

...And our little deck out back.

Mac is planning to demo it, maybe next year and build a patio instead.   It was not done correctly in the first place and because of that, it's causing problems with the sill of the house, but for now it's nice to have a place to sit out there.



 I would show you the parlor and living room, but they are not too photogenic right now.  We have most of our furniture crammed into the parlor, because Mac has all his tools and table saws and building supplies in the living room.   He needs a space to work that's out of the weather and as previously mentioned, we have no garage or barn yet.   He intends to build one as soon as our budget allows, which may be a long time away.  We also have an in-ground pool, but it has not been operational for many years and is over grown with grapevine and bittersweet.  There are cattails and reeds growing in the bottom of it and it is currently serving as a frog nursery.  Mac says he hopes to get it back in shape and running by 2014.  I'll post some photos of it soon for the curious.

All things considered, I feel very blessed.  I now have everything I ever wanted in life.  How many people get that?

We Finally Moved

Well Hell did not come, neither did high water, and neither did the carpet when it was supposed to. We were delayed yet again, but finally were able to move in on the 22nd of April.
There is still a ton of work to be done. The biggest problem we are facing is a lack of storage here at the new place. We are living out of boxes and every free moment is spent trying to unpack and figure out where to put things. Because Mac spent so much time getting this place ready, he got behind in his work. He is trying to catch up and is juggling three jobs at the moment, so he's been working nights and weekends as well as days, and it is slow going for work here at home.
There is still a lot to be done, but I will post some pictures of our progress in a few days.

Dealing with Delays

Things are not real great right now.  We are a few weeks behind schedule with the new house.  We had hoped to move in on the first of April, but due to circumstances beyond our control, delays happened.  The new move date is the fifteenth.  We were looking like we were right on target and then....the plasterer blew us off today.  If he comes tomorrow, which he said he would, it will still take him until late Thursday to finish (if all goes well)
. 

Because the plaster then has to "cure" for three days, that means we have to cancel the big painting weekend we had planned.  My sister and her husband, our daughter and her beau, and my younger brother had all offered to come and help us get the painting done this coming Saturday and Sunday, but now the walls won't be ready.  I also had to postpone the carpet install until next Wednesday.  

Here you see the walls with blueboard installed, waiting for the plasterer.  It sure looks different from a few weeks ago, doesn't it?  Mac created a hallway between the two small bedrooms, and took out two big windows, replacing them with smaller ones which fit better in the spaces.  These two  rooms will have pocket doors so we don't have to lose any living space to the door swing areas.

That's Mac in the shot above.  He looks really tired these days.  He has been going from his day job straight to the house and staying until after midnight for months now.  He needs a vacation.  Here, he is plotting out how to pull up the floor in the upstairs master bedroom to add a supporting beam.  He saw it bounce as my tiny niece was jumping on it last weekend, and decided he couldn't live with himself unless he pulled up the sub-floor and rectified it, which he did in record time, finishing it in the wee hours of this morning.  He worked like a madman to be ready for the plasterer, and then the guy stood us up today.

On a very bright note, my brother has donated all our paint (gallons and gallons of it!) and my sister and her husband went over to the home center and astonishingly, paid (in full!) for the carpet we'd ordered!  I am so lucky to have such a caring, generous family - we have come to realize during this ordeal that they are truly our best friends, and we so appreciate all the help they have given us. 

 
We are determined to stay with our deadline for moving.  The only thing we can do now is for me to take next week off from work to try and get it all done, so I'm going to talk to my boss and see if I can get the time.  We are moving in on the fifteenth of April, come hell or high water.  The next time I write we will be in our new home.  Wish us well!

Constructing Stuff

I spent today pulling up old carpet and preparing the upstairs of the house for the new Stainmaster.  My sister, her husband and my brother came by to help.  The carpet came right up, but the old padding was stapled into place and so we had the pleasure of prying out all the old staples.  It was actually a breeze, though, because we had so much help with the task.  Thank you, guys!

Here you can see the new half-bath with the new piping in place. 

Tomorrow the new fixtures should be installed.

Once the plumbing phase is done, the electric will be next.  Mac is still occupied with the fire block.  This involves installing heavy blocks of wood in all the spaces around the outer walls.

 If there were to be a fire this would slow the progress of the flames. 

Without it, a balloon frame wood house such as this would "go up like a tinder box", as they say.

What you see above is just a small example of what has been taking us so long to get the house ready. 

All the new light colored wood you see here is a brand new supporting skeleton for this old house.

Below you can see the framed out skylight in the master bedroom (my favorite thing in the whole upstairs!!! :)

It's "crunch-time" now and we are full steam ahead for April first!  Pray that we can be ready.