Waiting room

Hello, friend. Thank you for joining me here!

“Slow and steady wins the race.”  

I never much liked that saying. I am not a patient person. I am also not a huge turtle fan—something about the wrinkly, reptilian skin and prehistoric shell set-up weirds me out. I know the lesson is a good one, especially for someone whose anxiety can manifest as rushing through discomfort, sometimes losing accuracy and niceness in the process. I simply do not wait well. But 2020, my friend, 2020…

Patience is to 2020 what ammunition is to war. 

Now, I bet you think I am thinking about the election and how long it took to count all the votes. I am. You may also think I am talking about the pandemic and how long we’ve been masking and distancing and missing out on life. I am. But there is another equally pressing circumstance that feels like a personal purgatory around here. I am referring to the endless nature of home renovation.  I am 100% down with waiting for Democracy to do its thing. And I have come to accept that Covid will be with us for a tragically long time. But I may have reached my threshold for living in a construction zone. As we head into winter, it is less a cute adventure and more a mind-numbing mess. Let me fill you in.

The first project we took on in our 1887 farmhouse was electrical. Outside, there was a dangerously dangling wire that needed to come down ASAP. In this area, most power lines are buried in the ground, which is much safer, not to mention more attractive. Having been raised in the Midwest, I never did get used to all those power lines in East Coast neighborhoods, so I was fully onboard with hiding them here. Transitioning from overhead to underground electricity was a large (read: pricey) project that required work by both our electrician and our power company. They had to work in tandem, and we were at the mercy of both of their very busy schedules. It took multiple appointments over months to complete the trenching and to then switch over to a new, more powerful electrical panel. But by September, it was done. 

Now, don’t get too excited. All that new power had almost no effect on the experience of being inside the house. No, that was just addressing safety concerns and creating a basis for the overall stability of the future power inside. From August to October, there were only two outlets on the first floor that we could use for three pronged plugs like computers and vacuums, etc. And on the second floor there are still only pull-chain overhead lights and no outlets except in our daughter’s room. Extension cords run our world up there. The current plan, pun intended, is to wait to upgrade the first floor electrical until we work on each room in turn. Upstairs, is a different story…

During our home inspection, we were told that the attic (really just a crawl space) had “significant” mouse droppings. Not surprising. Later, however, after the deal was done, we found out that it was not only mice that had been up there, but bats. Here’s something I never needed to learn: bat poop is called guano. And we had about 200 pounds of it covering the attic floor. We did not, thank goodness, seem to have any actual bats. Bet you didn’t know that bats are a protected species in the state of Minnesota. I didn’t. Bat “exclusion” is a process in which you seal up the entrances that bats use to come into your house, while still allowing them to get out. A one-way ticket, so to speak. Now, due to state regulations, you can only perform exclusions at certain times of year. There is a ban on doing it during bat mating season in the late spring and summer. If we had had live bats in the house, we would have had to hang out with them till fall. Small favors, I tell you. We waited until October for the first allowed appointment with our friendly pest control expert, Joe. He completed the exclusion at long last, and we are now relatively sure that no bats will be adding to the guano pile. However: it, too, must go. This week, Joe will return to clean that sh@#$ out. They do not do clean-outs until November due to more regulations. So, we waited some more. Why is this important—beyond the entertaining ick factor—you may ask? Because we cannot run new electrical from the attic to the second floor until the attic is clean! Bat outlets before electrical outlets.

All this waiting around to upgrade our power situation has not been wasted, however. We’ve had many other half-finished, domino-effect projects to tide us over. The three main living spaces downstairs (living room, parlor and library) have hosted a dizzying carousel of chaos since our arrival mid-August. One of the most egregious “updates” previously made to this Victorian house was the decor of the living room. Though the original woodwork still surrounded the doors and windows, nearly every other surface was changed in the late 1960s or early 70s—an era in which I truly believe no one should have been allowed to build or design anything. There was sparkle popcorn ceiling, which likely held asbestos, anchored by a broken ceiling fan with shiny brass trim. The walls were covered not by wood paneling, no, but by faux wood paneling wallpaper !! And to top it off, at the bottom of it all, was wall-to-wall, deep orange, shag carpeting, filled with what had to be decades of dirt. I honestly could not let my daughter sit on that floor, no matter how much I vacuumed it (using the one grounded outlet in the room). It was nasty. So, only a few days after we got here, David and I pulled the rug up out of sheer disgust. Along with it came a thick, equally filthy, gray rug pad. But underneath that was an interesting find: a floral patterned linoleum floorcloth, nearly as big as the room. I had never seen a vintage one of these, and certainly never one of that size. For a few days, we left it down. I scrubbed it clean, but we found that it showed dirt easily and made the room feel dark with its autumnal palate. Beneath the floorcloth was the original hardwood. We rolled the linoleum and took it out to the porch. But, instead of the glorious wood we’d always pictured, the floor we revealed was covered in tiny black sticky specks. Ew. There was also a smell. Double ew. David did a test to rule out mold, while I scrubbed at it with a bleach solution. Thankfully it was not mold, but it was also not about to budge. We finally figured out that the gunk was teeny pieces of the linoleum floorcloth backing that had adhered to the wood over time. A bit of research told us that the floorcloth may have sat there for 100 years. And with the weight of the massive rug pad and shag carpet placed on top for approximately 50-60 of those years, it was no surprise that flecks of the dark underside had transferred onto the wood. There were also areas with larger dark spots, especially in two corners of the living room. Soon after we’d revealed the original floor, the weather shifted and temperatures soared into the 90s. As the late summer heat rose, so did the fragrant fumes of cat urine from those shadowy spots. Awesome. Between the vinyl residue and the rising reek, refinishing the living room floor catapulted to the top of our to-do list. 

After reading a few horror stories, we knew that for us, floors were not a DIY project. It took some time to find a floor refinishing company with availability because there were so many people stuck inside during quarantine who were also tackling house projects. We waited for return phone calls. We waited for estimates. We waited for schedules to clear. And then, all of a sudden, there was an opening! Great! Except: we then had to spend a mad weekend clearing every single thing out of the living room, the library and the front hallway. We decided to do those three spaces at the same time because it was less expensive to have the company come out once and do as many adjoining spaces as possible. We planned for the longest day to coincide with an in-person school day, and Finley and I visited my mom for the other day. Even so, we were definitely displaced. In addition to having to walk outside to get to the bathroom and kitchen from the bedrooms, there was fine dust everywhere in the house and a lovely new odor from the finishing products. Once the floor folks left on the final day (it turned into three), we were told that we had to wait 24 hours to walk on the floors with shoes and 48 hours before moving furniture back in. The furniture from all three rooms was stacked to the ceiling in the front parlor. We climbed in and out, wedging ourselves into the one corner of the daybed that was clear. Only one person could be comfortable (relatively speaking) at a time. Otherwise, it was walking outside around the house to the temporary kitchen to sit on upright wooden chairs. Never really feeling comfortable, except in bed at night, wore on us a bit.

Now, you would think all this would have made me anxious to move back into the first floor rooms. And, it did. But, as the dust cleared, I looked at our gorgeous maple floors, now restored to their original, honeyed glory and everything else seemed shabby by contrast. The tall, dark baseboards were badly scuffed. The fake wood wallpaper felt like an affront to the actual hardwood floorboards. And I don’t even want to discuss the sparkle popcorn. I knew I needed one room downstairs to start feeling like home sooner than later. The thought of moving everything back, only to later move it all out again to complete the other work seemed silly. I bit the bullet and called on the painter we had used upstairs to tackle the living room. He began by stripping off the wallpaper. And guess what was there? Not normal plaster! Of course not. The original walls were made of a type of plaster none of us had ever seen before. The best way I can describe it is that the walls looked and felt like janky, old sidewalks. Rough and crumbling in spots, it was not going to be a simple paint job. And so the process lengthened. Again. You know how everyone says that with renovations, it always takes twice as long and costs twice as much as planned? This kind of thing is why. Especially with older houses, you cannot foresee what you will uncover as you go. Unless I wanted our living room to have walls that resembled a prison, extra steps had to be taken. We found a product called loxon, a masonry sealant of sorts. It helped fill in the gaps and stop the crumble before we skim coated. Skim coating is like a plaster goop that smooths everything out—though without the loxon underneath, it would not have sufficed alone. Each of these products needed time to dry. Then the skim coat had to be sanded—more dust! Then the painter primed the walls. Then that had to dry. Then he prepped the trim. Then he primed the trim. Then that had to dry. Then he painted the trim. And only THEN did he finally paint the walls. Our house was a side job for our painter, and because he came to us only on evenings and weekends, sometimes he was unavailable for personal reasons like blind dates and Vikings games. So all told, the work I just described on the living room was actually spaced out over about three weeks. He basically did one step each time he came over. Now, you might think that we could have more quickly done all that wall work ourselves, but with David’s work on the bathroom/kitchen/porch/winterizing/land maintenance and my handling the parenting/cleaning/cooking/distance learning/unpacking/laundry, adding anything more might have broken us. We were grateful to have trusted, mask-wearing help—even if it extended the timeline.

As the walls were finally nearing their finish, I looked around the still empty living room, and my eyes wandered upwards…to the popcorn ceiling and that jacked-up ceiling fan. Maybe while the room was cleared (and our painter headed to the Boundry Waters for the weekend after a bad break-up), we could get the ceiling drywalled…Hmmmm. And, once that was done, why not go ahead with the electrical in the living room, too? All the new, grounded outlets would require touch ups on the wall paint anyway, so we might as well just get it done real quick…

And that is the story of how the impulsive ripping up of an orange shag carpet one day in August meant we had nowhere to sit down until nearly November.

Our choices meant we had to wait. It was messy and frustrating, and that was only one room. I am still using three strung-together extension cords to charge my phone at night, and there is plenty more kooky wallpaper to be reckoned with. But it is all doable. These things will get done, someday. The journey will never be swift on a house like this. We just figure it out as we go and try to stay sane in the process. And I guess that’s my take away. 

We are all waiting. For covid to end, for the election and its aftermath to settle, and for each of our own private dreams to come true. I wonder every day if I’m letting crucial moments of life pass me by while I look forward with yearning. I try hard to make my brain realize that there is only now. I know life can end with no warning; I have seen that happen. I try to remember to allow enough space for joy, even as my world fills with circumstances that make me restless, annoyed and scared sometimes. I wonder if everything will really be so much better “after”? What exactly are we waiting for? Togetherness, for sure. Safety, most definitely. Some certainty, perhaps. My heart aches that my child cannot touch her friends. I am terrified someone in my family may get sick. I want to know that our new President can get to work to heal our nation. And I very much want to feel comfort in my own house. In time, I believe that our wishes will be changes and our lives will evolve. But what about today?

Good things come to those who wait, they say. Sometimes that is true. I think we’ve always assumed that phrase means that good things only come after the waiting is done. No wonder we want to hurry things along! Why does patience equal suffering in all the stories we tell? Perhaps, because that is what we’ve always been told, it is tempting to continually focus on what will be, when things improve. In many ways, what will be, will be, and our willing it can’t make it so. I do not mean one should live in a bubble and not recognize how very much is wrong that needs righting by us all. I just mean that, our time is too precious to focus so much on the future that we skip over the present. Just think: what if for you there wasn’t any time anymore, all at once? Wouldn’t now look pretty beautiful then? I wonder if there was no more waiting, if there was only this very moment left to me, would I look at the same half finished bathroom tile and constantly muddy floors and see in a flash of gratitude all the hard work being done for my benefit, rather than just wishing it was different?  Would I notice the path of power cords running from our girl’s room to ours, like some electric umbilical trail, and be reminded of how we are all finding any way we can to connect to each other? Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Maybe living during the time of coronavirus, amidst political and racial unrest, and tearing our house down to build it back slowly as a reflection of who we are and what we want our life to be is a Goddamned miracle. How lucky we are!! We get to wait! I get to watch my world slowly evolve! Sometimes the process is ugly and awkward, like that fabled turtle, crawl-walking toward where it has set its slow-eyed gaze. You know, turtles may look odd, but they don’t look angry. They aren’t wasting their walk wishing it was different, they are just moving forward as they are able. Perhaps that IS winning. Maybe the race isn’t to a finish line. Maybe the race is to an acceptance of what is and choosing to take steady steps towards what will be without rancor in our stride. Maybe?

It is possible that when the wait ends, we may look around and not know quite who we are anymore. But, WE ARE. And by the very fact that we did not die from this horrible pandemic, nor from police brutality, nor in protest for democracy, we ought to hail the fact that we have lives in which to sit—even on hard IKEA chairs in temporary kitchens with bat guano over our heads—and wait. I don’t want to waste the waiting on wishing the wait would end. I want to use the waiting to take the steps needed to get to where I want to go, AND find the parts of the path that are destinations in themselves: little pebbles of joy on my own bumpy road. There is no “then” that changes everything. There is only the slow and steady journey through all the bad and all the good, one awkward and lucky step at a time. It is not waiting if you are living fully right now, I try to remember. It is only now…And now…

And now.

And now will always trump then.

This photo—Living Room: Then.

Top photo—Living Room: Now.