happy halloween

It's been one year since we moved here. One year since Matt rolled over at 9pm– while I was at Home Depot– the first of dozens of trips– and, with Michal, hauled the monstrosity of a water heater taking up our entire bathroom out to the proverbial curb (we have no curb). The first of countless more things we'd take out to the curb.

And it's been one year since I've been wishing I'd more intentionally chronicled and shared whatever had transpired each day besides snapping some bad photos, at best. Remember how you really used to take photos? When the camera was less of a utility, more of an artistic instrument? Each day I think, there can't be anything that interesting that's going to happen. But every single day, there is.

Interesting is subjective. How interesting is it that we applied foundation coating to all the foam around the slab we poured? While this is a minor detail, it's these minor details that make the whole interesting. Is the whole interesting, itself? Sure it is. Or is it each step forward, each mistake, each repair, each time Bob wanders over, each meal, each upgrade, that's interesting?

People are polite and ask, how's the house build coming along? How's your house? I usually give a vague, dissatisfying, hollow reply. So busy, so great, so amazing!

Failing to meaningfully describe the phenomenon that is daily life is a crime which I am forever guilty of committing.

So, without anymore ceremony, here's to yesterday.

Yesterday, I dug up some of our fall potato crop. My heart burst open when I dug up a big, fat earthworm along with them. Sorry to disturb you.

I laid out about 10 lbs of green tomatoes to ripen on a towel in Michal's music room. We had our first frost the night before. I made a salad. I hung the laundry. I worked at some stains. I cut another pumpkin from the vine. We have a lot of vine, a little pumpkin. This was the third cinderella pumpkin we've harvested. Got saucers at Home Depot for all the herbs we brought indoors the day before.

At dusk I helped Michal with the new house. I taped the foam boards together that will help prevent frost heaving, while Michal cut them to size. He'd already laid out the 6 mil black plastic underneath. He also compacted all the gravel around the house yesterday. Rented from the plate compactor from Wagner. Then he used spray foam to fill in any small gaps between the boards. Who knows what else he did.

We missed our neighbor's Halloween gathering to finish this. We're trying to pour the front patio soon. We're in the final 10% of phase 1, which feels like it is taking 90% of the time. I use 'we' loosely. 95% of the time when it comes to building the house things, 'we' means Michal!