Image by Canadian Veggie via Flickr
My husband and I built (and I use that term loosely) our house. Really, my husband designed the house and made sure everything was getting done, other men actually built the house. I pretty much just visited during the process and looked at how things were coming along…and made comments. My contribution to the process pretty much went like this, “This half bath will look soooo cute!”, “I like the view from the front of the house.”, or “I think I just saw a spider crawl under the baseboard. Sweetheart, have you seen a lot of spiders?” In my defense I DID stain our big front door. In the garage. In the middle of February. When it was like -100 degrees outside—and it felt just as bad inside because the stinkin’ house wasn’t heated yet. My hands went numb and froze to the brush I was staining with. And for those of you that know about staining, I realize that one should not stain when it is that cold. But, I also know that I wasn’t lugging a 500,000 pound door somewhere else to stain it. And, I also wanted the huge gapping hole in the front of the house covered so the Arctic wind couldn’t get in. So, I made due. It was one of those experiences that I will one day tell my grandchildren about…..”Oh, yes sweethearts. Grandma’s hands are permanently stained brown because of the freezing cold, door staining incident during the winter of 2009.” Aaahhhh…..the memories.
I love our house. I really do. But…….don’t tell anyone…I think our house is alive. Yes, I still have my wits about me. No, I’m not having hallucinations. Let me explain, that I’m not really crazy…..um….not anymore than (ab)normal.
1. We have geo-thermal heating. If one happens to be standing in the garage when it comes “on”, it sounds as if the house just breathed a huge sigh. I’m not kidding. It sounds very human. Sigh.
2. We have a metal roof on our house. On really windy days (which tend to me many, here in rural Ohio) the house sounds as if it is moaning. You can really hear it in the attic. And no we are not haunted. It is not a scary moan. Besides if we were haunted it would probably only be the spirit of a dead cow, considering our property used to be some farmer’s cow pasture in days gone by. Just sayin’.
3. I’m still getting used to the fact that we have a soaking tub with jets, in the master bath. The tub is set on a timer to “blow out” it’s jets once a day. It’s kind of like a reverse vacuum cleaner. Anyway, I forgot about it the other day. I was sitting on the toilet, minding my own business when, ‘whoosh!’, the thing kicked in. Um…let’s just say, I’m glad I was already on the toilet so I didn’t pee my pants. I think I heard the tub laugh.
Right now, I’m listening to the hum of the dishwasher. The music of my life.
It Just Dawned On Me 