Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Plumbers Delight

A few years ago when we lived in Terre Haute we had to replumb out entire home. It seems that sub quality copper piping was used throughout the home. As we investigated alternatives we finally went with flexible plastic pipe (which has no influence on this blog) and they made the installation in 1.5 days at considerably less cost then estimates for copper pipe. I investigated the viability of the flexible plastic pipe and received ringing endorsements from contractors I trusted. It was not only a short experience, but it was painless. It was almost as if they weren't there.

The living room wall - before

Same wall, during! Plumbing for the spare bathroom (on the
other side of the wall)

We are in the midst of the same experience in our new Las Vegas home, but this time it's the result of a class-action suit and we don't pay anything. There are some differences, however. In Indiana we had a crawl space. In Las Vegas we have a slab. In Indiana the plumbing was under the house in the crawl space. In Las Vegas it is in the ceiling. For a midwesterner the whole idea of water pipes in the attic is scary, but then we don't get very cold here. In Indiana they had to cut a two holes in our walls, and that was to get to the showers. In Las Vegas it was a different story.

On Thursday morning the first crew showed up to plasticize the house. We literally had plastic sheeting handing everywhere. When I got home from work it was like living in a maze. Then the plumbers showed up. I was gone by then and JoAnn figured out in a hurry she was best out of the house also. We easily had over a dozen holes in our walls. The good news was that all of the plumbing was completed on Thursday and on Friday the wallboard and plaster crew showed up to patch the holes and prep the house for painting. By the time they left at 3 pm all the holes were patched in the house and garage.

Outdoors with NO covering!

As a side note, on Thursday I walked out behind the house and there was a hole in the back of the house - a BIG hole. The insulation was laying on the ground and there was no covering over the hole. You can take me out of the midwest, but you can't take the midwest out of me. All I could see in my imagination was rain (and we get so much here!) and critters. I moved the insulation to the patio and went inside and cut a sizable piece of plastic and covered the hole. When I talked to the foreman in the morning it was clear he did not have a midwestern mentality. He didn't see any problems. I did, but it's that midwestern perspective.

I'm writing this on Saturday morning while I wait for the painters to show up. It's 9:12 am and all the other crews have been here at 7 am. The painter showed up at 2:30 pm. On Sunday we discovered, while sitting in Sacrament, that our neighbors from 2 blocks away were hogging the painter on Saturday morning. Today (Monday) it's cleaning, hook the dishwasher up (5 days without a dishwasher!!!), and the walk through. Actually, it looks like no one was even here and we got a new paint job and all the left-over paint!

Cousins! Kissing Cousins! Really?

The other evening I was having a nice quiet evening at home surrounded by plastic sheeting hanging from the ceiling (that's another blog) and enjoying the NFL opening season game when the phone rang. On the other end was granddaughter 3 who is daughter 2 of daughter 3. Still with me? After a little grandfather - granddaughter banter, mostly by me, she finally said, "Grandpa, I need help with my genealogy." Since that is a topic near and dear to my heart, I said, "Sure, what do you want to know?" She asked for our birthdates, birth places, realized she didn't need our death dates and then went on to ask about other relatives. After getting my parents, she asked, "Who are your dad's parents?" I shared all of the relevant information with her, followed by my mother's parents. Then it was off to JoAnn's parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Remember, this was done a little randomly, meaning we didn't always follow a family line, and I'm several hundred miles away on the telephone. When I asked questions the answers were sometimes a little vague. She concurred she was building a pedigree chart, but I wondered why we went to great-grandparents on only one side. That was when she shared she wanted to go back 8 generations and would need to call again! Eight generations is a lot of names.

The next morning I talked to our daughter, her mother, Suzanne, and asked the burning question, "How does Lexi's pedigree chart look." I got this guffaw from Suzanne and she finally said that Lexi came to her and showed that JoAnn and I were cousins. We're not, we aren't from Kentucky (apologies to my family in Kentucky), and were not even remotely from related families. Not that progenitors haven't done that, but not for over 300 years as near as I can determine.

JoAnn and I had a good laugh over the idea we were cousins - maybe even "kissing cousins." This is what makes grandparenting so much fun. We get to see how children interpret what is said and how differently they see the world from us. It is a joy for us to have such wonderful grandchildren and children. Not that we are biased.

Wordless Wednesday

Hattie just a little on the tired side during our visit
in July.

Remembering Summer

Family reunion time in Iowa with almost all 16
grandchildren sitting still.

Summer is officially over. How do I know? School has started, or in my case, I'm back to work at the university. But what a great summer it has been. For the first time in 10 years I took the whole summer off - granted, not by choice. But the reality is that I'm more prepared for fall then I have been for a number of years. I know there are those who scoff at a "summer off," but that's one of the reasons I went into higher education. Most of those summers over the last 35 plus years have involved travel, research, writing, and an occasional class. This summer I had great hopes for all of those things and the travel provided the best experiences of all.

It's not an official reunion without cake
and ice cream - and LOTS of it!

Trips to Idaho, Utah, and Iowa were stupendous. We were gone for almost all of July and into August and while we thought that was a little long, there were a lot of years when a 3-week vacation was standard for us, but as the children left home and started their own families we found we had not single, but multiple destinations to visit including, at various times, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Iowa, Michigan, California, Colorado, New York, North Carolina, Missouri, and England. That idea of a single summer vacation has morphed into year-round vacation opportunities that are usually shorter. Much of the notion of a 3-week vacation was built around the need to drive from the mid-west to California. Now we hop a plane for those longer destinations.

Summer used to be a time for our families to visit us, but since we moved to the desert there is less interest in seeing us during our summer head and more incentive for us to visit further north - or to the California beaches.

The Allen's hamming it up!

Yet, our summer trips remain a staple of our opportunity to visit family. We have a longer period to stay at each home and we can try to get quality time in at several homes. This summer we were able to spend time with the Bake and Bradley families in Idaho, the Hansen's in Utah, the McLean's in Iowa, and JoAnn spent time with the Dunn's (less David) in San Diego. By the time late August got here we were ready for a quiet few months at home, but we are already planning Christmas in Idaho with a new grandson.

Summer has been good to us. We have enjoyed it. We expect to continue to enjoy it in the future and while it remains the foundation of our vacation, we now visit year round because we love seeing our families. We feel blessed by these opportunities.

Grandma celebrating her birthday with all of her very
best friends - her family!