The Yooper Schooner (Part 10)

Being attention deficit doesn't get the house finished in a hurry, but things continue to get done anyway. Also, despite our being out in the woods, we share in the nation's grief.

Chapter 19 Attention Deficit Disorderly Work

  

As always, there was work to do on the Yooper Schooner, in fact, I could still just pick a direction and go to work. Well, that was a problem. Electrical, plumbing, drywall and finishes all seemed to be long-winded tasks with little visible return. Electrical and plumbing? Yes, they are nice to use, but you don’t see the any of the work when they’re done. I had a couple electrical circuits energized and a toilet working, so they were coming along. Drywall? No one really understands the work that goes into drywall until they do it. Finishes? Well, Karen did most of that fulfilling task. I had all those leisure activities I told you about to consider so I became more attention deficit.

So far in our story here, as you may have gathered, but I haven’t explicitly pointed out, is how I established and maintained focus before it waned. At this point, my focus and drive was waning because of those diverse non-fulfilling jobs all needing done at the same time. Early on, it was easy to focus and find the necessary motivation. When winter approached that first year, the roof became very important, and when freezing temperatures were imminent, the stove and back filling became the most important tasks, and so on. That sort of job was easy to put on top priority. I have to say simply, it was automatic prioritizing with the essential, big jobs when done I could say, “wow! Look at what I did.” Like giving myself a gold star or hanging art work on the fridge. In essence, what had to get done, got done. Maybe that is why I now had trouble focusing at this point; I felt nothing had to get done right at the moment.

And at that moment, I forced myself to continue putting up and finishing drywall, which is fulfilling, but I never liked but really began to detest and didn’t stay focused on for very long. I went through piles of drywall sheets, boxes of ring shank nails, rolls of tape for the seams, and five-gallon buckets of spackling compound for filling the dips and crannies. These items were the usual purchases from Menards for months on end. I did all the drywall installation by myself except when needing a hand with a full size sheet, and after putting one up. Some sheets would take an hour to cut for an especially complicated situation like an area with an electrical receptacle box, a wall mounted light fixture and a fit around a window. I became especially careful measuring, marking and cutting with these after making mistakes and trashing a whole sheet�"not a fun time. I found, while using a Sharpie marker, that where I cut on that mark with my carpenter’s knife made all the difference. Cut to the inside, the sheet wouldn’t go over a receptacle. Cut on the outside there’d be an ugly quarter-inch gap around the window. My dried-out, callused hand ached from cutting the drywall with the knife, but it paid to be anal with drywall installation. After a couple consecutive sheets, I’d usually applied the first coat of spackle, but after it dried, Karen, the ever-persistent hard-worker would take over with the horrid jobs of mudding and sanding; and then, mudding and sanding some more. Day after day, she would be covered from head to toe in the fine white dust.

The front wall’s drywall installation proved the most difficult because of the narrow pieces between the big and trapezoidal windows and the log beam-ends that were imbedded and bolted inside these front prow walls. It didn’t help that it was difficult to position the ladder here also. I had to piece drywall around the logs with round cuts that I trimmed bigger and bigger until they fit just right not to mention it wasn’t easy to make rounded cuts to begin with. Finishing these pieces were especially tedious because of the height of these walls, twenty-three feet, compared to most of the walls where we could reach the wall tops from the floor. I seemed to go up and down the ladder a hundred times for the empirical fitting jobs, if you get the picture. With the dusty mess we made on the floor and us, at least we had a good Shop-Vac but still no shower. Everyday, we bathed in the basin, but now we had hot running water. Someday the bathing receptacles would come, someday.

            One task I enjoyed and found fulfilling the previous year was the steel work and welding for the stairs. The steel stair steps were bolted firmly to that upright log but basically floated on thin air on the outer ends. The problem with this was when you walked up the stairs would twist individually just a bit making them feel wiggly and unsafe. They weren’t really, and we got used to the feeling, but others who only went up once or twice like John the plumber, didn’t like the feeling, so I continued work on this long-winded stair project.

For this installment, all I did was to cut two-inch by nine-inch straps, drill four holes in each and mount the straps between the stairs on the outside corners with four bolts. The second stair step was attached to the wooden base and the second to last above was attached to loft floor, actually the fourteenth step. All the other straps mounted on the outside edges from the back of the step below to the front of the step above, all at a slight angle. This angle in essence spring-loaded the entire assembly making it amazingly stiff.

            I also finished the loft railing. On each end of the loft, I built four-foot high walls to the exterior wall out of lumber frames covered with t&g boards left over from the ceiling. On the west side, it was eight feet long on the east only four feet because of the proximity of the stairs. This left the center sixteen feet open. All this time, you didn’t want to sleep upstairs and sleepwalk because you could step right off the loft’s edge and ten feet down to the concrete floor. I had a few shorter logs left over, about six inch in diameter, and mounted them as posts adjoining the top stair step, and on the center sections where the short walls began. It is interesting how I put the log posts up because they were going right over a log joist meaning the bolts would have to be fourteen inches long just to touch the bottom of the posts from underneath the loft.

Instead of using the long bolts, I took a twelve-inch plank, 16-feet long, and cut round ends on it by slicing two-inches off the edges in between, so it looked like a long dumbbell. I mounted the posts through the plank’s round ends by countersinking lag bolts from underneath. I turned the board with posts back upright and mounted the assembly with bolts through the round plank ends surrounding the posts right into the loft deck. Someone said it looked nautical; I guess it did. Better yet, I welded up a drop-in steel mesh panel that fit over hooks I fabricated and mounted on the log posts. All together, it looked nice warm-stained wood against cold black steel, a natural versus industrial theme. This lift gate railing was slick because we could take the panel out to take things up to the loft rather than wrestling them up the spiral stairs, which in some cases become impossible when the railing was installed. So instead, we lifted things to the loft by first leaning the long ladder from the first floor by the stove, angling it up and resting it on the loft. We got the drywall up to the loft by laying a sheet down on the ladder. Then I slid the sheet up with Karen on top to hold it in place until I ran down and around, up the stairs to help her unload the sheet. 

            Well, we had been finishing the drywall mostly in the upstairs because that was straightforward and away from our downstairs bedroom. As we continued the front of the loft, I installed speaker wires in the sidewalls to the front corners of the Great Room and dedicated computer power and phone lines. Speaking of drywall, you know I mentioned the drywall dust how many times now? One problem the dust caused was to burn out our stereo amplifier. We had that amplifier a very long time, and it succumbed to overheating with the dust clogging it up. We had to work with music, so we bought another one from American Appliance. Another expense we surely didn’t need, but a good example of our dust problem. 

  I pressed on with other things like a return to stonework. We had purchased several boxes of off-brand fake stone at the cheap from Fraco Concrete Products when they were liquidating their warehouse. This was a type of river pebble stone in grays and browns with some sparkles added for interest and the many boxes were stacked up in the back of the now lonely polebarn. Compared to the Cultured Stone we put on the outside, this stone looked cheap, but we wanted to use it anyway and had an idea. Originally, we were going to cover the concrete block wall with it, but we changed our minds. On the new plan, we wanted the stove to sit on an elevated hearth and have stone behind the stove and pipe up there all twenty-three feet worth. This was the center of the prow front between the windows, about four feet wide. First, I installed one electrical outlet behind the stove with armored cable because the woodstove had an electric fan built in and needed power close by.

            We pulled out the wood stove and the long chimney pipe and prepared the wall with screen and mortar coat. With the scaffolding in place again, I started on top because you have to install the stone top down, so the mortar slobber doesn’t fall on stone below and get stuck. The hardest part was getting enough stone up there on the scaffold to provide a good working variety. Karen loaded one five-gallon bucket on a rope with stone and another with mortar. I hauled up the loads with attached ropes and laid the stones carefully beside me on the planks hoping I wouldn’t knock them off.

            I spent a lot of time sitting up there on the scaffolding, fitting and sizing up stones and cleaning around them after installed. I had the fear of the stones falling off once up there, because nothing but mortar suction holds the stones in place until the mortar sets up. Nothing but concrete floor was below, but I knew better that a stone falling could hit the scaffolding and bounce potentially smashing into a window. After all, I knew how things work though I didn’t see one thing coming until I saw it while sitting way up there.

            For some reason, it appeared that the green glass globes on the ceiling fan had loosened up. The fan was still a few feet above my head, but it was definitely easier to see a problem there than from the floor. Actually, the globes were quite thick with dust.  I brushed one off and reacted physically in sudden alarm. The globe fell off in my hand! I couldn’t imagine why this happened except that the globe’s retainer ring fell to the floor. Karen picked it up and told me it had melted. I told her to turn off the lights, and I checked the other two. Those retainers too had melted from the heat of the lights. Carefully, I wrestled the rings off because of the melted condition and sent the globes down to Karen. I rechecked the bulb wattage and they were correct with the lamp’s attached caution sticker. How bizarre. After the stone job, I called the company and they said had a fix for the problem and would mail replacements free. Of course, they would, but what if one had fallen and hit us or Bonnie in the head, then what? Lucky, we were. When the rings arrived a couple weeks later, we found that the replacements were aluminum. Back to the stonework.

            The narrow section of stonework expanded to eight feet wide and five feet high below the bottom windows to back up the stove. In the same width as the backing behind, and to make the woodstove a focal point, I built the hearth area up with gobs of mortar and four inch blocks. Then, I finished it by topping it with two foot square hearth stones except for the four along the back that were angle cut to match the prow’s angle. I liked working with the mortar except for the finger wearing out and drying side effects. It was kind of like adult Play-Doh. Mixing up the mortar a little wet, I globbed it on and floated the hearth stones into place, pressing, and bumping them with hammer handle until they were level, square, and spaced correctly. I set nice grooves in between and that was done. Karen finished the trim stonework around the three sides of the hearth.

            On a roll of sorts because we had sooo much of this stone, we expanded the stone look into the kitchen area. By the big patio door, under the kitchen’s front recessed lights, I built a bowed counter to separate the Great Room from the kitchen. To make the counter bowed, I began on the outside edges between the outside wall and inner log post with vertical two by twos, and gradually thickening it by installing in steps, two by threes, by fours and so on until I had two by twelve’s in the center. It was a subtle bow that I warped quarter inch plywood around, covered it with screen, and skim-mortared it. I let Karen finish the stonework on the counter also. Someday, it would become a nice breakfast counter, since it didn’t have a top. In fact, there were no counters in the kitchen. You know what that meant�"kitchen cabinets and counters were up next.

            I began on the kitchen counters as simply as possible. Empirically, I sketched the counter-cabinet positions on the floor with chalk. Maybe a bit more specific than a sketch, I used a straightedge to make straight lines to follow. I built the bases with two by fours on edge and covered them with heavy cabinet quality plywood to make the standard toe kick. I then went vertically with two by fours at corners and along the back for the counter top to sit on. I was taken with the space saving feature of a corner lazy susan which Menards had in a kit form, how convenient is that? I ventured on in cabinet building from the stone counter around the lazy susan, and I left a standard gap for a stove�"the stove we didn’t have. From this little bit of work required to start the cabinets, I braced myself because I realized the cabinets were going to take a tediously long time.

            Meanwhile, Deb and Ivan were moving to another town and university so we helped them move out of their home in the hole, and we acquired a few free hands tools and garden plants for helping out. They had a washer and dryer they were selling, but they had no takers, including us who needed them, because of their high asking price. The Thomas’s agreed to advertise and sell the appliances. After a few months had passed and still had no takers, we offered much less than the asking price and the former owners agreed. We hauled the two pieces down the street on our four-wheeler trailer and put them right into place. We’d been going to the Harvey Laundry Mat for three years now, longer than long enough. A little more money drained away, but it seemed a little more like a home and so much more convenient and cheaper in the long run.

            John the plumber always had big jobs to work on, like complete, new houses to plumb that paid well, so I was pretty much on my own with my own nightmare of plumbing. Well, not really so bad. I proudly installed the upstairs toilet on my own. You know, you got to start somewhere. John showed me how to rough the plumbing drains in, how to run, connect, and secure the plastic “pex” supply lines that were much easier than copper pipe to install, and I pressed on.  

            Drains are easy to envision. From the traps they slope an eighth inch down a linear foot until they reach the main waste lines. You just have to plan a little, not my strong suit, to run the drains through walls, floors, and ceilings to get the drainage where you want it�"outside. The newly code-required vents were similar to drains in reverse; they ran the opposite direction, upwards, so “fumes” could travel up or water, condensation, could run back down into the drain system. The new code required every sink, tub, and toilet have a vent pipe in the drain within three feet of the facility. I can’t imagine some new houses with multiple full baths, kitchens and other facilities, a bona fide drain and vent nightmare. I guess I didn’t have it so bad.

            My venting did prove a little unwieldy while working with impenetrable concrete walls and second story solid floors that didn’t hide pipes. Think in a big perspective and consider piping in long runs and on curves, all while maintaining a consistent one-eighth rise until eventually connecting with the main vent in the second story walk in closet. Supply, drain, and vent pipes hung everywhere, and it became a little scary and disheartening to wonder how in the world I would ever hide all this plumbing stuff.

Logically, because it was near the septic outlet, and we desperately needed it, I prepared to install the shower surround in the downstairs bathroom. Of course, the code specified the amount of elbowroom allowed in the toilet cubical, and we found bath surrounds only came in sizes code-accordingly. At Menards, Karen eyed up the roomy shower surround, but I reminded her of the narrow space we had to install one. Even though the one we bought was simple and small, it was expensive. It proved a very snug fit between the elevated toilet and the laundry room wall. The drain also proved a very tight fit below with less than six inches underneath to the concrete floor to install the drain stub, an elbow, and still leave enough height for the water to drain to the septic outlet. The surround was up on the elevated seven-inch platform like the toilet, so watch your step after showering! At the time, this surround, two toilets, and the laundry tub were the only installed water dispensing facilities.

            One day led to another, work on the house, work at work, and work on my homework, but one day proved different. One morning, after rolling out of our low, waterbed-converted-to-dry bed, I pulled on my work clothes, and went out to start coffee in our dust-covered friend in house building, Mr. Coffee. As it perked, we flipped on The Today Show just like Any Other Day, but this day turned out to be…

 

Chapter 20: A Disconcerting Day.

 

            Unfolding before us on the news, something dreadful was going on in New York City. They showed footage of an airliner crashing into one of the World Trade Center Towers. How bizarre a scene, I thought, considering that even under extreme aircraft failure a pilot would not let his plane crash into a skyscraper. The smoke and fumes boiled from the building, and I stood transfixed, unbelieving, like my consciousness remained and my body’s senses melted away. They on the news had no explanation for this “accident” until the second plane crashed into a tower.

            The words terrorist attack became synonymous with that date, September 11^th, “nine/eleven.” I’m not sure if I ever drank the pot of coffee or even sat down to watch. It was worse than any possible disaster movie scenario because it was real, with those people dying at that moment. My mind wandered to nameless, faceless people in their offices, early morning like any other like mine and saw that plane coming at them for a split second of pain and then, nothing. We wondered about the terror on the planes because the passengers could see their end approaching. Thinking of the attack in that way tightens my stomach even today, years after. When the third and fourth planes crashed into the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania theories erupted into acts of heroism thwarting the terrorist pilots and diverting that one plane from populated areas.       

            After gathering my own wimpy courage and unfortunately watching the replay of the attack too many times while Matt Lauer and Katie Courik, in her whiny voice, surmised what had happened on that day, I had enough. Karen and I agreed there was nothing we could do, so we pressed on. My thoughts were spinning, and my heart raced. Karen took off in the truck to inform the Smythe families of the terrible news because they lived rustically, more rustically then us, imagine without television. I had to go for a short jog, so slipped on my shorts and ran out. The neighborhood was normal with the farmer man banging on metal like every other morning and ripping around on noisy, muffler-less machinery. As normal, a car went by very slowly, rubbernecking before I hit the street. I ran toward the dead end of our street where Mr. Thomas was working in his yard.

            A little out of breath, I said “Terrible thing in New York, huh.”

            I stopped on the road’s shoulder.

            “What’s that?” He looked up.

            “The towers burning in New York, the World Trade Towers.” I tried to catch my breath, unable to think of the correct titles for a second. That seemed to get his attention.

            “What happened?” He asked, slowly stretching up and approaching.

            “They’re saying terrorists. It’s a mess.” My eyes welled up.

            “What station is it on?” He asked, as I walked away and broke into a trot.

            “All stations, I imagine,” I said over my shoulder and watched him go inside his house. I saw a flicker of blue screen in his window when I jogged back by. I don’t remember if I worked on our house, worked at work, or worked on homework the remainder of that disconcerting day.

 

***

            For us, the following day was normal, and I decided to shift tasks again. Therefore, we made another run to Menards for more black pipe to supply the ongoing drain/venting work and some wall paint, a good sign showing that at least some areas of the house were reaching that trophy, finished state. Karen was the designated master painter. We bought paint for our upstairs bedroom, a nice sunny yellow, five-gallon worth. This was another case where I think our minds were elsewhere when we made a purchase. Karen started painting the edging and stopped, not believing the yellow we had just paid good money for. It was a blindingly sunny, neon yellow! We couldn’t handle that. Because Menards had mixed it for us, we couldn’t take it back. Neal the mixologist came to the rescue.

             We had several other paints of the same latex brand around like white, brown, tan, blue, black, and red. You see, we’ve been painting here and there for awhile. We started mixing small batches of modified yellow in a plastic cup. Yellow and white turned out looking like bananas. Adding black made it a weird muddy brownish-yellow, a combination that was just horrid. After a few batches of starting from scratch, and then using fresh bright yellow with blue and a little brown, we came up with a pleasing warm green. Mixing it into five gallons was another story because it took a whole lot of blue and brown to get to the color we got in our sample, but we got the acceptable color before we ran out of mixing colors except that we had about six and a half gallons of green! Karen went to painting and the bedroom became beautiful in one day�"a perfect warm, green color. Areas of finish began popping up all around the Yooper Schooner, the empirically built home.

            John the plumber or his son Mark would drop in occasionally to check on my progress or offer advice. Seeing we had the whirlpool bathtub sitting on blocks for a couple years now, Karen thought that perhaps I should think about installing it. Well, I had thought about it to give myself some credit. Mark dropped in and asked how things were going. Mark had a drinking problem according to his father, and I had noticed before he was a little shoddy in his work habits. John said he was frustrated with Mark’s work ethic.

            Despite this knowledge, I asked Mark to install the expensive spa faucet we had bought some time ago into a beautiful cedar panel I had prepared for the foot of the tub. One reason I needed him to do it was because I had returned their pex flaring tool when I completed the supply line job, except now the tub’s lines were plugged, and I needed the tool to unplug them. Mark examined the faucet and instructions for sometime before beginning; I conjured up second thoughts but didn’t say anything. The faucet had soldered copper tubes that linked the hot and cold lines and spout together, so needed separation for installation in the panel. Mark got a propane torch out and began heating the solder joints.

            I asked, “Want a wet cloth to keep the faucet cool, a sink to keep the heat away from the faucet’s seals?” I knew enough…

            He hesitated, pulling the torch away from the pipe, “Naw, the heat won’t get bad up here.” He touched the faucet seal area, but he jerked his hand away a little too quickly.

            “You sure? I’d hate to burn out the seals.”

            “Do this all the time,” He said still heating, letting the flame go higher up and tugging on the joint, finally pulling them apart one at a time.

            He then assembled the faucet on my panel and resoldered the joints while I turned off the water and ran water to drain the lines. He pulled the plugs out of lines spilling water that ran through the holes in the floor and down into the bathroom below. He slowly flared and hooked the lines to the faucet. It took him four times to get the joints tight.

            “Turn on the water,” he said.

            “Sure thing.” I trotted down the stairs through the house and back to the utility room to flip the circuit. I trotted back and got halfway up the stairs.

            “Turn it off! Turn it off!” He yelled. As I ran down the hallway, the water was gushing down from upstairs. I muttered something know what had happened and flipped off the pump, but could hear the water splashing to the floor for a seemingly long time. I took my time to go back up stairs. The water was still seeping out from around the faucet stems when I arrived.

            “The seals must be bad,” he said, already pulling it apart. “We probably have the parts.” 

I knew the truth. When he took it apart, it was obvious the parts had melted. Without another word, he re-plugged the lines. John told me a couple weeks later that they had to order the parts. Two weeks after that, Mark came back to fix it. He put in the new parts, and once again, we turned on the water. Water seeped out around the faucets when you turned them. Mark left saying that they’ll reorder the seals and include the faucet insert sleeves that time. I never saw Mark again, actually. The faucet problem never came up in conversation because I called the manufacturer, got the correct seals and inserts, and fixed them myself a couple months later�"like I should have in the first place. I compared the parts I received and the parts he had replaced, and they were obviously different. Contractors! The fancy tub with a long, problematical history was still months away from installing because of other problems. Karen accused me of purposely not finishing her extravagant bathing tub.

I have to add a note here. I had removed the whirlpool tub from the upstairs surround after the rough electrical inspection because I had to get behind it into the wall to rewire. So now with the faucet problem, once again the tub sat on blocks with the big piece of cardboard covering it with my Sharpie artist’s rendition of a cat’s head lined through meaning “anti-cat protection.” For some reason Cleo and Dyna loved to sit in the bathtub and scratched it by slipping down the back slope while jumping in and out.

            About this time, Bush’s tax rebate check arrived. We were against the tax rebate, not that we were rich but believed the growing national deficit resulted because of this huge tax rebate, and we could not be bought into favoring George W’s agenda. We were not unique in signing our check over to the Red Cross that was encountering a tough time while helping the needy since 9/11 and the recession.

            Then, the anthrax scare riveted the nation when several anthrax-laced or faked letters arrived at various media and government officials. Several people died from anthrax disease after handling the letters. The biggest scam or what I called joke associated with the anthrax scare were the isolation kits. These amounted to plastic sheet drop cloths and duct tape so that you could cordon, seal off rooms to isolate your family from anthrax. This demonstrated how sick people prey on the vulnerable and credulous over purposed family safety.

             Back at our woods surrounded home, firewood cutting continued year around with a concentration of splitting and stacking behind the house now that it was fall. In my spare time, I had a thing about cutting apart the twin maples from around the house and future barn site. It appeared that our property had been logged back in the thirties or forties, and so there were many of those red maples that had grew initially in clumps. Over time, the clumps thinned out until the strongest four, three, and eventually two main trunks remaining. I thought that these twins couldn’t grow healthy close together so I picked the straightest, biggest, and healthiest and cut the other away. These provided a good source of firewood that cleaned up the woods’ appearance at the same time.

            Another initially shocking newscast that caught everyone by surprise was the airliner crash that killed 260 in Queens. We, along with the news people, assumed right away that the crash was another terror attack as footage showed flames and smoke from the suburban neighborhood. We were all relieved that it was just a plane crash due to mechanical failure and not a terrorist attack. Relieved? Yeah, I pondered my own emotions

We prepared ahead for Halloween that year by deciding to just evacuate, go out to dinner and skip meeting the trick or treaters. We were becoming anti-social hermits.

Thanksgiving came along rather quickly. We weren’t invited to anyone’s house, and we still lacked turkey cooking capacity, so we decided to order out. No, it wasn’t pizza or Chinese, it was national turkey day so we had to eat accordingly. We ordered and carried out turkey dinners from the restaurant in Harvey. It was delicious and satisfying complete with pumpkin pie, but in retrospect, sad, sad, sad.

            Time flies and Christmas soon approached, and we contacted most of our neighbors to give good tidings except the farmer who had recently yelled at us during another argument over his invading, stampeding cows. Donna and Carol stopped over with gifts, and we sipped some hot toddies with them. They didn’t appreciate the fact that our bathroom didn’t have a door though liked the toilet’s royal height. Karen gave them a home tour, but they didn’t care for going up the spiral stairs without a railing either. We advised, and they followed fervently, the hugging the center log as you walk up  Being a little heavier than Karen and I, the whole assembly of steps still sprung and twisted as they walked up. Well, I hadn’t finished pondering that whole project yet.

            Strong biting winds blew, snow fell and fell�"more of a normal UP winter. On cold days, the clunky yellow John Deere wouldn’t start, period. It always needed its battery charged and half a can of ether to start, so I plowed the driveway only on the warmest days. The tractor did a good job considering, scooping huge mountains of snow out front by the road. I continued working and going to college classes, and on Christmas break finally selected English Writing as my major with a minor in History. Like a real college kid, I volunteered and began pulling DJ shows on NMU’s radio station WUPX, “Radio X.” I loved the hell out of playing my kind of music “on the air” for the college kids. Karen and I were more comfortable in the Yooper Schooner staying nice and warm, keeping the hungry woodstove going night and day. Bonnie the blue dog stayed tucked in nice and toasty right underneath the stove most of the winter.

            Christmas came and went quietly like the coming years. We dragged a smaller Christmas tree, though still huge by normal tree accounts, into the house and decorated it to Christmas songs on the stereo. With Ben in Alaska, Karen and I celebrated Christmas with the two cats and Bonnie Blue, the buzz saw dog. Bonnie knew all about present opening by grabbing a gift-wrapping flap in her teeth and whipping the package back and forth until it let loose.

            There wasn’t that much noticeable done, but we had progressed a little more in the past year on the Yooper Schooner. Unbeknownst to us, Karen, Bonnie, and I would bear a life-threatening event in our fifth year, and it wasn’t because of the visitors that came to see us.

Author's Note

You can ignore the typos and grammar problems, just tell me if it is interesting enough to keep reading.