The Yooper Schooner (Part 12)

In this part, I tie up some loose ends in the house, help the neighbors with a building project, and say goodbye to an old friend in which I share carnal knowledge.

Chapter 23 More of Those Other Things

 (that seem to get in the way)

 

Because Karen was going to take delivery of Katherine Hepburn the horse soon, housing for said beast suddenly became our number one priority. In our long-range plan, remember the zoning permit, the barn was going to reside to the east of the house which was the only location with relatively flat ground. We had cleared this of the few large trees and what remained afterwards were groves of small ironwood trees. Ironwoods, as the name indicates, are nearly as hard as iron. Cutting them with a chainsaw is nearly impossible, cutting slowly and dulling the saw’s teeth rather quickly, but these trees have relatively weak, shallow roots. Only one way to remove them�"crash and bash them! Crashing and bashing, as we called it, these trees down with the clunky yellow tractor became an entertaining pastime.

With the tractor’s scoop up high, I ran up to an ironwood tree and slowly pushed. Gradually, the tree would lean over and down until it almost lay flat on the ground. As it tipped over, the roots sprang up from the ground. I then pushed the tree flat with the scoop until the front tires of the tractor lifted off the ground. Then backing up, I drove the scoop underneath the roots and lifted them out. It was not too difficult and actually fun until we had to get rid of that gnarly mess, of course. That was never fun or easy. We pushed this jumbly mass of trees over the edge of the east ravine with all the other brush we had cleared over the years. The brush pile became larger than the house despite the fact most of the pile was hidden down in the ravine.

 For Kate the horse’s domicile, we decided to build a Kentucky tobacco barn. With time running short, money running short and having no need for the entire barn, yet, we thought we’d begin with a third of a barn. This third being one of the low lean-to wings that normally slung onto a higher center section. We dug the holes for the poles by hand; set the vertical poles with high tensile concrete poured in the holes, framed the poles together, sheathed it, and steel roofed it all in two weeks. To let additional sunlight in, I installed fiberglass panels along the top of the temporary wall that would be up against the center section to be added at a later date. After all that work and just for now, it was a slant-roofed shed.

 Karen was concerned for Katherine being all by herself, so thought about a companion for the horse. She heard donkeys made good companions, and as an added benefit, they patrolled pastures and drove out predators. A story revealing a donkey that killed a cougar out west did much for donkey popularity at that time. A trip to a Wisconsin rescue farm with a rented horse trailer got us Isaiah, the donkey they had rescued from a slaughter yard. On the farm’s website, he was advertised as the loudest brayer in Wisconsin. Isaiah turned out to be a righteous, though deafeningly expressive, dude. Actually, Isaiah was rescued along with another donkey, and he was supposed to be adopted along with this other donkey. When we arrived, Isaiah was indeed a fine looking “spotted a*s” but his stall companion, though a good-looking standard marked donkey had a crippled hoof. She was a sad picture, but the farm we were getting Kate from wanted her, so it all worked out in the end. We hauled in a load of hay to store in the polebarn, and Katherine arrived a week later. Karen and I were almost living a normal life with normal interests, but the Yooper Schooner still wasn’t done.

 That fall after the visitors, the storm, the horse and donkey, we decided the house needed siding. We have always detested vinyl siding because it seemed energy inefficient, not a renewable resource, not to mention that everyone has vinyl siding. The author of my house-building book detested vinyl so that’s probably where I got the notion. I went with a sheet hardwood siding, and more or less, it was something that would hold up for quite awhile and was easy to install. After struggling with the installation of the siding for a couple weeks and painting it sea salt, it effectively ended our notorious “Tyvek” era. To offset the plain off white paint, we had a brilliant idea. I bought and screwed on cedar boards that replicated Tudor half-timbering. At the first consideration, we couldn’t imagine the timbering looking all that good with the trapezoidal windows up in the front, but with some interesting board patterns, it looked like it was the best possible decision. You know you decided correctly and did a good job when you can step back and comment that it always looked that way.  With many of the finishing jobs occurring, we thought the house looked just right like we had always planned, even though we didn’t have a foggiest idea what it would look like at the beginning. If someone would have asked us back then before we had started what kind of siding we were going to use, our answer sure wouldn’t have been hardwood siding and cedar half-timbering. I’m quite sure the building permit didn’t require siding decisions.

I returned to working on the kitchen cabinets when the real winter weather arrived with a storm that exceeded over a foot of snow overnight. Now I had nothing to interfere with working on them. Snowstorms came and went in rapid succession. I installed a cool pullout trash drawer back next to the fridge. As Christmas closed in, I had the cabinets built all the way around the kitchen, though the center wall adjacent to the hallway was going through renovation reconsideration. We had originally planned for the kitchen to remain open into the hallway, but using the coffee pot and microwave on the picnic table felt right now, so I built a wall there, like an island wall. There were still two kitchen entrances now instead of one huge entrance. One came in the back directly from the backdoor, past the fridge, and the other from the bathroom, laundry, and bedroom. Both entrances were under the two recessed light banks, and this change seemed as it always was meant to be.

We went and cut another balsam Christmas tree from the farthest corner of the property because it is never easy with us, and we celebrated in quiet reflection of our embattled heck of a year in the slightly battered we Yooper Schooner.

 

Chapter 24: Saying Goodbye to a Friend

 

When life becomes uneventful and routine, (i.e. boring), the years begin to slide by.

 

            In this, the sixth year (fifth full year) of our project, Karen and my lives changed in many ways, even though we kept plugging along on the Yooper Schooner. This year, perhaps more so than the previous years, construction work became a secondary focus in our lives, almost an afterthought. Starting right off the bat in the New Year, I was taking it very easy because I had recently graduated from NMU. I hung onto my DJ position through the entire holiday break even though in reality, I was no longer a student. I finished DJ-ing with gusto pulling consistent six and eight hour shifts on the air. I’m quite sure a tear or two formed when I signed off for the last time accompanied by Porcupine Tree’s “Collapse the Light.”

I continued to work security, but I definitely did not like it. I endured the pseudo-military aspects of the job, but the relationship remained tedious between my Mussolini-like boss and me. Like Karen’s and my persistence in building our empirical home, at least for the first three difficult years, I pressed on in my menial job like a loyal soldier.

Neighbors came and went, but the farmer remained across the street with his steadily growing cowherd, all grazing on his postage stamp plot of land. Karen and I would walk out the door everyday and be greeted by metal banging or a loud piece of equipment starting up. His timing whenever we stepped out became impeccable�"too coincidental and suspicious�"it was unnerving and began to wear on our patience. As once before, we wondered if he had spy cams installed. He located his bulk wood furnace right across the street, and it smoked horribly and stunk as if he burned garbage in it everyday. Luckily, we weren’t downwind everyday. Kate the horse began a habit of terrified staring across the street through the tree line almost as if she watched for predators lying in wait for her over there. We just attributed it to prey animal instinct and not having a wide-open pasture or prairie for her to scan for predators.

Speaking of animals over this winter, Bonnie and I performed some animal tracking. One morning, Bonnie alerted on a set of animal prints in the snow that had moseyed up to the house overnight and whatever made the prints marked the house’s corner. This decoration did not please Bonnie or me. The prints appeared different�"neither feline nor canine-like. The animal walked around the house, the firewood pile, and then back out the driveway. Bonnie and I followed the prints down the road and into the other driveway at the polebarn. The tracks then dropped into the ravine heading north on one of our hiking trails. Bonnie and I kept following not knowing what this animal may be. Excited and on edge, Bonnie’s back hair stood up like a Mohawk. The tracks went up a leaning tree and then disappeared. Bonnie became even more perturbed at the tree and started barking, spinning, and carrying on.

Suddenly, acorns started falling one at a time, and a screeching and chattering came from up above with a medium-sized animal jumping from branch to branch. Bonnie really hated this animal. It would stop, rip off a small branch, and drop it down at Bonnie. Bonnie was infuriated; she stood stark still growling, then bolt to grab a branch in her teeth and whipped it side to side in anger. The animal kept bounding across the branches that looked too thin and light for its size. At the time, I couldn’t quite figure it out. It was brown, almost feline, and bigger than a squirrel. After doing some research, I found it to be a pine marten�"how cool is that? We only saw him once more, but while there was snow, we saw his tracks everywhere on our property much to Bonnie’s irk. Her hair always stood up when she sniffed Marty the marten’s tracks. The wildlife was one reason we lived in the UP.

Meanwhile, Karen had met Suzy with husband Jim who lived just down the street and owned a few horses. We met them once or twice before, but never hit it off until Karen got Katherine Hepburn. Suzy and Jim told us up front they thought we were a bit strange because we were always working on something or more precisely, building something. This sixth year, our lives changed by pulling our number one focus away from the Yooper Schooner, at least for the majority of the time, and redirected our focus elsewhere. Our attitudes began to sour. 

Karen and I were not overly pleased with the direction the United States was headed these days. We were huge fans of the Lord of the Rings movies at the time, all filmed in New Zealand, and we thought that would be a nice place to go to live when the U.S. went to pot and not the good kind of pot. Karen always said that we needed to go there. There are no snakes in New Zealand! Seeing I’m sort of off topic, I’ll go on entirely off-topic.

            Here is an off-hand description of the clothes I wore while working on our home-building project for six years. Being a military retiree, I had a pile of military uniforms leftover from when I separated from the Air Force. I was required to keep my uniforms intact and packed for ten years incase of a retiree recall. The probability of a recall was low, but a recall would mean something dreadful occurred to cause the government to call up retirees to supplement the active and reserve military. Anyway, I kept most of my uniforms packed, but my Battle Dress Uniforms, BDUs, camos, or whatever you wish to call them, were just so comfortable, wore like iron, and don’t snag while working. On my feet, I wore either my super-comfortable suede desert combat boots, tan suede by the way, issued to me during Desert Storm, or I wore my running sneakers with the backs ripped out from Bonnie heeling me up. The combat boots felt nice and tight around my ankles, yet cool in the summer, perfect when crawling around in the trusses or walking on the roof. I had an old green field jacket, a predecessor to the BDU jacket, someone gave me that I sewn a blue “Neal” name stripe on. It kept me dry in the light rain days and early snowfalls. The blue stripe meant it was old 70’s era and first names were special sewing orders because last names normally go on the stripes. Anyway, the field jacket had seen its better days with rips and terrible goo globs on both sleeves. The goo was derived from a mixture of Liquid Nails cement, clear and white caulk, and orange heatproof caulk from the chimney installation�"way back when. The goo got on my sleeves when I couldn’t wipe my fingers anywhere else and to save the house from getting “over-gooed.” Unlike my military clothing that had seen its better days, I, myself had become quite physically fit and handsome much like our home, if I don’t mind saying myself.

            There remained a few details on the outside of the house to finish, such as closing up the soffits and covering those lookouts along the roofline on the prow front, but inside, I continued with the cabinets. The bases were nearing completion except for the actual countertops and the two sets of drawers; one set on the corner under Mr. Coffee’s area, and the other set between the stove and sink. Maybe I was tired or jaded, but I decided to pursue buying pre-built drawer boxes and slides for the kitchen. Maybe this far into the job and for so long, I didn’t want to bother building drawers from scratch. Menards would special order them, so I went that route. After getting them, I determined it was a good decision because they were well built with dovetailed jointed corners and a coat of varnish. Constructed of pressed steel with nylon rollers, the drawer slides operated very smoothly. The slides were a bit tedious to install to ensure each one went in parallel and level, but I got them straight and mounted the boxes. I made the drawer sizes with corresponding fronts out of tongue and groove increasing in size, top to bottom, even though the drawer boxes themselves were all the same size. I carefully cut full-length vertical tongue and groove boards into pieces to match the sizes of the drawer fronts. I glued and air nailed these pieces carefully, very, very carefully, onto the boxes to keep the vertical groove lines straight. It came out especially clean because the grains, knots, and board shading continued top to bottom despite the separating drawer cuts. It was almost as the spaces between the drawers disappeared   

With nothing left to run on the hard drive, I slept better than I had in years. I had plenty of time to work on the house, perhaps even finish more of it, so decided to ponder the kitchen cabinet countertops. I knew this would be one of those bugger tasks, and is why I didn’t want to rush into doing them. Along with much of the house, I had no practical experience with countertop construction and laminations. The fact that the empirical method wouldn’t work here because trial and error just wasn’t possible here didn’t embolden me to rush into it either. Trial and error amounted to replacing the particleboard and/or surface material if in error, something I didn’t think was an option or something I wanted to go through.  The only countertop surface installation guidance I had came from a short section of the kitchen chapter in the old standby DIY building book, which by the way, was getting quite dog-eared. Getting the basic idea and gumption, I found a source of high-density particleboard in Marquette. The board is extremely dense and heavy, maybe eighty pounds a sheet. When Karen and I carried them into the house, they felt like sheets of iron.

            After cutting the six different countertop pieces, I cut one and a half inch strips for overhangs. This dense board was tough to saw through and the sawdust fine and itchy. I didn’t like it at all. I glued and screwed the narrow pieces under the countertop edges and afterwards trued them with the belt sander making them nice, perfect and square. If you ever look at commercially built countertops, they are haphazardly glued and air nailed. Many I had seen were coming apart in the stores. The top on the stone-fronted counter was the most difficult to build because of the curved front and the varying sized stones right at the top lip. I cut this top’s edge on the curve with the saber saw, which proved not so easy, smoothed it perfectly curved with my belt sander not easy either, and with various grinders hollowed out areas where the stone stuck out not easy at all. Finished but unsecured, it proved a wiggly fit until I screwed it on from underneath

The cabinet piece along the wall where Mr. Coffee lived was just a rectangle with a facing strip on three sides and proved a very easy cut. The countertop left of the stove I built in two pieces because of the right angle turn over the lazy susan. First making sure it would drop into place on top of the cabinets, I screwed and glued plywood underneath to join and reinforce the pieces. I did the same with the rear two pieces except the length that would hold the sink ended up over ten feet long. It would be a bugger to put into position while installing the countertop surface material. We bought an Ultra Stone granite kitchen sink, and I traced and cut the hole out of the countertop using the supplied template. Where I had seams, I mixed up a mixture of carpenter’s glue and sawdust applied it liberally to the cracks, and let it dry. Afterwards, I sanded it perfectly flat.

            It was warming up a little in the UP. With spring fever setting in for me, and having a bit of extra money again because we weren’t purchasing any high ticket items for the house now, we purchased a new Arctic Cat four-wheel drive four-wheeler. My plan was to use it primarily to run on the trails and gather up firewood. That purchase was entirely beside the point in the building story’s perspective.

            My being home all the time now did loads for my sagging motivation. I had to do something and there was plenty to do on the kitchen countertop project. We purchased the surface laminate material, a non-descript earthy color and pattern, contact cement, a roller, and new filters for my respirator because the cement is highly flammable and toxic. Just a whiff gave you a buzz or so I heard. The biggest problem in applying the laminate material, besides the fire/explosive danger, was the fact that when you touched the material to the super tacky-dry cement, it stayed there forever. You must make sure it is located correctly the first time. There was no “trial” because if you touched it wrong, it’s an error. I did each counter section on different days because of the cleaning prep, wipe, wipe down, vacuum, and vacuum some more before coating with cement. Then afterwards, the cement’s vapors took awhile to dissipate in the cool house with no stove, no power, and the windows cracked open for ventilation. During the countertop process, I found that you should slightly oversize the material, and carefully mark the material and the countertop before cementing. Then, when fully prepared physically and mentally and with respirator cinched on my face tightly, I put an even coat of cement on the countertop. I freaked the first time because the cement dried so fast, and I thought I had to install the laminate before it dried. Wrong. It stayed tacky for hours. After cementing, I would aim the laminate material carefully at the marks while holding it in a bow, and make damn well sure that first contact aligned perfectly. When it was, I just rolled it out from the initial contact, pressed it down, and rolled it center out. Luckily, there were no major errors.

All the laminate applications went perfectly except for two minor areas. The curved great room countertop piece had a particle under it (a zit) that couldn’t be removed or rolled out, and the long piece along the outer wall that had the sink hole in it veered off the edge in the back corner. Lucky for me, the backsplash would cover the mistake’s edge. A closecall. After I put each piece of the material on, the vapors were somewhat capped, but we remained paranoid about an explosion potential from the refrigerator motor or some other source of ignition, so the house always stayed cool and airy during these applications.    

            After the house cleared of fumes and warmed back up, I reassembled and secured the countertops over a matter of days. Narrow strips of laminate material needed to be applied to the horizontal facing edges of the countertop. First, the excess off the front edge was trimmed off with the router. This operation proved easy but scary with the chance of a major mistake that could wreck the now immaculate appearing finished tops. Then, I glued on the strips, taking the same precautions as with the tops, and trimmed them off. This was an easier job than the huge tops, but still proved time consuming and caution demanding due to the possibility that one slip would mean disaster and a start over. I finished by routering the hole for the sink. We dropped the sink into the hole in the counter, and I caulked, secured, and hooked it up. Now we had a kitchen sink in our home, another step forward to real civilized living taking only a little over six years to where Karen could stop washing dishes in the laundry tub.

            I failed to mention the rough plumbing inspection. We had maintained the inspection schedule verbatim from the beginning though towards the end I became a bit lax. I think in most contracted houses all the inspections from the first pre-footer inspection to the final occupation inspection would be completed within a year, maybe two. Here we are at six years and none of the final inspections were forthcoming. The rough electrical passed, but all the electrical work wasn’t done so we could not get the final electrical. I failed to explain the rough plumbing inspection that was done after my main sewer vent task and before the visitors’ boondoggle. This inspection went much better than the electrical with only a few adjustments. The kitchen sink vent pipe scooted along the hallway wall/ceiling juncture and had only one hanger in an eight-foot span. I knew better. The inspector chuckled a few times with the sewer exit above the footer, royal toilet height, and the step for the shower, but I guess there was nothing non-code about them. I wonder what those inspectors had to inspect in some owner/builder houses!

            One important hint John the Plumber had passed along to me from the beginning was a suggestion to hook all plumbing fixtures up with supply line faucets versus permanent hook-ups, so the toilets, bathtub, shower, and sinks all had faucets underneath in case of leaks, failures, or future replacements. It was an added quick and invaluable feature that didn’t cost all that much, thanks John, but afterwards, I wondered if he suggested this because they often developed leaks such as our bathtub for instance!

On a sink installation roll, so to speak, we decided it was time for a sink in the downstairs bathroom. All this time, we washed our hands in the laundry tub. By the way, the tub, washer and dryer were arranged in a neat ninety-degree angle in the tight laundry room, very space efficient. I had installed a neat joystick water faucet for the washer but wondered the operational life of such a device. The bathroom’s floor space was limited with the royal height toilet shoehorned in between the outside wall and shower stall leaving just barely enough code-approved elbowroom. The remaining space on the lower floor was scant, so the only way to solve this was to build a corner cabinet sink, so I opted for a rounded front, corner cabinet. Remember, it can’t be too easy in my building book, but in reality, this was!

To begin, I cut two matching quarter circles out of three-quarter plywood. I built a two by four base that I wrapped thin plywood around and attached one of the quarter circles on top. I installed vertical one bys up to the cabinet’s top surface to the other quarter circle plywood leaving space for the depth of a sink basin. I air nailed tongue and groove boards to the quarter circles’ edges. These installed surprisingly well to the narrow curved nailing surface after trimming off the back half groove of each board to allow the angling between the boards. I built a matching curved door. We topped the cabinet with a one and a quarter inch thick stripped pine plank cut in a slightly larger quarter circle, cut the hole with a supplied pattern and mounted the sink. Around the sink, Karen painted her on-going vine design that began to crop up around the house wherever finishing took place. She applied a double-coat of Helmsman sealer for waterproofing on the top surface. The faucet hook-ups went in without a hitch. 

The kitchen could now function as a kitchen but still required some finishing touches. From carefully scissor-cut cardboard templates, I cut pine boards to fit in between the logs along the ceiling and wall juncture. Every one was different, so it proved a time-consuming chore, cutting the oddball curved ends with a jigsaw and fine-tuning them with the belt sander. Up to now, there was only insulation covered with plastic vapor barrier up there. Before sealing them with caulk, Karen put her artistic touch on them, the recurring leafy vine motif.

After a thorough search of the entire UP for a hanging lamp, we finally bought one from the lighting showroom in Escanaba. I installed it in the center of the kitchen to light the void between the two banks of recessed lights to provide better lighting at the stove. Remember the solid ceiling/floor couldn’t hide any electrical within it, so the lamp’s cord had to remain exposed. We solved this by covering and protecting it with the metal power cord covers made for that purpose that is after Karen painted them to match the logs’ stain, so in essence the cord covers nearly disappeared.

Outside, I rebuilt the stone retaining wall along the patio wall, a long overdue job because it remained partially smashed down from the trees falling on it after the big storm. In front of the barn, much to my distress, we cleared yet more trees to build an oval turnout area for Kate and Isaiah. We left the biggest hard maple in the middle, but soon had to put fencing around the tree’s base to keep Kate from chewing the tree’s bark off. This turnout did not alleviate Kate’s concern over whatever she was concerned with across the street. This bothered us immensely, mostly Karen actually, because only the farmer and his family were over there, and we considered that if bears or coyotes were a concern, they would come from the other direction behind us from the lowland. The sixth anniversary of our building permit July 5^th came and went without celebration, hoopla, or notice.

One day, Karen asked me for Suzy if I would use the clunky yellow tractor to move a huge pile of manure for them. This wasn’t necessarily a significant event to mention except for the reason they wanted it moved. Jim and Suzy planned to build an indoor riding arena. This idea proved extremely attractive to Karen with a possibility of riding Kate inside the arena during the winter months. Of course, we remained the building celebrities in the neighborhood, so they asked our opinion of contracting versus building it themselves. Well, we did everything ourselves and didn’t like the price and quality of work by contractors, so what do you think we suggested? Their project coasted un-discussed for a while.

Sometimes, everyone does things they don’t really want to and said would never do. In this case, I advertised the 260Z for sale in the Marquette Penny Saver. I had said I’d never part with it, but now decided to do just that. I suppose driving it became more drudgery than pleasure. I didn’t get any takers for two months. Karen found out that the sports car club scheduled an autocross out on the old Marquette Airport runway. The county airport had moved to the old KI Sawyer Air Force Base years ago. I worked a swing shift that afternoon and with the autocross beginning at one o’clock, I realized I couldn’t stay for the entire car event. Driving the 260Z over there was fun as usual, gassing it up with super premium and giving it a huge dose of octane boost before going to the event.  

The cars lined up, and the 260Z became a center of attraction. There were a few questions such as its horsepower, how fast it was, and why I was selling it. The question came up asking me if I was going to race. You can race anything in these events, and the 260Z would fit into the modified class, but you had to wear a helmet. I didn’t have one, though someone said I could borrow theirs. To say the least, I raced the car around the pylon course, mostly acceleration, steering, and braking skills without any high-speed runs. Great fun nevertheless. I ran the car hard but not as hard as I could have on the two of three required runs before departing for work.

One young guy expressed interest in the car and promised to call me about the car despite the fact the car wouldn’t start on its own for one of the runs because it had overheated. I didn’t hold my breath for a call. The racing event made the Mining News front-page banner with a thumbnail picture of me racing the red and white 260Z. Unhappily, that ride home after work became my last ride in the car because the guy did in fact call, bought the car, and hauled it away one sad day. I had mixed feelings seeing the red and white beast leave. I hated to see the car go, and I didn’t nearly hate to drive it, but I had, if I can use the phrase here, carnal knowledge of the car. I knew it inside and out after taking it apart, cleaning it, painting it, and putting it back together piece by piece. One day, I’d use the same phrase to describe our home, the Yooper Schooner.

            Jim and Suzy, probably bolstered by our comments about doing the building themselves, finalized their decision to build their indoor arena themselves providing we would help. Again, I drove the yellow clunky tractor to assist in landscaping the area where the arena would go. Empirically, we laid out the rough location of the arena with the basic 3, 4, 5 method of finding ninety degrees, then measured four sides and the diagonals several times until we got it close. Some of this early planning invoked a feeling of de ja vu all over again, (sorry about that) but, my heart was elsewhere. I wanted to be a helpful neighbor, so I assisted with the entire process because we were committed. We dug holes, erected poles, poured concrete, nailed crossbars, put up sheet metal sides, installed trusses, and whew, put on roof sheet metal. In all, over a month and a half went by while we helped It measured forty by eighty feet, a quite huge building in fact. For me, the Yooper Schooner project was at a stand still.

            In her spare time, however, Karen began mural work in the upstairs bathroom. One mural depicted a huge apple-laden tree on grassy hill that grew above the whirlpool tub. Her mural work really made our home unique. Outside, autumn moved in around us as leaves changed colors and began to fall.

            We bought a medicine cabinet for the downstairs bathroom. The cabinet was overpriced of course because it was a specialty corner unit. I felt we copped-out again for buying a manufactured cabinet like this, but I was tired and uninspired. I installed it during the Thanksgiving break, putting it up above the quarter-round sink cabinet.

Upstairs in the bedroom, Karen and I finally put up the drywall on the ceiling. Flat ceiling drywall is tedious, but at least you can build props to hold it up in place while you secure it. All our ceilings had pitches because of the scissor trusses, and so added another difficult aspect to home building. I suppose that fact convinced me to put all that tongue and groove over the great room, so I never looked forward to drywall installing the bedroom ceiling. Holding the drywall up with one hand while standing on a ladder and putting screws in it while getting dust in the face and eyes is not my idea of fun. We did not tape and mud the seams right then because I downright dreaded that accursed work.

Instead, I went ahead and installed the ceiling fan with lights in the peak of the bedroom. I had wired the room for a separately controlled fan and light from the beginning, and I was really getting the hang of wiring this complicated stuff after the bathroom, which had those three separate multi-position switches for exhaust fan, heat lamp, and interior light that was worth a Hey, this guy is good! Well, not good enough for me to get narcissistic, bigheaded, and all.

The security job and the grumpy, ancient boss just became too much for me to take. I made a joke about his Mussolini methods and Mickey Mouse promotion system, and an informant told the boss, or so I assumed. To spite me, he promoted a kid with less time working there than me. I said I had enough. One co-worker said I would never quit, calling me a lifer, and a friend told me it obviously was a dead end job and I shouldn’t put up with the mind games. Okay, there was no more convincing for me, and I walked�"well, after my two-week notice, of course.

           

Sometimes, you just have to say enough is enough

 

Reviews

[wondering]

is this a shorter one than the others, I got thru it so quickly. Press on I say, never give up and true enuf sometimes you have to know when enuf is enuf. love this story. How am I suppose to get anything done at work??