Journal: May 24th. The work begins. (sort of)

Shop-vac with car

Plumbers trucks gathered on lawn.

Monday--back to New Jersey. It's an hour and a half drive in the best of conditions. This translates to a three hour commute daily, but I am so excited and perhaps brain cluttered that it strikes me as fairly reasonable proposition.

I had planned to head out as soon as the morning traffic abated, but I must not have been that eager to jump in. First, it was necessary to make many house-related phone calls.

My first call was to MacKenzie Hall, the New Jersey bat authority. I had initially spoken with her when I was still in Venice far from the New Jersey winter.  She'd gone to the house two weeks ago and saw almost no evidence of bats. She had been really excited when I’d told her that there might be 5000 bats summering in my house (based on reports from my brother, and also on sighting huge piles of bat guano in the attic— blasts of ammonia scented air on opening the front door). She soon had me looking at pictures of "bat condos" on the internet as alternative housing for our attic bats.

Her enthusiasm must have waned when she drove up from South Jersey at the beginning of bat season.   Equipped with a special bat sonar device and years of experience, she spotted only six bats. It's possible that their return to the house was prevented by George's efforts at bat proofing, but it is more likely they had succumbed to white nose syndrome, a disease that has been decimating the New Jersey bat population.

This is good news in the very short term.  I don't have to address the questions of bat removal.   But despite my immediate relief, I have to note this is bad news for the planet. Bats, an essential part of the ecosystem, devourers of mosquitoes and other flying pests, will no longer be doing their due diligence--keeping this lakeside property relatively bug free.

And, it does involve some mental shifts. I've been describing the house as bat infested for years, and as it turns out...there is scarcely a bat in sight. MacKenzie must have thought I was a bat imaginator--someone who had spotted a bat or two and instantly imagined thousands. I think I eventually convinced her that there had been a large bat population over the years, but it is possible she thinks I made it all up.

Also checked in with George Roof--told him I'd be there early afternoon, told Liz Mataset i was getting to work--and finally--it was already after noon, packed up the car and drove to Newton.

Lots of activity. George was at work.  He'd been closing up the collapsed roof under the bathroom.  Carl Little, the plumber was there with his crew. Huge trucks on the front lawn. No running water.

All the pipes broke this winter. Not quite sure how this happened. The pipes had been drained, and water shut off in November (before house transfer took place). According to Carl, at some point in December (before the final transfer of the property, Scott, working for Arthur, asked him to turn on the water for some kind of real-estate check. He was never asked to turn it off--so--the water froze, the pipes burst, and there is now no working plumbing in the house.

In my own macho way, I was imagining that I'd be here this summer, maybe living in a trailer, or in a rented apartment elsewhere--and would somehow manage. George Roof, much savvier than I in these matters, knew that basic plumbing was a necessity, and brought in Carl to have it up and running by my arrival.

Things are a bit behind schedule, but it looks like all wil be in order in a day or two. In the meantime, as I'm commuting to Brooklyn, I am managing without plumbing.

The plan is to have running water in the kitchen and to have one working bathroom. Carl had quoted a price of $6000 to install the new bath, but George told him that this bathroom would just be temporary (it's in a bad location--the pipes run outside, and since we're ultimately planning to move the kitchen upstairs, it doesn't make sense any way you cut it. Carl was reluctant to jerry-build a bathroom on the cheap. "People say it's temporary, but then they don't do what they planned, and I get blamed for shoddy work," said he. I promised him there would be no blame. And we waited for the missing part.

I had big cleaning plans--but no water--so I made the first of what would be many trips to my neighborhood Lowes and bought a Shop-Vac--a construction vacuum cleaner to start clearing out the layers of filth.

First lesson of completely inexperienced cleaner of huge messes: You have to put the shop-vac together. After all the driving, the shopping, the conferring, all I could manage to do before heading back to Brooklyn was to get that big plastic vacuum put together.

And that was the first day.