Journal: September 13. Porch. Colors.

Oh dear--many days with no postings.  I'll have to start filling in the blanks.  Things are indeed moving along.  Today, George and Johnny got the tongue and groove ceiling up--lots of measuring and hammering.  The paint needs a second coat.  George asked if I wanted to be responsible for getting that done, i.e. did I want to get Sarah or Sam or another hapless visitor to put on the second coat.  As I spend a good part of my days in one house related chore or another, I'd like to think I could easily paint a porch ceiling or two.  But, truth is, I know I couldn't do it.   I couldn't think whom I might be able to recruit for a job that should be done in the next few days, especially as George pointed out painting a ceiling was harder than most painting jobs, we agreed Johnny would do it.

While they were putting up the ceiling, I'd first made another trip to the paint store with my trusty sample of Glacier Blue (color of siding)  and my little card of Constellation (color of ceiling) to choose a color for the porch floor.  Again, I can't tell if I'm bowing too quickly to tradition and history.  For years I'd imagined that if I ever was able to re-do the house, I would restore the white cedar shake shingles.  Instead I'm wrapping the house in gray blue plastic.  The porch floor and ceiling will however be wood--and I quite unwittingly chose colors very close to the colors they'd always been.  The ceiling is a much paler blue gray, that's true, but the color I picked out today for the floor, pike's peak gray is not all that different from the old porch.  So be it.

porch in process

This afternoon, while the ceiling was hammered into place, I tackled the piles of pictures and papers that have been waiting to be sorted for months.  Family pictures I'd never seen, my mother's canceled bankbooks,  (do bank books no longer exist?  I certainly don't have any), graduation programs, yellowed newspaper clippings of my father's "famous cases."
The case that I remember--the one where he saved a young man--an accomplice in a robbery that resulted in a murder--from the electric chair--was not represented.  As I recall (though this might be a muddled memory), the man's family gave us a set of Lionel Trains--the best toy we'd ever had--who knows where that ended up?  There were however articles from the Hudson Dispatch recounting my father's  successful challenge to keep the auto insurance rates of being raised a huge amount, as well as articles about the discovery of a cache of money discovered in a garage--there were many claimants--the money belonged to an imprisoned gambler--Joseph Moriarty--and had been found by the FBI.  My father was the lawyer for Hudson County--which claimed it was the rightful recipient.  The final decision was not saved--and I don't remember what happened.  In any case, I spent way too much time going through this stuff--and it still hasn't been filed away.
I did however successfully do a laundry--it was warm and sunny all day, but minutes after I took the well-dried clothes off the line, a sudden storm blew in--dark and ominous--thunder, hail--very dramatic.  I drove to my weekly yoga class at lafayette village in a huge downpour--but now all is clear and star filled with a slim crescent moon moving across the sky.