from boxes to bedrooms

We had a blessed event recently here at the Coop.  No, no new frickens.  Heaven's forfend!  Can't handle the two we got now.  Any more and the monkey-to-handler ratio would be screwed.  We'd be outnumbered.

No.  No new monkeys.  (kinda sounds like a slogan, hmm, could be taken as racist though.  Not good.)  No, what we got, was out of the monkey motel and into a monkey heaven!  Yep, i finally finished the bedrooms in the addition.  

For the first five years of our journey of enjoinment, the Mynk and i rented a succession of cardboard boxes that more or less fit the criteria of "living space."  Mostly less.  For a year and a half or so, as we were looking and saving for a Coop of our own, we lived in a couple of bedrooms in the asylum that i was raised in, with most of the inmates still there.  i do not recommend moving one's family into the dwelling of and under the umbrella of their own parents.  That's one umbrella too many.  In our case it worked, incidents involving the police were few and far between and probably would have happened whether we were there adding to the chaos or not.

Then, on Independence day, we moved into the Coop!  Our own little wooden tent.  A rather drafty, painfully small, barely plumbed, ant infested, hardly insulated, frighteningly wired, scarcely kept-up, mouse house of a wooden tent.  We started gutting and remodeling on almost the first day.  On the second day the children of God ceased to remodel for it was bad and started laying plans to build a new dwelling altogether.  Remodeling the original coop is like restoring a LeCar.  You can, buy why would you?

Eight years, several fifty-five gallon drums of elbow grease, a couple of strained friendships, a broken down grandfather or two later, we have finished the two bedrooms.  Not the whole addition mind you, but just the two bedrooms.  So on Thanksgiving, the children of God blessed turkey and real, painted, trimmed and gloriously mouse free drywall and moved into rooms that actually hold whatever temperature you set the thermostat at without the heater running like an alcohol burnin' funny car doing the Paris/Dakar rally.

Yep, i designed a double envelope into my house.  Two layers of R-13 insulation with an airspace in between that actually lends some R factor by being trapped.  Double wrapped house wrap on the outside, solid spray foam in the ceiling.  This puppy is air tight.  If you fart with the windows shut, your ears pop.  As my old boss said, "you could heat that place with a candle," and he wasn't off by much.  

i hate it.

Here's the rub.  Over the years, i've gotten used to living in a thru-way for the local winds and breezes.  We've always slept under a pile of blankets to rival the thickness of our mattress.  Like pulling a nice soft, fuzzy bear on yourself every night and listening to the sounds of the woods and the wide world without, which is almost within due to the breezes whistling through the broken windows on their way to the rotted ones.  i was lulled to sleep by the sounds of katydids and hoot owls, fighting cats, skunks, cats versus skunks and chirping, whistling and beeping, booming frogs.  Leaves rustling was my lullaby.  It was like camping.  i love camping!

Now i hear the dust settle.

And it's warm.

Really warm.

Powerful warm.

And sometimes, someone farts.

Careful what you wish for.  Somebody open a window.