I don't have a race report in the traditional sense, since I wasn't able to race this weekend. My calf is getting much better and I continue to work on stretching it and walk/running to get it back up to snuff, but last weekend, I was still recovering and so we got some work done. A LOT of work done.
Friday was lovely. I gave myself a nice walk/run and saw the lovely leaves in my neighbors yard. Then I came home, made fish tacos for dinner and John and I watched the movie, Chef. It was a little Hollywood in some ways, but really fun and I bought the soundtrack, I loved the music so much.
On Saturday, I woke up with a migraine. I took my meds and went back to bed. When I woke-up again, John was already starting on the windows. We have that lovely 1950's house with the old windows that you have to switch out the screens for storms in the Winter. All of our windows need to be replaced, and at one point we thought we would just go to the vinyl windows, but then realized they were disposable and only lasted about 20 years and we really do want to keep the "charm" of the period of the house, so we have been talking bout just redoing the windows and doing one or two a year until they were all done. Of course, Saturday was windy and John had the windows leaning against the cars to spray them down and a couple of them got blown to the ground. Oops! So, now we will get going on redoing those two windows that broke and quit just talking about, I guess.
We cleaned all of the windows and put up the storms before we got started tearing out and dragging the fiber glass, styrofoam and other detritus from the crawl space. We figured it would take us several days and we would just quit on any day where we reached our saturation point, since we had several weeks before the basement encapsulators we due to arrive. We dug in and pulled out 11 industrial sized trash bags of very full crap from the crawl space before we called it a day. Then we went to Eastside Shorts and had dinner and a couple of beers. just what we needed.
On Sunday, I woke up migraine free. Hooray! I walked the mile to Hickory Hill Park and then mostly ran on the trails there for a couple of miles before I went home. It felt great and my calf wasn't too sore.
We continued on with our crawl space project. Only this time, John had to travel further from the window to get the stuff, so while I waited, I raked leaves. Many, many leaves. By the time we reached our saturation point, we had finished 15 more bags and finished most of the crawl space. John said he has probably another hour or two of cutting chicken wire and taking the plastic off the ground, but we're done for the most part. I also raked up most of the leaves from our yard and got them to the curb for pick-up by the city this week. Can John and I kick out the work, or what?
We decided we earned some fun and we headed out on our cyclo-cross bikes for a little renegade ride around the Eastside of Iowa City. John took me to construction sites, school yards, parks and this really cool back part at the ACT campus where they have all these cut trails with park benches by ponds. It was so beautiful and really fun to ride.
We went home, showered and made it to Big Grove Brew Pub for Happy Hour. I love that place, I just wish they had more vegetarian options. Anyway, this was our conversation when we got out of the car.
John: Hey, we're actually going out after dark.
Me: Yeah. It helps that it's daylight savings time and it's dark at 5...
John: Still in time for the early bird special!
Me: Don't call it an early bird special. Call it Happy Hour. We'll sound so much younger.
2 comments:
I miss Iowa City sometimes, so thanks for the post (and your jacket!). What in the world was in your crawl space? Hobbits??
Your house cleaning and maintenance is really thorough and that should be an example. It's wise that you do not spare any crawlspace. Normally, that's where the termites take root, or other insects such as bugs that may carry infectious disease. Better sanitize that terrain before it becomes a launching pad for all the problems that I'd bet you wouldn't want to deal with in the future. Good luck with that!
Debra Owen @ Invader
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