Uneven wear

Last week concluded five years of The Listening Post--yikes! In the spirit of new beginnings, my kitchen and bath are being gutted to the studs while Terry and I remake our acquaintance with dishwashing in a plastic tub, spit baths, hot-plate cookery, laundromats, and the complete inventory of fine dining establishments throughout the region. I knew that NCPR MemberCard would come in handy.

Memory resides most strongly in the sense of smell, I am told. Certainly the ever-present aroma of plaster dust is putting me in mind of past home devastation projects: "Sir, we had to destroy the building in order to save it." As they peel the onion, layer by layer, every bone-headed home handyman shortcut comes back to haunt, each budgetary compromise revealed in the full light of its squalor. Ugglee!. But this is as close as we could come to Plan A, as formulated by Terry: "Let's bulldoze it into the cellar-hole and build out back," or my own variation: "Let's open the gascocks and throw in a match."

But eventually, we'll have something out of it, besides a crippling debt-load and a renewed appreciation of modern amenities. We'll have a shiny new state-of-the-art kitchen and bath that make it blindingly clear just how low-rent and disheveled the rickety remainder of the homestead really is.