March Sadness: The Last Guest to Leave the Pity Party

Okay, this is going to be the last one. I promise.

If you haven't already guessed, this is one more blog about the love of my life: my house in Cape May (with apologies to the hub). We got an email last night from the new owner; they said "we love the house."

I'm sure that was supposed to make me feel better. And I'm almost sure that I've uttered the exact same thing to previous owners of homes that I've bought.


And I'm absolutely positive that they wanted to rip my throat out when I said it.

Because no one will love the house like we did. Not even if the house stands for another 100 years (and since the hub and I just rebuilt the foundation, it should).

So, here are some more of my THE LAST ramblings on my baby:

People We Almost Killed. Hey, renovation isn't for sissies. My dad almost died the day we carried this solid wood television cabinet (otherwise known as the beast) up the front stairs of the porch All By Himself. The story was that the guys who were holding the other corners couldn't fit through the door, and Dad ended up carrying the whole thing for about three feet. I'll be glad when flat-screen televisions let us get rid of these widow-makers once and for all.

Our painter almost died when he didn't eat lunch, and passed out in his van from diabetes. Luckily, I had some orange juice handy and we revived him. He didn't give us a break on the paint job. I almost killed him myself four years later when we paid him to power wash the house, and he disappeared. We learned later that he was in jail. "For a long, long time," the sheriff told us. Hey, tack on a couple more years for skipping out with our powerwash money.

To hear our contractor friend Mr. Mark tell it, he almost died the day he was renovating the shed out at the pool. We knew that the floor was rotted, and we knew that something must have lived there at one time. Turns out, one time was just enough for Mr. Mark, who pulled up a floorboard and found a nasty looking possum looking back at him. Mr. Mark was dropped off at an orphanage by his mother when he was about 6, he almost died in a motorcycle accident years ago, and he just had emergency heart surgery in February. But if you ask him, he came closest to death in 2002, when he came face-to-face with those beady little eyes.

I could add the mother-in-law here, for dumping a gallon of paint on one of the only rugs in the house that we had planned on keeping. But I wasn't really mad for long...and the room looked much better with a painted floor, anyway.

Plants I loved. There is nothing like gardening at the beach. Planting a ton of flowers and then leaving for six weeks. Missing the peak season of almost everything. But here are some things I will miss: The several thousand muscari bulbs I planted (seriously...while I certainly am not above gross exaggeration in this blog, it really was about 2,000 bulbs over the years). The peonies, that looked so good in the garden but that were just one more vehicle for ants to come in the house. Hydrangeas, the official flower of Cape May, even if mine never did look awesome. The clematis my neighbor said would never grow, which did anyway.

(One of these statues is not like the others. Which one is different...do you know?)

Ghosts that Walked Among Us (allegedly).  When we first bought the house, and hired our first lawn guy (he would be one of a long string of guys who didn't seem to know what he was doing), he mentioned to us that a woman named Mrs. Undy lived in the house for a long, long time. He also mentioned that he and his brother were completely positive that she was a witch. (The meanness that society extends to single, older women will be another blog for another day).

Anyway, Grassy Eddy and his brother used to dare each other to run up on the house's front porch and touch the front door. And then they screamed like little girls when Mrs. Undy came out to yell.

When we bought the house, there was an old, scratchy, red wool cape in one of the closets (all of the closets were full--we threw out about 25 pairs of shoes). My FIL was sure that it was Mrs. Undy's. I was sure that she wore it to her grandmother's house, through the wolf-ridden hills of southern New Jersey.

Whether she was the inspiration for Little Red Riding Hood or not, Mrs. Undy and I became great friends through the past 10 years. I talked to her frequently when we were working on the house, asking her if she liked it, asking her to finish painting the trim while I was gone for the weekend (she never painted anything, as far as I could tell).

I talked to her again two weeks ago, when we left for the last time. I tried to smell some faint perfume, or see something out of the corner of my eye, but all I detected was the leftovers from Tony's that were smelling up the trash.

Goodbye, Mrs. Undy. I will be really pissed if you show yourself to the new owners!

People that we loved. Without fail, every time we had a big group of people at the house, my husband  would say to me at night "It's nice having the whole house full." And it was.

Okay, I need to stop. Right. Now. This is the last blog you'll see about this house. I've already overstayed my welcome as the last guest at the pity party.

To the new owners, Dave and Renee: I truly hope that you do have as many good memories in the house as we had.

To all our friends and family: we'll see you all at the NEXT house!!!!!!

You're Feeling Sleepy, Sleepy...

That's what one hour less sleep will do to you.

My husband has long declared that, if he were to run for office (insert here the incredulous sound of your choice...such as HA, or TSK), he would run on a platform of having the sun go down at 9:15 every night. His theory is that the need for watchmakers would help employment numbers, productivity influenced by seasonal affected disorders would go up, and he would be able to play baseball with the boys every night.

My own declaration, were I to oppose him on the ticket (would those debates be cool or what), is that we would keep daylight savings time, but it would happen on a Friday afternoon (or Monday morning, I would have to check with the popularity pollsters on that). The switch back to standard time, of course, would happen on a weekend when we all could enjoy it.

Anyway, all of this is just to say "Remember to spring forward." And remember to stretch first. That springing forward crap can really hurt if you're not warmed up properly.

By the way, the clock pictured above is in the old Ponce de Leon hotel in St. Augustine. It's embedded in the largest piece of marble in the world. They'd have to break the marble to reset it (and fix it). So it's always 10:50 there. On a Saturday. Or at least that's how I think of it.

Happy napping!

A Few of My Favorite Days

They say a house is just a place to live, but a home is a place to love (do they say that? If they don't, they should.)

We didn't live in our Cape May house, but we certainly did love the time that we spent there. Even the time that we worked there (which was pretty much of the time that we spent there).

Here are just a few of my favorite days (and/or nights, and/or weeks):

1. The night we realized that the pipe from the upstairs bathroom came straight down the house and emptied in the crawlspace. And had been emptying there for weeks. My husband didn't just "crawl" out of the "space" when he realized that, he scurried backwards like a spider...one that was scurrying away from a bigger, poop-covered spider. You can see the whole story in yesterday's post.

2. The day our pool contractor drove into the fire hydrant next to our driveway and broke not just the hydrant itself, but the water main underneath it. We had owned the house for two weeks and had not yet met any of the neighbors. We could see them all, of course, as they walked outside and watched the water rise with worry (it ended up about halfway up their car tires). Although it would have been convenient to meet them all at once at this impromptu block party, I didn't think that that was the time. So the hub and I fell to the floor, and painted baseboards until the water receded. I darted above the windowsill just once, to take this photo.

3. The day we wanted to plug in a radio to play music while we painted the third floor bedrooms, only to discover that there wasn't a single.solitary.outlet anywhere on the floor. (This, despite the fact that the old owners had multiple lamps in the room as if there were outlets there).

4. The very next day, when I called the home inspector and screamed at him for not mentioning the lack of outlets (there was only one outlet on the whole second floor as well). Highlight of my call: "Even an IDIOT can count to ZERO." (Note: I didn't even call him about the sewage line that opened up underneath the house. I didn't think I could top my earlier line, and I wanted to go out on a high note with him).

5. The day we came downstairs and found Mike's 4'8", 86 year old grandmother standing ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER wiping down the inside of the cabinets. "Does your daughter know you're up there?" I asked as I walked through. "She doesn't need to know," said Grandma. We needed the help, so I continued on my way. I'm not sure how she ever got down again...but I know she wasn't on the countertop when we stopped by the house last weekend.

6. The day/week/month we realized that our friend Birdman had no home renovation skills whatsoever. He couldn't pull out old carpet tacks. He couldn't paint baseboards (unless, by painting, you mean slapping a full gallon of paint onto a two foot section of baseboards so that it all slid off and onto the newly painted floor. He did that pretty well). He couldn't scrape wallpaper (although he determined that in less time than I think it actually took to get the wallpaper scraper out of the toolbox).

7. The day we realized that Birdman was invaluable for providing comic relief as we did all the crappy jobs like pulling out old carpet tacks and painting baseboards and scraping wallpaper. And, subsequently, the relief we felt when we realized that he was somehow able to pick up lunch without hurting himself or anyone else. Everyone has a gift, Birdman, and we are just the kind of people who will exploit yours.

8. The day my dad and my brother drove to Cape May with their farm truck, pulled out all of the horrible old carpeting, and TOOK IT HOME WITH THEM to burn. I am still grateful, and I hope it isn't still smoldering!

9. All the days that friends and family came to help us...like Karen, who painted, and my brother's girlfriend Heather who helped me lay a path around the pool made of broken slate (I am convinced that that was the day that my brother decided he would marry her). My friend Mary Jane, who painted the shutters on the shed, and who bought the rockers for the front porch...and who passed away five years ago from breast cancer. The 140 hours that Mike's mother and grandmother spent scraping wallpaper from the bathroom (full disclosure to the new owners: we just painted over the wallpaper in the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom). Eating dinner in the living room...with Mike's Dad (who could never get enough of Tony's batter dipped fries), Mr. Mark, me and the hub. Speaking of Tony's, we made a sign one weekend that said "Thanks Tony: Corporate Sponsor of this Renovation." We ate a lot of Philly cheesesteaks (fried onions, provolone cheese, and hot peppers, please) in those 18 weeks.

10. The day we finally finished everything and had time to just lay in the pool sipping mai tai's. Oh wait...that never happened.

The Worst House in Town

Cape May, New Jersey is a pretty competitive town.

Like, if your town suggests it has more Victorian houses then they do, Cape May will accept your smack down invite and throw back with all sorts of b.s. about the number of "restored" homes that they have, and how they are the true "queen of the seaside resorts". Or "cooler by a mile". Or just "better than you". (Two of these were actual advertising campaigns for Cape May. A free coupon to the Fudge Kitchen for anyone who guesses correctly.)

So don't try to beat those Cape Mayites. You won't win.

Which is why I always love to hear the one-up-manship between two historic homeowners, when they bump into each other at Swain's Hardware Store.

"What you buying today, Ed?"

"Some drywall patch for my ceiling. The roof is leaking again. I've spent $4000 in the last three months patching it, and still the water drips down it like the fountain in the mall."

"You're lucky. When I bought my house, the whole third floor was covered with mold from decades of leaking. Apparently the old owners wanted an indoor swimming pool."

"Ha! At least your house had a roof. Our roof collapsed twenty minutes after we went to settlement. Opened up the whole third floor. Killed our dog, too."

And on it goes.

I don't like to enter into these contests, as it seems to me like there are no real winners.

But I have a doozy of a story, if I wanted to throw my hat in the ring.

I mentioned that the house was in some sad shape when we bought it. The front of the house looks better than I remember it..but the back is pretty accurate:

It was a little unliveable, with mold everywhere (it's the beach, folks...it happens) and mustard-colored carpet in the whole house, including the bathroom (I'm not sure what color it was when it was installed in 1970. I think it was orange, because we found some orange patches underneath the mouse-infested sofa).

I thought that there had been a fire in the kitchen, because the floor was very dark and missing in a section in front of the refrigerator. In fact, I later figured out, the linoleum had simply melted after 40 years underneath a southern exposure window (this is about week 10...you can still see the dark area in the back there in front of the mustard-colored fridge):

That's a lot of deferred maintenance.

The funnest part of our acquisition is that we planned to rent the house. For gobs of money. It was 2000, you know, and we took advantage of banks that were giving money willey nilley to all sorts of bad credit risks like the hub and me. Renting the house to tourists was the *only* way we could pay for our mortgage.

We said we'd open for business on July 1. We started taking rentals.

And then, as I said earlier, we worked our butts off for 18 weeks straight. We scraped wallpaper. We chloroxed walls (not good for a manicure, or for your skin, or for mold). We called plumbers, electricians, and pool people (we planned to install a pool, thinking it would help with the rentals).

Later, I'll write about some of the fun times we had working on the house. Like the time that we flooded two blocks of Washington Street.

But let's stick with the mother of all stories first.

It was week 17. The house was looking pretty good. Almost liveable. Our contractor friend Mr. Mark was down for the weekend, taking care of loose ends. And going to Atlantic City, which is where he was on Saturday night when the hub decided to install the home theater system in the living room.

"You want these wires to run around the room, or should I run them underneath the house?" the hub asked, clearly hoping it would be the former.

I hate wires, and said to run them under the house.

A few minutes later, he was back in the house. Looking a little sick.

He said that there was a pipe under the house that appeared to go nowhere. And that it looked wet in front of it.

Did I mention we were in the midst of a 17 week drought? It hadn't rained once since we bought the house.

But that wasn't everything.

There was, he said, little white things.

"Like toilet paper," he whispered. He was as white as a roll of Charmin as he said it.

I'm not always the calm one, but this time I was. "It can't be leaking from the bathroom," I said, very matter-of-fact. "We would have known by now."

So we devised a plan where the hub would crawl back under the house, with a flashlight (it was getting dark already), and I would flush both of the toilets in the house and see if anything happened. (How I got the "good job", I still don't know. I usually don't).

We were both in place. I decided to flush the toilet upstairs first, since the pipe seemed to be in the middle of the house. I pushed the knob down. I heard the water swish through the pipes the way water swishes through old pipes.

I heard my husband scream. Seriously. Two stories beneath me.

I came running downstairs. He was back in the house by now, covered with...water.

"I expected a trickle," he said. "A small leak somewhere."

But no, the pipe opened up straight into the crawlspace and the whole force of the flush came flushing out on him.

We both were sick to our stomachs. "If you have to puke," I said, "use the bathroom on the first floor."

We waited until our contractor friend came home from Atlantic City. It was almost 2 in the morning.

He listened to our story. Then he almost laughed.

"That's no big deal. We'll just run out to the hardware store tomorrow and get some plastic thingamobobs, and about 400 feet of doodlywhacks, and one or two hokeymans."

Obviously, he didn't say that. The truth is, I stopped listening after the "no big deal" part.

It was a bigger deal than he said (a trend among contractors that we would see again and again during the ten years we've owned the house). But it was fixed before the first renters came.

I didn't ask them, but I think they would have been less than pleased to have a festering pool of poop underneath their vacation home.

And that, boys and girls, is the story of the Worst.House.inCape.May.

Note: The only reason that there wasn't more "stuff" in the crawlspace is because the toilet spent much of the 17-week renovation right here: inside the bathtub. Thank *God* the plumber kept canceling on us!

No Business Like Snow Business

Well, it's another week that there isn't a whole lot of traveling going on for this historic traveler.

But dang, this winter is nothing if not *historic*.

According to the weathermen, the snowiest year on record for Baltimore was 1994-1995, with 62" of the white stuff falling. In this winter season, we've seen 79" of snow already. And we've got another couple of inches, which is supposed to keep falling.

As the hub would say, as he sat around in his pajamas two weeks ago for only the second snow day he has had since 1981, "We're number one! We're number one!"

I'd be happy to lose this contest.

So, as I *travel* outside for another milk, bread and toilet paper run (which is weird, because I don't even eat bread), I thought I'd share some Baltimore images with you.

Centuries old stalactite formation in Luray Caverns, er, the icicle that grew on my neighbors porch in two short days:

Half a million people visit Luray Caverns in Virginia each year. Perhaps tourism is Parkville's future?










Our side yard--it's under there somewhere:

Lesson learned: if you have a white car, and you get over 4 feet of snow in four days, it is helpful to hit your remote lock thingy and follow the sound of the horn. (Because this is what they looked like *after* we dug out!!)








A street full of people pitching in and shoveling. In just a few days, these same friendly neighbors will slash your tires and throw a flaming bottle of hooch through your driver's side window if you dare to park in the space that they have shoveled out:

Note: the guy on the right is headed to his garage to get a lawn chair so that he can "save" his space. New Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said on February 18 that Baltimore police would begin enforcing the law that makes it illegal to hold your space with lawn chairs, bar stools, ironing boards, etc. But, like most laws in Baltimore, few people pay any attention to it.


Happy travels, snow angels!!! May your flights all be rescheduled quickly!

I'm a Baby Seller

This weekend, I started packing up some of my things from our Victorian house in Cape May.

I know--even before I write this blog--that this post won't technically be about historic travel, unless you include traveling down memory lane. Which I am. Because it's all that I can think about.

We bought our vacation house in 2001. It was pretty run down at the time. Like, so run down that when we told the hub's parents to take a look at the house (along with their contractor friend Mr. Mark), they not only looked at it, they made a list of three other properties that were for sale that we should buy instead.

Seriously.

"Run away from that house," their contractor friend said.

Have I mentioned we're not much for taking advice?

We bought the house (obviously), and started what would become a routine for the next 18 weeks.

On Friday afternoon, we'd meet at my sister-in-law's house, leave my car there, and drive the 142.1 miles to Cape May. Many times, we'd start working when we got in, even if we were tired. And we were tired. And we got more tired.

We patched, and painted, and called every contractor in the phone book (and quite a few that were not listed anywhere officially, their phone numbers whispered surreptiously in the dark corners of Swain's Hardware like deeply held secrets). After working for 47 hours straight, we'd hop (and by hop, I mean drag our battered bodies across the lawn) in the car on Sunday night and drive home.

Creatures of routine, we always stopped at the halfway mark (76.3 miles), a nice WaWa with a clean bathroom. The WaWa (I just love saying that) was still in New Jersey, which meant we could live large and sit in the car like ex-Presidents while someone else pumped our gas.

We liked sitting in the car, because--when we went into the WaWa to use the bathroom--it took us 5 minutes to get out of our vehicle and try to stand mostly upright to walk into the store (and by walk, I mean drag ourselves through the parking lot).

By the end of 18 weekends, we no longer did a bathroom break. I would have rather peed on the car seat than tried to move my screaming muscles if I didn't have to.

That was nine years ago, although I still remember it like it was just last year. A lot has happened since then, but the biggest thing happened on February 3.

That day, we got an offer on the house that we couldn't refuse. We tried to refuse it. But the interested party just took that as negotiating. Eventually, we signed a contract.

And then the crying began.

Cue the violins.

As my husband says, there are a lot worse things that could happen to us. We know that in a world full of earthquakes and soaring cancer rates and unfortunate civilian deaths that this is on the low scale of tragedies.

But we are sad. Very, very sad.

Getting the house ready for the new people (we hate them, incidentally, and call them the people who stole our house), packing up our things...I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

So, as therapy (or something), I thought I'd tell you a little bit about our renovation experiences. Because we may not own the house, but no one can buy our memories.

I'll start with an after picture:

Check back for the befores, along with a funny story about the time we realized that sewage was slowly filling up our crawlspace.

Ahh, memories.....

Turn the Lights Out When You Leave

Last night, the lights went out on the ten-week long Nights of Lights in St. Augustine. If you missed it this year, make your reservations for 2010-2011. It's a pretty magical place...enlightening, as the poets and the artists say!

Thank goodness for that warm Florida weather, and the beautiful buildings that still shine day or night, or today would be a dark dark day indeed!