Tuesday, January 10, 2012 AM

I have a few minutes more this morning, as it's so foggy you can't see more than a few feet in front of yourself.  I can begin my (outdoor) duties a little later this morning.
My feet and legs are so sore this morning.  Janie and I built some shelves yesterday, which are in the cellar at Creekside, and I carried nails and screws down the stairs to stack on them.  I feel like I've been marching all night.  Steve said that I 'twitched' a lot more than usual.
We need to get a lot done today, too, as rain and cold weather is coming tomorrow, and we want everything ready for that.
Steve finally finished the installation of the new water heater in the west end of the crawl space.
I will now need to build a 'room' for it under the house, as it will need to be kept in a fairly well-insulated space.  It will serve the two baths on the west end of the house.  It's the one we got on a special sale at Lowe's in Jefferson City a few weeks ago.  He drilled holes in the floor joists to run the pipes through, to get them up off the ground where they had been, and so that the floor insulation would also insulate the pipes as they run along under the house.  I still have the floors in that part of the house to insulate.  I'll use a lot of those foam rubber mattresses that I bought at Habitat for that purpose.  It's  LOT nicer than fiberglass in a tight, dark area.
I used some re-purposed laminate flooring insulation to line the south-facing wall of the downstairs west bathroom.  That is the coldest bathroom in the house, and I think it's because it's got all those concrete stucco walls.  I climbed up on a ladder, used some roofing nails to hang the insulation, and used some caulk for adhesive to secure the insulation to the walls all the way to the floor.  There's a noticable difference in the temperature of that room.  Janie noticed it right away when she came to work on Monday.  She thinks my little money-saving ideas are neat, and she says she's learned a lot from me.
She was surprised at how simple it was for us to build those shelves.  It is nice to have the floor space on the ground floor where all those nails were stored before.
We discussed taking some paving stones from Clairemont up to Creekside to pave the floor of the cellar.  This conversation came about because Steve had a plumbing leak that flooded the floor of the cellar, making it look something like the French Broad River.  We think it will make a good walking surface that also keeps us up out of the mud, should there ever be another plumbing disaster...and there will.  I also hate walking on dirt floors in a house.
Janie and I are pretty close to getting the library ready for paint.  It's going to take a lot to cover the maroon that some tasteless person had slathered all over the walls and baseboards in that room.  We SO want to get just one room totally finished.  We are also close to getting the upstairs west bath finished.  Steve has to make some small repair in the overhead light, and we have to come up with a vanity top, and it will be finished, except for curtains on the windows.
The upstairs sunroom still has to have baseboards, window and door trim, overhead lights installed (which I have), and curtains.
Of course, all of the older part of the house will still have to have the floors sanded and re-finished.  I don't know when we will get to leveling and re-working the floor of the downstairs sun room.
I talked with Dorothy and Robert Reagan yesterday at lunch at the Down Home, and Robert mentioned that Randy Reagan was his nephew.  They encouraged me to prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.  Robert told me that they were, in the past, afraid that he would break into their home while they might be out to the grocery store.  They said that they didn't want to live on the same road as he did.
Anna Vee Phillips told me several weeks ago that I should prosecute him, as other victims of his actions might not have the money to do so, or might not know how to go about it.  I have assured everyone that I will prosecute him, and that he will serve every minute of his sentence this time.
I've been spending a lot of time late in the evenings (after the workers are gone) insulating the pipes under the floor.  Steve has a lot of new connections and pipes, and I don't want them to freeze.  I'm amazed at how many pipes there are to provide hot and cold water to a house that size.  It takes a lot of patience, and a good working knowledge of bandaging comes in handy.
The bends and turns are the hardest part of the job.  I need ace bandages.
We have a lot of heat tape, but Steve is afraid to use it.  I just keep on wrapping.
There's still lots of concrete rubble and rock to remove from under the house, to make room for more work there, and to keep it from drawing moisture.  Some of the wood remnants are mostly eaten away by insects, termites, and rot.  I burn them, as I don't know what may still be living inside.  The rock is used to fill the low end of the yard, with the smaller stones kept for our driveway at Clairemont where there are low places that become muddy.
Janie and I need to come back to Clairemont today with all the blow mold, unload it from the trailer, put it in the barn loft, and then load the trailer with paving stones, which we will then take to Creekside, carry down into the basement, and install on the basement floor.  Sounds like a lot of fun, I know, but someone has to do it.  And I'm someone.
Janie is so good at pitching in to help with just about any project.
She's good as gold.
The pestilence in my respiratory system is still keeping my immune system wrecked.  Some days, I sound terrible, but some days, I don't sound too badly.  I feel terrible almost all the time, and I constantly keep the symptoms of cold and flu.  I have began to feel that I will die from this disease.  No one is able to diagnose or treat it.  I've had it for a year this month.  My throat feels like I've swallowed needles, I'm weak, I'm tired all the time, my stomach hurts if I eat, and I'm passing small amounts of blood almost every day.  My sinuses run all the time, I have bad headaches, and my tinitusis in overdrive.
I feel a need to get things finished.