July 1st, 2005
Slim Chances
Hot again. And muggy. Abnormally muggy for how dry it’s been. The weather people have flashed nothing but perfect suns for the last ten days, and nothing but perfect suns for the ten days coming. It’s finally summer. After a near rainless winter put Washington state at less than ten percent of its normal rainfall and prompted the governor to declare a state of emergency, we watched the first half of our summer wash down street drains, and our rainfall total climb to eighty percent of normal. But now—sun. Sun and nothing but.
It’s the perfect time to re-roof our house. Tonight, we, along with a friend, will tear off what remains of our sixty-five-year-old cedar shingles. First, we prepare. Tarps are stretched over ferns and an in-full-purple-bloom hydrangea, to catch falling debris. A cable is run from one end of the roof to the other, to clip lanyards into.
The guys take the harnesses, climb over the roof peak to the west side of the house where there’s nothing beneath but ground. I cling to a rope on the east side, where a carport will (with any luck) save me if I take a cedar shingle sled ride. We rip and tear and stir up sixty-five years worth of grime and dust, and twenty-five-year-old Mt. St. Helens ash that the previous owners must have tried to shovel off. Our arms are black; our faces are black; our teeth are crusted with fine, black grit. We drip ashy sweat. Later, when we pull off our shoes, we’ll discover black socks.
What would easily, at my pace, be a full day’s job, is done in an hour or less. Our roof is now skip sheeting and thousands of tiny nail heads. If you look up from below, you see slits of sky. In the front yard, we hose off. We tell stories. We laugh. We drink ice water. We spit and cough and try to rid our noses, throats and lungs of ash, dust and wood debris.
After our friend leaves, we load the truck. It will take, we estimate, three full loads to get all the shingles to the dump. Load one is ready for the next afternoon. Inside, we sit on the floor in the living room and drink black Chai tea, eat Mango cheesecake. Through the blinds, I notice a pink striped sky to the east. Cool, I say, look at the sky. We crowd around the glass in the front door, decide to climb back onto the roof and see what it looks like to the west. We take pictures of a golden peach sunset and say over and over how beautiful it is, how we should have framed a bird’s nest up here so we could watch the sunsets all the time. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, my husband says before we climb down.
Back inside, we shower. The shower curtain is dotted with black spots. Soon, the bed sheets will look the same. Before we turn in, we watch the ten o’clock news. The weather girl smiles and changes the ten upcoming full-sun days. There’s a low front to our south, moving north, where it will collide with an unstable air mass and produce rain, thundershowers. Oregon and eastern Washington be ready. Oh, and there’s a slim chance it will clip the coast, the southwestern interior in the morning. We look at each other. How slim? And how far north?
In bed, I cough and cough and cough and suck on throat drops to ease the sandpaper in my throat. I do nothing but cough and think about how, while Brian’s at work, I will manage to, should that slim chance occur, tarp our entire roof alone. For two hours I walk through the procedure step by step until I know exactly how I will do it. Finally, a bit after two in the morning, I drift off. And I hear it–the rain.
It’s raining, I shout. My husband is instantly awake. We pull on pants, shoes without socks, grab the flashlight from the drawer. The stairs are already wet. So are the hardwood floors. I harness up, tug on gloves, grab a tarp and head up to the roof. My husband sets up the extension ladder. In the dark, on a slippery roof covered with nail heads, we unfold and stretch and cover what we can. At 2:30 in the morning, we drive nails through the eyelets of tarps, hammertack plastic over what the tarps don’t cover. Dogs bark. A light around the corner goes on. Our neighbors must hate us, I think, but hopefully they’ll understand.
A quarter after three and we’re done. My husband has to get up in an hour and eighteen minutes. I haven’t slept more than ten minutes all night. We crawl under the covers, though, really, it’s too hot. I feel like I’m going to fall off the bed, I say. My husband says: Me too. Thirty seconds later, he’s asleep. I stay up and cough and cough and cough some more, but this time I don’t wonder how I’m going to cover the roof by myself should it actually rain. Instead, I listen to the rain and think about why crawling around on a roof in the middle of the night gives you vertigo. I grip the edge of the bed and scoot toward the middle, because I know if I don’t there’s a slim chance I might actually fall off.
Filed Under: Remodel Stories |
It’s the perfect time to re-roof our house. Tonight, we, along with a friend, will tear off what remains of our sixty-five-year-old cedar shingles. First, we prepare. Tarps are stretched over ferns and an in-full-purple-bloom hydrangea, to catch falling debris. A cable is run from one end of the roof to the other, to clip lanyards into.
The guys take the harnesses, climb over the roof peak to the west side of the house where there’s nothing beneath but ground. I cling to a rope on the east side, where a carport will (with any luck) save me if I take a cedar shingle sled ride. We rip and tear and stir up sixty-five years worth of grime and dust, and twenty-five-year-old Mt. St. Helens ash that the previous owners must have tried to shovel off. Our arms are black; our faces are black; our teeth are crusted with fine, black grit. We drip ashy sweat. Later, when we pull off our shoes, we’ll discover black socks.
What would easily, at my pace, be a full day’s job, is done in an hour or less. Our roof is now skip sheeting and thousands of tiny nail heads. If you look up from below, you see slits of sky. In the front yard, we hose off. We tell stories. We laugh. We drink ice water. We spit and cough and try to rid our noses, throats and lungs of ash, dust and wood debris.
After our friend leaves, we load the truck. It will take, we estimate, three full loads to get all the shingles to the dump. Load one is ready for the next afternoon. Inside, we sit on the floor in the living room and drink black Chai tea, eat Mango cheesecake. Through the blinds, I notice a pink striped sky to the east. Cool, I say, look at the sky. We crowd around the glass in the front door, decide to climb back onto the roof and see what it looks like to the west. We take pictures of a golden peach sunset and say over and over how beautiful it is, how we should have framed a bird’s nest up here so we could watch the sunsets all the time. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, my husband says before we climb down.
Back inside, we shower. The shower curtain is dotted with black spots. Soon, the bed sheets will look the same. Before we turn in, we watch the ten o’clock news. The weather girl smiles and changes the ten upcoming full-sun days. There’s a low front to our south, moving north, where it will collide with an unstable air mass and produce rain, thundershowers. Oregon and eastern Washington be ready. Oh, and there’s a slim chance it will clip the coast, the southwestern interior in the morning. We look at each other. How slim? And how far north?
In bed, I cough and cough and cough and suck on throat drops to ease the sandpaper in my throat. I do nothing but cough and think about how, while Brian’s at work, I will manage to, should that slim chance occur, tarp our entire roof alone. For two hours I walk through the procedure step by step until I know exactly how I will do it. Finally, a bit after two in the morning, I drift off. And I hear it–the rain.
It’s raining, I shout. My husband is instantly awake. We pull on pants, shoes without socks, grab the flashlight from the drawer. The stairs are already wet. So are the hardwood floors. I harness up, tug on gloves, grab a tarp and head up to the roof. My husband sets up the extension ladder. In the dark, on a slippery roof covered with nail heads, we unfold and stretch and cover what we can. At 2:30 in the morning, we drive nails through the eyelets of tarps, hammertack plastic over what the tarps don’t cover. Dogs bark. A light around the corner goes on. Our neighbors must hate us, I think, but hopefully they’ll understand.
A quarter after three and we’re done. My husband has to get up in an hour and eighteen minutes. I haven’t slept more than ten minutes all night. We crawl under the covers, though, really, it’s too hot. I feel like I’m going to fall off the bed, I say. My husband says: Me too. Thirty seconds later, he’s asleep. I stay up and cough and cough and cough some more, but this time I don’t wonder how I’m going to cover the roof by myself should it actually rain. Instead, I listen to the rain and think about why crawling around on a roof in the middle of the night gives you vertigo. I grip the edge of the bed and scoot toward the middle, because I know if I don’t there’s a slim chance I might actually fall off.
Filed Under: Remodel Stories |
