Other Floors of La Fortuna

The upstairs -- I didn't take many pictures. I got the view on the Main Floor, and the bedrooms are pretty much just bedrooms.

The Stairs Up break into two parts around a sizable landing, and the three parts (stairs, landing, more stairs) each have their own separate floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on the inner wall.  The tall windows on the landing look west over a Mormon Church and its parking lot about half a block away. Emphasis on over -- the west side of the house is the steepest drop off, so the Church itself is 50 feet or so below the floor of the house.  (HomoDommi commented that they are destined to always own houses overlooking church parking lots).

The church parking lot.  Not really going to be visible once the trees have leafed.

At the top of the stairs there is a small (5 x 8) landing (lined again with bookshelves), and with a nice computer table built in across one end.  A very nice place for the Teenager to sit and play games or do homework -- quiet, aloof, but open to the house, so not too far away from everything.

The upstairs has three bedrooms, all ordinary square rooms with small closets and big windows on the view -- Girl-Child's on the southwest corner, Teenager's next to it, directly overlooking the loggia, and, behind them, what quickly became known as "The Fourth Bedroom" -- windows on two sides overlooking the north, the driveway, the relatively ordinary suburban-looking neighborhood.  This room will be a guest bedroom, and until there is something better, officially HomoDommi's "art" room.  There is also a bathroom.

My room these first couple days in the house, the 4th Bedroom has the only ordinary view in the house.

The basement / Ground Floor

The taller window (see below) overlooks the koi pond and rock garden.

The portion of hill upon which La Fortuna is built is so steep that the "basement" is completely above ground.  The floor is mostly taken up with "The Red Room" -- appropriated as a television/games/guest bedroom already, with a door opening directly outside to the front side of the chicken coop.

This is The Red Room, before we moved in any furniture.  In the original plans, those windows matched steps outside along the side of the house.  In the actual layout now, that's just a rock garden with the koi pond just outside of the taller window.  

The Red Room was the Texan's guest room those first nights in the house.
The door visible at the back is to the L-shaped room. I am standing in front of the door to the outside.

Another room -- hardly a room -- is an L-shaped area almost the full length of the house. The spine of the L is perhaps 5 feet wide, the foot of the L perhaps 6 x 8, all with a half-finished, uneven floor. The whole room is only half-finished -- the head space is quite cavernous, but the non-walkable part of the room is a giant ball of rough concrete.  I think of this as the cartilage between the hill and the house -- protecting each from the other -- the house won't slide down, and the hill won't be eroded away.  The room, such as it is, is currently hip deep in quick and cheap shelving housing working supplies for the chickens, the koi pond, the garden, paints, all nicely labelled.

The back of the L

The foot of the L.

The space isn't really very useable for anything but storage, but I have no doubt HomoDommi will improve that.

There is a second door to the outside on this floor, as well, in an unadorned, concrete-floored hall/mud room.  It opens discreetly to the egg nests at the back of the coop.

Critter in the Cellar

Last night I was puttering around the basement (which I haven't done while I've been working on other household chores), and I noticed a large poop in a corner. Larger than the cats generally do - about the size of a small dog's feces. I cleaned it up, but didn't see any others, and chalked it up to naughty feline territorial marking. This morning, however, four large poops decorated the couch down there, and I realized with growing dismay that a number of things had been knocked off top shelves -- a metal pitcher of dried flowers, a lamp, two small speakers.

Obviously, we had acquired a guest.  In retrospect, the newly shrill cat-shrieking fights in the cellar, their interest in a specific pile of boxes they hadn't every looked at before, Fred's abrupt switch of sleeping-spot preferences, the recently increased appetite (the need to refill the food bowl twice in one day and the water bowl emptying fast) ... suddenly, it struck me that the cats had been interacting with something in the basement for a couple of days.

You can see in the photo that it turned out to be a possum (ironic that it chose to hide on top of a game named "Mouse Trap", which itself was stacked upon "Whack-A-Mole"). It was about Tasha's size, despite the relatively huge poops. The critter thought he'd found Nirvana -- warm and dry just as the weather is turning to Autumn, a regular supply of food, and clean water.  He got in through the cat door.  Until last month, I've been sleeping underneath the cat door/window -- effective hindrance to scare off animals who don't belong (I woke more than once with a raccoon or stray cat on the platform, but they scurried out if I moved). I don't live down there anymore, so there's no guard, except for cats. And I take it that cats aren't much of a deterrent.

I didn't find him myself. After my epiphany, I calmly cleaned up the poops, holding a large stick in one hand and making loud noises to make my mere 5'4" frame scary. I unemotionally latched the cat door so nothing could enter (but things can leave). I coolly sprinkled a trail of food from the again-empty food bowl to the cat door, and then carefully sprinkled baking flour along the route so I'd be able to identify who ate what where from paw marks. Then I sedately climbed up the stairs and barricaded the open doorway at the top and called in a professional. And for the next three hours before Tim The Wildlife Professional, was able to get here, I scrubbed the rest of the house until it is immaculate, looking for evidence that any critters might have skulked up those stairs.

A meta-photograph of Tim photographing the possum -- you can see it on the display of his phone.

Tim is a kind and calm young man who just this morning removed another possum from another basement, and three skunks from a backyard with dogs.  He did not expect to find our possum, given the many many open boxes and dark corners in which it could hide. The plan was to look around, then leave a baited live trap.  However, the critter chose to nap for the day not far from where he had tipped over a lamp, so we found it in about 20 minutes of poking about with a flashlight.  It was a simple job, then, to grab the tail of the possum and lower the critter into the live trap.  Tim's services included cleaning up the mess left on the games (which maybe we want to throw away now) and a couple of other messes that turned up as we were looking.

Tim told me the curious thing about possums is that they have an amazing immune system. They don't get sick; they don't carry rabies; they can be bitten by a rattlesnake with a dose of venom enough to kill a horse and they'll walk away. But then they keel over and die at about three years old. He reckoned ours was about a year -- not born last spring, but not old enough or big enough to have had kits.

As the "home-owner", I had to make the decision whether to have possum released into the backyard, or taken away. County law says that you can't catch and release elsewhere, so "taking it away" means an endless dreamless sleep back at The Wildlife Professional's headquarters.  I am getting hardened: he took the possum away.

Meanwhile, perhaps karma is getting back at me -- I am twitchy and jumpy, mistaking furry mouse toys for beasts and hearing skittering always just around the corner. No way am I going down in that basement again today.

The things we carry along with us

"Moving", such as it were, has begun. The children and FemmeDommi are at a family reunion up north, so those of us left behind are taking advantage of their absence to pack (if asked, every crayon would be needed -- this way, we can filter out a lot of the broken and less-played-with stuff). They return on Thursday. On Friday, we will load the rented moving van, and on Saturday morning, early, the AffinitusDommus will set out on their new adventures in a new house, a new city, a new state. (I shall have to find a new name for them, as well, because they will be living in a complete absence of cats; pets are not allowed by the landlord.)

In the meantime, I am emptying my storage unit. With only two people in this house, we will have room in the cellar for my stuff, and room in the studio for FemmeDommi's office furniture. Also, AffinitusDommus will need a deal of kitchen furnishings at their rented house, so I'm pulling out my own, for the Texan and me to use here. We have borrowed a friend's truck, and I am single-handedly moving all my things. That is, I'm moving all the boxes and liftable furniture -- the couch, some desks and a large bureau will have to wait for Thursday when we'll have friends helping us.

Sooooo, today and yesterday I moved 34 boxes from the storage unit to the basement, as well as five pieces of light-weight furniture. All of those were carried downstairs individually, so I reckon I've climbed at least 350 steps up (and down) today, carrying weights (yeah glutes! Frankly, I ache all over). The unit, 9 feet by 11 feet by 20 feet high, is about half empty.

So, what have I been paying to store since September 2005 (and which I also paid to bring out to Oregon in late 2006)? About a third of the boxes are books. Some of these books I have missed -- an entire box devoted to multiple copies of Dorothy Dunnett novels (some of which I've had to buy additional copies of, in the intervening years). Or my copy of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, which I purchased again to read again last year. Or my hard cover edition of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I have prevented myself from purchasing several times because, for Pete's sake, I have the hard-cover version in storage! Sadly, this also means I have not yet read that novel. Presumably it is packed away in the large, leaden, box marked, Books I Do Still Intend To Read. Someday.

Others I have not missed -- what could be in the preposterously heavy box labeled, Books - #3 - Living Room? I'm guessing that holds the picture books -- a history of rally cars (with early Mini Coopers) and I dimly recall a photographic chronology of World War I. These and a few others, although outside my usual interests, were too fascinating not to buy for Less Than $9.99 on the Bargain Table in the entrance to Borders Book Store. And maybe that box has the exhibition books accompanying the show I saw at the Uffizi in 2003? I will enjoy looking at them again, but I didn't miss not having them.

About half the boxes are kitchen stuff. Some of that is because kitchen stuff is large, and thus fills a lot of boxes. But have I needed to store twenty (nice quality) Rubbermaid food storage boxes for four years? What about the cheap pots and pans -- cast offs and filler pieces when I got them? They will be handy now, but I'm noticing the scratches in the teflon, and the permanent stains -- should I just buy some new, less toxic pans? I've got spatulas and wooden spoons and mixing bowls and three sets of measuring cups. Did I really need to keep all this?

Did I really need to own all this in the first place? But I felt a rush of pleasure to rediscover my ivory wire fruit bowl, and my Italian tea towels. Doesn't that rush -- especially when it is sustained over four years -- justify the cost? (That is, the cost of purchase and the cost and hassle of storage.) The Rubbermaid containers elicited a feeling of familiarity, but no rush. Yet, frankly food storage containers are something I use -- a lot more frequently than linen tea towels. Instead of storing them, should I have discarded the containers, necessitating a new purchase now? Is it more wasteful to have had them in the first place, when they are not something I cherish?

What about things that are of no practical use, nor are they lovely? Should I be storing the suitcases, long outdated and mostly worn out, given to me by my parents when I went to Cambridge U. in 1983? I carried the little one across Europe for three months, but it is sagging, tattered and torn, and I doubt I'll use it again. Is the sentimental value of that well-traveled gray case worth keeping it in the basement for another six months?

These thoughts dogged me today. I would park the truck next to our rose bushes, so the scent of roses overwhelmed the dust that puffed up from the boxes as I unloaded them onto the dolly. In groups of two and three, I wheeled them up the steep driveway, past the cats lying sprawled in the August sun to the side door of the house. There, each box was carried down the wooden stairs into the cellar, and stacked neatly according to label, kitchen, books, textiles, other.

These are only my things. These are all my things, the total. Every one of these things, in all of these boxes, is going to have to leave the dark, cool cellar, someday.

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie (Friday Cat-Blogging)

As I write this, sitting at my desk as the sun rises, my feet folded up on the chair for reasons that shall become obvious in a moment, Tasha sits two feet from me, feet folded up into a cat-muff, waiting.

Two nights ago, just at midnight, just as I was turning off my nightly election-dose of Stephen Colbert, Tasha brought another "preymate" home with her. She can get through the cat-door with a mouse in tow, but not down from the high platform (descent to floor level in this basement room involves three steep jumps or one long one, direct to my bed). On the jump down she invariably reflexively opens her jaws, and the struggling wee beastie falls out and dashes off for safety, squee-squeaking to wake the dead. Or at least enough to wake the merely sleeping, or the about-to-be sleeping. Or the would-rather-be sleeping.

This is the fourth mouse, the second in two weeks. The first two visited in late summer, and since I've heard no peep from them in months, I assumed they met their deaths when I was out of the room. The third, too, disappeared without a trace after two nights. I've put out live traps, but they are never sprung (perhaps the mice don't like peanut butter as much as claimed). (Mice are not the only species picked-on: there was a period in summer when the fledglings, appetizingly flightless for two or so days, were hopping out of their parents' nests -- we had 15 preymates, mice and birds, in and around the basement in 20 days.)

The kitty carnage upsets me. I like mice (that is, I like mice safely in the underbrush outside, not so much shrieking across the floor in the pitch dark, skidding under the piles of laundry in front of the washing machine, or huddling in the toe of a discarded shoe). I don't like torture or death, generally. I don't care to be woken from dreams of white, high-ceilinged, dusty rooms by a squealing, violently playful death. And frankly, the little mouse is as cute as the raccoons which plague us at sunset.

Live traps ineffective, reflexes slowed by sleep, and brain muffled by sleeplessness, my usual response is to wearily pick up a pillow and move upstairs to the couch, but I'm getting tired of switching rooms. And despite liking mice, some kind of instinctive panic overcomes me when I see one racing across the floor, and I'm useless at quick-thinking, grabbing-a-pail and catching-it-by-hand type of bravery. My housemates are sympathetic, but don't seem to me to fully appreciate the gruesome prospect of having Tasha bring a struggling, half-dead mouse onto my chest for a triumphant snack at three in the morning.

However, I guess I've been over-reacting. Four times last night, Tasha caught the wee cowran sleekit, and four times she let it go. It's much too interesting to just shake and kill. I can always tell where the mouse was last seen, because Tasha is vigilantly guarding the spot, for hours at a time. She loses interest after a while, and walks around, mewing with what I anthropomorphize as frustration, and then returns to her post. Harry watches her watch it, but his hobby tends towards birds, and he seems generally uninterested (beyond the required ears-up alertness when he senses scurrying).

At the moment, it is huddling under the bookshelf next to my desk. Five minutes before I started this post, it ran yet another circuit of the room, under my desk, between my feet, around, under the bed and then back to safety, Tasha pouncing right behind it the whole way. I've since set the live trap (the gray thing in the photo) right at the entrance to its hidey-hole. A moment ago, it simply shoved the live trap aside and stood outside its hole for 30 seconds, apparently stretching its limbs in a shaft of sunlight, yawning to welcome the morning. Tasha tensed but didn't spring, and it strolled back into its crevice, out of harm's way. I may force HomoDomi (whose rock-like reflexes have saved the lives of several birds and mice before this) to help me catch the beastie, who seems to be overcoming that cowran).

And now, some poetry to take us out:

For I will consider my Cat [Tasha].
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness...

For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For second he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood..

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God, and himself, he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger...

For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery...

For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

-- from For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry, a.k.a. Jubilate Agno, by Christopher Smart

Friday Cat Blogging

Today was the first day this week where it didn't rain, but we still didn't work on the yard. (Let me correct myself: I did not work on the yard. Andrew put in half an hour.) Andrew is cleaning the studio, something that has needed doing for months if not a year. One of those deep cleans, involving several trips to Ikea to get the right kind of new shelving and storage units, rearranging the space, repairing and repainting, and discarding old shelving and storage units that have been outgrown. An entirely satisfactory type of cleaning.

It means that the basement has been torn up -- not that it didn't look like the proverbial hurricane had swept through before all the discards of the studio stuff were dumped here. So I'm simultaneously cleaning the basement, and as long as I'm doing that, working on the Fall Cleaning of my bedroom. Not as intense as Andrew's cleaning of the studio, the primary change is that I'm putting in matching "walls". That is, for two years I have had three sets of mis-matching drapes (with three different attach-to-the-rod methods) curtaining off my corner of the basement. Also, since we took out the chimney -- which had been a corner of my room -- I've had a floor to ceiling, chimney-sized gap open to the laundry room. Now I am installing the Ikea Dignitet curtain "rod" (a taut heavy-duty wire rather than an actual rod), with a complete set of same color-matching curtains. I'm using Ikea's super cheap twin Sova sheets (blue or blue-green, I can't decide which) at $2.99 a piece for the curtains.

Everything that could possibly go wrong with this little job, has gone wrong, from dropping infinitely small but unique screws into dark web-filled corners, through snapped wire and stripped screws, to forgotten items that require return trips to Ikea just for one $1.99 part. Twice. But I hope soon it will all be clean and done.

As I stood on an upturned bucket, trying to screw the Dignitet anchor-piece to the wall, I realized that I was surrounded by sleeping cats, all in different corners of the room. So I took photos in honor of Friday Cat Blogging. Boris woke up and kindly posed for me for a couple of minutes. Natasha, curled up on a blanket on top of my portable wardrobe, did not stir, although she was the closest to me, and Harry stayed in pride of place on the bed, ignoring me entirely.


Note, added 10/7/2007: I chose blue sheets for curtains, in the end. The blue-green was a beautiful color, and perfectly matched my bedspread, but was just too dark for walls in the south-eastern corner of a basement.