33) Bisque and Baby Steps*

THWUMP.

There was a brief pause… then again…

THWUMP. THWUMP. THWUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP…

You could feel your jaw clench.

THWUMP, THWUMP, THWUMP, THWUMP, THWUMP!!!

“David…” you managed to hiss, barely opening your mouth, “I need you to go see what’s going on… because I know that if I go… I’m not going to like how I handle whatever is happening right now…”

David sighed and closed his laptop while standing up. The two of you were sitting in the guestroom by the big picture window… one of your favorite places in the church. He had been working on paperwork for your company and you had been sitting in your little rocking chair creating reels for the church’s social media accounts.

He didn’t say a word, he gently put his laptop down on the chair then went downstairs to figure out what was causing the offensive banging. He closed the door tightly but with a bit too much force, the sudden loud sound of the wood and glass sent you into a silent rage.

Noise was such a trigger for you. Loud noise especially… but really any noise… it did something to your very being. You could hear electricity for fuck’s sake… this banging felt like a hammer to your frontal lobe. A ticking clock in a quiet room, dripping water from a leaky faucet, the timer that you had for your plants’ UV light that made a little clicking hum; loud or repetitive unrelenting noise drove you nuts… it became all that you could focus on.

“You can’t hear that???!!! It’s not bothering you???” You had said to David a few days ago after maniacally tearing the little plant light timer out of the wall… you had felt a deep sense of relief when the offensive grinding came to a halt.

“Ummmm… I mean a little bit… I guess if I’m listening for it…”

“You have to listen for it to hear it??!!” You were incredulous to that notion.

“Yeah… for the most part I don’t notice it at all.”

With the timer unplugged you had felt your heart rate slowly return to normal. How anyone could put up with that sound was shocking to you. Noise had a way of turning your world on end… it became all consuming…

For as long as you could remember, noise sensitivity had always been a thing. So much so that you covered your ears every night to sleep. You remembered starting that as a kid during thunder storms and the ritual of covering your ears at night had stuck. David thought it was funny that whenever you were restless, he could reach over and put his hand over your ear and you’d be sound asleep in two minutes tops… “It’s like hitting a power down switch, Vanessa… I’ve never known anyone that functions like that…”

“What can I say… I’m a freak of nature…”

Despite loving music you had been to two concerts your entire life… even with ear plugs the noise was just too much. Oddly enough you could listen to loud music so long as you had control over the volume… the contradiction made no sense to you. Going to the movies was jarring… Dolby surround sound was your nemesis. “Why couldn’t they lower the volume just a tad,” you always wondered… After your therapist had recommended them, you had even tried purchasing special ear plugs designed to muffle sound, rather than cancel it out… Instead of relief…the little metal loops made it sound as if you were holding a conch shell up to your head and simultaneously pressed uncomfortably inside your ears… you abandoned them after an earnest try.

One of your many reasons for being so excited about the prospect of living in a 7000 square foot church was that you felt you would be able to escape the noise of your kids being well… kids. In your little Florida home the racket was often far too much. You regularly found yourself outside staring into your patio pond watching your fish and turtles just to calm your nerves.

Apparently 7000 square feet wasn’t nearly enough space either.

David came into the room, this time with a much softer click of the door, “The kids were jumping down the stairs… they actually broke the basement steps…”

“Wait?! What??? They broke the fucking stairs??”

One of the other things that you had looked forward to living in a 130 year old church was that buildings were constructed far better back then than their modern counterparts were. How many times had the kids slammed the door handle right through the drywall in the bathroom? You had lost count. When you moved into the church you had grinned ear to ear as you ran your hands over plaster several inches thick, slabs of wood cut more than two inches deep, stone and brick… “Good luck fucking this shit up…” you had thought with the satisfaction that only someone who had repaired countless drywall holes could understand.

And yet… somehow they had indeed managed to… ‘fuck this shit up…’

“You’ve got to be kidding me! What happened?” You wanted to know.

One of the first things you had noticed when you moved into the church was that the stair landing in the basement was comprised of four very thick wooden boards. The last board on the end had come loose and if you caught it just right, the board would skid forward, revealing a six inch chasm of black below… more than a six foot drop into the crawlspace. The wooden stair stringer had rotted out with the basement’s ongoing water issue causing the tread to come free on one side. While it would not have been possible to fall through a gap that narrow, one could more than easily fall in at least up to their groin, perhaps breaking a foot or pelvis in the process. The thought of dangling through a dark hole in the floor, your pelvis snapped in two had sent shivers up your spine. You had grabbed a drill and wood screw, found some existing part of the stringer that had not been affected by the water damage and securely affixed the stair’s tread back to the frame. Since then you would every so often catch yourself pawing at the repaired tread with your heal just to make sure that it still held tight. The new screw had yet to fail.

“Well from jumping and stomping on the stairs,” David told you, “they managed to not only knock two of the treads off the frame, but they actually cracked the treads…”

“No fucking way… those risers are two inches thick!!”

“Yup. They did it… they managed to break in just a few months, what 130 years of regular use could not.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well I showed them how they cracked the treads, then I pulled the treads up to show them that they were no longer attached to anything and if they continued to stomp and jump down the stairs before I fixed them, that there was a chance they might jump right through and down into the crawlspace… you should have seen their eyes when I told them that. I think they were scared thinking about falling down there.”

“Pffft… can you blame them? The thought of falling down there terrifies me…”

“Luckily this should be an easy fix. I have direct access to under the stairs… I guess there turned out to be an upside to the toilet falling through the floor and the wall behind it rotting out.”

“Oh boy… counting my lucky stars now…”

David ignored your sarcasm and continued on… “Anyway, I have everything I need to fix it, won’t cost me a dime and should take me ten minutes tops to shore everything up down there…”

“Great… and what about in the meantime?”

“Don’t jump on the stairs…” he shrugged.

Later that day when you went down to the kitchen in the basement to find some lunch for yourself you stopped just before the landing, carefully inspecting the boards. Sure as shit, the two middle boads were split from the wall nearly through to the middle, “Son of a bitch…” you murmered… you couldn’t believe your eyes. Your imagination ran wild… When the single tread had come loose there was no way that one could have fallen through the eight inch gap… but two treads… not only broken but what would have become jagged spikes of wood with a sixteen inch gap? All of you were more than capable of falling through a splintered hole that size. This just became some Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom shit real quick. You thought of what it would be like to fall through the spiky wooden treads… your skin flayed from top to bottom, your bones shattering from the fall into that terrifying darkness under the church… all that was missing were a few pikes with human skulls strung like macabre beads and a handful of venomous snakes for good measure.

You thought of what it would be like to break every bone in your body, your skin torn in thick gashes, filleted like a live fish, your jaw wired shut as you lay in a full body cast in the intensive care unit for months… adding insult to injury your monitors would beep a slow, torturous, unrelenting beep… and there would be nothing you could do to stop the noise.

That made you laugh, “Wouldn’t that be fucking something…” the first and last time you had been hospitalized you wound up with a roommate attached to faulty monitors… two days of nonstop beeping… you pawed at the nurse’s call button every time it started up… “The person next to me… their monitor is going off again…” and the nurse would sigh and eventually come while you grit your teeth, the beep boring into your very essence… they’d fiddle around with the monitor, reset the offensive machine only for the whole thing to start up again an hour later… two days of this and you thought that you were going to go criminally insane, toss their monitor out the window, or jump yourself. “Ha! You would find a way to drag your full body casted self out the door should you ever find yourself in another predicament like that…” you mused.

All you had to do was remember to walk carefully over the treads for the next 24 hours. You certainly weren’t going to forget to do that. You managed to never put your full weight on a single tread… David promised you were fine so long as you weren’t jumping on them… but you weren’t risking it. And the kids? The kids were practically tiptoeing down the steps… silver fucking linings indeed.

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That afternoon was the “Soup-er Bowl”… a soup making contest at the local bar a few blocks up the road. David had heard about it months ago and had been looking forward to the even ever since. He had gone back and forth about what type of soup to enter. He loved to cook. He finally decided to go with his lobster bisque… it always came out wonderful. You couldn’t go wrong with lobster bisque.

A week or so before the big day you had started to tease him about the contest… “You know what?” You’d ask him out of nowhere… he’d be at the stove making dinner for the night…

“What’s that?” He’d say.

“I decided to enter this soup making contest down the street… they’re going to be having a ‘Soup-er Bowl’ party and you can enter a soup for judging…”

“Vanessa…” he smirked… “cut it out…” he knew you were busting his ass but you continued…

“No, no… I’m being serious… you know how much I love to cook… and how I just love a good competition…” truth be told you loathed cooking, even if you were one of the most competitive people you knew…

David just rolled his eyes as you continued…

“Yeah I decided to make a lobster bisque… just like I always say… ‘you can’t go wrong with lobster bisque…’ Maybe you can come and vote for me… not that I’ll need it… but you know… for moral support…”

Without missing a beat he picked up what you were tossing, “Oh… well I’d love to come,” he replied… “but I’m probably going to be busy that day… “

“Busy doing what?” You laughed… enjoying the witty volley…

“I just started this whole social media account thing for the church… maybe you’ve seen it on TikTok… ‘Well We Bought An Old Church’ is the account name…. And I’ll probably be too busy editing reels…” truth be told David hated social media… but he loved a good match of wits.

“Touché’ good sir, touché’!” He was so quick on his feet and that was something that had attracted you to him from the very beginning. You kept each other on your toes… there was always a good bit of playful ribbing that you both enjoyed. Nothing mean, just something fun that got you both laughing regularly.

That afternoon the two of you bundled up in thick winter coats, gloves, hats, boots, and for extra measure you wrapped your head in a thick wool scarf. You both planned on having a few drinks and wanted to err on the side of caution… so you walked the short distance to the bar. Your feet crunched in the dry snow. Normally you’d walk side by side but today you fell in line behind David, his body blocking some of the blistering wind that cut through you, even with your layers and coat… with the ease of a surgeon’s scalpel. Your exposed skin stung. You were thankful for the sun, though it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. Negative four degrees with a feels like temperature of -25 didn’t give a shit about sun… freezing was freezing. Earlier in the day David had dropped off his bisque entry… not before you ladeled two heaping scoops into a bowl for breakfast. Despite the weight of the full crock pot, you almost wished you could have carried the hot dish all the way to the bar… maybe your fingers wouldn’t feel like they were on the verge of snapping off your hands?

“Well at least on the way back… after a few drinks in us… the walk shouldn’t feel as cold…” David turned to say to you…

“Actually did you know that’s a fallacy? Drinking alcohol might make you feel warmer temporarily but the flushing of your skin and the blood rising to your skin’s surface actual cools your core temperature…”

David rolled his eyes…. “Womp, womp… Debbie fucking Downer here… maybe keep that little factoid to yourself when we get to the bar…”

You laughed. Another personal defect of yours… you couldn’t stand to let an incorrect tidbit of information go uncorrected… “Just saying…” you offered.

“Well don’t,” He laughed as the two of you reached the bar and he opened the door to let you in.

Inside you were greated by a rush of warm air, the smell of beer on tap and hot soup simmering in almost two dozen crock pots along the back wall on folding tables and shelves. The place was packed. The owner who knew you both well by now… everyone in town knew you both at this point…. You were “those people that bought the church” or even “Vanessa and Dave,” handed you both a stack of little sampling cups and a small spoon for each of you as she smiled then went back to handing out her cups and spoons.

Several people made their way over to you and David, “How’s the church coming along,” one man whom you had never met wanted to know. David told him the standard… “Good, tons of work to go but we’re getting there.”

When he left you asked David who that was, “Oh that was the guy that does masonry… I saw him the other day at Lowe’s when I was grabbing the floor leveler…”

A little later a woman walked by before stopping, “Oh hey… it’s you guys…” then she laughed, “I have so many pictures of you both on my phone…”

“Ummmmm…. Ok… that’s weird…” you replied.

“I mean from when you competed in the Field Day competition… I was in charge of photographing everything…” she laughed.

“Ok good… because if they were taken through our windows, that would have been really fucking creepy,” you said.

You both found that pretty funny, “No, I promise I’m not a creeper.”

“Good to know!” You smiled.

After who knows how many drinks another woman walked by David and stopped him… “Hey… you’re that church guy… aren’t you?” And before he could even answer… “You know there’s some lady here that bought a church and she has a TikTok and I follow her… you should check it out…”

“Yeah… that’s my wife… we bought the church together…”

“Huh… imagine that… small world…” she managed before swaying off to join her group.

You and David sampled soups, the stuffed red pepper being both of your favorites, you drank Guiness on tap from thick pint glasses, and waited in anticipation of the contest winner’s announcement. When it came, David took third place, winning $40 cash (enough to cover his soup cost), a $75 bar tab, and some wooden soup spoons and potholders. The stuffed red pepper soup took first place. Rightfully so you both agreed as you walked home later that afternoon.

Outside the sun was beginning to set casting long blue grey shadows on the sparkling snow that reflected back a cool yellow sun. You always loved the juxtaposition of color in a winter landscape. Where most people saw bleak white and grey, you saw pops of blue, purple, reds and steely grays in the winter shadows, and flecks of yellows, pinks, and green glitter in snow set in a sparkly blaze from the bright sun.

David stopped to pull two joints out of his pocket… “You want one for the walk?” He asked.

“Yup.”

He took out his silver metal lighter and popped both joints into pursed lips, carefully lighting them both at once, one hand expertly flicking the lighter open, the other shielding everything from the wind. He took them both out and offered you first pick… he always offered you first pick even though they were always the same… you always chose the one closest to you… appreciating the sentiment. You held the joint in your lips, peeling one of your mittens off with your other hand…

You inhaled deeply, the taste of red pepper soup and bisque and Guinness, and now the sour tang of smoke filling your mouth.

“That was nice to place today… Did you hear the owner’s friend joking around telling us not to come back anymore because we keep placing in all of the competitions we’ve entered?”

“Ha, no I didn’t catch that…” you pulled in a long drag as David exhaled his… a small cloud of smoke quickly dissipating in the cold dry air…

“Yeah… well I had fun… I wasn’t expecting third place…”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” said David, “That definitely wasn’t my best bisque…”

“True… but it was still good…”

“The stuffed pepper was awesome…”

“It really was.” And then with a playful ribbing, “Sure takes a special kind of loser to not get first place with lobster fucking bisque.”

David’s eyes squinted like they always do when he finds something hilarious… “That’s good Vaness… really funny,” he was laughing. You both were.

“Thought you’d like that. For real though, congratulations. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks.”

The rest of the walk home was in silence, the two of you crunching along through the snow… you both finished your joints right before you got back home, stubbing them out in the snow and tossing them into a neighbor’s open trash bin before heading back into the church’s foyer to clap the snow off your boots.

*************************************************************************

For the first time since moving in, the kids no longer stomped, jumped, or stampeded down the church’s old wooden steps. How many times had you asked them not to do it… that the noise destroyed your nerves only to be met with blank stares and stomping feet just a few hours later….?

“Oops… we forgot!” They’d reply.

Now though: they didn’t make a sound on the stairs. You couldn’t believe your luck. Maybe the stairs being broken was the solution all along… they practically tiptoed down each flight. It was amazing what the fear of plunging into the crawl space could do that a simple ask… a plead really, could not.

The next day while they were in school, as David had promised he climbed into the crawlspace through the derelict half bath where the toilet had fallen through the floor and the rotting wall had been ripped out. Silver linings everywhere. With him he dragged in his drill, a box of wood screws and some precut pieces of two by fours. Within ten minutes he had the stairs shored up and safe again… and to prove it to you… because you always appreciated the visual peace of mind, he even jumped up and down on the formerly broken treads. They didn’t so much as wiggle.

“Well this is awesome. I feel so much better knowing that none of us are going to be impaled while crashing through the stairs into the crawlspace. Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome,” David replied.

“Hey?”

“Uh-huh?” David asked…

“Did you notice that the kids aren’t stomping anymore? I feel like I’ve gotten part of my sanity back…”

“I did notice that,” he said…

“Maybe can you do me one more favor…?”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe can you never tell them that you fixed the stairs?”

David started laughing… “I can definitely do that…”

“Great… thank you.”

And the kids never stomped on the stairs again… the incessant jumping in the sanctuary and the loose ceiling planks and chunks of plaster that still fell in the basement on occasion was another story altogether… but for now… as they say: baby steps…

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David with his third place win… We had such a good time!

“Say Cheese!” Hamming it up during the “Soup-er Bowl”… and maybe a few beers in…

Competition was stiff… there were so many amazing entries! I think just about two dozen people participated. Some of David’s favorites (most were made with meat which meant I couldn’t eat them lol) were the Cheeseburger Soup, the Stuffed Red Pepper Soup, and the Potato Leek Soup… David has already been thinking of ideas for the next “Soup-er Bowl” competition. He plans on trying out some new recipes between now and then… and by recipes I mean that he never uses a recipe and just throws stuff together and some how it manages to come out amazing nearly every single time… like just a few weeks ago he made a Japanese Squash Soup that was absolutely incredible! That one was definitely a winner in my book!

Here’s a little video I put together of the stair repair… it goes quick but so did the repair so maybe that’s apropos?

******************************************************

I’m honestly shocked that the stair repair was so quick and easy because… The funny thing is that virtually NOTHING is quick, easy (or cheap) here. Since we bought the church I’ve made friends on different social media platforms with several other people who have bought churches to live in just like we did, along with quite a few people that are either in the process of or beginning to look for their very own church. It’s fun to be able to help the newbies with any questions they may have… like the one person I have been helping to try to find a mortgage lender… apparently getting a mortgage on a church is like trying to well in keeping with today’s chapter: eat soup with a fork…

But speaking of nothing being quick here and my church pals who have been living the church life for far longer than we have… apparently that’s actually a thing… a verified phenomen that one friend has coined as “church time.” Meaning that there’s your regular house renovation time… which if you’ve ever renovated a house, kitchen, bathroom, etc… you probably already know is a shit-show in which normal time frames cease to exist and everything takes infinitely longer than one might have expected. My husband… a contractor is not only well versed in this, but he’s often had to talk many a riled up homeowner off the edge when the painters, or plumbers, or cabinet makers are weeks, or even months behind and the home owner is losing their ever loving shit… which is fair.

And apparently “church time” is leaps and bounds worse. Whatever timeframe you might conjure up in your brain for demo, bathroom remodel, drywall installation, etc… you’re going to want to take that number, multiply it by 87, divide by two, add 43, and then subtract five… and you might come close (probably not) to an actual finish date. Hey… I don’t make the rules. Cost? HA! Don’t even get me started on that.

Fine… you got me started.

Apparently when you buy a church… this is a thing too… people assume that you’re loaded. It’s a crazy stretch considering that most churches are far less expensive than your average starter home and very compelling for that very reason. For instance my church pal that coined the expression “church time” bought her 10,000 square foot church for $37,000 cash… a freaking steal. Another friend of ours bought a 5,000 square foot church for $75,000… the cost to buy a 10,000 or even a 5,000 square foot house would be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Now the caveat of course is that you are going to pay an absolute fucking fortune should you hire anyone to do the work… which I think brings me back to my initial point being that people assume that you’re loaded and probably tack on an extra… oh I don’t know… $100,000 to any estimate. Now in all fairness, yes… I understand that putting a roof on a 7,000 square foot building with a steep as fuck incline isn’t child’s play and is going to take a bit of know how and some heavy equipment (and no fear of heights) … but the rest of it? Kinda feels like taking candy from a baby. If you buy a church and you’re not loaded… you better be able to do all of the work, or nearly all of the work yourself (which I learned VERY quickly).

For instance… when we started the basement renovation and I was just beginning to comprehend the concept of “church time” and thinking, “what in the absolute fuckery have I gotten myself into” having just begun the painstakingly slow process of chiseling 130 year old plaster off 50’ x 11’ times 2 walls… I had the bright idea… “Hey… let’s call a professional and see what they would charge us to put in a basement French drain system.” I had seen the adds on Facebook: We’re looking for people in your area with damp, moldy basements, that always stink of rot… check, check and check… hoping that maybe they could solve our problem of figuring out how to dry out this basement and shave a good deal of time off our project…

So I made the appointment, a nice man came out, introduced himself, then walked into our basement and I’m pretty sure I saw the look of utter shock and disbelief wash over him, wondering what in the absolute fuckery have we had gotten ourselves into which… was a totally fair question… been there, done that, sir… I could definitely relate. He walked around, took measurements, told us he had to call his boss, and he walked outside. I heard bits and pieces of his conversation… “What do I even tell these people??!!” His flabbers were surely gasted and I’m sure his boss said something like… “Just add $20,000 and maybe they’ll go away…” and he did and we did.

He told us that it would cost roughly $30,000, that he couldn’t even guarantee that their fix would work, that they really couldn’t even get a full drainage system in, and basically ‘could we just lose their number please and thank you’ (though that last part is just speculation)? On top of that they weren’t going to finish the plaster removal or haul out the debris… I am usually pretty good at cost estimation on projects… that’s something, even if I absolutely suck at time estimation, that I’m actually pretty good at… in my mind this was a $10k - $15k tops job… but when you own a church? All bets are off.

Then there was the heating and cooling company that came out to give us an estimate on replacing an old, existing furnace and installing two new ones to heat the sanctuary which we plan on doing at some point in the future so that we can rent the space out for upscale events… but that’s another story. Well I think this nice man thought that we wiped our asses with $100 dollar bills because the numbers that came out of his mouth were not only not even in the ballpark of what I would have expected… they were four states over… by a bike… with two flat tires.

To replace the existing furnace and add new duct work, I was quoted $40,000. When I picked my jaw up off the ground and managed to stammer, ‘what about just the furnace and we keep the existing duct work,’ and he told me $20,000 I just about went into shock. Silly me I shouldn’t have even asked about the sanctuary but at this point… why the fuck not if we’re just throwing shit out there… and this man told me that it would be a six figure number…. And not just $100k six figures… his exact words and I quote were, “WELL into the six figures…” which at that point, I thanked him for his time and he went on his way. He called us a few times after that and even came back to leave his card… because apparently my Walmart brand sneakers and 20 year old pair of work pants still had him thinking that we were “incognito rich”… but we never got back to him because… there was a better chance of me riding off into the sunset on a unicorn to gallop through the Narnia wardrobe than there was of us shelling out whatever the fuck numbers this guy was putting out there.

Now if you’re thinking… “well geez Vanessa… maybe the cost of labor and the cost of the furnaces justified those (astronomical) quotes,” I see you and I hear you and also… no. No they did not. Prior to having this gentleman out I did my due diligence… I don’t like to sound like an idiot and so I like to come to the table with some working knowledge of what I’m getting myself into (unless it’s the biggest investment I’ll ever make in my life like… oh I don’t know… buying a church LMAO). So I spoke with my cousin who owns a heating and cooling business and has been running it for probably 35 - 40 years now and we came up with some ballpark estimates. The guy who came out to give us the estimate… as I said before… was not even close to our field.

Then just to double check… I spoke with my Uncle who also runs a heating and cooling business (third generation) and we talked very specific numbers. Want to know what the actual cost was of the furnaces were that were going to cost us easily $20k if not more per furnace? If you guessed $2,600 dollars each… congratulations… we’re in the same fucking park again. Want a hot dog?

My point in all of this is that I think when you buy a church like this people make a lot of assumptions about your net worth (joke’s on them lol) and other people (me… I’m other people) make a whole lot of assumptions about the timeframes that it will actually take to bring these projects to fruition. We have been at this basement project now for half a fucking year… Jesus Christ…. that’s wild to say… And I am JUST NOW starting to wise up on the timeframe aspect (I caught on to the financial one real fucking quick).

People since basically day one, have asked me… “Well how much longer do you think it will be before you finish this basement project up…?” and so I’d think of everything that we had to left to do, and I’d roll that information around in my head, really mull it over… pondering how long everything had already taken us thus far… and then I’d say something that seemed completely plausible like say… oh I don’t know ‘four to six weeks’ and then five months later and still no closer to being done I’d laugh and laugh and laugh (am I laughing or crying… I don’t even know anymore) and finally I just wised up and started answering: We’ll be done when we’re fucking done.

Because quite frankly I have no fucking clue…

“Church time” is wild. And I am JUST starting to pick up on that.

…because at this point I am apparently working on my master’s degree at the “School of Hard Knocks…” maybe you’ve heard of it before?

And also: I’ll let you know when I get that doctorate… That’s “Doctor Dumbass” to you sir… I fucking EARNED that title!

I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!!!!!!