38) The Ship-Show

It was strange to you now because although you had ‘finish’ dates in mind for the basement… and they changed frequently… you never really imagined the basement being finished.

Even now when you and David were getting ready to roll the paint, you didn’t feel that much closer to when you started. It was a strange feeling… you wondered if it was internalized self doubt or just finally starting to realize that this project would NEVER be done.

Not the basement per se. The basement would eventually be done… mostly… but you were now acutely aware of something that although you ‘knew’ on day one… you didn’t really ‘know, know.’

Much like one might have an idea as to what it would be like to parent children, one really had no fucking clue until they were deep in the trenches. And this whole renovation felt very much the same.

You knew… but you also had no fucking clue. Even now… nearly eight months in and you were still feeling relatively clueless.

There was ALWAYS something to be done… or something that would need to be done at some juncture in time. There was never going to be that: everything is done and ready to go moment like what you’d see on a reality show where the homeowners leave town for a week then don blindfolds and dramatically turn towards their fully renovated home before the host would count down… “3… 2… 1…!” The blindfolds would come off and everyone would exclaim, “Oh wow… oh my god… I love it…” and inevitably someone would start crying and the host would say, “But wait! There’s more… let me show you inside!” To which everyone would clamber to the front door and the “wows” would be repeated upon entry… “Oh wow… oh my god… I love it…’

“The Big Reveal…” that’s what they called it.

This however was no reality show. It was just plain old fucking reality. And the reality was… this place would NEVER be done. Ever.

Period.

What would a big reveal cost? The kind where you’d leave for a week… in this case probably at least six months, and you’d come home to a fully restored and repaired church…?

“And if you come this way Ms LeVesque… you’ll see that not only did we fix the impossible ceiling leak in the sanctuary… but we put on a whole new roof!”

That’d be close to $150k if not more. That was more than you paid for your first home.

You regularly thanked your lucky stars that even though the roof sucked, you probably had at least another 20 years left on her.

“Now Ms LeVesque… I don’t know if you noticed this yet… but we put in radiant heat flooring in the sanctuary… look at those gorgeous floors! No more subfloors!” You would start crying at this point… you were definitely the cryer.

You had priced that out several months ago… radiant heat flooring for the sanctuary. Not even the labor… just the materials… of course it would be another DIY job… and then you laughed… and laughed… and laughed… and laughed again… never fucking happening. Seventy Five Fucking Thousand Dollars… just to buy the flooring materials…. And that didn’t even include the actual floor…. That was at least another $30-$75k depending upon what you chose. HA!

“Oh but Ms LeVesque… we’re not through yet… we put in all new windows… Anderson windows… no expense was spared… as well as central AC!”

You hadn’t even bothered pricing that shit out.

Welp… a gal could dream. Reality though was that this church would need a full time team of dedicated handy-people working indefinitely to not only restore, but to keep this place up. And speaking of dreams… that was definitely one of them. None of this even addressed the issue of cost.

You found it all funny though; oddly enough you weren’t at all cynical about any of it. You found it all pretty comical. Which you found interesting in and of itself considering that cynicism seemed to course more powerfully through your veins with each revolution you made around the sun. Maybe it was because this was the first thing outside of painting for a living, that you had ever really chosen on your own… of your own accord… aside from your husband… a co-conspirator to all of this crazy….

This was YOUR nut house… errr church. You did sign up for this. These were your fucking monkeys… and you were the ringmaster in this batshit nuts, crazy ass circus.

Cue the clown car!

And yet there was something satisfying about that. Lunacy and all. This was your shit-show. You were Captain Kirk… this was your Enterprise… even if maybe sometimes you felt more like Captain Phillips on the Maersk Alabama… when the bees, and the leaks, and the bats… always the fucking bats… seized the ship. Maybe even when you weren’t in control… you still took some solace in knowing that this was still your ship to command… even if the pirates did have a gun to your temple… You were a good captain… and you would ride this bitch down to the bottom of the sea with a huge fucking grin on your face if that’s what it came to.

Or… maybe you had just inhaled way too many paint strippers at this point.

Regardless… you were immersed in this journey and you felt a full sense of duty… a fulfilling sense of duty… that kept you stationed at the helm of your proverbial ship-show… You owed it to yourself to keep up the never ending navigation… so long as this ship was in your command, it was up to you to keep her afloat, to steer clear of icebergs… to ward off pillagers…

“Did you see the bees are back?” David said, jarring you out of your cruising captain fantasy world.

“What did you just say???”

“I said… did you see that the fucking bees are back?”

“You’re kidding me right?”

“You really think I would joke about that?”

“No. I guess not… because that would be really fucked up if you did.”

“It wouldn’t be funny either.”

“We paid that guy a small fucking fortune to get rid of them…”

“And I sealed up the hive entrance… really, really, really well…”

You sighed deeply, “Put that shit on a to do list somewhere I guess (what else could you do?): TAKE CARE OF BEES… AGAIN…”

“Which one? Which list should I add it to…? We’ve got a list of lists going at this point…”

And we did…

ICEBERG DEAD AHEAD!

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

There were finally some breaks in the weather, little teases of spring… 74 degrees one day and then 30 the next. You had forgotten about the crazy weather patterns of the NorthEast. Mother nature was doing her due diligence in reminding you. You both took advantage of the nice days peppered in to the lingering winter.

“I’m thinking that we could turn all this soil in the next few weeks…” you said pointing to one of the huge eight planter beds in the yard. It was sunny and warm out, “I was digging in the garden a little bit and unlike the rest of the yard, this was really easy to dig through…. Even with my arm like it is”

“Yeah, I think that will be nice to get the garden going… I’m really looking forward to that…”

“Me too…”

You saw it out of the corner of your eye… a large insect of some sort, you assumed a fly… you couldn’t quite tell if it had landed on your shoulder or your head and just as you reached out to swat it away…

“Careful!” David warned you, “There’s a bee on you.”

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” You darted from where you were standing… there really was no need to be afraid of them… the bees, yet your reptilian brain always won out when it came to bugs… you were running… especially if they stung or looked especially gross.

When your senses caught up to your knee jerk reaction and you stopped running and flailing your arms you turned to David, who stood in the center of the yard…

“Speaking of bees… look at that shit…” he said pointing to where the massive hive had been, where he had hastily and temporarily sealed all of the gaps in the soffit… a mad dash to beat the impending winter.

You had to watch very carefully on account of the old hive being so far off the ground, but there they were, a handful of bees buzzing about the old hive entrance. Every so often one would land on the soffit and begin crawling across the wood before disappearing into what you could only imagine was an overlooked gap.

“Un-fucking-real…” you sighed.

“I wish it weren’t real…”

“So I guess we’ll figure that out then?”

“I mean what else are we gonna do?”

And just like that, you spun the wheel… the ship slowly creaked and groaned, turned with the new angle of her rudder… another deviation from your strategically plotted course. How far off your intended route you’d venture… you were beginning to realize, wasn’t really up to you. You’d get there when you got there… and at this point, who even knew where the fuck ‘where’ was…

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*Recreation of the bees… and me seeing them…

Somehow the bees found a way in… yeah I know… doesn’t look great (yet) but the basement took priority here lol! The bees were coming in right where the downspout comes off the gutter. Good thing it’s not too hard to get to (sarcasm there - it’s almost 40’ up off the ground).