Saved by Some Buddies

The house mentioned in the previous post got a MAJOR overhaul over the weekend. The basement remodelling/reconstruction took it's last major step with the installation of laminate wood flooring (about 1,000 square feet worth.) It was really the difference we needed to start moving in. We still have to do a few minor things like add the baseboards and a few joint pieces, but we can start moving the furniture in any time now.
The progress was mostly the result of the dedication of some great friends (Don, Jayme, and Kathy) who unselfishly gave up their Saturday to help us out.
Installing the flooring is relatively simple, but there is a lot of measuring, cutting, laying down underlaymment materials, and just generally figuring things out. I've always been best at the grunt stuff, and fortunately, Jayme, who is an engineer, and a pretty skilled craftsman, figured out the measurements and technical details. Don did most of the prep stuff with the underlayments and kept me supplied with the cut pieces of flooring.
We spent from 10:00 AM until about 5:00 PM on our knees crawling around, and by the time we were done, I was just flat worn out. My knees, shoulder, wrists, back, and head were all used up, but the sense of satisfaction (and a few beers and and handful of Ibufprofen) more than made up for that.
Once I figure out how to post pictures on this thing, I'll let you see how good it looks.

I was thinking yesterday about my grandmother and grandfather who riginally owned this house. He was a master do-it-yourselfer who could fix anything, and she was a master worrier. I think I got more of her traits. In the last years that she lived here, the unfinished basement became the family dumping ground for old furniture and stuff that people couldn't bring themselves to throw away. The basement used to be packed to the ceiling with boxes, sofas, and tools.
Today, the same space is wide open, and ready to be used for living.

Surely You're Not Going to Stay

Our house is the house that my Dad's parents first bought in the early 1950's when Decatur, Georgia, was still a bedroom community to Atlanta.
My parents bought the house from my grandmother when she moved into an assisted-living community nearby in the mid 1990's. My parents were gracious in letting us rent the house for years at very market-friendly rates, and in October of last year, we worked out a deal where I (meaning my wife and I, of course,) bought the house from them.
As I was going through the loan application with the mortgage broker, he explained to me that I would have the house for three or four years and then sell it, and he wanted to base the loan on that theory. He told me that "everyone does this." I explained the above history to him, and he dismissed my protestations and assured me that I would be moving on in a few years.
I have read a lot of Wendell Berry, G.K. Chesterton, and a (relative) newcomer Rod Dreher, who have written of the virtues of staying put, and growing a family as one grows a garden or farm. One does not reap a bountiful harvest by uprooting the plants every year and moving them 300 miles. Of course, one must nourish the soil and care for it, but if done properly, the earth will sustain life for a very long time.
I love the fact that my house (our house) still smells the same as it did when I walked into it as a child to visit my grandparents. Even after a major renovation in 1996 and the contributions of Olive (our Basset Hound) haven't eliminated the smell. The smell is that of old wood and incense, and it's there for me, every time I walk in. The original refrigerator that came with the house is still plugged in and still works in the basement. The refrigerator is one of those coffin lidded behemoths with the (deadly) locking handle.
We have many, many pictures of my family (aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sister) in this house celebrating holidays, birthdays, and plain old visits in this house. The clothes and hair give a pretty good idea when they happened. When I was a kid, we visited both sets of grandparents almost every weekend, or so I remember it. My paternal grandparents lived about 500 yards away on a different street, so we usually saw both sets the same day. What great memories I have of my grandparents, and how blessed am I that my parents gave me that gift.
I spents hours and hours in this house as a child visiting my grandparents, and just the other day, I was explaininging to a visitor, and demonstrating how the refrigerator used to be here, and we would open it up, and be amazed at the old 12 ounce glass bottles of Coke, which we always had to have poured into a glass. I can still feel the feeling of my teeth scraping together and sliding off of one another from all of the sugar that used to be used in Coke in the orthodox days for corn syrup became cheaper and easier.
My parents live in the house in which I grew up in nearby Dunwwody. These days, we pack up the kids and take the exact opposite trip that I took to visit my grandparents. We visit them a lot. On purpose.

Day #3 and still going...well, not exactly strong as my battery is about to die.
This still counts!!!

Day #2 and I'm still writing.
Last night, we had to go to the "last chance Mass" due to the bicycling emergecy aforementioned. I was going to take the two older kids, but Will (3) was just begging to go. I knew he would fall asleep about 10 minutes in, and sure enough, as soon as the homily started, he was out (no offense, Monsignor!)
How can you not take a kid to Mass when he's literally begging to go?
My wife joked that I "caved" to him (which I sometimes accuse her of too, really, who hasn't at some point?) But, if there were ever a time to cave, it's when one's three year-old is at the point of crying to go TO Mass...

We started training for the MS 150 today. We got about 4 miles down the road and Tim hit some railroad tracks at the wrong angle. The bike stopped, but he didn't. I heard the sound and glanced over my shoulder to see Tim fly over his handlebars and shoulder roll across a silt fence and into the mud.
When I got to him, I thought he was OK, but then I saw the blood on his shirt on his upper chest. In flying into the silt fence, he caught his chest on a piece of re-bar which tore across and through his left pectoral muscle exposing an awful lot of flesh underneath.
I didn't see any evidence of a deeper puncture, but we called 911 and an ambulance came quickly to patch him up and take him to the ER to make sure he was OK. Had he hit the re-bar about a foot either higher or lower, he could have really ripped something vital open. I found his helmet visor split in two near the scene, and there was evidence that the visor had struck metal at some point.
I had been a lackluster helmet wearer, but no more. Tim knew what he was doing, and he was sent flying pretty easily. It is not hard for me to see how easily one can hurt one's brain falling from a bike. I was converted in an instant, and now I see bike helmets like I do seatbelts, and don't leave the driveway without either a seatbelt or a helmet.
I also have a Miraculous Medal that I got in the mail in an appeal for contriutions that hangs from my handlebars. Maybe that's how I got over the tracks before Tim???