.... ah, Billy Joel and the days of old. I cannot hear that song (which is playing now) without remembering Toronto and the 1970's and singing along to that song with my friends while doing things that were, and still are, mostly illegal. I was coerced though, because I am very easily led. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it :-) Ah, the days of old......
KEVIN BACON: Just read an interview with Kevin Bacon and the fact he almost didn't get the role in footloose because the studio head didn't think he was f**kable enough. Hilarious. For the record, I didn't like footloose, or Kevin Bacon for that matter in those days, or the dancing, the songs or the whole frolic of it all. The river wild, now that was when I realized I actually liked Kevin Bacon because the applie pie face of his made a really really good evil dude and he seemed to really enjoy being evil. Oh yes and stir of echoes. Loved it too, just thought I'd add that.
The HOUSE: We are putting up cedar trees for hand rails. Yes, oh yes we are. Dave got them from his friend Pete who cut down a bunch and they were exceptionally straight and the perfect diameter for handrails. So they're up. And of course we have no idea what we'll do between the top and bottom rail, that's sort of "to be determined" at this point but that's the kinda stuff that doesn't cause us one spec of concern. Putting in the septic, that concerns us, considering we've never installed one before and have no clue. Oh yes and affording all this since we are, in fact, building this house as we go along.
5 YEARS: Today is the 5 year anniversary of the day we signed on the dotted land and so began the story of the Iron Dog Ranch. (Named after our deceased dog Max, who's actually buried on our land. Max spent about 5 years not meeting anyone because he would randomly walk over and bite people but if you ask Dave, he will say Max is the best dog he ever had. Max was, and always will be, the Iron Dog, although I also call Dave that as he gets a little greyer and impresses me more and more with the way he's pulled this whole thing off. He really is quite incredible).
By the way, having never built a house before was huge. Deciding to design it ourselves, that was at times overwhelming. To anyone who ever thinks of designing and building their own house: NOTE to selves: It looks nothing like it did on paper, no matter how hard you try to be accurate. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, I'm just sayin.....
Dave no longer looks at the designs and I never did, so that just adds an even crazier element to it all. We've changed so much on the fly (Dave says I'm the worst and best client he's ever had). Fortunately we're both artists, scavengers of things old and unusual, and we did work together professionally at one time (5 years to be specific) so it's not like we aren't experienced in building together. So for the most part we don't fight or even freak out. And we just throw in ideas and if it's cool, we just build it. And just once in awhile, when it dawns on us how crazy building this house has really been, and how not even looking at the plans is really ballsy, well then we freak out a little. Did I mention we are building the entire thing ourselves, board by board, block by block? The first night of the actual build, we spent 2 hours lining up a line of 10 concrete blocks because we couldn't get it all square, and we looked around at the 2,800 blocks (I would come to learn that a block weights 37 pounds and let me tell you something: the last block is as heavy as the first block) piled up around us on so many pallettes we couldn't count the pallettes there was so many, and I came pretty close to completely freaking out. I looked at Dave, sort of horrified, and he looked at me and smiled and said "Hey, ...it'll be fun...." and there was a silence then, broken by the sound of the birds and the frogs off in the distance on this pleasant Loess Hills night in Iowa and neither of us said anything for a really long time... "we are so screwed" I finally said (it was all I could think of to say because It was all I was thinking over and over again...). and we both laughed the first of what would be a long string of "we're screwed" laughs to come in later months.
Very shortly the construction crew (consisting of the two of us, as I have kept repeating), will be handing the build over to the artist crew (consisting of the two of us yet again) to really start the fun. Maybe the fighting will start then. (but I don't think so :-) But I don't really know for sure..... We don't even have running water yet. :-) We are so screwed. But happy anniversary to us :-)
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