i haven’t written in a whole week because i’ve been very busy scanning, going to missouri, and roofing.
yes, that’s right, roofing. i can add that to my resume of very valuable skills.
when we were in missouri over the weekend (it was beautiful, by the way, and we did take photos of our cabin in the woods, but of course i haven’t had time even to download them from the camera yet), on monday, a shopkeeper in the quaint town of hermann mentioned that it was supposed to snow by wednesday. when we were driving back to splfd monday night, kevin said that if it freezes and snows, it could completely mess up the unfinished part of the roof.
remember kevin working on the roof? starting in the spring? one section of the roof wasn’t finished. and suddenly he had ONLY ONE DAY to finish it. i said i’d help. because of his knee injury, it would have been very bad for him to lift the bundles of shingles onto the roof, so i cut the bundles open and carried them a few at a time.
i made it up to the roof even though i was fairly petrified. it was a perfectly lovely day on tuesday, sunny and warm and the view from the roof was great. honey our cat has been climbing the ladder all summer long and jumping on the awning in the back, and she was quite happy that we were up there to visit with her.
sometimes, though, she wanted to climb down the ladder at the exact same time as i was climbing down, so we had words. at one point she decided to lie down right on the step below me. by some miracle neither of us fell.
after i got comfortable walking on the roof, i started laying out the shingles for kevin, who then pounded them in. after a few hours – well i was very tired after a few hours. it was amazing, the energy needed for carrying shingles up the ladder. i was ready for lunch an hour after we started. but after a few hours it was clear that we’d need more shingles. randy had called me and said he was off work for the afternoon, and i suggested to kevin that we ask randy to come over and help me load more shingles into the car. i said, maybe we could even persuade him to carry the shingles to the roof, then i could buy another roofing hammer and help pound, because it didn’t look like rocket science to me.
so randy arrived, thinking he was going to be done in an hour, and we managed to kidnap him for the entire afternoon. we went to the store (while kevin kept pounding nails) and bought more shingles and loaded them up and i asked him if he’d help carry them up and he said, sure, and pretty soon he was very hard at work. much much more than he’d bargained for.
hammering wasn’t so bad, actually easier than lugging the shingles onto the roof.
on monday i had suggested that we get mom to help us, because she’s always up for anything. i described the time, a year or so ago, when she teetered on the very top of a tall ladder in the living room of amy and jim’s old house, and painted the very top part of the very high ceiling.
kevin, though, didn’t think we should ask mom to climb up on the roof. clearly he’s still not fully aware of mom’s many talents.
mom showed up tuesday afternoon, dressed nicely with earrings and a matching necklace, which i could see in detail because suddenly there she was up on the roof with us, in her sandals, asking what she could do.
at this point it was about 3 o’clock and the day was quickly getting away from us. it seemed impossible that we’d finish before nightfall. kevin started ordering her around, and soon the four of us were buzzing around the roof, just like the amish people. that’s how i thought of us, anyway, although if we were amish, i’m sure mom and i would have been downstairs making pie instead of pounding in nails and ripping up pieces of old shingles.
(i just made a perfect mince thanksgiving pie, by the way, or at least it looks perfect. a couple of thanskgivings ago i made a pumpkin pie but forgot the sugar and hopefully this pie will be better than that one.)
as we worked and worked i got more and more tired. pretty soon i had no strength left in my hands at all.
and i had to give a massage at 5:30, so i had to stop hammering by 4:30. but how was i going to give a massage with no strength left in my hands, not to mention all-over fatigue? i kept telling randy that i was so tired that i was going to cry. he and mom both kept making noises like they had to leave, but kevin would have none of it. even though he’s one of the most mild-mannered people i know, he somehow impressed upon them that they COULD NOT LEAVE.
but i did. i showered (i wish i had a photo of how completely horrible i looked while roofing) and ate something and felt that i would at least have the energy to drive to the massage appointment. as i left, at about 5:10, it was pretty dark, but they were still at it. the rain was supposed to start tuesday night, and there was a couple-inch hole along the entire length of the roof peak. so it had to be done.
i sort of had some doubt, but i knew that somehow kevin would do it. i wasn’t sure how he was going to finish in the dark, but he did. by the time i got home of course i couldn’t see how it looked, and kevin was at work already. i, personally, was ready for bed right then, but i HAD TO DO MORE SCANNING.
oh, and i had to buy groceries and make pies.
so now you see why i haven’t written.
but now the roof is done, the pies are made, the scanning has been stopped for now. there are many many great slides of mom’s trip to europe, plus many great ones from when we were growing up. as a matter of fact, i’ll put a couple of them up right now.
but first, a few photos of austria. we were in the wine country, monday afternoon, and we went to the little touristy quaint town of Durnstein. we had to climb a fairly steep hill to get into the town.
the main street was, indeed, crawling with tourists. we walked our bikes and talked about just walking right through and out of town, but we decided to park on a side street.
we went to a restaurant and had a glass of wine and looked at the river. it was completely uncrowded, away from the shoppers.
we walked down to the water, and here’s me in my lovely biking gear.
this is a view of durnstein castle, taken from the river. it’s one of my favorite photos that kevin took.
we’d been in town for a couple hours, and by the time we wandered back up to the main street, the crowds were thinning considerably. we stopped at a shop that proclaimed FREE BRANDY AND CHOCOLATE SAMPLES, and did quite a bit of sampling. some other biking americans showed up and one man started ordering the saleswoman around and buying everything. he was kind of annoying, but not horrible. we started talking to his wife – they had just taken another bike trip, from vienna to budapest. i can’t imagine doing two bike trips back to back. she also said that on the first day of this trip, they had started late and therefore missed the ferry that was supposed to take them the last part of the route for the day, so they had to bike fifty miles in a day. i said “i’ve never ridden 5o miles in a day.” and she said “neither had i.” they looked kind of tired.
they were in a big organized group, and were headed for the same hotel in krems where we were going.
we went into a few of the tourist shops, but most of the stuff looked like junk, so we bought very little (except for the chocolate and the brandy). driving out of town, the wine country was dwindling, but it was still very pretty. as we arrived in krems we saw the couple from the group, and the guy had a GPS on his bike, so we decided to follow him, because he must know where he was going.
he didn’t. not really, anyway. we all conferred, using the guidebook, and found the hotel pretty easily.
it wasn’t a great place. kevin kept saying it was like a dorm room. it was a big room, with a view of some old place off in the distance, bu our immediate view was of the back of the hotel and all the trash bins. all the furniture in the room was really cheap and it felt kind of depressing.
we had to wash clothes, so we did that in the big bathtub, and then draped them all over the place, which made it look a lot like a tenement. we walked over to the main street, which was a big pedestrian zone, but most of the shops were closed. i had read that krems was a “hidden gem” of austria, but like linz, we weren’t sold on it.
we were headed for a little town called Stockerau the next day, and we wondered if that hotel was going to be any better. it was called the drei koniskof, but it had been changed to the BEST WESTERN drei knoiskof. hmm.
ok, that’s all for now,
grace.