There have been very few moments in the past seven years when I have felt anything even remotely akin to sympathy for our glorious leader, George Dubya Bush. But recently, I have an idea of what he must feel like as he tries to plan, invent, deploy, re-plan, re-invent, re-deploy, obfuscate, and rebut debate on his strategy for the war. As little as two entries ago, I announced a major shift in our tactics on the hillside. We would abandon our roofing goals, to be achieved at a later date. Instead, we would re-deploy our forces to the installation of windows and doors, since that goal seemed to be achievable in the here and now. Well, the here and now came and went, and the harsh reality of life without a roof slapped us firmly about the head, face and neck. There is a natural order to things on this big blue marble we call home, and to those who risk doing things out of sequence, the piper must be paid. After we paid with leaking windows and runny caulk, our strategy took a one-eighty and lo and behold, we were talking about the roof again. We realized we really couldn’t do much more without it. Once we accepted this, it was as if a great weight was lifted from our shoulders and a veil removed from our eyes. There is much wisdom in the old saying, ‘The roof will set you free.’
Before we could start putting the roof on,
I had to shovel the snow off. Once again, I discovered a task to avoid at all
costs. While I was shoveling off the roof, Anne was shoveling a series of paths
through the snow so we would be able to carry the roof panels to the base of
the ladder. All in all, I think Anne moved enough snow to cover a football
field, and I’m not talking about pee-wee league at the local park, either.
Our roof is metal, a charcoal gray color
that actually looks sort of brown in certain lights. Luckily, we both like it,
whatever color it may be. Each panel is about three feet wide by seventeen feet
long. They are ungainly beasts, difficult to move, although they make the
coolest laser-gun sounds when they wiggle. Our first task was to figure out how
to get them up onto the roof. After our first few panels, we came up with our
system. I am at the back end, and Anne is at the leading edge. She slowly walks
up the ladder with the panel carried on her back. She looks a bit like the
bloke on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV. When she gets to the top of the ladder,
she rests the edge of the panel on the roof, scrambles back down the ladder,
and takes the back end from me. I then proceed to scramble up another ladder,
clip into my safety harness, and grab the front edge of the panel. Together, we
slide the whole thing up the roofline, and get it into place. It is fastened to the strapping with gasketed
screws, and if you think the act of putting multiple holes into your new roof
doesn’t make a person cringe, here’s a news flash: it does! But we have to put
our faith in hundreds of little rubber gaskets and hope that they do their job.
There was a bit of a learning curve today,
which ate up some precious time, but we managed to get almost half of one side
done. It looks pretty sharp, and I cannot wait until it is finished.
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