BE-COMING HOME: smoke and showers

Into each life some rain must fall.
[The Rainy Day, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]

The Aufrichte was only Part I of our roof-raising revels.  We celebrated Part II the next day, with a smudging.

I’d smudged before, of course.  Twice.  Third time’s the charm, especially as we capitalized on the lucky number by smudging in triplicate.  Roy and Reiner and I did the honors.

We almost smudged in quadruplicate.  Dori was slated to join us, but she was feeling a bit under the weather on the day.  Her contribution to the work was enormous, nonetheless.  Smudge sticks from the market are fine and dandy, but those who take their smudging seriously know the incense should never be bought, but rather, received as a gift.  Dori gifted our ritual with beautiful dried stalks from her extra-special store of Native-American blessed sage.

Apparently, in smudging circles there’s some debate as to whether or not shells are appropriate vessels to hold the incense.  Some say, “sure.” Others insist that smudging is a fire/air rite and sea-shells should be reserved for water-magic.  Dori was fine with it, and I had the perfect shell for the purpose – the once-white, now black shell that had survived the fire intact.

We began downstairs in the mudroom.  We joined hands and centered our energies, kindled our sage-bundles and smudged each other to cleanse our personal qi, then proceeded to smudge the house thoroughly, making our way slowly from the basement to the top floor.

We circumnavigated each level independently and in-tandem, rekindling the incense as needed.  By the time I climbed that last set of stairs, a mini-furnace had formed inside my incense-bundle and the shell was too hot to hold.  I’d barely identified the problem before the solution appeared before me: a giant metal dust-pan, the perfect “trivet” for the shell that held the smoking sage.

On the way up, we were too busy to be snapping pics, but Roy caught this one of me using the last of my smoke to cense down the stairs and close the circle in the mudroom.

We rounded off the evening by accepting our neighbor Carol’s kind invitation to stop by for a tipple and to get snaps of the house from a northerly perspective.  The best of these (below) were taken by Reiner (of course).

A few days later, Sasha, Shannon and Matt

dropped by to check out the prep work for the carport and the new forms for the back stairs.

Well, truth be told, Sasha was more interested in the electrics page of the plans,

and I was more interested in getting opinions on exterior colors… but Reiner caught the concrete action on camera next day,

we both turned our lenses on the forms for the carport’s retaining wall,

I took pics of the fully-finished back steps,

and finally! with the completion of this short flight of stairs,

Roy and I were able to experience the joy of a seamless internal ascent from basement to master suite!

To top it off (pun intended), when we reached the third floor, we found the plywood under-layer of the roof had been laid.

Reiner was absolutely right.  After the Aufrichte, it’s not a matter of building the house, but adding to it.  The drop-ceiling was a wonderful addition,

as was the framing for the upstairs closet,

but the hands-down winner for most amazing addition of all was the reflective plywood roof.   Outside the temp was in the high 80s; inside and under a genuine, high-tech ceiling (of sorts), it was cool and comfortable.

The meteorologists were predicting rain by the end of the week; autumnal weather to welcome the Autumn Equinox.  Totally on top of it (yes, more pun-ishment), Jere and Martín got the roof papered,

covered the skylight holes, and draped a protective tarp over the nascent balcony.

The rain came and went.  The house weathered the weather just fine.  Here she is in the equinoctial sun, looking an awful lot like a home.