This is the first day in I don’t remember how long that I see blue sky everwhaar.

Which means that I have been doing things other than skydiving since I got current and the weekend afterward, when I made another four jumps. Yesterday, I said to HHB, “It’s a good thing I got current when I did because I’d be going crazy waiting for a month after getting all ready.” He noted that I would be driving HIM crazy, too, by whining about the weather.

Fair enough.

Yesterday, we thought we might squeak in a jump toward the end of the afternoon. The clouds were supposed to lift to above 6,000 feet, which is high enough. Just. Not much freefall, but fun under canopy, for sure.

Around 2 PM, we went on a couple of errands–one of which I’ll tell you about later. Not that it’s super exciting, but it does feed one of my other addictions.

HHB drove. This is how the conversation went.

Me, after craning my neck to look at the sky out the side window: Are you laughing at me?

HHB: Not me. [NOTE: This is perhaps the sixth conversation we've had so far today about the clouds and weather. Every time I look, I want to see something different, and he knows it.]

Me: You were, too. That’s your lying face.

HHB puts on sunglasses to hide his eyes: I was not.

Me: Whatever. I think those are at about 4,000.[Note: feet above the ground.]

HHB: The low ones look just over 3. The higher ones are probably at 6. [NOTE : Thousand is implicit.][NOTE 2: Clouds here come in layers: low gray ones, higher not-as-gray ones, and whatever's above those.] [NOTE 3: HHB has 30 years of cloud-watching to my three. He's more likely to be right.]

Me: I don’t get it. It’s brighter here–look at the shadow under that car. [NOTE: 'Shadow' being shorthand for it's just bright enough that there's a slightly darker area under the car in front of us. It's not what you think of as a shadow, unless you're from here.]

HHB: Uh huh.

Me: The clouds over there look so gray. I guess that’s because I’m looking at a bunch of them from an angle, instead of looking up into them. [NOTE: I have a masters degree. In SCIENCE.]

HHB: The wind is out of 300 [NOTE: degrees, with due north being 0], so the weather’s coming from over there.

[NOTE: It's raining over there.]

Me: That doesn’t look promising.

HHB: If we hurry back, we might make the first load.

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Every day amazes me, but I’m not talking about my dreams this time.

I’m talking about Buster. For his entire life, warm and sunny weather has created a dilemma.

He wants to be outside.

And he wants to be near me while I’m working.

He goes outside for as long as he can stand it, then he whines to come in. Of course, I’m well-trained, so I respond with alacrity.

Rinse and repeat throughout the day.

This year, the tenth of his brown life, his dreams have come true.

The backyard isn’t fenced completely in, and he’s a wandering Hungarian fool, so he has to be on a cable. But, in my new office, with the door open (and even both doors open already this year), he can have sunshine on his fur and me nearby.

Also, please notice on the bench above the arrow which is painted on the picture and not the deck, Skittery Crittery is oot and aboot now. She has to come in before dark since she’s only nine months old, but she loves loves loves loves loves outside.

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I’ve thought long and hard about The Jump That Broke My Neck (TJTBMN). And skydiving. And the people I love.

I’ve been thinking about these things for eight months but especially since my surgeon cleared me to skydive again in early February.

I’ve learned lots of things. First, TJTBMN happened for a whole fustercluck of reasons: the particular canopy, the jump I was on, my fatigue level, the way I packed, my body position, and the degree of baseline strength in my shoulders and neck. All of which I have control over.

Last fall, I bought a new (to me) canopy. I wanted one that had a history of nice openings — and that wasn’t the same type of canopy I jumped before. I’ve been practicing packing for the last six weeks and watched my sloppy jobs get nice and neat.

In February, I knew I didn’t yet have enough upper back, shoulder, and neck strength. So I’ve been lifting weights and, more recently, bouldering a few times, which is SO MUCH fun!

I thought about skydiving. More than anything else, there are two things I appreciate about it. First, while I’m doing it, nothing else exists. My mind is both one of my greatest assets–and, for sure, my greatest liability. Skydiving is a total vacation from my mind because it’s completely impossible to think about anything else while I’m doing it.

Secondly, skydiving taught me who I really am. I had to dig really deep to learn to skydive. Before then, I didn’t know I could dig that deep–so I didn’t know how intensely good it is. I like digging deep, which requires being out on the edge. I like edges. I like controlled risks. I like being as free as I can possibly be. Without those things, I don’t feel nearly as alive.

I thought about my lovely daughters and asking them to potentially repeat last summer. Or worse. If the tables were turned, there is no way I would ever ask them to stay away from the edges just for me.  They will never know how deeply I appreciate their generosity and courage for not asking me to do the same for them.

I didn’t have to have that conversation with HHB. From the beginning, he said that he’d support me if I chose to jump again or not. Support has, for the last month or so, taken the form of us drilling on everything I ever learned, from my first license exam to the ones I haven’t taken yet, and reviewing emergency procedures.

Yesterday, we drove to a dropzone a couple hours north of us because it was open on a Monday, and we knew it would be a very casual experience.

I thought I might be nervous. I’ve certainly been nervous enough over the last months. But, once we made the decision after checking the weather yesterday morning, I was just excited. Seriously excited on the drive up. Poor HHB.

I thought I might be afraid in the plane or exiting. But, once we climbed on, it was like I’d done it hundreds of times. Which I have. Doh. Then jumping out was as fun as always–and skydiving with HHB was awesome. Seeing his smiling face right in front of me in the air, like I have so many times.

My canopy was awesome. And it was warm. Ish.

I jumped twice. And that was enough for the first day back.

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After seven weeks without it, having running water in the kitchen feels positively decadent.

This is the granite. It’s greeny, browny, blackish. It’s beeyootifull.

Plus, I am really enjoying wiping things into the sink, where a new garbage disposal grinds them up. Instead of stuffing them into the pipes, which is what the old garbage disposal did.

You’ll  notice there’s no backsplash yet.

The design committee has met a few times without coming to any decisions. Eventually, we’ll put something back there that seems just right enough to both of us.

In the meantime, many fabulous foods are coming out of the kitchen again. Last night, I made these for the first time in a long time and remembered all over again how much I love them.

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Well, the leak is stopped. The subfloor is gone, but we have a temporary floor where it used to be. The unders of the house are dry. The sink is in the garage, the refrigerator is in the eating area, and the stove is where it should be, to the right of this photo.

Now comes reconstruction. In order to fix the floor, all the cabinets and the stove have to come out because they have to interlace the new wood with the old wood. The toilet in the guest bath has to come out, as do all the doors in the hall, because they’ll sand and refinish all of the hardwood so everything matches.

Whatevs.

It could be so much worse. Hanging around with Jim and Steve, our mitigation/reconstruction team, we’ve heard some stories.

Like the hot water feed to a washing machine on the second floor, directly over the kitchen, that failed two weeks after people moved into a new house. THAT would suck. Or the fire in three adjoining condominiums. Or the undermounted sink that fell down–twice–because the installers didn’t properly mount it.

All in all, we’re just lucky we’re us.

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They removed the industrial equipment yesterday. And now the house sounds like this:

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It’s bliss.

More noise will commence tomorrow. But today, nada. And no worker bees, fond as I am of them, inning and outing.

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All weekend, we listened to the sound of industrial blowers.

But, last night, we went to the symphony and heard Andre Watts play Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto, The Emperor.

It was amazing, and here’s why. The concerto was after the intermission, and the orchestra did a perfectly fine job of the pieces they played before the intermission.

In other words, snore. I was yawning throughout and wondering how the aitch ee double hockey sticks I was going to stay awake through the concerto.

Andre Watts is 66; he’s been playing concert piano for his whole life. When his fingers hit the keyboard, it was like the electricity went on in the room. All of a sudden, staying awake was a non-issue.

That’s what I’m thinking about today. The ineffable quality that turns a room full of bored listeners into a standing ovation, four times over. I think it comes from pouring yourself completely into what you’re doing, without holding back one molecule of self-consciousness. Of course, you have to know what notes to play, and he did. He didn’t always hit the right one, though, and it didn’t even matter.

The whole of what he gave was perfectly luminous.

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Night before last, I got up about 2 AM. When I walked barefoot across the hardwood kitchen floor, it felt like this:

coldcoldcoldcoldcoldWARMWARMWARMcoldcoldcoldcoldcold

The WARMWARMWARM was over a spot where the wood started cupping a few days ago. We thought it was related to some previous water damage.

When HHB crawled under the house to look–which he had done by the time I got up for real at 5:15–he found a broken hot water pipe. We had steam-heated floors, only not in a good way.

The amusing thing was how, in about two hours, this expanded from a broken pipe that needed fixing to a mitigation/restoration project. I’m super grateful to Harry, our insurance agent, for recognizing we had a PROBLEM, instead of just a problem. By noon, Jim and John were under the house, pulling out 12 bags of sodden insulation. They’re standing outside my office right now, plotting further demolition for today, which will include cutting out the hardwood floor and perhaps the subfloor, depending on its condition.

The kitchen looks like this:

Those big blue machines are a heater/dehumidifier/fan. They’re circulating hot air under the house and pulling moisture out of the air. There are four other machines under the house. Or maybe it’s five or six. I don’t remember. None are silent.

There’s also a plumber under the house. One day without any running water is enough.

The actual kitchen remodel is on hold for a unknown period of time. The cabinets have to be back in place, and, for that, the hardwood floor has to be replaced/repaired, refinished, and cured.

Eventually, we’re going to have running water and a refrigerator and a dishwasher in the kitchen. And then we’ll go back to the remodeling project we started earlier this week.

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We have three cats and a dog–which means we’re one pet away from being THOSE people. (I don’t actually know how many pets you need to be one of THOSE people. If it’s four, please don’t disabuse me of my notion that we’re not there yet.)

The house doesn’t smell like pets. Everything else runs a distant second in importance to that fact. I might even be able to tolerate knowing I’m one of THOSE people as long as the house smells good.

Meet the players:

Grumpy oldest cat

This is Rea on her chair in my office. There’s a heating pad under the blanket, so she’s there about 22 hours a day. She’s 14, and her right eye always runs like that. She has a cauliflower ear.

She always looks like she’d like to kill something. She growls at everything and everyone. She takes Prozac.

We’re not sure it helps, but we’re afraid to stop it.

Middle cat

This is Cali, short for Calico. She doesn’t like to be petted, except occasionally and then very hard. I think she might have Asperger’s syndrome.

She’s on the bed in the guest room. As far away as possible from Rea.

Rat girl

This is the formerly feral Skitters. HHB calls her ‘rat girl,’ because her tail is still skinny like a rat’s. She is full of piss and vinegar at every moment, except when she’s cuddled up with us, sleeping. I forgive her everything because she does that.

Muslim dog

This is Buster. He’s sitting on his bed in front of the fire. Ordinarily, he doesn’t wear a hijab inside the house. Only when he goes to the market.

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