Day 77: Get Back to Where You Once Belonged (Thank God I’m a Country Boy)

So.

Here we are back in Nova Scotia. What gives, you ask? Isn’t this project supposed to be wrapped up until next year? And why no picture this time?

From the beginning of this project we had intended to spend only ten weeks or so in Cape Breton before moving to Toronto. But while we were preparing to drive there last week we started asking ourselves why we were rushing to return to city life – our money hasn’t run out yet, we’re enjoying ourselves in Mabou and the project could definitely use another month or two of work before winter hits. And Carla is getting lots of work done on her book in the peace and quiet of our rural retreat. In light of all that we decided to stay for another two and a half months, and hold off on “goin’ down the road” until January. I guess I’ll need to buy some warmer clothes now since I left most of mine in storage in Vancouver.

This last-second decision made our week in Toronto much less stressful – more like a vacation from a vacation, really. No need to find an apartment right away, and less pressure on me to nail down a job immediately. However, we did use some of our time to explore the city and visit some open houses – and to find with some relief that we can actually afford a house in Toronto, which is a refreshing change from Vancouver and its housing bubble. I also had some job interviews. No final decision on where I will work yet, but I expect to know in a few days once a formal offer or two floats in. There is plenty of work in Toronto right now and it looks like I’ll have my choice of firms. Good timing.

Bells Clanging played a show at the Tiger Bar on Thursday night (a ‘secret’ venue in the basement of a College Street diner) to a decent crowd. Despite our lack of practice things came off well, and I’m told I sang my few backup lines in tune. We were sandwiched on the bill between Tin Can Telephone System Switch Board Operator (or something like that), a very young band with a bass player who looked just like a very young Burton Cummings; and Brigitte, who were, to use some rock crit-math, like Devo + the Feelies + They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – in other words, completely spastic but tuneful.

In the week before our Upper Canada jaunt, Jeremy, our carpenter friend from Vancouver, came by Mabou to help for a few days. Jeremy is a whirlwind and doesn’t need much supervision since he runs his own construction business. In three days he and Robert strapped the tar paper joints, made a temporary door, helped install all of the window frames and about half of the glazing, and began working on the skirting. I think I did something too, but it didn’t amount to much by comparison. Thanks Jeremy! And, of course, thanks to Robert too, who we won’t be seeing in Cape Breton for a while.

Installing the big window unit in the crow’s nest was very nearly a disaster. I knew the glass would be heavy but I figured four people could bring it up via the scaffolding since it was too large to fit through the floor opening inside. Jeremy rightly pointed out that this approach was a tad unrealistic given the fragility of the material (even just tilting it up off the ground you have to be careful it doesn’t crack under its own weight) and the 70 KPH winds gusting outside (an hour up the coast in Cheticamp, they call the winds 'les souetes' and they’re known to pull houses right out of the ground). Instead we cut a sort of giant mail slot in the floor and lifted the glass through it. The four of us were just barely able to accomplish the task, and for a few terrifying seconds as my grasp faltered and my arms shook uncontrollably, I really thought it was lost – afterwards we estimated the thing weighed between 350 and 400 pounds.

To make matters worse, this window angles outward by about ten degrees and the moment we leaned the glass into its frame I fully expected the entire unit to detach itself and drop 16 feet to the ground, maybe taking out some foundations posts when it hit. With a bit of bad luck, I imagined, the whole building might come down (this is a vision I have a lot, and it’s usually accompanied by some vague thought that I’ll try to jump out one of the windows as it falls – a logical plan to be sure). It didn’t. Or hasn’t, yet. Then again, I’ve been away for a week now, so I can’t say for sure.

- Geoff

PS the reason there's no picture for this entry is that Blogger is a piece of crap and takes hours to upload a 400KB image. I don't have the patience for it today.

If Tyra Banks Saw Our Artspace, She'd Declare It Fierce.

Hello lovely readers.

Are you still out there? Apologies for my complete and total disappearance from this blog during the past month or so. During that time, I completed my MFA in Creative Writing. Good boy yourself, as my grandma used to say. As Geoff mentioned, now I'm in Banff, trying to finish the second half of the manuscript. I would love to post a photo of the pretty deer that I found munching on leaves outside the theatre building this morning. Alas, I was only able to capture its image with my cheapo disposable camera. Who knows when I'll ever print those pictures, let alone scan them. (Update: My friend, Mike Kennedy, who graciously drove me from Calgary to Banff, took the above photo outside a place where we'd stopped to eat brunch. Postcard perfect, eh?)

Besides writing, I'm doing some Banff-y things like hiking. Honestly, I'm not doing much of that, although I did walk from the Banff Centre to downtown the other day. I was in search of vital toiletries, namely eye drops, moisturizers and hand creams because the air is so damn dry here. Today I attended a Pilates class and then a free classical concert in the Music and Sound building. Then tonight I'd organized an America's Next Top Model party in my room with some of my new female writer friends, but apparently this program doesn't exist in Banff. Which is probably a good thing. After all, we're here to write, not to get distracted by Tyra Banks.

Anyway, this blog is about our artspace so I'll quit with the tangents. I'll have you know that, despite Geoff's worries and lamentations, our artspace rocks. I mean, like, totally. While I was revising my thesis, it was so hard not to run down to the work site every five minutes and ogle the progress. It's completely beautiful. The second floor view is to die for. I even found the courage to climb up to the roof and it's utterly jaw-dropping up there. Geoff: take a picture of the roof and post it, would you?

Thanks for all of your comments and support. This has seriously been one of the best summers of my life.

xo Carla.

Day 50: Indian Summer

Carla has run off to the Wired Writing Workshop in Banff to spend two weeks working on her book and getting one on one mentoring from Lynn Coady, one of her favorite Canadian authors. It’s a big deal for her and she’s been waiting for this all summer, but her departure, along with the sudden cold weather, has made it abruptly clear to me that our time in Cape Breton is running out – only two weeks left.

It feels as though we’ve barely started. Not only has the novelty of the experience made time pass quickly, but we’re so far behind schedule that I’m now scrambling to finish just enough so that the cottage can stand up to the winter onslaught. The application of building paper is nearly finished, roofing is nearly complete and the windows will be installed next week, but shingles aren’t going to happen this year, and neither are plumbing or wiring or, obviously, any interior work whatsoever.

If I could stick around and keep working for another month I would, but with no income our money isn’t going to hold out too much longer. Luckily we’ve managed to stick closely to our budget, so we should be able to replenish our savings in time to do more work in the spring.

After dropping Carla off at the Halifax airport I picked up the skylight to bring back to Mabou, as well as the plywood we’ll use to clad the projecting porch and ‘crow’s nest’ volumes. It’s marine grade Merengi -- as exotic as that sounds the price per squre foot ends up comparable to that of regular old shingles, and the wood’s strong grain and rich red colour will contrast beautifully with the cedar shingles as they turn silver with age. Now the trick is to design the panel joints well enough so that it doesn’t meet the usual soggy, swollen and rot-ridden fate of plywood cladding after a season in the rain and snow.

I was lucky to make it back alive with the wood. As I pulled out of the warehouse parking lot, fully loaded with supplies, I felt the truck shudder and heard a crash. Looking in the rear view mirror and letting out a particularly nasty profanity, I saw the wood and the spare tire I’d used to weigh it down scattered in the middle of the busy intersection – the truck’s rear gate hadn’t latched properly and had let go at the first bump. The light changed and oncoming cars started honking in irritation as I ran across the intersection and began struggling with the heavy sheets and pulling them one by one back into the parking lot. To my amazement, despite the fact that there was plenty of room to maneuver around the mess, two cars drove right over it, leaving tire tracks on the wood and seeming completely oblivious to my plight. When I finished, I turned to head back into the warehouse to elicit help reloading the truck and saw that one of the workers was sitting on a nearby picnic table on his break, languidly smoking and staring at me with the faintly hostile, blank expression that backwoods hicks in horror movies always give to city folk who stop to ask for directions. I had the sense that he had been sitting there the whole time, watching. I hated him for a moment with great passion and stared back until he slowly turned, threw his butt on the ground and headed inside.

- Geoff