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