Notes from Maine - 2024/09/22
What happened to September? It’s disappearing rapidly, and suddenly it’s autumn. It’s almost time for my nocturnal horse friends to become diurnal. There are fewer nuisance insects at night, so in the summer the horses usually take a break in the barn during the day. When I go outside each morning, they’re waiting, queued up at the door, desperate to get inside. They stay outside while I tidy up the place, draw water, and put out snacks.
Except yesterday—I had more than one cartload full of shavings to take out to the pit yesterday. So I opened the door and let the horses mill around the aisle while I dumped the first cart. I came back in to find Earl in Maybelle’s stall (which I had just cleaned). By his stance, I could tell that he was about to gush a few gallons of used water all over her stall. No big deal, right? That’s what horses do. Except, one, I had already finished cleaning that stall, and two, he was outside THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE, and could have urinated literally anywhere and caused no extra work for anyone.
Fortunately, he’s well mannered enough to skedaddle when I waved my arms and questioned what he was about to do. Earl trotted back outside and I shut the door so I could finish cleaning in peace and he could pee outside, like a gentleman.
Maybelle was beside herself. She pressed her big nose to the gap between the door and frame and whinnied for Earl.
“He was trying to use your stall like a public restroom,” I said, rolling my eyes. She didn’t care.
I finished my cleaning, lured her into her (still clean) stall, and then slid the big door open. Earl was standing out there in the morning sun, crossing and uncrossing his legs as he danced around on his tiptoes. I know I’m anthropomorphizing Earl, but it couldn’t have been more clear that he was holding it in. When I stepped aside, he ran into his own stall to relieve himself.
Unbelievable.
I know he urinates in the pasture all night. It’s not subtle. But he had made his mind up to go in the barn, and nothing was going to stop him, I guess. He did the very same thing again this morning—as soon as I let him in he ran to his stall and used it like a urinal. I’m afraid that this is going to be a trend.
When it gets a little cooler outside, they’ll be out during the day and come in at night. Maybe that will break the trend.
Inside, I’m still building cabinets. It’s fun to remember a younger, more naive vision of re-using the old cabinets or purchasing premade cabinets from a store. Every single thing I’ve installed has been a purely custom unit, tailored to the weird specifications of my imagination and the demands of this kitchen. I can’t even fathom how long it would take to try to shove off-the-shelf cabinets in there. The island required cables and pipes. I’ve been building it piece by piece, considering it from every angle to make sure I don’t leave anything out. Once I’ve finished the island, I can finally turn my attention to the upper cabinets. The novelty of working on a new type of box will bolster my enthusiasm for a while. The details will bog me down eventually, but I’ll slog through.
I suppose I always knew it was going to go this way. For years, I put off starting the kitchen as the scope of the project grew in my head. There were tons of decisions to be made. More importantly, I had to get everything sequenced in the right order so I wouldn’t have to backtrack. The first steps were underground—me and my sister digging in the basement to set footings for the columns so I could get rid of the bounce in the floor above.
My friend is a cabinetmaker. I’ve been talking to him throughout this process, picking up techniques that he has spent years perfecting. It would be interesting to do another kitchen and see how the approach evolves with the next iteration, but I won’t. After I’ve put up the final cabinet door, I don’t want to think about doing another kitchen renovation in this lifetime. One was enough. I’ll be busy renovating the attic next. There are some fun details to learn about venting, insulation, and vapor barriers. Next year maybe.
