I like to say I live in the worst house on the best block. And in many respects this is true (in all respects, in my opinion, the second part is true--it's the first part that is debatable). Yes, I do have the worst porch. Most everyone has a roof, except for Gretchen, and she at least has a porch made of concrete and stone. Mine is a deck. It would be cute on the back of somebody else's house. It is not cute anywhere attached to mine. I almost didn't buy the house because of the porch.
And the interior of my house aspires to be considered wabi-sabi. It is semi-baby-proofed live-with-it-for-now. Most of our furniture has been passed to us or came to us used; some of that is really good stuff and others? Eh. For now. Our floors are pine and we still don't have baseboards in the all the rooms, etc., etc., etc.
But this house really is the worst.
On the corner. It stands empty and has for at least 12 years.
Hill House had stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more...the owner bought it for a song, which makes sense considering it was falling apart. When my parents moved to town he tried to sell it to my dad, but my dad saw that it was the proverbial Money Pit and declined the offer. Our alderman has leaned on the owner, Dwayne Farthing, and threatens him with blighting and seizure of property every so often so that Dwayne does the minimum amount of work to keep it looking like it's under construction instead of abandoned.
He's been working on it for years. Like a decade. Through a nasty divorce, his kid growing up, his father's death--the house is the constant. And all the time and money he's sunk into it--I can't see him ever recovering what he's lost.
I don't care much, though, because he's shifty and made me feel unsafe on my own street more than once. But that's a story for another time.
This is simply a demonstration of the kind of "work" he does. Everybody on our street, hell, on the south side, has a porch that leads to a short sidewalk that leads to at least one step (we have four) down to the sidewalk. Different kinds of houses, different sizes of front yards, but there's a thin strip of concrete leading away from the house. Some folks have busted up the concrete and put in brick or something else that feels more English country home-esque, perhaps, but the majority of us (we're sort of a no-nonsense crowd in south city) look at that walk and think "that's a solid chunk of concrete, why bother it?"
Dwayne didn't like the concrete. And he's the type who always tries to gussy up something that should be allowed to be honest and plain. But he's also a classic short-cut man. So he didn't bust up the concrete. He just paved it with flagstone.
Loose flagstone. He didn't mortar it together or grout or even really attach it to the sidewalk itself. So now, instead of a utilitarian simple unobtrusive path, he has a safety violation. On our walk a few weeks back when I took these photos, Billy climbed up onto this path and immediately stooped down to pick up one of the rocks, which were really too heavy for him but he managed for a moment until he got bored. You can see him there, rearranging:
It's like a dress that's had too many alterations. What a shame.
New Year's Eve was creepy warm. Highs in the 60s and the tornado sirens went off. We went to the basement because Fiona is a bit concerned about storms. The girls set up tents and played their DS's while I did some filing and Mike listened to the weather radio. The "squall line" passed us without incident, just heavy rain. But a tornado touched down west of us and north of us. So it was prudent to hide.
