Winterize your home in 10,000 easy steps

(A view of fall colors out our front window--lovely, but the cold is coming)

The other day we noticed that our neighbor had blankets over his flowers. It looked a little weird and we thought, "hmmm." But then we checked the weather, and sure enough a freeze was forecasted. Yup, it's frost time.

We don't have flowers to baby, but our tomato and pepper plants seem to be enjoying the cooler weather. At least they've both finally got a couple little fruits coming along (I thought tomatoes were sun worshippers, but next year I'm sticking them in a more sheltered --ie shady--spot). So why let frost cut them off in their prime? Not having blankets we were willing to sacrifice, and since the plants were in containers, we just pulled them into the kitchen. Hey, it's sunny in here. How long can we trick them into thinking it's still production season?

With the coming of cold, we also thought we'd better winterize the house. We've heard that that's something responsible homeowners do. So we googled for details, and now I wonder how any home survives the season. The list of tasks went on and on and on, and I didn't even know what all of it meant (like shutting off the AC water valve. Do we have an AC water valve?).

As we looked closer, though, we realized that some things were just helpful (to get better energy efficiency or to get the yard ready to hibernate), others were important (to keep the pipes from bursting, for instance), and some were downright essential (like making sure the furnace doesn't blow up). So while I'm sure it's all good, maybe we can pick and choose a little bit.

But I'm still intimidated. I'd like to use the fireplace for more than a photo backdrop, but suddenly it seems so dangerous. Do I have to get the thing professionally checked, or can I just rely on our carbon monoxide monitor? And how about the furnace? We opened it to clean the filter, like the manual says to do, but it didn't look anything like the diagram in the manual. If it didn't have the brand name on it, I'd think we had the wrong manual, like maybe the one for the bathtub.

One thing for sure, we know we need to wire one of our smoke alarms back in. See, one night about 3 am we woke up to that annoying, piercing beep that smoke alarms emit every thirty seconds when they're low on batteries. So we dragged over a chair and Uchenna tried to take it off the ceiling. He wrestled it and wrestled it, and that stupid beep wouldn't stop. About the time he realized that it was actually wired in to the house's power supply (so it won't just twist off, and of course has no battery to be low), I noticed that there was a little light blinking down near my feet--a CO monitor plugged in. That's where the beep was coming from; apparently it was letting us know that it was malfunctioning because it was old.

Our only defense for being so slow is that we had been awoken at 3 am by an incredibly annoying, piercing beep. But you may be thinking, as we sometimes do, that we're not adult enough to be responsible for a house (I'm not even mentioning the times we left the garage door open all night, or the time I left the water on in the hose with a nozzle and the hose burst and flooded our neighbor's yard. Fortunately it was during the heat of summer, and they were grateful for the extra watering). Uchenna says sure there's a lot to do, but now that it's frosty he's SO glad to have a garage and not have to scrape the car in the morning. I guess that means that, in spite of everything, there are perks.

Geese really do honk

When we only had to mow the lawn every two weeks, the temperature wasn't hitting the upper 90s anymore, and we could leave the door open without inviting in swarms of flies, we knew summer was on its way out. In St. Louis the air felt positively nippy, but on our return Oklahoma was still warm (lower 80s). Three drizzly days, however, seem to have kicked off autumn for real. The rain is gone, but the nippiness has settled in.

We thought about turning on the heater, but we're holding out a little longer and just piling on socks and sweaters. We brought out a big, floppy blanket to cuddle under while watching TV. It may be a long winter for Uchenna--he feels smothered by all these clothes. In his opinion, you should always be able to wear shorts and t-shirts around your house; anything else is just cold.

We've seen other unmistakable signs of autumn (rather than just absence of summer), such as flocks of geese flying in that v-pattern you always see in cartoons or paintings. They really do that, and they honk like crazy, too. We seem to be in their air-traffic pattern. The other day, geese were flying overhead and letting everyone know they were coming through just as a train was also going through town, letting everyone know that it was passing by (as it always does, multiple times per day. We don't live near the tracks, but you can hear the whistle no matter where you are in town). The geese and the train seemed to be talking to each other, or maybe trying to out-honk each other.

Also, I was looking at the leafy trees surrounding our yard, and thinking that while there are a few leaves scattered across the grass, all those leaves up there still have to come down. While cutting the grass for probably the last time this year (red letter day), Uche attached the bag and sucked all the current leaves. That's pretty slick! But now that mowing is over, we think, raking may soon replace it as the unending task. We did invest in a rake, but I'm wondering how well I could wield the power blower. I never could pile up the grass clippings with it--everything just blew everywhere--but maybe leaves will be more cooperative.

Besides raking leaves, I wonder if there are other things we should do to winterize the house. I'm sure I won't like the heating bills, but I'm glad we have a garage this year, for the first time ever. Yay garage!

Mom and Dad

Before we went to St. Louis, Mom and Dad came to visit for about a week (I know I'm going backwards in time, but I've never been very logical, chrono- or otherwise). It was fantabulous.

Of course it's wonderful to spend time with people that you love and enjoy being around. But it's more than that. Those of us who move around a bit have fractured lives; each new residence has new people, places, activities, issues, much of which isn't really connected to any earlier time or place. When you've left pieces of your self/life scattered across the country, constants or moments of integration can be really comforting--you know, looking at pictures and remembering how it felt to live in that room (to paraphrase an author whose name I can't remember), or reading through papers written by your former scholarly self and remembering that you were such a person.

So imagine how much better it is to have living, breathing people who also happen to be the fundamental constant from the beginning of your life--your parents--come be a part of your current life, if only for a few days. To see the home you've created for yourselves, and to approve. It's pretty great.

They flew in to OKC Tuesday night and met us at the hotel. OKC is two hours away, after all, and by staying overnight we could go to the temple in the evening and then see the Bombing Memorial the next morning. That memorial museum is pretty powerful. Seems like any museum is a combination of information and experience, with the emphasis tilting either way depending on the purpose. In a memorial like this the information is mostly a tool to take you through an experience. Some of us cried all the way through it.

After recovering from travel on Thursday, Friday we explored the town. Well, through his walking Dad explored the town quite thoroughly. But we also went to the Marlan Mansion, our own version of Hearst Castle: a local (obscenely rich) oilman fell in love with lavish villas while on vacation in Italy, then came home and built one for himself. You walk around the ornate furnishings, grand salons, and extensive private apartments and think, "What the heck is this doing in a little out-of-the-way town in Oklahoma?" Then we went to the Standing Bear museum and learned about the six closest tribes, a little of their culture and sad history. It was a full day, so we went to dinner (at the restaurant the company always takes the people they're recruiting).

Saturday and Sunday was Conference, which it sounds like you all enjoyed as much as we did. Between sessions on Saturday, we decided to leave the house (which was making us feel too cooped up), went to a park by the lake (which was too windy), and finally ate our picnic snacks at another park by a little stream (which was just right). And on Sunday we had dinner with the Meldrums, so Mom and Dad got to meet some of our favorite people.

Monday I drove them to the airport, where they set off for even more adventures.

Meet me in St. Louis

Some things I learned this week:

1. While I've heard for years about the uber-prestigious medical school at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, I didn't know how striking the collegiate-gothic campus would be. I looked around and said, "This is the sort of place where people wear suits (not the students, of course, but the grown-ups)."


2. The business school at WashU includes a lovey hotel for their executive education program with seminars and conferences and all that. How many business schools house a hotel?


3. I alway knew I loved hotels that provide a good breakfast; I now know I also love hotels with a "Guest Pantry" stocked with complimentary snacks, a fridge with drinks (non-alchoholic, of course), microwave, etc.


4. When a fire alarm goes off in a hotel at 3 am, not everybody leaves the building; and of those that do, not everyone remembers shoes, jacket, or room key (though between the two of us, we got all those essentials); also, some people wear funny things--like boxers with a suit coat.


5. Even though St. Louis, MO, isn't listed among the top 50 biggest cities in the U.S., it has a city park bigger than NY's Central Park.

(In Forest Park, St. Louis)



6. The park, called Forest Park, was originally the site of the 1904 World's Fair (remember that old movie with Judy Garland, "Meet Me in St. Louis"?) and is surrounded by gorgeous leafy neighborhoods with houses that look like they could have been in the movie. Gorgeous!


(That big building behind me is the Art Museum--not too shabby)



7. In its 1293 acres (really, it goes on forever) the park has a free history museum (pretty cool), a free zoo (not a skimpy zoo, either; the penguins were up-close and awesome), a golf course (not the sort of thing I'm personally into), a beautiful art museum, tons of open fields and ball fields, enough paths to keep you biking for hours (looks like it--I didn't put that hypothesis to the test), gardens, streams, ponds, fountains and a variety of bridges, and (yes) an actual forest. I think there's other stuff, too, that I didn't get around to seeing.


(I never could get myself and the animals in the same shot)



8. The roads that go through the park twist and turn and get you all turned around and confused. I'm just saying.
   
9. A one-day conference that goes from 8 am to 9 pm is really a two-day conference that's been crammed into one day. And even if you have a lot of cool stuff to see and do, if you're by yourself you begin to feel the need to talk to someone.


10. The neighborhood, Dogtown, in which I set the opening of my book is not one of the pretty ones, which I figured, since it's by the old factories. But it is surprisingly close to the river and downtown. On the map it looks way out there (and if you can only get around by walking or horses, it would seem pretty far), but you can actually see the Arch from the top of the hill.


11. The Gateway Arch is huge-normous! You cannot fit a person and the whole arch into one photo.

(You can barely see Uchenna as a tiny figure, with portions of the Arch)




(Ahh, here's one way to get your picture with the whole Arch--go for the model in the museum underneath)

12. You might think the Arch just sits on a little park area overlooking the river, but that simple grassy area is completely deceiving--underneath is a big ol', cool history museum, complete with theaters and animitronics. It's called the history of westward expansion, which you know is basically the history of the whole country.
    
    

    (In the hidden history museum under the grass)



(We love finding references to our own history in national contexts)

13. While it may not be in the top 50 US cities right now, historically St. Louis is one of the most important places in the country: Louis and Clark launched from there, Oregon Trail pioneers went through there, it had a bunch of industry, it was the northern-most navigable place on the Mississippi, it hosted the World's Fair and the first Olympics in the US, plus the whole Charles Lindburgh and the "Spirit of St. Louis" thing. Just remember that all the western cities except San Francisco (like L.A., Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston) were either non-existant or cattle outposts, so St. Louis was the unchallenged dominant western city.
    
14. You can go up inside the Arch to the top if you're willing to spend $10 per person, so we figured we'd catch it next time.