September 2018 Island Trip – Day Ten

I am done painting. If this were my house there would be more painting to do, but it is a rental, and I am finished. Aside from the powder post beetles derailing placing the property On the rental market this trip, the only thing I did not accomplish was putting a few coats of clear finish on the new kitchen sink cabinet doors. The sawhorses will stay in order to make that job easy when I return before the end of the month. The final paint brush is now soaking, and will be clean enough to put away before I leave tomorrow morning.

The neighbor who mows spent a couple of hours here this afternoon. He explained he hadn’t been here earlier due to how dry things have been. Hit a rock, cause a spark and burning a few acres of dry grass is a reality that happened not far from here. I don’t regret having Jesus and his helper in to take a first pass at the place. It looks really good now!

I re-hung two of the doors, and will do the third one in the morning.

The entry door (pics to follow) had a sizable steak of black down the knob side on the interior. With little effort I was able to all but eradicate this blemish with a water and vinegar solution. It was not lost on me that I was erasing my late father’s DNA, born of thousands and thousands of finger prints laid down while coming and going from the house. We have so much of his art, made by his hands, that cleansing the door of this reminder of my dad was OK.

While cleaning the door I discovered that the screws on the interior of the lock were loose, one of them almost falling out. Tightening them solved all sorts of issues with the overall lock system. I thought I might have to replace it… It’s tight and secure now!

I went over to Tim and Cindy’s for a glass of wine at 6:30. While I was relieved to know Cindy had a UTI (Elderly + Infection = Confusion), I don’t know that the infection is causing all of her mental foibles: burning things on the stove and oven six days out of ten, trying to change TV-channels with the phone rather than the remote, forgetting the zip-code of a town on an Island where she’s lived part-time for over 40 years. Between her heart problems, TIAs, and this, the picture is looking very bleak, and Tim is left grappling with some intensely difficult decisions. Their Mainland heart surgeon, two states away, won’t operate at this point because Cindy doesn’t have the stamina to recover, and she’s grown weaker since her last appointment with him. The doctors they saw here are in a limbo of mis-communication. Tim knows that fixing the heart of dementia patient is folly. Neurology is their next stop. And meanwhile we collectively hold our breath and offer prayers.