Eleven years ago (well, at least in a few more days!), I unlocked the doors to this house for the first time and started what has been my last move of this rather itinerant life. I did the sums of all of the PCS (permanent change of station) and other moves through the years and figured out that I was averaging about one move every year I’d been alive with this 40th move.
And if I have anything to say about it, the only way I’m moving out of here is feet first! I don’t mind helping schlep stuff from place to place but I think I’ve moved enough in my life that I get how it works and I’m quite over it. 🙂
I love this house, I love the privacy that comes with living at the apex of a cul-de-sac with a stand of oak trees between the back of my house and a lake and I especially love my neighbours here in a very diverse neighbourhood.
Well, the ones I know where most of them are pretty close to the cul-de-sac…life in a civilian neighbourhood is nothing like living on base where everyone knows *EVERYONE* and drops whatever they are doing when the moving lorry turns up to either pitch in and help unload and meet the new arrivals or help load and wish them a safe journey to a new post we’ll likely find ourselves at soon enough!
The one disadvantage of having a stand of quite large oak trees behind the house is that they have a habit of dumping their leaves to the deck and clogging the gutters.
Nine or so years ago, I got on the bits of the roof I could actually access and cleaned out the gutters I could reach and installed some metal mesh screens in them (and in the spirit of confession, this was with much cursing and taking the Lord’s name in vain and wondering why hast he forsaken me every time I’d set the new screen just to have the one next to it pop off the K-shaped lip of the gutter).
There was always an intention to hire out cleaning the gutters I couldn’t reach (most of which are about 20 ft / 7 m off the ground).
Then life would occur and that idea would hit the back burner.
A year later, I’d look up and see a little bit of tree branch growing in the gutter and think that perhaps it’s high time to hire out getting the rest of the gutters fitted with the screens.
More real life. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
The box of screens ended up getting stashed in my F-150’s metal toolbox that was now sitting along one wall of the garage and buried under various strata of stuff that had the effect of reducing my desire to unload that tool box to get them back out again.
And there they stayed until a casual conversation with Miguel who lives next door who proved conclusively with his laser measuring toy that my estimation of the height of the back roof was only 20 ft rather than the 30 ft I thought it was.
Miguel is the handy genius behind Prestige Home Renovations and has spent more than a few hours helping me recover from more than a few of my less-than-stellar attempts at mending things round here. From replacing the entire guts of the three toilets and re-seating them to helping finish properly installing the sink disposal (I was proud that I’d at least gotten the old one removed without breaking something) to giving several almighty tugs to remove the guts of a shower diverter that got stuck and shredded halfway through trying to mend it.
He makes it look so easy that you can’t help but stand in awe.
Those gutters that didn’t already have the screens from years ago were filled to the brim with a nasty black coloured muck with roots and trees and stuff growing in them that immediately brought to mind Red’s description of what Andy Dufresne crawled through as he made his escape from Shawshank Prison.
“Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of sh*t smelling foulness I can’t even imagine, or maybe I just don’t want to.”
Red, “The Shawshank redemption”
It may not have had the stench but I can assure you it was *FOUL* looking muck!
Over the next few hours Miguel cleaned out all of those gutters and installed the screens so that for the first time since I’ve been here, I don’t think we’ll ever have to worry about the gutters clogging again. And thank goodness those years of neglect hadn’t wrecked the fascia boards all round (though had it happened, I’ve no doubt he could have mended that as well…he’s right clever at that!).
I wish I could accurately convey just how much of a job that was…just cleaning out the trays o’ muck was Herculean enough but then putting in the screens which required a fair bit of tinkering and customisation on the fly (especially on the front of the house where there’s a bunch of twists and turns) that there is no way in hell I’d have been able to pull off on my own.
And yet he made it look easy.
You’d never know that it was his first time installing gutter screens and even with the couple of instances where they needed a bit of tweaking and bolting to keep in place, he’d figure out what needed to be done on-the-fly and make it happen.
And then there’s the perfectionism. One of the screens on the back had moved slightly out of position when the next screen was snapped into place. It probably would have been just fine as screens I’d installed years earlier that were even more off the lip of the gutter have stayed in place.
But he knew it had moved and that just wasn’t good enough and he just wouldn’t leave it be until he was satisfied with it being properly and completely in line with the others.
He’s never done with a job until he’s happy with it. And his standards are way more than ours will ever be.
I’m sure he had much better things to do for most of a Saturday than clean out filth I’d let accumulate in those gutters for a decade and then sort them out with the screens so that we should never have to do much more than occasionally take a look at them and ensure they’re performing properly.
But that’s Miguel for you.
He’s far more than a neighbour and a friend.
He’s family to me as much as those born to it.
And yesterday was *HORS CATEGORIE* “love thy neighbour as thyself”.
I truly don’t know what I’d do without Miguel and Jessica (who is patient when I need his help saving me from myself!) in my life. I truly don’t *WANT* to know what that’s like. 🙂