Old business, or What happened to the Hades hole in the front yard?

I suppose I should probably finish off some old business from last year, as poor T spent the better part of the four weeks I was away in the States, dealing with it.

Before (when I left...):

After (when I returned!):

It was not "cheap". Basically the cost was about the same as two full price round trip tickets to the states!

So here it is, the "thing in the middle"- (click on picture for detailed view)

and (notice how serious the team is...) fortunately they connected the first septic field to the third septic field. This is what happens when you have an "embarras de champs septique" (or too many septic fields!)

12 to 14 (T lost count) trucks, each poured 4 cubic meters of "fill" into the hole. Then it was topped with "good dirt" so we could grow some grass. (Needless to say, now that the grass is growing the dirt has settled and we'll probably need at least another 4 cubic meters of "good dirt"

Poor T, of course, at the same time, also had to deal with the leaking roof:

that included him spending GREAT quantities of time up there basically repairing all the fissures and holes with 25 tubs of cement (40 kilos each!) and then painting all the tiles with a sort of rubberized sealant (5 tubs of 20 kilos each) to make it as waterproof as possible: for a while, anyway.

Sadly, he's not done yet, meaning there's more to haul up to the roof. (Should I mention at this point that he is NOT fond of heights?)

Anyway, at least things are mostly back together and as we've had two huge storms (with gale force winds!) since I've been back, the roof has not leaked, and there are no new chasms.

We give thanks that currently, the household gods (or demons) are holding off any mischievous new repair challenges!

As for my new years suggested 'evolutions', I have managed to dance to my music every day, without anyone laughing (mostly because I do it when T is otherwise occupied!)

I have also managed to listen to OM for at least a few minutes every afternoon - thus far, the mind squirrels are at bay!

Tomorrow I will be baking - SOMETHING - as we are going to go to a really nice place on Saturday with friends and bringing a picnic lunch along. I will write more about where we're going probably in my next post.

For now, Ciao.


I have included a little app for free web radio (Shoutcast) as the current soundtrack of my life.

Piano music is just lovely and currently playing for me right now... there are a few other channels in the favorites file. (so far this app works well, tho not all the channels seem to be available all the time.)

Day in the Life...

I am so happy to finally be settling in here. Still there are so many things to get used to again! Seems like there's an awful lot of driving one does in the USA.

After Corfu, this is a bit of a shock.

We went hunting, today, for some furniture and draperies for middle son- meaning of course, we spent some quality time at IKEA (in Schaumburg Mall) and walked about 4 miles through the interior of the store!!

We decided to drive to Oak Park for lunch, and found a nice place to eat there. Bar Louis is a nice comfortable place that serves a HUGE amount of food and calls it lunch...

The simple cheeseburger that made me reconsider becoming a vegetarian...


We then made a few more stops before finally coming home and putting our feet up for a couple of hours.


One always seems to be driving with the city always in view out of the corner of your eye.

I love the city but I really do forget how car dependent you can be here! Public transportation takes you into the city, but for the neighborhoods really need a car... unless you're just going to stay in YOUR neighborhood. Otherwise you really have to know how to get around to navigate the buses and the el. (I am not that good at it!)

You also need REALLY comfortable shoes because walking is what you do here, as you never find a parking space close to where you are going.

~~~

Finally we decided to get ourselves organized for supper. Middle son had a birthday date (hers!) with his lady this evening, so youngest son swung by the house, picked me up, and we went to his house for a very nice dinner.

Ah the concentration of it all!! My darling baby Gabriel -
SUCH focus! (on a balloon actually...)

I have settled into Chicago, but I do not feel very articulate. In catching up with my children, I am mentally filing away their stories and my memory pictures of them and all the while there's a little voice saying "Yoo- Hoo! The blog! Write something! Post pictures!" (which by the way I am doing courtesy of my dear middle son, whose camera I begged to borrow- as I cleverly left my camera on my desk at home in Corfu!!)

This weekend we'll be going to Michigan to visit my oldest son who has just moved into a new house. So again there will no doubt be disjointed ramblings when I return.

The blues remain the soundtrack of my life- so that hasn't changed yet.

I will update you all to one important fact however... The huge HOLE/ABYSS in the front yard in Corfu, is filled in!! T has managed to slog through the process fairly well and only parted with 2500 euro.

(I will post pictures of the process, when I return, as T has informed me he took photos from the roof - where he continued toiling to try and seal its little clay pot surface for potential problems, during the "great filling" of the abyss.)

"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n."

excerpts from Milton seems appropriate today:
...
Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
...
The dismal Situation waste and wilde, [ 60 ]
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
...
How overcome this dire Calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from Hope, [ 190 ]
If not what resolution from despare.
Paradise Lost: John Milton


So. Moving right along, we've had two different "experts" come and survey the abyss and determine the fix-abilty factor and we are awaiting the dreaded (or dratted) "estimates". The probability is high that it will cost a bundle.


Part 2 of our Paradise Lost, was the roof leak. T spent the day Friday patching and fixing and Friday night it leaked again like a sieve. So Saturday he got the BIG stuff out, and spent a good part of the day redoing it yet again, but with better goop.

(All this doesn't preclude the need for a new roof, it only gives us a modicum of hope that we'll make it through this winter and the winter rains without too much inside damage.)

Part 3 of our "horrible terrible no good very bad day" was our phone problem that lasted all last week. A friend called and reported our phone was STILL out of order this morning (she speaks Greek) and she did NOT mention that the DSL line still was working.

Thankfully, someone came to fix the downed line, downed I might add because the pole was not buried deeply enough, so that the gale force winds caused it to sway and pull at the line until it broke.

A single guy alone worked on digging the hole deeper and reseated the pole, then scrambled up the post to reconnect the wires! T watched him work from our front yard and called out to him, wondering if he could check out our phone as it wasn't working.

So the guy who spoke a little English, was very nice and he came over did something, and fiddled with the phone connection to the house and ... TA-DA two minutes! and the phone was fixed.

All in all two out of three ain't too bad, right?

[Today's three songs are Adiemus: Song of Tears (tho where it went I do not know), Penguin Cafe Orch.: Perpetum Mobile and Robbie Richardson: Mahk Ichi (Heartbeat Drum Song)]

Just another day in paradise...

Yes, this is for all of you out there who think we're "living the dream" here on Corfu...
Currently we're facing a few problems: First there's this giant hole that has appeared in the front garden. It is huge. It is in fact the septic field. OK, it is one of the THREE septic fields that are in the front garden. This is the septic field we didn't know about. To date it now appears, it has never functioned as anything but a large underground hole covered over by cement and grass. (It's a good job T wasn't mowing the grass when it disappeared as it's' about 30 feet deep!)

To make a long story short, when we first moved here we had a "shakedown cruise" with T and myself, two of (the three of) our grown sons and six of their strong young friends (you know who you are!) who all flew, train-ed and ferried here from different parts of the globe, to spend a happy couple of weeks at Christmas time clearing the yard and attics of assorted useless gear and on the way, having a nice "free" vacation. T and I rented a few cars (all well past their service due dates!) and ta-da - Instant houseparty!

As with all houseparties this one shortly after inauguration fell afoul- literally- as the toilets backed up with ten of us using them. We were fortunate and had someone come out to take care of the problem within a day- but it was long 28 hours to work around!

After everyone left, we decided to put in a new septic field to assist the first one. When the diggers dug up the front yard, imagine everyone's surprise to discover that there was a second one already in the ground. It had never been properly connected to the first one, making it obsolete before it was ever completed.

We put in the "third" septic field anyway, connected it, and the diggers filled in the front yard and for the last ten years, T has been trying to get grass to grow where the diggers mangled the soil to the level of a gravel road .

That is our first paradisical challenge. The second is the water leak that is currently in our front hallway.

This- T is convinced- is because the many angles of our roof line are challenged by the great need for a total roof replacement.

At this point the roof tiles are about as water repellent as clay pots added to the small and large spaces between many of the tiles (and no underform at all!) the roof is good for shade, but not so useful with rain.

T has jury rigged and repaired as best he can but he says that the time has come. Of course this is a VAST roof that needs many many many tiles as well as an underfoundation because the pitch needs to be changed so the water will run OFF the roof rather than pool in the center of certain roof areas that are a bit flat making the water trickle into the attic below and run to whatever point is most vulnerable in the ceiling line of the inside of the house. Sigh. The worst of it is that the roof really can't be dealt with til next spring at the earliest. So we're in for the rains AND for the potential redecorating (plastering repainting) it will entail.

Sometimes I think we are rebuilding this house piece by piece.

Lastly our challenge in paradise is the phone. T went downtown to the bizarre and Kafkaesque offices of Ote (phone company) and felt like an extra in Brazil (the movie- not the country)

After finally speaking to a man to tell him our phone was out, the man insisted in an irritated voice that it was our inside phones that were the problem. He never dialed our number to hear the recorded message claiming technical difficulties with the line, nor did he take note of T mentioning that there was an actual LINE down since the storm!

The odd thing is that we still can connect to the internet, tho the connection is irregular. (ranges between nothing to 18Mbps to 54Mbps)

Not having a phone wouldn't be so terrible if it wasn't for the fact that I am leaving in a week and we are tying to organize and connect the equivalent of the landing of the forces in Normandy on D-day with my mother and my sons and several retirement facilities, hotels and airlines.

So. We here in Paradise are baffled. Confounded we are, to the point where we decided to go out last evening with friends and have a glass at the Exhausted Dog Bar (also known as Stavs) in Gouvia.

We were all entertained by this dog that simply "crashed" on the floor for the evening and EVERYONE had to step over him.

We decided he'd been drinking all afternoon and needed a place to crash.

I've changed the music again to reflect the irony in our lives in paradise- it's a bit like instead of an orchestra, rather the steel drum rendition of "Thus spake Zarathustra" or the perhaps the wistful pan pipes playing a lively "stomp"! (I find this little music player to be seductively becoming the vehicle of the soundtrack of my life!) Oh and I also include an old chestnut version of the song Brazil...