Do It Yourself - Raising One Hell of a Roof

We've always been a do-it-yourself kind of family. No, I didn't homeschool my kids. I was happy for them to get out of the house and learn Italian and .... I didn't want replicas of me. God knows I'm not perfect. We were so isolated on the farm it would've been just me and them, nope not for us.

But everything else, yip we did it ourselves... growing food, killing chickens, making wine ... building a house, building another house, you get the picture.

So, last summer we needed to fix up the roof on the barn. Here it is in pictures. Cautionary note: do not try this at home. Put this playlist on loud so you can get in the groove of what it was like. Every day, we woke up, had some breakfast, and got out into the boiling sun to wrestle with beams. Enjoy!

A day in the life... mama is cooking lunch and the guys are grooving to Led Zeppelin and moving homemade scaffolding around. Yeh! We took down the old roof, created steel-reinforced concrete supports, put up support beams, structural beams, panels, ceiling ... all on a stone structure from a couple of hundred years ago, that was CROOKED!

The Roof:

The Materials:

and a lot of sand, cement, bricks, and pasta!

The Players: 

Two lanky but energetic teenagers, a power-lifter Classics student, the Boss, and me, yours truly, 62 years old former midwife, cafe owner, and long distance runner.

Blues Guitarist and Chef-to-be

The Boss and Right Hand Man

Coolest Dude on the Mountain

Pumped!!

a moment to relax

Taking down the old roof

Only the beams are left, the corrugated metal and the insulating straw are gone

Scaffolding and support for the end wall

That was before he fell

But he's fine!

We call it the wonk

One beam down!

Taking down the rafters

Hmmm half a beam left. 

One beam to go!

Deconstructing the roof

Scaffolding

Building up the stone wall to create cements rests for the new beams

Painting the metal supports 

bolts ready for metal supports

Metal supports in place

The first support beams! A whole day of figuring it out... we did it!

It's actually happening!

Ok, the main supports are done... time for a beer.

The monolith

Rafters in place

Planks. Home-made ladder.

That night they worked late!

Planks Done!!!

Ceiling

We still have to put the metal panels on top of the wood...no time left in 2019! Back in 2020 to finish the job!

Is Social Media Destroying my Joy?

On the metro in the morning I wear my disguise. I dress up as a middle-aged woman going to work. Which is what I am.

It's pretty nice because people give me their seat, which I like.

But every Sunday I go for a nice long run.

I've been doing long races since 2015, when I ran my first half-marathon. I love running!

Or at least I used to. But these days I feel clogged up with information, advice, opinions, reports, essays, books, photos ... it's all very heavy and it's making me feel bloated and uncomfortable.

There are countless articles, scholarly and otherwise, about the effects of social media on our "self-esteem". But that term itself is a modern take on an ancient concern: Who am I? Where am I? And what does it all mean? "Self-esteem" is a way of describing a certain contentment with the way things are, or rather, with the way I Am. "Self-esteem" inspects how I feel about myself. And what better way to increase my "self-esteem" than to present pleasant images to others that will reveal how truly wonderful I really am.

Right?

The problem is, everybody is posting those images, and some people are better at it than others, and some people even hire other people to post them, so we really don't know where to stand. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The bigger picture is that all of our activities - from the most banal (walking the dog? giving a three year old some cereal?) to the most intimate (giving birth) to the most impressive (running a 3 hour marathon at age 60) - all of these activities that we love to do, or the ones we do by rote, or the special unique events in our lives - they're all bunched together, shouted out to the world, commented on, "liked" or not, and then forgotten.

Don't tell me that you've never been doing something and, as you're doing it, you're thinking about what to post about it. Oh, I know there are purists like my husband who - honestly, people! - uses Facebook for what it is worth - funny animal videos. But most of us who are online are online way too much, and thinking about being online way too much, and we are turning ourselves into something I'm not sure is such a great idea.

Or are we? My state of mind when I made this pre-Olympics video with my son was one of good humor, happiness, and strength. I make some fun of myself, and I was clearly having a good time. So what has led me to the point I am at now? When I'm taking myself so seriously, checking my paces, weighing myself, jumping from one running program to the next, not satisfied with my progress.

Progress?

We are using social media to mark our progress. Who's better - using any marker you and your friends choose to use - most radical, most downtrodden, most fertile, most religious, most athletic, best cook, cutest pets...

Oh, don't get me wrong! I'm still going to post my cafe events, funny things I find, my haunted houses. But I'm planning on going real easy when it comes to virtual running. My body needs to run, fine. My "self-esteem" can stay at home.