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thwoorping aluminum
Sunday, May 27 2018
With all the cutting I'd done into the house to make a place for attaching the new shed-roof of the screened-in porch, it seemed prudent to take measures against the encroaching of rot. I'd be installing a flashing transition between the wall and roof, but that still meant some exposure to the elements along the bottom edge of the roof meeting the flashing and also at either end of the roof. So I thought I'd use some Rust-oleum Coppercoat to protect the newly-cut edges of clapboards and exterior trim. Then it was just a matter of getting the flashing installed. But then I realized I'd made a mistake: I'd bought a ten foot roll of 14 inch wide flashing instead of a 14 foot roll of ten inch flashing.
Meanwhile we had another Neville guarding crisis on our hands. Overnight, Neville's bandage had worked its way down from over his stitches, exposing it all to the air. But he wouldn't let us redress the wound, guarding his arm like it was a choice bone. Not wanting to get bitten by his fearsome jaws, we didn't know what to do. He even tried to bite Gretchen just when she went to put on his cone of shame, though I managed to get it on in a single fluid motion without incident. It being Sunday, our only option was the emergency vet. So that was where Gretchen took him in the hour and a half before her workday at the bookstore.
Later I met Gretchen at the Woodstock bookstore to take Neville off her hands. With his cone of shame and suddenly proclivity to guard his arm, today wasn't a good day for him to be fussed over by random children. It being the Memorial Day weekend, I found parking in Woodstock nearly impossible; even the illegal spot in front of the bookstore was taken when I arrived, though it had cleared after I'd completed an unsuccessful hunt for open spaces in the back. Neville seemed to be back on his best behavior now that his bandage had been removed, though this had required the application of a muzzle at the emergency vet. Gretchen had been told in no uncertain terms that Neville was to wear his cone of shame "25 hours a day."
After a fruitless visit to the Tibetan Center thrift store, I drove out to Home Depot and got a 50 foot roll of 10 inch trim as well as a variety of big lag bolts. When I returned the other wrongly-dimensioned roll of flashing, I was waited on by the hot cashier who has worked there now for many years. She was wearing a short red peasant dress, which was an unusually femme getup for her. She'd never waited on me before, so this was the first time I'd seen her close-up. She looked to be in her late thirties now.
It was a bit too rainy to make much progress on the screened-in-porch project, but I did eventually (and with great difficulty) manage to wrangle the flashing into approximately the correct position. It kept jumping out at one end while I was positioning it in the other, a maddening process that made me want to ball up that sheet of thwoorping aluminum and call it a day. Gretchen returned from the bookstore in a particularly unpleasant part of this procedure, when I was in full-on "muttering at inanimate objects" mode, though she quickly retreated into the kitchen to make a delicious bean soup using the pressure cooker.
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