I'm alive!

No need to send a rescue party. I've been working, and occasionally running, and apparently reading a lot.

We finally pulled the trigger on replacing all our windows, so Anna has been project-managing that, in her copious free time. It's amazing.
 

That big window used to be 8 panes of glass, tenuous held together by brittle caulk (presumably the original 1938 construction) that would come off with your fingernail. The entire assembly would flex if you pressed on it, and with the not-at-all-safety glass and the 3-foot drop on the other side, the situation cried out for some zooming child to crash through it and end up with a concussion and dozens of stitches. We drilled this point into the children entering the house, and put a big chair in front of the window, which made it safer, but the chair is very opaque and so we didn't really think of the window much.

It turns out there's an entire whole world out there! Easily visible through a single piece of glass that doesn't have a huge armchair in front of it.

We replaced everything except the bathroom windows, so a new sliding door in the office, no more rattling single-paned aluminum-frame windows with the weather-stripping gone. Occasionally we open and close windows just because it's so easy: no strenuous effort, no CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK as the windows skip and chunk through the frame rather than slide.

 

We replaced the two rear doors, which, as it happens, were actually interior doors that people had just gone ahead and used for exterior doors. That is how this house rolls.

(I say "we," but of course Anna is doing the day-to-day project management.)

The dark, cavelike corner of our bedroom now has natural light, of all the crazy things, filtered through trees. These doors are actually double-paned, but with a set of Venetian blinds inside. This is space-age stuff. (Or, rather, this is what we build instead of going into space.)

I'm not showing the hacked-up stucco, or the lonely-looking wall gaps or places where the trim hasn't been replaced. It'll get fixed, hopefully before it rains.

 This is the last big project for a while, but wow. It's like a different house.