Baby, It's Cold Outside

If you haven't spent a winter in Nashville, I'll go ahead and be perfectly honest.  It's ugly.  Like, really ugly.  I used to think Virginia winters were about as bleak as could be, and in some parts of Virginia that still holds true.  My one winter in each Blacksburg and Roanoke were both cloudy and sunless but even those bleak, dreary days held - just above my head - the ripe possibly of snow, the quiet soaring feeling than at any moment the flakes would fall and the world would effectively stop.  But in Nashville where the temperature hovers just above freezing for weeks on end, the dreary skies only promise more clouds or, at best, rain.

It's rather unsettling.  I've spent the past month and a half of quiet mornings huddled with a computer (or an ipad or a phone) or a book on the couch glancing every so out the window to my left just hoping to see something, anything of the sun.  Running has become nothing short of a chore.  Mornings feel like giant weights that press on my eyelids, successfully trying to keep me in bed longer, and even simple chores that involve going outside (Get the mail?! Out there?! Are you kidding?!) are like Olympic events I can hardly fathom to achieve.

Needless to say, house work has been nothing short of BLAH.  That in combination with the holidays and multiple trips here and there has made house progress rather slowwww.  But we're still persisting.  I say 'we' as if we all have some equal part in the house progress when rather, Dad is persisting.  Casting aside all dread of the unpleasant weather, he dons those flannel lined work clothes every afternoon and weekend to work on plumbing or electricity - which, of course have consumed us for the past month and a half.

We're really just starting electricity, but plumbing is seriously taking form.  Dad had actually finished last month, but he had to change a couple things after the inspection due to differences in county code.  Now that Todd's home, things are starting to move a little faster.  He and I helped Dad by hanging some can lights in the kitchen and hallway, then Todd went to work wiring them this weekend.

Electricity, I must say, is pretty cool.  The minute Dad started showing me the "hot," "neutral," and "ground" wires, I immediately begin craving my old Physics II notes because while I aced that class nearly ten years ago, I couldn't even remember the parts of a circuit today.  Not all of us are natural geniuses.

[Side note: Dad first wired a room when he was 8 years old.  Yeah, 8.  Without any help from an adult, he just went to work re-wiring his basement.  Imagine that on a bumper sticker.  My child is a self-taught electrician.]

Anyway, thank god for a little Google-ed circuit refreshment.  It occurs to me often that things might move faster if I wasn't asking so many dumb questions ("WAIT - Why the neutral still hot and the ground not?"), but fortunately, Dad's patient enough to answer.  So despite my many questions, things are still moving.