A Year on Monona

"The wretched thing had become a daily frustration. Here we were with hot weather and the outdoor eating season just around the corner – the days we had dreamed about back in England and through the winter–and we had nowhere to put a bowl of olives, let alone a five-course lunch." from A Year in Provence






June 10


One of the most peculiar things about managing a fully functioning residential home in a historical neighborhood that sits across from a river in a large city, is that you must come to trust relative strangers with the overall well-being of a house they see every day, and that you see online.  "Are the weeds creeping up through every last crack in the landscaping? Are the birds pecking away at the caulking lining the windows of the front porch...and have they roosted inside our fireplace?  Ants, centipedes? Who is to know?  Maybe the presence of the intermittent entrance of the contractor into the home – for such short spurts of time, one comes to wonder if the refrigerated wine cellar has become their own private storing unit and that on a thursday afternoon perhaps it is conveniently time to enter and swap out a Beaujolais for Pinot Grigio?  The other possibility for the out of town owner is to trust nothing, no one, and let the house alarm to do most of the heavy lifting for the sake of the two

hundred mile distance between.  The house alarm, for all that have entered into its alluring logic of perceived security, feels something like buying a boat or a house pet for that matter.  The boat will be fascinating to own and commandeer across the gleaming surfaces of the chain of lakes, but it is, to an equal degree, a large piece of metal rusting on water that you now own and it will certainly carp and moan for much attention as the years go on; the house pet, a darling soft little bundle of fur and brown eyes, but please do not forget about the piles on the carpeting behind the office desk at four in the morning or the yip and every shadow that crosses the clear pane of the front door.  This is to say, interpreted, the alarm will hopefully alert you to the most malicious of intruders and deter them to continue to walk briskly past your house, but also know that the metal mail slot carved onto the front door, when it collapses and hits metal to metal, will indeed strike fear into that same bold alarm and display broken glass in living room.  When the call in landed from Des Moines Iowa that you cozy uninhabited home in another city has a broken living window, what would you like to do?  Should we dispatch the cops?  Well, sure, send in the troops.  It is three in the afternoon in broad daylight directly

at the after school hours and the neighbors are so thick on the passing sidewalks that you may wonder, temporarily, how the cold intruder could even find a slot to jump through and tackle the window, but send them anyway, we must be safe!  The great benefit of the alarm, though, comes to the homeowner in a variety of unadvertised ways, our very own favorite is that from here at this very spot in Unalaska, WI, we now know the precise ranges of time that our carpenters have the time in their day to attempt some of the tasks that we have requested, like please gut and recreate our master bathroom would be nice.  For overtime the carpenter has to enter our home, they too must go through the deliberate

process of sounding off our alarm then resetting it on departure, each of which signal is briskly sent to us via handy email.  Gone are the days of long-distance contracting when the owner implores more progress while the carpenters ensure that that is precisely what is happening, all the while sipping sparkling waters from the high perch of a pontoon boat just now on maiden voyage from Lake Mendota to Lake Monona.  For better or worse, we have the hours of entry and industry flashing by our eyes hundreds of miles away instantaneously.... and for the most part, we know that over haul of that trap that is now our bathroom or the remodeling of our entire basement more than likely takes more time than twenty minutes each tuesday.