Holding chaos at bay

Have felt compelled to write but there are so many subjects pressing to be addressed that I have preferred to keep quiet...but obviously I am coming out of it now. This is typical of my winter process. The freeing-up of Saturdays from retailing just allows such ease, that it takes a few weeks to figure out where to apply the energies. 

Certainly I clean the house and organize my receipts and bills and such for taxes, and little by little I sort my inventory and make a plan for the coming season. I eat better and exercise more and read and reflect and go to meetings and type up minutes. I watch myself for signs of irrationality and obsessiveness and laugh at how much of it I can find.

My foot is healed and now I am concentrating on walking a lot, stretching and massaging and trying to build the muscles back up and the scar tissue down. Instead of biking I am walking everywhere, and that is good, lots of thinking time and looking at all of the houses and working out my house book.

Researching the property is still my main obsession and I'm getting somewhere, but opening up new mysteries all of the time. Last night I wondered when my clawfoot tub probably appeared. There had to be indoor plumbing, and that was most likely achieved in the 1916 remodel, though no permit was ever taken out on the plumbing until I got here. With each mystery comes a raft of new areas to explore and new puzzles to solve. 

I spent another day in Deeds and Records and I so love looking through those old books from the beginning...all the way back to 1855! All handwritten in those days of course, and some almost illegible. My skill at reading handwriting is a good one for these challenges. It's even harder to decipher the stuff on microfiche, and I'm researching a few too many people at this point, so I will be spending a few more of these cold foggy days down at the County building. 

Most of my house people disappear rather early on, especially the Davises who came in 1847 or something. The Huddlestons lasted longer, because Samantha sold off a lot of properties in the early 1900's after they platted up their DLC and her husband died. Her son Henry C. is there, but predictably I am much more interested in the women than the men. I am sure that will be essential for the book. We all know that women had to use a lot of special powers to hold their own in those days, and fortunately for me, a lot of the owners of my property were women. So I'm studying Catherine S. Davis (1811-1898), her daughter Samantha A. Davis Huddleston (1836-1926), Miranda J. Freeze Haskett Vaughan (1854-1932), her daughter Grace Edna Vaughan Bowers (1886-1989), and the subsequent owners of my house Tillie Van Harken (1864-1942), Alma M. Goddard (1910-1995) and Theodosia E. Calloway (1875-1954).

Those are the principal players in my drama. Plus me, of course, the one who took apart their work and took them on as my house family. I have to study their husbands because history is mostly about men, it seems, but some of these women did own the property in their names, and some of them did the actual work themselves, at least might have. They made the decisions about the decorating, at the very least. 

I located and copied some of the original land transactions, but still haven't determined when my house was built and put on the property rolls. There is a lot to look for. Navigating the records is tricky until you get familiar with the systems. I really love looking at the books and plat maps and feeling the hands of the real individuals who lived before me. Yes, I am irrationally attached to these folks. It's a wonderful one-way affair (my favorite kind, if the  history of my own obsessions were written....)

I managed to organize my research into some notebooks and a lovely portfolio, since the box of papers was unwieldy and tough to utilize. I'm putting my writing and my Jell-O energy into the project but that may change as the Radar Angels are meeting tomorrow for brainstorming and the initial stages of this year's fabulous Jell-O Art Show. I have to step up: I'm the Queen!

My long walks are filled with looking at foundations, rotting sills and window details of the many old houses in Eugene. I'm glad I don't look like the type of person likely to break into houses because I'm sure my over-curious stares are unusual. Don't worry, I'm not looking at your stuff, just the wood and carpentry of your walls and porches. I'm learning so much about vernacular architecture, which of course just deepens the mysteries since people vary so much in the way they do things. A major theme of the writing I expect...there is no one way to do this stuff, build houses, plant gardens, all of it. Plus we all respond to the conditions we are under: poverty, abundance, necessity, whimsy, death and partnership and family.

I am unable to cut down the growing bay trees in my yard because I have convinced myself that Grace Bowers and her mother planted the first one and all of the subsequent seedlings connect to that. I peer into Grace's former backyards and wish there was more evidence. The giant Black Cottonwood down the street was quite likely planted by either the Vaughans or the Huddlestons, but it was cut down and chipped up while I was away and no body counted the rings. Tragic in my view, but I should have made sure it happened. I expected the stump to be there when I returned...like all the other stumps always are. This one got chipped up, but I still hope someone counted. They theorized 80 years, but I think it could even have been a survivor of the pre-settlement area. And it burns me to know that Grace was still living when I bought this house. My neighbors even remember her, but of course didn't talk about the things I want to know. Yes, irrational. 

But I'm learning realism too...discarding theories left and right as I look at more traceable facts. I'm not going to cut down my apple tree to find out, but now I'm guessing that it can't be 150 years old...though it is planted a bit close to the houses, it is doubtful that it predates them. The lockset from the 1850's was original to the door but more likely the door was not original to the house. I think Alma or Tillie or Grace did some "period" decorating as the house went through its changes. So much speculation. I look forward to looking up enough details so I have a more coherent narrative.

And I will have it. I'm on the verge of just starting to write, to relieve the pressure if nothing else. It would be cool to get the book out in time for the 100th anniversary of my board dated 1916...so that is kind of a goal now. Right on track if I don't stop working.

So that's where I am in general, rather dull and hermit-like and loving every minute of it. I think I have mentally retired, just not physically yet. I just want to work on what I want to work on. Barring any more stupid medical crises, I plan on having a smooth-sailing year of productive creativity and mental ease.  

 Plans, laughable. A year ago as I pruned trees and walked to cemetaries, I was just about in this same mental space. Had to do some other things, as it turned out. Guess we'll see how it all goes, one halting step at a time. Just no falling down, Diane, no falling down.