Upper Floored: Preparation (H)

In between me buying a new motorcycle and looking about 50 years into the future, we’ve been working on putting down wood flooring in Daughter Dearest’s bedroom. We’d done the hallway before — we know what to do now, it should be a breeze, right? Rip up the carpet and glue down the new floor….

Of course, any job at FAR Manor is going to turn into a complete hairball.

First, we found a mixture of plywood and particle board under the carpet. And that’s not all: I’m not sure exactly what those spots are, but they look like blood. It wouldn’t surprise me that FAR Manor was causing pain even while it was being built.

The instructions for the new flooring specially say that it can’t be put down over particle board. To make things even more “interesting,” there was a pretty significant sag in the middle of the floor, almost two inches (no, I’m not exaggerating). I looked at Mrs. Fetched and said, “I was right about this place.” (While she was going completely berserk, and driving me berserk wanting to buy this place, I saw its many flaws and described it as a pig in a poke. Like any data that doesn’t fit the previously-made decision, she ignored it. At the time.)

We got two opinions on what to do. Our carpenter friend, who advised us on the last floor job, said it would be fine to just glue (and possibly nail) the strips to the floor as it was. A second person, who would be the one to do the work, said it had to be straightened out — we could either jack it up from the ground floor (yeah right) or put some shims between the sub-floor and the plywood that would eventually be the substrate for the wood floor. Cosmic Rule of the Universe Number One: given two choices, Mrs. Fetched is always going to pick the most complicated option. If I don’t fall in line immediately, she’ll besiege me with whines, nags, dire predictions, until I throw my hands up and say some variation of “Do what you want — you’re going to anyway.” Of course it’s not an issue to her: she’s not the one doing the actual work.

In a vain attempt to get some peace, I had The Boy help me measure the sag and mark some spots. I figured I could partially even it out, enough to satisfy Mrs. Fetched’s mania for complicating things. I wasn’t having much luck, and she called in the people who caused all the commotion. Upon inspecting the floor, they informed us that there was a layer of plywood under the top layer, and if we could crowbar it out it would save them some time. Well… taking a crowbar to FAR Manor is a pleasure surpassed by very few things, and one of those is taking a crowbar to the chicken houses. J (the son of our carpenter friend) has been our extra resident for a couple of months now; he tends to be quiet and helpful so he doesn’t get quite the coverage of M.A.E. or Lobster. We spent a happy evening of echar la casa por la ventana (literally, not the Hispanic idiom for a wild party) because the particle board came up in pieces and we could toss the small- and medium-size pieces down to the front yard instead of carrying them. In fact, Mrs. Fetched caught me singing some happy 80s tune, and wondered why I wasn’t mad anymore. How quickly we forget. :-P

Somewhere in there, Mrs. Fetched got one of the farm trucks, and we finished up by loading up the fragged particle board. I got a perfect action shot of J tossing a big chunk on the first attempt.

That got us through the long weekend. Last night, Mrs. Fetched and I cut 1/4-inch plywood to lay down over the new floor (the guy who did the work said it would be best if we did). I was hoping to come home to find it already nailed down, but Cosmic Rule of the Universe Number Two says: if I don’t do it around here, it doesn’t get done. Taking a hammer to FAR Manor is less satisfying than a crowbar, but it’ll do in a pinch.

Tomorrow, we get to glue down the floor… since it’s Daughter Dearest’s room, she gets to help. A lot.

New Toys

Little Zook

The company stock went up a fair amount in the last week, making it worthwhile to cash in some stock options. Then when I saw this DR-Z400SM at the bike dealer with 170 miles on it, for about $1200 off list, I decided it was time to stop talking about getting a smaller bike (like I’ve been doing for a long while) and do it.

My mental image of a motorcycle goes back to the '70s, when little dual-sports ruled the roads in the aftermath of the oil embargo. There aren’t many bikes that look like those, at least shipped to the US anyway, but this is a sort of modern expression of those bikes.

This bike represents a number of firsts for my adult-life motorcycling: it’s the first sub-liter bike I’ve had, the first (almost) new bike, the first I picked out (as opposed to the previous two more or less following me home), first with a radiator and chain drive (the previous two were shafties), first vehicle with a digital speedometer/console… and the first bike without a tachometer, centerstand, or self-cancelling turn signals (I’ll have to get used to the latter).

The ride is very smooth, which isn’t surprising since it has motocross suspension, and I sit at about the same height as a pickup truck driver. Insurance is actually less than the Virago’s (small engines make a big difference), and it gets close to 60mpg. Unfortunately, the tank is really tiny, so I’ll be filling it more often. Go figure.

Now to get really '70s-retro and replace that little bag on the back with a milk crate…

Duty

Iowa Victory Gardener writes an excellent Memorial Day post.

No matter how low our opinion of the “Commander Guy,” we must never lose sight of the people that he’s sending overseas to die for the glory of his ego. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of our underequipped, thinly-stretched soldiers would rather be home with their families today (you and me) — enjoying a Memorial Day barbecue, or even doing house work — but duty calls, and the good soldier answers. As Gordon Dickson wrote: “Soldier, ask not - now, or ever, where to war your banners go.”

On this Memorial Day, as we are engaged in the Second Oil War, let us all — soldiers and civilians alike — remember that we all have our duty. Let us perform it to the best of our ability.

For those of us who want our troops home with their families next Memorial Day, we too have a duty, a duty to act on our convictions. I don’t use the term “Second Oil War” lightly — the first was Desert Storm, aka Kuwait — as it’s easy to see that this is about nothing but oil. The proof is as easy as looking at Iraq and Darfur — why are we embroiled in one and not the other? I remember a protest sign from the First Oil War: “What if Kuwait exported broccoli?”

So what is our duty, those of us who want an end to this waste of time and lives? If the true reason for war is oil, then it’s up to all of us to make oil less important. It’s not easy, though: oil pervades nearly everything in our lives. It’s in our fertilizers, plastics, (of course) our gas tanks, and the asphalt we drive on is what’s left over when all the other stuff is pulled out of the oil. Manufacturing, mining, shipping, lumbering, agriculture, all require diesel fuel.

Admitting that oil is necessary to our “non-negotiable way of life” is one thing, it’s quite another to admit that we are past — or at best, very near — “peak oil,” the maximum point of oil supply that we will ever see. Supply is dwindling, and will continue to do so, while demand has just kept going up. That’s why we’re already paying post-Katrina prices for gas before hurricane season has even started. We can’t do anything about the supply, but we can — and it’s our duty to — do something about demand.

One of the lasting legacies of WWII is the collection of posters and other artwork, exhorting the civilians of the time to support the war effort — by supporting rationing, growing one’s own food in “Victory Gardens,” recycling scrap material, carpooling (even though we, hard as it is to believe, were the Saudi Arabia of the day), and all sorts of other sacrifices. Quite the contrast to Commander Guy’s “go shopping,” huh? Even during the 70s, we had myraid PSAs on the radio that drilled us with all sorts of tips to save gas. Where are those PSAs today? Well heck, we don’t need them — we know what our duty is. Let’s get to it.

Our friends and loved ones overseas are depending on us.

Smoke from a Distant Fire

The south GA/north FL fires are depositing a thick layer of smoke all the way up here — I was pretty sure at first that there was a fire nearby. Someone at church this morning said she heard on the news that ash was falling on the south side of Atlanta. Supposedly, it’s not so bad on the mountaintops.

All the windows are closed and we won’t be doing much outside today. Today, a 30-mile bike ride could be a good way to get a case of black lung.

PITT (Pain In The Thighs)

Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest went to see Pirates of the Caribbean III this afternoon. Since I haven’t seen the first two, I decided to sit it out. This was my chance to ride the road course that goes by FAR Manor. I packed my cellphone (in case of trouble or photo opportunities), two water bottles, and my trusty iPod. Escape Pod provided a high-tech counterpoint to my low-tech adventure.

I haven’t done a 30-mile bike ride since I was in college, so of course I’m feeling it. I could be feeling one or two of the college-day rides as well. The route isn’t exactly Florida-flat, and gets somewhat remote in some places. This bit of graffiti pretty much says it all.


A stretch of road had these flowers growing along the side. They look like a white belladonna, but frankly I got no clue. Maybe one of the plant experts can identify it? I’d appreciate it.


I started “feeling it” about 2/3 of the way through the ride, so obviously turning back would have been a Bad Idea. I’ll probably walk funny for a little while, but Lord knows I need the exercise. If I do this every weekend, I should get in shape fairly quickly. But I’m pleased with how the pictures turned out — the cellphone camera worked will in bright light.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Fetched! (and TFM!)

Birthdays just aren’t the same when you get past 40, I guess. Yesterday was Mrs. Fetched’s mumbleth, and we spent the evening videotaping Cousin Splat’s graduation ceremony. I got her an orchid (Dendrobium), which we had to re-pot right away because it fell out of the pot on the way home.

And I missed the occasion of the second birthday of my blog (May 16). What are the Terrible Twos like for a blog? I guess we’ll find out together….

Graduation night

Do I really need to say anything more here?



Oh, you want a full frontal? OK, you asked for it:

Friday Night Cinema (rerun)

Gas prices on Planet Georgia had been hovering under $3/gallon for a while — it seemed like nobody wanted to be first. But when one went up on Wednesday, nearly everyone followed suit pretty quickly. Since it’s too danged expensive to drive anywhere, grab a snack and settle in with Friday Night Cinema!

So to (ahem) “honor” the occasion, FNC has brought back an old favorite: Dominic Tocci’s I Can’t Afford My Gasoline.

“Happy” motoring!

On Creativity

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” — Genesis 1:26a

Does God look like us? Do we really look like Him? Or does “in our image, after our likeness” mean something different? After all, if God has a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso… well, so do the apes. Some other animals use their front paws as hands from time to time (raccoons, squirrels, etc.). Chimps and even some birds use tools to get food. What really separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom?

It’s not language: bees communicate through dance, chimps through gestures, dogs through body language and scent, not to mention whales and dolphins. But that answer is “getting warmer.”

Maybe it’s more a matter of how we use language. It isn’t just a tool for getting food, or bonding, or marking territory. We do all those things with language, but we also use it to create stories about where we came from, or why we are here, or simply to entertain ourselves and (if we’re lucky) other people. In other words, after God created the universe, the earth, and the ecosystem in it, He populated it with a species that could, in a small way, create worlds of their own! Our creativity isn’t divine in its own right — but it’s an echo of the divine. Call it part-divine.

This I’ve realized for a while now, more came to light as I read Stephen King’s On Writing, specifically when he talked about many writers having a drinking problem, and himself being baked on coke and booze while writing Cujo, to the point that he didn’t remember writing it. That’s when I got the rest of it: I’d always thought that getting a little squiffed was good for the creative part of me… confirmed, so I thought, by how much easier it was to write after a few drinks (or in the middle of a fever, for that matter). It came to me in a flash: the creative part of us is partly divine and thus isn’t affected — either way — by earthly things like self-medication or even sickness. Alcohol and drugs just muzzle that anti-divine part of our minds, that inner nagging spouse or domineering parent, the part that picks at everything, is never satisfied with what we do, and would rather have major surgery without anesthesia than to say “well done.”

And here I’ve done the worst thing to that part of me that can be done: I’ve vivisected the little SOB and laid its pathetic guts out on the stainless steel lab table for everyone to see. Feel free to laugh at it and ridicule it as it squirms under your amused gaze….

Amazingly enough, I’m completely sober tonight. Must be a leftover from yesterday’s virus.

Taking My Medicine

WARNING: Too Much Input follows.

Mrs. Fetched confiscated the DSL modem yesterday, because The Boy refused to get out of bed and help with the chickens. Not that it mattered: I was awakened a bit too early (after staying up too late) with a bout of what I call LGS (Le Grande Shittes). I had a scheduled checkup at the doc’s yesterday morning anyway, so i figured I’d get that seen to as well, especially when I felt slightly nauseated on the way over.

This checkup was a little more intense than usual: in addition to getting poked for blood (which I hardly felt, they’re good about that), I was also handed a cup. The nurse asked me the usual battery of questions that usually have the same answers, except for the symptoms of the morning. Then when the doc came in, she asked about those and said I probably had a stomach virus that was going around, it would be gone in a day or so, eat bland food and drink plenty of fluids.

Then she pulled on The Gloves. “I don’t enjoy this either,” she reassured me.

“Just like being at work!” I said. Well, maybe the annual review part. She then boldly went where no woman has gone before.

“All the time, people show me things they don’t want to show me and I don’t really want to look at,” she said. I suppose that’s one of the things they don’t tell you about when you start med school. Lord knows it’s the same for technical writers, and probably any other profession: you end up mucking around in things you never really thought about in school.

“No blood in your stool, and your prostate feels normal,” she said. I suppose my dignity was a small price to pay for that good news. “But there was some blood in your urine sample. You need to give us another sample in two weeks, then if it’s still there, I’ll refer you to a urologist.”

The thing she didn’t tell me was to go back home and ride out the stomach virus in bed. Naturally, I felt pretty rough by the time I was ready to go home (probably running a fever) and went straight to bed when I got home. I slept until 10, when the fever finally broke, then read my Asimov’s for an hour or so before turning the light off. The bed was hot; I thought Mrs. Fetched had put a heating pad under the sheet but it was just me baking the virus (and the mattress).

I still have a little LGS, but that’s not completely bad. I haven’t truly been what the old folks call “regular” since I started taking the RIpitmore, and I needed a good purge. I wouldn’t recommend it as a way to lose a pound, but I did that too.

A (mostly) peaceful weekend

I was blessed this weekend with less crazy stuff than I expected. The Boy’s counseling session was moved to Saturday morning since today is Mother’s Day. (My mom is out West having a good time on a tour.) I spent an hour & a half taking care of various business, combining a bunch of errands into one trip, finishing up with groceries.

Coming out of the grocery store, I found a message on my smellphone: “don’t get groceries, go by Subway and get sandwiches… [list] …then bring them over to the chicken houses; we have a water leak.” Since I’d already got the groceries, including ice cream, I decided to just make sandwiches at home and take them over. Fortunately, the leak was near the back end of the house so Mrs. Fetched just drove the small tractor in to scoop the wet stuff out and it really didn’t take long. We finished to rumbling noises in the sky, so we went home, unplugged stuff, and several of us (including yours truly) took a nap.

Today has truly been a day of rest. We took Mrs. Fetched out for Mother’s Day, watched A Night at the Museum and haven’t done much since then.

Family Man describes himself as a slacker, but I’ll bet Dolly Freed could teach even him a thing or three. Back in 1975 or so, at age 19, she wrote a book called Possum Living (link to full text) about the extremely low-maintenance lifestyle she and her father lived. I wish I’d run across this book when I got out of college — it could have changed my life. It would be interesting to see whether she’s still living that ultra-slackerly lifestyle now at age 50-ish, and what improvements she might have made on it.

Friday Night Cinema

It’s almost not Friday anymore on this side of the country, and payday isn’t until next Friday. FNC to the rescue with short free flicks!

This is one I’ve had kicking around in my archives for a while, forgotten but not gone. As I try to be helpful and informative, here’s a handy tip: How to Wake Up a Drunk Friend…

News briefs

Looks like the retail industry is now following the home mortgage industry down the toilet.

All the schemes that have been tried to feed Africa’s poor, and the one that seems to be working? Urban Gardens. Get together with your neighbors and plant a garden in the vacant lot next door. I like this quote, for some reason: “He can't grow crops that will get too tall, or else they will absorb too much pollution. Also, bandits might hide in the foliage. Better to keep the vegetables low and leafy.”

And this gem from (of course) The Register: the things that people smuggle into Irish prisons. Not for the squeamish.

Dwarf Lilies

I noticed these dwarf lilies (as Mrs. Fetched found they’re called) springing up where the tiger lilies usually prowl. She said, “they just came up on their own, I don’t know how they got there.” In other words, another pretty nuisance plant.



Click the picture to get a closeup. The blooms remind me of the wild violets that came and went earlier in the year (but are still growing all over the place).

There Goes the Neighborhood

When I first moved out here, I figured that the subdivisions would catch up to me about the time I retired. I wanted to retire when I was 50, but that’s only a couple of years away — and barring a life-changing event, retirement isn’t in the cards for a long time.

That hasn’t stopped the subdivision from coming, though. This is going in just down the road from FAR Manor, a farm across from my in-laws’ that the owners sold last year.

“No Gas Day” Bunk — and a Better Idea

While I expect regular readers of Tales from FAR Manor are intelligent types, there are plenty of people out there who either aren’t too smart or turn off their “critical faculties” when reading the latest email.

Take the latest craze: No Gas Day (Snopes link). The idea is to not buy gas on May 15^th, under the assumption that it will lower prices. The first problem with that is, even if the entire country were to participate, it wouldn’t make a difference. If you don’t buy gas on Monday, you’ll buy it over the weekend (so you won’t run out) or Tuesday (because you’ll probably be running low). So over four or five days, let alone the entire month, there’s no difference in sales.

The second problem is that demand is at near-record highs, at a time when oil production is starting to decline (according to statistics published on The Oil Drum, we may have reached Peak Oil at the end of 2005). In short, gas prices are high because people are buying all they can get and then some — gasoline inventories have been declining all year and hit a 50-year low at the end of April.

Do you want gas prices to come down? Not buying gas for one day, when you’ll buy it the day before or after, isn’t going to make a difference. What will bring prices down is to not use so much of the stuff. Fortunately, it’s not that difficult to cut out 5%, 10%, or even 20% of what you’re using now — we in the US are much more efficient than we were in the 1970s, but there’s still a lot of slop in the system. You can save 5% to 10% just by following some simple Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage (FuelEconomy.gov link); you don’t have to buy anything. If you have a standard-shift car, give Pulse and Glide driving a try. Just coasting downhill in neutral is enough to give me a 10% boost in gas mileage (36 to 40 mpg).

Simple lifestyle changes, like telecommuting or carpooling, can save 20% or more — and these are the kind of changes that will improve your quality of life and still don’t require you to ride a bus or buy a hybrid. Wouldn’t it be great to not have to drive to work all the time? It would certainly be less stressful.

If everyone used 5% less gas, prices would come down. Of course, the temptation would then be to slack off and watch prices go right back up…

The Real Electronic Shackle

The Boy was kind enough to show off his new fashion accessory last night. It’s going to be a part of him for the next two months. After hearing about this deal, I wonder that he didn’t just choose being in jail for the next two months instead: he has to be in the house (not even the garage) by 8pm; he needs to get permission from his probation officer to do anything later than that. He has to have weekly drug and alcohol tests, as well as 3-hour counseling sessions every Sunday afternoon. His driver’s license is gone-zo until he’s 21 (like that matters; he’s been dropped off our insurance for a while).

The phone is a bit of a pain, but not as much of one as it could be. To leave the line clear for the ankle bracelet’s receiver to do its thing, we’re supposed to limit calls to five minutes. The monitoring service can call at any time. That’s not such a big deal; we have smellphones for longer calls and can turn off the ringer at least in our bedroom.

But I hope last night isn’t going to be typical: since he couldn’t go carouse with his “good friends,” they came to FAR Manor. All evening. And the ones who weren’t popping in and out like blink dogs were calling well into the wee hours. At least one of them had been drinking before (I hope) he got here, and ended up falling asleep in The Boy’s room. I took him home this morning, along with some pointers on how The Boy’s real friends will conduct themselves around him: no booze, no drugs, and no late-night calls. I’m sure it went in one ear and out the other, even though he assured me he’d pass the word around.

We all get to enjoy this time together, I suppose…

Friday Night Cinema

Gas prices are climbing past $3/gallon, and it’s been a rough week anyway. Friday Night Cinema is ready to help you save gas and save time!

Some of the best links I get for FNC come from the Techcomm list, and tonight’s selection is no exception. These guys aren’t The Who, but they’re Brits, and they’re Talkin’ ’bout My Generation…

Plants, flowers, bees [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: I added a picture of the mountain laurel.]

Mrs. Fetched snagged me from the comfort of a lounge chair this evening, where I was reading Cell, to plant a few things out front in the dusk. I dug, she planted, and we both scooped dirt back in.

Looking out the bathroom window this evening, I saw a huge mountain laurel in full bloom down at the edge of the woods. Click the picture for a closeup of the flowers.

Some of the lilies that run riot around the manor grounds are also starting to bloom, purple varigated with white, that look somewhat like large versions of the wild violets that I couldn’t get rid of even if I wanted to.

The mountain laurel was getting plenty of attention from the large carpenter bees, and my strange old friend the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth was also getting in on the pollination action. I haven’t seen any honeybees in about a month, when they were buzzing around the wisteria. Colony Collapse Disorder is a terrible thing to have happen, but it looks like other bugs are already picking up the pollination slack. I hope so, anyway.

Are you seeing honeybees at your place, or are other bugs stepping in?

Home 0wn3rsh1p – a Thought Experiment

James Kunstler’s column today is the sort of thing that brings FAR Manor to mind. Not so much the state of architecture, nor even the shoddy build quality of most homes today.

My first thought upon reading it was that the real failure isn't architecture — or even construction — so much as people collectively have a “busted give-a-damn.” But then I thought about it a little further. Owning — or rather, being 0wn3d by — FAR Manor has taught me that two things are required to maintain a home: 1) money; 2) time (and improving a home requires the same, just more of it… lots more). Anyone who marketed any part of a house as “maintenance free” should have been summarily drawn and quartered, but that's another story. This tale is going to be a thought experiment that will perhaps illuminate the current situation.

Let’s look at Joe and Jane Average. They bought a tract house back when Joe had a decent manufacturing job and Jane was working part-time as a bookkeeper. Like most people these days, they bought something a little more expensive than they should have, but figured they could sell it in a few years for a tidy profit. Then comes the perfect storm: the decent job went to China, the local housing market cratered with the job market, and a birth-control failure led to a couple of unexpected kids. Joe’s “lucky” — he’s working a couple of so-called part-time jobs, six and a half days a week at crap wages, that bring in about 3/4 of what he used to make on a 40-hour shift. Jane still has her bookkeeping work, but she hasn’t had a raise in three years and is mostly tied up minding the kids.

Instead of owning the house, the house now 0wns them. They tried selling it, but the few offers they got for it weren’t enough to cover the mortgage, so they’re stuck. Fortunately, they were smart enough to nail down a decent fixed rate before things went to hell; most of their acquaintances with creative financing got foreclosed on last year, and most everyone else is looking at that reset and sighing in resignation. What Joe and Jane are bringing in would be enough, except for the credit cards. They ran up some plastic debt back when things were looking good; they bought a few luxury items and figured they’d have plenty of time to pay them off. Then the clock ran out and left them hanging — everything not going into living expenses is now barely keeping them abreast of the credit cards.

So the siding's starting to look a bit grungy, and it’s even coming loose in a couple of places. The fake-wood trim needs to be repainted, and the front door frame is dry-rotting at the bottom. The living room carpet is, to put it nicely, shot. Joe has little experience with construction or carpentry work, Jane none at all — they could do some maintenance, but neither one has much time or any energy to do so much as paint the trim.

They’re holding on by their fingernails, folks. They nearly got burned by a debt consolidation “service” that was saturating the radio with ads last year, which turned out to be little more than a scam — there may be legit ones out there, but they don’t trust any of them now. They looked into bankruptcy, but Bush-league made sure that door was slammed in their faces. Their few friends are in worse shape than themselves. The car is starting to make a weird noise (the second one got sold a few months ago, just before it went to pieces; they used the money to pay their property taxes). The bright spot is that they should be getting a few hundred bucks back on their taxes, which will go to fix the car.

Is it any wonder that people aren’t maintaining their houses?

Compared to Joe, I’m far better off. My job hasn’t been outsourced (yet), and I have (if Mrs. Fetched allows) a little time on weekends to fix steps or work on a wood floor. FAR Manor, as I’ve found by pulling up carpet, is far from quality construction (and I give Mrs. Fetched hell about buying this place every time, you betcha)… but it’s mostly maintainable. I can manage a few of the things that need to be fixed, and the few things I want to do.

The Averages might have a way out, though — now the thought experiment begets a thought experiment within itself. Jane’s bookkeeping skills have saved their bacon, so far; she set up a budget and has managed their money the way a skilled kayaker negotiates a Class V rapids. One mistake, or the submerged rock of an unexpected expense, could spell disaster; but so far so good. She made a little extra money this spring doing taxes — a local tax preparer was swamped with complex (i.e. expensive) returns, and farmed out many of the 1040A and EZ jobs to her. A little of the money treated the family to dinner at a cheap Mexican restaurant; the rest went to a credit card payment, opening up a little breathing room.

But I digress. One day, one of her neighbors sees Jane playing in the front yard with her kids. She just landed a job at a big-box store, nothing to brag about but it will help to supplement what her husband Frank makes doing odd jobs. Would Jane watch her kids (close to Jane’s in age) in the afternoon? She couldn’t pay anything right away, but —

“I have a better idea,” says Jane. That afternoon, Frank brings the kids over. While the kids get to know each other, he tacks up the loose siding and pressure washes the whole house. The next day, he paints over the trim. The house is looking better already. Joe gets home and silently picks up the trash in the yard before collapsing with a beer in front of a TV he suddenly can’t stand to watch.

That weekend, the two families get together and have a cookout during the few afternoon hours that Joe has free. Frank says he can replace the front door, frame and all, with a better one that he bought for a job (that fell through) some time back. Joe offers to trade the lumber he’d bought for a deck, back when he had a life, and the deal is struck on the spot. “I’ll keep an eye out for some carpet for your living room, too,” Frank says. “If there’s no hurry, I can probably get a roll-end for nothing or next to it.”

At his jobs, Joe gives Frank’s name to co-workers — there are always things that need to be done, and people willing to pay someone else to do them. Jane starts getting money instead of barter for the day care work, and takes in one more kid (all she feels comfortable handling). Slowly, almost reluctantly, the credit card debt gets whittled down. Jane manages to squirrel away a few hundred bucks for emergencies; the car will need new tires sooner or later and gas prices are only getting worse. Joe and a co-worker start car pooling to split the expenses.

The Averages are nowhere near out of the woods yet; a major sickness or accident could put them under in a heartbeat. They have put their house back on the market; it’s the nicest one on the street now. But as tempting as it is, I can’t in good conscious pull a deus ex machina and give them an offer that would pay off all their debts with enough left over for a deposit on an affordable apartment.

In the end, it’s not completely their fault that they bought the Endless Growth line; it seemed true for so long. But they are slowly bartering their way into (what they hope is) a better future.