Entry #11
August 27, 2023 — 7:15 AM
I slept poorly. Not a nightmare, just the house keeping a schedule of small sounds: a soft ping in the baseboards after the air cooled, a dry slip in the roof, that light tapping from the south wall whenever the breeze bothered the trees. Each time I sat up, the sound I was listening for paused, as if it had only been my own weight shifting things. Each time I lay back down, it returned. Old frames move. I know this. It still took the kind of sleep that makes work go smooth.
I got up before six and made coffee that tasted metallic, like the pot needs a more thorough scrub. The front room was already bright enough to work without a lamp. Today’s task was to replace two lengths of baseboard I pulled last week. Both runs are long, the wall a little bowed where the plaster swallows the light. Easy enough, I told myself. Scribe to the wave, keep the miters honest, shim where the floor dips.
I measured the long run twice. Ninety-two and seven-eighths at the top, a breath less along the floor. I marked it, wrote the fraction big where I could not miss it, then brought the board out on sawhorses and cut it a quarter short. I do not have an excuse. Somewhere between the tape and the saw I translated what I wanted to see. Dry numbers in my notebook, a shorter piece of poplar in my hands. When I tried to seat it, the gap at the right end smiled back at me. I set it down with more noise than necessary and said nothing useful to the room.
The tape snapped and bit my thumb when I reeled it in too fast. It left a neat red line and a bead of blood that smelled like iron nails. I wiped it on my pant leg and kept going, which was foolish because the board could not grow by scowling at it. I hate wasting material, but I ripped a filler out of the offcuts and planed it thin. Invisible under paint, if I am patient with the seam. I am not patient this morning. Every tiny burr felt like an insult I had earned.
Going up and down the stairs for clamps left me winded in a way that does not match the work. It is not hot in here. The air is just close. My back feels two days older than yesterday. I keep telling myself it is the dust from the old plaster — the chalk and hair — and the poor sleep. My shoulders ache as if I carried something out of the house in the night and set it down where I would not find it again. I know better than to make that sentence mean anything. The body keeps score whether I like it or not.
On the back of one of the old baseboards, under a skim of dirt, there was a penciled EB in a tired hand. I took it for east bedroom and moved on. The pencil had almost vanished into the wood grain. Whoever marked it is not here to care if I guessed right.
I will try to get the second run done after another cup of coffee and a walk around the yard. I can hear the light tapping again, thinner in daylight. The house has not changed. I am just low on sleep. This morning, fatigue makes every room feel occupied.
— Thomas Hale