Entry #154
October 29, 2025 — 8:30 PM
Short night again. Bed by 12:10. Up at 1:03 with a single click from the hall like a loose jar lid. Back down. Half hour later, the register pinged as if tapped with a coin. 2:19, a shift in the stair made me sit up. Nothing on inspection but the cool of the banister and my footprints from earlier. 3:47, wind through the north sash, the glass ticking against the putty. 4:28, the far room let out one dry pop where the subfloor meets the wall. No steps. Just that one report. I closed my eyes and waited. Slept in scraps until dawn.
I worked anyway. Coffee, then mask. Scraped the last of the bubbled paint from the dining room crown. The old oil gave up in curls that smelled faintly sweet, then sour when the heat gun lingering too long lifted the underlayer. Vacuumed the dust. Patched two feet of lath with new pine strips, tight fit, set with ring-shanks. Mixed plaster a little too wet; corrected with dry. It took, despite me.
I reset the second stair riser where it had gapped. Shimmed the tread we cut for the hollow step last week. The wedge held. The knock that answered me out of that void the other night hasn’t repeated, but I still paused before putting the tread back. On the underside, scratched in with something sharp, E.B. Two letters, no flourish. Old, under the varnish line. I noted it and moved on. The cut had to be square.
Tired makes you sloppy. I measured twice and still put the first pilot hole too close to the edge. Split the trim. Glued and clamped, cussed once, low. When I was planing the threshold, the blade kissed my knuckle. Not deep, but I saw how it happens when you think you’re fine. Fatigue is not dramatic. It just narrows the world until you don’t see the corner you’re about to take wrong.
The house ran its little routine all day while I worked. Pipe ticks. A faint rasp in the plaster where the chimney shares a wall. A soft settling under my feet when I crossed from the old flooring to the new subfloor patch in the “other” room. I talk back less now. No point answering what isn’t asking. I log it, adjust, keep going. Replace what needs replacing. Seal what needs sealing.
Plan for tomorrow: finish sanding the patched bay, prime before noon to beat the damp. Replace the two dead runs in the front room circuit if the hardware store has the right boxes. Make time to pull the casing on the south window and see if that draft has a path I can actually address. I’ll also move the catch on the back door; that rattle at 1 a.m. reads like wind, but I’d like the hardware to be the culprit and not some loose thought I carry into bed.
I am not hearing voices. I am hearing wood, metal, air, heat. It is enough. The mind does the rest at the edges when you’re running on fragments. A house does not need to speak clearly to interfere with sleep.
— Thomas Hale