All Hail the Plaster Wizard

Plastering is a dying art.

We’ve heard this over and over as we’ve rescued lovely but cracked walls hidden beneath decades of wallpaper, from The Big C to nosy HVAC dudes to the ill-fated “artist” who gave us a ridiculously high estimate for his “artistry.”

Tools of the scraping trade.

I am not about to disagree with them. Who the hell knows how to plaster a wall? No one, that’s who.

We have been diligent about getting estimates from multiple contractors for every single job. The Big C has his favorites, but he searches far and wide for other people to bid. He wants what’s best for us, and when we choose to go with someone he doesn’t know (and therefore doesn’t trust), he shifts his feet and stares at us real hard — but ultimately it’s our choice. He shrugs, and we hope to high heaven we don’t regret going against his gut.

Chris' sweat smells like despair.

When we got a good chunk of wallpaper scraping done, The Big C called his plaster guy. He’d been waxing poetic about this mysterious Plaster Wizard for weeks. He’d smooth his hand over our sad, fissured walls and reassure us that his guy would make them “feel like glass.” But for some reason, he couldn’t connect with the Plaster Wizard by phone, so he got in touch with some other guy who took one look at our house and quoted us an amazing sum to get the job done.

He didn’t even measure, noted The Big C, shaking his head. (This is a huge red flag.) At a loss, we figured out which walls The Big C could drywall (bathrooms, mainly) to save money. It wasn’t enough to cut costs significantly because our desire to preserve the gorgeous plaster crown molding made drywall impossible to install in many rooms.

"Forget about the sagging ceiling," cries the crown molding. "Save me! Save me!"

Clearly in a spitballing mood, The Big C mentioned a special wallpaper designed to be painted that restaurants often use to cover cracked plaster walls in a pinch. I gagged a little at the thought of re-papering all of the walls we’d spent two solid months scraping clean (and still aren’t finished with, thank you very much). He wisely moved on.

He floated the idea of spraying all of the walls with a texturizer. I scoffed at the idea of our lovely old home looking like a giant popcorn ceiling.

And so we were stuck.

We knew we had to do something. The Big C was still unable to get this Plaster Wizard on his cell phone, causing much grumbling about Verizon on his part, so we took a chance and went another route. A friend of ours has used this guy before on several houses he’s worked on, so we asked for a hand getting in touch. Two texts later, Chris had a new contact in his phone and we had a clear shot at the Wizard.

We called. He came. He estimated. We hired.

We are paying the Plaster Wizard roughly what the other plaster guy had asked for, only the Wizard is plastering the whole house AND doing the drywall for The Big C. Plus, he’s the best. What more could you ask for?

"We would like to ask for parents who don't take on huge renovation projects. And also for some new American Girl dolls. Grammie? Are you reading this?"

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Plaster Wizard is, of course, a wizard. And his work is beyond reproach. But the Plaster Wizard is also a smart-ass of epic proportions, thin as a greyhound and twice as jumpy. He has two guys working with him, both of whom have permanent half-smiles and chalky hands they hold palms-forward when I enter a room, as if I’m sticking them up at gunpoint instead of trying to shake their hands.

I’m not used to this kind of energy in my house. It’s been overrun by men who spend their days perched on scaffolding staring at and touching white walls, which has to be listed in the DSM-IV as evidence of a special kind of plaster-derived psychosis. The Big C stays safely away from the Wizard and his crew, choosing to safely install lights in our master closet and laundry room while the crew fills cracks and sands and bitches about how much paper and glue Chris and I left on the walls we “supposedly” scraped. And I can’t blame him.

We have clearly entered a new phase of the project, and it feels weird. Today the Plaster Wizard pointed to a wall in the living room and said that after another skim-coat and sanding, it would be ready for paint.

Paint.

This was the wall in question a week ago. It looks amazing now, but you'll just have to use your imagination.

It feels so final. As if we actually have to pick paint colors. And you can’t pick a paint color for one room and not pick the colors for the rest of the house. You just can’t. It’s absurd and unseemly. And then you have to put those colors on the wall. And then paint the trim, and install the flooring and carpet. And move in the furniture. But what about the kitchen? And that huge chimney we decided to remove?

Please go about your business while I go hyperventilate for a few hours.

Once Again, One More Time

Once again, Chris has left the bosom of our family to scrape wallpaper off the ceiling.

It’s not a fun job, and I am supremely grateful that he is the one doing it. The plaster guy comes on Wednesday, and to say we’re under the gun is a wild understatement.

I, in the meantime, sit at home watching sleeping children and wondering why Design Star is so bad this season.

The Big C bought a brand-spanking-new scaffolding kind of deal, and he’s letting Chris use it to scrape the wallpaper off the ceiling. It’s canary yellow, and though he’s a generous sort, he seems a little paranoid; his nickname is scrawled in black Sharpie ink on every inch of that piece of equipment. In case any one tries to steal it piecemeal, he’s got the bastard covered.

And so I sit here alone, contemplating the work we’d done over the weekend.

Goodbye, guest bathroom ceiling.

We didn’t find any hidden stash of gold coins in the guest bathroom ceiling after it was gutted. We only found coal dust, and by “we” I mean Chris because I was home with the girls for most of this demo project. This is, as you can see, a recurring theme. Chris with the sledgehammer, me with sleeping babes.

It’s not that I can’t wield a sledgehammer, it’s just that I choose not to.

Anyway.

I want to be alone.

Did I mention that a bunny lives in our yard? Our old yard, not our new yard. This is actually confusing because our old yard won’t be ours once we sell this house. Then we will have a temporary yard with possibly no bunnies and our hearts will be broken. We love this bunny, and he loves our ornamental grass.

Which brings me to another heartbreaking development.

As gentle as The Big C can be — and though he puts on a very tough front, he  can be gentle — he could not convince our trutledoves to stay with us.

Lonesome dove.

The Big C witnessed the baby turtledove’s first flying lesson. He stepped over their droppings and opened the screen door extra carefully so he wouldn’t disturb them. But alas, the ruckus was too much. They’ve gone, and it appears they’ve even taken their nest with them.

But I can’t blame them.

Not really.

I think we all feel a little bereft without our watch-doves to coo over us as we eat sandwiches with The Big C on the side porch at lunchtime. But it could be a sign that we’re moving forward with the project, heading into the next stage. We’re not just busting down and ripping out, but instead we’re building anew. Inching forward.

One can only hope.

The Girls’ Bathroom, Part 1

The Big C informed us that it’s time to start buying things for the girls’ bathroom. He specified bathroomy things like faucets and medicine cabinets and lights and fans. He’s pulling wires and needs to know what’s going where.

Now, The Big C has been around. To say he’s seen the guts of more houses than we have is a wild understatement. He respects old houses, and he has definite opinions about what works and what doesn’t. He lives for symmetry, therefore the girls’ bathroom is a study in symmetry. The window is perfectly framed by two matching closets. The 60-inch tub/shower sits opposite a 60-inch double vanity. It’s all very precise.

Another thing I like about The Big C is that he has his opinions, we have ours, and when they don’t match up he shrugs and says, “Whatever you want.” This doesn’t happen much; 90% of the time we listen to him. But sometimes we don’t, and the girls’ bathroom was one of those times.

I want the girls to have medicine cabinets. Desperately. This is not a shared desire; the girls don’t care and neither does Chris. But I have visions of teenaged Bella and Sophie leaning over their sinks, holding shaking mascara wands perilously close to their wide-open eyes, needing storage for a thousand little things like dental floss and makeup remover and OxyClean wipes and hair ties. These thousand little things belong in a medicine cabinet. Recessed, if at all possible.

Wait, Heather. You could solve this problem with a nice, roomy vanity. What about one of those sink cabinets you can buy at The Orange Wilds or The Big Blue Box, you ask?

Nope, I say. Not gonna happen.

I have an almost pathological aversion to sink cabinets. I believe the storage space underneath is a no-man’s land of waste and despair, and no good can come of it. I want both girls to have their own recessed medicine cabinet, and I want their vanity to be a simple, clean, table-ish thing and … well, hold on … I’ll get to their vanity in another post.

So I told The Big C that I wanted two recessed medicine cabinets and three wall sconces, one on either side and one in between. He gave me a look but I pressed on. So he made some measurements, said we’d need to be careful to buy things that would fit in the space, and gave me one final “whatever you want” look.

The Big C doesn’t know everything, I thought.

Chris and I took the girls to the Blue Big Box, which wasn’t too terrible a disaster but not tolerable enough to brave the Orange Wilds for some comparison shopping. We snagged what we could and called it a day. Here’s what we got:

We bought two, one for each girl

Three wall sconces

And two of these. Bella did NOT approve.

Bella has made several requests along the way with regards to how she wants her bathroom to look. She wanted a pink bathtub, for example.

We shot her down.

She wanted two toilets; we shot her down.

Several other earnest requests were unceremoniously deep-sixed, and yet she somehow remained jovial and involved in the renovation process.

In hindsight, the Big Blue Box faucet meltdown was unavoidable and, perhaps, even inevitable.

Bella wanted this:

And we shot her down.

In addition to a bizarre intolerance for sink cabinets, I cannot abide the single-handle faucet. The water is either scalding or freezing; there is no warm. I understand the attraction of the trough-like spout, I really do. In fact, I love it. And if there had been a two-handled version available at The Big Blue Box, we would have bought it. But the single-handle style was a deal breaker.

Alas, the Big Blue Box had no other options.

Bella was devastated. “It’s my bathroom, not yours!” she shouted. “Why do you get to pick everything?”

I mumbled something about money and working and earning a living, never feeling more like Cliff Huxtable in all my life, and then we hightailed it out of there. I felt terrible disappointing her.

I felt even worse when Crow illustrated for me, with the help of a bold blue Sharpie he used to draw directly on the wall, just how horrendous my design would work in that space. He drew two rectangles, one perfectly centered over each sink. The gap between the cabinets was huge, but there was barely enough room for the sconce on the left side. The middle sconce floated in the gap like a brushed nickel buoy, and the right sconce looked like it had lost its mother.

(I’d show you a photo if I’d been smart enough to take one.)

Back to the drawing board.

I don’t have to tell you that I think The Big C was secretly pleased. No recessed medicine cabinet! he must have thought.

Well.

The next day Chris and I went to The Big Blue Box in hopes that we could find another medicine cabinet that would fit the space better, along with an overhead vanity light since the sconce idea wasn’t going to fly.

And we found this:

Big Recessed Beauty

It’s big, it’s recessed, and it’s got three — THREE — cabinets. One for each girl, plus one for the things they’ll “share” as they get older. I’m thinking hairspray and mousse, perfume and a product not yet on the market that will make boobs look bigger. A girl can dream.

Even better, we found this:

Bella will be so pleased.

Right This Very Second

Right this very second the door banged shut behind Chris as he left to go clean up after The Big C. It’s a near-nightly ritual we have now, after eating dinner, after putting the ladies in bed, and after cleaning up the kitchen. Well, I cook, so he cleans up the kitchen. It’s only fair.

Then off Chris goes into the twilight to sweep plaster dust and carry plastic trash cans down three flights of stairs to our huge dumpster, which looked like this after the Fourth of July weekend:

We struggle to fill your voids.

The Big C had previously expressed some concern over how we were filling this most excellently rusted dumpster: “Your husband needs to learn how to fill up a dumpster. There are a ton of voids.” Thereafter Chris and I made it our mission to eradicate all voids from said dumpster, and we did a bang-up job until some local dude in cut-offs started crawling through it to salvage “lumber” for his own project up the road.

That was kind of creepy, but we’re into recycling so it was okay. But still kind of creepy.

Anyway, when Chris leaves the house every night to clean up after The Big C — which is all part of our agreement with him to save on labor costs — he finds some curious things. One night he found a bird flapping around the third floor.

The bird, no longer flapping.

This is not to be confused with the bird we found flapping in the basement, which I mistook for another flapping creature and subsequently lost my sh*t and fell embarrassingly — and painfully — on a concrete slab in my efforts to escape.

Ouch.

This sad tale of death and injury leaves us pretty much where we left off. The Big C is making progress in the house, but it is ultimately invisible progress: plumbing and electric. It ain’t sexy, but it’s necessary.

In other news, we are “negotiating” with an HVAC contractor. I call it a negotiation only to appease my own sense of self-worth; there is no actual negotiating happening. In fact, I may have promised my first-born as a down payment in our dogged pursuit of the exalted A/C. But I did assure the soft-spoken and baby-faced HVAC dude that Bella’s imaginary friend, Tiny, is included in the deal, so I think we’re good.

We also have subcontracted with a plaster/drywall dude who will make our walls look like glass again. In some cases beyond anyone’s control it will be more like that really old wavy glass, but we’re cool with that. It beats wallpaper.

We’ve also ironed out our master bath layout, and exposed part of that mystical fireplace in the kitchen.

Peek-a-boo! I see you!

The good news is we’ll be able to use it in the kitchen design. I’m thinking open shelving, Chris is thinking flat screen television nook. The bad news is we won’t be able to use it as a fireplace. The whole thing is crumbling, and with every swing of the sledgehammer — even my pathetic, infantile swings — more of the structure fell to the ground.

Thus dies my dreams of living like the Huxtables.

Anyway, it is still twilight. Chris is still out cleaning. I am home blogging, and all is right with the world. Until he finds another bird with a death wish or I find a new way to maim myself. Whichever comes first.

Goodbye, Guest Bath

One of our homework assignments over the 4th of July weekend was to demolish the guest bathroom. We approached the job with gusto. Nothing gave us greater pleasure than chipping off the pink tiles … at first.

Chipping tile is slow work.

The tile started to accumulate into noisy piles on the floor, and when we shoveled it into the trash can it clinked like a pirate’s booty. It was almost musical. However, after hearing that noise for a few hours, it stopped sounding like money and started sounding like breaking glass.

So we took a break from tile chipping and Chris removed the shower door.

This was the easy part.

Then came more tile chipping, both inside and outside of the world’s shortest shower. Finally, Chris was able to bust through the shower wall. The Big C had suggested we take the wall out in pieces, and theoretically that is a good plan. If our saw had been able to hack it, that is. Alas, it was not prepared for such heavy labor, so we resorted to tackling the project the old-fashioned way: with a puny rubber mallet.

Take THAT!

We pulled up the wallpaper, just for kicks, and found a note. Doug the Plumber wrote an enthusiastic note to Joe the Floor Guy indicating that he could start work because the water was turned on. Given that the flooring in question was actually a horrid piece of gray carpet, I sort of wish Joe had never been given the green light, you know?

Plumber + Floor Guy 4-Ever

Chris dismantled the shower himself while I cheered helpfully and snapped photos of him toiling away. It took a lot longer than we had anticipated because the shower was nailed together tighter than a nuclear fallout shelter. For all we know, it could very well have been a safe room of some kind, in case Danville was ever attacked. It was really well constructed.

This shower was built to last.

The shower pan gave us pause. It was huge, it was thick, and it became clear that our lame rubber mallet would be useless.

The heavy lead lining isn't helping matters.

So we called in an expert: our buddy Josh. He arrived with a ridiculously long crowbar and a no-nonsense sledgehammer. It didn’t take him long to put them to work.

Josh - 1; concrete shower pan - 0.

The men carried down the pieces and threw them into the dumpster. Then they folded up the lead shower pan and hauled that down, too.

Heavier than it looks.

When all was said and done, it took a whole day to demolish the bathroom, and we were exhausted yet proud. Except me, because I didn’t do anything but watch. Lazy or smart? You be the judge.

Independence

Kids are not really cut out for renovation.

It’s true. Sue me.

So Chris and I were more than happy to send our kids up to a remote mountain community to enjoy 4th of July fun — including parades and lake water, a sandy beach and a playground — with their grandparents. Just so we could start and finish the two Demo Homework assignments The Big C had assigned us for our holiday break: Eradicate the third-floor wallpaper, and get rid of the guest bathroom.

You see, the girls are not actually much help with the new house.

Look, Mommy! We're in boats! In the ocean!

Sometimes Bella and Sophie can be helpful, and we love these moments. We appreciate them with an intensity usually reserved for World Cup matches or Academy Awards telecasts, depending on which Johns parent you’re talking to.

What's gonna work? Teamwork!

But for the most part, when the hour grows late and we’re still scraping wallpaper on a sweltering third floor, we encounter some behavior issues. For example, Sophie staggers behind us and moans pitifully. She usually exposes her complete failure to understand the concept of body temperature by declaring, “I’m COLD, Mommy! I’m COLD!” Meanwhile sweat has transformed her blonde locks — once so much like billowy, golden strands cupped by protective corn husks — into a plastered wig worn by the likes of drag queens on Sunset Boulevard after midnight.

Bella, on the other hand, gets into so much trouble with screwdrivers and wires and holes in the floor that we give her a “time out” on the floor below where the action is. That is until we discovered that a true artist cannot be punished, as evidenced by the plumbing sculpture she created during Time Out No. 359.

An Ode to Disobedience

Needless to say, Chris and I were beyond thrilled to learn that we’d have an entire holiday weekend … minus Saturday … to show our revered contractor that we could keep up with his blistering pace. What happened next will be revealed in the days to come!

Okay, tomorrow.

Give me a break. I’m tired.

Thinking Outside the (Sweat)Box

Our house happens to have a ton of closets, one in just about every room — except for the one our girls will share. A friend of ours (Hi, Bunco Beth!) suggested stealing some space from the next room over to create two reach-in closets.

This meant some demo was in order.

With the exception of the kitchen, Chris has tackled most of the big demo projects with someone other than his wife. I stay home to care for the children while he enlists the help of family and friends to rip and tear. This is not because I am an anti-feminist, but more because I’m a relative weakling who tends toward splinters and swear words rather than unbridled brawn.

The last big demo project was the wall we needed to open up to create the girls’ closets, and the two lucky ducks who happened to be in town to help were my sister, Lindsey, and her boyfriend, Ben.

Ben and Lindsey, aka The Demo Duo.

The Big C helpfully scored the area of the wall to be removed with a powerful saw. Chris and the gang hung a blue tarp to keep the next room dust-free, then removed the baseboard to save it for use in other parts of the house.

Saving baseboard is a two-man job.

Dust masks in place, along with the world’s most uncomfortable goggles for Lindsey, the intrepid crew of demolition devotees started to pull down the wall. You can see the plaster dust starting to fill the air. This was just the beginning.

Ben and Lindsey, tear down that wall!

They ripped the wall down to the studs, which The Big C will later take out one by one.

Plaster dust can't hurt you ... right?

Demoing the wall was the fun part. Carrying the debris down two flights of stairs was the back-breaking part. It was a hot June night, the work was sweaty, and Ben and Lindsey must have regretted their offer to help a thousand times with each step they took.

That's not a Hypercolor shirt. That's Ben's sweat.

Demo is messy, but satisfying work. Or so they tell me.

Is Lindsey attempting to stake a vampire? Or is she just feeling victorious?

When all was said and done, the room looked terrible. But that was a good thing. The girls are one step closer to being able to hang their clothes in an orderly fashion, and that is one hallmark of a civilized society.

The end result.

Thank you, Lindsey and Ben, for your help! We couldn’t have done it without you.

Scraping Wallpaper (and other circles of hell)

There are times when I’m scraping wallpaper that I start to think I am a truly bad person. I must have done something horrible to have earned this unique hell. I push a dull blade over plaster walls for hours on end, herding sticky, brown, ancient, pasted wallpaper into little mounds and watching them fall to an ever-growing pile at my feet.

What did I do to deserve this? Am I serving time for biting my sister? Is this payback for skipping school to eat brownie batter and watch soaps? Will this hot, sweaty, thankless purgatory ever end?

Sophie is worried about my mental state.

After the first hour, I tell myself there is a particular satisfaction to touching every single square inch of wall in this house. We are telling this big, beautiful building that we love it and want it to be free of all these layers of wallpaper so its natural loveliness can shine through.

This works for a little while.

Then, about two hours into each scraping session, I decide that I am a good person. None of the agony I’m suffering is actually my fault. The real person to blame for my pain is the soulless masochist who put this wallpaper up in the first place. I fantasize about this person. I think about what I’d say if I got that wallpaper-happy jerk in a room, without the years of history to separate us. I craft long soliloquies filled with curse words and vicious metaphors.

This is usually how I end the scraping sessions: a seething mass of sweat and claws for hands. It’s not a pretty picture.

Sophie considers dialing 9-1-1.

After one particularly long day of scraping, I discovered something written in pencil on the wall. I scraped faster, eager to uncover the hidden message. Was it a cryptic set of directions to a buried treasure? Was I about to embark on my own personal Goonies film? Who would I choose to help find the Johns’ version of One-Eyed Willie?

I did not uncover a cryptic set of directions, or map to a pirate’s ship filled with gold. Instead, what I uncovered was a name.

Nice to meet you, Ben.

I couldn’t read his last name (and still can’t), but I stopped being angry at him. Because he, like Chris and Bella and Sophie and me, took pride in his work here. He wanted to be remembered for what he’d done to this house, just like we do. I felt chagrined that I’d been vilifying him instead of admiring his craftsmanship.

The blasted wallpaper that haunts my waking and sleeping hours is impeccably hung — straight as a monument and downright snug in the corners. We have to coax it off the walls with tools and water; clearly, the wallpaper is as committed to the house as Ben was.

What this all means is that, though the process is draining and the very essence of not fun, scraping the wallpaper is ultimately satisfying. And at the end of each session, we wipe our brows and wearily tip our hats to the proud man who cared enough to sign his name.

This Ain’t No ‘Holmes on Homes’

The Big C is nothing like that Holmes dude from Holmes on Homes. First of all, Holmes is Canadian. Secondly, Holmes is so jacked up that he looks like he’s been CGIed into hugeness, like the bad military guy in Avatar. They even have the same haircut. The Big C is a tall dude but his strength is deceptive. I wouldn’t enter him in a wet T-shirt contest, in other words.

Also, that Holmes guy isn’t surprising. You know what he’s going to say before he says it, and even though that trait does have its charms, it gets old. One of the many awesome things about The Big C is that he surprises you. For example, did you know he’s in a band? A classic rock band? Or that he used to be in a metal band, and he even wore spandex?

I didn’t think so.

His band even has a kick-ass light show. “You have to when the band sucks,” he says. Dryly. Have you figured out yet that everything The Big C says is dry? I’d link to the band’s website, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere online. Maybe I’ll put my librarian friend on the case to find it. (Hi, Steph!)

Now, we’ve never seen The Big C out of his uniform of jeans and a grey T-shirt, and we’ve never seen his band. Well … I take that back. Since he’s been sweltering his days away on our third floor while running wire and plumbing, he’s taken to wearing jean shorts. But on the whole, his look does not change.

Another one of my favorite things about hanging out with The Big C, which I do on a regular basis due to my self-assigned job of Head Wallpaper Scraper, is hearing his lingo. He calls smoke detectors “smokes” and electricians “sparkies.” It cracks me up. My Etown friend thinks he must be from Brooklyn, but he’s Central PA born and raised. (Hi, Laura!)

The “sparky” on our job has known The Big C since he was a kid. They have a shorthand, a relaxed back-and-forth of insults and jibes that makes me feel like a fly on the wall instead of a sweaty, dirty, eavesdropping fool holding a scraping blade and a soggy sponge.

The best part of working with subcontractors The Big C knows and trusts isn’t that we trust them, too. It probably should be, since we’re placing what feels like our entire future happiness into their calloused hands. But it’s not. Instead, the best thing about working with The Big C’s hand-picked subcontractors is that they’re just as surprising as he is.

The “sparky” on our job, who is capably turning our sky-high pillar of whitewashed brick from a 100-amp to a 200-amp residence, wasn’t there on Friday. The Big C wasn’t surprised. Our sparky is also, in his spare time, a civil war re-enactor who builds battle camps and dresses in period clothes and even makes his own hard tack for the kids to try. And that, dear readers, requires a three-day weekend to pull off.

So while our sparky is bayonetting slave-holding southerners, and The Big C plays bass in jeans and a grey T-shirt in a bar, Chris and I took the girls over to scrape wallpaper. It’s kind of sad to realize that we live a more boring life than our contractors.

More photos will come, and soon. I have a whole camera full of demo featuring Chris, my sister and her boyfriend to download. Rock on.

The Big C

We haven’t talked much about our contractor here, even though we can’t shut up about him in real life. We fairly worship him, and for good reason. He’s done most of the renovations in the house we live in now, and when I worked from home with baby Bella on my hip she and I spent a great deal of time going past our contractor as we trekked up and down the stairs to change diapers or eat lunch or go down for naps.

He’s even rescued Bella from her crib when her leg got wedged between the slats during naptime. I remember rushing into our bathroom, where he was installing the custom shelving/bench unit he’d built. I was frantic and begged him to come help me. He calmly but quickly freed Bella, who was crying in pain and fear. I wasn’t much help, I’m afraid, but I knew he’d get her out any way he had to, even if he had to saw the crib in half.

And when she was out and safe, and I was cradling her in my arms, shushing her and moving with that instinctive mother’s sway, I swear I saw a look of relief flicker across his usually impassive face.

“I thought she was singing,” he said. “She usually sings for awhile during naptime, before she falls asleep. I didn’t realize she was crying.”

I thanked him profusely and assured him that I didn’t recognize the difference between her crazy-loud rendition of the “Bob the Builder” theme song and real, panicked cries for awhile, either. But he didn’t look comforted. And every so often after that day, I’d catch him lingering by Bella’s room at naptime, his ear cocked toward her door, listening carefully to Bella’s singing. He was making sure she was all right.

This is why we love him. This is why we trust him. And because he seems like a private fellow, we hesitate to use his real name on this blog. Instead, we’ll call him The Big C.