Direction Connection

Not long after we bought our house back in July 2007, our Green Street neighbors (and former landlords), John and Clare, mentioned that an older neighbor had told them that both of our houses had been moved back in the 1960s. Apparently, they used to be located on the property of the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church, which is about a block and a half away from our house, and about a half a block away from John and Clare’s house. The story John and Clare heard is that the houses were moved to make room for a parking lot for the church. Since there is a large parking lot along Oakland between Green Street and Hillsborough, I figured that’s where our two houses used to be.

Here’s a map of the corner where the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church is (the red star), where our house is now (the red triangle), and where John and Clare’s house is now (the red square):

I figured the story about our houses having been moved was probably true, because (as John pointed out), our houses are the only ones in the neighborhood that have cinderblock foundations, while all the other houses have brick foundations. I figured I’d look into it someday.

Then, we had our front porch redone. This is a separate story altogether, but basically we had it tiled and screened in, and now it looks really nice. When we were having that work done, our contractor noted that we had nice wooden German siding underneath the cheesy aluminum siding that’s on our house. He suggested that we could remove the aluminum siding for the full width of the porch, and then we could paint it and that would look really nice as part of our new screened-in porch. So we decided to do that. When the contractor removed the aluminum siding and the trim around the front door and front windows, we could clearly see impressions in the paint above the front door where the old house number—903—used to be.

Here’s a picture:

So, that was cool, and I naturally assumed that our house used to be located at 903 Oakland. But I was wrong! How do I know this? Well, because that block of Oakland between Green Street and Hillsborough Road is (unlike what it says on the map I’ve included above) actually called Trent Drive. And that is actually the 800 block of Trent (Oakland), not the 900 block of anything. So I wondered if maybe our house used to be located at 903 Alabama Avenue. The address of the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church is listed as 901 Alabama Avenue (in some places, and 903 Alabama Avenue in other places). The next house on the street is 905 Alabama Avenue. So it’s safe to say that the church property includes the lots for both 901 and 903 Alabama Avenue.

I should mention at this point that Preservation Durham has a historic plaque program, which allows people who own houses more than 75 years old to obtain a plaque that authenticates the house’s history, if the homeowners research it. Important elements of Preservation Durham’s requirements for such research are chain of occupancy and chain of title.

So I went to the Durham County Public Library to research the chain of occupancy by looking at old city directories. As you might imagine, this was a little bit challenging because I was not 100% certain that the previous address was indeed 903 Alabama Avenue, nor did I know exactly when the move to 2407 Green Street occurred. But eventually, I found out that:

1. From 1930 through 1964, a house was located at 903 Alabama Avenue. The 1955 directory notes that this address is the parsonage of the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church. From 1940 through 1960, the occupation of each adult male resident of 903 Alabama Avenue is listed as “Reverend.”

2. From 1965 through 1968, neither 903 Alabama Avenue nor 2407 Green Street appears in the city directories.

3. From 1969 through the present, 2407 Green Street appears in the city directories. A child care provider was the homeowner from 1969 through 1979, and presumably ran her business out of the addition on the back of our house, which had a separate exterior entrance.

After learning all of this, I was very interested in trying to obtain other information in support of our houses being moved sometime between 1965 and 1968. One way to do this is to stop by the West Durham Pentecostal Holiness Church, or talk with a church elder. I have not yet coordinated this, although I did contact someone at Durham County Public Libraries to see what she could tell me. She was impressed with what I’d discovered thus far, and she gave me some links to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) historic aerial photos from 1940, 1955, and 1972. The 1940 aerial photo is fairly unexciting, mostly because the resolution isn’t that great. But the 1955 and 1972 aerial photos are much more informative. It’s easy to see in the aerial photo from 1955 that there is a house on Alabama between the church and the house at 905 Alabama Avenue, and there’s also a house on Trent/Oakland right next to the church (I presume this is John and Clare’s house).

1955 USDA aerial photo (the red arrow at left is where our house was at the time; the red arrow to the right is the empty lot where our house was later moved [same pattern for John and Clare's house with the blue arrows]):

1972 USDA aerial photo (the red arrow at left is where our house used to be; the red arrow to the right is where our house is now [same pattern for John and Clare's house with the blue arrows]):

I also need to research the chain of title. I was able to do this for 2407 Green Street (also known as “Lot 3 Block J Oakland Heights PB 5/12”) from 1983 through 2007 using the Durham County Register of Deeds online records. Then I got stuck (which a realtor friend says is not surprising, given what she knows about these records). So now I have to go the Durham County Register of Deeds in person to look at the deed books. I’ll have to take some time off from work to be able to do this. I’ll update this post once I have done that.

Most of our interior doors are fairly nice, wooden, two-panel doors, with hardware that may not be “original” to our 100+ year-old house, but that looks fairly authentic to someone who isn’t an expert. Except for one of the doors leading out of our master bedroom. That one–for some strange reason–had been replaced with a cheap, hollow-core, veneer door, then painted white, with very basic, circa 1980s hardware. Yuck. It had always bugged me. But then the seasons changed and the house settled a bit, and it started to rub the floor too. And I had already decided that I didn’t like the side it was hinged on. So after I painted the bedroom a really fabulous red, I decided that I would replace the door too (I also want to purchase and install a new fan to really finish the room off nicely, but we haven’t gotten around to it yet). I found this place downtown, called Peter’s Design Works. Apparently this guy buys old doors and hardware and such from people who are renovating or tearing down old homes. So I was able to get a door that looks a whole lot like our other doors. It wasn’t cheap, but oh well (at least they trimmed a quarter inch off the bottom of it for me–to ensure that the new door wouldn’t rub the floor too). And then I went back the next weekend and got hinges and a doorknob and door plate. Then I washed and sanded the door, and one day while Rebecca was taking a flying lesson, I decided to try to hang it. By myself.

I wasn’t sure how that would go, but it ended up going fine. I had to use the new chisels I had bought to carve away some of the door frame in the shape of the hinge, so it would sit flush against the door frame. That was kind of a pain, but once I figured out I should actually hold the chisel opposite of the way it really seemed like I should hold it, things progressed more smoothly. Then I installed the hinges and lined up the door, propping the door up on shims and paint sticks to get it lined up just right. Then I installed the hinges on the door as well. And that’s when I started talking to myself, psyching myself up to be royally ticked off and have a mini-cursing tantrum when it didn’t line up exactly right. Then I closed the door. And it was perfect–completely and totally straight! I couldn’t believe it!

At this point, I’ve put two coats of paint on the door, and I think it will need one more. I also forgot to mention that I needed to fill in part of the doorknob hole with some wood filler before I painted the door, because I had not realized how important it was for older door hardware that you not have an inordinately large hole (most older doorknobs need a much smaller hole than modern doorknobs). Oh well. I’ll know for next time. Then I am going to need to sand or plane the door frame just a bit so that the door fits it it a bit better, and so that the door can latch once I install the doorknob. Then I will install the doorknob and strike plate, and I’ll be finished! When I’m all finished, I’ll add a picture.

Here are some recent pictures of my Portland nieces and me (all taken by Rebecca) from our trip out there last weekend:

My oldest niece, Naomi (she is 10):

My second-oldest niece, Una (she is 6):

The three of us up in the “attic” of the outbuilding at their land:

And here are some old ones, the first of me with my nephew Riley and the second of me with my youngest niece Mira, both taken by Rebecca on our visit to Ft. Collins last year (I’m scheduled to go again in December):

Rebecca is a good picture-taker, don’t you think?

We just got back from a trip to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and two oldest nieces in Portland (more on that later). Josie and Ellie went to stay with Sonia, the best dog-sitter ever. We are so lucky to have found Sonia. She just loves our Josie-girl, and it’s been so nice to know that Josie is in a place where her caretaker understands her idiosyncrasies and doesn’t try to treat her like a dog without anxiety issues who can be kenneled.

This was the first time we took Ellie to stay with Sonia. I think Sonia barely got to get to know Ellie, though, because apparently there were four other dogs that Ellie played with constantly the whole time she was there. She got into a bit of a tussle with one of the dogs though, and she has a little wound under eye, which Sonia doctored with some neosporin. We have to work on socializing her better so she knows when to back down in these situations!

Right now Ellie is on a dog bed in the back room, completely SACKED OUT while we watch the debate. We have not seen her this inactive outside of her crate for more than 15 minutes at a time. She’s been immobile for at least the last 30 minutes–and I don’t think it’s because she’s been lulled to sleep by John McCain constantly saying “my friends…”

Oh yeah, and both dogs are smelly. We usually give Josie a bath as soon as she gets home from Sonia’s, but tonight it was already dark by the time we got home, so Rebecca just gave them both a Capstar. Maybe I can give them a bath tomorrow, or this weekend at the latest.

Rebecca is out to dinner with her friend Julie, so I’m going to spend a little time providing a gardening update. I’m not sure I have a whole lot to say, so this could be fairly short.

So, we bought this house last summer. And one of the things we thought was cool about it was that there is no grass in the front yard; it’s entirely landscaped. Rebecca was very excited because she wanted to get into gardening. The only problems with her plan to become a gardener were (1) mosquitoes really really like to bite Rebecca; (2) Rebecca is not all that strong; and (3) Rebecca does not really like physical labor very much. So, out of necessity, I have needed to become a bit of a gardener myself.

The front yard was fairly out of control this Spring, because we didn’t really do much of anything to it last year. And neither of us knows a whole lot about, well, plants. So we don’t really know what we’re doing. Here’s an example of a conversation we’ve had at least a half-dozen times since we bought this house.

One of us: Hey, come over here. Look at this. What do you think it is?

The other one of us: Hmm, I don’t know.

One of us: Do you think it’s a weed?

The other one of us: Um, I don’t know.

One of us: Well, should we pull it?

The other one of us: Maybe we should just let it go for another few weeks and see what we think.

One of us: OK. And I guess it doesn’t matter that much if it’s a weed; it’s more a matter of whether we like it, right? So if it’s a weed we like, we could just decide to keep it. Maybe?

The other one of us: Um, yeah, I guess so.

So. I think we’ve probably pulled some stuff that we shouldn’t have, but we’re trying not to dwell on it. Because I am the one of us who is more capable of physical labor, I have decided that there are enough low-maintenance options that if something proves itself to be unruly or needy, I yank it up and move on.

We’ve got some good stuff going on in the front  yard though. Two humongous rosemary bushes, three huge lantanas (there were four, but I recently dug one up and gave it to a friend), lavender, thyme, a butterfly bush, some monkey grass, and other stuff I can’t name. Oh, and day lilies. Day lilies are insidious!! I hate them, and will be yanking them up once again as soon as I get the chance.

So that’s the front yard. The back yard…the back yard is another thing entirely. There are a number of problems. One is that the former owners preferred a “wild” look in the back yard, which is not really our preference. Another is that we had foundation work done after we moved in, and then we had a large deck built, so instead of nice topsoil in our yard, all of the clay that’s usually down deeper here in North Carolina is right there on the top. It’s a mess. And it’s kind of lumpy. And we probably should have cut back a bunch of the bushes over the winter, so those are a bit wild too. And we tried to start a garden in a part of the yard where we probably should not have tried to start a garden (not enough sun). We have a plan now, though. Sometime soon, I am going to saturate all of the ivy with Round-Up to kill it. We hope to get a bunch of top soil for the back yard, and maybe have it graded. And we are going to move the garden from where it is now to someplace else, which will make a whole lot more sense. When we replace our chainlink fence with a wooden fence, it will make even more sense. The one thing we haven’t figure out yet is what we’re going to do instead of grass in the back yard. There’s not really enough sun to grow a good amount of grass, so we need to figure something else out. Any suggestions?

So. That’s about it. Not terribly exciting. Maybe I should add pictures.

The presidential debate is on right now. We are sitting on the couch with our laptops, and Rebecca is keeping track of political blogging in time with the debate. I, on the other hand, am sitting here, prepared to blog about something entirely different, because otherwise I might go crazy. So I have decided to provide the animal update I alluded to in my last post. And maybe when I’m done with that I will post a job update and/or a gardening update. I’m just gonna keep going until the debate is over. Here I go.

By the way, Obama rocks. McCain is an idiot, for many many reason, not the least of which is that he selected Palin as a runningmate.

OK, so our Josie-girl, who is now 12 years old, had some cancer (hemangiopericytoma) in her left foreleg, which we had removed last July. By around November or December of last year, we started to notice that the lump on her leg seemed to be reappearing. But I kept pushing it aside, thinking maybe it was just scar tissue or something like that. But it wasn’t, and in April we found out for sure that it was a recurrence of the hemangiopericytoma, and ultimately decided to amputate her leg to contol the cancer. Although the first full day home was very very hard, she is now doing really well. Interestingly, her being three-legged is actually less noticeable when she is running than when she is walking. Here she is on youtube. Isn’t she a cutie? And here are some pictures of her on Rebecca’s flickr account. You can look at other pictures of her post-surgery in this set too.

Did you know that McCain has outlived his father by 2 years and his grandfather by 12 years? And he looks like hell. Have you noticed? The man is OLD, and if you compare video footage from 2004 and 2008, you can see it–and hear it–very clearly. As a matter of fact, someone has recently suggested to me that perhaps McCain selected Palin because he doesn’t really want to win this presidency, and he’s basically intentionally sabotaging himself. An interesting thought.

About a month or so after Josie’s surgery, Rebecca started really talking about getting another dog. She said she really wanted a “project” that was just hers; she really wanted to be a dog mom. So we got a dog. And that didn’t work out, which was very sad. So then we went to the Durham APS to look at a few dogs. We went one afternoon late in the day, thinking we could just have a look. And we did. We saw one dog. The way you meet a dog at the Durham APS is you pick out the dog, then you tell the staff the kennel number of the dog you want to see, and you go into a little room and a staff member brings the dog to you. And the room is little. And the dog is excited. And it’s really hard to get a good idea of the dog’s personality in that environment, but I understand that they need to keep the environment controlled. So we went that one day, and we identified some good potential dogs, but there wasn’t time to meet any more than just that one. And that one dog was very high-energy, and we didn’t think she’d be a good match for our Josie. So we passed on her.

Does anyone feel like this debate moderator is acting a bit like a marriage counselor? He keeps telling the candidates to “talk to each other.” Which is just strange.

So the next day, Rebecca had some free time early in the day, so she went back to the Durham APS on her own to look at a few dogs. She saw three dogs. The first two were very high-energy, and that was a lot to handle in that little room. And then–then Rebecca met Ellie. Ellie was a puppy, about 6 months old. She was about 23 pounds or so. And Rebecca said to me that day that her default position was sit. So she said that’s it; this is the one. After only about 5 minutes or so. She called me and said she had found our dog. So I took off work a little early that day and went to the Durham APS to meet Ellie. I spent time with her in that little room. I held a ball and she sat waiting for me to throw it. I rubbed her belly. I kissed her little face. I picked her up. Rebecca was right: She was the one. And I went home and told Rebecca all the things I had observed about Ellie in the 20 minutes I spent with her–she has a freckled belly, and white paws, and a white chest, and a little bitty bit of white at the tip of her tail. And she is super-sweet and a very very good dog. And Rebecca thought that was funny because she had only spent maybe 5 minutes with Ellie, and hadn’t had the time to observe all of the things that I had. Here is the picture from Durham APS site of our cute and sweet little Ellie from (from my flickr account). And here are some more recent ones from Rebecca’s flickr account. As you can see, she has very big ears! The Durham APS said she was a Pit/Lab mix, but we don’t think she has any Lab in her at all. She is too little. We think she is probably part Basenji, part Pit. She is now 9 months old and about 32 pounds, and we don’t think she is going to get much bigger. She has now graduated from puppy class and is taking regular obedience class. And she really loves to jump and run fast. She is going to be an agility dog, we think.

Is anyone else wishing that McCain would stop saying that he’s not Miss Congeniality? And did you see that dip in the graph on CNN for the Democrats and the Independents when he mentioned Sarah Palin’s name? And when he said the war in Iraq was a success? Rebecca just observed that the Independents are moving with the blue line (democrats). This is good. This is very very good. And Rebecca just observed that the Republicans are not having an overly negative reaction to Obama’s talk about Iraq.

I think that is it for the dog update. The cats are also good, although they wish that Ellie would stop thinking that they want to play with her. They are trying to deliver that message by hissing, but they do not have front claws so it is difficult for them to deliver the message more powerfully. Sap got out the other night, which was surprising. She immediately freaked out, and the little kitty who seems to have laryngitis in the house was suddenly capable of quite a loud meow. I found her, and grabbed her, and brought her inside. And I think she was grateful.

I love Obama. He never gets rattled even when McCain acts like a total jerk. He keeps his cool. You gotta love that. I’d have punched someone out by now. Probably several people. And I’m not a particularly violent–or particularly strong–person.

The debate is not over yet,so I don’t know what I am going to do now. Maybe I will go get Ellie out of her crate and give he a belly rub. She likes that. She also likes it when I pick her up and put her on my hip like a baby. It’s very cute.

So I should blog. But I haven’t blogged since the day we closed on our house, which was more than a year ago. So a lot has happened. I suppose I will provide a bulleted summary of house-related things. Then later maybe I will provide job updates, animal updates, gardening updates, and things like that. OK, here I go.

• We moved into our house.
• We paid someone to perform several home improvement essentials: Installing a dishwasher, converting the pantry into a laundry room; running a dedicated electrical line for our fridge so we could move it to a more sensible place; replacing the not-really-exterior-doors with actual exterior doors. Stuff like that.
• We initially thought that our kitchen was going to be the thing that bugged us the most and that we’d really want to upgrade as quickly as possible. But once we made some minor modifications (dishwasher, fridge, laundry room) and started using it, we realized that (1) it wasn’t nearly as bad as we’d thought, and (2) other stuff bugged us more.
• We did run into some kitchen good fortune last December. On Christmas Eve morning, I logged onto my computer to discover a neighborhood list-serve email, which offered a side-by-side fridge that was 2 cubic feet bigger than our freezer-on-top version, AND a dual-fuel range (gas stovetop, electric oven). FOR FREE. All we had to do was pick them up ourselves, before the donaters headed out of town on New Year’s Day to spend a month at the beach while their kitchen was remodeled. So we rounded up a few friends, rented a truck and a dolly, and picked the items up the next weekend. Then we upgraded our stove receptacle to accommodate the dual-fuel range, for approximately the selling price of our old fridge and stove. So that was pretty cool.
• Another time when Rebecca was out of town, I decided that the wood-look formica countertop that was all the rage around 1980 really needed to go. So guess what I did? I PAINTED it. Pretty cool, huh? You might think I’m nuts, but I researched it online, and others have done it. I think some people use spray-paint, but that sounded messy to me, so I rolled on primer, then some Ralph Lauren paint with some sand in it to give it some texture, then used a water-based polyacrylic finish (like polyurethane, which is oil-based, only the water-based kind is probably safer for food surfaces). The painted countertop was a surprise for Rebecca when she got home, but she may have gotten a little clue about what I was up to when I started telling her that I wanted to paint the kitchen when she returned (the yellow kitchen did not really look right with the charcoal-gray color I’d chosen for our countertop).
  • Here’s the “before” photo.
  • And here’s the “after” photo.
• Then we paid someone to build a fairly ginormous, multi-level deck, which we now enjoy regularly.
• We also moved furniture around several times, and bought some new furniture, and got rid of old furniture. In the end our second bedroom is not really a bedroom anymore, and is now Rebecca’s office. And instead of semi-gloss periwinkle (which was something to see, but not really our style), we’ve now painted it a nice burnt-orange color, which is a tremendous improvement. From the painting project I learned this about Rebecca: She has no tolerance for painting. It would be best in the future if we paid someone else to do this, or if I just do the painting myself.
• Next, we will be adding an exterior door on our addition, but I don’t know when we will do this, because Rebecca is having a job transition right now (Curious? I’ll write about it soon!). Then we will add closets!!! Because there are only three closets in this house, about which I have begun to complain regularly.

There’s probably more, but I think those are the highlights.

Today at closing, the attorney actually said “Wow” when he saw my credit score.

Josie has had some health adventures recently. On a Sunday at the end of June, I spied a lump on her left forearm elbow; it seemed to be cyst-like, so I took her to the vet the following Monday. The vet agreed that it looked like a cyst, but took some cell samples and looked at them anyway. She thought the cell samples didn’t look quite right, so she sent them off to be analyzed. That Friday I learned that the cells were indicative of a soft-tissue cancer, either hemangiopericytoma or fibrosarcoma. The “good” news was that either one of these types of cancer is typically locally invasive, meaning that it’s a cancer that doesn’t like to migrate to other body parts, except after it’s been around for a while (this is my loose interpretation).

The vet said that a definitive diagnosis could not be made based on the cytology results, and that Josie could have surgery to biopsy the lump. She said that I could just get the lump removed (which likely would require a skin graft to preserve her range of motion due to the lump’s location on her elbow) or amputate the leg entirely. I was initially extremely opposed to amputation, but throughout that day and the next day, Rebecca and I did some research. It seems like three-legged dogs do really well–they’re certainly able to balance with only three legs (we’ve even found stories about some dogs who can get along with only two legs), and they have no body image, so that’s not an issue.

This past Tuesday, we went to the NC State Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Raleigh, and discussed our options. I had thought that if they could do a biopsy without putting her under general anasthesia, I’d do that and then make a decision about amputation based on the histopathology results. But I learned on Tuesday that they needed to put her under regardless of whether they did a regular old (tissue sample only) biopsy or an excisional biopsy, so I figured since that was the case, I’d have the excisional biopsy (there was a price difference between the two, but it wasn’t enough of a difference to persuade me one way or another). Also, the surgeon who examined her said that there was enough skin to work with that they wouldn’t need to do a skin graft. They took her blood on Tuesday to make sure nothing was out of whack prior to surgery, and all looked good, so we were a go for surgery on Wednesday.

After providing a detailed explanation of Josie’s severe separation anxiety to both staff members we met with on Tuesday, I took Josie in yesterday morning for her surgery. They were going to try to get her in early in the day so that she could definitely go home that night, so I expected a call around mid-day to let me know how she was doing post-surgery. Instead, I had a bit of a scare when the fourth-year resident on the case called around mid-day to tell me that there was a “suspicious nodule” that appeared when they x-rayed her lungs to be sure there were no metastases prior to the surgery. She asked if they could do a fluoroscopy (live x-ray) to get a better look. The price was miniscule compared to the overall bill I was expecting for the day, so I said to go ahead. Then I freaked out for about 25 minutes, IMed Rebecca to let her know what was going on, and practically broke down when a former supervisor asked how my dog was. Then the resident called me back and said they weren’t able to find the suspicious nodule on fluoroscopy, so it must have been a shadow or something.

Finally, I got a call around 4:00 to tell me that Josie was out of surgery and starting to wake up. The resident said the surgery was really quick, and that the surgeon’s gross assessment was that it was cancerous (which we already kinda knew, based on the cytology), and that we’d probably need to follow-up with Oncology to discuss the next steps after we got the histopathology results in a few days. She told me we could pick Josie up around 7:30, then called me back at 5:30 to say that Josie was doing so well, we could pick her up anytime.

She’s home now, with a shaved front left arm and wearing a positively demeaning cone collar, but other than that, she seems to feel fine (by the way, she felt completely fine prior to surgery too–she clearly had not begun to feel any of the effects of the cancer by the time we caught it). At this very moment, she is obviously having interesting doggie dreams because she is making her super-cute “whoop-whoop-whoop” noise. She limps a bit whenever the pain medication starts to wear off, but I don’t anticipate that she’ll have a limp after she heals further.

Next steps? We don’t know. I’m not too keen on radiation. It’s expensive, requires frequent vet visits, and does not have as high of a “cure rate” as amputation (also, um, she’s a dog…). Amputation may seem drastic, but it’s less expensive, requires only one initial multiple day, heavily-sedated hospital stay, and prevents recurrence at the initial site (because the initial site is no longer there), thereby reducing the risk of metastasis. At this point, that’s where I think we’re going…but probably no earlier than August.

Oh, and did I mention we close on our house this afternoon? Yeah, it’s been a busy week. The movers come on Monday. Yikes!