Wild and free

The van was in our rental house's driveway when we walked up: KW CHICK said the license plate.

There was a woman with a rooster in her arms nearby, and I walked over to say hello.

Aren't you Katha Sheehan?, I asked. She was -- the woman who runs the Chicken Store, renowned patron of our gypsy chickens. The friend in her arms was Diablo, son of "Public Enemy No. 1" in the Key West rooster roster.

She was there to coax a hen out of a mahogany tree on our rental's lot line. People had complained.

I told her how much I appreciated her work. She agreed to a photo, shy as ever, and I thanked her and left her to do her best with the hen.

Here's why I appreciate her so, from her website:

To me, they aren't yardbirds or even picturesque Key West chickens. To me, they are Kiwi, Curly Toes, Pecky Hen, Fluffy, Ranger, Scotty, Tony and Red Rover.

I wish everyone could live, if only for a day, the life of a Key West chicken. To be born wild and free, to stop traffic on U.S. 1 on a whim, just because the grass may be greener on the other side, or because you see a handsome rooster there. To eat 4-inch scorpions for breakfast, while creatures 20 times your size cower or run from them. To fight and mate on impulse, in the passion of the moment, with no regard for the consequences.

We humans have become the prisoners of our own rules, but there still are a few creatures out there who remind us of the breathtaking freedom and unbridled joy we have given up in favor of the safeguards of civilization. Key West's gypsy chickens are the creatures that have reawakened my creative energies and taught my heart to sing.

I think when it sings it's the rooster's salute to the dawn.

Historically accurate, but temporary

The last few days have been cool and windy -- 60s overnight, 70s daytime, gusts up to 30 -- so Roy was happy to start priming our shutters today during relative calm.

They're going to be an intense blue, so he went to Sherwin Williams with an order for tinted primer that would work. They came up with this. And at that point, my Wayback Machine kicked in.

After World War II, the Navy started shutting down in Key West and elsewhere. It had to dump hundreds of gallons of battleship gray paint -- and impoverished Key Westers (the economy had tanked postwar) scarfed them up. Nature here is brutal, and everything needs painting a lot.

When you scrape houses down here, you find battleship gray. Ditto, when you scrape our shutters down a few decades from now, under the brilliant blue that will adorn them oh, so soon.

Gravity won

"We was expectin' a delivery," Dave said in his wonderful brogue, "bot we din' know it was gonna be an air drop."

Definitely not on plan.

The 42-foot semi delivering our flooring had to swing around on Olivia from Duval -- it wouldn't make it up our narrow street -- but that let us position it to block only one of the four ways out of the intersection during the delivery.

The first pallet of mahogany, all 2,000 pounds of it, came down the lift gate just fine. Dave, Ted and the driver wrestled it on its pallet jack up to the front of the house, where a Canadian tourist had courteously and intelligently parked blocking our gate. We parked the wood in front of the Canadian tourist.

The second pallet -- 3,800 pounds worth -- didn't want to budge. Dave tried to get the driver to split it up to offload. No dice. So they pried and prodded and finally got the thing moved to the lift gate. Then the lift gate broke in half, spilling the load into the intersection.

Some of the goods were damaged, but thank God no one was injured.

The hurt came later, as we carried each 70-pound bundle up the street and into the house. Neyda, our wood lady in Miami, was not amused that her people had packed it that way, and promised to ship replacements for any bad boards along with the stair materials coming later this week.

Watts up!

If you want to look like a new- comer here, you talk about Keys Energy Services.

"City Electric" is much more direct, and it harks back to the days when Bascom Grooms' grandfather ran the company almost a century ago.

So I was definitely energized when the big City Electric bucket truck pulled up today and the driver, Ray, went up to run current directly to our weather head, instead of down our temporary pole.

We had to get all sorts of notarized signatures to allow the hookup -- technically, it gives us a 30-day deadline to get a full certificate of occupancy. The race is on.

Such incredible hatred

I try not to get political here, but every so often something so odious crosses my personal radar that I can't help myself.

Of course it's Ann Coulter, whom Republicans and conservatives have made rich and famous, and her "faggot" reference to John Edwards. It's nothing particularly new for her; she's used that, or a variant, with both Clintons, Al Gore and heaven knows how many others who've caught the attention of her reptilian mind.

Some of us learned years ago to deal with that kind slur and its variants. But my heart goes out to a generation of kids still coming up who cringe in pain when they hear its hatred -- or those who hear it and feel empowered to inflict that pain. One sick, sad woman.

A lovely shade of green

The mahogany didn't make it out of Miami today -- they say it's coming tomorrow -- but the electrical inspector made it around. Hoo. RAY!

He left the loveliest sticker on our permanent meter box -- which I think means we can get rid of our temporary pole, which means we can pour the pad for our propane tank, which means we can hook the gas line up, which means we can hook up the cooktop, which means we can install the oven under it. . . .

Also today: Roy finished varnishing the front door, we picked up the last (almost) of the door hardware, we ordered vanity mirrors and Southernmost Kitchen and Bath delivered our three toilets.

A royal flush of a day.

Too pooped to post

Saturday was tiring -- but incredibly productive.

We'd already swept and vacuumed the house earlier in the week, but Kenny the HVAC guy thought we ought to do it again before he fired up the system. So Robert swept and vacuumed, and I mopped the whole floor.

We probably got 20 pounds of dust out, most of it in beautifully tinted water like this.

By the end of the day, only the 4-ton unit was running. The 2½-ton just wouldn't get going.

Kenny said he'd be there to get it going Monday -- but as usual, I wonder which particular Monday that might be.

A few things I do know will be there Monday: us, Dave and the boyos and about 5,000 pounds of mahogany.

So proudly he waves

We were about to check out at Home Depot, with a length of chain for the chandelier, when a little old Conch, who came up to about the middle of my T-shirt, walked toward me with his finger pointed at my chest.

"I designed that flag," he said, breaking into a twinkly smile.

I was thrilled finally to meet Claude Valdez, who designed the flag of the City of Key West in 1967. It was revised to reflect the creation of the Conch Republic during our Secession of 1982.

Valdez is a delightful guy, and didn't seem to mind a bit that the bright blue of my shirt had aged to blue-gray.

Indeed, he said, "Are you guys parked in the parking lot?" I assured him we were. "Meet me there."

We followed him to his white Caddy. He opened the trunk, pulled out a CR license plate and presented it to us with a happy handshake.

Credit where it's due

Arnold put the new plaque up today.

When I pulled it out of the package over the weekend, it took him a few moments, thinking about how it ought to be mounted, before he took a good look at it and recognized himself on the last line.

"When I did that church in Albany [Georgia, the civil rights museum there], they put a brick in front with my name. That was going to be my last big job.

"Then I got here. And here's my name on my really last project. . . ."

One that anyone coming through our front door will see as long as the house stands.

Artist in the kitchen

Hank, the genius who masquer- ades as a tile setter, finished our kitchen backsplash today. He grouts it all tomorrow.

A few minutes before I got to the house, I'd stopped by the post office to get the official notice of my hearing to appeal the historic commission's order to tear our our front windows. I was not in a good mood. But then I looked at Hank's work. I couldn't help getting tears in my eyes.

Around the corner later, at Bobby's bar, I ran into Vie and Mike from Flamingo's Cafe, and had to show them in the camera viewfinder the place I''d finally cook for them after all these months. They loved it.

No matter what happens to other parts of the house, there are things about it that will be beautiful forever.

For compound eyes only

Living in Zone 11 provides some wonderful latitude in plant selections. Craig, our landscape architect, is building in everything subtropical from silver buttonwood, with its velvety leaves, to the showy Simpson's stopper and that butterfly magnet above, coralito.

But while it's attracting mariposas, coral vine repels prying eyes, growing thick and quick. That's why it's the choice to "enclose" our outdoor shower, which abuts the Clarks' back yard.

Outdoor showers are incredibly liberating, and our climate makes them possible most days. The first few times you look out and see someone looking back -- from the neck up -- it's a bit disconcerting. Then you realize they can't see anything from the neck down.

After that, you just smile and wave, rinse and repeat.

The whole 10 yards

Amazing how much trash you can come up with in a day.

Robert ordered a 10-yard roll-off Tuesday morning. They said it would arrive about noon, but I'm glad I was at the house around 9 to let the driver know where we wanted it.

We started on the trash at the porch, plus dug-up roots, plus the big cartons the A/C units came in. Rotten timing -- it was in the upper 80s, and afternoon sun.

We got a fresh start this morning, cleaning out the deck, master bedroom, den, little guest room and finally the big room.

Sweep, cough, vacuum, sweat, sneeze. By the end of the day, the downstairs was far cleaner than we were.

A lesson in perspective

Troy and his helper Robert got our special- order shutters in today -- with my Robert beefing every minute about the cost.

When they were up and in, I had nasty thoughts about how satisfying it would be to leave the damn things closed all the time and avoid having our improper windows exposed to insult the delicate sensibilities of passers-by. But enough of that. They'll be a deep, rich blue, and I think they'll be stunning open or closed.

Window questions were, as usual, making me mildly crazy all day. Then, at dinner at Fogarty's, I got a lesson in perspective.

A few forkfuls into our meal, a bite went down the wrong pipe. Robert saw the look in my eyes, and I pulled him inside, away from other diners, where he did the Heimlich on me.

He saved my life. Makes windows look pretty insignificant.

Bronze on my mind

I think this obsession started with our front-door plaque, but it's now in full force:

On the theory that if you start something in one color or finish, you damn well ought to follow it through, almost all of the hardware in the house is or will be oil-rubbed bronze.

As in the front-door lock set -- which feels terrific in the hand, by the way -- everything from hinges to handles to fans to switch plate covers is going in with a little patina and a lot of deep color.

The exceptions, of course, are in the kitchen and baths, where the rule is stainless, chrome or polished nickel. (One other exception: gray slate switch covers on the kitchen backsplash, which ought to be a kick.) Otherwise, I'm scarfing up things in this dark, sleek brown, which I've come to think of as the new black for home decor.

On the practical side, it shouldn't corrode much in our incredibly salty air. On the style side, it looks lush as all get out.

The demons at 5 a.m. -- a rerun

There I was, kept from sleep again by waking nightmares of the historic commission, when I flipped the TV on in predawn desperation and flipped into -- a rebroadcast of the HARC meeting, on the city's cable channel.

I looked grayer, balder and wearier than I'd hoped -- but nothing like the poor soul in the great Goya etching "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos: The sleep of reason brings forth monsters." At least my voice was strong.

The overhead camera captured the exhibits well, and in my biased way I thought the whole process captured my horrible predicament all too well indeed, though it missed the howling owls.

I filed the appeal Friday, and I await word from the city's special master about the hearing. Sleeplessly.

Happy birthday, Mom

Here she is at our house in Tennessee with her boyfriend of 67 years, my dad, on his 94th birthday, in the fall of 2004.

He died six months later, and since then she's been reinventing herself: new car, redone house, new sun room, more African violets, more time for her card groups.

But she's never left his side. For her, he's still there every day -- I'm sure including Saturday night, when Ray and Shirley took her out for an 87th birthday dinner.

Bless them for that. I would have done it if I'd been there -- I do miss being there for her so much. I need to get this house finished, and get back up north for a while.

Pick your jellybean

Roy's little collection of empty paint cans is about finished, and every time I look at them I have to smile.

From top left: mango for the inside soffits, orchid for the cobalt bathroom, pale lemon-lime for the upstairs guest room and other baths, "Positive Red" for the den and master bedroom, sky for the porch ceiling and outside soffits, lemon drops for the exterior.

We still don't have the deep blue for the shutters in here. Roy's going to do them next week, because the last of the ones we ordered custom-made just came in, and it's better to do them all at once.

At any rate, I think our plantings will echo every one of these colors, from plumbago to ixora, and we're talking about those Monday with our landscape architect, Craig. He'll supply the green background.

Camouflage

This is Joe painting the fence on the south side of the house -- three sections in primed-wood vertical slats, while the rest is horizontal pressure-treated wood.

The big posts were pressure-treated and primed white, too, but Roy found a tan tint that blends seamlessly with the "Honey Gold" water seal we put on the horizontals. And the match was so good, we went ahead and painted the verticals, too.

Those verticals will always remind me of Ref. In the few days immediately after he died, we were scrambling to do something, anything, to take our mind off the loss -- and get on with the project. We had various takes on the style of fence he'd been planning, and those three sections were the prototypes we built. Rather than toss them when we found the final horizontal pattern, we fit them into the spaces least visible from the street or the rear deck.

The HardyBacker at the bottom, by the way, will hold dirt in place for our gardens.

Goddess in my pocket

She is Tara, at the left of the picture.

She is in brass, and I took the photo against the stairway up to the roof deck at our apartment. The mask to her right, maybe 6 inches tall, is one of the odd and wonderful pieces our landlord, Steve, has floating around the place where I've lived for the last year.

The Tara figure is not quite an inch and a half tall. She lives in my pocket every day, her sharper edges playing against my skin to remind me she's there. My thumb polishes her as best it can.

She is all about connections. My sweet friend Lou sent her to me. Lou got the figure from her daughter Gail. Gail had gotten it from a lama on a pilgrimage in Tibet. Gail has since taken her vows as a nun, and every time I touch Tara, silent now as Gail, I touch into her web of peace, strength and compassion. Four degrees of nirvana.

Not the court date I was expecting

Tomorrow morning, I go to the city clerk's office to file my official notice of appeal for our historic architecture commission decision.

So far as I know, that puts me on the agenda for the next session of the city's Special Master in HARC disputes, which is listed for March 23 on the municipal calendar. All of which means I think they'll catch and release me on the 19th, when I'm to report for jury duty.

One of the great clerks at the Building Department (and they have many) made me smile about all of it today.

I was talking with her about the mechanics of posting a performance bond, in the event of further adverse decisions, that would allow us to proceed toward a Certificate of Occupancy for our home despite outstanding HARC issues -- actually moving in, while pledging to abide by whatever decision the court ultimately makes.

She was doing her best to make the process as painless as possible -- to get the paperwork started early, because it has to be signed by inspectors, the city manager, the city attorney -- and when I mentioned the jury summons, she said:

"Honey, get on that jury! You might decide your own case."

I thanked her for the laugh, and she ended up giving me a huge hug before I left the office. She said I looked like I needed one.

Even splashier

Hank's progress in the last day gives you an even better idea of what the kitchen backsplash is going to look like.

What it doesn't give you is the contrast between adjacent surfaces -- nubby slate vs. glassy granite. There's also the matter of color transitions: The slate has just enough dark gray and blue to pick up the granite, and enough russet to make the jump to the cabinets.

I think I'm going to like it a lot.

Making a splash

We figured solid slabs of granite would be too massive for the kitchen backsplash -- too much of a good thing -- so we're mixing things up with the same slate mosaic from the master bath floor.

Hank and Ray just started on it. Hank wasn't exactly delighted about the cuts required for the diamond set, but he sure understood why I wanted to do it that way: to offset the strict verticals and horizontals of the kitchen cabinets and pulls.

Back on plan

Dave's bumper had the best advice of the day.

Looking up

The weather got better, and so did my twisted gut.

I ruled out flu and food pretty quickly. That left amoeba's residual damage. It's a gift that keeps on giving -- bad enough after my first bout in my 20s, and worse after my second 10 years ago. Pile stress on top of that, and it knocks me flat.

By this morning I was up and about for a couple of hours. Roy was sealing the fence, but the best view was up. Breathtaking.

Still, all the crap going on with HARC made me wonder how many more angles I'd have to figure.

So I went home to bed again. I kept thinking how lovely the sky is, how luminous the yellow in the right light.

This is not a post

It was a gray, chilly day, and I woke up feeling awful. Anxiety and grief, I assumed, and went to the house and helped Roy put in some of the ventilation grates he'd painted.

I went back to the apartment before noon, chilled to the bone. Half a bowl of soup for lunch, but it had bought a return ticket.

I spent the rest of the day in bed.

Old Chicagoans

The sidewalk pavers are from the Old Chicago Brick Co., which buys, cleans up and ships out goods from my old stomping grounds.

As I've said more than once this week, it's good not to be the only Old Chicago artifact around here.

Today the lads finished up with some hidden concrete curbs along the street to hold both bricks and pavers in, as well as the two "soldiered" brick planting beds outside the front gate.

I think they did a terrific job.

Moving right along

This is Joe, who signed on to the paint crew a week or so ago when Santos was indisposed (Santos is back now, too).

He's giving the mango touch to the frame of the railing around the loft -- the same color as the soffits, but as usual light plays tricks, and it looks much lighter here than there.

I thought a lot about Joe Wednesday every time I started to feel sorry for myself about the windows, or about the HVAC guy delaying us yet again, or any other little setback.

Joe's apartment building on upper Whitehead burned down Tuesday night, and he's currently a guest of the Red Cross, with unknown housing prospects.

Lose a vote, gain a driveway

We had an inch or so of rain early this morning, which was not great news for Dave and our paving crew.

There were a few inches of water sitting in our walkway and parking area -- nothing I'd ever seen -- though Dave was determined to get the pavers in today.

Declan and Ted scooped water out to the street with shovels, and then they brought in a tamper I could feel as a foot-massager from the porch.

The sun came out, the ground dried -- and then the truck from Mama's Rock and Sand (just behind the smut store near the Navy station at Boca Chica) pulled up.

I had to go off to the HARC meeting, but by the time I came back at the end of the day, they'd almost finished it.

Remind me never to judge anyone on first appearance. That little yellow-and-black blob at the closest edge of the driveway waffle is a laser level -- the highest tech to give us the best result on our driveway.

Besides, Dave, Deco and Ted are all ready to discuss any element of Ulysses or The Wake.

Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa, birthing our driveway.

How the HARC hearing went

Pietro Perugino, St. Sebastian, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Then again, I don't think Sebastiano had a lawyer.

I hate to engage in that sort of thing -- in my entire life, I have never been in court, for anything at any time, except as the subject of a case when my parents adopted me -- but within moments of the end of the hearing, I called the local lawyer with the best batting average for HARC appeals. After all, the commissioners had encouraged me to pursue my case. So we'll take our plea before the Special Master -- a magistrate who handles HARC appeals and zoning disputes.

I asked our architect, Dennis, to estimate the cost of replacing the seven windows in question. I doubled the figure he gave me, and that's my tentative budget for that hearing, as well as an appeal to the Board of Adjustment or the Circuit Court, if they're needed. I might as well use up my lifetime litigation budget all at once.

- ■ -

Here's a question: FEMA, the State of Florida, Monroe County and my insurers all tell me I need to armor my homestead against hurricanes. What role do non-storm-safe wooden windows take in that?