history of the batcave

Yay! It’s March! In 20 days we’ll be at the Equinox and it will be officially spring! Here’s what things look like here on the homestead:

Maggie snagged this sunspot this morning. The snow on the deck is higher than her head. (By the way, that’s a solar-powered flashlight next to her. It’s from an outfit called Elephant Energy, which “distributes appropriate sustainable energy technologies in the heart of elephant country in rural Africa”. Buy one from them, and they’ll do good deeds.)

The deck. Sigh. After my last post in which I described how we got an inch a foot of snow, we got another six inches.

The icicles on the west side of the house are achieving impressive lengths. (This is the bathroom window.)

Here’s the mountain of snow from the plow guy. See in the back, behind the garage, how there’s a big mountain of plowed snow down there? Today I conquered that mountain on snowshoes and dragged a wheelbarrow that was in the pole barn back over it. And then I played a game called “chucking firewood twenty feet into a wheelbarrow.” I completely suck at this new game. Twenty or so throws and I only landed one in the wheelbarrow. Ah well.

Let’s play another round of Find the Honda. (You can just make out the windshield wipers.) I wish I’d taken a picture from recent warmer days, when the snow had melted enough that the Honda looked like it was sporting a snow mohawk.

This is the sunspot Charlie snagged today.

In other news, I have been playing in the batcave.

History of the Batcave

The batcave is a small room tucked behind the living room, in the old part of the house. It’s gone through a lot of transformation over the last several years. In 2007, before the big addition project of 2009, we hired Our Hero Michael to replace the small window with a larger one, and install a second window.

From the doorway, this is what that project looked like. Note the small window.

Then I went through one of my episodic Orange Paint Frenzies, and painted one wall a burnt orange (the wall on the right), and the other walls a torturous, mind-bending chrysanthemum color. I’m not sure what I was thinking. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Until the addition project, this tiny room was our shared office, with these colors. Oh, and with this dizzzzgusting “brown” wall to wall carpet.

About this time last year, we (by which I mean, “not I”) pulled up the dizzzzgusting carpet, and put in some laminate flooring. The psychedelic vibration of the colors had been loosening my teeth, so I took advantage of the chaos to paint three of the walls white. I didn’t quite have the heart to undo the burnt orange, because this house is basically a Temple to Orange and Shades Thereof:

That’s what that project wound up looking like.

A year has passed, and I’m ready for the next step of redecorating madness.

See, I have this very nascent Reiki practice building up. Truly nascent. I treat a handful of people every week, but not here – at a local hospital. I’ll be teaching Level 1 Reiki here at the house in a couple of weeks, and I also want to be able to give treatments here…without getting in Kevin’s way. (He spends most of his working hours here at home.) So the batcave, in addition to serving as a guest bedroom, needs to be Reiki-friendly. Which starts with, “not orange” – perhaps because the massage table is purple. I’m not afraid to mix orange and purple, but this was A Bit Much.

Over the weekend, I took the plunge, and I painted over the right-hand wall. I also removed the groovalicious futon cover – purchased in 2003 but in style, vintage early 80’s (gack!) – and replaced it with a sheet.

 

So that brings us to today. With the exception of some closets, this is now the only room in the house a) that is painted white and b) where all four walls are the same color. That black thing in the corner is the massage table.

Wow, are you still reading? Good for you!