The best thing about living in a space where walls are crumbling and severely in need of repair is Writing On Them! For instance, at our advanced ages we seem to have memory short-outs quite frequently. This wall writing is very handy!

The other day Mr. H.C. asked me if we had a chalkboard (I actually did find an old one of Clara’s) but I don’t know why I didn’t just tell him to write it on the wall. It isn’t like we haven’t already made mistakes. The stove was originally going to go in the far corner of the kitchen where the pantry wall was taken out. We measured, drew lines, and very carefully marked where the stove would be (in heavy carpenter pencil). Then we changed our minds. So now the writing on that wall is wrong. What do you do with that?

Erase? No, it won’t erase.

X-out? What, and draw attention to the fact that we can’t decide?

So the wrong writing is still there; I hope we don’t forget and put the stove there anyway…

It’s also very handy for keeping measurements–just so we don’t have to measure the same doorway or window more than 4 times:

But the best writing on the wall so far is actually on the ceiling — red chalk lines that will help us lay out the new bead-board ceiling,

This means we are actually getting close! (Mr. H.C. is installing an attic fan and the light brackets in the attic as I’m writing this.)

I have a history of wall-writing. One of my first memories is happily writing on the wall with crayons while I was supposedly taking a nap. I have blocked out what happened when I was found out, but the fact that I remember it at all makes me think it was traumatic. Maybe the first time I got in trouble and remembered about it?

Much later, middle sister and I were getting ready to put wallpaper in our bedroom. It was bright orange and yellow and red flowers — must have been around 1966 or 67– and it looked eerily like the wallpaper on our bedroom now, here at the cottage.
We were painting the wall before we wallpapered it; I surely don’t remember why. Mom gave us permission to do graffiti on the wall before she papered over it. I painted several Nazi swastikas on it. I was just a kid and had no idea of the import of this symbol. When Mom came in and saw what I had done, she was horrified — her only brother had been killed in France during the war. She made us paint over them. “But we’re wallpapering over it,” I pointed out. She was shouting now. “I will not have someone finding these symbols fifty years from now on my house!” Of course, now I understand her rage perfectly. (Diane, am I remembering this right? I’m claiming full responsibility here because I can’t remember the extent of your involvement…)

A few years later, my boyfriend — he was called Mike back then — and I wrote our initials on the inside of a covered bridge on the Lippencott Road not far from where the cottage is now. We went back after we were married –30 or so years later — to see if they were still there.

The inside of the bridge had been painted and we couldn’t find any initials, but then, we weren’t even sure if it was the right bridge…(There are 7 covered bridges in Greene County–you can find information about them here.) And from reading this website, I’ve discovered its real name–The Lippencott-Cox Farm bridge.
So there must be a place on these three acres where we can paint or carve our initials inside a heart on our 10th anniversary (coming up in August). I’m thinking maybe The Gazebo, or one of our very tall trees. Might have to go get some spray paint…