Dear World: My House Wants to Sit On My Face

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

THE DOORS ARE HERE, THE DOORS ARE HERE!

They did the dooooooooooorsssssssssss!

As you know, I’ve been waiting for ~the door guys~ to come and install ~the new doors~ since, what? September? And finally, this week was the week. This week, I discovered I have an all new purpose:

Walking in and out of these new doors over and over and over again until my toenails bleed.

Buying this 1800s farmhouse in the middle of the woods in the middle of the countryside in the middle of America has taught me many new things—angry wasps can live in your mulch! angry wasps can live in your siding!—but the thing it has especially taught me is that you can actually sit perfectly still in one place for long periods of time and it’s not going to make you less interesting or less worldly or less cool because if you are a true forever traveler, then you will forever act like it, and you will forever see the world as the most fascinating love story there ever was, whether you are looking at the Eiffel Tower ~ or a cell phone tower ~ or a tumbling tower of onion rings (which I am no longer allowed to ingest, AHEM).

Do you know why wood rots?

Specifically, do you know why wooden beams rot? Specifically, the ones in your basement? Specifically, the ones HOLDING UP YOUR COTTAGE? (Where you just installed new doors. 🤣)

I didn’t know that five (5!) of the basement beams in the cottage were cracking in half and about to fail until yesterday, when I decided to put on my “brave country-girl face,” (I’m working on it) and go into the basement. I was there to look at the old copper plumbing that’s being replaced. And when I looked up? I thought the whole house was going to fall on my head.

Turns out, trees 🌳 love water 💧, even when they’re dead.

Live trees, as we know, have these long, hollow tubes inside of the trunks that run alllllllllll the way up and down ‘em. They use ‘em to send water around—phloosh! phloosh!—and when you cut down a tree and turn it into lumber?

Those teeny, tiny hollow tubes stay open for business. 👨🏻‍💼

And, water eventually gets into ‘em on the cut end—usually from moisture hanging out in the beam pocket, where you can’t even see it.

And then?

The water does something crazy.

It starts sneaking up your beam. Phloosh, ploosh. Because even though the tree is dead?

THERE IS STILL A TEENY, TINY WATER HIGHWAY INSIDE.

And, here’s the the thing about these creepy little things we call “water molecules”: they stick to each other like sushi rice. (Less delicious though.)

So!

Once one water molecule hijacks the property, its got another friend right behind it. And another friend behind it. And ANOTHER friend behind it.

They cannot be without one another. #lovestory

So once one molecule gets inside your beam, the others follow like a magnet 🧲 , pulling the others along with it, like a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig, long chain.

Next thing you know, you’ve got a rotted beam.

(Ah, water, the life-saving and also life-wrecking substance it is.)

But, here’s the real kicker: you don’t even need gravity! Or pressure! Or a pump! Because water molecules really do stick together like velcro, and just that alone means that they will flow.

You know how you can prove it?

CREEPY EXPERIMENT ALERT.

Take a paper towel. Twist it. Put one end into a cup of water. Put the other end into an empty cup of water.

The water will literally move into the other cup, without you doing ANY-THING-AT-ALL.

The fibers in the paper towel literally act like teeny, tiny hollow tubes. Here is me doing this experiment yesterday in my kitchen, because clearly I am 40 years old.

I mean, really: how can you be bored in this world?

Not to worry! I already called the guys, and the guys already came, and in two day’s time, they replaced the rotted beams with all-new ones, and put in these gorgeous new support posts, and even made me some concrete block piers, and THE COTTAGE RIDES AGAIN. 🤩

This is one of the best things about being in a small town: you make a phone call, and you get it done.

No one here is scared of things like this.

Things like this are normal.

There is no fear-mongering, no catastrophizing, no drama around it all.

Each guy just wanted $300 for the day.

After my last call of the day yesterday, I left to meet some friends at happy hour.

I LEFT THROUGH ONE OF MY NEW DOORS, AHEM, and then pushed the little "lock” button on the keypad.

(There is nothing like pushing a button on a keypad.)

(Especially when before the only way you could lock your door was with a skeleton key. 💀🗝️)

That’s when I heard it: snap!

And, right before my very eyes, a giant tree in the woods behind the house began to fall. Coming at me. Coming at the house. It happened in an instant.

And then: THUD.

The tree fell hard just feet away from the driveway.

Apparently, wood is really out to get me this week.

So was this lady I ran into at happy hour.

I didn’t notice her at first.

But, at one point, I glanced in her direction and noticed she looked familiar. But, did I know her?

Nah.

Went about my business.

Chatty, chat, chat.

But at one point, an hour later, I thought to ask the bartender: do you know that woman’s name?

“Who, Stacy?” she asked, RIGHT AS STACY CAME UP BEHIND ME. (Thanks.)

“Hello, Ashley,” she said, with the kind of face reserved for smelling sour milk.

“Oh, you recognize me, too? You know who I am?”

And, that’s when she proceeded to list bullet points from my lifetime resume, as if it were the most disdainful thing in the world:

• Ashley Ambirge
• Wrote The Middle Finger Project book
• Wrote The Middle Finger Project blog
• Traveled the world
• Played volleyball
• You were in a play with my husband in middle school
• Bought a farmhouse back here a few years ago
• You live two miles from me

But, then she said the real clincher:

You would think that for being such a big, bold writer, you would have just come over and said hello.

Damn. Stacy had a HAPPY HOUR.

And, that’s when I realized who she was: Stacy had been one of the JV volleyball coaches when I was thirteen years old, when I was in middle school—for one year only.

Apparently, she had married the director of the theater company that put on the plays for the school.

And, apparently, Stacy thought I was an asshole.

I definitely went and stalked Stacy’s house this morning.

I wonder how her basement’s doing.

If this week has taught me anything, it’s that everything looks perfectly fine right up until the moment you notice the crack.

Wooden beams.
Trees.
Old acquaintances at happy hour.

You just never know what’s been quietly soaking up water all these years.

I just hope the doors don’t get any ideas.