During the process of steel framing our home, David decided that we absolutely must have a back door for the top floor. The plans already included two side doors for each level but he was adamant about that back door. The foundation for the staircase to reach this door is concrete, ten feet deep. The structure of the staircase is masonry block, coated with stucco siding. The staircase is actually very handy for reaching the back doors of both levels of the house. What wasn't handy was the two years it took David to construct it.
Our cats love the staircase. They lay in the cool, deep shade of the bottom landing in summer. They catch the earliest sun rays on the top deck portion of the stairway in winter. Thus, we dubbed it the "kitty corner".
Like much of the house, the kitty corner is a work in progress in the decorating department. The corner now houses some favorite ceramic cats that our kids owned in their youth. The biggest cats on the staircase are made of tile using tangram pieces.
The old Chinese story of the tangram, paraphrased, goes something like this. A young scholar was taking a beautiful tile to the emperor when he had the misfortune of dropping and breaking the tile into seven pieces. He feared beheading but being a quick thinking and resourceful type, he assembled the pieces into a puzzle which he then presented to the emperor. Happy ending for all as the emperor was most pleased with his new puzzle. Through the years, several of my students have enjoyed the story, constructing new shapes and assembling the pieces back into the original square.
My stairway cats are assembled in three different poses and guard all climbers of the twenty steps and three landings that make up the stairway. I placed one tangram at the bottom just to prove that I really can solve the puzzle.
FROM THE KNOTHOLE: Hey, hey, it's me, and boy do I have to keep my eye on that Badboulderlady. Some of her stories are basically true, and others have, shall we say, evolved through the years with truth and fiction sort of melding together, kind of like the ingredients in a good margarita, so that what you wind up with is pleasant or desirable, but quite different from what you started out with. So here is my version of the stories at hand: it took me about two or three weeks to build the staircase; the Chinese scholar got frightened, ran away, and was not seen again; the Chinese emperor loved the number seven, and so had seven of everything to keep himself amused; Einstein invented the tangram; and, I made the first margarita on Earth. Now don't you see how things would really get mixed up if it weren't for me keeping an eye on things?
parting shot from bbman: i only regret that i have but one life to give for my country. nathan hale, captain, continental army
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