Fixer Upper

So here is the deal. We are redoing Naomi's room, so that it may become Naomi and Muriel's room. It is about time Muriel wakes someone else up at 4:45, although actually she and Naomi are perfectly suited as roommates because Naomi sleeps like a rock. The point is, we are undergoing a minor renovation, with all that it entails. And it entails everyone sleeping in our bedroom (along with most of their furniture), and it entails the house smelling like super eco-friendly floor oil something or other (which still stinks, just saying), and pointedly NOT smelling like VOC-free paint from the same crunchy home improvement center as the floor oil.

Although I would say we get along quite well most of the time, when we undertake any kind of home improvement project, unfortunately Jim and I, hmmm, well, we clash. We both perceive ourselves to be the project manager, and we have a difficult time believing the other person could have any good ideas whatsoever. I have to admit this is mostly on me, since Jim is better about reading endless tutorials and doing practice runs on things like cutting granite tiles and installing appliances. Really, he's good at things. That does not stop me from trying to run the show.

But now there's a new wrinkle, and it is kids. Our kids are getting better every day at amusing themselves, playing endless games with each other, pretending to be cats (for whatever reason), and in poor literature-starved Muriel's case, looking at books all day long. But they can't really take care of themselves or feed themselves or put themselves to bed, so there is no way that the two of us (the grown up two) can actually put the kind of waking hours joint work time in on a project. What has emerged is an unfortunate but of course strangely natural-feeling gender dynamic, where Mommy cooks dinner and does dishes and reads stories and puts kids to bed, and Daddy saws and hammers and masks and rents big loud equipment. Feh. I will be glad when the room is put back together, and the bunk bed is assembled, and I have mustered the industry to bag and hide 50-75% of the stuffed toys that will not find a home in the new room. In the meantime, I think Jim is kind of enjoying the manly man shtick, deeply entwined as it is with a sensitive (by which I mean, chemically sensitive) love of the earth and the acquisition of new power equipment.

So yeah, before the little distractions joined our household, and in spite of our mutual smartypants handicap, we did manage to do quite a lot of work (together) on our house back in St. Paul. It was a hundred year old house, and lovely inside, but it needed some paint, and some attention to the extremely low-end Home Depot remodel job on the bathroom and the kitchen. We pulled together! We painted! We tiled! Oh, the pride of getting that insanely heavy kitchen sink set into the counter! Before we started that kitchen job, we sat at the dining room table, eating breakfast, arguing about how to do something or other. I took the dishes to the sink, and Jim followed me, and said, Before we start this big job, promise me one thing. And... there was the ring he had been holding on to, waiting for the right minute. Hee. This Sunday is the sixth anniversary of that thing that I promised him, post remodeling bicker, post breakfast.

So as not to end on a corny note, or so as to end on a cornier note, here's the sign Naomi made to remind everyone to keep out of the room where Daddy is working:



"No Coming In!" I love the exclamation point. Also pictured is Jim, brushing oil onto the newly refinished floor, and a bucket. So you don't feel you have missed out by not going in?

Super Mild-Mannered Rant

Today at Starbucks I got snaps from the cashier just for not being bitchy when someone cut in line to make some small demand or other of her. That seems like a pretty low standard to meet- she even said I was "awesome." Which of course I am (ha), but not because I'm too dull-witted in the morning to put someone in their place for bad queuing etiquette. It's easy to be easy on people when you're generally non-confrontational. And it's not awesome to have the confrontation internally, by which I mean, of course I can be plenty bitchy, just not always in the out loud sense.

Seems like, though, people all around are working on building their confrontation chops. Political engagement is a good thing, right? So why does it feel so bad? My friend from the Walla Walla outing lives squarely in the heart of "keep your kid home from school lest she hear the voice of the President" country, and has trained herself to express her opinions only in a very low voice. Which if you knew her, would mean even more. She's no shrinking violet. She stands up for people, and for herself. I guess it seems more normal now to feel like you have to be in a safe environment to state your views. I don't think the people next to us on the patio of the pizza joint were anything other than nosy, with their distinctly obvious eavesdropping (hope I'm not that obvious!), but still, she felt pressure to be discreet with her anecdotes about a particularly rare flavor of campaign sign that was repeatedly stolen in her neighborhood.

I guess, though, pressure is one thing, and actual confrontation quite another. It's easier on the Internet to see people punching at each other in print, but does it happen in the actual world, outside of shouty town halls and those "rallies" that always seem to be held on the big intersection by Whole Foods (any conjecture on this location choice?)? Are there people who can talk about their political and policy differences in a meaningful way? Is it happening, anywhere? Does anyone out there believe that people on the other side have any good sense, any good intentions?

I think every time we get going on the decline of civility or morality or discourse, it takes just one quick review of life in other decades, even other centuries, to see that of course everyone always feels that way. I would be delighted to read some old headline on microfiche declaring an unprecedented rise in the rate of general kindness and open-mindedness, with outbreaks of spirited yet friendly debate. I'm not exactly a student of history, maybe that has happened, once, sometime, somewhere? Is it pathetic and weak to yearn for it now? Have I been hanging around my princess-pony-sparkle-rainbow-shooting star-heart delegation too much? Am I not grown up enough to have the hard discussions? Yeah, I know, I'm asking, but for the love of Pete, go easy on me.

Why Is the Trip Report Always Longer than the Actual Trip?

On a long-ago road trip through New Mexico, I conceded to the request of a road sign to tune into an AM radio station to hear tourism information, only to be rewarded with a series of staticky geographical and historical monologues wrapped in the seductive tongue of Ricardo Montalban. That memory, of sexily narrated anecdotes about local tribes dragging giant timbers from the mountains down to the high desert to raise elaborate mission churches, was the source of my optimism when I tuned in again, on Friday afternoon, heading over Snoqualmie Pass to the other side of the Cascades, to see what the tourism and weather channel on AM 1510 had to offer me. This time, though, I got what I expected the first time, a ghostly voice so deep under fathoms of static that it was impossible to make out its monotonous incantations. Oh well. Probably it just said I didn't need chains or snow tires.

After you get across those beautiful green mountains to the east of Seattle and head south (toward, say, Walla Walla), the landscape of this state heads in a particularly burnt ochre direction. There are orchards and farm fields here and there, of course, but where there are none, there are endless rolling hills of brown. Maybe it is just the time of year for this particular color to dominate? It's brown season.

Road trips always reawaken my pointless fascination with signage. Maybe that's why I was willing to try again with tourism AM radio. I had a few favorites on this trip. There were two or three instances where a vineyard or orchard was labeled, clearly for me, or for some 9-year-old passenger in some other car who at that moment was wondering to herself, what crop is that? Grapes. Apples. Peaches. There was also a spot on another pass, where you could see two glorious peaks in the distance, and suddenly, there was the sign, with two arrows, and it said, That one is Mt. Adams. That one is Mt. Rainier. Then there was the gigantic sign, atop an enormous white barn, inviting me to stop for FRUIT ANTIQUES.

Besides enjoying the scenery and the signage, I indulged in another of the great solo road trip delights- singing along at the top of my lungs to a bunch of my old CDs. Scenery, signage, singing! I know one reader who has already pledged to try to get me into the proper century, at least, with my musical tastes, and I'm willing to come along. But it was still really fun to belt out those old K.D. Lang songs, and some Tom Petty, and some Pixies, and some Beck (although you don't so much belt out the Beck). I also managed to get most of the people on the phone that I was hoping to catch up with. It is a rare and magical luxury to have hours to myself in which to phone someone...not working, not grocery shopping, not stopping the conversation every two minutes to address a question from the back seat. If I missed you, I'm sorry I did.

The drive (though great) was not the best part of the trip, of course. My friend and I stayed in downtown Walla Walla, in a suite that had been converted from old apartments- it was lovely! On Friday afternoon, we wandered the main drag in search of delicious treats that my friend, who is nursing, can't normally eat because of her baby's precocious collection of food allergies. Saturday morning we went for a run and ended up at a breakfast place with fantastic hash browns and very kind service (since we were foolishly short of cash- my fault). So, talking, jogging, eating, talking, eating, drinking, talking, eating, napping, drinking, eating, talking, sleeping. Also, a little shopping. We reflected. We set some goals. We worked it out. It was a good Saturday.

Besides being perfectly equidistant between Seattle and Boise, Walla Walla is a destination for wine tasting, what with all the vineyards dotting the gray-brown hills. Although I like wine fine, and although I am envious of people who are wine-knowledgeable, I think it might be time for me to admit that it is not a thing I'm truly considering, or something I'll get around to someday- I am not cut out to be a wine afficianado. We decided to just stay in town to do our wine thing, since there were tasting rooms all up and down the street. A mere two tastings, as it turned out, one cut short by the unbearably obnoxious pourer at the second place, and then we just drank up the bottle my friend had brought along with her- a local Idaho vintage- back in our hotel.

It always seems to me that the way back from somewhere is shorter than the way there. It was true on the return trip- I had a few more wonderful phone calls, a lot of enjoyable silence, and then suddenly I was back to my little cuties. They were on the fence about one of the presents I bought for them, but still agreed to model them for a picture.


They did like the chocolate dinosaurs and the geodes, which we smashed up out on the patio Sunday afternoon (the geodes, not the chocolates). I could lengthen the way back from this post by trying to distill that feeling of being a person out of my daily role, in a temporary place of freedom and luxury, and what it does for the me stepping back into that daily role, but whatever, we're already here. Best just unpack and get back to it.

Salad Spinner, Whiskers

OK, two more nights of working five hours at home after working eight hours at work, and then it will be too late to do any more, so, technically the project will be over. And then I will drive to Walla Walla, which really is a place, you guys, and lounge around with my girlfriend and read magazines and look inward and set goals and eat patisserie treats. And oh yeah, go wine "tasting." Heh.

In the meantime, here is a video, which will take all night to upload- what do I care? I am working! So if it works out, it's of two little chefkins who really enjoy the implements of the kitchen.

Wednesday Night

Yesterday I went to pick up my kid from daycare, and this is what they gave me instead:


Yikes! This is the same place that lets them play in flour and pours water on them when it's warmish out. It is like she is off taking care of herself, right? What is going on over there?! She seemed pretty happy about the whole thing, actually.

The other kid, whom I do not have such an interesting photo of, is wholly engaged in being alternatingly hugely bratty and ridiculously lovey and capable. She tells me all the time that she loves me to the moon and back, and lately, she is striking out to greater distances, recently, Mercury, and yesterday, all the way to the sun. If you love someone that much, it must be twice as horrible when they tell you in a mean voice to brush your teeth already, for the third time, before I start yelling. So that is when she makes the horrible face and a noise that is supposed to be an angry cheetah. Something like that? Oh, and this weekend, after I went for a run on the treadmill, she was kind enough to tell me that I smelled like the dog's breath. Things are a little weird around here lately, is all I'm saying.

I am on the home stretch of the most stressful project yet at work. When my manager proposed this project to me, I was nerdily excited- it was a tear-down- a manual that needed to be completely reworked, and converted, at the same time, into our gleaming new DITA format. What better test of a technical writer's skill? What could be more fun than this level of ownership? But instead I find myself a week away from my deadline, with four weeks of work left to do on it to make it really good, and one week of work to make it reasonably passable. Could it be (to paraphrase Elaine from Seinfeld) that I am not as awesome a technical writer as I think I am?

For the record I do not think I am an awesome technical writer. But I know I am capable of this kind of project, and it is bumming me out (read, turning me into a bit of a manic crazy) to have too much in the way to do a good job. Which in turn makes me feel like a big nerd, because isn't this the job I am all ho-hum whatever about? I guess not.

This is another one of those everyone gets a turn posts. So what do we get from Jim? He is doing what he does best- considering changing out his camera technology platform. Researching that spot on San Juan island we heard about that is supposed to be great for whale watching. What was that? Planning a date with me on Saturday night? That's what I'm talking about.