One of my resolutions should be to post more

And in honor of that, I'm gonna start with a classic post on January 1. Take that, procrastinatey gene! I'm using Sundry's meme, of course. Somewhat abbreviated, because...well, because of that procrastination gene (I have to accommodate somehow). Plus the long form feels a little too much like doing Turbo Tax.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
 Buy a full-on family ski pass (dear GOD was that painful.) Buy skis and boots. Enroll a child in a private sports program. Have a close relative with stage four cancer (*kicks the wall angrily*). Visit my sister's place in St Louis. Probably a bunch of other things I've forgotten.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

 Last year's resolutions:

1. Take the kids out into nature at least once a month. 
I didn't keep a close enough record of this to be sure, but I think this was basically a pass.

2. Eat more wild food.


So long as we define "more" as "some juniper berries and a couple dandelion greens," we've got a pass.

3. Watch the moon rise at least once a month.

Yeah. FAIL.

4. Hike once a month.
Check! Here's the list, for anyone who cares (me):

• January: Coyote Song/ Swallow Hill trails, 2 miles
• February: Glendale Farm Open Space, app. 1 mile
• March: Greenland Open Space, 4.5 miles
• April: Lake Superior Waterfront, app. 4 miles; Kramer Woods trail, app. two miles; Briar Patch trail, app. 1 mile
• May: Cherry Creek Ecological Park and Happy Canyon Trail, app. 1.5 miles; Glendale Farm Open Space trail, 1.5 miles
• June: Lost Creek Wilderness, app. 1.5 miles.
• July: Puma Hills, South Park, app. 0.5 miles; Mystic Falls trail, app. 4 miles
• August: Glendale Farm Open Space, app. 1.5 mi., Cherry Creek Bike Path, 1 mi.
• September: Kent Denver school property, app. 1 mi.
• October: Castle, Parmalee and Tower trails, app. 4 mi
• November: Frasier River Bike trail, app. 4 mi
• December: Lee Lorraine Canyon, Bowen Canyon and Yetman trails, 3 mi; North Tenmile Trail, 3 miles

5. Meet my ToBeRead challenge (read at least 12 unread books from my personal collection). Here are the books I pledged to read:

1. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl

2. At Home, Bill Bryson

3. Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

4. Collected Short Stories of Raymond Carver

5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

6. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

7. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace

8. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion

9. Little Heathens, Mildred Armstrong Kalish

10. Aeneid, Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles
11. Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez
12. The Story Behind the Story (various)

Here are the books I read:

1. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl

2. At Home, Bill Bryson

3. Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

5. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

6. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (in progress)

7. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion

8. Aeneid, Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles (in progress)
9. Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez

Well, 9 out of 12. Seventy-five percent to pass!

As to resolutions for next year, I'm keeping it simple. I'm going to remember the in-laws' birthdays and send cards. I'm going to check my 401K balances quarterly, so whenever I get the urge to monitor my progress toward retirement, I will be able to answer myself with ringing authority: NOT VERY WELL, THANK YOU! I'm going to try to hike every month. I'm going to do a smaller scale TBR (to be elaborated later, because already this post is a monster). I'm going to print out more photos. And the challenge: I'm going to do more follow-through on writing projects.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No. What's UP with that?

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
The great old U.S. of A. I don't even have a current passport.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
(sadly) More time with friends and family. Less house hassle. Less debt (*not* something that was lacking in 2011).  More writing and more writing projects.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
None, really, although the fall of 2011 will go down as fretful and anxious and ultimately Bad.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Painting the front of the house. I wish I was joking.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not connecting with people as much I'd like.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not really, although I suffered mental injury from the bill I got after taking Si to the emergency room for a sprained knee.


11. What was the best thing you bought?
The house & kitchen, although most of that was "bought" in 2010. Or now and for the next 30 years, take your pick.

12. Where did most of your money go?
The house, via mortage & the construction loan. Also baseball, skiing, and travel.

13. What did you get really excited about?
Hmm. I was excited about the finishing of the house and the return of its livability. Otherwise, though, "getting excited" is a state of mind I don't visit nearly enough.

14. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? sadder, alas.
– thinner or fatter? the same to slightly fatter. Not so fat that I have to pay attention, though.
– richer or poorer? richer, although perhaps less in actual net worth than in the sense that the financial situation is under control.


15. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Made more connections; had more dinner parties; asked more people over; picked up the phone more. Wrote more.

16. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Fretting about the house. Working on the house. Moving parts of the house and its furnishings from one place to another.

17. How did you spend Christmas?
With the four of us, my parents and my sister at my sister's lovely little apartment in St Louis. We opened presents, ran in the park, and ate traditional Christmas food, including creamed onions and two pies.

19. What were your favorite books of the year?
Bossypants. Biographies of Abigail Adams and Queen Isabella.


20. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
On my birthday I skied, then came back to a rented condo and celebrated with M, the kids, my sister in law and my nephew. Since this was my big four-oh, I was supposed to have celebrated with my parents and sister as well, but--well, crap happened. I did get to see Mom and Dad and my sister AND my aunt, though, on the weekend before, which made up for them not being there on the day (but not, of course, for the reason they weren't there).

21. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Satisfying? Well. Made some huge trip and/or gotten some wonderful job, I guess. I would have been plenty happy (even "satisfied") with simply a different diagnosis for my mom, though.

22. What kept you sane?
I'm not totally sure I was.

23. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

Life is too damn short.

Inching

The past few weekends have devoted almost exclusively to Stuff Management, a term that will be familiar to anyone with children (or anyone with stuff, although children seem to cause an inordinate and staggering amount of it to pour into the house). Unpacking, sorting, organizing, discarding, and, oddly, repeating (it's like the stuff packs itself up while I'm not looking.) However, after this weekend I feel like we really, truly have Made It, and the stuff is in its place and will remain so for the time being. The doors are back on, the kids' rooms are in order, the summer clothes have been sorted and put away or given away, the hats and coats have been exhumed and put where we can both access them and put them away. Hooks are up. Curtains are up. It feels possible that we might be able to live uncomplicatedly for a while, or at least as uncomplicatedly as it is possible to live when the cooking activities are being conducted from the garage and half the house is still a barn.

In a lot of ways I like the coziness of our current arrangement. We all eat dinner in our bedroom; we watch movies together here, the kids do homework, and M dispiritedly works away on his laptop. Lately I've been preparing dinner here, too, bringing the vegetables and compost tub and only dashing out to adjust the heat on the hot plate when I absolutely have to. On Saturday night I fixed a salad while some tortellini cooked in garage, and then we ate it while watching Where the Wild Things Are. We do our arguing over money and contractors here, too, and it helps that the files, digital and paper, are all an arm's length away ("How much did that glider cost? Well, let's find out!") Well. It sort of helps. Sometimes it's a little too cozy. Also, I still manage to forget what I was going to do between walking to the computer to go look up the kids' online school lunch account and actually sitting down in front of it with my fingers ready.

We try to get out as much as we can, although that isn't always possible.


This weekend, though, I did get away for a little bit, to attend Jess's baby shower. I kind of love baby showers, even when I don't really know anybody, like at this one. I mean: babies. What's not to love? And it was lovely to meet so many other women, and eat some delicious food, and just generally sit around in someone else's house and not worry about my own, for a while.

Now with pictures

I hesitate to post these, since they seem so depressingly unchanged, but behold, our house after two months of renovation:

The kitchen will be to the right of that wall.

Our bipolar house. Half the time it's solid brick, the other half it's crazy window time.

This part looks better.

This part too, although I think the main attraction is external.

Here's Si's room. He doesn't really get why we're dragging our feet on the move-in.

The opposite of fall

For sundry and assorted reasons, none of which, unfortunately, have to do with moving back into the house (an event that remains depressingly lodged in the future), I have not felt up to posting. I still don't, really, but I am tired of staring "Doggy Bags" in the face every time I open up this blog.

In the blogless interim, however, I HAVE felt up to doing other things, including but not limited to:

1. Sanding down assorted bedroom doors. Our house has very nice, solid wood doors. The previous owner had very anxious, insistent dogs that were often closed into the bedrooms. Need I say more? There's a delicious feeling of exorcising the last of the house demons as I rub those scratch marks into oblivion.

2. Celebrating our 14th anniversary at Rioja, one of those fancy downtown restaurants whose menus read like short stories involving collisions of luxury ingredients (Alaska-caught halibut in an Earl Gray-Tarragon reduction with lemon cream fraiche and a fig tartlet) (which was delicious). Pretentious, yet mmmmm.

3. Receiving rather handsome T-shirts from our builder (although the shirts have the alarming motto "It's not our fault!" written on the back). I'm hoping this isn't one of those "I took out a second mortgage and moved out of my home and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" situations.

4. Finishing the fall baseball season with Silas (thank GOD. No more long haul missions to distant fields.)

5. Finishing untold piles of homework with the same. Eegads, the HOMEWORK. It's more than I had in many college classes. The boy continues to soldier on, bravely and stoically, but sometimes it breaks my heart. M offers a refreshingly different perspective, however--he says that when he lived in Germany in fourth grade, his homework loads were similar. Weekdays were for doing homework, and only weekends were for playdates.

6. Being dazzled by the autumn colors. This happens every year. All year I remember, intellectually, that autumn is very pretty, and then every year I amazed again at the incandescent yellows, the burning reds, the glittering grasses, the way a tepid vista of green and brown is suddenly spiced into brilliance, and everyday acts, like driving to pick up the kids or going for a disappointingly short run, become miracles of hope and beauty. (Why hope, though? I don't know.)

Officially Out

So, we spent the night at MIL's surprisingly spacious duplex last night, and let me just how relaxing it was NOT to come home to the house in its state of deconstruction. No dust, no odd smells, minimal arguing about what new problem cropped up today or what old problem needs to be fixed immediately. Supposedly the builders were at the house late into the night, sealing off vents and things; however, I was blissfully unaware of what they were or were not doing. I feel very rested this morning, and sort of Zenlike about the money stuff (for example, if all of our money is embedded in the house, no one can steal it! except that we could steal it from ourselves, by moving too soon or not replenishing...anyway, perhaps the Zenlike part is not thinking about it too hard).

Sleeping arrangements, at the MIL's: M and I in the (windowless) basement bedroom, which is amazingly dust free. Helen on a Helen-sized futon on the floor, with her water and her stuffed snoopies tucked under a towel beside her. Costi on the floor. Since she can't fit under the bed (that's where she prefers to sleep at home), she put her front paws and head under the bed. Silas, by adamant choice, is sleeping on a small futon in the unfinished basement storage room with his music, two (!) fans, and his stuffed dog.

So far, so good. M said when he and the builders pulled up the carpet in our bedroom there was a quarter-inch encrustation of dirt and mold under a pathway from the door to the bathroom. I'm beginning to think that carpets=many of our problems, esp. allergy-related problems. Thus, hardwood floors: attractive, and also a medical investment! Hopefully.

Wormhole of Suck

So, we are entering the wormhole of suck phase of the renovation. Half the house is destroyed, entering or exiting the house involves either a) the garage door (which BROKE last weekend and had to be REPLACED even though it is two years old) or b) a dusty, gritty, possibly toxic tiptoe through a hanging sheet of plastic and the wrecked part of the house. Unpleasant, and although it has been only two weeks it feels like forever. Also, M is violently allergic to the drywall dust/ mold/ something growing outside and hasn't been able to sleep, breathe, see, or eat properly for about a month. Also, washing the dishes takes approximately 60 minutes every night. All yuck, but all relatively survivable (especially for me, since I'm not allergic). Then yesterday we got the results of the testing for a toxic substance that I'm reluctant to name publically (there are rumors that the local city will descend upon homeowners E.T.-style and temporarily condemn the house), but let's just say the substance is synonymous with 50s and 60s futuristic homebuilding and also that it's fireproof.

We're positive. Or the house is, anyway. We considered sneaking away in the dead of night and never coming back, but jettisoned that for the much less stressful complete emptying of the house while the vents are sealed, carpets are removed, the offending substance is removed along with the floor and/or subfloor, and then the floors are replaced and the whole thing is cleaned and sterilized. Oh, and also? Everyone involved has to sign waivers so if they develop symptoms of exposure to the substance in twenty years they can't SUE us.

Kill me NOW.

So yes, we are now entering the wormhole. Although what M and I are MOST dreading is the relatively mundane moving of boxes--everything we own has to go into a pod or a sealed room. UGHHH. I am SO SICK of moving (2008--we moved two households. 2009--we moved M's mom's household. 2010--apparently we are moving OUR household. Goal for 2011--NO MOVING ANYONE).

Friday Favorites

We've started to collect bids for the work on the roof and also some other things (what we technically want to do is tear down the entire north part of our house, scour the site with bleach, and start over. Due to earthly realities, like funding, we'll fall somewhere short of this). And by "collecting bids," I mean "talk with various builders and contractors about all the wonderful possibilities and also make lots of little drawings on pieces of scrap paper." That is to say, we haven't actually seen any pricetags, although here and there we'll get a figure thrown out--"oh, THAT will cost five thousand dollars" or "probably in the realm of fifteen hundred." So we're still in the dreamy phase. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a window here by the fireplace? Wouldn't it be nice if we had space for a study down here where the bathroom is now? Wouldn't it be great to have the stairs over here?

At some point, we'll get some numbers, and cold, bitter reality will set in. That will be painful. But in the meantime, just the idea that we can make this thing anything we want it to be is kind of liberating. Also, the idea that we are People Who Work On Our House, as opposed to what we've always been, which is People Who Think A Lot About Various Problems But Never Get Around to Actually Doing Anything About Them, is kind of liberating. It will liberate our money, too, from its cozy place in our bank/ equity/ future paycheck. But even that is a state of mind, and states of mind can change.

Well, I'm not sure how exactly I'm going to move from this to a list of favorite things, either. I suppose I could list my favorite things about construction, which are:

1. The smell of fresh lumber
2. Getting to pick through tile samples at Home Depot
3. That feeling, after it's all done, that we can live in a place that is not filled with noise and drywall dust and Toxic Attic smell is WONDERFUL, and feels like some kind of miracle.
4. The feeling that we're finally getting something done.
5. Yeah, that's it. House construction is basically miserable, and on top of it all the expense is staggering. However, unlike lots of expensive things (having open-heart surgery, say) at the end of it all everything is much, much nicer.

Friday Favorites

We're heading off to a cabin tonight in celebration of Husband's 40th (he's FORTY) birthday, which will raise all sorts of questions, such as, is it actually POSSIBLE to work full time all week and then do anything but drool on the weekends? We'll see. In the meantime:

My five favorite things about this house (which I am still, uh, learning to love):

1. It's one floor (with a basement).

2. The laundry room is literally two steps from our bedroom (this is the best set-up EVER and I HIGHLY recommend it).

3. The five floor-to-ceiling windows in the front room (esp. once these windows have been replaced and we no longer spend the winter heating the outdoors with our central air system).

4. The cavernous back porch, sunny and bright midday, shady and cool (yet open to the entire yard) in the afternoon. It's a perfect place to have a beer after work or eat dinner in the summer.

5. Our new master bathroom.

Have a great weekend!

Continuous Quality Improvement

Lately I've been trying to figure out what's with my bad attitude toward our house and its environs. Other than, you know, winter, which last I checked happened at our old place, too.

I have a lot of theories, but one of my prime theories at the moment is this: in the past, every move we've made has been an upgrade.

It helped that we started out life together living in a pickup truck:














(In answer to your question, Have you always been a dork? Apparently so.)

So pretty much all the crappy student apartments after that were a step up (there was indoor sanitation! electricity! tables! For MANY YEARS I was grateful simply to have a flat surface on which to lay out my solitaire game.)

Then came our first house:

I remember it being horribly stressful to buy, and it was kind of a wreck, but it was also cute and it was ours. No more landlords! We'd thrown off the shackles of The Man! Etc.

If the neighborhood we lived in was a little loud, and there were regular raids of the neighboring apartments by the local swat team, well--that was okay. It was REAL. It wasn't until Silas was born that we started to think that maybe we wanted something a little more genteel.

Moving from there to our second house was definitely a step up. There were two bathrooms! The basement was not half dirt! And, it had an absolutely gorgeous yard to which the current yard just can't compare. At least not yet.


Nice, huh? I start missing it all over again when I look at these photos. I start remembering our first night there, when everything was still in boxes and Silas was sleeping on our bedroom floor because his room wasn't set up yet. It was raining, and we had the windows open, and for the first time in five years we could actually HEAR the rain, because we didn't have the fan on to block the noise of cars peeling out of the alley outside our window.

Now, our new house is fine. It's not even really a downgrade: it has more bathrooms, more square feet, and APPARENTLY a better location because it cost a whole chunk of a lot more.

However, it is a downgrade in a lot of minor, personal ways. The kitchen is smaller and the cabinets are crummier. The yard is not as nice (although I'm working on that). The garage is smaller. I don't have a study (technically, however, this would have happened at the old place, since Si and Helen couldn't really share a bedroom forever.) The floor plan is a little less open. It's just...less. In a lot of sort of unquantifiable ways.

BUT. It is a nice house. I keep telling myself that once we've lived in it for two or three years, and made it more our own, I will love it. I may even love it MORE for having had to work at it.

Animal House II

The weather this weekend was mild and lovely, and we took advantage of the weather to do some typical midwinter Colorado things. We went and sat in traffic in the mountains for four hours, a.k.a. "skiing"--which actually was really wonderful, and our oldest is starting to LIKE doing this, which gives me rosy visions of a future in which we can all go slide down the slopes, or down remote mountain trails, together, instead of one of us snowplowing incessantly behind Silas and the other hanging out with Helen at the beer tables sans beer. Then, on Sunday, I got out the pruning sheers and did some winter pruning. This started out being very Martha-Stuart-better-homes-and-garden-ish: I trimmed the apple tree, and put the branches in the bird cage, and then I pruned the thorny flower bush, and put the already-starting-to-bud branches in some water in the house, so in theory we'll have some early spring flowers here in a week or so. Very pleasant and productive; all good.

Then I started in on the juniper bushes crowding the front of the house. These are almost forty years old and very, um, VIGOROUS, so it took me a while to get through the outer branches. I piled these up behind me, whistling a little Martha-Stuart-ish tune. Then I got into the middle of the first juniper, and whoa, different channel. One with a frat-house theme: I started pulling out beer bottles, and beer cans, and cigarette packages, and soda bottles. Out of one (1) bush, I pulled seven (7) beer bottles and one extra-large beer can. And these were just the ones I could reach. Four more would have involved diving into the heart of the juniper bush, preferably wearing a hazmat suit.

One (1) bush. Eleven (12) beer bottles/cans.

Other things we've found buried in the yard/ walls/ insulation of our house:

Yard: Approximately 48 little toy cars, car parts, and little plastic toy pieces. The kids love this, of course.

Garage wall insulation: half a hot dog, with bun. McDonald's receipt for an Oreo Slushy (I found this on a hot day and could only salivate helplessly--"Mmmm. Oreo SLUSHEEEE...") Three mouse nests.

Between the drywall of the bathroom and one of the kid's rooms: two toy cars, a Toys R Us gift card, a calling card, two packs of playing cards, one unopened, and an Etch-a-Sketch that works better than any of our other Etch-a-Sketches.

Hmm. I remember the nice old couple at the closing table, the ones who'd lived in the house for fifteen years--and think man. I know more about them than I ever really wanted to know.