Sunday, 07 September 2008
Before:
(the room had a wall between tub and toilet)
During....
(the plumbing and floor in place, thank god! and you can't see it, but the shower is a double and has seats at both ends; really great for shaving your legs while he showers)
And After:
(I've decorated it more since, but you get it. Oh, and notice the special faucet that he HAD to have!)
Over our lazy morning coffee in bed, we reflected today on what we'd done this summer, how it made us feel. You can't really see what this bathroom means to us; it's still small, but has lots more "living space" now. It has "mood" and "task" lighting and a cool and airy feel, and the decorating theme has been carried over into our bedroom.
When I'm stressed over work or family, I take a nice, long shower and fall into our incredibly comfortable bed, and somehow the world just seems to be a nicer place. We loved our trip to Spain last year, but this summer's staycation improved the quality of our lives. Here we are in September, and the new hasn't worn off. We love coming home to walk on the treadmill while watching the news, to share a cup of coffee or glass of wine in the reading room while discussing the day, to linger over dinner in a larger dining room that we plan to renovate within the next year.
We are now officially DYI-ers, and proud of it!
Thursday, 04 September 2008
I'm no political pundit, but I have observed something that I haven't heard anyone give voice to yet, not to say that no one else has said this, but I haven't heard it, probably because I'm working too many hours right now.
Sarah Palin threw out the news about her daughter's pregnancy precisely when she did because it's a political move, people! It's in her contract to play the role of tough, sexy, Mama Bear, defending her cubs and taking on the big, bad press. She's good at it; he wouldn't have chosen her if she wasn't. Still doesn't mean she's right for the job. You cannot compare Obama's "lack of experience" to hers. She's out there. Scary.
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Sunday, 31 August 2008
I spent the better part of this afternoon altering draperies, and no one was maimed or killed, and I did not damage the sewing machine!
To understand the triumph behind these seemingly banal facts, we need to go back in time. Set the time machine for the late 1960's. Weren't those the wild years of teen rebellion, with drugs and love-ins and demonstrations and flower power? This stereotype may have fit a small percentage of the population, but San Fransisco was light years away from the stolid, Catholic, Republican northern industrial city I grew up in.
I was forced to take two years of Home Economics. Two. Years. I learned to make a white sauce, arrange flowers, and sew an apron and a scarf, and that was only the first year. Because my grandmother was a professional seamstress who sewed the roses on Miss Indiana's ball gown and my mother made her own patterns, it must have been expected that I could sew.
I could not.
I hated sewing, all of it, from the pins and tape and chalk and needles and thread and cutting on the bias and the stupid machines that always hated me and planned my sabotage every single night. I thought is was all a waste of time, to have to trace and then baste before you ever got to actually sew the damned seam. It seemed a kind of torture and humiliation inflicted on half the population, and to make matters worse, there was a whole revolution that went on while I, still in junior high, was fated to a boring existence.
Therefore, my kids have always joked about Mom's mending pile really being the Wait-Until-They-Outgrow-It-and-Toss-It-Pile. So it's really strange that here I sit, years later, swearing like a sailor at the stupid sewing machine.
But the draperies are really pretty. And my husband is still chuckling at me.
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
...at least that's what I tell myself, that it's just a job. But it's not, really, not to me. I must be getting maudlin because when I look at a sea of fresh faces in the classroom, there are ghosts floating among them. Sometimes the ghosts are evoked by a name; I remember by association, so when the name of my child or nephew or grandchild pops up, so does the face. Often a student will remind me of former students: the smartass (always my personal favorites) or the surly jock type, the outgoing types with a sense of humor, the quiet types who avoid eye contact. I came in to work yesterday to find a note from a former student, a marine who keeps in touch as he promised so I know he's still around. He is very much around, as are my two nephews, one finishing up at Camp Lejune, one just starting at Great Lakes. Sweet, sensitive, tender, burly, crude, noble, sometimes sexist but always gentlemen man-children, and I look for them in every face because I'd always hoped they'd end up in my classroom rather than in the military.
I read their essays late in the afternoon, describing themselves as writers. Some of them just want to be left alone, some are afraid, some are bored, but most reveal glimpses of hope, they want to grow and learn and become their best and most confident selves. Their writing touches me.
And yes, I cried last night, just a little, listening to Hilary's speech at the DNC, just as I cried the night before during Caroline Kennedy's tribute to her Uncle Teddy, and at Michelle O'Bama's mom's tribute to her daughter. And I think about my children and grandchildren and nephews and nieces and my students: our FUTURE. And I pray that we won't have four more years of business as usual.
I get attached to people in my line of work; helping people learn to write, to express themselves effectively, gives me hope for their futures, makes me heavily invested in making the world a better place.
Bitter, apathetic, bored, cynical people need not apply. There is nothing so inspiring as potential. I want to believe again.
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Monday, 25 August 2008
I want to blog. You've no idea how much! But I've been on hyperdrive the past few weeks, trying to finish the work around the house, trying to sort through the tech glitches, trying to prepare for the new semester, which begins today.
I've completely run amok on the home improvement thing, to the point that they know me by name at all the home-improvement warehouses and our credit cards are smokin', but I can hardly recognize our home these days, which is so pretty I don't want to leave it but have to because I have to go to work and pay for it all somehow. It was the total immersion in the bathroom project that did it; I look around and see things that need fixing, and we just get to it. He has begun to enter our home cautiously, waiting for me to spring the latest project on him, but he got into this whole thing too. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we have to stop for a while now because of work and family obligations. Poo.
Eventually I hope to post photos of the bathroom, but I haven't had time to locate the lost cord to hook the camera to the computer, and haven't the time to make the wifi work, so have been unable to download anything. I did manage to save my iTunes purchases, and at the moment (cross your fingers) everything is working in our home office exactly as I want it to. About time!
Now I have to make good on all my promises and set up my classes for the semester, since I meet my students tomorrow. Despite the university's idiotic and insulting cutbacks (no Social Security!), despite my department's new technical requirements, it's good to be back. I know I should have pursued other opportunities, but, in point of fact, I must not have been ready to leave or I wouldn't have sat on my CV all summer. I think it's going to be a good term. One of my colleagues is a former student. It feels weird, but good weird. I have my brand-new dry-erase markers; the technology was working in the classrooms when I left campus on Friday.
Bring it on! I'm BAAAAACK!
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
As I type this on the old laptop, well not actually on that laptop because its keyboard is torn up, but on the wireless keyboard, looking at the old laptop screen, not using the wireless mouse which seems to not be working, I contemplate the options: death by drowning, chainsaw, or blowtorch. No, I won't be arrested for murder. Pollution, perhaps, if I go with the first option.
It's my laptop, you see. You cannot imagine the emails I've lost, the posts I've never finished, all since my hard drive crashed a few weeks ago. In the time since, I've spent endless hours diddling with tech support, both online and on phone, the modem, the router, the repairs to the cable, the old printer, the new printer, the big LCD monitor. None of them work. At least, not all at once, and frequently several are on strike together.
It's my own fault. I reasoned, why throw good money ($250 extended warranty 1 year) after bad (the actual purchase price of the laptop a year ago). So the replacement hard drive they sent apparently had a curse placed on it. I hate Vista. I hate Microsoft. I hate anyone and everyone in the technical fields who either cannot or will not solve my problems.
Most of all, I hate my computer. If I solve these problems and do not destroy the system instead (I kid you not...I handed my husband the matches just two days ago and told him to set it on fire...he briefly considered it) I will uninstall Vista and install Windows XP. I will master the monitor and finally be able to work on two screens, a move necessitated by the latest departmental requirements of Big Brother and technology.
If not, you will see me on YouTube or the six o'clock news. I originally was going to write an insightful post here on near misses and how we cannot control the weather and the fact that I'm so happy everyone I love was spared and feeling guilty about the people who've died from Fay (we so often forget that the islanders are people too...it's not just Americans who suffer from tropical storms) and how happy I am that I have the day off and that the evacuees did not stay here after all and how my children are safe and my house is wonderfully clean. But you can see tech problems have destroyed yet another wonderful post.
Screw it. I'm going shopping.
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Monday, 18 August 2008
I've never been able to sleep the night before school starts. Public school begins here today, but the university students don't go back for another week. I'm in teaching workshops all week and having a terrible time trying to dredge up an ounce of enthusiasm. I talked to our granddaughters last night, wishing them a good first day of school today, sweet little kindergarten and first grade babies that they are. I want to hover, see them off the way I used to see my own little ones off. The little backpacks and lunchboxes and don't forget your rain jacket!--I miss the innocence and enthusiasm.
So, anyway, the sleep problems are wearing me down. Tech problems are ongoing too, and I am operating at about 65 percent now, when I've all this prep work to do. Office is as organized as it can be, considering, but I feel so...out of it. I crave sleep. Stupid hot flashes, stupid worrywart, stupid hurricane that creates an atmosphere of unsettling expectancy. Probably all we will get from Fay is a lot of rain and wind for a few days, but it makes you nervous what with all the kids back in school, the traffic, the mess that the local school bus transportation office is in here.
...and my vision problems are ongoing...still...and I wonder if I will be able to do all the reading this term, and how I will cope if I can't. And the stupid large monitor for my laptop is one of the tech problems, so it's hard to read what I'm writing even now. I am whining like a kid does when summer is over, aren't I? Bad IML. Go back to bed, and don't forget your rain jacket in the morning.
Sunday, 17 August 2008
You really can't blink these days. Motime disappeared, an absolutely adorable American broke Olympic records, Russia signed a truce, a megachurch and a couple of politicians blurred the church/state line of demarcation, and a hurricane named Fay began to look at Florida with a hungry eye, while IML and Mr. Bluesky went to see Tropic Thunder and laughed our proverbial asses off.
How could we possibly put all this in perspective without our Motime? Thanks, Howard, for the resurrection!
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Technology: 10. IML: 0
Plumbing problems: 5. Mr. Bluesky: 5
Insomnia: 2. Sleep: 8
Office clutter: 9. IML: 1
Ankle and foot problems: 4. IML: 6
Visits to retina specialist: countless. Resolution: none.
Doctors who push meds: 1. IML: 1 (the standoff continues)
Assorted food temptations: 3. IML: 7
Annoying people phoning about various causes: 9. IML: 1
Smart cracks from small children: 9. Clever responses from IML: 1
Guilt trips from Mom: 347. Successful avoidance of guilt for IML: 3.47
Contradictory and confusing communiques from work: 8. IML's ability to ignore these: 2
Mail orders: 3. Received: 1
Days left to deal with above before resuming insanity of job: 4
Nice. long, relaxing showers and a bed that envelops IML in comfort: priceless!
Friday, 08 August 2008
It's 7:17 a.m., and I've already journaled, washed breakfast dishes, and started a load of wash. I've had my two cups of coffee (realllly want more this morning but am resisting). I'm going to be selfish this morning and not read posts because I've got about fifteen minutes left to myself before the granddaughters arrive. The house is fairly clean and in order, and, although I've still tons to finish in the next week, I feel I have a handle on things now.
It's been one of those Murphy's Law weeks, but the bad has been interspersed with much good. I was without internet off and on, and yesterday the repairman explained why: squirrels had eaten through the cable box at the street, allowing rain to fill up the cable wires (they actually dripped water from inside) and lightning had hit the box at the house. These are the kinds of things that happen around here; I'm no longer amazed. As my dad used to joke, there's just something about me that pisses god off 
But we've also accomplished a lot, as well as taken a lot of time with the grandkids. Wednesday we explored dinosaurs at MOSI with our granddaughters. Tomorrow night we spend with our almost-two-year-old grandson, and he's a total delight, a fascinating creature.
All that's left to do in the bathroom is the last of the finishing touches: the vanity light, the towel bars and transom strip in the doorway. I'll post a photo next week, promise. It's a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Nothing, absolutely nothing, has tested us as a couple like this remodeling project has. We began the teardown on July 5 and are finishing on August 8. We completely gutted and rebuilt one small bathroom, and we found our own weak spots in the process. There's been very little middle ground; either we were completely at odds or in total bliss over this project from day one. And I know we're going to do this again because this house is falling apart.
But I think we'll wait a while. Like labor, you have to enjoy the baby for a bit before you contemplate repeating the experience, but once you've had one, you love 'em! Tonight we celebrate with champagne in the shower. The lighting is perfect, the candles are ready to be lit. Wait! Isn't this how we got in trouble in the first place?
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