Still going after all these years.
I had a dream last night about our dogs. In the dream, we owned two more, including one with a litter of puppies, and I watched helplessly as a twelve year old dog walker let go the leashes of the mother and her puppies and they disappeared into the crowd. Later in the dream, a scorpion came out from the window in the ancient hotel room where we slept (really like a stone-lined closet) and stung one of the dogs.
Anxiety is weird that way. Tonight, watching them sleep, the dreams seem far away.
A month or two back I had a small scrape-up backing out of my garage. We had been parking the wheelbarrow just inside the garage door on my side; no longer. Backing out one morning, in a hurry, I cut it too close. The inside front fender lip caught the stand of the wheelbarrow, and I heard a crunch. When I got out, I found the top of the bumper panel had popped loose. Looking closer, I found I had managed to pull the panel forward until it got pulled off its slide connector, so the panel was now flapping loose. And I couldn’t pull it by my own strength to put it back in place.
Cut to tonight. I found instructions for removing the bumper in my shop manual, and got to work:
I used to futz around on my MG, and actually managed to replace a fuel pump without assistance once, but this is the first modern car repair I’ve done in several years. The fact that it doesn’t involve a critical system of the car is definitely beside the point.
Got a sore back and a sore arm from mulching the leaves in our side yard this afternoon. But it’s all good; I think the neighbor’s maple tree only has one more good yard-blanketing left for the season.
We spent much of the rest of the weekend working on other projects around the house. I’m finally getting around to tacking up all the loose cords in the living room, putting trim in the spare closet, helping Lisa clean up her home work area…in short, screwing around. Blissfully.
If not for a phone call from Esta, who was tailgating prior to the Virginia homecoming game (thank you, Troy State, for breaking our two-game losing streak), the random decision after a day of driving around to have dinner at Orrapin Thai in Queen Anne, installing Panther, the appetizers at Triple Door to the music of Nick Vigarino (who?) with Arvind and Kim followed by dinner and salsa lessons at the Liquid Lounge…
Ok, it wasn’t such a bad weekend after all.
After the Interior Show, we headed south to IKEA. After last weekend’s crush, I didn’t really think I’d get in and out in one piece without killing at least a few people. But thanks to some advance calling, we found the chest of drawers that they were out of last week, got it into our car, and got it home where it sat in two boxes overnight.
On Sunday after church, Lisa and I started assembly at about 10:30 am. We got the skeleton assembled and broke for lunch at about 12:30, then she turned her attention to the first of what would become seven quarts of tomato sauce (if anyone wants tomatoes, come and pick them from our garden. Please) while I assembled the rest of the bureau. With interruptions, the task took until 5:30. Ye gods.
Finally, though, we have enough storage to hold all our clothes, for the first time in our marriage—until now we’ve been limping along on my bachelor four-drawer chest which, though faithful, isn’t really big enough to hold two people’s stuff.
Saturday was the Seattle Interior Show. Since we didn’t get a call, I think it’s safe to say we didn’t win the grand prize drawing of all Kitchenaid major appliances. So I can say without reservation that the show wasn’t what I expected. I was hoping, based on nothing but the grand prize, for lots of appliances and other things that would allow me to revel in the manly side of home improvement. What I got was interior design, and about forty tile and glass vendors. (Aside: am I the only one that doesn’t get the concept of using tile anywhere but in the bathroom, and maybe the kitchen? or of using little glass mosaic tiles anywhere?)
But we had a good time, and came home with a gorgeous blown-glass colored vase by the partnership that made the glass lampshades that appear in Debra Messing’s office on Will and Grace. That was their line; personally I think the inclusion of some of their pieces in the Museum of Glass is a bigger claim to fame, but hey.
I also found that I’m capable of sleeping in public, thanks to Gretchen Schauffler of Devine Color, who committed the cardinal sin of giving a forty-minute lecture about color in a half-darkened seminar room and not showing any colors. It’s nice to hear about all your past careers, dear, but shut up and talk about paint already.
A gray Monday morning here in Seattle, but I don’t mind. I’m too busy trying to shake off the domesticity of the weekend and gird my loins for the week.
On Friday we went to see Intolerable Cruelty, which got the most out-loud laughs of any movie I’ve seen in years in the sold out theatre. The kids on IMDB think it’s the weakest of the Coen Brothers’ movies, and that might be true—the characters aren’t nearly as quirky, the ending too forced. But on the other hand it’s also the Coens’ first movie in ages where the jokes were firmly grounded in something other than dialect humor. (Not that I minded in the earlier films—“them sirens loved him up and turned him into a horny toad!” being a line for which I will wait years, if necessary, for the time when I can drop it into conversation without forcing the setup—but Simon and Garfunkel on the bagpipes was funnier without being cruel.) Lisa liked it too, which is a stricter criterion of greatness—her sense of humor is a lot less forgiving than mine.
It’s 7:30 am, just the right time for Kirkland’s Department of Public Works to start ripping up the pavement in front of our house. Again. This is getting to be an annual thing.
I just got done fixing our second ever plumbing emergency. Lisa had called to me from our guest bathroom, where she was rinsing a sponge mop in the tub. “I can’t get the faucet to turn off,” she said. After some swearing from both of us, I went down into the crawlspace and turned off the water supply (to all the indoor faucets, as it turned out). We then disassembled the faucet handle, only to find a broken piece inside; the handle was no longer capable of shutting off the water.
We got a replacement faucet handle from Lowe’s, installed it, turned the water back on—and it worked. First time.
The next thing to do will be to call Moën, who built the darn thing, and chew them out. I think the handle has a lifetime warranty. Hopefully we can get some help…
We spent the weekend working to beat the rain. As I noted before, on Saturday I was on the roof cleaning gutters; I also washed windows, destroyed a hornet’s nest, and harvested more tomatoes, four cherry tomatoes and two full-sized ones. Normally such a paltry growth wouldn’t be anything to write home about, but from our twenty-five tomato plants, these are six out of 9 ripe tomatoes that we’ve harvested so far. Later this week, I think we’ll give up and harvest the rest, and let them ripen indoors.
Lisa has started her annual tomato-sauce making frenzy. Two years ago, while I was in Seattle, she made three cases, about 36 quarts, of the stuff, which carried us over through last year. On Saturday we decided we couldn’t wait for the rest of the garden to ripen, so we went to Pike Place Market and bought about 20 pounds of tomatoes and turned them into five quarts of sauce (plus dinner) last night. Which is a start…
Today was a day spent on the roof. For any of you who know my fear of falling, it is probably surprising that this is the second year in a row—almost a year since the last time—that I have found myself on the roof cleaning our gutters. Again: a peanut in the gutter. This year was a little different, since it rained all last week, and the gutters were overflowing and nasty with all the gunk from the last year. So it was me and a hose this year, and that actually really worked well. Of course, when I came back down off the ladder, I was shaking and slightly nauseous. Minor acts of bravery all around!
I spent part of yesterday afternoon finally staking some of our indeterminate tomato plants. —Yes, I know. When the seed salesman informed us of the difference between “determinant” plants, which grow straight up, and “indeterminate,” which just kind of sprawl everywhere, I thought she was having a joke on us. As it turns out, the joke was on me. Some of the plants have been growing over the sides of our garden boxes, and all the way down the eight inches or so to the ground, where they’ve started producing. So staking them was a little tricky, especially since the longest stakes I had were about eight inches long and I needed something about three times that.
Unfortunately, the tomatoes on the plants are still wee little things. And if yesterday’s weather (cold and rainy for the first part of the day, after two evening rains during the previous week) was any indication, the growing season isn’t going to last forever. So it’s a race between the tomatoes and the weather.
Don’t know how much blogging there will be this week. Work is crazy busy, and I’m flying on Friday back east to a family reunion. But I’ll try to squeeze in a few moments along the way.
A friend called while I was in the back garden swearing at a thorny, recalcitrant wild strawberry vine that was growing over some of our “real” plants. He asked what I was up to. I responded, “We’re out in the garden finding all sorts of mystery weeds to uproot.”
There was a pause, and he responded dubiously, “Well, I guess that sounds like a good thing to do on a Saturday.”
I thought about it after I got off the phone with him. It’s not so much the uprooting weeds, it’s the results afterwards.
Which is rather the point of a lot of things, I think.
That’s me, in the headline, committing the pathetic fallacy. But it was such a good weekend. Friday: day officially shortened by four hours (thanks, David!), blissfully spent wandering around downtown, complete with both lunch and dinner with my lovely wife. —Note to restaurateurs: I don’t care how rare Copper River King Salmon is; spending north of three Hamiltons for a quarter of a salmon filet is too much in anyone’s book.
Saturday we weeded, mowed the lawn, cleared out underbrush, and purchased some more stone for a hastily planned and executed landscape addition. We were preparing for our first outdoor barbecue party on Sunday, which was preceded by a grueling four hour stone-laying session. We created a sparsely paved patio north of the grape arbor overlooking the garden beds. We will plant creeping thyme among the stones to fill things in, thus banishing another outpost of weed-harboring bark mulch (there’s that fallacy again) from the garden. The party was great. Burgers and fantastic grilled vegetables, lots of great conversation.
Today a late start, a leisurely trim and feeding for all the roses, and Chinese for a late lunch. Then naps in the living room. Now off to rehearsal. One of these days I’ll post some garden photos…
Nope, doesn’t get much better.
From the back yard, the last blooms of spring (save our reluctant irises) and some of the first of summer:
More pix here.