#135 - Laboring with love - October 16, 2012

Tuesday.

Aria got sick last night about midnight.  She didn’t go to school today. 

The rain cleared off in the morning.  I got up early, took out the garbage, burned a ton of cardboard that was overfilling our recycle bin, took the recycle bin out, and worked on reviews.  They were due last week, but I still had a few to do.  I took the kids to the bus while Aria slept.  I got a couple done, then it was time for Katrina and I to learn about my company’s changing benefits plan.

We know which plan we won’t choose, but we’re undecided on which HSA plan will be better for us.  So we have to do some analysis on our family’s likely medical usage and make a choice in the next couple weeks. 

I got home and evicted some woodpeckers from our house.  Katrina noticed a woodpecker pecking at our house a week or so ago.  The hole is large enough for the bird to easily get in and out of.  Today, Aria noticed that the woodpecker was pecking on the sheetrock now, trying to get into the house.  It was time to take action.  She did some research online and found that woodpeckers don’t like tinfoil.  So I took a rolled up pie tin and stuck it in the hole.  While I was up there, I found 2 more woodpecker holes, so I put tin foil in those.  And then we looked around the other corner of the house and found 2 more woodpecker holes.  It appears I have some patching to do. 

Then it was time to clean up leaves.  We have a push broom that I bought when we first moved in to sweep the driveway.  The leaves have been down for a while, and it was time to sweep them off.  So I spent about an hour out there with the push broom and got most of the driveway done.  I had forgotten how wide it actually is.  It was nice to be out there working up a sweat on a cool fall evening.

And I realized that I enjoy working on this house.  Our house in Beaverton was a lot of work to maintain – everything grew with abandon, and it was manicured.  So you would notice if something was untended for a while.  And there was the fact that that house did not feel large enough for us after we’d been in it for a year.  Katrina hated the tile floor in the kitchen, the kids were sharing cramped rooms, and our office was always clogged with stuff. 

This house is different.  I enjoy cutting and hauling wood.  I have enjoyed building the pantry.  I enjoyed taking care of the pool.  Katrina has been working piece by piece to make the house beautiful – 6’ high family trees on the wall, fall decorations on the partial walls around the kitchen, figurines in the display case by the dining table, new lights for the front porch.  She likes this house.  And even though the kitchen floor is tile, we don’t complain about it.  It’s on our list of things to do, just not quite yet. 

I will admit that I don’t like bringing wood inside.  I like cutting, hauling, stacking, and building a fire.  Just not the between part.  I don’t know why.  But living here is a labor of love.  I will trim the bushes back in a few weeks, but I have time to do that.  And I’ll do a million other things, too, as it gets colder outside and I have to turn the focus inside to finish unpacking the house and organizing the basement into usable space.  Much of it is still clogged with boxes that need sorting.

But what a nice day it was.  As evening fell, we ate dinner and I went up to the bedroom instead of watching the debate.  I was hoping that Obama would come out swinging.  But I read the second book in Aria’s series instead.  “Pretties” (by Scott Westerfield) is a better book than the first.  I’ve enjoyed it.  And before I went to sleep, I was nearly done.

#134 – Reading in the Autumn rain - October 15, 2012

Monday.

It rained all day today.  A hard, uncompromising downpour.  On my way home from work, I stopped twice to pick up garbage in the middle of the road that was making cars swerve.  I got home, soaked to the skin in my purple shirt. 

I spent the evening finishing “Uglies”.  A good book – some kissing and hugging, but not too much.  Certainly not too much for a teenage girl.  It certainly was interesting and a little offensive to hear the characters talk about one girl stealing the other’s boyfriend.  As if you can steal a person.  I have never understood that dynamic.  If you’re married, sure.  If you’re not even engaged?  In that case, nobody has made a commitment.  Fair game.  And it was not even intentional.

It was a warm evening, so at first I sat on the porch, reading with the rain stripping the leaves off the trees.  After dinner it was too cold for that, so I settled into the recliner by the fire and read there as the rain beat down on the skylight.

A very simple day.  I did not accomplish anything special today – a normal day at work, and a relaxing evening.  My back was sore all day, probably due to the lumberjacking on Saturday and Sunday.  So taking the evening off was logical and extremely enjoyable.

As an important side note, Katrina has been awesome the past few weeks.  I’ve been focused on building and home maintenance.  After I did a full weekend of laundry with our louse problem, I haven’t done a single load, but Katrina has been making progress every day.  She has planned and made meals for the most part.  I made tuna melts tonight, but she has been putting everything else together.  So I’ve been free to accomplish things.  It has made my progress on these projects much faster, and has encouraged me to get them done. 

Thanks, babe.  You’re the best.

#133 - Cutting up trees and reading ink on wood fibers - October 14, 2012

Sunday.

I made waffles this morning, and we got out the door to church.  Primary is fun – I’m comfortable behind the piano now.  Not that I’m good yet, but I’m getting better and I’m comfortable with my badness.  I can take all the improv the music leader throws at me, and it’s okay.  I took the time during the sharing time lesson to put some choir music into Noteworthy format.  It was nice to make some real progress.

Choir practice was okay.  I’m not quite comfortable there yet, but I’m getting better.  There’s certainly a learning curve to leading a choir.

After church we decompressed.  I played on the computer a little, ate lunch.   The kids played.  Katrina went in to take a nap, and I went out to finish the pantry wall.  Which I did.  We now have a complete room.  There is a door from the garage into the pantry, and from the pantry into the house.  No more walking through empty framing.  The room is 70% sheetrocked.  The other 30% has exterior siding and tar paper.  I have to do a little electrical work and then I can finish those walls.  And then I need to insulate the ceiling (it goes to an unheated attic) and insulate the walls between the pantry and the garage.

Then it was time for the chainsaw.  I took it out, refilled the oil and gas reservoirs, grabbed my safety glasses, and walked out to the Taconic side of our property.  The saw started up easily (much more easily than yesterday), and I sawed through 80 feet of tree.   I also got the piece that was leaning on another tree all the way to the ground and cut it up.  I’ve got a lot of maple to burn now.  I also took a walk to the edges of our property.  I found 2 large downed trunks that need to be cut up and hauled to the house.  I cut one in the middle and I’d guess it’s from the Halloween storm last year.  There’s a knoll toward the neighbor’s house, and I wondered where the property line was in relation to that knoll.  Turns out the brush fence (we have a line of fallen tree limbs that serves as our property line marker) gives us a whole new area that I hadn’t seen yet.  And there’s a great tree house tree and another tree that fell over on the October storm.  This one twisted about 15 feet up, and as it fell it hit a few more trees.  So none of them are on the ground, but this one is clearly dead.  It will need to be cleared. 

And there are a few other trees that need clearing as well.  So now I have a chainsaw, and reasons to use it.  Exciting.  I don’t mind the work – it’s cathartic, good muscle work.  Lots of thinking required, but it’s good sweaty work.  It just feels good. 

I threw the logs I cut up down the knoll, and went inside.  Light was fading, it was 5pm, time to relax.  So I sat down with a book that Aria just finished and read for a few hours.  The Giants were playing the 49ers, which is an important game for them this season, so I put the game on my iPhone on the armchair next to me and read.  Jake came to sit with me, and he pointed out words he could read.  He sat there with me for an hour, maybe more.  It was really nice.  We watched the game sometimes, we read sometimes, we talked sometimes.  He’s irrepressible. 

The book is good.  It’s called “Uglies”, and is set in a post-apocalyptic America in California.  Technology allows small pockets of people to live extremely easy lives, but the rest of the land has reverted to nature.  But along with the technology comes certain 1984-esque rules, and some people opt out of the easy life and run away to live more simply.  It’s an interesting premise, and Aria is well into the second book of the series.   There is entirely too much “kissing and lovey-lovey stuff” for her.  I haven’t seen any of that yet, but I’m only halfway through book 1.

I've been exploring better ways to start the fireplace.  I tried lighter fluid on the half-burned wood I had, but it didn't work out well.  I had a couple hot spots, but it was going to die.  So I added 5 charcoal briquettes, and blew on them until I could tell there were going to go.  An hour later, the fire was beautiful.  Hot, smokeless, lovely.  Briquettes  are so much easier than paper and cardboard.  Pretty cheap, too.  I think I found a winner.

And then it was time for bed.  It’s a good life.

A couple pictures.  We can see our neighbors now.

The sun sets left of the pool now.   This is about 5pm, looking
over the meadow.  The neighborhood below us on Gina lane
is visible through the trees.  

#132 - Some words about my dad - October 13, 2012

Saturday.

Today I just want to write some things about my dad. 

When my dad was 37, the year was 1978.  He had 3 little kids, and he and my mom were doing the young-married “let’s move a lot” thing.  The next year, they bought a house at 24680 S Barlow Rd, Canby Oregon 97013.  This address is how I learned to count by 2s when I was 4 or 5.  The house was a one-room, but I remember it being a studio when we moved in.  You walked up the steps to the front door, and when you opened the door, there was a low table with a little TV.  Looking straight ahead, there was a couch facing the TV, and then my parents’ bed.  Step in a couple feet and turn left, and that was the kitchen.  Turn left a little more and you could see the bathroom door, and the stairs that led to the attic that my brother and I slept in.  I don’t remember where my sister slept in those early years.

I loved that house.  It did not bother me that it was small, because, of course, I did not know different.  It was my house, and that was enough.  As soon as we moved in, my dad went to work on it.  I was seldom asked to help, as I recall.  I was 4 when we moved in, and 7 I think by the time the major work was done.  In the meantime, I watched my father frame walls, put in plumbing, put on siding, roofing, split wood, add wiring, texture ceilings, wallpaper, paint.  My mom did a lot of this, too, but the building part belonged to my dad.  When we sold that house, it was a 5-bedroom, 2-bath home with a large kitchen, living room, family room, 2 covered porches, and a truly massive 2-car garage. 

I was aware that it was a big job.  Dad spent all of his non-work time building it.  What I did not realize was how crazy it was to take on such a huge project all by himself. 

We moved to another home in 1986, a 1917 Victorian that could have been listed on Canby’s list of historic places if we hadn’t ripped the whole thing apart and reconfigured all of it.  I watched this project as a teenager.  Again, dad took the lead and didn’t ask for much help.  I helped put up a layer of insulation outside the house, and put up the blue vinyl siding that was all the rage at the time.  I helped clean up lathe and plaster walls that dad had taken down.  I helped carry a huge cast iron clawfoot tub down a flight of stairs and out to the driveway.   But I didn’t do much.  Not in comparison to my father.

But I learned a lot by watching my father.  I learned, most importantly, to never be afraid of the size of the task before me or its complexity.  We have never had this conversation.  He never sat me down and said, “Son, never be afraid of any task’s size or complexity.”  My did simply saw a 1917 house, and remodeled all 3 floors of it as a matter of course.  Don’t like the main floor?  We’ll rip out every single wall on the main floor, replumb and reconfigure the entire thing.  Lots of work?  Sure!  Big deal?  Nope. 

While I was serving a mission in Japan, my father took on another remodel job.  This one included jacking up an entire house, pouring a foundation under it, and setting the house back down.  Among a few other little odds and ends.

My father just lived his life that way.  Still does.  I have never heard him say that something was beyond my ability.  I have heard him speak of his own limitations, but there aren’t many of them. 

While we lived in Beaverton, I got to work with my dad on quite a few projects.  We converted a garden shed into a powered, insulated office.  We replumbed under my house to convert from cast iron to PVC piping, and separated the drain lines so the kitchen and washer drained separately and we wouldn’t have leaks in the laundry room any more.  We embarked on an aborted attempt to reconfigure my house so it would be better for the kids.  We roofed his new house together. 

Through all of this, I’ve learned some common sense about building.  Measure twice, cut once.  Perpendicularity is important.  Non-load bearing walls leave a lot of flexibility for configuration.  Check level and alignment a few times.  Then screw it in when you’re sure.  Some trim will hide almost anything.   Basic electrician’s work consists of matching the black wire to the black wire, and not a whole lot else.  Be careful in everything you do – the big project is not a risk, but not doing the job right is a risk.

The past 9 days have seen me permanently install a wall air conditioner above the freezer in our new pantry, frame a door in that pantry, and finish the other framing in the room.  It saw me buy a chain saw, read the manual, start it up and fell a tree in the woods around my house.  They saw me assign bringing in firewood as a chore to my son, take apart the filter unit for the pool to store it for winter, and build fires to keep my heating costs down. 

A teacher who has taught a child to read can be given credit for the words the child can read.  When the child is in med school, learning things the teacher will never know, the teacher still deserves the credit for giving that child the tools she needed to get through med school.

My father taught me to build in much the same way.  I know what’s important, what can wait, what I need to have a pro come and do.  And I know, because of what my dad taught me, that I can do this man thing ok.   I can chop wood, start a fire in my fireplace, add a pantry to my house, replace doors, saw up trees, play ping-pong, read a book my kid recommends, and laugh a lot. 

I love my father.  I have a ton of respect for him.  And he has made my life as a man more complete, and enabled me to do the same for my kids.  Thanks for not handicapping me, dad.  I needed to know all of this stuff.  It’s important.

#119 - Darth Paper Strikes Back: A book review - September 30, 2012

Sunday.

Overslept a bit this morning, but thankfully the kids all had clean Sunday-appropriate clothes.  We left on time, and I was able to steal close to an hour during Primary to organize the choir folders and music.  There was a baptism at the same time as choir and in the same room, so I cancelled choir and we went home. 

Lunch, a nap, some relaxing.  Katrina’s mom is trying to come out to spend Christmas with us, and we talked with her on Google video chat for a while.  Aria had the computer in her room, and we sat on her bed and talked.  It would be nice for her to come visit.  No reason not to at all.  Note to self: the count down clock is down to about 10 weeks!  We have work to do!

I put up a few more blog posts, and stayed up (again) to watch the Giants get beaten by the Eagles.  Just barely, and they beat themselves (a penalty at the end messed up the game-winning field goal try).  But a loss nonetheless. 

Now it is time to add a belated book review: Darth Paper Strikes Back.  This is book 2 in the Origami Yoda series.  I will assume that my readers have never heard of Origami Yoda.  This series is hugely popular with 10 year-old or so boys.  I took Darth Paper on my boy scout campout last weekend, and they all had either read it or knew about it.  The premise is clever: there is a boy who is socially inept at a junior high.  He creates a simple origami finger puppet of Yoda.  When his friends need an answer to a tough life question (as in, “I splashed a little water on my pants in the bathroom.  Now it looks like I wet my pants, and the bell is about to ring!  What do I do??!?!?”) origami Yoda provides a cryptic answer.  The kids follows Yoda’s advice and things turn out well.  (The kids gets the rest of his pants wet and walks to class.  No big deal.  The kid has wet pants.  But nobody can accuse him of wetting his pants.)

The trouble is that teachers see the Yoda thing as disruptive, and Yoda makes a prediction at the beginning of this book that another kid interprets as a threat.  The school has a zero-tolerance policy, and the principal removes him from school and recommends he be sent to the remedial school.  Meanwhile, his mom cuts off all communication with his friends – no phone, no visits, no email, nothing. 

The book is ostensibly written by Origami Yoda’s creator’s friend, Tommy.  And Tommy’s friends contribute chapters as well.  His buddy Kellen adds doodles to the book, and Tommy’s nemesis Harvey also writes rebuttals to each chapter.  Each chapter recounts an incident that Origami Yoda was involved in and how it turned out. 

The book is clever and funny.  Well about a 4-hour reading time.  Thankfully, the book is mostly clear of fart jokes and things, and deals more with interhuman interaction (among the boys and between the boys and girls) and the hilarity of being very uncertain of oneself than it does trying to put out one-liners.  For those reasons, it’s worth a read.  The third book, The Fortune Wookie, is out in hardback now.

A truly gorgeous day today.

This picture is on its side.  

#118 – Winterizing and project completion – September 29, 2012

Saturday

Today was a huge day for us.  Less so for the kids, but I was still very proud of them. 

We woke up some time after the sun came up, and wandered in for breakfast.  I had a normal breakfast.  The kids took the leftover hot dogs and cooked them on a resurrected fire.  It had gone out over night, but we had a cardboard box that needed disposal, so I got the fire going for them.

Today was the culmination of 2 months of worry and work by Katrina.  The ward’s annual day of service was tasked to the Relief Society, and Katrina got the project lead assignment.  So she has been arranging logistics, calling, marketing, etc, for a few months.  She has been worried about it consistently, and freaked out about it more than once.  This morning she went in at about 8 to help set up.

While she was out, I tackled my big project – I moved the washer into the laundry and set it up.  I tested the water, everything is good.  I ran a load to test it, and then cleaned up.  I put the tools away, pushed the dryer back into where it belongs, pushed the washer in next to it.  It looks quite nice.  The plumbing job doesn’t look very nice.  My focus was to make it operational and not leak, and I think I accomplished both of those things. 

Then Katrina came back close to 10.  Her entire perspective had changed.  For one thing, there were people there, waiting to donate before she left.  She also got a feel for the thing she had done, and that she had arranged something that is probably going to save the life of a few people.  She was happy, relieved, and grateful to have done it.  It is the kind of thing everyone should feel often.  She doesn’t feel that feeling enough, and I’m glad it worked out well.

I spent the rest of the morning finishing off the pool.  I drained 6 more inches of water out of it, took the chlorine tablets out.   I had thrown them in when I initially winterized the pool, but my reading this morning called out very specifically to not do that.  So I removed the cover that was sitting there, fished out the tablets and the dead mouse, and ptu the cover back.  Then I tied it in place using the fence posts, drained the filter tank, disconnected the power to the pump, put the cap on the electrical outlet, turned off the breaker, and unscrewed one of the 3 rings that need removal before I can put the system indoors. 

Katrina and I went off to donate blood.  No problem for me, but Katrina wasn’t able to donate.  Which was very disappointing for her considering how much she had prepared to do it.  We were some of the last people to go in, and I was #31.  We had exceeded the magic number of 25 donations, and that was cause for celebration.  So we went to Debra T’s.  I get an apricot soft serve and she got some fries.  Then we went back home.

I assigned the kids to deflate all of the pool toys in the basement, which Libby and Jake got to.  Christian cleaned up all the miscellaneous stuff left from our last times in the pool (swim masks and snorkels and such).  All the kids helped cleaning up our camping site.  And then I organized the pool toys in the basement storage area, pulled the umbrellas inside, removed the lounge chairs, moved the small table into the covered porch, and got Katrina’s help to move the large table off the covered porch.  The area looks much better now.  I need to disconnect the filter/pump unit a bit more and blow out the skimmer line, and then the water parts of the pool are done.  I have some plant trimming to do before everything dies, but it’s in good shape now. 

I got a few blog entries written, and we had leftovers for dinner.  Then the kids went to bed.  The Ducks didn’t kick off until 10:30, and I was tired.  But I realized that I wasn’t that tired, and I went out to watch the game.  It was a tough game to watch – by halftime, it was a one-score game, 23-19.  And it looked like our defense was not rattling their quarterback, and their defense was rattling ours.  Everything changed after halftime.  Our defense started to pressure the quarterback instead of the receivers, and we put together a 6-minute, 18-play drive to score.  We were completely in control.  They got the ball back and got into the red zone.  And then we sacked the quarterback 3 times in a row, pushing them out of field goal range.  1 minute later, we had 3 huge plays and another score.  On their next possession, it was an interception for a touchdown, and we were up by 24 points halfway through the 3^rd quarter.

It was fun to watch the complete makeover.  It was an entirely different game.  The best news was that the other top-10 teams all won by fewer points than we did, and the number 3 team especially only won by 18 points over a team I’d never heard of. 

Then it was 2am, and time to sleep again.  

Big bonus on the East Coast: I can watch games late at night when nobody else watches TV.  Big bleh on the East Coast: the games start at 10:30.
Very productive day, hoping tomorrow is as useful.

The leaf picture for today.

Pool area is cleared, almost ready for winter.

And all the pool stuff fits down here.  And the lawn mower, too!

Some of our trees are becoming brilliant.