Two Gals and a Hammer

Plumb, Dumb, Square and Level

2009-06-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

I am holding FatMax, our new laser level, on the sill plate above the west wall, aiming it at Rebecca as she leans over the east wall, watching her line up the red beam with a little piece of wood that is marking the edge of our soon-to-be-built weight-bearing wall. This is not just any weight-bearing wall- it is our first one. This is the wall that will hold our first joists, which will hold our first floor panels, which will hold our next level of exterior walls. This wall is the gateway to all future progress, and its anticipated arrival has receded further and further back on the timeline horizon, while we have impatiently slogged through the rainiest spring and early summer in decades, spent countless trips driving back and forth to Home Depot, and persevered through multiple unforeseen problems.

Problems like the SIP panels that were cut wrong at the factory and knocked the south wall ¾” out of plumb. It was the manufacturers fault, and once we finally figured out what was wrong, they fixed it. That was easy- there was someone else to take the blame. But every other problem has sat squarely on our shoulders. Unlike the house, which has had nothing square about it. The south basement wall turned out to be half an inch too long, due to a last minute “Stop Production!” call to the SIP manufacturer, asking them to make the wall half an inch longer. It made sense at the time, but it was a bad mistake. It threw the whole building out of square, which meant two days of climbing up and down ladders to the tops of our four corners, endless measuring of lengths, widths, and diagonals, scribbling math on scraps of lumber and scratching our heads as we tried to remember our tenth grade geometry.

That’s when I got a black eye. Bad domestic dispute, you might wonder? Nope. Improper use of power tools? Nope. It was a tape measure accident- a flying metal tape whipping back into its housing in frustrated exasperation. They really should have a warning on that thing- it’s a dangerous tool.

We ended up sawing half an inch off of our too-long wall, and sawed off parts of our sill plates to get things square to within an eighth of an inch. We had many heated discussions about how miserable or happy our lives could be, living in a house with the knowledge that the bedroom corner was wandering off an eighth of an inch to the northeast. But in the end, that eighth inch was looking pretty good. It was better than the sip plates that were bowed out by ¾” in several spots. That required an elaborate rope and pulley z-drag system, thanks to my days of Outward Bound tyrolean traverses. We yanked the walls in and popped the top plates in to hold them, all done in between rain showers, dental appointments, and equally annoying tangential tasks. Next was leveling the sill plates that had become warped and uneven during the weeks of rain. But by now we had become more comfortable with those eighth inch discrepancies, and this only took a day of measuring and shimming.

And now, today, finally, it was time to build our first wall. I steadied FatMax’s little red beam and saw it show up on Rebecca’s measuring stick. “About a sixty fourth of an inch to the left!” she shouted. A sixty fourth??? You’ve got to be kidding. But our tolerance for each other has grown during this project. So I did not hurl Little Fatso across the house, nor did I point out the absurdity of sixty fourth inch measurements. I gave FatMax the tiniest tap I could muster. “Too far!” she yelled. So I tapped gently back and forth, while the clouds rolled by and June casually plodded along in the direction of July, until Max’s little red beam could not have been more perfectly aligned.

Did we get the wall built? No. The bottom plate was uneven and we were out of shims, the power to the saw kept cutting off, and the grey day blessed us with a sequence of tiny rain showers. But we have learned to appreciate small steps. The boards are measured, labeled, and cut, and waiting under a tarp for tomorrow, when they will finally take their place in a straight and perfect wall. Or maybe the next day.

Sewer Drain

2009-05-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

The pieces lay like little turds,
Strewn about in bunched up herds.
Wyes and elbows, forty-fives,
Resting under cloudy skies.

Waiting for their gluey marriage,
Bound to be a route of carriage.
Out of sight beneath the slab-
A lesser role was never had.

I stare at them, I scratch my head.
Now what was it the plumber said?
I bend and reach, my pants drop lower.
This sure is going slow,
and slower.

But I carry on,
I toil and stoop,
And someday this
will carry poop.

Burying the Hatchet

2009-05-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure whose idea it was to bury a hatchet, but it leapt up out of a conversation like a clown out of a cake. And it was perfect. We buried it deep, at the bottom of our nine foot deep trench, in the dark back corner of the house, where it will lay forever. But since everything changes, ‘forever’ is a concept more suitable for those who need comfort than for those who want the real story. So imagine a cataclysmic upheaval of earth, epochs in the future. Imagine Wall-E and his pal Eva, the last robotic creatures on earth, stumbling across our hatchet in their futile attempt to clean up all the garbage people like us casually tossed into holes.

The rubber handle would have been eaten by microbes long ago. Perhaps the red nail polish on the blade would have survived. Wall-E will turn it over in his little clawed hands, wondering at the shiny red words. Judgment. Blame. Criticism. Negativity. Greed. Rivalry. What sorts of hideous earthlings felt compelled to bury this dark side of themselves?

Us, that’s who. Ever since we started this project, seven months ago, the universal reaction to our endeavour has been a barrage of stories about wrecked marriages, half-built houses, project budgets blown apart by couples therapy, and general tales of gloom and misery that trying to build a house together can bring to otherwise happy couples. The story would inevitably be followed by a slightly raised eyebrow. “And how are YOU two doing?”

Until recently, we laughed this off. Ha! We’re doing great! And it was true (except for one notable interaction on the roof of the old house, in the howling winter wind). We’d been thoroughly enjoying each other’s company, sharing the excitement of co-creativity, and appreciating the gift of having a life partner to do this with. But in the past few weeks, we’ve discovered that the pervasive myth of house-building as relationship destroyer could happen, even to us.

Enter, stage left, the evil villain- stress. As the pages of the calendar fly by at an alarming rate, enter weeks of snow and rain (seven and a half inches of moisture in five weeks!), and their partners mud and muck. Enter the un-reversability of any mistakes in the foundation or under the slab. Bring on some deadlines for subcontractors, unexpected extra costs, and an increase in rent. And there you have it- high drama on the stage. This is where Miss Quality Assurance and Miss Quick and Efficient play out repeating scenes of butting heads, exchanging the kind of toxic energy that you would never subject to anyone but the person you love most in the world.

Fortunately, neither of us is a shouter or a thrower, but when you’ve been together for 19 years it doesn’t take a yelling match to get your point across. An entire argument can take place in the tiniest tweak of a facial muscle, or the nano-decibel raise in tone of voice, or the accent of one word instead of another. Give us a decision to make, and we planted our feet in opposing stances, approaching the problem in the language of right and wrong, you versus me. We tossed slow poison back and forth, rather than bullets. And it churned through our veins for weeks, until we were so sick of it that there was nothing to do but give up the fight. Thank god for our friends who kept reminding us that it’s never as much about the other person as you think it is. That the only way out is to take full responsibility for the whole mess, and shifting your own attitude to create something different.

I’ll spare you the details and the many conversations that turned back into arguments as we tried to untangle ourselves, but eventually, we did. Instead of giving up on the project, or our relationship, we decided to give up our most treasured weapons- judgment, blame, and negativity. We’d had an old hatchet laying around, and Rebecca went to the dollar store for red nail polish to decorate the blade. Chris and Ray were in the process of backfilling the foundation, so the timing was perfect. After some ceremonial photos, we dropped it to the bottom of the trench, and watched as Chris maneuvered his bulldozer in to drop another load of dirt on top, and then pounded it down with his compactor. It felt great. Our intention is to keep that hatchet buried for a long time.

In The Trenches

2009-04-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

When I woke this morning the snow was spraying down like little dots of slushy rain, and now, after my morning tea, it is coming down in huge chunks, straight down like falling bullets. It has been a rainy, snowy April, and our house project has been mired in the slipperiest, muckiest mud you can imagine. At the back of the house, and part way down the sides, is a 9 foot deep trench, where the tall concrete wall is wedged down into the hillside. The trench varies from about one to three feet wide, and the wall of dirt and rock overhead has been steadily crumbling and sliding down into the hole for about three weeks now, while we have dealt with all the things you have to do before the trench can be backfilled. I had no idea. In my mental picture of this stage, it was a quick and simple matter of getting the foundation poured, slapping up some waterproofing (two hours for two people, the waterproofing guy said on the phone), sticking up the foam, gluing together a few pipes for the foundation drain, and voila! On to the fun stuff with hammers and nails.

But not so fast, when you’re working with Miss Quality Assurance. Thanks to her watchful eye, you can be assured that the basement of our new home will be so super-insulated that no errant BTU will ever escape. In future rainstorms we will sleep deeply, knowing that no drop of water could possibly penetrate the watertight fortress that we spent weeks meticulously handcrafting.

The first omission in my abbreviated mental picture was chipping away all the bumps and ooze spots of concrete, so the foam insulation has a flat surface to stick to. Then there was the parging. Parging is a new word in my vocabulary that even spell check does not recognize, and I will be taking this opportunity to use it as many times as possible. As far as I know, PARGING is only appropriately used in the context of filling in all the little nail holes and bubbles in a concrete wall, so the waterproofing can be a continuous membrane. Because the walls are so tall and most places in the trench are too narrow and uneven for a ladder, the top sections have to be chipped and PARGED leaning over the wall on top of a ladder from the inside, belly pressed on the 8” wide wall and blood rushing to the head as you reach down to PARGE the little holes.

My mental picture did not include me slipping and sliding through the back trench in the 35 degree rain yesterday, trying to glue the wet and muddy PVC together with frozen fingers. It did not include hauling buckets of gravel into the trench, up and over the protruding boulders, my soaking wet Carhartts leading me down that slippery slope to cotton-induced hypothermia. Normally, I would have been holing up inside for a rainy day, but the forecast was for the rain to turn into three feet of snow over the next few days, and if I could get the foundation drain in, I wouldn’t have to shovel that thing out one more time. It was ridiculously miserable, and at a certain point of absurdity it crossed that line into a certain kind of pleasure in seeing just how bad it could get. But after a couple of buckets of gravel I got smart and borrowed two laborers from the project next door. They came over in their Hefty bag rain ponchos and got the job done in an hour, which was the best $40 we’ve spent yet. Cheaper than a visit to the chiropractor, anyway.

The fun quotient of the past few weeks has been seriously reduced due to the fact that Rebecca was always the bearer of the news about all the pieces of work that I was not expecting, and therefore the recipient of a fair amount of resistance. Who knew that the sticky mesh that the stucco adheres to has to go on the top of each piece of foam BEFORE it goes up? Now we have to squirt canned foam into every little seam. Now we have to tape every seam. Now we have to brace the foam against the hillside because the caulk isn’t sticking. Now, Laura, you need to crawl on your knees for the entire length of the eight inch wide, ninety foot long wall to fill the nail holes in the rigid foam with the spray foam. Now, do it again to remove the tape that turned out to be a bad idea because the spray foam isn’t curing beneath it. Now crawl back again, this time on your belly, swinging your right arm like a windshield washer to wire-brush the foam so the sticky mesh will stick better. Did I mention that there are 3” anchor bolts sticking up from the wall every few feet? Now, scootch backwards on your butt (watch out for those anchor bolts!), unrolling a 19” roll of sticky mesh between your knees as you go.

This may have all been easier to swallow if we hadn’t just been through the gates of hell with the waterproofing, which was the blackest, foulest, stickiest stuff ever invented. Two coats of it, rolled on over our heads, slipping and sliding in the trench mud. It dripped everywhere, and everything stuck to everything. My glove was so firmly glued to the roller handle that I had to leave it there, and slipped my hand out when I needed to adjust my sunglasses- oops! goo on face- or my hat- oops! goo on hat. But no worries, Miss Quality Assurance was right there the whole time, so you can be assured that although everything in me was shouting to get this job over with, no tiny bubble holes were left untarred.

But its just about done, and once this snowstorm dumps its load, Chris and Ray will be back to fill the trench, and we’ll be one big step closer to the hammer and nails. The good news? The rigid foam is pink, and our house is looking very pretty, if you can overlook the mud. And my Carhartts are covered with tar, caulk, and dirt stains. I’m starting to look like a construction worker.

Bob, Bo, Boone . . . The Men

2009-03-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

Bob, Bo, Boone, Brad, Bruce, Brian, Doug, Ken, Chris, Ian, Alan, Ray, Glenn- we are a couple of gals supported and advised by a whole platoon of men. In our journey through the construction landscape we’ve had more interactions with men than we’ve had in the past twenty years. The only woman we’ve encountered is Michelle at the county, who is our plans examiner. Got to hand it to her for sailing against the gender wind.

It’s been interesting terrain for a same-sex female couple to navigate- a world of barrel chests and crew cuts, giant pick up trucks, and meatball sandwiches the size of footballs. But I’ve come to appreciate these men who, for the most part, have been very helpful and generous with their time and advice. Maybe it’s the unusualness of us, or maybe it’s a certain masculine protectiveness that comes up around women, although we certainly aren’t the girly girls that I’m sure are on the construction company calendars back in the office. Doug, our electrical consultant, who is the most communicative of the bunch, told us he was afraid we might be taken advantage of if he didn’t talk to the SIP people directly. He’s also the only one with the forthrightness to actually say the L word. “My ex-wife turned into a lesbian and now she’s my best friend,” he told us, shortly after the first handshake.

Communication skills are not highly ranked among most of these men. We’ve moved on to the next pick after many initial visits that were a barrage of talk, as if we weren’t even standing there. And then there are the silent types. Ian, our structural engineer and plans drawer, presents a new set of plans, decorated with mysteriously coded symbols and unrequested design changes, by rolling them out on the desk and then leaning back in his chair in blank silence. He prefers yes or no questions, so our conversations sound like a game of twenty questions. I never realized that ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ questions can actually be answered with yes or no.

But a little persistence usually gets the required information. It’s not that they’re trying to be difficult, it’s just that these men have had to adjust to a hard-as-nails male world, where you don’t let too much of yourself slip through the strong-jawed façade. As I’ve watched their broad shouldered backs hunch over a set of plans or over foundation forms, and watched them muscle boulders and twist together rebar, I’ve grown more compassion for men who earn a living by breaking down their bodies. The younger ones are tied up in tight muscle, and the older ones walk with stiff backs and limping joints. My guess is that for most of them, what they’re doing was not how they had imagined their lives. Ray the Excavator told us how he was in college when he got his girlfriend pregnant, and had to drop out and get a job wherever he could. That turned out to be excavating. Twenty years later, he has a son in college and he’s still moving dirt.

Chris and Ray have been working together forever, and they dance delicately around each other in their two backhoes, loading the dump truck in perfect, wordless synchrony. Yet when I take their picture standing together in the giant hold that they just spent five days digging, I jokingly say ‘put your arms around each other!’, which brings about a predictable jumping apart and the required chorus of ‘no way!’ and ‘eeewww!’. I feel sad when I see that.

I’m so grateful that my life has been in a softer body, and in a softer world. And I also so appreciate these men who are bringing the strength and stamina of their bodies to our house project. I appreciate their willingness to take at face value these two women who do not complement their traditional masculinity with a more familiar type of femininity. I appreciate their sense of artistry and integrity, and the pride that comes from knowing their corner of the universe very well. And I appreciate the balancing energy that they bring to our project. As Thich Nhat Hahn says, paper is made up of non-paper elements. And our female-centered house will be made up of non-female elements.

Champagne and Chocolate

2009-03-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

It’s two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and I am sitting on the deck drinking champagne and eating chocolate. Lest you think I am a problem in progress, I should tell you that this is highly unusual behavior (the champagne, but not the chocolate), and I am actually a little bit pleased with myself. What’s the occasion? Nothing, except that it’s a brilliantly sunny and warm day in mid-March, and I am tired of calculating lengths of pipe and square footage of insulation. I am tired of wondering what to do with the gigantic boulder that is perched in loose dirt above our frontdoor entryway, and tired of worrying about how we are going to place our SIP walls on the second floor.

I’ve been completely engaged in this project, but today I thought it would be a day off, and then we ended up spending two hours at a jobsite watching burly construction workers put up a SIP roof, and then Rebecca wanted me to help her unload PVC pipes from the roof of the van. My heels suddenly dug into the ground, entirely of their own accord. It’s as if that part of me that is more than a project manager, more than a laborer, more than a problem solving brain, finally fought its way to the surface and said Stop! No more house talk! Remember ME?

So that’s why I politely declined her request to unload PVC, came home to make a big salad with feta and pasta, and discovered the corked half bottle of champagne that has been sitting quietly in the refrigerator since Valentines Day. The cork flew off with a loud pop. Plenty of fizz left. Extra-dark chocolate has become as much of a staple as bread and apples since we started this project, so that was easy to find. And here I am, glass in hand, chocolate slowly dissolving in mouth, looking down on the town of Eldorado Springs as it comes and goes on a Saturday afternoon. Funny thing is, now that I’ve had my hour of self-indulgence, I’m feeling strangely compelled to draw a diagram of foundation wall penetrations. Or maybe I’ll just pour another glass of champagne.

Excavation Is Done

2009-03-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

Over at 137 Baldwin Circle we have a gigantic hole in the ground, and our footer forms are in place, waiting for their cement fillings. The excavation left us with a gigantic gouge in the earth, and the unsettling feeling that we really shouldn’t have been allowed to do that. But the process was amazing. The equipment was more massive than we had imagined, and picked up our car sized boulders like they were marbles. We were like two ten year old boys- for five days we just watched, and every giant boulder picked up by the giant machines gave us a fresh thrill. And when the machine would lurch in our direction, its steel jaws looming over our tiny human bodies, it felt like we were in Jurassic Park. We’d scramble for our lives, and Chris and Ray, our professional excavators, would take obvious delight in their power to scare the girls.

Our attachment to all the underground rocks disappeared after the tenth truckload or so. By then we had stopped thinking of them as uprooted rock-people, and just wanted to get rid of them. Pulverized or crushed would be just fine. But its true that Rebecca did jump in her car one day to secretly follow the dump truck down highway 93 to see where our boulders would be living. They’re about four miles up Coal Creek Canyon, serving as landscaping for a nice big house. We think they’ll be happy there.

Now Chris and Ray are gone until the backfill stage, and we’re dealing with Bruce and his un-named crew of three laborers who are setting the footer forms for the foundation. Bruce has the appearance and all the social skills of a caveman. It seems that his frontal lobes aren’t too developed either, which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of math involved in getting a foundation to its precise location and height. (Remember our three foot setbacks- there’s not an inch to spare or it would be hell to pay with Larry P.) Adding and subtracting doesn’t seem to be Bruce’s strength. What he IS good at is yelling at his workers. When we asked him to measure something he shouts “Measure! Arriba!” and the poor gap-toothed guy with the shovel fumbles and drops the measuring tape in his fear. I want to tell him “It’s ok, there’s no rush, we have all day”. But my Spanish isn’t good enough, and he looks at me like I’m the demanding, millionaire homeowner with more power and money than he can ever imagine.

The construction industry seems to expect that multiple, massive mistakes will be made, and that undoing things at the homeowner’s expense is all just part of the fun. The excavators forgot to dig a whole twenty foot trench for the west footer. We missed that, and the foundation guys just built their forms two feet higher than the plans specified. Rebecca was the genius that caught it, fortunately before the cement was poured. Chris didn’t seem too surprised. “Oh yeah, guess we forgot that” he said. And Bruce wasn’t bothered at all about tearing out all the forms and waiting a day for the trench to be dug. “Just how it goes”, he said.

We went over to check on things and found out that they had been going off of the wrong elevation mark on the tree. We clarified that, and then discovered that the excavators had left one corner of the grade three inches higher than it was supposed to be. Instead of just shoveling it down, the foundation guys had built the whole foundation three inches higher, which meant several hundred dollars worth of extra cement, and three inches less headroom in the basement. “Its only three inches”, Bruce said in his characteristic grumble. “Shovel it down”, I replied, adopting the firm and manner of fact tone that I learned from my father. He once got a contractor to take out a whole swimming pool because the cement they poured wasn’t thick enough. It takes arms folded across your chest, and a wide, firmly planted stance. Don’t face them directly, but stand at a forty five degree angle, and drop your tone of voice just a few notches. I’ve watched it all my life, and it works. Rebecca was impressed, and our basement ceilings will remain at their majestic 8’6” height.

Our next problem is figuring out what to do with the six foot boulder that is perched in loose dirt, at approximately head-level above the entry door. We’ll keep you posted.

Moving Earth

2009-02-28T18:43:00.001-08:00

On Monday, in two days, we start excavating. We were all set to start a week ago, but got a call the day before that Bob the Excavator’s mother had just died, and he needed to back out of the job. By now we’ve heard the dying mother, dying cousin, and dying vague relation excuse several times from subcontractors who haven’t called back, haven’t submitted their bid, or haven’t shown up for a meeting. But this time it was real- Bob was the kind of soft-spoken guy who would pause in conversation to bend down and caress a little clover plant, and who was fascinated by the delicate sand dollars that were laying on the back porch. Not the sort of guy who would lie about his mother. So we offered our condolences and spend last week getting three more excavation bids. We’ve lined someone up, but it’s too bad about Bob, because his gentle nature made the thought of ripping into this beautiful little piece of land much easier to bear.

For the past few months, swarms of men in hard hats and filthy sweatshirts have been digging eight foot deep sewer trenches all over town. Huge yellow mammoth-machines have been crawling and scraping through the streets, grinding couch sized boulders in their steel teeth and spitting mounds of dirt and rock in their wake. So we’re well prepared for the loud crunches of steel on rock, for the constant roar of diesel engines, and the smell of fossil fuels in the air. It is easy, and painful, to think of this as violence against the earth, to think of the beautiful lichen-covered boulders as sentient beings uprooted from their rightful homes. Which is why we liked Bob so much, because we could create a different story, of a soft, fuzzy-grey haired man gently lifting the rock-people, bringing sunlight to those underground earthlings who hadn’t seen it for millions of years, and happily transporting them to a new flatland field where they would have fresh air forever and million dollar views of the front range.

It’s all in the story. Neither one is really the truth, so does it matter which one we choose? Sometimes, I think, it does. If I tell myself that the man holding a sign on the street corner is just trying to buy beer, or that he’s there because of personal failures or bad deeds, it allows me to turn away. If I tell a story of a decent human being in poor circumstances, I have to look a little closer. Who knows what the real truth is? But in this case, the story that leads to the most compassionate response is the one worth telling. And maybe it doesn’t even need a story; maybe the bottom line truth is just that this person is obviously suffering, no matter how he got there.

But I digress. On Monday, when I watch the backhoe bite into our land, I’m going to think of happy rocks being released into sunlight. I’m going to be grateful for machines that can accomplish a lifetime of shoveling into a week, and for the smiling, open-hearted men driving them. I’m going to think of toes wiggling down into the sand, of a little space on this earth opening up for us to live in, and of a grey-bearded, benevolent God gently patting the earth, saying “Here. Come sit right here.”

Back to the Land

2009-02-07T08:47:00.000-08:00

It was the ultimate Leave No Trace house, disappearing from the land without even a footprint. The last stage went fast- it only took two days to pull off the rim joists, to twist the beams away from their anchors, and then to simply lift the heavy square posts off of the rocks where they had been sitting for the past hundred years. The fat four inch nails let go with long, drawn out creaks and groans, but released their grip with surprising ease. It was so gentle and simple that it felt as if the house was rising into the air- evaporating like a fine mist into the light blue sky of the valley.

And now it is a piece of rocky land, shadowed by a giant douglas fir, with the stump of a brick chimney squatting on the sidelines. Even though that little piece of earth hadn’t seen the sun for all those years, it received it as naturally as if it had just been one long night of darkness. Already the fir has dropped a layer of needles and cones on the bare earth, and the rocks that had been trapped in the two-foot crawlspace are now being walked on by upright humans and sniffing dogs.

A house is something that you expect to be solid, to exist forever, or at least to outlast your own relatively short-term life. Throughout the whole process, every time something changed we would experience an unsettling disorientation. When a wall dropped, rafters became exposed, or a hole appeared in the roof, we would do head-spinning double-takes as we reassessed the proportions of our changing little world. And when it disappeared completely, we couldn’t quite believe it was gone. It’s a lot like when someone dies- it takes time to remember that he won’t be walking in the door at three o’clock. Where did he go? What happened to our house????

I recently returned from a Zen retreat, which involves whole days of sitting in silence, observing the rising and falling of sense perceptions, the thoughts that follow, and the stories and identities we make from those thoughts. It becomes clear that none of these thoughts about who I am, is really who I am. One by one we toss out the identifications, realizing that each has no real substance, no ultimate reality. And in rare moments, we touch something that IS solid- the space in which it all arises.

In the same way, there was no one element that defined the house, and nothing that securely held it together. The pieces fell apart like they had been just waiting to drop. In some places, rotten posts were balanced on rotten floorboards, held there only by the attachments of everything around them. Without its roof, it was still the house. Without the floor, it was still the house. Even with just a few beams left, it was still the house. Like the movie we saw last night about a guy in a coma- even with nothing left, as long as he was breathing, he was there. Until he was gone.

What I’m trying to get at in this terribly profound little story is that the very things we think are solid and permanent, like ourselves, and houses, aren’t. We give names to collections of thoughts and habits, and call them people. We give the name ‘house’ to a collection of lumber and nails that surrounds a section of air. And now the same little piece of air that used to be defined by its surrounding walls and roof and floor, our ‘house’, is still the same space, the same air, but undefined by boundaries. Perhaps it’s the same with us.

Soon we will begin the process of enclosing that space again, building a structure that we will once again call house. But having seen the open space in which it will arise, something is different. The illusion of permanence has been cracked. And although we will still call it house, and rely on its solid nature, we will also know that someday, this too will leave without a trace.

A Human Pace

2009-01-01T10:12:00.000-08:00

Life is moving so slowly. I love it. Too cold and windy today? No problem- we’ll stay home and I’ll prop my feet by the woodstove and spend the day looking at kitchen designs on my laptop. Time feels different when there is plenty of it. There is a gentleness to the day, a way that things just unfold themselves in their own rhythm.

It’s been at least two years since we got the architectural software program, and hundreds, hundreds, maybe thousands of hours that Rebecca has sat up until the early morning hours in the blue glow of the computer screen. Night after night I would get up to pee at 2am and see her hunched over the keyboard, face inches from the screen, neck and shoulders locked in a creative trance. In the morning she would show me her latest brilliant design, to which I would either clap and approve or shoot it out of the sky with a roll of my eyes. And the next night she’d be back at it. There has been absolutely nothing efficient about our process. But it has taken this long for the house to show itself, for countless designs to gradually evolve into the next. The process of evolution has included bad ideas that dead-ended by 10am the next day, and grand ideas that grew into central features of the house. A string of small, unnoticeable shifts in a wall position or the height of the stair treads would be followed by a sudden lurch in progress, like the fish that one day decided to walk on land.

What has become obvious in this process is that each task has its own lifespan- a natural evolution of beginning, middle, and end, with a certain amount of time needed for each. And when we try to compress that lifespan in the name of efficiency, we deny ourselves the pleasure of not only being with things as they are, but of being with things at the pace that they naturally move. We compress ourselves, and we compress our joy in the project.

Where did we learn to set so many deadlines, to pack projects into predetermined boxes of time? In grade school, our tiny minds are shuttled onto the conveyor belt of progress. We are cultivated into productive workers from the time that we can hold a pencil. And then we graduate to dutifully type away at the keypad of this busy world, while the voice of dissent lies just under the surface. We dream of the freedom of time and vacation, and develop a quiet hatred for our To-Do lists. It’s completely crazy, and it is the water we swim in. But do we really need those deadlines? Isn’t there a natural human desire to learn, to create, to contribute? Is it possible that we could reach our goals, as individuals and as a culture, in a way that honors the natural rhythm of relationship between us and the mission?

Compared to the previous pace of our lives, this unfolding feels like a luxury. But I’m beginning to realize that for me, this friendlier relationship to time is a core element of happiness. I feel like we’re just hunkered down here in our little hideout of Eldorado Springs, laying low for a year while the culture of excessive productivity whistles overhead. I’m not making any money, and our entertainment budget consists of the $14.99 monthly Netflix fee. Going out to dinner is a rare luxury, and the thought of a little trip down to Mexico is about as far-fetched as going to the moon. But what we do have is the time to allow projects and creations to move through us, on their own time. We have the freedom of whole days to move with impulses, to follow the meandering thread of daily tasks, rather than trying to push that thread through the eye of a needle.

We’re still not done with our house design. My telephone wrestling matches with Larry P (his name rhymes with circle, and it’s such a nerdly little name that I can barely resist writing it, but I don’t want to tempt the googling gods of fate) at the county have defeated us to the point that we are shrinking the width of the house by a foot, so that the east wall can have normal windows and the dignity of an overhanging eave. Every inch counted when it was 25’ wide, and now its 24 feet. Which means that upon coming up the stairs from the entryway, you would bump straight into the corner of the kitchen counter. So now everything is changing- the kitchen and dining room are swapping places, the windows are shifting their size and position, and Rebecca is putting in late nights again to fiddle with the placement of counters and cabinets.

But it’s a better design. And we never would have gotten here if we had tried to squeeze this process into a time frame*. Yes, Christmas has come and gone, we still don’t have our building permit, and the front wall of the old house is still standing. But our blood pressures are low, we’re relaxed, and we’re learning how to move at a human pace.

*Counterpoint. Rebecca reminds me that if we DON’T start imposing a little more time discipline, in our old age we will be eating toast in a kitchen with no countertops.

Fire Happens

2008-12-21T14:30:00.000-08:00

This morning I had a heart-stopping moment- when what I was seeing was in total conflict with my ideas of what is probable. A moment when an entire alternate future took shape in my imagination.

There’s a loft above the kitchen of our rental house- a snug space with two low windows and no access except for the rope ladder I rigged up. Since moving here I’ve been climbing up the ladder every morning for twenty minutes of meditation. I’ve been proud of my consistency, even on those mornings when it seems like a big waste of time and I’d rather go straight to a cup of tea by the fire. Pride, of course, is the opposite outcome from ego dissolution that meditation is supposed to produce, so that gives you some idea of where I am on the curve of spiritual enlightenment.

Yesterday, I did skip it. Had a cold, didn’t feel good- forget it. And this morning I almost bagged it again, but managed to disengage from the mental dissent long enough to get myself up on the kitchen counter and half way up the ladder. That’s when my line of vision cleared the loft floor and I saw the burning candle. What?? How could that be? I haven’t lit it yet- I’m not even in the loft yet so how could it already be lit? My brain is a little slow at 7am. But oh, now I’m getting it. I left it lit. Oh . . . wow, I wasn’t even up here yesterday. Shit- 48 hours! I stare for a full minute while my self-image as a responsible, aware-of-my-surroundings kind of person goes up in smoke.

I blow the candle out. It was one of those fat, heavy candles, and it was down to half an inch from the cloth covering the low altar. The sides had split open, and green wax had run across the altar, onto the floor, and had puddled up against the wall. The wick was tall, and a good inch high flame was happily bouncing above the pool of melted wax.

I stare at the trail of smoke rising from the blown out candle as I see the whole thing unfolding differently in an alternate future- how easily I could have not been there this morning- could have been grocery shopping while flames spread across the surface of the wax, licking up the wall until the window sill caught, until the loft was filled with flame, until the whole house turned to raging fire. I slowly realize how completely oblivious I have been to this quietly developing disaster- all day Thursday working across the canyon while the candle burned, then all day yesterday sitting at home with a cold, while the candle burned. Sleeping all night for TWO nights, while the candle burned.

I am completely humbled. How could I do that? Is this a sign of early Alzheimers? And what other things are slowly burning, out of view? What catastrophes are already cooking, right under our noses? Growing tumors, slowly clogging arteries- my mind won’t stop. I am shaken.

How odd it is that fire shows up in the literal world, when we have been thrashing it out with the county about their over-the-top fire wall regulations. Our east and west walls are less than five feet from the property line, so we have to have walls that are constructed to stay standing for one hour with a fire burning on either the inside or the outside. Don’t even try to find the logic between distance to a property line and fire safety. There is none, but it’s a good way to pad the pockets of the construction industry with thousands of dollars of extra materials. I won’t bore you with all the details, but we’re talking about TWO layers of Type X 5/8” gypsum on the inside AND the outside, running all our furnace, bathroom, and stove vents all the way to the north wall, and the possibility of no windows at all on the east side. Fortunately that’s not our view side, and we have hopefully surmounted the window issue through discovery of a product that the county may accept. For $250 a square foot, we can have a section of ‘transparent wall’. Normally, such a thing would be called a window, but not in the language of ASTM E-119, which is the language in which I am learning rudimentary phrases so that I can converse with Larry P**., the lead plans examiner at the county (see 11/19 posting for my very disheartening initial encounter with Larry).

Larry has a voice that sounds like over-cooked oatmeal. I have spoken to his voice mail many more times than I have actually spoken to him in person, and I can now perfectly mimic the mushy, drawled-out intonation of his mechanical greeting. “Hi . . . this . . . is . . . .Laaaaar . . .ry.” By the time I hear ‘Hi this . .’ I am already pissed off. Let’s just say that Larry P** has not exercised his brain much beyond the boundaries of the Boulder County Building Code. ‘You knoooowwww . . . . this is for your own safety’, he says, and I want to scream at him that a raging fire at our doorstep is about as likely as his brain coming up with an original, creative, or helpful thought.

But look. Every stance has an equally true opposite stance. Fire happens. And not that I think we need to be wrapped in gypsum, with no windows and 25’ vents to protect us from it, but my certainty about how things are has been scrambled. Larry P** may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but I’m not so right or invincible either. Fire happens, gypsum walls happen, and it’s all just going to unfold in the only way it can. Next time I talk to Larry I’ll try to remember that he’s just on a mission to protect Boulder County residents from the candles they leave burning.

**P.S. I returned to this post to edit out Larry's last name after I realized that if Larry likes to spend time googling his own name, (which I can easily imagine him doing while he procrastinates the returning of my phone calls), the perspectives offered in this blog would not work in our favor. Our house would be toast.

What Lurked Beneath the Bed

2008-12-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

First, a warning. Those of you who live above clean cement basements where the kids watch widescreen TV will be appalled by this story. And if you are grossed out by dead or smelly things, skip this one.

Yesterday we unearthed the crawlspace below the bedroom. But the day wasn’t going so well even before we got to that part. Rebecca and I have been spending virtually 24 hours a day together for the over three months, and overall, we’ve been thoroughly enjoying each others company. But some days, we have different opinions about every stupid little thing.

Yesterday was one of those days. We argued about whether we should leave the pile of roofing boards on the ground, or put it in the back of Black Beauty (the pickup truck for those of you who haven’t been following every detail of our lives). We argued over whether the cracked bay window would make a good cold frame. About whether we should keep it or dumpster it. About where it should go. Our disagreements usually have the underlying theme of efficiency versus quality, and on those off-days we judge each other mercilessly for the opposing stances that we take. Of course, when we can balance each other on the center point of that seesaw, it’s a winning combination. If either of us were to win all the time, we would have either a perfect house that never got finished or a crappy house that got done in record time.

Wanting to win the argument is a bad strategy. Because then you’re stuck with a loser. But it’s one of those stinky aspects of human nature, one that usually lays underground until you’re with someone you know well enough that you can be your worst self. When it finally comes up, it smells bad. Kind of like the dead skunk that we discovered under the bedroom floor.

We’ve been working long, hard days for the past three days- getting the roof and walls off of the back portion of the house and the floorboards up before the big snow that we knew would come last night. Putting ourselves on an early-to-work schedule has probably contributed to our general grumpiness. And we knew that whatever was under those floorboards, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

The embarrassing part of all this is that we knew- knew in a way that is all too easy to forget. The scuttling sounds that lulled us to sleep were frequent enough that they became normal. But once or twice a year, we’d be woken in the night with anguished squeals coming from under the floor, followed by the thick, musty stench of angry skunk. We’d mumble something about ‘there’s that skunk again’, and go back to sleep. But the smell would hang in the air for a couple of days before settling back down to smolder in the odd collection of insulative things that Rebecca stuffed into the 18” crawlspace many years ago. We never knew if these annual skirmishes were raccoons killing a cluster of shrieking skunk babies, or if skunks were invading the raccoon hideout. Or maybe it was a domestic spat in the skunk family. But the final evidence of dead skunk suggests that in the end, the raccoons won.

I have utmost appreciation for the fact that Rebecca took on the task of bagging up all the mess. She must have felt somewhat responsible since she was the one who stuffed all those things in there in the first place. In her elbow-high yellow rubber gloves, her green kneepads, her respirator with the pink filters, and her rocket scientist safety glasses, she looked like she was headed into the plutonium room at Rocky Flats. She pulled up huge wads of chewed up pink and yellow fiberglass, a shredded sleeping bag, and six enormous, unexplainably heavy couch cushions. There was a desiccated skunk with a fluffy black and white tail that was attached to an unrecognizable black mummy of a body. There were piles of raccoon shit, a rusty can that had been opened with two nail holes, and a crushed pie plate. It was unbelievably disgusting. But even more disturbing was the realization that for twelve years, all that separated our sleeping bodies from this mass of filth were floorboards, carpet, the collection of rollerblades, river gear, sleeping bags, and boots that were stuffed in the not-to-be-wasted storage space under the bed, and one six inch mattress.

Is there a metaphor lurking here? About the rotten, invisible stuff in relationships that we choose to sweep under the floorboards? Let’s not even go there. I prefer to think that rather than a metaphor, it’s a simple matter of cause and effect. I once read that clutter under your bed can keep you from getting pregnant. I don’t think it was the clutter that kept either of us from that fate, but if clutter under your bed has that kind of effect, what horrible influence could piles of raccoon shit have on one’s matrimonial relationship? Seems like if that led to some minor judgments and a few useless power struggles, we’d be getting off easy.

Those of you who are judging us as backwoods hillbillies living in piles of filth can pause now to generate some empathy. Yes, we knew something bad was going on under there, but what could we do? Wiggling on our bellies into the crawlspace was unthinkable, and besides, once we were face to face with the skunk or the raccoons, what would we do? Shoving a trap underneath the house would lead to a whole different set of problems once we had to deal with a wild animal in a trap. Poison was just too violent a solution. So we put up with the occasional gassings, and forgot about it the rest of the time.

But the question remains- can we blame the everyday struggles of an 18-year relationship on the bad feng shui of putrid filth under the bed? I’d like to think so. Because although it has taken us twelve years and a major production for the past three months, the problem has been eradicated. The dead skunk is in a black plastic bag at the bottom of the dumpster. And we are looking forward to a sealed, rodent-proof cement basement, and under our bed a clean space with solar heat radiating from the floorboards. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even get pregnant.

A Good Day to Die . . . the house speaks again

2008-12-05T08:13:00.001-08:00

Last night I thought it was all over- that in the end it would be hypothermia and loneliness that would take me rather than the final dismantling of my bones. For two days it has been snowing. Lightly and gently, but enough to pile a good ten inches on my roof. Now I’ve weathered a lot more than that in my day- just a few years ago I carried three feet of heavy, wet snow- branches were popping all around me but I held up to it. My rafters were sore for weeks, but that was nothing compared to this. That was back when I had a good warm coat of insulation everywhere. Walls, floors, ceilings. I had asphalt shingles, and siding all around my underside to keep the wind from whistling through. There was fire in my belly, and hot smoky breath rising up through the chimney.

But the biggest difference was that I had people. They were depending on me. It’s a job that most people don’t even notice is being done, but imagine the disaster if I didn’t hold up the roof. They would perish. The cats would freak. And so even though I knew they were taking me for granted, knowing how much they would NOT appreciate it if I let them down was almost as good as being outright appreciated.

But these past two days, they didn’t even show up. They’re across the canyon in that warm and fancy house (which is a little pretentious if you ask me, but if that’s what they want . . .), looking at plans and pricing materials for my replacement. Sure, they probably looked out the window a few times to make sure I was still standing, but no visit, no shoveling, no fire. All around me I saw smoke drifting up from chimneys, I saw warm lights in windows, I saw walkways being shoveled. I couldn’t help myself. By morning there were big icicle tears hanging from my eaves.

I’m ready to go. I know it’s coming, and it’s time. This morning the sky is clear, and I see the sun hitting the ridge behind me. Soon it will be coming in the windows, and they’ll be back, bundled up and complaining about the cold and wind. But I’ll take them any way they are. I guess that’s been my gift all along- holding this space for them no matter how grumpy or happy or loud or quiet they are on any given day. I don’t care- I just want to feel their feet on my floorboards and their hands on my frame, even if they’re taking me apart. Its better than being empty. What is it that the Lakota say? Give me a good sunny day, my two favorite girls carefully dropping my rafters and lowering my walls, and it’s a good day to die.

Savers and Shingles

2008-12-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I took an afternoon off to go stock up on cold weather work clothes. Snow is starting to threaten our work days, and while the wood stove can take some of the chill off, there are cracks and holes everywhere now- dinner plate sized holes in the roof, vent holes in the floor, and inch wide gaps in the siding. The cold wind whistles right through, stirring up dust clouds as it goes. Not only is it cold, but this is the dirtiest thing I have ever done. When I pry off a board, torrents of dirt fall down on my head. Sometimes when I get home I have to drop my clothes in the entryway, and step back out on the porch in my underwear to shake them off before I let them in the house. The laundry has been piling up faster than my limited wardrobe can keep up. Between the cold and the dirt, the proper outfits are essential, and lots of them.

So the green cotton sweater I’m wearing has the distinctive Savers Thrift Store odor- overtones of laundry detergent and mothballs, with mysterious underlying scents of the former owner. Savers is a saviour when it comes to the need for lots of cheap, warm clothes. For $57 I got eight things, including a preciously ugly grey insulated parka that makes me look like a skier from Texas who just snowplowed through the lift line. Some scotch-guarded jeans would go perfectly with it. Winner of the best deal category was a Patagonia capilene long underwear top for 99 cents. Most coveted item was a green canvas jacket, suitable for evening wear, that Rebecca tried to talk me into giving her. In the Questionable Purchase category was a grey fiberfill vest with a stain that grosses me out a little bit. A grey fleece sweater and three other warm shirts, all grey or green, were featured that night in the fashion show that Rebecca always requests after a Savers shopping trip.

The whole closet smells like Savers now. But yesterday I wore that fleece sweater while I was up on the roof in howling December winds, and I was toasty warm. We have finally arrived at the penultimate stage- taking down the roof. Next will be the walls, then the floorboards, then the joists and timbers. Everything in our timing and sequence right now is oriented to trying to keep the floorboards dry once the roof comes off, since we plan to re-use them in our new living room. We’re betting on sun and racing the inevitable big snow dump. I have three tabs in my browser set to three different weather reports, and they’re all always different. So we’re just plowing ahead.

Yesterday we were pulling asphalt shingles off the roof. A windy day is not the best day to do this. The shingles were so happy to finally be free of their flattened state that they flew off into the neighbor’s yard like birds escaping their cages. But it was glorious to be up on the roof. The sun came and went, and at moments I felt as wide open and uplifted as the swirling sky. But most of the time, I was just focused on prying up the next shingle without being blown off the roof. That’s how this work is- its just about what’s right in front of you- getting that stubborn crooked nail out, or delicately rocking the prybar back and forth in the crack between floorboards, feeling for the gentle pop that happens when the tongue snaps free from the groove. I’m loving this simple satisfaction that comes with something done well, even if it’s just a tarped a pile of wood that holds up in crazy winds.

Today the wind is up again, and there are more shingles waiting for us. We managed to get the wheelbarrow up on the roof so Rebecca could cart the piles of shingles to the front edge, where she could toss them into Black Beauty, our $900 pick up truck. The plan is to then drive forward ten feet to the dumpster, where we’ll toss the shingles again. If it saves one more time of bending over to pick up the same shingle, its worth it. I can tell that my back only has so many bend-overs left in it, and I’m rapidly using them up.

And today we’re going back for more. I wonder which of my new Savers shirts I should wear?

Thanksgiving Eve at the County Building

2008-11-30T20:38:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday afternoon I took our beautifully precise architectural drawings to the county building, to complete our building permit application. It’s a little crazy that our old house is almost to the ground before we actually have the building permit for the new one, but we’ve been going on the assessment of others that once we have all the other permits, the actual building permit is a shoe-in. The beginnings of our application have been wasting away in somebody’s file drawer for the past six months, while we’ve exhausted ourselves leaping hurdle after hurdle that the stiff-jawed county staffers have laid before us.
First, there was the variance issue. The house is 30’ wide, and sits on a 30’ wide lot. Which is made worse by the fact that back in 1908 somebody’s survey string must have slipped, because the house is one foot, seven inches off of its lot. I’ll spare you the months of trying to get a property line adjustment, and of trying to buy 15’ of land from our reluctant neighbor to the west.
Ten foot setbacks on a 30’ wide lot means a ten foot wide house. So to rebuild in our original footprint means that step one is to apply for a variance. But in the twisted logic of the collective mind of county government, step one becomes step two, and before applying for a variance you must do step one, which is to apply for a building permit, plans and all, which will be rejected by the building division because you don’t have a variance.
The land use department and the building division share a front desk and office space in the old yellow brick building on the corner of spruce and 13th. Yet somehow the only communication between the two that we have seen evidence of is that the building division must have hollered across the room to tell the land use department that a building permit had come in without the required variance. The land use department then informed us that we needed one. Which, of course, we already knew.
Then it turned out that step two was really step three, because the historical preservation board got wind that a hundred year old building was about to be torn down, which meant a review and board meeting that had to happen before the county commissioners could hold their meeting to review the variance. Add two months to the process, and a whole other story to tell you later. Then there was step four, the site plan review, a lengthy examination that required our plans to be mailed to every resident of Eldorado Springs for their complaint or approval.
So I arrived at the steps of the county building in a celebratory mood, with three engineer-stamped sets of plans rolled neatly under my arm. It was a sign of great progress to finally be back at step one. By the time I walked back down those steps an hour later, my mood had turned to stomach churning rage.
I had laid the plans on the counter and told the woman who rose from her beige government desk that I was here to complete our building permit. This generated some confusion about why we had filed a building permit and were bringing completed plans six months later. I reminded her about the step one, step two process, which seemed to jog a vague memory of that section of the rules and regulations book. But the search for the permit file took a good ten minutes and the enlisted help of three others in the office, until one said “maybe it’s in Robin’s desk”, and the thin brown file was finally produced.
The first warning sign was the look on the woman’s face when she opened the file. “Oh, this one”, she said, drawing out the three words over a good ten seconds. “I’d better go get Larry.” Larry came to the desk in a green button down shirt, without a word and without even a glance of eye contact. I focused on the wrinkles in his forehead and his prominent white eyebrows as he leaned over the plans, making a series of urgent and worried grunts. Minutes went by. I could almost hear the gears of his brain grinding together as they searched for some critical piece of information. If I ever have to watch a doctor prepare to give me a fatal prognosis, I imagine it will be easier than this. I tried to make contact by throwing out little pieces of information and asking short, simple questions. Still, all I got was the top of his head. No response. Finally, he pulled the site plan out of the file folder, which shows our new house resting 1’7” from the east property line and 3’ from the west. “Oh, this one”, he said. And that is when he told me about the ASTM E119 fire rating test, and that because our walls are less than five feet from the property line, they have to pass this test with a score of one hour. This means, he explained, that a raging fire from either the inside or the outside of the house has to take one hour to burn through the wall. If our west wall was two feet further back from the line, they wouldn’t care if the fire could burst right through and burn us to a crisp. Larry also tells me that there can be no windows in the east wall unless they are fire rated to one hour, which he informs me can only be accomplished with very special glass block made in Japan, at a very special price. He makes me a copy of a page from a three pound volume of building codes, and adds that he’s not even sure if the extra special glass block will be allowed. Then he delivers the knockout blow by telling me that our painstakingly designed west wall, the one that faces the million dollar view of Eldorado canyon and the high serrated ridge of South Boulder Peak, can have no more than 25% window space. He is showing me a very confusing chart of distances and fire ratings, and I hold down my burning anger enough to tell him that I am having a hard time interpreting the chart. “I’ve been here 20 years and I don’t understand it either”, he says. My confidence in Larry as someone who may help us get through this quagmire drops to zero.
I want to run out of the building and collapse on the steps. We have just spent $3400 on these drawings, thousands more in permit fees and consultations, six months of meetings with county officials, and three years of plan revisions to come up with a 25’ wide house. But this is the man who will either approve or disapprove of our building permit. So I stay standing at the desk, and struggle to find that tone that says ‘I am someone who is not going to be pushed over’, without saying ‘I am unreasonably angry and will be returning tonight to bomb the county building’. In an only slightly bumpy voice I say “I can’t believe we have gotten to this point without hearing this information”.
But I am standing with an enforcer of rules, on the wrong side of the desk. It is 4:00 on the day before Thanksgiving, and Larry tells me he won’t be back until Monday. I still need to buy a turkey breast and a box of stuffing. I walk out of the office carrying the twisting prognosis in my gut, with only half of the information I need. I want to run straight home to tell Rebecca the awful news, and at the same moment I am dreading the thought of ruining her excitement. We have a four day weekend to imagine the worst.

The Kitchen Dance

2008-11-29T08:08:00.000-08:00

Rebecca is rattling dishes downstairs, and after six days of her absence, I am enjoying the sounds of someone at home. It’s interesting how we go about the dance of sharing a living space- the ways we glide past each other on the stairs, twist and pivot around each other in the kitchen, and jitterbug our way through conflicting needs. In our old tiny kitchen the choreography was so well rehearsed that we could prepare two separate breakfasts on hectic work mornings, in a space the size of a small bathroom, hardly ever bumping hips. As she would open the freezer for her frozen strawberries, I’d duck under her arm to grab the soy milk. While she stood in the tiny gap between stove and counter to blend her smoothie, I knew I had about one inch of clearance to slip by her to the refrigerator. I’d use the opportunity to place my hands low on her hips for a little leverage.
Our little kitchen no longer exists. The floor is there, the two outside walls are still standing, but there is no defined room, and definitely no kitchen. There is a lightened square on the wood floor where the old stove sat for a hundred years. The rafters above are black from some ancient fire, long before our time. And the awkward floor transition that happened in the middle of the kitchen- from the dark low floorboards to the slightly raised and then sloping floorboards of the former porch, is still there. We did our best to make a flattish floor by smoothing out the bump and adding layers of pad and carpet, but there was always a slightly disorienting wave to the floor. We choreographed it into our kitchen routine without even noticing, but it gave the kitchen a slight mystery-spot feeling, and visitors would roll over that patch with a tiny wobble, eyebrows lifted as if they knew something was different here, but couldn’t exactly name it.
The whole house was different like that. On one board that we pulled off the wall was a scratching in pencil, the mathematical figuring that went into the construction of the house. 26+4+4=32, it said. Think about it. It’s no wonder that nothing was square. And although we never really noticed those little off-kilter things, maybe they figured in to the subconscious steps of our dance. Maybe they gave us a slightly tilted perspective on the world, and it was probably for the better.

First, A Few Words From The House

2008-06-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

I’ve been standing in this same spot, give or take an inch or two, for a hundred years. There abouts, anyway- they didn’t keep such good track of things when I was born, but the county treasurer’s records say I existed in 1909 but not in 1908. But let me tell you, I’m feeling it- every windstorm and every three-foot snow and every blistery hot day of the last hundred years. I got about sixteen legs and they’re all stiff as boards, if you pardon the expression. They never bothered to give me a proper foundation so I’ve been balanced on little piles of rocks and dirt this whole time, and that’s hard on your feet. Sometimes I can feel the tiny bugs rooting around in there, chewing away at my flesh in little microscopic mouthfuls. Doesn’t hurt, really, it’s just a reminder that everything comes to an end, eventually.
I’m not much to look at these days. If you were to pass by on the one-lane dirt road, you’re more likely to be looking up at the startling walls of Eldorado Canyon than noticing my siding hanging at peculiar angles, or the thin nine-pane windows that wrap around my walls. You might think it odd that my old hipped roofs are pierced with modern skylights, or that the second-story front door hangs in space, echoing the ghost of a collapsed stairway. But you’d probably just walk on by, wondering with passing curiosity if anybody actually lives in there.
All my life I’ve watched places around me burn down, be torn down, fall down, and be reconfigured in the most God-awful ways. I just about went down the same path back in 1973. Thought I’d been left for good when year after year went by with no people showing up, even for summer vacation. Then the hippies found me and dragged their mattresses in through the broken windows. I’ve never seen such crazy things as what went on during their reign. That’s when I got condemned, along with nine other hippie-infested cabins. The county commissioners went on and on in the newspaper about ‘fire traps’ and how they couldn’t believe people actually live in those cabins. I was insulted. Just because a few shingles are falling off doesn’t mean I’m ready for the bull dozer. Uggh- makes my bones ache just to think about it.
I watched the other nine buildings be executed, right in front of me. But in a last-minute twist of fate, I was spared. Word got out that Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower had spent their honeymoon in me, and the local historians couldn’t stand the thought of losing a little piece of the past. It’s true- they were here. They say walls have ears, and we do. Eyes too. We have mouths, but there’s an unspoken agreement between us and those with arms and legs. You build us, we keep your secrets. It’s worked pretty well- never been broken as far as I know. So I can’t tell you exactly what went on with Dwight and Mamie but let me just say it was one of the sweetest exchanges that ever took place in that tiny back bedroom.
I’ve had a good life. Only four owners in all these years, and I do believe they each loved me in their own way. I’ve held them all as best I could- the summer vacationers with all those loud little children, the loving spouses and the fighting spouses, the scratching cats and the piddling dogs and the gracious guests. I’ve had a front row seat for all the things that go on behind closed doors, and I’ve learned that there are people who tromp hard in their boots and slap the walls to make a point, and there are people who glide smoothly through a space like swans in still water. But I’ve watched long enough to see that everyone laughs, everyone cries, and underneath it all, everyone just wants to be happy.
This last one has been my favorite, though. Thirty one years she’s been walking nice and gentle across my wooden floors. She’s the one that fell in love with me. Thanks to her I finally got a layer of insulation to get me through the winters, forced air heating to warm my belly when the woodstove went out, even plumbing. And eleven skylights! It was like seeing God when that light shone through for the first time. And then she got serious with somebody and there were two of them, and two cats that scan the neighborhood from my roof. Even better.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing lasts forever. People, buildings, cats- nothing. What gets me is that they talk about it all the time, out loud, right there in my living room, surrounded by the knotty pine paneling that is as rich and warm as the day I was built. They talk about how they’re going to take me apart, piece by piece, starting with the roof and working their way down the walls until there is nothing left here but a big gaping hole in the ground. I don’t know if they notice the slight trembling that overtakes me when they talk like this. I guess I’ve outlived the odds so long that I was starting to think that I would escape that ultimate fate- that in spite of my lack of foundation and unpractical design, they would let me gradually decay into a natural death. I cringe and creak when they talk about prying boards from the walls and knocking down my chimney. The first one’s pretty good with tools, but the second one- she can’t even drill a screw straight. The thought of her coming at me with a crowbar in hand is enough to make me want to light a match right now. Sometimes I wish they would have the decency to take that kind of talk outside.
When I steady myself and listen carefully, though, I realize that they have spared me the instantaneous demolition of the wrecking ball so they can re-use my parts. Better to go out in one blaze of glory than months of agonizing pecking and picking, I think, but I appreciate the consideration. And I can’t even count the number of nights I’ve stayed up into the wee hours with her at the computer, evolving a design that looks a little bit like me. Once she finally goes to bed I console myself with the thought that my two-by-fours will live on, that my wall boards will become subflooring, and my beautiful knotty pine will be transformed into kitchen cabinets. As I settle down for the night I remember to count my blessings, to have the rare privilege of being ushered into the next life with respect and love. I just wish they could tell me one thing. Is it going to hurt? (written 6/16/08)