Cheap, Lazy & Neurotic - Part 2

I hadn't planned on going to the Live Wax Museum because this was Good Friday and for some reason I had the day off but the kids had school, so I was supposed to, you know, tile the bathroom floor that day. But I was feeling pretty darn great because I'd a)dismantled one of the most important rooms in our house and b)returned from an errand on time so I figured I could give myself an hour off to see what this Live Wax Museum was all about. Although the last time I was in a wax museum was on our family trip to California when I was 6 and it gave me the serious heeby jeebies I figured a bunch of 1st graders wouldn't be too scary.

Turns out, every kid in Older Boy's class was a different historical figure like Ben Franklin or Sacagewea or the Statue of Liberty (historical figurine?) and they had all painted backdrops that had a big white button glued to them. Here is OB, guess if you can tell who he is portraying:

OK I gave you a little hint. His backdrop is war, I think. Unfortunately his button was 'broken' so when a museum visitor pressed it George just stood there. After a few more concerted pressings George would cheerfully volunteer to kick the wall as the button was out of order and then he would swing into action:

which went something like this:

[Note: you may need to turn the internet to 11 to hear this but there is something loud at the very end - beware!] The kids all did their spiels in the lunchroom with all the other 1st grade classes and the kindergartners roaming around pressing all the buttons so there was no way to hear what any of the wax museum figures were actually saying.

This seemed like a worthwhile outing and soon we were on our way home and I was planning the next step of the project. I figured I had another hour or so to work since M always took the boys with her when she took the Girl to her dance class. I was rather surprised when, after everyone had snacked up, she and the Girl got in the car and left - by themselves. Seems the boys only went with M because, on all the other Fridays, I was at work and since Daddy was clearly NOT at work today and in fact was messing around doing really cool things ["no you may NOT use the toilet that is sitting in the bathtub. Get out! GET OUT!"] there was no way they were going to boring old dance class.

No problem, I think, we'll all go to the hardware store to get the nails I forgot on my earlier trip to the lumber yard. The boys weren't going for that, either, and now I was seeing my confidence head on down to the poolhall with my wallet in its pocket. Did I mention that its Good Friday and M, being a pastor, has to go to work at 6:00 tonight? Do you hear that bang and the tinkling of broken glass? That was my window of opportunity slamming shut.

Why We Live Here - Second Reason

When I come back from a work errand and forget to bring my bike into my office and it sits outside, in plain view, leaning against the front of our building on one of the busiest streets in town for hours and does not get stolen. It helps to have a really really ugly bike.

Miracle

"You put a picture of one of your kids sleeping on the internet? That just seems wrong somehow, dude."

" "

"So you go into your kid's room in the middle of the night, turn on all the lights and throw off his covers???"

"So I go into his room late in the evening to cram his clean laundry back into his dresser and I turn around and there, in the glow of the nightlight, he is, in exactly that position."

"So you're all like 'dude, I've gotta get my camera'?"

"I'm standing there thinking: 'this beautiful boy came thousands of miles, over mountains of paperwork, through two hulking bureaucracies to a place he didn't know or choose, and instantly changed us from a couple to a family. He has no clue what he has done for us, and I owe him a debt I can only try, and fail, to repay every single day until I die."

" "

"And then I'm all like 'dude, I've gotta get my camera!'"

Cheap, Lazy and Neurotic – Part 1

The people we bought our house from raised three daughters in it. That they had no boys is the only explanation I can imagine for the wall-to-wall in the bathrooms not being worse than it was. But then we moved in with three kids, two of them boys. As long as the little pishers were in diapers we figured we were ok, but as soon as the boys started to be like daddy and stand up to pee we knew the carpet had to go. So, being cheap, I decided I would do it myself, and by the way, why don’t we get rid of the carpet in the hall that all the creatures under 4 feet tall in the house had puked on. And the steps, too, that carpet had to go. So we went out and bought materials – lots and lots of bamboo flooring that sort of matched the kitchen and dining room floors that we paid someone (the horror!) to install before we moved in. We also ordered tile for the bathroom. That was last fall.

So now I had a concept and materials and a worried wife because M has been here before and is trying to gently tread the dental floss thin line between gentle encouragement and desperate pleading. How long does the bamboo have to take up half the family room floor ‘acclimating’ to our house’s temperature and humidity?

Months.

I have a process for figuring out how to do these home repair projects that I know nothing about. First I obsess for a while and allow the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing to create incredible disaster fantasies. Could I put a nail through the water main when laying floor in the upstairs hall? Not only could I but I most likely will! Once I’ve gotten past that and what little confidence I had is on its way to the liquor store I then start talking to people who know less than I do (hi guys from work!) Next I talk to the Old Guy Carpenters who do know what they’re doing and talk to me like I do too so I only understand about half of what they’re saying. They load me up with tools that I am either afraid of or don’t know how to use. Then I get serious and go talk to the guys at the hardware store. They convince me that any idiot could do what I’m trying to do, and somehow I believe it. Finally, I read the two paragraphs that have anything to do with my project in my Time-Life Book of How to Fix Anything in Any Home with Introduction by Bob Vila. A few ten more cups of coffee and I’m ready.

I’m feeling pretty confident about getting the bamboo down in the hall and on the steps before our Thanksgiving guests arrive so I get started the first week of December. M continues to walk her very fine line as she contemplates her entire family arriving for Christmas. She knows if she kills me I’ll REALLY never finish the project.

My Old Guy Carpenter friend Cliff is amazingly helpful and patient and thanks to him I get all the important pieces of the wood floors down prior to guest arrivals but the vinyl tiles for the bathroom continue to ‘acclimate’ in the garage, on the kitchen peninsula, in the laundry room, wherever. And the kids bathroom isn’t smelling any better, let me assure you.

As always with these projects, I radically underestimate the amount of time and trouble. I boldly swear to M that I WILL get this done by, oh, lets say the end of March, definitely. So here’s the way things look on Friday morning March 21:

Yup, lots of carpet still there.

But wait, things are beginning to happen. Later that morning the toilet magically jumps into the bathtub! Thank whatever entity you choose to thank that you aren’t getting on your hands and knees in the small space back there where the toilet used to be and where gallons of pee have marinated the carpet, pad and underlayment. The underlayment, by the way, is about the consistency of shredded wheat and will need to be replaced. I sort of anticipated that might be the case but only in a vague, theoretical way, not in an “I have a clue what to do next” kind of way. Luckily the combination of the rotten wood and the fact that our house was so cheaply constructed means that there are only nine nails holding the underlayment down in that side of the bathroom, so, using my handy cordless Sawzall knock-off (overgrown electric steak knife) and a crowbar it comes up without a problem. I love demolition!

Now I find that I have 40 minutes to go to another Old Guy Carpenter’s house to get an essential and scary tool AND go to the lumberyard to get the new wood for the underlayment, before M needs the van to go to school to pick up the kids. Oh, and Older Boy is George Washington in the first grade’s live wax museum this afternoon too.

I tear out of the driveway concentrating on – what the heck is a live wax museum?

Somehow I get the tool and the wood and get back in time. I’m feeling pretty good right about now.

“So,” M asks, “want to go see the live wax museum?”

Heed the Sign!

Having 3 healthy growing children who eat a lot of roughage sharing a bathroom can be very hard on the plumbing. Thoughtfully, Older Boy prepared this sign and taped it to the bathroom door, during one period of plumbing distress:

Note detail:

Sheldon Brown Sprints to the Finish

Sheldon Brown died a few weeks back, of a heart attack. He was 63.

I never met Sheldon. I’m sure I passed him in the aisles of Interbike, I read a number of articles he wrote and spent some quality time poking through the LARGE amount of web-content he created, and I had a very brief email exchange with him last year in which I asked him if he knew where I might find a no-longer-manufactured part that is essential to the function of our tandem or if he thought an audacious Frankensteinian modification that would eliminate the need for that part would be possible. In his friendly way, his answers were no, and no. When Sheldon Brown said something bike related wouldn’t work, it wasn’t worth putting any more time into it.

He was married to Harriet Fell, a mathematician and computer scientist and their two grown kids are both working on doctorates in mathematics. Sheldon was born, lived and died in Massachusetts. He was a webmaster for a bike shop and had been since before most bike shops had computers. He was also a camera repairman, music lover, Savoyard, and was interested in Star Trek, bad poetry and hats. He spoke French and listened to the radio a lot.

Here is one of the more interesting bikes I’ve ever seen. Sheldon had the rare ability to both conceive of and execute wacky ideas that actually worked.

He was, right up to his end, an eternal optimist. Over the last few years he had begun to experience nerve deterioration in his legs which was eventually diagnosed as a form of multiple sclerosis. He created another page on his website titled The Bright Side of MS.

As I said, I did not know him. But he and other unique, brilliant characters that seem to pop up in the bicycle world from time to time are a very large part of why I love the bicycle world so much.

Sheldon, you are missed. I’m sorry you didn’t get to stay around longer.

http://sheldonbrown.com/home.html

Why We Live Here – First Reason

We used to live in a big bad city (of which I will later write,) and we loved it, much of the time. But it was a place where we had to keep a certain level of awareness, of caution, about us all the time, more so after dark. It was not a place to ride a bike at night while stargazing.

When we first moved here and I started to ride my bike to work and errands and for general transportation again I realized how much I missed the sensation of riding so casually and regularly. It’s a different feeling, for me, to jump on a bike in street clothes and zip downtown than it is to kit up, pump tires, fill bottles and head out for a ride.

A few nights ago I got out of a meeting around 9:30. It was 20 or so degrees and one of the other meet-ers pointed out the lunar eclipse that was in full swing. As I pedaled towards home under the cold sky with lots of stars I was able to stare at the eclipse while occasionally glancing forward to correct my heading and also to watch tiny comets of snow passing through my headlight beam. I saw few moving cars. Mostly I passed quiet houses with the shifting blue light of the TVs leaking out around the edges of their curtains. I got home, hung the bike in the garage and warmed up by the woodstove.

All those years living in the city I hardly realized I missed evenings like that. But now that I have them again I can feel how good they are for my heart and soul.