True Colors

Let's see.

Arthur can blow bubbles if you hold the bubble wand in front of his mouth and tell him to blow. We're hoping to catch some of this on video in the next few days.

On the house department, we've discovered the joys of paint strippers and honest-to-God paint stripping tools. It's a joy to use the right tool for a job. The paint stripper just peels the latex right off of the enamel.

It's kind of funny, but it appears that the interior has been painted variations of green and yellow found in oak floors before it was painted the dreadful olive-sandstone with white trim color. Also in the kind-of-funny department, I thought Mark and I had agreed on a color pallet, but I guess we haven't. It seems the specific tiles from M.P. Verneuil's Art Nouveau Animal Designs and Patterns weren't the final word, at least in Mark's mind, and he'd like to choose some colors from the book, but he's not sure, what. All I know is that the copy we he had blended in well with the oak floor and the pale cream color is bright and cheery.

The colors are sort of a pale creamy yellow, kind of peach, and a dark pine. Or not. Looks like we'll be visiting the Visibone Color Lab over the next few days.

You Oughtta LeapFrog

I was searching around the web and found an Alanis Morissette lyric generator.

Here's what it came up with when I told it my baby toy woes:

"Why"

Toys, songs, voices
Why God, Why?
Songs, homes, LeapFrog
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this purple horror?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of LeapFrog
Like a William Blake character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Babies, toys, sounds
Why God, Why?
LeapFrog, sounds, voices
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this purple disaster that is my life?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of LeapFrog
Like a William Blake character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this purple misery?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of LeapFrog
Like a William Blake character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?

My Sister's Big Fat Wedding

My sister, Julie, is married now. It was a high church wedding at the Episcopal church my folks have attended since 1967. Julie was regal in her white dress and my grandmother's veil. Randy, my new brother-in-law, looked handsome with his black tuxedo and lily boutonniere.

The funniest part of the wedding was when the officiant dropped the rings. The bittersweet part of the wedding was seating my Grandmother, who has a short-term memory appropriate for a ninety-six year old. The most ironic part (for me as someone who is organizing Unitarian Universalistic Pagans, anyway) was reading 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and 1 John 4:7-21. It was also (for me) the most self-restrained part because I had to refrain from reading the lessons as if I were William Shatner or the Bishop from The Princess Bride. I suppose it says something about the readings because many people who heard them -- not knowing they were coming out of the mouth of a neo-pagan -- were moved (or at least complimentary).

Arthur fed us his Cheerios as Julie and Randy were exchanging their vows -- and he really likes my cousin, Jane, because he fed her a piece of highly coveted cheese. The most medical part of the wedding was watching Jane sing The Lord's Prayer and seeing how her uvula and soft palate produce sound (this was before the cheese feeding). The Baby Bach moment of the wedding was when the string quartet played especially for Arthur as folks were exiting the church (I think the viola player might have gotten some cheese earlier if she had been close enough). The 'Be Prepared' moment of the wedding was when Mark loaned a tie to someone at the reception who, um, 'forgot' his.

Mark won the Father of the Year award for watching Arthur all of the day so I could play host at the reception and other Big Brother Jobs. My Dad won the Martha Stewart Award for being unable to sleep the morning of the wedding and getting up at 2 AM to work on boutonnieres. I'm sure my Mom gets an award, too, but I can't figure out what it should be.

---

Arthur has a cold. And possibly a new molar. Luckily, this all manifested after the wedding was over, so all of the 2,000 wedding guests think Arthur is the cutest, most well behaved baby ever. I try to remember all their kind words when Arthur wakes up screaming at midnight (OK, Mark will point out he had a little help waking up), or when he uses my pants as a Kleenex.

For the wedding, Mark purchased An Infernal Machine. For Arthur. He described it as a lawnmower that would help Arthur learn to walk. In reality, I think it's a cross between a monster truck and a Mardi Gras float... with a shopping cart handle attached at the end. It's a "Learning Band Walker." I don't mind (much) that it plays trumpet solos. I don't mind (really) that it has volume and on/off switches that Arthur can reach and manipulate.

What makes this, this thing, An Infernal Machine is that it has a woman singing. And not just any woman -- if it were Cher or Yma Sumac it would be fine. It's Her -- the same woman from the LeapFrog Writing Desk. In fact, when I said, "Augh! It's the same woman!" Mark said, "Oh yeah, it's the same company; LeapFrog."

It's bad enough that natural selection has provided the world with a person who can make the phrase "one, two, three, four, five" sound like a ultra-perky description of saccharin-sprinkled pink bunnies and unicorns frolicking in the woods. But presumably a toy executive decided that they needed to hold auditions to find such a person and pay them to keep doing it.

I hate the LeapFrog Writing Desk Woman. I hate Her so much -- and I don't normally do this sort of thing -- that when Arthur's asleep I think up ways to fool the LeapFrog Writing Desk into saying curse words. There's a lot you can do with a well placed X or homophone.

I did a quick Google Search, but I didn't find a hack page for the LeapFrog Learning Band Walker. Then I did another Google Search, but I still don't seem to be able find any instructions for replacing The Anti-Diva's voice with my own.

Why don't they hire someone like Annie Lennox or Alanis Morissette to be the voice for these toys? Or even my cousin, Jane; kids could learn all about uvulas that way.

Ah well... back to scraping paint off of the house.

A Pause in Scraping

Yesterday was my and Mark's second anniversary. Sarah, Gretchen and Lexi watched Arthur and we had a nice romantic dinner at a local restaurant. One of the women who used to work at Savoure was our waitress. We commiserated about the loss of the salon, and Mark added that we probably make better tea at home now. It was pleasant to be able to be with each other without having to focus on the child or scraping paint.

The last two nights I've been having all sorts of strange dreams. Sunday night's dream was very magically oriented, with amethyst and talking bears and Bigfoot and fish taking naps on the surface of the oceans. Last night's dream wanted to be a cross between a Prince Valiant cartoon and a National Geographic -- I'll have to look up Greek images of a horseman with a falcon. Then it turned into a reality dating show. I'm actually glad these types of dreams have returned; lately it seems I keep having dreams where I'm stuck at Arcosanti and anxious about catching a plane or train.

Tonight there's more paint scraping. Actually, I think it's sanding, now. I was wrong about the wall trim, it's not latex paint -- so really, all we have to scrape are the window casings (which is still more scraping than I wanted to do). The new house is nice. I was saying to Mark the other day how great it was that we had a full view of the southern sky so we could see the path of the moon and sun. The sky is darker over the new house (we're away from the bright lights of highway 105), so we can see the stars, too. I haven't done more than eyeball the house's edge with Polaris, but I'm pretty sure the house is squared with the cardinal directions.

Now all we have to do is paint, pack, move in, and unpack....

New Homes with Laurie Anderson

Looks like we're going to have to get higher desks in the new house. Either that or The Child will have to go to a computer class. Maybe we can find a drool-proof keyboard with a projectile-proof screen.

The other day we went on a open house tour put on by local area builders and realtors. It was strange. The first house was basically The Mariott meets the boy's club. In the bathroom was a huge, two-basin wide mirror. It was a two way mirror, and a television was installed behind it. It was the weirdest, stupidest thing I had ever seen -- I made the mistake of giving my opinion when somebody asked, "Isn't that TV cool?" I think he was the contractor who built it, and if he'd had cat ears they would have been flat against his head.

We went to a bunch of houses, mostly to look at color combinations and design ideas. The first three houses were more or less the same color. And they were very blandly decorated. Except for the lamp shades; it looks like your choices are Louis XIII lamp shades with dangling beads or large glass hurricane lamps (Mark broke his own, hastily enacted 'Be Nice' rule by calling the latter "somebody's science project.")

Then we went to the "MacMansions." I never understood the term before that night. It looked like The Borg had scooped up a chunk of southern California and dropped it on the southwest end of Eugene (where it used to meet the forrest). What struck me about these houses was that each room was designed for a single function, and that the rooms were not to human scale. One room looked like the ruins of the Lady Chapel at Glastonbury Cathedral -- it appeared to be missing a middle floor, and I kept looking around for where a crucifix should be. Oh, yeah, and it appears that new houses must come with small auditorium for showing either The Incredibles or Pirates of the Carribiean. When I ran into another TV installed behind a bathroom mirror, I said, "Oh no, it's another one." before I could stop myself.

The whole TV behind a bathroom mirrror really stuck with me, and inspired a Laurie Anderson-esque poem:

Good Morning, America

I woke up the other day
And I went to the mirror
But I couldn't see myself
Instead, it was the TV guy
And I said,  "Oh boy, I look good."

Saved by French Art Nouveau

I think that maybe we have chosen a color scheme to paint the house. We found a pattern in a Dover book of Art Nouveau animal patterns by M.P. Vernevil. The pattern is for tiles representing air, earth, water and fire -- a bird, rabbit, fish and salamander in a three colors: a sort of light peach, a redish tan, and an olive green. I think once we are sure, we'll take down all the paint chips and color samples. If you can zoom in on the advertisement behind me, you'll see pretty much how we've felt about finding just the right color.

People also wanted pictures of the house. It's a mess. We've removed most of the doors, and there's paint scrapings all over the floor. Arthur is not allowed in the house until the painting (and clean-up) is over.

The Options

I got off the phone today with Ed, a contractor friend of ours. We discussed the scraping and it turns out scraping enamel paint off of trim is like throwing Sauron's Ring into the Cracks of Doom; it's a nasty, dirty, hazardous job that will take a long time and somebody's got to do it. At least we don't have to deal with any Orcs. But Ed did give me some options:

1. Set the house on fire and rebuild
2. Try some non-toxic paint remover
3. Rip out the old trim, and put in unpainted new trim
4. Grin, bare it, and multiply how long we thought it would take to paint by four

I suppose the one good thing about all of this is that we can't seem to come to a decision about what color to paint the insides and maybe we'll have some idea once all the trim and walls have been prepped.

Stop the Presses

SIgh.

We're not even halfway done scraping all the latex off of the trim. So much for having the house painted by this weekend. So much for moving into it by August 15. Mark doesn't even want to pick a moving date. I'm secretly hoping that we can move by the end of August simply because it's unsettling to me to shuttle between two places all the time and I'd like to get back to writing instead of thinking about painting (and packing and moving and unpacking).

At least we didn't get a real fixer-upper.

Time Windows

I think we're going to start measuring time in how long it takes to scrape all the evil latex paint off of a window. For me, it's about two hours.

It's been another scorcher in the Willamette Valley -- 101 F on the valley floor. Arthur and I ran away to Corvallis, where it's cooler.

The Great Color Debate has taken a pleasant twist; Mark appeared this evening with a casket. Inside were photographs of various art pieces he's taken over the years. He also had a copy of a Sister Wendy book and a book on Edward Burne-Jones. "We already know what sorts of things we love, so let's choose a few and build our color palette up from that. He then turned to a reproduction of Burne-Jone's Briar Rose, the pannel where Briar Rose is asleep, and pointed to the rich green tapestry hanging behind her. "Isn't that beautiful?"

So we may go for a Pre=Rephaelite Brotherhood look. Given how long this house painting job is taking, it might be appropriate to use Love Among the Ruins as a starting point.

We'll Be Done When?

It's just after midnight, so technically it's Monday morning; the thermometer is reading 78 F as an outside temperature and NOAA reads a few degrees lower. And it's supposed to be like this for the next few days. Euew. Just eeuew.

Today we spent something like eight hours collectively on the task of stripping the latex paint off of the trim. We managed to sort of clear one side of four and a half doors (keep in mind that each door has two sides) and the woodwork around an old cabinet. We still have something like three more door sides to go, plus all the trim and the mantle (although I did manage to peel most of the top of the mantle off with my bare fingers yesterday. So it's probably really optimistic to imagine that we'll be done painting by this Saturday. We might be ready to start. Mark is talking about moving our moving date back a week or two, as well.

Mark likes to use an electric sander to take off the latex. I prefer an old-fashioned paint scraper. Mark's sanding down to the beige enamel layer; I find that with the stripper I'm going down to the green jade enamel layer. At the end of my shift, I was sweaty, and covered in dust and paint chips. I felt like an extra from The Ten Commandments -- only with a dust mask.

Since we don't want to know what's in the beige and jade enamel paint, we're keeping Arthur out of the house until we're finished scaping. Of course, we're going to have to rinse down all the walls again. I'm voting that we get a sponge mop and use that.

The great color debate is going forward and backward. I thought we had settled on a kind of pale wheat color and a darker one for the trim, but Mark has other ideas. I suggested that maybe we could get some corrugated aluminum siding and use that as a kind of wainscoting, but Mark vetoed that faster than you could say "Post Modern."

So I find myself waiting for the house to cool down enough so I can sleep by blogging and playing with colors at http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/big.html. Earlier, I sat in a cold bath and read Architectural Digest and Sunset Magazine. What these magazines have taught me is that our house could be beautiful if we had $50,000 to throw at it.

Money aside, I did see some things it might be fun to try; a hanging lamp / chandelier for the square hall; painting the walls a river stone color and the trim a dark stain to make the house look like a castle; or we could paint our house as blandly as possible to emulate a semi-famous designer.

Part of the problem is the house -- I don't know how or why, but it really wants to slide into "Old Lady" style (and Mark agrees with me on this one). I don't know if it's the 50's round chrome cover over the kitchen vent (which was grease colored before I cleaned it), or recessed linnen closets or the very wide mantel that could accomodate a flock of ceramic owls with room to spare for a bunch of antique farm impliments -- but I do not want to live in my Grandmother's house.

I find the back yard much easier to think about. When I let my imagination go, I can see a kind of mini-gazebo surrounding the cherry tree, only with the roof pitched to direct water onto the tree and a bench encircling the tree trunk. I see a long narrow brick trough running west to east with water in it. The trough is stepped into three sections, and a cascade of water tumbles from the higher sections into the lower before being pumped back. At the top, there's a little jog in the trough so that the Garden Sphinx can have the water come from underneath her paws as she looks north -- watching the circumpolar stars spinning over our roof at night.

If only the tree and yard would stretch to the demensions of my imagination.

The Move Calendar

When a Door Closes

Help.

Arthur has been watching us and he's figured out what doorknobs are. Luckily, he can't quite reach the doorsknobs in the new house. He pulls himself up, stretches, and just barely brushes the bottom of the knob. He can reach our current house's bathroom knob, so it's only a matter of time before he ascends to the bathroom level and can play with the toilet.

What Were They Thinking?

Hooray! It's the end of Saturday, and we're where we thought we would be Friday night. Today's theme was "What were they thinking." Not us; the previous occupants of our house.

While the mercury climbed into the hundreds (and the humidity rose, too) we contniued to wash the walls and scrape back the trim. The current wall paint layers are a kind of ugly sandstone-meets-khaki and a pale intestinal pink (in the kitchen). Before that, the walls (and ceilings) were white. Before that, they were a kind of avocado-sage green, and before that they were yellow. We're guessing the green and the yellow layers are the layers we don't want to know the chemical composition of. And guess what, we're probably going back to a yellow-based palette (although Mark isn't quite sure yet and wants to experiment with one room before committing).

Whoever did the last paint job didn't really know what they were doing. The white trim on some of the door frames, the Jim Kirk divider, and the mantle was a latex paint applied over an enamel. At least in most places the white latex peels off like a bad sunburn. In other places, they painted over hinges. It was a rush job, too, as there are some places where you can see through the top coat.

We hope to do better.

We also found places where people were creative with trim, walls, screws, and nails. I also found the false ceiling in the kitchen where we can hide small bodies (I found two dead wasps, so that's a start).

Mark Wyld stopped by to help (during the hottest part of the day), and I think he thought we were being anal-retentive very thorough in our efforts to prepare the walls and ceilings. Mark W also broght by some hedge clippers -- they're vorpal, and Mark D had to call me back into the house to continue scrubbing the walls before I could begin my topiary masterpiece. They're waiting though, hung up on a nail, calling to me.

My dad loaned us a laser level. Mark tried to convince me that we had no tasks in the house that could use a laser level; but I quickly chimed in that they would be handy getting a square-cut hedge. They're waiting for me, too, singing a duet with the clippers.

In the very early evening, Elizabeth and Jamie (from Scary Reading Hour at the Library) stopped by and Jamie and Arthur got to play together for a while. By this time we were taking a kind of break in the back yard, so I pulled up some pernicious weeds and we discussed things to do with rhubarb (which, it turns out, we have growing in the back).

If we're really good, tomorrow is taping day.

John Burridge

Today Arthur and I hid out at my folk's house. They have a swimming pool and air conditioning. They're also going just a little bit crazy getting ready for my sister's wedding, mostly because about three weeks ago their water heater failed and flooded the downstairs and the wallpaper and the carpets and some of the sheetrock and various stored items (like books) got soaked. Who would have thought your house could be flooded on a hill 300 feet above sea level?

In response to the wedding, my sister is fighting back her inner Bride-zilla, my dad is channeling his inner vaudeville carpenter, and my mom is making lots and lots of lists.

I had gone to help out with The Great Deck Rebuild, but ended up doing some computer work for the folks, instead. Then Arthur needed to be fed, and then we both sort of napped. We did make it into the pool, but Arthur wasn't as into it as I thought he would be.

This weekend is the great house scraping weekend. Tonight we managed to scrub and scrub and the one room that had been a Shrine to Mother Whoever is a completely different color from the other rooms. Maybe we'll have to call that room the Sistine Chapel. Five more rooms to go! A quick and dirty estimation of the square footage is about 1000 square feet of walls (probably in a very, very pale yellow) and about 800 square feet of ceilng (in a nice, bright white) to wash, rinse, scrape, prep and then paint.

Angels Don't Lie

The weather I hate is back. I guess it's back all over the country. Tomorrow (Friday) and most of the weekend it's supposed to get to 100 F. At least it isn't humid, and at least we can cool the house down to 60 F or so at night. I wish it would rain. Don't get me wrong, I like the sun and the light, it's just the heat I could do without.

The other day I was walking Arthur around our new neighborhood on a shopping trip and he started imitating the crows. It took him a few tries before I realized what he was doing. He's also learned the sign for bird, and I think today he wanted us to whistle, so he made the sign for bird followed by music.

The house move is going slowly. I think it really hasn't quite sunk in that we are home owners. We're also having to rethink our decorating style. Six years or so we agreed that we wanted a fairy tale cottage style. It was that or else sixties retro (which I think is a little sterile) or Elizabethan Palace (which Mark thinks is too exhausting).

Mark, who has more style than I do, noticed it first. Fairy tale cottage style doesn't work with the new house -- the ceilings, while high, are not vaulted, and there's no exposed rafters or wood banisters or ladders going up to lofts. It's a 1950's house that sort of but not quite uses golden rectangles in the floor layout.

Just to move something into the house I took the two gilt angels out of my writing loft and put them on the fireplace mantle in the new house. They don't go at all... OK, they go even less in the new house than they did in our current home (but they're gold and over the top, which is why I love them).

We'll have to negotiate a new style we both like. I think we might be able to go with an Arts And Crafts style or a Mission style. Art Deco is out. Mark has already vetoed hanging wattle fences as a border along the top of the walls as a way to add some texture to the house. He's also vetoed painting the walls as if the house were the Temple of Dendur, and he's vetoed placing a Japanese spirit gate outside the dinning area window to continue the line of portals that start with the front door and continue out through said window. I've taken down the offensive light fixtures in the bedrooms, but we haven't found something to replace them with.

I still think we should build a bunch of shoe-box-sized boxes, sink LEDs into them, paint the walls white, and then change the LED colors to whatever mood strikes us. We could even cycle through Christmas colors and bring out the gilt angels.

I don't know what we're going to do with our dog-sized Sphinx.