Kitchen Cabinets

We need to make a decision about kitchen cabinets. Surprisingly, I love the Ikea cabinets. I am also impressed with Thomasville and KraftMaid. Do we get slab door style or have a bit of an edge on them? Oh, and can we decide by yesterday?

Of course this is just one of a million decisions. And I'm pretty sure that the contractor told us to assume the position today. Not in so many words of course, but there it is. I've put it out there and I don't want to take it back. Why is it with some many people that you do business with, that you feel like you are being taken advantage of?

Pictures of Progress

Starting at the street, you can tell that we are making progress.

For starters, our living room is now a storage depot of used "parts" from the house.

The windows and window frames are broken.

We have also made some discoveries. For starters, the hardwoods that were "original" to the house appear to have been laid on another set of hardwoods that were more original to the house.

And who doesn't love temporary walls to hold up your house?

It is funny to think that we are seeing wood and parts of our house that no one has since 1921. That's right, the last time someone saw certain bricks, the Great Depression was still nearly a decade away. Hard to believe.

And the real individuals portrayed as characters in my new best show, The Pacific, were not even born. And yet, here I am, another Sunday evening spent absorbed with the television. Is anyone else worried about what is going to happen to Lucky?

The Economist

At our house, The Economist comes on Fridays. Without fail, if I get home first and check the mail, Paul asks "Did The Economist come today?" Well, The Economist is not nearly as regular at the condo. Paul has probably gotten three magazines since we moved in, and I think that two of them came at the same time--several weeks after their publication dates.

Apparently the USPS is a little questionable on the whole forwarding mail thing, especially as it relates to magazines. Maybe this is why I have just now received my renewed license.

Pacific

I love television and movies, especially documentaries and based-on-real-life stories. Naturally, I am watching Pacific on HBO. We are only on part 2, but the series is utterly fantastic. I can only imagine that all Americans who are watching this are having a similar response.

First, I am terrified for these young men as I watch. Keep in mind that this is a movie that I am watching on TV in my very comfortable condo more than sixty years after the fact. Nonetheless, my heart is racing and I want to cover my eyes. I can only imagine the magnitude of emotions felt by these soldiers as they really faced these events. Was it a thousand times more intense? Is it any wonder that this was the Greatest Generation?

Second, I am beginning to wonder whether we are holding up our end of the bargain. Two generations later, do we, as a society, continue to act in a way that is worthy of these kinds of sacrifices? And more importantly, do we as individuals, act in a way that is worthy of the sacrifices that have been made for us?

Recovering from a fire really is only a minor inconvenience in the scheme of the world.

Horrified

When last I blogged, I recounted a little encounter in another part of downtown Raleigh. Well today, I recount an encounter that took place a little closer to home.

Having heard that we made progress this week, Paul and I stopped by the house to check it out. As we got out of the car, we saw a gentleman coming out of our exterior bathroom (also known as a port-a-potty). I was horrified, Paul thought it was hilarious and the young man in question seemed to be mortified.

Note to self--ask the contractor to add a lock.

Piers!

Our house is moving forward! That's right, we're on track to have an almost good as new house that is nearly 100 years old. We are getting 11 new pier supports. They have been hard at work preparing our new piers and we hope that by the end of next week, that piece will be complete. The next step will be a framing inspection. Loving it!

The Wire

Paul and I both loved the television show, The Wire. We both agree that it was one of the best television shows of all time. Seriously, all time. Good plot. Great characters. Who didn't love Stringer Bell? I could go on. Anyway, the plot centers around a group of Baltimore police officers. Several seasons are devoted to a ring of drug dealers and their constant efforts to foil the police and sell ever increasing amounts of drugs to the poor of Baltimore.

Well this evening, on the way home from pilates class (it sounds like The Wire already, right?), I was driving through a slightly questionable neighborhood near downtown. There was a lady standing in the middle of an intersection. Just standing there. She didn't seem to be on her way anywhere and she didn't seem concerned about the fact that she was standing in the middle of the intersection. She just chilled for a bit and then started smoking a cigarette. Clearly she had been buying someone's product.

What looked like her drug dealer was approaching when I decided to use the old front wheel drive sleigh to get the heck out of Dodge. I bring this up not because this was such an amazing event or because I am so naive as to believe that this little drama is not played out in infinite variety across the country every day. Rather, I bring it up to illustrate how different my reality is from the reality of this woman. My days are filling with work (for which I am luck enough to find both enjoyable and challenging), family, friends, pilates, running, reading, hanging out with the dogs, the constant quest to return the house to its pre-fire state, and the like. (As further example of the good things in my life, at one time I would have used "etc." rather than "the like." But Charles Meeker was kind enough to show me the error of my ways.) I can only imagine that this woman is not lucky enough to have such a list of things that fill her life.

But life is what you make of it. So best of luck to us both.

Correction

In an earlier post, I blogged that nothing spelled class like a port a potty in the front yard. I have been forced to re-evaluate this position. I now believe that a toilet in the living room is even better! Yes, we do have a toilet in our living room. It has been there for weeks. I'm not sure why it is there, when it will be leaving or where it will be going. I am hopeful that it will be going somewhere soon though.

In fact, I am hopeful that we will just get some movement on our renovations sometime soon.

Permits

We have permits! I couldn't be more excited. We have settled into life at the condo, but we are ready to be back in our house. After several weeks of only behind the scenes action, we are ready to see some progress (pictures will of course be shared here).

Food

No matter how long you wait between trips to the grocery store, you always have groceries. Ketchup, mustard, spices, rice, pancake mix, weird vegetables that you bought for recipes that you never made. When you have a fire, everything like that gets thrown out. So when we moved into the condo, we literally had no food. Not one thing to put into the pantry and probably only a half full bottle of water for the refrigerator.

This is really not a big deal but somehow it makes you feel like you are not really a grown up. Grown ups have food, right?

Well in the interim, we have fixed this problem -- sort of. And I have found a wonderful service that is going to allow us to fully rectify this problem. Online grocery shopping. I was skeptical at first. But 20 minutes later, I had my online list. I agreed to pay the $4.95 for them to grocery shop for me. The grocery store in question is only a few blocks from Paul's work, so he picked them up on his grocery, I mean lunch, hour. He didn't even have to get out of the car. $4.95 and you don't have to go to the grocery store! If you agree to pay something like $18/month, you can shop as much as you want in a single month. This is a no brainer--this is the best deal going in terms of "finding" time.

Sundays

Our fire started on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The Sundays that followed were anything but lazy. Nomads don't really get lazy Sundays where they go to brunch, lay on the sofa, maybe do a little work, take a long slow run and go grocery shopping. But lazy Sundays are back!

Even Sophie and Emma are getting into the act!

Stuff

I am admittedly someone with a lot of "stuff." I don't think of myself as someone with lots things, but if asked, I think that I would have always admitted as much. Well after a fire, you have to make a list of everything that was destroyed. Furniture, clothes, everything. It is amazing how the list grows as you mentally tour the rooms and go to the cleaners. Even more amazing is when you start putting dollar figures on replacing your things. I have been surprised. Astounded. Shocked. Bamboozled. How can it be that we had that much stuff? We did though. And we will again I suppose. But in the interim, we are just trying to survive the post-fire process and enjoy a life with less things.

The up side to having fewer things is that a small condo feels big.

For your pictorial enjoyment, I have included pictures of some of our furnishings after the cleaning process. As you can see, some of our furniture is not quite the same.