progress!

As our little photo journal here shows, the fireplace is finally getting clad in stone, after a rather messy demolition and slow-motion rebuild. After the other half (and a parental unit) rebuilt the frame and put backerboard on it, I chickened out (i.e. 'wised up') and decided to call a pro to do the actual stone work. Twelve vertical feet of slate is nothing to fool around with, and I didn't want to spend the rest of my years in this house looking at my own foolish mistakes.

One of the (few) good things about an economic downturn is that because many good, talented folks are looking for a little extra employment, it becomes more affordable for normal folks to hire the best at still-affordable rates. (At least, I'm hoping I hired the best.) We actually ran an ad on craigslist.org; after getting nearly 40 responses in a week (!!), I selected the most qualified-looking emails (going mainly by literacy) and asked them to come scope the project for a bid. Probably about 7 different individuals/companies came out and submitted bids. We ended up with someone who was right in the middle and seems to have the right experience and attitude, and may be able to do some other projects in the house in the long run if all goes well.

So far so good; they're one day and two courses into it, shown in the last photo above.

And we are seriously excited to finally have some slate on the wall!

Stay tuned.

blast from the past

Some of you readers may know that I'm on Facebook. (I still have yet to see a MySpace page; being a woman of a certain age, I fear that merely clicking anywhere within TheirSpace will set off some sort of age sensor that will then send punishing electro-shocks through my mouse, accompanied by revolting visuals of stuff like emo-dudes in skinny jeans and hair gel and eyeliner and black nail polish, thereby teaching me a painful lesson to stick to more age-appropriate social networking sites like FB.) After having been tracked down by numerous former high school acquaintances, exes, and frenemies, I am constantly debating pulling my profile off and retreating to my default anti-social book- and cat-loving hermitlike ways. But still, the profile stands, and attracts people from my past.

This week, I was located by a certain ex of mine from about 15 years ago, with whom I had an extremely tumultuous relationship followed by a train-wreck end to the relationship. I harbored anger about things that happened for a good, oh, I guess 15 years or so. He's tried to contact me before, and rarely did I return the call. I just had nothing to say, and eye-rolling is not easily conveyed over the phone.

But something must have shifted in me emotionally, because this time when he found me on facebook, despite my initial impulse was a knee-jerk reflex to cringe and then run for cover, I thought about it. His email sounded nice; mature even (this is a BIG change). I didn't respond for a day. Next day, another nice email. Still, I just didn't know what to do. Do I want to blow this person off yet again, and hurt their feelings over something that happend over a decade ago? Did I want them back in my life, albeit only as a cyber penpal? Or maybe even a friend? I wrote back a short response, poking fun at his persistence and saying I'd be in touch when I wasn't traveling so much.

On the third day, another email, longer than the first two. He was genuinely excited and thankful that he had found me, and that I had responded. He was embarassed at so readily showing his anticipation at hearing back from me, and charmingly awkward in his writing. It made me feel genuinely ashamed that I had debated blowing off his earnest attempt at friendship, and ultimately, forgiveness.

So I called him today. We talked for an hour and a half. He was very much the same outwardly, same (almost comical) accent, same self-effacing sense of humor, same laugh. It was surprisingly nice to reconnect. Although my anger at what passed between us has diminished over the years, the scars from the experience remained, and we had never actually reached any level of friendship because of it.

I'm proud to say, we finally crossed that barrier. After reading his third email, I asked myself, am I really still angry at him, after 15 years? Is it benefitting me to still be angry? And does he deserve that, after all this time? We were both young, and both made mistakes. So right at the beginning of the conversation, which was only moderately awkward, I told him I'd finally moved past all of that anger, and was impressed by what I saw in his writing - that he's becoming more self-aware and taking responsibility for his actions, and seems like a good guy. So he audibly relaxed, although he told me he was nervous throughout the call and had been waiting all day for the phone to ring. Which was cute.

We just caught up with each other on what has passed in the decade and a half since we last saw each other, and reflected on the choices we'd made. He shared with me that after all these years, I'm probably still the person who got to know him best, and that what happened with us was his one big regret in life. Which makes me sad, of course, but he stopped me and said, "no, it had to happen. I'm sorry it happened to you, but I learned from it. And I paid for it, dearly. So I'm a better person for it having happened. Regrets aren't necessarily things that you wish didn't happen, just things you wish you handled better", or something to that effect. Wise words.

It's funny...I have friends, and I meet a lot of people and make friends relatively easily. What I don't do is keep friends easily. I have a requirement from those who want to be in my 'inner circle' - authenticity. I don't present myself as anything I'm not to others; I ask the same in return. (Ok, so maybe it's 'overshare' on my part, but whatever. It's part of my personality, and I choose to embrace it.) It's amazing how many people aren't authentic even with themselves, and are therefore completely unable to be authentic with others. These are the people you'll have a great time with out in a bar, maybe even have some semi-deep conversations with, then never hear from again. If that connection is authentic, sooner or later one of us should contact the other, right? I mean, I'm crap at keeping in touch, probably worse than most people. But I will say that the Electronic Age has made it easier. I'll shoot an IM or a text or a FB comment to someone I'm thinking of. And I think of my friends often. They may not know it, but people I really like, I have a hard time letting go of. My fabulous (and oft-missed) neighbors in Miami, co-workers in Pgh, my former neighbor in MD, certain classmates from design school...they're always circulating in my mind, especially when I need emotional support or wish I had a friend to share a fun moment with.

So the funny thing about it was, despite all the turbulent water under our bridge, I felt like my ex was really reaching out to me for friendship. Just looking for someone who understood him, and he knew that although I couldn't tolerate him at a certain time in my life, I understood him maybe a little better than he understood himself. I suppose he felt the need to have someone at that level of emotional intimacy in his life again, and thought of me. Whatever the reason, I'm glad he did, and I'm glad that I was a big enough person to stop holding onto that anger and look at the person he is now; not who he was then. And I know he's being authentic with me now, as he has nothing to lose; only my friendship to gain.

I guess it's no surprise that I have a few of my exes in my life, and they are really good friends. Sometimes when a relationship doesn't work out on one level, you've already invested so much energy in getting to know each other that it's a shame to walk away from it all. You really do build a friendship alongside the romance. It always takes time, but once the hurt over the death of the romantic relationship has passed, sometimes you can rebuild a very strong friendship, and move forward to a better future. I look forward to being friends with my ex, as clearly he sees me as a valuable friend, and nothing feels better than being valued by another human being who knows you well, and likes you anyway.

Oh, the joys of travel

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Chicago with very little insulation in the wall. I'm pretty sure the left side of my body is about 10 degrees cooler than my right (just so you know in case my typing gets weird). My trip here was such a typical pain in the butt, I just had to write about it to give you non-travelers out there a taste of my 'glamorous' life.

As I'm getting on the plane, a woman in first class was flossing her teeth. No, she wasn't just flossing her teeth, she was vigorously attacking them with dental floss. Angrily, even. In a manner that screamed "I HAVE AN OCD PROBLEM!" Not sure what those poor teeth and gums did to her, other than maybe harbour some stringy pork or something, but she was hell bent on getting something out of there. While seated in a first class aisle seat while 150 other people are walking past her to board the plane. Niiiice. I'm just hoping she didn't fling whatever she drilled out of there onto me as I passed.

Once I reach my seat back in cattle class, I notice a woman in an aisle seat diagonal from me sitting down and yanking the barf bag out from the seat-back pocket in front of her. She opened it with purpose, and proceeded to stare at the bottom of the inside of the bag as if she had every intention on filling it. Mind you, we're still stationary. Just seeing somebody like that put my stomach on high alert. Not much grosses me out, except for another adult human throwing up, or getting ready to throw up. I feel gross just writing about it. Yuck.

It turned out ok (for me, anyway), she just held onto that bag like it was her security blanket the whole 2 hour flight (all the way up to the gate, too), jiggling one leg nervously, and looking miserable in general. But she didn't do anything nasty, thank goodness.

Even if she had, I probably wouldn't have been able to hear it with the screaming, babbling two-and a half year-old seated in my row. Her mom was seated between me and the crumbsnatcher, but proved to be a lousy acoustic buffer. This kid literally babbled - LOUDLY - the whole entire flight. I will say that at least she didn't cry, but the mom really didn't encourage the kid to work on her shuttin' up skills, either. Which I strongly encourage all breeders - erm, I mean parents - to do when your rodents - uh, children - are in public with cranky non-breeders like me. Let's just say there's a really good reason I haven't reproduced, and it's not just to prevent more overpopulation.

I don't adore children, and I especially don't adore children who don't seem to have any rules given to them. There was a little boy seated behind me for a five and a half hour flight from San Fran last week, whose mother kept asking him permission to do things. I wanted to slap her. "Johnnie, we're going to have to sit still now, ok??" AAARRGH. No. That didn't work, not even a little bit. And for all y'all who are thinking, "But J, you don't have kids, you're not a parent, you don't understand...", I have one thing to say to you: BULLSHIT. (Wait, I have two things to say: what the hell are you doing reading my blog?) I WAS a kid, I've babysat hundreds of kids in my day, of varying levels of brattiness, and I remember what worked for me. You don't actually have to spawn to know certain things. Like, kids need rules. And you must teach them to respect you as a parent/adult, or they will grow up to be disrespectful little shits in a society that's already full of 'em. Parents do not need to be friends with their children. Not at the age of 3, anyway.

So back to my point, this little baby-doll-looking creature damn near split my left eardrum. That's really saying something, that she can actually hurt my ears above the whine of turbine jet engines. And the mom just sat there, not even remotely embarassed that her offspring was making people's ears bleed. Poor thing, she's probably already deaf herself and just didn't hear it. That's my theory, anyway.

But just because this kid is cute, that doesn't mean her behavior was ok. I didn't say anything, or even huff and puff and roll my eyes like I do when I get passive-aggressive mad, because I was in an ok kind of mood, and I felt bad for the mom having to travel alone with a little kid. Still doesn't make it ok, but I did my best not to make it worse for her. Actually, I gave her a magazine to read. Nothing like celebrity gossip to make you forget your troubles. And for those of you who are wondering why I didn't grab my noise-cancelling headphones, it's because it wasn't so bad until later in the flight, and I knew they'd be announcing our descent, and I'd have to take them off anyway. Just my luck.

So I finally make it to Chi-town, and pick up my rental car: it's some sort of Kia, a Rio or something. Which, ok, at least it's not a P.T. Cruiser, which makes me homicidal, but the friggin' thing has MANUAL ROLL-DOWN WINDOWS. And no automatic door locks. I'm not even kidding. I'm a Preferred member at Avis (oooooh, aren't I special!?), and this is what I get? Had I not been in a rush, and snow falling, and a ton of people at the counter, I might have gone back and asked for a better car. Instead, I'll just bitch when they send me the survey. But of course, they won't survey this rental. They'll wait until the one time a year I accidentally get a Cadillac or something, then ask me to complete the survey. That's always how it works.

Been a while, hasn't it?

Man, have I been busy! Still working on the house, and traveling like a fool. Not by choice, of course.

First and foremost, I'm sad to say that we've lost another furry friend. Sunny, a longtime family pet (and when I say longtime, I mean, like 20 years or so), crossed the rainbow bridge while my dad was visiting us in Jax. Funny how they always seem to go when you're not looking. I'm convinced it's them being kind to us - they really do prefer to pass in private. That's why many of them run away just prior, or hide. We're all very sad to see Sunny go, but glad that she had such a long, happy life and that this winter will not be so rough on her old bones. I know we'll all miss her - my sister used to tote her around just before bedtime and ask each of us to give Sunny her nightly "tail pet" before she went to bed. Rest in Peace, sweet Sunshine, we all loved you.

Well, back to work for me now. I have one more marathon-like roadtrip for work this week, then things should be relatively calm over the holidays. Lucky for me, my employer basically shuts down for two weeks around the holidays and allows us to catch up on life a bit.

In other exciting news, we've finished the hardwood floors in the house. And by finished, I mean, completed the parts that everybody can see. We still have some closets to finish. No big deal, just one more little detail nagging at the back of my head. Oh, and must stain and replace all the baseboards we removed in the process. Then the painting of the walls can begin...

We have also decided to hire a professional to install the slate tile on the fireplace and in the foyer. We realized that the investment we had made in the stone was too much to risk messing up due to our inexperience. And, slate is finicky. A lot can go wrong on a 12-foot high fireplace. I'm going to hire the best worker we can afford, and that way anything that goes wrong is his fault, not ours. :) I think it will be worth it in the end; I can imagine sitting in the living room in front of a crackling fire, absolutely fixated on a crooked tile I installed. Or worse, sitting under a pile of fallen slate tiles because I didn't know what I was doing, and gravity won. I'd rather not do that, so tomorrow more folks will show up to give us quotes on the job.

I just invested in a piece of home fitness equipment - a Schwinn 460 Elliptical trainer. I'm pretty excited because it's a new type of elliptical that lets you run, walk, sprint, or climb/step, all on the same machine. I hope it's worth the money AND the space it's going to take up in my office. Hopefully the other half will assemble it this week and I can start using it when I get back.

I also just bought a new external hard drive, a half of a terabyte. Wow. Add that to my other external 240G, plus my hard drive, and I'm pretty sure NASA might be calling me any minute now to borrow storage space for their rocket-launching programs. Hey, it could happen. My 50-mintues worth of VMWare files that I'm copying have just about finished, so it's back to work for me...I have a week's worth of demos to prepare for and haven't even started.

Sigh.