Szonjaz First Blog

Progression

2009-06-12T22:18:00.027-05:00

So it's been over a month since the last post, but, in weekends, that is only like 8 or 12 days. Seriously. If I looked at calendar I could count how many, but let's just get to the photos.

We'll start with our touchstone, Mr. Jack Baxter. He's the supervisor. We need something recognizable before launching into mystery...

Hmmm... What on earth?
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Aha! It's the removal of ceiling paper! All painstakingly pealed off with a standard 1" razor blade. For a few hours, we were thankful the kitchen is as small as it is.

Upper cabinets! (Yes, these are the same cabinets we put in upstairs, but they are, in my humble assessment, the highest quality cabinets for the price that you can get. Also, technically, these are only the doors, as Husband made the boxes out of real wood instead of using the store bought melamine version).

Next up... carpentry. Casing for the archway, more properly called a cased opening. There also some more drywall work going on in the "fridge nook"

And now there is wall, but alas, picture is sideways. Maybe I'll fix that. Later.

Same faucet, different sink. Smaller, whiter, squarer.

Generally throughout this project we have not been without kitchen sink more than one day, but this last stretch we did let the sinkless state last longer than 24 hours. We had quite the back log of dishes. Here's the highlights of the dishwashing marathon:

Even baby helped.

So after sink come base cabinets.

After base cabinets come doors on drawers.

After base cabinets comes the supervisor to inspect.
(Ok, ok, this is out of order, the sink's not yet hooked in this image.)

Second to last, but not least: hooray for tile!!!
Shiny pretty tile!

And then... Last AND least: boo for dishwasher.

NOT visible in the image above, and not at all worthy of its own picture, is the dishwasher. The dishwasher arrived and was hooked up several days before the shiny tile appeared on the wall, but, alas... It was a brand-spankin' new, special-ordered, fancy-pants "panel-ready" dishwasher that doesn't work! Repair tech came out and declared its computer stupid, ordered a replacement, and will be back 8 days (8 days!) to repair the brand new machine. Stupids.

And here's the funny part. It's the same repair tech guy who came to fix the brand new fancy-pants range on the third floor when it didn't work out of the box. Different brand, different appliance, different store, something like a year and half ago, and yet, same repair nerd. Weird.

Teaser

2009-06-12T22:07:00.002-05:00

Tile, dishwasher, cabinets, sink, loooooong faucet....

Where we last left off...

2009-05-09T13:10:00.014-05:00

When we left off, I believe the cat was slinking about the destruction. He still is.

Think of this as a recap blog, all those episodes of your favorite show that you missed, summarized in a few well-chosen snippets.

In our last episode, the original plan was to open up the wall nearly fully, but in this image you will see we found a surprise: large cast iron tube in wall!

Upon further inspection, we determined the tube was not an old gutter waste pipe, but in fact, a structural column that is holding up a good portion of the second and third floors.

We estimate the column was retrofit in the '30s, in response to some water damage (seen in the ceiling, previous image of cat slinking about). The water infiltration was likely caused indirectly by settling and directly by roofing issues. The pipe-column lines up with the outside wall of the second floor, and the old water stain in under the bit o' roof that bridges the gap between the outside wall of the second floor and the first floor. (If that doesn't make sense, just remember, it's a Queen Anne house, walls do not go front-to-back or up-and-down in a straight forward manner.) The house would have been 50 then, which is plenty of time to settle, making an unexpected valley in the mini-roof and allowing water to come inside and play. We reason that it was it happened in the 1930s, because a. there's plaster over it and b. there wasn't a lot of spare metal available for home improvement after about December 7, 1941.

The surprise did cause some initial head scratching, but we did some drawing and the plans will still work out. The net result is we must keep structural column and re-envision walllessness as a cased opening.

Onto the next event: remove wall cabinets. For the record, lead blogger Szonjaz did actually help out in this stage, as no fetus-harming dust, chemicals or heavy lifting was involved. I helped removed the content of the cabinets and squirrel them away.

Cabinets down!

A wall without upper cabinets. Note that the vent pipe (horizontal white tube near top of photo) projects out from wall, in former dropped ceiling space. That will have to be reckoned with. Stay tuned.

Header! (That's the beam that makes the cased opening able to not fall down.) Notice the swath of sunlight on the floor. The magic of opening up walls--the dining room now shares daylight with the mini kitchen.

For those of you with eagle eyes, you might have noticed in the header pictures that the floor has changed. The lovely hexagonal vinyl flooring was pulled up to reveal some mighty dirty oak below. The verdict is still out on sanding and refinishing versus painting.

This image is a little dark, espeically for those of you with PCs (sorry, ain't got time for photoshop), but the important things to notice are 1. diagonals of light making it into kitchen and 2. location of sink (that is its starting place).

Can you find the kitty ('kitty the monkey' as Alex called him)?

For extra points, there is something in this picture that will be gone in the final picture of this post. Can you find it?

Same sink, new location, 30" or so to the west. Note, too, that the vent pipe is properly located inside the wall (or what will soon be a wall and not just wood studs).

Lights! Level! Sheetrock!
I know the sink is invisible in this photo, but don't worry, it will reappear.

Look it all that gypsum board.

So that's the recap. This weekend's task is the beginning of cabinet making.

ReShab

2009-03-19T17:42:00.012-05:00

Get it? It's a pun...

Don't like puns? Well, let's start with a cliche then. Those who don't learn from their mistakes are destined to repeat them.

Another kitchen.

What? That looks like a green wall to me. Where's the kitchen?

Well, the kitchen is trapped behind the green wall. And it is our job to let loose the inner kitchen. So we will start by assembling kitchen items in the green room, and making a little plastic tent world.

Next you beat the living crap out of the little room that shouldn't be the kitchen anymore. It's not pretty. It's not even fun, and it's no job for pregnant people (putting those two words together makes me laugh) so I didn't take part in it.

The wall with the large wound in it is the backside of the green wall, if you can imagine such things. So the not green backside of the green wall loses its plaster, and the dropped ceiling gets, well, dropped, as in, buh-bye. Happily there was nothing too terrible hidden in the ceiling--just a wonderful transom window we knew would be there, and some crazy wall paper (er, ceiling paper) that I could not coax my camera into photographing adequately. (Hint: click on photo to enlarge to reveal ceiling paper in all its glory.)

Well, to be fair to the man who did all the hard work, there was one surprise: loose fill insulation. The gray, toxic "snow flurries" made for a lot not-fun during the demo, but loose-fill is easier to get rid of then, say, a cast iron pipe or squirrel carcasses.

And here is the resultant chaos: green wall reveals its inner kitchen. It's going to a lot more therapy before true acceptance occurs.

Saarinen

2008-12-07T17:52:00.004-06:00

Saw this at the good ol' Walker, saw some fine Eero Saarinen drawings. This little plan is an executive office for the executive types at American Auto maker during their hey-day.
Here's the fun part: note the gun closet. Cars, modern architecture & guns--who'ld've thought they were so intricately connected.

C'est fini!

2008-10-26T13:50:00.015-05:00

Well, well, well, we did the swap from treehouse to the nether apartment. I took some pics today of the treehouse, in its finished state. It looks pretty good. Especially noteworthy are the new treehouser's furnishings: it looks good stark. I have too much crap for the treehouse to ever have looked this good with me up there.

First the images with decent exposure:

And then the image I should have taken the time to correct in photoshop:

I would say the only thing lacking is some really colorful art work on the walls.

...Continued

2008-10-14T21:14:00.006-05:00

Plugged hole.

More Treehouse Fun (MTF)

2008-10-13T22:22:00.005-05:00

Dedication

2008-10-13T10:12:00.001-05:00

This entry is dedicated to Bengeance, who I believe is the sole subscriber to this blog.

It's been awhile

2008-10-13T09:13:00.012-05:00

So the big news is that we are leaving the treehouse, which has meant that after a long hiatus, we need to return our attention to the last few unfinished items.

Enter: Operation Cool It.

We did a little exploratory drilling in the kitchen wall, which conveniently has a bit of exterior wall that is not roof—a north-facing gable end that is visible from exactly nowhere. The gable end is in the middle of the house, facing to the rear, you can't see it from the street, the yard, or even the roof of the garage.

After toying with the idea of inserting a little window and then using the attic space to install a mini-split A/C unit, we decided on a new approach: "quick, "easy" and "cheap." A thru-the-wall A/C unit (much cheaper than mini-splits or central air) would be tucked into the wall space, all we needed was to find a small unit, right? The plans seemed simple enough, and as an added benefit, so I thought, a thru-the-wall unit would be cheap, as cooling season has left our northern regions.

Of course this is life, and nothing works the way it should. I called around for the cheap, off-the-shelf A/C unit and discovered that they are off the shelves: none in stock at the big boys (Home Despot, M'nards, Sears) or the little local guys. I spent a long time calling around until finally I got a number from a guy, whose number I got off a random website, and hooray they had one! The only problem is it was in the distant suburbs ("Guam"), and that my husband's car conveniently died the day before, so I had to drive him to work in Minneapolis (gnarly traffic), then loop around the interstate outer ring (gnarlier traffic), and then get utterly hopelessly lost in the gridlessness of suburbia. But I did eventually find the appliance shack, purchase the only thru-the-wall A/C unit in the whole of the metro area, and was only 2-1/2 hours late to work. So then the demo happens...

And the unit is too big...

So more demo happens...

To be continued...

Spring Eye Candy

2008-06-04T08:34:00.008-05:00

The asparagus emerge! Oh wait, I mean hosta.
April 30, 2008

Same plant, May 15.
Stepping over apple blossom pedals to get to the office.
The smell was downright intoxicating. Alas, it only lasts a week.
May 21
May 24
Crabapply blossoms.

Alas, no images

2008-05-14T08:24:00.002-05:00

Slow Spring, fast Spring. The winter has been loathe to let go of us here in the northland. On the radio the other day, they said we were only a degree or two below normal, but I don’t believe it can only be two degrees. The same radio talkers reported that thousands of song birds have starved to death after April snows killed off all their insect food supply. It snowed on Easter, and again the weekend of Cliff-Dwellers’ wedding. Mother’s Day, always a warm sunny day, this year had lovely but weak sunshine and a breeze that made one’s skin pucker. So the weather has been slow to give Spring to the land, while in perceptible time, the months we call Spring, have seemingly flown past posthaste.

There was the Cliff-Dwellers’ wedding in mid April, which was a flurry of out-of-town guests (we even had a brave soul stay in the wreckage at the Treehouse—he was a very good sport and a lot of fun), birthday parties for little humans, two new humans born into this world (another kind of birthday party), and now we are in the middle of trying to plan the party-to-end-all-parties, a task which I am utterly unqualified for. So, pretty pictures, they will come… and some not pretty ones, too, perhaps. But for now, just words, words, words.

More treehousin'

2008-04-02T18:06:00.010-05:00

Things are moving along, and it is just a question of which will happen first: I run out of patience, I run out of money, or this actually gets finished. Place your bets.

But there is good news--bamboo is laid, bathroom keeps getting more white, appliances are getting hooked up instead of getting ripped out, and, most exciting of all--I now have water pressure the likes of which fire fighters would marvel over (at least on the third floor of a 120+ year old house they would.)

I'm floored.

Now we're cooking... well, almost. Now we're washing dishes in a standing position.

The bathroom pic I think says it all. No kitty for the KPR yet, but as the rest of the place gets to be kitten-ready, it's getting near to be kitty-shoppin' time.

And tonight, I will cook dinner on a stove. I hope I remember how.

Biziest Weekend Ever Blog, Take 2

2008-03-30T10:54:00.009-05:00

So here come some pics of the fun

The Belly!

M&G arrived in the afternoon on Friday. We met up and went to M's sister's place to meet her darling kitty. M-sis has a cute apartment and an even cuter kitty. The kitty has some name I can't spell, so I won't even try.

The kitty!

After some greeting and some eating, we did some errands and then got all dolled up for Party #1. Party #1 was hosted by the lovely E, and featured delicious cocktails and scrumptious food.

Saturday was the DBP, which featured mimosas and gingerosas, Famous Family Pork Dish made by M-sis, and loads of cuteness.
More DBP party fun times. If you look carefully, you will see that we had several out-of-towners who made it to the fete, as well as scads of in-towners. Note that Mr.G got a zamboni booklet, or rather the kidlet got a zamboni booklet (that little kidlet will have to pry out of daddy's hands). If all who came had even half as much fun as I did, then I would call DBP a success.

Biziest Weekend Ever

2008-03-24T22:36:00.004-05:00

Well, things did not get ready enough for M&G to stay Chez Disaster, but we got our party-selves on, nonetheless.

It might well have been the biziest weekend ever. It began with the memorial service for a dear friend's mother. The service was powerful, a deep digging to make one stop and take measure of one's life: where one is at, where one wants to be. And one of the things I resolved was to better keep in touch with those that I care for. And, exchanging seriousness for levity, this last weekend was all about keeping better in touch.

Invasion of the preggers:

Trying to get ready for M&G

2008-03-12T23:07:00.003-05:00

Here's more on the bathroom front

I see I left that labeled kitchen saga-ga, well, it's all mixed together. Maybe I will fix it later. Here's the real kitchen mccoy, with some living room mixed in.

Kitchin' Right Along

2008-03-04T18:52:00.004-06:00

Two days, lots to see.

It's a blizzard, white out conditions! Wow, looky how the new design makes the space so much biGGer. Oh, wait, that's distortion.

ReKitch

2008-03-02T13:15:00.005-06:00

This is the current plan for what it will look like--can you see it?

Remod

2008-03-02T09:33:00.005-06:00

There's a lot to post, but not a lot of time to do it in, so here's a small nugget of what's been going on.

Holidaze

2007-12-30T15:51:00.000-06:00

Random images of holidazin'...

Holi-Snowin'!

Holi-treein'. (You can see up its skirt!)

Holi-foodin'

Holi-singin'

Cute small humans.

This is what happens when you let cute small humans hold the iphone.
Yes, the above photos were taken upside-down.

Swedish Sausage Party Attendees.
BLB attendee & bloodees.

Ok, here's it all in a whirl.

DeMOWED

2007-12-30T15:45:00.000-06:00

This is where the house used to be, one day after the pictures below.

Demo

2007-12-12T20:23:00.000-06:00

What I really wanted to write about today was not remodeling, but demolition. I had to finish the remodel blog entry, because I can’t get in the habit of leaving blogs hanging, and yet here I am much more interested in something else at the moment. Demolition.

See this house? It’s a nice duplex, built 1903, great hard wood, relatively level floors, good floor plans with a cute pantry (with a window!). Maybe you didn't notice that giant yellow machine idling next to it in the alley...
But maybe the litte guy will get your attention. That cute, sound house has a bad mortgage and no one paying its taxes, and, well, you all know what is coming.

This is all we've been talking about at architecture-work. It's an absolute waste. It's an offense to the universe, to tear down this perfectly sound, well-designed house and put it in a landfill. Why? All because some big lending companies and the real estate lobbyists drop-kicked the economy.

My Mentor Architect (we will call him AM) spent a good part of yesterday and some of today prying the birch trim and removing brass fixtures from the house. Once he showed interest, suddenly the Demo Man saw $'s and then he took off the big booty: two built-in birch buffets, two birch ice boxes. The demo man got tired though, so he sold the birch archways and balustrades to AM. Our side garden at the office is now a refuse lumberyard, but we already have one project in which the homeowner wants to use the birch baseboards.

We should start advertising how hip & sustainable we are, eh?

ReMod, ReTold

2007-12-12T20:14:00.001-06:00

In the interest of clarity, and longevity, of story, I am going to start this tale anew. In the beginning, there was a wall. The wall was at a 45-degree angle to vertical, and had several large cracks along it, like roads through a rural area, in some country other than ours that has non-grid-pattern rural roads. The crack-roads followed the topography of the wall, which swelled outward in several places, like a bit of flesh around a mosquito bite. One day, as a demonstration of the doughy quality of these swells, I poked one with my finger. The swell, however, had grown beyond the doughy stage; it simply collapsed. A clump of plaster fell to the floor. Behold! My new wall:

And this was the state of the room when work began, a few moons ago. My previous post was a little misleading, as it shows a mixing together of living room and turret. In real life, however, the living room was worked on first, exclusively, while the turret was left untouched (and was in fact filled with furniture). So here is where the story more properly left off:
This view: looking South, toward the front of the house and the street.

I had advised my carpenter to use his judgment and patch where he could, remove and replace with sheetrock where necessary. Well, you can see where that led: nothing patchable above the knee-wall.
This view: looking North, toward the back of the house and the rest of the apartment. Please do note the lovely (and useless) 80s vintage light fixture in the center of the image. For the record, plastic "walls" do not actually contain sheetrock dust, contrary to popular belief.

Wall with new sheetrock! Living room! What a happy result after having to rewash clean dishes every morning. The white dust, it's everywhere....

Wall with new sheetrock! Living room.

A little sideways window repair.

Now with paint! And for the very observant--without carpet! Actually, maybe that's the other way around. That dark surface you see is what we found under the lovely beige carpet: surprise! a stained floor. The subfloor is a rough but lovely wide-plank variety, which unfortunately will have to be covered again at some point, in the interest of dulling the sound transmission to the apartment below.

Living room, in a moment of relative presentability. In summary, what's been done as of this photo: bad plaster removed, insulation filled in as necessary, windows taken apart and put back together, new sheetrock, new paint, bye-bye carpet hello shiny, rough floor boards.

And with that stage of the mess completed, we will move onto the turret. For those who might be new to the story, I live in what is commonly called a Queen Anne Victorian, which among other features (asymmetrical craziness and a roof that makes a grown roofer cry), prominently features a tower to store princesses in. Since my tower's (former) princess decided to move to NYC, I decided to tear it up.

To start with, the turret is a 10' x 10' octagon in plan, and had a somewhat oppressive 7'-2" ceiling height. No wonder the princes fled--her turret was a cramped box. The ceiling was in good shape, so it was with a small amount--only a small amount--of remorse that we cut into the flat, crackless sheetrock to reveal... plaster. So we cut through the layer of plaster to reveal... what can that be?

So, yes, this is the inside of the turret's "witch's hat" complete with beams. Yes, those lines on there are plaster lines from the former ceiling, which was, once again, at 7'-2" from the carpet. Somewhere in this time period I began referring to the beams as the turret's "snowflake." And though the carpenter (and his father) thought I was crazy, but I would not let them cut them out. No, I insisted that he cut the sheetrock around all eight-times-three of them.

It feels a little more lofty in the turret now. The sheetrock (slowly, and perhaps a little painfully) was puzzle-piece fitted around the beams. J made a custom (star-shaped ;) ) face plate for the joint of star. The dark little shapes are where fixtures will someday live. The moulding is just to look fancy.
The princess even came to visit, so we had a little party:

Oh turret fun.

This is the first snowfall. Someone didn't get their leaves cleaned off their roof. Bad homeowner. OK. this has nothing to do with the reMod.

Home. Re. Pair.

2007-11-16T23:39:00.001-06:00

So I thought it about time to post some pictures of the home-sweet-home, thought it’s not been a sweety, homey kind of place for a while. It’s a long story that is not worth telling of misplaced dreams and not enough time; bad contractors and even worse other things. And besides, anyone who's reading this knows enough of the story anyway.
This is not quite a "Before"... more of an "Early" image. I am not dating these images to protect the guilty. But that is lathe, lots and lots of lathe.
That is a sidways view with sheetrock--that column-like thing is the same column-like thing as in the first image. (Turn your head 90 degrees for better viewing)
OK. Now this one is in the turret. I think I need a "before" picture before this one, but I just suddenly realized that I need to step away from the computer. So this is a cliffhanger. More to come...

Oh and there was dancing

2007-11-04T11:33:00.001-06:00

Yes, dancing!

Bulls Blood, Paprikas, & Friends

2007-11-04T10:10:00.001-06:00

Ohhhh… When the Minnesota Hungarians get together, you’re going to feel it the next day. We ate too much, drank too much, and danced too much. It was a good time. The Gralenas are in town, the half of the Molkens crossed the river, and the half that did brought her Mom. A good time was had by all, and by some, a little too much of a good time.

Our table, the focus is a little funky.

The DeeJay and his protege

The wonderful raffle-ticket-and-sausage salesgals, putting the hard-sell on the deejay stand.

The reluctant?... no, the eager bartender
A half Mol-ken and her Mommabird.

Dessert!!

And then came the raffle...

Our clan made off like bandits in the raffle. J-Man scored the first prize. Having only purchased one ticket, he was quite amazed. Mommabird won a bottle of wine, Cousin-T won a Rubix-Suduko (how Hungarian!), Mister-J won a lovely doily, and the grand prizes went to the table as well. Mad got the PAPRIKA PALINKA and Bob won the CAKE! Hooray!

Not everyone could win the palinka, though.

Hollow Evenin'

2007-11-01T23:20:00.000-05:00

Taking a queue from the CEOs of the world, I am backdating a few things here. Halloweens. It was fun. Master Jay and I went to party the weekend before, we were costumed as a carrot and a bunny.Master Jay’s costume required some last minute stitchery—you can’t have 4 ears! BTW, that’s my estate sale 35-dollar sewing machine. It’s a swinger, I mean, Singer.

The carrot costume—constructed via self-made rules in under 30 minutes of things already existing my apartment—weighed heavily on my wee little skull (The plastic fern was a-stuck in my ponytail), so I did not re-costume for the actual holiday on the 31st. Magyar-E & Magyar-T did costume, and the less painful bunny-costume reappeared for the great candy hand out.

For the record, Magyar-E holds the record for scaring the most children. Her devil costume brought tears to a few little eyes. Magyar-T handed out candy like he'd been doing it all his life, although this was his first Halloween. I did my small part in purchasing about seventy or eighty bucks of candy, which was gone by 7:45 PM. Lord forgive me for the teeth of the children.

Jobby 2

2007-10-04T11:42:00.000-05:00

Office...
Aerial photos of the building I draw lines in. I put some text on the images, but it is only 150 dpi to begin with and it is utterly illegible once posted. Alas. I work in the brick building on the left, in the left-hand picture. In the right-hand picture, you can see the alley side of the building. The little window in the white addition to the building is where we draw lines and make blue prints. The blue print machine smells like ammonia. It clears them sinuses real good.
For the record, I am cheating and past-dating this blog entry, so it doesn't look like I went a whole month without adding anything. Oooo... sneakers.

jobby

2007-09-17T09:11:00.000-05:00

I am done recovering, because I have an internship. My.

the food network

2007-08-19T13:48:00.000-05:00

I was just in Portland, on a culinary tour of the life of gralena. Inspired by all the wonderful things we ate, I decided to make mac-and-cheese from a cookbook for lunch today. I did a half recipe and followed the directions reasonably well. I'm sure my math was right, at any rate. I used a stove and an oven. And a whisk. And a grater and good cheese.

Ugh, it was so bad. (Yes, there is a reason I am not a bakess.) I wish I had just made the cookbox variety. Or that I'd stayed back to Portland...

This pic is from a beer garden in PDX, pretty orange looking beer bubble pattern. I'll add more images later. I got to get ready to go down to the Chicken Pickin'...

tomato protection zone

2007-08-04T16:43:00.001-05:00

Here is the gigantic fence my neighbor built. I figured out the aluminum bat sounding pinging (see previous post): she used an aluminum bat to drive the stakes. My tomatoes are behind--not behind as in within, but behind the within, if that makes any sense. I'm not sure how I am supposed to water them now. Hmm. I'll have to work on that.
Bunny-eye view of unattainable delicious dinner, through the nasty metal fence. I think my neighbor left the tomato carcass to taunt the bunny.

See--doesn't the bunny look taunted? This is a born-thief baby bunny, BTW.

Ping

2007-08-04T11:25:00.000-05:00

It is grey day teasing much-coveted rain, a day for delicious wasting, saved from two-hours of plant watering…

I was lying around indulging in literature when I heard it: ping. A metal-on-metal pi- following a resonating cord, -nnnnnnggggg, not at all unpleasant, similar to wind chimes except for the sharpness of the hit. There followed a couple successive pings, at longish, irregular intervals, perhaps a minute of three apart each. The pinging somehow reminded me that I was hungry, so I abandoned my supine reading position and walked through the throes of furniture that have befallen my apartment, and heard yet another ping. It seemed to come from the west, which is to say, the sound came in the open skylight on the west side of the roof in the living room. Cracking an egg, another ping sounds: once again drifting in an open skylight, but this time from the east-sloped roof. Intrigued, I wove around the temporary plastic-sheet walls to the turret, where three real windows, of the vertical double-hung variety, allow one to look out. I did not see a kid in the driveway practice hitting with an aluminum bat. I did not see anything other than the parched lawns, the cracked surface of asphalt in the driveway, the bright yellow hose snaking the lawn that never gets corralled anymore due to daily watering needs. Ping—just out of sight, three stories down, clutching the edge of the clapboarded walls, ah yes, I understand whence the sound cometh.

My second floor neighbor planted two rows in the vegetable garden this year. Four tomato plants, basil, mint and several heads of lettuce. The tomatoes are heirlooms, and though she planted them two weeks after mine, hers grew taller and small bubbles of fruit began to appear sooner than on my tomato plants one row over. It’s been a good summer for tomatoes in the north country. We’d had 20 days above 90 before August even showed its face, and those bubbles popped up in early June. I ate my first red grape tomato off the vine in June, this in a climate whose last-freeze date is in the third week of May. Tomatoes belong to late August in Minnesota, not early summer. My neighbor’s miracle plants had several full-sized tomatoes, turgid and ripening, straining the vine before my little grape tomatoes were even thoughts in their mom-flower's eyes. I staked the fat fruit beasts for her, hoping she would not be offended, and I watched as several began to turn. One afternoon I came across one beauty in the lawn with bite marks on it. I picked it up and tossed it into the compost.

It was only a few days later when my neighbor called. My neighbor has a melodic voice, the kind made for radio, but it was a little sharper than normal. She asked me, not so much accusing as pleading, if I had been picking her tomatoes. I informed her that I had not, and mentioned the fallen beauty I had found. She tried again, asking if I thought that, perhaps, the children on the first floor might be eating them? But the children from downstairs were on summer travels, and moreover, they grew their own beans and berries in the garden. They knew the rules. I told her no person was picking the tomatoes. It had to be the bunnies or the squirrels. My neighbor’s beautiful voice wavered uncharacteristically, oh but the tomatoes are so big, you don’t think a rabbit could possibly carry it off?

Ping. The metallic noises are my neighbor installing a rabbit fence. I will sneak out later to inspect it, once the pinging has subsided. Maybe I’ll even pick one of my one tomatoes, my garden variety Early Girls. I’ve had two so far, the bunnies don’t seem to like them.

Garden

2007-07-13T07:21:00.001-05:00

Friday the 13th, Still in Recovery

2007-07-13T05:48:00.000-05:00

I haven’t gotten up this early in years. Something about being in graduate school… it sounds almost a cliché, even to my own ears, it seems like my almost every story has to be clarified by its placement in time pertaining to the event—a story begins with “before graduate school…” or somewhere in the middle an awkward clause sticks itself in, “you see, this was during the throes of graduate school.” Or there’s now, the aftermath, this new world of possibilities, time to be social, time to cook, time to sleep.

Writing these words, it’s before 6 AM. My bedroom windows face all directions other than East, but when I first opened my eyes I saw crimson staining the edges of the trees and buildings that cover what would otherwise be the flat Midwestern horizon. This is the closest I’ve been to sunrise in over three years. The Spring before graduate school, after I knew I was accepted, I was still enrolled in a what I am going to call my graduate school aptitude testing era. It was self-imposed, I had signed up for one and then a second drawing course at the University, to make sure I really could do this architecture thing, that I found it sufficiently intriguing, engaging; that I was good at it. I remember getting up in the pre-drawn to draw a particular structure for the class. I wanted to draw the building in all possible daylight blankets. I watched the sun’s predawn Technicolor show reflected in the shiny metals of the museum’s cladding, only occasionally stealing glances of the real thing, which was mostly obscured by the looming brick boxes of the neighboring campus buildings. During the first year of graduate school, the eager year, I would wage my battles against time and exhaustion sometimes by allowing sleep before the assignment was finished, and then forcing my body out of REM-less slumber in the wee hours to finish whatever it was that that moment’s pressing deadline dictated. But I do not recall seeing the sunrise during any of these night-morning work sessions. I perhaps captured my 150 or 200 minutes of sleep exactly at the time that the earth rolled over and squeezed the sun’s strong rays through the thick oblique of atmosphere. Perhaps, the show was there for me to enjoy in my semblance of wakefulness, but I was too deeply tied to my glowing screen of “millions and millions” of colors. As graduate school grueled on, and my eagerness wore thin and then through—eagerness is not quite the inverse of exhaustion, but there is a dependent relationship—I found that I could not rouse in the mornings without an elaborate dance of the snooze button followed by massive doses of coffee.

I am calling this current era my recovery period. I am still guarded about my sleep. Having been deprived consistently of a necessity for so long, one becomes prone to overindulgence. I have read such things about the starved, the thirsty. My grandmother hoarded things until the day she died, having suffered the loss of everything—home and every last thing in it—during the Great Depression. Even with five houses in two states, all piled to the ceilings with all sorts of useful and potentially useful items, she continued to feel insecure and packed away stores that just might be needed someday. For the last few weeks I have been emulating my grandmother’s behavior, but with sleep. I go to bed early and sleep late. If I wake up early, I stay in bed, endulging in the softness of sheets and pillows, stubbornly shutting my eyes to the day. I don’t yet know if today is an anomaly or a return to normalcy. After all, my deprivations were voluntary, and though they felt anything but they were indeed minor. Yes, on the grand scale of world suffering, graduate school ain’t jack.