Cat in a Tub

Yes. This is kind of the highlight of the week: Patty sitting in a plastic tub. I was using it to store the slate with which I was rebuilding the indoor fountain (more on that later) and, once finished, I set it in the entry with a mind to take it back into the garage on my next trip down there. Before that could happen, though, she decided it was a perfect place to rest. I put an old kitchen towel in the bottom and now it is hers. I'm not quite sure how we'll work it into the decor, but she's sooooo happy when she's in it.

Patty is maturing quite nicely. She has learned not to get up onto the dining room table or the kitchen counters or the coffee table (at least when there's someone there to see her). She has also learned that food is only hers if it is in a dish on the floor. The same goes with stuff to play with: if something's on the floor, it's fair game for a toy.

She has, however, gotten creative with this last one: if she can find something on a chair or one of our desks, she pushes it off onto the floor and, voilà, a toy is born. Her latest discovery is rubber bands. At first I was worried she would chew on them, but she only holds them in her mouth, tosses them into the air, then bats them around on the floor.

Marcel, our dour and grumpy 11-year-old cat, has taken to playing with Patty, and now they are pretty good buddies, chasing each other around the house (especially up and down the stairs). When she discovers a new toy, Marcel feels obligated to engage the object as well. This warms my heart, as one of the reasons for getting a new and younger cat was to get Marcel out of lying around and sleeping all day.

And now to the fountain: yes, I completed it and it's in the corner of the dining room (our prosperity corner, feng shui-wise), with the little cinnabar frog atop it holding a gold coin with a red jewel center in its mouth (although I'm certain there is no cinnabar, gold or jewels involved; more like resin, brass and red glass: it's the spirit of the thing, you understand). So once again there is the sound of burbling water in the house.

For those of you who are waiting for the before and after pictures of the new floors, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait (you can see a bit of the bamboo flooring in the cat-in-a-tub photo above). It seems things just haven't found their new homes yet and, in the disruption, we have begun a campaign of cleaning and organizing all the storage spaces in the house, which means there are piles of things on the dining room table pretty much constantly. The kitchen is nearly done, with three boxes already packed for donation to Out of the Closet (for out-of-towners, that's a thrift store that raises money for AIDS charities) and two empty shelves available for reorganization.

Another reason for holding off on the photos: we are supposed to be getting a new sofa in the next week or so. We ordered it three weeks ago today, so I'll be checking up on it with the store. Our present sofa is about 40 years old and looks every day of its age. Steve has arranged to pay a guy from his work $50 bucks to haul it away, so we're just waiting to find out when the new one arrives to coordinate all this. Once the sofa is in, we'll be looking for an area rug for it, and then something to replace the coffee table (the sofa is big and we're going to have to rescale the space for it). The entire reveal may very well be delayed into next year, depending on how things go.

On the job front, there is no news. Postings of open positions have dried up in the last few weeks. The jobs I have put in applications for no longer show up on the online job sites, so I'm hoping my application is in a review pile somewhere and the process is just taking a while.

I've been kind of depressed the last couple days because of the lack of movement, especially since I now have a functioning website up and running for review, and I have spruced up my portfolio site with a recommendations page and links to my online work (which also includes cousin Robin's website, even though it's just a single page with her reel on it as of now).

But I try to boost my morale by remembering that most of the jobs I've gotten started in October, November and January, and that lots of corporate entities don't move on new hires until they know what their year-end is going to look like. There's a great job out there for me, I know it, and I only have to land one. But I am getting tired of eeking by on unemployment, scrimping to try and save as much of the inheritance for investment in the house and retirement savings. Being employed again will be great, because we used a fair chunk of the inherited money to pay off debt, so those bills won't be there when I actually start making an income.

And all those thoughts and worries are why I'm up at one o'clock in the morning writing this stupid blog. But I do want to keep everyone abreast of the trivialities of my existence. I really do.

Stuff That Happens in a Year

It was early this morning that I uploaded my very first commercial website design. Now it belongs to the Internet and, more important, I can put a link on my portfolio to show it off as practical work in the medium.

As I uploaded the final files, sending them into the cyber-ether, I realized something: A year ago today, my mother died. And I stopped to count back those 365 days and realized how much has happened that I haven't been able to share with her. I miss her every single day, but today it's especially poignant; not because it's the anniversary, but because I've done something really special.

A year ago, I hadn't even gotten approval for my WIA grant to go back to school. I knew what HTML code was, but, like musical notes on a page, I could comprehend it but not make any use of it.

A year ago, I was three months into my current unemployment and realizing that a job in publishing was probably never going to happen again. The grant was a possible route to a new aspect of my design career. It hasn't opened any doors yet, but I have moved forward. And, as Confucius said (no, really, he did say this), "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

So in November, I start school. By March, I have my own portfolio site online. In May I finish school and start the job search once again, only to find that everyone wants two years of experience in a web design environment. Screw the 20-plus years as a graphic designer, "Have you designed e-mail blasts?"

So in June we take a breather and spend a week in Eureka, looking at houses and checking it out as a retirement location. It was the first vacation we'd taken in four years. Spending a week in a rural setting, walking through old-growth redwood forest, spending time on a beach empty except for us and the shore birds, strolling the boardwalk along the bay, it was very healing. I mean, this is a picture of one of their city parks; how cool is that?

In July, I find out that Pearce Plastics, where Steve works, is looking to rebuild their 10-year-old, embarrassingly designed website. I take on the task so that I will have a finished website to show prospective employers.

In August, Steve and I celebrate our second wedding anniversary, and neither of us remember about it until the day after. The rest of the month is filled with tenting and fumigation (see "Nazi Bunker Weekend") and installing flooring on the main level of the house.

September we spend recovering from August. I join back in with workshops and such at the Foothill Employment and Training Center, doubling my efforts to network and get a damn job.

The summer has been wonderfully mild until this week, when it hit 113 degrees and literally fried one of the plants on the patio. To be fair, the thing always been touchy, but the heat alone killed this plant. It had just been watered the evening before. This brings to mind again why we want to retire in Eureka: average temperature (pretty much year-round) is between 58 and 68. It rains a lot, is lush and green, and is right near the beauty of the Pacific shore; expansive beaches as well as stunning rocky coastline.

Today, it rained. About 10:30 this morning big thunderclouds roll over the city, thunder claps and a heavy rain descends, if for only 10 or 15 minutes. I sit out on the patio under the umbrella to feel and listen to the rain. Some idiot with a leaf blower powers it up next door, ruining the moment. Only when the rains is pounding down does he give up and wait out the storm. There's another reason I want to retire someplace else: This is the first rain in months and people just view it as a nuisance instead of a miracle.

My soul needs more than this.

It's All in Process

I really didn't realize how disruptive improving your environment can be. In upgrading the floors in the downstairs of our humble adobe, we have upped the value of the condo by far, but after the dust settled, it seems like nothing else did.

Example No. 1: The fountains.

We have two fountains (correction: had two fountains), one on the patio and one in the corner of the dining room. They're a feng shui thing, and, more important, I like the sound of moving water.

The fountain on the patio was an asian-inspired design, rendered in cast Fiberglas and resin. (Here's a picture of Beuford in the fountain, taken when we weren't quite sure where his permanent home would be.)

We've had the fountain for almost five years. Over that time, it has gotten its share of calcium deposits and algae growth, and it's on its second pump. So, before I replaced it on the new slate patio, I decided to get some bad-ass cleaning solution and scrub it clean.

Bad idea. It leaked. So I put aquarium epoxy in all the suspect places, putting it forth from the tube as liberally as buttercream frosting onto a cake. It still leaked. So I got some even badder-ass rubberized coating designed for the undercarriage of trucks. Six coats later, the fountain still leaked.

I'm intent on tossing the base, but I really like the twisted column top, so I'm holding onto that and hoping I can find some suitable squarish container to house it and the pump. Nothing has presented itself yet.

The second fountain many of you have seen, since I've had it for 12 years. It's in a blue hexagonal bowl and was made of rocks I collected from of a stream at Montana de Oro State Beach. It was a favorite meditation place for me, and I thought I'd build the fountain to take the sound with me when I found out I was moving to Los Angeles.

Over the years, the sandstone rocks have leached their minerals and were crumbling amidst a growth of furry deposits. When the slate flooring went in, I was hoping there would be some remnants left that I could use to build a more durable fountain from, but the guy used every last tile.

So we went out to Home Depot and found slate tiles on sale: five for $7.95. I spent a day or so last week smashing up neatly honed 12x12 tiles into craggy chunks that I could then fashion into a fountain.

It's like riding a bike, you know; building fountains. The last time I constructed one was the last time I was unemployed, and I'm not quite sure how I felt about rebuilding the same fountain here in the midst of this spate unemployment. I'll have to ponder on that and let you know.

So, after the demise of the fish on the Nazi Bunker weekend and the removal of the aquarium, and the decrepitude of our two fountains, there is no moving water in the house, save the dishwasher and the occasional toilet flush. Well, there is the lone surviving fish in his half-gallon plastic aquarium, but that's smaller than a pitcher of beer, so I don't think it has a lot of impact on our chi.

Looks like it's off to the hardware store today to pick up more aquarium epoxy to polish off the one fountain I can complete on my own.

Anyone with any brilliant ideas about where I can find an organic-looking vessel, approximately 2 feet square by 8 to 12 inches deep, drop me a line and I'll get the patio fountain back online.

An Anniversary

While everyone is focusing on this as the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attack, I have to report that it is the third anniversary of the beginning of this blog. Odd that it should have fallen on such a date, but there you are. Here's the first entry:

My friend Kathy has a blog, and I was so taken by it I decided to try one.

I have nothing to say at this point. I am still working out the bugs in figuring out how to get this up and running.

Perhaps profound things will be said here. I really doubt it. Once I get things going and get familiar with the lay of the cyberland here, I may add pictures and such. Just getting this first message up on the site is enough for me now, though.

I'm assuming Kathy has abandoned her blog, since the last entry was about two years ago. She has found Facebook a much better way to keep in touch, and in a lot of ways, she's right. I check Facebook far more often than I do the blog. In fact, I only visit here when I'm making an entry.

I was going to celebrate this anniversary with a revealing of the "before" and "after" pictures of the new flooring downstairs, but with all the changes that the remodel incurred, not everything has found a new home yet.

We've removed the aquarium for the time being, since all but one of the fish died during our fumigation exile, and a lot of the tchotchkes that populated the living room in our "before" phase simply no longer have homes. So we're planning on doing a culling of items, opening up some space, and getting ready for the new look.

This would have been achieved this week, except Steve came down with a really bodacious bout of gastrointestinal flu on Monday evening and was out of commission for a day or so. Then I came down with it on Thursday and am only now recovering. This being so, the week was kind of shot as far as domestic projects went.

Another victim of the remodel was the fountain out on the patio. After a good cleaning, I set it back up and it is now leaking from mysterious sources somewhere in the base. A generously applied tube of aquarium epoxy did nothing to stem the trickle, so I'm thinking the exterior finish has simply eroded to the point where it is no longer viable. So there's something else to shop for this weekend.

I continue sending out resumes and still here little back. I'm working this month with the Foothill Employment and Training Center, and have gotten lots of support and encouragement, but nothing in the way of a solid interview, much less a job offer.

The website for Pearce Plastics is now complete, including a pretty cool 70-second introductory Flash animation. The only parts missing are those that the client has not yet provided (which have been weeks in coming and have still not been done). I'm going to have to push them hard, I think, because the site is contractually supposed to be online by the 25th of this month and there will several days worth of work to get this final information onto the pages and properly coded.

It doesn't help that the owner of the company (a nonagenarian) simply will not turn on his computer and look over the site. He wants me to print it all out (140 pages!) so he can look at it. His wife is a little younger and a little more responsive, but it will still be an uphill grind, no matter what.

So, hopefully we'll get things situated in the next week for appropriate "after" pictures and there will be something interesting to look at in the next entry. Until then, everyone keep well and happy: That's my plan.

It Is Finished

A wonderful feeling. The bamboo guy finished with the floors and put on the new baseboards this afternoon, so we are now finished with the remodeling for now. We have yet to return all the stuff that we removed from the living room and dining room, so no before and after pictures just yet.

Tomorrow I'm going in to the Foothill Training and Employment Center (the service arm of the EDD here in California) for a job search strategy workshop and an appointment with their business liaison. Seems I'm one of the 25 top employable yet unemployed people in the WIA program (which is where I got my web design training).

When they want to know what my dilemma is, I think my answer is fairly straightforward: you say you have web design training and everyone asks, "Where are the websites you've designed?" It's like being in my 20s again, and everyone wants two years of experience before they hire you, but you can't get the two years of experience until someone will give you a job. My two decades of design work don't seem to count for much of anything in those situations.

I did make application for a senior designer position with the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County. Sounds like a really interesting position.

Tonight I found a listing for e5 Global Media (the company that bought the Hollywood Reporter from Nielsen) for the position of Art Director at the Reporter. I could not help myself and applied for the position. There has been a big change in staffing and management and, who knows, perhaps the fit would be perfect.

I have a feeling Deeann will probably apply for the position as well (although she doesn't know web design and they specifically requested that), since she was art director there for almost 16 years. I doubt if either of us would get any calls, but stranger things have happened. I am not, however, holding my breath on this one.

With an all-new creative management staff hired from Us Weekly magazine, I think they want to go in fresh new directions. I'm all for that; when I was there, there was too much status quo for me, even during the redesign process. And if they do call me in for an interview, I would go because I want to move forward, not because I'm looking to go back to the old turf: Same building but a new century is the only way to go with publication these days.

Stay tuned for the before and after pictures of the house, just as soon as I get out the camera and everything has found its way back downstairs, which will be soon, I hope: This office is crowded.

Another Disruptive Weekend

Last weekend was not fun. When we got back into the house after the fumigation, I discovered I had forgotten to remove the plant from the office (the one houseplant we have, since both cats love to chew on anything green). Boy, is it dead. It's amazing there's any chlorophyll remaining at all.

It took Monday and most of Tuesday just to come down from the disruption of the weekend move-out for the bug killers, and on Wednesday I found myself sitting down and making extensive lists in preparation for this weekend and next week: the installation of the slate and bamboo flooring on the main floor of the house (I've only been harping about this for months).

The biggest chore was a thorough cleaning of the patio, which had turned into an ecosystem of its own over the winter, spring and summer (yes, it's been that long since it had a really good cleaning).

Luckily, the plants had already been removed to the walkway outside, so we were one step ahead. I moved everything else to one half of the patio and gave the other half a good sweeping. Then I gave it another good sweeping. After a third meager pass, it became clear that Mother Earth had become one with the concrete. If I was to provide an acceptable surface to receive adhesion of slate tile, I would have to take the hose to it in a big way.

With the "flat" setting nothing much happened except the dust got muddy; no movement, no removal. On the "jet" setting, I got quite good results, but it only cleaned about two square inches at a time. So I started at the back of the patio, making tiny circles, blasting the muddy water toward the edge of the slab. It was quite easy to tell how effective it was being, because the concrete changed colors once it was truly clean.

For a 10-foot-by-12-foot area, this technique took about four hours. After this, disassembling the fountain and cleaning the gook out of it was a relatively simple, though repulsive task (especially digging the rocks out of the algae-sludge). But now the patio is all prepped for the tile guy, who shows up at 9 a.m. tomorrow (Saturday).

And, today, the bamboo flooring was delivered. It seems that the material has to sit around for three days where it's going to be installed, so as to adapt to the temperature and humidity of the room before becoming one with its environment. As you can see, we now have 18 boxes of planks (23.8 linear feet per box), stair noses, quarter-rounds to trim out around the kitchen cabinets, and transitions for the few doors involved.

So, where last week we were bagging foodstuffs, this week we are clearing areas, finding room elsewhere in the house for things that will need to disappear for the flooring magic to happen. Luckily, the slate will be finished by the time the bamboo starts to go in, so we can take advantage of outdoor space for the less particular items in the living room.

So, slate on Saturday-Sunday-Monday, and bamboo on Tuesday (and I'm assuming Wednesday and Thursday, at least). But, by God, by this time next week, we will have slick new surfaces underfoot.

Last night, while I was going over the to-do list with Steve, he stopped me and put his hand on my forearm: "After this, let's take a rest for a while," he said with pleading eyes.

Oh, yes; I totally agree. I think we'll take at least a couple weeks off before we start thinking about ripping up the kitchen counters, opening the walls for rewiring electrical upgrades, installing a backsplash and such. And I haven't even mentioned pulling the counter and mirror out of the downstairs bath and replacing the sink and flooring in there.

You can tell I'm really into this fluffing the nest stuff: I took "before" pictures today, just so I could remind Steve what an improvement this will have been (and so I can show it off here in another blog entry in the very near future).

May your floors never squeak and your water features run clear.

Nazi Bunker Weekend

Boy, did we have fun or what???!!!

I really like being exiled from our home while a great big fun-looking circus tent is wrapped around it and poisonous gases are pumped in to kill every living thing inside. Entomologically speaking, it is a fun-filled Final Solution. And if I ever have to go through it again, I will burn the house down first.

What made it even more fun was the place we got to stay for four days: The Vagabond Inn here in Pasadena. Not only that, but we got the best room: I call it the Nazi Bunker, because it has NO WINDOWS AT ALL! ("Zo, Eva, do you vant ze pill or ze bullet in der head?")

To be more precise, this weekend was probably the closest I've ever come to insanity or a nervous breakdown or whatever you might want to call it. It was that final stressor in a year full of shitty stressors: it was the dump that gave the camel permanent hemorrhoids; an experience that scars for life. Perhaps I'm being a little oversensitive, but it sure feels that way to me right now.

It really started the Saturday before, when the air conditioning went on the fritz. (Fritz: get the Nazi tie-in there?) So on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, while I was bagging up all the open food in the house and prepping everything for the impending gassing (another WWII tie-in), I was working in 90-something degree temperatures and surviving by sitting in front of fans and constantly hydrating. On Tuesday, the air conditioning guy came and told me the compressor motor was burned out. He ordered a new one and said he could get it installed on Friday. Since the house would be deadly by that point, we scheduled for Tuesday morning, when I knew everything would be fine.

All was packed and ready by Thursday afternoon, when Steve got home from work, so we schlepped all the plants from the patio onto the sidewalk inside the security gate, caught and bagged the seven fish in the aquarium, got the cats into their carriers (they just love being in those things, just can't stop yowling once they get in them), and headed for the Vagabond Inn (falda-frickin'-ree, falda-frickin'-rah).

Checked in, got the cats out of their carriers, got the fish into the holding aquarium we had. The stress levels of this small move were already through the roof for both of us, and the cats and fish were all freaking out over this ungodly disruption of their existence.

This is when we realized they had put us in the wrong room. Six weeks earlier, we had reserved a smoking room with a king-size bed with the two cats added at a small charge. We were now in a non-smoking room with two double beds (the small ones) and no windows at all.

Well, that's not true: there was one tiny window in the oversized bathroom (that, an iron with an ironing board and a serv-yur-self minisafe made this an executive suite). The window was about the size and position of those in old Alcatraz movies, and out of it was a view of one of the seedier sections of Colorado Boulevard and the Spy Shop across the street: "covert surveillance for the common man.")

Steve called down to the desk and was told we could move to another room on the third floor that was the same but a smoking room. We looked a one another and contemplated the stress of cramming the cats back in their carriers, rebagging the fish (who were already puffing like long-distance runners, a sure sign of stress), repacking what was already unpacked and moving everything to another floor.

Stress, stress, everything was stress. Steve and I could read the other's face: the move wasn't worth it, for us or the animals. So we decided to stay in the bunker to which we were assigned and forfeit the $250 no-smoking deposit which might be applied to our bill.

I rationalized it by saying that, even with the blood money, our stay was still cheaper than boarding the cats (our original plan). I came up with a couple more rationale like that in my mind, which was starting actively to crack at this point.

We turned on the television (high-def with cable!) and the signal barely came in. After some fiddling, Steve found the cable wasn't fully seated, and he fixed it. He had a picture!

We ordered in a pizza and, after flushing three fish who had expired by that time, we hunkered down for the evening.

On Friday, Steve went off to work and I was left with the animals. Three of the remaining four fish had died during the night, so flushing them was my joyful first task upon rising. The cats were still freaking out and jumpy as hell, so I decided simply to stay in the room with them until Steve got home from work.

Even with a television for distraction, it is odd the effect of being in an enclosed area with no window. The only source of "fresh" air was the air-conditioning unit in the wall, which made a sound quite similar to an idling 747 jet engine and, as it was hot outside, this machine was running for most of the day. During the brief periods when it was not churning air, my ears would ring quite loudly in the silence.

Steve came back from work and I was overjoyed to see him.

At this point, the rest of the weekend becomes kind of a blur. I know we went to dinner at our favorite fish place; I recall going into a furniture store and finding some nesting end tables that were perfect for the house remodel; and we had Saturday breakfast at our usual place, which happens to be across the street from the Vagabond (a couple doors down from the spy store, right next to the box store). I also recall that we went back to the furniture store and purchased the nesting table set, and we packed up on Sunday evening to be ready for our return home. I also recall that I got about three hours sleep Saturday night and none at all Sunday.

We left the motel on Monday morning to get back to the house by 8 a.m., since the gas company said they would be there between 8 a.m. and noon. The cats seemed not to mind getting back in their carriers (well, not too much), and the one surviving fish was still hanging on.

We were in our driveway at home by 7:30 a.m. To make a long story short, the fumigation people didn't arrive until 10:30 and the gas company didn't arrived until 1 p.m. And, don't forget, the air conditioner was still broken. But it was so-so-so-so nice to be back in our home. Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home.

The air-conditioning guy showed up at 7:45 this morning to install the compressor fan, and blessed cool air is issuing forth on this day when the temperature promises to hit 103 degrees Fahrenheit. I figure with the week I wasn't using it, I can run it 24 hours a day for at least three days without affecting the electric bill or our carbon footprint.

EPILOGUE
So that was Nazi Bunker Weekend. I plan to spend today getting my focus back and returning to the things I was doing before this lovely life experience descended upon us.

And what is the moral of the story of Nazi Bunker Weekend? What enduring life truth or morsel of universal insight do we glean from this tale?

As I see it, there are two pieces of wisdom I came away from this hellish experience with that I would like to share with you, and they are:

1) You can never have enough Xanax, and
2) It doesn't work if you don't take it.