Apt. 11D

Grey Jersey #2

Maybe I see the world through Jonah's eyes, but this is an awesome climbing tree. 

Grey Jersey

After dropping Ian off at an art class, I wandered around the small town taking pictures. 

Dreaming About Seeds

We're getting excited about spring time. Our old  house had enough room to grow exactly six tomato plants, 3 basil, and 6 pepper plants. It was in a very shady spot, and there were probably chemicals leaching into the soil from the pressure treated fence that surrounded the property. Now, we have a bit more land. Not necessarily sunny land, but it's land. 

 So, Steve's shopping for organic seeds and raised beds. And I'm pacing around the yard trying to figure out where the light will be best and how to plant tomatoes in the front yard without pissing off the neighbors.

Not here.

Maybe here. 

 

Photo Class

I'm taking photography classes at a sleepy little art school here in suburban New Jersey. I've picked up little tricks so far, like make sure that your digital camera is set to take raw format pictures and not .jpegs. Also, the AV setting on the camera is better than the automatic setting. However, we haven't learned more than that yet. Actually, we haven't even taken any photos ourselves yet. After six hours last week and three hours today, I've mostly been looking at the instructor's pictures and pictures of his favorite photographers. 

The instructor was a big shot in the late 70s and early 80s and those are the photos that he likes. Graphic images with lots of tricks with the lenses. 

This stuff has gone out of style. I think I had similar images on posters in my dorm room. 

I prefer street photographs. I even like the grainy stuff that is coming out iPhones. Of the oldies, I like Walker Evans the best. 

I like the freaks of Diane Arbus.

And my absolute favorite is Sally Mann.

The instructor is sad and a little bitter that his style of photography is no longer in fashion. He says that photo editors would rather go with the younger photographers who shoot bored and angry models and then the editors and the photographers do coke together. The guy does know his gadgetry though, so I'm picking up on some lens geekery. Apparently, my camera is pretty crappy and he wants me to buy a $1,000 camera. (No.) My fellow classmates are sweet, so I'm enjoying myself. 

Doorway

The Chatterati

This weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking and talking with Steve about what my next move will be. 2011 was a disaster for work. Disaster. Selling the house and minding the kids was an 80 hour per week job. I did make some headway on a book, but the writing happened in bits and pieces and as a result, the writing is choppy with lots of half finished thoughts. I want to keep working on it, but I need immediate gratification projects, too. Preferably projects that also bring in a little casheroo. 

A blog is fabulous for people who only have bits and pieces of time. 20 minutes and there's a blog post. In another 20 minutes, fun comments appear. It's magical and wonderful. 

I also continue to do this blog, because sometimes you feel like you make a difference. I'm not a hundred percent sure that it makes a difference, but sometimes... maybe... perhaps. 

A few weeks ago, I noticed a small article in Business Week on Lego for girls. I threw out a very quick link to it, tweeted it, put it on Facebook, and threw a note over to my buddy who specializes in writing on these topics. Erin wrote a series of excellent posts on the topic. Her posts were noticed by bigger fish. Pretty soon, the Today Show was debating whether or not Lego for girls was a good thing. 

Did my blog post and tweets directly lead to Matt Lauer and Star Jones fighting about Lego? No. But I was one part of a larger group of people that did make that happen. I am part of a network of people that can take a topic from page 14 and make it page 1. This is very, very rewarding. 

While this blog (or any blog) should not be a career goal or a long term life plan, it is an extremely fun hobby. 

Happy Festivus

I've got eight or nine grocery bags sitting on the kitchen floor. One has a box of rapidly defrosting waffles in it. Must run and unpack. 

I had such good intentions for a productive day of blog post. I've got loads of material stored up. Including one on wrapping presents with brown paper and some multi-colored masking tape that I found at Pearl Paint. I love that store, so much that I almost begged the  heavily tattooed and pierced cashier for a job there. Maybe after the break. 

Well, all will have to wait until next week. While I drinking eggnog, I'll figure out a new design and concept for the blog. 

So, if you celebrate, then have a Merry Christmas. Drink and eat lots. If you don't, then enjoy the lovely Chinese food and empty movie theaters. See y'all next week. 

Sitting at the Corner of Burned Out and Fried

OK, I'm burned out. Christmas is fun, but Christmas is a shit-load of work. And I've had one hell of a year.

I crashed and burned last Friday. I didn't realize that I was just so, so, so tired, until I started thinking about how I was going to have to cook 12 fishy appetizers for Christmas Eve, and I kinda lost my marbles. Family has taken over, so instead of cleaning the house and writing menu plans, I'm researching hotels in Puerto Rico. I would have booked a vacation for this weekend and had a holiday on the beach, but Steve used up all of his vacation time during our move. So, we'll have to wait until February. 

Any suggestions? 

DIY Fail and Guilt

We moved three months ago, and we're still not settled. While this house isn't in the desperate straights as the first house that we bought, it still needs lots of work. The previous owners last decorated their home in the early 80s, so the shrubbery is overgrown, the walls are covered in country wallpaper, and the light fixtures are dusty and dated. 

When we moved in, Steve and I figured that we could do much of this work on our own. We like feeling self-sufficient. We also like saving money. So, even though the house is surrounded by towering oak trees, Steve spent his weekends raking leaves, rather than hiring a landscaper. I pulled out the old junk left in the basement and painted the walls with waterproof paint. I painted the living room. Steve changed out some old light fixtures.

Last week, I started pulling down the orange starred wallpaper off the dining room walls. After three evenings, I stripped about three feet of paper. The stuff was stuck on with super glue. And under the wallpaper, I found bumpy walls. Someone had put primer over old wallpaper glue. The walls needed to be skim coated with plaster. Sigh. Skim coating is outside of my pay grade. I called in Eddie the painter. 

So, Eddie and his guys are doing the dirty work for us. For four days, they've stripped and painted the dining room, the kitchen, the TV room, and the entrance way. This job would have taken us a year to do on our own, and it wouldn't have looked so good. I keep sneaking upstairs to take pictures of the before and after. (That purple in the dining room is primer. Today, they should paint the upper walls a light grey.)

As happy as we are with their work, we still feel a little guilty. Yes, we're saving time. Time that can be used to play with the kids and pitch article stories. And we can afford this. But we still feel spoiled. 

Down the block from us, a huge mansion is being built. Someone bought a house for $700,000 and then knocked it down to build a house the size of a small town. Every morning, twenty trucks are parked out in front to install the plumbing, granite counter tops, decorative woodwork, in-ground pool. They've been working six days a week, since we moved in at the end of August, and they are still not finished. 

Painting four rooms is not in the same league as the mansion project, but living in such close proximity to extreme wealth is frightening. We're the people who used to live in a cockroach covered apartment with a four floor walkup. That year when I owned one pair of shoes. We're struggling to remain ourselves with our DIY projects amidst all this insanity.

Because of the weird turn of the market, we were able to buy a wallpapered house on a block filled with the 1%, and we're still not at peace with it. So, I find myself googling directions on how to remove polyurethane from slate floors without hiring a contractor. 

Gift Guide 2011 #4: Fireplace Edition

Behind the kitchen and the dining room, we have a TV room. It was probably once a porch that the former owners closed in. When we bought the house, our real estate agent in her never-quite-left-the-Bronx accent told us, "Laura, you'll take out the stove and put in a sectional sofa on that back wall. And then paint everything white."

We are going to paint the room white next week (and get proper chairs), but the stove is staying. My husband the Eagle Scout is having way too much fun building fires. We also have a fireplace in the living room, so we're in fire heaven. After Halloween's freak storm, Steve ran around the neighborhood stealing branches off the neighbors' yards. 

Showing you where our priorities are, our first purchases for the new house were equipment for the living room fireplace: Crate and Barrel's Fireplace Screen and tool set. On a whim, we also got a fireplace candleabra, which actually sits in the middle of our large picture window. Some nights, I light the candles, so Steve can see our house on his walk home from the bus stop. 

After reading this article about a Finnish house full of wood burning fireplaces, Steve and I are now in love with Jotul stoves. Maybe next year. We need more equipment, like a storage bin and a log tote. 

Along with the light coming from the fireplaces, we love decorating with lots of candles and string lights and paper lanterns for the holidays. You'll be able to see our house from space.