Saturday, September 13, 2003
HOWARD DEAN WHO? Having spent a good part of last week being my contractor's errand bitch, I must say it has taken a concerted effort to stay abreast of what is happening in the world. I forced myself to read an article about how the nation's huge surplus has become a vast deficit this morning even so my mind was 90% on paint chips. At the moment, such an article is RAIN ON MY PARADE -- the parade being the lovely little improvements I am making to the abode.
Thirteen years of living in a once-upon-a-time, move-in condition-1920's-house have taken their toll. One day we all woke up to scratched, darkened wood floors, chipped paint, and a deteriorating last-frontier bathroom we never had the money, time, and/or will to do anything about. The last-frontier bathroom is a 1970's remodeling hack job of bad-taste extraordinaire... Who in their right mind would pick Yankee Tour Bus brown-and-yellow to tile a bathroom? The countertops are a swirly marbled Formica disaster, and the floor a moldy, cracked nightmare of vinyl squares that even when new had to have been ugly. The bathroom has had to accommodate four family members ever since we moved in -- the younger of which used to take steamy water-all-over-the-place baths when they were really little, and now tend to take two to three showers a day as teenagers. We've had our share of house guests over the years too. There is no fan in the bathroom so the little summer bugs just get stuck to the beads of condensation on the ceiling by which there is now a polka-dot pattern of petrifying insects spattered across the porous painted surfaces.
Once a bathroom gets to such a point it wins.... i.e. you just give up trying to really clean it. Such is our bathroom. The once-white caulking is NEVER going to turn white no matter how much you pour bleach onto it. It's time for the sledge hammer.... With the help of my contractor*, I am going to get my bathroom transformed into a resellable, whistle-clean-white-tiled delight. The new white tub, sink, and toilet will be accompanied by the decorative splash-of-color of my choice and will cost about $2,500 total thanks to my extraordinarily evolved shopping skills (I frankly rock at finding good quality goods for cheap [I also rock at finding good quality goods for lots]).
Not two weeks ago hubby and I were all about selling this place and moving to a house in a quieter location that might also have some of the amenities lacking in this house (an open floor plan for entertaining, a quiet, private deck off the kitchen to read the paper and drink a cup of coffee, etc.). Come to realize that not even three-quarters of a million dollars will get you much more than a house you will have to plunk another $50K minimum into to make it livable. To make things more difficult, hubby and I constantly vacillate. We are both afflicted with profound Wanderlust: One week we want to go west. Then it's Europe. Then no, we want to stay here. Our kids used to freak out when they would overhear these conversations of ours but now they hardly glance up from their MTV reality show. I want to be there, and there, and there. All at once. There is a wonderful expression a good friend of mine said to me once (which is applicable for any ocean): "Once you have crossed the Atlantic, you are always on the wrong side....."
So last week I decided what the hell. Let me plunk ten or fifteen thousand dollars into this house and spruce it up. It's a win-win situation. If we decide to sell, the house will be in great shape and we will certainly re-coup our investment. If we stay put, well then we enjoy the face-lift. So as I speak, my energies are entirely devoted to restoring old oak floors to a lustrous golden blond, turning marred, faded walls fresh again with gleaming coats of Benjamin Moore paint, and morphing my bathroom into an aesthetically pleasurable experience. As an added bonus, I just today found a great hand-woven rug ON SALE that has turned my bedroom from nice to, "Oh my..." Some of the painting I am doing myself. Just because. I've always been very good at house painting and once in a blue moon I enjoy doing it.
This momentary distraction (perhaps call it momentary passion) -- this choice to be distracted -- this innate-creative-ability to be distracted -- this hunger to be distracted -- a hubby who subsidizes my distraction; well it's an interesting thing. I am creating something beautiful but to do so must use new supplies and jettison out the old I do not like. One more commode to the town dump. Ten more empty cans of paint. And on and on multiplied by everyone else using toxic chemicals to stain their floors, and solvents to power wash their wood decks. All in the name of creating what we as 'man' perceive as beauty.
Can one even fathom the toxic cloud emitted when both the Twin Towers imploded to their fiery collapse? Office furniture, computers, carpeting, heating systems, cooling systems, office kitchenettes, cleaning products, plastics, light fixtures, artwork, synthetic fabrics, sewage, insulation, glass, steel beams, molten airplanes, fuel, rubber, acoustical ceilings, stained wood, pressed wood, wall paper, glue, office supplies, fax machines, telephones, paint, tar, concrete, granite, brick, sheet rock, fiberglass, ceramic, aluminum, copper, lead, human remains, and god knows what else born into the air in one thunderous moment -- the implosion so great that the above-mentioned was compounded into ONE inescapable cloud of microscopic particles that lodged into each and every soft tissue lung of every fleeing New Yorker that day. A few weeks after 9/11, New Yorkers were told that the air quality was fine. What? ARE YOU KIDDING? I smell a cover-up by a government too chicken to tell thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers that were blasted with the biggest carcinogenic ka-pow-cloud ever imaginable on US soil.
WHOA tangent.... How did I get from my bathroom makeover to the Twin towers? I guess my point is that every man-made accomplishment that employs non-biodegradable man-made materials that I can think of, no matter how beautiful, is in essence an environmental disaster on some scale. Look around your desk as you read this. Everything you see on your desk is likely destined for a landfill sometime in your lifetime (probably sooner than you think). I admitedly see nothing in my office that has a life expectancy of more than 50 years: computer (two years), printer (two years), telephone (one year), catalogues (out tomorrow), cork board (ten years), lamp (five years), CD player (three years), speakers (three years), throw rug (six years), picture frames (twenty years), plant (doesn't look like it's going to make the year let alone fifty), pencil holder (five years), pens and pencils (six months to a year), calculator (five years), scanner (two years), coffee mug (ten years), phone book (one year), car key (three years to coincide with a trade-in of my car), daughter's Coach purse (five years), wine glass (could go at anytime given how often I break them), notepad (two months), artwork on wall (maybe fifty years).
Next time you go into a Toys 'R' Us, or a COSTCO, or a Radio Shack, just look around. EVERYTHING in that store is going to end up in the trash in less than ten years. I'm not asking you not to buy something you need. Just take a moment to THINK about what you purchase and what it means to the planet...
*My contractors were being held captive (by me) until this last Friday when they appear to have made their escape just before I got home from work. I have not heard from them since. I am encouraged that they have left a good deal of their equipment here and am hopeful that this means they will be back on Monday. If I find out whom they have ditched me for, I will break their knee caps...
Thirteen years of living in a once-upon-a-time, move-in condition-1920's-house have taken their toll. One day we all woke up to scratched, darkened wood floors, chipped paint, and a deteriorating last-frontier bathroom we never had the money, time, and/or will to do anything about. The last-frontier bathroom is a 1970's remodeling hack job of bad-taste extraordinaire... Who in their right mind would pick Yankee Tour Bus brown-and-yellow to tile a bathroom? The countertops are a swirly marbled Formica disaster, and the floor a moldy, cracked nightmare of vinyl squares that even when new had to have been ugly. The bathroom has had to accommodate four family members ever since we moved in -- the younger of which used to take steamy water-all-over-the-place baths when they were really little, and now tend to take two to three showers a day as teenagers. We've had our share of house guests over the years too. There is no fan in the bathroom so the little summer bugs just get stuck to the beads of condensation on the ceiling by which there is now a polka-dot pattern of petrifying insects spattered across the porous painted surfaces.
Once a bathroom gets to such a point it wins.... i.e. you just give up trying to really clean it. Such is our bathroom. The once-white caulking is NEVER going to turn white no matter how much you pour bleach onto it. It's time for the sledge hammer.... With the help of my contractor*, I am going to get my bathroom transformed into a resellable, whistle-clean-white-tiled delight. The new white tub, sink, and toilet will be accompanied by the decorative splash-of-color of my choice and will cost about $2,500 total thanks to my extraordinarily evolved shopping skills (I frankly rock at finding good quality goods for cheap [I also rock at finding good quality goods for lots]).
Not two weeks ago hubby and I were all about selling this place and moving to a house in a quieter location that might also have some of the amenities lacking in this house (an open floor plan for entertaining, a quiet, private deck off the kitchen to read the paper and drink a cup of coffee, etc.). Come to realize that not even three-quarters of a million dollars will get you much more than a house you will have to plunk another $50K minimum into to make it livable. To make things more difficult, hubby and I constantly vacillate. We are both afflicted with profound Wanderlust: One week we want to go west. Then it's Europe. Then no, we want to stay here. Our kids used to freak out when they would overhear these conversations of ours but now they hardly glance up from their MTV reality show. I want to be there, and there, and there. All at once. There is a wonderful expression a good friend of mine said to me once (which is applicable for any ocean): "Once you have crossed the Atlantic, you are always on the wrong side....."
So last week I decided what the hell. Let me plunk ten or fifteen thousand dollars into this house and spruce it up. It's a win-win situation. If we decide to sell, the house will be in great shape and we will certainly re-coup our investment. If we stay put, well then we enjoy the face-lift. So as I speak, my energies are entirely devoted to restoring old oak floors to a lustrous golden blond, turning marred, faded walls fresh again with gleaming coats of Benjamin Moore paint, and morphing my bathroom into an aesthetically pleasurable experience. As an added bonus, I just today found a great hand-woven rug ON SALE that has turned my bedroom from nice to, "Oh my..." Some of the painting I am doing myself. Just because. I've always been very good at house painting and once in a blue moon I enjoy doing it.
This momentary distraction (perhaps call it momentary passion) -- this choice to be distracted -- this innate-creative-ability to be distracted -- this hunger to be distracted -- a hubby who subsidizes my distraction; well it's an interesting thing. I am creating something beautiful but to do so must use new supplies and jettison out the old I do not like. One more commode to the town dump. Ten more empty cans of paint. And on and on multiplied by everyone else using toxic chemicals to stain their floors, and solvents to power wash their wood decks. All in the name of creating what we as 'man' perceive as beauty.
Can one even fathom the toxic cloud emitted when both the Twin Towers imploded to their fiery collapse? Office furniture, computers, carpeting, heating systems, cooling systems, office kitchenettes, cleaning products, plastics, light fixtures, artwork, synthetic fabrics, sewage, insulation, glass, steel beams, molten airplanes, fuel, rubber, acoustical ceilings, stained wood, pressed wood, wall paper, glue, office supplies, fax machines, telephones, paint, tar, concrete, granite, brick, sheet rock, fiberglass, ceramic, aluminum, copper, lead, human remains, and god knows what else born into the air in one thunderous moment -- the implosion so great that the above-mentioned was compounded into ONE inescapable cloud of microscopic particles that lodged into each and every soft tissue lung of every fleeing New Yorker that day. A few weeks after 9/11, New Yorkers were told that the air quality was fine. What? ARE YOU KIDDING? I smell a cover-up by a government too chicken to tell thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers that were blasted with the biggest carcinogenic ka-pow-cloud ever imaginable on US soil.
WHOA tangent.... How did I get from my bathroom makeover to the Twin towers? I guess my point is that every man-made accomplishment that employs non-biodegradable man-made materials that I can think of, no matter how beautiful, is in essence an environmental disaster on some scale. Look around your desk as you read this. Everything you see on your desk is likely destined for a landfill sometime in your lifetime (probably sooner than you think). I admitedly see nothing in my office that has a life expectancy of more than 50 years: computer (two years), printer (two years), telephone (one year), catalogues (out tomorrow), cork board (ten years), lamp (five years), CD player (three years), speakers (three years), throw rug (six years), picture frames (twenty years), plant (doesn't look like it's going to make the year let alone fifty), pencil holder (five years), pens and pencils (six months to a year), calculator (five years), scanner (two years), coffee mug (ten years), phone book (one year), car key (three years to coincide with a trade-in of my car), daughter's Coach purse (five years), wine glass (could go at anytime given how often I break them), notepad (two months), artwork on wall (maybe fifty years).
Next time you go into a Toys 'R' Us, or a COSTCO, or a Radio Shack, just look around. EVERYTHING in that store is going to end up in the trash in less than ten years. I'm not asking you not to buy something you need. Just take a moment to THINK about what you purchase and what it means to the planet...
*My contractors were being held captive (by me) until this last Friday when they appear to have made their escape just before I got home from work. I have not heard from them since. I am encouraged that they have left a good deal of their equipment here and am hopeful that this means they will be back on Monday. If I find out whom they have ditched me for, I will break their knee caps...
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