Still raining, still waiting for a builder

When will it not look like this? 

The rain makes anything but what I'd much rather not do, if not impossible, extremely unpleasant. It has rained for three weeks, allowing for some hours of waiting for it to start again. Because it will. Planting means working in the mud. Riding means wearing my waterproof duster and maybe getting struck by lightning. There hasn't been a lot of that, but you never know. My feet disappear in the soaking wet grass and clover of the unmowed lawn. I do that any time I possibly can.

Being faced with what is left that I can (but that I'd rather not) do and actively not doing it, is a shock to my notion of myself as an Extremely Productive Person, acquired with pride and a sense of accomplishment during the Covid confinement. Having nothing else to do while asked to remain home, I did what needed to be done around the house and garden, and I learned to stack, becoming a pro at whizzing from task to task, spotting ones I could do along the way, and be done with, too! It was exhilarating! I listened to podcasts and GOT THINGS DONE! Since I couldn't go see my horse, I was granted the time to focus on the plans and the garden which was actually a huge relief. I lived in a suspended, magical state of serenity, everything ending with joyful exclamation points. 

Also, I sent off the plans for the renovation to the building department in July of 2020! How liberating! And exciting!

More accurately, the getting things done started when I cut my hand open and blood swore to myself during vacation 2019 that WHEN I GOT BACK, I WOULD DO THE PLANS FOR THE RENOVATION. Maybe it was 2018. It was too long ago for a job still not even started. My laptop got old and began to die along the way. 

In 2021, people have gone from asking when it will be done to asking when it will start, and (worse) why it hasn't started. 

"This is the longest renovation in history," someone recently said.

"It hasn't begun, actually." The look of surprise and confusion is difficult to face, and the reasons for it still harder. You know the question coming and think, drawing a deep breath (closer to a sigh), Do you want the long version, or no answer at all, because there is only a long one?

I am happier to to give none. Happier yet not to be asked. Every time one of my husband's kids or family members ask him in my presence, from interest or just to make conversation, and I hear him begin, my heart starts to race. I beg him with frantic, angry gestures to CHANGE. THE. SUBJECT. 

I have lost sleep, and I have learned to live with it, but it has to start SO THAT IT CAN END. Actually finding a builder and tradespersons who will provide an estimate, much less SHOW UP, is not a task that can be stacked and for which I can give myself rows of mental gold stars and endorphin rushes. There are opposing wills and interests, and it has been a very bad lousy year for building. 

The one person I know who GETS BUILDING THINGS GOING is having a hard time. He asked about the work on our house the other evening, and I gave him the full version. He told me that he has made calls to various tradespersons, who said they'd come to make an estimate, and then never return any subsequent calls. God knows if that was helpful to hear or not. At least I am not the only one. I was starting to think it was me. 

One electrician came, said he would return and spend a couple hours assessing the work, and then prepare the estimate. He could start in the summer. He would only be taking a few days off, here and there. He did return the next week and spend a couple hours looking at every little thing. That was April 30. APRIL. I have not, however, seen an estimate, but he did follow me on Instagram. I didn't bother following up. He can look at photos of my horse and me, my garden and my animals, and maybe watch the work get done. Eventually. 

Not quite the same thing, but two guys delivered our firewood for someone we know, who has done it for years. It came in 6 big bags, lifted off the truck with a crane. Pierrot had always tossed it off the back of his fourgonnette, one log at a time. Once, he ran the open door into something and wrenched it a bit. I felt kind of badly, even though I hadn't done it. It was here, unloading our wood. The young guy was the son of a neighbor, who is a friend of Pierrot's and his wife's. He said I could buy the big bags for 10€ apiece, or he'd come pick them up when I had finished unloading the wood. I said I didn't really need 6 enormous bags, and I'd send him a message when I had emptied them. I hurried, working to get it done before the rain was expected to settle in, and in case he needed them. That was June 23. The bags are still there. No word from him. 

The builder who was supposed to do the first project I had estimated, and for which we were THAT CLOSE to having the permit when I pulled the plug in October 2020 (ok, that part of any delay is my own fault), said to send him the plans for the revised project. That was May 3. 

May 19, I emailed to be the squeaky wheel. 

May 20, he replied to say that he had received the drawings from May 3, and to propose that we proceed as we had for the first project. They could begin construction at the end of the year, but if the roof of the building in question got worse before then, they would come and put up a tarp on a frame. Demand being what it is, he would only be able to get to the new estimate in about 10 days. OK. I was good with that. 

June 28, growing impatient, I sent a message.

July 8, getting worried, I sent another message. 

An hour and a half later, he replied. He was sorry. He had completely forgotten to reply to my previous message. Would I accept his apology, please? I was to note that he had decided to end his collaboration with the construction company in question. Perhaps I would be interested in contacting another company? Depending on when I wished to begin the work, he could suggest someone, but given their experience and the current demand, they would be booked for a while out; depending on the date I wished for, they could (or would not) offer an estimate and a start to the work. Best wishes. 

He forgot to tell me that he had stopped. May 20, we're good. July 8, he has ended his collaboration. What about the company? Was it shuttering? I had just seen their sign up on a really nice renovation project for a super interesting Victorian house on the Seine in a village Monet painted from a stool from our side of the Seine. How wonderful was that?! Why couldn't he just have someone else from the that company contact me? (EXPLETIVE!) I replied to say I was bien triste to hear all that, and my husband would be very déçu, but please do send the name of anyone he would recommend. Of course we wanted to start as soon as possible, but we also want a trustworthy and experienced builder. 

He has not replied.

WHAT IS THIS? HOW HARD IS IT? 

I couldn't tell my husband (I have gotten very good at dissimulating and keeping things to myself).

A couple days before, over dinner in Champagne, I was telling an old friend from the States, who had just asked about our house, about our trials and frustration. Coming from a place where people actually show up, and perfectly convinced that I was being dramatic, she said "Oh, you'll find someone!" in that tone that suggests the end of a subject of conversation. Feeling slightly admonished for my negativity and lack of brightness, I decided it was better not to insist on the bleakness of it all. That's no fun! Pour another flute!

SO, after reviewing what was left of my options (that took about 1 minute and 23 seconds), I sent sent a message to the guy who had decided that first project was more than he wanted to do. That was Friday. Sunday evening, a message popped up on my phone. He'd be away until the 20th, but please feel free to call him to set up a time to meet to discuss our futur projets. Hosannah! 

DARE. I. HOPE? And when do I let my husband in on all this? 

Right now, it's raining so hard that there might only be a pile of rubble from the collapsed roof to cart away before the work begins. The birds have made their nests in the garden (and in the decomposing eaves of that building) for years from the bright blue tarp that is now in tatters. I am so sick of seeing it. Roofing tiles lie on the floor, covered in sodden sheetrock and polystyrene. If the seagrass flooring wasn't really intended for the bath, it absolutely wasn't intended to hold up to years of rain, and it has joined in the decay.

I could compost it. That's an idea.

Actually, nearly the whole thing. Make it useful in its afterlife. It's already more than halfway there.

...

Rain, rain

The rain continues to fall. It has rained most of June and now most of July, too. We're not at the midpoint, though, so there is still hope for a July that was mostly summery. Yesterday, in a humid and buggy interlude, I was able to weed the first bed and prepare to add more planting soil and manure before planting. 

The watering can is superfluous. It was necessary yesterday, when the soil in the pots the plants came in was dry as a bone, somehow. I had watered them all the day before. Not very well, I guess. 

The other day, I posted a photo on Facebook of my horse walking back out into his field to join his friends, and I thought nothing more of it. Not until, that is, a friend in California asked if the turn-out fields are irrigated. I stared at the photo for awhile, also wondering if it really had enough interest to even be there, let alone as my cover photo; I was going to tell about putting the fly sheet on poor Qalypso, and thought better of it. Who cared? Then, I saw it: the green. Green grass all around the group of horses. I forgot the Pacific Northwest and NoCal are crisp and cooked right through, while we need shoes and a sweater, and a hood or an umbrella. Or, just to stay inside. 

It's depressing. Some are melting, practically on fire, except there has to be so little left to actually burn after the last years' fires, while others are wading to get out of the subway, and my plants sit and wait. Some things I will do in the rain, like prune the edges. Planting is not one of them. 

It's also depressing because while a year and a half ago, we were waiting for an estimate, and a few months ago decided to withdraw the building permit application and change the project, we were now waiting for the revised estimate, in no need of a building permit, and waiting for the work to begin at the end of this year, but now we are back to square one, with seemingly no place to go. The builder "forgot" to tell me that he had left the construction business in the few short weeks (endlessly long to me) since his last communication May 20. 

He offered to recommend someone, but it would depend on when we wanted to start because his experience means he is "very much in demand". Experience or not, everyone seems to be "very much in demand", and nobody is able to come do the work. I didn't tell him that, in case he told someone else, and they raise their prices as a result, except that I suspect they know this. 

I haven't told my husband. I know what he will say, and I really don't need to hear it. It plays nonstop in my head already. Sometimes it's really hard to maintain the good humor and optimism. 

It's depressing.

....

The best-laid plans

 

Unplanted recent acquisitions

When will I learn? 

I held firm every time I went to my favorite garden stores, buying only and exactly what I needed, as much as I longed for some of the plants presenting their glorious flowers to me. Things I had always wanted to plant and told myself to wait until I was ready. Until the time was right. Until I had a fairly unshakable sense that I knew enough about what I was doing planning a "mixed rose border" to do such a thing. Make no obvious and glaring errors, and people can still believe you do know what you are doing. Make them, and it's Game Over. You are unmasked for the amateur with the sadly limited natural talent that you are. 

And then I cracked, and I bought everything. Everything I could fit onto a single cart, crowding them all together and using every possible bit of it. I did this despite a observing a man, who was wandering about, gazing sadly at the plants, and just barely repressing long sighs, and who finally looked up at me and said, "They are all in such sad condition. It's late in the season, I guess." 

And there I was, thinking they looked glorious. This should have been my signal to stop and put everything back and go home with the cat food. But noooooo. Ever Miss Mary Sunshine, always at the ready to bolster the flagging moral and hopes of any person, friend or stranger, mostly myself, I said, "Oh! They aren't that bad! All they need is proper planting and care, and they'll jump right back!"

Every sentence I speak, having anything to do with plants and gardens, finishes in a "!"! Plants! Flowers! Gardens! Every gardening tool known to gardeners! Compost! Nematodes! Lady Bugs! Mulch!

I wasn't wrong (or so I tell myself), however unconvinced he was, and then I made the mistake of stopping on the way home at my other favorite garden store to see if they had the Cransebill geraniums I wanted, and guess what? The worst. They had just had a shipment of fresh plants. Exactly what I had just bought, and in vastly better condition. It was gorgeous. I longed for it all. I kept the smile pasted firmly on my face, and bought  -- some more. Oh God. 

I bought all this without calculation. Without making a plan. I bought all of this by some sort of instinct that I hoped would serve me not too badly. It looked soooooo beautiful in the car! How could I be wrong! It would surely work out! I have an eye for color! I'd go home and paint with plants! It would be sensational! Ha! 

And yet, the plants are still sitting there, waiting for me to decide exactly where they belong. 

"This time, you'll plant them, and not leave them to die, right?" asked my husband. Of course! 

"I'm just giving myself the time to move them around until I have it just exactly right!" I said, and he believed me. 

Feeling insecure about the quality of my instincts, I set out to come up with a way to do it on paper. That would do it! I'd be certain of my decisions! 

It wasn't a bad idea, my system. With great concentration and industriousness, I cut out and colored the rose bushes and glued them where they were in the beds. Then, I sketched out the increasing heights of the roses and the plants I had bought. Now, all I had to do was make corresponding colored cutouts for each of them and move those around until I had used them all up and they seemed to be in the right place by color, height and size. Simple, right? 

That effort fizzled in a puddle of insecurity and laziness, too. 

My plans

The unending rain has allowed me to save face (for awhile) under cover of bad weather, while I wait for inspiration to speak to me, but this isn't going to last forever. 

....

Halloween magic

Halloween, my favorite holiday of all holidays, ever since I was little. Everything about being a child is wrapped up in Halloween, and returns on this day once every year. It does not require the  innocence and belief of extreme youth like Christmas, or the lesser holiday of Easter, with an over-sized bunny and baskets for chocolates. It doesn’t even have religious requirements, like its main competitors. Halloween is not observed. It is participatory. There are no invitations. Everyone is automatically included. All you need is to want to be a part of it. It requires next to no money. No one can be excluded because they couldn’t afford it, and have to rely on the kindness of strangers, and the Salvation Army. There isn’t even special weather required like there is to make sense of Santa’s heavy winter clothes and sleigh, although a scent of autumn in crisp air helps. 

It is a sensual holiday, involving age appropriate senses. The long, and maybe boring, if you didn’t enjoy the privilege of going to camp, summer comes to and end with the excitement of the trip to the store for a new pair of school shoes and new clothes because you have grown, and not just in size, but in social awareness and fashion sense. A new lunch box to replace the embarrassing one, or maybe no lunch box because you are going to graduate to paper bags and a lunch money for pizza days. Do they still exist?

I can still smell the cafeteria blended with the tastes on the tongue. Breaded fish patties, toasted cheese, floppy hamburgers with the color steamed out of them resting in their Wonder buns with bright red ketchup. Mushy canned vegetables and the scent of a hundred of pints of milk against the lingering background odor of floor cleaner, all in the vaguely humid weather system of  a large room full of kids. Outside, the air smells of falling leaves and damp soil, and something slightly sharp in the nose, suggesting the possibility of snow soon, and apples, the promise of their tart sweetness, and cider. 

The wind comes up and rustles the dry leaves on their branches, sending them scuttling across the grass and pavement, a vague moan of the larger branches and the scratching sound of the little ones. Voices calling out and murmuring in quiter conversation, squeals and laughter sounding against the brick walls punctuated by the bid windows onto rows of desks and walls covered with colored construction paper art and blackboards. Cupboards of paste, glue, scissors, pipe cleaners and macaroni. Shelves of globes and shadow boxes, a hamster, books. The rubber balls bounding off the pavement and slapping against hands in games of Four Square and Dodge Ball. The rhythmic creaking of the chains of the swings accompanying the rising and falling sing-song of the chants against the shrill metal squeaks of the turning, turning roundabout and the teeter-totters. 

The clouds darken, and light shines brighter through the windows, calling us inside, where the excitement of our store-bought or home-made costumes, the basins of water and apples for bobbing, the bowls of candy corns await, and then we get to climb in the buses and go home, where our parents will divide up the tasks of handing out the candy and accompanying us through the darkened neighborhood to trick or treat. My father did that. I have to assume my mother handed out the candy. I never considered that. 

Somehow, we never needed coats, although our costumes were flimsy. Laybe a layer of ski long underwear (finally!). I can scarcely remember mine. A devil once. Never a princess. My mother would have rather seen me dead than see me dressed in pink, let alone as a princess. A prince, maybe. I was probably a cowgirl one year. I had probably recently visited Frontier Town. Fallen leaves scurried away from our feet. They wind carried the smell of flames licking pumpkin flesh as the tops burned. 

Our fathers’ presence and our own excited voices tamed the sounds of the wind and the nervousness of knocking at certain darkened, forbidding houses, and they were always the same ones, into a pleasantly thrilling level of fear. our bags grew heavy with the candy we desired, and candy that some persisted in giving out, despite its lack of appeal and popularity. This made so little sense. It provided the earliest opportunities to wonder about perversion. it wasn’t even especially associated with the uninviting houses. This made Halloween also an intellectual and philosophical exercise, invoking a certain sophistication in feeling and thought. Issues of gender association — don’t think we children of the 1960’s weren’t aware of gender roles their idealized binary quality — and fear, pleasure and the perversion of pleasure. 

My child arrived just in time for Halloween, which made sense of his birth and presence in my life. He would bring Halloween back to me and I would offer it to him. In the collection of things people had offered us, there was a black and grey-spotted white fuzzy pyjama, complète with a good and possible black ears. I made him a carnival of gold paper ai found in the office, tying strings through holes on each side to hold it on his 5-week-old head. He found this acceptable. I put it in our bag and headed across and uptown to catch MetroNorth home to Riverside to take him out Trick or Treating. We’d go to the homes of friends and neighbors to show him off and say hello, posing for pictures I never saw. 

His Halloweens were opportunities fr me to showcase my costume-making skills. Having once made my own clothes, I set out to create incomparable versions of Max from Where The Wild Things Are and a black wool flannel Dracula cape with red satin lining and a high collar another. The next year, he wanted to be Darth Vader, and we shopped for the costume. He was 6, and we had moved across town to a larger apartment. We went to our old neighborhood for a Halloween party and to Trick or Treat with his friends, and it was a disaster. An incomprehensible failure. We were at a loss to save the evening. The mask, this one I didn’t make, did not fit his face as the very first one I made him 6 years earlier had. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe. There was no compromise. He wasn’t Darth Vader without it. His friends continued ahead. His Halloween was over, and mine shriveled and died. We aborted mission and went home, frustrated and disappointed. 

But, there were others, and when he was 11, we were in France. Everything was there for the same autumn, except Halloween. But the first vacation of the school year is le Toussaint, or All Saints’ Day. We were gathered at my inlaws’ big old house up on the ridge above the Loir, surrounded by forest and filled with cousins, and I had an idea. We’d make a French Halloween. 

My brother-in-law, however, however, was not having it. He didn’t want French culture overridden with more American commercial holidays, especially not one that challenged Catholic traditions. He was alone in that, though. Halloween looked likt too much fun. I explained that it does not involve killing chickens, and then that it actually has a connection to Christianity, ia connection to the holiday the kids were on vacation to celebrate, if they thought about that as much as some of their parents. On May 13, 609 AD Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to all Christian martyrs and established the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day in the Western Church. Pope Gregory III expanded it to include all the saints, too, and moved it to November 1. 

More than that, it was  French holiday, really, as an usurpation of the original Celtic holiday Samhain that celebrated at this time of the year some 2,000 years before the Catholic Church thought you christianise it. The Celts had settled in Northern France (la Bretagne, where the family had mostly lived), along with practically everywhere else in Europe. 

Halloween acceptable, as long as I the party was accompanied by a lesson, and that there would be no going door-to-door. Fine. My husband and I went to every local supermarket, looking for pumpkins to carve, and finally found some practically in the shadow of the cathedral in Chartres, in the zone commercial near the highway, and candy for the hidden treat bags they’d find in a chasse au trésor (très français). His wife and kids turned the Jack ‘O Lanterns into the heads of recumbent scarecrows with their jeans and sweatshirts. How did they know about this?

In the years since, and with the spread of the Internet into France, like Tunisia and Egypt, who had their Arab Spring, French children found out about this going door-to-door, and jumped in with both feet, their parents’ enthusiasm and my encouragement. Every year, our village sees an outpouring in creativity in make-up and assembled costumes, mostly home-made, including the parents. My candle-lit carved pumpkins are a smashing (heh heh) success. A couple years ago I was away on Halloween. I’m still not over that. Last year, I skipped carving the pumpkins. I didn’t have time. The neighbors’ teenage son mentioned it with regret, and I was crest-fallen. Never again. 

Yesterday, I finished days of work on the plans, met the builder and was hitting the ground running to prepare to have friends to dinner . There had been small pumpkins at the U Express. That would be good enough. When I got back to get them, there were just two left, one very misshapen. My motherhad taught me to reject those. I turned it in my hands and saw that it could do. The neighbors' son noticed. We share Halloween now, too. 

I handed the candy out through the grill in the window of the petite salon, like my private balcony onto Halloween, running back and forth between it and the kitchen. That room is dark. The electricity doesn’t work in that part of the house. Onto the widow I stuck three post-it notes instructing them to frappez svp.

Up out of one group of kids, one little boy with a monkey wrench jammed down into his fuzzy hair looked at me and asked, “Don’t you have electricity?” I laughed.

“Well, it’s not working. We’re going to have that fixed soon.” 

He considered that and asked, “Aren’t you afraid to live in the dark?”

“No,” I laughed and added, “we have candles. It’s actually very romantic.” His older sister, who also had a monkey wrench in the lovely soft fuzzy hair on her skull, seemed to appreciate that. I forgot to make it clear that the WHOLE house was not plunged into darkness.

Later, two older girls knocked. I called out HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! from the dark so they would know I was there.

“You are American?”

“Yes, and French.” I realized that she was still too young to maybe know that not so long ago, kids did not go Trick or Treating, and that Halloween was frowned upon. I told her. She looked from me to somewhere up the street and then her friend before saying, “I know. But Halloween is fun. We get dressed up and we meet friends and people, and we laugh and have a good time.” 

Those were my exact words to my brother-in-law 17 years ago. 

And now, parents tell me about a godfather who lives in Dallas, who learned French and came to France for Mylène Farmer. Another of her family in Chicago, and how visiting them made her want to work in linguistic exchange programs; she bought her own company recently. Another, colleagues of my husband’s, had their two young grandsons with them. They are back from four years in Washington, DC. I told them I had lived there, too, and asked the older boy what he liked best there. He didn’t miss a beat, “The Art Museum of San Francisco.” 

A young black girl asked me where I lived in the States.

“New York.”

“AH LA CHANCE!” she burst out. 

“Yeah,“ I nodded. I was suddenly dying to have them all in a classroom. 

The parents instructed their children to say “thank you”.  We said, “Bye!! Happy Halloween!” 

A boy asked, “Do you speak French and English on Halloween?” Like maybe that is a special thing I do for the holiday, or a trick. 

And, my son and his whole office celebrated Halloween, wearing movie villain themed costumes to work and having a party at a bar the company, Le Slip Français, rented. I’ll leave you to guess which one he is. Hahaha.

Happy Halloween à tous.

Waiting for the estimate

If you look at the hard, cold numbers, it should be reassuring. We can build for about the price of constrution on a square meter basis, but I am riding the roller coaster, I'm on pins and needles, I am exhilarated, I am anxious. In short, I am not finding that particularly reassuring.

It's small. What can it cost? 

A lot. 

It was hard to go to sleep hyperventilating quietly on my side of the bed. I managed, though.

It's all relative, isn't it? Actually, maybe not. There is a logic in there that can't be so easily defeated. I want to say that if you have the money, this is simply not a problem. You book a table at your favorite restaurant and enjoy your aged malt scotch before, and after, dinner, returning home to tuck into bed with a satisfied soul. But, if you had that money, what would you be doing here, owning this wreck that you have watched tank on your very beautiful property, when someone has the time to care for it. Its ruin is now about complete. The builder looked up at the ceiling yesterday and pronounced that one more winter, one good wind, and that roof is coming down. I think he is exaggerating just a little bit. It's bad, but collapse is maybe a few more good soaks and a solid blow a couple seasons away. Or, I am overly optimistic about the mess.

"D'un autre côté," he mused, "ça fait moins de travail en dépose."

It falls on its own, and there's less demo to do.

There is always the bright side of things. Moins de travail equals an uptick, however subtle, in savings, but don't get ahead of yourself, because there is always the highly doubtful foundation, and you can't know about that until you get at the work.

That is a contingency. Typically, add 15% to the estimate and bank on spending it in a case like this.

That foundation occurs along this wall, which evokes something from industrial Newark or Rouen, not the charming villages of the Ile-de France. Can anyone, anybody at all explain to me how in God's name you build anything like this? For any purpose? I swear I am going to catalogue every blasphemy of construction before it is dismantled, and carted away; another fortune, unless I get a jump on it and start taking it, trailer load by trailer load to the dump. I have done just about as crazy stuff before. My husband is convinced that if something is built, and it has withstood at least three decades, that it must fundamentally be alright. We can keep that back wall, certainly, he says. What I want to know is why clients always understood what husbands don't. The only possible explanation is that clients go to architects and pay them, and so they respect what they are told. If my husband doesn't have to pay his wife, the architect, then he does not have to. She is wrong according to his comfort levels, or right according to the same.




A quick round-up of the structure should be enough, except, that would be to anyone who builds things. This is the wall. It is built in brick and 10 cm concrete block. It is cracked all the way through at 3 locations. This probably has to do with the insufficiency of 10 cm of concrete block and the roots of the tree I cut down on the neighbor's property, with his sanction and help. Of course he should have done it or had it done, since it was an issue for our building, but now, when we will need access from his property to carry out the work, we are much more likely to have his cooperation. The stump is not dead, it is massively complex, and I have to keep trying to kill it. Until I succeed, it will continue to disturb the structure.

I have never built anything out of 10 cm (4") concrete block. Just typing that, I cannot believe that I am. 20 cm of reinforced (vertically and horizontally) concrete block is the minimum. But, it's not carrying a lot of weight, I hear. It doesn't work that way. It is also subject to forces, carries its own weight, and supports the loads on the roof, plus the dead weight of that roof. But, it has stood up all this time, comes the response. That doesn't mean it's going to continue to. See the cracks. It is continuing to, the argument goes on. Yes, it is, but you do not build a proper, new roof on it. Nobody in their professional capacity and right mind would ever do that, and it's not because someone else did sometime before that they do. This place was built by God only knows who, and on the fly and the cheap.

I was not helped by some guy, who came here for something, and who said, when I showed him the wall on the other side of the garage part that is literally made of stacked bricks only, with some sort of grey stuff covering it on the inside. That sort of trowel-on stuff actually thickens the wall at the door and window framed to handle their depth.

I kid you not.

That guy said, "Oh, that can work." I wanted to strangle him. We didn't hire him for whatever job he was there for, so, why would we listen?

My husband looked at me and said, "See? That can work," and nodded at the guy with authority.

I judged better than to comment. There is no winning some arguements. The builder will have to sit him down and lay it out. There is another argument, and it goes that building is faster when you get rid of the old and build from scratch, foundations not counting. Faster equals less labor equals less costly. Concrete block is not expensive, and working around problems, finding solutions, reinforcing with pillars where needed, and so forth costs time and money. But, why replace concrete blocks with new ones that cost whatever they cost? We just went over that.

Never mind. I just keep plodding along the path I have to trod, knowing that he will follow.

For now, I wait for the estimate. We talked over the structural issues, and how to build it. A new slab will sit on the old one, and bring the level of the ground floor, and the mezzanine and roof with it, 25 cm, not 10 cm, as I had planned. He wants to bring it out an additional 20 cm into the garden side. These two things will have consequences for the ridge height and the roof pitches, which is fine, except that there is this existing window. We'll figure it out.

He is also pricing the same treatment for the building exactly as it is so we can compare the cost and decide if we go forward with the bigger project. It has two tremendous advantages. First, it connects the two structures, which permits us to count the three new rooms created with the existing rooms. That is a major factor in the appraisal of a home's value. Second, it could be adapted for us to live in when we are very old, wheelchairs excepted. It's too small. Beyond that, there is the aesthetic value: it creates interesting spaces and some of the good sort of drama.

That said, either would be a huge improvement in aesthetics over this.

The gutter decoration is cute, though.

...

Straight lines through managed chaos

I love these pieces of paper. If my house were to burn down, and I had to save one thing (pets and humans not counting), it might be these sheets of notes and sketches, of calculations and measurements and bits of cream trace covered with sketches, cut from the roll with the edge of my ruler. It used to be a scale, but nobody uses those anymore. Not even me. I suppose they would be second, after the photos of my son growing up. Beyond the obvious sentimenal reasons, he keeps sending me text messages asking for photos of him aged 5 to 8 for work. They like attaching the people who work for them to who they were young. One was for each person's coat hook in a long line of them in the hallway. Like kindergarten. 

I can't even begin to name every reason I think this is just plain brilliant, except that it comes down to the very straight line between who we are when we are very young and who we are grown-up. We ask kids, "What do you want to do when you grow up?", but all we have to do is look at what they do and talk about the most, and not argue when they answer and say, for example, that they want to be, say, a fashion designer, or an architect. I'll grant that I'll warn anyone about doing the latter for a million very good reasons, the first being that if they think it's glamorous and that they will be famous and have Rizzoli calling to prepare the coffee table edition featuring their work, and be able to have a Porsche and a house they design for themselves, when a car payment and an apartment might be a bit of a stretch already, they are sadly mistaken. Do it if you are driven, if you are passionate, and if you cannot imagine doing anything else, no matter what, no matter the cost to you. 

I don't think anyone goes into fashion with such pretentions, and they are much nicer people, I'm sure. 

It's a reminder to remember that child and keep him near. I use the male because my only child is cis-male, and he is even more cherished to me than I and the little cis-girl in me are. To let him be and make sure he has enough crayons and blocks. 

Actually, I thought he was going to become an architect, when at some crazy precocious age -- like under two -- he sat down at his little desk next to mine and started drawing perfectly straight lines down the sheet of paper with a pencil, all the way across it. They were closely spaced, and he did it easily, methodically. It was actually his OCD tendency that he was expressing. But hey, I was disqualified at the age of four for cheating on the corner grocery store's coloring context. They said no child my age could possibly color so perfectly within the lines, complete with color coordination and shading. They were mistaken and a great injustice was committed, but I felt rather fluffed up by that, until I encountered modern art and felt -- conventional and lacking in exuberance. 

Maybe that's why I love these pieces of paper. They are like showing the inside of my brain. The mess of the process that produces the other thing I love, the result, the neat print-outs of carefully coordinated drawings, with excellence of line weight. 

It's like when you look at something, and you see immediately that it's not right, even though it took an unspeakable number of hours to create. My mind does an automatic calculation of the additional hours it will take to fix. It's tempting to cheat, except that it's wrong. Wrong now is disastrous later. It's like when I set out to make a carnival mask for my 5 week-old son his first Halloween and started cutting, hoping that he'd be able to see out of it, and breathe. The proportions mattered, if I didn't want him screaming. He sat in his little seat on my desk at work, where he came with me, and I put it over his tiny face, the face that I had spent 5 weeks gazing at, and it was perfect. Proof that there is a connection between the eyes and the brain that goes straight to the hand. It matters what you look at because it will inform your brain. 

And we're back to childhood again, and what the child, the little person is looking at and does, and that it matters. 

When my son was not quite two, I took him to Rotterdam and to Paris. We took a train from Brussels to Rotterdam, and he sat on my lap and looked at the countryside sliding past the train. The houses and the barns, the cows, and he pointed, and said, "Buildings different here." His English was good, but not quite fluent. 

"Yes!" I told him, delighted with his observation, the fact that he was looking, and seeing, and that he was mentally comparing it to what he knew. Also that he was not falling over from jet-lag. 

In Paris, he made me take photos of all the equestrian statues and scultures. Outside the Grand Palais, he pointed up towards the sky, and told me to take a picture. I didn't even bother to question him. Of course there was a horse sculture up there. I scrutinized the freeze at about that level, and there it was. 

A year later, I wanted to see Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in "Before Sunrise". Being an architect, and an unemployed one (one of the most common sorts of architects), on top of being a single mother, a babysitter was a luxury we didn't know. I didn't to drive up I95 to take him to my parents' house. He was little. If I went to a matinee, he'd nap through it, right? No. He watched the movie, and his little hand went up and pointed to the gigantic image of beautiful 19th century palaces in Vienna.

"Paris!" he announced to the entire darkened movie theater. 

I stopped breathing. Not only did he remember the name of the city, but the buildings did look just exactly like the Grand and Petit Palais on either side of avenue Winston Churchill. 

More reason to worry that he was heading to a future in my profession. Imagine my relief 14 years later, when he decided to go to law school. That lasted not quite a full year before he tried something called "applied foreign langauges". I mean, do you do anything with languages other than apply them? That lasted almost two years before scary psychological symptoms were triggered by any mention of the future. When you have to go lie down and take deep breaths just thinking about your future, you're maybe not on the right track. 

So, how do these parents who kind of program their kids do it, exactly? Having been the kind of kid who colored inside the lines in shaded tones of Crayola, who dutifully did all her work, granted, with a naughty independent streak that exasperated my kindergarten teacher, who told me we learn to read after we learn to tie our shoes (wrong thing to say to me), and who did not appreciate my delight at sending hundreds of little pieces of colored construction paper into the air with a gleeful laugh, when she was mentally praising what she had been taking for an totally unacticipated effort to help clean up, I knew what that gets you, and what it does not. At least in my case, all my self-direction usually went along with my teachers' expectations. Not so in my son's case, but I didn't want him growing up to please people and harboring romantic expectations. I certrainly didn't want him lying in the dark, using deep breathing to cope. 

"Stop. You have to do what you love. Choose. Fashion photography or fashion design. Pick one and do what you love."

"Fashion design." 

I breathed a sigh of relief. Short-lived, for and, so began another messy process, the inside of the brain spilling all over the place, the indomptable self resolutely refusing to accept mediocrity and others' exigencies, when they do not match one's own, to arrive at what looks like a tidy, straight line to the result. The job. The job. That first one that matters so much and makes you in other minds what you are in your own. That's why resumes exist. Padding and lying are inadmissable. Tidying up, however, inside the lines is a very good idea. I breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction, and I looked back over the signs that pointed to this future. They were there in abundance.

I realized that fashion isn't a slave maker or something dreamt up to inflict shameon those who have a knack for getting it wrong, or being a little too short, or shapely. It's not only what you see in the pages of Vogue. It's design. It requires as much of the wearer as it does of the designer. It takes courage, and creativity. It's the twin sibling of architecture, involving an identical process to arrive at a product that shares the same tension between art and functionality, both requiring significant means to produce, and to acquire. He borrowed and read my architecture books alongside BOF and profiles on fashion designers, and he quit fashion school when it insisted he betray purity of line and architecture of clothing, or be considered lazy for not complicating things. While I sewed my own clothes, that was not his thing, which is fine. I don't, after all, build my own buildings. 

When I finaly get through this renovation, I will tidy up all those boxes and folders of photos and sketches, calucations and notes, and maybe make the perfect scrapbook story of who we are, past, present, future. 

...

Busta plans now, huh huh, gotta have it

Sometimes you have to relativiser, after a good long "Noooooooooooooooooo."

I don't cry anymore. Like ever. A beloved pet or human would have to die before I cry again. Over plans? No way. That's one thing that moving to France taught me, the fine art of relativiser. The French have everything in perspective, except when they are indulging in massive histrionics. It's one or the other really. Some aren't above manipulation of others, while the art of the manipulation of the self is raised to heights all of us should wish to attain, for others' comfort, along with that of tying the perfect scarf knot. The nec plus ultra being the sassy small scarf, tied around the neck and framed by a sensational blouse collar. OMG. I ache to be able to pull off that look.

Anyway, I have parfaitement relativisé the multiple (it turns out) things I messed up and/or assumed were just fine in my excitement to wrap my plans up, and I did not give up. No way am I giving up. What do they say? Where there's a will, there's a way? Yes, there is. And like the gym walls instructed me in elementary school, When the going gets tough, the tough get stronger. I am the tough. Who knew? I certainly didn't feel that way back then, but I guess I was pretty badass. That's what Birdy said when she looked at my 6th grade class photo the other day. I saw angry and depressed, but badass is so much better. I am no whiny bitch.

I sharpened my determination and got badass.

So, how come? It's complicated, but, in short, first I discovered that I had attributed about 12.5 centimeters in width to an already very narrow building. This is catastrophic, but it was also a fact. Deal with it.

Thank God I went out and checked one more time, just to be absolutely certain because this is a Golden Rule of construction, never to be messed with, ever: never carry wishful thinking into bids and construction. You have to know your plans are as close to absolutely and divinely right as is humanly possible, and you have anticipated every last issue, or you are to pay and pay in cash money. All of the consequences of those missing 12.5 centimeters cascaded through my head, like those numbers on old adding machines that turn and turn until one by one they fall into the result.

That result was that the other end of the building, which was absolutely and very definitely 336.5 cm wide, is not, outside to outside face of concrete block.

The worst of these consequences would be on the stair wall location, making even the Japanese stair for tiny houses unrealistic, short a brilliant and complicated solution (cash money).

The other was headroom under the sloping roof at the mezzanine level.

And, the problem with the Japanese stair and the wall behind it was further complicated by the location of the heat pump unit (Awesome. Hitachi, high temperature) and all the very beautifully wrought copper pipe connections to the existing underground radiator pipes for the house. I can hear them breaking out in their best Busta Rhymes, Don't touch me now. The guys who work with him are in awe of his work. Orfèvrerie they called it. We paid cash money for those. Not touching them now. Unh hunh. Not now. Huh huh, huh-huh.

So, check it out, I think I found a solution now 'cause it's my duty now. It's some real shit, now.

Hunh huh. Huh huh, huh-huh.

I sat down and I thought, and I sketched, and I came up with alternatives, and I balled them up, and I drew some more, and I thought, and I said oh shit! Hey hey hey let's go, and I won't ever stop. I'm trying to keep up with the pace because I GOTTA HAVE IT. Oh shit!

O-M-G.

Here we go. Violence.
Steady on the left.
Hey y'all, calm down.
Steady on the right.
Hey y'all, calm down.

I am pumped. I got this 'cause I gotta have this.

So, I am back at the drawing board, and I'm gonna make this work now.

....