our storied parking spot

Our neighborhood email list is abuzz with the news that multiple seven story apartment buildings are permitted to be built a block and a half west of where we live.  It's been an interesting discussion about environment, neighborhood character, gentrification, equity and the amount of density our neighborhood has been forced to accept.

Mostly we come down in favor of the density, but we're still very grateful to have squeezed in our little parking spot since street parking is about to get very competitive.   Someday we'll have an electric car and a good place to charge it too.   In the meantime, we don't complain about squeezing through bushes as we get out of the car, or having the kids climb through the back seat, entering the car through one door.

For your entertainment here are four bizarre incidents that have taken place in our parking spot.

1. When D was about 5 he awoke to the sound of a woman singing outside his bedroom window.   For security, we designed the ground-floor windows facing the parking spot small and high up, so D wasn't able to see out them, even while standing on the bed.   D spoke to the woman and she seemed untroubled by his little voice and kept rifling through our car, through a window a kid had accidentally left open.   She didn't find anything worth stealing so no harm done and we had a conversation with him about not confronting thieves.
2. Cars do get broken in to a lot and there are some weird people passing through our alley, so one night when we heard a knock on the door at about 11:30 pm, we were worried.   It was the police.   They had been passing by and noticed that our car doors were wide open, so they wondered if our car had been broken in to.   Nope!  In a flurry of unloading, Jack had left the doors open and had actually left his wallet in the cup holder.   In this case, any unsavory characters casing cars on the alley probably assumed the car had already been ransacked.  
3. Sometime in the early pandemic, when life was peculiarly paused, I found a paper bag behind our car, containing the contents of a woman's purse.   There was no wallet, but there was make-up and a glasses case and other odds and ends.  It looked like what a thief would leave behind after taking a wallet and a phone.  I looked through it all and found a receipt for a QFC nearby and I noticed that it had an employee discount applied.   I called the QFC and they found the employee who had recently had her things stolen out of her trunk, instead of her purse, like I thought.   She came and picked up her things and solving a little mystery and doing something kind made me feel good for a few days.
4. Lastly, earlier this summer, Jack returned home at about 9:30 in the morning after dropping D off at some camp and there was a car parked in our spot with a very naked man standing next to it.   He was not in the process of changing clothes, or thankfully any other unsavory activity, but was just standing there.  Jack hesitantly told him that it was our spot and then drove around the block and by the time he got back, thankfully the man and his car had disappeared back in to the streets of Seattle.

Spring 2020 gardening

Here's an update on our gardening efforts, with links and plant names so I don't have to search my emails for them anymore....

On The Ground

We transplanted a black currant from a neighbor.  Hopefully it gets enough sun on the north side of our fence.

I was sooo excited to get some big rocks from a construction site in West Seattle after the garbage truck and other construction trucks pulverized part of our parking strip starting in January (and several more times in February...).   Then someone took our rocks!  These rocks were all I could manage while using a car and a dolly so it's not like someone just causally carried them down the street.

The garbage truck driver's job was made more difficult by the months-long process of pouring new concrete on half the street and several sidewalk curb cuts, so maybe it was him?  Jack thinks that the street inspector told the paving contractors to remove the rocks because they were taken in the middle of the afternoon while the inspectors and contractors were around. 

Over the winter I put in some paving stones in the parking strip and a few months ago we put up the birdhouse we painted over the winter.

Last year the Japanese snowbells bloomed in late May, so we are still looking forward to that.  The daphne  was so much better this year (this pic is from before it bloomed) and the creeping jenny is just the right thing for the shady under-tree, crap soil area.  Below the daphne is some aggressive oregano which makes weeding smell great.

This is not our cat, but he's a frequent sight in our neighborhood.  We call him (or her?) Shoes.

On The Roof

The high country blueberry bush planted in spring 2019 has been joined by a little bluegold blueberry bush and I hope this results in more berries.   I'm encouraged by all the blooms.

I bought some pink coral bells and put two down on the parking strip and three on the roof.   The latest round of construction work has been a three-weeks-and-counting job where they are putting down conduit for comcast in our alley, the street, and the alley to the north.   They further tore up the grass and killed another coral bell plant I'd just put in, a rather sorry sarcococca plant and a new catmint plant.

Also on the roof I planted pale evening primrose (white buttercup sundrops) from seed, a hayscented fern, a big bluestem grass, and several blue false indigo baptisia australis.

I got some lettuce and cauliflower plants and planted more kale and spinach from seed, as well as some onions and carrots for the first time.

For the cats we put in some seeds for a nicer cat grass and cat nip.  Toru spends quite a bit of time on the roof, even when it's cold.   He almost always follows us up there too.  Luna comes up occasionally, when it's warm, though she still insists on struggling to open the cat door with her paw instead of just pushing through it.

We've got parsley and cilantro self seeding, which is just fine by me.  Our delicious chocolate mint plant continues to thrive (surprising no one) and many bulbs from last year came up again.  I think they're hyacinths and ornamental onions, but we'll see when they bloom.   The pansies are self-sufficient and pretty, so I like them.

D is a good garden helper.

house plant roll call

When Jack said recently that our bathroom Boston fern would look better if it had companion plants, I took it to heart and tapped in to my desire cultivate more house plants.

But first, I'm sad to report that our Meyer lemon tree succumbed to something at the beginning of the year, after 1.5 years with us.  It smelled so good and we made lemonade once or twice.  I'd consider getting another, if we had a better idea of what went wrong.

Before I get to the new plants, here's a picture of our aloe, which was actually sun burned from being in the kitchen.  It looks so much better now.  Yes, having a sunny kitchen is kind of a nice problem.  The other senior members of the house hold plants are the fern I mentioned earlier, some spider plants for the cats to occasionally munch on and an absolutely easy going rubber plant that was a house warming gift.

Now for the newcomers, whose names I will mostly not remember unless I document them here. 

Though they are not yet in their ideal pots, we welcomed a trio of sansevieria trifasciata (mother in law's tongue, from IKEA).   I've been dreaming of plants here since we got the coat rack up two years ago.  The two story open space around the entry gets eastern light  Did you notice the young black cat who wishes we would take him for lazy cat walks?  

In the bathroom, the fern's new friends are a purple waffle plant and a pothos 'N Joy' (the variegated one on the bottom shelf) .   In the kitchen we have a trio of succulents, called echevaria afterglow (red), sedeveria (jet beads, the small green one) and crassula (curly green, large green one).

Not quite in the house, we have a pair of perennials in a pot together. The smaller flowers are a Touran white saxifraga and then there's a hellebora, by the door, ah...  whose full name is shooting star lenten rose (heleboro shooting star).

The stairwell is one of our favorite features of the house, and it has a lot of diffuse light from the skylights and the transparent panels between the stairs and the second and third floor rooms.  We have a lemon button fern and then this little tree is a dracaena (marginata sunray)

house technology update

In December Jack completed two long anticipated house projects. When we wired up the house we forgot about a doorbell so Jack installed one, which required a fair bit of electrical work to bring power out by the door.   It also took us a long time to decide what we wanted. Now we have a Nest doorbell with the camera on it hooked up to the Google home app, with a motion sensor alarm on the front door.   I think our best home security is still the fortress like quality of our tall house, with only one door.

We also now have two old-fashioned cordless phones which take incoming calls to our landline (which we are required to have because of the elevator) and both of our cell phone numbers.   This, along with our smart watches, allows us to leave our phones at a central point in the house. The watches are useful but not entertaining so it helps us reduce our screen time.

Another benefit of the phone system is in relation to kids. On cell phones I make the talk on speakerphone to reduce his radiation exposure. I do the same. I like having a phone that he can talk on normally, that we all can easily locate in case of emergency  and something that is just a phone, rather than a camera/game console/computer.

Of course, since I am breast-feeding  and recording Dd’s naps throughout the day I do still end up using my phone often. On the other hand, our new surface charger for the phones actually makes it impossible to charge my phone unless it is in the central location, because the regular charging plug-in is blocked by the adapter needed for the surface charger.  There are a few kinks to work out regarding contacts on the phones but I would say it’s a  solid start to using our phones less.

 As for the google home hub, it’s in the kitchen and at this point is mostly an expensive digital clock. We have the Always Listening mode (where are you can say “OK Google” and then a command) turned off because it creeps me out.

 Can you tell Dd is having a long nap right now?

la boîte

One of the oddball things I wanted to do when building our own house was make a space for a batting cage for baseball practice. Originally, i was thinking of a place where you could pitch or hit, but that would require 70-75 feet of space, so when we started seriously looking at the lot we eventually bought (only 45 feet long) I revised my mental picture of how I would use it.  

In the end, I was able to carve out a roughly 12' wide space along the side of the house which is fine for batting practice, at least.  This is why the first floor of our house is smaller than the 2nd and 3rd floors- which wasn't easy to build (that's why we have four big steel beams) but actually fine for how the house works- especially because we were limited in the total amount of floor space by the zoning code.  It's nicer to have that space on the top floor than down on level 1.  The overhang provided by the house also gives us dry access to the bike / outdoor equipment storage accessed from there. 

During the design process, Cari decided we needed a shorthand way to refer to the space, so she coined "la boîte." Totally works for our family, and I think I have heard the grandparents start to use it, as well.

This spring I was able to order a net online and put it up so that I could start using the space for hitting.  La boîte is too tight for regular balls to ever be used in it (I think even tennis balls may be too much), but I already had a golf-ball-sized whiffle ball pitching machine, and I been able to use that.  Cari was also kind enough to give me soft-toss a fair amount, as well.  The net I ordered was sized to hold in golf balls, and it's nice to never, ever have to worry about one escaping.  The net is only 34 feet long (the length of the house - I was able to order a custom size) and that is plenty to get good batting practice.

It has been really gratifying how much D has used the space, as well.  We want to thank our parents for indulging him with countless hours of "baseball" down there while they are taking care of him.  He is far more excited for T-ball to start up again next spring than he was when it ended in June.  

Eventually, I would like to be able to push the net together and roll it up somehow to clear the space below, but that is pretty far down the list.  At first I felt a bit embarrassed about having the net hanging down from below the house, but, like most things, I got used to it and it doesn't bother me anymore (can't speak for Cari on this one).  Someday, I am going to get the outlets working down there, maybe some lights on the underside of the house, a new (small foam ball) pitching machine, and practice lots. Maybe I will hit a baseball over the outfielders head next year!

so much … stuff

We just finished our self imposed challenge to get rid of 100 things in 100 days.  A highlight was gifting on Buy Nothing a bike I’d been meaning to sell for over two years.  Jack also got rid of some soccer cleats he’d had at work for well over a year, having intended to sell them on eBay.  Most items went to Goodwill, including many kids’ books which had come from there in the first place.  I was surprised by how much the small gesture of listing a discarded item was just enough of a reward to be motivating.  We have a long way to go to make our house and lives more manageable.

This weekend D and I are going to two birthday parties, for which we are bringing gifts.  I think I managed to think of good ideas for the brithday boy and girl, but I certainly appreciate that the vast majortiy of kids’ parties we are invited to request us to not bring gifts.  It is better for everyone.

Perhaps I have a warped image of myself, but I really don’t think I’m particularly un-generous.  Giving meaningful gifts or ones where I’m confident that I have a great idea is really fun and rewarding.  Unfortunately most gift-giving occaisions are just not like that.

On the recent occaision of D’s fourth birthday, we limited the grandparents to only giving one gift.  They mostly stayed the course and he got very nice things: one hand made ukelele case, a game he’s played several times already, an easel he’ll use for years and “experience” gifts that make memories instead of clutter.  

Looking around our house, there are so many things Jack and I have given each other as gifts.  Some are great, but they can’t all be.  As we embark on our second 100 things in 100 days challenge, giving Jack some tangible gift for Father’s days just seems perverse.

In a few months we’ll have been in our house for two years, with more space than we’ve ever had before.  We stayed at our Boston apartment for three years, followed by a major possessions purge when we only kept things that we mailed back to Seattle.  In Seattle we spent about  two years in two different apartments on the same floor of the same building.  Prior to this, moving has been the primary method of controlling the volume of our possessions, so we really need to stay on top of it so that we don’t drown in stuff in the decades we hope to spend here in our house.

roof pavers are done!

After two months, we’ve finally finished installing the 200+ pavers on our roof.  Jack did almost all the work, but my dad and I also moved and laid down quite a few (and my mom did extra babysitting).  We never did weigh them, but they are 18” square and we think each is about 40 lbs.  The roof was engineered for the weight of them but it was kind of alarming to realize that making a tall stack of them in one spot on the roof could actually exceed the allowed load.   We got them delivered and then we moved them from the parking spot to the yard, to the basement and up the elevator in small batches.  The we installed them on plastic pedestals with adjustable heights and angles to counter act the slight slope of the roof.  Good work, Jack.

The next step is to build planters around the outside and for the four square cut outs.  Also we need to fix the starter to find out if our buy-nothing barbecue works or not. 

Who gives a crap?

Sometimes life is improved by mundane day-to-day changes that are of absolutely no interest to those not affected by them.  Let me tell you about one such change!

Our male kitten, Toru, has had a rough few months.  Sometime around Christmas he stopped jumping like a normal cat and we assumed he had seriously hurt one of his legs.  He struggled to get up on the couch, dragging himself up with just his front paws in a really pathetic way and he was eager to play but wanted to lie down while doing it.  It looked like a problem with one of his back legs.  We took him to the vet, tried some pain meds and enforced rest.  It didn’t seem to help so we even had an x-ray of his back legs and hips, but everything was normal.  We decided to just accept the mystery.

Around this time we bought a second self cleaning litter box on craigslist and hooked it up in the basement.  Three cats have a lot of outputs.  We had to set up a third litter box in the room Toru was confined to and all the cats much prefer to use the labor intensive and smelly traditional box. 

We gave up on confinement but then had a trouble with Emo pooping in the basement.  Finally we found a good schedule for the two automatic boxes to clean themselves at different times and Emo got back on board, but Toru rebelled.  We actually would see him go in to the litter box in the basement and then step back out to go to the bathroom on the floor.  We we not happy but figured that part of it was that he was in pain.

Now a few months later, he has gotten a bit better and does jump and play standing up.   The bad bathroom habit continued for a long time, but now I’m so excited that we’ve gone over a week with no one pooping outside of the litter box. 

This site was very helpful http://www.catexpert.co.uk/cats/how-to-clean-up-cat-pee-or-poo/.  It has lots of possible causes and potential solutions.  We started small by cleaning up with Dumb Cat cleaner, because if they smell anything they’ll just stick with their old habit.  Then I think the magic trick was putting some food in the problem corner of the basement.  It has worked like a charm!

Not having a basement [corner] full of poop is such a treat.

July–December 2017 house projects

Since my last house project post in July, we’ve accomplished a few more house tasks.

• On a lovely fall weekend, before the rain started, we planted heavenly bamboo (nandina, not actually bamboo) and put in rocks for last construction obligation to our neighbors.  We’re lucky to be abe to borrow a truck from Jacks parents for projects!

• On the north side of our house, we planted daphne, rosemary, a yellow blooming lilac and three sarcococca plants.
• We put up a peg board in the basement and organized our tools, which have been in disarray for quite a while.
• Between Thansgiving weekend and New Year’s we built cabinets in our bedroom and and the first floor bathroom, and built a bucket laundry chute.   Thanks for the cabinet help, Mom and Dad!  Dropping the laundry from levels one and two, all the way down to the basement is awesome.

• We’ve had a frustrating and mysterious electrical problems that all seemed to trace back to the vanity lights in the master bathroom.  For over a year we just didn’t turn on the lights to avoid the problem.  Luckily there are other bathroom lights that worked.  Finally this fall, Jack un-wired the almost the whole bathroom to diagnose the problem.  It turned out to be the DC adapter in one of the vanity lights.  After ordering two replacement parts (the first of which wouldn’t fit in to the fixture), Jack re-attached the lights.  Putting up the fixtures is really tricky because of the tight space between the mirror  and the wall.  The first time we did it took us about an hour of working together.  After all the struggles, the threads were stripped so Jack couldn’t use a screw any more.  Jack is optimistic about the utility of hot glue, so he tried that twice without success.  Then he bought these super strong magnets that worked like magic to re-attach the light, perfectly straight, in about 10 seconds.

• This might be a stretch to include in a post about house tasks, but we spent a lot of time on it, so I’ll throw it in.  With three cats our self-flushing litter box was under considerable strain.  We spent a few evenings up to our elbows in *** deep cleaning it in our shower.  Then we ended up installing a second one of the same type in our basement, which takes times too because we use this hacked control board that this guy sells online so that we can avoid buying the cleaning cartridges that are the expensive re-occuring cost for the little box.  There are now NO EXCUSES for not using a litter box correctly!
• We successfully covered the house in Wifi using a 3-pack of mesh routers.  It’s not that the house is so big, it’s just that it is very strangely shaped (5 small levels). We had done the data wiring and, amazingly, we were able to find both ends of enough wires to create a wired connection at all three access points.  In the last, most difficult one (high in the wall in the pantry), Jack re-wired the end dozens of times (he was running out of slack coming out of the wall) before figuring out that his tester was malfunctioning!  Gaah!
• We also had an “anti-project.”  Unfortunately some of our windows are leaking.  Stay tuned for the soltuion…

a bunch of plants

We're officially done with construction now that we've replaced the plants we took out (nasty old bamboo) on the border between our property and our neighbors.  It took them a while to agree on a plant amongst the four townhomes and then we waited until the beginning of the rainy season to plant them.  They are lemon lime nandina and now that I'm familiar with them I'm noticing other nandina all over the neighborhood. 

For ourselves we planted sarcococca which will have amazing smelling white flowers in the winter.  I hope this area is shady enough for them.

We also planted a winter-blooming daphne, which should have fragrant pink flowers, and a Beijing Gold lilac tree.

We really have a lot to learn about plants, but I have done a fair bit of gardening and weeding for other people.  I must say that making our own decisions is kind of a thrill.   

progress on a few little projects

It's very satisfying to finish projects around the house, no matter the size.

This window is on the fourth floor penthouse (access to roof).  By mistake, it so low that it is a code violation (that they didn't catch), but at this height, even code compliant windows are scary.  We used metal pipes and I'm really excited to be able to leave this window open because it is very good for ventilation, has a screen, and is less of a concern if it rains unexpectedly.

We'd planned to put a food poster of some kind in the kitchen, and we finally found one that I like, from Pop Chart Labs.  It's a diagram of edible plants families.   There are a lot of tacky food posters out there.

This towel rack is a detail I've been looking forward to.  On the kitchen island, there is not a good place for a towel rack, so we came up with an unconventional spot under the counter.  It's also where we have the garbage disposal switch and a kitchen stool to access high storage and windows.  It is on the kitchen side of the island so it's not visible from most of the room.

Last month we finally put up this mirror, fixed some wiring and installed the light fixtures in one of the bathrooms.  Drilling through tile to mount it was harder than I expected and required a diamond drill bit (who knew?).  I was happy to find the mirror at Second Use, although I managed to forget to use the coupon I had.














This totally random formatting is brought to you by Google Blogger.  I can't find any good free blogging program.  In May, Open Live Writer, which replaced the older Windows Live Writer, stopped working.   You can write blog posts directly in Word, but not with google blogs if you have Windows 7, which I do.  I find this frustrating.

house cleaning with a house

It should come as no surprise that taking care of a house is a lot more work than taking care of a one thousandishish square foot apartment.  Yet, I am still occasionally taken aback.

While I reserve the right to change my mind in the future, I'm not ready to hire a house cleaner, even though I heard that the Joneses have one.  My objections stem from a combination of frugality, pride and ideology.

The idea that I can do something productive that is not on a computer appeals to me.  Even though it isn’t much exercise, I feel called to fight against the dystopian future where we automate everything except eating and then spend grudging hours on the treadmill so that our bodies continue to function.  Or perhaps that is already the present?

One of my first jobs as a kid was cleaning houses and I found it to be fairly enjoyable.  I have fond memories of vacuuming up some pretty gnarly places such as the ceiling of a very old Irish farmhouse I stayed in.  Cleaning is satisfying, unlike straightening up, which is onerously full of sidetracks, and in our house, stair climbing.

Does this mean our house is dirtier than we’d like?  Absolutely.  There are still floors in our house that have *never* been mopped and  vestiges of construction dust, since we were so crunched for time that there was no post-construction deep clean before we moved in.

Though we’ve long held a preference for non-carpeted floors, this is the first time we had them.  With wood floors, when the windows are wide open in the heat, the dust bunnies leap about athletically in the breeze.  To combat this herd, we now have three vacuums.  The first is a backpack vacuum, which is quite necessary with all the stairs, the second is a shopvac for the car and all the projects on our list and the third is our new Roomba.

Cleaning robots like the Roomba and our beloved Cat Genie litter box somehow don’t compromise my values like a hired person would. 

Disclaimer: I fully recognize the hypocrisy of this D.I.Y. post, considering the amount of cleaning help (mostly laundry and dishes) our parents do while watching D.

indoor projects

 

Here’s a loooong list of house projects.  There is enough to do that prioritizing the time and money can be tricky, but we’ll get them done eventually.

Kitchen

Completed:

• flipped refridgerator door swing
• electrical
• built ikea cabinets for kitchen

To Do:

• add panels to conceal the litter box area and contain more of the litter pellets
• install instant hot water on prep sink
• install a hand towel rack in the kitchen
• assemble and install cabinets in dining room
• create an awesome light feature above dining area
• replace prep sink faucet, which is too small and low flow to use
• build a “barbecue cart” that will roll in to the empty under-counter space
• install a water filtration system (pending discussions about what it is worth to us)

 

Bedrooms and Bathrooms

Completed:

• built ikea cabinets for bathrooms
• electrical
• hung one mirror and one plant
• installed a bidet
• installed master bedroom closet system
• installed most of smaller bedroom closet systems

To Do:

• put in a mirror or medicine cabinet and light fixtures in bathroom
• build sliding closet doors for master closet
• install three toilet paper holders (one actually needs to be moved)
• add tile on wall just outside of master shower which seems to get a little bit wet
• assemble and install cabinets in master bedroom, master bathroom, second bathroom, which will include the laundry chute
• build a storage bench along the windows

 

Rest of the House

Completed:

• assembled two futons
• put up coat rack in entry way
• attached shelves to walls (baby/earthquake safety)
• hung up pictures (just the frames we already had)
• put peephole, chain and chain guard on front door
• put up mailbox
• put up two hanging racks in the basement (my parents did)
• installed doors and inner shelves on staircase bookshelf
• installed peg board for tool storage

To Do:

• build a desk
• diagnose and fix electrical issues (flickering lights, master bathroom lights, some stair lights)
• put in more outlets in basement
• put safety bars over the terrifyingly low fourth floor window
• put in drywall on basement interior walls
• install a doorbell and perhaps security features
• install a cell phone docking station
• install speakers and clean up the routers using all the low voltage wires we put in
• finish or replace the supports for the clear moxy pannels next to the stairs
• buy and install blinds for whole house (currently we have hardware store temporary blinds)