Theo's Christmas Spirit

I'm thinking that dogs and Christmas don't fit well together.  Which seems wrong on first blush since Theo was essentially a Christmas present for Kanha last year, arriving on January 7th, the adorable ball of multi-colored fluff he was.  But Christmas went a lot better when he lived with us via photo, not in the fur and blood.  

You see, Theo is a chewer, always has been, and God forbid, always will be?  At least during his puppy and adolescent years that he appears to be mired in.  He started on the Christmas tree, an 8 foot tall decoration that took a heroic effort by Kanha and I just to get into its stand -- me trying to maneuver the too-fat trunk, her trying to hold the tree stand still, both of us completely out of sync.  When the tree finally landed with a thud in the hole, with a millimeter to spare on each side, I plopped down on a chair and decided decorating could wait for a day or two.  

A disappointing decision for Theo, it turned out, because he had to wait those couple of days before he got to munch on his first ornament.  He started on the easy ones -- the green paper 3D Christmas tree Kanha had taped together as a seven year old, the shiny red ball that crunched into pieces on the bare wood floor after one Theo-sized bite.  I remained in denial after those disasters but when I heard the brand new oversized designer ornament I had gotten at this year's Christmas tea bounce to the floor, I realized that Theo had misunderstood when Kanha and I told him we were going to get him a toy for Christmas -- he obviously thought his present was the tree itself.

Soon after, our tree became pantless, a term coined by a friend with a bit more experience in puppy-filled Christmases:  all the ornaments within a foot of the floor got a ride up a few branches.  But that didn't deter our darling dog.  Not only did he see the tree and its accoutrements his gift, he figured every gift, brightly wrapped, tightly tied, lying so comfortably in place on the tree's blanket, was for him too.  So he started picking them up in his teeth (he can get a lot in that oh-so-cute, puppy-sized mouth), carrying them around the house, leaving them in various spots.  When I came down from the second floor a couple of days ago and one of Kanha's gifts appeared entirely destroyed -- wrapping paper in strips, the box akimbo, the padding torn apart -- I surrendered and the tree had to too.  Fortunately the gift in that box -- a beautiful pair of star earrings from my sister Lynn  -- had survived the attack but our tree had to give up its presents.  I rewrapped the earrings and added them to the oversize basket stacked full of all the presents formerly resting under the tree.  The basket now sits on a table next to the tree with no chairs nearby lest Theo attempt to climb up to find his prey once again.

Our pantless Christmas tree

Life's a little duller for Theo right now -- he no longer seems so much in the Christmas spirit with so much less to chew.  But on Christmas, once we've started to open our presents, I'm sure he'll be happy again -- wrapping paper, ribbons, cards, tape, a true feast to behold.  You may hear him howling, Joy to the World, as he happily munches away. 

Storm Trooper Extraordinaire

It's been just over a year since Kanha and I arrived at our old red house on the corner with the white picket fence and, this weekend, we finally actually truly moved in. With the upstairs renovation finally finished, providing three new rooms of space in the Margie-cave, miraculously including empty closets and shelves just longing for a reason to be, it was time to carefully dismantle the precarious pyramids of clothes and computer cables and old magazines sprawled throughout the house, not to mention hauling one bed out the front door, another across the hall, and the fold-down couch up the stairs. Clearly I couldn't do this all by myself so I asked my sister Nancy to come up from Boston for a couple of days -- not for a Maine get-away of walks on Cape Elizabeth rocky beaches or meals out in the Old Port but to do some work.

Are you as lucky as me, or as blessed?  Do you know someone, anyone, who you can ask to help you with something that really isn't fun -- in this particular case, lifting heavy pieces of furniture up and down stairs and back and forth across the room to find their just right spot, browsing endless pieces of 5th grade artwork and very short stories to decide what to save, sorting rubber bands and hair bands, vacuuming and dusting and just plain cleaning up  -- and she will say yes, without hesitation, not out of obligation but simply out of love?  Moreover, said person is not just willing but is eminently qualified for the job:  muscles rarely seen on a gal of her age (the specific number I am declining to mention...), a slight lack of sentimentality necessary to quickly reduce the overwhelming piles of junk, a linear focus on getting the task at hand crossed off the list, a shared sense of humor, and an endless stream of interesting pop culture commentary from high brow -- reviews of the latest best-seller she's read -- to low -- who is going to win The Amazing Race this year??  I'm not foolish enough to care if it's chance or grace that brought her into my life, I know to just be grateful.

Bedroom Become Family Room -- Hurray!

So starting at noon on Friday, together we storm-trooped the house, room by room, with Kanha and her friend LZ avoiding the rooms we were in and Theo finding them the most comfortable place to be.  Within less than 36 hours we had recreated the home I had imagined from the first day I saw this place, minus a few pictures on the walls and a coffee table or two.  When we were finished and I was racing Nancy to catch the 5 o'clock bus back to the big city, I felt a sense of relief and renewal unexpected -- seemingly unwarranted -- for the size of our two-day accomplishment.  All we had done, really, was reorganize a few hundred square feet of floor space and put a bunch of boxes away.  But with the help of my wonderful loving sister, we had essentially restructured my life and, in so doing, laid out a direction for me to move toward.  

A Fantastic Marriage

This afternoon my house husband, Nick, aka my contractor, left, and I couldn't have been happier.  Not that I'm going back on the vows we made when we first came together to fix my third floor.  We've stuck by each other in good times -- when the skylights opened and brightened up the rooms, and the blue glass tiles combined for a penthouse-looking shower - and bad -- when it turned out the glass shower doors didn't quite fit.  And I didn't run the other way when, as the hours went on, he, and the plumber, and the electrician, and the painter, got richer and I got poorer.  But it was always a contract marriage, good for the time it took to transform an attic to a haven -- or as a friend named it, "the Margie-Cave."

And transformed it has been.  Shiny white walls and painted floors, all angles and corners -- great for a game of hide-and-seek as Kanha has made sure I know, built-in dressers and file cabinets, a closet you can  walk into and a bedroom window you can jump out of (only to meet the fire code...), colorful pendant lights and sleek and sharp track lights, a bedroom and bath so functional yet so fabulous.  The timeline and the price tag have made me murmur under my breath but the results make me want to shout for joy out all three skylights at once.  I can only hope my next marriage works out as well.  Thanks Nick.

My Neighbors Took My Grass!

Someone stole my pot plant last night!  I went outside this morning and all that was left was a little short stubby stick of green and brown stuck out of the ground where my treasure had been.  In happier, more intoxicated times, it looked like this:

I had such dreams for my plant.  Just a couple of days ago, my house husbands and cannabis consultants. Nick and Dave, reported that my plant was a gal after all, bursting with little buds, high in the air, capable of, after a little drying and rolling, making me and a few others high ourselves.  According to Nick, my little bit of greenery could produce thirty to forty joints, which, I think (not that I know....), could produce quite a few dollars for my pocketbook.

Ahh, but that wasn't my idea -- I didn't want to get rich, I wanted to get stoned, preferably with a few select friends who would really appreciate this find -- you know who you are... -- and who would also, just as important, keep me from imagining myself as the lead character in Psycho, under the shower or not.  You see, my own personal history with marijuana has featured plenty of paranoia -- I was sort of a misfit with all the other "free spirits" on the 3rd floor of Brown at UMass in 1974.

But this was my grass, just about literally -- how could I not smoke it?  I had it all planned -- I'd sneak out in the middle of the night, cut the leaves down, bring them in to dry, and plan my pot party.  But that dream has gone up in flames, or more likely down a neighbor's lungs.  I guess I can hope they'll do the neighborly thing and invite me over to smoke MY grass.

Calm and Quiet

A quiet week in Portland.  Kanha is off at sleepover camp in western Maine, aptly named "Survivor Camp" -- I think she will! -- while Theo and I are home holding the fort.  We got back from vacation on Block Island, in Rhode Island, on Friday night.  I know, I've been told how crazy I am to go on an island vacation in another state when we live in Maine, the state of hundreds of craggy rocked, surf splashed, stunning islands.   But still BI, a home away from home for me, was beautiful, mostly because it was shared with old friends who make time stop, laughs flow and love abound over a bonfire and folk songs on a moonlit beach.  Plus the water was warm enough to swim in -- I went in three times in five days, which might be a record for me, Ms. Salt and Sand Hater.

The calm feels odd after a summer of running Kanha from camp to camp -- soccer, tennis, basketball, gymnastics, Fractured Fairy Tales, writing -- phew, I think I got them all -- and a July of a promising romance.  Now Kanha is out of my hair and the romance has gone ka-phoo-y, and Theo and I are sitting around licking our wounds.  Well, he's probably just licking his paws or one of our pairs of shoes.  Not all bad I suppose -- time for respite, recovery, and rejuvenation before the onslaught of school, my new business (more on that in a future post -- perhaps I will have a story about how Kanha and I are not going to starve to death...), a future romance or two -- maybe??, and cooler temps.  Here's to a lovely end to summer 2011.

House Husbands

Last week, Nick, my contractor, went on vacation, which was a bit of a shock.  After six weeks or so of his being here every day, we're kind of like an old married couple, the happy version -- he helps me with the groceries when I come home, I pick up the dog poop in the yard for both my and his dog, I ignore the dirt he tramps around the house, he ignores the junk I stack on the edge of the stairs that gets in his way as he carries lumber up the stairs.  I suppose we might move into the OMC, grumpy version, if this project goes into 2012 but for now I'm enjoying having a temporary "husband."

But every good couple needs time apart so once I had adjusted to Nick's upcoming absence, I was feeling pretty good about being a swinging single for a week.  But alas it was not to be -- Dave, the painter, showed up.  Short, smiling, and entirely paint speckled, Dave arrived with his adorable twenty-something son in tow.  My silence was broken but still I smiled widely in response:  if we're down to painting, I must be getting pretty close to move-in date!, I thought.  

Dave made a pretty good replacement husband from the start -- he was cheerful, communicative, puppy-friendly, and a hard worker.  I was happy to have him around for a week.  And the incredible thing about Dave was he took his responsibilities as a husband very seriously.  On Wednesday, while I was toweling off from a shower in front of the mirror in the second floor bathroom, which is accessible only through Kanha's room, I noticed the bathroom door -- which was at least three-quarters closed -- sliding slowly open.  I wheeled around and said something incredibly clear, concise, and comprehensible, like "yow!", only to see Dave standing in front of me.  His body faced the wall, but now his face faced me -- not that I saw it for long.  I was too busy winding my towel around me while he was racing out the door down the stairs.  We reconnoitered awhile later, after I was dressed and he was appropriately chagrined.  He said, "I'm really sorry," and seemed sincere -- so I decided not to quiz him on what he was doing in Kanha's bedroom staring at the wall.  Perhaps getting new painting technique ideas?  

We managed to remain adult about the situation for the rest of the week -- no more too-husbandly behavior on his part -- and he even came up with a new business idea for me before the week was out.  On Friday afternoon, before heading home for the weekend, he brought me outside to show me the pot plant I was inadvertently growing in my front yard.  He appeared to be quite the expert -- told me this plant probably wouldn't get me high because it's male, not female, gave me tips on drying the leaves if desired, suggested it started growing from a roach dropped along the edge of the garden.  At that point, I was happy for his expertise -- maybe I'll try baking it into brownies and taking over for Nancy on Weeds... -- but truly glad he was not my husband.  Hurray, it's next week and Nick is back.  

Heat

Finally it's hot in Portland -- in the 80s every day this week, and I will not be one of those complaining, even in a house with no air-conditioners, a menopausal mom, a dried out flower garden, and a daughter and dog who wither in the sun.  After this winter of snow, ice, shoveling, breath hanging in the air, slippery sidewalks, huge heating bills, and too many temperatures in the teens, all lasting far into April, I will enjoy every drop of sweat I endure.  

Not my two charges though.  Kanha, from the day she came home from Cambodia - a country where the average temperature year-round is around 90 degrees - would emerge from a half hour on the playground on a warm New England day with a head of hair so soaked it appeared she had been for a swim rather than a swing.  The wet head look has diminished over the years, as the pediatrician predicted, but she still tosses and turns in the warmth of her bedroom even with the fan on high.  It's hard to imagine how she would have managed if she hadn't left her original tropical home.

It turns out Theo has the same challenge.  With a body of thick, beautifully brindled hair that doesn't shed, I can't see him enjoying life in western Tennessee where he was born.  Last week, after watching him mope lethargically around our house for several days and discovering that the poor puppy, like all dogs apparently, can't sweat out his discomfort (must have missed that in 7th grade science...), I called every dog groomer within 20 miles until I found one who could cut his hair immediately.  I took him in the next morning and by noon he had emerged a new man.  

With all that hair gone, we could see his real body -- the spindly legs, the cylindrical torso, the big brown eyes unhidden by wisps of fur.  He looked fresh and innocent, and not one little bit like the dog we had taken in -- except for his bushy, oh-so-confident, erect tail that the groomer had left to its own devices.  He was a puppy with a bigger bounce in his step that day, relieved to be a few pounds lighter and a whole lot cooler.

As for me, I sweat on -- or I suppose, when I'm feeling feminine, I "glow."  It's a small price to pay for days that might include an intense workout running up and down the stairs in the park around the corner, a barefoot walk through the surf on a magical Maine beach, a hike through a fairy house building zone up to a view of terns and gulls flying above a tiny estuary that extends to the ocean, and a dinner created from farmer's market delectables at my beautiful mosaic table on our lawn.  So the flowers are drooping and I must dab my brow often.  I'm warm, in many ways.  

Theo's Incredible Journey with His Pal Hunter

Theo, it appears, is not only energetic and adorable but also very very clever.  Yesterday, when the plumber who my contractor Nick hired to outfit my new bathroom inadvertently left the gate to our new fence open, Theo hustled up his buddy, Hunter, his tall thin theoretically more mature friend (Nick's girlfriend's dog who spends most days calmly pacing our yard while Nick works) and the two of them escaped onto the streets of Portland.  Truthfully, it could have been Hunter leading the way -- he lives a few blocks in one direction of our house and his "mom" works a few blocks the other way -- perhaps he just wanted to go home, and Theo would have been happy to sign up for the adventure.  In any case, I can just see Theo's gleeful little face, tongue wagging, paws bouncing down the sidewalk, his pal Hunter at his side, with nary a look back to Grandma, aka me, working away, entirely clueless that her little baby was off, exposed to the dangers of the city.

I'm not sure how long they were gone -- probably just a few minutes --  before the plumber walked through my front door, which was open to the yard, and said, "Are the dogs in here?"  It wasn't terror that struck me, just disbelief.  Wasn't this why I paid $1300 for two small sections of fence?!  I was up and off, with Nick close behind, sprinting down various streets in the West End, shouting  HUNTER!  THEO!  I asked people along the way if they had seen a couple of Mutt and Jeff dogs scampering about and they only looked back with pity.  I purposely stayed on our side of State Street, the major three lane artery carrying all the traffic from Portland over the Casco Bay Bridge to South Portland -- its cars move with a sense of unimpeded urgency -- just their constant stream would keep any unleashed dog from trying to cross, I was sure.   

After about ten minutes, I stopped back at my house to grab my cellphone and there it was -- a blinking light on my voice mail.  It appeared the $2 tag on Theo's collar had been a better investment than the fence.  I listened to a young woman named Annie report she had a dog on her front steps with this phone number around his neck.   When I called her back, she reported Hunter was there too -- thankfully the partners in crime had stuck together.  And where were they?  I'm sure you can guess.  Not only on the other side of State Street, but on the other side of High, the equivalent "vein" taking all the traffic out of South Portland from the bridge back into the city.  Somehow the two of them had managed to cross all six lanes of bustling cars without getting a mark on them.  I like to imagine one looked out for the other, making sure neither got hit, but probably it was just patient drivers who really did brake for the animals in front of them.

I arrived at the address Annie provided a few minutes later on foot with Nick showing up simultaneously in his truck.  We found three smiling and obviously dog-loving twenty-something women sitting on the granite steps of their apartment house petting the two canine pals.  The women had brought down a giant bowl of water that the dogs had indulged in -- the excitement of their journey had gotten them a little tired and thirsty, I guess.  I'm sure they would have been just as happy to hang out there with their new human friends but we said our profuse thank yous quickly and ferried them on their way, Theo walking home with me, Hunter riding back in the truck.  The time had come to split up the perpetrators, to end the caper, to get dogs and humans back home safe, sound, and relieved.

The Price of Cleaning

I spent yesterday morning cleaning, because my cleaning lady was coming.  Or should I say my cleaning guy and gal?    -- the hip twenty-somethings from the eco-friendly cleaning service Green Clean Maine  I hired recently to clean our house.  I must say, there are so many reasons I don't like my cleaning people -- I think of them as the James Franco and Anne Hathaway of the cleaning world, doing a thankless job in front of an unappreciative audience.  (Just to be clear -- this is nothing personal -- they're really quite polite and friendly young people.)

First there's the cost. I pay them $100 every two weeks to mop the floors and dust the windowsills and scrub the tub, a rate that comes out to about $35/hour/cleaning star.  I know they're not pocketing that since they are employed by a real business with a company van, an office, and a boss, but from the purchaser's perspective -- that would be me -- it's a pretty impressive rate of pay for the simple labor they perform.  

Then there's this cleaning before the cleaning issue.  You may wonder why this is necessary, which would prove that you have never paid someone else to clean your house -- or that you're my friend Lynn, whose house never ever has looked like it needed to be cleaned, even in the midst of a fifteen-person dinner party.  But Lynn's house is not my house and after two weeks of Kanha, Theo, and I living our normal lives in our house with too many walls and no closets, the interior looks like fifteen dinner-partiers were here too -- they took their coats off, ate a good meal, read a few magazines and a book or two, helped Kanha with her homework, and even took a quick roll in our beds, and left all of the evidence behind and none of it where I thought it was supposed to be.  (Looking around, I'd imagine they'd report it was a very good party.)  As a result, in order for James and Anne to be able to get to the floors and shelves and table tops to clean them, I must pick up the mess.  

Then, once I've completed the unveiling of as many surfaces as possible, I must vacate my own house.  If I had a job, with an office and a boss (even without the company car), this would not be a problem -- I would trip out the door over the pile of shoes, past the pills of dust, away from the streaks of dirt, drop Kanha at school, do my productive day of work, and come happily home to a shiny clean and and oh-so-so environmentally correct home.  But I have no office other than the one in my bedroom, and that needs to be cleaned too.  Moreover it's unnerving to hang out and see, out of the corner of one eye, Anne scrubbing my soap scum off the bathroom sink or James wiping up last night's cheese crumbs from the counter.  The company's environmental bend assuages just a tiny bit of my liberal guilt over having someone else clean up my mess -- there's plenty left for me to wallow in.  So I make up an errand or two and head out for an hour and a half and try to feel more productive than penitent.  

Yesterday my timing was slightly off.  Anne and James were just finishing up when I got back from the post office and grocery store and vacuum shop and pharmacy -- I couldn't come up with anything else needing doing -- so I came in and let Theo out while they were donning their rain boots and loading up their jars of no chemicals cleaning solvents.  I turned away for a minute as they headed out and Theo, in the unpredictable way of all dogs, came racing back in, tracking every drop of rain water and dirt that could be contained in four little dog paws across the beautiful and formerly very clean floors of our house.  I'm thinking of just calling the fifteen partiers back over right now -- and perhaps Anne and James will want to come too...

The Incompetent Gardener

A glorious day in Portland, Maine, and we deserve it, if I do say so, on behalf of all of my fellow Mainers who have survived a cold and very white winter and cold and very gray spring.  When this past winter snuck up on me -- my first winter back in Maine after five away -- I had, somehow, forgotten how nasty a winter up here can be.  Winters in Massachusetts can be unpleasant but just two hours north brings a few more degrees of cold and a few more inches of snow in a typical year, and that is enough to huddle inside in front of the fireplace and step up your planning for that Florida condo.  Worse, spring comes later, colder, and even a bit less bright -- it seems a complete indignity to me that one still needs a pair of gloves on a morning run on many May days up here in the north.

Ahh, but I started my story on a positive note so I must return.  It's sunny and warm enough today to go without a jacket and the birds are chirping and the flowers are showing their colors.  Whoops, I'm starting to frown again.  You see, all of a sudden I have a garden, a real garden, with mulch and wood chips and plants I don't know the names for and an irrigation system.  To many of you, I suspect this would seem great good fortune, not impending terror, and on the days when I am just looking out the window and feeling grateful for my cool old house and its patch of yard and the haven of plants, trees, and flowers that form its border with the city streets, I too see the garden as a blessing.  However, on a day like today, a Saturday, when the sun is shining and the clock is not calling me to work and my neighbors are out in their yards, sweeping out the last dead leaves and planting bushes and cutting their grass, sadly, my heart is not light -- it is filled with dread at my total incompetence amongst a gaggle of greenery.  

Not that I haven't tried, but over the years, we -- my gardens and I -- have never gained a sense of mutual love, never mind respect.  There was the patch of vegetables I planted at my first real house in Natick, a Boston suburb, that quickly became overgrown with weeds.  I didn't understand why I only got zucchini, which, as we know, cannot be killed even by the blackest-thumbed gardener, until my friend told me that you really had to pull out the weeds that were scaling the vegetable plants, even if you thought they looked cool.  There were the brussels sprouts my ex and I planted one summer in the eight inch wide strip of dirt at the front of our parking area at our old house in Portland, stalks of which we pulled out of the thawing snow the following March.  They almost looked edible although we didn't dare try eating them at that point -- the eating season was long gone, never mind the growing one.  There was the comprehensive and detailed garden of mostly seeds planted in the raised beds in my adorable backyard in Cambridge a couple of years ago as a joint project with Kanha and my niece and her future husband.  I provided the real estate and the three of them did the planting -- tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, lettuce, radishes, peppers, and probably a few more vegetables that one would dream of pulling out of their own ground and devouring right in that spot on a beautiful New England summer day.  I'm sure it won't surprise you that the only thing we ever saw in full grown, edible form were the tomatoes and basil --  they had started their lives as baby versions of themselves and not just seeds, giving them a fighting chance of survival that our gardening skills did not.  By the end of the summer, the blight going around had even destroyed most of the tomatoes and, in fact, most of my gardening will.  

But here I go again.  Perhaps I'll do better this time.  I'm working with plants here, not vegetables -- maybe they're easier.  (Or maybe not...).  I have an incredible head start -- the garden is already mature, someone with real talent and love for the greenness of life created it and all I have to do is keep it alive. I'm committed to making this house my home so perhaps that commitment will blossom into skill when I drag out the trowel and hoe.  

Today I spent an hour, digging up weeds  -- well, really, digging up dandelions because they were the only green things I was sure were weeds.  It's a start.  I've invited my friend Barbara, gardener extraordinaire, over to exchange libations for advice.  I'm humble and hopeful.  Let the spring blossom, throughout the city and in my garden.  

The Nightly News

Last night Kanha and I were watching the news together.  OK, I realize this is somewhat of a questionable practice.  We all realize that on any given night, on one of the network channels, there's a lot -- a torrent, really --  of bad news that comes across the screen:   horrible weather catastrophes, wars from here to there and back, rapes and murders, reports on the latest crisis in health care or the budget or our school systems.  (On the show I watch the most often, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, I find it somewhat humorous that every night they end with a three or four minute piece called Making A Difference -- as if this brief report on one person or group in one small community doing one piece of good can counterbalance the mountain of bad news they've covered for the last twenty minutes.  Perhaps that makes them more hopeful than me.)

But these days the evening news is practically the only way I get any news.   I know, it's so retro -- hardly should be admitted to on an electronic, on-line, techno-ish blog.  But I don't like reading long articles on-line (although short blog blurbs are great!) -- the New York Times just isn't the same without that crisp sound as I flip each page.  And the news I get on the websites I frequent -- Yahoo, RoadRunner -- may be less doom and gloom but it's definitely more "what planet am I on?"  -- endless stories about the royal wedding, creative ways to make your bed, and whose face sells the most magazines.  And my other retro options -- listening to NPR, actually flipping all those pages of the paper -- seem to have dropped out of my life due to lack of time, money, and hours in the car.    

Perhaps, you think, I should just give up, throw in the towel, as many of us have.  If the news is so bad, why listen to it anyhow?  Why not just live in the worlds we feel some control over, the worlds where we can star in our own Making a Difference segment by cooking casseroles for a seriously ill friend or springing for dinner for someone out of work -- actions that can mitigate the bad news those we know experience -- and leave the wider world to someone else?    Sounds wise, I think, for a few minutes -- but I just can't do it.  My dad watched the news every night right after his 6 pm dinner, and then quizzed us on what was happening the next night.   He wanted to be aware, for better or worse, and he wanted us to be also, and it got under my skin.   So I keep up, I stay aware, by sitting in front of that TV each evening.

And I let Kanha sit there too.  I know everyone won't agree with that choice but I'm not the mom who is creating the perfect, protected childhood for her kid.  Perhaps I should but I figure the world will catch up with her soon enough -- shouldn't she know a little bit about what's in it?  So we watch the news.

And then, last night, she asks me, in the midst of a scene of violent battle, "Mommy, why are they fighting?"   By the time the commercial comes and I can answer, I can't even remember which war she's referring to.  Is it the ongoing violence in Libya where civilians are being massacred or the recent uprising in Syria, a country late to the rebellion party, or the massive prison break in Afghanistan where Americans -- the older brothers and sisters of kids her age -- are dying?  And how can I possibly explain?  I will admit to trying, and I will admit to not coming close to succeeding.  And I wonder if I should just turn the TV off.  

Missing Body Parts

I'm home this weekend by myself -- and really, literally, all alone, by myself.  No kid, no dog, no guests, almost no social plans.  Which should feel like a relief, and mostly it does.  No one to make breakfast for -- fried egg sandwich or bowl of dog food, no one to urge out the front door for the next gymnastics practice, no one to worry about what he's got in his mouth.  Time to follow some of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, a rare self-help book from which I actually have retained a few of the suggested action items that might help me.  I have time to do those unimportant, un-urgent things that I simply want to do -- to read my book, do my yoga, go for a brisk walk -- and, more important in fact, I actually have time to do the things that are in that crucial furthest quadrant of his chart

-- the important but un-urgent things that usually get swept away, or indefinitely postponed, in the crises of the day.  I've organized my desk so I can see an open space of wood, I've washed the throw blankets on the living room couch that Theo has been crawling all over for weeks, I've figured out 90% of Kanha's summer camp schedule.  In just a few hours, I've regained a sense of mental organization that matches my clean desk -- there's a reasonably large chunk of uncluttered space again.  

What remains surprising to me, after all these years -- almost six -- of being on my own is that I never completely get used to these solo weekends, these respites from the grind of my parenting life. I typically don't mention this to my "married with children and hectic lives" friends, because I know to them it probably sounds like nirvana:  a read book, a brisk walk, a clean desk -- who wouldn't want one of those?  Especially when the last time you experienced it, at least without guilt, was in the last millennium.  But it's as if I'm missing a body part for these couple of days -- not an arm or leg as I'm functioning ok, but the sensation is similar to the "phantom limb" phenomenon that I've heard veterans discuss.  It's as if Kanha is still here, nearby, yet I turn and no, she's not.  She's not here to hear about the day's weather report or look at a funny cartoon I found on the web or ask what she wants for dinner.  I even miss Theo -- I am constantly imagining I'm about to trip over him and keep heading for the front door to let him out until I realize there's no furry ball sitting there patiently waiting.   It seems clear the body part they've actually taken away is a tiny sliver of my heart.  I'm always so grateful when it gets returned on Sunday evenings.  And I'm glad that's only a few hours away. 

Not Going Away

I'm sitting here, trying to work away, the puppy on the other side of the room chewing away on some type of animal's trachea (and, even though I'm an animal lover and it sounds disgusting, I couldn't be happier because he's not chewing me or my stuff), my contractor Nick banging away on the floor upstairs, his girlfriend's dog Hunter, tied up out front, barking away -- as you can imagine, I wish I could just get away.

But I am happy Nick is here and has started on the work.  The plan is to turn the upstairs space into a living suite for me -- bedroom, three-quarters bath, office, and walk-in closet.  The woman who sold me the house had had the same plan for the space and had some initial work done, then, it appears, threw her hands up into the air and walked out with it one-tenth finished.  Come to find out, her act of despair isn't all that surprising considering that the insulation, the initial framing, and the plumbing were all done wrong, a fact I have discovered largely since I committed to having the space refinished.  Every day comes a new surprise -- the old work permit is no longer acceptable by Portland City Hall so I have to pay for a new version (a few hundred $$), new drawings to go along with the new permit would help (another couple of hundred $$), better insulate the full basement along with the attic (now we're into several thousand $$).  I realize it's what everyone says about a renovation project -- it always always always costs more than you expect.  But somehow, shockingly!, it feels like new news when it's happening to me.  

Having said all that, I'm thrilled with Nick.  He's already my second contractor -- I had to fire the first one, an old friend who created a fabulous kitchen for my ex and I, after I couldn't get him to talk to me.  After sending emails, leaving phone messages, and trying to corral him in the dining room while he breezed through with the plumber and electrician in tow, far too busy to talk with me, I could see this had all the markings of a one-sided love affair.  I was going to spend my hours imploring him to spend more time with me, to listen to my ideas and my needs, and he was going to constantly be shaking me off.  Bottom line, I needed someone who would pay more attention to me.  If I couldn't get it in my last relationship, I was going to find it in my builder, doggone it.  And I seem to have, with Nick.  He's got a creative flair -- he was the one who came up with the idea to turn the dining room into the kitchen and vice versa, he found the surplus blue glass tiles for the shower at a super cheap price, he suggested the bannister for the stairs that will come down along the inside treads like a fireman's pole.  And he's happy to hear what I think, and even take me up on some of my ideas -- as long as I keep paying him, of course.  A very fair trade I've decided.  

It will probably take another month or so for the upstairs to get finished as we have to wait for City Hall to bless the plans and the historical commission to approve the window design.  In the meantime, I will wait as patiently as possible as we live amongst the stuff and the noise.  I will not go away.

A Very Very Cute Puppy

So, now there's the dog, our dog.  Our puppy actually.  Theo.  He's very cute.  I need to say that at the start.  He's very very cute.  But I also need to say he's more work than Kanha was when she first came home.  Or maybe that's my version of forgetting labor pains -- I have forgotten the initial trauma of sleep-interrupted nights and climbing and crawling on, over, and out of everything.  

In any case, this puppy isn't easy.  But, of course, he's cute.  He pees at least a dozen times a day, as if he's the one who's going to be having labor pains soon.  In fact, I think it's just that he wants to show the big boys (i.e. big dogs) who he is so he leaves his little mark all about.  In addition, if all goes well, he poops three or four times a day.  How can this small a dog -- just around twelve pounds, looks like an oversized rat when he's soaking wet, eats just two small bowls of food each day -- have that much to get rid of?  But I have to remember, when he's dry, with his swills of colored fur -- white and black and gray and tan and even a little orange -- tufting out all over the place, growing over his eyes, his tail always erect in a confident close parenthesis (our dog trainer, Mallory, is constantly saying, "Oh my, what a confident tail he has!"), he's really really cute.  

But when he's finished pooping -- after I've walked him around the yard for five or so minutes for the eighth time of the day (perhaps it doesn't sound that long but I suggest that you try it, every single day), and it's only noon (the perils of working from home...) -- he gets so excited that he turns me into a human tug toy. (Tug toys, for the puppy-uninitiated, are long, tightly woven pieces of cloth that one spends a ridiculous amount of money on so that the puppy will have something, anything, to chew on other than all the other things that a puppy thinks are his tug/chew toys -- electric cords, my undies, Kanha's socks.  After I -- actually, Theo -- went through an $80 Apple power cord -- yes, $80 -- does Apple have us under their Zen-like thumbs or what?  -- I didn't care how much that silly woven piece of cloth cost, I was buying it.)  

But I digress.  His number two achievement behind him, Theo and I cross the threshold of the front door and instantly he's all over me.  My coat, my scarf, my boots, my slippers, my pant legs.  Mallory says all I have to do is turn away when he jumps and bites, but how do I turn away from myself?  Holes pop up everywhere.  Perhaps there's a silver lining here -- I get a new puppy, I just absolutely have to buy an entire new wardrobe.  But he really is so very cute.  

Closet Trauma

I haven't written in forever -- well, more than four months -- and in that time a bit has changed.  We've been in the house that long, certainly long enough to make it feel lived in, perhaps too lived in.  The reality is even though we have the same amount of square footage that we had in Cambridge, in a certain sense we have nowhere near as much room.  Our house here, which looked so gigantic in all its massive redness extending from one side of our Christmas card to the other, consists of really only four rooms -- well, five if you count the tiny kitchen -- while our little house in Cambridge, squashed in amongst its two neighbors a few feet away on each side, had six rooms, even when the combined living and dining room are counted as one.  The additional rooms didn't add square feet, obviously, but they did give us something else important -- walls.  And walls can have things pushed up against them, and in our world, those were typically things that could store stuff.  In Portland, we have lots of open space -- lovely to walk through - but providing nowhere to put anything, except, of course, right in the middle of the pathway from dining room to kitchen, say, or bedroom to bath.  And we've used that space and many others.

This situation is of course exacerbated by the classic problem of an 1827 house -- no closets!  Literally there are zero closets -- yes, you read that right -- 0, better known as no, none, ZERO -- closets on the first floor of the house, the place you normally store coats and vacuum cleaners and drop leaves to the dining room table and embarrassing art projects that even your kid wouldn't want to have displayed.  On the second floor, things are, a little, better.  There are three whole closets -- two in my room and one in Kanha's -- although not very big ones.  We're not talking about a place you can stand in and contemplate your clothes selection for the morning -- I'm lucky if I can tug the pair of pants I'm planning to wear out without popping off three other hangers.

In fact, I had such closet trauma when we moved in that I took the room with two closets instead of the one with only one but direct access to the bathroom.  My girlfriend pointed out that this might be a problem when I had a "friend" spend the night who might not want to be caught by Kanha in his skivvies in the hallway.  (Dreams of the hallway scene in "Kramer vs. Kramer" with the gender roles reversed.)  That never crossed my mind, being more concerned with hiding my own stuff vs. anyone else's.

All of this should produce a pretty clear picture for you -- we have stuff -- mine, Kanha's, and seemingly eight other children's -- everywhere.  It's not pretty, convenient, nor likely to get resolved soon enough.  Although we're working on it -- renovation has started on my personal suite for the third floor that will give us all kinds of additional space, along with a few more walls and even a walk-in closet!  

More details about that to come, along with the introduction of our new family member, Theo, who has caused a name change in the blog.  I think he's even better than a view, if a lot, lot, lot more work.