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.