The Fixer Upper House and Garden

Old Yellow

When my third-grader brought home instructions for her King Tut expository, I was relieved to see the teacher had underlined the words "simple, inexpensive costume." I took this to mean I wouldn't have to spend a lot of time on the outfit. But then, I'm new in town, so I asked around. Because "simple, inexpensive costume" can have as many definitions as "casual dress." One mom said "Oh, it's nothing!" and then described the elaborate spacesuit she designed for her son's Neil Armstrong presentation last year.

I asked my daughter what she thought "simple, inexpensive costume" meant. Cee decided she'd wear a King Tut headpiece that we bought at a museum earlier this year, along with "old yellow clothes." Score! I wouldn't have to buy or make anything! ... Then I discovered we have no "old, yellow clothes." Pink, purple, brown, teal, orange, red, blue, black, tie-dye...our three daughters have clothes of every color, but yellow.

"Simple, inexpensive" was going to require an afternoon of shopping, made complex by the fact that plain yellow is not a popular girls color for Spring '07. After three hours in as many stores (and parking lots), I found a pair of ladies' extra-small drawstring Capris at Target and an unadorned yellow polo shirt at Old Navy. And then, as luck would have it, our neighbor dropped off an Egyptian princess costume that included a gold lame tunic and multi-colored elastic choker. Combined with a gold hoop earring from a gypsy costume, bangles from multiple birthday party goody bags and my black eyeliner, Cee's King Tut was as decked out as Cleopatra. And you could even see a hint of yellow beneath the tunic.

In the end, it didn't matter what "simple, inexpensive" meant, because she did a terrific job in her presentation.

A Clean Sweep

The cleaning ladies took one look at my house and said "No ma'am. We can no do this house." Desperate for help in taming the dog-hair monster that is growing beneath my sofas, I begged them to stay. The one who speaks English...the Alpha Cleaning Lady....insisted "No ma'am can do. No time Ma'am."

"What will it take?" said I, feeling the perspiration soak through a gap t-shirt, grey turtleneck and black zip-front cardigan, necessary armor for a frigid spring-less April day. "How much do you want?"

"130 dollar," said the lady with the vaccume as she eyed the toys that were scattered on every available surface in the living room: tiny wigs from playmobil soldiers; stockings and shoes for barbie's wedding; world map puzzle pieces; magnetic tinker logs; an expensive nintendo ds cartridge....etc..... "And no do kids rooms. No time."

"But I can clean the whole house in less than 2 hours by myself!" I said, revealing how low my standards of cleanliness have sunk (as if the house in its present state was not enough proof).

"130 dollar," she said with the authority of a locksmith.

I caved. I was desperate. Besides, she was taunting me with that vaccume.

By the next day, you couldn't tell they'd been here.

The Things You See

In the end she couldn't see, so it didn't matter what I wore to visit my grandmother, or whether I was up five pounds, or if I needed a hair cut. But I always wore a skirt to the assisted living facility where she lived. I always dressed my daughters in matching outfits and made my husband tuck his shirt in. Because sometimes she could see...sometimes she'd notice if you didn't eat your peas or if your 3-year-old was still in diapers. Once, as we boarded the elevator in her building, she sized up my husband and said: "Say! You're awfully skinny! You look like you could use a ham and cheese sandwich!" as the metal doors screeched closed between us.

Our daughters were frightened of her filmy eyes and the way she'd get so close to their faces when they entered her darkened living room, like an old dog sniffing a litter of puppies. But after the first awkward greeting, they loved seeing their great-grandmother; loved searching for snails in her courtyard and playing with the plastic fruit on the table by her door. They loved to stand before the walnut breakfront and admire her collection of Royal Dalton figurines, fine porcelain ladies in intricate dresses. They thought their great-grandmother lived in a fancy house.

They didn't notice her "house" was a nursing home in the middle of a JC Penney parking lot or that her apartment was just two rooms with an efficiency kitchen. What they saw was a flowered sofa and a silver bowl filled with chocolates on a shiny wooden table, and a yellow phone that lit up when it rang.

The things you see are so important.

It's so much holier to believe internal beauty trumps the outer wrappings. I tell this to my children nearly every day: What's inside counts. But like my grandmother with her chintz sofa and porcelain ladies, I want a little finery. I want a lovely home amidst the asphalt.

I think about this now, as we plan the renovation of our house. We've spent a lot of time contemplating lay out and function and where to put the outlets. But it's the things you see that seem to matter. This is why my husband wants to have a Viking cooktop in the kitchen, even though he never cooks; he's extremely cheap, and he understands the brand costs several thousand dollars more than KitchenAid. Viking leaves a good first impression, with its chunky knobs and infamous logo screwed into the corner.

My tastes are homey: I would like beadboard in the kitchen and an exposed brick wall in the eating-area. I want to stain the floors a light mahogany, like coffee with a hint of hazelnut creamer. I would like wood shutters and painted hunter green. My middle daughter's room must, I'm told, be yellow.

When my grandmother died in 2002 at the age of 100, I inherited a Royal Dalton lady in a bright green gown and a few chubby Hummels. I put them on a high shelf in my former house, near an urn with my dead cat's ashes. No one could see them, which was the point: I didn't want people to think I collected such klotchkes. The figures are in the basement now, packed in moving boxes with all of our other non-essentials. I wonder where I'll put them when the renovation's over.

Something's Misssing

It's hard to keep track of everything these days. Pens, notebooks, cell phones, dogs, appointments, homework, meetings, deadlines, square-footage, dining rooms, garage lofts...teeth.

T, my first-grader, has been yanking on her front teeth for months. The teeth were loose but they held on; perhaps because I wasn't ready for them to abandon my baby just yet. But all things must end, even the gap between a child's front teeth. Both teeth fell out (with ample prodding from their owner) within the last 24 hours. The first one fell out during a terrific tantrum at bed time; the second fell out during a terrific rain storm during school.

Pictures instead of words

It was a warm and windy day and the kids played outside for hours after school. Whoever decided to up Daylight Savings Time is not a mother. Mothers need that extra hour of darkness in the evening to get the little ones to settle down. The big ones, too. But today, oh you bright, warm, springish day, was nice. It looked like the air and trees had been scrubbed with Windex; like the world had gone through a massive car wash (except for the gooey mud all over the patchy lawn).

Here is a photo of the rear of the house. That flat-roofed room was added in 1961; the previous owner referred to it as "the new addition" when she sold us the house last fall. We plan to take this down and dig a new basement (smileyface,smileyface,smileyface; winkwink). The first floor will have a family room, mud room and new kitchen added on. The second floor will get a master bedroom/bath and possibly a study. It sounds like a lot and it will cost a lot, but it will be modest on account of the fact that our garage has a secret room upstairs.

In this shot, Milo is standing on a deck of sorts.  This is where the new kitchen/mud room will be built. See the bare trees across the street? In the mornings I sometimes see a Cooper's Owl perched on the branches.

Alpha Mother Dog

When my friend Sandy put an addition onto her house a few years ago, tradesmen filled her personal space for nine months. What started in the fall inched like holiday traffic through winter and into spring.

"How can you stand this?" I asked her one rainy night as she scrubbed the imprint of a boot off her butcher-block counter.

Sandy pointed to a plate of fresh brownies and asked if I'd like to have a few. "Oh I don't know," she said calmly, as if a cleaning lady had just left her house in perfect order. "The guys are friendly, and mostly they're in the family room and bedroom."

Some people handle stress better than others.

For seven months I've often felt strangled by the stress of moving, selling, buying and planning the renovation of an older house. Lately I've been doing better, but in moments of high anxiety I still feel I can't breathe in enough air. Last week when I learned about the architect's miscalculations, it felt like my lungs filled up with Drano.

So I took a few deep breaths and tried to channel Sandy. When that didn't work, I reached for my First Communion rosary, which was somewhere on my messy desk. When I couldn't find that, I called my husband but his caller ID can somehow sense if I'm in a good mood...or not. No luck there. So I turned to Plan D: I called a dog trainer.

When you can't control your life, at least control your dog. Milo weighs 20 pounds and is as cute as...well, as cute as a puppy. But since we moved he has been channeling my stress and translating it into his own personal hybrid of fear-aggression and canine obnoxiousness. When another dog walks past our house, he barks as if the Taliban were coming. When he's on a leash and passes a dog, he lunges with his sharp, pinchy teeth for all to see. I can't let him out alone and I can't walk with him, either. I fear my new neighbors will seek our eviction. And we haven't even applied for permits yet.

Jeff is an old school dog trainer who shows border collies for discipline and trains dogs and owners in their homes. He came to our house on Saturday morning when my little nieces and nephew were running with my children and our neighbor's kids were ringing the bell and the new architect stopped by with a roll of drawings. Between the disruptions, Jeff, husband, dogs and I sat on chewed blue couches and talked about my...I mean Milo's...problems.

And Jeff said: "I can see you have a lot going on."

Finally someone who sees what I'm up against!

He told me to take control: to get a crate and make Milo sleep in it instead of snuggled against my legs in bed. He got out a scary-looking but humane prong collar--the kind you see on pit bulls and dogs as big as Marmaduke--and wrapped it around Milo's scrappy little neck. Milo sat. He lay down. He shut up. He shivered, too, sensing the new order approaching like a college graduation.

Milo doesn't know his rank and that makes him nervous and territorial, Jeff said. We can control his behaviour by clear and consistent training, which we're supposed to have fun doing. It's a chore (which is why I've avoided doing it) but is working pretty well so far. I just have to keep acting like the Alpha mother dog.

There's another word for that, but I've got too much control over my temper to use it.

Bearing Fruit

Once when I was 10 weeks pregnant, I ate a pineapple while standing at my kitchen sink. The next day, I had a miscarriage.

My obstetrician tried to convince me not to blame the fruit or myself for eating so much of it in one sitting...er, standing. But even after 10 years and two more (wonderfully healthy) babies, I'm still suspicious of the pineapple.  To me, its thorny crown and sweet interior will always seem duplicitous.

Cause-and-effect relationships are on my mind these days, as I search for blame regarding the situation with my house. The connection is not as clear--or as coincidental--as gorging on fresh pineapple one day/violent cramping the next. But accountability is in order.

Let us examine the evidence:

Exhibit A: Ralph, a well respected 50-ish architect; runs local design/build firm; highly recommended by our realtor; sits on village historical commission. This latter point tipped the balance in his favor when we were interviewing architects; we thought it would help to have an architect who knows the village's archaic zoning codes.

Exhibit B: Me, for trusting Exhibit A to do his homework.

Yesterday I received a call from Village Hall saying our addition's allowable square footage is half of what Ralph calculated. Ralph said we could add 1,600 square feet and spent four months working on schematic drawings with that in mind. The Village has now laid down the gauntlet at a mere 800 square feet. I won't bore you with the details about why and how, but I will say there is more evidence against the charming two-story, detached garage than there was against the pineapple.

Of course, it's no longer Ralph's problem; I fired him last week before I even knew about this grievous miscalculation. When Miguel, our new architect, looked at the drawings, the square-footage issue was a red flag as obvious as a bloody nose. That's why we had the village development office come out to verify, or in this case, vilify it.

I wonder if pineapple will stain the finish on a lexus?

Back To The Future

When the invitation came for a PTO fundraiser with a 1980s rock theme, I stuck it underneath a pile of catalogs and dry-cleaner fliers. Since we moved seven months ago, I have avoided volunteer groups and events like a barefoot jogger sidestepping  jelly fish on the beach.

In my old life in New Jersey, I taught Sunday school; led a Girl Scout troop; did PR for a community fair; did PR for the PTO; helped the library devise a five-year plan and sat on numerous charity boards. I was so over-committed that when my husband was offered a new job 800 miles away, my first thought was that I could drop the Girl Scouts.

Most people don't change their life to get out of selling cookies, but avoidance has always worked for me. In my new town, I am determined to volunteer for nothing, at least until we renovate the house. This mantra extends to attending events planned by other volunteers.

But as I waited for the architect to call me back last week so I could fire him, I needed something to obsess over that had nothing to do with square footage and permits and the durability of soapstone counters. I dug out the PTO invitation and contemplated what to wear.

Husband was easy: Levi's and an old Springsteen T-shirt. But what about me? My friend MJ suggested a needlepoint belt and Polo shirt with the collar turned up. Louisa said shoulder pads. Molly recalled the cut-up, inside-out sweatshirts of the Flash Dance era. Therese suggested big hair.

The diversion worked, for whenever I started fretting about the architect, I willed myself to think about the '80s instead. I e-mailed with a lot of old friends about the ugly things we used to wear, like black stirrup jump suits.  And the fund-raiser was a lot of fun. The PTO ladies in my new town know how to throw a party. Or maybe it was the mix of Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, Duran Duran and Prince. I even ran into a guy that I knew in the '80s, although at first I couldn't place him.

Some people got really dressed up, like the quartet of moms impersonating KISS, but most arrived in concert T-shirts and jeans. The architect--whom I finally got to fire the night before--went as Wayne with a black wig and baseball cap, and he chatted with husband and me as if nothing had transpired between us. This was good.

I wound up wearing the timeless trio of jeans, Frye boots and a black shirt. My only real nod to the 1980s rock scene was a Rosary wrapped twice around my neck in honor of Madonna. I'm going to keep it on my desk and use it as a diversion when I go back to obsessing about the house.

Flatness

I met a woman named Ginny who moved to my Midwestern town from the rolling landscape of Virginia recently. Over President's weekend she took her children skiing in Geneva, WI., to a resort that came highly recommended by her new neighbors. As she drove nearer and nearer to her destination, Ginny kept turning her head and squinting out the frosty windshield. "Where's the mountain?" she asked her husband, who was equally perplexed by the flat, snow-capped fields. He replied: "Probably the skiing's in a ravine."

As they turned into the resort, they kept thinking there must be some mistake. "Where's the mountain?" their children chimed from the middle bench of the minivan.

Where indeed? What was billed to them as a great ski resort turned out to be, in Ginny's words, "like the end of a run where you're just coasting to the chair lift." Not able to work up a sweat, she shivered the entire day. Her kids, who had never skied, loved it and left feeling as if they'd mastered SnowMass.

But it made Ginny homesick. You can't take the landscape with you.

When I moved to New Jersey from Chicago a decade ago, I used to miss the smell of roasting coffee from the Superior plant on the city's north side. I missed the screech of the El and the anonymity you could get riding on it. I missed the deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati's, the gnocchi from Generro's and the many Thai, Indian and Vietnamese foods north of Belmont.

Then I learned about, and came to love, Central New Jersey's many charms. For example, the thin-crust pizza is better there. So is the Madeleine cheesecake, baked in a tiny town called Ringoes, and Lucy's Ravioli. Where I lived just west of Princeton, you never get stuck in traffic if you can avoid Route 1. Hills, pastures, brooks and forests are everywhere you look. The produce at the organic farm in Pennington was so good, my kids even loved beets.

Now we're back in the Midwest. Someday we'll find new great foods--I already like the latte here at Nona's better than Princeton's Small World Coffee; the blts at The Lantern taste great, and I've heard about an organic farm a short distance from town.  I'm looking forward to corn.

Settling in is just a matter of time. That's a small consolation when you're looking for a mountain and wind up shivering on a hill.