Kernel Dump

A couple of days ago, a co'worker mentioned a news story about dead, frozen cows, and the various plans that had been proposed and rejected by the forest service due to cost or environmental impact or what have you.  From there the conversation went:

• D:  I think I'm going to use that as an interview question.  "You walk into a cabin and find it filled with dead, frozen cows.  What do you do?"
• J:  That's actually a really good question.
• Me:  I agree, but can you imagine being the poor guy who gets all four of us on an interview loop.  "They keep asking me about dead cows.  WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!?!"
• M:  Yeah, that seems like an HR investigation waiting to happen.
• Me:  Maybe we should each pick a different dead, frozen animal to ask about just so it's not so weird.
• D:  Yeah, because it's the fact that it's COWS that makes it weird.
• Me:  Right.  I hereby lay claim to dead, frozen yaks.  Acceptable answers include (but are not limited to):
  • "I would flag down the nearest passing UFO and request assistance with beaming them into outer space."
  • "I would look for a movie production with a need for zombie yak props and let them deal with the funding."
  • "I would find those "Bodies" people and see if they needed any yaks for an art exhibit."
  • "I would ask those pink slime people if they had any suggestions."
• M:  I was with you until the pink slime.
• Me:  They might have some enzyme that would render it (disgusting but) inert.
• J:  It's called lye.  We used it in 'Nam.

Just in case you were wondering if the non-kid part of my life ever gets surreal, now you know.  Also, we may all be a little cracked.

If you'd asked me three weeks ago what I was looking forward to about this project, I'd have told you something about how lovely the space was going to be, and how much I liked the countertops we'd picked out, and about how much I was looking forward to picking out the paint colors that would add so much personality to our rooms.  I might even have said something about how much more storage we're going to have, and how I was excited about moving the living room back into the front room, which is easily my favorite space in the house.  Probably, I'd also have mentioned the appliance upgrades. However, after 3 weeks of living without the kitchen, my aspirations have become much more mundane.  If you ask me today what I'm looking forward to at the end of this project, I'll tell you:

10. A sink large enough to wash a cuting board in (and the associated garbage disposal)
9.  The tap that produces hot filtered water as though by magic.
8.  The tap that produces cold filtered water as though by magic.
7.  Reclaiming half the square footage of my house.
6.  The ability to cook things that involve boiling water casually.
5.  The ability to cook anything that involves a pan without risk of immolation.
4.  A reduction in the overall dust production capacity of our home.
3.  Unpacking these boxes that I have to trip over all the time.
2.  REAL FORKS (I'd be looking forward to real wine glasses too IF I COULD FREAKING DRINK)
1.  The ability to eat dinner at a table tall enough that cat tails cannot reach it in passing.

Growing up in Texas, there was a flat side of the street and a side of the street that was built at the top of a small rise.  I lived on the flat side of the street.  We had bermuda grass that was generally sort of pokey on the feet and lots of aggressive foliage.  I regularly eyed with envy the gently sloping lawns across the street.  H & H had the ur-yard.  Well, actually, the next door neightbors had the ultimate Texas summer ur-yard, since it had a pool that was surrounded by large flat stones that were perfect for basking like a lizard, but that yard was hard to get an invitation to.  H & H had a front yard that was perfect for rolling down, with broad shady oaks that kept the perfectly trimmed (and soft on the feet) turf pleasantly cool on the hottest of days.  All of the kids in the neighborhood spent seemingly countless hours each summer collecting acorns and playing swinging statues and freeze tag and ghosts in the graveyard and whatever else came to mind in that yard.  On reflection, their dad must have spent an incredible amount of time making sure that that yard stayed properly watered and well-maintained, but when I was a kid, it was just there. We never thought about those things.

When we bought our house in Seattle, I saw the sloping yard and the rockery as the ultimate expression of that Ur-Yard.  The incredibly mature hemlock and cedar seemed sure to provide a shady summer paradise, while the abundance of rainfall made it seem like plants just leapt out of the ground.    And the abundant moisture makes pulling the weeds out of the soil a snap compared to the hard-baked clay you have to chip weeds out of in Dallas.  And it's all true.  The deep shade makes the lack of air conditioning downright tolerable.  And the plants DO leap out of the ground.  They would probably do a lot less of it if I would just loosen up and nuke all the weeds with some sort of systemic poison, but I persist in fighting the yard's constant efforts to transform itself into something that resembles a spring greens salad mix by hand.  Which is where the ease with which the weeds come out of the ground comes in handy, because by God there are a lot of them.  With all of the deep watering that the area receives, I had visions of this lush lawn of fine fescue upon which to frolic.  In reality, though, there are areas that never seem to get properly dry, such that the grass drowns and the moss reigns supreme.  This year I'm thinking of fighting back with clover.  Wish me luck. 

So it seems that the same conditions that produce the ur-yard in Texas produce somewhat sub-optimal conditions in Washington and leave me wishing for some flat surface... any flat surface, really.  I find myself pining for the yard from which I spend my summers eyeing the ur-yard enviously.  Sometimes, the metaphorical greener grass is literal, which means now I'm even more full of plans for how to make this yard into something different from the Texas ur-yard but something wonderful for here.

Sometimes I feel kind of bad.  I had a huge array of things that I documented and observed and whined about when I was pregnant with the iBoo, and I feel like my whining scope has been sort of limited this time around.  Part of that, I suppose, is because I learned a lot last time around and have brought that learning to bear now.  Specifically:

1. Remain well hydrated at all times.
2. EAT
3. Including protein at regular intervals.
4. If I start to feel myself going off the rails as a result of ignoring the first three points, get a glass of water and for God's sake EAT.
5. Don't just take Vitamin B6, take 50mg per day.
6. Use pillows liberally.
7. There are a broad range of incidental discomforts that are just par for the course.  Don't obsess on them, everything's probably alright.
8. Don't eat things I'm allergic to, it'll make me CRAZY.
9. The caffeine in low caffeine tea is probably less bad for me than the sugar in the drinks I'd replace tea with is.
10. EAT.

I think the other parts are that none of this is new this time, and that I have too much other stuff to be worried about to really have too much time to obsess about pregnancy related things. 

Point #9 has worked out for me this time, though.  During the last go round, I had the short gestational diabetes test, and the results came back borderline enough that they sent me in for the interminable one.  I passed that, but generated a monster baby.  They decided that this time, they'd just cut to the chase and send me in for the monster test from the get-go.  The infinite vampire test involves fasting for 8 hours in advance.  I thought I'd be smart and schedule the test for first thing in the morning.  My thinking was that I'd eat something and then fall into bed.  Then I'd get up, shower, and drive to the appointment, grumpy underfed pregnant lady time minimized, badda boom badda bing.  I did NOT, however, take into account that I'm primary on call this week, so my phone rang at 5:30, and by the time I got to my 10:00 appointment with the vampires, I'd been awake and grumpy for 4.5 hours.  So I get there, they suck some blood out, and then they give me some foul orange goop made entirely of sugar to drink in 5 minutes, then parked me in the world's chilliest room, followed by hourly attempts to extract more blood from my now cold-constricted veins.  On an up note, I finally got some quiet time to pull some procedural documentation together that I'd been trying to get time to work on for a week.  I'm not sure how coherent the result was, though, since when the pure sugar hit my food-deprived system, I'm pretty sure I started seeing spots.  Perhaps I should check that doc I sent out...

In any case, I passed the glucose test, and they told me that I could go celebrate with a hit of sugar.  I put a packet into my glass of tea and called it good.

Well, last week it officially started.  Our kitchen is bald.  There is a large drop cloth draped across a huge swath of the downstairs in a feeble attempt to keep the heat in the part of the house that hasn't been stripped of insulation.  There are flood lights spliced into to key light boxes to provide our crew with light to work by in a pinch.
     

When I was 19, I worked at a Bookstop.  In some ways, I still miss that job.  Not in the paycheck sort of way, but in some ways.  When I was hired, they were severely understaffed by a manager who was trying to save money on employee compensation.  They way the management team dealt with it was the assistant managers waited until the manager went on vacation for two weeks, and then they went on a hiring spree.  I was part of that spree.  We had our work cut out for us.

The "work cut out for us" aspect is part of what I miss.  Everything was SUCH a mess that I got to help fix just about everything.  One of those things was helping the receiving supervisor.  His name was Kelly.  He rode a Harley, and he had a way with a tape gun.  Seriously, the skill with which he'd fill a box with returns to just under... 40 lbs was the limit I think..., button it all down, and have it labeled and ready to ship was downright daunting.  He was like some sort of earthbound tape demigod.  I've never been able to wield a tape gun with the confidence and panache that Kelly did.  Which brings us to today.

I've been loading a lot of random crap into small boxes over the last few days, and I've learned a couple of things I've never taken the time to pay attention to before:

1.  Tape.  I have strong preferences in this area.  The cheap stuff has a tendency to get wrapped up and glue itself to the inside of the tape gun, making panache nearly impossible to achieve.  My advice is to pony up for the good Scotch stuff.  You don't have to be paid much for the time it saves you (since you're not constantly untangling it) to pay for the extra initial investment.

2.    Confidence:  Once you have the right tools, you have to approach the tape gun with assertiveness and confidence.  Tape that box and then jerk your wrist down like you KNOW the little metal teeth are about to do their job and cut the tape.  They'll be intimidated into compliance.

I'm not saying that I've eclipsed Kelly's mad tape skills, especially since I still periodically end up yanking out a huge long tail of tape instead of confidently and assertively trimming it, but I think I see the path to glory.  Now I just need to channel those little packing dynamo women that come and pack an entire house in like an hour.  Certainly THEY must be some sort of demigods, right?

My dad used to have this girlfriend that I didn't like much.  One of her redeeming qualities, though, was Mexican Cornbread.  It was fan-freaking-tastic.  They broke up probably about 20 years ago, and I'd intermittently noodle around with combining various recipes together to try to achieve her cornbread, and about 10 years ago, it came together.  I remember serving it to HRH and our friend Paul, and they put the seal of approval on it.  I took it to a potluck at a co-worker's house, and while it was too spicy to have a broad following up here, the people who liked it were devoted to it and it disappeared.  Some of my co-workers asked for the recipe, and I wrote down my improvisation and mailed it to them.  Some time later, I went to look for that mail and couldn't find it, and I was back to noodling, this time dejectedly.

So today I'm packing up my kitchen, and I'm on the (seriously, do we need this many?) cookbooks, and I found a stack of papers in between two cookbooks on the bottom shelf.  I leafed through them to see if there was anything worth keeping, and I found a printout I'd done of the mail I'd sent to those two co-workers!!!!!!!!!!

Today is about packing, and so I'm not going to transcribe it here now, or anything, but I just had to take a moment to squee.

Now, more packing.

SQUEEEE!

When you're on a rollercoaster, it's the free-fall, out of control parts that are fun.  The same is often not true of life.  

Leading up to his departure, I had NOT been looking forward to HRH's week out of town.  There's a lot of stuff going on, and I didn't know how I was going to deal with all of it.  My grip was kind of tenuous, and the only saving grace was the overwhelming gratitude and peace I felt from my friends having said that they'd come over and help me knock the kitchen part of the project out.  However, that completely fell apart, and so did I.  I spent one evening and one whole morning bursting into tears every time I thought about the upcoming week, completely overwhelmed.  The worst part was its effect on my patience with the iBoo:  I had visions of spending a whole week snapping at her like that. Then I went into a co-worker's office, and asked if he'd take one of the things that was overwhelming me off of my plate, which he did.  Then I burst into tears one more time (of gratitude) and walked out, feeling significantly more in control of things, and things settled into a nice, boring trough.

The weekend has actually been good.  I got to spend yesterday hanging out with a friend I haven't seen in a long time, and last night, the iBoo got to go to Kid's Night Out.  She had a great time, but she was so tired, she went into Tasmanian Devil mode when we got home.  I think it would have gone okay if HRH had been able to carry her without waking her up completely, so we'll tr it again.  In any case, she woke up this morning in a sunny mood, and she apologized for listening to her teacher but not to Mommy.  Now she's crawling around meowing and watching Cars 2.  Later this afternoon, another friend I haven't seen for a while will be coming over to keep me company while I continue packing the kitchen.  Win!

HRH is back on Tuesday, so there's still time for another free-fall drop, but I'm confident it'll all be okay on balance.  The iBoo's been trying to help pack, which results in me building a box for, say, cookbooks and coming back to find it filled with National Geographics and wooden trains (true story).  It's a little odd (and not especially efficient), but it's nice that she's trying to get involved.  I've taken the next two days off, so I'll be able to get some unassisted packing done, so maybe we'll still have a chance at pulling this whole thing off before Wednesday morning.

Now, off to pack! 

Seriously, some of the conversations I find myself drawn into in are kind of surreal.  Exhibit A, from yesterday morning:

Me: What do you want for breakfast?
iBoo:  Rice Krispies in a bowl with milk!
Me:  [prepares Rice Krispies]  Go pick a spoon.
iBoo:  I don't WANT these Rice Krispies.  They only have a little bit of honey.  I want TOO MUCH honey!
Me:  I'm not putting too much honey on there.  Too much honey is yucky.
iBoo:  But I WANT too much honey.
Me:  They have plenty of honey.  Eat your breakfast.
iBoo:  I don't WANT plenty honey, I want TOO MUCH honey!
Me:  iBoo, for the love of God, if you don't eat your breakfast, I will eat these Rice Krispies RIGHT NOW.
iBoo:  NO!  THOSE ARE MY RICE KRISPIES!  I WANT THEM!!!
Me:  Then EAT them!!!
iBoo: [angry chomping]

The joke's on her, though.  There wasn't actually ANY honey on there, it was Agave Nectar.  I'm not actually sure if that makes me a winner or not, though.

As some of you know, I've been having a bit of a freak out about all the stuff that's left to do before men with sledgehammers start demolishing half of the house what with all the other stuff that's going on.  Happily, I managed to hand off some of that stuff today, and then I talked to my manager about taking Monday and Tuesday of next week off to finish up loose ends.  "Ah," he said, "you're one of those pregnant women who insists on demolishing the house during the pregnancy.  Nesting on steroids."

I had no idea that destroying one's house during pregnancy was a Thing.  I mean, I know nesting is a Thing, but I've always heard of it as furniture acquisition and manic cleaning.  I don't think I really did any of that with the iBoo, so I guess I'm just Nesting on Steriods this time?  In any case, starting next week, we're taking down a wall, extending the kitchen, vaulting the ceiling of the existing kitchen to match the room we're extending into, and raising the floor in our living room so that it's no longer sunken.  That means we'll be living out of a microwave and a grill for 6 weeks while effectively half the total square footage of our house is offline.

And then, a New Kitchen party!

You can see some of the choices we've made and others we're orbiting over on Pinterest.  The faucet arrived yesterday, which is scary/exciting.  The tap that produces hot water as though by magic should get here Monday-ish.  Still need to figure out paint colors and ceiling fan.  I'm sort of in one crisis at a time mode now, though, so first is packing.  Then paint.  Then Ceiling fan.  Then baby name.  Then area rug.  Then furniture.  Oy.  Then drink.