This group realization for the need downsize is now in full swing (could it be… the economy??)  and you see more and more minimalism in both furniture design, production staging, fashion, bicycles, computers, etc…  I see the occasional article like the one recently about a guy who has whittled down his life to 57 things and he is super-smug about it – 57 things?  Really‽  I NEED a lot more shit than 57 things.  Go through my SSS kit, thrown in a spork, bowl, pocket knife, thumb drive, soap, shampoo, camera, a few cables, watch, wedding ring, glasses, computer, notebook and a couple of pins and I am standing there naked with over 60 things.

I can identify with his hypothesis that “we’ve been duped into buying things by an advertisement-dominated society for the last 50 years.” However, I need some of that stuff that I was brainwashed by the media to run out and purchase: iPhone, eReader, Global kitchen knives, my bikes, the super-cool Freitag messenger bag sitting next to me right now, etc…  One has to weigh true need, want, and desire for themselves to determine how much is too much and how much is enough.  I feel that the wife (Stamps With Foot) and I are doing fairly well, but we could still stand to par down some, (do we really need 4 computers, boxes of long-canceled checks, and my 4^th grade notebook rantings?)

For years American suburban life has been all about keeping up with the Joneses: Big house, fast car, big truck, boat, HUGE TV, toys, toys, toys… The glut of articles and blogs and books about moving to a more minimalist life style is a sure sign that the Joneses may not be as important as they once were.  However, moderation in any movement is the key.  If I lump all the stuff I have read about making life simpler lately, it feels as if there is a thread of one-upmanship that pervades: “I can live with less shit than you…”  Some of the authors are crazy-smug (like the 57-things guy) about living on friend’s couches and having all their world possession in a backpack  (padding their $3000 laptop…)  Instead of the Joneses, there is now the Schwartzes: a section of our proletariat, riding fixed geared bikes, sporting skinny jeans, typing away on their MacBooks, drinking expensive coffee, texting away on $500 smart phones, getting ironic tattoos and swapping stories about how little they can subsist on

To my mind minimalism today is less about freeing yourself of all your crap and more about your attitude towards the stuff you have.   Do you NEED that new Blu-Ray player or do you WANT it?  Are you buying that to last forever or just until…?  Does it have a life-time warranty?  Are you actually going to use or wear it enough to justify a high initial price (price per wear principle). Can you rent it, borrow it (books), or do without it?

Now, before buying something new, I try to have the need vs. want conversation and while mildly successful, there are still some things that I just have because the are cool toys and I like to either play with them or look at them.  Would my life be simpler without ALL the bikes, 4 snowboards, a book press, 2 TVs, and a competition pellet gun??  Yes, it would, but that life wouldn’t be half the fun.  For me and for us, I think the trick to not falling into the pit of conspicuous ownership is to be careful with what we spend our money on, and whether it is a need or a toy we should buy the best quality available so that we get years of use and enjoyment out of whatever it may be that our hard earned greenbacks are being traded for.

I was awestruck.  It was like a scene from one of the old Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom shows from the Alaskan wilderness where host Marlin Perkins would describe what a bear was thinking as the bruin stood on a water covered ledge in a snow-melt river swiping 4 foot salmon out of the water.

I believe that this afternoon I will be going to Big5 and to get my fishing license so that I can attempt to BBQ some fresh Salmon this weekend – I saw attempt due to the fish repelling pheromones that I seem to produce.  Just in case I do either get lucky or am able to steal a fish from a true angler I am thinking of using my father-in-laws ceder plank salmon recipe.  YUM!  Again, I am amazed almost everyday with the place we have chosen to live: The people, the culture, and the natural world that surrounds us.

This is what La Maison du Talley looked like in 1957.  It was bright and sunny, there was no Compton-grade chain link fence, hedges or trees.  You can see just the top of our now huge vine maple growing in the back yard. The neighbors’ homes looked neat, well cared for, and the houses share a cute little white picket fence.  Our cute little home is almost 83 years old and has changed little in that time – porch made into a mudroom, new windows, siding, some paint…  The original owners would have no issue at all in recognizing their home all these any years later.  God only knows how many children they raised in our 2-bedroom 1-bath Seattle box.  By today’s suburban standards it is a starter home that is meant for a young couple with perhaps their first child.  To be sold to the same as the infant grows into preteen or before the birth of their second bundle of joy. Our home was built in an era when an entire wardrobe would fit in a suitcase, a double bed was just right for two people to sleep in, and a middle class family had one car – maybe.  A time before mass consumerism and container ships made closet rooms, 5-car families, walls of shoes, man caves, and massive Barbie collections possible and attainable for a working family.

While I am grumpy with at least one of my neighbors, my current heating costs, the basement stairs, and some of responsibilities that accompany homeownership, I do have a genuine love for our house and yard.  What I love most about my house and all old houses are the stories that have been told, written, and lived under their roofs.  I love being a part of something greater than myself, adding to it lovingly, and having the knowledge that it will eventually pass on to another who will also add to the tale of a little old house.

We plan to live in our home for a very long time, raise some vegetables, have a couple of kids, live there, work there, relax in the yard, etc…  With that in mind we are planning a few upgrades and changes that won’t change the look and feel of the place at all – they will, in fact, enhance its appeal, sense of time and place, and functionality.

Current planned projects:
Rebuild of Basement Stairs
New heat pump installation
Garage/Mother-in-law build
Egress window in basement bedroom
Master suite in the attic
Rebuild of back stairs
Three fruit trees in the back
Half bath and kitchenette in the basement
Rewire of kitchen and main floor bathroom
Extension of front yard to sidewalk
Removal of chain-link and addition of wrought iron fence
New interior paint
Misc. cabinet and trim installation

Manual record keeping has been around since man started making beer, selling crops and I am sure that a ledger was involved in the early days of the world’s oldest profession…   The new way isn’t always the better  way – GASP! (full disclosure: we will be taking hi-res pictures of the pages every month and including those images on our external hard drive for back-up purposes)

I found a 150 page, acid free paper version on Amazon that we are currently looking forward to filling with notes of bills paid, confirmation numbers, etc, etc…  It should last a good long while.  Many years from now our grand children with either lovingly peruse the yellowed pages after the last of us passes from this earth, wondering aloud how things could have been so cheap in 2010 and how cute it was that we had a “Book Budget.”  Well, either that or they will throw it away in their attempt to deal with the clutter and possessions from the years of our lives in the couple of days they have allotted to “deal” with our things.  I hope it is the former.

My lovely wife and I have been married for almost four years and are just now getting around to having the reception. We booked the event hall just after New Years and have spent the last 7 months planning, deciding, rethinking, deciding again, spending, organizing, finding a caterer, picking a menu, herding cats, applying for permits, cake tasting, choosing the proper glasses, wedding dress alterations, finding flowers, writing checks, wine tasting, finding a new caterer, buying kegs of beer, tracking down a violinist, making invitations, finding 7 matching ties in one place, forking over the credit card, DJ – band – or iPod?, finding rooms for out of town guests, writing vows, buying gifts, soothing ruffled feathers, renting suits, keeping feuding family in their respective corners, dealing with lost bridesmaid dresses, etc, etc, etc… It never fvcking ends.

I am at the point where I want to run screaming from our cute little house – abandoning my green yard, letting my tomatoes wither and set up a tent in the mountains where I can live like a hermit until all this is over! After all the wine and beer are gone, after everything has been cleaned, and after all the guests have all flown back to their respective cities and towns, I am going to stay home every weekend for a year, read my Sunday paper, work in the shop and on my yard/garden. I am not going to plan one single fvcking event, outing, or trip. I am going to church on Sundays, yoga on Saturdays, visit a few galleries, and go see a film or three. I am not going to take on any more projects and I am going to spend my off hours reading, writing, making love, cycling, running, climbing, and building cabinets.

When my kids and grandkids decide to get married, I am going to do my dead level best to bribe them into eloping and will give them a lump sum of cash that would have been spent on their wedding/reception as a down payment for a home.

post written on and uploaded from my iPhone

The rosé is Portuguese and the white is German. We wanted a local red that would work with the chicken pasta and stuffed mushrooms that we are serving. After much swirling, sniffing, drinking, and repeat, we settled on the Wood Bridge 2007 Two Vines.  It is a Merlot and Cab Sav blend aged in oak that will go well with the food and desert for those guests that don’t like beer or white wine.  Good booze is a key element to any successful party and while people forget bad music, the drunken aunt, weird venue, and ugly bridesmaid dresses, no one EVER forgets bad food or booze at weddings! Serve lil’ smokies with a side of mac and cheese on paper plates and PBR at your nuptial do and you & your partner will forever be saddled with the shame of being poor hosts. There will be whispers behind you back, you will be used as an example of what NOT to do when friends gather and your can forget brisk attendance at any birthday or anniversary party you will ever have.

Right after we moved in, I scrubbed the place, applied some leverage to the walls to square them up as possible, reinforced the roof trusses, glued and screwed 3/8 plywood sheathing to two of the interior walls, installed florescent lighting, installed 9 bike hooks in the rafters, added garden tool holders and box storage shelves, built a narrow stout plywood work bench, and partially wired 5 outlets.  I did most of it with lumber, wire, and lights that I already owned, so my total outlay was less than $200 and the structure is now solid as possible given the years of neglect and will usable for the next couple of years.  I was going to do a little more – rebuild the barn doors and finish the wiring, but a surprise shoulder injury and subsequent surgery put that off indefinably.  I now have more projects than time and can’t fit it all in.

The little bit of work making the garage usable has really been a blessing:  In the six months that we have owned La Maison Du Talley, I have built our compost bins, the three huge garden boxes, two window flower boxes, a mason bee house, refinished a massive hutch, built a rolling utility cabinet, stripped and repainted furniture, built stuff for the kids, stored and serviced my fleet of bicycles, rewired a couple of lamps, etc… all without filling our house or basement with noise, sawdust, or fumes, which keeps The Mrs. happy!

For the last couple of months my kids have been here and cleanup and organization after this or that project was minimal.  Crap started piling up.  I got some new lumber and supplies dropped in my lap and they were just sort of tossed in.  There were semi-emergency house and bike repairs that left tools splayed about, my larger table saw (every proper joiner/cabinet maker needs two…) is in pieces as I am rebuilding the fence and adding a router table to the side leaf.  I had to crawl around and under bikes, push saw horses out of the way, step over a wheel barrow, and move the drill press to get a set of micro pliers to repair a necklace for my happy wife.  It was starting to look like Godzilla ate a strip mall containing a furniture, garden and bike shop then pooped in my garage.

After dropping my daughter off at the Airport the past Sunday morning at 5:00am, I went home, snuggled with the wife and the puppy for a couple hours, spent the rest of the morning in my bathrobe reading part of a book, consuming a large amount of coffee, and had a leisurely lunch.  I then spent the entire afternoon cleaning and reorganizing the garage so that it would again be usable and so I wouldn’t brain myself every time I opened the door.  I was super-productive:

Completely cleared and cleaned my bench top
Hung all the bikes on their assigned hook
Worked on stripping “new” Schwinn frame
Unpacked two boxes of refinishing and painting supplies
Sweep up a summers worth of saw dust
Emptied trash and recycling bins
Got the Tug-a-bike trailer ready to sale on Craigslist
Completely reorganized my tool chest (All the bike tools now have their own drawer!)
Put some labels on the nail and screw bin
Organized bench tools
Worked on a secret project for Laurel
Hung up First Aid Kit
Reinforced a wooden table
Made up a complete took kit for the house (no more in and out for little repairs)
Moved drill press to better location
Worked on finishing table saw fence

In addition to my sometimes compulsive need for organization, there will be a number of Engineers and builders staying at or visiting my home in the next month and it would kill me if my work space looked like that when they showed up.  When I shut off the lights at 10:00 PM, it was a whole new space and ready for inspection and for me to jump into a new project that I have planned for  September.

a few pictures of the building and the organization spaces/racks from earlier this summer.

As for my latest acquisition:  My Hellbilly neighbors had a yard sale a week or so ago and due to the blaring death metal and the drunken lawn party atmosphere, the sale was lightly attended.  One of the unsold items was a classic Schwinn Varsity that was somewhat beat up and missing a rear wheel.  While walking by on my way to Walgreens, they offered it to me, so I HAD to check it out.  It turned out to be a lime Green 1973 10-speed that was in good overall shape and had original bike registration stickers from Walla Walla, WA (1974-1976) and the negotiated price was a case of PBR Tallboys.  How could I pass up a frame built in the year I was born?!  Such action would border on sacrilege. I paid up and carried the thing to my garage/shop and started stripping all the old parts from the frame.  I am not 100% sure what I am going to do with it just yet – maybe a 3-speed internal rear hub and conversion into a sometimes-commuter and basement trainer?  For now the frame will hang in the garage awaiting time and spare cash for the build-up.

The coming CycloCross bike is a 9-speed Specialized with a beefy tig-welded aluminum frame.  I have to swap the bars and shifters (already have a set from an old bike waiting to be installed) and give it a tune up.  I plan to make her my primary work commuter AND my CycloX race bike come fall.  This will allow me to forever take the commuter wheels/tires off my carbon bike and tune it for solely training and racing.

I am running out of space in the garage rafters.  It is a web of wheels, gears, cables and seats above my workspace.  Since they are all out of the way, I don’t know if my cute little bride understands the full depth of my “collection”  and if any more two-wheeled “ladies” show up she may do some snooping in the garage and the poo will hit the fan – I hate when we “have to have a talk…”   That said, I would still like to have a couple more: a downhill 29er and a folding single speed for the train/travel, but I feel that the physical and financial impact of any cycling purchases in the next couple of years will have a detrimental effect of my love-life and corresponding sleeping arrangements.   I REALLY like my bikes, but I like snuggling up to a warm happy wife a lot more.  I think that I am going to have to start practicing cycling moderation.  That realization hurts a little.

When my daughter visited last year I accompanied her on her first ferry ride on which we crossed the waters of Puget sound for a Day trip on Bainbridge island.  This summer I have have the great pleasure to not only take my son on his first ferry ride, but to also be with him on his first train trip and his first experience on a wooden sailboat.  He loved the boat, I think, most of all and I can see a little spark of adventure travel starting to glow in his eyes.  My daughter will take a little more work – right now she hates to travel, hates cities and hates making decisions, but who knows, I may get to visit my grandchildren in their 300 year old French farm house surrounded by fields of lavender along the southern portion of the Route Du Napoleon…

This year, the only real first I got to experience in the company of my presently-surly 15-year-old daughter was to take her to her first professional sporting event.  We went to the Mariners vs. the Royals MLB game the night before she went home.  There is something about being 15 that make one hate almost everything, but she seemed to have a genuinely good time.  It didn’t hurt that we had AMAZING seats on the first-base line, eight rows up from the grass.  Baby steps: a new experience close to home, a cool new sight here, some exotic food there, a fine novel set in a far away place, and BAM! I am getting postcards from Japan.

Not two days after my run-in with Candidate-in-need-of-a-straitjacket, I am in Big 5 buying pellets for my son’s air rifle. The checkout lady asks me if I’m going hunting. I smile, gave a little chuckle and said no, that they were for a small pellet gun and that I was teaching my 9-year old the basics of proper marksmanship. A nano-second after it comes out of my mouth the lady behind me in line, buying a new yoga mat (no demonetization meant against yoga practitioners – I love yoga – it is just what she happened to be buying) shrieks and starts yelling at me – no really yelling at me about how I should be ashamed “teaching a child to kill.” She launched into a a stuttering unrehearsed diatribe about how wrong guns are, how evil and vile they are, how I was “perpetuating violence against animals and women” - really, she said that – and that “I should be arrested…” I stood there like a statue, not knowing what to do or say. The cashier started yelling at this woman and by the time an employee from the baseball section came running up, the screamer was so worked up that she was almost foaming at the mouth. She dropped her stuff on the floor and charged out the door. The three of us were left just staring at the glass door and each other. I shrugged, they shrugged and I left. I am afraid of both sides of the spectrum when it comes to gun nuts, so I didn’t walk strait to my truck, I stopped in at Starbucks for a much needed Mocha first and took a long look at the parking lot. I was half afraid that the anger over our “discussion” and the loss of a new mat, might drive the woman into braining me with a tire-iron as I tried to leave. No joke, the thought went through my mind.

What has happened to the middle of the road citizen? What is it that seems to have made so many people so aggressively partisan? How is it that all these rational people with real jobs, education, hobbies, etc… go off the deep end? It is that you just never hear from the moderates? Do they just keep their head down, go to work, occasionally go to the pistol or clay range and just go on about their lives????