When we were in Seattle in June, My mom gave me these two pictures. In the first she is a year old and her older sisters took her to school to have her picture made while they were taking yearbook shots – it was at small country school and in a different time… The second is from when she was 5. I now have one in my office and one downstairs on our family picture wall. I am really proud to have them and that they are out and not filed away in a box somewhere.
As part of my work contract with my J-O-B, we are flown back to the States twice a year. One of those trips has to be coupled with work travel, but overall not a bad deal. Stamps-With-Foot and I flew in to Seattle last week and stayed with my mom at our/her place. This was our first time back “home” since our move and my mom has transformed our eclectically decorated (books everywhere, Moroccan bits, craftsman furniture, mid-century couches…) home and turned it into your grandmother’s place: ceramic chickens, recliners for TV watching, lace doilies, a tin of cookies ripe for raiding, special soap in the bathroom that is meant just for looks…
We stayed in the basement and by our second day we had trashed it with clothes and books and other stuff to the point that it looked like a staged teenager’s room in a TV sitcom. I felt like I was in high school: mom cooked, did my laundry, made sure I got up on time every morning, offered to pack me a lunch, I played a little music, watched a few movies when I should have been sleeping, tossed clothes about… The only exceptions were the lack of posters on the walls and that I had permission for the pretty girl to share my bed and I didn’t have to sneak her in the basement window. 🙂
I ended up working for 5 days of the 8 day trip, but I got a good bit of other stuff done this week:
Sorted 3 months of mail – we get a LOT on junk mail
Picked up backyard and garden a little bit – long winter
Went to a couple of our favorite restaurants
Made 3 trips to Woodcraft for toys tools to take back to France
Coffee at C&P 🙂
Cut and edged yard
Fixed a few things
Hung out with my mom
Had great breakfast at Easy Street
Moved a room full of boxes into the basement
Painted a mirror frame for my mom
Ate 2 dozen cookies – true story
Snagged treasure at Goodwill: baseball bats, rolling pins, sweatshirts…
Ridded the yard of filthy, dirty, evil dandelions
Treated the yard for moss
Accidentally poisoned my mom’s cat with Moss Out
Spent evening in veterinary ER and dropped $250
Cat all better now
Turned compost pile
Paid some bills
Set up a Skype account for my mom and showed her how to use it
Got a sweet new pair of running shoes
Arranged for professional lawn care – warned them about the cat
Moving from one country to another, the actual process, is a huge pain in the ass. So much to do and so many details… The complexity of our move was increased because we will continue to own our place in Seattle and we had The Nana move into it. Separating the stuff that would go and stay, fixing small issues like that leaking faucet, winterizing the garden, trimming trees, installing railings and additional locks, and organizing yard and house maintenance contacts was enough to make my head explode.
There were 4 specific and different to-do lists that were drawn up in June and added to as time went on. I would like to tell you that it all got done, but the state of my backyard, the unsold table saws, the uninstalled basement railing and the incomplete bookshelf in our bedroom say different.
Things that were accomplished:
The images below are proof of some of the work and evidence of what did not get done as well.
Holy Jiminie-Joe-Bob it has busy around La Maison du Talley! We finally got the green light from the French authorities for our work and residence visas. A week later, the movers showed up, packed our place and loaded most of our possessions onto truck that drove away, hopefully to be seen sometime again in February/March in Toulouse.
We have a list two pages long of stuff to get done before we take our flight around the first of December. Yard work, paint touch up, moving The Nana, small fixes at the house, selling vehicles, etc…
Speaking of the last point: I FVCKING hate car dealers. For me, they rank right up there with lawyers, who hand out cards at accident scenes. You walk in the door of a dealership and you are a mark, like a rube in the big city for the first time. Big smiles and hand shakes, innocent questions, a free coffee or coke, all to gauge how much they will be removing from your wallet. No matter how informed you are of how much research you do, you will be bargaining from a position where they hold all the cards. This is doubly so when trading a vehicles.
We are trying to sell my truck preparation for our move and I want to strangle someone a little. Because of our time table, a private party sale is not going to happen, so we have to take the dealer route. The first dealer I went to offered me $16K for my 20 month old truck and had the identical model on his lot for $23.5K. Even with fees, he stood to make 7 grand on the deal!?!!
I get it. Everyone is in business to make money, but come on… Hate car dealers.
We/I have some serious work to do before we move to France for two years and we have a list of stuff that needs to happen. Here is the initial “to-do” post:
The Lawn:
The Nana is going to be moving into our house and will be puttering around the yard, planting flowers and the like, but there is no way that she will be pruning trees, cutting the lawn, weed eating, edging, or pulling pine needles out of the gutters. There is a little time, so we have contracted a crew to start taking are of the lawn now so that any kinks will be worked out.
In the spirit of full disclosure, the timing of this yard work transition was set into full motion only when my lawnmower blew up. Really, really – kaboom! As in there was a silver dollar-sized hole in the side of the piston housing and oil spewed everywhere. Right up until that moment the lawn caed transition was just a good idea. After it died, I threw it in the back of the truck, so it wouldn’t leak anymore oil on my grass and called the lawn service. There were a couple of things after their 1st visit, that I would like done differently, but on the whole, so far so good.
Projects:
The Kitchen HAS TO BE COMPLETED. I have stopped working on my Basement of Doom, the Campaign Camping Furniture, wood turning and a couple of refinish projects until the kitchen is complete. I will work down from there and not take on ANY new projects. I have two chests of drawers and a Duncan Phyfe Table that I want to complete and sell so that I am not storing them.
Shop:
I hate my table saw. I am going to out the beast on Craig’s List along with my contractor’s saw (Just collects spiders and sawdust), 12″ band-saw, small joiner, small drill press and the miter-box saw. None of them will work in France (50Hz vs. 60Hz power issues), so I can’t take’em with me. They are all old and have had a good life with me. It is time that I pass them on to new homes where they will see less use and live out their golden years making soapbox derby cars and bird feeders. I am planning to use any money made to invest in both some quality carving chisels and I will save part for the down payment on all new, cabinet shop-quality, power tools when we return to the US.
I can’t not build stuff, so I am taking the Anarchist’s Tool Chest route and am taking a rebuilt an old ammo/tool box (see evolution in pictures below) into a more useful tool travel case and will then show up in France with planes (22 of them), carving knives, mallets, hand saws, chisels, etc… The plan is to make smaller more detailed items, mostly by hand, while I am there (I will be sourcing a lathe and doing some bowl work though…).
My J-O-B occasionally has me fly all over God’s Green Earth with zero to little notice to provide support when something is wrong with an airplane or aircraft system. It never happens on a wednesday at 9:00am. Nope, I usually get the call as I am headed out the door for a 3-4 day holiday weekend with the family. I spent Thanksgiving a couple of years ago in Abu Dhabi, there have been Labor and Memorial Days spent in England/Northern Ireland, and I cannot remember the last MLK weekend that I got to hang out at the house.
This past Friday was one of those days: I got off work and was home just long enough to put on my shop apron, turn on the shop lights, and cut a piece of 47X13.75″ 1/2 plywood for my basement bench before my phone started blowing up. After about 9 calls to and fro, I had tickets booked for the first direct flight out to Tokyo the next morning and a semi-unhappy wife. Stamps-With-Foot has been very gracious about my last minute travel over the past 9 years. She understands that my employer’s ability to have me do these types of trips are part of the reason that we live where we do, have our cute house, and can save for college funds & retirement. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still get a little miffed – this trip is going to cost me something shinny, I can feel it.
Anyway, I love Japan in general and am here for couple of days. I will have a chance to pick up some ruffled-feather-soothing Japanese gifts for my my wife and mother (The Nana had planned a sunrise Easter Mass/Service as a family outing and was not please that I “bailed”), and there are a couple of things I want to pick up for the kids while I am here, so life shouldn’t be too hard for me when I fly home 🙂
We have a new resident living at La Maison du Talley: Izzy Osborne the cat. My mother recently moved from a house to a smaller apartment and her cat went nuts. Screaming, scratching, and peeing on everything and everyone. The Nana was beside herself with anger over the mess and with worry about what would happen to her kitty. This cat and I have history. For the last 7 years she has attacked me, drawn blood, hissed, growled, spit and slapped at me almost every time I got near her. There was an air of loathing in her yellow eyes every time she looked at me. Mean is an understatement! I have repeatedly teased The Nana about the cat being the Devil’s own and that her kitty brain was busy plotting evil, hate, and plague.
Stamps-With-Foot and I grudgingly agreed to bring her to our place to live in the back yard (I refuse to have a cat in the house – refuse) because I didn’t want my mother to get even more upset. Izzy wanted nothing to do with us for the first few days and even walked back to The Nana’s old house a couple of times. We went and got her – visualize armor made from a catcher’s mask and welding gloves – and once she figured out that we would feed her a couple times a day and not let Brodie use her for a chew toy, I guess she decided to stay.
She is a whole new cat… She purrs when I feed her, she will let me touch her, hasn’t attacked me even once, and her look of revulsion toward me is gone. While sitting in the yard on Sunday, she got into my lap and demanded some scratching – it was shocking. I was even able to pick her up yesterday without pulling back two bloody stumps from where my hands used to be. It is like she has experienced a complete reversal of personality. The thought has crossed my mind that she is just trying to lull me into a comfortable place, biding her time until she can corner me in the shop and eat me or catch me napping and come at me like the face-sucker from the Alien movies, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt for now, pet her when I feed her and pay her some attention when outside. You never know, she might earn her keep and find a mouse or two trying to invade the yard.
