A Wing and A Prayer

"Every day, unsuspecting people wander into construction projects like babes in the woods, and they come out wondering what the heck happened in there..." And so begins the introduction to the book "What Your Contractor Can't Tell You".

This little gem of a book arrived yesterday from Amazon. A gift from George the Elder to me. The man is a genuine romantic. My question is - - why is the gift for me? Is this perchance a not so subtle hint that I'd better bone up on all-things-remodel so when the shit hits the fan I'm in the cross hairs? Me thinks this is a bit of a set-up. Get the unsuspecting girl to read said informational reading material providing boy with the ability to shout (when things go wrong) "Why weren't you prepared for this? I GAVE you the BOOK!!!"

I'm not saying this is his fundamental motivation. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was just trying to help. On the other hand, I'm also considering the worst case scenario and am thusly preparing myself for that potential time in the not so far future where George the Elder blurts out - "What the hell? Didn't you read the chapter entitled Tick Tock: How Time = Money on a Construction Project??" Hop to Hop Sing. Time is MONEY!!

So, I will read the book. The first chapter says that prior planning prevents piss poor performance - - words to live by in any event (see previous paragraph). So, I will head out to my local book store and purchase all manner of design magazines (of which there are many) and begin to cut out pages of appurtenances and accouterments that my dream kitchen will possess. Big picture, I'm thinking that it should have a stove and a fridge and a sink. But maybe the Book will give me some other ideas - like including a built-in chef instead. Now that'd be something useful.

Oh, and I guess I should bone up on the difference between a back hoe and a front hoe (if there is such a thing). Since we will be excavating a basement, it may be useful to get another book entitled "How to Manage Your Insurance Provider When the House Caves In". Prior planning and all....

Dulcet Tones

On Tuesday I was driving to the airport to pick up our friends who are visiting from Tokyo. I am listening to NPR and my mind is wandering as various politicos try to get information / reactions from Sotomayer. I decide that I've had enough of listening to the dems blow sweet smelling clove smoke up her butt while tossing her compliments not so cleverly disguised as questions, and the reps making snide commentary and criticisms while asking insanely badly worded questions to try to get her to blurt out the next sound bite that they will use in all the newspapers to illustrate her ineptitude as the next supreme court justice. So I change the station to listen to some music.

This music is kind of nice because the boys are at camp and I do not have to listen to Lady Gaga over and over again - - no matter how much George the Younger likes to sing about taking a ride on his disco stick. I do not have to shudder at the thought that I know the lyrics to Echo and Blame it on the Alcohol (or whatever the real name of that song is). I get to listen to what I want to listen to. Boring, stupid pop songs. I want to hear Plain White Tees. But that's not where I'm headed.

I start listening to some woman singing. I don't know who she is. I don't know the name of the song. This has always been a shortcoming of mine. It makes singing karaoke very challenging. You get the BIG book of songs listed both by song title and by artist so that you can pick the "Best" song to sing in front of friends and strangers. Problem is - I don't know the names of songs or the names of artists who sing them. So I just leaf through the book wishing that I had thought of this earlier and made some kind of a list before being confronted with the 10 inch thick volume of possible choices. Finally, someone else will get up and sing and I will be pissed off because I KNOW THAT SONG. I just can't find it in the book. So I end up singing My Way or something by Cyndi Lauper 'cause for some unknown damn reason I remember her. But that's not where I'm headed either.

This woman singing has a beautiful voice. Like angelically lovely. So I thought it's pity that everyone can't sing like that. Which led me on this little daisy chain of thinking that since most humans (at least those who are not unfortunately deaf or mute) have the capacity to make and mimic noise - why can't we all sing well? Now I know that all humans cannot sign well especially since my own husband, George the Elder, cannot carry a tune on a shovel. In fact, last Saturday morning he rose before me and headed in to the adjacent room to catch up on the family finances and to surf the web for whatever he searches for. He put on his head phones to listen to music while I continued my morning of sleeping in resulting from the absence of children in my home. The problem was I kept being jolted awake by what can only be described as a keening noise akin to that of a banshee. It was George "singing" along to whatever he was listening to. He was singing and I was frightened awake thinking a small animal was caught in a trap or something. But that's not where I was headed either....

Where I WAS headed in my weird little daisy chain of logic was whether or not some birds are worse singers than others. I hear them chirping and warbling, but is what I hear the same as what other birds of that species hear? Is it possible that there are some tone deaf song birds who are relentlessly ridiculed by their song bird peers because, they too, can't carry a tune on a tiny little bird shovel. I'm no ornithologist - so what do I know. I was just wondering.

My own wondering got me to wondering even further... why was I wondering about this at all? There I was starting off my day being all in-the-current-event-mode trying to decipher whether or not some woman was the right choice for supreme court justice and I end up wondering whether some talentless Chestnut-backed Chicka-dee is cursedly mocked by his chicka-dee friends. You are most certainly wondering the same damn thing.

And they're off

Boys were successfully transported from San Francisco to New Hampshire yesterday via American Airlines. To confirm their receipt on the other end, I have gotten one call from the camp who retrieved them at the Boston Logan last evening and I have photographic proof that at least George the Younger is actually at camp. He was playing basketball. I do not have photographic proof that Henry is there, but I feel I can safely assume that if only one had arrived instead of two, I might have gotten a text message at least.

Since a large part of my day was spent at San Francisco International Airport, let's talk about US airports for just a moment. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Really ashamed. What a miserable experience travel is. And, for the lion's share of it, we need to blame the people that are responsible for it.


I had a little observational experiment yesterday. I wanted to see if there was one single person who I encountered during my visit to the SF airport who (and I set the bar pretty low) could actually muster up a smile while they were working. Not surprisingly, the number of people who were able to squeak out a grin was only one solitary individual - - the waitress who served us lunch. And, I am nearly ready to disqualify her from the experiment, since she actually sort of prostitutes herself trying to get tips - therefore the smile is not a sincere gesture. The smile was there in mouth only. It did not affect any other part of her face. How sad is this? What a bunch of grumpy, displeasing people are there to provide "send off". And they wonder why stewardesses get punched in the face? I propose that the poor thing is just the final no-cutomer-service straw to a wretched travel experience that began the minute that person pulled up to the white curb that was for loading and unloading only.


But, listed in no particular order were the other things that plagued me yesterday:

• I COULD NOT manage to get a luggage cart. At least not one in the "honest way" that you are supposed to. "Honest", meaning that I got a brand new one out of the little cart dispenser. In most international airports (and I'm trying to think of an exception, cause I am sure there is one, but...) luggage carts are free. Yes, free. What an amazing convenience concept. In SFO, they cost $4 - that is, they cost $4 if the machine will actually accept your bills. The two that I tried would not accept any bills, not even the pristine non-wrinkly kind. They didn't take cards either. The second one I tried was occupied with a nice Spanish lady who was practically in tears when the machine repeatedly spit out every single bill she inserted. She was talking to the machine in what I can only assume where Spanish curse words. I backed away just in case she should turn her frustrations on me, the only American in sight. In the end, I trolled the parking lot looking for an abandoned cart. I found one hidden between two SUVs. I think people though I was looking for a car to steal.
• I had to deal with a nasty "red coat". In my vernacular, a Red Coat is the guy who first greets you and tries to determine how to "help" you on behalf of the airline. It dawned on me yesterday that there must have been a change to this job description. I will check wikipedia. My experience went like this: We approach the check-in line. I have two boys and a luggage cart with two large rolling duffel bags and two large stuff sacks on the stolen cart. Red Coat says, "Go to Kiosk" (just that, nothing like good morning, please or nuttin). I say, "I need to fill out some paperwork so that they can fly unaccompanied". The Red Coat says again, "Go to Kiosk" and points in that direction. I respond with "I am already checked in, but the children need to fill out some paperwork REQUIRED by American Airlines" And then the Red Coat(no kidding) responds with an audible sigh of disgust/revulsion/annoyance and just points to the other line. An American Airlines customer service hallmark moment.
• We wait in undesirable line. We are handed paperwork to fill out while we are waiting. A flimsy form in quadruplicate with no pen and no surface to fill it out on. Boys finally get checked in by James. James does not make eye contact or murmur any conversational tidbits such as "welcome to AA, can I help you?" Basically he held his hand out for the e-tickets, the flimsy red and white unaccompanied paperwork and the passports. I think Henry wanted to know if he was a mute. After some sour faced punching of buttons, and the single request of "how many bags?", he did (without looking up from his 9 keyed keyboard) ask for my credit card to pay the $100 unaccompanied minor fee and $40 each for the boys extra bags. Mr. Charming. I'm gonna request him specifically next time I make it past the red coat kiosk Nazi. Please send me right over to the sullen, aphonic ticket guy...he's a regular feel-good-kinda-man....
• We get our boarding passes with out a single bit of information on them - as in what gate are they leaving out of or what time they are boarding. Must have been the specific kind of ticket that is issued to parents bringing their children to fly unaccompanied. You know, just the airline's special way of making an already stressful situation a little more so. I heart them.
• Finally a 30 minute wait in the security line and we are right up to the x-ray machine. Boys are shoving their stuff in to the bins and when this stewardess (I know you are supposed to call them flight attendants - but what a crock...they are still waitresses in the sky who have been trained to inflate slides) butts right in between us. Slaps her suitcase on the belt and,without a "how do you do" or a snide smile, inserts herself in between me and boys and just sails through the electronic gateway that obviously can determine whether or not you have any items necessary to take down a 747. I get that they should have the "right" to cut in line. I mean honestly, can you imagine standing in the security line every time you want to go to work (although, come to think of it I have never seen an Orange Julius worker have the right to cut the line, but maybe I just didn't notice them in their uniforms and they do it all the time). Still, what I don't get is the absence of those two little words of common courtesy...EXCUSE ME. Man that's a tough one to enunciate. Easy to get why she didn't say it. George the Younger says that if she was on his flight he thought it would be funny to spill his coke on her "by accident"! See what I mean? To a 13 year old, it would be funny to spill a coke. To someone older - a punch in the face might seem reasonable. I'm just saying it's not too hard to imagine this happening or having oodles of empathy for the person that did it.

I suspect that every one complains about their airports. The foreigners probably do it too - it's just that you can't always understand what they are saying, and of course everything sounds better in a foreign language that you can't understand. But, when you are there and the carts are free - well at least you've got that going for you.

Done, Still Walking and Beans

I am posting this photo because I am allllmmoooossttt done painting the porch furniture. In fact, I am so alllmmmooossst done painting it, that it is possible (probable, likely, almost balls-on-certainty) that this may be as good as it gets.

See the pretty BRIGHT yellow (this color is best yelled in a loud and excited voice). This professionally applied four coats of very thick rust preventative paint is so peachy-keen that it makes these bad boys look nearly brand spankin' new. The proverbial fly in the soup is that the four coats of very thick rust preventative paint are only on the glider and the chair (as seen in the representative photo). There are only three coats of very thick rust preventative paint on the second chair/rocker (the arm of which is noted in the representative photo). I ran out of steam. I just couldn't bring myself to apply one more coat with the words "wax-on-wax-off" running a continual loop in my brain.

In truth, what really happened is that I just plain old got fed up with not being able to put the car in the garage. I am a spoiled brat. I like to open the door from the house and get directly in the car without being subjected to the elements. With the porch furniture in the garage I was forced to open the front door and walk an exhausting 50-60 feet to the car. It was unbearable. A veritable living hell. Oh, and besides that we were having guests over for dinner, so I wanted to have somewhere to sit and watch the sunset.

I wanted to post this photo of the kids on our Golden Gate bike adventure. I know I griped about it yesterday as something that just took up time and put a dent in my otherwise placid life. But, we really did have some grins. Yes, I seriously considered having an aneurysm at least twice while huffing up some hills and I had a couple of out of body experiences wondering "will I be able to physically propel myself forward tomorrow when I get up and my legs are made of noodles?" And yes, for those interested - - I indeed have been able to walk. Good deal.

And last, a question that has been plaguing me for many years and I keep forgetting to ask it. What are kidney beans packed in when they are canned that makes them froth up like they are full of dishwasher soap when you rinse them in water? What is this viscus liquid that leaves gloop in the bottom of the can and yet creates mountains and mountains of bubbles when confronted with common tap water? Just a question.

It turns out

Turns out that children not in school take up an inordinate amount of time. I knew this several weeks ago (on some level) when I posted about what-the-hell-were-u.s.-schools-thinking-with-the-loooong-summer-break thing. What I clearly wasn't prepared for was the actual absoludicrous amount of time they truly require. Like tons. Like every damn minute.

Typically, I can blast out a blog every couple o'days about the basic insipid vapid pestrian aspects of my life. But with the cruise ship schedule of the every other day "field trips of entertainment" combined with my need to keep the house spanking clean - - stick a fork in me. I am done.

To add some more stuff on my to-do list, Shannon arrived last week for a quick visit on her way to Beijing and, you guessed it, she takes up scads of time too! She's lovely, wonderful and fabulous to have here. It's just that she needs to get stuff done and we want to do stuff while she's here. Over the past five days we have: shopped for all things needed that can't be had in China, we biked over the Golden Gate Bridge and had a lovely over-priced lunch in Sausalito, we went to a 4th of July bbq, we saw the Giants lose miserably to the Astros, and much to George the Elder's chagrin, we squeezed in a Sunday evening shopping trip to Union Square (where Shannon bought some traveling clothes and I dished out 28 smackers for a pair of underwear that I have been searching for since leaving Tokyo and now it appears that Shannon has heisted them and taken them with her to China - what a brat. And even after I bought her the most expensive fish and chips I've ever seen in any country!).

Before Shannon arrived - and after we returned from Vashon Island, I took the boys to the Exploratorium for an afternoon, made the boys go shopping at Target for a sundry of things that they need for camp, made arrangements for two estimates for landscape architects, made the final selection for our "regular" architect, contracted a plumber, made an appointment with a roofer, make and kept two orthodontic appointments, and tried to find another mover to make another estimate since now we are going move not only once, but twice before the year is out. Even typing this makes me want to take a nap.

In other news, Shannon left this morning and the boys leave for camp on Friday. Perhaps I can get on with the business of getting everything else done that I usually get done - but maybe not. Perhaps I will just sleep through the entire weekend once I put the boys on the plane.

And speaking of the plane, when I made their reservations to head back to NH for their camping adventure, I felt certain that I was going to be fine with putting them on the plane alone. Lately, I have been having second thoughts (think Air France) and feeling highly anxious about it. Today, I put Shannon on a place to Beijing. I felt a little squidgy about that too and she's 28. Guess it doesn't matter whether they're young enough to need to red and white striped ID tags draped around their necks to fly or whether they're old enough to buy those tiny bottles of Jim Beam as in-flight entertainment. Still nervous at any age.

In other words, my life is complexicated by the whirling vortex of boys-not-occupied-with-learning, older daughter-making-rapid-fire-visit-on-way-to-foreign-country and purchase-of-what-could-potentially-be-a-giant-money-sucker-project. Can anyone say Nob Hill Spa day? Come on say it with me....SPA DAY PLEASE!!!

We Got House and other news

The youngers and I are back from a weekend on Vashon Island. This is narrow piece of lovely about a 29 minute ferry ride from Seattle. What was interesting about this place was that each of us visitors (from around the US) felt that it looked just like somewhere we loved (the coast of maine, upstate new york, a small town in PA). Either we were all high from the lavender farms that dot the island, or it's just one of the places that has the immediate impression of "welcoming".

We were up there mainly to attend the Cambodia Tomorrow board meeting, but got lots of good social time in, so that was great. It was fun for the kids to be around other adoptees (although George the Younger lamented his status as the "only Vietnamese" kid there). George the Elder and I do not spend much energy or importance on lets-talk-about-our-adoptee-status at home with the boys, but it's fun for them to be able to meet these other folks. Mostly, the kids just played outside, went to the pool and headed off to see Transformers during the weekend. It's not like we had them sit and round table about their "feelings" of being adopted. Mostly they round tabled about how to get more marshmallows for s'mores or about how everyone was yelling at them simultaneously to keep the frickin soccer ball out of the baby lavender. Pretty normal stuff.


In the picture are most of the board members of the ngo - they are easily identified as the "white folk" in the photo. We had a great meeting (it was my first) and I have to admit I was getting a bit of a thrill out of thinking and acting like I had a job again (mission statements, visions, personal goals and action steps). It was nice to take those skills out of the bag and dust them off for a change. Today I am back to home management (laundry mostly), but perhaps being on this board will give me the little of "I am NOT JUST a mom" back that I am craving.

In other news, we actually are home owners, although I haven't been over to the house yet. After some ado about an environmental somethingorother, we went "on record" sometime on Thursday while I was in the air between SF and Seattle - mainly reflecting on how the death of the king of pop was affecting travelers (i.e. when we were in SF folks were getting off the plane trying to confirm the "rumor" that they had heard while they were in the air. Others were just noticing on the large screen TVs and shouting out to one another - - weird). George finally got over there on Sunday, so at least one of us has visited the place. It's odd, since we're both excited about getting the place - - but are in a place in the process where we own it, but don't need to really use it, but need to plan for it, but don't need it's physical presence yet.

I suspect I will walk over there this afternoon to check it out and use the key (just for fun). I also have to meet with a new neighbor who I am trying to woo with my unparalleled cooperation so that I can get her pay-back partisanship in the short future. My plan is to seem unbelievably convivial about trimming back a tree for her (that is on our property). My expectation is that when we present her with the plans to do-whack-a-do to our place that she will feel the need to reciprocate and give us her immediate blessing. This is the plan any way. We will see.

Where's the Fun in This?

Yesterday, George the Elder and I headed over to Fidelity Title to sign the papers for our new house. We were excited. We were gonna get a NEW HOUSE!!! We were summarily disappointed.

You see, California is one of a handful of states that close real estate in escrow. It's a total drag. We sign reams of papers. We give them a lot of money. In turn, we leave with a dirty thumb (a notary requirement) and a copy of that ream of paper. What we don't leave with is real estate.

No house. No nothing. According to the escrow officer, once the house is "on record" we will get a call. Wow. A call. How about someone with a trumpet arrives with the keys?? Now that would be at least a tad bit more exciting than a phone call.

The escrow "officer" (sounds very official, but in my mind it just is a stupid word for someone who keeps my house from me) says that none of the sellers have signed yet, so it could be a while. How strange is that? No shaking of hands at the lawyers office. No bonding with the sellers. And more importantly, no house. Seems kind of unfair. We give money = we get house. Apparently in California is goes more like this... we give money = they get the float = we wait for a call. A big thumbs down (with or without ink) from me.