Merry Christmas, I Guess

I might as well begin by saying that we have a second life as extreme house flippers who have been crazy enough to live in some of the houses we are flipping, and have raised four wonderful kids doing it over the years. Each flip, like the children themselves, has been unique and has also come with its own set of challenges, but all have made us stronger and better people. Except, perhaps this one. I must admit that this time, it got to us. We flew too close to the sun, spun the wheel one time too many, and played remodeling russian roulette once too often and unlike the other flips over the years hoping to come out unscathed, here we are, abysmally and totally down for the count and completely KO’d for the Christmas season as we know it. We do have a tree up, a real one, best we could do quickly chosen on a picked-over lot, but I have thrown all the ornaments, lights, and garland at it with a vengeance to somehow fly in the face of it’s scrawniness, and the fact that there is blue painter’s tape stuck all over the walls nearby, spotty baseboard trim, and a cement hole two steps away. But it stands. Oh yes, it stands grandly, reminding us that there are things to celebrate, even if we can’t see them at times.

Here’s what happened: A beautiful plan for us to remodel our home was hatched, to bring it up to date from from its humble beginnings in the early 80’s. Which by the way means outlets, people. Or the lack of them. It seems that code at the time stated only one plug per wall was necessary for some reason, and I now have a nice collection of extension cords running around the house to make up for it. Did we not have lamps that needed lighting and Nintendos to plug in back then? But I digress. Back to the raison d’être: we were giddy with excitement, our heads full of excoriatingly white waterfall islands, modern brass drawer pulls and gleaming subway tile. This was supposed to take a mere fleeting six weeks back in July and we had broken ground with handshakes all around and thoughts of completion before September was over. Yet as we all know, the way things happen, first with Hurricane Harvey making an appearance through our roof in the form of a black stain dripping from our newly textured and painted ceiling down to the recently installed wood floors, to having lost entire teams of workmen needing to go repair their own or their family’s homes in nearby Houston, it has taken us a lot longer. We are grateful it wasn’t worse, and I can’t even imagine what devastation some people are facing for the holidays, but for us, we’re in our own little world, we have to finish this job, make good on our investment in this house, and try to give where we can to help others during this time as well. As of now, our home project is destined to go into the New Year. We’ll be needing extra champagne, no? Currently we’re hanging tight, counting our blessings, and hoping for the best but in the meantime we have no kitchen for family get togethers for the holidays, no stove with which to make a fragrant Wassail or fry up Christmas morning bacon, and no end in sight until we see quartz. Right now, there is no counter space to do anything more than set down a lukewarm takeout bag.

We need to tile, but have to match what we have. These turn out to be rather expensive imported Spanish tiles called D’Hanis, that are only made every six months out of the year in Spain. (What do they do the other six months? Do they switch to baking bread instead of firing tile? Do they go on vacation? We may never know.) We have found the tiles to be aptly named, as it has been a truly heinous process to get them to match. 3rd unrefundable time’s the charm, we hope. Props to my amazing father in law for having done quite well in the remodeling industry until his recent retirement, successfully matching all kinds of crazy stuff to other stuff that isn’t made anymore or is hard to get. Whew. Serious slow clap.

I am today living on popcorn and coffee on a warmer upstairs to keep me going till the workers we have gotten to know and love, quite well, over the past 4 months-of our 6 week remodel-head out for lunch. Our teenage daughter had baked them cookies almost weekly, until the counter space went, and we’ve become quite used to their cheery greetings and conversations in the mornings when they come to get started on what they can until the plumbers, who we’ve heard really do exist but haven’t seen yet, can magically appear someday and get their part finished so we can get on with the rest of this project. There will be cookies all around for everyone on that day, if it ever comes to pass. While the house is quiet, I can scurry downstairs and squeeze in between the plastic overspray sheeting in the kitchen to grab something out of the fridge, say, a morsel of cheese or a leftover bit of underdone potato. (Thank you, Charles Dickens, for the reference). Yet unlike ye olde Ebenezer Scrooge, money is tight and healthy eating is a laughable memory as frozen pizza boxes litter the landscape and takeout boxes line the fridge. Our flesh has turned to a Gollum-like state, and we are starting to crave raw, tasty fishes and abhor sunshine. I believe my brother in law’s recent gift of his famous brisket may be our last meal soon and we are saving it in the freezer to that end. Our Precious is the TV and occasional movies help us forget our woes. (Thank you my awesome son in law who graciously set us up with a Direct TV package; we can now binge watch all the Big Bang Theory, This Is Us, and Mystery of Oak Island we want! (‘A piece of WOOD? From the 10x SITE? Could it BE? …WOOD that COULD have been used to make TREASURE CHESTS? And PIRATE SHIPS?’)

Our master bathroom is a dirt hole in the ground with bare studs. Not the manly kind, thank goodness, but the insulated kind, complete with shovels and rocks, with copper and plastic pipe fittings strewn about on the floor for good measure. Well, they do say fixtures are the jewelry of the home. We stride past the debris at five in the morning to get dressed in the closet beyond, and we go upstairs to shower when we can hop in and out before workers arrive everyday. My hair is a strawlike consistency from the constant layer of dust that is created, and we all have a soft cough. The Yorkies, Gracie and Brie, have turned grey and sneeze quite a lot. I dust and vacuum all I can, but the next day the dust is back to haunted-house-like levels, and as we all know, we haven’t begun the countertop phase yet, which is known to generate a lot of dust in itself. I may have to start packaging up the dust and selling it for dolomite for gardening purposes.

All is not as usual in our daily lives. We used to welcome neighborly meetings in the front yard, chat about the kids and activities, but now, in the evenings, we cautiously peer out of the curtains and if we see a neighbor passing by we quickly retreat to safer ground upstairs lest they see us in our disheveled state. But wait! There’s more! Night before last, at 3a.m., I had gotten up to go to the bathroom in the front of the house, which right now is the only working one on this floor, when I stopped cold in my tracks. Bright, alien-like beams of laser light veered randomly around the front lawn, as if fifteen cars were furiously turning around in our circle drive all at once. Then the doorbell! (WHAT? a DOORBELL? At THREE in the MORNING? Could it BE? sorry–Oak Island gets to you after a while.) Still frozen, and contemplating what to do, the doorbell again! And this wasn’t a hesitant type of doorbell ring, but insistent, pushed hard and with authority, no fear of what the homeowners might think. I decided that I would like to have a little male backup before I answered this door, so I skipped quickly back to the bedroom and got my husband up out of bed. He was groggy and confused, but came out to see what on earth could be going on. It was The Police! They said there was a complaint. They said a sound was disturbing the peace. They said it was coming from our house. My poor husband donned a shirt and quickly went out into the cold night air to see what was the matter. I had heard a tiny beep beep beep when I got up just a few minutes earlier. Like a watch battery alarm in a kids’ room drawer, very faint and not seeming to be asked to be dealt with until the morning, if at all. But outside! My goodness, it was like a wailing air raid siren from World War II that had been activated and was carrying out its duties with a stiff British upper lip! A carbon monoxide alarm, it turned out to be, which we hadn’t even known existed in our house at any point, had been unplugged and thrown into a trash pile, which we were attempting to keep hidden on the far side of the house so the HOA didn’t fine us on our poor lawnmanship. The battery backup had kicked in, waking the entire neighborhood. The Sheriff had a pocketknife, which he helped to open the cursed thing, and it was summarily dismembered and gutted. We shakily returned to our sheets, vowing this project to be over soon and wondering what had been done with the smoke alarms.

What it boils down to is this: This Christmas season, I am just able to barely exist, living life in a faded, noncommittal sense, not thinking of planning any events, putting together lunches with friends or family, or even finishing a load of laundry successfully on any given day. To all who may invite us out, I am sorry, but this year, I’m just glad to show up, if anyone is willing still to have us. Of course I can leave the house and look like a normal person if I want to, if I have the energy to put on shoes and throw on a scarf and get outside. I have found that scarves work wonders in making a two day old outfit appear new, by the way. With boot and jewelry changes, and a muted pallete of white and black, mixed with subtle grey and browns, I believe I have successfully been able to fool most people I know and show up for events seeming relatively put together. Maybe this is what New Yorkers have done for years. Maybe they have fooled us all into thinking they are sheik and stylish when all they were attempting to do was duck out in the cold for a warm bagel and shmear? I do the showing up in my freshly dented car, of course, which happened last week as I was turning into the driveway and accidentally swiped a tree branch while trying not to hit all the other cars parked there for work to begin for the day. Then I broke the fitting to my wedding ring when I hit a wall while trying to quickly move things out of the way for the crew. What a year this is turning out to be! Please, if we ever talk about remodeling extensively and living right on top of it again, talk us out of it like Prince Caspian in the Silver Chair. Tie us down, lock us up and throw away the key until the notion leaves us.

Merry Christmas, I guess,
Jennifer

P.S. Not to truly bah humbug, we are actually in quite good spirits considering, and looking forward to all the season brings! PLeASE know that we love everyone and are actually still quite sane, especially after 6pm most nights and weekends.

Love,
Jen

This Year: Weight Loss. 2015. Oh Yeah. It’s All Going To Happen.

So here we are, going into 2015 as innocent as lambs, just as if we were just kids by the creekside one summer, then we all got jobs, then taxes, mortgages, bills and kids, which come along without our ever realizing we had grown up; it was time to change and keep pace with the responsibilities life brings. But now we need to change. Change used to be easy. Now it’s hard; next to impossible. Why? What is so hard about getting what we really want out of life?

As kids, if we wanted something to change, we asked Mom, and she made it happen. If we wanted to lose a few pounds, she went to the store and bought us a can of Slimfast and cut down on seconds at dinner. 10 pounds down, done, boom. Now, we have to make things happen for ourselves. We naively decided that we could do this. There were things we would change, like our hair styles and clothing to make us look thinner. And then there are things we’d never change, like our love of Taco Bell Meximelts. We grew up, and we grew out.

Out, mainly because foods from childhood surely are the diehard memory inducers and everlasting comforters of this life. They did not go. Macaroni and cheese, no. Cheeseburgers, no. Pizza delivery, hell no. And we can drink now, we’re adults, so we add in even more fun times with glasses of wine, bottles of beer, and perhaps the occasional cocktail with friends. That would be Margaritas down here in Texas, home of the best Tex Mex food anywhere in the world, and I have the stack of Chuy’s T-shirts to prove it. Yeah, big, green, frozen Margaritas. 500 cals. a pop. And whoever has only one? The goal seems to be slipping further and further from sight, like the ranch dressing at the bottom of the bowl at Mr. Gattis buffet. We’re pretty set now; we like what we like. Ke$ha got it right: we are who we are. This is the real me, we say. We’re happy with this. We roll along for a few months, okay with this life, until we look into the bathroom mirror one morning, and say,”When did this happen? I don’t remember having two chins while brushing my teeth?”, so we stick our necks out a little more, sure that it was just a fluke. But then the jeans won’t go on, the shirt is bulging at the muffin tops and chicken cutlets, and we hurt our backs trying to bend over to put on shoes. We think this is just the dryer shrinking things. We outsmart the jeans by grabbing our stretchy jeans: you know the ones that look great the first time, then mysteriously develop stretch marks after the first wash. But maybe no one notices this when they’re being worn. Then we spend all day pulling and tugging to keep the correct silouhette at work, school or just opening the door when the neighbors drop by so we don’t look like we were just digging into the Cheetos. Which we were. We totally were.

So what can change? If these things are set in stone, it’s going to be the Rock of Gibraltar by the time we get to retirement. And we’ve seen some of those rocks. Not pretty. We have to do something different. So we buy another diet book based on what it will still allow us to eat, and join the gym again. This feels great. We are inspired, invincible. For about 2 1/2 weeks. Then we get invited out to a family birthday dinner. At the chicken fried steak place. Hm, well, we’ve been doing so well, we say, we’ll just order the salad. And some iced tea. With lemon. After the birthday dinner, we roll out licking our fingers from cream gravy and fried okra, french fries and buttered rolls, too ashamed to go back to the gym; they can smell it on our breaths, they will know.

Years go by. We love the rest of life; kids grow and move out, we have exciting careers and wonderful friendships. Which possibly makes this harder to change. After all, life is pretty fulfilling and we can have whatever we want, whenever we want, sort of. But not during the night, when we lay there thinking of the one shirt that’s in the wash that will fit for tomorrow’s luncheon, or when we have to dress any nicer than a trip to the store, or wear heels for longer than 30 minutes. There is a trade-off, and that’s it. We need some way out, but what? Everyone we know is struggling with the same thing, and if they aren’t it’s because they became anorexic or pro athletes. Where are the role models? The just naturally thin and relaxed people who aren’t really dieting, don’t belong to a gym and still love good food? Time to explore this and find the sense, the peace that  good living and finding new ways to enjoy that life will bring.