Vagabondage 101

Despite the speed at which things are progessing at 1510 17th, what with the walls and temporary electricity and all, I've finally reached the terminus of my rent-free life. The house-sitting gigs have stopped appearing, probably because word got out that I kill people's houseplants and let stuff fester in their refrigerators. It's too crappy outside to sleep in the van, even if it weren't full of boxes and the not-so-vague odor of dog. And despite many generous offers, couch surfing for the next eight or nine months sounds like a really super way to screw up some friendships (guess what? I'm not much of a conversationalist at home! I'm a secret slob! I get up at the ass-crack of dawn!) So I've decided to rent an apartment--not so that I can think Deep Thoughts and construct some National Book Award winning memoir about paint chips and subflooring, but so that I can be gross in the privacy of my own space.

It's hard not to get excited about the house, since there's progress everyday--joists, trusses, studs, and beams are organized and installed, replacing the mud and air with structure and permanence. James demonstrated the purposefulness of the kitchen windows, crouching in front of the void where the sink will be. When I was asked what he was doing--why the squatting? he said, "I was imagining about where you'll be when you wash dishes." I replicated his play-acting throughout the house: here I am greeting guests at the front door! Here I am vacuuming the bedroom! Here I am tripping down the steps from the kitchen to the living room!

I'm able to maintain a state of subdued ecstasy simply because there are so many other things to be excited about. My group of friends that's been together 30 years gathered to celebrate Amy's 2-year triumph over cancer; I'm busily planning my birthday party; I visit daily with Laural's parents, who've dwarfed the Vanbulance by stationing Eldora II in the neighborhood for their annual month-long visit; and I occupy myself, as always with good books (see sidebar), great music (Josh Ritter at the Showbox; Brandi Carlile at the Mt. Baker); a fabulous, fun boyfriend, and as always, work and work-outs. I've also been doing lots of writing and recently posed for a photo for Village Books' Community of Readers campaign--look for me and Kosha soon in the Cascadia Weekly.

My energy is truthfully devoted to the impending end of my vagabondage: this weekend I'll assume the lease on the downtown apartment of my co-worker, Pippin. My mind is busily occupied thinking about how I'm going to get my storage unit open without my entire life's possessions crashing down from the mountainous pile towering above the DO NOT STACK ABOVE THIS LINE line. The apartment is small, but I would gamble it's got at least a hundred times the square footage of the Vanbulance, with the added bonus of toilet and shower facilities. I'm also looking forward to reuniting with my pillow-top mattress, having a place to hang my clothes, and of course, a potential reunion with Stinky, The Cat Who Traveled the World, although there's a good chance that he'll continue on with his adoptive family (a.k.a. Charlie and his children) in Sedro-Woolley. Shh...don't tell, but I might adopt a cousin for him. I've been checking out the options at Whatcom Humane Society. A warm fuzzy pet would be a great addition to my new home. Also, the cat box can help me gross it up.

My Psychology of Space

Former New Republic journalist Jake Halpern, a self-described “bad homes correspondent,” writes in his book Braving Home about people who endure unusual circumstances, remote locales, isolation, danger, and bizarre circumstances in their desire to lay claim to and maintain their own slice of space. Like the folks who insist on living in Whittier, Alaska, a tiny settlement reachable only by a special tunnel and consisting mainly of a 6-story “apartment” building. Or the Hawaiian hermit housed in a shack surrounded by molten lava. Halpern’s treks lead him to conclude that home is “not just a place, but a work in progress, something built and rebuilt over the course of a lifetime…home is simply who you are.”

My home isn’t anywhere near a lava flow or a flood zone (believe me, I know; I’ve paid for confirmation), but it will definitely have a dose of the unusual…or least the individual. Despite warnings that I must think about resale value, or that I don’t have enough storage space, or that laundry room “should” be near the kitchen/garage/back door, or that this/that/the other thing is going to be too expensive/too strange/too trendy, I’m planning the house that I’m going to live in based on extensive experimental research that I’ve conducted over the years by moving so many times that my mother has erased holes in her address book under my name.

My quasi-methodical research has led me to some conclusions about how I live and how my house is going to accommodate my habits and quirks. I realize this is a luxury, and I’m thankful every day for it. I also realize that in six weeks or eight months or seven years, I might totally contradict myself and question why I ever built that ten-story faux lighthouse above the garage. Pre-forgive me. I am large. I contain multitudes.

Conclusion #1:
Like a lot of people, I live in the kitchen. I dump my stuff there, make my phone calls there, conduct my home office from there, watch TV from there, feed myself/my animals/my friends there. Therefore, the kitchen is the center of my new house. My friend Paula W. just helped me redesign the space to include a larger island, more counter space, a prep sink, a nice corner bench for guests to lounge on while I cook, and a groovy built-in desk. I’m more excited than ever to live there! Paula’s awesome. (That's me at work sketching out the kitchen plan).

Conclusion #2:
Many of my ideas about home have been influenced (big surprise) by the homes I’ve lived in or known, so I’m trying to incorporate elements of those. I’m not going to have a Murphy bed a la my Hollywood studio, but I am going to have a day bed built under the stairs, kind of like the under-the-stairs spot in my Grandma’s old house. And the bench seat in my kitchen is also in homage to Grandma Westcott’s house, as are the built-in bookcases and dining room buffet. Now if I can only find a light-up map of Washington State for the wall.

Conclusion #3:
There’s a chance I could go all Mrs. Winchester on everyone. Not because I plan for endless construction in order to appease evil spirits, but because I’m including some secrets within the walls…a swinging bookcase, a hidden door, and some nooks and crannies that would make Nancy Drew proud. Why? Why not?

Conclusion #4:
Having removed at least five football fields’ worth of wallpaper in my immediate past (including an end zone’s worth of Rocky and Bullwinkle paper), I’ve overqualified to make this pronouncement: wallpaper is wrong and its manufacture should be prohibited. I don’t care if it’s made from the delicate inner thigh skin of endangered albino Siberian tigers or second-growth bamboo dyed with organic dingleberry juice. No house of mine will be befouled by it. I’m busy picking out paint colors, thank you very much Cameron M. for bringing me those samples from Behr’s Disney collection. Bibbiddi Bobbiddi Blue™ will be perfect for my guest bathroom.

And I'm getting closer and closer to actually having a bathroom. The first load o'lumber arrived this week, the site has been meticulously prepped by James (see photo of him explaining to Evie June what a "spawl" is), we have temporary power, any day now the bank should begin releasing chunks of money.

As for an estimated "done date," I dare not guess. Like those Hawaiians living with the uncertainty of eruptions and lava flows, and the Alaskans secluded behind that tunnel in Whittier, I'm living with the strange sense of not knowing when I'll be home. In the meantime, I'm content living with the knowledge that when it is ready, it will be everything I've dreamed of. At least for now.

Spacing In and Out

While it’s true that I’m only technically homeless and I don’t really live in a van down by the river, I am living much of the time out of my van. House-sitting means 1) cable TV; 2)kitchen amenities; 3) a soft bed and 4) a parking space. But house-sitting is not home; as grateful as I am for these temporary shelters, I miss being weirded out by mystery condiments in my OWN fridge. The same oozy, sticky bottles and jars of unrecognizable goop are somehow less gross when they’re mine.

I miss having a place to store my clothes. Even if the hundred-pound closet doors in my condo did roll off their tracks and bonk me on the head and fingers, the system far outranked the Rubbermaid boxes I’ve been dragging from house to house. I miss folding t-shirts and rolling socks into compact little balls of tidiness. I miss hanging my garments by color. Also, where the hell is my brown A-line skirt?

I don't believe that I'm plagued by hardship, just a little scattered. My shoes are like foster children, all placed in different homes--a few at Charlie's, a basketful in the Vanbulance, some in mini-storage (probably buried under that #%$@%$ brown skirt). My cat lives in one house, my dog in another. My snail mail comes to Laural and Tom's, my email to school, except for some that comes to cathybelben@gmail.com which I can't access at school because of the filter, nor at the current house-sitting job because they don't have a computer.

Thus, these are my constants: work, the Vanbulance, my cell phone, my friends, and the gym. My home-in-progress doesn't count because it is anything but constant, although some of you philosophers out there might argue that change is the only true constant. I check development every day when I go to pick up my mail, marveling both at how cool it is to watch my plan materialize and also at how many steps there are in the process.

The good news is two-fold, 1) the foundation is done! and 2) standing on a mound of dirt that approximates the height of my second story, I can see Bellingham Bay. It's very tiny and far away, but it means I'm not wasting money on the veranda that'll stick out of the master bedroom. Also, I'm now aware of the view that I'm "stealing" from the neighbors. I'll try to feel bad about that.

James told me that building a house means a constantly shifting sense of space and perspective, and it’s true. After the excavation, the footprint for the house seemed really big. Then the footings were poured and it shrank—so much so that I thought they’d made a mistake reading the plans. The forms went up and the rooms expanded. The forms came down and the rooms seem small again. According to James, this illusion will continue: the studs will go up and the spaces will enlarge, then the drywall and subsequent shrinkage, etc. I hope someday to have a house that’s just the right size. Like Goldilocks, only without the bears. And with lots of closet space.

Stung!

I waltzed around bragging for 27 years that I had not been stung by a bee for 27 years. I am uproud of the pride with which I did this, because practically the next week, a bee flew into my bike helmet and stung me on the ear. And just when I thought it was safe to go back to my bee-boasting, I stood on my lot yesterday chatting with James, felt a pinch on the back of my knee, squished the pincher with a reflexive snap, and spent the next four hours trying to ease the sting with a combination of arnica gel and Cabernet-Sauvignon.


Not so easily alleviated the sting issued by the neighborhood anti-welcome wagon brigade, a committee of two who took it upon themselves to visit James while he was knee-deep in rebar and inform him, in great detail, how sad it is that this new house is taking the place of the lovely, green, empty lot that they evidently thought of as their own little private slice of weed-infested Eden. Never mind that this project is 1) James’s first ever lead construction project; 2) my future home and the first house I’ve established on my own, and 3) the culmination of the talents, plans, and dreams of half dozen people. One woman’s idyll is another’s eyesore, apparently.

To be fair, things aren’t so pretty right now at 1510 17th, unless your idea of “pretty” is a hole in the ground, a silt fence, piles of dirt, yards of rebar, foundation forms, and a mishmash of cryptic neon paint markings, string, buckets, and junk (including this little red piece of crap wheelbarrow that someone just wheeled over and left on the property a couple weeks ago). In the eyes of this beholder, it goes way beyond pretty, all the way to full-on smoking hot. Jessica Alba hot. George Clooney hot. Matthew McConaughey-naked-on-the-beach hot. I’ve never seen so beautiful a pile of dirt and its accompanying hole in my life. I think you’ll agree, even if certain cranky neighbors whose window-crack views of the bay may or may not be obscured by my house don’t.

The hole, in all its glory (hee hee), is gradually disappearing, and the alleged view-blocking about to begin. I returned home yesterday to find the street between Larrabee and Donovan clogged with equipment—trucks and trailers, a cement mixer and a pumper. I parked and disembarked the Vanbulance, clapped my hands, and ran across the street in my school clothes to watch as the footings were poured. I destroyed my nylons and got my pumps dirty, but it was totally worth it to watch as the foundation of my future home began to take shape. The event wasn’t even ruined when I stood near a neighbor who was watching the pour and said to his four-year-old daughter, “These big machines are really noisy, huh?” and she replied, “Yeah. This is what we have to listen to ALL day.”

Across the street, my less-amnst-encumbered and more welcoming neighbors, the ones providing me with a home base(ment), a mailing address, and a place to store my voluminous collection of rubber stamps and crafting supplies, celebrated the progress with smiles and excitment. "It's not just negative space now," Tom said, referring to the disappearing hole. "It's a positive one!." And I thought, yeah, it is. Despite the bees...and the b-words.

My Name is Matt Foley

A confession: since last writing, I have unfortunately formed an opinion about toilets. After committing myself to Just Not Caring about some issues of the homebuilding process, I’ve had the good fortune to be homeless(ish) and shacking up in an assortment of other people’s houses while they go places like Michigan, New Zealand, Rome, and Turkey.

Fun part of house-sitting: new and exciting liquor cabinets! affectionate pets! CD/DVD libraries! Not-as-fun part of house-sitting: alarm systems. Quirky light switches. Canoe-shaped futon beds (a.k.a. “canutons”). Low water pressure. In a previous life, the one where I owned a home and a pillow-topped mattress of my own and a toilet that (mostly) flushed with great vigor, I could take a shower in less than five minutes.

I don’t need my new house to be equipped with the Turdbuster Ten Thousand™, but I’m not going to be reducing my environmental footprint in the bathroom. I’ll bicycle to the Co-op for recycled sponges and organic locally grown tomatillos, but I am NOT flushing three times for every number two, and I won’t take a shower that requires me to wash my hair one strand at a time under a lethargic, lukewarm trickle.

That isn’t going to be so much of an issue for the next week, since I’m between house-sitting jobs and will be living in a van down by the river. Seriously, the Vanbulance is stuffed with every ridiculous thing I seem to think I need to cart from one temporary housing situation to another, including a dog, a mountain bike, seasons 1 and 2 of The Office, a giant suitcase with a broken zipper, a box of craft projects, a basket full of shoes, a jockstrap and a pair of sliding shorts (not mine), and 3 bags of non-perishable groceries.

Luckily, I’m able to station Vivian across the street from the construction site, plug in to Laural and Tom’s house, and keep a close eye out for any progress at 1510 17th Street. Exciting new development #1 was the delivery of the porti-potti on Wednesday (no flushing issues there) and then, early Thursday morning, the rumbling arrival of the excavator.

Emerson said that you should “write it on in your heart that every day is the best day of the year,” and I embrace his enthusiasm, but let’s face it, realistically, some days are way better than others. Thursday was definitely one of those days. At nine-thirtyish the crew arrived—Ron and Chris with their earth mover, and James with his safari sun hat, his blueprints, and the building permit neatly encased in a plastic envelope.

Across the street, Noah prepared an address sign to help future subcontractors and curious friends, and Dana and I tripped to Farnandia to inform Cooper, Evan, and Brandon that the big rigs had arrived, and we trouped back up the alley to set up a viewing gallery for the show. The lineup was impressive, and as the hole got bigger, so did the crowd. If I’d known fifteen years ago what a man-magnet an excavator is, I would’ve driven one around instead of spending all that money on grooming supplies and acid-washed jeans.

The day soon evolved into Testicle Festival 2007, with 9-10 men and boys watching as stumps were plucked and earth moved. The only man not impressed with the events was one of the neighbors, who seemed a little miffed that my house is going to block his negligible quasi-view. If he wants a better view, he might start by getting rid of the broken-down mini-van full of crap that’s been lodged in front of his house since 2001.

Excavation went about as expected: we didn’t unearth any ancient Indian burial grounds or underground springs or beehives or anything. The digger did collide with a sizeable chunk of rock in the area that will be my living room, so thanks to Planet Granite, there will only be two steps down from the kitchen instead of three. I think I can live with that. In fact, at this point, living as I am in a cramped van that smells like dirty shoes and dog, I’m freakin thrilled.

Entry Systems and Exit Strategies

“This is where your house actually begins,” James said, tying a fluorescent orange bow around the log he’d dragged into the location of my future front door. The question now is whether that front door (excuse me, “entry system”) will be the Ashurst, the Prestwick, the Arcadia, or the Barrington.

Now that the city has officially granted us permission to build (a bargain at $16,452, including the city’s $5 “technology fee” and a four dollar and fifty cent charge for the state building permit), the project has lost a degree of hypotheticality and my life has evolved into a happier shade of chaos (I call it Quivering Sunburst). My condo is sold, most of my belongings are in storage, and the 47-page lumber package bid has finally arrived (see photo). Now I can focus on truly important issues--this week: doors and bathroom fixtures for my invisible house.

“This is your homework,” James told me last Wednesday as we sat at the Colophon (I had the gazpacho—fantastic!) He passed me a worksheet with teeny-tiny blanks into which I was to write the model number and price of all of my appliances, lighting items, bathroom fixtures, and doors. Despite my difficulty selecting an Entry System, choosing interior doors was pretty easy.

“I want solid wood doors,” I announced, perhaps envisioning a future requiring excessive privacy from houseguests or stepchildren. “None of those ticky-tacky hollow things. I want a door I can throw a hairbrush at.”[1]
James shook his head. “They don’t really make solid wood doors anymore. Too heavy.”

“What?!”

“Well, they’re solid, but they’re not exactly solid wood,” he explained. “To really understand, we need to take a trip to the door factory…”

Ten minutes later, more fully educated in the manufacture of interior residential doors, I re-surveyed my options, leaning towards more traditional 6-panel “Jefferson” or “Plantation” or “Elite Virginian” or some such thing but opting for the classy but simple “Cambridge,” with its “ovolo[2] sticking profile.”

Choosing bathroom features was tougher, in part because of tricky trends like tempting sinks that sit on the counter like shiny fruit bowls and lots of slick glossy catalogues from European companies that make a visit to the john look like a day at the spa (only without the paper bras).

Here’s the dealio: I want a toilet that flushes with precision. I don’t need a bidet or a special Japanese toilet seat that shoots water at my undercarriage. I don’t care what brand it is as long as it’s not the same lidless jobs they put in prison cells. Self-cleaning would be swell, and so would a toilet with a seat that automatically slams down and frightens men when they don’t put it back in the proper position. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. But that’s just my little fantasy.

I cannot get excited about bathroom sinks. In my world, they are repositories for toothpaste globs and spiders that I’ve had to squish for frightened houseguests. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. I don’t know or care what “undermount” or “self-rimming” means. Both sound suspiciously like something from Penthouse Forum, so no-thank-you, I’ll just go with the vessel that fits in the hole on the counter and holds water. Taps, toilets, tubs=basics are a-ok. I’ll spice things up with purple towels and sassy shower curtains.

Oh, yeah, and I might spring for a whirlpool tub in the downstairs bath. It won’t be long before you’ll find me there, I hope, with my aromatherapy candles and my soothing bath oils. Just peek behind the Cambridge. That’s the entry system without the hairbrush-shaped hole in it.

[1] As a curly-haired pre-teen, I struggled to achieve the popular feathered look of the early 80’s and at one point, blamed both my hairbrush and the bathroom door. See photo.
[2] I don’t know what it is, either.

I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Condiments

Of all the not-so-brilliant ideas I’ve had, this one might be might not-so-brilliantest: in the midst of packing, I decide that a great way to get rid of my extra baking supplies would be to do some cooking in between lifting heavy boxes of MISC and FRAGILE. It’s nearly 90 degrees outside, I’m sweating from the exertion of carrying my tiara collection to the garage, and I decide to heat the oven to 450 and bake 2 coffee cakes, two dozen muffins, and strawberry shortcakes for Charlie’s baseball team.

Aside from the obvious, this was an absurd plan for other reasons. Of course every recipe required at least one item that I didn’t have, so on top of greasing pans and whisking eggs into oil, I had to schlep over to the store to acquire some ingredient that I wouldn’t use all of. My muffin tins and cake pans were packed, so I had to buy disposable aluminum ones. I was one egg shy of a coffee cake, had no milk, needed a bottle of almond extract, and spilled my last two teaspoons of vanilla. All just to avoid packing a box of biscuit mix and a pound of flour. Thank god I learned my lesson before deciding to use up the remnants of 47 different condiments lining my fridge door. I don’t even know what Spicy Tahitian Baja Tomatillo Marinade is.

When finished, I had a dozen dirty bowls and utensils that now not only had to be packed, but cleaned as well, and my kitchen counter, floor, and stovetop were coated with a sticky batter that could probably hold 747s together. Also, the muffins totally sucked. If you’re ever thinking, “Gee, my mouth feels overly moist and saliva-enhanced. I think I’ll dry it out with some surgical gauze and a cotton ball,” STOP RIGHT THERE. Call me and you can have my dry, flavorless “carrot cake” muffins. I also think they might be useful for absorbing wet spills, and possibly as doorstops (I call them Muffin Stops).

In addition to the baking, for some bizarre reason, I also decided this that it I should get a head start on my homemade Christmas gifts (!?!?), so I’ve been copying photos and organizing ideas for a handmade book for my nephew, who likes to read (see photo). Charlie and I are training for a triathlon, I’m learning to keep score for baseball (and therefore, watching Mariners games almost nightly to practice my F7s and BBs and 5-4-3s), I have the details of three and a half house-sitting jobs to manage, an all-school book read to organize, and a column to write for Writers on the Rise.

Plus there's this whole other "new house in progress" business. I've got to select locations for every outlet, light switch, and fixture in the new house, choose toilets (dual-flush or standard? DoI need this "one-of-a-kind life-enhancing bath product" "Washlet" feature?), meet with James occasionally to talk about subcontractors and examine things like sewer drain access. Also, since my permit application was submitted, I've begun receiving mysterious advertisements from businesses offering everything from new furniture to on-site sanitation facilities. NEW HOUSE?! YOU'LL NEED TOILET PAPER! CHECK OUT OUR SELECTION OF BRAND-NAME TISSUES--EXQUISITE QUALITY AT AFFORDABLE PRICES! WE CARRY ONlY THE SOFTEST, MOST ASS-FRIENDLY PRODUCTS!

Multi-tasking? I’ve got a PhD.

Thus, the REAL reason I’ve fended off offers to help with the packing—I don’t want to reveal what’s really going on over here—the baking, scrapbooking, and boxing interrupted by periods of napping, spectating, and the occasional trip to Lake Padden for a swim and a dog-dunk. NONE OF IT in any particular order. “Oh, Belben, you’re so random-abstract!” my psychologically-minded friends might exclaim. But the truth is, I’m not. I’m one of the most linear left-brainers on my alphabetized list of linear left-brainers. I just have a lot of lines going at any given time, and they’re aimed in a hundred different directions. Right now, one leads to Discovery Park Mini-Storage, one to Goodwill, one to the Dumpster, and the others? They lead, in loop-de-loops and curlicues, into the future.