House of the Raising Shims

Certain things become apparent only AFTER you have moved into your new home.  It comes down to this: Love is blind.  When you fall in love with your new place, its character, its quaintness, its nooks and crannies - you have blinders on.  With these 'in love' blinders, you can see no faults.  It is only upon taking possession of the house that we realize the living room walls are covered in painted, lifting wallpaper - noticeable now, because the walls are empty.  No to worry!  Quick faux fesco finish and those walls become a 'feature'!

Every single floor in the new house is uneven. I swear to you that, other than the threshhold to the master ensuite, I didn't notice any floor issues the 4 times we were in the house before we took possession.  None.  And yet... and yet after we own the house, it quickly becomes apparent that we need to buy shims in bulk.   "Quick, hand me a shim!" 

David and I begin to argue about the relative nature of 'level.'

"Do you want it level to the walls?  To the ceiling?  To the floor?"

"What I want is to look at a piece of furniture against a wall and not think I'm in a Dali painting!!"

We planned a nice long 2 week overlap between the closing of the new place and the sale of our old place for our very small renovations.  We would take March Break and turn it into a family project.  WE HAD  LOTS OF TIME.  (Sorry, I need to stifle hysterical laughter for a moment.)

We didn't have that much to do in the new house before we moved in.  We were being conservative in our renovations.  We were tackling them ourselves.  (With some very generous help from friends and family, and tradespeople to do the tricky bits.)  We were taking a 1 bedroom with ensuite and 2nd floor loft family room and turning it into a 2 bedroom with a common bathroom... 

... and we thought we'd shift where the master closet is to utilize all the space under the eaves... and we might have decided to move a cellar egress door to create a traditional door to the basement so that the cats would be able to navigate down the non-conforming-to-code stairs...  and we were putting up an entire wall of upper cabinets in the kitchen...  and we were laying floor... and intended to eliminate the separate 2nd floor laundry to open up a wall so that the common bathroom could have more space...  and we needed to bump out a closet on the main floor to house an upright freezer, washer/dryer and treadmill...  and we were going to create a wall of repurposed antique windows, which we would then frost/etch/cover with stained glass so that Rissa would have some privacy...  and we were going to add custom cut angeled doors to the sloped ceilinged bedrooms, because there weren't any.  No problem.

Strangely enough, in that 2 week overlap before we moved in, not one of those jobs was actually completed in full.  Go figure.

The bathroom is 'mostly' done.  The fixtures are in!  And we can shower - so WHOO-HOO for that!  We need to finish the drywall, tape and mud and put on the beadboard wainscotting and chair rail and then paint - but at least we can shower!  In keeping with no floors in this house being level, the floor of the old laundry room and the floor where the new shower/tub combo resides, has about 4 inches of level disparity.  Step between those different floor levels and you're in for a wild ride.  It's not quite the beginning of the Leviathan, but if you've had a nightcap (or 6 - you know, to cope with living in a home during renovations), it's close.   I'm just going to pretend that we're living on a houseboat.  That's why nothing's level.  We've even added a waterproof light fixture over the shower so that we can really immerse ourselves in our 'marine' bathroom.

The new closet in the bedroom has clothing rods, but nothing to hide them from view.  The flooring in the living room and foyer is done, but not the 1/2 bath.  The upper kitchen cupboards are up, but still need a coat of paint... and handles.  The closet on the main floor needs to be taped, mudded - and something to cover it.  The wall of windows, the privacy doors and the door to the basement?  I'm thinking that will happen in the summer.

And yet, with every box that we unpack - the floor space increases.  Smaller jobs are getting done.  We mostly got the office area settled on Monday night, and last night David made a microwave shelf to get the appliance off the counter.  We hung the curtain rod in front of the main floor closet - I have no fucking idea where the curtain rings are,  but they'll turn up as soon as I buy new ones.

I'm looking out our kitchen window, towards the back yard and there's some sort of gnarly tree (which I hope will be a flowering apple) and a little group of bushes with our bench and some haphazard flower pots beside it.  This morning, there are two blue jays poking around in the mostly-revealed spring grass.  I couldn't see this view from our other kitchen window - it was always too high to get a good look at the backyard.  I had to get on my tippy-toes to enjoy the green.  And now, here I am, typing with a view.  It's going to be okay.

Dance of the Sugar Plum Sluts...

These girls are 9

So there I was... watching the baby sluts dance...  It was not, as might be inferred, the END OF DAYS - nope, that wasn't it.  Dance competition season had begun.  The last time I endured this was 5 years ago, when Rissa did a couple of group numbers at the age of 9.

I thought we were safe, this time around, I really did.  I told David, who came late to the party, that this year the dancers were mostly wearing clothes and weren't too slutty.

Hubris.  That's what it was.

No sooner had we sat down in the theatre (waiting for Rissa's group to dance), when pint-sized hip-hoppers clad in next to no clothing, all began shaking their little asses to the delight of their parents.  At least, I'm hoping it was their parents who, when these delightful little divas started doing the ass popping move, hooted hollered and cat called.  I hope to God that it wasn't some random pedophiles off the street who thought they'd found their own personal Heaven.  (Media Alert: ANYBODY can walk into a dance competition.) The booty-poppers were in the mini class - which means that they were 5 - or younger.  David and I shared looks of horror.  These wee little bits of spandex and sequins danced with this subtext:

"Hey, look at us grind our little asses!  See us shake our non-existent boobs!  We are A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!!  Doesn't it just make you want to..."

"I swear to you," I said.  "This is the first that I've seen of it at the competition."

"My eyes!" David said.  "I need to bleach my eyes!!"

Then the Irish Step Dancers came out.  They were 15. Their costume: barely there, sparkly mid-torso shirts missing an arm, leatherette booty shorts and, wait for it... fishnet stockings with a seam up the back.  'Cause you know... that's what Irish dancing is all about.  Sex.  The fishnet stockings are there, I guess, because they were fishing.  Fishing for... sailors.   The girls were fabulous dancers - very precise, synchronized beautifully... and all I could think was "WHY ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE STRIPPERS?"  David turned his head so violently to avoid looking at them (and going straight to hell), that he almost broke his neck.

Dance schools have dress codes.  Really fricking serious dress codes.  You have to 'bunnify', you have to be covered, no jewelery, you can't look sloppy.  At least not until it's competition season and then apparently you're allowed to look like a $25 hooker who gives blow jobs in the drive-thru of an all-night Tim Hortons.

It can't just be us, can it?  Please God, tell me that David and I aren't the only parents who don't want our daughter graphically sexualized!  Rissa's 13, and if I discovered her doing the choreography that some of these 7 year olds were doing?  I'd be bringing up the dance studio on child pornography charges.  Over the weekend, I watched young girls performing to these songs:

I'm a Good Girl - A jazz solo by a sassy little 13 year old who basically did a burlesque number. Don't get me wrong - I love a good burlesque number - LOVE them - hell, I'd love to do one myself.  What I don't love?  Is watching a 13 year old offer her boobs up to the audience as something akin to the dessert section at all-you-can-eat buffet.

Put Your Grafitti On Me danced to by a group of 10 year olds in sequined bras and panties, splaying their fingers all over their bodies - basically indicating where they'd like their full-body bukkake.

The topper?   Flaunt - danced to by a  trio of 13 year olds who did a lot of gesturing to their own tatas and hoohas before they finished the number off by grinding their asses.  The lyrics of this song are:

Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna see me flaunt what I got?
Baby, come a little closer
Come and get to know me
And what I got?
Baby, won’t you come and see me?
Won’t you come and be with me?
See what I got
‘Cause what I got is what you need
What I got is what you need
What I got is what you need
It’s what you need
It’s what you need, so
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna see me flaunt what I got?

"NO!  NO, I DON'T!!!  You're 13!  WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS??  Put on some fucking clothes!"

I'm not a prude.  Read my posts about sex, you'll see.  I love sex.  I read tonnes of erotica, I enjoy off-colour smut.  Have done, since I was a young adult.  My daughter is 13.  I am not comfortable with her being thought of as a sex object.  I don't want her to become accustomed to receiving applause for popping her booty.  I don't want her to think that being clad in next to nothing in public doesn't have consequences.   Yes, in a perfect world, we should all be able to run around naked and nothing would happen.  Yes, the human body is just skin with hills and valleys defining our primary and secondary sexual organs.  It shouldn't cause such riot.  But it does.  We can pretend that the world has changed, but it hasn't. For millennia men have been schooled to believe that women's clothing and behaviour can warrant a Get Out of Jail Free card...  Yes, it's 2014, and yes, it's still happening.

So how about this?  Let's just encourage our children to... dance.  In clothing that allows them to move without sharing their asses with the world;  to music that empowers rather than subjugates.  Can we please be vigilant parents, protecting our precious progeny - allowing them the time to grow up?  'Cause here's the hard truth folks:  Your little girl, who used to skip around the dance studio in innocent abandon, pretending to be a butterfly?  That little girl, when she dances all 'grown up', is going to have random strangers in a crowded theatre wanting to fuck her. And if you're cool with that?  You need to re-examine what it means to be a parent.

We're the white trash!!!

I'd been holding back the hypervintilation for most of the morning.  I'd stepped over and around things - did the Stanley meeting Livingstone in my bedroom as I finally located a pair of tights, pried open the vanity drawer that didn't have its handle, because it STILL needs another coat of paint before the handle can go on and I can't seem to find the time to paint...

Visual chaos makes me mental.  The day we moved in I ended up lying on the floor, topless and sobbing.  10 days later the house is still rife with visual chaos.   We haven't moved in 8 years.  In the last house, I managed to have things behind doors and curtains, hidden in  drawers.  I had perfected the art of squirrelling things away.  In this house (half the size of our other), we have too much crap to squirrel and no place to squirrel it.

David is dropping me at work.  I get into the car, take one look at the top of the driveway beside our house and muffle a sob.

"What?  What is it?"  David's hand on my knee - he's so concerned.

"We're the White Trash."

"What?"

"WE ARE THE WHITE TRASH!!  We have old chairs on our lawn and things up against the fence and knocked over things and bags of garbage and random pieces of cardboard..."

"Heather, we just moved in."

"I know that!!  Don't you think I know that?!?  But your average person driving down this street doesn't know that.  'Look there's an old ratty armchair, just sitting there by the back door.  How can they let that happen?'  The only thing we're missing is a CAR UP ON BLOCKS!!!"

By this time I am hyperventilating.  I've closed my eyes to avoid the mess, but even with my eyes closed I know that it's there, so with my eyes still glued shut, I turn my head to face the side of the house.

David doesn't say anything.

I work a bit later than usual, and then have to run a couple of errands.  By the time I get home and walk up the driveway,  there is nothing there.  Nothing.  Not a chair, not a bag of garbage, not a random old bannister... nothing knocked over or piled haphazardly. 

I stick my head around the back of the house.  David has cleaned off the deck area, leaving only our bistro set and BBQ.  All the stuff that still needs to eventually go into the still-to-be-built shed, is stacked neatly against our fence, out of sight from the street.  My heart nearly bursts with joy.

I walk into the house.

"You made me a haven."

"I did."

"You organized everything."

"I did."

"You must really love me."

"I do." 

Automatic Cat Wash

We have an indoor/outdoor basement in our new home.  Built in the mid-to-late 1800s, the cellar sports a gravel and dirt floor, parts of which are in various states of damp depending on how quickly the snow is melting.

The cats are... ecstatic.  As indoor cats, their new proximity to 'outdoors' has them doing their own version of Parkour through the basement.  We hear them bouncing around and letting out heroic "You can't catch me!" yowls through the kitchen's pine floor boards.  Our diminutive, and usually dainty, Lola frequently comes upstairs looking like a victim of Shelob.

"Dude!  Are you aiming for the cobwebs?!"

"Prrrrrrrowl?" she says, before licking her paw and nearly choking on what's she's stepped in.

Litter boxes are in the basement.  Amidst the gravel and dirt.  We've put a tarp down, but they still manage to come up, paws and fur covered in various forms of detritus. Our house will have cat paw prints and cobwebs forever.

My friend Margo came up with the brilliant and cunning plan.  The cat door to the basement can have little brushes on the sides and top so that when the cats come through, they are automagically cleaned.  BEST PLAN EVER!

Except that we have two different sizes of cats.  We have normal to small sized cats and we have Minuit, whose circumference is a tad more rotund.  I just know that Steve and Lola would find a way to avoid the brushy parts.

"Beaded curtains!" yells David.  He's been wanting beaded curtains for the longest time.  He says it to see the whites of my eyes.  "We add  beaded curtains to the cat door so that they are cleaned WHILE entering or exiting!"

I had to agree that it might work.  "Or... or.... you have those things... those cleany-skinny things..."
Everyone is now looking at me like I'm mad.  Damn my post-partum aphasia - 13 years on and I still can't find words.   "You know - they have wires in them?  They can be chenille...?"

"PIPE CLEANERS!"

"YES!  Wait!  Wait!  We get the metallic ones!  Drill holes in the frame of the cat door and then insert them.  THEN we can change their colour according to seasons or special events..."

"Like black and orange for Halloween!" Margo chimes in.  We're so sympatico.

 We shall patent this.   This is how we will make our millions.

And that's when he told me the cat was paralyzed.

In the middle of moving day.  I was at the new house, already unpacking.  David was back at the old house to help lead the movers in a second rendition of Should it stay or should it go.

"Hello?"

"...Hi..."

He had a tone.  "What's wrong?!?"

"Well, Minuit seems to be..."

"What?  Seems to be what?"

"Well, I think that she somehow injured herself.  She's, uh, moving a little odd."

"Like how odd?  How injured?"

"Like she is having trouble moving her back end.  I think I need to take her to the vet."

"What are you NOT telling me? How much trouble is she having?!?"

"..."

"David..."

"She's kind of... dragging her back end..."

"VET!  Take her to the vet!!"

Of course this would happen on moving day.  Of course this would happen to Minuit.  This is the absolute best time for this.

Later...

"The vet's not sure.  Could be a blood clot or it could be a slipped or pinched disc.  Nothing's broken, nothing showed up on the x-rays - except for a slightly enlarged heart."  (Minuit is the fattest of our cats.)

"So what are we doing?"

"We're going to wait and see.  They said to keep her contained in a small space and see how it goes.  We've got an appointment for tomorrow."

So we spend the rest of the night - in between toing and froing from the old house (we don't technically close the deal on the old house for a few days)  - checking in on Minuit, now sequestered on the floor of the 1/2 bath in the old house.  She's not eating food.  She's not drinking.  Every time the humans share a glance, we have that resigned, lost another cat, look.

Next day, Rissa and I have her in with the vet.  We're prepped emotionally.  David's already said his goodbyes.  The odds of us being able to give full time care to a paralyzed cat are slim to none.  I work, David works, Rissa's in school.  There is no way that a cat in a rolly-wheel device is going to be able to navigate a litter box.

The vet checks her out.  "She's looking better than she did yesterday."

I think: Really?!?  This is better?!?  Paralyzed from the waist down is better, how?!?  But I say,  "Oh?"

"She's reacting to pain in her feet, (squeeze - MEOW!  squeeze - MEOW!) Brighter eyed.  She's definitely improved."

"She has?"  A sliver of hope opens within my chest.

"Definitely.  I think you should keep an eye on her over the weekend and then check in on Monday with us."

I scritch Minuit's ears.  "You hear that beast?  You have a reprieve."  I decide to use scare tactics.  "But I'm telling you babe, you gotta start moving your back end soon or it's 'coitans' for you, 'coitans', I tell you."

We're in the waiting room.  I'm prepping to pay.  The cat cage is open on the floor, Rissa's hand is inside, scratching under Minuit's chin.  I'm wincing at the counter, as today's total of vet fees gets tallied.

"MUMMY!"

I turn around.  Minuit is now out of the cage by at least 2 feet.  She looks at me - gives me a pointed, "Don't give up on me" look, and stumps the two feet back into her cage and settles down once more.

"See?" I said to the vet.  "Nothing like a good threat of euthanasia to get a cat motivated to heal."

Obsessing about ONE box...

WARNING: there is too much information in this post.

We moved a week ago.  Downsizing by half means we have spectacular box stackage in the new house.  Boxes, as far as the eye can see.  Boxes, piled 4 - 6 feet high.  The master bedroom, at present nearly impenetrable, because there is an entire room of craft/sewing supplies waiting to be stacked in the back of the soon-to-be designed closet under the eaves. 

For the past week, I've been searching for the box into which I deposited the contents of my bedside table.  I have a stack of books + my e-reader in that box.  That e-reader has become my Holy Grail.  I've got the latest Kim Harrison book on it - fantasy escapism is in that e-reader - plus a crapload of erotica.  And right now - I am in great need of fantasy escapism.  The visual chaos surrounding me is making me batshit crazy.  My wild-eyed panic usually hits at the end of the day - when I'd like to decompress with a good, or at the very least, satisfying book.

As I was madly searching for the missing box last night - I had a horrifying realization.  Other contents of my bedside table are in that box.  Other adult contents of my bedside table.  My Hitachi Magic Wand is in that box!!!  I've lost my royal sceptre!  Plus other things are now missing... other 'help you have good sex' things.  Things that made me tell Rissa years ago, "Do NOT go into my bedside table."  "Why?"  "There are sex things there."  "EEEEEEEEEEEWWWW Mummy."  "Yes, and if you root around in there all you'll be able to think of is Daddy and me having sex with them."  "MUMMY!"  "Told you."

There are 15 years of marriage props in that box.  The best of the best is in that box.  Over 15 years of marriage you try and discard a lot of stuff.  Like say, the honey dust, which although it tastes good, having the dedicated time to dust or be dusted by your partner is almost non-existent and then when the dust gets even slightly wet - you just end up sticky.  And even though you're supposed to lick it off - come on - who has the time or the energy to do a full-body lick.  And then the sheets are all sticky...  And that means that you have to do even more laundry after your adult play date... 

But there are other things in that box.  Tried and true things - just the right size, just the right fit, the right amount of... shall we say... glide...  Things that were purchased at the Sex Shop equivalent of a Whole Foods store.  Pricey, organic things.

Which means that now I need to go shopping.  And you know what's going to happen, right?  I'll re-source my bedside table contents and then of course the box will show up and I'll have two of everything.  I'm having a flashback to  Double Mint commercials.   Double your pleasure, double your fun.   Even just the thought of that scenario is going to keep me smiling all day.

Deer in the headlights...

A buck, a doe and a fawn stand in the headlights of an oncoming Mack truck.  Our family took possession of the new house on March 4th.  By the next day, we had broken it.  8:00 p.m. Wednesday, after spending 12 hours demolishing things, I stood at the entrance to the common bathroom and started to hyperventilate. Hours before, there had been working fixtures in the room: a shower, a bath, a sink, a toilet... walls.  At 8:00 p.m.?  NOTHING.  We'd had the house for 18 hours.

"I... I... I have to leave now," I said to David.  (He and our friend Jamie had now moved on to ripping up the old floors.)

"I... I..." A wave of nausea hit.  "I can't... I... I need to go..."

I staggered back to our old house (we had two weeks of overlap before our house deal closed), dropped my dusty paint clothes and ran a bath - in my working bathroom.  I threw in multiple couple of cups of Epsom Salts and immersed myself in the cast iron tub. I was in desperate need of a Calgon moment.

So we're just a wee bit behind where we thought we'd be.  Not a problem.  The door to the basement hasn't happened.  At present there is an egress door - which means we can totally pretend there's a twister and run down to the basement with our pets.  Right now, we're leaving that door open and can see into our 150 year old cellar - how many people really get the chance to see gravel and dirt and lopsided jack posts?  That's Canadian history right there folks!  And really?  The living room from which you access the basement is pretty much a fortress of boxes, so seeing the basement isn't really even an option yet.  It's like a surprise part of the house."Wait, don't look yet,  not yet... and now... open your eyes!"

I can walk between unfinished studs from our bedroom to the now plumbed bathroom - we had a killer plumber who did the job in half the time expected and left us with ALL our fixtures working!  I got to have my hair shampooed and conditioned in the kitchen sink - scalp massage courtesy of David - as the caulking for the shower sets.   I don't know where.my... (insert random nouns here) are, but that just means it's like a scavenger hunt - every day.   Last night I found pants!

We had Professional Tetris movers.  Swear to God.  They managed to get a 2 tonne, 4 foot wide wardrobe up a 30 inch set of stairs and over a knee wall without damaging walls or killing anyone.  Christmas decorations are now packed into the secret eaves hidey hole which will afford us quite the adventure come December this year.  And that computer program we used to figure out where all our shit was going to go?  Mostly worked and after the move we only had to give away two more major pieces of furniture - which, when you are downsizing from 3000 to 1500 sq feet - is pretty freaking remarkable.

My Dad took two for the team.  He came to help with construction and it was only on day 2 that he required two staples in his head from whacking it on the angled ceiling of our story and a half house.  And then the silly bugger CAME BACK and continued to build.  What do you give a guy who does that for you??  David's Mom painted and cleaned and packed and kept me moving when everything in me wanted to sit down and bawl like a baby.  AND she stocked our freezer with enough meals to ensure that we didn't have to cook during the 10 days of renovations and we can still now defrost something and not worry about dinner.  David's step-sister brought lunch, made us treats and housed us for three nights until we could find our bed linens.

That is not to say that last Sunday, when we were really IN the house for the first time, David and Rissa didn't witness my collapse on the floor of our impenetrable bedroom and my subsequent flailing as I tried to locate a paper bag into which I could breathe.  But... even in my wee cottage of a new home, covered in boxes with many rooms remaining unfinished, I have this space...

Not quite a Great Room - doesn't have the sq footage to be dubbed thus.  We're calling it our petit grand room.  And do you see that- in the midst of my kitchen area? It's a turquoise fridge.  A cheap-ass fridge-only unit that I took to the autobody shop and, in spite of looking at me like I was insane, they painted for me.  I have a turquoise fridge.  It's all going to be okay.