Showing My Baby Part II

It’s cool! It’s working. 

I’ve created the “place” and ways to have privacy and also happily rub shoulders when they want. TJ keeps standing in front of the chimney and new upper cabinet, saying, “ This is just what it should look like. I keep forgetting it hasn’t always been here.” 

As we show the place to potential housemates,they smile as they walk through the house. Some have actually expressed that they can feel how I’m aware of their needs. (And our own, too actually, but they don’t know see that as much.) Places are “sweet,"  and special to them- like the little laundry room. And the upper deck that they can sit in even when it rains. “Oooh, can I do a veggie garden in pots up here?!” she asks. “Yes, it’s wonderfully sunny and veggies will love it up here.” I reply. 

They’re putting themselves into it.

The laundry room has an ironing board and folding area, and we hung a clothes rack right over the heating vent for "air drying." 

My Choices

Our baby’s on the market.

and not at all surprisingly, all my initial fears that she won’t be good enough have resurfaced. 

My ideas, my reworks. 

Will I succeed in attracting the people who share my attitudes? 

Is it the right story?  

I’ve toured the rooms,  and while my head knows they’re looking at it from their needs, I’m feeling emotional about it.

Do they see us?

Where IS that Tape Measure?

During that first big weekend of phase1, I had created all the work areas in the house. I  hired two grunts ( thanks Matt and Joe) to move all the furniture pieces against the walls in the big space in the back. We emptied contents and they moved the pieces where I directed. With their strappin' young muscles, it was done in 40 minutes.

That left the center of the great room as “staging” for all work. It was hard to make snap decisions about where to stack every little thing I needed to temporarily move, but in the end, the house felt mostly organized. Every choice had a reason, and the work areas for all of phase I felt prepared and set-up.

But now, tools have crept back into almost every room…like dust bunnies. They just rolled into corners and on top of fridges. And as they moved, my sense of temporary order melted with it. Now clutter, even important clutter feels everywhere, but I don’t know where that is…and I spend too much energy trying to find things.  Being in the middle of the project managing and running around keeping the schedule tight so those rooms are ready for mid- January, means I can’t take another day to re-organize. Besides, the octopusian reach of my general contractor means it will happen again, as terrific as he is.

Uuugh!!!!! I’ve just got to fold that “finding task” into my job description. It’s wearying. 

If you can, no matter if you're doing the work or hiring it: Be a containment nazi about where things are. Restrict places for  tools- have someone- you , or a work person - grab stuff at lunchtime and again at day’s end and put them back where YOU want it to be. My work team swept and left the place totally clean each day, but they didn’t re-center their tools. Part of it was because they offered us their tools for our tasks- hanging pictures for example goes much faster with a cordless drill. But part of it was that their level of happy meant their tools only needed to be  mostly organized in heaps, somewhere. Just be aware that you can ask for the level or organization you need, if you’re living there while they work.

I am the Perfect Crash Test Dummy - Part 2

To be as accurate as possible, I realized I needed to include the other side of how I experience sharing life and space with other people.

 I do need my own space, literally and figuratively. But when being around other people is a choice, rather than a requirement, I can enjoy it. I grew up with five brothers and sisters, and sometimes I miss the feeling of a house overflowing with people and activity and conversations. When a musical band I’m in is clicking, it doubles or triples the excitement of performing over playing by myself. When I was a writer and living in Seattle—and they had finally invented laptops—I often would take my computer to a coffee house and write. I enjoy the feeling of having life flowing around me, without having to interact unless I choose.

I can also enjoy what Loni and I call having people “flow through” our space. When I lived in Moenkopi, we had a constant stream of people coming to stay with us at the mission. It was part of our role as a voluntary service unit to host the people from all over the world who were using the “Mennonite Your Way” network to travel across the country cheaply and, in our case, see the Hopi and the Grand Canyon.

Back before the Internet, we never exactly knew who would turn up next, or when. And often as not, they weren’t people with whom I would have chosen to spend time. But there were enough people who were interesting, or who asked in-depth questions about our work in the village or the Hopi, to make having new arrivals be something like opening an unknown present at Christmas. I became good friends with several of our return visitors as we got past surface impressions and got to share and know each others’ lives.

It seems for me it’s a combination of having the right to choose whether to share time/space with people, and who the people are. I know that no one usually has a pure choice about this; I’ve spent lots of time being polite with travelers and others because it would be rude to just leave. But being at home should mean being relaxed and more yourself, so for me to feel ‘at home’ around others means I have some level of choice about sharing.

I don’t yet see how all this can happen in our 1908 Victorian. Having seen Loni’s gift for space planning, and her sensitivity to what people need, I believe that if anyone can figure it out, she will.

But this is my life and our lives and our home, and I’ll have to live with this however it turns out. So sometimes this project does really feel like being a crash test dummy…