Collateral Damage

My inanimate objects are suffering from Covid-19, and it’s not just my car. The latest victim: my beanbag chairs.

Yes, yes, I know: nobody has beanbag chairs anymore. Nobody in their Third Third. Nobody who has trouble getting up once they’ve gotten down. I have that trouble, too. But when the TV proved too hard to see all the way from the couch, it was easier to drag the beanbags out into the middle of the floor, closer to the TV. 

(Why do they insist on using text messages on detective shows? You have to race for the pause button and get right up to the TV to see what crucial bit of information the detective has just received.) 

But now – compliments of Netflix and Prime and Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max and PBS Passport – the beanbags are pretty squashed and flattened. I’m not sitting on beans anymore; I’m sitting on floor.

I sewed my first giant-size beanbag chairs back when I had my first apartment. They have a muslin lining so I can wash the outside, and there have been many iterations of the outside as they wore out, were faded by the sun, or just got tired. Now the outsides are fine; it’s the insides that have Covid.

The issue is the filling: Styrofoam pellets. They start out round and roly-poly, but they flatten. Then you have to add more. That was easier in the ’70s. Since then, it’s been a challenge.

I filled my first beanbag chair in Berkeley, California. I’d driven there in my little Datsun and stuffed it full, really FULL. It was like an early version of air bags, I guess, but as if they’d already exploded. I ended up spending the night, and when my friend Jenny saw the car the next morning, she marveled that no junkies had broken in thinking it was some incredible bounty of drugs.

When I lived in San Francisco and my brother worked the early a.m. shift as a trolley coach driver, he used to show up at my place, settle in the beanbag chair in the sun, and fall asleep. So when he turned 50, I made him a beanbag chair and flew down to San Francisco in September 2001 with a bag and liner. I called all around and discovered a plastics place for the pellets.

The thing about filling beanbag chairs is that Styrofoam pellets have static. They stick to the plastic bag you’re emptying, to your hair, your clothes, to the bag you’re putting them in. We looked like a popcorn popper had run amuck with us inside it.

Once the bag was filled, planes flew into the World Trade Centers and my sister-in-law buried herself in the beanbag chair in front of the television. It was comforting: beanbag chairs hug back. She liked it. She said, “This is nice. You’ll have to make one for your brother some day.”

But now I have Netflix-flattened beanbag chairs, which means a Quest, a Quest for Pellets. I’ve been led on wild goose chases to Fred Meyer, Walmart, a bigger Walmart, a different Fred Meyer. Salespeople say, “Oh, yes, that’s in Crafts.” Crafts say, “We haven’t had them in years.” Salespeople in the front of the store have seen the pellets in the back of the store, but that is only a figment of their imagination. This happens in every store.

The Quest moves online, where – no, no, no! I’ve done this before! – I lose myself in the customer reviews of pellets.

This is too much complexity for my Covid brain. The floor is just fine.

Art vs De-cluttering: A Play in Three Acts

The Setting
I save art supplies. Not only paints and brushes, inks and pastels, pencils and papers, fabric and yarn; but things that could possibly turn into art. Pieces of bark, sticks, wire, metal. Old scraps of rubber, plastic, sponges, things with texture. Mesh net that once held onions or cheese or whatever. Bins of this sort of stuff.

The key phrase is “could possibly turn into art.” Anything can possibly turn into art. Anything can also turn into clutter. Junk. But junk can turn into art.

You see the problem here? Quilters nicely call their hoard of fabric their “stash.” That’s because fabric looks like fabric. My sticks and bark and scraps look like junk.

Backstory
Way back when, I bought Crab Cake Minis at Costco. It was an experiment. Then Covid-19 happened and what was I going to do with 36 crab cake minis and no guests? So they sat in the freezer until Sophie visited and I thought, “only chance to get rid of the crab cake minis,” so we ate them.

They came in a distinctive plastic shell, sort of like Costco apples, but mini. It was a sheet of little half-globes, each holding a tiny crab cake. The angel on my shoulder looked lovingly and imaginatively at that sheet, dreaming of how it might print a pattern or turn into something else.

But the devil on the other shoulder shouted, “No more junk! You have bubble wrap and other plastic textures. Just junk! Throw it out!” Which I did.

Art Inspiration (the Motivating Action)
My assignment from the Anchorage Museum’s Book Arts class is to make an accordion book of one of my collections. I’d already done something with my pressed leaves, something else with my tiny rocks. This time, I looked at my collection of flying women, the ones gathered around my computer as my muses. I would paint a sort-of-somewhat 3-D image of each doll and give her a page.

And there’s one of my Marilee Dupree dolls dancing over me, sitting on a globe. 

A globe that would be perfectly represented by a Crab Cake Mini half-globe!

[Brief episode of foul language]

Shopping Expedition #1
Costco has apparently moved on from Crab Cake Minis to Mini Tacos and Mini Quiches and Spanakopita. No more Crab Cake Minis.

Supporting Cast: The Friends
I turn to my Thursday Morning Women and my Friday Morning Women. They have lots of ideas, but it comes down to the packages that Ferrero Rocher chocolates come in. I’ve never heard of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, but I Google it, and Target has them.

Shopping Expedition #2
Target has them, but while the plastic packaging holds individual little chocolates, it has flat bottoms. No little half-globes. But while I am at Target, Friday Morning Judith has been on a thrift shop expedition of her own and has brought a plastic egg carrying case to my doorstep. It’s hard, too hard.

Supporting Cast: The Family
Obviously, I’m getting pretty boring by now, talking about little half-globes. My sister Allison, who lives in Germany, knows international chocolate. She’s also an incurable researcher, so during our Sibling Zoom, her head disappeared. We all know what that means, so the rest of us started yelling, “Stop it, Allison! Stop researching!”

But the flurry of emails couldn’t be interrupted: for a German chocolate named Toffiffee. Followed by an email for Toffifay, the name in the U.S. Followed by the directions to a Walgreens that sells it in Fairbanks. Followed by the directions to the Walgreens on my corner!

Shopping Expedition #3
Success!

Applause

The Encore
One of the other dolls hangs from the ceiling on a parasol.

Aha, there were those paper cocktail parasols Sophie got a long time ago for a birthday party. There were some left over that I’d saved for years. ... But I’d finally de-cluttered them, too.

[Another brief episode of foul language]

What’s to be done? I obviously can’t live in a house filled with all the infinite possibilities of junk-to-art. Right now, my art space is getting overwhelmed with projects-in-process. It’s driving me a little crazy, crazy enough to do some serious de-cluttering … and repeat this show in a few months.

Ah, but Judith to the rescue again: she has a stash of little cocktail parasols! So now I’ve reduced Judith’s clutter while she saved me from my over-eager de-cluttering error. Such a win-win!

The Challenges of Art

This is a gratitude blog. Two weeks ago, I was abysmally [my word] grieving Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and the potential end of the world. I was a blob of despair…, yet hours later, I managed to sit at my computer with a burst of creative energy. What sparked it?

My Bricolage art challenge group. Bricolage means “something created from a variety of available things.” Five of us meet regularly to draw another creative challenge from our Ziploc bag of challenges.

Jinnie convened us and then moved to Idaho, but we’re still here. So first, I’m grateful to Jinnie for getting us together, for reintroducing me to Art as Play.

We used to meet indoors, but when Covid-19 happened, we had to come up with something else. We brought our chairs to the huge lawn in front of the closed universities and spread ourselves out very far apart. We were so happy! It was our first chance to see faces and bodies in real life.

We’ve become a little nervous about the weather going bad on us, but last week, it didn’t rain, and we’re determined. We’re checking out overhangs.

The challenge this time was “weaving.” Jane (who shared her art with photographs) wove gold-flecked paper and embroidery thread through paper. Pam wove yarn into the Y of a branch and covered the branch in yarn. Betty made a frame of four branches with jute and wove in natural items – feathers, flowers, even a wasp’s nest. I made two branch pieces; the big one is now on the living room wall. This is the little one.

Usually, Cathy is there, but she couldn’t make it this time. Both Cathy and Betty know about materials. I may have ideas, but I don’t know what kind of paint, what kind of coating, what kind of ink, etc etc. They are my go-to resources. But hints come from everyone. Pam kept her weaving tight by using a fork to squeeze her rows together – a fork! That would have made my weaving much easier! Now I know.

In my very first blog post, I asked myself, “How do I re-insert creativity into my life?” I’ve taken art classes, but it’s been the Bricolage group that has consistently kept me thinking and percolating over my creative choices. The challenges stew in my head till they take shape.

When confronted with the “playing cards” challenge, I turned it into painting a card on a rock and a whole book of face card characters and their royal scandals. When the challenge was “postcard,” it turned into a transparent, multi-layered postcard to the poet, Billy Collins. “Tea bags” became Happy Uterus Tea. “Paper dolls” is a continuing project as my protesting Barbara still has lots and lots to protest.

Jinnie reintroduced me to Art as Play, but I still cling to Art as Project: I visualize an idea or concept before I create something. And then I have to figure out how to make it difficult challenging.

So when the challenge was “envelopes,” I decided I would learn how to do curved piece quilting.

There have been a few duds. “Upcycling” occurred when our house was overflowing with brown paper bags from curbside grocery pickups. I happened to be at the Recycling Center when two guys were unloading cartons. They discovered the cartons were filled with packing material they didn’t know what to do with. “I’ll take it,” I said, “for an art project.”

So now I had brown paper bags and packing material. I read that you could make faux leather by wetting the bags, crumpling them up, then ironing them and varnishing them. If I stuffed them with packing material, I’d have trivets! Or, as the group dubbed them, “cow pies.” Fortunately, I got rid of all that packing material by standing outside the UPS Store and offering it for free. I’m still loaded with paper bags….

I really like the cards I made for “ravens,” but “leaves” is a project I haven’t let go. I keep making pressed, dried leaf notecards. Now’s the perfect time to collect more leaves.

“Plastic” meant a stained glass window for our bathroom. It’s colored plastic bags glue-sticked onto clear plastic. I’d wanted to do that ever since I took a workshop during one of my months in New York City, but it would have sat in the “someday” pile of ideas if it weren’t for my Bricolage group.

I often suffer from some creative paralysis, creative lethargy. I’m an in-the-mood creator, not a disciplined one. But if any creative juices flow, it’s usually sparked by a current challenge picked out of a Ziploc bag. The new one: “wire or metal.” I’ve had an unrealized metal idea since high school. Maybe now?

I am so very thankful that I am part of a warm, supportive circle of artists who inspire, challenge, and educate me. That’s why this is a gratitude blog.

Beware: Exciting Project Ahead

You may be wondering where I’ve been. Well, of course I’m still hunkered down at home, but that’s where I fell down the rabbit hole.

I promised myself – as I heard tales of people learning Italian or finishing novels or writing sonatas during Covid-19 – that I was not going to be one of those people.

I most certainly was NOT going to organize my unsorted photos. I’d flunked that before.

This all started with the daughter – who used to have a chef at work preparing her meals – phoning to ask for some recipe favorites from home. I felt so … flattered. I eagerly pulled recipes from my cookbooks, magazines, index cards, folders, and scraps of paper and sent them on.

But as I scanned a few cookbook pages, I discovered other recipes – long forgotten ones – that had “delicious” marked on them. In my ratings hierarchy, “delicious” is the top. Those recipes get added to what I call The Repertoire. Yet these had been forgotten, buried in the pages of the cookbooks, lost in recipe clutter.

In this Covid Spring, I’m ordering grocery pickup like a military logistics person: how can I use every bit of produce so it doesn’t go to waste? I go through my cookbooks, maximize my ingredients. When I see an unknown, unremembered “delicious” – marked in my own handwriting so that other Barbara must have really made it – I try it again. It’s still delicious!

I am not and have never been a foodie. When I take my urban infusion months, I don’t visit fancy restaurants; I eat street food. I don’t know the names of famous chefs or 5-star restaurants. My fascination with food starts and stops with The Great British Baking Show.

But it’s Covid Spring and I’m reading cookbooks page by page.

I’m also getting my daily email from Shutterfly to make a photo book with big discounts and free shipping if you order by Tuesday. That’s not going to happen, but maybe I could eventually make a photo book of our favorite recipes. Maybe I could scan in those original, oil-stained pages – unbury them. Maybe I could do this over a year or so and catch whatever discount was in play.

So I start.

Soon I’m immersed in recipes. I’ve broken the bindings of two cookbooks from scanning. I have little slips of paper with headings: Holidays, Soups, Salads, Appetizers and page numbers. Or magazine pages, torn out. Or more slips of paper.

I’m artfully arranging pages, designing headings and comments and stories. This is so creatively absorbing, I can’t blog. I can’t garden. I can’t watch Netflix. I am a recipe-aholic. It’s delightful.

Then I get an idea: add photos of our family eating some of the dishes.

That’s when I pull out the huge carton of unsorted photos. That’s the door to the abyss.

The floor of my office is covered in photo envelopes and little tags: 1999, 2000, 2001, etc. Instead of just looking for food photos – which I found – I became obsessed with … ORGANIZING.

Organizing is a curse. I emailed my siblings: what year did we go to Victoria? What year was the first Girl Scout Encampment? I’m not only dealing with photo clutter, now I’m dealing with the terrible confirmation of memory loss.

It gets worse. For the Salad section, I wanted the photo our family calls “Sophie Salad.” She is an infant, and we have put her in our giant wooden salad bowl. I go right to the album, and the spot where that photo has always been is BLANK! Yes, I remember I’d pulled it to make her yearbook collage in high school, but didn’t I put it back?!?

I tear the house apart. Ultimately, I go through every single photo envelope looking at negatives. Negatives! Hundreds and hundreds of negatives. This is not a rabbit hole; this is solitary confinement in the cuckoo’s nest.

But I found it!

This is a Pyrrhic victory. I have won the battle, but lost the war. My enthusiasm for the great recipe photo book has waned. I don’t even want to cook any more. I can’t face the piles of photos and tags strewn across the floor. I should just pack them up, clear them out, and de-clutter my brain.

So now I’m gardening.

Of Decks, Dominoes, Dust, and De-cluttering

This is another story about dominoes. Home remodeling or repair seems to do that. You think you’re just replacing carpet, but really that’s only the first domino in asbestos abatement, floor replacement, stair reconstruction, etc. etc. I’ve written about that.

No, this time it’s about a deck. For years, we hashed and re-hashed the deck idea. If we put it off the kitchen, it wouldn’t catch maximum sun. If we put it off the living room, we’d have more sun, but we’d have to schlep from the kitchen. Over and over. No deck.

Finally, last summer, we DID THE DECK. Or rather, Lance (“I’m Your Handyman”) did. We love it. It’s beautiful. So this summer, it was the second domino’s turn: turning the window from the kitchen into a sliding glass door to the deck.

Third domino: The baseboard heater is under the window. Pipes have to be moved over so the door can be put in. Tim goes downstairs to the laundry room, moves stuff into Sophie’s room, and cuts a hole in the ceiling. After the plumber moves the pipes, Tim drywalls and paints the ceiling. (Yes, I constantly think of my mother sighing at Tim and murmuring “Oh, he’s so handy!” in adoration.)

Fourth domino: The laundry room – and all the shelves, pantry, storage – are covered in a fine layer of dust. Everywhere. Dust. This is my domino. I own it. I attack it.

Interruption: I LOVE the deck and the sliding glass door. It’s my favorite New Thing. I love how it adds more light, opens out our space as if we have another living room. I even love how global warming means it’s in the perfect location because elsewhere it would be too hot. I love how “lying on the deck” somehow means more than “just vegging out” because I’m OUTSIDE. In our Third Third, we may think we should have done this in our Second, but it’s here now.

But the deck I love came with dust. Lots of dust. This amount of dust requires a major operation: removal, scouring, organizing, replacing. And de-cluttering! I am in my element: I am The Organizer! I will Clean Things and Assign Them Their Proper Places.

I proceed shelf by shelf. First to go is the Sno-Paint set. Sophie didn’t like it; the paint froze when they went out to spray it on snow. But Dawn’s grandchildren will love it. (Easy de-cluttering: not wanted, good place to give it to). They also got the box of the bazillion bubbles and wands. (De-cluttering score: 100!)

But then, realizing the punishment I inflicted on my mother for alleged de-cluttering, I started photographing the Sophie-childhood items and texting Sophie just to be sure. Have to hold onto the Build-a-Bear bear, the remote-controlled truck, the Storyblocks.

But the easel can go to the Alaska Literacy Program preschool; art work and wine glasses to their silent auction. Record albums sold or donated. The seven celebrity waiter aprons can go to the synagogue preschool, the bowls and lids to Sarah for her potlucks, the Harry & David boxes to Irene for her art kits for kids. (De-cluttering score: 100!) The bags and bags of bags have been sorted and will be recycled. (Recycling earns only a de-cluttering score of 90.) There are still too many jars and boxes – good jars and good boxes – but I think I come in at a good 95 all around.

The dust is a challenge. The steel shelves come with little curly decorations that won’t yield to a vacuum cleaner. I have to wash each curl one by one.

But the victory! I open up so much room that I can store my dozens of bottles of ginger beer. I have all the camping food supplies in a neat tray. The crafts are all together; picnic supplies are easy to reach. Things are off the floor!

I am a de-cluttering phenomenon! I am on a roll! I have reached a new level of what I’m willing to give away or recycle. I am motoring through other rooms, other closets – I am a de-cluttering fiend!

Uh, oh. Danger, danger. There’s a reason why they say all things in moderation. Next post: Discard Remorse. Or, if they’re still in the recycling bin, do I dig in and retrieve?

Go Signs

A few days ago, my sister and I were on Long Island at longtime family friend (my mother’s best friend) Gloria’s for dinner. Her daughter, Linda, described how she took a particular course of action because she’d had three signs. You know, SIGNS. Like the universe telling you this is what you should be doing.

So let me tell you about my Signs.

#1
Several years ago, I became enthralled with the notion of transparent art. Something on transparent pages that would say different things depending on what you could or couldn’t see. I couldn’t figure it out. It’s very complicated because, of course, you can see through the pages.

#2
I read Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. A young man commits suicide in the bookstore and leaves his suicide note in clues in a series of books. He cuts out the words in one book, leaving windows. When placed up against the pages of a companion book, the windows expose the words which become his suicide note.

#3
My Bricolage group challenge for last month was “Postcard.” Do anything with postcards: make one, collage one, send one, whatever. That’s how our art challenges work. I look at the postcards I’d sent my mother over the years – which I now have after her death – and they seem to me messages from not only place, but time.

#4
The next email I receive is from the New York Public Library about their 2018 series, NYPL LIVE. Billy Collins, the poet, is a speaker when I’ll be in Manhattan. I buy a ticket.

#5
Suddenly, Billy Collins’ poem, “Forgetfulness,” rises to my consciousness yet again. I’ve mentioned it a few times here because it’s so age-appropriate for us, but now you need to see these first verses:

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

And they seem to me to be messages from another time, from other places – postcards to ourselves in the present.

#6
So I take the poem and cut it up. I buy some clear, plastic envelopes and cut them into postcard sizes. I glue the words down to send these messages from the past, from someone who’s gone and retired far away. This is the first postcard I’d send:

And then this:

And then this:

And after eight postcards – all with messages like this – you would have this:

#7
Isn’t that exciting! All the Signs led me to this art project and it worked, so of course I have to show it to Billy Collins. I get to the library very early; I am the first in line. I get a good seat.

Billy Collins is a relaxed, humorous, self-deprecating sort of conversationalist. I thoroughly enjoy myself. Afterwards, I am right in front on his signing line, and I show him my creation. He looks at me, thanks me, is glad to inspire, and then he looks at the 75 people waiting in line and has to usher me away.

I leave happily. The universe told me this was the project for me – all the Signs said so – and they were right. In a world where things go wrong, sometimes they just line up and go right.

A Royal Scandal

Looking at the world doesn’t take too much consciousness. You look, you see, you move on to some other view. Unless it’s spectacular or very detailed or you have some other reason to inspect it. Maybe you’re looking for a splinter in your toe.

I don’t look at my clothes too closely unless I’m looking for a stain. I don’t look at my dishes unless I’m checking if the dishwasher cleaned them okay. I look at the clock, but I don’t examine the clock. I barely notice the clock.

Have you looked at a deck of cards lately?

Last month’s challenge for my Bricolage group was “playing cards.” I was going to turn rectangular rocks into playing cards, and I did.

But first I had to copy from a playing card. I pulled out the box I keep the decks of cards in. Wow, I had no idea how many I’d thrown in over time! My family used to play Spit, and each person needed their own identifiable deck so the played cards could be counted. Back then, the airlines used to give out decks during flights. I had 21 decks of cards, and that didn’t even count the Go Fish and Old Maid decks! I have Northwest Orient, Delta, Alaska, United, and Hawaiian Airlines decks. I have Carnival Cruise, FedEx, and British Air, too. I even have Peter Dunlap-Shohl’s White House of Cards and Idaho Authors (and no idea where that last came from).

Yes, I’m decluttering. Cannibalizing, too.

I pulled out the face cards, the Jack, the Queen, and the Kings. This time, in order to paint them, I had to examine them. If you’re a regular old face card, you are bored to tears if not clinically depressed. Your face is SO SAD. Your clothes are bright and colorful, but your eyebrows are sad and there are bags under your eyes. Your eyes are … blank.

But I was looking closely, and that’s when I saw that a Jack isn’t a Jack isn’t a Jack. Two of them have mustaches, and two don’t! Jack of Hearts is holding a feather, and Jack of Spades is holding some sort of wand (or scepter or rattle). And they’re not looking in the same direction: Jack of Hearts looks hard right, Jack of Spades looks hard left, and the two others sort of lean to the sides.

Now for the big discovery: all the queens look to the right except the Queen of Spades. She looks left. Her husband, the King of Spades looks left, too. So they can never look at each other! Meanwhile, the King of Diamonds can only look hard right, so he and his queen can never look at each other, either.

The only queen’s eyes the King of Diamonds can look into are in the face of the Queen of Spades.

Do you see the scandal brewing?

The King of Diamonds is the only king extending his hand. Is he reaching for the Queen of Spades???

There’s trouble in the royal court! (And all this boldface type shows just how excited I got.)

Now, while all the royalty look the same from deck to deck, the jokers are entirely different. Some are clowns, and some are harlequins. Some are in disguise, some are on bicycles, and one is an Asian juggler. All these jokers, and the royals still look so exceedingly glum.

There’s a story there, and I couldn’t resist telling it. I made it into a book.

Things just get more interesting when they’re noticed. All sorts of things.

Do you know which king is the only one without a mustache?

Adventures in Guy-land

It all started with a broken rivet for the strap on my Crocs.

Apparently, Croc used to mail out replacement rivets for free, but not any more. Maybe I’d just have to glue the strap in place. But then I found this nice guy on YouTube.

He said I just had “to go down to my home improvement center and buy a bag of … Chicago bolts.” I asked Tim (the holder of countless little plastic boxes of nuts and bolts and screws) if he had Chicago bolts. He looked it up on Google and said, “Oh, sex bolts.” Well, I guess so. One end does screw into the other end. No, he didn’t have them.

So off I went to Home Depot. Where I confronted the hardware aisle with its zillion little bags and drawers of nuts and bolts and screws (Oh, my!). [Aside: when Eagle Hardware first came to Anchorage, Tim walked in, spotted the hardware zone, and dubbed the place “Doodad Heaven.”] I had no idea where to begin searching this Doodad Heaven.

One guy looked like he knew his nuts and bolts and screws. I asked, and he pointed me to some drawers. When that proved fruitless, he recommended Fire and Fastener. Another guy, down the aisle, called out, “Yeah, Fire and Fastener.” So did a third, a Home Depot employee. I didn’t even understand what they were saying: Did I have to fire something? Did he say First or Near? They were in the hardware aisle; they mumbled.

Finally, they clarified. Fire and Fastener was a store on International Airport Road. I’d never heard of it. They named stores it was near, but I’d never heard of them either. So off I went to … Guy-land!

Guy-land – that stretch of International Airport Road – is full of stores where most women never cross their threshold. (Of course, that’s where The Bush Company is.) I had to stop in at Young’s Gear Driveshaft Specialists (past Motion Industries and Alaska Bearing) to ask where Fire and Fastener was. Entering a Guy-land business is like entering a magical, foreign world.

Last year, I’d needed a replacement washer for my backpack. At a Guy-land little shop, the guy at the counter found one, took off my bent one, struggled to get the new one on, and said, “No charge.” This is what happens in Guy-land. Guy-land is a world of solutions! There are doodads to solve every problem and guys who know their doodads.

John in Fire and Fastener was no different. He pointed me to the exact little plastic bins with Chicago bolts (one for the screw and one for the home, the “male” and “female”): #128 and #134 (in case your Crocs have a broken rivet, too). He got a screwdriver and helped me screw it in. It was a little wobbly.

Randy, behind the counter, said, “Washer, John,” and John ran in the back room to come back with an OSP. It fit the Croc indent perfectly. They were very proud of themselves. Randy said, “Y’know, we call this a sex bolt.” “I know,” I said. “My husband taught me that.”

“How much?” I asked. “No charge,” they said. How does a place like that stay in business? These guys gave me personalized attention for a long time. John even took me on a tour of their Guy-land wonders. There was a whole wall of carabiners and springs and pulleys, spools of wires of all different colors. Multicolored plastic tubes of all sizes.

I was gushing about some of my favorite Guy-land stores – Alaska Rubber is a total treat, especially their remnants – and I wanted to mention the store that saved my backpack, but I couldn’t remember its name. I could describe the layout perfectly. I searched the Yellow Pages, went in and out of stores that might be it, but no luck. Finally, I checked my diary. Last year, on June 1, I got my washer at … Fire and Fastener.

I would worry – really worry – about my memory, but I think it was the magic of Guy-land. When you enter an alternate reality, you don’t come all the way back.

The Quest for New-ness #4

The quest for New Things is always a win – for variety, for newness – but the exact result of the quest sometimes yields a few duds. Recently, I’ve scored two clear wins, but the jury is still out on the dud.

They all came from classes at Anchorage Community House, my new go-to place of learning and doing New Things. The other things I’ve made there have been wood projects, but the class description for Indigo Dyeing said, “Create beautiful indigo creations using the shibori dyeing technique.”

In class, we took our fabric and folded it, tied it, clothes-pinned it. Basically, we made a tight little wad so that when it sat in the indigo dye bath, we’d leave the marks of where dye absorbed and where it didn’t. Yes – shades of tie-dying! – that’s shibori.

This was a clear success. I think I’ll cut my bluish indigo-ish fabric into squares and make a quilt, but that’s a project for another day … or year.

While we were busy dyeing indigo, Meg told us of another Community House offering: Bundle Dyed Scarves. What I got out of this one was that we’d roll flowers and vegetables up in cloth and make patterns. This sounded sufficiently goofy and fun and useful – right up my alley.

Yup, we rolled rose petals and leaves and eucalyptus and flowers and bugs in silk. (The bugs are from cochineal insects which produce the crimson color. I first met them when visiting weavers in Peru.) Then we wound the silk around tin cans or sticks and tied it on really, really tightly. Then we stuck the bundle in boiling cabbage water.

Finally, our dye bath was over, and this one, too, was a great success. An artistic, silk, loop scarf will challenge my usual schtunk attire, but it’s soft and pretty … and can always make a nice gift.

So now we get to my last New Thing class:

“Learn to make bags out of plastic grocery bags. These bags are EXTRA sturdy and hold lots of weight. It’s easy. Just bring a scissors, a crochet hook the size of your pinky, and patience.”

What really amazed me was that everyone in the class brought their own Bags of Bags. We all have Bags of Bags … along with Boxes of Boxes and Containers of Containers. Even using cloth shopping bags, plastic bags accumulate. We were supposed to slice our plastic bags into strips, loop them together, and make “plarn,” plastic yarn. This class was a decluttering/recycling opportunity!

My only experience with crocheting was a Brownie project when I was little. I would ride my bike to Mrs. Goodhartz’s house for help crocheting Pierre the Poodle. Every trip, Mrs. Goodhartz would say, “My, my, these stitches are so very tight.” They were SO TIGHT they were impenetrable. If Pierre had ever been finished, he would have been airtight.

But this time, I was armed with a crochet hook the size of my thumb!

A crochet hook the size of one’s thumb is no protection against tight stitches. My thumb nail hurts from trying to pull stitches off the crochet hook. When I come around a row, things are so tight and jam-packed that it’s hard to tell what exactly qualifies as a stitch. Peggy, who took the class with me, said I must be adding stitches: instead of going up, my shopping bag is going out. I am making a plastic rug.

Mimi, who also took the class, said this sort of project would drive her mother crazy. Her mother doesn’t get quilting (“Why cut fabric up only to sew it together?”) so the idea of slicing plastic bags in order to crochet them together to make another plastic bag would strike her as ludicrous. I’m starting to agree.

I had to take a break for my thumb nail, cuticle, and spirit to recover, but then I cut my thumb slicing an onion. After bleeding on my plastic bag, things have ground to a halt.

In my Third Third, I get to abandon projects that aggravate more than they please. Maybe I’ll recycle my crocheted plastic and call it a draw. Then I’ll sit and re-admire my indigo-dyed fabric and flower-dyed silk.

Not all hands on deck

We built a deck.

Let me correct that: we had a deck built. I had nothing to do with any hammering or digging or measuring. My job was to say what I wanted and pick out colors. My job was actually to decide to go ahead and build a deck at all. After that, I was pretty useless. Tim is the hero of this story.

We’ve lived in our house for 28 years. The concrete patio has been crumbly and broken for a while, but we’ve gotten by. Mostly, we don’t use it. Tim would say, “The stairs need work. I keep repairing them, but they need more work. We have to decide what to do about the patio.” I’d look but couldn’t decide where I’d want a deck, where there’d be the most sun, what about over there, and it always got too complicated.

But this summer, after visiting a friend’s deck, I said, “I’m ready for us to build a deck.” In Barbara language, that might have meant next year (and the us is definitely an inaccurate pronoun). In Tim language, it means decide on a design tomorrow, pick out materials, hire a contractor – can he start Monday?

He’s my husband – you can’t have him!

First off, he rented a jackhammer to break up the old, crumbly patio. He and Dillon, our friend’s son, banged away and hauled the rubble to the front of the house.

Tim loaded the truck. When it was all carted off to the dump, it was 16,000 POUNDS of concrete.

I’m keeping him!

When Lance, our marvelous, master-craftsman, deck builder, dug out the Sonotubes, he unearthed giant boulders. My job was to put them on Craig’s List and wait for everyone to fight over our free rocks. They did.

The deck is mostly finished. It’s spectacular. Friends say it will change my life. My Third Third life is going to involve spending a lot of time on that deck. It’s so sturdy that I figure in an earthquake, the deck will keep the house standing.

The lawn is littered with lumber that I wouldn’t let Lance or Tim haul away because it can be recycled. My friend Connie said it would be a crime not to recycle it, but Connie and I can be a bad influence on each other that way, and it’s not lying around on her lawn. If worse comes to worst, I’ll go back on Craig’s List.

Tim sorted the lumber for me, but I’m waiting for it to dry so it won’t get my car wet. Yesterday, he said, “I’ve ordered a load of topsoil to fill in the patio hole. They’ll be here in the morning.”

“Now?!” I panicked. “What’s the rush? We’ll have a pile of dirt that’ll turn into mud. I still have to dig up the baby tree that I’m donating. Why do you have to rush things?”

“Because I have to get seeding started to put the lawn back together. I’ve already found a kid to help me move the dirt.”

Just now, I looked out the window. The topsoil is raked and spread over the torn up spots. It’s done.

I can hear my friends yelling, “Yay! We’re on Team Tim!”

Now I have my big job: planning the deck warming party. It’s a little problematic because of the forecast for rain. I’m trying to dawdle a little to see what the weather does. Eventually, I’ll have to get around to finding some deck furniture. That’ll take some research.

How odd this is! I usually think of myself as a get-it-done, make-it-happen mover (who often has to prod her husband), but I’ve clearly been just watching from the peanut gallery while Tim handles, hauls, sweats, and gets dirty. It’s good to have our identities messed with a little, to reevaluate ourselves, to let a marriage shift around and rebalance itself. A little disconcerting, but interesting. I have to hope all my laziness is just premature deck lounging, but I’m thinking each of us just has different speeds depending on our different talents. (I wonder if Tim would accept this generous analysis.)

This deck is a gift for our Third Third, and I hope it means more enjoyment, socializing, and relaxation. I hope that every time I sit on it, eat on it, or lounge on it; I’ll remember whose sweat made it possible.