Reclaiming the House Part 2

So reclaiming the house turned out to be more difficult, or perhaps a better word is strenuous, than I initially thought it would be. We had to move furniture back in place, of course, and return art to walls – but there was also a good deal of painting and cleaning and rearranging that is pretty much de rigueur when one’s house has been upended.

Simultaneous to reclaiming our house from the renovations I have re-signed up on Facebook. A lot of old friends and some new have materialized. It’s cool. No one has yet tried to get me to engage in any vampire or bat or what-have-you games and for that I am grateful. But there are many folks from my MFA in Writing program at Spalding who are online and it’s great to “see” them. Also, many folks from my past life (sometimes current life) in theater and it’s wonderful to see them as well.

So… reclaiming the house? Reclaiming one’s identity? They aren’t too different if you think about it. We get comfortable with what we know, with what feels familiar. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It is at it is. But I guess I also think it’s valuable to understand that we are comfortable with the familiar, that we are comfortable with what is, with what we know. Sometimes we need to face the unknown. All of us. Regardless of our socio-economic status, our race, ethnicity, creed, religion, you name it – whether we are prepared or not, we will be forced to confront the unknown. And, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to get ready for it. We can’t quite “prepare” for it, because we don’t know what “it” will be, but we can be ready to expect the unexpected. We can be okay with the unknown, ready to face the unknown, the heretofore not known. Soon it might become more comfortable than we can imagine.

For now, I am working on reclaiming our house, reaching out to friends and loved ones and carrying on.

Namaste.

Reclaiming the House

So yesterday was the last of the workmen… for a while. And what a day it was. Not only did we have four guys here replacing half of our windows but we also had two guys by in the middle of the day to install our custom glass shower door. Now the bathrooms are officially done. And we have replaced all of the windows in our home – half were done 2 years ago, the other half were done yesterday.

Gloria (my wife) put it very well yesterday evening: She said, “I feel like we’ve been given two big presents and we aren’t allowed to open them for two or three days.” The reason? The shower door has to sit there – don’t even look at it, let alone touch it – for 48 hours, and the new windows must remain locked and closed for 72 hours. Given the weather today here in Chicago it was no big thing not to open the windows. Brrrr… Are we going to get summer soon? I sure hope so!

But what’s important it this: We’ve had terrific contractors/workmen in our lives recently and we are deeply grateful. They’ve done their work beautifully and (for the most part) have also cleaned up behind themselves thoroughly. We are blessed people living in a beautiful land (to paraphrase my friend Aaron Freeman).

Went back on Facebook today; connected with a bunch of folks, which is good. But if any of you Facebook amigos are reading this, no pokes, no mob wars, no vampire bites please – I’m there to connect and network only. No Scrabulous or anything else. It’s too distracting.

Gloria and I are reclaiming the house. Moving furniture back, or in some cases, to new positions; doing some post-renovation painting and the like, getting it to the new Almada/Russell household, which is a good thing. I’m trying to write and making some slow progress. Home renovations do take a toll after all. But life is good. In a very real way.

Namaste.

Post MFA Residency

All right, so I had an initial goal of blogging each day during my recent MFA residency at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. I made it to Day Two.

They keep you busy there and exhilarated and excited and challenged and inspired. It was a wonderful residency and terrific to reconnect with students and faculty I’ve known from earlier residencies and to meet some of the newbies – fresh-faced, with big plans, I’m delighted to welcome them into our fold.

Being among a community of writers is a wonderful thing if you are a writer. It makes you feel less alone. Less odd. Less solitary.

Upon returning home to Chicago last Sunday afternoon, I was hit with the reality that the contractors were still not done with our bathrooms – you know, the ones that were supposed to be completed before I left for my ten-day residency? On one hand, the work they’ve done is top notch and looks great (and, I’m very grateful for that) yet on the other hand, God supposedly made the world in six days and these guys have taken nearly thirty (more than twice what they thought it would take) to do two bathrooms!! It’s endlessly distracting to have people banging and pounding on walls and floors and whatever else they can decide to bang and pound on. Not the most conducive environment for writing.

But, I do not wish to complain.

Residency was great. It’s wonderful to be back home with my lovely wife Gloria and our two adorable dogs. And, the bathrooms are almost done.

Namaste.

The 21st Century Shower #2

Okay, so perhaps we aren’t as old fashioned as I asserted in my last posting.

Yes, we are eschewing the thermostat that the lady at the store kept saying we simply MUST have. But, we are installing a pretty snazzy showerhead from Grohe called Freehander®. (Gloria and I have already started referring to it as the freeloader. We’re sometimes silly that way.) If I’ve been able to figure out the technology properly, you should be seeing an image of Freehander® directly to the right.

I have to say that I am very much looking forward to trying this. The two showerheads both pivot and rotate and arm can move up and down. As the promotional material on Grohe’s website exclaims: “Thanks to its ingenious design, GROHE Freehander® shower can simply be turned from an overhead shower to a side shower.” Sold!

Today the work on the bathrooms began. There is not a toilet and a sink sitting in front of the fireplace in our living room. A five-foot cast iron claw foot tub sits about ten feet away from my desk in my office. It’s awaiting its new home up here. The contractors tell us that the new shower might be done as early as next Tuesday and then they’ll move up here and start the demolition of this bathroom.

Fortunately we will never have to do this again.

Namaste.