August 2001 Archives

For the last few days, Henry has been practicing climbing the stairs. Well, actually, just the first stair. He would climb up and back down over and over. Yesterday, I joked that one day he would suddenly just climb the whole stairs as though he'd been doing it all along.

This morning, he climbed the stairs as though he'd been doing it all along.

The apartment we thought we'd be renting fell through. We stopped by to drop off the application only to find out that someone had just beaten us to it by a few minutes. We responded in typical Brad-and-Kathy fashion, by knuckling down and, uh, setting it all aside for a couple days.

A lot is happening but I don't feel able to write about any of it now. There has been a subtle change in the light that indicates autumn is on the way. The sun doesn't climb quite as high, the light has a golden cast, the evening shadows stretch out earlier and longer. Brown fallen leaves crunched under my feet in the velodrome parking lot yesterday evening, the last night of regular racing. The first Pacific Ocean storm of the season blew through town a couple of days ago.

We went for a long walk at noon today, sweating and burning (tanning in Brad's case) in the sun. We made a berry cobbler and grilled outside this evening. Even so, I can't shake that fall feeling. In a few more weeks I won't want to shake it, but now I long for more summer.

We think we've found a place to live during the remodel! Today, we looked at an apartment in a one year old building in the Roosevelt District near our house. It's not as nice as the place in Queen Anne, but it's nicer than anything else we've seen nearby. Tomorrow morning, we'll drop off the application and deposit. Whee!

I spoke too soon. It seems our plans still haven't gone to the DCLU for the building permit application. The structural engineer expected to be able to get to them Friday afternoon, but won't be able to finish with them until tomorrow. More waiting...

Nonetheless, things are continuing to move forward. Our contractor (the aptly named Tim House) is scheduling a walk-through with all the major subcontractors for sometime next week. He should be able to give us a more accurate timeline and cost estimate afterwards.

We're still searching for a place to live during the remodel. We saw a house a couple blocks away today that would be perfect but for the multiple allergy-inducing pets the current tenant has. Yesterday, we saw a gorgeous apartment in Queen Anne with an incredible view of downtown. It was a difficult thing to do, but we decided to pass on that one, too, primarily because of the distance from our house. Sigh.

Yesterday, we got a call from our architects asking us to drop by with a check made out to the City of Seattle. It was finally time to apply for our building permit. If all went well, the application went in before the end of the day yesterday. We'd been waiting to hear back about our "pre-application inspection." The city needs to do a site inspection before you can even apply for a building permit. We'd been waiting (along with our architects) to have the inspection scheduled, but apparently they'd already done it. Nobody knew until a letter arrived at the architects' office yesterday. Sigh. So now, the real waiting begins. If all goes well, we could have our building permit in hand a month from now. Our contractor is ready to go as soon as the project is approved, and so are we! Well, there is that little tiny issue of finding a place to live during the remodel, but we'll figure that out somehow.

Thanks to the miracle of TiVo, I've just finished watching a superb documentary on PBS, Philip Johnson, Diary of an Eccentric Architect, produced and directed by Barbara Wolf. Philip Johnson, best known to most people as "that old architect guy with the funny glasses... you know, like that other guy," has played a pivotal role in the last century of American architecture. As director of the architecture department at MOMA, he helped introduce the United States to the International Style that comprises much of what we think of as "modern architecture." Not content to sit on the sidelines, Johnson headed back to Harvard at the age of thirty three to obtain a degree in architecture. As fascinating as his contributions to architecture may be, the documentary wasn't exactly about that...

Later this year, we'll be starting a big remodel/restoration/addition project on our house. There comes a time in the months before such a project that you begin deferring various maintenance tasks. Why bother fixing the crumbling plaster on the wall if we're just going to be ripping it all out in a couple months? The door that always sticks and the window that won't stay open? No problem! Peeling paint all over the place? Not to worry. All will be taken care of in the remodel. It's only natural to put them off.

It doesn't stop there, of course. As time passes and the remodel draws nearer, other things get deferred. Spring cleaning things: running the oven through a cleaning cycle; cleaning the windows; the annual servicing of the furnace. Again, it's only natural.

But sadly, there's one more stage in this downward spiral: deferred cleaning. A pervasive feeling descends upon you that even daily cleaning is pointless. Why clean the tub if it's getting ripped out? Why sweep the floor? Why scrub the sink? Why dust? It's as though the house is inherently unclean now in some deeper sense. The cosmos would laugh at the folly of cleaning. Right?

We might have felt that way once. Back before we were struck by the reality that Henry has picked up god-knows-what from the floor behind the door and is about to give it the old toddler taste test.