step by step (so to speak)...

The flooring crew showed up this morning and installed flooring on the landings, then sanded and stained the stairs. I worked from home, at the kitchen table, eventually resorting to earplugs in an attempt to muffle the sounds of the pneumatic air hammer, vacuum, etc. It was so loud that when someone called from work with a question for me, I had to go into another room and close the door to hear her. There's no way that stairs are a DIY project.

In a few hours the guys will show up again, to apply polyurethane.

Talk Nerdy to Me...

My post yesterday got me thinking about relationships, and I decided to re-post this. I wrote it 3 summers ago, and it still applies.

"The brain is the most important sex organ in your body. It's your brain's reaction to ideas, fantasies, images, smell and touch that triggers arousal and desire."

That’s a quote from Dr. Rosalina Abboud, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the Mayo Clinic, in my home state of Minnesota. I agree with her (and not just because she’s a Minnesotan).

Some women are attracted to a fat wallet, or eye candy. Although I can certainly appreciate those attributes, the thing that excites me, always, is intelligence. I like bright guys. Politics aside, Bill Clinton is sexy because he’s bright, vs. Dubya (who’s not because he’s NOT), and it’s the light of intelligence in his eyes that makes Matt Damon sexy in a way that Ben Affleck will never be. Intelligence is, and always has been, WAY sexier than brawn to me. Because of my moth to the flame attraction to raw intelligence, I’ve dated a number of very bright guys in my life. But often, I haven’t enjoyed their company. All people are complex and multi-faceted, and I’ve learned that it’s a mistake, always, to allow oneself to be seduced by a single aspect of anyone, even when that aspect is intelligence. But until recently, I frequently allowed myself to be seduced by intelligence alone, and so I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the meaning of the phrase, “fools rush in”...

A great deal of the time that I’ve spent reflecting on that phrase has occurred in nice restaurants, while I was sitting across the table from any of a number of the interesting, bright guys I’ve dated. Inevitably, on those occasions, I was manicured, pedicured, and spritzed with Chanel 22 for the evening. My hair was usually pulled back into a tidy chignon, and I was wearing a de rigeur chic little black dress or some variation thereof, complete with sexy heels and pearl earrings...but for all the effect any of that had on most of those bright guys, I might as well have been devoid of make-up and scent, barefoot, and wearing a muumuu. Because as we sat there, waiting to order, glasses of wine and a bowl of fresh bread on the immaculate table before us...rather than flirting, gazing into each other’s eyes, and enjoying each other’s company, as couples all around us always seemed to be doing, australopithecus robustus’ head was inevitably bent intently over his dinner napkin, where he was graphing something for my benefit. Sometimes I’d say, “Please! If you must draw, at least use a pencil on that linen!” The response was always a variation of, “But I’m trying to show you something, and this is important!” Then, as my eyes glazed over and I felt my heart sinking in my chest, I’d think, “Shoot! Not again! When will I ever learn?” Sometimes I’d realize that in addition to drawing a graph for me, he was speaking, and I’d try to sit up straighter, and pay attention, as I heard him uttering seemingly random multi-syllabic words and phrases like “sub-galactic” or “quarks” or “stratospheric phenomena”...or sometimes “cardiomyopathy” or “tort reform”, depending on his profession. And I’d nod and smile, envious of the couples around us, whose snippets of conversations contained words like “weekend” and “beach” and “tortellini”. Fantasizing about, and longing for, some friendly banter, I’d plan my escape, and I’d vow to curl up alone with a good book, come next Saturday night.

Eventually, I did just that. I took a break from dating. I spent a lot of Saturday nights curled up, alone, with a good book.

It was good to do that. I’ve learned a lot about myself, and about who I’m attracted to and what I want. I’ll always be drawn to bright guys, but I’ve learned that I want much more than just brightness. I want compassion and generosity and especially, because it’s delicious to me, I want humor. Life is good, and funny, and I’ve learned that what I want is a co-conspirator...a bright, funny guy, who can not only carry on an intelligent conversation and make me laugh, but who can look into my eyes while he’s doing it...because Crosby, Stills & Nash had it right in Suite Judy Blue Eyes: Fear is the lock, and laughter the key, to my heart...

General Petraeus update...

Tonight I worked late and my boss stopped by my cube, as is her habit, to shoot the breeze. She asked about the on-again, off-again, as of last week on-again liaison of Bev (not her real name) with the bogus General Petraeus. Bev took two weeks off, beginning last Monday, because after a months long, whirlwind internet romance that he supposedly was able to conduct in spite of his being Commander in Chief, US Central Command, in Pakistan or wherever he's posted these days, DP was at long last taking a vacation from his post and coming back to the states, to Texas, to meet Bev and her elderly parents before they (Bev, her two geriatric lap dogs, and DP) began a road trip in her vintage Ford Mustang to his splendiferous mansion in...drum roll here, are you ready? yes, that beautiful, exciting, most romantic and vibrant of places...Iowa. Uh-huh. That's what Mr. Scam Artist told her, and she bought it, hook, line and sinker. Her days have been filled with decisions like whether to have the security detail with them or not...uh-huh. Like he could just dismiss that! There was just one little wrinkle, a teeny tiny matter that he hated to trouble her with, it having to do with money...he couldn't access his bank accounts to buy his ticket, that darn ex-wife...(current wife to the rest of the world, because the divorce was secret, of course)...

Dunno whether she sent him the money or not. I did hear they were fighting about something. My overactive imagination immediately thought of a few things she might object to, like, in addition to asking her for money, maybe he asked her to bring rope, duct tape, gloves, garbage bags and a shovel, for example...but I digress. Someone who couldn't stand the suspense (not me) called her on her cellphone last week. Don't have any details, but it seems he no showed, so she was at home...alone.

Physically, at least, she's safe. Dunno about her bank account, and don't even want to contemplate her psyche...but I thought of a poem by Bukowski, entitled Oh Yes...

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

Things I did today - 02-Aug-2009

1. Cleaned the house
2. Washed my car
3. Went for a mani and pedi
4. Went to Central Market and bought groceries
5. Walked through the neighborhood, where I did my usual loop. I missed Alex and Silas on this walk, though.
6. Moved the sprinkler around on the front lawn to give the flowers a little water in all this heat

a new month...

It's August 1. Where did July go? I would ask, where did the summer go, but living in Texas, that would be a foolish question, as I'm quite sure we still have a lot of summer remaining. The catalogs from Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel are starting to look a lot like fall, though, and I'm beginning to long for those dusty warm days with cool, clear nights...my favorite time of year.

We had our midyear company meeting this week. Attendance was mandatory, and a few minutes into it, I realized that was because if we weren't obligated to attend, no one in their right mind would willingly sit through such babble. It didn't escape my notice that the speakers were all middle aged white guys, although my boss pointed out that they aren't as white as they used to be...meaning that some of them spoke with an accent. But middle aged white guys, nevertheless, and of course, not a woman among them. And I found myself wondering once again, what on earth am I doing here? I have a master's degree in psychology. People interest me; business doesn't interest me. I don't begin to understand it. I've never dated a businessman, and sitting there, listening to these wealthy guys in their beautifully tailored suits drone on and on, I congratulated myself on at least being wise about that. I've dated doctors...they talk about their patients, or procedures they've done, or the pharmacology of new drugs coming on the market; I've dated lawyers...they talk about their clients, or courtroom strategies...shoot, lawyers are generally articulate and can talk about anything; I dated a former NFL player, and he talked about guys he'd played with, and games he'd played, and plays that went down on the field...and he also talked about his son and his brothers and the kids he coached...but businessmen...what on earth do they talk about over dinner?

I'm grateful to have a job, and more than that, to have a job with good benefits and flexibility and yet most of the time these days, I wonder what on earth I'm doing there...

bit by bit...

So after a huge amount of hammering and sawing, I have unfinished oak treads and risers installed. The guys did a great job, and any thoughts I'd had that perhaps the stairs were a DIY project were banished by the long hard day put in by both carpenters, one of whom came back for a couple of hours this morning to finish up. Next Wednesday the flooring crew comes in to do the landings, and then to sand, stain and finish, after which I'll be posting more pics.

a new project - stairs!

I worked very hard this weekend, and I can feel it in my back, but I'm happy because FINALLY I'm having the stairs redone. It'll be seven years in October since the fire. I won't rehash why it's taken this long to complete these final projects except to say there was a contractor fiasco. This is the last big project of what remained to be done, and I'm very happy to finally have the end in sight.

I worked hard this weekend because the man who’s redoing the stairs is scheduled to start next Thursday, and I needed to get them ready. Before the fire, the stairs were carpeted. I don't like the look of carpeted stairs, and I hate vacuuming them. After the fire, I got rid of all the wall to wall carpeting in my house. Every floor, upstairs and down, is now either hardwood or tile or, in the game room, Pergo, so at first, I decided to have the stairs tiled too. I found some Mexican tiles that I loved, and in anticipation of having this done, I had a carpenter put down cement board over the wood. Kath immediately said it was a bad idea, arguing that tile is too slippery for stairs. I wanted the tile, but worried she was right, so I decided to wait “for a while” to make up my mind. The stairs have now been covered in cement board for about six years. A couple of years ago, vowing to not spend another Christmas with cement board covered stairs in the front hall, I decided to bite the bullet and simply have them carpeted again. This was definitely the cheapest alternative. But about that time I was having the fence built, and one of the guys from whom I got an estimate walked through my house. It turns out he was a builder in another life, and when he saw the stairs, he asked what I was planning to do with them. I told him I was going to carpet them. He advised against it, pointing out that on the bottom step, the carpet would meet the Saltillo tile, and no matter what type of carpet I picked, that would never look right. Originally the lower stairs were open, and so although they were carpeted, the carpet never abutted the Saltillo. After the fire, I had the lower stairs rebuilt to match the upper stairs, so all 12 steps are closed in. I realized he was right, so I put the carpeting idea on hold, but the prospect of finding someone to remodel the stairs in wood (to say nothing of the price of doing that) was daunting.

This summer I decided the time had finally come when this project needed to be underway, so a couple of weeks ago I started getting estimates. A friend who had had the stairs in his townhouse remodeled told me the approximate cost, per step, so I had a ballpark figure in my head for what it should cost. However, he had no landings; I have two, and it turns out landings are a separate expense, and not a small one. The stairs themselves (risers and treads) will be constructed by one contractor; when he’s done, a flooring contractor will come in to do the landings and will then sand, stain and finish everything.

The good news is that I’ve found two guys who seem to know what they’re talking about, and whose numbers, although not cheap, are in the ballpark. But before any wood can be installed, the cement board needed to be removed. To save money, I decided this was something I could do myself. I started Friday night and ended up working all night Saturday finishing up. The carpenter had used construction screws on the top floor landing, an area approximately 9’ x 4’, and those pieces of backer board came up easily, but for reasons unknown to me, he decided to nail the rest of it with 3” nails. My guess is that’s what he had in his truck. Most of the nails were slightly counter sunk, so the only way to remove the cement board was to force a pry bar under it and pry it off. There was no easy way to do this. For most of it, I had to start with a chisel. In some places, to make the cement board flush, he’d placed sheetrock behind it. It appeared that he had glued a couple of sections. For the tile to adhere properly, all of the cement board should probably have been glued, but thank goodness he didn’t do this, because removing the glued sections took forever. When the last of the cement board and sheet rock had finally been removed, I was left with a zillion nails sticking out of the wood. I was able to remove most of them, but some simply could not be pried loose, so I hammered most of those back into the wood. I discovered a couple of areas on the plywood on both landings that my Bengal cats Mia and Leo had nailed (i.e., sprayed with urine – which is why they are no longer living with me), so I painted those with a coat of Kilz, and I’ll probably apply a couple more coats before the remodeling starts. I'll post more pics as the project progresses.