I'm schlepping along on my roommate's pet sitting runs, in case she gets stuck in the snow. It beats another day lying around watching bad tv. I was starting to get bed sores.
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I thought I'd get Christmassy with my silly little game of the week. I haven't done one for a while. Apologies about that.
Anyhow, to make up for it, I bring you Santa, haplessly brought down in mid flight into zombie land.
Help him save the reindeer!!!
fog and thunder on Mt. Oread
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Frequently, I will fall madly in love with a piece of furniture that leaves even my closest friends & allies scratching their heads in confusion. Such was the case with my new desk. When I first showed it to my husband, I could tell he was skeptical, but knew better than to say so...When the glimmer is in my eye, just back away.
It was love at first glance on Craigslist for me:
So I contacted the owner to arrange a viewing. We had several conversations over the course of a few days while attempting to fit our schedules together and I learned that the desk had belonged to his mother and he had the pity-able task of sorting out her belongings. I told him that I was a furniture maker and would take really good care of it...that I wasn't sure if I would refinish it, or leave it alone, but either way it would be loved. In a small way, I think these exchanges may have been a bit therapeutic for him, as I sensed he was perhaps a bit choked up on the other line.
I should mention, in addition to being incredibly kind, he was also extremely fair with the price ($45 for desk, chair, & mirror) and generously offered to deliver it to me for free.
So yesterday, when he showed up, it was an easy no brainer. I saw it on the truck, knew it was love, handed him the money, and brought it in the house. It was a little dirty from being in storage, but a little simple green & elbow grease was all it took to clean up nicely:
While pulling out one of the drawers, my husband discovered hidden treasures had fallen into the back of it. I couldn't believe it - a beautiful desk AND hidden treasure! I had hit the jackpot. The best things we found: an antique bottle opener, stolen from a San Francisco hotel called The Raphael; a porcelain lid to a tiny box (this must have made her CRAZY trying to find it); an old silver swiss army knife? or nail cutter?; and best of all - a tiny gold skeleton key with a #2 on it.
Doesn't that just pique your sense of wonder & adventure like crazy???!!!! WHAT on earth does that key open and HOW will I find it?
Well, those questions may have to go unanswered. I plan to call the man today and offer him what I found...but I'm REALLY hoping he doesn't want them back, because I love them so much! I would like to keep them with the desk, either displayed behind my computer or in a shadow box on the wall. Each item has so much history and so many secrets to tell...If I am allowed to keep them, I know they will provide endless inspiration and possibly good luck while spending long hours feverishly writing at this desk.
if only I hadn't already bought my sink and toilet this princess pink pair would be very tempting...
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When I was a desk jockey in San Francisco, I frequently changed my desktop image to something happy and tropical because I was, well - unhappy & cold. Now that I'm back in Hawaii, I wanted to put some images out into the internets, in case anyone out there is searching for warm, flowery, happy, tropical, Hawaii wallpaper:
You all know that I'm fucking nuts, so this will come as no surprise.
On Monday, I was at work, bored, staring down an afternoon with little to do. I did what anyone with a serious mental illness would do: I faked a headache and left work to go work on the house!
I put in a good five hours, feeling pleased that I was getting closer to being ready for my drywall contractor to work next week. The next morning, it occurred to me that I already had an excuse in place, so I called in sick. Good thing I did.
At about 9:30, my drywall contractor called to say that his schedule had changed. He could either start on Wednesday or he wouldn't be able to get to it until the new year.
My people, you know what I did. I said, "Start on Wednesday," and then I threw my ass in gear to get ready for him. I knew I had at least two more days of work to do, so I figured on at least 16 hours. It ended up taking a little longer than that. It was my first and hopefully my last home remodeling all-nighter. Because it's one thing to pull an all-nighter, sitting around eating pizza and studying. It's another thing to spend all night standing on a ladder, scraping, peeling, sanding, and priming.
At about 8 pm, I broke for dinner and went down the block to the nearest fast food place. In the shape I was in, I would normally have gone through the drive-thru, but the bathroom in my basement is sooooo cold. I was willing to face a little public humilation in order to put my ass on a toilet seat that was not glacial.
I took my pee break and went back out to order some dinner. People stepped away from me in line. At the counter, the cashier recoiled. Now I knew I was dirty, but until that moment I hadn't realized just how dirty. I had a cloud of dust and debris around me--the pulverized particulate of fifty years of bad wallpaper choices. And probably not a little in the way of lead paint chips. The cashier didn't even bother to ask if I wanted my food to go; she just bagged it up and handed it to me from arm's length. Only then did I notice the little semi-circle of dust and detritus that I'd left at the counter where I'd been standing.
But wait, there's more. At midnight, about 15 hours into my ordeal, I was dying. I could see I had at least 3 more hours of work and maybe 5 hours. I went out to the local quickie mart for coffee and another pee break in non-artic conditions. An elderly man stood by the counter chatting with the college age cashier. Clearly the old man had reached that point in life where he no longer really needed sleep, so he'd taken to hanging around pestering cashiers at all-night quickie marts.
When I approached with my coffee, the old man smiled at me and said, "Why don't you let me get that for you?"
I was already in a slightly stunned state, but I managed to say, "No, that's okay. I got it."
He persisted, but I already had my money out on the counter.
Having failed to buy me a coffee, the old man said, "Do you have some place warm to stay tonight?"
Yes, that's right, my people. I was so bedraggled looking that I was mistaken for a homeless person. I schlepped my crusty, dusty self back to my 2 bedroom gulag, and went on with the work. At 4:30, I put the last strokes of primer on all the cut wallpaper seams, and dragged myself home to shower and sleep for a few hours.
For the record, I do not recommend this, but I do now have sheetrock on my walls.
plus pumpkin lasagne.
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As the pipe clamp blisters began to pop and heal on my hands, I knew I was in a race against myself to find my next gig in woodworking. I had just quit my job after I was put on a mandatory 72-hour work week schedule, which was neither safe nor necessary in the warehouse where I was a full time furniture maker. From my first taste of sawdust, I was hooked. I loved everything about it, especially the aches & pains associated with putting in a hard day of manual labor.
I had moved thousands of miles from my industrial Michigan factory roots, only to go to college and decide the blue collar life is what I wanted. I quit my job, only when it was obvious that it would either kill or permanently injure me...but it was still one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. Besides the fact that I love it, I realize now how wrapped up I was in the identity of being just one thing...In my working life, I have always had to have at least three side hustles going on and I've done everything from nude modeling, to being a maid, a well-paid executive assistant, an extra in movies, a make-up artist, to an apprentice sander in a woodshop.
When I call home to update my family, typically, whatever it is I describe is met with unconditional love & acceptance, even if there is a tinge of it not necessarily being understood. As a woodworker, I was finally able to align myself with an identity - one thing that I loved being and doing...and it was so much easier to explain that!
Predictably, when the job fell apart, I scrambled for any paying gig I could find on craigslist. As it turns out, it was a good time to be involved with film making and I even signed up for acting classes. Being involved in the process is as exciting as it seems like it would be - even the long hours of waiting, while being completely dressed to the nines for a 6:00 a.m. call time, shouldn't be exciting, but it still is.
Around this time I also found work as a fit model, working for a local design house. It's a job that pays very well but the work is inconsistent. Still, I am extremely thankful to have it, even if it is a bit weird for me to use it as an identifier at the dentist's office and have the receptionist squeal and ask me a bunch of questions about the job. That's a rock star moment, I'm not going to lie, but it's completely foreign to me to identify myself as "model" in any capacity...especially when "factory rat" was a closer signifier just weeks ago.
I'm not sure if all the discomfort in lacking a fixed occupation or identity squarely rests on my shoulders, or if I am reacting to other people's confusion when I try to explain, "Well, I'm actually a furniture maker, but I'm out of work, so I'm doing the acting and modeling thing, while looking for another woodworking gig." Who does that? I'm not sure if I even understand myself anymore.
In the long run, it's probably a good thing that I am so versatile & adaptable - I always have something relevent for any type of resume I'm creating for myself (and I have at least 3); but I long for the day when I have a short answer to the question, "So what do you do?"
