Mumbling Madly

This post has been a long time coming. I kept seeing hints of this trend coming back, from random celebrity sightings to that Levis add with the girl plowing through NY traffic to stare face to face with that dude, I had a horrible feeling that fashion was about to recommit a terrible crime from the 80’s. I can handle the other come-backs: leg warmers, fine, enormous earings, OK, I was even cool with the brief reappearance of neon. I REALLY believed that society as a whole would reject this resurfaced trend. I find that it is with great sadness that skinny jeans have found their way back into mainstream fashion. I AM NOT OK WITH THIS. Has no one been paying attention? Did we learn nothing from the What Not To Wear girls? Tapered jeans look AWFUL on majority of women–and men for that matter. Lately I’ve seen the dumpiest, shortest, hipster chicks walking around Seattle with their skinny jeans paired with FLATS…dear GOD, flats? No, no, no, if one wants to attempt to pull this trend off, you need to suck it up and wear the goddam heels so your legs look somewhat alongated and not like two short stumps. But no one wears heels in Seattle, we’re way too practical for that.
The last time I wore straight legged pants was in middle school–and this was also when peg-rolling was fashionable. I had a nice acid wash pair with a high waist and a little stretch. My feet had ballooned up to a size 10 and my short frame had yet to catch up with my gigantic appendages. I looked like Olive Oil…I looked like a stick with two marshmellows attached to the end. Skinny jeans do nothing for the big footed girl, we like to be able to hide our paws with a healthy hem. And, I’m sorry, but skinny jeans don’t do anything for anyone unless you are, well, SKINNY. This is why super models can pull this look off the same way they can pull off leather chaps, enormous belts, and fur. The rest of us need to pick and choose our trends carefully, based on what looks good for our body type. OK, so you MIGHT get me in a pair of straight legged jeans, but I draw the line at tapered.

We’re still not moved in entirely. There is still a lot of dissaray around the new house and the old place still has a few random things lying about. (Not to mention a big cleaning). Hobbes is the only one of us who has transitioned entirely. She absolutely loves the upstairs, specifically the carpet, which upon further inspection really does resemble the fabric one finds on a scratching post. Hobbes has spent most of her day lolling around on her back at the top of the stairs, peering down at us as we walk by.
Josh and I are feeling ragged. It was only us and Kyle who ended up available for the move (with props to Katie who swung by and unloaded boxes with incredible strength and vigor). Because my noodle arms are useless when it comes to lifting furniture I was left with the job of packing the entire house while Kyle and Josh carried things into our rental truck. (Mad props to penske who came through in ways that u-haul can only imagine). Of course, moving is terrible and nobody wants to help someone else move. All things considered, the move went smoothly but there became a point when hiring movers would have been a godsend.

Our house is currently in shambles, with a few exceptions: the kitchen is almost unpacked as is the bathroom and our bedroom. Our weekend is gone, poof, from existence. Luckily, the weather has been beautiful, but we wouldn’t know it on the south side of our house since our neighbor’s trees stoop across our roof and cover any visible sunshine. We also found out that we have pigeons. They’ve been hiding out in the eves, pooping and shedding feathers onto our porch. The next big project is buying a huge ladder and climbing up and placing these unfriendly spiky discs which discourage pigeons from camping out and ruining your paint job.
I’m still adjusting to having our bedroom facing the street. I’m currently reading the Idiot’s Guide To Fung Shui and it’s making me miserable. Of course the master bedroom should be in the back of the house! Bad chi is entering through the windows in the form of low rider vehicles and pedestrian foot traffic. (Josh and I are so lame, everytime a Caucasian walks by we exclaim, “Look! A white person!” as if we are exotic bird watchers). I can block the chi using a myriad of mirrors and crystal spheres, but there is a point where I realize that I can only do so much with limited resources. I’ve tried not to take fung shui personally; so what if my driving pad has cracks and my bed is facing a door? At least I HAVE a driving pad and my bed is on the left side of the room which represents a favorable “commander” position. At this point we are struggling to feel comfortable. We feel utterly disoriented, completely off kilter, as we navigate this, our first house.

I had to dismantle a large cardboard structure today in the little area between the stairs and a cement wall at my work.  As some of you may know, I’ve occasionally had to wake people up in the morning who are sleeping around the stairs.  It really is a nice little spot, warm and sheltered, but it’s starting to get a little out of hand.  It used to be one guy, and I guess he’s a normal homeless guy, a ‘regular’ who wakes up promptly and is polite.  Many nearby businesses have been tagged with spray paint, but our building has been spared largely due to the presence of our sleeping vagabond.  However, this fellow has recently allowed meth addict friends to shack up with him, and this has started to get creepy.  They sleep behind mounds of cardboard so that, for a little while, I didn’t even notice them in the morning.  Today they left a bag of stale bread in the parking lot which was attracting a huge amount of birds.  The owner’s begged me to don gloves and go out and remove the bread and put the cardboard out for recycling.  What the hell…I’m trying to score points at work and the situation is becoming a bit of health hazard.  I actually didn’t find anything too incriminating in the cardboard, just lot’s of cigarrette butts and garbage.  I have to admit: I felt bad when I threw a toothbrush away.

We’ve been spending every ounce of spare time over at our new house. Sadly, the wood floors are unsalvagable, but we’ve decided to cover them with enviornmentally friendly, totally renewable, bamboo. We got a slammin deal thanks to ifloors an online flooring company that thankfully has a showroom in Seattle. In the mean time I’m trying to get some painting done before I have to worry about drop cloths. Here I am painting in between the creases of what was once wood paneling (while listening to “Whadya’ Know?” on NPR):

I decided to paint our bedroom blue because it receives more natural light than any other room. I was going for a sky blue, and I wasn’t disappointed. Consumer Reports just did a whole thing on interior paints, and reccommended major store brands as best buys (like Hope Depot and Walmart). We went to Lowe’s and I picked out the brightest light blue I could find. It always amazes me how much darker the wall ends up compared to the color sample.

Don’t go thinking this whole weekend was spent cheerfully painting walls, we actually had to tackle some pretty big flooring problems. In order to get the floor ready for the installer, Josh had to figure out why the floor had a huge hump down the center of the dining room. After ripping up a bunch of floor boards, we discovered another wood floor underneath it with old, misaligned, planks that had warped with age. Obviously we couldn’t rip them out, (through the cracks we could see underneath the house), so Josh carefully stapled wedges of wood down and then nailed plywood over it. I can’t believe it only took a sentence to describe this process because it took much, much longer then anticipated. To remove all the boards Josh ended up having to pull out the molding, but did everything in his power to avoid this. I haven’t seen Josh that pissed in a long time, I guess house projects do that to people (ahem, DAD). Here is a picture of the finished project:

I’d like everyone to take note of the chandelier in the background. It is fantastically tacky with fake ‘jewels’ dripping from fake candles, intricately detailed and decorated with gold accents, I love it…Josh hates it. It came with the house, obviously really old and vintage. I keep saying we just need to tie it up so that Josh won’t hit his head on the spiky part at the base of the chandelier. Josh isn’t buying it. I told him replacing the chandelier is LOWEST priority right now…hopefully it’ll be no priority and it stays.

Yup, it’s been three years of marriage as of today, August 16.  Of course this brings in seven total years of partnership, which I like to ponder more than just the remembrance of this special day.  I have to say: I really dig being married to Josh.

Josh and I went to our new house last night and pulled up all the carpet and padding from the main floor–that’s four rooms and a hallway. We had to avoid being stabbed by staples and the dust and mildew stench coming off the carpet was strong. Underneath we surveyed the wreckage: ancient hardwood floors that have been painted green in the living and dining rooms and brown in the two bedrooms. The only problems are the wiggly boards placed over an enormous hump in the middle of the floor–most likely a large beam underneath. There used to be a fire place in the living room corner, the evidence being plywood nailed down around the absent hearth instead of hardwood flooring. It’s really odd, when you look at our house you can see not one but two chimneys coming out of the roof. One is in the living room and other is behind the kitchen. I suppose they come from the days when the hearth was your sole means of heat and warming up your food.
Josh and I had a scare over the weekend. We were surveying the bathroom, and Josh stepped into the bathtub/shower. He didn’t fit! His head skimmed the ceiling. We freaked out: what are we going to do? Josh can’t fit into his own shower! OMIGOD! Then I made him take off his shoes…he fit much better, and realized that the shower slopes down towards the fixtures and he actually has several inches of clearance. Eventually we would benefit from tiling the whole shower area, avoiding eventual mildew build up from Josh’s head.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around living so far south and in the hood. My street is fine, fairly well kept houses. We saw a couple much like ourselves taking a walk with a tiny infant in a carrier and noticed that they live across the street…for some reason it made me feel better. We’re definitely not the first white folk to move to the block, however, we are the minority.
Several blocks to the east is the water, and the homes get significantly nicer. Several blocks to the south is the Kubota Gardens and a mishmash of houses varying in degrees of niceness. Several blocks north is Rainier Ave and, I have to tell you, it is an ugly, ugly, stretch of road. Sad, dilapitated businesses are barely standing, trash litter the road, strange characters roam the sidewalks, and I can feel myself starting to chicken out. I keep telling Josh we need to avoid Rainier, I-5 is to the west, only a half mile away. Last night we took the long trek back up Rainier to our current home, and it kind of tripped me out how random that road is. Several miles away you have intensely gentrified Columbia City, lined up with a Starbucks and fancy pub dining. Is it that this scene is more familiar to me, and therefore I feel more at ease? We drove by Katie’s townhome and I felt better.
Tonight we went back and began to arduous task of pulling out the carpet paneling and the wood trim that used to border the carpet. Tommorrow we’ll learn the virdict: restore the hardwoods or cover them with new ones. I think they’re salvagable but Josh is doubtful. We’ll see…

The symposium is really best summed up with pictures. In short, it was fantastic, wonderful, and a lot of fun. I traded about half my zines for whoever would trade with me. Besides other zines I also traded for a henna tattoo, a silk-screened sweatshirt, a printed poster of a cat dreaming about a mouse, and other silk screened treats. According to Gina, the Symposium went from having only zines and self-published work to currently including crafty items, visual art, used clothes with stuff screened on them, food, and even little plants. Here we are on Friday afternoon, still assembling Gina’s latest zine at our little half table:

Diego was nearby selling his politically charged silk screened clothing. The shirts included this scrub with Heterosexism Is A Grave printed on it. As you can imagine, his table did very well.

I bought this little knitted cat at a nearby table where a Mom and her teenage kids were hanging out selling their comics. She had a box of these charming little cats and they immediately became a HUGE hit at the Symposium. People everywhere were wanting these darn little cats…

I bought Gina an orange knit cat to match Soda, her house cat:

Eventually, everyone around us bought into the knit kitty phenomanon. When things were slow we spent time posing and photographing them:

The general hubbub and excitement of so many artists packed into one space was hard to resist. Here is my sister and friends celebrating the little vegan chocolate cake that Gina traded one of her zines for:

Sam and Erin stopped by…Sam was intrigued by the Too Much Coffee Man and Erin bought a print from the folks at Loose Teeth Press:

The three of us leaving the Symposium and to my parent’s house for dinner:

My Mom supporting the Zine Symposium with their offical logo tee:

Gina and Josh relax after a long day…note that Josh is also wearing a Zine Symposium tee.

Of course I didn’t network nearly as much as I had hoped. I regret not being able to finangle Sunday into my Zine experience, but Friday and Saturday were ample enough time to try and make my mark. I managed to donate my zine to the local Seattle Zine Archive and Publishing House, rubbed shoulders with Microcosm Publishing, and expressed admiration for Tugboat Press. We returned home to find our real estate agent with the keys to our new house and a bottle of champaign. Now that the fun is over the hard work begins!

Every spare moment is being spent on writing, drawing, and producing my zine for the upcoming Portand Zine Symposium. It takes place next weekend at Portland State University in the Ballroom, 3rd Floor, at the Smith Memorial Center. Gina and I will be selling our zines from 3 – 7pm on Aug 11 and 10am – 5pm on Aug 12 (I’ll be gone by the 13th but Gina will still be around). If you’re in town please stop by!
I labored a long time over the cover of my new zine about teaching, wanting to draw something with a big impact. After messing around forever on a cover featuring a bird’s eye view, I scrapped the whole thing and went for simple and straight forward:

Got asked out by a guy who found me as we walked from 23rd back to MLK from bus number 48. He chatted me up the whole six blocks, introduced himself, shook my hand…he told me all about how he’s out here from Yakima, maintaining the flowers that line Lake Washington for work. He’s currently living in a boarding house behind the bus stop on 28th but he’s looking for other housing…long waiting list, though. I assumed he must be talking about assistant housing, and I remember vaguely reccommending the crappy apartment complex on our corner as possible Section 8 housing. As we strolled along, I wondered if maybe I would finally get some street cred walking with this tough looking guy down Cherry St. At some point I worried that he might follow me home, and if he did I decided I would feel confident telling him to beat it. However, when we reached 28th he said, “Listen, would you like to go out sometime?” And I said, lamely, “No, I’m married.” This always comes off sounding sort of arrogant in a way, but it really is the best defense. These types of guys usually have at least some respect for the sanctity marriage…more so than if you just have a boyfriend. Back in the old days I would say, “No, I have a boyfriend” (or back when I worked the restaurant circuit I would simply shrug and say, “novio”). This was sometimes met with a snort, and a “well, who cares, I don’t get jealous.” But, I still felt sort of bad letting this guy down, and I tried to cover it up by saying quickly, “but I’m flattered…have a nice afternoon.” I think it’s the summer that brings this out in people…that sort of need to connect with some random stranger walking down the street.