Lifestyle change.

We got a new sofa.

When we moved into this house four years ago, we for some reason went on a manic furniture-buying binge. Well, I guess the reason is that we wanted furniture. Our old sofa was little and our new living room was big. So we went and found a big old leather sectional, very lodgy looking and dark. (Big ol’, really, not big and old.)

My house has a view of the San Fernando Valley, home to about 1.75 million people. But the thing I love is that we’re low enough to hug the tree line, so it just looks like a big valley full of trees. In fact, until some neighbors started an aggressive tree-trimming campaign, you couldn’t even see any of the other houses in the neighborhood. Now we catch a glimpse of a porch here, a roof there.

So on one hand, having a nice, dark lodgy sofa and a tree view made it feel very much like somebody’s hunting cabin out in the wilderness. On the other hand, the sofa was ginormous, and it dominated the room, which is actually not a lodge-style room.

So we gave the old guy away and got a new, smaller sofa, as well as a chair with a footstool. (The husb has an obsession with chairs. He got the idea after watching an HGTV show about a guy who was obsessed with chairs. His goal someday is to have a special room with many cool chairs in it, where people come and… sit, I guess. So the new chair is his baby.)

We spent approximately 45 hours yesterday afternoon rearranging furniture. Small sofas are heavier than they look, by the way. We couldn’t find a configuration that satisfied both of us at once, until we decided to do something fairly random that conventional wisdom, and I, would tell you was not a good idea (hint: diagonal furniture).

It opened up the room and created negative space and all of those other home-blog-term types of things.

The problem is that, for example, I am sitting nicely upright on the new sofa typing this blog entry. Sitting UPRIGHT. On the old sofa, you would need to rig a pulley system to achieve anything like normal posture. Also, I am drinking my coffee nervously, because this sofa is not leather and therefore cannot just be hosed down.

The old sofa was like an RV–you could eat on it, sleep on it, have three close friends hang out with you (four was possible, but tight), bring your dogs, etc. etc. etc.

The new one is not the kind of thing you curl up on when you’re sick. It’s not the kind of sofa you sit and eat orange-cheese-powder snacks on. If you drop chocolate on this sofa, so help you God you’d better get it off before it melts under somebody’s body heat.

So there’s going to be an adjustment period. We need better side tables now. We need a new rug. And we need to relearn how to eat dinner at the dinner table. How to sleep in our own beds when we aren’t feeling well. How to watch TV from a few further feet away. How to keep the dog on his blanket or a lap–never the sacred upholstery.

Despite, or maybe even because of all this, I’m glad New Sofa has joined us. Change is a good thing, right?

The Daily Plah: Day 6
Currently reading: The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong, and Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland (which totally got me to go through my yoga clothes and coat closet yesterday and clear out the ones I don’t use)
Song of the day: I don’t have one yet. I’m sitting in awed silence on the new sofa, you see.
Other notable facts: I was just going to say it looks like rain, but then I turned around and saw the sun shining on everything. So never mind!

3 comments March 6th, 2010

Crafty Monday: Prehistory of Crafting

Happy Monday, everyone! The husb and I spent the weekend shopping for new bedroom furniture, because we’re upgrading from a queen-size bed to a king-size. Who wants to guess why? That’s right–because of the DOG. He is a bed hog of unbelievable skill and sneakiness, and in order to have enough room for all three of us to get a decent night’s sleep, we need a bigger bed.

It was something I wanted to do before too long, anyway, but waking up hanging off the edge of the bed while the dog was sprawled out in the middle got to be too much.

“Why doesn’t the dog sleep on the floor or something?” you ask.

To which I answer, “Uh, sorry, question time is over! It’s Crafty Monday!”

Today I’m going to post a picture from my crafting pre-history. This is the first quilt I ever made–it was before I even owned a sewing machine. I was in Florida, visiting my family, and the guest room was also the sewing room. My curiosity got the better of me and I decided I wanted to learn how to make a quilt.

For whom? For Winston, naturally!

So we went to the fabric store (and it begins…) and I picked out some cottons and some flannel, and my stepmother helped me measure and cut everything, but I did most of the sewing myself.

It’s a little wonky, by golly, but it’s puffy and Winston took to it right away!

The reason I post this is that sooooo many people lately have said to me that they wished they knew how to sew.

Trust me, there are plenty of things I wish I knew how to do–things that seem magical and insanely difficult when you look at them from the outside. (Knitting, playing a musical instrument, learning some basic carpentry, becoming fluent in another language…) But ask anyone who does those things, and they’ll tell you that it’s just like anything else. Once you get started, the “It’s hard” feeling melts away, and before you know it, you’re just DOING the thing that once appeared impossible.

I made that first quilt in March 2006. And I never looked back!

If there’s something you’ve been wanting to try, but were afraid to, GO FOR IT!

Almost nothing in this world is as hard as you think it’s going to be.

Except for getting your fair share of bedspace when Winston is involved!

6 comments August 24th, 2009

Please excuse Katie’s absence…

Man, I hate that every blog is an apology for not blogging! This past week, I was out of town. The husb and I, having lived in California for more than a decade, decided we should get a look at our state, and finally drove up the coast, past Big Sur and all of those amazing places. The views are amazing. The weather is dramatically different from LA. A good time was had by all.

(Plus it allowed us to escape the homestead while it was being fumigated for termites.)

Now we’re home, and Winston is being a superpill. Not only that, but he’s horrifically itchy. I think the groomer might have cut it a little too close in some spots. All I know is, I’m about to hose him down with anti-itch spray.

We bagged everything up in the traditional termite-gas way, and I can’t bring myself to unbag it all. Seems like a heap of work. So I’m just cutting the bags open and taking out what I need. Maybe this is just how we should be living. Keep all your stuff in a clear bag. Then, when you leave home, put a fumigation notice on your door, and there’s no need for an alarm!

Golly, I shouldn’t just give these ideas away.

Well, happy Tuesday anyway, and please join me over yonder at the Debutante Ball, where we’re debunking writing myths.

Speaking of the Debutante Ball, only about 5 more weeks until the new class takes over… how crazy is that? Time sure flies.

Off to print out some fumigation warnings. Wonder how long it’d take to sew a tent for the house.

2 comments July 21st, 2009

Bloglet #1

Don’t you hate emptying the lint filter in the dryer and finding teeny-tiny paper shreds? You know you can never figure out what got shredded. But whatever it is, it is no doubt some crucial life document that you will need desperately someday.

9 comments February 16th, 2009

Thoughts on the coming storm (not a metaphorical storm)

Out here in LA, we have a lot of days where it looks like it might rain. But conventional wisdom says that, no matter how much it looks like it might rain, if it’s not the rainy season, it’s not going to. (Becoming ingrained in this mode of thinking will really get you into trouble when you go home to visit places like Florida and Georgia, where, it turns out, often when it looks like rain, it is actually going to rain.)

But here we are, back in the rainy season! With an actual storm on the horizon. One with actual water predicted to fall from its belly. There’s a weird sense of anticipation in this city when a storm is coming. The local weathermen just about go out of their minds with glee. Everyone else just seems slightly unsettled.

And the vacant lot up the street is once again drooping into the gutters and bringing about the necessity of the rest of the neighbors going and shoveling hundreds of pounds of dirt out of the way, to keep the drainage distributed between both sides of the street. If we don’t, the north side of the street will have no water, and our side (the downhill side) will have all of the water, which isn’t really fair, is it?

We don’t use sandbags. We might, if we had some, but they have a tendency to explode and leave piles of gravel all over the place. Instead, we use a very sophisticated and attractive system of buckets, 2×6s and tarps to keep the water from actually coming down the front stairs and pouring through the house. Even in the worst of times, we’ve never actually seen it close enough for real worry, but now that a storm is coming, I’ve made plans to leave work with enough daylight to get home and start shoveling

It sure would be easier if the guy who owned the vacant lot would take care of his property, but considering he never got around to clearing his brush, even in the height of brush fire season, I somehow doubt he’s going to show up to heroically look after the rest of us.

It’s all right. I don’t mind the work. I’m pretty handy with a shovel. And I look totally hip in my new rainboots.

4 comments November 24th, 2008

The astonishing lure of HGTV

Wait, before you do anything else, please watch this video:

And now on to our post…

Being in Belize, and being rained in for a sizeable percentage of the time, the husb and I found ourselves often lounging in the living room of the condo where we stayed, watching HGTV (yes, we were roughing it)–that’s “Home and Garden Television”, for those of you who don’t have cable.

HGTV has a lot of shows about, as you can imagine, houses. Selling houses, buying houses, renovating houses, valuating houses, dressing up houses’ curbs and playing down houses’ weaknesses. As their promos say, home prices are falling, and people–even people who have no intention of moving–seem to be obsessed with making sure they retain as much market value as possible.

You see the full spectrum on these shows–the new empty-nesters who are “downsizing” into a 3000-square-foot condo with a fountain and a media room; the newlyweds who are struggling to find a house in their miniscule budget. The real appeal, I think, is that while you watch homeowners and real estate agents pick over the features of each property, you pretend they’re in your house.

Doodly doodly doo, doodly doodly doo… squiggly lines, squiggly lines… begin fantasy sequence…

The hosts are smartly dressed. There are two of them. One has a British accent. Despite the fact that camera crews have been tracking mud all over my floors for the better part of the day, I pretend I’m surprised to see them here.

“Well, look at this! What a surprise!” I say.

“You are pathetic!” they snap as they enter my foyer. “Did you know that 66% of your outside lightbulbs are burnt out?”

“Uh… that is known as ‘the lighting rule of thirds’,” I will say. “It also plays up our hillside charm by inviting woodland creatures, such as squirrels, skunks, coyotes, and disgusting, disgusting potato bugs to visit.”

By this point, they are through with listening to me. They are staring at the plastic bags in the foyer.

“Er, those are for charity,” I say, sliding in front of the offending bags. “This house has really good charity karma. Buyers love karmically clean houses.”

They are also unimpressed by the fact that the water is off in the guest bathroom, because the toilet won’t stop running and, um, someone is too lazy to call a plumber. (Where’s Joe the Plumber when you need him?)

But I cleverly explain that it can be hidden: at an open house, we just need to move buyers through the house in three-minute intervals–start by demonstrating the fact that the toilet flushes, and then rush them through everything else. Or we need to plant someone in there and have him or her flush every three minutes, and leave a bunch of empty Pepto bottles out where you can’t miss them. Polite people–people karmically clean enough for this house–will be too courteous to say anything.

By this point, I will have wandered into the kitchen and poured myself a Kool-Aid. Because, let’s face it, HGTV may fit the laid-back pace of Belize, but now that we’re back in the USA, I need my editing a little snappier–at the very least, TLC pace.

Things go downhill, fast.

While the hosts attempt to assess the merits of my galley-style kitchen, I am rooting through the snack bin and pulling out a 100-calorie pack of Goldfish, preferably with flavor blast. I plant myself on the couch and politely ignore them until they get the message and leave.

As they let themselves out (because by now I’m watching America’s Next Top Model, where they assess things that really matter, like your ability to walk in heels and smile with your eyes), the one with the British accent trips over the two overflowing bins of dog toys and threatens to sue. To defuse the situation, I let him root through my charity bags and choose whichever two items he wants (an old portable phone and the dress I wore to my rehearsal dinner).

Then, exhausted, I lie down on the couch and let Tyra’s voice lull me to sleep.

Maybe I’m not cut out for reality TV.

Doodly doodly doo, doodly doodly doo…

I wake up with a start, in a mostly dark house.

It was all a dream.

What a relief.

The living room is dimly lit by the comforting, familiar single light bulb shining over the front steps. The toilet is singing like a burbling brook (“great flow!” a creative realtor might write in his ad). The potato bugs are scratching their sweet scritch scritch lullaby at the front door.

And I know that when I wake up in the morning, I will find, as my little gift from the universe, a giant potato bug lying dead on the front walk, and it will take all my strength to keep the dog from picking it up and trying to eat it.

My own little slice of paradise.

There’s just one little thing that doesn’t make sense…

Why do my fingers smell like flavor blast?

5 comments October 18th, 2008

More on book minimalism

Is it the onset of warm weather that makes me so desperate to clean my house? And not just tidy it, but rip through it and get rid of everything we don’t need or use?

The problem is, we have so much little stuff that just hides away in closets, and then when you try to get something done, the little stuff all jumps out and says, “Ha ha ha, what about me?” and then you’re left looking at picture hanging kits and canisters of 35-millimeter film and instruction manuals to stuff you know you have around here somewhere. And what can you do? You can’t get RID of it, for heaven’s sake! What a waste of good 35-millimeter film.

However, I’m making some progress.

(“Why don’t you tell us about it, Katie?”)

Okay!

Online indie bookstore Powell’s has a neato feature called Sell Us Your Books, wherein you can enter the ISBNs from any books you’re looking to get rid of and they’ll either bid or not accept it. This is a heady and addictive process, let me tell you. Before you know it, you’ll be scouring your shelves just to find books that they’ll take. “Accept me, Powell’s!” you will say. “Let me and this copy of Angela’s Ashes into your exclusive club!” (Spoiler: that’s an ix-nay on Angela’s Ashes.)

They’re not offering hundreds of dollars. They offer a couple dollars for hardcovers and less than a dollar for most paperbacks. After a while, you start to get an idea of what they’re into, and you start trying to guess whether something will be accepted.

Here’s the exciting part, though: if Powell’s doesn’t take it, you can’t put it back on the shelves. You have to put it in a stack of books that will go the the thrift store or to a library. Because if you were ready to let it go for 75 cents, you can let it go for free. Let’s be real here, fellas.

Anyway, I have a box shipping out today (pre-paid), so that’s exciting. I actually made almost enough room on my shelves for all the books that I used to keep in the sewing room, but had to move when my fabric stash overtook the space.

What’s that, you say? When am I going to purge the fabric stash and sewing room?

I’m sorry, I don’t have time to talk about that. I have to go shoot fifteen rolls of 35mm film.

*runs away*

9 comments May 2nd, 2008

My life as a pioneer woman.

Two days ago, the unthinkable happened:

I had finally managed to lure the husb down to the sewing room. I often try to get him to come hang out with me while I work, but he doesn’t particularly like going downstairs. But on this day, the top story of the house was very warm, and the basement level was nice and cool.

Almost immediately, my sewing machine broke. Something happened where the needle thread gets caught under the little plate where all the secret, magic stuff goes on. I tried repeatedly, but couldn’t fix it.

Then, the next morning, as I was sitting at the computer, the husb comes in and says, “I need the computer for a shoot we’re doing over the next two days.”

I beg your pardon?

But these mythical “shoots” are apparently more importantly than my voting on lolcats over at I Can Has Cheezburger, so I surrendered the machine (with great misgivings and lots of whining to show how serious I was, naturally).

That night, I got home from work to find that the shoot was still ongoing, thereby robbing me of the third of the four essential items in my home (my husband–the fourth is Winston, but he was grouchy). Add this to our chronic lack of groceries and the fact that our DVR is full of high-def episodes of CSI: Miami (don’t ask me why, I gave up on David Caruso a loooong time ago), and I was marooned.

I wandered around the silent house, occasionally pausing to look at the empty desk where the computer belonged. Then, clearly driven to madness by the starkness of my situation–

I went downstairs and started… cleaning. On a weeknight.

The big room downstairs has become a bit of a catch-all, especially with the new outdoor-type supplies that have to live inside. I rotated the couch and started organizing and making various little piles and putting things away.

Eventually, I hit a wall and went back upstairs. I found something random to eat and sat down to watch The Stepford Wives, feeling strangely like a Stepford wife myself. That movie is so strange. Especially now that it’s so ingrained in pop culture–every time they say, “There’s something wrong in Stepford,” you want to shout at the screen, “What do you expect? It’s STEPFORD! The place with the wives!”

Last night, knowing there was neither sewing machine nor computer nor husb waiting for me at home, I stopped and meandered around the grocery store a little. Then I got home and found that the DVR had made room for America’s Next Top Model (which I am starting to have a problem with, as none of the winners actually go on to become, you know, MODELS). I prepped a little food, sat down on the couch, and watched Tyra Banks ham it up.

This morning, like a dream, I woke to find the computer back in its spot. The husb is also in his spot, and Winston is more sleepy than grouchy. The sewing machine has not yet been repaired, but I have a loaner.

Close call with reality, eh?

PS – Bath math:

getting conditioner for hair + looking at face wash = conditioner all over face

PPS – Winston is three years old! His birthday was Tuesday.

5 comments May 1st, 2008

And so it grows…

(or, “Wishful Thinking”)

We recently had some landscaping done in our backyard. What was once just ivy is now a terraced little yard, and what was once a deck that belonged to a monstrous 1980s party hot tub is now refinished and furnished with barbecue supplies.

Because of this, and also because of books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have taken a keen interest in trying to grow some plants. Some edible, some not.

I have a history of killing plants. Or, more euphemistically, not keeping them alive. So I decided that maybe growing things from scratch would give me more of a sense of involvement and responsibility. I bought some seeds and planted bell peppers and oregano in a couple of little pots. Two bell pepper seeds sprouted, but the oregon was silent. So one day, when I was bored, I took a few garlic cloves that had sprouted in the kitchen and stuck them in the oregano pot. Naturally, four days later, hundreds of little oreganos sprouted out of the soil.

Last weekend, I transplanted some things and planted some new things, and now we’re playing the waiting game.

I was right about being more invested, too. I water those little buggers every day.

Here’s a tour of how things look right now.

This is my shade garden, at the side of the house where the hammock (a $15 cloth number, criminally comfortable) is… mostly shady, especially later in summer as the sun goes off behind the trees. This is all new planting. The tall guy at the back will be a fern; so will the terra cotta round pot. The two in the foreground should be begonias. No, will be! Will be begonias. Positive thinking.

This is a place under the overhang of the downstairs balcony where I dropped some of the oregano sprouts. I can’t believe that so many of those seeds sprouted at once. Talk about an embarrassment of riches, and poor planning. I stuck this ball of dirt here as an afterthought, hoping it might decide to fill in the awkward area between the ivy and the little curb. That big green thing is new; it’s not oregano. I don’t know what it is. I am also trying to grow a leather strap, apparently.

These are my sunny plants. In the back are Peruvian Daffodil and asparagus; then some garlic (thriving! go figure), mint, and oregano (assuming they pull through); the rectangle is my bell peppers, although I’m losing hope because they’ve been that size for weeks now; and in front is another Peruvian Daffodil.

The front daffodil pot is notable because something has dug through it, and I’m not even sure the bulb is still in there. Apparently skunks will root around in pots and eat bulbs. This makes me exceedingly sad, but I don’t know how to check without potentially destroying it, so I’m just going to keep watering it and then maybe eventually plant some basil or something.

So that’s the excitement in my life. It’s amazing how much more fun this stuff is when you’re a grown-up than when your parents force you to do it as a child.

I’ll provide updates occasionally, and if anything exciting happens. Cross your fingers, and we may have a full-blown leather strap plant before long!

Oh, and the big news, thanks to this post by Jemima Bean is that we have a peach tree! I saw the photo of the flowers and asked her what they were, because we had some. She replied that they were peaches, and sure enough when we looked more closely at the tree, there were fuzzy baby peaches on it! Hundreds of them, actually.

The guy we bought the house from knew there was a peach tree but never remembered it bearing any fruit (probably because it used to be so shady in the yard). But now… peaches! Peaches! Peaches! We pruned the tree ruthlessly, as apparently is the way to maximize peaches, and now we are just waiting… waiting… waiting…

6 comments April 26th, 2008

Ant ya ever coming back, ant ya?

The husb heard some snooty-foodie radio show about parsnips. He told me they look like white carrots and are supposed to be delicious. I said, “Hey, they have those at the co-op grocery near my office.” So I bought some parsnips, but they were actually daikon root, which I thought was a fancy name for “parsnips”. I was, as usual, wrong. Unsure exactly what to do with them, we left the bag on the counter.

Two days later, the ants arrived.

I have a history with ants. I hate them. They always seem to show up just when I’m at some breaking point or another.

Incident 1:

I was in seventh grade, ugly and unfashionable and unpopular and all zitty, and we had just left our old house to live in our new house. Life in the new house was super stressful, because the people who lived there before us somehow hid the fact that they were horrible slobs. The day we showed up to move in, they were like, “Oh, our daughter needs to stay another day, is that okay?” And they left so much crap in the house, including dirty dishes in the dishwasher–that we were all a wreck. I hated my bedroom, which was dirty and gross and the closet was filled with these creepy tiny glass animals.

So, I woke up one morning, feeling all defeated (this was a daily occurrence), and found that there were GIANT ANTS swarming in my bedroom. They were on the walls, on the bed, in my clothes, all over the floor–canvassing the place. We called this type “carpenter ants”, and they were 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) long. I couldn’t even get dressed because they were in my open dresser drawers. I even remember what I wore to school that day: my denim vest/shorts combo, over a turquoise faux polo (fauxlo?), with my turquoise Minnie Mouse socks, which I had totally intended to stop wearing after sixth grade. They were the only “safe” clothes, and I was quite aware that I looked even more unfashionable than usual.

Just another day of feeling ugly and gross (I believe the clinical term for that is “middle school”), made 100 times worse by ants.

Incident 2:

The day I moved to California–flew across the country, anxiety eating me alive (because I am not really a wandering spirit, and pretty much moved out here because the someday-husb was moving, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go after college), I got to the apartment complex where he’d found a one-bedroom, and it was in the ghetto and there were a lot of ladies of ill repute living there (although the place was fortress-like and nicely kept, but let’s face it, don’t go outside the gates at night, and if you are one of my friends who makes fun of me for not liking to leave my house, have some compassion because I think it all started there)… so I went to put my stuff away–

And my suitcase was FULL of ants. Just overflowing with them. Ants everywhere, in and on all of my clothes, etc. And it was horrible, horrible, because I didn’t even know where to start to get rid of them. I ended up soaking everything in the tub and then laundering all of it. And getting bitten.

Incident 3:

(Present day.) So anyway, there’s this never-ending line of ants, and we have no bug spray in the house (that stuff is noxious anyway), so I went online to look for natural remedies.

#1: Cinnamon. Sprinkle some cinnamon on the ants, and in their path. They dislike it and will go away.
I don’t know if they loved the cinnamon–they definitely didn’t sit around eating it or anything–but as a deterrent, it was roughly as effective as a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday!” would have been.

#2: Vinegar. Mix a solution of 1 part water and 1 part white vinegar and spray it in their path. They dislike it and will go away.
I enthusiastically sprayed not only the floor and counter but also each individual ant. This technique did not seem to please the ants, but it did not deter them.

#3: Soap. Make a solution of dish soap and water, and spray lightly on the ants’ path.
As an added bonus, this may ruin your floors and also create a horrible slipping hazard. Floors slippery? Check! Ants gone? Nope.

#4: Baby powder. Sprinkle baby powder liberally in the ants path.
At first, this seemed not only incredibly messy but also silly. Like the cinnamon, the ants seemed intent on avoiding the baby powder, but did not seem to take it as a message to turn around and go home. But as I sat there, watching individual ants, something amazing happened–

It worked! One of the most fascinating things was that you could dip your finger in baby powder and trace a circle around an ant–it could even been so faint that you couldn’t see it. But the ant in question would be like, “Whoa! Don’t want to go that way! Whoa, don’t want to go that way! Whoa, don’t want to go that way… wait a second…!”

So I sprinkled it liberally (understatement alert) all over the path the ants had taken. I sprinkled it on the wall they were walking down. Then I went to bed.

The next morning, no ants. None. And since then, no ants. None!

Baby powder wins. And then you just wipe it up with a damp paper towel. Who knew?

14 comments March 20th, 2008