Bad Home Smell ... and the neighbors are complaining like dicks

But first, area man Green Meanswallow explains why Facebook sux now: 

Because I abuse it. I keep scrolling down thru the updates I've already seen. Yesterday I caught myself at it more than once in the same minute. There was nothing new on there, and it occurred to me, as I was doing it, that I didn't know why I was doing it. It was mindless.

Facebook friends:

Be prolific, will ya? Do I have to do it? I mean, just post whatever's the top entry on the front page of the Internet. I mean, Reddit.

Switching gears here, I gotta say, I'm all done with my business on the john, but I just don't want to get up. I'm perfectly happy. Sure, it leaves a red ring on my ass, but that's livable. I don't have any responsibilities in here!

Changing subjects, my house has smelt like nail polish for a week.

Well, it's not my house, and the smell was floor polish, and it was for like five days.

Now forgive me if I don't sit in the living room and watch Curious George with my kids as I write this, but I gotta say, it's tough when these particular circumstances affect one:

• Noxious floor finish smell in your private living space
• You're at home with your kids
• It's too cold to go outside
• It's August

The reason the floors are getting re-finished is so that my family can move downstairs to the larger apartment. In all, not much to complain about.

It's simply been a bit of a to-do this last week dealing with this obnoxious, harmful smell slowly wafting in through our floor.

Sometimes the smell was so bad in the pantry I had to hold my breath. I'd be going in to get something, and breathing in would actually cause a physical sensation. It was a sort of a light burning, inside my face. To the tune of nail polish.

Unpleasant. A haiku:

All the fans blowing
Maintaining consistent wind
Repels finish stink

The kids' closet, which has no door, has been a great ventilation space, apparently. Every night before I go to bed at about 11, I open their door for the night and check to see if they're ok. About three or four nights in a row, their room stank fairly hard. And with a window open and a fan going!

But as I write this, the smell seems to be gone for good. I hope those jokers at D.J.'s Hard Wood or whatever are done putting varnish coats on.

I swear, at some points, they would come by real quick at odd times in the day, like in the evening close to the kids' bedtime, paint but a section of the floorspace, and then bolt!, closing and locking the doors behind them, allowing the smell to brew really nicely down there, like a thousand girls doing their nails at once and they all spilled it all over the floor.

Oh, and when I'd go downstairs to practice guitar, the whole consarn basement would stink. And two of the windows down there don't open without a fight, but luckily the one in my studio opens without a hitch. I actually broke a pane of glass in the thing recently, and had to get it replaced. Cost me like $148.

D.J. said the whole project would take three days, and that the smell wouldn't be harmful to us up here. HOWEVER, like all large-scale housing projects put into the hands of small-time companies, and not to mention set in the historic location in a century-old house, it took longer than estimated. I should expect this by now.

BUT!-- The smell is gone. And that makes me much happier because it's cold and windy out today, like in the high 50s, and I want those consarn windows closed.

Here's a picture from today:

Long lede and 1st graf, needs error correction

Totally recorded a video yesterday of me doing cool stuff, and was gonna edit it in iMovie, then I couldn't figure out how to work iMovie, then I had to do all this other stuff, then I had to do a bunch of other stuff, cause the car broke, but when the tow guy came he fixed it right there, then I had to go to the hardware store to replace my neighbor's shears I broke yesterday, then him and I started cutting up the pile of branches I cut off that he let me just put on his lawn cause it was recycling day the next day and his bin was full, then I got too carried away with the clipping and got rid of most of this big, dead bush in my front yard, then it was eight o'clock and I had to come in to help put the kids to bed, then I was tired and internetted for the rest of the night, then it was bed time, but I didn't go to bed on time because I found this blog entry, written by the wife of a classmate of mine from The City Collegian.

Now, it's nine o'clock a.m., the video is still open in iMovie, I still want to cut a few parts out of it, and I'm on my second cup of coffee, piping hot fresh in the $1 blue cup that I got from the grocery store that had a generic name like "Savings Mart Land" and now has an even more generic name, like, "The Store," in Bellingham, at the intersection of ...Lincoln and ... up the street from Lincoln Creek, and now I have to shave my face cause I'm sorta getting this weird red rash under the hair on the bottom of my neck and it's really itchy and it's time to fucking shave it, though I hate shaving.

Lucy's exact words to me, just now: "Do I need a nectarine? I need a appwe."

"Appwe. I want da appwe."

You know, when I spell out phoenetically what she says like that, it makes her seem a lot younger. Sometimes I take for granted that she doesn't speak in complete sentences, use grammar, or pronounce words correctly, cause we just have this mind-meld going on. I understand her. People come over, and when they hear babble, I hear a person trying to communicate and be understood and join the adult conversation. What's more, I understand her perfectly. It's not babble to me, it's a person trying to talk. Same with BB, even though all the says is different inflections of the word, "Da." But last night she started with, "Mamamamama" and other cute variations of other sounds.

Now I have to go shave and take them outside bye

Switching Imminent

Well, I don't know if my landlord reads my blog, or if things just came together coincidentally, but we're slated to move two weeks from Wednesday (the 11th).

The day after I wrote that last blog entry, Megan and I got an email from our homeowner man downstairs. It said that work on the floors downstairs begins Wednesday, will take a week, and after that, the place must air out for another week.

Not bad, right? It's coming--we get a bigger place! Oh man, it means packing and all that headache, but we're gonna hire movers, and it'll only be within the same house. Not bad, I gotta say.

When Megan, Lucy and I moved in, our landlord was inhabiting the larger downstairs apartment. You've all seen pictures of my place. It's the upstairs of the house, a 2-bedroom, approximately 700-square-foot, brightly colored affair. Not small exactly, but with four people in here, space is at a premium.

Our landlord mentioned switching apartments a long time ago. It seemed logical to put the family of four in the bigger apartment than the bachelor.

He knew, though, that his century-old house would need a lot of tender, loving care before the switch could rightly occur.

Somewhere around one and a half years ago, he had a plumbing crew come in and re-do most of the house's plumbing. It began with our bathroom, then progressed to the whole downstairs. I mean, they knocked down walls down there. We had a couple small holes in our bathroom, but the work done up here was minor in comparison to the gutting that took place below us.

Our landlord knew that had to be done, in order to get the walls re-painted, in order to then re-finish the wood floors.

Kav has been putting a lot of work in down there. In the past month or more, he's had to move all his shit around, much into the garage and basement, and basically vacate his place in the meantime. It's gotta suck.

I'm sure he'll be glad when all this shit is done with. However, he's definitely gonna have to repair the rotting under the floor around the toilet up here, though, and the stairs outside aren't going to hold up forever. And the JUNK downstairs! The previous owner left a buttload of fuck down there. Just a bunch of fukkin doors, cabinets, pieces of wood, and rolled up nasty moldy rugs.

I KNOW I'm going to enjoy that double-basin sink down there, as well as the large dining room, which is separate from the larger kitchen and living rooms. And the ceiling fan in the bathroom and the ventilation fan in the kitchen. And the cupboards.

Moving will be a little hard on Lucy, I foresee. I think BB will be ok with it, but it's gonna be weird getting them used to the idea that, though we still live in the same house, we don't go into the same place anymore. We just go in the downstairs door now.

Kinda creepy, in a way.

I'm sure the increased size will grow on her, though. Imagine the toy-strewing-about possibilities.

I need an office

It just hit me. I need an office.

I need a brown office with a brown leather chair, brown desk, dark hardwood polished mahogany floors, bookshelves detailing my intellect, pictures detailing the happiness of my family, where I beat and/or molest my sons with my belt.

No, seriously, I need a place to not have to be around Lucy while she's playing Zelda. It's the sensory overload that kids love--the sights, the sounds--that's turning me off.

It's bright lights and bright colors, and there's a sound for everything. Link is yelling, shit is blowing up, monsters are electrifying themselves audibly and they roll at link with giant hard carapaces that sound like dirt bikes, and Lucy has taken to pushing the Wii's home button to pause the game and freeze the action about ten times per minute, sometimes rapid-fire five or six times in three seconds, and of course it makes a nice little menu sound every fucking time. Even with the tv volume turned down to 5, it's like bleach pouring into my ears.

So where do I go? To avoid constant distraction from all adult thinking, I need a separate room. And right now in my apartment, there are three rooms available to me, that aren't the living room. One is my room, with the bed, and not the comfy couch. Another is the kitchen, with a hardwood table and hardwood chairs, and not the comfy couch. The third is the bathroom.

You see my dilemma? BB is finally sleeping, I took the kids outside today, got them dressed and fed, and .. gosh ... darnit... if this fucking game doesn't beep constantly when the player is down on hearts. I was a good dad today, and I deserve a little break.

Also, Lucy deserves a little time to do something she loves. This is exactly what she wants to do right now and she's happy, and it's not filled with advertisements, or even characters that talk at you and don't encourage reaction.

I was thinking about putting on headphones, but that requires sound directly in my ears, and I'd rather just have less sound, overall. And it involves me getting up. And I'm tired. And I don't want to have to get up to do one more thing. But fuck dude, this job of mine is right at home, and I've gotta do it. I've gotta do it.

√∫◊

My landlord is DRAGGING HIS FUCKING FEET with moving us out of here. See, we're waiting on him to get the flooring re-done downstairs, so we can switch apartments in this big, century-old duplex house we share. He's got the bigger place downstairs, and wants to switch with us. He's never frickin home, so it seems like it would be good for all of us.

I dunno. Maybe it's time to move. Again. We've been in this place for three years. That's not that long. Can't we stay here a little longer? This waiting is driving me nuts. My best bet is to wait it out, and get the awesome apartment downstairs with a double basin sink and fucking twice the space as this place. I want it I want it I want it.

Landlord said he'd have us down there by MARCH. Criminy. The waiting. The waiting. The waiting. The dwindling faith. The having to rely on others. The weighing of enslavement to rent wages versus the high price of home ownership. The lack of time and energy when one parent is stuck raising kids and the other is stuck at a full-time job. It's all so depressing.

We're lucky to have this place, it's in the middle of a much richer neighborhood than us. I mean, the people living around here are like, established, money-making, middle-aged parents who have their shit together and own houses with nice-looking yards. And Megan and I just rent this tiny little upstairs apartment in the middle of it all.

We've got a sweeeeet park right next to us, we live literally one block away from Megan's work, it's close to the U District, Capitol Hill and downtown, wi-fi is included in the rent ... it's too good to let go.

Looks like we're waiting! In the meantime, it would be great to have a room to go to to just have some quiet time. But I don't get that right now.

Holy shit, Lucy just made it somewhere on Zelda that I don't know how to get to, and it's all interesting, and I'm actually enthused about where it might go, and then ... "Can I play Mario 64?" sheepishly.

"Ok, honey."

Today at the park I got a phone call about a video internship in Woodinville. This lady lives up there, and she has two video bays in her home, and she makes documentaries. She's trying to put together a non-fiction film festival. She needs help putting some projects together in Final Cut Pro.

Tomorrow morning at 10, I'm gonna go over there and see what she's all about, and what kind of time commitment I'm looking at. And I gotta talk to my school to see if I can get credit for it.

®å∂

Maybe not a brown office, but a studio... with the room divided with the control room on one side and the performance room on the other, and like a big ass couch and not two but three comfy chairs, and a big ass mixing board and like all this shit ...

Two little munchlings

Late June, 2012

Kid pictures

My first experimentation with Flickr. Looks pretty good to me.

Tits

Babies get the best tits.

AM I RIGHT?!

Post-dad-visit reflections

My last post was about my dad's then-upcoming visit.

You know, if it had not been so long since I had last seen him, I would not have been so nervous.

He's an easy-going guy, quick to realize his effect on the moods of others, and generally full of love for the universe. I didn't have much to worry about.

I was so preoccupied thinking of my childhood, when we were both very different people, that it was making me anxious.I was caught up in only remembering my perception of him--dad thru the lens of a son growing up before him.

It seemed strange that, in the weeks before his arrival, I was feeling like how I did as a child, helpless before this giant who could squash me like a bug, who isn't as impressed with my antics as my friends, and whose experience in the world exceeds mine by a long shot. This giant also chose to stick with me, a baby, toddler, adolescent, and teenager, and all the shit I dole out during those life stages.

We loved one another, but it wasn't a way that I understood until I had my own kids and started doing almost exactly what he was doing when he was my age. I realized who he is, who my mom is, where I fit into all that, and who I am as a mixture of the two.

Things were tense in my house for a long time, mostly during high school. Some of it was my fault, some of it was my parents'. Trying to keep score now, to know where to assign blame, is frivolous.

We get along better now that we don't live together. Let's just leave it at that. And they're both great people. And I love them very much. And I owe them my life.

They're leaving my brother and I the house and their assets in their will, did I ever mention that? They'll be providing for me even after they leave this world. Now that's something I'd like to be able to give my kids.

When dad actually visited, it was awesome. He was cool just hanging out, meeting BB, going with the flow. Him, Lucy and I went to the aquarium one day. Another day, we took him to Top Pot, and then to my campus at UW. He got to bond with his granddaughters and leave a lasting impression.

The last night he was in Seattle, he hung out late here at the house. Him, Megan and I sat at the kitchen table and drank Jack Daniel's for a little over an hour. He talked a lot and we listened a lot. It was all truly interesting to hear, and dad told me a lot of stuff that kinda opened my eyes.

For one thing, he was a Detroit and Jersey punk who specifically chose western Michigan to settle down with his family. It gave me a lot of insight into his character.

His process for applying for jobs in that area, while we all lived in San Jose during my first years, was interesting--he sent out letters, by mail, mind you, to various companies. He was going to be in town at such-and-such a time, and if they wanted to set up an interview, they could. He had job offers he could live with in the Muskegon area, and in Manistee. Can't remember why, but he took the Manistee job--there was something about it he liked better.

It was there I grew up, from a five-year-old to my entrance into legal adulthood.

Dad went up to Bellingham after a few days. My family's got a little contingency there--my uncle Guy, aunt Laurie, and their three kids Jared, Savannah, and Tessa, and my brother, live there. Megan and I dragged our kids up there and spent a night in the same hotel as dad. It was fun.

It was a busy time--in addition to my dad's visit, Tessa was graduating high school, and Laurie's parents, cousin, and cousin's wife were all visiting. Hence the hotel visit--Guy was going a little bonkers dealing with everything and constantly cleaning house and trying to retain some composure.

Brother, Dad

So after a good two days with the Smith BHamm Contingency, we left dad in Bellingham and went back to our regularly scheduled lives in Seattle. The next morning he hit road, down to Everett, and from there to highway 2, which took him across the north border of the country, thru the U.P., and back down to Manistee.

After a few days had gone by, I noticed that I had a renewed enthusiasm for, well, life. To be a good father, and put forth that extra effort for my kids, was no longer a trifle for me. Dad gave me some kind of inspiration I didn't expect.

Reconnecting with my family is awesome. You learn so much about yourself.

Also, did I mention that my family is just generally awesome? We don't have squabbles; we don't fight. We're good to one another. I'm a lucky dude.

Grandpa's coming to visit

My dad's coming to visit tomorrow, and I gotta admit I've sorta got the jitters.

He's something else, all right.

A laid-back dude, biker for almost 20 years, self-employed therapist with an MA in clinical psychology from San Jose State University.

Always been a tree-hugger and a hippie. Raised us in Eastlake, a small village just across Manistee Lake. For all intents and purposes, I tell people that I'm from Manistee.

And indeed, my parents are well-known there. They still live in the house I grew up in, are happily married, and basically have their shit really well in order. I'm proud of them, really. From humble, middle-class backgrounds they both came, and they both rose further above them.

Dad took us camping a lot when we were kids, something I didn't always appreciate then, but I sure as shit do now.

Raised my brother and I in the church, something my brother and I have since left, and my mother and father still struggle to reconcile this. It's the elephant in the room with us, so to speak.

But they both know they raised good boys, albeit a little crazy. And I've given them granddaughters, two beautiful granddaughters. Can't complain about that.

My mom and dad are both really nice, cool people. For that I am lucky. They still love each other too, for which I am always thankful.

My dad's riding his fucking Honda 1100cc Shadow out here from Michigan. He called on the phone tonight, from Spokane. Tonight he's staying in a hotel, as, apparently, the drive thru Montana today was windy, rainy, snowy and cold, and kicked his ass.

Or he kicked its ass. Whatever.

He'll be on his way tomorrow morning, and then book himself in a hotel here for four days. Then up to Bellingham to see his other son, the jerk, and his brother's family of 5. The Bellingham Smithold, if you will.

I've got "ammunition," as his cousin calls it, of a certain exchange student he took to prom. I know nothing, but I think Caryn wishes she could be here when I spring it on him, don't you, Caryn?

So yeah, I've got the jitters. For no good reason, other than that it won't be a long enough visit. And I miss my dad, and yet he will always eternally annoy me, simply because he raised me, AND I have his dna, and (mostly) I'm an uptight guy.

Dad's never met Beatrix before, and he's only seen Lucy twice--at two months, and one year. It'll be a big deal for him, and he's been excited about the trip for a long time. Packed and ready to go about two weeks in advance, my mom said.

Gritty Detroit documentary by Loki Films

I come from Michigan. I was raised in Manistee, and went on to live in Ann Arbor for four years before moving to Seattle, where I am now.

This is only so you know that Detroit is a very important city to me, and Loki Films is telling its story as no one else has the courage to.

The link below will take you to a site that has a short video preview of the film that follows an introduction by the two Loki masterminds.

They're asking for donations, but don't click out of an obligation to give money. Click because you love Detroit.

DETROPIA - We're Releasing our Doc Independently by Loki Films — Kickstarter:

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