The impossibility of choosing materials

As I looked through my photos from June and July, looking for things to post, I mostly found pictures like this:

Dozens and dozens of them. Don’t worry, I’ll only post a tiny fraction, just to give you an idea.

John and I are determined to make sure that we choose materials that we both like. Remodels are so expensive – we want to do it right. It’s much more complicated than choosing a few random things that we like – everything needs to coordinate well or the end result is chaotic.

Also the materials should coordinate with the stye of the house and its occupants. For example, if we went with a lot of bling – glass and other bright and shiny options, it wouldn’t settle well with our burnt adobe brick house and southwest style furnishings. Nor would a modern, severe, or industrial feel work with the muted, natural colors and textures in our home.

Our goal is a home that feels like it belongs in the desert, without ending up as a southwest cliché. We’ve put hours, days…weeks into this. We’re so tired of looking at materials!

Here’s the latest, what do you think? Clockwise from top left: greenish hexagonal kitchen backsplash, greenish-gray cabinet, terracotta floor tile, gray and white countertop.

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A pool for Emily’s girls

When Emily and her family were visiting back in April, she noticed a huge above-ground pool on sale online for half price. It would be perfect for summer!

Immediately after she ordered it, it sold out. Would she get one? Orders aren’t guaranteed anymore, not since the pandemic. Unfulfilled online orders sit in limbo with companies reluctant to allow cancellations for delays.

After a day or two, Emily was sent a shipping date. A good sign, but still no guarantee. She didn’t tell the girls she had ordered a pool, so they wouldn’t be disappointed if it never arrived.

I had a clothes dryer that just kept getting a new shipping date – exactly one month out from the previous shipping date. It was, it turned out, a completely imaginary shipping date. I eventually had to be very firm with a customer service agent in order to get it canceled, so I could buy a slightly different model from a different supplier.

Emily’s shipping date became a tracking number – an excellent sign! And one day, she had an entire swimming pool delivered right to her house.

Here it is being installed. That is an enormous pool.

Yay summertime! Just in time for the older two girls’ birthdays.

Luckily for me, I think they’ll still come visit us again in April, because April won’t be pool season in Boston!

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Pictures from Laura’s weekend at Folsom Lake

Laura, Alex, and their dog, Zane, spent the weekend at Folsom Lake recently. That is just northeast of Sacramento, in an area that John and I considered moving to, before deciding on Tucson instead. The advantage of Sacramento is it’s located between the kids, although it’s closer to Santa Clara than Boise. It’s also close to the mountains. Unfortunately, it’s expensive. It was also full of wildfire smoke when we went to look at houses one summer.

The 4th of July weather turned out perfect for Laura and Alex. They rented a great place, with a balcony overlooking the lake.

Apparently Zane had a stressful first night, after a stressful car ride. But what dog can resist the beach?

So much fun!

Apparently they also checked out a clothing-optional beach.

Somewhere out there!

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Singular They

I’ve been a fan of Khan Academy for awhile. They offer free online classes about many different topics; math, physics, biology, programming, etc., for kids and adults. I like their straightforward style.

Recently I decided to take a grammar course. No, not just because I’m weird. I wanted to improve my writing. In particular I get confused about punctuation, but I decided to start at the beginning of the grammar course as a refresher.

I thought you might enjoy this segment on the singular they.

Fun fact – the singular “they” has been used for hundreds of years. It was only very recently that we started being taught otherwise.

In my observation, (and your case may vary, depending on the school district), but in general it seems like the Boomers were taught to use “he” as the generic for when gender is unknown – exacerbating patriarchal bias. To combat the bias, Gen Xers were taught to say “he or she” every time – awkward! and the Millennials were taught to randomly sometimes use “he” and other times use “she” – confusing!

So why did your high school teacher try so hard to stamp out the singular they? Watch the video to find out!

Apparently awhile ago a group of grammarians decided we’d sound more sophisticated if we incorporated more Latin grammar into our language. Yes, English has some Latin roots, but English is most decidedly not Latin. I discovered that when I attempted to take Latin in high school! Plus, maybe my memory is failing me, but in order to sound like Latin, wouldn’t we need to move our verbs to the end of our sentences? That would ridiculous be.

PS. I love an educational video that includes the phrase “pompous class markers”, lol!

Also, by the way, “you” is plural, so “you all” is redundant. But once language starts heading in a direction, there’s not much you or I can do about it.

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Dragging stuff around…again

The story of my life. We’re packing. Again. Again!

No, we didn’t buy a new house, lol. We’re just getting stuff packed up and out the way for the big remodel. And while we’re at it, we’re dragging a bunch of stuff back to Albuquerque, in anticipation of me spending more time there for awhile.

They say, “Home is where the heart is.” For me it’s more like, “Home is where my clothes are.”

When we first bought our house in Tucson, in 2020, I split my clothes in half, with half in Albuquerque and half in Tucson. I also tried that same tactic a few years ago when I was splitting my time between Santa Fe and Placitas, but it didn’t work back then either. In the end, I brought everything to Santa Fe.

Same thing this time around – over the last couple of years I kept bringing more and more stuff out until I had brought all my clothes to Tucson. Apparently I like having all my clothes in one place. Now I am moving all my clothes back to Albuquerque. I’m not sure for not sure how long. Eventually we plan to end up in Tucson full time, but John’s pesky job keeps getting in the way. So it’s Albuquerque for now.

I can’t really say that we are moving back to Albuquerque, because our permanent residence, and drivers licenses, and car registrations and taxes have been in Albuquerque all this time.

I’m sad to be shifting away from Tucson for now. But we’ll be back. We do like Tucson better than Albuquerque, even though Albuquerque has a special place in our hearts.

As we’ve anticipated all along, it’s becoming harder for John to work remotely. We always figured that once the pandemic was over, he would have to show back up in Albuquerque for work. Of course the pandemic isn’t over, but everyone is acting like it is. Maybe because it’s less deadly now? Covid numbers are very high and presumably significantly underreported since so many of us are just testing at home and riding it out. But let me not get distracted. My point is, John’s numerous meetings are now being held in-person, in Albuquerque.

Simultaneously, we have finally gotten our remodel in Tucson underway. I think we’ve found a guy who is trustworthy and can implement the remodel without us being there. That’s definitely my preference. I dislike chaos, and I need a quiet environment for my coaching sessions. The remodel we have planned is a very disruptive one. We’re going to strip the kitchen down to the studs, remove a center wall, and completely redo the layout with all new everything. We’re also going to tile the entire house. New flooring is hugely disruptive because everything has to be moved out of the way.

I don’t want to try to be living there while that’s happening. Ideally, I would be living a block away, like when we remodeled the house in Placitas. I could literally stand in our backyard at our rented house on La Paz and look up at our house on the top of the hill and see that the contractor wasn’t up there (even though he was claiming to be there all the time). We had a terrible contractor in Placitas.

Being a 7-hour drive away will not be convenient. I really hope we don’t regret this. We could rent a nearby house in Tucson, but that would be expensive. And it doesn’t get around the fact that John needs to be in Albuquerque – and I would like to be there with him!

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Albuquerque in June – Porcupine butts and other outdoor adventures

The next day, John and I went to the biopark. I’ve posted many biopark pictures before, but never of this guy.

Can you see what that is? It’s the underside of a porcupine. It’s sleeping up high on an overhead pergola covered in vines. We’re standing under it, looking straight up.

We always have a good time at the biopark.

Next we went to Old Town. It’s not usually a good idea to go to Old Town on a summer Sunday unless you like throngs of tourists. But it’s strange, the tourists don’t seem to stray more than a hundred feet from the plaza, even though Old Town has tons of nooks and crannies to explore. Here’s one of several wonderful courtyards not more than a block and a half from the plaza. And no one was there.

I discovered a fabric artist in an empty shop in one of the overlooked courtyards. I have been collecting fabric (from old clothes) and have been thinking for awhile about what I want to do with it. I want to make pictures with the fabric, but I haven’t decided on my exact technique. I’m collecting ideas, so I bought this cute little clutch.

I think whatever I make will be less cute and more – hmm, well, we’ll see. I haven’t made anything yet.

Laura is getting a peacock tattoo, so I have been inspired to send her pictures of peacocks. I’ll write all about her tattoo when it’s finished. Here’s a metal peacock from Old Town:

Eventually we got the big thunderstorm and monsoon rains that had been threatening all week. John and I enjoyed watching the storm from our covered back porch. Except once the lightening struck so close that I screamed! You know how you’re supposed to count, one-hundred, two-hundred…to estimate how far away the lightenings? There was no counting. There was no time to even register what had just happened and consider counting. Just a simultaneous flash, hiss, sharp snap, and booming. (And screaming, lol, followed by swearing, followed by my husband quietly reminding me that the close-by neighbors have small children. Oops.)

After the monsoon rains, they opened the forests back up. It’s common in New Mexico for the forests to close during May and June until the monsoons start, as a wildfire precaution, because spring is dry and windy.

John and I were among the many people waiting for the announcement that the forests were open. On the morning of the opening, we eagerly headed up into the Sandias. But didn’t get very far. The road was still blocked off. What’s the deal? The news reports said the forests were open.

While we pondered what to do, suddenly it looked they were opening – yay!

But no, all they did was let the ranger through the barricade and close it again. We waited around speculating with fellow hopeful hikers. Word spread – yes, the forest was open, but the road wasn’t open due to downed branches. We were welcome to park and walk in. So we did.

The first trail was only a short walk up the road. We had never been on that trail before, because we always drive up higher. It was a nice trail, plenty green.

By the time we returned from our hike, they had removed the barrier. I suppose all the later visitors passing by wondered why there were so many cars parked at that spot, which wasn’t even at a trailhead.

We had a nice time in Albuquerque, and John got lots of work done. We had driven out separately, so I headed back to Tucson a couple of days before he did. I spent the drive thinking about our unwieldy 7 hour commute.

Before John even got back to Tucson that week, he found out he would need to go back the next week. We had hoped to spend the week of July 4 in Tucson, but he ended up flying back out again on July 5. He used to be able to spend weeks at a time working from home in Tucson. But no more. Even though the pandemic is not over, it’s no longer as deadly, and his online meetings are being replaced with in-person meetings.

We knew this day would come. Maybe it’s time we move back to Albuquerque?

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Albuquerque in June – Fire

I have a friend, Anjie, who lives in the east mountains, just east of Albuquerque. She commutes in to work at the University of New Mexico Medical Center, and I live on the far east edge of town, so her commute takes her close to my house. Whenever I visit Albuquerque, we try to schedule a walk in the hills near me after she gets off of work. We always have a nice time catching up.

The day after I walked with Anjie, I was out walking with John after work and the light was funny. Beautiful, but it didn’t seem quite right. Is that clouds and the reflections of the low afternoon sun, or is that smoke?

John found a news site – sure enough, Carnuel was burning. Carnuel is a small community between Albuquerque and the east mountains, along Interstate 40. The freeway was closed and so was Route 66.

The only way to go east out of Albuquerque is I-40 and the old route 66 that runs next to it like a frontage road. There’s really no other way east out of Albuquerque without going 60 miles north to Santa Fe or an equal distance south. It’s possible to go east from Placitas, but it’s a poorly maintained, very rough 4-wheel drive track through the mountains and not appropriate for regular passenger cars.

It was rush hour and I knew it was Anjie’s only way home. I texted her, “Are you stuck?” Sure enough, she was. Here’s the photos she took from her car, while stopped on the freeway.

She was stuck out there a long time. She never did get home that night.

Eventually the authorities got the stuck cars turned around and headed back into Albuquerque. I offered our house for the night, but she has relatives in town and stayed with them.

They got the fire out thankfully, and it didn’t burn the entire east mountains down, or the houses in the foothills. The previous month there had been a huge fire in northern New Mexico. We were lucky this time.

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Albuquerque in June – Birds

After the cement pour and some other remodel tasks in Tucson, such as meeting with a cabinet designer, I left to join John in Albuquerque. He’s been having to work in Albuquerque nearly every week lately. I didn’t like having to drive out and back by myself, but it was nice to be able to go out and return on my own schedule, rather than at the whim of his ever-changing work requirements. I enjoyed my visit, and sure wish I could just click my heels together and be out there and back again with no trouble!

The theme for my first couple of days in Albuquerque seemed to be “birds”.

On the first morning, I was busy in the kitchen when Biska alerted me to something odd happening on the back patio. Luckily her doggie door only leads to the side yard and not the back yard, or this poor bird would have been a goner.

It was just standing there, motionless, with its mouth open. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it so I put out a little water. It was an exceptionally hot and dry day, before the monsoon rains had started.

It didn’t move at all when I set the water down. I went back into the house and got back to work on whatever I was doing. When I checked back later, it was gone. Hopefully it had just been in shock and flew away after recovering.

The next day I left Biska at home and went for a walk with my friend along the ditches in the Bosque.

After our walk, we went to Los Poblanos Inn and Organic Farm.

It’s a very beautiful place, with a nice restaurant and a casual café. We got coffee and croissants at the café and ate on the patio under a pomegranate tree.

On our way to the bathrooms, we spotted this guy:

I told him he was beautiful, so he decided to show off some more:

Complete with a butt-wagging dance!

John better watch out – this guy was pretty impressive, lol.

My friend has an exceedingly delightful, small, older home, full of southwest charm, within walking distance of Old Town.

Her beautiful tree is a mimosa tree. I love them and I want to get one for our house in Tucson. They are messy though – not only the flowers, but seedpods everywhere. It would go best in the front or side yards – not near the pool!

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How to pronounce Tempe

I suppose you aren’t staying up late nights worrying about how to pronounce Tempe. But just in case you were, let me help you out.

Before I moved to the southwest in 2001, I would have pronounced it TEM-peh. I would have been wrong.

After numerous years of getting used to the Spanish language influence in the southwest, I would have pronounced it TEM-pay. I would still have been wrong.

After being told that the ending makes a long ee sound, I would have pronounced it TEM-pee. But that’s still wrong! That may be how most people in the rest of country pronounce it, but if you subscribe to the belief that the locals determine how place names are pronounced, then the correct way to say Tempe is tem-PEE! The accent is on the PEE.

It’s awkward to say it that way, and it sort of makes you think they’re all searching for a bathroom. But that is how the locals say it. Tem-peeeeee!

For more fun Arizona pronunciation, here’s a good link: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/arizona/az-mispronounce-words/

You’re welcome.

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Cement pour

The room between our kitchen and our garage is going to be our new dining room.

It was originally an Arizona room before a previous owner converted it into a family room. An Arizona room is basically a covered and screened back patio, except they are often located between the house and the garage, with a window or open decorative cement blocks built into the wall along the street side, allowing for a cross breeze. According to Wikipedia, “…residents slept in their Arizona room during the summer months, before the advent of air conditioning…Arizona rooms are often decorated with Southwestern decor and furniture, and reflect the casual, informal style characteristic of the Southwest.

I really can’t imagine trying to sleep in the middle of the summer in Arizona without air conditioning. And I love the heat! It would have been hard. Some nights it doesn’t get below 80º.

Even though we can now peacefully sleep in our air conditioned bedroom, I still really like the concept of an Arizona room. It’s nice to be outside, yet protected from the aggressive little tropical mosquitos that swarm during August and September. I’m looking forward to getting our back patio screened later this summer. But it won’t be a true Arizona room because it won’t have the cross breeze.

Our original Arizona room was converted to a family room by a previous owner many years ago. It has the most character of any of the rooms in the house, because when the previous owners made the conversion, the left the burnt adobe brick exposed. It’s going to make an excellent dining room.

But because it had once been an exterior space next to the garage, the floor had originally been built at the same height of the garage floor, which is 2.5″ lower than the rest of the house. When the previous owners enclosed the room, they added a thin cement overlay to the original brick floor, but they did not add the volume of cement it would have taken to level the floor with the rest of the house. Therefore, we have a 2.5″ ledge running across the middle of our kitchen-dining area.

Talk about a trip hazard!

I’m going to lose track of how many floors John and I have leveled. We’ve owned at least three prior houses that had sunken living rooms. The sunken living rooms were frequently built in the 1970’s – 90’s when the “open concept” was popular and the architects were trying to create a sense of room definition while using fewer walls. We dislike them, considering them dated and a trip hazard. At our first house in Albuquerque, guests would regularly fall off the edge of the landing near the front door, right into the sunken living room as we all stood around greeting each other or saying our good-byes. It was not a good design!

Since then, whenever we plan to upgrade the flooring, we level the floor first, before going to the effort and expense of installing new flooring. So our first step in this remodel is to level the floor!

A few days before the cement pour, our contractor came out to prep the space. This picture is confusing. A hole in the wall in the shape of a top hat? Are we getting creative, or what?

We’re going to install a new 8′ wide sliding glass door instead of the original 6′ wide door, but the new door hasn’t arrived yet, due to delivery delays. Cement is also really hard to get, so when our contractor got a call that there was going to be cement available on a certain day, he jumped right on it. We couldn’t lay cement up against a wall that’s going away, but we wanted to use the 6′ door until the 8′ door arrives.

Here’s the old 6′ wide door reinstalled after the cement pour. We jerry-rigged the old door back in place temporarily. We are (a month later) still waiting for the new, wider door. Once it comes in, our contractor will cut the rest of the drywall to the new, wider size. This isn’t pretty but it works for now.

Here the room is prepped before the cement arrived. There’s a form across the doorway to the garage, the baseboards are removed, and rebar is installed. Note the lovely lilac paint that was hiding under the baseboards, lol. Not a good match for the brick! What were they thinking? And we thought the previous owner’s blue walls were bad.

Our contractor installed wood forms, including a step out to the back patio. If you look very closely in the bottom left corner of the next picture, you can see some of the original patio brick. It’s under the wall that was installed when the room was enclosed and the first cement floor was added. That’s when they should have raised the floor height.

Cement is messy, so everything was taped off.

In the original layout, the door on the left would have been the back door out of the small, galley kitchen, and the door on the right would have been a sliding glass door off the dining room, both doors leading into what was the Arizona room.

This room started as an Arizona room, was converted to a family room, and now we’re going to make it into a dining room. We’re going to use the previous dining room as space to expand the kitchen, and for a breakfast nook. More on that later.

They’re planning to bring the cement in through the garage.

The cement crew is here, but no cement. The cement truck is late and we’re a bit worried. Our contractor steps outside to make some calls. We’re prepped and ready to go. Cement is so hard to get right now that it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if this delivery fell through. And it could be another month before another delivery is available.

Huge relief – the cement is here!

And we’re pumping! Yep, it’s splashing everywhere.

They work quickly to level it as it’s pumping in.

It’s loud and spasmodic.

Ugha-ugha-ugha-ugha-ugha

We couldn’t walk on it – or reinstall the doors – until it cured.

Our cement contractor told a story about a pour he did out in the rural area to the east of Tucson in a basement, and the doors were left off all night while the cement cured. In the morning there were clear paw prints of a mountain lion and her cubs, including an indent where they had laid down on the cool surface. The contractor offered to resurface it, but the homeowner loved the prints and left it that way.

We leaned our doors up for the night the best we could. With my luck I’d get something significantly less desirable than lion prints. I was just praying for no stuck cockroaches.

When the cement started to cure, these footprints slowly appeared out of nowhere. They were like ghost prints because there was no detectable indent or texture disturbance, just a color difference caused by the slower rate of curing, presumably due to greater density where the cement was compacted by the weight of the person.

As the cement continued to cure, the footprints faded.

They are only barely discernible now.

That crack’s not an issue, by the way. The new cement has multiple fine cracks, which is to be expected. They will covered by tile. The cracks are not structural and will not impact the tile.

We had put the furniture into the garage, and then John went to Albuquerque and I wasn’t able to get it back out of the garage by myself. So I dismantled my backyard hammock and set it up inside. The hammock I could move by myself!

With a hammock in there it’s looking more like an Arizona room and less like a dining room – almost as if we’re going the wrong direction! But projects often look worse before they look better.

Meanwhile it’s hilarious to watch John and I trip over nothing as we cross the room, automatically compensating out of habit for a step-up or step-down that is no longer there.

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