Category: me

no one of consequence

Sit Your Sass Down 

A wooden side chair with a floral pillow on its seat. The chair is in the living room.

The design team had an idea. It wasn’t an especially original one. It was an idea that accommodates present day home fashion. Wait for it, are you ready? A master suite. 

So there would be the bed, a monster walk-in closet, a private bath with a sink-a-piece, and a sitting area. All for the master and mistress of the house. If you look at newly built homes, and at old homes that have been remodeled for flipping, or really at any desirable home on the HGTV channel (home and garden TV, for the uninitiated) you will see the master suite concept. 

So it’d be an easy, “yes,” if one of my goals was to maximize resale value. I mean, why would it be such a thing if it wasn’t a thing that most/many/all people want–or at least that the tastemakers want?

But I don’t want it. Sure I yearn for a walk in closet–it’s not like I’m an alien. And a water closet and shower en suite is also tres attractive. But seriously, what the hell do I need a friggin’ sitting area in my bedroom for?

How many places to sit does one bottom need? I can sit in the living room. I can sit in the den. I can sit at the table in the dining room. If the weather is nice I can sit on the front porch. There is a table and chairs on the back porch. There is a desk to be sat near in the new office. If I want private time to sit, there’s the bathroom throne. 

Honestly, what a waste of space. A sitting area? For real?!? Not a requirement for this Doc. Nosiree. 

That was an easy decision. 

Posted on by docthink 0

Trade Winds

Underneath the sink. There's some pipes and a spare paper towel roll and the compost bin. It's a bit dark.

The trades came today. Like a whirlwind of pipes, wires and wood. They are the elders. Even those who are young. 

They came like the furies, ready to overtake those who have false oath, maybe those who would desecrate the soul of the house. Because the house has a soul. 

And, if we chose poorly, if we made decisions that ignore the bones and heartbeat of the house, if we impose too much au courant…

The mythological furies were tasked to “hear complaints brought by mortals against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants – and to punish such crimes by hounding culprits relentlessly.”

Yikes. I’m thinking that we better not screw up.

So, I observed carefully. I studied as the structural engineer poured over the outlines, looking at the walls to be moved, seeing where the faults lie.

He was mostly bald and finished it off by a smart shave. His head was long. He had the strong features like my Slavic relatives and the confidence of looking at hundreds of homes. He pointed at invisible beams that framed the center hall. He pointed. Up. 

“This is what’s supporting the house.” 

I’m looking at the hallway anew. It’s a throwaway piece of architecture. Like important, but not like you knew its criticality. And now, I do. Or, at least, its potential.

I didn’t speak with the window guy, the floor guy, the heating and air guy, the electricity guy or the plumbing guy. I think that more guys walked through this morning. 

Me? I couldn’t stay. I had to go to work. We had a thing. But, today, something happened. Things were discussed. And I will know more. 

I’ll know more when the bids come in. They will be full of information. About capabilities. About options. About decisions. And I’m thinking now, and I’m remembering now, about what it is that I need to have done. And I’m listening. I’m ready to allow the house to push back. 

I find myself thinking about going to confession. As a prophylactic. To protect from the demons. Leaning on my historical Catholicism. Against the furies. 

Posted on by docthink 1

Green Screen

A wall lined with bookshelves, filled with many books and more whatnot.

I’m looking at the bookshelves lining the wall in the den. They are tall. They span from door jam to radiator, filling in all the usable space. They were an attempt to provide a library feel. I’m not sure we got there, but it definitely evokes that storage room feel. 

Where I’m looking right now will be a set of French doors, opening to the hallway. The doorway will be twin to the archway leading to the living room. So where this wall, stacked with a book buffer, currently stands will be a set of doors. I bet they end up with eight or fifteen little glass panels. We will be able to easily see from room to room. 

I really can’t quite see it now, though. I’m trying. Hard. I guess we’re in the imagination stage of the remodel. Where we make decisions based on ideas that seem good translated into line drawings. I feel like I’m acting with a green screen–I can’t actually see what it looks like, but I have to react. 

I’m spending time in the bathroom washing my hands where the appliance garage will be and leaning up against the wall oven. I have to move the back door over three or four feet and squint to see the new windows. My mind wanders to spatial relations. Will the dog food bin fit in the island cabinet? Do I want it there? Do dishes go in one of the roll out drawers? And what about the paper towels? They need to be accessible, but where?

I walk back and forth where the new bathrooms will be, thinking about lighting and the staging of towels and bandaids. I stand just outside where the new doors will be and mime opening and closing them. 

To get some perspective, my eyes dart between the drawings of the windows and the actual windows. I align my body with the frame and turn myself to the left to see how much wall space we’ll have. I think I sometimes open doors here, too. 

Once or twice, at night, I’ve had dream tours. These tours are always fantastical and absolutely wrong. My brain adds extra floors and maybe a slide. The rooms are not like the rooms in the drawings. Once there was a pool outside the kitchen door. I don’t want a pool. The colors are wrong, too. My sleeping house is viewed through hazy filters, like the old fashioned ones in Instagram.  There’s too much yellow, or it’s way too rosy. 

The next morning I wake up and pull the plans up on my phone, and walk through the rooms as they’ll be–hanging towels, pulling deodorant from the medicine cabinet, stepping into the imaginary walk-in closet. I hope that they don’t put any toothy CGI monsters in when we get to post-production.  

Posted on by docthink 1

West Wing Shenanigans 

The 100 year old mantle peppered with candlesticks and pictures. I guess it's in the East Wing.

I’ve been to the White House before. I’ve nibbled on Christmas cookies in the East Wing during the Clinton administration, rolled Easter eggs on the South Lawn during the Bush years and, once, peered into the void as the door to the Situation Room briefly swung open during a West Wing tour with an Obama staffer. I didn’t see anything, by the way. I tried. 

Today I got an email with the subject line Cabinet Meeting. I swear to God I thought it was from the White House. Not lying. And I’m looking at it and wondering why they’d send it to my personal, versus work, email. Yeah. That was actually my first thought. Not a recognition that it would be highly unlikely–like impossible–that I’d have anything to do with a Cabinet meeting. 

Of course, it wasn’t from the EOP (that’s an insider’s way to say the executive office of the president). Of course, it was to set up a meeting to go over cabinetry and to walk through the updated kitchen elevations–the ones that freaked me out last week. 

I mean seriously. The cabinets are going in the East Wing of our house–in the Residence, not in the West Wing. Sheesh. 

Shenanigans!

Posted on by docthink 0

Overbite

Sight line From the living room through the dining room to the back door of the kitchen.

“What do you think about moving the door over a little?” He asked the question very gently. I guess I’d been pretty adamant about leaving things as built. Perhaps a notch or two above adamant. I think that’s why he just barely poked the bear.

I don’t know much about the history of architectural trends. I don’t know how homes were designed in 1915, what the fashion dictated. I do know that the window placement on the two sides of the center hall mirror each other. There are bays in the front rooms and twin trios of windows surrounded by the impressive frames in the middle rooms. The rooms themselves are not identical with an array of fireplaces, closets and some room transitions being archways versus doors.

I never noticed that the door between the dining room and kitchen was off center. I mean I knew, because of furniture placement, but I didn’t notice. The fact that there are non-standard nooks, bends or placements is part of the charm. Like the gap in Michael Strahan’s smile or Eva Mendes’ overbite, imperfections that are unique and memorable.

I’m obviously not a designer, trained in the beauty of symmetry. I’m not a mathematician seeking the beauty in a balanced equation. I’m not a quilter like my mother-in-law who made a coverlet that matched perfectly when folded. Although I can spy a double space in a sea of words, I sometimes forget how many scoops of coffee I put in the pot. I still add water and drink it. I’m okay with a little slop.

I had a very delightful colleague who would place four pens on her desk each morning. A red pen, a black pen, a green pen and a blue pen perfectly aligned, parallel to the edge of her desk, just above her blotter. She would remove the caps and carefully snap them to the top of the pens. Sometimes when I was meeting in her office, I would nonchalantly use one and return it haphazardly. She would reset it within about 45 seconds–even after she realized I was teasing her. She’d look up at me from above her glasses and underneath her curly bangs when she caught herself. We’d both laugh.

I don’t know where my pens are, and I have a lot of colors. I hang my kitchen utensils on any old empty hook. They don’t have a specific place to go. Sometimes I wear two different socks. My right eye is shaped a little different from my left eye. I’m randomly random.

I like things a little unbalanced–to have to solve a puzzle that may not have a neat solution.

The door stays off center. We won’t have a clear line to the back porch. I like that. That’s how the house was built. I’m centered by being a bit off-center, by imperfection.

So what makes an overbite a little cute?

Posted on by docthink 0

Autonomy

A shot f some tile samples---black and white hexagon, if you must know--and a snippet from the kitchen drawings.

Dear Lord Jesus, please. Please help me. Please help me breathe. Because I think that I might have stopped. I’m not sure. And I’m worried that it might have been long enough to have killed some brain cells. You know, those cells that let you think. Like those ones that are responsible for decisions.

Like, do I like the tile pattern? Sure. It’s awesome. So how about it in the bathroom? No. It’s nice, but I was thinking of something simpler.

Like, you said storage was important so we have cabinets to the ceiling. But how will I get the platter from the ten-foot cabinet? Oh, there’s a ladder we can store in the toe kick. And it’s cool because we can have it so when you kick it slides out.

And, there I am, wondering, what the hell is a toe kick???  Oh. That.

But my guides are amazing. They are keen listeners and they are interpreters, too. They are accommodating and kind. They make me feel smart instead of stupid.

And then I’m home. Am I still stupid? I wonder if I’m like a baby who demands his way and feels a win because a wise adult pointed me in a direction that I thought was my own. That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? And I am content–like a thumb sucker with half closed eyes, aimlessly and with direction curling a lock of hair around my opposite index finger. Wait. Did I just shit myself?

Posted on by docthink 0

New Game

Cleaned out a junk drawer, shined my pressure cooker, de-grimed the microwave, got dogfood, took down & put out the tree, then ate dinner out of a bag & bottle.

Well, Loyal Reader, it wasn’t a surprise. No. Not really a surprise at all. I am none the less disappointed. In myself. 

Yes, I have let the dust settle a bit too comfortably on this journal. After my fury (or furiousness) of thinkings and writings and postings, I took a sabbatical. And didn’t come back.

I said that I’d post weekly, but I fell into my old pattern of doing the thinking, the coming up with ideas and the starts in my head without the actual writing. Much disappointment. But I said that already.

So, like the little kitten who chases the laser for fun, I need something to chase.  Another challenge. This time an easier one, but still specific and measurable. Like a game. A game I can win! 

Here’s my plan for this year. I’m going to take and mess up a picture and write something. Every week. A photo prompt and a post. I’m not going to necessarily write about the picture, not that I won’t. And sometimes you will scratch your head, puzzling over the relationship between the post and the pic. That’s part of it. (Thanks Matt, who claims to read this blog, but I think he does not.)

Anyway, it’s a little game. Just a little trick to make myself do what I want. Yes. I’m really that lazy. 

Anything to win.

Week #1, done! Purr. 

Posted on by docthink 1

What I Learned Writing Every. Stinking. Day for A Year

A Doc and The Beast in writing repose.

Okay, Loyal Reader. It is day 366–why didn’t anyone tell me that I chose a long year for my quest?–the end of the line.

Quick recap, my 2016 New Year’s Resolution was to write and publish a blog post every (single. stinking.) day for the entire year. I allotted myself no excuses, no blackout days and no get out of jail free cards. I (wisely) made no resolve about quality. It was a production resolution. Daily production, irrespective of word counts or topic areas.

One year later, the results are in. Since January 1, 2016, I published 358 posts, filling in 98% of the year. Per my weak platform-provided analytics, 5,800 visitors read 9,500 pages. The Onion and Vox must be shaking in their boots and looking over their shoulders with competitive concern </sacrcasm>.

But, so what? To what end? In thinking about it–since that’s what I do–I found that this challenge provided a plethora of lessons. I’m breaking down my learnings into four categories: doing, creating, sharing, growing.

Doing: What I learned about process

Publishing every. stinking. day requires alot of process. The ideation process is accelerated to grab any straw of an idea. This sounds harder, and while sometimes it was harder, there were thousands of prompts in front of me all of the time. It’s in the recognition of them. No idea is too weak. I saw dust particles in the sunshine and wrote a post. The comfort of warm blankets was good for a few hundred words as was the initial warm breaths of spring.

I wrote about people I saw walking down the street, making up stories about the man with the cake, the woman in orange, the tuba players, the equine fanciers. Pop and politics were occasionally fertile, but I didn’t want to write “me-too” posts so these were sometimes more challenging.

After a few months I came up with a set of categories to help me understand what I wrote about–it provided a structure that I could pop thinkings into and speed them ahead. 

I had a running notepad of ideas and fragments that I’d mine and I occasionally found an almost completed post, I wrote about that here. Using the notepad was clutch when writing on the subway.

Two more process learnings. 

First, photo editing takes a lot of time. Alot. Speaking of time, if I was very conservative I spent 90 minutes per post (and I know that it was not unusual from start to finish to spend a few hours), I spent weeks writing this year.  

Second, I am so friggin’ lucky for the support of The Spouse. The Spouse would look at me furiously typing and say, “I got dinner,” or “Are you having luck on your post?” and never a disparaging remark about my daily (and frequently nightly) embrace of my keyboard. Total, unequivocal support. That’s how shit happens. 

Creating: What I learned about writing

Writing. Wow. I guess after the more than the one-hundred thousand words that I shared this year, I can call myself a writer. I started to think of myself as a writer after a few weeks. I started thinking about writing itself and in a few more I was thinking about how I wrote.

I enjoyed putting together a post with a clever title–many times I rewrote the title, and I often hoped that you, Loyal Reader, would get my little references in the title. Or in the photo. Or, for those of you who look at code, in the alt-text describing the photo. The post is more than the words and sentences and paragraphs. It’s the wrapper, too.

I would often fight with my inner editor. The editor who knows exactly what a complete sentence looks like. The editor who questions the use of dashes over commas. The editor that battles the writer who might be striving for a specific rhythm or an irregularity in syntax. The hubris of the author can cause confusion for the reader. Or so says The Editor. It’s like my personal version of The Narrator and Tyler Durden.

Most importantly, I learned that my writing takes its own course. Everyone writes differently, and I didn’t know how I wrote. 

Thinking about it, I found that I get an idea, and it drags me along. I realized that I wrote an allegory after I reread it. Sometimes I start with an allegory, but the story takes its own shape. 

I can’t know how a post is going to end until it actually ends. There is no master plan. It’s organic. And, so sometimes, it stinks.

I can get things out of order, because the stream of words switchback and I write something else. So I’ll move a paragraph around. 

Less frequently, I’ll find a few paragraphs at the end that don’t belong. I added something in the middle that diverged from where I was going. I have deleted thousands of words that belonged in a different post, for a different time or a different mood. When a post is done, it’s done. If it needs more it nags me until it’s satisfied that it’s complete.

I know I am the writer. I really do. But I know, too, that what I’m writing is more revealed than reasoned. 

I own it. It’s from me.

Sharing: What I learned about you, my Loyal Reader

Oh, Loyal Reader, you have been a great teacher, too. Sometimes you tell me directly and sometimes I infer.

Bottom line, it’s really is all about you. I mean that in a good way. 

I have learned what you care about, which is humanity and making connections. You like my vignettes much more than I do. You infuse them with life and invest your hearts in my made up characters. I love you for that.

You also really care the most about personal things. Things that really happened. You have given me much love and support, and have turned sometimes to me for support. I like that. We’re here for each other.

Growing: What I learned about me

I realized that being authentic was more important to me than showing off. Showing off is publishing every day and doing what I said, even if I was cheating by posting twice in one day and backdating. 

After a few months in, I decided that missing a day or two (or eight) was better than faking it. I confessed to you, my Loyal Reader, and you, as is your way, didn’t care. Or forgave me. It’s okay either way.

I always said that I was undisciplined. Lazy. Couldn’t stick to anything. But after writing hundreds of posts, writing every day and sometimes forcing myself to hit publish, I can’t say that that is true.I guess this project never bored me. 

Sorry if I bored you.

Finally, and I am really almost done, I learned that I want people to read my work. I would obsessively look at how many people looked at a post, lapping up any likes, and super proud when an editor featured my post.

But, the other thing is, ultimately, I don’t care. I wrote for months before I started telling people my resolution. I wrote every day. And you didn’t know. 

I say that I write for you, my Loyal Reader, but that is a lie. I write for me. Because I am a writer. That’s what I most really and definitely learned.

That’s The Lessons Folks

Phew. I did it. I am proud. And I am taking a little break. Let me know what you think. And I’ll be thinking and sharing and writing more in the New Year!

xoxo
Doc Think

Posted on by docthink 4

26.198 (Post #357)

A boy. On a hill. Wearing skis and a Washington Football Team jacket.

I can see the finish line. It’s just ahead. Just one day more, cue Les Miserables.

Tomorrow I’m going to post about what I’ve learned this past year (like the irrelevance in teasing you, my Loyal Reader). My retrospective, if you will. Today, though, I’m going to be prospective. What am I going to do?

You see, last year at this time, I resolved to write and publish. Every. Stinking. Day. For the entirety of 2016. This has taken up a good hunk of my life. Like 44 waking days over the course of the year.

So, what’s next? 

Well, one thing for sure is I will not publish a post every stinking day. But you likely already knew that. So let’s say I commit to publishing weekly. That is a decrease of 600%. (To be honest, I kind of made up that number. I don’t feel like doing real math. It might be a higher percentage decrease. See what I mean? Higher decrease?) 

When I started this challenge, I said that I wanted to produce as well as consume. Now, I want more balance. I want to read more quality writing. Read more books. Read more long form, more New Yorker. Oh, and read zero celebrity you-won’t-believe-where-they-are-today posts. I’m also cutting back on fake news. Just kidding there.

Third, I am going to use a bunch of my brain-space as we remake a hunk of this, our 103 year old, house. It’s going to be a big project. Even huge. It may kill me. It may have me killing The Spouse. I hope not. This will require extreme effort. But I’ve seen others succeed. We can do this. I’m going to set out a goal right now, no family bloodshed on the house thing. There, I said it.

Last, I realized that I’ve slacked off on volunteering my time and talents. We have a cool town here, and in addition to buying local, I need to do more to contribute local. It was easy when The Boys were in school. There were plenty of things that needed doing and plenty of people asking. I’m going to do some asking and then get about some doing.

Pretty much all of the above is ripe for future thinkings (that’s my code for posts). I expect that I’ll be incohate, insulted, insipid, inspired, inept, intrigued and infatuated. Not all at the same time, though. More spread out. Maybe some overlap. Maybe also some adjectives that are not as alliterative. Maybe. I’ll keep you posted.

Anyway, I’m poised and ready to start a new year. Sadly, for me, I’ll be spending a lot less time with you, my Loyal Reader. But I hope our time will still be good for you. Fingers crossed. 

Posted on by docthink 1

I Scream, You?

Sample wares from an ancient ice cream truck.

One spring, an ice cream man posted up just past our school, just after the dismissal bell. It was an excellent move. The kids would line up with their quarters and nickels and dimes for an orange push-up, the coned nutty-buddy and the rectangular ice cream covered in a topping and served on a stick.

I wanted to eat ice cream on the way home from school, too. Mom did not agree. She thought it was too close to dinner time–school getting out at 3 pm and plates on the table pretty religiously by 5 pm. Plus, she was thrifty. She was not one to waste a penny on overpriced convenience food when she could get an entire box of frozen treats for the price of the two ice creams for me and My Sib.

We pleaded as little kids do. I’m sure we made the normal arguments of “all the other kids,” which was likely followed by a standard parental response about the wisdom of following them off of a cliff. We likely then went to bargaining, promising to do extra chores or offering a sacrifice to be named later. Not super effective. Mom was not easily moved. Check that. Mom NEVER changed her mind. She considered equivocation a huge weakness. Actually more like an unrecoverable error. We tried anyway.

Plan B? Ask Dad. Now this was the reasonable guy. He was open to begging, especially when it came to seven-year-old me. I fancied myself persuasive. But, as it turned out, there was no way that Dad would overturn Mom for an after school treat. Our childish desire to eat ice cream did not tip the scales. Nope. Not at all. Yet, it was really too much for us to walk past that white truck with the entire school partaking of sweet frozen ambrosia.

Next option? Thievery. 

We didn’t have any money, but Mom did. Over the course of a week or so, we pilfered coins out of her wallet. We cased the truck, selecting then reselecting then returning to our original goodie of choice. The day arrived. We were going to put our plan into action. After school. 

I don’t know how My Sib felt, but I felt like a grown up. I held my coins tightly in my fist as I waited my turn. The bigger kids jumped in front of me. I was a little lost in the crowd. My Sib was a year older. She found our way to the window. I felt rushed. The paper wrapped ice cream was in my hand and my money gone without me fully savoring the experience. But, there was the ice cream. 

I had selected the ice cream sundae cup. There was a little bowl full of very hard, very frozen ice cream with equally hard and equally frozen strawberries around the edges and halfway down the container. I had a small, thick, flat wooden spatula for a spoon. It could dig into the tundra. My Sib had the cone with the chocolate and nut crown. We had a little less than a fifteen minute walk home to eat the evidence of our crime. 

I think we were nervous. I don’t think we particularly enjoyed the ice creams, but were thrilled at our most clever execution of our plan. We talked about what we would get next time. We had to dump the wrappers. I’m pretty sure we just threw them on the ground. Litterers, too. 

We were not without pride when we walked into the house, after defying all the rules. We procured the cash, bought and consumed the forbidden contraband. Well done, small people, we thought. But, you know what pride goest before. 

Dad and Mom called us into the kitchen. We were not alerted to any danger. They were relaxed. Mom asked how school was. I went on and on about my day. I figured the more I said, the further we were away from the events we were hiding. I soon got into sharing about my reading group or spelling words or flash card math. Dad smiled at us and asked, “So how was the ice cream?”

Without missing a beat, I grinned and nodded and said, “It was GOOD!” My Sib snapped her head in my direction. My little hand lifted to cover my mouth that was now wide in horror. How did he know?!? The next few minutes are a blur. A combination of super slo-mo with everyone talking in that slowdowned way and a flurry of sped up words and fluttering hands and washed faces and off to our rooms. There were tears of humiliation and guilt. Especially when it was explained to us that we stole from our mother. That’s on the same level as drowning kittens, copying off someone’s test or lying right to Jesus’ face. 

This was the worst thing I had ever done. And my lack of discretion under cross examination made me the goat in My Sib’s eyes. Not a good partner in crime. I was pretty much the worst. I felt so sorry for myself, for being so awful, that I cried and cried in my room in the most dramatic fashion. I think my mother came to my room to recommend that I cease and desist with the theatrics. 

We were told that there would be no dinner, and that we needed to go straight to bed. They relented, and we ate dinner in our pajamas. You can be sure I cleaned my plate as I ate in silence, my stomach in knots. My Sib whispered to me that I was forgiven. We went to sleep. I don’t think I dreamed about ice cream that night. 

Parents must have complained because the truck soon disappeared, never to taunt or tempt the second and third graders at Norman Rockwell Elementary School again. I’ll never know if my parents called. They may have, but they were tricksy. They knew things. They were superhuman. They were out of my league. 

Turns out that it was easy to bust us. We both had ice cream all over our faces. No napkins. A flaw in the henious plot. I overheard my Dad telling the story to my uncle. Still, they were good.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t lie. I’m just not any good at it. But I still eat ice cream in a little cup. I pay for it with my own money. And sometimes I eat ice cream for dinner. I’m grown, now. 

Posted on by docthink 0