Middle of the Road

We just moved back into our house this week after living in an apartment across the street for three weeks.  We had the old carpeting ripped out and oak floors put in.  We had to move all of the furniture off the floor and we needed a place to keep our stuff and sleep.  Our neighbors bought the two flat apartment across the street from us almost a year ago.  Since then, they have been remodeling the place which had not seen any upgrades in at least a decade, maybe longer.  The windows were painted shut, for starters.

One of the best things about the place was we got to keep Fox there without any issue.  I was worried we might have to kennel him for the time we were getting the floors done, but we were very lucky we could keep him there.

The kids seemed to handle the adjustment to the new place just fine.  Claire Adele would hide in the kitchen of our house and check SnapChat as our temporary abode didn't have Wifi.  The Boy would sneak back to the house once in a while and play with his Legos, but otherwise he was fine.

Fox, our third child, struggled.  He wasn't used where we live being so close to the street.  He would bark and people walking by and at our neighbor's cat who rightful thought she owned the place.  We would eat dinner on the back porch of our house, and then return to the apartment in the evening.  We would bring Fox with us while we ate.

Sometimes in the morning, Jack would let Fox out to pee, and he (Fox) would bolt of out the yard, across the street and into our backyard to take his morning potty break.  When we would walk the dog at night, Fox would sometimes try to go back to our house.  Other times, he would head back to the apartment.

The day were were moving back in, I was carrying some bags back to the house.  Fox decided to walk with me, which was fine until he stopped in the middle of the street.  I called him to come, but he just stood there in the middle of our two worlds.  It was like he was paralyzed, not knowing which was to turn.  Fox wasn't leashed, and I was carrying a heavy load so I couldn't just drop everything and pick him up.

After a minute or so, he followed up up to the steps to our house, but I felt bad for him in his confusion, not knowing where he lived, stuck in the middle of the road.

Photoshop?

As part of my campaign, I needed to have my picture taken.  My neighbor across the street is a professional photographer and he did a fine job.  (I previously wrote about having my picture taken.)

I first posted a picture on my website and Facebook account, and then I submitted it for the Voters' Guide.  Now, I am at the step of getting campaign fliers made for doorbelling, where I knock on numerous constituents doors and ask them to vote for me.

In each draft of the flier, my photo kept getting bigger and bigger.  And I kept cringing and cringing.  I wanted a small tiny picture in the corner, something maybe the size of a dime, not a big more than half of the 5x10 flier.

The bigger the picture, the more I noticed my flaws, especially the little middle-aged double chin and the dark brown gum line above the tooth I broke in third grade.  I maybe could get plastic surgery to fix the chin, or lose forty pounds, but neither is going to happen before my campaign needs to print 5,000 fliers.  There is nothing to fix the tooth except Photoshop.*

I talked to my photographer to discuss my dilemma -- to photoshop or not to photoshop.

"I'll do whatever you want, Lauren," he said.  "I can do anything with Photoshop.  I can make you look like a Barbie.  I could even make you look like a man.  But I left it the way it was.  I think you look fine.  I take pictures of people without teeth and people who are wrinkled and disfigured.  You should own how you look.  "

I thought about Tina Fey.  She was knifed by a stranger as a child and she has a large scar on her chin which is covered up with make-up.   Tina Fey doesn't let the scar define her.  Does she cover it up at home, or go naked?  Has it faded significantly since she was a child?  I have no problem with Tina Fey covering her scar if it makes her feel more confident.

Before I said yes to vanity, I went for a second opinion.  I emailed a draft of the flier to my friend Susan, who thought it looked fine.  She didn't comment on the picture, so I asked.

"What do you think of the picture?  Is it too big?"

"No, you just aren't used to seeing glamour shots of yourself," she said.  "It looks great."

Glamour shot?  I was too busy looking at my gum line to see the picture as glamourous.

Then I thought about it.  Aside from the dark gum line from my broken tooth, I have a great set of teeth.  They'd be damn near perfect if it weren't for root canal and cap.  I have what is officially called a "winning smile," which is defined as having visible molars when I smile.  My photographer takes pictures of people without teeth, and here I am complaining about a tiny flaw in what otherwise would be perfect.

I ponder my double chin.  Sure, I could lose a few pounds, but I am far from obese.  Who am I to be so picky about my appearance?  I don't have a disfigurement, so I should be happy.  I let the picture go au naturale, and not photoshop.

* Poor Photoshop has to get a bad rap as the company that allows women to look twenty years younger, when they just make the software to enable such behavior.

Moving: Heaven and Hell

We are getting hardwood floors installed in the house this week, and we have moved into our neighbors’ duplex across the street.  They have been remodeling it for almost a year, and the work continues.  The previous owner did very little in the past decade, and the place was in need of major updates. 

We asked our neighbors about six weeks ago if we could move into their apartment.  They blanched, but said, “Sure.”

“I am happy to pay market rate for the whole month, and pay for utilities,” I said.

“Oh no,” the wife replied.  “You don’t have to pay me.  I am glad you are staying.  It will force us to get the place ready for someone to move in.”

The day before we moved in, the wife was telling us she was having the floor painted.  

“Egads!  You didn’t need to paint the floor for us!” I said.  “It won’t be dry in time, and we will just mark it up!  You should have waited until we moved out.”

“It won’t be a big deal,” she said.  “I will give it another coat as soon as you move out.”

Over the past few weeks, Elke, a college girl from Indiana who is helping me out around the house, helped me purge and clean before the move.  We had to clean out the basement to move stuff from the closet down there while the work is being done.  I’ve made a handful of trips to Goodwill and Value Village to unload stuff, plus a trip to the dump.  We’ve had numerous loads of recycling.

I thought that doing this (purging, cleaning, re-organizing) during a campaign might be a bad idea, but I find it a pleasant distraction.  There is a limited amount of control I have over my life as a candidate.  I can have control over the move, more or less.

The movers arrived yesterday morning to take our entire first floor and move us out.  We had far less to move, thanks to Elke.  The movers were supposed to arrive at 9:00 a.m.   They arrived at 8:40, just as the rain began.  It wasn’t a downpour, but it was heavier than a drizzle.  They were carrying the first load out by 8:50.  Kind of a bummer to have the only rain in a week happen while we were moving, but what can you do.

I walked into the apartment to see where to put the furniture.  Angela’s construction worker was laying down construction paper so our feet wouldn’t stick the floor.  They ran out, and had to run to Home Depot before we could finish the move.  The third bedroom was still a construction staging area, with an old water heater and lots of tools and wood debris.  We couldn't set that up as one of the kid’s room or move my desk in there, so we have extra furniture in the kitchen and living room.

But that wasn't all: there was no hot water heater, no oven, no cooktop and no refrigerator.  The shower wasn’t hooked up, even if we wanted to take a cold shower.   I had to bring over all of my hanging clothes, but there were no rods in the closet, so all of my clothes were draped on the couch.  It was a roof over our heads, but that was about it.  I told one friend we were moving out of one construction zone into another.  Jack joked that he wanted to see the thought bubbles above Angela and my heads when we had our previous conversation about using their space and she refused to take rent.

Lauren’s thought bubble: “I am happy to pay rent.  Please don’t think I am a mooch!”

Angela’s thought bubble: “Oh my god the place is a train wreck.  It will take a miracle to have it ready by the time they move it.  I can’t charge her for living a place that has no doorknobs!”

And I love the place.  It is not nearly the disaster it appears to be written on paper.  Our regular house is across the street, so we can easily go back and forth and shower, check the mail and access the internet.  My kids have the same walk to school, we still walk the dog on the same route.  But the convienence isn’t the whole reason I like it.

I feel genuinely happy to be living someplace else, and I don’t know why.  Back in my twenties, I moved every few years, from Chicago to Saint Louis, from an apartment in St. Louis to a house, and then from Saint Louis to Seattle.  With each move, came a cleansing and a purging, lightening the load.  It feels good to get rid of stuff that has hasn’t been used in ages, or to find new uses for old and forgotten things.  Angela needed shower hooks, and I had found an old set in the basement which I gave to her.  I lived in the same apartment in Chicago for all of my twenties, and I loved the place.  I also loved my house in Saint Louis.  Maybe I was longing for a change of scenery, and new location, a different perspective.  I’ve spent years looking at the house across the street.  Angela did a great job of picking a bright new exterior pain color, and has cleaned up all of the plants.  She fixed the retaining wall.  On the outside, it looks great.  But now I can sit and look out the window at my own house.  My friend Diane used to live in this spot, and she said we had a really cute house.  She would know, as she could see it all the time.  She was right.

Maybe I like this move because it is just like my place, minus the clutter.  There are no stacks of unread mail and magazines.  There are no stacks of notes from my countless meetings.  I don't have my hundreds of books.  It is clean and neat and tidy, but it also still my life.  It isn’t sterile like a hotel room or a vacation condo.  There is charm, and it is in my neighborhood.  It is like I have just lost twenty pounds:  it is still the same me, only better. 

“Better?” you are thinking.  "Lauren has no cooktop, no hot water, no shower curtain.  She is nuts."

Sometimes "nuts" and an upside down life beats the status quo.