Archive for October, 2009

I could use some red slippers

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Progress on mad maison, both the house and the blog, has slowed a bit due to my October business travel schedule. Over the course of one month, I will have flown over 20,000 miles. Traveling for work has its perks (you get to see colleagues you normally wouldn’t, and in the case of my most recent travels, I’ve gotten to see customers as well, which is always fun), but it is always grueling. There’s no sleeping in to get over your jet lag, very little decompression time, and the knowledge that your “regular” work will be waiting for you in exponential quantities when you eventually get home. And I can tell you, even when your house isn’t perfect, you miss it terribly. Even though the water pressure here in my UK hotel room is better than the mad shower, I still miss home. And of course, there’s the guilt I feel about taking Mike from his hometown to the city by the bay, only to leave him alone to scrape wallpaper and care for our cats. Of course, he’s a trooper and happy to help, but my guilt persists anyway.

When we were originally planning to transform my father’s childhood home into mad maison, we were comforted by the notion that two of the rooms (our bedroom and the living room) didn’t have wallpaper. We were wrong. They have the worst kind of wallpaper–insidious, hidden under layers of paint, and unevenly applied over badly cracked plaster. We’ve repaired the walls in the living room, and Mike has been tackling the bedroom inch by painful inch. It’s taking every ounce of steam, DIF goo, and elbow grease Mike has to get the wallpaper off, but he is making progress. Until then, we’re still living in a serious state of transition and we’re eager for that to change. I’m also eager to actually scrape by Mike’s side when I return from Europe this weekend.

They may not be slippers, but they are red. Perhaps if I click my heels in them I'll be home again.

They may not be slippers, but they are red. Perhaps if I click my heels in them I'll be home again.

Stranger Moments

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

In between our renovation projects, large-scale and small-scale, mad likes to occasionally pause to enjoy the sights and sounds of our fair city. Personally, I’ve been noticing a mini-trend of stumbling into the oddest conversations with our fellow San Franciscans. Not that I particularly mind…after all, New York is certainly known to have special tolerance, and even reverence, for loud, colorful characters. Anyway, I’m standing in line in the supermarket recently when a well-dressed woman about 30 years my senior calmly & assertively asks me, “Excuse me…do you know what month this is?” I told her the correct date and she replied, “Oh, thank you….I really thought it was December.” And with that, she quietly continued her shopping experience.

The other day, I’m walking past a cafe in Bernal Heights minding my own business when suddenly a young man who was seemingly wearing a white chef’s jacket blocks my path and urgently asks me, “Hey! Do you know how to spell the word “gumbo”? Is it 1 “m” or 2?” Once again, I’m caught a little off-guard and I blurt out, “Um, I’ve always seen it spelled with one m.” Then he excitedly replies, “Thanks! That’s what I thought!” As I was trying to figure out if this man was preparing a menu, finishing a crossword puzzle, or was just so incredibly enthralled with our English language that he couldn’t help himself…he disappeared. I peeked my head into the cafe, but I didn’t see him. He just somehow dissolved into the sunny afternoon, not unlike the alien in the Predator films. Events like these, coupled with our recent apocalyptic-type rainstorm, have had the effect of feeling like we’ve walked into Bizarro World.

But we love it.

A San Francisco delicacy, apparently

A San Francisco delicacy, apparently

Lighter moments

Friday, October 9th, 2009

For the majority of my childhood, I lived within a few miles of the house mad now occupies. I have many fond memories in this house–assembling jigsaw puzzles with my grandfather, applying 4 layers of my aunt’s lipstick, enjoying my grandmother’s peanut butter sandwiches, and the occasional holiday celebration. It’s been a long time since my grandmother entertained in what is now mad maison–at least 20 years. Needless to say, mad was surprised to find decorative items still in the house that don’t have any real monetary value. Some of these items are so hilarious that we can’t help photographing them before we purge them. What’s most amusing to me about this “salad” is that the ingredients are now so passe. I mean, iceberg lettuce in a salad for company? Please.

I think mixed greens would be more appropriate, don't you?

I think mixed greens would be more appropriate, don't you?

The next project

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

I know that we owe a full set of pictures on the living room, but I thought I would share the next room mad has started working on. We were foolish enough to think that no room would present us with more challenging wallpaper than the living room. I was wrong. The room that will be our bedroom has walls that are in terrible need of plaster repair. I’m guessing someone before mad realized that, because the walls are comprised of some kind of mysterious cardboard-bandage-wallpaper hybrid that sits on top of some kind of magic adhesive, but underneath a layer of peachy-pink paint. Yup, it’s that bad. Honestly, mad would have simply repaired the cracked plaster and painted on top of the mystery walls if not for the visible horizontal “stripes” of wallpaper that can be seen on the two long walls around the 6-foot mark. So, mad has been diligently removing layer after layer of mystery substance. The only thing that keeps us going is the knowledge that one day we’ll have a real bedroom with walls that we completely understand.

Can you see the mystery stripe? It's really there, I promise.

Can you see the mystery stripe? It's really there, I promise.