Pondside Thoughts...

Peeling Away the Years

It's gone. All of it. The layers of wallpaper, layers of linoleum and plaster and glue and grease and errant flying crumbs, layers of memories of my family and the ones preceding us. Gone but for the few fragile remnants - bits of various wallpapers, pencil marks, linoleum dating back to the original floor laid in the first decade of the prior century.

It feels precious to see and touch the remnants of all these layers of the language of kitchens; the many loving arms of almost a century of human habitation. All the mothers who cooked in this kitchen and comforted children and bathed babies and patched boo-boos and supervised homework and cried over endless cups of tea. All the friends who gathered around kitchen tables to share secrets and joys and the tears brought by sorrow and laughter. All the spilled milk and burned fingers and burned meals. Thousands of sunrises and the security found in full pantries and frosted birthday cakes. I'm profoundly moved by all this. Either that or the smell of old wood and the inside of funky old walls is making me hallucinate. You decide.

This happened in a single day. It feels biblical. The amazing Henry and helpers schlepped it all out to the waiting gynormous dump truck and drove it away.

Today I selected the specific slabs of granite that will be the counter tops, as well as the low voltage recessed ceiling fixtures that will light the glass shelves that will hold the teapots and other treasures. Damn, this is fun. If only it were free. The money hemmorhage continues unabated. I'm staying within the revised budget but that doesn't help the feeling of naked panic that consumes me each time I put down a credit card for a 4- or 5-digit purchase. Yikes. I'm trying to think of the miles I am earning. Earning miles. Not spending money. Earning miles.

The Fabulous M continues to provide advice and support without which I would be utterly clueless. Well, I am still utterly clueless but with advice from the Fabulous M, I appear to have clues. Answers even.

I can't wait to get home each day to see what miracle has happened in my absence... so far so good. I'll keep you posted.

Locked and Loaded

So here we have it... my kitchen. Empty. Condemned to death row, awaiting execution, stripped of its kitsch trappings, flora, fauna, color, and content.  It took a lot of energy and merciless culling to empty its treasures. We found a few items that hadn't seen the light of day for multiple decades, individual pieces of mummified macaroni, and some spices that had lost their potency before Nixon resigned. I bravely parted with the pizza stone I bought several years ago and never used. I turned my face from the least desirable of the twelve travel coffee mugs. I put the broken panini press out of its longstanding misery,  while at the same time I was unable to part with the little cheese spreaders with the colorfully dressed peasants for handles and their many, many friends. Infinite thanks to Sweet A and Dear G for their help and good spirits.

But never mind. Progress we must, and so we will. I've set up a temporary miniature kitchen in the dining room, which will serve as Culinary Control Central (CCC) for the next few months.  It's a rolling cart loaned most generously by neighbors M & K, and it came along with an induction hot plate that only heats iron pots. Who knew such a thing existed? It doesn't get hot itself, but it manages to  heat pots with a high percentage of iron in their composition, thereby warming their contents. Magic. 

So tomorrow it begins. Henry will move the fridge into the dining room and will prepare everything for D-Day (Destruction Day) on Tuesday, when the rowdy crowd of muscle men arrive to rip the cabinets from the walls and toss them outside to the waiting dumpster. I'm going to hate to miss that... sigh.... 

I've loaded the freezer wtih prepared meals, gathered the paper plates and plastic forks and spoons, and I'm set for my adventure.  My eyes are set on the future and my chin is set in an optimistic near smile, indicating infinite patience. Or at least the ability to count to ten many, many times.

Anticipa-a-tion

 The kitchen renovation is set to start a week from tomorrow, June 23rd. Finally, all the big decisions have been made. The ten thousand obligatory visits to the Kitchen Man have been completed, the many major design decision have been made, and now it is on to execution. 

Henry, the builder, has brought in the plumber and electrician to view the site and provide estimates.  Of course, my original target has already been exceeded by a huge amount, but I've now got a budget I can manage to. Or not. I've chosen and ordered the cabinets, the wood, the granite, the appliances, the flooring, the new window and exterior door. I keep thinking that I've done the lion's share of the work to be done by me, and then the next wave of "must be done immediately" shows up and I'm swamped again. The current list includes pulling a permit (tomorrow), selecting back splash tiles, and door handles.  And then I've got to finish packing up the kitchen. Oh my! What a huge amount of crap... errrrrr... treasures I've accumulated over these 28 years.  But the purging feels good. I'm passing bags and bags of my collections on to Sweet A and giving the certified junk to Morgan Memorial and the worst of it to the recycle bin.  But still I have more than any human being should have, and I suspect that I'll purge as much in the unpacking as I did in the packing.

I will try to take photos at each of the milestones of the renovation and post them here with my current whining and complaining about the inconvenience, the cost, the layer of dust coating every object throughout the house, no matter how remote from the construction. Oh, what fun that will be for you to read.  Less fun than a root canal, of course, but then, how often is that really an option?

These are the 'before' pics. My eclectic, disorganized, uncoordinated, but very happy kitchen. Let's see how long it takes to completely replace its cheery ambiance with soulless pseudo-elegance. My biggest worry right now is the molding to the right of the kitchen door pictured here. It has recorded on it the height of children and friends and family over the years, including Zoe the dog at a bit under 3' and uncle Paul at 6' 5".

So next weekend is the final pack 'n purge and then the fun begins. I've made travel plans for every weekend in July and half of August, hoping to be away for the worst of it, but I'm looking down the barrel of probably 8 weeks of take out, paper plates, and mooching around town.  I should know who my real friends are by mid-August.

 

Time Traveling

How I love the internet and blogging and classmates.com and LinkedIn and all the other magical fonts of connectedness.  Just the other day the following comment appeared in my post called "What's Your Name Again?":

"Are you the Gwen Blank that lived in Mineola NY and went to UConn? If so, you and I spent 2 wonderful summers together at Camp Kendale that I will remember for the rest of my life. You can reach me at .......... I'd love to hear from you!"

Oh joy! Leaping out of my past came the Adorable P, my high school honey, the first love of my life, my senior prom date, who I haven't seen or heard from since 1966.  My silly old heart skipped a beat or two and I called the number he left.  We talked for hours about our time together all those 42 years ago.  His wonderful Borgward Isabella, Camp Kendale, parents, brothers, dogs, and what a fool I was to break his heart, yes I was.  We talked about all that has transpired since, our marriages, children, careers, glory, and losses. We chatted away with teenage abandon, tossing out the stories of our lives as if reciting plots from TV soap operas. 

It was lovely to hear my life told by someone who adored me long ago. And it felt good and right to confess the bad boy stage that drew me away. I'm not one for playing what-if and if-only, and I'm pretty sure it would have ended badly in any case as I was a restless young woman twirling my way into my private Age of Aquarius, but oh, it was sweet to remember and regret.