I have decided yo have some work done in our basement. Presently, it looks like a prison cell for holiday decorations gone bad. The floor is gray concrete, the walls white cinder block with a few narrow shelves and box after box of holiday creations (orange and black for Halloween, red and green for Christmas - yes, there is an order to my chaos) stacked two deep along almost every wall.
There are two small transom windows set up high which offer a lovely view of the side yard with its scorched grass. They have been painted shut for about thirty years and do have bars across them (courtesy of the alarm company). Occasionally, we get those jumping crickets, but fortunately, the spiders that live down there seem to keep that population under control.
Since our last big project was two years ago and the memories have begun to fade (well, not so much fade as been repressed) I decided it was time to tackle the final frontier, the only space in the house that we haven't redone (which is proof that I have waaaay too much time on my hands and need to get a real job!).
I say "I" because Tim is having no part of this. Just the mention of tile, paint, and lighting fixtures is enough to have his eyes glazing over. Talk about placement of a door, and he is headed for the nearest one as though the house were on fire. Whenever I do manage to corner him and ask his opinion on anything, I get the same answer every time: Let's move. It will be less aggravation!!!
And so, left to my own devices, I made a plan, and a darn fine one it was too, if I do say so myself.
Two years ago, one of the guys who was running some wire in the crawlspace behind the shelves happened to mention that there was actually an entire room back there that was filled with dirt and had never been dug out. This got me to thinking (thinking, obsessing, potato, potauto). What if we broke through the wall and put all the junk into this other room? Then, we could finish off the basement and have a really neat rec room with a bar and maybe a pool table (or at least that is what I told Tim. I was actually thinking more along the lines of a chick room, but, hey, all's fair in love and home design).
Naturally, I tried to talk Tim into crawling around back there and scoping it out for me, but he had some silly objection to snakes and undead, so the most I could do was get him to shine a flashlight around through the three foot opening and mutter, "Let's move." Not helpful.
When my father came for a visit, I tried to coax him to take a look-see but, once again, there was a lot of flashlight waving and head shaking, but no actual progress on determining the dimensions of the mystery room. Since he is over seventy, I let him slide on this out of the goodness of my heart.
Finally, I got the guy who had done our bathroom to come out to the house and take a look. At last, here was someone who would brave the world of the unknown! Wrong again. I had a brief moment of hope when he actually stuck his head through the opening, but then the flashlight came out and well...
He did, however, determine that it was big enough to hold all my stuff, and said he could dig out the room and cut through the wall to make a door. At least that is what he told me.
His face and tone of voice told another story. They clearly said, "Lady, you are insane. Do you know how much work it would be to haul all of that dirt out, bucket by bucket and pass it through those windows by hand???? Not to mention cutting through a cinder block wall, pouring a concrete floor, and don't even get me started on the possibility that the foundation doesn't go down further than three feet over there and we'd need to build a retaining wall!!!
Okay, so maybe this wasn't the best way to go. Perhaps it was time to come up with Plan B
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Shop Till You Drop
I love to shop. Anywhere, anytime, for anything. But not in China.
Here, the rules of engagement are simple: You enter a store and stroll through the aisles where some lovely muzak is playing. Maybe someone offers to help you, or even bring you a soda. You choose an item (or thirty), select the correct size (S,M,L or XL --depending on how the diet is going), and pay what the tag tells you (unless it is on sale, and really, why buy something if it's not?) It's all very simple, very civilized.
Not in China.
There, you have to fight your way through a teeming mass of street vultures, er vendors, just to get to the store ("Hey lady, you want T-shirt, DVD, postcards?). Then, once inside, you fall prey to the pack of salespeople waiting to pounce upon the next victim. The hunter has become the hunted. (Muzak? who can hear anything except, "buy, buy, buy"?)
You wander, dazed, from stand to stand where everyone is selling the exact same things ("No, really, these are real pearls and diamonds for five dollars. See, I can grind them under my heel and they don't break." Yeah, always the mark of fine jewelry. I understand that's how De Beers tests their diamonds.)
If you pause or make eye contact, they have you and it's all over.
Suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by an endless sea of merchandise. You like rings? They have rings. Silver, Gold, Platinum(aluminum, painted aluminum, tin). Tiffany, Cartier, Harry Winston. (Riiiight) Watches? Rolex, Tag, Patek. (all made of lead) Trays and cases and boxes of whatever you want, or think you want, magically appear. Soon, you are buried under an avalanche of fakes, er genuine imitations.
What size do you want? XL,XXL, or XXXL? (Don't even think of looking at S, M, or L unless you make a supermodel look fat or are six years old. Not a real ego boosting experience when they refer you to the men's section because they don't have anything large enough to fit you in women's. The Chinese are seriously tiny compared to us huge, hulking Americans.)
Finally, desperate to escape, you make your selection. Then, the real fun begins.
They tell you it costs $400. It doesn't matter what it is, everything costs $400. (Of course, in Chinese money, this is eighty million dollars, and you have to do the math in your head, which is always fun.) You offer $1.
They pull at their hair, beat their chests, gnash their teeth...and drop the price to $300. You offer $2.
They tell you how pretty you are. How sweet you are. How smart you are. How that ring/watch/shirt was made for you, and only you because no one else would look good in it...and drop the price to $200. You offer $3.
By the way, this is all conducted via calculator. They enter their price, you hit clear and enter your price, they hit clear...and so on, and so on, and so on...Try that at Neiman Marcus.
Anyway, this goes on for some time. You start to walk away, they follow you, grab you, all but body tackle you. They swear you are killing them...slowly.
Finally, you pay $5-$10 for something that is worth fifty cents, and you are free -- sort of. You still have to fight your way back to the door and the bag you are holding labels you an easy mark.
When you do finally escape, exhausted, you sort through your haul only to find that, caught up in the moment, you now own an enormous pile of junk.
However, now that you've refined your bargaining skills, you are ready to go home and buy that used car you've been looking at for $5.
Here, the rules of engagement are simple: You enter a store and stroll through the aisles where some lovely muzak is playing. Maybe someone offers to help you, or even bring you a soda. You choose an item (or thirty), select the correct size (S,M,L or XL --depending on how the diet is going), and pay what the tag tells you (unless it is on sale, and really, why buy something if it's not?) It's all very simple, very civilized.
Not in China.
There, you have to fight your way through a teeming mass of street vultures, er vendors, just to get to the store ("Hey lady, you want T-shirt, DVD, postcards?). Then, once inside, you fall prey to the pack of salespeople waiting to pounce upon the next victim. The hunter has become the hunted. (Muzak? who can hear anything except, "buy, buy, buy"?)
You wander, dazed, from stand to stand where everyone is selling the exact same things ("No, really, these are real pearls and diamonds for five dollars. See, I can grind them under my heel and they don't break." Yeah, always the mark of fine jewelry. I understand that's how De Beers tests their diamonds.)
If you pause or make eye contact, they have you and it's all over.
Suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by an endless sea of merchandise. You like rings? They have rings. Silver, Gold, Platinum(aluminum, painted aluminum, tin). Tiffany, Cartier, Harry Winston. (Riiiight) Watches? Rolex, Tag, Patek. (all made of lead) Trays and cases and boxes of whatever you want, or think you want, magically appear. Soon, you are buried under an avalanche of fakes, er genuine imitations.
What size do you want? XL,XXL, or XXXL? (Don't even think of looking at S, M, or L unless you make a supermodel look fat or are six years old. Not a real ego boosting experience when they refer you to the men's section because they don't have anything large enough to fit you in women's. The Chinese are seriously tiny compared to us huge, hulking Americans.)
Finally, desperate to escape, you make your selection. Then, the real fun begins.
They tell you it costs $400. It doesn't matter what it is, everything costs $400. (Of course, in Chinese money, this is eighty million dollars, and you have to do the math in your head, which is always fun.) You offer $1.
They pull at their hair, beat their chests, gnash their teeth...and drop the price to $300. You offer $2.
They tell you how pretty you are. How sweet you are. How smart you are. How that ring/watch/shirt was made for you, and only you because no one else would look good in it...and drop the price to $200. You offer $3.
By the way, this is all conducted via calculator. They enter their price, you hit clear and enter your price, they hit clear...and so on, and so on, and so on...Try that at Neiman Marcus.
Anyway, this goes on for some time. You start to walk away, they follow you, grab you, all but body tackle you. They swear you are killing them...slowly.
Finally, you pay $5-$10 for something that is worth fifty cents, and you are free -- sort of. You still have to fight your way back to the door and the bag you are holding labels you an easy mark.
When you do finally escape, exhausted, you sort through your haul only to find that, caught up in the moment, you now own an enormous pile of junk.
However, now that you've refined your bargaining skills, you are ready to go home and buy that used car you've been looking at for $5.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Here a Squat, There a Squat, Everywhere a Squat
There is a reason I don't go camping (actually, there are many, many reasons). But a really big one is that I can't squat behind a tree. Seriously, I think I am missing the squatting gene. Maybe, like some other diseases, it skips a generation, or maybe I was switched at birth with a member of the Royal family...yeah, that's it. (I mean, can you imagine HRH Liz hanging with Yogi, looking for a nice, leafy shrub to duck behind?)
Whatever the reason, China should not be on your top ten list of places to visit if you don't squat. Personally, I think their flag should be a toilet with a red line through it instead of a yellow star(s)! Much more helpful.
You had to squat at the wall, the palace, the Forbidden city, and most restaurants. The temples, the terra cotta soldiers site, even the airport all had squat toilets (picture a seat set into the floor with footprint guides on either side). Apparently, everything really is made in China except for toilets.
For someone who has managed to avoid squatting her whole life (and this includes two summers at camp) this was not good. And, as if the situation wasn't bad enough, the smell in these places was blinding! Imagine the elephant cage where the entire herd has been given Metamucil filled bran muffins on a ninety degree day and the air conditioning is broken. That would be an improvement.
To make matters worse, if, by some minor miracle, you did manage to get lucky and behind door number one was an actual toilet...surprise, no paper! I don't mean they ran out, I mean no paper. Ever. Not even a holder. Most of us, fortunately, had been forewarned and came prepared for just such an event. What we were not prepared for was the fact that you did not dispose of your paper in the toilet, but in the wastebasket next to it. (There's a job people are standing in line for!)
You didn't dare do otherwise and clog the only toilet for miles around that wasn't floor level or the sixty people in line behind you(all Americans of course) would have beaten you to death with their purse sized packs of Kleenex and bottles of anti-bacterial gel.
Now, since I don't squat (I was not about to break a life-long record), I didn't drink much during the day (to heck with worrying about germs and parasites, I was more worried about my shoes). Never was I so happy to see the hotel at the end of the day. Tim quickly got used to being second in my affections to a hunk of porcelain. He understood completely when I rushed past his outstretched arms to go embrace the toilet instead.
The hotel staff also took it in stride. They simply unloaded a case of water onto my bedside table every night and placed the recycling bin for the hotel outside our door. Either I am not the first person to ever try and rehydrate at night, or they suspected we were harboring a camel.
After a week of opening doors only to quickly shut them again, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Before getting on the plane for the return flight home, I did check out the bathroom situation. You can't be too careful, and thirteen and a half hours is a long time to wait for a seat.
Whatever the reason, China should not be on your top ten list of places to visit if you don't squat. Personally, I think their flag should be a toilet with a red line through it instead of a yellow star(s)! Much more helpful.
You had to squat at the wall, the palace, the Forbidden city, and most restaurants. The temples, the terra cotta soldiers site, even the airport all had squat toilets (picture a seat set into the floor with footprint guides on either side). Apparently, everything really is made in China except for toilets.
For someone who has managed to avoid squatting her whole life (and this includes two summers at camp) this was not good. And, as if the situation wasn't bad enough, the smell in these places was blinding! Imagine the elephant cage where the entire herd has been given Metamucil filled bran muffins on a ninety degree day and the air conditioning is broken. That would be an improvement.
To make matters worse, if, by some minor miracle, you did manage to get lucky and behind door number one was an actual toilet...surprise, no paper! I don't mean they ran out, I mean no paper. Ever. Not even a holder. Most of us, fortunately, had been forewarned and came prepared for just such an event. What we were not prepared for was the fact that you did not dispose of your paper in the toilet, but in the wastebasket next to it. (There's a job people are standing in line for!)
You didn't dare do otherwise and clog the only toilet for miles around that wasn't floor level or the sixty people in line behind you(all Americans of course) would have beaten you to death with their purse sized packs of Kleenex and bottles of anti-bacterial gel.
Now, since I don't squat (I was not about to break a life-long record), I didn't drink much during the day (to heck with worrying about germs and parasites, I was more worried about my shoes). Never was I so happy to see the hotel at the end of the day. Tim quickly got used to being second in my affections to a hunk of porcelain. He understood completely when I rushed past his outstretched arms to go embrace the toilet instead.
The hotel staff also took it in stride. They simply unloaded a case of water onto my bedside table every night and placed the recycling bin for the hotel outside our door. Either I am not the first person to ever try and rehydrate at night, or they suspected we were harboring a camel.
After a week of opening doors only to quickly shut them again, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Before getting on the plane for the return flight home, I did check out the bathroom situation. You can't be too careful, and thirteen and a half hours is a long time to wait for a seat.
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