The light at the end of the tunnel may be a freight train!

After about 5 weeks of non-stop remodeling, we have turned two smallish rooms into one 23′X11″ kitchen. I am so close to being done that I can almost taste the sweet glory. Here are some pics.

Unnecessary Safety Warning!!!

Have you ever noticed all of the ridiculous safety warnings out there? Warning, HOT! Watch Your Step!

These seemingly obvious statements have unfortunately arisen out of necessity. Someone burned their mouth on coffee and sued the bejeesus out of McDonald’s. Now we all have to suffer the annoying labels. Someone tripped over the bright yellow step that everyone else used with ease. Now we have to be distracted while we approach the step and possibly trip over it ourselves. My favorite warnings are on children’s items. Kids are inherently squirmy, curious, and careless-hence all of the warning labels. One of my favorites is the picture below.

Now, the FAIL label was added by some cynical person, probably a Farker. The label only adds to the hilarity of the photo. Many of us who have kids have possibly witnessed the event pictured above in person, and maybe some better FAIL moments as well. I invite you to let me know if you can top this unfortunate pic.

Mincing Words

Last Friday I received a phone call from my brother.  He needed an opinion on something that was said to him earlier in the day and he wanted to make sure he didn’t misunderstand a statement made to him.  Okay, I said, lay it on me.

“So I am leaving the gas station after work.  I had filled my tank and purchased a pack of cigarettes.  As I am walking to my car, the guy filling up next to me says, “Whoa, gas and smokes!  It must be payday.”"

I am completely flabbergasted  by the audacity of this guy.  I ask my brother what he said in return.  His reply: “I didn’t really catch what he said until I was driving away.  Then I called you.  I am thinking about going back.”

My brother is a rather strong individual.  He works in construction, and mostly specializes in demolition work.  He was dressed the part on this particular Friday no doubt.  That doesn’t give anybody the right to make fun of him.  I am still awe-struck by the big brass ones this guy must have to say something so rude to someone who has a trunk full of tools designed for dismantling things and is much larger than himself.

Home Remodeling Fun

I have been working on a kitchen remodel for about two weeks now. The experience has been enlightening. So far, I have completed the demolition of an entire wall (I combined two rooms to make one large kitchen), removed the plaster and lath board from every wall and the ceiling (the room is now 11′ x 23′ x 9′ tall), installed and wired recessed lighting (6 cans) and removed all of the flooring. It has taken all of my spare time on the past few weekends and most evenings throughout the week.

So far my hands hurt, my back hurts, every muscle in my upper body aches and I have inhaled enough plaster dust to make a coal miner shutter. The entire experience has been difficult on the whole family. Try raising 3 kids aged 6 and under while not having a fully functioning kitchen. The mess is beyond anything I imagined. There is plaster dust throughout the entire house-including the bedrooms upstairs! I have done everything I can to prevent the dust from escaping to the rest of the house but to no avail.

You may read this and assume that I am miserable and wish that I had never taken on this gargantuan task. But you would be wrong. Oh so wrong. This has been a major learning experience for me. I have had to pull almost every favor I have in reserve for the next several years, but I have enjoyed every step of the process. There is something strangely rewarding about knocking down a wall. Swinging a sledge hammer releases some primal hormones buried deep in the brain and makes you feel like you have accomplished something no man has ever done.

So here I am two weeks into a project that is supposed to last 6-8 weeks and I haven’t stalled yet. I am looking forward to every little step ahead of me. I have to finish wiring the entire kitchen. I have to hang drywall on every wall and ceiling (and then do all the fun mudding and taping). Then we have to paint the walls and ceiling. I have to install sub-flooring and then the floor itself (we chose to go with cork flooring), I have to paint and install the new cupboards (yes, we are finishing our cupboards all by ourself for a substantial savings over the finished products you see in Home Depot). Each task is a lesson in life. A new fact stored in my brain that isn’t a song lyric or an obscure movie quote. A skill learned (maybe not perfected, but learned still).

How much does the average kitchen remodel cost? Think about one with layout changes, plumbing moved, gas lines re-routed, walls removed, three layers of floor ripped up, plaster demo and the subsequent new drywall installed, new lighting throughout, new cupboards, new french doors installed…and then think about the contractor bill that would ensue. I imaging that $10,000 would be a low number for this job. Then think about the fact that by utilizing knowledgeable family and friends, and doing all of the labor myself (again utilizing family and friends) I am going to do this all for about $2,000! That sum even includes the purchase price of several new tools and dumpster rental. More people need to buckle down and do this stuff for themselves. Or maybe, I need to start doing it for a living since they won’t.

Here is the before photo looking from the entry door.

Here I am removing the wall with the help of my FIL.

This is what the kitchen looks like now.  The dog is not a permanent fixture in the room.

Michigan Winters Suck (AKA other ways of entertaining ourselves)

As usual, winter in Lower Michigan sucks. It is bitter cold for a few weeks, then warm for a week. This means that the snow doesn’t stick around long enough to enjoy. I love skiing-both downhill and cross country-but can’t find the time to get out and do it in the few days we actually have snow on the ground. Even in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula they don’t seem to get the snow to stick around much anymore.

I don’t have the time to drive to the Upper Peninsula to go skiing for a day, and if I had the time, who has the money for the gas anymore? So, I have been forced to find a new way to entertain myself during the cold months. Yesterday I bought a Xbox 360.

That’s right, I spent a lot of hard-earned money on a silly video game system. Video games are a part of our culture, and I grew up playing the classic consoles like Commodore, Intellivision, Coleco-Vision and the popular Atari 2600. These games were a part of my childhood, a nice little slice of distraction.

A couple years ago, a good friend of mine asked me (while we played a Nintendo GameCube) if I thought we would ever stop playing video games, now that we were starting to enter our 30’s and becoming grown-ups. I simply stated that I didn’t ever plan on quitting. I am not harming anyone with my mild gaming habit. I only play after the kids go to bed so they don’t even really think about the possibility of playing. Now that the oldest has played a 360 at a relatives house, she will likely see mine and make the connection, so I suppose I will have to get a kids game. I will not have my first grader playing adult rated games like the second graders on my block who play Halo all of the time.

So there it is; I am a 30 year old adult male with a steady job and a wife and 3+ kids, a mortgage, car payments, and the whole lot. Yet I still like to play video games. I am still a kid inside and see no reason to change anytime soon. I am sure my wife feels otherwise.

Retention Deficit Disorder

When I was a kid, I was proclaimed the smartest thing on the planet by my parents and every teacher I ever met.  I was constantly told that I was smarter than either of my siblings (and they both graduated with almost perfect grades), and that I was going somewhere great.  That is a lot of pressure to put on a kid.  I certainly didn’t appreciate it, and I didn’t deal with it very well.  The main problem was that being a smart kid usually means getting beaten up and generally picked on almost every day of your life.  When you add smart to the already lethal combination of being short with red hair, you are guaranteed to be destroyed.

I was in the Talented and Gifted program, of TAG for short.  There were about half a dozen kids from the school who were deemed worthy and we got to get out of class once a week and sit around with some other teacher who ran the program and challenged us to bigger and better things.

How did I cope with it?  Not very well, actually.  I didn’t really enjoy being forced to sit in the back of the classroom reading silently while the other kids learned a task that I mastered several months before them.  I saw who the cool kids were, and what it took to be one of them.   I realized that being smart was not the way to go.

So how do you not be smart, when you already are?  You slowly, gradually dumb yourself down to the level of other kids.  As you are trying to master being average, you also hone your wit to a cutting edge.  You master sarcasm (because no one understands your jokes anyway), and use it as a weapon.  Before you know it you are the class clown, and  no one really knows why they are laughing at you when they can’t understand your jokes.  But you dumb down the jokes enough and people really start laughing.  The same people that were beating you up a year before are now laughing at the things you do and say.  What a relief!  Then you quit the TAG program because it really cramps your style.

It took many years to dumb myself down to the level of people around me, but it worked.  I graduated high school with a meager 3.0 average.  I didn’t go on to college right away, but worked in dead-end physical labor jobs.  Eventually, I went on to college to get a degree in Forestry, not exactly what my parents and teachers thought I would be doing with my life.  After all, I was the smartest and most talented child they had ever seen.  The only problem was, they hadn’t done the right things to encourage greatness.  They pressured for results, instead of encouraging growth and exploration.  I felt trapped in a world I didn’t understand, and even worse, I was alone there.  Maybe the right kind of environment would have helped propel me to greatness.  Maybe I wouldn’t have almost flunked 8th grade because I didn’t care anymore.  Maybe I would have aspired to bigger and better things.

But I didn’t.  I chose the path of least resistance.  I went the way of the clown, the one who everyone wants to be around.  I wanted to be accepted way more than I ever wanted to be respected.  Friends were more important than grades and accolades.

You want to know something else?  I am probably better off because of my choices.  My life is great.  The only real stress in ly life comes from having 3 (yes, 3) daughters.  The stress I feel there is mostly my own fault, because I let the little things bother me, and I am working on letting it go.  I just want to enjoy them, not yell at them for making a mess.

So here’s to all the smart kids out there.  If you’re lucky, you will figure out that friends and family are way more important than getting straight A’s on your report card.  Try to enjoy the little things in life, not fret over them.

Strange Things Happening All Over

Today, I was driving down US-31 near Muskegon, Michigan. I happened to notice the Adopt-A-Highway sign as I passed rather quickly. Apparently, the West Michigan Survivors of Suicide had decided to adopt that particular 3 mile stretch of road.

There are so many questions that popped into my head at that point. Here are a few:

1. Is it better to be cleaning up highway trash than being dead? I have to wonder…

2. Is this an exclusive club for people who have actually survived a suicide attempt?

3. Or can you have simply contemplated suicide at some point? Or maybe it is for people who have been affected by other peoples suicides…There are so many possibilities here that my head started to hurt and I considered driving into a tree. I wonder if I can join the club now?

4. Couldn’t they pick a nicer stretch of road to work on? The area they’re in is pretty boring and busy. They could have been up north a little further up the road with less traffic, and better scenery.

Usually a group like the Boy Scouts or some companies will get together and adopt a stretch of highway. This was definitely a new one for me. Oh well, things are strange all over these days. I hope I haven’t offended anyone who is thinking about suicide right now. If you are, I know of a group who may be able to help you.

Doomed to Failure Again

So I promised myself that I would spend more time with my friends after one passed away recently.  I have tried, but it seems that my friends don’t like me.  At least that’s what I assume when I call them several times and never get a return call.  I leave messages every time, but they never seem to get back to me.

This has been apparent to me on several occasions.  Once, a few months back, I was traveling for work.  I was in the hotel lounge having a few drinks when it dawned on me that there were several people I hadn’t spoke to in a few months.  After making about 6-8 phone calls and not getting a single person on the other end of the phone I came to the conclusion that my “friends” were ignoring me.  How else can you explain not a single person being available to talk at 9 o’clock in the evening on a weeknight?

Have I been a bad friend to everybody?  Am I just really annoying and nobody will tell me?  If that’s the case, I would love to know so that I can attempt to not be pain in the ass so that I may retain at least a few friendships.   It’s not like I gave any of my friends my blog address so that they can see my pain and suffering.  I will have to figure it out for myself I guess.

A Little Peace and Quiet

I have been out in the forest for the past 4 weeks now marking a rather large and cumbersome timber harvest.  I was somewhat complaining the other day to my wife about how lonely it can be out in the forest by yourself for long periods of time.  I even decided to bring along my PDA for the last stretch since it has Media Player and a large memory card.  That made it better.

To provide some contrast in my life, I finished the timber sale marking today and came home earlier than usual.  I was greeted by 3 screaming, running, eating children that slightly resembled monsters.  They continued to run and eat and scream for the next hour, until I was blissfully remembering the ling lonely hours in the forest where I had to listen to no one but whomever I slapped on to my storage card for the music that day.

Oh well, I guess that’s what you get for having a bunch of kids.  It is my wife that has to put up with them for the most part.  I usually get the evenings, after dinner when everyone is winding down for the day and just want to relax on the couch with a book or a TV show.

Job Update

So I didn’t get the job with the State. Oh well. That just means that I don’t have to sell the new house and uproot my family. A good friend of mine actually got the job instead. I am torn between being happy for him and wanting to strangle him for getting the job.

I am perfectly happy with the job I have and make decent money. This was just a chance to advance my career a little earlier than I had planned. And now we have time to finish the updates to the house before we have to sell.