Author: SeattleMichaelN

Day 30 ~ Okay I am sick of looking at this!

On Day 5, which was 25 days ago, the excavator who cleared the lot and dug trenches where the walls of our house will eventually go, finished.  He was done.  He took his big machine and he left.  The trenches are filled with large rock and he’s painted where the foundation forms are to be built.  We are now on Day 30 and nothing has happened for over two weeks.  David, who left for India yesterday for a vacation with family, was hoping to SEE something before he left.  No luck.  We are waiting for a surveyor to show up and put stakes in the exact corners where the walls meet in our new home.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

This is a really small thing but when it happens it makes me very happy.  I was just folding laundry and listening to NPR and then, at 2:44 PM, I heard those familiar musical notes and I realized I actually had the radio on at the exact moment Garrison Keillor was about to do The Writer’s Almanac.  It gives me such pleasure.  Sometimes I’ll be in my car returning from seeing property and as I pull in the garage at work I realize The Writer’s Almanac is about to come on.  I’ll actually sit in my parked car in a dark cold garage and text people or send emails for a few minutes until 2:44 PM.  Sometimes I’ll decide to get up from my desk at work and run an errand, or take a coffee break where I drive to get to the coffee, just to be in my car at 2:44 PM  Simple pleasures.  Even better is David loves this too.  Not long ago I realized I was married to someone who also knew exactly what time NPR would be broadcasting The Writer’s Almanac each day.

Day 1 ~ The Real Day One

David and I woke up in Harlem on the last day of this year’s six night visit to Manhattan.  We gained three hours on our flight back home and, after picking Opal up at her sister’s house, still managed to get home to Georgetown in time to see in the day’s fading light that work happened.  Excavation has begun.  From walking out of Mary and Melinda’s party on November 7th of 2015, when I said to David while he was driving us home, “That’s it, I want to build a house for us,” to today, that’s how long it took.  From inception to actual ground breaking, one year, ten months, and eighteen days.  Just shy of two full years.  Wow.  And whew.

And so it goes . . . . .

Got up early, left the house early, well before 8:00 AM, as it’s Monday and I have my weekly office meeting to run.  No workers were on site when I left but it was early and I figured they’d show up near or after eight.  Busy day at work, many agents coming at me with many needs, so I completely forgot that today was DAY ONE.  David and I are leaving for 6 days in Manhattan tomorrow so I came home early, 2:30 PM, to pack.  I just assumed I’d turn the corner onto Flora and there would be heavy equipment tearing up the street in front of our vacant lot.  But no.  No. Nada.  Nothing.  Not a thing had been disturbed, it was very clear no one had been here at any point throughout the day.

Really, when you think about it, it was probably the perfect start to building our house after almost two year’s of planning, pushing, and waiting.  They have clearly established how they are going to keep our expectations in check.  They have clearly established who’s really in control here.

DAY ONE, a harbinger of what’s to come.

Things I Wish I’d Said First

“Figuring out what matters most matters most.”

~ I came across this while surfing “news articles” on Facebook.  As I guy who makes small lists on 3 X 5 cards almost every night about the next day, and as I guy who carries a full size spiral notebook with me everywhere I go titled, “To Do,” I really appreciate that sentiment.  You should see how many pages I can fill up when stuck on a plane with my To Do notebook.  I just sit there, no music, no movies, no distractions, and make lists as I mentally “walk through” either one of our homes, as I think about my career, as I think about goals, etc.  Often by time the plane lands I’m exhausted just thinking about what I want to get done.

We Got Our Permit Today ! ! !

We are shocked at what it cost us, but we actually got a building permit issued to us today.  When our architect was getting close to being ready to submit our first round of plans, I was told to go to a City of Seattle website and pay a fee for a permit number.  So I did.  The fee was modest, just a few hundred dollars.  That was painless I thought.  Later I found out that that first few hundred dollars was just a fee to get in line to apply for a permit.  It was a fee to be allowed to apply at a later time.  After a good deal of back and forth between the City and our architect, the actual plans, the final and complete set, were submitted.  The day they were I was given a very short window of time to go back to the same City website and pay for the permit.  That time it was thousands of dollars.  I foolishly thought that was it.  Surely a permit can’t cost more than the two fees we’ve paid already.  Well, yes, yes it can cost more.  About a month passed.  We were notified today that all the corrections and revisions to the plans had been approved and the permit was ready “to be picked up.”  It sounds as if I’m being invited to go down to City hall where a nice counter person is going to hand me a very official looking permit.  Nope.  Back to the City website again and – I couldn’t believe this – a few more thousand dollars to “pick it up” online.  And no one hands you anything.  You just get an email with a .pdf in it and you print out your own damn permit.  But you don’t get that email with the .pdf until AFTER you pay the third fee.  Total cost of a permit from the City of Seattle to build our house:  $6,202.

 

One Of The Few Things I Remember Well

Hey, today is my and David’s 32nd Anniversary.  Our first date, a blind one, was on Tuesday February 12th, 1985.  I remember every detail of that week well.  We first spoke on the phone on Sunday the 10th.  I remember this because 60 Minutes was about to come on and I called him before it started to ask if he’d be available to talk after it was over.  I was being deliberately coy.  Or so I thought.  He said yes and I called him for our first real conversation at 8:00 PM, after 60 Minutes was over.  I asked him out for Tuesday night, the 12th.  I had tickets to see a play at Empty Space Theatre and asked him if he wanted to go with me.  On Tuesday we met at The Mark Toby for a drink, went across the street to have dinner at the Red Onion, (we debate this, I think it was called the Red Onion but David thinks it was the Red Cabbage), and then off to see the play.  Which we walked out of.  It was called Husbandry and it was slow and tedious and dreadful.  Even on a first date we were both nodding off.  Then I drove him to where he was living (Fremont, in his sister’s basement) and we stopped at Baskin Robbin’s on Greenlake Drive and had ice cream.  In front of his sister’s house I looked him straight in the eye and asked him if he wanted to have a second date.  I had found a lot of flakes during my dating years and was getting more and more direct with guys.  He said, “Yes.”  I said, again wanting to not be vague and not waste any time, “When?”  And he said, “Tomorrow.”  I took that as a very good sign.  We kissed once and he got out of my old Ford Courier pick-up truck.  I remember being completely ecstatic driving home to Capitol Hill.

I called David in the first place because he sent me a very well written letter.  He sent me a letter because I placed a personal in The Weekly when they only ran STRAIGHT personal ads.  (This was decades before men seeking men or women seeking women ad categories.)

We had our second date on Wednesday night.  I had not (and I swear to god this is true) watched TV in years prior to this date.  I didn’t own but a 12 inch black and white little plastic TV and I was going through that “I’m too good for TV” bullshit phase that young people try on.  David wanted to watch something and he thus introduced me to something called Dynasty.  We made out a little bit after Dynasty and then he went home.  Again I asked, as he left, if he wanted to see me again.  I had a stack of other letters to open and read if he did not, but I was so hoping he did.  He did.  He asked if Friday was possible.  It was.

The next night, Thursday, David had another date from a different personal ad in he found in The Weekly.  I didn’t find this out until years later.

On Friday we talked on the phone (because I couldn’t text him back then!) and we decided I’d make us dinner at my house which was at 2202 East John Street on the lower east side of Capitol Hill.  I told him he should bring a toothbrush.  He did.  We have never been apart for more than six days in a row since that night.

WRAP THIS UP:

The Mark Toby went out of business.  The Red Cabbage, or Onion, went out of business.  Empty Space Theatre went out of business.  Husbandry was never performed ever again anywhere in the world (I hope).  Baskin Robbin’s might still be on Greenlake Drive tho’ most of them have gone out of business.  I’d have to remember to go to Greenlake to check on this and the streets there make me crAZy so I likely won’t.  The Weekly is a lame and sad version of what it once was and I predict it will go out of business within a year.  60 Minutes is still on TV and we both watch it every Sunday night while having dinner.  2202 East John Street is still standing and I drive by it at least once a week, I’m sure we all do since it’s on an arterial.  And guess what?  Dynasty is back on TV with a whole new cast and we are recording it and watching it weekly.  Oddly we seldom make out afterwards.  But hey, less making out happens in your 32nd year.  Then again, 32 years and we’re still in business.

In November of 2015 David and I went to a party

The idea to dismantle our koi pond and garden and build a house where the koi pond and garden used to be came to us as we left a party on November 7, 2015. In 2011 David and  I downsized from a house that had 4,300 square feet of living space (and a 400 square foot garage in addition to that) to a much smaller house in the heart of Georgetown. Our current Georgetown house has two floors, each with 1,120 square feet, for a grand total of 2,240. Everything we need fits into it. Beyond being the perfect sized house for us now, it came with something that I longed for: a flat, vacant 4,000 square foot.  It had a sidewalk on the street on one side and level alley access on the other side.  It became the garden project of my dreams.  While we realized it could have a house on it, we never planned on building anything more than a great yard.

Then we went to this party. The party was a joint effort of Joe and Kim who own JAS Design Build and two sisters who each had a home of their own before they decided to buy this little Wallingford bungalow and downsize into it together. JAS did the gut and remodel to the bungalow and the work was enchanting to David and me. We had such a nice time at this party: great cocktails, great food, cool glassware, all served up in a wonderfully designed space, perfect space. We spent most of the night taking each other aside and saying, “Hey did you notice the way . . . ” or “Take a look at the way they . . . ” or “This is how we should live, in smaller but higher quality space.”

We stayed at this party way longer than we planned to stay out that night and we took it all in. It was, in our minds, the perfect event. Mary and Melinda (the sisters) gathered fun, interesting people together and presented them with a wonderful spread in a great space. As David and I were closing the car doors and pulling away from the party, I looked at David and said, “Fuck. Now I want us to build a house.

And that’s how it all started.