Tada! Table.

Have you ever had one of those projects that seems like a good idea, and is a good idea, but if you had known how much work it was going to be . . . Well, in this case I would have done it anyway, but you know the feeling. 

We have an old table. I'm not sure how old it is. We got it from Tanya, a fellow Navy wife with four kids. She got it from a little old woman who said, "A big family needs a big table." But when Tanya's big family was moved to Virginia, the Navy refused to move the table. It was too heavy. Tanya could't afford to ship it herself, so she offered it around to her acquaintance.

At the time, I was full of dreams of a big family to come, so I jumped on the chance. Seth sure was surprised to come home and find a huge wooden table and six chairs where a little white formica circle had been. But the table had been through a lot. It's finish was worn. Its underside was covered in food particles.  It needed work.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I love a project. They also know that unless I have a pressing deadline, that project ins't going to get done. We've had this table for six years, and only now, two dwellings later, is it getting the attention that it's been needing since the beginning.

My excuse is that the table is big and solid. It's a real pain to move. When I first got it, we needed four navy wives to carry it to my house. We couldn't get it in through the screen door, so we had to lift it up onto the front porch and maneuver it through my front door, down the hall, back through the kitchen, and into my diningroom. That is definitely an experience to repeat as little as possible. Plus now we have a garage, which makes handy-work less dependent on the weather. It's hard to refinish a table in the rain.

So when we unloaded our moving truck last October, we just left the table in the garage. It sat there for a while until we found a store that sold refinishing equipment (Fred Meyer has a wonderful selection). We used Formby's Finish Remover, which I was told is much easier than sanding. It is easier, but it’s not faster, and I'd call it a toss up between the smell of Formby's and the feel of sawdust.

 Still, it was a thrill to watch the uneven old finish scrubbed away and revealed bare wood grain. I wish I had a picture of myself all kitted out in my grubbies with safety goggles, ventilator mask (wow that stuff stinks), and heavy duty rubber gloves on. Boogaloo wasn’t sure what to make of me the first time.

The wood underneath was very pretty. And the new stain gave it a reddish color that I wasn’t anticipating.

The really fun part, though, was spreading on the polycrylic. You might have seen those Minwax commercials where the stain and poly just glides off the disembodied brush in a perfect line and a perfect coat. Nuh-uh. Poly drips, and so does stain for that matter. The polycrylic runs out halfway across the table, and the overlapping gets thicker than the non-overlapping points. And the drip marks stay there forever. There is no smooth and even coat. There is coating, sanding, coating, sanding, coating, and calling it good enough!

 Still, it's fun because the table becomes shiny and smooth and looks like furniture again.  A part of me wanted to keep going until I had the perfect coat, but the objective part of me said, "All you're doing is taking the stain off. It's time to be done with this."  We moved it upstairs, screwed it back together, and called if finished.  Still, good enough was good enough to get the ultimate compliment: the words “I’m impressed” from my husband.

A rainy day walk.

The dog needs to go out. He paws my chair leg and looks longingly at me as I finish my breakfast.
“Ok, Max. Ok.” I glance outside. It’s raining in that picturesque, dimpled puddle sort of way. Not ideal walking weather, but a walk in the rain could be fun. I turn to my daughter.
“Hey, Boogaloo, Max needs to go out. Do you want to go for a walk?”
“Go for a walk,” she seconds. After a pause she adds, “Get pants on.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.”
We run upstairs to get socks and, in her case, pants (I already had mine on, thank you very much.) and then run downstairs to get our boots. Her boots have little monkeys on them. Mine have umbrellas in pink, green, and blue. Highly appropriate. We put our boots on, zip up our coats, put the leash and harness on the dog, grab the umbrella, and head out the door.
Then we hit our first kerfuffle. Boogaloo wants to bring her stuffed dog, but she wants me to carry it. She wants to carry the umbrella. I tell her that if I have to carry the dog, I’m going to put it back inside. She reconsiders. Doggy gets stuffed in her pocket. Up goes the umbrella, and honestly, she looks like a little mushroom because the umbrella is wider than she is tall and hides everything except her legs.
We meander down the sidewalk toward the park. The rain patters on the hood of my coat, and I can see it making dark patches on my shoulders already. Max pulls me to one side so he can find the nearest tree. Some needs are very immediate. Boogaloo stomps past us at a brisk pace, and I begin to worry that she’s heading toward the playground. I don’t really want to spend that much time out here. It’s a little wet to stand idly by while she runs up and down the swaying bridge, up and down, up and down. Time for a mommy diversion.
“Hey, Boogaloo, come see the puddle.” I have no aversion to puddle hopping. In fact, if my boots didn’t leak, I’d do it myself. Boogaloo comes to investigate the puddle. It’s a doozy: all the accumulated water from three sidewalks and a patch of grass is funneling into one dip in the path. The water is at least three inches deep, and the puddle is several feet wide. It’s just too tempting. As Boogaloo leaps in with both feet and makes several splashes, I shuffle through it, plowing water aside and leaving a wake behind me. “Whee, whee, whee,” Boogaloo shouts. Yeah, kid, I know the feeling.
We go hunting for another puddle, and now I notice that the water from our big puddle is being funneled out into the roundabout and into a little creek bed between us and the nearest housing development. I look back at the park. There are several currents of water running down the edges of sidewalks, across the pavement, and into this little creek. There’s a depression in the curb so the water can get through. The whole park is subtly sloped so that all the water will run to this one point and travel down this dry creek bed rather than flood out the houses below us. I never would have noticed. What a marvel of engineering.
I follow the creek bed, and Boogaloo tramps along behind me crowing, “The water, the water.” The creek extends the length of the park and joins with an unofficial stream at the border of two other housing developments and runs through a little divot between them. That’s a lot of water for a little divot. I wonder how it all stays in.
Max takes this moment to finish his business, and as I bend over to clean up after him, the first drops of water run off my coat and onto my blue jeans. I straighten up and feel the back hem of my coat. Water wrings out in my hands and dribbles through my jeans to my underwear. Ew.
“Boogaloo, let’s go back.”
“Back,” and we tramp along until we get to the roundabout, where Boogaloo stops to splash in the puddle again.
“Boogaloo, Max wants to go back inside.” Max really wants nothing of the sort, but now the seat of my jeans is beginning to soak in earnest, and I can’t seem to keep my coat hem from touching me.
“No want it, Mommy. Puddles.”
Sigh. “Boogaloo, we are going to walk back now.”
She acquiesces. Then she tries to hand me the dog.
“No, Boogaloo. You wanted to bring him. You carry him.”
We make it to the sidewalk, and then she veers left toward the playground.

“Boogaloo, we are going home.”
“No, Mommy, slide.”
“No slide. It’s time to go home. Look, you can pick which path we take. There’s this one.” I point toward the short path that takes us directly into the apartment complex and home by means of two covered breezeways. “Or this one.” A slightly longer path through the trees which lets us out on our street. “You pick.”
“This one.” She points defiantly at the longer, wetter one. Then she tries to hand me her dog again.
We start wandering down the path. Between the clouds and the trees, the path we’re walking is pretty dark still, but it’s really not that much drier than the open air. Some places on the pavement are dry, but only because the trees catch the water and concentrate it elsewhere. Max forges on ahead, drawn into the underbrush by his ever active nose. I really don’t want to go into the underbrush, so I pull him back and turn around to look for Boogaloo.
She’s standing still, staring at the umbrella which she’s holding in front of her. I’m not sure what it fascinating her, but her hood is down, the trees are dripping on her head, the dog is pulling on my arm, and I’m losing patience.
“Boogaloo, let’s go.”
“Here, Mommy. Take doggy.”
“No.”
She tramps a few steps, kicks a puddle, and then pauses to rearrange the umbrella on her shoulders and the dog in her arms. She reconsiders, rearranges again, frowns discontentedly and holds out the umbrella. I take it and hold it over both of us. No, she wants it back. She tries to hand me the dog.
“No.”
We walk a little ways, and then she stops to rearrange everything again. There’s the slightest trickle of water by her feet, and she seems to want to make a puddle out of it. She jumps in it, but it doesn’t splash, so she kicks it a little and watches the water break around her feet. Then she sneezes, but that doesn’t signal the need to hurry up. Step, step. Pause. Step, step. Wander. Step, rearrange. Rearrange. No, I will not hold the doggy. Rearrange.
I walk to the nearest path lamp and stand beside it, pretending the that light can also make me warm and dry. The lamp itself stands about waist high and has a domed top, and I’m randomly reminded of the diabolical alien robots the D’aleks from Dr. Who. Is it ironic, cozying up to something that resembles a world-destroyer for light and warmth? A cold spot forms in the hollow of my neck, and the water that is soaking through my coat begins to trickle down my chest as well as my rear. No, ironic is cozying up to a streetlamp in the pretense of staying dry.
“Boooogaloooo!”
She hastens a couples of steps and rearranges herself. I am cold, dagnabbit, kid. Keep going. I wait. She comes a few steps closer and offers me the umbrella. I take it gladly, and we proceed in comradely silence for a few moments as I hold it over both of us. Then she wants it back. I don't fight it. I haven't got the energy to fight it. I try to think about warm things like hot cocoa and fresh baked cookies, but then I remember that I'm the one who has to make them happen, and I decide that I'd rather just crawl under the blankets and pull them up over my head. I want to be home.
We’re on the right street now. I can see our door. She sneezes. She tries to hand me the dog, but I take the umbrella and use it like a carrot in front of a mule. That’s right. You want the umbrella. Walk a little faster. Keep moving. Keep moving. Max tries to pull me toward an interesting smell, but I'm not having it. We are going in one direction and one direction only.
By the time we get in the front door, Boogaloo has caught my nasty, petulant mood. She tosses the doggy on the floor, sits down on the step, and tells me in no uncertain terms which parts of her are wet and need to be dry.
“Mommy, socks off. . . . Mommy, pants wet. Take them off. Take them off.”
I peel off her corduroys and toss them aside. She stalks up the stairs. As I peel off my coat and hang it up to drip, I think lugubriously of sleep and dry clothes. Why are walks in the rain so much fun again? Oh that's right, because it's so much fun to come in and be done with them.

Tidbits on a high note and a low note.

1. It's snowing! For the second time in two days, tiny white flakes graceful angel feathers perform their mesmerising dance outside our windows.  They're not sticking, and they only fall  in spurts, but they mark the first snowfall of the season. "Oh, look at the snow," Boogaloo says. The news last night spent a full five minutes covering everything from people's personal reactions to the possibility of icy conditions on the morrow.  They showed pictures of snow-covered roads and parkinglot accumulation that barely reached half an inch.  And then they poked fun at themselves by pointing out that according to the mediorologist's scale, what we have here is only a "trace" of snow, technically no snow at all.  Much ado about nothing you might say.  Only in Oregon.  Still, we hope the mountains are getting a share of this. We've been short on moisture this year.

2.  Hypothesis rejected:  We had a hypothesis that the Broncos could not lose if Seth wore his lucky jersey.  Well, Seth wore his lucky jersey yesterday, and I wore one of Seth's other Broncos shirts.  The Broncos still lost pretty spectacularly.  Their season ended last night in a painful defeat to the New England Patriots, 45-10.  Oh, ouch.  Congratulations to the Patriots who played some flawless football and took no prisoners.  We turned the game off halfway through the third quarter, and I said a prayer this morning for all the disappointed Broncos fans, all the satisfied Tebow-haters, and all the people who said they were going back to church if the Broncos won.  . 

Still, I have officially crossed over into Bronco fandom.  I went to amazon.com and put a Broncos sweatshirt on my wishlist. After all, fandom is like love.  A true fan isn't put off by losses and does not alter when it alteration finds (sorry Shakespeare).  I mean, look at the Raiders.  Look at their fans (normal ones excluded, Alan).  There is no greater committment. And in the family I now live in, well, one has to have an allegiance of some kind.  So, good bye, nominal Seahawks allegiance.  Hello, fledgeling Broncos committment.

3. A Word of Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton for all readers of supernatural fiction:
I was reading the comments on a Twilight article a couple of weeks ago (I know, I know), and I noticed one from a woman lamenting that a Christian nation should be so caught up in a movie about vampires.  Well, she was obviously unfamiliar with the material, but I thought about her question anyway for a while.  And then I read this passage in an essay by 20th Century apologist and captain of imagination, G.K. Chesterton, and thought it applied, especially to me:

    I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. . . . I could sit here and write some very creditable creepy tale. . . .Only, you see, this mood is all bosh.  I do not believe it in the least. . . . For there is nothing so delightful as a nightmare, when you know it is a nightmare.

     That is the essential.  That is the stern condition laid upon all artists touching this luxury of fear.  The terror must be fundamentally frivolous.  Sanity may play with insanity, but insanity must not be allowed to play with sanity.  Let such poets . . . by all means, be free to imagine what outrageous deities and violent landscapes they like.  By all means let them wander freely amid their opium pinnacles and perspectives.  But these huge gods, these high cities, are toys; they must never for an instant be allowed to be anything else. . . . [They] must be his dolls, not his idols.  His central sanctitites, his true possessions, should be Christian and simple.  (Chesterton, "The Nightmare," from The Essential G.K. Chesterton Collection, Kindle ed.)

 All in all, I don't think Chesterton would have had a problem with the Twilight franchise in itself.  He liked fairytales in which the hero finds himself in a strange world and makes good in it.  At the same time, a little warning against idolatry never hurt anyone, and applies to any captivating series. 
4.  I finally get a picture of me on my blog (see above), and Boogaloo took it.  I had to jump in front of the lens, but she pushed the right button.  Clever girl. 

Go Broncos!

     This is Boogaloo's favorite outfit of late.   She wears it with her monkey boots (which also get a lot of use, in case you were wondering, Mom), and she goes everywhere in it. Yesterday, she pulled if off the hanger and changed into it just to go the park. But we're all wearing the orange and blue pretty proudly since Sunday.  Seth has four Broncos shirts, and he has worn no other shirt all week. Even I find myself unintentionally sporting blue and orange. I need to find some official gear so I can fit in with the family.  

    Seriously, who wouldn't want to be a Broncos fan right now?  Wow, what a game!  Seth has been predicting Tebow's success all season, but last Sunday blew us away.  When Demaryius Thomas caught Tim Tebow's pass at the beginning of overtime, we thought he'd get some good yardage.  But then he kept running and running and running, and suddenly there was a touchdown.   And we were screaming and screaming.  Even Boogaloo was jumping up and down and yelling "Go Broncos.  Go Broncos."  We were so amped up, we had to go out for ice cream to settle down.

Then we followed Tebow headlines all week.  I love reading the comments under Tebow articles.  One comment said, "I am a diehard Steeler fan, but I will be cheering wholeheartedly for Tebow and the Broncos against the Patriots next Saturday."  Another one said, "If Tim Tebow and the Broncos can pull off another win like this one against the Patriots, I am going back to church!"  Amen.   

I'm not used to having a team to patronize.  If anyone had asked me in high school or college if I followed a football team, I would have replied, "Well, I know that Steve Largent played for the Seahawks once."  Yeah, when I was eight. There are those who would argue that "my" local team (i.e. the Seahawks) weren't worth following at that point, but as I have since learned, that wouldn't stop a real football fan.  But now, having fallen feet first into a first-class football family, I find myself liking football.  I don't exactly follow stats, but I'm actually beginning to pay attention to who is in what division so I know how hard to cheer. 

 And following the Broncos is fun right now too.  Seth is no fair weather fan.  He's been following them since 1986, probably before Tim Tebow's mom made the fateful decision to keep her youngest son.  But even he, my steady, ain't-got-time-for-that-hysteria, it's-all-about-the-numbers husband, is following Tebow mania like the quarterback is a rockstar.  Seth says he knows it's pathetic, but he has to click on Tebow headlines.  I tell him not to worry.  I've only just kicked the Kardashian headline habit, and Tebow is more worth following than they are.  Besides, if the Broncos go all the way to the superbowl, which would you rather say:  "I knew it all along, even when the pundits were doubting.  I called it every step of the way." or "I didn't follow it all that closely.  I didn't want to be uncool."?

The perfect present

You know you've found the perfect present when it gets duplicated a day later by your mother-in-law.  Because my darling Boogaloo has an annoying habit of hiding in my cupboards, Seth and I decided that we should get her a hiding place of her own for Christmas.  We looked at a lot of tents on amazon. There were tents with turrets and tents in camoflage.  There were tents with dragons on the side and tents with Bob the Builder.  But my Boogaloo is rapidly developing into a girly-girl, so we decided to get her the girliest tent we could.  Voila!

She loves it. She drags it upstairs and downstairs.  She tumbles in and out of it.  She "disappears" into it, and calls, "Mommy, where you go?"  We have a blast. 

Well, this past week, after Seth got back from Taiwan, we dropped down to Seth's folks in the Salem area to celebrate Christmas and see some family.  And while we're waiting to open presents, we begin discussing the presents we've already opened.  We mentioned that we'd bought Boogaloo a tent because she spends so much time in the cupboards.  And my mother-in-law froze. 

"What kind of tent?" she asked. 

 Yup. That kind of tent.

  What a to do.  Do we leave the tent in the box and return it for something different?  Well, no.  Because everyone else is opening presents, and we've already told Boogaloo that we're opening presents, and this year, she's finally figured out what opening presents means.   So we let her open it. We even let her set it up.   

After all, we didn't pay for it, and she loves it, and what kid doesn't need a back up?  The way she uses the one in our livingroom, I am totally anticipating early rippage.  Still, next year, we are going to coordinate more carefully with the grandparents. 

Speaking of Christmas presents, did you know that Taiwan specializes in coral jewelry?  Now I do.  My sweetie brought me home a wonderful coral bead necklace.  One of the only perks of having a husband who travels is the exotic presents he brings home. 

Considering New Year's Resolutions

I remember reading about the romance of a ship pulling into a harbor and hearing the shouts of the stevedores as they moved about the business of loading and unloading the boats. Somewhere else I read about the cries of the cockneys as cabs pulled in and out of the coachyard of an inn. Both instances had sufficiently impressed their authors so as to comment on them, but I never thought about the poetry of such a situation until today when I pulled into an Oil Can Henry’s for an oil change. There were several mechanics moving around the autobay, assisting each other in the details of the three separate cars they were working on. They would shout to each other in a rhythmic sort of way, combinations of numbers (“447903”), technical terms, and cues (“Checking engine on number threeee”), and the whole thing sing-songed around the bay in a chorus of call and response that will probably go on as long as people work on things together.

All this goes to say that I was two quarts low on my oil, my transmission fluid is filthy, and I’m due to change fuel filter. I took care of the first one. The other two will have to wait a couple of months. There are apparently a couple of leaks as well.  My poor car is getting to the point where I wonder if some of the more expensive treatments are really worthwhile, but on the other hand, a Buick is supposed to be good for as long as you take care of it. I might change my own air filter. That’s not hard to do. This year, I resolve to take better care of my car if at all possible.

There is something about the beginning of the year that adds impetus to turning over a new leaf. Not that the leaf will always stay turned. I heard on the radio the other day that 75% of people break their new year’s resolutions, 33% of them in the first week. And then we give up.  Once it's broken, it's broken.  But the energy inherent in new birth at least inspires the desire to make ourselves better people.

I think there's a Biblical precedent for this desire.  I was reading the beginning of Exodus, when God instituted the Passover, and he made it the new beginning of their year. Life began from that point; they had a new identity. I can't speak for the people of Israel at that point, but I know that now, the Passover represents a time of cleansing. A Jews for Jesus representative told me a few years ago that to the Jew at Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, leven or yeast represents sin. Passover is the time to sweep it out of one's home and life. Jewish housewives spend a lot of time sweeping up every bit of yeasted bread that they can find, leaving just a symbolic crumb for their husbands to dispose of (as a symbol of their responsibility as spiritual head). All yeast is disposed of to begin the year without sin.

I’ve been having mixed feelings about making New Years’ resolutions this year. It seems like everything I’d like to resolve, I’ve already resolved, broken, and put back together again. I just didn’t wait for New Years’ Day to begin. I mean, if something needs fixing, fix it; don’t put it on your calendar. Things like reading my Bible more astutely, praying more, exercising more, getting out of debt, and paying more attention to the people around me have been on my radar screen since last spring at least. Since I feel these things are really necessary to my physical and spiritual health, New Years’ Day didn’t really add a lot of urgency. It just reminded me that I didn’t have any new resolutions to make, and that I haven't been keeping the mid-year resolutions as well as I would like. In essence, my plate is full, and I just need to keep eating steadily.