House of Swank

Shopping The Parental Boutique

My parents are in the process of putting their house in the market in preparation for empty nester move #2 - after they got me out of my childhood home the downsized to a 3 bedroom place with a tiny yard that allowed them their basic comforts while allowing them to travel without worry of the yard going to shit and the ability to have parties when the mood struck them.

But now the mood to party rarely strikes them, and they're sick of the basic maintenance required for a home, occasionally the stairs are a pain in the ass, and it would be nice if they weren't 2+ miles from a bus line/store/coffee shop.  So they're downsizing yet again and planning to end up in some sort of apartment or condo.

In preparation for this they are significantly culling their possessions.  If they're not going to be partying anymore they don't need all of their party supplies and even traveling as much as they do there are only so many suitcases two people can use.

So I've been spending some time of late going through their house and laying claim to things that Sweetie and I want.  Thus far we've laid claim to:

• China (our second set!  Without ever registering for it!)
• A 100+ year old clock for our mantle
• Various serving dishes and a vase or two
• A tablecloth my grandmother embroidered.  It's not a very good embroidery job - puckers something fierce - but it's one of those "ugly, but it's family tradition" type things.
• A silver trunk that my Dad acquired while stationed in Japan.

By the end of this week we will also have 3 end tables which will work perfectly in our living room, but are too dark to work wherever my parents end up.

It is very, very, very, very odd to go through the house of your relatively healthy mother and start filling up shopping bags with her stuff.  I've been through this once before - during empty nest stage #1 my grandmother was moving simultaneously so my mom and I had to go through her things - but I was living a very mobile lifestyle at the time, and my mom was doing the same thing (and had first dibs), so it didn't seem quite as invasive a process.  But man, it's just weird.

The consolation is that many of these things (especially the clock and the tables) are items my parents treasure and cannot get rid of, but are a bit of a waste of space or won't fit their new decor.  While they fit our decor perfectly, and save us a ton of money to not have to go buy them for ourselves.

The second stage of the process will come once the house has been sold, and that is the garage sale.  I refuse to allow them to have this sale without me supervising.  Well, I trust my Mom, but not my Dad.

He gets excited in the heat of the moment and the success of the sale, and starts to case the joint for more things to sell.  During their garage sale during their last big downsizing this activity resulted in my father selling this:

That is an ice bucket in the shape of the helmet of a suit of armor, and one of the swankest things I have ever seen in my life.  And when I moved into the original House of Swank it was denied it's place of honor in that home because someone bought it at a garage sale.

10+ years later and I still give my dad crap about it. 

So now I've decided that I supervise any garage sale my parents host.  I accept that my parents want to keep some of their stuff for themselves, and I've got it on "layaway" until the appropriate time arises - I'm even a bit surprised on how quickly I got the tables out of layaway - but they can't go selling my layaway items out from under me!

I've Never Been a Breakfast Person

Can someone please explain the allure of the bed and breakfast to me?

I'm not talking about the small, like 4-10 rooms, inn that has a front parlor where they serve you breakfast.  The decor in places like that tends to be a little cute for my tastes, but I've stayed in places like that before and have no complaints.

No, I'm talking about when the rich retired couple buys a really big house and rents out their guest bedroom(s) to wandering travelers.

Hotels I get.  You go, you pay, you mess up the room and the staff who have an hourly wage or a salary do your bidding for you.

Staying at a friend/relatives house I get.  You go, you don't pay in money but you bring a bottle of wine or it's family and you just descend upon them, you hang out and visit and at the end of the day you retire to your separate corners.  You ask if you can help with the breakfast, you strip the bed before you leave, you try to clean up behind yourself and you don't stay too long or you'll start to stink like the fish.

B&Bs are like these weird hybrid where money changes hands and you can never really feel at ease.  The owners want to be all chatty with you and tell you their life story and offer you recommendations on where to go and what to do and form this CONNECTION.  While you're just sitting around being your slovenly self.  Because if I'm paying for it I'm not making my bed.  And maybe I don't need your recommendations.  And maybe I like it when things are quiet once in a while and don't need you to just keep on talking.

Luckily our room was in "the bunkhouse" this weekend. E.g. not part of the main house.  There were two rooms in the bunk house.  The couple staying in the other room had completely taken over the common area of the bunk house before we got there.

So we wandered Newport catching the sights we wanted to see, sharing some yummy dinner, then hid in our room and read our books for the night.

Really, do people enjoy this sort of traveling?  I just don't get it.

Them

The majority of my life, and the entirety of my voting life (the year I lived in San Antonio I maintained my vote in Oregon) I've lived in two states.  States that, from a national perspective, appear to be very "progressive" and "liberal."

The fact of the matter is that both of these states are VERY divided.  The urban, metropolitan areas are very left-leaning.  The rural, agricultural areas, not so much.  However, the metropolitan areas, by definition, have more people, so tend to win out in statewide elections.  But look at a statewide map and there's a fair share of red on a local level.

My own political persuasion tends to lean to the left, and I've always been very at home in the metropolitan areas of my states.  The year I spent in the Tri-Cities I got to see what life was like on the other side, but that was a move of necessity rather than choice, so it was a bit of a badge of honor that my politics didn't match those of all of my neighbors.

Well, I've started to see these signs popping up around town:

A bit of a history lesson for those who don't live in Washington and don't remember the story:  Dino Rossi is your stereotypical Republican.  Christine Gregoire is your stereotypical Democrat.  They were opponents in the 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington.  Originally Rossi won by something like 200 votes.  There were mandatory recounts and accusations of voter fraud and all sorts of mudslinging on both sides.  In the end Gregoire became Governor.  By eight votes.

It was not a pretty process.  It showed a lot of holes in the system, that people at least claimed to be cleaning up since then.  I'm sure that Rossi supporters still have hard feelings about it.  Just as Gore supporters still have hard feelings about 2000.  And this is our first gubernatorial election since that debacle.

And here we are four years later, and we'll have the same opponents facing each other, and I now live in a place where there is enough of a right-leaning contingency that the Republican candidate can play into that us vs. them mentality.  I am now amongst the them.

At least my legislative district still leans to the left.

For The Birds

Dear Local Birds:

I thought we had a nice little thing going.  I'd mow the lawn and futz around in the garden, and then you'd come along and look all cute while feasting on all the worms and bugs that had been disturbed in the process.

I enjoyed watching you out the windows, and was strongly considering developing a garden that you would enjoy even more, so that I would have the best yard on the block for you and your friends.

And how do you thank a girl?  NOT by taking a giant crap on her windshield.  Nearly every damn day.  Even if none of you are the culprits, you've got more pull with the outsiders than I do.  They should be crapping on the car that is permanently parked in the neighbors yard, not on my car.

I'm willing to work with you on other issues, but only if you address this one issue for me.

Love,
Swankette

The Answer: 140 gallons

The question:  If I let the "grass (mostly moss with some weeds mixed in at this point)" in the back yard grow to a height of two feet, what will the volume of the clippings be when it's all mowed down?

Your standard yard waste container is 64 gallons.

Just play around with that math in your head for a little bit.

For My Own Convenience

This is the recipe I like to use  for making white chili.  Although, as should be expected with chili it's not so much a recipe as it is a framework.  But it's a good framework, and every time I go to make white chili it takes me forever to find this recipe, so I'm posting it here in the hopes that next time around I'll have an easier time finding it.

It's very easy to make this in a Crock Pot, but if you make that change I recommend against swapping out the great northern beans for black beans because everything takes on a nasty color if you do.  Black beans and the stove top method work great, though, and if you use yellow corn makes for a colorful dish.  Otherwise, it's very monochromatic.

This go-round I'm using a bunch of leftover chicken bits from a roast chicken I made earlier.  I'm contemplating substituting lemon juice in place of lime juice since I've got some lemons on hand, but I don't have to make that decision final until I'm at the store.

I'll soak the beans tonight (outside of hummus I generally prefer using dried beans to canned) and throw the rest of it together tomorrow.

P.S.:  Sweetie - if you don't feel like having chili for dinner tomorrow night you should stop by Burgerville on your way home.

A Tale of Two Sports and Seven Words

I know I'm the last person on the planet to memorialize George Carlin in weblog form, but it occurred to me today that one of his most brilliant pieces of work has been ignored in favor of the cursing that he's so well known for.

The first time I heard this routine he put it in a context of why football should be our national past time instead of baseball.  Even without it, I think it nails both sports perfectly and explains why I am a fan of both of them as well.

Well, It's a Start

Bavasi's gone.

So we now know the top dogs at the Mariners have pulled their heads out of their asses at least a little bit.

Perhaps it was The Onion article that made them realize just how bad a team the Mariners are.

The new GM's first move needs to be to get rid of Jose Vidro - .219 does not a DH make.  I would be better as DH, and Jeff Clement is hanging out in Tacoma just waiting for an opportunity in the bigs.

Unless the GM can figure out a way to get Richie Sexson traded to another team so we can lose him AND his salary.  But if that happens he's obviously signed a pact with the devil.

RIP, Jim McKay

I just learned this afternoon that legendary sportscaster Jim McKay died last weekend at the age of 86.  He will be missed.

If I had to attribute my love of sports to any one person it would be McKay. In the days before ESPN there weren't a lot of television options for a bored kid on a Saturday afternoon.  So on those days, I'd frequently turn into the Wide World of Sports.  Sometimes it would be covering sports I had no interest in (boxing, racing), but frequently enough it would slide into the fun or bizarre that it kept my attention.  Cliff diving, pool, sports you'd frequently only see during the Olympics, it was all covered in the Wide World of Sports.  And McKay projected both reverence and joy in whatever sport he was covering.  As a kid, who knew something could be both fun and important?

I was around 6 months old during the 1972 Summer Olympics, so I did not get to witness first-hand his coverage of the hostage situation.  But I've seen him oversee coverage of many other Olympic games, and without even reading the reports could know that he covered things perfectly.

I miss the Wide World of Sports, the same way I miss MTV.  Both shows forced you to sit through the bad so as to guarantee you'd not miss the good.  They gave you little tastes of things, and if you liked what you were tasting you could go elsewhere to savor them in larger portions.  There are no television smorgasbords anymore, just hundreds of stations filled with focus-grouped programming.

So, goodbye, Jim McKay.  You'll be missed for what you brought to the wide world of sports, and that can never be replaced.

Notorious

Today I decided to walk to the World Wide Knit In Public Day event being held in the 'Couv.  It's just over 2 miles away, mostly downhill, and I could simultaneously be a lazy ass and take the bus home.

While walking through my neighborhood I came across a house that was for sale and stopped a moment to check out the flier out front.  Mainly to see what it was listed for, to see how badly the market had dipped since we've moved in.  The house has 1 fewer bedroom and only 1 bathroom and is listed for $10k less than what we purchased the House of Swank for, so I think we're doing OK.

Anyhow, there was a gentleman at the neighboring house out doing yard work who commented to me that I had just moved into the neighborhood, so shouldn't be looking to move already.  He recognized me from the latest neighborhood meeting.

That would be the meeting where I told the transportation committee that if they didn't support a recommendation that brought transit through our neighborhood they were not honoring the wishes of the majority of people within the neighborhood based on survey results.  I think I made a few enemies at that meeting, but I also made a couple of friends. 

This gentleman was not amongst the friends.

But we still had a nice chat for a few minutes about things completely unrelated to transit and transportation.

I suspect soon I'm going to become "that girl" - since I am making myself known and am not afraid to speak up. 

If I can be "that girl" walking to the max stop in 10 years I'll be very, very happy, indeed.