Digging Deeper

Owning your own mess is humbling. As I watch other people owning theirs perhaps it’s only natural I should face my own shortcomings. It was not purposeful. I just looked in the mirror one morning and there it was out of the blue:  a vision of my less-than-stellar moment. Why did it have to be with my nephew? At the very moment he might have actually been trying to establish a relationship with me. He’s only 10, kind of shy, if you can still be that today. After I first moved here, my sister came for a visit with the twin boys and her husband, their dad. I had suggested we might kayak in the bay at Lovers’ Point in Pacific Grove. The boys were both taken with the idea. When I was growing up this was the site of the glass bottom boat concession. They still have one of the old boats sitting out front with its arched swan’s neck at the prow. There aren’t swans in the ocean, but that’s a minor detail. In those days, you got in the boat with 15 others, the pilot turned on the motor, and you all looked down wide-eyed while the ocean floor in all its splendor passed beneath your feet. Everyone oohed and aahed and ate cotton candy that came with the price of your ticket.

Today you have to be fit. No cotton candy for kayakers! But, I had been working out at the gym and, after my nephew selected me as his kayaking partner, I immediately challenged his dad to a race. Competition! Why do I love it when it so frequently gets me into trouble? After donning life jackets, and getting a very brief instruction from the concession manager on the basics of rowing (“What about tipping over?” I inquired), we set off from the busy inlet, easily gliding by the bathers. Things were going pretty well there in the little cove, until after 30 yards when we hit the bay and the afternoon tide coming in and the kelp beds. Off my brother-in-law handily maneuvered around to the next inlet while we were completely stuck, or so it seemed. It’s actually hard to tell when all of a sudden you are in the ocean and everything is moving every which way. We had been instructed not to go with the tide or we would find it very difficult getting back home. Best to fight the tide at the outset and then let it bring you back. But at this point, we were not only going contrary to the direction in which I was pulling against the tide, but it seemed we were being pulled further out into the bay, while I, unable to maneuver somehow had turned the boat around to face the opposite direction. It wasn’t until later that I heard the story of a woman kayaker who was lost for hours until she finally washed up ashore in Sand City some 15 miles away. I was in the back of the kayak and struggling with the entire concept of kayaking and how to turn the boat while also moving it forward. My nephew, sat in the boat ahead of me, facing forward so I could not see his expression and frankly I can barely hear what he is saying in a quiet room, let alone on the open sea when he is facing away from me, and I am otherwise occupied. I presumed he was thinking wistfully of his dad and brother, who were now no doubt having a glorious time trolling along with the otters. Was he aware that we were going backward? He seemed relaxed and calm as his oar skimmed the surface. I might have tried to explain the situation, but as my oar was less and less effective as it was caught in the kelp, I just urged him to, “Dig deeper!” with his. Note to self: more talking would have been better at engaging him in the situation even if that description portrayed my own confusion. By hook or by crook we somehow made it back to shore, my brother-in-law beat me to that as well. I just wonder how many times I said “Dig Deeper” to my nephew even when the first dozen failed to have any effect, like the whole mess was his fault. Suffice to say the trip did not get a ringing endorsement when my sister greeted him and inquired, “Did you have lots of fun?” To his credit, I learned that his dad never actually lost sight of us.

In the meanwhile back at the building site, there are so many things going on, I am the one who is having to dig deeper into the intricacies of building a home. I have been focused on the installation of the windows. I would like to get a lawn chair and just sit and watch. Since they were delivered, the guys have been doubly careful to secure the property, and that has been made easier by the fact that before installing the windows, they wrapped the house in this paper called Tyvek, a seemingly ubiquitous construction material. It is a Dupont product that purports to keep moisture like rain out, while also not keeping it in and thus preventing mildew and fungus.

The breathability of a house is an interesting concept I have read about in Dwell magazine. I am not sure there is a science to it as it is a recent concern now since houses are no longer breezy, drafty places as they used to be. Now they are insulated and tightly fit together, which can make a house stuffy. I ran across one illustration involving a professional range vent hood, which exhausts to the outside through a powerful motor. According to the vent hood salesperson, upon turning it on with all of the windows closed, nothing seemed to be happening, however, once the windows were opened the owner’s long hair was sucked straight up standing on end into the vent hood. It’s probably an exaggeration. Nonetheless, it gives one pause about circulation.

We will have radiant heating in the floor instead of forced air, so there will be no built-in house fan. Neither will we have air conditioning. We will have ceiling fans, but we decided for breathability to have the skylight open electrically and to have a screened opening there to draw air through the house.

Just as I was getting set to position my lawn chair, the plumbers were suddenly back installing more pipes to the second floor and vents to the roof and setting the position of faucets and shower heads and other connections into the walls, and I was sent to figure out the exact height and positioning of things.

In addition to shear walls, which have structural significance and any modification of which must be approved by the structural engineer, we also have other walls that seem infinitely changeable to accommodate pipes and wires. We have several short walls, called pony walls that house plumbing and soon electrical lines. One separates the shower from the tub and another the kitchen from the living room. We even have what the architect calls a “nib” wall that projects 6” into the bathroom as part of the shower wall on one side and will house switches on the other.

No time for me to sit, I must take photographs to see where a pocket door stops and plumbing fixtures begin. I hear stories of sheet rockers who might sheet rock over a plug in a wall. When the electrician swears he put it there. The smart owner will have taken a photograph of every wall at every stage, so she can go back and find the plug on the wall that now the sheet rocker must redo.

Allan is always working several steps ahead, which is good. There are lots of small details because it’s a small house at 1500 square feet into which my husband at 6’5” must be able to fit. Harry is excited to have a large four-foot square shower. However, the shower is next to a closet which will have a pocket door, the frame for which, inside the wall, was pushing the plumbing for the shower into the corner of the shower. Even after confirming that the shower head is on a ball joint that will rotate, I still felt it should be in the center of the shower wall. Voilà, Allan fixed it. Also, we wanted a curbless shower in case there’s a wheelchair in our future. To accommodate this, the shower drain will run along the back, across from the shower door. But a problem arose because the floor must be shimmed down to accommodate the drain, and it seemed there would not be sufficient fall from there to the outside to allow us to harvest grey water for the landscaping. Somehow, Allan fixed this too. Ahh, he’s a very smart man, especially when he gets to decide.

The tile installer was out this week. Next comes the electrician for whom we are almost prepared. Last week, just as all of the windows were being finished, the roofers suddenly appeared and began installing panels that would provide for a changing elevation on the roof to allow runoff and I was sent off to select gutters and drain pipes.

Right before that I had been meeting at the site with a wiring subcontractor for the security system:  smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and the sprinkler system required by local codes. Allan was with us when the subcontractor said he thought we had about six months more of construction before the job is completed. Allan muttered something under his breath. “What was that?” I asked quickly. “It’s not gonna be that long,” he replied. “Oh Allan, you have made my day!” I smiled.

It’s been six months since my kayaking adventure. I am still going to the gym to work with weights but now I focus on mending my rotator cuff strained on the kayaking foray. I am thinking that as a final push toward healing I should send my nephew a note to apologize for my ineptness and thank him for his patience and fortitude during our ordeal. Time to model what’s really important:  not winning the race, but being kinder–and having more fun! I am not necessarily ruling out kayaking’s potential for future fun either.

Awakening the Buddha Within joke of the week
Question to the Master:  How did you become enlightened?
Answer from the Zen Master:  One mistake after another.