this old, old house

We've moved (the blog, not the house!)

2010-03-22T19:00:00.000-04:00

Hello! We've stopped updating this blog for the time being. Whitney will continue to blog about the house, being a homeowner, and Buffalo at her website.

You can, of course, continue to explore our posts about NACA, buying a house, and Buffalo-related housing issues.

Thanks for reading!

Extreme Makeover Park Dedication

2010-01-24T23:11:00.003-05:00

Thought I'd share this photoset in light of tonight's Buffalo-based Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Congrats to our neighbor Delores Powell, our fave organization PUSH Buffalo, and the rest of the crew that made it happen.

Y'all rock.

Scenes from our house painting (exterior)

2009-11-10T18:26:00.000-05:00

We painted the house this summer, did I mention that? I could swear I wrote a post about it but when I tried to find it, I couldn't.

Anyway, here's a photo of the house in the beginning of the summer:

As you can see, the paint was starting to peel. The sides were in much worse shape, trust me.

Sean and Steve did the majority of the painting and had a little accident we refer to as "the caulking incident." It was the time they caulked the whole front of the house with non-paintable caulk and had to go over the entire thing again with paintable caulk. Yeah, it was awesome.

It's also the reason we ended up painting our house white. Because it was the only color that didn't show the caulking mistake. Because the caulk is clear. Because when we tried to paint over it with green the paint beaded up and ran away. Oops.

Anyway, it turns out we really loved the white. It opens up the whole back yard and we'll add some splashes of color to the door and window trim this Spring. We're also going to get a new fence in the backyard and I will (finally) hang up my window boxes.

Oh, and we're going to paint the cement porch--any color or paint suggestions?

Dreamy interiors

2009-09-22T19:11:00.000-04:00

I'm inspired by Andrea Scher's photo challenge at Shutter Sisters:

I am manifesting a home. A dreamy house right here in my neighborhood... I
have a detailed list of all the things our ideal place would have, and gorgeous
light is one of them.

[...] This week's challenge is to show us your dreamy interior, or perhaps
its an image of someone else's you can link to.

Krisatomic did a similiar "inspiration" post a few weeks back and I found it lovely to step into her collection.

I regret that not all of my photos have the appropriate name/credit attached to them, so many were right-clicked and saved as I browsed the web. Nevertheless, enjoy:

"For Jane" originally uploaded by yvestown.

Lovely attic room with a great cottage feel.

Love the open shelves in this kitchen.

Another open shelf and a great half door!

So many Buffalo homes have towers like this...

The mini-gallery looks cool.

Scandanavian flavor + colors + playfulness = charming

Who wouldn't want a cup of tea here?

Another dreamy attic space.

Lunch time rant: Erie County Holding Center

2009-08-19T12:46:00.002-04:00

Bad news just keeps rolling in for the folks who run the Erie County Holding Center. Check out this article from the Buffalo News today:

Linda Arthur moves slowly on arthritic knees. She's 60 years old, 5 feet 5 inches tall, and a breast-cancer survivor who reaches for her medicine at noon
each day.
And she's dangerous.

Or at least she was treated as a danger to society for a weekend in December when jailed in the Erie County Holding Center. She was denied her medicine and other basics of civilized life: toilet paper, a toothbrush, soap, water, a blanket, a bed.
It all stemmed from a neglected parking ticket.

The sad thing is that this kind of treatment is a regular occurrence at the Holding Center. Just read the 14-page Justice Department report on the Center's deplorable conditions. My lawyer friends, a few of them acting as public defenders or assigned counsel, frequently share horror stories that match the report's findings: clients beaten in elevators, denied essential medication, and otherwise treated like garbage.

I know that there exists the sentiment that people in the Holding Center are criminals, deserving of whatever ill comes their way when behind bars, and I think it's crap. As the News' story demonstrates so well, people in the Holding Center aren't always mass murderers and child rapists. They are your neighbor, your kid who did something stupid, a family member who didn't pay her parking ticket. Hell, they are your favorite hockey player.

They deserve due process and they deserve humane conditions while being held.

I took a minute to write this while scarfing my lunch down because I wanted to get the word out about a related event happening tonight and every Wednesday in the near future*. If you can, please come out to demand some change and if you can't, at least drive by and give the crowd a good honk:

PRISONERS ARE PEOPLE TOO rally outside EC Holding Center

Every Wednesday during rush hour traffic - 5:00-6:00PM

Outside the Erie County Holding Center (Delaware & Church)

*I know, two posts from me in less than 24 hours? Is it still the same Whitney?

Slideshow! PUSH Houses on the West Side...

2009-08-19T07:58:00.002-04:00

I swear that an update is coming soon but for now I wanted to share some photos I took on Monday. They're part of a project I'm doing with PUSH Buffalo.

These homes are all on the West Side: Chenango, Massachusetts, W. Utica, 19th.

News from the neighborhood...

2009-04-26T20:28:00.001-04:00

Cross-posted at Buffalo Locavore.

This weekend was pretty darn exciting over on the West Side. Just a couple short blocks from my house Five Points Bakery opened its doors and sold out of bread within two hours. Sean and I walked over today around noon and were lucky enough to snag a loaf for our late breakfast. It was delish.

Besides the fact that Five Points is owned and operated by a couple living a block away from the bakery, besides the fact that their bread is 100% grain and made from locally-grown wheat stone ground on site, besides the fact that Five Points partners up with the good folks at Promised Land CSA (my CSA!) to purchase their wheat and products--THEY OFFER A BREAD SHARE.

I am so out of control excited about this share.

Five Points is offering a 13-week, $65 bread share. They'll have four shares every year, one per season. The summer share offers a multigrain pan bread, a honey wheat loaf, a cinnamon raisin, and a specialty bread. You select the kind you want and stop by one of the pick-up locations every Thursday to take it home. You can also add muffins, cookies, and their house-made pizzas to your share as well.

As we walked home from the bakery today, Sean and I talked about the summer ahead and how easy it will be for us to eat local. Between our CSA share, our new bread share, and an endless supply of deer meat from Sean's brother (that's for him, I'm a vegetarian), we hardly have to grocery shop.

Now, on to the chickens..

Holy moly: two years

2009-03-22T21:46:00.003-04:00

Two years ago yesterday, Steve and I closed on our house(s). Seems sort of unbelievable but at the same time, not really.

For me the biggest change over the past year is that I've grown into my role as a homeowner. I've become more comfortable with the ins and outs of maintaining a house and with all the drama associated with being a landlord. I've relaxed a bit, to put it simply.

Being a homeowner is no longer the defining part of who I am or what I do, like it was when I was 23 and had just made an investment bigger than I could even imagine. Don't get me wrong, I'm still naive and learning at 25 but I'm happy to say that I'm no longer freaked out by the fact that I have a mortgage.

The first couple years of living in our house and on our block were really about orientating myself: to the West Side, to the way a house works, to what would eventually become our system of managing household finances (ok, still trying to figure that out), even to working full time. It seemed crazy to me that I would ever have the time or energy to start a garden or a block club--two things that I plan on doing in earnest this spring and summer. This next year will be a Year of Getting Out More.

Of course the biggest change of all is the addition of two lovely people named Sara and Sean. They've both embraced the house and neighborhood in fresh and different ways, which has helped me do the same. I'd be lying if I said the household wasn't occasionally challenged the question of what's their/my role in this whole house-owning adventure, particularly because Steve and I, well, bought the houses together. But we're learning how and when to make decisions, and I feel blessed to live with three people as thoughtful and loving as them.

This blog is also over two years old by now. Many thanks to everyone that's read and commented, and (please) keep it coming. I'd love to hear your suggestions on the blog's content, especially if there's something related our house or experience about which you'd like to know more. Let me know in the comments of this post and again, thanks for reading.

The Boo/Hiss board + a contest

2009-03-14T13:59:00.002-04:00

The Boo/Hiss board is located inside our kitchen and was one of the first things I put up when we moved in. It's really a "Boo/Hiss" and "Thumbs Up" bulletin board but whatever. Here's how it looked a couple weeks ago:

Because I'm a pack rat I like to save scraps of paper that have virtually no value. The Boo/Hiss board disguises my hoarding tendencies as fun, snarky and maybe even worthwhile.

Seen below on the Boo/Hiss side of life, going clockwise: (1) a photo and interview excerpt with Janet Snyder from Kiss 98.5 in which the morning radio show host basically calls Mia Farrow a bitch because she had the gall to bring up genocide in Darfur, (2) Impossibly snide-looking boys in expensive suits on a yacht, being groomed for a life of priviledge and J. Crew trouser socks, (3) An article from the Buffalo News about Amherst residents rejecting a ballot measure that would protect a certain amount of green space from commerical and residential development, (4) Family Planning Advocates button which shouldn't be there because I heart FPA, (5) An article about the legacy of the Vietnam War in Vietnam.

As you can see, I've also included the all-white, all-male "Best News Team on Television" from a CNN ad in the New York Times. Also there's a business card from some weirdo Sean and I met in Puerto Rico. Not really Boo/Hiss material but we don't have a designated "Sketchy" portion of the board. Oh, and there's Janet Snyder again. If you can't read the Q&A that's ok, it's basically all about shopping and finding "the perfect outfit."

And now, some Thumbs Up, clockwise again: (1) Boss's Day card from Sean's secretary, sort of surreal for both of us that he's a boss and that he has a secretary, (2) Invite from a Mike LoCurto Rocky-themed fundraiser, (3) Article on Danny Glover's arrest in Niagara Falls, Ontario, resulting from a protest in support of Unite Here!, (4) Thank you note from CEJ, (5) Letter to Steve from a near-stranger who gave him his DMX and insisted that he pass it along to another young man when he no longer needed it.

The board might be coming down or changing focus soon so I wanted to make sure I honored all the snark and love. Speaking of prostitutes, check out our frozen-in-time Eliot Spitzer caption contest:

Add a new caption in the comments of this post and I will give the author of the best comment a yet-to-be-identified prize. And by "best" I mean that one that makes me laugh the most.

More Boo/Hiss photos and explanations up on Flickr.

Scenes from our front house painting & caulking "party"

2009-02-15T12:48:00.001-05:00

Back in December we spent a weekend getting the upper apartment of the front house ready for new tenants. This included painting the walls and trim of several rooms, scrubbing the bathroom until it couldn't be scrubbed no more, and steam-cleaning the carpet. Oh, and re-caulking the tub.

Our previous tenant lived in the house for 13 years and kept it very clean. Still, after all those years the house needed (needs) some major updates, both cosmetic and structural. Our new tenants were on a tight time line so most of the updates in their apartment were, like I wrote above, of the cosmetic persuasion

Our friend & neighbor Kevin helped us paint on Saturday night. Here he is with Steve in the living room.

We decided to go boring landlord white with the painting but are flexible if our tenants want to paint it another color. Besides Steve, Sara, Sean, and me, we were joined by several generous friends and declared it a "painting party." I guess BEER + PIZZA + [any activity] = PARTY.

My father brought over a steam-vac and helped us clean the carpets. They were stained in certain places and generally very dirty. The above photo is of the living room after the carpets were cleaned and the walls and trim painted. Trust me, it looks so much better. Next time I'll do before and after photos.

My primary job was to clean the bathroom and I got really into it. I scrubbed the walls, the tub, the toilet, and the floor. I put a wax on the floor at the end and then admired its shine from the doorway (me to everyone else: "DO NOT WALK IN THE BATHROOM IT IS DRYING"). With Steve's help, I learned how to use a caulking gun and made the following video of my disappointment:

Scenes from Whit's first caulking experience

2009-02-04T22:47:00.000-05:00

Warning: Use of a caulking gun may sometimes inflate one's sense of coolness.

Rite of Passage: Our pipes burst!

2009-02-04T19:31:00.000-05:00

So Saturday morning I woke up around 9:00 and lazed around in bed for awhile, reading a magazine and thinking about what my Saturday would involve. It was the first time in awhile that I'd had a day open and to myself, and the possibilities were endless: shall I go for a walk? Perhaps kick it up a bit and strap on the snowshoes? Maybe I will clean my apartment really, really well and even start in on the disaster that is our back hallway/pantry?

I was planning a mix of getting-stuff-done and having fun but alas, none of it was to be. At 9:30 Sara called to report that her mom (who was visiting at the time) went over to the front house and thought a pipe was leaking. Oh, and the basement was flooded. Like past the first stair.

I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and put on my rain boots. Sara met me outside and we ventured over to the front house to take a gander. Sure enough, the basement was flooded with about a foot and a half of water and as I discovered upon getting a face full of spraying water, a pipe had burst.

What followed was a morning (and afternoon and evening) of trying to get the fire-hose sized sump pump in our basement unfrozen and working, as well as finding a plumber who wouldn't charge us a million bucks. There was also the issue of hot water, as in our tenants didn't have any. And then the waiting around for the plumber to get there.

My Saturday quickly turned from a day of doing what I wanted to a day of dealing with shit. After an hour of a self-imposed pity party and a tough love talk from my boyfriend, I decided that I wasn't going to let the flooded basement and bursting pipe ruin my day entirely and that, well, I'm a grown up and I own a house and shit happens. So I cleaned the kitchen while I waited and I learned a lot (relatively speaking) about the basement of our front house.

Nate the Plumber--and that's actually how he introduces himself--showed up just as the water in the basement was all pumped out and the lights turned back on. It was dark in the basement all day (and flooded with freezing water) so I hadn't been able to see the burst pipe, I just felt it when the water sprayed my face. Not knowing anything about electricity and with our electrician-in-residence at work, I didn't want to play around with the fuse-box and light fixtures while standing in a foot of water. Once the water was out and the lights came on, this is what I saw:

Nate the Plumber went to work thawing out the frozen pipes, cutting and replacing the split pipe (thankfully it was a small part), and solving our drainage problem. He eventually concluded that the waste pipe* in the middle of the house had no access point and therefore no ability to be cleaned. We usually get the main drain pipe in the front yard cleaned of tree roots twice a year but our regular Roto Rooter maintenance didn't do the trick this winter. Nate thought that there must be a clog towards the middle of the house and without the ability to clean it, our basement would keep flooding. So, Nate and his son cut the pipe and installed a Y-shaped pipe for access.

And so far, so good. We had a big melt on Sunday and while that would usually flood the basement, it stayed flood-free. My fingers are crossed, hoping that we've solved our problem for the time being. Or at least until the lining of my rubber boots has time to dry out.

*Steve claims that he's never heard anyone describe this by a name other than "shit stack."

The Winter Of Incessant Basement Flooding

2009-01-11T20:58:00.000-05:00

Winter '08/09 will go down as the Winter Of Incessant Basement Flooding. So far the basement in the front house has flooded four times this winter, requiring us to do the following (in no particular order):

Sump-pump gallons upon gallons of water onto our driveway and into the street during a days-long snowstorm, creating an ice rink at the end of our driveway.
Bring in the "big guns," i.e. borrow a sump pump with a hose that looks like it could fight fires. See above.
Inquire about replacing our now-fried electrical board for the brand new furnance for the downstairs apartment.
Have Roto Rooter come out to clear the root-infested drain pipe. Twice.
Cringe whenever the temperature rises enough for the ice to begin melting and then frantically check the basement for water.

I have to say though that after I (mostly) handled the first flood all by myself, I felt pretty frickin' awesome. Two years ago I would've wanted to lay down in the fetal position and/or call my dad.

Learning how to take care of a home, I've learned, is mostly baptism by fire.

Scenes from my kitchen, sunspot edition

2008-12-12T19:13:00.000-05:00

I looked at this picture tonight while trying to find another photo on my Flickr stream. Even though I'm enjoying the snow right now, I thought this summer scene in the kitchen was sweet.

News from the home front

2008-12-08T18:38:00.000-05:00

Exciting news to report from the home front: we are getting our house weatherized! And I don't just mean the put-plastic-over-the-windows kind of weatherization.

I'll have more details (and technical terms) tomorrow but here's what it is likely to entail: entirely insulating our house from basement to attic, caulking doors and windows, wrapping the basement in plastic, and completing an energy audit (we've had the first part done).

After my mom and brother came over last night and informed me that my apartment is inhumanely freezing, I feel even more excited to get the house insulated. I think our quality of life will go up by 400%. I'll keep you posted.

Oh and also, our tenant moved out of the front house so expect some updates on what we're going to do up there.

As promised: scenes from my "new" office

2008-10-28T08:16:00.000-04:00

New floors, bright space.

Finally got around to hanging some stuff up.

Oh, also

2008-09-23T18:06:00.003-04:00

I'd be remiss not to mention whitneyarlene.com. Yes, I'll keep blogging here but after keeping a journal online since 2000, I wanted to take a leap and get my own domain. Read both.

Scenes from my office and bathroom makeover...

2008-09-23T17:55:00.003-04:00

So my months of obsessing over all-white interiors led me to two simultaneous projects over Labor Day weekend: new (old) floors in the office and a brighter, whiter bathroom.

In the office, like every other room in the house except the kitchen and bathroom, there was ugly, black indoor/outdoor carpet. I'd like to take it all up eventually and decided to use my office--the only room with carpet not connected to another room with carpet--as a test run: how long would it take? would it be messy? what was underneath?

Formerly white and minimally damaged floors were underneath. Plus lots of staples, glue & insulation, and tack boards. Ripping up the carpet and insulation was easy enough. We hauled five four-foot pieces out in about a half-hour. The messy (and dusty and tedious and long) part had to do with pulling up the staples and tack board.

I wore this cool mask to protect me from allergens.

At the same time, we taped off the bathroom and began painting the walls and ceiling white. Previously, they were a light tan--for a bathroom with no window, it was too dark and dank. The splash-back (is that what you call it) area behind the sink and toilet was a yellow-ish color. I painted it and the woodwork a light grey.

After all the staples were pried and the tack board in the garbage, I scrubbed the floor with a mild detergent and let it dry overnight. I then collapsed into bed.

The next morning, I set to work painting the floor. We used one container of Dutch Boy's Latex Enamel. It went on smooth and thick and thus far, there have been zero scuff marks left behind. It was too expensive either--I think $28 with a mail-in rebate.

The first coat going on! And speaking of coats...

The bathroom took three coats of white. Sigh.

At this point I need to thank my mother who helped me throughout the weekend and especially in the bathroom. She OWNED the bathroom, she ROCKED the bathroom. She also got all mom on me and took charge of the carpet removal--just the kind of leadership I needed.

On Monday, Labor Day, she and my brother stopped by the house to pick up my mom's supplies. This is how they found me: a wreck. The floor's second coat of paint had dried and I barely had enough energy to drag the IKEA chair into the office and fix myself a cup of tea. I forgot how exhausting a renovation project really is.

More photos of the finished (and put back together) office and bathroom soon. For now, more photos of the improvement project can be found here.

Oh, and I won't be doing the rest of the floors for awhile. Maybe never!

Alternative reads from your lazy hostess

2008-08-26T17:31:00.000-04:00

Since I'm certainly not giving you enough to read this summer, try the following links for some Buffalo and housing-related reads:

Where the Urban Dream Life is Going Cheap: What could make someone want to leave New York and move to Buffalo? You'll recognize some familiar faces in this New York magazine article, most notably our friend Aaron.
Should you become a Co-ho? A Time piece on the growing trend of buying a house with a friend. We know a thing or two about that.

Scenes from this summer's CSA share

2008-08-07T10:54:00.005-04:00

The first week's share. Check out the garlic scapes!

Baby beets and my new tablecloth (found at a garage sale!)

Sean models this lovely little squash.

Wherein I reveal myself to be a crazy plant lady...

2008-07-06T08:01:00.000-04:00

(Apologies for the cross post)

I'm a sucker for mornings. My house, a rarity in the tightly packed neighborhoods of Buffalo, has only backyards on either side of it (it is behind another house). The sunlight pours in throughout the day, switching sides of the house, switching rooms.

In the morning it hits my bedroom, gently nudging me out of my sheets so I can find what, for me, is often a breathtaking site: my home office, with its wooden table, bathed in brightness. As I write this, my desk is covered in a rectangular patch of sunlight; the window looks out on the building a few doors down. I've been told it was a dairy, now it is home to a Burmese family. The back half remains vacant.

Because the house is behind another house, there is no backyard. It is on the backyard. For this reason, I have attempted to grow a jungle of houseplants inside by the windows, and have only recently begun fiddling with the patch of grass we have between the two homes. I started my house-jungle with the ficus and Christmas cactus that had both survived my post-college moves and abandonment. Brynn gave me a branch of her enormous jade tree and last fall, with a $50 gift card to Lowe's left over from my June birthday, I brought home all the sickly and marked-down plants I could fit in my car.

For months now, I've done battle with one of these plants. It sits on my desk, close to the window I am at right now. I refer to it in my head as the Crazy Plant but according to the information card it came with, it goes by "jellybean plant," sedum, or Aurora Borealis (yeah, I did a double take on that last one too). It is a succulent, therefore more delicate than my viney and leafy darlings, and I've been a bit obsessed with its well-being.

Its little jellybean leaves are very fragile and often fall off when I touch them. As the plant has grown, its branches droop over the sides of the pot, with tiny white roots extending out, looking for something to plant themselves in. It has doubled its size and little miniature bunches of leaves pop up around its base; sometimes I drown them when I water the plant. A few months back, I realized that one of the drooping branches was headed on a road to nowhere so I picked it up, dropping leaves as I did it, and twisted it around another, smaller branch. It's doing ok now. After that though, I decided that unless I interfered, my Crazy Plant was going to kill itself. Each time I looked at it, I became stressed.

This morning though, after a week away on vacation, I came into the office and found the plant and its companion, another jade, thriving in my absence. I don't have much to explain for my sudden change of heart--my mellowing out about its obviously natural characteristics--but I now love the Crazy Plant. I suppose I always loved it, hence my obsession with its health, but now I love that it is crazy. It droops over the sides, in what I assumed was vain, but instead of dying, it just adapted. New branches have sprung from the side of the drooping branch. It's green and solid and really beautiful in its chaotic growth.

I've been sort of having a hard time lately, feeling like I can't see the path ahead of me as clearly as I'd like. This morning I am laughing at myself, at my obsession over this house plant's path--a sort of small example of my worry, unfairly placed on this lovely little succulent and its growth process. I don't really know what zen means to other people but to me it means letting the chaos of life wash over me, taking moments to notice the way a plant grows and apply that same lesson to my life. I'm going to be zen about this plant from now on, and I'm going to try to be zen about me.

I'm a sucker for mornings.

We love advice: bike storage style

2008-06-25T08:11:00.002-04:00

There are many great things about our weird--but not weird for Buffalo--house behind a house situation. For instance, we get tons of sunlight because there are no houses next to ours, just backyards.

There, as well, some downsides. With the warmer temperatures and an increased need/desire to do yardwork and gardening, a problem with storage has arisen. Before Steve and Sara moved in to the downstairs apartment, we threw all of our crap--including rakes, shovels, bikes, ladders, and more--into the front hall. Now that front hall is their entryway and well, it don't work out no more.

I'm not asking for you readers to solve all our problems this morning, just some help on one front: bike storage.

Tough times: our bikes in the early-December elements.

It's been raining like crazy lately and my and Sean's bikes are getting hit hard. Rust is even creeping in a little bit. As Steve likes to scold us, we're bad bike owners.

We could bring them upstairs into our hallway but the hallway is not very wide and it already sort of bursting with shoes, coats, and my dear houseplants. We're thinking of erecting some kind of tarp/outdoor shelter in the back of the house between the fence and house--any thoughts or suggestions? Anyone have luck with those hooks you hang your bicycle on? Help!

Silver lining

2008-06-23T22:11:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to share this photo for awhile, from the early spring when the lilacs were blooming. We now have roses bushes in bloom all over the West Side and it's fun to see them pop up all over, even the vacant houses.

I went on an explore with my camera in the vacant yard next door. The grass is overgrown and full of wild flowers, crazy weeds, and even morning glories. Please don't confuse this excitement with my endorsement of slum landlords though--just trying to find the silver lining!

A window in...

2008-06-23T22:01:00.000-04:00

I made lentil soup for dinner tonight--it's still cool enough for it to make sense--and wrote a letter to a friend while it bubbled on the stove. I got up occasionally to stir the pot and add a little more black pepper, a little more thyme.

On one of these trips to the stove, I looked out the window near the sink and spotted three girls tiptoeing across the roof of their back porch. They were covered, from head scarves to long dresses touching their toes, in beautiful flowing fabric that played with the wind quite well. They soon saw me through the window and started waving excitedly. It was very sweet, the whole scene.

And now, my lentil soup recipe (it's all improvised):

1 tbsp butter
2 medium red onions
2 medium sized potatoes
one bag dry lentils
4-6 cups of water (you pick thickness)
3 celery stalks
1 cup diced carrots
1/2 cup brown sugar
about 1 tbsp hot sauce (or a couple dashes of cayenne)
black pepper and salt to taste
2 tbsp thyme
dash cinnamon

Cook onions and potatoes in butter in soup pot until onions are soft. Add water, lentils, black pepper, and salt and boil for 30 minutes or until lentils are softened up. Add carrots, celery, brown sugar, hot sauce, and rest of spices. Cook until desired consistency and adjust spices accordingly. Enjoy over brown rice or with a piece of whole wheat bread.

Scenes from our first West Side winter...

2008-05-15T11:10:00.000-04:00

Somedays it was just beautiful.

Sean and I battled my car every morning: frozen shut doors, doors that wouldn't shut when driving, refusal to start, doors of which one would work, etc.

New friends moved in, including Micaela and wunder-dog Umi.

More Umi dog.

The discovery of a snowsuit I bought for cold winter mornings on the farm made a day of sledding more...interesting. The flared legs aren't too visible in this photo but wow, this thing was clearly a snow bunny uniform in its day.

Lots of bundled up conversations on the front porch.

The space between our house and next door was verrrrrrry icy this winter. Sara nicknamed it "the glacier." Rock salt wil be bought in bulk next year.

Spring lilacs

2008-05-13T11:27:00.000-04:00

Spring has come to our backyard: lilacs everywhere! The white and light purple are technically from my neighbors yard (shhhh) and the dark purple from a potted lilac tree my Dad and Terrie gave me at the housewarming last May. Plans are underway for its permanent home by the porch.

You may be from the West Side if...

2008-05-06T19:46:00.000-04:00

I found this jewel, "You may be from the West Side of Buffalo if..." while looking for something online at work. It appears to have been written when the West Side was more of an Italian neighborhood than Hispanic, as it is now. Maybe ten years ago?

Anyway, enjoy.

Hang in there...

2008-05-05T11:31:00.000-04:00

Spring-flavored update--complete with photos--coming soon!

Studio city

2008-04-09T20:34:00.000-04:00

Buffalo was recently named the #1 Arts Destination for Mid-Sized cities by American Style magazine. It shares the honor with big-size New York and small-size Santa Fe. I think, for the people who live here, this is a welcome but unsurprising recognition.

In their write-up (graciously passed along by my friend Melissa!), they mention Buffalo's efforts to attract and retain working artists with the subsidized Artspace Lofts housing project. While Artspace seems great--after all, I've got a soft spot for intentional communities--I'd like to see more attention placed on the easy opportunities for inexpensive work/live spaces in the City. Artists desiring studio and living space--hell, living quarters!--would likely find Buffalo's housing market a treasure trove.

Using our house and situation as an example, here's what's to offer:

Two homes (both doubles) with a combined 4,000 square feet (roughly 2,000 ft. each
Rental income on the front home
Two apartments in the back house with 2-3 bedrooms in each plus a full attic
A mortgage payment a little over $500 a month
Less than a mile or two from the Elmwood Village and downtown Buffalo, both of which host art galleries, theaters, shops, and other points of interest
Walkable distance to Grant Street with its family-owned Italian market, butchers, pharmacy, community center, and more

Before Steve and Sara moved to the downstairs apartment, Steve's music studio sprawled throughout the living room. We had an enormous home "theater" in one of the extra bedrooms and a "dead daughter room," which was for all intents and purposes a guest room. The kitchen was unused. In short, we had plenty of room. Even now, there's a lot of room down there and Steve has a small, magenta-painted music studio in one of the bedrooms. I still have, as I always have since we moved in, an office in which I write and store massive amounts of junk.

So, artists, come to our city and turn a vacant house problem into progress.

Looking for ladies with the know how

2008-04-02T20:21:00.000-04:00

From time to time I take a look at the Seal Press submissions page to see if any of their upcoming anthologies are a fit for me. I thought I'd highlight this current call seeing that it includes a request for female "home repair" experts (I am not one, sigh).

Want to be a Seal Author?
Here’s your chance. Seal Press is launching a new series and we’re looking for writers who are experts on the following topics:

Car repair
Camping
Home repair
BBQing

We’re looking for women writers who are passionate about these topics. Whether it be your passion, your hobby, or your profession, the main qualifier is that you really know your stuff. We want writers who can translate these subjects in an intelligent, fun, and accessible style. We’ll tell you the details of the series upon seeing your qualifications.

Requirements:
One-page cover letter
detailing why you’re the person to write on this topic
Resume or CV
Previous publishing experience
Anything that you think sets you apart
from other applicants (keep this within reason, please)

Send materials in a word document attachment, in the order listed above, to Brooke Warner at: brooke.warner@avalonpub.com .

Questions about NACA: Round #2

2008-03-31T20:12:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the delay in this next installment. I was unexpectedly out of town...

What's your experience with NACA's rehab department, HAND?

Not good--not good at all.

But before I launch into my tirade, let me give a little background: NACA members have the option of taking out rehab loans for their property at either a lesser, equal, or higher amount than the amount of their mortgage. Both loans--the mortgage and the rehab funds--get rolled into one payment. We took out a rehab loan worth a quarter of our mortgage loan. Follow me so far?

Prior to closing, buyers are required to get 2-3 estimates on each item of work they need done. This is difficult for a couple reasons: for one, it's hard to get into a house you don't yet own and for another, it's challenging to coordinate with 2-3 contractors per job. We had many jobs but luckily, we only needed to choose two separate companies to handle them all in the end. Still, a lot of groundwork.

After closing, we were told that work on the house needed to start immediately. Our contractors needed to fill out 5-8 pages of paperwork to begin their work and another 5-8 pages to complete it and receive payment. As if the paperwork itself were not enough, the HAND department is completely and utterly incompetent.

In year or so that we've been dealing with the HAND department, staff turnover has been high. Perhaps for this reason, very few staff members know what they're doing. Staffers often contradict each other or themselves, and they rarely seem familiar with NACA's own policies and procedures. You can forget about developing a relationship with someone in the department because they will either leave before you get a chance to call again or not remember you at all, despite the fact that you spoke for 15 minutes the day before.

(Can you tell I hate this part? Steve has often felt violent after hanging up with HAND; I relate.)

The very real consequences of this staffing problem come into play when it's time for contractors to get paid. In short, it takes forever. Both of our contractors have told us they will never again do a NACA job. My friend Michael, a contractor, said he will never again do a NACA job after he spent hours of his life on the phone with the idiots at HAND--and he's the one who recommended NACA to us!

So, I would not recommend getting a substantial loan for rehab from NACA. I'm glad we got ours--annoyances aside--because we would not have been able to afford the repairs out of pocket, but I am thankful that they were relatively small, done by two contractors and completed within six months of closing. I have a friend who took out upwards of $40K in rehab and her experience has been, it seems, a nightmare.

I hope to never interact with the NACA HAND department again.

I'm working with the NACA program now in Baltimore, and I want to give up. No one returns your calls or e-mails, and the turnover is so terrible you end up working with several counselors before you can close.

I've heard people in other cities, besides Baltimore, voice similar complaint about NACA offices. Just like any business, I'm sure much of the experience depends on the staff. I found Buffalo's office to be responsive, helpful, and reasonable both before and after we closed. Good for us, I guess.

When we were wrapping up with our counselor John and moving on to work more appropriate for our NACA-paid lawyer, I definitely got the sense that our progress was freeing up room for more people. John is no doubt a busy guy so I think it's even more incredible that he returns my calls.

All this being said, given my experience with the HAND department, I think NACA does need to do some top-level evaluation of its departments and regional offices. Inconsistency seems to prevail.

One year as a homeowner, this friday

2008-03-20T01:04:00.000-04:00

This Friday marks the one year anniversary of our closing, otherwise known as The Day My Hand Fell Off From Signing So Many Papers. Hurrah!

I thought I'd do a little retrospective and include never-before-seen-on-the-internet photographs of the house. The scenes and spaces may look familiar but I've a soft spot for the kind of light you get with film, especially with a well-used and known camera (click the photos for bigger versions).

Another telephone wire and sky shot, this one taken from the kitchen window.

This year we've made the following repairs/improvements to the houses: new porch roof, new siding on the back of the house, two new furnaces, one new boiler, some chimney work, a new back door, a new drop ceiling in the rented house, multiple toilet repairs, new paint throughout both houses, electrical work, security lighting, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting.

We survived two incidents of overflowing toilets and crumbled ceilings (including one tonight!), a couple flooded basements, mice infestation, broken toilets, clogged tubs and sinks, and lengthy discussions with CitiMortgage customer service reps.

My office with nice light. Still messy, as always.

Steve and I have both been through job changes and most recently an intra-house move/rearrange. Our mortgage payment--taxes escrowed--has changed three times, and will hopefully stay static for a while. Friends moved in to the apartment next door and a vacant house across the street was bought at the City's IN-REM auction.

Also, I planted tulip bulbs.

Questions about NACA: Round #1

2008-03-18T01:15:00.000-04:00

I've compiled the questions you've asked about NACA through the comments section of this blog, over email, and through MySpace. I will answer them in a series of posts. Some of them I grouped into general issues/concerns with the program. Please keep in mind that I'm speaking about my and Steve's experience; other NACA members may have a different take on its services, positive or negative. I'll throw in a few anecdotes from friends here and there.

How long did it take you to get through the NACA process?
Steve and I knew we wanted to buy a house in the City of Buffalo but beyond that, we were clueless. We were leaning to the West Side but were also willing to consider properties closer to the Canisius College area and Black Rock/Riverside. In our hearts, we wanted a house tomorrow but in our heads, we knew it made sense to go slow.

I think this reality affected our experience with NACA in a positive way. We didn't have a neighborhood or a house in mind--as some people who contacted me do--so it didn't matter, for example, that we had to wait three weeks after our NACA workshop for a one-on-one appointment.

From finding out about NACA and attending the required workshop to closing on our house, the process took about a year. If I remember correctly, both presenters at our workshop said their process took around a year too.

While I understand the frustration associated with slow-moving bureaucracies, I think that the process NACA puts its members through is a good thing. If the goal is to give first-time homeowners mortgages that are non-predatory in their nature, fixed at low interest rates, and genuinely affordable for that buyer, then an education process is a must. NACA members are required to create budgets, accumulate savings, take care of bad debt, and be reasonable about what they can risk. This hand-holding was great for us; some people might find it annoying.

For about 4-5 months, all Steve and I did was save money, pay bills on time, and check in every couple of weeks with our counselor John (he was very accessible). Once we had enough money saved--that magic number was determined early on--we got hooked up with a real estate agent. About two months and many homes later, we found "it" and made an offer. After that, everything moved along well.

(I can't say express enough how grateful I am for taking this process slow. It's the biggest investment I made; I'm glad I looked at 15 houses and had enough money saved to buy paint supplies after closing.)

I think the slowest part of the NACA process is accumulating enough savings and credit. For those of you hoping to speed this part up, come to your first appointment with money in the bank and a budget already created.

What's your relationship like with NACA post-closing?
This is a two part answer because there are really two relationships to consider: that with our local NACA office and counselor, and that with the NACA rehab department (known as HAND). I will get to the HAND stuff in another post--trust me, I've got a lot to say!

Regarding the local office: each member is required to participate in two NACA "actions" per year as an agreement of his/her membership. These actions aren't enforced with an iron fist and I suppose if you wanted to blow them off completely, you probably could. That would also make you an ass.

The "actions" are pretty diverse and include the following choices: office work, speaking for ten minutes at a workshop about your experience, attending an advocacy event, and putting a lawn sign on your front yard. You can also sit on a panel and review current requests for NACA's Neighborhood Stabilization Fund loans from other members. We did this last one a couple months ago and it took an hour.

Beyond the actions, I've had very few reasons to call our counselor John post-closing. I did reach out to him regarding my trouble with CitiMortgage and he had some helpful advice. I would not hesitate to call him again if needed. Around the time I was having trouble with the bank, a different NACA rep from out of town called me to check in and see if things were going ok. They frequently monitor the status of member's loans and will check in if things look hairy. Luckily, my problem was finally resolved the day before so I didn't need his help. Still though, I appreciated the call.

Q&A on NACA

2008-03-17T11:06:00.000-04:00

There have been a lot of requests for our "honest take" on NACA in the comments section of this blog. I'm going to respond to them in a post on this blog over the next couple days.

If you have any lingering questions, please post a comment to this post and I'll include it. Thanks!

Color links

2008-03-14T11:35:00.000-04:00

I meant to include these in my post but here are some links I recently found related to homes and choosing colors:

Houseblogs.net has a great slideshow of 15 entries on colors from its member sites, some of which I'll list individually here.
An interview by Lsaspacey of SHELTER with an owner of a colorful and beautiful house (includes pictures).
Yvestown blog follows a woman who lives in a white-walled confectionery palace--I love it!
This new discovery, Door Sixteen, has inspired me.
I'm not the only one with an obsession with white walls.

Intense colors WHOA!

2008-03-14T11:23:00.000-04:00

Stairwell of an Israeli house profiled in the New York Times this week.

Having lived in a multi-colored, high-intensity house for almost a year now, I have to say that it's a mixed bag.

On the pro side, photographs taken in our house are always lively and engaging (I'm biased, of course) and first-time visitors to the house usually offer positive feedback. One otherwise laconic friend recently stated, "These are the colors I'd paint my house if I had the balls." Awesome, thanks!

On the con, it's a little dizzying to go from intense red to intense surfer blue in just two steps. And there's something about the bright colors that makes the space feel cluttered to me, even if it's really not. To the contrary, the two most muted (and cluttered) rooms--my bedroom and my office--are often my refuge from the intensity. They both seem to me clean, and airy.

Since Steve and Sara moved downstairs--we need an entry about that, I know--I've been contemplating future changes to the space. I'm drawn to all-white walls or at the very least some more neutral palettes. Thoughts?

Do not get a mortgage with CitiMortgage

2008-02-27T22:40:00.000-05:00

I am, at the moment, on the phone with a representative and I am crying. I cannot tell you how many times I've talked with someone who was going to "clear everything up" only to have the same conversation 2-3 weeks later.

Updates, all shapes and sizes

2008-02-26T01:16:00.000-05:00

1) Two more regular characters have been added to the homestead scene, namely Sean and Sara. They both came off adventures of their own--Sara in the political world of Iowa, Sean on the coast of Kenya.

Over the past few weeks, Sara and Steve moved to our downstairs apartment and painted it fun colors, in the tradition of our fun house:

2) I started work at City Hall, heading up a Councilmember's office. I am learning more about the Inspections department and housing court than I ever imagined possible. Good stuff.

3) Been cold and snowy around these parts lately, producing crisp views like this one:

4) Mortgage company is still a jerkfest.

5) Our next door neighbors moved out (sadness) but our tenants have a new baby (happiness).

Neighbors to the North

2008-02-19T00:06:00.000-05:00

You can see the Peace Bridge from our attic window and in the summer it's possible to ride bikes to Canada. This week alone I went across the border three times!

Peace Bridge, looking towards Canada. November 2007.

Most recently--as in, today--I took my brother to Toronto. He turned 17 yesterday and this adventure was part of his birthday gift. We spent most of the day walking around so Josh could see the city up close; it was his first time exploring Toronto on the ground and at length.

We hit up the Annex, Kensington Market, Chinatown, the whole Queen Street West strip. It was lovely, all in all. Such a great city.

Flowers on Bloor Street. May 2007.

While munching on some Korean bibimbap downtown, I crossed my fingers and prayed that Grant Street in Buffalo would someday turn into the international restaurant scene that everyone is talking about.

That's all, I'm rusty at this writing thing of mine.

An open letter to my mortgage company

2007-12-30T13:54:00.000-05:00

Dear Jerks,

As much as I love wasting hours of my life on hold with your collections and customer service departments, it's getting kinda old. Especially because the error in accounting is entirely yours.

I've made my payments, on time and without exception. In fact, the checks posted weeks ago, a fact I've explained to all four of your employees that have either reached me at home, at work, or on my cell phone. Once I explain everything to your employees, they usually say something helpful like "Oh wow, yeah this is a mistake," or "I don't know what's going on here," and then end by telling me "I'm going transfer you to customer service." Twice their transfers have led me to 35-45 minutes waiting periods, all of which I've ended because my lunch break was up. Twice the collections representative hung up on me when he/she tried to transfer departments.

The woman with whom I spoke this morning--my cherished Sunday morning--was frustrated herself. After a couple minutes of her bullshit customer service lines, she said, "Ok, I'm gonna be real with you, I can't even see my supervisor--I don't know where she is right now." Awesome. Then I got disconnected when she tried to transfer me to customer service.

Awesome.

So no, I won't be making a payment over the phone because I didn't do anything wrong. Your company messed up, your employees have backed up my claim, and next time a collections rep calls me at work, I'm going to refer them to the letter I've slipped in January's payment. It's written for the customer service department and it includes my phone number and the best time to reach me. Until then, leave me alone.

Sincerely,
Whitney

Frozen waffles

2007-12-17T12:45:00.000-05:00

I'm working from my kitchen table right now as I can't get my car out of the snow. I'm pretty sure the old woman living behind us is throwing frozen waffles out to her two Rottweilers.

Man, working at home is exciting.

Monster Snow Storm

2007-12-16T14:04:00.000-05:00

I've been reading the Weather Channel's front-page narrative, titled "Monster Snow Storm" and it's kind of poetic:

Heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain have raced across the Midwest into the Northeast as yet another powerful early season December winter storm roars along headed to the Atlantic coast to redevelop and fire a ferocious storm into the Maritimes...

...After a quick burst of sleet and freezing rain mainly from the Mason-Dixon Line northward this early morning, rain will rapidly push northward from Virginia, through eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to New York City as temperatures rise with a mild but strong wind off the Atlantic. The I-95 Corridor from New York City to Washington should just be wet through Sunday evening.

I can't find a permalink so chances are by the time you click there it will be gone or modified, but it looks like this narrative feature is a regular thing on Weather.com. I will be checking it more often.

Quick hit

2007-12-12T20:32:00.000-05:00

Found this great gallery of decorating ideas via KRISATOMIC: LivingEtc. I'm a big fan of the sections on "Walls," as I have a ridiculous amount of photos to put up. Great ideas.

From the safety of my winter hibernation...

2007-12-08T18:24:00.000-05:00

Now that the snow is flying, I am content to sit by my window sipping coffee, knitting hats, and thinking about all the things I'll do around the house come Spring. These daydreams include what has become a staple of all my fantasies: the illusion of more time.

This summer, for example, I constantly claimed that post-campaign I'd have more time. Now it's post-February I'll have more time. This spring--I claim again--I'll have more time. It's not likely that I'll have more free time at all. In fact, it's likely that I'll be up to my waist in local and presidential campaigning.

Still, one can fantasize and fantasize I will:

Get Your Garden On with Gayla Trail, a workshop held in Toronto this April with the author of You Grow Girl. She's an urban garden goddess.
Food not Lawns: My little patch of grass has such potential, at least from the perch of my warm window seat.
The removal of this monstrosity. Steve and his pops did put a nice, new door on the outside to keep the heat from pouring into the kitchen of our tenant but it's likely we'll scrap and rebuild the whole thing. And I'll help, I swear.
Paint the downstairs, including the room that STILL has painter's tape around the windows. This could happen sooner than the Spring, I know, but the fumes. The fumes!

Roto rooted

2007-11-26T21:24:00.000-05:00

Today the Roto Rooter man came and cleared out a bunch of roots inside our sewer line. It was pretty neat, actually, and probably something we'll have to do twice a year as maintenance. According to our tenant, the house has historically needed roto rooting 1-2 times a year.

I did a little research and found the following on invasive roots and how to deal:

5 Steps to Dealing with Invasive Tree Roots
Sewer Line Replacement Procedure - This narrative takes it a step further than we needed (fingers crossed) but it's interesting nonetheless.
Q & A on invasive tree roots with Reader's Digest's Handyman

It seems like periodically reaming the pipes is not a bad option. Roto Rooter man also recommended the following: once a month, fill all sinks and tubs in the house with water. At the same time, release the plugs and then a couple seconds later, flush the toilets. He says this should clear out the sewer line fairly well. I'll keep y'all posted.

Any other experiences out there? Has anyone tried the chemical solution (i.e. copper sulfate crystals)? Share in the comments please...

Scenes from Talent Nite!

2007-11-25T01:31:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, our house hosted its 1st annual Talent Nite. It was awesome. What was intended as a small, neighborly event quickly grew into a larger showcase so if you couldn't/didn't come this year, be on the lookout next time!

In preparation for the event, a stage was constructed Sunday afternoon. Steve and our long-term house guest/friend Harrison were subject to my insane hostess cleaning mania--another sign of my lovely mom's influence!--but they forgave me when they saw that I bought gummy bears for snacks.

The winners of each category, as seen above, were as follows:

1. BEST USE OF BODY PART BELOW WAIST - Kevin, "Amazing Moves"

2. MOST HILARIOUS - Jack, "Dino"

3. BEAUTIFULEST - Whitney & Steve, "Tonal Poem with Interpretive Dance"

4. MOST LIKELY TO GET YOU ARRESTED IF DONE IN PUBLIC - Jack, "Dino"

5. BEST USE OF MICAELA - a tie between Erin & Zoe, "Mind reading" and Liz, "Pageant Rules"

6) CLEARLY SPENT TIME REHEARSING - Anthony, "Mayor meets Motley"

7) POOR PILGRIM PITY PRIZE - Jewel, "A Night Without Armor"

8) BEST - Jack, "Dino"

All pictures can be found here: TALENT NITE set on Flickr.

My mother's daughter

2007-11-04T20:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, with help from our house-guest and friend Harrison, I rearranged the two common areas in our upstairs apartment (read: the living quarters).

We'd had the bookshelves and two chairs in a room that's really more conducive to couches and coziness, and the couch and comfy chair in a space that's kind of an entrance room. I hatched the plan to switch them a couple weeks ago and finally got around to it yesterday.

IT IS AWESOME.

As both Steve and Harrison have pointed out, I have completed my transformation and am officially--as if there were every any doubt--my mother's daughter. You might remember from my tales of our painting party how my mother repeated her love for the color of the walls no less than a thousand times. Well, as I sat on the couch yesterday, surveying the rooms post-rearrange, I kept repeating over and over, "I love this, this looks soooo much better." And on and on.

To top it all off, as I was planting bulbs in my front yard today, my friend Micaela told me that since I'd bought a house I turned into a "granny." I suppose she was referring to my gardening, and my tapered sweatpants, pink gardening gloves, giant fleece jacket, and sensible sneakers. And maybe the fact that they all went out last night and I stayed in to knit and catch up on some much needed sleep.

So maybe buying a house does change you but I want to go on the record with this: I was definitely an early-to-bed girl before the house, as well as a knitter, a secret-lover-of-decorating, and my mother's daughter.

Anyway, pictures soon!

Scenes from last week...

2007-11-01T11:46:00.000-04:00

Before he left for Kenya, my boyfriend was basically staying with us. Below is a Sunday morning breakfast I made, isn't it cute?

Also, check out scary Steve in the camo poncho my dad lent to Sean for his trip. He didn't end up using it though because he wants to try to blend in or at least pass for Canadian--sorry Dad!

Doesn't he look like a wax figure?

NACA mention on NPR...

2007-10-24T12:13:00.000-04:00

Bruce Marks, CEO of NACA, was on NPR's "Morning Edition" this a.m., discussing the mortgage meltdown and Countrywide's loan adjustment program.

Go NACA!

Faded

2007-10-19T11:27:00.000-04:00

Look at how much the paint in my office has faded since March:

It's kind of unbelievable, right? I don't remember the color ever being that bright but apparently it was. I didn't spend much time in the office until recently because it was full of junk and boxes and crap.

Actually, it's still full of junk, boxes, and crap but I've shoved most of it into the closet! Hurrah!

Anyway, we used high-quality (read: expensive) paint but I guess the morning sunshine is too bright. The only thing that annoys me really is that I can't take rearrange the photos on the wall without it looking weird. Oh well, I'll take weird walls over a dark room anyday.

Now, if only the sun could tone down our electric-blue living room...

Sky plus wires

2007-10-04T11:37:00.000-04:00

It may be obvious that I'm obsessed with the view from our kitchen window, in part because it looks over the neighbor's garden but also because makes one of my favorite combinations: sky plus wires.

Here are some recent shots from the kitchen:

Scenes from our neighbor's garden...

2007-10-02T12:48:00.000-04:00

The neighbor's garden continues to flourish. The squash plant is so far up the telephone pole that I can now reach out the 2nd-floor kitchen window and touch it. I'm hoping that at some point I can harvest dinner without having to leave my table. Just reach on out and grab squash.

They're growing pumpkins too. The tomatoes have mostly been claimed.

Hard to close drawers

2007-10-01T11:50:00.000-04:00

I spent the more time inside my house this weekend than I have in months. A lot of it in my lovely kitchen with its bright light and old, hard-to-close drawers.

The hole

2007-09-28T11:38:00.000-04:00

Since we moved in, the toilet in the upstairs bathroom was wobbly. Lately, it had gotten to the point where sitting down was dangerous if one wasn't exceedingly gentle and delicate. Not too long ago, Steve called to tell me that finally, the wobble had gotten the best of us: the toilet leaked and the seal around the bottom needed to be replaced.

Here's Steve with the gross, expired wax seal that protects all toilets from leaking.

Now, I've had many moments during which I've been happy to have a friend along for the roller coaster ride of home ownership. The toilet breaking was one such moment, mostly because the sight--but surprisingly, not so much the smell--of the hole above made me want to retch (in case you're wondering, that brown stuff is not poo).

Steve apparently LOVED the challenge of a broken toilet though as well as tormenting me with the grime from the hole:

Anyway, my involvement ended after the above photo was taken but I think that Steve solved the problem by going to Home Depot and buying a toilet fixing kit. Now when I sit on it to do my business, it's nothing but stable and strong. Not unlike a throne.

Instead of blogging this summer...

2007-09-21T11:29:00.000-04:00

I worked 50-70 hours a week helping to elect these wonderful people to office:

My lovely friend, boss, and 6th District County Legislator Maria! She came in with 65% of the vote.

Mike LoCurto, Delaware District Council member, and film buff extraordinnaere.

And the real big winner, David Rivera for Niagara District Common Council!

Read about our races here and here. We worked our asses off and I'm so ready for some quiet time. And blogging!

Cool tool

2007-09-05T11:45:00.000-04:00

Made with Spell with Flickr!

Plants make everything better

2007-09-04T11:33:00.000-04:00

Boarded up

2007-08-29T11:25:00.000-04:00

This is the house next door to us. Earlier in the summer, the back window was removed and left wide open. We were nervous about it, especially walking back there at night, so Steve boarded it up himself.

Instead of blogging, I've been...

2007-08-28T11:07:00.000-04:00

...attending campaign meetings 3-5 nights per week.

...forgetting to water my houseplants.

...going to Saturday morning Buffalo ReUse board meetings.

...enjoying open bars, maybe a little too much.

...working with folks to keep this kind of stuff to a minimum.

Tune in

2007-07-24T11:22:00.000-04:00

One of the great things about my job is that I get to meet people who are doing important work in the City of Buffalo and help hatch plans as to how we can collaborate. Case in point: we met yesterday with Mark Fuller from the Stop the Violence Coalition.

If you live in Buffalo, you've probably heard about this organization. In short, they have about 15 balls in the air, including responding to homicides, working with families of victims, putting themselves in the middle of urban war zones to create and keep truces, looking for missing persons, running a GED program, and launching economic literacy programs. Plus more.

I was and am beyond inspired by their work. Therefore, I'm making a plug:

Radio-thon today to benefit the Stop the Violence Coalition
WUFO 1080 AM - "Pledge for Peace" all day long

Why Oh Why

2007-07-23T22:19:00.000-04:00

It turns out this is a great song to listen to in your kitchen when it's raining and your stomach is full of food.

Scenes from an urban farm

2007-07-22T18:22:00.000-04:00

When we first bought the house, both of my parents commented on the backyard of the house behind us. I specifically remember my dad saying something to the effect of, "I know where you can get a lot of shit." My mom consistently grimaced.

You see, two rottweilers live back there and from what we could tell back in February, they were free to fill up the yard with poop. No one picked it up and as the snow melted and the rain came pouring down in the spring, the backyard was one giant puddle of shitty mud. Here's a shot from a snowy April day:

We had suspicions though, due to the set up, that our neighbors were actually great. We suspected they were gardeners, of the put-everyone-to-shame category. Later in the month, after that last snowfall, they started to work the ground. Not only did they turn over the soil in their own yards, but they did the same in the two yards to the right as well:

Throughout the rest of Spring and now into Summer, we've been watching their bounty take over. It's really not fair at this point to say that they are gardeners--how trite! how self-indulgent!--because in all actuality, they are farmers:

Look at those rows! This is the third or fourth different vegetable they've harvested from the middle lot.

On the fence they're growing squash and that tree in the left corner is full of ripe pears. Show offs!

So you're probably wondering, who are these neighbors? We are too. We know they're old and we think they're Polish. We know they water their masterpiece every day and get lots of deliveries. We know they walk very slowly. We've never exchanged words.

Stay tuned though, dear readers, for I'm hatching a plan to become best friends!

Balancing act

2007-07-20T11:26:00.000-04:00

Last night Micaela came over to talk with me as I was having a rough sort of night. I've been working a lot, as is the case during the summer campaign season, and also feeling kind of lonely. Seems like I've gotten out of practice with asking people to be there for me. Or rather, with asking more than a small selection of people to be there for me.

Micaela & Steve: probably the most "Kodak moment" moment we've had.
We were writing a song about the Holy Trinity--no joke, we're in a band!

I told her about the calm I felt post-vacation and how I've been trying to carry it with me since coming back into the grind. She said she thought a lot of it started with canceling out the chaos around you, and we both agreed that our physical environments have a lot to do with it.

Somehow I thought I'd be more settled in at the house. I never thought the dishes would always been done or the bathroom sink clean but I did think that I'd have pictures on the wall and a relatively clean bedroom and all boxes emptied by now. Not the case, not even close!

I'm so tired at the end of the day. Last night I thought I could use my little ball of energy to clean out my office after I read the last two chapters of my book but by the time I read the last few words, I was too whipped.

I'm not asking for advice per se, just admitting that I'm still adjusting to a life that is not, well, college. Even years later I'm still hoping for a chance to get it all done and probably romanticizing the hell out of the past. It's all about balance and if you've got any pointers, hit me.

Some not-so-good news

2007-07-19T15:41:00.000-04:00

Last weekend delivered two murders in our immediate neighborhood as well as other violent incidents. The Buffalo News reported on it earlier this week. At 7 p.m. last night, there was a Stop the Violence rally/vigil around the corner and the News reported on it too. Here's our neighbor, Lona, speaking about the neighborhood:

Credit to Buffalo News

I don't know much else to say right now but to emphasize what a lot of my friends, co-workers, and allies have been saying: we can't stop violence unless we organize against poverty. Period. Own the word, use it.

Boundless energy

2007-07-19T11:39:00.000-04:00

I told everyone about my first new friend in Buffalo, Michael Gainer, a little while back. Well, now you can see how everything has come full circle: he's on the cover of this week's Artvoice!

This lengthy profile is an adequate portrayal of Michael's boundless energy, his sincerity, and his vision. I'm so proud of him and of Buffalo ReUse--we've come a long way, baby!

Picking the Buffalo ReUse logo at a Board Meeting

Quick story about Michael: when the toilet overflowed last Friday and poured down through our tenant's kitchen, I panicked because Steve was at work and I didn't really know what to do. The first person I called was Michael.

"Where are you?" he asked. I told him I was at work, about to hop on my bike and ride home. "I'll meet you there in a minute."

Sure enough, when I pulled up, he was already there talking to the family, making jokes, and assessing damage. He mopped up the water in the bathroom upstairs, showed the kids how to turn off the water should the toilet overflow again, and helped me haul out the water-logged ceiling tiles. He did all of this while smiling.

You go, my friend!

Things I want to do

2007-07-18T11:06:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry to say that my office hasn't gotten any more organized but I think I'm going to move some of my crafting stuff (i.e. knitting, paints, sewing machine) into an empty bedroom downstairs.

I want to start painting again, and knitting, and otherwise do some stuff with my hands. Sometimes I feel like my life is a long list of things I want to do.

Shameless plug of friend

2007-07-16T10:37:00.000-04:00

My friend Mic has just begun an 8-month job aboard a Carnival cruise line ship. He is blogging about the experience over at The Salty Tales of Seabag Manbag. Go read!

When it rains, it pours

2007-07-15T14:03:00.000-04:00

Quite a few crazy things happened in my first week back from vacation: my car was stolen, for one. Before I left for my break, I dropped it off at the mechanic's because the transmission seemed screwy. When I came back and called to inquire about the status of my car, the shop owner discovered that the car was missing. He thought that perhaps some of his guys took it to a "trammy shop" to be scanned; he'd call me in the morning.

Sure enough, the next morning, he called to tell me that the car was gone and the police were on their way. A stolen vehicle report was issued, my insurance company and the mechanic's insurance company set up to squabble, and then last night I picked up a voicemail from the police saying the car had been found.

I'll give some updates when I know more but let me take a minute to gloat about this particular irony: my car was stolen not in my neighborhood in the city but in Amherst, the "safest town in America."

Besides stolen cars, I rang in the weekend with an overflowing toilet and spent Saturday replacing the tiles of the drop ceiling in our tenant's kitchen. I think this is one of the gifts of owning a home though: necessity makes you do things you didn't think you would, or could.

So long, farewell

2007-06-29T11:45:00.000-04:00

I raise a toast to my own vacation.

I leave tomorrow for one-week, stimulus-free vacation in the Canadian wilderness. Unless Steve suddenly remembers we have a blog for which he is a "co-author," you won't see any posts up here until I return.

In the meantime, check out these great things going on in and around our neighborhood:

Urban Roots. Cooperative garden center near our house. We bought potting soil and a rake here and they are by far the best potting soil and rake I've ever worked with.

Buffalo ReUse. Yours truly is on the board of this fine organization--it was the first project I worked on upon moving back to Buffalo. Check out our salvaged materials inventory and the pictures of the most recent deconstructions.

Black Rock Advocate. Newly discovered blog about the neighborhood to our north.

Homeowner club

2007-06-21T20:08:00.000-04:00

It seems like a lot of people I know are buying houses. My boss and her husband just bought their first, as did my and Steve's friends Eric and Rebecca. A couple other folks are in the midst of the NACA process too, soon to be homeowners themselves.

One thing that's struck me these first couple months is all the money we're spending on stuff like lawnmowers, sump pumps, and hoses. Sometimes these purchases can be delayed but more often they are of the immediate variety. For instance, the basement has flooded. For instance, the grass is 3-foot high. For instance, the basement flooded again.

With all this in mind, Steve and I recently sent out an email to our homeowner friends, suggesting that we create an informal list of household and yard tools that we wouldn't mind sharing. We volunteered use of our painting supplies, Steve's toolkit, yard & garden tools, and lawnmower. I suggested too that we think about purchase bigger items as a group, like a ladder.

I grew up on a tight-knit block and borrowing stuff from the neighbors was a regular event. Anyone out there have experience with this sort of communal sharing of tools?

Making peace with my mom's clean-freakiness

2007-06-20T15:32:00.000-04:00

My mother has often described her twenties as a time when she would vacuum her apartment multiple times a week and wax the kitchen floor every Saturday. She's always seemed to enjoy diving into that particular pool of nostalgia, staring off into the distance to imagine her dust-free windowsills and sparkling silver sink drains. I never understood how someone could be so turned on by a cleaning routine.

And then, yesterday, I came home from work and cleaned for five hours. It was great. After plowing through four loads of laundry and discovering where the funky smell in the kitchen came from (answer: moldy hamburger buns left over from the housewarming party), I felt peaceful.

I'm understanding, I think, where my mama was coming from. The life for which she reminisces is not necessarily a life of scrubbing floors on your hands and knees but of having enough time to take care of your shit, including the maintenance of your living space. I bet the same period of time in which she prioritized a well-vacuumed apartment was one where exercise, sleeping, and eating right were also honored. A time when she had the capacity to honor those priorities--and this is something to look back at fondly, to fight to maintain even as you learn to compromise.

So, if you're reading mom, I vow to never again snicker at your memories of clean living (especially because my birth probably threw all that balance out the window). My house will never be as clean as your standards dictate but I now understand your need for a routine as sane. And what's more, I see my recent crazy-busy week of letting the laundry pile up and the hamburger buns go moldy and working more hours than I care to admit as just what it is: crazy.

It turns out...

2007-06-19T11:25:00.000-04:00

...that hedge clipping is the most fun I've had in a long time. It's the adult version of cutting off your Barbie's hair. I kept looking around like Really? I'm allowed to do this? I can just cut this branch off, alter the landscape, and no one can tell me not to? Awesome.

It also turns out that the next day, my forearms hurt so bad my arms shook when using the phone or lifting a coffee mug to my lips.

Scenes from my home office

2007-06-15T11:34:00.000-04:00

So a couple weekends ago I put together a bookshelf for my office. It's from IKEA so you can either exclaim, "Ooo, I love IKEA--awesome!" or call me a yuppie behind my back. Or if you're Steve and Micaela, to my face.

Anyway, if you've ever put together furniture from IKEA you know that they include wordless instructions and a crapload of wooden pegs, non-screw screws, and a set of allen keys. The instruction packet also features a happy little man who mimes something like, "Call IKEA if you need help!"

What follows is my photographic evidence of the process--from start to stop, frustration to frustration, bruise to ultimate triumph:

Those damn pegs pissed me off, I thought I would die one or two times when they kept popping out. Instead I hit things and swore.

Sadly, my office doesn't look much cleaner than this now...

Can you feel the chaos evaporating from my life? The cube-shapes are crying, "Order! Cleanliness! Success!"

Of course I picked the hottest day of the week to tackle the project. I was sweating a lot and took breaks to rub ice cubes all over my face.

Battle wound: it grew bigger and is now a nice, faded yellow.

Ooo, getting closer.

I own you, bitch: when I finished I sat on top of the bookshelf so that it would know who's the boss.

Yuppie-ville, here I come! Look at those baskets, those file folders, those boxes--so lovely. Seriously, I'm really happy with how this came out and can't wait to get the rest of the office squared away. Onward!

Is this what happens when you buy a house?

2007-06-13T11:22:00.000-04:00

I asked for hedge clippers for my birthday. Seriously.

And scenes from the morning after...

2007-05-31T11:38:00.000-04:00

I forgot to ask Steve how much money we got in bottle returns but I'm sure it could have bought him a sandwich at Wegmans.

So much beer left over: 72 bottles or cans, we counted. So much wine too. We gonna get liquored up for weeks.

Scenes from our housewarming party

2007-05-31T10:44:00.000-04:00

I did a bad job at taking photos at our housewarming party this weekend. There were so many people coming and going that I kind of forgot to document it.

Steve's dad and my Uncle Ed handled the grill. We had chicken, hamburgers, veggie burgers, portobella mushrooms, and peppers smoking on the grill, and lots of salads and drinks inside.

Christen, Rebecca, & Courtney chill out under the party tent Steve's dad brought up. It's still up in the yard, I heart it.

Cool kids sit on the porch: Sara, George, & Serena. The party was both inside and outside the house, eventually we moved in because of the noise-factor. It's nice to be in the back house in a way because people could congregate on the porch without being on the street.

Another sign that we're too young and immature to buy a house: the only dessert items we purchased were two cases of Fla-Vor-Ice. Geneseo-friend Fiona demonstrates the general reaction to our decision.

Mustaches of Power: Jack, my Dad, Steve's Dad. Nuff said.

More cool kids on the stoop.

Across the street from us

2007-05-21T22:37:00.000-04:00

Click the photo to see abandoned houses in their larger, more detailed glory:

Also, ignore the bad job I did melding these photos together. You can tell I messed around with their tints as the house in the middle doesn't match itself anymore!

Anyway, the brown house on the left is abandoned and that roof is seriously scary. The middle house is maybe empty and the white house on the left with the door wide open is definitely vacant. The white house way on the right is the start of a block of 4-5 houses belonging to Burmese refugees. Their kids sell lemonade.

Here Comes the Neighborhood

2007-05-17T21:29:00.000-04:00

I moved back to Buffalo in March 2006 after a year of living on a farm and travelling all over the damn planet. At this point I knew Steve and I were going to actually make good on our "house idea" and so I did what any rational person would do: I tried like hell to make friends.
One day at the coffee shop, I picked up a copy of Artvoice, Buffalo's free weekly, and on the cover was a group of men and the headline, "Here Comes the Neighborhood." I quickly understood that it was about housing in the city--something I knew I should learn about because hey, I was looking to buy a house in the city--and began reading the cover story. The project sounded interesting and necessary, the issue riled me up, and after reading that PUSH Buffalo needed volunteers to help clean out its first cooperative house, I dialed their number.

Aaron picked up that day and gave me the run down on volunteering. I showed up, got really dirty while tearing out some old flooring, and met my dear friend Michael Gainer for the first time. Michael not only told me about this thing called deconstruction and this organization he hoped to start--tentatively called Buffalo ReUse--but he also told me about NACA. I went home that day and called Steve.

The rest is history.

I have a point though in retelling this history: I owe PUSH Buffalo my every happiness! Steve and I quickly identified PUSH and its members, organizers, and supporters as the community of which we wanted to be a part. Through volunteering five or six Saturday mornings at the PUSH house--Steve would drive an hour and a half just to paint some walls--we then found other communities, other friends, other paths. I'm sure we would've eventually found our ways to where we're respectively at today but the process probably would've been longer and less fun.

Hell, I met my boss at a PUSH barbecue!

With all this mind, I implore anyone in the New York City area to come on out to the PUSH fundraiser party in Manhattan on June 9th:

I will be there, working off my debt this amazing organization. If you're interested in hopping a bus from Buffalo to Manhattan for the party, give me a shout: whitneyarlene@gmail.com.

Updates

2007-05-16T20:47:00.000-04:00

REHAB WORK. We did our first NACA-funded repairs on our house last week: two new furnaces and one new boiler. The boiler is sparkly and fancy and I think Steve wants to marry it. The company we used, TruTemp, was professional, responsive and especially great given the difficulties of working with NACA’s rehab department, known as HAND. This rehab work is included in our loan package so it’s not something we’re paying out of pocket but rather over the course of a fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage—yay! In the next couple weeks, we’ll begin our next major rehab project: a new porch roof on the front house, some new siding on the back of the rear house, and some chimney repair.

DECORATING. The living room continues to shape up as my lovely boss was kind enough to give us her hardly-used poposan chair. So, in one room, we’ve got a formal sofa and a poposan chair. What’s that Van Morrison line, the one that could describe our process of furnishing the house? Oh right--Bit by bit by bit by bit by bit by bit.

TRANSITION TIMES. I can’t speak for Steve, but I feel that The House is still an appropriate number-one conversation piece—sort of. I’m straddling a line between the newness of owning and moving into our house and the development of some semblance of a routine. My office is still a mess, there remain a couple boxes in the hallway, and I’ve got a list a mile long of all the shit we still need to do, buy, or fix but our kitchen has come together and we cook in it every day. I’ve begun writing again instead of just thinking about writing, and I know Steve is working on some music projects. So clearly, we’re getting used to our respective new lives in our new house.

PRESENTS. Growing up, we had lilacs and I always made “perfume” from them in the spring with my friend Kelly. Our perfume consisted of mashed lilacs, some water, and a couple drops of lilac-scented perfume that Kelly already owned. We sold it in Dixie cups door-to-door using a red wagon—seriously, we were that cute. Anyway, the lilac bush was destroyed in the October storm so you can imagine my delight when last week, I discovered that the massive bush between our yard and our neighbors was actually full of lilacs, on the cusp of blooming. Sometimes I feel like our house came with presents—like lilac bushes and door stoppers and pretty cupboards.

My office

2007-05-11T11:21:00.000-04:00

So I really haven't been able to use my office yet since I still have boxes upon boxes of shit piled up all over the place. How descriptive of me--boxes of shit.

To be more specific, I've got entire IKEA magazine files full of Tori Amos lyrics I printed out in eighth grade (not to mention magazine covers) as well as the syllabi from almost every course I took in college. I've got cool scraps of paper that I can't wait to use for something and old office supplies from my high school yearbook office that were going to get thrown out--why not reuse, I thought? I am, in short, a ridiculous pack rat that needs a kick in the ass. I'm about 90% positive that this kick in the ass will come from my mother and probably in the form of her coming over to purge for me.

In the mean time, this is sort of what the office looks like:

At least the light is pretty and the color is nice. Whatever--I need help. Seriously.

The Grandma couch

2007-05-11T00:12:00.000-04:00

So the other week I bought a couch at Amvets. According to Steve, lots of thrift stores have the names and numbers of people who will deliver purchases from the store to your home. The man whose name and number I was given is named Myron and he is Hungarian. Myron had a whole row of gold teeth and talked a lot. He was fun.

The couch is pretty and poufy and since it makes you sit up straight, Steve calls it a Grandma couch. Quite nicely, he did not mention that this also means the couch is uncomfortable. No, he waited until I admitted that myself. The exchange, occuring at the moment Steve began eating his dinner, went something like this:

Whitney: Wait, I wanted to talk to you.
Steve, walking towards living room: Hang on...
Whitney, following him: No! Don't eat on the couch--it's uncomfortable!
Steve, turning quickly: See! Ha! It is uncomfortable!

So I guess I bought an uncomfortable couch which now means we must find a super comfortable chair to accompany it. At least it's pretty!

Discuss amongst yourselves

2007-05-08T10:16:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm The Only One Trying To Gentrify This Neighborhood

Faithful readers

2007-05-04T10:58:00.000-04:00

I got an email from a faithful reader--okay, it was my Dad--about updating the blog more and yes, I acknowledged my laziness of late. A combination of emotional upheaval, the start of campaign season, a visit from a lovely friend, and nice weather really killed my energy for updates.

However, I'm uploading a big batch of new photos today and plan on spending much of the weekend at home. I vow to blog.

The Dirt Bandit and my new best friends

2007-04-26T21:26:00.000-04:00

The home directly behind us has two rottweilers, this crazy dog fortress (read: a series of connected sheds), and what has appeared to be a garden. We suspected that the two households to the right of that home also contained avid gardeners and this week, our suspicions were confirmed.

We've got a great view from our kitchen windows of the backyards and have spent many a night spying. We obviously can't see the front of the homes and we've never met their owners but it doesn't matter: I wanna be besties with these people.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to find the yards of the three houses looking like this:

When I first saw it, I immediately assumed that during the night, someone had come and dumped dirt on the yards, spread it out evenly, and fled. A dirt bandit! It wasn't until later last night when one of our friends suggested, "Do you think maybe they just overturned the soil?"

Man, I felt dumb. Feel dumb. Present tense.

As a girl who often begins stories with, "When I lived on the farm..." I failed miserably at deciphering this simple reality. I am shamed, deeply, and must never let my new best friends know that I'm such a goon.

As you can see from the photos, one of the yards has already been worked. I can't wait to see what pops up--literally, hahaha so funny--this summer. We'll keep you posted.

Scene from the kitchen table

2007-04-26T15:25:00.000-04:00

A daffodil that our tenant's daughter gave Steve because he is "handsome." Oooooh.

I'll be heading up to Toronto on Saturday with my dear friend Brynn. I suspect that we'll make a stop at IKEA along the way although I'm not sure if she's aware of this plan. Brynn has not yet seen the house in person--only through the blog!--and I'm excited to see her reaction to our color choices and basically everything else. Brynn and I are going to a Knitter's Frolic, by the way. We're nerds like that.

As I was walking into the house a couple of a minutes ago (home for lunch, how cool is that?), I spotted some bright yellow buds on our bushes out front. I've been wondering about them since January, whether they'd flower or be green or what.

Spring will definitely be full of treats.

Reflections, all kinds

2007-04-24T11:27:00.000-04:00

We've got two dollar stores around the corner from our house, and I set off yesterday in search of some storage boxes for my office. What I got instead was a new mirror for my bedroom:

Obviously taken with a cell phone camera.

I know the updates have been slow-coming lately, I've got a gazillion pictures on my digital camera that need to be uploaded. But hey, what can I say besides BUYING A HOUSE IS EFFING OVERWHELMING?!

I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety and fear lately, feelings that strike me as pretty understandable. Throughout the whole home-buying process, I kept a lot of those feelings under wraps or just between me and Steve and a couple of friends. Often times I just kept them to myself. In part, it stemmed from the desire to be ridiculously upbeat about a decision that caused many people to raise their eyebrows and nervously ask, "Where'd you buy a house?" Or, "Who'd you buy a house with?" Or, "How old are you?"

But it also stems from being so damn busy with all the shit that needs to get done that you don't have time to think about how you feel, you just do it. Shit like moving in and learning how to be a landlord and rushing home to deal with flooded basements and trying to get another room unpacked and keeping afloat your personal relationships and making sure you smile at your neighbors and manage your checking account--shit like that. Plus more.

I'm not hopeless though, and truth be told, yesterday was a much better day because I had begun to articulate some of my feelings. Sometimes acknowledging fear and anxiety helps it go away.

And this weekend was beautiful--both days in the 70s. I sat in the kitchen for a good part of Sunday morning, drinking coffee and writing and looking at my neighbors' backyards. Our kitchen has shaped up to be a sweet little room and with the shelves that Steve hung up, it is looking more and more complete each day. I went for a walk, mailed some letters, and just generally tried to take some deep breaths while I had the chance.

I think I will remember that lesson: deep breaths, when I have the chance.

Yay! Water in the basement! Yay!

2007-04-17T11:37:00.000-04:00

So Buffalo was somehow miraculously saved from that bad Nor'easter that put New Jersey and West Virginia into states of emergency. We got a little bit of freezing rain, and lots of complaints from people who thought spring had sprung and packed away their winter clothes accordingly (this includes me).

Around 8:00 last night, I picked up a voicemail message from our tenant informing us that the basement in her house was flooded. Given that I was at a meeting, I let Steve handled the first shock of going over there and hurried home.

About two inches of water covered the basement floor, which wasn't so bad considering other times when apparently four feet of water was hanging out, sometimes with sewage (Oh seller's real estate agent, why did you not tell us?). When I got there, Steve was already at the store getting whatever we needed to fix the problem--he came back with a sump pump.

In a painless 10 minutes or less, the sump pump was set up and pumping and we were back home chugging wine* and eating two boxes of macaroni and cheese. And I did my taxes.

I think some part of the flood seemed novel, one of our first potential disasters. Like: Yay! Let's sump pump this mother! Yay, we did it! Yay! Wine!

Questions is though, when does the novelty wear off?

*"chugging" is the appropriate term

funny money

2007-04-15T17:26:00.000-04:00

In the process of moving I've spent $4,000. To me, that's a pretty sizeable investment especially considering that the money we saved with NACA basically eliminated closing costs. Paint, moving truck rentals, shelves, garbage pales, pizza, snacks and beer for friends and family who helped us paint and move, a minor plumbing situation, etc. Its easy to spend a hundred dollars and I've done it thirty times in the past thirty days, plus a couple of big purchases. I'm always amazed at how much things cost, and in this case, the incidental expenses have been gigantic.

I should have studio pictures up soon.

Also, why does it have to snow in April?

2007-04-14T01:03:00.000-04:00

Neighbor's backyard...

Scenes from unpacking...

2007-04-13T21:38:00.000-04:00

It's a little better than this now although the room next to it is still totally empty and devoid of any warmth. Or places to sit. Or anything.

Who knew I had so many items of clothing? Oh yeah, EVERYONE that helped me move. Frequently heard: "You are ridiculous, get rid of this crap."

It's so hard though! My skirts from eighth grade that just might fit someday! That crazy dress I know I'll wear somewhere someday and got for $4.99 at a garage sale! My hats, my beautiful never-worn hats!

I am ridiculous and full of crap.

Eating "better"

2007-04-11T11:10:00.000-04:00

So remember how I thought that once I moved into the house, all these magical things would start happening to my personal and professional life? Well, dear readers, I'm here to tell you that they have! They have indeed.

Behold: I am eating better.

Check out those homes fries slathered in butter and fried to crispy perfection. Did I mention I'm saving money by not going out to a diner every day?

Avocados are totally the good kind of fat, c'mon.

What? Cookies aren't healthy? What do you mean it doesn't look like I'm eating "better?" There are organic eggs in those suckers!

Whatevs. I don't even care.

The inaugural gentrification post

2007-04-05T20:20:00.000-04:00

So I've been hesitant to write about this from the get-go--despite knowing that it is an absolutely unavoidable topic given our situation--because I know that it is a sprawling, heated subject and because I am honestly overwhelmed by its layers and history. I'm talking, of course, about gentrification.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for "gentrification:"

Gentrification, or more specifically urban gentrification, is a process in which low-cost, physically deteriorated neighborhoods experience physical renovation and an increase in property values, along with an influx of wealthier residents who typically displace the prior residents.

I don't bring this up because I'm coming from a defensive place. I don't seek pats on the back and encouragement, "Oh you guys aren't gentrifying, Whitney." I'm simply trying to open up a discussion about what's inevitable and what's not when two young, white kids buy a house in a predominantly Hispanic and black neighborhood.

And let's be totally honest here too: we're not from the neighborhood. I grew up in suburban Amherst for the majority of my childhood, and Steve lived downstate. I've got a lamp from IKEA in my bedroom, too.

I also won't say that we didn't move into the neighborhood with an idea to improve it and I think maybe in here lies the crux of the gentrification question. Herein lies the unexposed racism, the misguided good intentions—the real sticky stuff.

I find myself talking about our plans for the house and our desires for the block differently depending on with whom I’m speaking. I tell my family members that of course I want to see our property values rise and that it’s really an up-and-coming neighborhood. I hear myself using words like “pioneer,” as if I’m some sort of savior out there in the ‘hood dealing with shit that thousands of poor and disenfranchised people have been dealing with for years.

Other times I’m less ambitious, it depends on the audience.

The truth is that I don’t have any sort of conclusions about our situation and the larger question of gentrification except that it is a complex tangle of racism, classism, and institutionalized disinvestment. I can’t decide if I’m fighting it or joining it—maybe both.

Bring on the discussion, this is just the start as I will write more soon. Thoughts?

Yes, we're always this adorable

2007-04-04T17:06:00.000-04:00

Check out these scenes from our first night at the house--March 31.

It doesn't stop at our home, we're cute and squishy all the time.

This recent dose of cuteness was brought to you by Wegmans' free internet access and my (late) lunch break--hurray!

Unwired

2007-04-04T11:09:00.000-04:00

So we don't have internet or phone service at the house right now which has limited our blogging capacity. It's also limited our contact with the outside world.

Last night while Steve was wearing a hat he made of tinfoil, he started talking to "friends" that I couldn't see or hear and telling me that we really should look into "protective, black universe curtains" for our windows. Help us--we must make contact!

In all seriousness, our unpacking process inches ahead and has now gotten to boxes containing the Dregs of Moving. You know, the crap you didn't pack up with all the rest of your stuff but can't bear to throw away yet.

For example, in one box I've got six pairs of shoes, fairy wings, Mardi Gras beads, CDs, mixtapes, pens, electric mixer wands, and a couple mugs. These boxes may very well take years to unload.

Photos of our move to come soon, in the meantime you can take a look at the view from one of the kitchen windows. The wires here taunt us daily: We carry the internet, We carry phone service, We are not yours to touch or use or love...

The dark, scary quality of this photo may cause my suburban relatives to refuse to visit me.
It's usually bright and sunny up in here!

Success!

2007-04-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

So, we're moved in.

I have pictures but my battery charger is in some box somewhere and will not be found until it wants to be found. Other things that will not be found until they want to be found include my missing left boot, a proper corkscrew, and several plates.

Flickr madness

2007-04-02T11:10:00.000-04:00

The Buffalo Flickr group is on the front page of the News! Ha!

Red, red walls

2007-03-28T11:11:00.000-04:00

Our red hallway, soon to be home of the Awkward Portrait wall.

Trying to show some contrast, forgive the dork-factor.

Finally, another kitchen shot. I cleaned out the cupboards and drawers, need to get some contact paper.

Talkin' Proud

2007-03-27T22:31:00.000-04:00

Ex-Buffalo Bills player Willis McGahee, who seems to only spent time at area malls while living in Western New York, decided to shit all over Buffalo in a recent interview. In the greatest thing it's ever done to date, the News published an Open Letter to McGahee in response. Buffalo Pundit has a great breakdown of the exchange.

Also, if you haven't seen this yet it will explain a lot:

You got tickets?...To what?...The Dad Show.

2007-03-27T01:02:00.000-04:00

On Friday, Steve wrote that his dad was coming up to Buffalo to help us paint. Immediately, we both knew our meager painting party was about to turn into a production. As Steve said in an email, "he's bring drop cloths, and dad-ness." Dad-ness he brought.

BJ calls a team meeting in the living room.

Steve's dad--heretofore known as BJ or the Beege--came armed with a box full of things we did not have, some of which I never thought of acquiring: plug-in lamps for dark corners, a wire brush, a tall ladder, more brushes, more drop cloths, more trays, and items whose functions I still do not understand.

When we got to the house, BJ and Sara took a look around as neither had seen the place in person. Soon though, a "team meeting" was called and the Beege took a seat on the only chair in the room. He asked for a piece of paper and a pen so that he could write out a work plan.

"What are painting in this room?" He asked. We continued on like this until all rooms were accounted for and then we prioritized based on each job. Agreeing that certain friends/family members might need more supervision than others, BJ agreed to be the resident grump. Or to put it a different way, he agreed to be the Dad of the Painting Party.

And he's nice!

Seeing that it would require the most amount of work, BJ took on my writing room and its pink walls, trim, ceiling, and doors. The rest of us began taping things off and after that was done, we cut in and rolled.

Throughout the day, whenever we needed a deciding opinion, we asked BJ. He almost always had an answer that sounded official and undoubtedly correct.

Inspecting Sara's work in the Orange Room.

At the end of Day One, we sat down for another team meeting done in improved Robert's Rules style. I made a motion to do a second coat of "Pollination" first and Steve seconded my motion. The Beege declared it resolved and we moved on to Towne Restaurant for a late dinner.

Wrapping up Day One with another team meeting.

Not to be upstaged, my Dad--heretofore known as the Coach--decided to come over Sunday morning. When the Coach and BJ met, the world almost exploded because of their dad-ness and mustache power.

The Coach proved to be, as noted earlier on the blog, a beast with the roller. In case you missed it the first time, here he is whipping through a second coat of "Garden Pot," right after he cut in and rolled our red entryway.

Coach doesn't mess around.

The Dads bonded over things like the bizarre consistency of the "Pollination" paint or whether or not we should sand something dry or wet*. They each were quick and precise and finally, when they both decided we were all good to go on our own, they let us snap this final picture:

Mustaches of power!

*What is with the universal Dad qualities? I'm also remembering when my friend Brynn and I shared a storage space one summer before college and our Dads conspired to make our belongings fit inside. Something unspoken went one between them in the process. Bizarre.

Scenes from the painting party, part one

2007-03-26T11:32:00.000-04:00

Sara waits for direction on Saturday morning. We began around 10:30 and painted until after nine that night.

Steve's dad came up from the downstate area to help us paint and generally be the dad-figure at the ruckus that was our painting party (ha!). As you can see, he's painting the walls of my writing room a blue-grey. When I took this picture, he had already done the ceiling but you should know that the whole thing was pink: walls, trim, doors, and ceiling. All pink!

This is my helpful brother Joshua. He is a rock n' roller.

Sara again. She's a cutie. By the end of the weekend, she was a pro at cutting in. Here she is in our living room with a bucket of "Aqua Bay." You can't tell from the picture but the wall she's painting is textured. Some time, between 1886 and 2007, someone painted over that velvet, floral wallpaper stuff. We've got patches of that raised design throughout the room--it's very neat.

It was a team effort for sure. In the background: brother Josh and Steve on a ladder. They are painting the room "Pollination," a pukey-yellow-green color that took three coats in the end. In the foreground: Harvey continues on with the "Aqua Bay."

My mother approves our color choice and work (she's standing behind my brother). She said, no less than nine times, a version of the following, "I really like this color." I really like her, and the way she repeats things when she gets excited.

When Mike wasn't rolling "Garden Pot" on our kitchen walls, he was cleaning out the light fixtures and taking apart the ceiling fans. This is why our relationship works so well, my friends. I would never get to shit like that and he sees it and pounces. You go, Mike.

I told my friend Jack to look excited about taping and this is the result. Jack entertained me/eavesdroppers with internet-comic news and the possibility of building a flashlight that could knock a man over from sheer light force. We also discussed the new Tori Amos (concept) album and my accompanying contempt.

My mother told me that my dad was a beast with the painting roller. And that, dear readers, he is. Here he is on Sunday morning doing a second coat of "Garden Pot" in the kitchen. He also cut in and rolled the red entryway (of which I failed to take photographs).

This pictures makes us call our house the "Fun House." We will be filled with bright, bold energy every morning. The orange room, by the way, is Steve's bedroom. The paint is called "Lucky Penny."

Steve's dad needed to head back home but wanted to stop for a "big, expensive" cup of coffee first so I drew him a map of his itinerary. Apparently, while I was on the phone, they all made fun of me for drawing such a nice map. They were jealous of my skillz.

Behold: fresh paint! This photo is a total accident and marks the near-end of our painting party on Sunday morning. It was intense, exhaustive, and successful.

More photos to come!