Kitchen Upgrade

We all know I like planning, and the more impossible the task, the more fun I have figuring out ways around it. So give me a mission like renovating an old kitchen in Jersey City and I'm stupidly happy, even more pleased when I find out the new IKEA line doesn't have all the sizes I need.

Hallelujah! Something aggravating and impossible! 

My contractor might be less delighted, I know, but I think at least he finds me a little funny. Though I'm not sure how long the tolerance will last. I find he usually lets me waffle a while then finally interrupts with "Just let me do it," and off he goes whether I'm done thinking or not. (This is a good quality in a contractor. I am not complaining.) 

One thing I learned from Turbo the Aussie (the ex who approached every problem from learning to make my morning coffee at a campsite to building a house on a mountain with the same curiosity and can-do attitude) is to study the problem first. Go to Home Depot. Study the solutions. Go back to the problem and study it some more. Google. Eventually, you get there. That's how I've already screwed up twice in theory and had to get a new plan. Best to screw up on paper.

Initially, I thought I'd just leave the kitchen alone for a while. I certainly am spending enough money on heating, laundry, windows, painting, locks, and the bathtub. But then I realized I was avoiding using the kitchen on my trips home, because it's disgusting.

That's when I realized new cabinets would be a good thing.

They look fine in the photo below, aside from the garish gold knobs. It's when you open the base cabinets to find the warped particleboard that it's really a drag.

So I'm getting all new lower cabinets, new appliances, and new doors for the top cabinets. Or maybe entirely new top cabinets, depending on the condition of the existing ones. I visited a custom IKEA door shop yesterday, which is such a great idea, but the shipping costs had me taking a closer look at Grimslov.

The only thing I haven't worked out yet is what to do about the ugly wall tile. Any ideas? I'd like white subway tile, but I'm not sure I like all the dust that comes with removing the tile currently on the wall.

Union Station Walking Tour

It's so hard for me to sit still on weekends, though I have a ton of stuff to do.

Like choose a refrigerator for my house in Jersey City. Read an outline for work. Find an apartment here in LA/Burbank.

But like most people, I'm excessively curious. I have to walk around and investigate my surroundings.

Yesterday, I went on a walking tour of Union Station with the LA Conservancy. It was great! Look, it's not Grand Central with its secret FDR car and dizziness-inducing glass catwalks, but it's still a great look at a snapshot in time, with its Mission/Art Deco architectural style and it being the end of the line of a grand journey across the country.

I did that journey myself in 2001, from Penn Station to Chicago, then switching to the Southwest Chief for the cross-country Amtrak trip. I loved it. I'd do it again in a second if I had the time.

Here are some photos from yesterday's trip.

Helping Yourself Feel Less Helpless

I bought four tickets today to send Syrian refugees from Budapest to Austria. It was really easy, especially since my laptop had stored my username and password from when I was in Budapest a year-and-a-half ago.

The tickets are only $11 each.

There are other direct ways to help, detailed here. Give it a try.

My friend Zora was just on the Greek island of Mytilene (Lesbos), and she reports back from there on ways to help refugees traversing this area.

You not only help refugees, you help yourself feel like useless in the face of a humanitarian crisis. 

House Progress

My house is really coming along, thanks to the efforts of Michael Kraiger (who is painting and coordinating), Jim (who does carpentry, kitchens, and rabid-animal soothing), and a great master plumber named Chris at Royal Heating and Cooling.

I think I've convinced Jim to let me hire him to do the kitchen. That probably sounds kooky, but I had to come up with a way that didn't cost me an arm and a leg or he would stop me. No problem--I have experience in cheap kitchens. Hopefully this time I won't get drenched in gray water. Last time, Al H (my friend from college who is a contractor in Brooklyn and Manhattan) was doing something to one end of a pipe we were moving while my job was to hold the other end and get covered in skanky water. That was fun.

I'm in love with my little house. But I laugh at myself too. I'm so stuck on old and slightly broken things. I guess that's a good thing as everyone I know is aging.

Home Is Swallowing Me Up

I'm home in JC for the long weekend, and it's spectacular. The cafe owner wanted to know what I think of the West Coast (I didn't even tell him I went there--word travels fast). My contractor friend is willing to put up with me a bit longer to do my kitchen. The little room at the top of my house (it's small but comes with a distant view of Manhattan) is almost done and I can make it all my own. My storage unit is surprisingly organized and things make sense in it (shocking), and my car is running smoothly. I've seen some friends—not all of them, of course—and am off to see my hair colorist today. 

On Thursday night, Denise and I went to dinner at GP's, where we sat outside on Hamilton Park on a perfect summer night. She walked me over to my car, where I promptly fell in this hole. With my good foot. 

Ridiculous. 

Once we determined that nothing was broken aside from my pedicure, we laughed and laughed. I really need to start paying more attention to my feet. 

Anniversary

It's been ten years, since that lonely day you left me...

That's a lyric from a Jason and the (Nashville) Scorchers line, from back when I cared a great deal about music, in my teens and twenties.

It continues to where the singer shoots his lover, and that has of course nothing to do with me, but that and the last line of the song runs through my head when I hear about the hurricane that hit New Orleans ten years ago.

That's the day Herr Marlboro came tearing into my apartment on the Ggaba Road, back from running errands in Kampala. "Did you hear about New Orleans?" He went straight to the television and put on BBC or CNN (I forget which we got there).

It's also the last vivid memory I have of when things were going well for us. Right after that, his family came to town from Bavaria. We all went to a dinner at an outdoor garden in an Italian restaurant, where I ate something that made me terribly ill. They left in the morning, before I got so sick. He took them off to Murchison Falls while I stayed in Kampala, going to doctors when I wasn't lying on the sofa watching repetitive coverage of Katrina. This is covered in the first chapter of Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik.

Everything went off the rails shortly after, and then we were chased by a hippo. I ended up leaving, getting far, far away in a hurry, and I got very ill in Swakopmund, Namibia.

You can read all about September of 2005 early in this blog. You have to read between the lines a bit, because my book about this time hasn't been written yet. I don't know that it ever will be. I'd like to write it, but it's hard to find the time. I used to not write it because it was hard to revisit. Now I can revisit it without upsetting myself, but time is at a premium.

Everything changed for me in September of 2005, and that's okay. People do change, you know. But I migrated into a zone of a long state of depression, which only responsibility for a dozen employees in Cairo was able to pull me out of, a few years later. What really changed from this time is my outlook, and my inability to trust others. I do sort of, sometimes, I guess, but essentially, at some point in handling all this myself, I become my own mini-kitchen, a self-sufficient package of competency. It's morphed into a zone of familiarity and comfort. It's fine. I know other people have different ways of living, usually involving their own definitions of fun and happiness. This is what works for me, and I don't fight it anymore. It's kind of great, in its own way.

Pray for me, mama. I'm a gypsy now. 

The Foot Update

Here's an updated look at my right foot. Hooray!

What's It With Me and Feet?

Do you remember this? I stubbed my toe on the vacuum cleaner the night before leaving for my mother's house a few days before flying to Mexico. That was in July of 2013.

Then do you remember this? I vaguely remember stubbing toes on the other foot, then walking all over Manhattan right after. When I got up the next morning: ouch. This was in October of 2013. Same year, different foot. My podiatrist in Jersey City is great, and his assistant was a big fan of Iron Man. I was writing an Iron Man novel at the time.

Well, now I have a new treat to share with you. I'll try to get a Burbank podiatrist appointment in the morning, but if not, maybe my JC guy can take me when I get home on Thursday for the long weekend. 

At least this time, I know what I did. I ran across Hollywood Boulevard--not exactly against the light, but after the little countdown had started. That's technically illegal here. Los Angeles takes its jaywalking seriously. I didn't get a ticket, but I did hit an uneven bit of pavement and nearly go sprawling. I semi-recovered and continued to trip a little, and thought "Oh hell, I'm going down." I felt my shoe fighting my foot and nearly lost it.

I didn't lose the shoe or land on my face, fortunately, but I did damage a foot. I continued on to the apartment-viewing appointment I had with a sweet-as-pie former resident of Jersey City Heights. I liked her, I liked the loft-style apartment, but I ultimately decided I preferred the older places up the hill a bit and even something in Toluca Lake or Magnolia Park, Burbank. I'm a little concerned about ending up in Hipster-ville, and it's important to me to have people from different economic and social backgrounds living around me, so I think I might need to avoid newer developments with all the bells-and-whistles.

But maybe I'll think about getting a place with an elevator this time.

Addendum: Hey, wait. Looking at the photos...that's all the same foot, isn't it? I really do not want a second right walking boot. It's a shame mine is in my garage in New Jersey. 

Los Feliz to Los Feliz

You know my big plan to rent an apartment?

I didn't get very far. I quickly learned that the studios I thought were acceptably priced ($1200-1400 or so) had something wrong with them. They overlooked a parking lot and were dingy. They seemed really dilapidated. I saw one that was pretty good, but was on the ground floor, and I remembered from my first 8th Street place that you can't sleep with the windows open on the ground floor.

And I learned too that no one calls you back, because why should they? There are dozens of applicants for anywhere reasonably priced. It's a seller's market, and we're all grasping at scraps.

I understand now I'm going to have to pay a lot more to live in Los Angeles, but because I haven't found the right place yet, I rustled up another sublet for a month on VRBO.com. It was a nice-looking back house in Toluca Lake, and all was going well until the owner sent me the contract.

"We do not accept credit cards at this time."

Hmmm. That's odd, I thought. The last place, the excellent place in Los Feliz, sent me a bill along with the contract and I was able to pay it online. This contract said to pay by check.

I wrote the owner back and asked if he wanted me to bring him a check the next day.

"Cash only, or cashier's check or money order."

Wha--? I was taken aback. With a personal check, at least I had a few days to cancel it if he gave me the keys and they didn't work the next day or something. At least there is a slim margin of error in case Internet guy is a con artist.

I decided not to sign it yet. I went to sleep instead.

In the morning, the owner called me at my office.

"Did you get the contract?"

"Yes, but it's a little weird you don't take credit cards."

His tone changed completely. He was suspicious. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well...just that there is security for the consumer with a credit card."

"So you'd dispute a charge."

I have no idea how we went so quickly into him thinking I'm a con artist. I thought I was talking to a man I'd never met about an Internet transaction for an apartment I'd never seen, and suddenly I'm the bad guy for trying to look out for myself.

"Well, no, but it's for my protection in case we have a disagreement."

"I don't think we can do business then."

I let him have it, saying something along the lines of "You've set this up so there you have all the power and there are no protections for me, and any business transaction is a two-way street, not about one person holding all the power."

House Hunting

Renting an apartment in a sprawling city turns out to be a baffling experience. How did I get so far in life without ever having to do this before?

I have owned properties for my entire adult life since I left Jersey City group housing in 1992 (when I was in a three-bedroom on Mercer Street with Other Marie and Otis). I have rented sublets overseas, but that's easier. You just take what's affordable and doesn't look too gross. So the last time I rented an apartment like I'm doing now was, well, never. I've never filled out a rental application, had them check my credit, supplied two months bank statements. It's just never come up.

That's right, I've never subjugated myself to the credit check and judgment of a rental agent. I've never had to be charming and look dutiful and responsible on cue in order to get housed. I don't even know if I can do this. I'm a known eye-roller.

I'm finally starting to seriously search for an apartment today, so I might be filling out some forms this afternoon.

It all comes down to location and character. I can't—won't, really—live in a carpeted box with vertical blinds. I won't live in anything without good natural light. I won't live on the ground floor. I won't live anywhere without food and services within walking distance. And obviously, it's all about the commute in LA, so I am limited to places with easy access to Burbank. My other rule is I need access to public transport. Yes, I own a car, but it happens to be garaged in Jersey City, and I'm not sure if I want to drive my 1990 Ford Taurus across the country for a week, though I did buy it in Torrance in 2002 and drive it (with Turbo, who actually drove it for large chunks of the way while I was back East) across the country to get it to New York City between April and July of that year. I might drive it out here, but I'm not so sure it would make it. That might mean getting rid of it. Would I want to own two cars, one back East and one in LA? Well, why not, I guess. I already own a house in Jersey City and am still getting an apartment here.

I'm starting out looking at studios in Los Feliz, Franklin Village, Ivar & Cahuenga, and Burbank/Toluca Lake. But I might just need to stall for another month, getting a sublet as fast as I can, so at least I have time to consider all my options. I love the idea of living in Downtown LA, but I don't love the rents there.

I'm being flaky about this because I can't figure out what location actually has it all. Probably because there is no such thing. Where can I find a concentration of restaurants where I don't feel weird going in alone at night by myself? There are a few clusters here and there, but many clusters end abruptly and suddenly that magnificent paradise of take-out turns into oh, I didn't realize it was only three restaurants and one is burgers-only. 

My grand experiment of sublets around town has been utterly informative, and I feel like I know way more today than I did on June 2, when I arrived. But I still haven't seen the right place.

I miss my brownstone walk-up over the trees of Hamilton Park, one stop from the West Village. I need to stop pining away for what I don't have here and try to appreciate this odd sprawl for what it is.

Which I haven't figured out yet. LA regions are so disparate that it seems impossible to make generalizations about this place. I'll let you know when I sort it out.

But it might be a while.