Garden of Words

Hot Times in the Old Town

If I could take it all back, I'd still own a home.

When Nikole and I first saw the house we now call our home, it seemed tiny and charming. The yard was an overgrown mess with a thicket of massive holly trees in the front yard, but inside was a newly gutted-and-renovated-and-expanded cinder block home clad to give the outward appearance of a cottage.

The emphasis for purposes of this post would on the word "renovated".

There was general excitement in the air at the prospect of buying a house with new everything, primarily because "new everything" meant a long time before "anything" needed to be repaired or replaced.

That was before we discovered that the sewer line wasn't new. That, in fact, it was slightly more than 60 years old and made of creosote-soaked cardboard (which has a life expectancy of, you guessed it, 60 years).

The adventure of a new sewer line -- with all of its assorted excavations and cash payments -- was surrounded by the adventures of a new washer-and-dryer, a new refrigerator, a new toilet and a new stove.

This week, one of the last surviving pieces of machinery in our home -- the furnace -- gave up the ghost.

The first clues came in December. It was a bitter cold Sunday, and the city was climbing out of a snowdrift -- the effects of a foot (give or take, depending on your geography) of snow.

Thea and I were in the kitchen fixing tea for the still-sleeping Nikole. The furnace issued forth with a brief belch, a muted belch that probably had more energy in the attic (where the furnace lives), and the house was briefly permeated with the smell of carbon, or the back of an auto repair shop.

Nikole and Thea fled to Chester -- for clean air and warmth -- while I waited for our repair friend from Woodfin Oil. He dove right in, issued what felt like a seasoned assessment, and went to work.

His assessment was that not having the furnace actually serviced since I moved in more than six years ago bordered on idiotic. The work consisted of a bit of cleaning and lubrication. By nightfall, the house was warm once again.

This past week, Woodfin was back -- this time for a scheduled maintenance visit, arranged by Nikole. She said the Woodfin guy spent two hours in the attic, gave everything an "all clear" and went on his merry way.

Not 12 hours later, we woke in the middle of the night to a cold house. A cold house with a very quiet furnace. By the time we call crawled from bed around 6:00, the inside temperature was down to 63.

I scheduled another visit from our new friends at Woodfin, and headed off to a workshop.

Just before 10:00. I get this text message: "Um, we need a new furnace. Not even kidding. He said it is not safe to turn it on."

Awesome. I rushed home to troubleshoot with Nikole.

Two hours later, we were on the schedule to receive a brand-new, variable-speed furnace first thing Monday morning. We've spent the weekend at home, using space heaters to keep essential corners of the house warm, and constantly flipping tripped switches in the fuse box.

Nikole and Thea headed to her mom's for the night, and I climbed into the attic to clear space for the furnace installation (and accompanying refitting and insulating of our flues).

Tomorrow, we're wearing shorts for dinner. And making plans for the failure of the dishwasher.

Dinner? Beans and rice. For eighteen months.

Well-Trained, Seizure Dog

We had a special visit from Jennifer Kyzer on Sunday.

Jennifer is a dog behavioralist, and we originally planned to call on her in an attempt to manage Rilo's new-found love of counter-surfing and stealing food from Thea's hands and/or plate.

Last week, though, she snapped at Thea, and Nikole was ready for some heavy-duty training.

Naturally, one of the first things Jennifer reminded us as we outlined the various neurosis experienced by our dog, our two cats and our daughter is that the first place we should be looking is the mirror.

Thanks.

And then she asked questions, observed Thea and Rilo together, talked to us about dogs and humans and boundaries and patterns. We took Rilo for a walk. We let Thea hide some treats. We received our marching order, and then Jennifer left us.

Not an hour later, I noticed Rilo pawing strangely at the rug. It only took a few seconds before I realized she was having another seizure -- the first two last year completely freaked me out. Her back arches in a tremendous curve, and her hind legs jut straight out. Naturally, she's trying the whole time to stand up, and there's a clear look of terror in her eyes.

Within the first minute, I'd scooped her up and was headed to the car bound for the emergency vet in Carytown. Trying to drive a stick-shift car with a dog having spasms in the passenger seat is no mean feat, let me tell you.

By the time we neared the I-95 ramp to Cary Street -- maybe four minutes into her seizure -- she sat up, stretched and stuck her head out the window, sniffing the cold, winter air.

Situation normal.

We stuck around the emergency vet for a few minutes, and then decided to come home since she had normalized -- a pattern we saw with the other two seizures.

A little Internet research led us to suspect canine epilepsy. A visit to her regular vet on Monday suggested that we might be on target.

Fortunately, he doesn't think the seizures should be too alarming. He's doing blood work, and he gave her a full exam during our visit. We'll keep an eye on her, and if things get worse I've a half dozen friends who have already emailed with herbal recommendations their seizure-prone pups apparently swear by.

At least it's not Tourettes; it would suck to think every other bark was our dog cursing.

P.S. The training's already having an effect. Thanks, Jennifer!

The Baby Factory: Goodbye, Christmas

Thea was a little obsessed with all of the small elements of Christmas, particularly the lights and the tree and the stockings and the lights and the lights and Baby Jesus.

As the decorations have slowly evaporated from her world, she's managed to cling to the small remnants. This morning, I think, she finally managed to let go of Christmas.

She woke, as usual, at the crack of dawn and curled up on the couch with me as she rubbed her eyes.

"Three. Wisa. Mens. Gone," she said, snuggling close. "Penguins, gone. Baby Jesus, gone. Snowmans, gone."

She went through her litany of Christmas items -- the reindeer, the orange angel (tree ornament), the (musical gingerbread) house.

And with what felt (to me) like a heavy sigh, she concluded, "Santa, gone. Christmas, all gone."

I think she's managed to let it go.

The Baby Factory: New Year's Day

 

This is what happens when you never sleep and deny yourself a nap for five days in a row. Imagine what Nikole and I looked and felt like...

The Baby Factory: Dancing to the Mummies

 

You can't begin to imagine how pissed I am that the Ululating Mummies don't have six dozen videos on YouTube (or two, even) because now that Thea has seen them perform live -- at the New Year's Eve celebration at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden -- she wants to see them again and again and again.

She's stuck with a low-fi, one-minute video of them performing that I found on YouTube. And memories of her first New Year's Eve celebration.

She was pretty smitten.

The Baby Factory: Third Generation

 

When my father died more than a decade ago, opportunities to connect with his side of the family seemed to dwindle. For the most part, I've been okay with that -- beyond my two uncles, I never felt particularly close as an adult to many of my relatives on his side. But with the addition of Thea to our family, it's felt a little more important to connect to family -- especially my dad's family.

On the day after Christmas we headed to Glen Allen for a visit with my dad's older brother, Rufus. Growing up, he was called Rudy, so Thea and I practiced saying "Rudy Tootie" on the way to his house -- much to her delight. Rudy was as close to me growing up as my own father, and while politically we live on polar opposite ends of the spectrum I still love him very much.

It was great watching Thea and Rudy connect, and to see him smile as he picked up up, tickled her and kept her engaged. It was a good hint to me of how my father would have connected with her.

The Baby Factory: Christmas Day

 

After a somewhat relaxed early morning at home -- a bit of gift opening, breakfast with the grandmothers, showers all around -- we dove into the fray that is Christmas.

 

The good news is that the pace has slowed considerably in recent years. There was a Christmas where I managed 13 stops between breakfast and last rounds, and while it was a lot of fun it's not the sort of extended sprint I would want to manage with an toddler in tow. No, this year we had all of two stops, and that was after sadly striking a visit with my life-long friend Angie and her family from the list. (I've dropped by Angie's or her parents' house every Christmas since 1985 -- until this year.)

The first stop was my mom's house, where we filled the family room with my sisters, brother-in-law and nieces and nephews -- 12 of us all told. The oldest nephew is 19, and the youngest niece is going to be 10 this spring, so Thea was the star of the show. She'd better get used to being the centerpiece at her Omie's house on the holidays, at least for the next few years.

She was already bushed by the time we got to my mom's but was quickly seized by the manic energy of the day. She simply bounced from package to package, from hug to hug, from tickle to tickle. She plowed through the better part of the morning and early afternoon, a subtle glazed look slowly creeping across her face.

We were home, and she was in bed, by 2:00. Nikole followed soon after, and I even passed out for half an hour. Back out the door we went around 4:30 -- on our way to Nikole's mom's house to have dinner with Thea's Mema and Papa Price. Dinner, a few gifts and a bit of play time on the floor was all it took to wipe her out the rest of the way.

 

Another Christmas, quietly concluded.

Happy Birthday, Rilo

 

While Rilo showed up in our lives three years ago this March, a sort-of birthday present to Nikole and me, we figure she was born in early January. And though she drives us bonkers at times -- especially lately with her penchant for counter-surfing, snatching food from Thea's hand, spazzing out whenever I come home from work and staring obsessively at us when we snuggle on the couch without her -- I'm very happy to have her in my home.

Even when she stinks like fetid popcorn butter.

The Baby Factory: Christmas Morning

 

It's a step in the right direction. Those could be words I'll regret in three or four years, but I found Christmas with a gabby toddler to be much more exciting than Christmas with a teetering infant. I'm guessing that next Christmas -- when Thea will be nearing her third birthday -- will have its own, new groove.

One of the first traditions of Christmas Nikole, Thea and I have created is breakfast with Thea's grandmother's -- my mom, Nikole's mom and Nikole's stepfather. We invited them over last year to quietly celebrate Thea's first Christmas before the madness of the day took over, and it made sense to repeat the performance this year. It was a simple affair -- a frittata, pumpkin bread and fruit salad. Coffee and tea. Gifts for Thea.

The morning for Thea started with a bit of glazed incomprehension. She stumbled into the living room not quite sure what all the excitement was for -- even seeing her art easel (a gift from her Mema Price) didn't really register. When she saw a sock monkey lurching out of her stocking, it began to make a little more sense, and the pattern-making continued as she reached deeper into her stocking.

That's how we spent the first hour of Christmas morning, just the three of us opening a small handful of presents. Like many people, we responded to the recession (and the loss of my paycheck) with a bit of belt-tightening. Which led Nikole -- fortunately -- to make huge batches of homemade caramel corn. A jar of which was in my stocking...