The Music Box

thanks to The House on Red Hill blog for this classic clip, and early talkie short filmed in nearby Echo Park. These sorts of stairs run all through the hills here, built originally, I understand, to allow domestic help easy access to the homes that they kept.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

There have been 478 earthquakes in California in the last week, according to the USGS CalTech Seismic Net report, 104 of them in the greater Los Angeles area. That's just an average week. It's been said that living here in the basin is like living in a bowl of splinters; the ground is never quite still. Most of the rumblers are small, well below the level of conscious detection, but they do add a subtle insubstantiality to life in LA that keeps us all a little  off balance. 

Only one of those 104 quakes really matters to me, however, the 5.4 temblor that struck near the Chino Hills--about 35 miles from here-- at about 11:30 this morning. It was a roller, lasting about 20 seconds or so and, because we haven't had a good one like that in a while, it got everyone's heart pounding. Though most of us are used to them by now, we have been in what feels like a prolonged period of seismic quietude and when we get a little wake up call like this one, the adrenaline starts pumping and we overload the phone system needing to ask everyone we know, "Did you feel it!?" We are a considerate city, if not the brightest in the world.

Of course, the  rocker could not have struck at a worse time for Casita Moreno.  With most of the interior walls gone, the floors stripped of any sheeting that might provide shear strength, and the 10 ton tile roof held up by little more than a few temporary 2x4s, she swayed and shimmied like a coked-up go-go dancer. The framing crew scampered out of there as fast as their legs could carry them, pie-wide eyes praying for the extra minute it would take them to burst through Montezuma's window to the relative safety of the front yard.

Luckily, the old lady stood her ground.  And a good thing she did. I did not, as of 11:30 this morning, have any insurance at all for earthquakes.  Eep!

Not for want of trying, mind you. When I went through the whole Allstate-dumped-us-buy-new-insurance thing, I asked about earthquake coverage. Somehow, it fell through the cracks (maybe I couldn't bring myself to write the check, again 2x what we were paying before). About 10 days ago, however, clear from any incipient paperwork demands, I restarted the process, which was set to go save for a single document the company required before issuing the policy. The company needed my contractor to sign off on the fact that the house was retrofitted.

For those of you unfamiliar with California earthquake building codes, the wooden frames of most houses built before the 1994 Northridge Quake basically sat on their concrete foundations like a hen on her nest. When Northridge hit , houses danced and jumped off their foundations like bacon in an iron skillet (we nickname our big quakes by epicenter, thus everyone knows what you are saying when you say "Northridge," "Loma Prieta," "Sylmar," or "Long Beach"). Thus was born the earthquake retrofitting industry, started by a nice orthodox jewish guy named Shelly Purluss. 

Shelly appeared at my door one day in 2001, kepah on his balding head, and patiently explained to me that retrofitting involves drilling through the sill plate of the house and sinking compression or epoxy bolts in the foundation, the bolting the house down to keep it from doing the jitterbug every time Mother Nature shakes her thang. Where cripple walls support the first floor above the foundation, plywood sheeting gets nailed to all the walls, stiffening their shear value and greatly reducing the tendency of these weakly constructed framed walls from collapsing. These were the two largest causes of damage in the Northridge quake, and Shelly, having pioneered the process before it hit, had pictures of two identical old houses near the epicenter, one of which was totally destroyed and the other, which he had just retrofit, virtually unscathed. The LA Times ran the picture shortly thereafter, and an industry was born. There are now hundreds of companies running around bolting houses. 

Shelly was kind enough to come out and bolt our home when Charlie was born, part of my "new Dad sleep better" initiative, reducing the fear that my house too would choose to tango-slide down the hill and, I suppose, fulfilling that primal father instinct to protect the young cubs. That, combined with the red yarn my mother suggest I tie under Charlie's crib mattress to keep the evil spirits from rising up from below and stealing his life in the middle of the night, seemed to appease the anxiety, at least until we discovered the cracked ridge beam and I almost simultaneously realized that being a parent meant slaying the dragons of free-floating anxiety every night for the rest of your life. But that's another story.

Writers are often given gifts by life, and in case you haven't gotten ahead of me here already, I could never, from the workings of my meager brain, create the delicious irony that I don't have earthquake insurance because the company writing the construction insurance policy on my denuded, matchstick-supported house needs to be assured that this fragile house of cards with the 10-ton roof, currently held together by little more than some old nails and luck, is properly attached to the foundation. 

The comedian Shelly Berman (no relation to the Quake guy) had a classic routine in the 50's describing the experience of flying on airliners assured that he was wearing his seat belt, because if he wasn't strapped to his seat, he might very well fall out of his seat, say, if the plane came to a sudden stop, say, against a mountain, in which case only the top half of his body would fly out of the seat, the bottom remaining sitting there, legs crossed, a macabre picture. I love the word macabre and this is where I learned it. Certainly, the mental picture of my collapsed house, a pile of splintered sticks and shattered red tile whose sill plate in nonetheless firmly attached to its foundation would be, in some small way, similarly macabre, if not nearly as funny.

Just to prove that some lessons are hard to learn, it actually crossed my mind to have a conversation with my new  insurance company in an attempt to explain the insanity of their request, but Alice's rabbit hole immediately opened its maw and, having spent quite enough time down there of late shaking my earthen head, I chose to banish the thought  and get Stephen to sign the damn paper.

On the bright side, I ordered a cup holder for my scooter, which arrived today, an invention that makes eminent sense.

Authenticity

It strikes me that there has been a lot of talk of authenticity involved in the house, especially in fit and finish, the things with which we interact. Aside from the Jungian implications, which I fully embrace, it strikes me that some people want their house to be stately, to stand proud and reflect well. Some want clean horizontal lines and uncluttered pen spaces. Some strive for peace or tranquility, and others a sort of messy id-ness, wearing their insides out. Traditional, historical, craftsman, victorian, colonial, a house reflects the self- perception of its creator or owner, some notion and some period of time of how life should be lived, in public and in private.

We seek authenticity, a sense that in our home genuine things can happen. Genuine love, friendship, connection. Genuine contemplation, conversation, and even (though increasingly rarely with age, it seems), genuine sleep.

I was thinking about this because it strikes me, in thinking of you, the reader, how easy it must be for some to find this journal overwrought, sentimental, or striving too hard to be meaningful. Passing for a moment the irony that would present for a creative life dedicated to eradicating those very qualities from the human story experience, it might be difficult for some of you to connect with something so innocent and permeable as the search for authentic expression. 

We have so many filters in our lives, so many ways to take the real and recontextualize it in ways that diminish its significance, as if we're afraid to admit to ourselves that the breaths we take are precious to us and we care deeply about how, where, and under what conditions we expel them. To cite a banal example, I notice how fast Barak Obama's message of hope and rational government has been pushed away by a parody of saintliness, as if striving to be better (could our government be worse?) was too insignificant to admit that we cared about it, and this by those very thinking people who, I'd wager, for years have pined for just such a rational and intelligent approach to governance.

The political message is not the point here; the psychological process is.  Some might call this process cynicism, but I think that's too easy. We wrap ourselves in a general blanket of dismissiveness for protection against the authentic, to protect ourselves from a harsh life, a life that often feels like its getting away from us, moving too fast, getting too complicated, getting too regulated or just too multifaceted for us to make sense of.

But a home is the shelter from that life, the external container of our internal space. How we shape and form it should be emotionally naked and raw. Most people don't get this opportunity, however, the space and time to make it just so. They either do it bit by bit over time, an epic narrative, or live in various states of benign neglect, making do with what shelter and comfort we can find within the walls we inhabit.

I am increasingly aware that we have been given a great gift, albeit one born of adversity. We get to reconsider and reconceive our home almost from scratch. We didn't choose this path; it has been thrust upon us. But it may prove great nonetheless. In the seared and empty walls of the wooden box on Moreno Drive, we can pour the imagination of who we are and aspire to be. And we're trying to do that honestly, authentically, and with heart.

In that space, I think, there is no place to hide.

So pardon me if I can't muster ironic distance, clever retorts, mild quips, or even--most of the time--a wry smile toward this experience. I know it is vastly more entertaining to read that sort of narrative. Goofy characters, quirky irony, etc.  I can be funny (I think). But every time I try, I simply revert to a contemplative space closer to the bone. I don't want to push this away, or wrap myself in a warm blanket of protection. I want to breathe clean air, to get the smoke out of my lungs, to stay clear and present to the experience (perhaps that explains the scooter). 

This journal hopes to find a way to share with you that exposed feeling so that you can touch that parts of yourselves as well, to find in the space of our reconstruction a bit of your own inner authentic space. I want you to put this down and look around your room and think about how the home in which you live effects you moment to moment, plays in your senses like flavors play on your tongue, writes the narrative of your inner life. I want to find a language on these pages that you can embrace with the same emotional nakedness that we feel, turned out of our home into that speeding world,  trying to find both a way back in, and what "in" really is.

Picture progress -Week 3

Our small framing crew is being very productive. Good lesson to remember: sometimes the few can accomplish well what the many will only fuck up in confusion.

I also have to remember this is a visual medium. Poke me if i forget to post some photos every now and again.

The old stairs are gone. I suppose this is the Amazing Floating House Pt1 pt 2, as the stair return started it all. But we'll just celebrate its passing after 80 years of carryin' that weight.

Burnt subfloor and joist mad new. The fire started in the far left corner, where the much despised floor furnace used to live. Very happy to see it gone.

That's the right wall of the new staircase going in. The first brace is tacked where the fridge will go

Framing in the master bedroom upstairs.

Lingua Franca

Construction speaks a language of its own, of course, but what comes as a revelation is the language of fit and finish. We are deep in the process of selecting the textures, surfaces, and materials that will skin the sticks and nails of the structure, and each, we are learning, comes with its own quirky language. Tile, for instance, as durable and solid a materiel as one could wish for, comes pillowed. This cement-affixed man-made stone, measured in tonnage, can have pillow, a slight curve  on its top edges. A square of red clay roof tile (100 sf) weighs about 1000 pounds, depending on the style in question, which means our roof weighs about seven tons. You could not imagine, however, ordering seven tons of pillows.

Red clay roof  tile, for the record, has no pillow.

Our guide through the world of finish materials is Shelby, a sweet, art school-educated former furniture maker now turned go-to guy for all that looks pretty in a house. He roams around the city, showing up periodically at our door with a sample of this, or a board of that, illustrating a stain color, a tung oil texture seal, or a plaster technique. Elicia and I murmur appreciatively, pretending, I suppose to know one thing over another, voicing our likes and dislike oblivious to any coherent sense of appropriate style. Shelby must make sense of our whims and try to fashion a coordinated whole.

We've made the job harder I suppose, by trying to primitive pico hacienda on a 1920's Spanish Revival house. The Spanish revival, for all its now quaint charms, in fact tried it damnedest not to be Mexican. It strove to be Spanish, or Moorish, or Andalusian, anything but Mexican casita. Thus our little house had pretentions of a much larger Mediterranean palacio; cove and tray ceilings, and precise textured wall plaster (originally, degraded over time), and faux peg-and-plank floors ( a bit of an architectural oddity for the style, but popular in LA in the years after the house was built. Though it had 1-3/4" red oak floors, workmen went door to door during the depression and sold a sort of retro fit which involved routing out and darkening grooves every 5" or so to illustrate a wide board, then drilling and sinking dark walnut "pegs," to simulate the look on the cheap). It had, despite a small floor plan, a formal dining room and a huge trapezoidal window in the living room facing the street (another oddity-- most of time you will see a arched cathedral window there. we fondly called it "Montezuma's Window"). The living was in the front of the house, near the street, despite setting back only 10' from the curb, so that the servants, of which there were probably none,  could work in back.

We're undoing all that. Our floor plan is open, rustic, and modern, with the movement from kitchen to dining area to soft furniture to deck almost seamless. A house in which to wander and flow, to entertain in cozy zones all connected by geometry and viewing angles. No walls downstairs, nothing stopping the sense of connection. We're moving all the living to the back of the house, where the Big View stars, and all the utility to the front. We're going for a "Drunken Mexican" roof, "freestyle" wall plaster with "cats faces" and trowel marks, wide plank flooring, clay bisque foor tile with hand painted talavera accent tile. We want things made by hand, soapstone you want to touch, walnut cabinets whose dark grain paints swirls and movement through the mellow-toned wood, tile painted by someone who works for a living.

And, of course, all mod cons. the best cooking and food storage machine made, soundproofing that turns my buzzing, whining, whirring, humming house into a sanctuary or silent contemplation (at least when Charlie isn't playing drums). Shelby has to assemble all that, on a budget.

The process is oddly fun, tactile, and shifts in tone and mood, but is also fraught with worry. Every decision seems laden with something, but we can't figure out what. David, Marcelle, Bill, Rose, all our designer friends seem to do it so easily but for us each decision is pondered and let to bubble until we're sure its right for us. Somehow, we know we will shine through all the choices we make.

I started this post thinking I would writing something pithy about the language of finishing the interior of a house and have spent most of it talking about our sense of style. But in a sense, the choices you make, the textures you touch, the colors you see become the language of the home, and by extension, your life. Early on in this journal, I remember posting about how moving through your home, from object to object, pile to pile, room to room, formed a sort of narrative, the syntax of your life, making the home not a space, but a series of moments, like words, that tell the story of your day. Perhaps what we are experiencing is the process of trying to write that story, or at least outline it's next chapter. Each day we struggle to pre-visualize the sorts of experiences various materials will provide for us. Will that tile be comfortable to walk on in bare feet, or too bumpy? Wouldn't it be nice if the french door had inner screened panels that we could open at night to get a cool breeze through the house while keeping the dumb beetles out? I can imagine enjoying that. What will it be like to set the table while Elicia is cooking? Will Charlie be able to get the silverware while safely avoiding a swinging chef's knife?

These are the questions we ask ourselves as we contemplate each choice before us. What will be the story of our lives in this home each day, each minute, each experience? What story can we write here? What language will it speak?

Perhaps Shelby has a bigger job than I first thought...

Quadrahousia

I got a scooter. Call it a mid-house crisis, a funny-money toy, or what you will. Got tired of getting into my rolling living room to get the mail.

The scooter, a -- get this -- Geniune Buddy, is, in a word,

 fun! (exclamation point included). Since having it, I'm simply happier. Each day, I get 20 minutes of sun and wind and smiles at the people I pass. Vampire no more, each night I dream about where I'm going to scoot the next day. I take the long way home, intentionally riding around the block, or around the lake, to get to the simplest place. I forget things at the store so that I have to go back. I stop by friends houses as I pass, just to be able to detour a little out of the way and prolong the ride. So, in addition to the fun, I sitting with friends drinking coffee in the afternoon, just enjoying.

Sometimes a toy is a toy, but in this case, it's a different life.

When we first bought the house, when Elicia sat crying on the kitchen floor about how ugly it was and I told her I would fix it and set out to do so, I first demo'd the room, ripping out the old laminate cabinates and Z-brick faux-brink wall covering and the chocolate brown sink. It was August by then, and hot, and the sweat dripped down my face catching the whispy-fine strands of my hair and glueing them to my forehead. It was then, as I started to build back what i had ripped out, that I cut my hair buzz-cut short for the first time. I had always been a longhair, but the time had come. Myra came and cut it on the newly stained deck, and I proceeded to put down the backer board and hang the cabinets in what would be come our new kitchen.  My hair has been generally short since then, the moment of building back that house being a turing point of sorts.

Perhaps that's what this silly scooter is. Not to make too much of it, but sometimes it's just good to open a new door, to see things a different way, and it is not the thing that you do that is the change, but the new perspective you gain from having done it. 

I scoot through LA, where before I drove. I feel the sun on my suddenly vulnerable skin and the wind past my helmeted head. And I smile more.

The Amazing Floating House, pt 2

and poof! it was gone.

Strike another blow for the forces of good, truth, and structural integrity.

Window Tax

Having stripped the house, I think we have solved one of the lasting enigmas that had puzzled us since we bought it.  Downstairs in the living room we had early on discovered two large 4' windows that had been boarded up and plastered inside and stuccoed over on the outside. In the dining room, more obviously, was a similarly sealed picture window, much larger, which though plastered inside had been left framed on the exterior, its sill intact, a piece of plywood where the glass once lived.  We heard told that the picture window was removed by the last owners, and English family, to make room for the large family heirloom china closet they put on that wall. Ron, the old man who lived next door for 45 years,  told us this.

But we had never figured out the living room, resting with an assumption that the windows had been boarded when the house next door arose to present a view of a stuccoed garage wall.

Having stripped the plaster thoroughly, though, it now appears that the wood used to close all three windows is identical, leading us to now believe that the three windows were all boarded at the same time.

History supports this view. During the late 17th century in England, the King wanted to raise funds. Unable, or unwilling, to leverage an income tax on a landed aristocracy that found disclosing your income bad form, but wanting to draw revenue from the rapidly growing merchant class, they came up with the inventive progressive solution to impose a "glass tax." Working from the assumption that the richer you were, the larger house you could afford and the larger the house, the more windows it had, King William III instituted a tax on windows in under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money in 1696. The more windows you had, the more you paid.

The tax was unpopular, as all taxes are,and some by some as a tax on "light and air." Nevertheless, it persisted for 200 years or so, forging an indelible mark on both English architecture and culture. Anti-tax crusaders (the Republicans of their day no doubt), rather tan risk getting their heads chopped off or some other medieval grotesquery, simply bricked up their windows. Over time, people built fewer windows into their homes and got used to living in the dark.

Which brings us back to Casita Moreno. Our English predecessors, presumably attracted by the lack of rain but repulsed by the incessant beating of the glorious SoCal sun, simply boarded it up, removing any pretensions our little box had to sunny warmth and, coincidentally, destroying any flow-through ventilation the house ever had. Though the saying supposes that mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, perhaps it's because when you go out you can wear a hat and even Englishmen won't wear their bowlers around the house.

Our new casita will have glorious light and the wafting scent of night jasmine and mock orange blossoms on the cool night air. It will breathe once again.

The Amazing Floating House

When I began working on the house back in 1995, one of the first clues I got that I was in over my head was the amazing floating staircase. It was a split level stair, and the top return created a nook in the kitchen under which the stove and fridge tucked. When I stripped off the plaster, I discovered a rube goldbergian framing in which one thing was attached to another, but none seemed to attach to anything that descended to the ground to carry the weight. It just seemed to float.

At first, I attributed the confusion to my lack of experience, but one by one my construction savvy friends came to look and all went away scratching their heads in amazement.  One one header, scrawled in child's crayon, were the words "fix this Cornor," (sic) scribbled, no doubt, by a barely english literate Italian workman and heeded, seemingly, by no one.

In the end, i threw up my hands, figured it had been standing for 80 years and wasn't going to fall down now, strapped everything to everything else with flat metal plates, and closed the whole thing up like a bad family memory that you suppress and only recall at thanksgiving meals.

Over the years, I ran into other examples of framing that looked like it had been completed by a severely ADD limited nailer and the hand of God, but nothing as bad as the stairs. Until today.

Having removed the stairs completely, I was faced with the framing designed (and I use the term loosely) to hold up the entire upstairs bathroom and part of the roof, two 8' 2x12s sistered together supported where they met the wall by a single 2x4 and at the other end by...nothing. They were simply end nailed into a floor joist.  I know this because, after 80 years of supporting the 800 iron bathtub, all the  fixtures and walls of the bathroom, plus the trodding of countless humans, the joists had sunk a full 1/2" exposing the three slender nails holding the whole mousetrap together.

Now, to be fair, 1/2" sag over that time is remarkably little, but still, had I known that critical parts of the house were joined by little more than duct tape, I think those Thanksgiving dinners would have been even uglier than they were (Did I tell you about the 6 months staring up at the ceiling over our bed knowing that about 20,000 of clay tile and wood directly over our sleeping heads were being held in place by a ridge beam that had cracked in two places? No? Remind me someday.)

Perhaps the controlling metaphor for this reconstruction should be the joining well of that which was only loosely held in place, as if the years we spent keeping things going, scratching to get by, were just a house of cards that held long enough for us to build the strong internal bonds we would need to confront this project. Now, older, established, we have the opportunity to bind our home together with bonds as strong as the bonds of love with which we built our family, with which we survived tough times, infertility, the death of both of my parents, career transition, Charlie's adoption, successes and failures, with which we persevered one slow step at a time into the middle of our age like we were driving at night, seeing only as far as the headlights would shine but knowing we would get there nonetheless.

Now we get to make our small spot of earth as permanent as a person can, which is to say not very permanent, but perhaps, at least, well built.

Can you build in space with a hammer a reflection of the far more difficult -- and ephemeral -- construction that is your life? Should you try?

Weak #1

First week: not stellar. 

We have a hole (thanks Jose and Arturo!) for the footing that will support the new staircase and, incidentally, the center of the house. The old staircase is gone, as is the wall between the dining room and kitchen. the place seems larger, of course, and I'm sure a lot of ordering/planning/scheduling happened in the background, but we haven't had a crew more than 3 on the property yet and I'm hoping that changes soon.

We had so much pent up energy for the project we assumed the contracting crew did too. But I suppose it is more reasonable to understand that a project like this will ramp up. I kinda want to grab a hammer and get to it, but I'll keeping pounding on the keyboard trying to get this draft out. Perhaps the two are related. Wouldn't be the first time my work and life were moving on invisible but parallel tracks. In those cases, I only discovered after the fact, and perhaps that will be the case here as well.

Steve and I continue to go back and forth over the contract. The latest notion is that "I want my cake and to eat it to," which i confess I found a bit unfair, even if it might have been made in half jest ("kidding on the square," Al Franken calls it). I'm trying, perhaps futilely, to build a time plus materials/not to exceed contract that includes both an incentive fee for them to come in under budget, but also some enforceable control on overages. Steve's first draft basically said the budget was a guide only, and provided no guarantees. That seemed too much risk for me./ I want to share the risk and share the reward. He, justifiably, wants to protect himself. I believe we can find a middle ground, but in so doing, the number keeps going up. It's making my brain hurt, but I'm going to see it through. the annuls of construction are littered with the remains of unprotected homeowners. Mikey Holmes taught me that (;-))

Also, in a fit of I-don't-know-what, I bought a scooter on Saturday. Funny money impulse buy. I hope it doesn't kill me. If it does, this blog is done and everyone should know that Elicia and Charlie are the two most important, beautiful things that ever happened to my life (Just thought I'd put that down in print somewhere, in case).

The scooter's cool, though. Comes in this week.

a Holmes returns

yup, Mikey is back.
TLC just picked up Holmesy in... get this...HD!

Did I mention the fact that our cousin Pam is head of Legal and Business Affairs for TLC?

I SWEAR she had nothing to do with returning Mike to the US. I SWEAR. Really. 

the release:

TLC Premieres HOLMES ON HOMES
Hit Series Joins All-New Episodes of DATE MY HOUSE Beginning June 28

Los Angeles, CA – June 24, 2008 – The hit series HOLMES ON HOMES has found a new home on TLC beginning Saturday, June 28, it was announced today by the network.

HOLMES ON HOLMES, which most recently aired on sister network Discovery Home, follows construction and renovation expert Mike Holmes as he visits unlucky families who have been swindled or abandoned during their home improvement projects. Mike uncovers shoddy construction methods, improper techniques, and down right rip-offs, working to uncover and fix the problems, while explaining how homeowners can safeguard themselves from these unscrupulous builders and dishonest contractors. Viewers can learn valuable lessons for their own home renovation projects, such as the importance of a good contract, proper payment terms and what good craftsmanship should really look like.

“As more people focus on renovating the homes they have, instead of moving to new ones, it’s important to be informed and aware of the ‘right’ way to tackle any construction project,” explain Holmes. “Through the experiences and stories of the homeowners on the show, viewers can avoid unexpected disasters and big headaches. It’s great that HOLMES ON HOMES will find a new audience on TLC.”

the "news" part

When i went to the house to see the workmen, I found a delivered copy of the LA Times. We suspended service shortly after the fire, postponing it for the maximum 6 months allowable. It resumed today.

Jung would call this "synchronicity."

I postponed it another 6 months. I wonder what will happen then.

Groundbreaking News.

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. -Anais Nin, (1903-1977)

In my mind, this was a momentous day. In my mind, the day workmen began rebuilding would be a flurry of activity, a cacophonous post-modern symphony of sloshing portapotties, grinding hydraulics, crashing metal dumpsters, screaming men's voices in Spanish and English, bleeping cell phones, attacking hammers and squealing crowbars as a dozen or more workers descended on Casita Moreno in a flurry of industry and creative destruction. In my mind, this day would be the release of all the pent up frustration, twisting worry, and force of will it took to get here, to keep family spirits high and emotional keels even, to wring sufficient dollars from reluctant Allstate (still in process), to believe that this day would come. In my mind, today the unstoppable force of man's desire to build would overwhelm the unmovable object of charred entropy on Moreno Drive and yield the beginnings of a shiny new life.

Instead, we got Jose and Alberto digging a hole. A modest hole, granted, perhaps even a sincere hole. In fact, as I consider it, a beautiful hole. But on this, the first day of new life for Casita Moreno, we got two guys with shovels.

They seem to have brought a white microwave oven which they have put beneath my house. This is a mystery I choose not to solve. I have done so poorly so far.

Evacuation

the portapottie is back. we're back in business.

Permit Me

Permit achieved.

[PICTURE OF PERMIT TO COME]

After a Kafaesque process, they signed. I went down to the city to view firsthand the machinations of this secret bureaucratic cabal in person. the office where all the decisions are made about what is built and how in the entire city of Los Angeles is an absolutely featureless room with 6 empty desks arranged in kneewall cubicles. Scotch-taped to the wall above each is a single sheet of white paper with a single number, handwritten, to denote each station. there is absolutely nothing else on the walls. Nothing. Rein. Nada. Nil. Zilch. Not a sign. Not a poster. Not a picture of a house.  Nothing. you could perform open heart surgery in this room.

Presumably, the sterility of decor removes all possible distraction for the plan checkers whose job it is to get endlessly lost in a repeating feedback loop of inane regulations and code requirements. If they had a touchstone to remind them of the real world outside this austere room, presumably, they would not be able to so completely, quickly, and repeatedly lose sight of the big picture of what you are trying to accomplish.

Each time they touch your plans, they immediately go down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass in a ribbon of linearity, going from point to point down some supernatural checklist that only they can navigate, until they hit a bump in the road, and no matter how many times you have explained, clarified, and agreed to the resolution to that bump, they stop dead as if frozen deer, panicking lest some lag bolt or flashing has been tragically misplace, dooming the entire project to imminent destruction.

At one point today, the über-boss was looking at our plans and describing how, because of current setback requirements, the "addition" to my house (which, I remind you, involves simply adding a wall to enclose already existing space within my already existing foundation footprint) would now have one wall that must angle five degrees in order to set it back 5" from the property line. This would be in the middle of my bedroom. And after ten minutes of explaining the reasons for this, and us trying to explain the inanity of this, he says that's the way it has to be "unless, of course, you have the signatures of your neighbors," which, of course, we had ten days ago and had shown them twice. Shown a third time, he says, "Oh, well why are we talking about this? I'll sign." and we are done.

Next up: Sweaty men on the property...if, of course, I can get my builder to draft a contract. but that's another story.