cool, old.

Today, right at this moment, while I am sitting on the porch and drinking a beer, I am triumphant, and a little bit covered with grime, and also more bejeweled than usual.   We here at team upchurch have a tendency towards disorganization and acquisition of cool old things.  We have a lot of useful things, and lots of cool things,   and a lot of things that straddle the line between old/cool/useful. What I've been doing today is creating the venn diagram of the stuff.  I managed to do a lot of sorting, not much culling.  The culling will be easier now that the sorting is done. 

Today I sorted all of the tools.  We have a lot of tools, from linoleum and wood carving tools to the usual assortment of hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, saws, cutters, nails and screws and hooks, a few power drills, two dremel tools (the handy dremel moto tool) drill bits, socket wrenches-- all of which could be conceived of as being useful in some way, to things like a length of copper tape, magnetic wire, a rusty crow bar, a very old jig saw and (now) an envelope filled with questionably useful blades for this saw, all of which fall into a gray area.  We also don't throw away each others cool old stuff, so I sorted all of it without questioning the need to keep 17 C clamps of varying sizes.  As I said, the culling comes later.

Tackling the tools led me to the other side of the basement.  I've already sorted and packed up my sewing and fabric stuff, and boxes of old sewing notions, trims, tools and so on.  I don't forsee having time to sew before we move, and I'm very much looking foward to setting up shop on the sun porch in the new house and going into curtain production after we close.  Those are the useful things.  This side of the also  basement creates boxes like the one I packed the other day-  filled with  the special dolls and stuffed animals of my life and my kids  baby lives.  Even my grandma's doll.  A box of dolls and 6 pages of the journal I kept when I was a first time new mother, my wedding flowers wrapped in a scrap of velvet from my mom's wedding dress... this is a well packed box of pure love,  atop which sits the plaster cast of my very pregnant belly from my last baby.  This is a box that probably isn't going to get unpacked anytime soon.  Unless there is a black crisis of epic evil in the world, then I will unleash the power of that box.

I packed a box ( a cool old box naturally) with 11 flocked deer, some embroidery,  vintage button and snap cards, a branch of a giant thorn tree, a (real not flocked)deer skull and a solid perfume pendant of Tabu to make it all smell like 1970.  I unearthed an already packed box, one that I brought home after my Grandma's funeral, of all of her costume jewelry-  the things that she loved enough to take with her to the assisted living apartment from her house.  Louise and I went through all of that tonight-  pendants, clip earrings,  so many sparkly pins, bracelets, strings of beads that always hung off of her mirror and lived on her dresser.  I was fun to go through all of that and see her love of pretty jewelry again.  We repacked that in an old sewing box and are both wearing a lot of it right now.
One of the pieces that came from Florida is a big glass front, glass shelved display case.  My mother in law displayed her extensive Lladro collection in it.  We've never had a display case before and will put all manner of stuff in it.  Like the roly poly clown collection, and the mechanical elephant, and my small ceramic shoes.  We didn't keep any of the Lladro except a little fox and a cat, but they, and the odd rubber hippo from a perfect Iowa garage sale will most likely go in there too.

Look at this one though, I didn't realize Lladro made interesting dust collectors too, and not just freaky elongated turn of the century people.


I also packed up all but a skeleton crew of office supplies, stationary and kids art supplies.  No one uses crayons here, yet I am having a hard time setting them in the give away box.  Surely we will need crayons, even if it is just to melt them.  I discovered a little stack of sympathy cards.  I always buy nice sympathy cards when I see them, because you just never know when you are going to need one, but of course, never knew where they were stashed.  Until now.  They are in that bin marked "stationary and blank journals".


Granted this is only the beginning of the packing, and by the end of it I'm going to be offloading junk like there's no tomorrow, and a lot of what seems keepable today might get down graded from "cool, old" to just "old"

Grandma

A big old redbud, lilacs, bridal veil, peonies,lily of the valley, hostas, ferns like you would not believe, evergreens-  it seems that the new garden will be a springtime wonderland of beauty and splendor. Then in summer there are grapes,  a few lilies and about a billion tons of a couple kind of ground cover.  I will bring echinacea, bee balm, live forever, black eyed susan, rue, sweet pea, white sage.  Hopefully I'll bring a start of the Louisa Flowering Crab, as well as starts of the Lilac in my yard and the Forsythia.  I'm going to need to cut down some trees.  I think our christmas tree is growing in the back yard, and next summer that spot will be raised beds. 

Today I went over to the house and met Sylvia who is the daughter of the current owner and has lived in the house since she was 3.  I have been a little worried about this and I dreamed about it last night.  It began with a pond in the dining room in which many cats and dogs were bathing.  The cats and dogs were all members of the household, and it seemed like they were used to this happening.  Everyone was on board with getting clean and paddling about.    The house was filled with ladies of all ages and a baby,  one room contained costume jewelry, vintage fashions and accessories, and the most beautiful furniture and display cases.  This was the room of the most important old lady, and she reclined in a bed and recieved people.  Later she was up and about and moving around, and being very lovely.  I climbed into her bed and someone handed me the baby, which of course I nursed. Stay with me readers.

Then John came in, and we went into another room, which was clearly the man's room, but he was no longer there.  The room was filled with amazing things, tool boxes, a beautiful tandem bike, suits and coats and racks of shoes, two cookie cutter displays from a long closed store.  right, I know.  The room was a gorgeous shade of dark pale green.  John was as delighted as I was, and we walked around the room choosing the things that we would keep in the house.

So, yes,  today I went over to the house and met Sylvia, the daughter of the current owner of the house who has lived there since she was three.  Sylvia and her mother are moving to a garden condo in Elmwood Park.  I liked Sylvia, and she is very happy that we are buying the house.   We are very happy we are buying the house.  She and I walked around today and went all through the house.  There are some items there that we are interested in keeping, but most of it needs to go.  There is a giant stack of Latvian books which are about to go to the alley if anyone needs to know about Latvian.  I think Sylvia and her mom and brother are very happy to be passing on this house to us.  I would like meet the mom, but even more than that I would like to have met the Grandma.

There are paintings all over the house that she made.  One of them makes up the ceiling of what will be Win's bedroom and one inexplicably covers the passway through the kitchen into the dining room, I will be glad to have them both.  The garden is all grandma.   Clearly This whole situation is sort of a cross between Gray Gardens and Spirited Away.  I am feeling like we should allow them to leave the piano. 

Change

We have had a few weeks of going back and forth about moving to this house.  We currently have a very awesome house, and one that we weren't really ever planning to move out of.  It's not huge, but it's really bright and open and a good house to live in. It's not in a fabulous location, and a lot of times I really do not even like my neighborhood-  mostly in the winter when the assholes come out with their stupid parking dibs at the slightest hint of snow, or oh, I dunno, for the LAST 12 YEARS of the yellow jeep's car alarm going off at least 3 times a night.  I don't care for my next door neighbors part time auto shop that he runs illegally out of his garage, it drives my husband insane with rage that the whole neighborhood uses our one garbage can (the other gets stolen as soon as it's replaced) to dump their unwanted trash.  Lots of things like that make me not love my neighborhood.

I have a longer list of the things I love, like the mexican grocery on the corner where we buy warm tortillas almost every night.  I love that most of my neighbors can't be bothered to talk to me at all, let alone quiz me about homeschooling. The kids on the street are mostly nice, and I've seen most of them grow up.  We share the street with a Greek Orthodox church and once a year, around Ben's birthday, there is a long parade of parishioners marching on our street, with trumpets and a flower covered bier and incense swinging.   I have a huge weedy perennial garden with all sorts of amazing flowers blooming.  We've planted flowering bushes and trees and our street is wide and green and pleasant most of the time.   We have put the love and money into this house too... it has a perfect new kitchen, and a bathroom that is pretty much a love letter to myself.  I designed all of these things for us, not for some strangers to come in and live with.  I never intended to leave this house.

But, we have this letterpress. and with the letterpress we have a lot of type, and tools and stuff stuff stuff.  All of this had been being stored and used by other letterpress printers, but they moved away and it all came back to us.  We've been thinking of where to house this stuff so that we can use it. The logical spot is the garage.  Our garage is standing only by the grace of the universe.  It looks like it could fall over at any moment.  Over the years it's been home to a large family of rats, who burrowed under the cement pad.  For a long time, the garage was a place that we preferred to not think about.  And then our terrier Malcolm showed up and barked the rats away.  And the press arrived.  So we made plans to put more money into this piece of Chicago, knowing now that we were getting past the point where we would be able to get the money back out of this place if we were ever to sell.   That isn't so much the issue, if we were planning to stay here, but our yard is small, there would never be an opportunity to have a bigger yard here.  We forged ahead with plans to rebuild the garage, on a smaller footprint, to give us as much yard as we could.

Still, it seemed like that still wasn't going to work out.  We'd have to build 3 feet in from the property line in order to meet the new code.  That 3 feet would cancel out downsizing the garage... we'd still be left with little yard left over.  We decided to just take a look and see what was available out there on a double lot.  We looked for about 5 minutes online and our new house showed up.  Upon taking a closer look at the listing I realized that this house was a house that I used to walk by about 4 years ago while W was in karate.  I would drop him off and Scout and I would ramble around Galewood, imagining myself living in that peaceful, integrated neighborhood with it's big lots, unique houses and nice people.  And this one house, the one that looked like summer home in the woods of northern Michigan was one that I always slowed down and looked at.  This is the house in the listing.

So, immediately my witch bells started ringing.  We called and set up an appointment to take a look at the house a few days later.  We loved it.  We went back with our carpenter friend.  He looked it all over carefully and gave us his opinion and advice.  We decided to go for it, and started the bidding process.  And here we are.  Getting ready to move to that house.  A house that is the same age as this house but has a list of issues as long as the new overgrown back yard. As tall as the hugest tallest tree back there, the one that is covered with an overgrown grape vine.  There is so much to do in this house, but so much that is already good.  Bigger rooms on the main floor.  A fireplace that is out of my dreams.  A sun porch (that has no windows that open) that will make a perfect studio and reading zone.  There is a den, with glass doors, and a bathroom with a tub from the 20's.  There is a back stairs and a screen door that leads out to the back yard.  An upstairs door that leads out to a balcony.  Well, it leads out to a roof.  It will be a balcony.

There is a poplar tree, and an Oak tree.  and a lot of scrubby pines and cypresses that will need to leave, and a whole lot of ground cover.   There is a long driveway that leads to a garage that we can move the presses into.  (After it is cleaned and gets a new roof)  There is no air conditioning, but there is radiator heat. There is going to be a brand new wood floor and fresh paint and open windows.  And a lot of construction and repair.   It has cedar siding, one whole wall of which needs to be replaced "corner to corner" as the inspector said, but we are going to see if we can fix it.  It has the potential to be amazing.   The energy in the house right now is flat and still and old feeling.  I can't wait to see it get moving around with lights and music and food cooking, and animals and kids.

The ladies who live there (elderly mother and daughter) have invited me over to meet them.  I'm hoping that I can go over there and turn over a bed to transplant a lot of my flowers in before we even close.  I know it seems like a crazy thing to do, go from being so settled and comfortable to being at the mercy of a big old problem filled house.  But the problems aren't structural, the house is solid.  We won't talk yet about the kitchen.  Oh the kitchen.  Oh my already perfect kitchen.  I will miss it, of course I will.   But, I am excited about the changes ahead.  Change is good.


The blog Chicagolo has been on hiatus for a long time.  the archives are available here, dating from 2006! if I can figure out how to transfer them all over here, or change the typeface there for a bigger font, then I might be posting there again.  Thanks for reading.