2012 Gratitude

Highlights of 2012 (5): What are you most grateful for this year?

I'll put down the top five things in my life/year that I'm most grateful for, in order of importance:

1. Improved communication and communion with O., particularly for the breakthrough conversations we had in mid-October than changed so much.
2. New friends and old--who would be higher on this list if it weren't for the fact that I am equally grateful for them every year. 
3. Our house, which is so much better than our 2011 dwelling and which is now occupied by only us and the bunnies.
4. Bunnies, babysitting, the other part-time job, and grad school applications: things that keep me occupied and give me a sense of purpose or accomplishment.
5. Health.

2012 Challenges

It's Ten Thousand Questions Day! This week at Ten Thousand Questions, the theme was Highlights of 2012; I intend to answer the five questions today (in five posts, since I am still aiming for 100 posts this year...).

Beginning with Monday's question: What was your biggest challenge this year?

Well. 2012 had quite a few challenges. From December 2011 into January 2012, I spent my first Christmas and New Year's away from my family, staying for a week (or more?) with O.'s family in Florida. We also had to find a subletter and move in the first half of January. February brought the mundane adventures of learning my way around the grocery and hardware stores in the new town.

March and April were filled with failed attempts to hang curtains, as well as the acquisition of two adorable rabbits who presented ridiculous furry problems. In May I forced myself to drive in New Jersey for the first time (during a torrential downpour, as it happened; I arrived 30 minutes late to the vet appointment).

In June (or late May?) I spent a week away from O. at Basileia. That joyful week, though, confronted me with the fact that I felt more confident facing new people and a new situation without O. than with him, and that it was easier for me to keep my relationship with God in good order when I was away, on my own. A new friend advised me, sternly, not to think about going back, but to think about moving forward. Her words echoed in my mind when I got home to O. and confessed my discoveries to him.

Somewhere in there O. fasted for seven days--a miserable and worried week for me. Plenty of marital challenges this year, definitely.

July's trip to Turkey was accompanied by the joys and frustrations of spending many hours of the day in close quarters with relatives on both sides.

August was the beginning of a new job with our church, which has challenged my communication skills and my ability to assert my preferences. That's actually been the major struggle recently, although the conflict of a few weeks ago seems to be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. I just hope our negotiated plans work out.

September began a babysitting job, which is mostly fun. Disciplining a three year old and changing his diapers definitely challenges me, though.

Oh, September. Suddenly it all comes flooding back: L. and J. and their two cats moving in with us due to a housing crisis for them; our failure to establish expectations at the beginning of their stay, which stretched for two months; our refrigerator unwontedly crowded with bottles of salad dressing and mustard and a dozen other things; three jars of peanut butter in the overflowing pantry; limited bathroom access; cat allergies; the rabbits stressed out; practically no alone time with O. And meanwhile, O. gradually deciding to quit his job, hopefully leave the tech field altogether, and strike off in a bold new direction (though just what direction was unclear). Thank God we were already in counseling at that point!

October was more of the same.

November started with a hurricane, during which O. gave his two weeks' notice, with my ambivalent consent. During a non-trivial portion of that week, the atmosphere inside the house matched the winds and storms outside. L. and J. found a new place to live at last and moved out just after the storm. Then Thanksgiving, then December, and Christmas, and here I am at the end of the year.

Conclusion: 2012's biggest challenge, by far, was sharing the house with a stressed-out couple, two highly allergenic cats, and occasionally a very energetic five year old girl--for two months. Would I do it again? Maybe. But I would plan it a heck of a lot better and not be shy about asking for changes, because, by gosh, it's my house. And I would not harbor the cats for more than a week.

Retirement Home

There is no denying that my parents are older now than they were a few years ago. Bifocals and presbyopia are dinner conversation, and hikes are shorter, particularly following my mother's bunionectomy (what a word). Names are shouted across the house, and they are not always heard.

After witnessing my father's deafness in one instance to my mother's calling of his name from several large rooms away, I remarked to O., "When we get old, let's live in a little house so that we never have to shout for each other."

"How about a dome house?" O. suggested.

I had never heard of such a thing in real life. O. described to me a geodesic dome house with a wooden frame, but he was fuzzy on the details. An internet search was soon mounted, quickly leading us to a website for an entirely different sort of dome house: one manufactured by a Japanese company and made from "the fourth generation building material: expanded polystyrene!" You can watch the promo videos, hilariously dubbed in a lovely Australian accent, on the company's website, but a better viewing experience can be had courtesy of Youtube. Embedded below:

This is the house of the future! That is, my future. I hope they are still making these things when O. and I are ready to retire. We'd like the "tow dome" construction, please.

I doubt these houses will catch on in the U.S., but I can imagine them doing well in Japan, as illustrated in the 480 dome village in the video. Having lived in Japan, I recognize a thousand subtle Japanese influences and assumptions in the design--most obviously, the compactness of it. What American would call a 44 sq. meter dome "really spacious"? These dome houses made me nostalgic for the world of my childhood, a vaguely remembered Japan.

Anyway, I seriously am interested in living in a dome house someday. This looks way more convenient than a treehouse, and almost as cool.

Baseboard heater contents

For your combined amusement and horror (or perhaps simply sympathy, if you have lived in a brownstone yourself), a list of things I have vacuumed out of our baseboard heaters in the past week:

• 3 leaves, of a shape that does not match the leaves on the trees outside, whose highest branches end ten feet below our windows anyway
• 1 green thumbtack
• a round plastic thingy that goes on 
• several lumps of plaster, presumably from when these walls got replastered, almost certainly from the previous millennium :P
• 1 feather, dark brown and crumpled
• at least 100g of what looks like sand. What it actually is, I really can't say. I've vacuumed it up before but it keeps coming back...
• 15 cents in pennies and dimes
• copious spiderwebs
• plenty of what appeared to be cat hair but may have actually been (a) dog hair or (b) more spiderwebs
• dust
• dust
• dust
• and more dust
• [update:] ball-point pen
• [update:] at least 3 screws

How most of these things got into our heaters is a mystery. I can only hope that now that they're out, my allergies will go down and maybe the chronic fatigue will dissipate.

But let me stop a moment to be grateful: for a vacuum cleaner, for the narrow pointy attachment on the vacuum cleaner, for electricity; for heaters, for the pilot light on the furnace finally being lit, for the furnace working properly, for the expansion tank on the furnace not leaking or blowing up; for an apartment; for private space.

House Perspective

Today I started vacuuming the living room while the toaster oven was heating up my lunch in the dining room. It worked for a few minutes, and then suddenly the vacuum cleaner went silent. The air filter five feet away in our bedroom was still puffing away, so it took me a bit to figure out that the circuit had blown out... Yup, no light in the kitchen, bathroom or dining room.

Oh well, I thought. Last time, when I stupidly ran the microwave and toaster oven at the same time from the same outlet, the electricity returned to us in about 30 minutes, seemingly not connected to anything we actually did. The circuit will fix itself after a while, I figured.

An hour and a half later, the situation remains the same. Half the outlets in the living room still work, though, as do the ones in the bedroom. For this I am grateful.

And as I wander the house, frowning as I flick light switches and see no results, the thought occurs to me: I should be grateful that I can still heat water and cook things (thanks to our much-maligned gas stove). Yes, I am grateful for the gas stove/oven, and grateful that there is still running water, and grateful that normally there is electricity throughout the house, and grateful that there is a house at all.

Thank You.