the workshop ate my homework
Fri 2015-06-26 23:56:01 (in context)
Pictured at right is a large part of the reason that the July 26 Friday Fictionette will be late. This is the walking-in-the-door view of our storage closet, which is located downstairs in the parking garage. Every unit in the building gets one. Bigger units presumably get bigger storage closets. Our unit is a 2-bed 2-bath, which apparently corresponds to a huge storage closet.
It was also a huge selling point for our new home. From the first time we looked at the address's listing online and saw pictures of all the rooms and amenities, John declared that, if we did buy the place, the storage closet would not be used exclusively or even primarily for storage; it would in fact become his new workshop. He has all kinds of DIY projects in various stages of development, and he needs a place where he can store all their components and work on them in comfort.
If he were that sort of a dude, this would be his "man cave." But he is not that sort of a dude (I probably wouldn't have married that sort of a dude), and he finds the whole gender-normative and gender-restrictive idea of a "man cave" to be repulsive. Scrapping and woodworking and electrical projects aren't just for men. And, as he was quick to point out, the workshop/storage unit isn't just his. Some of my DIY is down there too: fleeces I have yet to card and spin, used roller derby equipment to be donated or upcycled, my homebrew equipment for when I finally contemplate making mead again, & etc.
John's been excitedly showing me every step in the ongoing process of organizing and furnishing the place. Like when he brought home that work bench from Home Depot (you can barely see it on the left in the photo) and pointed out where he was going to hang a peg board. And how he met a neighbor who's put his own storage closet to similar use, and got some useful tips from him.
Today we went to the rental storage unit and, together, ferried back four 8-foot planks and a whole bunch of cement blocks. Back at the old place, these used to be part of our entertainment center, where we kept and used our TV, computer, phonograph and records, CDs, and video games. Now they've been erected as storage shelving. See how well they work?
After bringing those things home, I was officially beat. I have no idea how John found the energy to go down there, put a bunch of things on the shelves, sand his workbench to a satiny finish, sweep the whole place out, and make a first pass at staining the workbench. Me, I was flat. It also bears mentioning that in addition to the planks and bricks, we brought home two boxes of paperbacks, and I wasted no time picking out one to reread. So I wasn't just flat, I was flat with my falling-apart copy of Patricia McKillip's The Book of Atrix Wolfe. I had the self-restraint to put it away after fourteen chapters and several hours of on-and-off napping. Would that I had not picked it up in the first place, but it was probably unreasonable to expect me to resist that much temptation.
(Books! Books are coming home! We have a house full of books once more!)
We don't have a name for the workshop besides "the workshop," other than agreeing, with much rolling of the eyes at the mere mention, that it is not "the man cave." But we do have a name for the house. We came up with it last week: The Conservatory. It is phonetically similar to the previous place's name (The Observatory), and it makes reference to almost all the senses of the word we can think of:
A solarium/greenhouse. We've got the herb and vegetable container garden out back, the tropical plants indoors, and the flowers on the front patio.
A place for the performance arts. We've got a number of musical instruments, many of them real (piano, guitar, hammer dulcimer, cornet, etc.) and a few of them fake (Rock Band 2 and 3 on the Wii). Transitioning from a third-floor unit with neighbors below to a street-level unit with nothing underneath but a parking garage has made us much more free to indulge in melodious noise-makers.
A sunroom. AKA the back half of the house. Since the summer arrived in earnest, it's gotten quite bright and warm. The plants are happy, but we find ourselves retreating to the office, kitchen, and front patio for a little relief.
A pun on "conservation." I've already made mention of the wildlife in the neighborhood, specifically itinerant whitetail and mule deer. And then there's the bird-and-squirrel TV on the back porch. We get house finches, sparrows, and the occasional grackle on the feeder. Then there's a very timid bird, somewhat smaller than a sparrow, that visits the feeder quickly and stealthily, almost before I can get a good look at it. I think it's a black-capped chickadee. Squirrels show up to eat whatever winds up on the deck. Sometimes the squirrels investigate our garden, at which point we chase them away with brooms. It'll be a pleasant surprise if any of our sunflowers make it to the flowering stage.
The most recent bird drama has been a family of grackles--possibly more than one family--the adolescents of which have been doggedly resisting their parents' attempts to teach them self-sufficiency. They yap and yap until the adult birds shove a mouthful of suet cake into their faces. Or until the parents make it clear they are not going to do this anymore, but instead showily demonstrate how one goes about getting one's own damn mouthful of suet cake from the feeder. Today, the youngsters have been shyly arriving on the back porch, unchaperoned and determined to figure things out.
Best of all today was the dragonfly swarm at dusk. I don't generally get to see dragonflies in Boulder in anywhere near the numbers I would back home in New Orleans. Usually I just see one or two, mostly out by the small private lakes, along the creeks, or in the pocket "wetlands" where the cattails grow. But as I walked down the block to go see how John was coming along in the workshop, I happened to look up at the place where our building separates into two "towers," into the space in between that's open to the sky, and in that narrow alley was a mob of dragonflies, all swooping and diving and hunting their prey. John came up with me to see the spectacle. We went up to the second floor walkway for a better look, and it was that much more amazing--especially when some of them repeatedly swooped at our faces. I only wish I could have seen their colors better; at twilight, small things turn monochrome.
Well, I also wish I'd gotten a picture, but I doubt my crappy 10-year-old Kodak would have done the scene justice. Maybe I'll try anyway on Sunday. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow's bout day. Come twilight I'll be skating roller derby at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. (If you would like to see this for yourself, doors open at 5:30 PM and tickets are $15; I'll be in the second bout.) But I'll be home at twilight on Sunday, unless plans should change.
Sunday is also when I'm hoping to post the July 26 Friday Fictionette. Monday at the latest. (Sorry again.)
So that's the week, that's the news from the Conservatory, and that's it for me for now. Good night!