Jade Dragon

On a swatch, it's one thing. in a large room, it's overpowering.

 

As the husband and I settle, or try to settle, into the house, something has us bamboozled. 

Where are we going to hang the art?

We don't have priceless works, but we have a few that have been in the family forever.  And this house, at 112 years old has an interesting problem - a forty-foot-deep living room that has two big bay windows, two huge arches, a fireplace, and as little wall space as you can imagine.

Honestly, many open floor plans "for today's living" don't even offer that kind of space.  

The walls in the living room were, at one time, Sherwin Williams' Jade Dragon, a color that has darkened over the five or six years since the room was last painted.  What color is Jade Dragon? The same color as Margaret Hamilton's make-up in The Wizard of Oz.

Said living room will be painted a far lighter hue come spring, but in the meantime, we are pulling nails, and patching, which meant, finding the remnants of what was in the can of Jade Dragon in the basement, dry as the desert. 

So I spent an hour and a half at Sherwin Williams today waiting for my turn.  All I needed was a quart of this concoction (I am a Benjamin Moore kind of guy) watching other painters who got there before me, strut around. 

I spent most of the time looking at my paint fan (that quasi booklet of every paint color that Sherwin Williams makes, they give them out if you ask) and trying to decide what color we could paint the living room if I didn't hate dirty Jade Dragon so much. 

Then my mind had a thought: Jade Dragon is a perfect drag name. Not for me, but for someone else. Neither the Husband nor I do drag, still, we have drag names. The Husband's "drag name" is Taffeta Darling, after Madeline Kahn in Young Frankenstein. 

Mine is decidedly more Shaker: Bubbie VanAken®, an homage to all the Jewish bubbies that lived on Van Aken in the 1960s and 70s, who furnished their houses in Glitzy Louis the XVI furniture. 

Anyway, after the rough trade painters were through, it was my time.  I told Miss Thing at the counter what I needed and his reaction was "Really? Do you really need that color? I mean I never would have thought you were a Jade Dragon type of guy."  I told him that we evidently were in sync, that I wasn't, but that I needed it for touch-ups.

And we talked about colors, and the names of the colors. And what a job it would be. 

"Could never do it," said he. "My names would be too honest for Corporate."

I could see his point.  I mean, one of S-W's biggest selling colors isn't a color at all, it's a shade: Agreeable Gray.  It's not too light, not too saturated. With white woodwork, it's a totally safe bet. 

I told him I would have named it Safe Choice Gray.

"And who wants to go safe when you paint a space?"

Which brought us back to Jade Dragon. 

"This color cries out for bird of paradise wallpaper, with banana leaves."

So I left, a can of paint in hand. The spots have been touched up and are now drying. 

And before you know it, the sun is beginning to set. 

Tomorrow, another adventure. 

But tonight, it's all about covering Jade Dragon up with art.

Your catharsis is not my ephiphany

 

What fresh Hell is this?

Well, today is my birthday.  Whoop de-do.

When you are born on Thanksgiving or have a birthday during Thanksgiving week, it's always a bummer.  

Making it worse is that in the United States, this date is always a day of National Day of Mourning.  Kennedy was killed on my first birthday. 

After a while, you get used to it. 

You never get a real birthday party on your birthday if you were born on a Thanksgiving week, because everyone is traveling.  And a meal on Thanksgiving is never a birthday feast.  Trust me, my family tried that con enough times and it never worked. 

Presents always came after the Christmas sales started. UNLESS, you have that Aunt who buys a gift for you at Christmas close-out time and by the time your birthday rolls around, you are too old for the gift. 

The absolute worst of those idiots are people who say "It's your birthday? Well did you know that Kennedy was killed on this day?" 

Why yes. Yes, I do. Because I am not stupid, I have lived that connection for my entire life, had the national news remind me every damn year. And your catharsis doesn't equal my epiphany.

There was a girl in high school who took every opportunity to ask me if I knew I was going bald.  And every time she did it, it was like the first time she knew it was happening. 

And some people, like "Becky" from high school, who have said it once, like to do repeat performances like "Becky" every damn year. 

"You have pointed that out every time my birthday rolls around, and, I can assure you, it's not as big of a revelation to me as it is for you." 

Quite literally, I am trapped in some macabre Groundhog Day movie. 

Making matters worse is that the weather in Cleveland every November is dismal, wet, grey, chill to the bone cold, which just makes my SADD shift into high gear. 

None to worry - this too will soon pass. We'll get through this weekend, and then ramp up for Christmas. 

Still, The Husband hurts for me. He wants me to be happy and have a nice day, and it pains him that he can't make it so.  I keep telling him I have everything I could ever want. I do have friends. I have my health. He has his health. We have a rainy day fund in the bank, not much, but enough.  So what else could I ever wish for?

Good things come to those who wait.  

I can wait. 

And because Thanksgiving floats around the calendar like Veterans Day, you really have no way of knowing one year to the next.  But in 2024, its on the 28th, and my birthday is a Friday the week before.  So things are looking up.

And yes, I can wait. 

When did light bulbs become such a pain in the in the socket?

 

One of the toughest things about the new house is getting the "light" situation in each room settled. 

Unlike the last two houses, where the longest exterior walls faced north and south, this house is like our home in Columbus, this house faces east and west.  Because of this, and the layout of the rooms, our windows are east-west and north, with only five facing south.  

The previous owners, who were a man-child and his wife, were huge fans of bare bulbs in clear glass fixtures, which give off horrible lighting effects, making everyone look like a ghoul.

I mean, c'mon people, it's going to be 2024 - don't we all know what lightbulbs look like?

We've been using LED bulbs for a very long time. But the new mainstream LED bulbs in "equivalent watts" don't seem to get the job done anymore. 

Light output is measured not in watts, but in lumens.  Today's modern 60-watt equivalent bulbs are supposed to crank out 800 lumens.  Add to that the light temperature of daylight (which makes everything look and feel cold), Soft White, and Warm White, which has a brownish cast. 

The problem is, that there is no standard for what qualifies as "Soft White" light anymore.  And then the manufacturers have their own standards.   today I saw a box of lightbulbs that claimed to be "Soft White" and on the high end of the kelvin (bluish light) scale.  Can someone tell me how that is supposed to work?

And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the lumen ratings.   The difference between GE Reveal soft white 60-watt equivalent bulbs and the 75-watt equivalent is 15 lumens, supposedly. But when I get out my camera light meter, the output between the two bulbs is almost the same. 

We've had luck with GE 100-watt equivalents which actually do put out a reasonable amount of light.  But at the same time, we now have a box full of lousy 800-lumen bulbs that are worthless because their light output is all different. 

Change is the only constant in life, but dealing with these light bulbs and their inconsistencies in illumination could drive one to drink. 

Slowly, we are testing and finding "watt" works, but so far, the 800-lumen bulbs are losing out to the brighter cousins. 

A lot to unpack here.

 

Even Kevin has tried to help with the paper problem. 

So here is the deal.  We've been here for five weeks. The movers packed 215 boxes and crates of our stuff.  Yes, we have a lot of stuff.  But remember, both Cookie and The Husband both work from home and out of our home. Still, 205 boxes of all sizes into a 2,500-square-foot house is a lot. 

To date, we have unpacked around one hundred boxes.   So there are, more or less, 105 boxes to go. 

And that isn't counting the art on the walls. 

Our burb picks up trash once a week and yard waste and recycling on the same day.  everything has to go in the can, or the yard waste bag at the curb.  The only time you can put out "overage" is the first trash day of the month. 

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get rid of these boxes so they don't end up wet or bug infested, and recycle them?

But wait, there's more! 

The movers used 24x36 sheets of clean newsprint to pack each box.  The paper wrapped around stuff, wadded up to provide a soft bed to place things onto, stuffed inside stuff, and wadded up and placed on top of said stuff, filled up voids, etc., and so on.   

On average, dishpack box (about 48" tall, 24" wide, and deep) contains about - and are you ready for this, on average, 40 sheets of this crumpled paper.  Less for smaller boxes and more - sometimes a whole lot more -  for huge boxes, especially if they just contain a "lamp".  

That means we dealing with potentially 12,000 sheets of this stuff, more or less.

So when we unpack, each sheet needs to be pulled out, and searched through (to make sure there is no little stuff), and then the sheets have to be laid down and smoothed out. That takes time. It can take one minute or ten to unpack an item. 

And this shit doesn't lay down smooth.  No, you can smooth it out and it'll fight ya.  And try as you might to make neat piles, like likes to slide this way and that. 

That's why after five weeks, we are only into 100, more or less, boxes. 

MOREOVER, those boxes need to be broken down and the tape stripped from the boxes so they can be recycled. 

But there is nowhere to take these boxes as they pile up.   And you can't put things where they need to go because the dumbass movers put the furniture in the middle of the room and boxes against the walls. 

But ah, the good news is that we have found several people who have gladly taken the boxes, and most of the sheets of packing paper.   One woman was in a disability-accessible van talking to a young man about boxes.  Cookie interjected himself overhearing this, and asked "Does someone need moving boxes?"

Indeed.  The woman is the sole caregiver for her son who has CP, and they are moving into a one-floor condo and needed boxes. They took fifty boxes and reams of packing paper.  "How much do I owe you?" I said that we should be paying her.

Then after not being able to give the boxes away on Next Door (ugh) I stumbled into a Facebook group and found that a woman had just posted something asking for boxes to help a friend move. How about thirty of them, I asked, and packing paper, too. Again, I got rid of the boxes and packing paper, and she was delighted that they were free. 

Another 20 boxes went to someone that a friend knew who was moving into his condo. 

And lately I have been having dreams that one day I will wake up and find my home full of the boxes that I gave these people.  Having used them, they returned them. Then I wake up. 

Last weekend I unpacked my office so I am taking it easy until this weekend when we get into the pictures and artwork. 

I am hoping to have the first and second floors squared away by New Year's.  

But the basement is clearly a 2024 project. 

 

East side, West side, We're Going On the Town

 

Cookie and Husband have been exploring the East side, and the West side of Cleveland, but not the South side of Cleveland.  Cleveland doesn't have a south side. Oh, there is a south side, but the parts that are east of Cuyahoga are the East and the parts that are west of the river are west. 

To help the husband acclimate to what is where, Cookie has made sure he knows which main roads lead to, and what they don't do.  And he has passed driving tests, where I tell him where we going and he has to navigate the route. 

He has learned that Mayfield Road is a east/west arterial, that Warrensville Center Road will take him to Shaker, and that Warrensville Center Road is fucked up as they replace the bridge over the Rapid at Shaker Boulevard.  And that's not all. 

He's been the entire length of Superior Avenue, which alas is mostly not Superior to anything,  and that Prospect Road doesn't lead to any prospects unless it's hookers yer' after. 

He has learned that effectively that one can get to Culver's in Eastlake just as fast as S.O.M. Center Road will take you, and that the nearest Menard's is in Mondo Parma. 

The great surprise is that the "Opportunity Corridor" (a stupid name for a road through the burned-out neighborhoods of the eastside), which is an extension of 105th Street will get you to I-71 faster than if one had taken Lee Road across to 480. 

Together we have learned that the huge modern building that looks like a tribal casino from the Opportunity Corridor is in fact the new youth courts building and detention center. 

He also has learned, as have I, that the Giant Eagle at Legacy Village is the place to shop, not the Giant Eagle on Chagrin, which is just gross.   That Heinen's, a grocery chain from my childhood, really does have finer foods, in more locations, and that Dave's Market is great as well. 

And we have discovered that Spectrum Cable sucks - I mean, Jesus it is lousy - when it works. 

He has also learned that the dysfunctional city of East Cleveland (sister city to East Saint Louis, Illinois) is to be avoided, always. No reason to go there, no reason for it to be its own city.  May it be ripe for redevelopment in our lifetimes, or annexation by the City of Cleveland.

Finally, we have discovered how much we hate steam heat and that the ker-chunking of the heat pipes as water and steam vapor duke it out.  I tell you the first night we heard that racket we both sat upright in bed thinking that some depraved soul had taken a pick axe to the house. 

Two weekends ago, I took him to the West side of Cleveland, another land, far away. 

So yeah, it's good to be home. 

Longer than a little while.

 

Well, that really did take longer than expected. 

Our time in the "Old Line State" has ended. 

The husband and I are in the Heights!

The whole moving company was a gigantic fuck up, maybe more on that later. 

But the good news is, the air is sweet in Ohio.  Cookie's asthma is doing better, and the dogs have more prance in their steps.  The husband is more relaxed. The Grocery stores are better, shopping in general is better, and the drivers aren't as batshit angry when they drive. 

Cookie's office should be set up on Monday or Tuesday.

One bit of good news is that the Husband and I registered our cars, and I was able to snag my old license plates, which had been my mother's for 55 years and my father's for 10 before that.  Somehow, that seemed to reset our exit from Ohio 12 years ago. 

AND, we were able to vote in the November election, casting YES votes for women's reproductive health, and legalizing weed for retail sales. (Although the scuttlebutt on the street is that the Ohio House is trying to introduce legislation to muck up BOTH constitutional amendments.  We'll see.  Ohio voters don't like to be ignored.)

So more to come as time permits. 

And oddly, there is nothing we miss about Maryland, except AMTRAK. We aren't pining for anything, or anyone, save for a handful of friends.

My body still aches when I move and I am exhausted from all of this lifting, but we are getting there!