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On the Shin Kobe Ropeway

You know how sometimes you have to ditch the husband and kids and just take off for foreign countries?  Well, that is how awesome I am.

I’m in Kobe Japan with my sister Anne… I traveled all by myself and it is awesome.  Anne has been here for a year and a half and I knew I needed to get over to see her life while she was still living it in this locale.  This was the right time to go, while the kids didn’t have much going on and could safely be sequestered at their grandparents’ houses (Thanks Mom and Dad & Dennis and Sue!).  I have had some pangs of guilt, but not many when I think of them having the time of their lives being all spoiled and entertained in the country.  Inez is probably being licked by a dog right now.  Scratch that.  It’s 1 am Oregon time, so that baby had better be sleeping!

Anyway, I don’t intend to be updating this blog much while I am here, but I did want to let people know where I am.  Eating awesome food!  Chatting non-stop with my little sister!  Going running with Kobe Hash Hound Harriers!  In Freakin’ Japan!

In the herb gardens at the top of the rope way

7 Comments | In: Awesome!, family, on the road again | | #

Okay, so this is Parmeter.net, so maybe it is a bit self-serving to devote a blog entry to this, but I do just need to tell you all about how talented my uncle is (and YOUR uncle is if I have an adequate grasp of the bulk of my readership).  Yes, Rick Parmeter is good at what he does, and as I live in a house that has millions of problems needing to be solved with finesse and cleverness, I am a big fan of a craftsman who can solve them.  He thinks through things in a very interesting way that manages to be thorough and yet fluid, practical and yet still creative.  He is picky with details and yet open to different ways to solve problems.  Here is the reading nook that he created under our stairs in the basement:

Where once there was chaos and cardboard boxes stacked in dusty piles, now there is something pretty…. with storage space!  Victory!  We spend a lot of time here now.

Another Uncle Rick creation is poised and ready to go.  The bathroom isn’t quite done yet, but the cabinets for it sit in the dining room, preparing themselves to launch into their new and long-lived service.  (They have sat in a corner of our dining room for over a year because we weren’t really ready to start the actual remodel.)  Will I miss them from that corner?  Not really.

Next up is the stairs to the basement.  Everything is so nice down there, but the entryway is not.  It hasn’t helped that we knew we would replace them and sort of purposely abused them.  (“Don’t bother putting down that paint drop cloth!”  ”Don’t worry about the stairs!  They can be ripped up!”).  They look really bad next to the daybed nook, but Rick is on it!  Here is a view I will not miss:

Can’t wait to show you what he’ll come up with!

6 Comments | In: Awesome!, family, projects | | #

How about you?

Maybe it is the morbid in me, but I simply love these boney folks from Mexico.  They make me smile, and I guess it is as simple as that.

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Pardon the extended metaphor.  Remodeling is a deep, dark tunnel.  Something good is at the end, but you must pass through far worse possibilities before you arrive.  Finally, I see paint at the end of the tunnel… and it is bright red.

We’re doing the bathroom red… really, really red.  I am hoping that people will open the door and say, “ohhhh, my!”.  Sheetrock and wonderboard went up last week (or down, as the case may be).  This week I ordered tin ceiling tiles (for the wall behind the sink basin) and painting started.  It gives me hope that it will all end eventually.  As flexible as I consider myself, I am sick to death of not having a dining room, and even sicker of not having an art space.  One day of paper mache with Francis in the kitchen had me convinced that food prep space does not care to share with artsy activities, not when the food prep space is already somewhat compromised.  In this department, we are no longer eating at a tiny kid table, but we do have a table tucked in right next to the couch in the living room.  It is right next to the window so you feel like you are constantly at a sidewalk cafe.  Is that cool?  Only sometimes.

Anyway… the other great thing that has nearly wrapped up is the ceiling in the art room.  As you may remember, the leaking floor in the bathroom had rotted out the beams underneath it.  We pulled sheetrock away from the ceiling in that space back when we initially tackled the basement in 2008, but then were not able to address the larger problem because we couldn’t afford to deal with the bathroom up above.  (I just went looking for a photo example of the room and me being who I am, all of the pictures I have taken of the space attempt to cut off the offending hole as well as the stupid duct that hangs down in the room.  If you look really closely though, you can see both the hole and the huge HVAC pipe that cut across the room on the way to the bathroom upstairs.)

August 2008 basement remodel

2010 New and Improved soffit!

Another view of the soffit of my dreams.

I hated that damn pipe, but now that we addressed the bathroom on the main floor, we have also moved the pipe to run along the SIDE of the room rather than smack dab down the middle.  It looks awesome!  Of all the silly things that I am excited about, this soffit takes the cake.  I love my new soffit.

Whoops.  Need to feed the children.  More remodel photos coming!

1 Comment | In: Awesome!, projects | | #

We were chosen!  We were chosen!  We were BAWCK BAK! chosen for the Tour de Coops July 26th, 2010!  Y’all come see us.  We intend to be the nicest stop on the 29 coop Portland tour.

Hugs & Pecks,

Rita

8 Comments | In: Awesome!, chickens | | #

How often does this happen?  You go to your refrigerator trying to figure out what to do with your random left overs and each ingredient is somehow EXACTLY what you need to make one of your favorite things in the world?

We’re leaving for New Orleans on Thursday night, so I am trying to clean out the fridge before then.  I started out thinking I would make chicken broth by boiling down a denuded chicken, then I found some brown rice.  My refrigerator yielded up some more surprises.  Hey, some cabbage all ready chopped up!  Woa, look at these beets that need to be used!  Hey, these baked potatoes are nice.  And what about those diced onions?  Frozen carrot chunks?  Lo and behold– borscht!

I first had borscht in a quite unforgettable location.  I was locked up actually.  And it was midnight.  Intrigued yet?  My first taste of borscht was over a control panel in ______ County Juvenile Detention.  I was working there as a guard, (although they had some fancy name for us to make us sound nice and knowledgeable), and was filling in on an overnight shift with a very sweet man of Russian decent.  Knowing we were to pull a difficult (i.e., boring) shift together, making hourly checks on snoring juveniles and looking at cameras where nothing ever happened and no one ever went, he asked if he could share a special family recipe with me.  Little did I know, he intended to bring a crockpot into the facility and stew up some borscht overnight!  I am not sure how the kids slept considering that the smell pervaded the whole building, but it was delicious.  I loved it instantly.  It made a miserable job a bit better, at least for one night.

There are many recipes on The Internets about borscht, but I have had good luck just throwing stuff together.  Here is what I toss in there:

• beets (shredded)
• beet greens and stalks (chopped)
• cabbage
• onions
• carrots
• potatoes
• vegetable broth or chicken broth
• optional rice or barley
• touch of mustard powder

I like to finish the bowl of soup with a nice fatty dollop of sour cream.  Yum.

And now for your amusement, a picture of me from that time in the uniform that magically added about 20 pounds.  I was trying to look really tough:

4 Comments | In: Awesome!, food | | #

Watch this awesome video/cartoon on consumption!

The Story of Stuff Project

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Picture taken by Jason Franklin

This is me, soaring through the air at sunset.  The kids and I discovered that we could run at a sand dune and fling ourselves over the lip, hurling through the air and letting our stomachs drop out of our bodies with the sensation of falling, all before landing comfortably on soft, lovely sand.  Fun!  We also spent a great weekend staying at yurts at Umqua Lighthouse with super good friends, but really the best part was this— launching.  There is surely a metaphor for life in here somewhere.

2 Comments | In: Awesome! | | #

Francis wrote this great essay for school.  I was so proud of her, I thought I would put it here:

En mi familia plantamos un jardin.  Todos en mi familia tiene un cuadrado para plantar.  En mi cuadrado yo quiero plantar calabazas, espinacas y muchos flores.  Mi hermano quiere plantar zanahorias y melocotones.  Mi mama quiere plantar lechuga y guisantes.  Mi papa quiere plantar los mismos cosas que mi mama.

8 Comments | In: Awesome!, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

A woman,

black severe hair, closely cropped,

Pale skin, red, red lips, arching dramatic eyebrows,

Dressed all in black,

Carrying a huge shopping bag with a cartoonish vampire face on it,

Getting out of a Red Cross Mini Van,

“Give Blood!” it said.

1 Comment | In: Awesome! | | #