Talk the Talk

Sometimes I like to ask friends what their superpower is. Mine, I know, is the ability to peel an orange and end up with one continuous rind. Not so impressive, but there it is. My son, Gil used to win every game of War he played (maybe superpowers expire). Others have more socially enviable aptitude, such as community builder superhero, or do-everything-and-make-it-look-easy hero (I hate them, personally).

Possibly the best superpower of all is the ability to unexpectedly communicate in another language, revealing a razor sharp competency beneath an unassuming exterior. In one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, a timid-appearing Jewish guy walks through a train station in Berlin, being trailed menacingly by a bunch of neonazi punks. He ignores them as they get closer and closer... suddenly they begin, as skinheads do, to beat up his companion's friends. He whirls around, kicks some ass, and snarls in surprisingly fluent German [I'm paraphrasing] "Go to hell motherfuckers!" Booyah. Oh yeah, and he's Mossad too. Awesome.

When we first met our architect Jessica, finding a superhero was not foremost on our minds. Mainly we were looking for creativity and functionality, someone who could help us translate our needs and ideas into feasible plans. In fact, one of the selling points she gave when we initially interviewed her was her ability to listen. She did listen, and ultimately delivered a design that we love, despite the limitations of square footage and physics. It was a fun process, and we looked forward to our meetings with Jess as the plans and ideas evolved. I learned new terms such as soffit and fascia, and even picked up a few skills. Who knew that all you need to draw a toilet is a rectangle and a circle? Amazing. The best thing was that she seemed so normal, a mom with two young boys, fun to chat with, and genuinely nice.

Her superpowers, however, were not immediately apparent, until we sat together in a city planning meeting discussing roof lines and aesthetics; without warning she suddenly code-switched and spoke with the planners like an expert. The review board pretended to be friendly, but then lunged like cobras: "The PROBLEM with the gidniff is that it's too snorky. It needs to be more mostrilesque." She countered coolly, "these gidniffs are burukated in such a way that the oopside bunderhosts geminally." Ahhh. said the planners. "good point." Booyah. David and I glanced at each other in bewilderment and relief. She can talk the talk! The same thing followed in exchanges with structural engineers, contractors, city workers and green consultants. She knew what they were talking about, too!

Like any self-respecting superhero, Jessica could also walk the walk, as it turned out. She's crawled into our crawl space to measure the spacing of the supports, and scaled our roof in a single bound, to determine the best views for our second story windows . Our experienced contractor has remarked more than once that Jess' plans are the most detailed he's ever seen. So here's to you, Jessica. Our gidniffs will forever be burukated, and we thank you.

New Digs

A lot has happened since I last posted. During early November, when ideally, our efforts should have been focused on enjoying leftover Halloween candy, we were in serious crunch time (and not the delicious Nestle variety). One vanload of boxes turned into 4, then 9, then we lost track in our fog of moving. After exhaustive and exhausting excavations were undertaken in our house, a sort of archaeological dig site emerged. We found evidence of of optimistic ventures long since abandoned... exhibit A: orchid fertilizer. Exhibit B: ice cream maker. Some sort of hot oil hair treatment from the 90s. And there were so many baby pictures! Diapers were discovered, embarrassingly enough, in our earthquake preparedness box- our children will be celebrating their 9th and 11th birthdays soon. We even uncovered the mixed tape that David gave me on our third date, though I thought it was lost forever.

Gradually, our things were moved, sold, donated or tossed. We were down to our last 1.4% or so, those lingering papers in the office space, the cans of paint in the garage, a stray bowl or two in the kitchen. We thought we were doing pretty well. In the meantime, our contractor Mark had been shaking his head ("do they get it?" he must have been thinking, "everything needs to be OUT").

And so the demo began. It's fascinating how those doors that allowed our privacy, slammed occasionally, and walls that defined the spaces of our house could come down so quickly, leaving an empty cube with no discernible features. Interestingly enough, the kids remarked how small the house looked after the walls came down. I would have expected the opposite. Perhaps it was the contours and corners, what we had thought of as limitations, these were what that breathed life into the space in the first place. Doors that close can also open. So now, at long last, we are settled in our new digs, getting used to being in one house again. The adventure continues.