Definitely Dying, Possibly Dead

Sick here, sick sick sick.

Some kind of terrible awful no-good very bad flu has descended upon Chez Bristowe Turner.

I was down for the count by 10am yesterday, and we got a call mid-day to come fetch Sloaner from playschool after she'd barfed all over her naptime bed and blankets. But she seemed mostly fine by the time she got home and essentially scored a free day of videos on the couch, much to a toddler's understandable delight.

I've been hit a bit worse - ok much worse. Rolling-around-in-agony-type worse. Turner has had to wait on me hand and foot (literally - I had to beg him to rub my legs at 12:30am last night because they were throbbing and terrible). I woke this morning feeling a great deal better, so after Sloane headed off to school I went around opening windows and lighting candles, something my old friend Jenn Foley Foster used to do; her Cherokee grandmother believed it burned the sickness out of the house. So I'm on the mend, but not yet 100% - not yet able to eat anything, for example.

Post-Freezie tongue comparison.

 

Categories: Family | Friends | House

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Park Times

We are blessed, living close to a number of good-ish parks.

Crazy nighttime bath bribe: note the pyjamas & indoor moccasins.




Swinging after playschool.

Categories: House | Sloane

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Aaaaw, So Cute

The cats have recently taken to bringing up "presents" from the basement. These take the form of old (as in, over a year old) poops left in a crawl space by our original cat, Rooney. ...I had no idea he was regularly using that crawl space for this purpose, but it's obvious, now. Although it sounds really disgusting, they're really just calcified turds at this point that resemble old clumps of flaking concrete. But they're definitely poops.

Actually, I've found it heartwarming. It's like Loki and Fre are saying, "WTF. Some other cat has been shitting in our basement. Here's the proof."

(I won't subject you to photos!)

Categories: House | Loki & Fre

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Earthship Nation

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Michael Reynolds on THE COLBERT REPORT last night!!! (Warning, really slow load. Cue it up, push pause, and come back in five minutes.) Looks like dudes who made Garbage Warrior finally went and hired Reynolds a publicist.

Go Earthship, it's your birthday...

Building the bottle wall surrounding "The Phoenix" (the house featured in the Colbert Report, natch). Earthship seminar, at the Earthship Greater World Community outside Taos. July 2006.

Categories: GeoHope | House

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Our Garden

Sloaner and the beans!

(Also shown, below: hollyhocks from Strawberry Hill, marigolds inspired by Shimla, and many sunflowers! The 'orange' theme for our newly-planted flowers this year is in honour of John Johnston's arrival in Calgary last spring.)



We have a great book, Barbapapa Sur Mars, given to Sloane by Jenny and Korey for her first birthday. It only took us a year to decipher the very elementary French of the story. And now? We love it!

Barbidur takes a bean, and plants it in the soil once they get to Mars.



Turns out that the French have moralising to do, under the guise of children's literature. This time, it's the well-known "never bring seeds across international borders" lesson you really need to drill into the under 5 crowd. In this story, the 'harmless' Earth bean tries to take over the whole planet! Mon dieu! Quel disastre!



For her part, Sloane was thrilled that we had planted and grown the very same beans which took over Mars! Formidable!



When we harvested all the beans that'd grown - two whole packages' worth of 'runner beans' - we ended up with just about enough to not-quite-be-a-side-dish for one person. Has Montsanto taken over the domestic bean market here in North America, too?

Categories: House | Lise | Sloane

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Grateful

Last Monday evening Turner and Sloane left for Nova Scotia and I was left here in Calgary by myself. This was by design. I needed a period of me-time, it had been decided and planned months ago.

I missed Sloane and Turner this week, but I have been using the time alone (the first alone time in more than 2.5 years) very wisely. Among the things I was grateful for, this week:

- My bicycle. Such a lovely and constant companion these last seven days. It totally deserves a tune-up, I realize. But I toodled my wobbledy way through the traffic every day to avoid the horrendous Stampede parking fees around town, and got enough exercise in the process to stave off totally gaining the 20 pounds I deserved to put on this week (I went off "the Plan" when Turner left and this week even had PIZZA. And REAL TEA. And a GELATO. And so on).

- The band at Fionna McSomethingsomething (the Sheraton hotel downtown bar)'s willingness to play our yelled-out 'requests' of "RIGHT UP YOUR KILT" (Wild Rover) and "AND SHE WAS" (Black Velvet Band), and their amazing, miraculous, and fortuituously perfect timing on "Home For A Rest", which pulled Victoria and I out of the bathroom to madly pseudo-stepdance our hearts out, channelling the old Clark Hall Pub spirit.

- Sourpuss shots. Thank you, David Friese, for introducing these into our world. Far too tasty & dangerous!



- The weather. During the week it was 28C every day. I ran around outdoors working and carousing in the improbably humid air, loving every second. Then today, when I woke finally exhausted and worn out from the week, it was 14C. Perfect timing for turning on the furnace.

- Chic Studios. Amy Nicole of Chic Studios and I have been working together to cross-promote since December and I've really valued her amazing and ultra-positive business sense. A few weeks ago we hammered out the details of turning her hallway into a gallery that I would curate. This past week this has become a reality. Please visit the gallery at 100 - 850, 16 Ave SW (lower level). This is directly across the park from 17th Ave where the kids juggle and people hang out with their dogs in front of Mount Royal Village. You know you go past there every week, dawg. Drop in to see our hip shit on the walls.

- My house. Though I usually spend a lot of quiet brain time wishing my house had higher ceilings, or a second storey, or a back extension, or a rose window for the attic, or a properly sealed front walk... etcetera, this week I found in me a huge amount of genuine and unconditional gratitude for my house as it is. I love our proximity to downtown, I love the hollyhocks that are finally sprouting in the front yard, I love our freshly painted croft shed. I love how the house is cool even when it's roasting outside. I love that we have windows above our bed that let in the fresh early-morning air. I love that we don't live in a show home, so that our messy lives with our toddler and cat and million magazines can spill all over everywhere and it's okay. Plus, we live close enough to Stampede for the nightly fireworks to rattle the windows, so we've got that going for us, which is nice.

- And of course, the peoples! Among the peoples I need to thank for this amazing week of amazing fun whist being amazingly un-traditionallly-encumbered are: Chris Turner (my spouse and father of my child) and Sloane (said child) for getting out of Dodge without complaint; Alexis Bahry for finding a lot of really fun things to invite me to; Karen Krull and Victoria Coffin for calling and yelling into the answering machine, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TONIGHT???"; Bruce Bristowe and Peggy Bumanis for inviting me to the RCA Stampede party; Moonira Rampuri, Marcello DiCintio, Jenny Saarinen, Garth Kennedy, Jewels, Maryam Nabavi, Heather and Trevor for including me in their awesome, I-was-invited-last-year-but-couldn't-come Kensington House Crawl ('07)... what a wicked Georgian-toasting, bocce-playing, Reefer-Madness-watching, and piratey-minus-the-intended-eye-patches-ARR-me-mateys time was had by all! Thanks to my neighbour Rob Dermedy who was 100% cheerful about lending his electrical skillz to the Chic Studios gallery despite the repeated delays and logistical glitches. And of course three cheers to John Johnston, David Friese, and Bruce Manning, plus the guy Karen brought to the Sundowner. Thank you all for including me in your Stampede plans this year. (Marky Mark-Mark, we'll see you next year, yo!)

p.s. I read TWO BOOKS this week!!

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Friends | House | Work work work

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Because After All, It's Only The End Of May

Lo, ye readers not born in Canada, prithee tremble before these bald evidences of our latitude:

So it's 12:40am last night and Turner and I have just finished watching LOST on PVR. We're channel surfing, procrastinating going to bed. And I glance out the window. It's snowing. I say to my husband, "It's snowing." He says to me, "Well...  it's only the end of May. You're really being delusional if you think it's actually spring until well into July."

We looked at the snow. Turner: "...You want to go save your bedding plants?"
Me: "Yeah, I guess so..."

Because, you know. We got the bedding plants on the weekend. In Canada you're told you're really not safe planting stuff outside (besides tulips and crocuses and stuff that can handle frost) until after the Victoria Day weekend. Which was last weekend. But I think we've hit a technicality: Victoria Day is a public holiday and they always make it fall on a Monday. But the actual Victoria Day itself is May 24th. So when you're using Victoria Day as a planting guide, which is it? The long weekend or the actual day?

I think we have the answer. Don't plant until after Victoria DAY. (Being today, though we might wait until the snow melts.) Luckily I was too lazy to get around to planting them this week, anyway. We just hauled in the trays.

For the record, it was 25C on Monday. How quickly the worm turns!

Categories: Calgary | Canadiana | House

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Hairy Mama

All my life, I've had a lot of hair. I've never had to worry about my hair the way many women (most women?) worry about their hair. I don't dye it or primp it or frost it or cut it or mess around with highlights/hot oil/colouring. The stuff that grows out of my head is thick and shiny and a nice hue (and still mostly brown), and it's pretty cooperative as hair goes.

I went through the whole hairspray-the-hell-out-of-your-bangs phase in junior high of course, and I ill-advisedly doused my head in peroxide one summer (result: orange) but once I had that out of my system me and the hair arrived at a good place. During university I cut my own hair, using pinking shears and a rather haphazard approach which involved hunting around for split ends and chopping them off. To the ongoing horror of friends who staked their egos in their hairdos, I often had mismatched lengths and pieces hanging every which way. Now that I'm older I do get my hair cut "properly" every 8 or 10 months. I sit in the chair and say, "cut off anything that's dead, even if I lose length. And please layer it a bit". I condition it with a fancy Redken product that comes in a gold-ish bottle, and I rarely, if ever, use a blowdrier. And through this rigorous regimen of upkeep... voila, the hair abides.

Having a lot of hair, it's logical that a lot of hair falls out. And my hair being long, the hair falling out is... also long. Most people lose hair to their brush on a regular basis, and everybody finds stray hairs periodically, stuck to clothing and sprinked across the bathroom floor. But me, I lose pounds of hair. Always have, everywhere. Back in high school my best friend Margaret used to find my hair all over the place, even in her house - she'd seemingly carry it home from school on her clothes and it would end up in her room even if I hadn't been over in months. I loved her "Aaaaaughhh!" yell and subsequent getitoff!getitoff! flail when she'd find one of my hairs in her pencil case or in her backpack. (Margaret's hair was, I should add, blonde and quite short in high school. There was no mistaking my random hairs for hers.) There was really nothing I could do about it - I brushed my hair morning and night, I mostly wore it tied up. That some of the hair would flee my head and end up in other people's books and lockers was simply beyond my control. I could live with the situation knowing that any hair of mine that people found on their person was, at least, clean.

When Mum and Mike were last visiting here on Spiller Road, I was petting their new puppy Beau and commented on the shedding. How, when Pony left us, one of the actually nice things was that we didn't have to deal with dog hair all over the place anymore. Then Val pipes up, "Dogs? You think DOGS shed? I'll tell you that YOU shed, my dear. Worse than any dog! Every time you come to my house I spend the next week picking your hair off my clothing and vaccuming it out of the rug! ...You should talk. Dogs! Bah!" And, yeah, she's right.

Cleaning up my own hair is part of my everyday routine. I don't really think about it much anymore. I find hairballs under the bed and in corners, and not just a few times have I had to take apart bathroom drains to fix a clog caused by my hair. And due to the sheer volume, inevitably I miss a lot of it, so if you come to my house even 12 hours after I've vaccumed and you drop something on the floor, I guarantee it'll come back up covered in my hair. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. I can't keep the house hair-free - I wouldn't be able to hold down a job, and I wouldn't sleep. God has granted me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, in this case.

Now, a few weeks ago, Sloane started noticing my free-range hair. She'd seen it before, on the floor and stuck to her clothes, but it's started to actually bother her recently when she finds my hair wrapped around her fingers or clinging to her shirt. We shower together in the mornings: she sits on the floor pouring water between cups and playing with her model hippopotamus, and I stand above. Inevitably I have soap in my face when my hair makes its first attack and I hear the Uuuuuuh! UUUUUUUUGHHHH! and the sounds of Sloane flinging her hands around, trying to shake off strands of my hair stuck to her wet skin.

I should mention that it doesn't look like Sloane has inherited my hair. Hers is a bit curly at the back, but otherwise it's blonde and wispy, tangly, and unfamiliar. Brucio and I look at her hair and we roll our eyes: Obviously not Bristowe hair. 

So it falls to me instead to teach Sloane to chill out about my hair, since it's a fact of life - my life, and the life of anyone who spends any time anywhere near me - that my hair is going to be around, waiting to pounce. We can't have her freaking out on a thrice-daily basis when my non-attached hair floats onto her toys or lap. We've started teaching her: That's Mama's haaaaaaair. She says it back to us: Ah-Mama haaaaaaair! I show her how to stick it to the shower curtain (for post-shower collection and removal). I show her how to ball it up between her hands and roll it into a little knot, to throw away. I always put a big smile on my face and lift the hair off her clothes and gently drop it to the floor, watching it fall. Because that's the way it is. I'm not shaving my head, and so we all have to live with the hair - even Sloaner.

Categories: Ash | House | Sloane

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No Shirt No Shoes No Problem!

We, and by we I mean "me & Sloane", spend a lot of time naked. In the house, I mean. I like to tell people that I grew up in a nudist colony, though that's not strictly true. My dad was mainly clothed. The rest of us, enh. We ran around starkers. There are many amusing stories featuring this aspect of an upbringing in the Calgary Bristowe household, my favourite being The First Day Of School In 1990. I won't completely humiliate my brother by going into elaborate detail, but it involved a race to see who would get the first shower. I lost because I was laughing too hard. That's all I'll say.

Anyhoo, the tradition lives on, here at Chez Bristowe Turner. Which is to say, we're a nudist colony, but Turner is generally clothed. He doesn't like to prance around with us. I blame it on his Catholic upbringing. He's the one always nervously glancing to see if anyone is coming up the walk when Sloane and I are running around like idiots with no clothes. He's like the camp counsellor at Nekkidlaand (that's the name of our house when we're naked, inside). I should get him a sun hat and a whistle on a lanyard for xmas: hmmmm - note to self.

When we started the "bath before bed" tradition when Sloane was a few months old, I'd always give her some warning by calling out: "Bath-time for bay-beeeees!" and then, when the clothes start coming off, it's all, "Naaaaaaaaaaakeeeeddddd bay-beeeeeee! Naked baaaaay-bee!" We really celebrate being naked around here - strutting around, grinning, running in circles in the kitchen. And I was always very pleased with this endowment from how I was raised. You might have a big ass or tiny boobs or a bent nose or whatever, but it was always A-OK to waltz around in the nude if the mood struck.

As such I grew up thinking nudity wasn't a big deal. I'm not one of those, "Turn your back whilst I change my shirt" types. Meh. I just pull it off and change in public. Turner used to go, "Hey! Somebody might be watching!" To him, and to you, I'd say - C'mon, who really gives a crap? Do I know those people? Am I ever going to see these people again? Not a chance. Everyone's naked under their clothes. Big whup.

That's not to say I'm an exhibitionist. No. No no no. You will never be watching one of those skanky Girls Gone Wild videos and spy Ashley K. Bristowe on the shoulders of some drunken Calgary Flames fan, taking my shirt off. N. O. I take reasonable measures not to stand in full view of our livingroom picture window when I'm just out of the shower. I'm not out to titilate the general public, not in the slightest. That's for people with better pole-dancing abilities than moi. But I most certainly do stand by the notion that if it's my house, I'm gunna be naked a good percentage of the time (when there's no guests staying over), and if a fiddle song comes on, well, it's time to dance, naked or no. And Sloane agrees with me. (Turner, for his part, goes downstairs to work and leaves us to it.)

Anyway, Brucio was over the other day, and it was time for Sloane's bath, and he offered to bathe her now that she doesn't need someone sitting right in the tub, with her. So we were undressing her and as soon as she was naked, off she went for a few run-around laps of the livingroom. And as she took to her heels Brucio started to whistle this familiar snippet. It's impossible to render the tone and detail of whistling in words, so I won't even attempt it. But as he was whistling at Sloane's departing bummy backside, running away down the hall, I involuntarily began to smile. And the smile got bigger and bigger. And I turned to Turner, absolutely BEAMING. And he's all, "Whut? Whut is it? What's that?" and I was like, "That's... that whistle-tune my dad is doing... it's the theme song to 'naked kid running through the house'. I haven't heard that in YEARS!!"

And Brucio started to smile, and I kept smiling, and as Sloaner rounded the corner, heading into the next turn, I saw her grinning too. Turner rolled his eyes, but I bet he's working on his own "the rest of the family is naked" theme music now, down in the basement. Because obviously every family needs some in-house nudity dj-ing, probably best done by the guy in clothes.
 

Categories: Family | House | Sloane | Turner

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Fire Fire House On Fire

Well, as I pulled away from the house tonight on my way to running clinic, I was waving to Sloane perched in the front window. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Turner go into the kitchen, Sloane still banging on the window screeching Bye Bye Mama!! as I turned my eyes to the road.

And I returned about two hours later, flushed in the face and hungry, ready to settle in for the evening's screening of LOST. When I came through the door, Turner was on the couch, calmly eating his dinner. Seemed late for him to be eating, I thought. "What's for dinner?" sez me. Turner replied, "There's more of this on the stove... and you'll see the disaster in there for yourself when you get to the kitchen."

As Sloane had finished her meal just before I left for the running clinic, Turner had taken the high chair tray and set it on top of our stove. I'd seen him do it before, and it always made me a bit nervous - when I was eight years old I'd single-handedly put out a fire in our family kitchen caused by a paper bread bag too close to the electric element. Today the tray got set down, and I went out the back door, and Turner took Sloane to the front window to wave at me. When I'd seen him go into the kitchen from my vantage point in the car, he'd just smelled the burning plastic and was going to investigate. I had no idea, of course, so I left, and Turner faced the whole show solo.

A fire is always a pretty serious thing, particularly indoors. Turner put out the flaming high chair tray with our fire extinguisher pretty much toot suite, but if you've ever used a fire extinguisher for real, you know that it makes one hell of a mess, and that the chemicals suck all the oxygen out of the air, so you have to evacuate the area pretty much immediately (you can't breathe very well - no O2 to feed the fire, no O2 for your lungs, see?). So Turner and Sloane decamped to the front porch for a while, waiting for the house to air-in a bit. Rooney had had the good sense to hide in my office, so he stayed put. When T and Sloane returned, the girl was put in front of her beloved Ernie dvd while Turner spent the next hour picking bits of semi-crusted blue plastic off the stove and sweeping up about ten pounds of fire extinguisher detritus, all the while picturing the zillion ways we were so lucky and how, in a completely different set of squillion ways, it could have been so much worse.

So, uh, the high chair tray is ruined, to say the least. The linoleum, never a favourite pattern for either of us, is definitely destroyed, now, too. And melty bits of plastic tray have apparently fused into the front element, from where it dripped during the blaze, so that's shot.

But we're alive, and our house isn't burnt down. And there are some pretty serious pictures to tell the tale's aftermath.

Yo, please, everybody: make sure you have a fire extinguisher. If you live in Calgary, they're available for about $40 at that fire equipment store on 9th Ave in Inglewood (independent retailer).

Categories: House | Turner

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The New Door!

This one's for Margo & John, the kind benefactors of our lovely new (sealed, fit-the-frame, properly insulated) set of doors.

These doors, they weren't cheap. But WORTH EVERY PENNY, I tells you.

The front door was installed late last week, and on the first morning afterward I awoke thinking that the front door was open, there was so much light pouring through the front hallway. The new front door has totally changed everything about the balance of light and shadow throughout the main part of the house, entirely for the MUCH BETTER.

We've had a few... problems with the doors thusfar, mainly with the whole "ordering" and "receiving" process via the manufacturers (estimated turnaround: 3 weeks... elapsed time so far: 8 weeks and counting). First they didn't arrive at all. Then they arrived and they were all BACKWARD from their shipping labels (the handles and hinges were all on the opposite sides than they should have been). On and on. For a few days there Turner was back home in Calgary on his own and it was 30C, all the old doors had been ripped out of their frames and were precariously propped against the house, "closed". There was no air movement, and no way to use the previous screen doors to provide ventilation. Every time he tried to leave the house the cat would escape as he struggled with the doorknobs and frames. It was all hell.

But cheers to the tireless and persistent Stephanie & Mike (and Dave), friends who are doing the painting/deck/doors/carport/etc. additions this year for us. Stephanie is an old family friend from Bonavista and she has gone to the mat for us repeatedly all summer. She's absolutely LIVID about the whole door-ordering fuckup situation. As Turner put it to me on the phone when I was still back in Ontario, "Stephanie's SO MAD about the door situation, I don't even have to get mad. I mean, if she wasn't so obviously COMPLETELY PISSED OFF about how everything has gone down, I'd be a lot more angry. But as it is, I feel okay about it all."

Right now, the door is white. Eventually it will be painted deep burgandy outside, and remain white on the inside. I make no claims on interior/exterior design, and I have no design-y ambitions (aside from the extensive and grandiose renovations to our house about which I obsess on a daily basis), but we figured dark green house with lighter-green trim and dark brown fence + deck, plus dark burgandy doors, would be an overall pleasing colour configuration. I suppose we'll find out in the coming weeks once all the doors are in and the painting is complete.

Which is all to say: hurray! New doors! One installed, two more to go. They'll be put in as soon as they arrive from the manufacturer. Which is... any day now, we're told. More photos to come.

Categories: House

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A Hiatus

You might ask what the hell is going on, and you have. Thanks for the emails! I kind of went on an unexpected hiatus.

One of the funniest things I've ever seen on a resume was on my friend Matthew's, circa 1999/2000. We'd met at an audition when we were kids, both child actors in the Calgary scene. After high school he taught himself how to play guitar and formed a band called Shiver. They had tshirts and a great cd. The band did pretty well. They were, as we say on the prairies, big in Saskatoon. Ten years later, Matthew was a married homeowner and decided the whole rock star thing was getting tiring, and was drawn back to acting. I was sitting in his house in Mission at Christmastime that year and with a big grin he handed me his new and updated acting resume. On it were the serious high school plays he'd done, the starring role in the grade 12 production of "Grease", the street performance stuff. Then, under a heading of "1993 - 1999", it read, "HIATUS" ...followed thereafter by an explanation of his longtime and successful stint as a lead singer, the subsequent wearying of the road and desire to return to acting, and so on. But my eyes kept coming back to that six year hiatus as I laughed my ass off on the couch. To this day I am SORELY tempted to just put "HIATUS" into the blank spots on my resume (you and I both know I was UNEMPLOYED or OVERSEAS) just to re-live that great laugh from Matthew's cv.

No disrespect to Matthew's actual hiatus, mind. He was, and is, a true rock star.

Anyway, I went on hiatus there. Had some friends 'round the house. Went over to visit other people. Did errands. Painted the damn fence (which looks, I might add, damn fine).

Now we're getting ready for the annual Bristowe-Turnersesses' Eastbound Pilgrimage, to visit the loved ones in Antigonish and Halifax, and our beloved people in Ontario. Goddamn them all, such fine people that they make us broke and lonely, by turns. It's expensive to fly across the country, but it's harder to miss them. Besides which, Nova Scotia and Ontario are "home" just as much as Calgary is, so it's not really a choice. We gots to go.

However, this year we have a lovely housesitter for Chez Bristowe Turner. Please welcome Barb Bell, new Calgarian by way of Newmarket, by way of Edinburgh, by way of... somewhere else, I forget. She's a friend of a friend (Tracey) of a friend (the incomparable Alexis Bahry), and I think we're all quite happy with the arrangement.

So ha! to you, people who might like to come and steal our hand-me-down furniture covers and broken chinese bead curtain! Ha, double ha! The house will not be empty! Lo, we have a friend of a friend of a friend staying here, and she will BEAT YE UP! Don't even try it! 

Photos to come from Nova Scotia, our first leg of the Eastbound Pilgrimage.

Categories: Canadiana | House

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Bottle Wall

I got all in a lather at the Earthship seminar in Taos, inspired by the bottle walls. Sure, the concept of Earthships in general was FABULOUSLY inspiring, but time consuming and with an inherent, serious time and money investment. An idea at least five years off for us, at this stage. Someday: our Kootenay Earthship retreat. Or maybe in Antigonish if the entire current city council is hit by a meteor. But nowadays? It's Ramsay until further notice.  

However - just a bottle wall? C'mon! Collect a buncha bottles, set 'em in mortar, and voila. I've got a pretty ghetto yard where anything goes, and any moron can erect a bottle wall if they really want to, right? ...Well, this moron is going to try. In the Spiller Road yard, no less.

First off, like any good artist/planner, I figured I'd "work with the materials" to get a feel for bottles as an artistic-architecturo medium. So I thought a border for the garden would be a good start.

(photo to come of initial bottle border)

Ah. Working on the first border in the location where our carport will eventually be erected in the fall taught me a few lessons. Said lessons:

1) Take labels off bottles

2) Put a time-consuming bottle border in an area of your yard where you are not going to have to tear it out in less than three months

With these new ideas in hand, I selected an area of the front garden where I'd been digging up the grass and sod, with the intention of putting in a shade periwinkle garden a la Sharron & Mary's front yard on Major St. in the Annex. I had a leftover plastic runner in place from the previous jackasses who owned this house, but it was thence jettisoned to make room for the bottle border.

I collected bottles from our own leftovers, Brother John's recycling pile, and through direct recruitment of a few neighbours and friends. In waves as they came in, I soaked the bottles to loosen the labels, and scraped and scrubbed and brushed them clean and anonymously shiny.

This is just a few days before Brother John's wedding - I'm trying out the dress I eventually wore to the rehearsal dinner as I scrape the labels from this night's load of bottles.

Then I dried the bottles in a rather general way by laying them in the yard, near the pre-determined shallow trench where they'd be inserted into the ground.

Akin to drunken gardening, drunken bottle border construction is an equally fulfilling late-nite undertaking when you're a parent of (a) young kid(s).

Photo of finished bottle wall to come!

Categories: Ash | Calgary | House

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Chez Bristowe Turner: Now Asbestos-Free!

Postscript: This post got a little long. I had this little story to tell and then I realized there are all sorts of important little side-stories attached. And so for those of you literateness-disinclined, in the tradition of The Believer, I provide a point-form review. ...So you can pretend you read it when you come over to visit Sloane.

Discussed:

• Zonolite, the viciously carcinogenic insulation found in more than 335,000 Canadian homes
• dreams of Chez Bristowe Turner attic renovation, destroyed
• manual labour, a collapsed lung, and obsessions about our backyard barn
• the Calgary real estate explosion
• light at the end of the asbestos-caked tunnel, and a flicker of hope for the ressurection of the attic plans, and
• ...VICTORY!

There you go. You can come over now and nod sagely when I ask if you've heard the good news about our house. Be advised that the above executive summary is a SUMMARY and also includes a subtle red herring. So you're taking your chances not reading the whole post, but that's your prerogative.   

...So. When we bought this house back in November of '04 '03, it was a strategic decision. I'd been desperate to buy a house for years and years and years, so when I got my government job I socked away half my paycheque, every paycheque, towards my future downpayment. I didn't go out, I'd sworn off the booze until further notice, and my rent & board were covered by Brucio. Basically my only expenses were the exorbitant $11/day parking fee near my building, and my thrice-weekly salad rolls from Vietnam Village around the corner from work.

A few months before the wedding I finally decided enough was enough with living in Douglasdale - what was I going to do, get married and then move back into Dad's basement? - so I went out looking, and chose a house in Ramsay. (This one we live in, as I type, in fact.) I took my savings, plus all the money my parents had given us towards the wedding, and I unrepentantly poured that whole glunk of cash down into the house, right away.

Ahhhhh! Home Ownership, At Last!

I loved the back hallway with its corner cupboard like at my grandparents' house in Thunder Bay on South Hill Street; Turner loved the kitchen. Although by many people's estimations our house was considered "a piece of shit" in "a crappy neighbourhood", I didn't completely agree. I could see that it LOOKED like a piece of shit, and I understood that the neighbourhood had crappy ELEMENTS, but I knew the 50' double lot was a great investment and the house was solid. Plus, I figured we would be here for a year or two, maybe five years on the outside. I had vague plans that we'd flip it and move closer to Inglewood, or Nakusp, or who knows - but at least to a bigger house where we'd start our family.

Nevertheless, the first time I went up in the attic I was THRILLED to discover it was a whole seperate floor! Like, unlike your standard attic with exposed joists and insulation and whatnot, our attic had a real, load-bearing floor. And it had cupboards, closets, painted walls. We asked our neighbours about all this and it turns out that our attic was once the second storey on the house, and about forty years ago the owners closed it in as an attic, poured insulation all over the floor, and removed the stairwell. Why they did this will remain a mystery.

In any case, I suddenly had dreams of renovating the attic. In the UK they call this a "loft conversion" and it's done all the time. In fact there are construction companies and contractors who work exclusively in the field of loft conversions, and sell the whole job as a package. Do you want one room? Two? A bathroom? Skylights? Please peruse our brochure for package rates and fittings options. Etc. I began to talk excitedly with my family about the possibilities, about the increase in the value of the house if we added another 600+ square feet to the place. Think of the vaulted livingroom ceiling! Think of the dormer windows and the extra bathroom! How wonderful!

Then Brother John was poking around in our attic one day, setting up the wireless network, and took a good look all around. Then he came downstairs and called me at work:

   J:    Ash, I think you have zonolite in your attic.

   A:    Heh? What?

   J:    I saw it on The National about two or three days ago. It's this carcinogenic insulation that's in old houses. It looks like wood chips. It's more dangerous than asbestos.

   A:    HEH! WHAT!?

   J:    I didn't touch it, I just looked at it, but I think that's what's on the floor of the attic.

So! What to do? Well, after hanging out the "Gone Fishing" sign on my cubicle door, I got straight on the internet. And it didn't take long to find out all sorts of scary stuff about zonolite, a type of vermiculite insulation used widely in Canada throughout the 1970s and early 80s (it's estimated to be present in more than 335,000 Canadian homes) which is, in some forms, apparently 20x more carcinogenic than asbestos. ...Asbestos being somewhat carginogenic in its own right, you may have heard.

After quietly shitting my pants right there at the desk, I did more research. Turns out having zonolite in the house is okay so long as you don't disturb it. So long as you don't, for example, sweep it up. Which we very nearly did on a few occasions in our enthusiastic visiting-the-attic trips up the ladder to consider the renovation prospects. Later that week I spent some time asking our realtor and a few acquaintances about what it would cost to get the zonolite removed, and everyone estimated the job at $25,000+. My dream of renovating the attic level died a quick, wheezing, mesothelioma death. We decided to blow fibreglass insulation in on top of the zonolite, to extra-insulate the roof, and shut up the attic. Forever, we thought.

I spent the next year getting over the disappointment of losing my vision of a magnificent second story on our home. And finally I turned my attention to our "shed". It's not really a shed. It's more like a small barn. With a root cellar, a greenhouse, electricity and its own ancient furnace, I'd long ago decided that this 700+ sq.ft. wood structure out back of our house would make a perfect office for Turner. We set him up in the basement initially, because our neighbour was storing a great huge heap of wood in our shed, and there was no way to work around it. But the neighbour said he'd get rid of the wood "soon", and we believed him, so we put Turner down the basement while we figured out how to finance the renovation of the barn.

Yes, it's a piece of shit. But you don't even have a piece of shit - you have to envy mine.

With the shift of my mental energies towards the barn came an upswing of energy for clearing it out. Which lead to the February 2005 Great Dump Of The Old Renters' Shit, the disposal of a giant pile of suitcases and general detritus in garbage bags which someone had piled up in the greenhouse (after they'd smashed up half the windows, of course). We'd been hesitant to throw this stuff out, mainly because it was very clearly someone's entire world possessions, including clothes and photos, plus a lot of simple personal crap like old Hallowe'en masks and stickers and a mug from an agriculture company. Garbage to us, but I thought these people would get out of juvie or come back from wherever they'd gone and retrieve this stuff. Letters from grandmas, that kind of thing. I'd come back for it, if it was me.

Anyway, by last spring it was clear no one was ever coming for this shit. So I threw it all out, piles and piles and piles of it going into the back alley for the Tuesday-morning pickup. Besides the general chaos in the greenhouse, there was old dirt and cat poo everywhere, dust and pieces of broken cardboard from where the ceiling had caved in due to water leakage. When I finally reached the clear floor of the greenhouse after hauling all the stuff away, I was sweeping up the extra soil and feathers and shiny flakes of what I figured had to be fertilizer or a strange broken glass substance. But then for some reason, something made me stop. I took a good look at the dirt on the floor, as fibres of insulation floated in the air all around me. And all at once my stomach fell. I looked up: the cardboard ceiling had caved in? Insulation was leaking out? I poked the edge of the hole with my broom. And what was very definitely zonolite trickled over the cardboard edge and fell to the floor.

After I'd run THE HELL out of there, I took off my clothes and threw them away. Then I spent a whole (possibly-hypochondria-induced) afternoon retching and convalescing in the livingroom, although having just done two hours of heavy lifting with no mask in all that dust and accumulated mold, I probably earned myself a temporary lung condition even if the zonolite wasn't working 20x overtime at shortening my life. (I was eight months pregnant and really not in any condition for manual labour, so maybe I should have known better?)

For all intents and further purposes the greenhouse was effectively abandoned, although I rushed in there a few days later with a mask over my face to remove the last of the garbage and to set up our various garden tools on the shelves. Since the window walls are half busted-in, I think there's probably enough ventilation in there to guard against imminent death if we only pop in once a week or so to grab a trowel or the rose food.

So! Having been twice thwarted, do you think all this zonolite dissuaded me? No sir, it did not.

Whenever I was in the barn, I found myself looking at the ceiling. It consisted of painted cardboard, erected from above between the attic joists. I poked at it. It didn't sound like there was anything above it, let alone little wood-chip-type bits of carcinogenic insulation. I don't know why, but I hummed and I hawed and I prowled around out there, during the day and at night with a flashlight, obsessed. I had a hunch about the barn: WHAT IF they'd insulated the greenhouse, but NOT the rest of the barn? Hmmmmm.... But try as I might, I couldn't find a way into the attic. I walked around and around, surveyed the outside walls, stood on tiptoe and pushed repeatedly at what was very obviously the official trap door to the attic, nailed shut from above with about a squillion nails. Even as yet without a route to the upper level, I found myself perusing the books section at Rona and Home Depot, going through the "Garden Cottages" magazines, looking at possible design ideas for when I renovated our barn for Turner.

Because boy oh boy, I was a-gunna renovate that barn for Turner, so help me god. No author husband of mine will be banished to the basement when we've got a perfectly good barn out back just aching to be turned into a writing retreat! Mordechai Richler's third-floor attic office will have nothing on Turner's BARN, thunked I.

...Mostly it was dreaming, I'll admit. We are broke, and we don't gamble, so there are no lottery jackpots coming our way even in theory. I am untrained and basically incapable of starting home renovation projects on my own; I'm enthusiastic, and I'm a willing and energetic worker bee, but when it comes right down to brass tacks, I just don't have the skillz to do stuff myself. Plus, dude: I was fully thinking skylights and new dormer windows and wiring it all up for internet and that kind of thing. Specialized stuff like putting in a bathroom and a loft where guests could stay, and an area for bikes and the lawnmower and tools. Yeah, if it ever happened, it wasn't going to be done by Ashley K. Bristowe in her spare time. And given the budgetary constraints, we were also in no position to out-bid every Tom, Dick and Sanjay in Calgary frothing at the mouth to get in skilled home renovation people.

...But? Then? Calgary's housing market went all apeshit? ...And like? Our house? It rose in value? ...Like, a lot? ...Like, a WHOLE lot?

As any homeowner will tell you, having the price of your house suddenly jump is dizzying and disorienting, but ultimately it's good news. That is, if your house jumps in value relative to the other houses around you. If everybody's house jumps in value, like in Calgary, then everybody now has more equity in their home. Everybody wants to sell their now-more-valuable house and move into a better-but-relatively-cheaper house, to take advantage of the situation. But for most of us, we're living within our means without too much wiggle room. Our mortgages are set in a place that we can (barely) afford, and we can't take on more monthly payments. So it comes as a disappointment when everyone rushes out househunting or goes online to the MLS listings and they all realize they can't afford to move. While YOUR property has jumped in value, EVERYONE'S property has jumped in value, and EVERYONE wants their big new money if they're going to sell. So unless you're going to cash out and move to Nova Scotia, there's really no sane way to upgrade your lifestyle by moving into a different house in the same city. And so everyone comes to the same conclusion: I've got all this new equity in my house, and I can't afford to move anywhere else. ...I know! I'll renovate! That way I can live in a nicer house now, and flip it later! Yes yes. We all know this route.

In general this kind of thinking and activity is good for the overall housing stock. Conditions improve, are upgraded. But everyone is looking to flip and nobody is willing to sell for a bargain. So you can take equity out of your house to renovate, but if the market crashes, you're on the nut for the bigger loan. If the market doesn't crash, you're making your property better - but remember, so is everyone else. It's sort of a single-blind experiment where all the homeowners are the mice, unaware of their also-sprinting competitors.

Now, knowing all this isn't going to stop us. No no no. I have a lather all set to go for home renovation, anyway! Damn the market and its vagarities! I'd pour every last cent into our house, learning how to do stuff, if we had the capital. Tiling the floors by myself! (Probably rather badly.) Framing the basement! (Ditto on the badly.) Etcetera!

About a month ago we started talking to Brucio about building a deck on the back of the house. I think Dr. Bristowe had finally had enough of sitting crookedly on our uneven back "lawn" (I shudder to think you might be picturing a manicured garden of grass.... noooooooo) perched sideways on his own old, peeling lawn chairs (we're not shy about accepting family hand-me-downs, you may have heard). So he snapped one day and the idea of putting on a deck was set in motion. Our deck-building friends arrive on Monday: deckwarming party to follow in early July.

This process evolved into further discussions about Brucio investing in our house as a partner, to improve the house in general of course, but also to make some money if/when we ever sell it. We're talking painting the stucco, replacing the windows, maybe doing new front steps, fixing the gate, and so on. Meanwhile we were also perusing the housing listings, trying to ascertain if we were truly fucked in the moving-onward-moving-upward process of finding ourselves a house that might not be right beside the 7-11, for example. Only the barest attempt at cursory research revealed that yes indeed, we are never, ever in our lifetimes, going to ever be able to afford to sell our house. Unless we are picking up and leaving Alberta with our lives and profit, which we aren't doing anytime soon, or so goes the plan.

Anyway, in the midst of finding out the market value of our house (a terrifying number too large to count, really) and planning these investment-renovations with Brucio, and actively looking at some of the other real estate options nearby (too small, or too expensive), the zonolite problem re-appeared in my brain. When it was going to cost $25,000 and we owned a house worth X number of dollars, it was simply out of the question. But now that we own a house worth X plus the drastic and terrifying appreciation, suddenly it might not be such a crazy idea. I got on the horn and arranged for an asbestos remediation company to come and assess our house.

Could be that we have no problem whatsoever. I doubted it, but could be. Like, in theory. But in any case, I priced the zonolite remediation (removal and air quality guarantee) and it came in at about $10-15 per square foot + $350/day air quality monitoring. Which brings the price tag of getting it the hell out of our ceiling at between $11-15K (the earlier estimates had been a bit high). So... then let's say we put in a few windows, a skylight, a wall or two, some plumbing and electrical, paint, and a stairwell. Maybe even a little second-story balcony landing on the back. In this scenario we've increased the square footage of our house by at least 800 sq.ft. and put in another bathroom and a bedroom, all for the investment of about $35,000 - 60,000, give or take.

Does it seem extreme to dump that much money into my ugly-much house? Well sure. But it begs the question: could I buy a different Calgary house that's 2000 square feet, and has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, for a mortgage price I can afford? Abso-smurfly not, not in a hundred years, and not even way out in the suburbs. Right downtown on a double lot? Sure, that'll be your first born child plus your nuts. No way.

OR: or, or, or, putting in a bit of elbow grease and investment into the barn to renovate it into an office for Turner. This project wouldn't raise the value of the house/property to the same degree (if at all), but I think it would actually be easier, besides feeling like a gigantic accomplishment. I love the idea of Turner toodling out to the renovated shed, mason jar fulla whisky in hand and all them clever words in his head. I get all shivery and excited about providing that space for Turner to work. He loves his basement office, but I know that once we had the barn all fitted out how he liked it, I'd never convince him to move, not ever. We'd live on Spiller Road for all the livelong days of our lives, prying it only out of our cold, dead hands.

So suffice to say, I finally called in the remediation people. And they came a few days ago. And lemme tell you, we got all kinds of value for our money.

Worth the price of admission, Point 1: Sean, the very nice asbestos remediation man and Dave, the very nice environmental engineer guy were interesting, polite, engaged in the process, and not in a hurry. If I'm paying you (or I might end up paying you for your grotesquely expensive and specialized services), I don't want you to act like you're doing me a favour. And these guys didn't. Contact me for a recommendation if you need either asbestos remediation at your own home, or any kind of environmental engineering-type stuff - they were professional and very reasonably priced; free consultation is the best kind of consultation, sez I.

Worth the price of admission, Point 2: Turns out there is no insulation in the barn attic, whatsoever! (No wonder it's so goddamn cold in there!) And we know that because...? Because Dave, the (tall) environmental engineer guy managed to figure out that I was pushing on the wrong side of the attic hatch. It's on hinges! And I was pushing on the wrong side! Those squillion nails weren't holding it down, they're holding it together! We put up a ladder and lo and behold we found... more of our neighbour's wood! (That he claimed, to my face, the other day that he had no idea how to get into the barn's attic is something I'm now calling into question...) But: Nothing Else! No zonolite! No lab testing necessary! (The greenhouse is insulated seperately, just as I suspected.)

HURRAY!!!

Worth the price of admission, Point 3: It turns out that only about half of the zonolite found in Calgary homes contains asbestos. Given the internet sleuthing I'd done (and we all know how dependable the internet is when it comes to verifiable, abso-toot-ly true "facts"), I had definitely given up hope that what was up in our attic could possibly NOT be terrifyingly toxic. I'd even had a huge temper tantrum on the electrician who installed our bathroom ceiling fan last year because he wasn't being 100% diligent about keeping zonolite from falling down through the hole as he worked. But here were these asbestos-industry guys standing in my kitchen telling me that we basically had a 50-50 chance of getting away lucky.

Folks, we've established that I'm not a gambler, BUT I LIKE THOSE ODDS!

So they went up into the attic, and they gathered up a giant bag of the zonolite (me hiding around the corner, cringing, imagining the little asbestos fibres floating all around us and getting sucked into Sloane's lungs), and took it away for testing. They also tested the drywall paste, since if you don't already have enough to worry about as a homeowner, it turns out that basically everything used in construction prior to 1980 may or may not have contained asbestos, particularly drywall paste. You're just in a game of Russian roulette to see whether or not YOUR house has it. So they took some chunks of drywall for good measure, and I wrote a cheque for $140 to cover the lab work, and we all shook hands and wished each other luck (luck for me = no asbestos in the house; luck for them = attic stuffed full of asbestos, ching-ching, giant remediation project!).

A few days passed. And then we came home on Friday to a message on the answering machine from Dave, environmental engineer guy. All the samples came back negative. He was preparing an official report for me and would send it in the mail, but the jist of it is this: NO ASBESTOS.

No. Asbestos. None. The zonolite in our attic is safe. The house is clean.

I stood outside on the lawn, where Turner had brought me the phone. I was just stuck there, looking at the house, contemplating the roofline and the attic, below. Actually, I guess I really didn't believe the news. I'd spent two years thinking that our health was at potential risk, living here. And that we couldn't really invest any energy or funds into the house, because eventually it'd just be torn down. Suddenly this whole world of possibilities was visible. Suddenly it didn't seem so bad to be five doors down from the 7-11.

Turner came back outside. "What're you doing? ...You don't believe it, do you?" No, I didn't.

"Well, believe it, Ash! Best $140 you ever spent, eh? Anything you do to the attic now, starts out $15,000 cheaper than it woulda been. ...Could've been worse! Could've been the carcinogenic insulation you've spent the last couple of years stressing about! Eh?!"

Yes, indeedy. It's starting to sink in that all that worry was for nothing, thank god. And that it's nice to be lucky.

 

Categories: Ash | Calgary | City Planning | Family | House

Comments [2]

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Honest Ode To Ramsay

About a week ago I received an email from some cool folks in Toronto, looking to move back to Calgary after many years away. Sounds like they're looking at Ramsay as a possible staging ground for their return to this city, with the intention of avoiding suburbia and hopefully finding something similar to their super neighbourhood in Toronto.  

Hi Ashley,

I came across the post about the rendering plant on your blog when I 
was researching the community of Ramsay.

My name is [name removed].  I'm an ex-pat Calgarian now living in 
Toronto with my wife, and our 14 month old daughter.

I thought I'd write you to ask your thoughts on raising a family in 
Ramsay.  Seems from your blog that it's a nice place to be.

We are considering returning to Calgary after five years in Toronto, 
but the thought of living in suburbia is, well... unthinkable.  We 
have really gotten used to the community spirit of living in a dense 
residential environment, especially in our neighbourhood of 
[inner-urban community in Toronto near Lawrence and Eglinton],                                                                        

which is full of young, smart, creative people, who are 
raising families.  We're in an amazing mom's group, there are several 
playschool co-op centres, parks, cafes...  It's the kind of 
neighbourhood where you go for a walk and keep bumping into people 
you know.

So I'm trying to figure out where we would live if we come back to 
Calgary.  I grew up in [near-northeast middle-class community in Calgary]

so I know the loneliness of the 
suburban teenager...  I've driven through Ramsay on my last few 
visits home and got the feeling that it's one of the only 
neighbourhoods in Calgary that compares to what we have here in 
Toronto.  I like the look of the creative folks roaming the streets, 
the pretty streets, and the cute houses that give the place a very 
inviting feeling.  We would consider living there.

So, if you have a second, maybe you could tell me about Ramsay and 
what the community offers to young families.  Are there good 
preschools?  Are the inhabitants progressive, creative people?  And 
do you know if the city is planning any development projects in the 
area that might compromise the neighbourhood?  Do you get used to the 
smell?

Thanks, glad I found your blog. 

 

While I complain periodically about the local drug scene (found another crack pipe by the newspaper box across the street yesterday), and the folks dragging all their worldly possessions up and down the sidewalk in front of our house (periodically peeing on my neighbours' steps, true enough), and it's accurate to say that the smell of the Liliydale factory is, some days, pretty gross, I have a lot of good things to say about Ramsay too. So I figured I'd post my reply to these fine people, for the rest of you Canadians looking at the Alberta economy with wistful longing. To pique your interest, likesay. Calgary may well be a city of 990,000 that sprawls over the geographic area of Delhi (a city of 14 million), and a large portion of the population does reside in the sprawl of blandified pink suburbia chewing up the prairie in every direction. But there are some pockets of urban living here, too, and certainly Ramsay's one such example.  

So here's my reply, which became a sort of Ode to Ramsay, Calgary's wrong-side-of-the-tracks hidden gem community. Read on:

 

Hey there. We lived in Toronto for a long time - at Gerrard & Broadview, and on Roncesvalles, and my husband put in time on Vaughan Road for a while, way back. I'm a reluctant returnee-to-Calgary after growing up here (