As I have detailed in the past here and here, I think I am the center of universal attention — hence the blog and all. Despite my debilitating self-absorption, I actually managed to ride my new bike to work last week without breaking out in a nervous sweat (or any sweat at all; the two-mile ride is on a fairly level grade) or collapsing in a fit of anxiety hives. Even when I shifted badly and dropped my chain, I was able to fix this mechanical mishap without feeling that each car driving by held the entirety of my adolescent romantic failures, all of them pointing and giggling at my predicament.

However, this past Saturday, I had that feeling again. Hazel woke up nice and early around 6 a.m. ready for the day, a fact that invariably begets two groggy parents rolling out of bed to attend her needs. Once Hazel was changed, dressed, and fed, I headed out to do some yard work. First on my list was digging up the remnants of an overgrown forsythia bush. Last year, I noticed that it was sending shoots and branches up under the siding on the east side of our house. I read online that you can hack off forsythia limbs and transplant them in the fall, each branch taking root and growing into a fully-fledged forsythia bush. I was skeptical, but hopes for the best since, as the adage goes, “If it’s on the internet, it must be true.” And this spring, just like a starfish’s arm that grows a whole fish(?), those ungainly bare stalks I jabbed in the ground actually blossomed and have new, promising growth.

So like I said, this weekend I put spade to dirt. Even though the remaining bush was nothing more than a few inches of knotty trunk, foot-long shoots were sprouting still, so I knew I had to move this beast. Everything was going well until, just before the imminent uproot, my shovel (which I was using as a makeshift pry bar) gave out, its fiberglass handle issuing forth a disappointing crack. I looked around, but I guess nobody heard it. No newshound popped out from behind the maple tree remarking, “What a scoop!” No paparazzi shouted my name as their flashbulbs painted my now flaccid digging instrument in stark relief. Once more, life reminded me that I’m not the center of it all, despite what I might have Sharpied on the waistband of all my underpants.

Last night was our free estimate appointment with a local contractor — we’re hoping to put up a two-car garage. Not having a garage stinks, especially in Maine where winters are cold and snowy. Plus, it’d be cherry to have a place to store the lawnmower, snowblowerthrower, bikes, and sundry other things that we don’t want sitting in the middle of the living room. This includes our cars.

I met the guy (let’s call him Guy) in our driveway and shook hands. After a few minutes of small talk, he set his mind to the business at hand. Right away I noticed that Guy was a very jittery person. He seemed to have difficulty using the 25’ tape measure he brought and never stopped talking. He continually spewed words from his mouth for the entire 15-minute visit without answering a single question I posed. This includes the three times I asked, “So can you give me a rough estimate on how much a new garage would cost?” He kept putting this inquiry off, saying how there were so many factors that could affect the price. Our free estimate was becoming a free awkward experience.

“I should come back when both you and Megan can sit down to go over the options,” he stammered.

I told him no and asked for just a base number. I knew siding choice and such would change the price, and we wouldn’t hold him to an exact number today. Just tell me something so that we won’t waste his time. But Guy kept blubbering, back-peddling toward his truck, saying that there were so many options, we should really wait until Megan was available. I pressed the issue again, and he went into bamboozle mode, trying to use terms like “roof grade” and “rafter span” to scare me into dropping the conversation. At that point, I asked Guy to leave, which he did only after giving me a three-page list of references. In short, Guy was a bad salesman, even though his card read “Senior Vice President”. I imagine that everyone who works at this place is a Senior Vice President; it must be the entry level title.

I can only assume that Guy wanted to speak with Megan as well as me so that he could win over the little lady with surface level details like windows and door shape. This stereotyping strategy wouldn’t have worked though, as I’m the soft sell in our house. I couldn’t imagine writing Guy’s business a check for several thousand dollars. It’s a wonder he does enough business to afford his official company polo shirt.

Is this a sign that a garage would be superfluous at this point? Maybe. But what if the band gets back together? We need a rehearsal space, and Hazel’s room has terrible acoustics.

Excuse me, Hazel?

How old are you today?

Darn tootin’!

Megan and I have moved a lot over the past eight years — seven times by my count. It’s like one of us is in the military or wanted by the authorities (or both á la The A-Team!) and we have to keep stealing away in the midnight hours. I have to seriously wonder if all this relocation has given us an aura of displacement because my workplace, situated in the same Mid-coast town since 1990 and in the same cozy offices therein for the past 12 years, just up and moved last month. The move was only 8 miles down Route One, but still I feel somewhat responsible for our recent need of change of address forms and sturdy brown boxes.

Overall, I love the new office. The building is more modern in both its design and amenities and is only two miles from home, so I can bike to work, thereby combating both high gas prices and my carbon footprint. It has been kind of strange to make the shift from our old “single serve” bathrooms to the large, public affairs we have here. It wasn’t a huge leap back into my memory banks to remember that, even if you see someone you know in the men’s room, anything beyond a polite nod and quickly muttered salutation is sort of taboo. Like when you find yourself in a dicey neighborhood, keep your eyes forward, just keep moving, and for God’s sake don’t point.

We’re located at the topmost floor, the fourth, so this gives me great opportunity to exercise a little bit each day. But whenever I come across people on the stairs, any smile or friendly hello on my part is treated with surprise and even suspicion. Something about the stairs — closed in by cinderblock walls, narrow with lots of blind corners — spooks people. A frighteningly large percentage of the folks I see look fearful of some masher attack. It makes one wonder if something unfortunate happened in this building,  in the very stairs that are meant to connect floors.  But most likely it’s just the insular attitude that many people in Maine have. It’s not unfriendliness, but it certainly isn’t sociability.

Of course, I could always just sell out and take the elevator. I do periodically when something large or unwieldy needs to be moved up from or down to our basement storage area. But then you can be trapped with people in a little box, forced to decide between idle chat or staring resolutely at the floor number display as you ascend. But taking the elevator wouldn’t only betray my marginal fitness goals, it would also seriously slow me up. Several times, people who can clearly walk have gotten on the thing for a ride of just one floor. Trying to get from the basement to the fourth can be confounding enough, but running the gauntlet of one-floorers can be downright enervating.

Maybe it isn’t laziness though. Maybe these people take the elevator because of the Incident that happened in the Stairs. Maybe they know the elevator to be a safe haven, a story-spanning sanctuary. Perhaps that humble lift is this building’s version to the Headless Horseman Bridge: offering secure passage to those who reach it in time.

Picture yourself in front of an impossibly tall door that can easily be opened, but not by you. Imagine, if you will, the sound of a small hand smacking against a pane of glass. Visualize the frantic motions of someone whose dexterity is still in beta development, spurred into action by a burning need to get the attention of a person who is looking the other way and cannot hear your warnings. Can you imagine the frustration felt, the panicky sweat that would make smooth hands clammy and brushed hair matted?

Hopefully you are picturing a cute, active baby and not some sort of demon spawn just birthed from the unholy womb of Hell because I’m talking about Hazel, not Beelzebub Jr. This week was the inaugural First Mow of the Yard and I’m embarrassed by the glee that bubbled up inside me at the thought of cutting the grass, one straight, deliberate row after another. But what made me actually laugh out loud (and I don’t mean LOL) is when I briefly looked over at our front screen door. As I shore our lawn to a respectable height, there stood Hazel — 30 inches of flailing fury, desperately trying to get my attention and alert me of the big scary monster (i.e. the push mower) that could very well make me into Daddy mulch.

One of the best skills a person can have is the ability to put a positive spin on a potentially bad situation. I’m not talking about someone who blindly ignores the icky parts of life in favor of Precious Moments figurines and posters of kittens staunchly “hanging in there.” This optimistic outlook needs to be authentic and honest, boldly acknowledging that things aren’t perfect without actually focusing on that glum fact. Take for example this anecdote from my college graduation. Commencement was held outside on the Marist College green despite warnings of heavy rains to come. And come they did; dumping rains began soon after the first diploma was handed out. Many of my classmates left in a huff as soon as they walked across the stage, but a good handful of us stayed on to cheer our fellow graduates. By the end, the mass of students who had stuck it out congregated to the front of the seating area, celebrating as the steady rain soaked us through our gowns, our eyes barely protected by our waterlogged mortarboards. Once the last name was called, Marist Brother Paul Ambrose took the microphone to deliver the closing benediction. He cleared his throat as said, “May your young lives have as many blessings as rain drops that have fallen on your heads today.”

So that’s what I mean by effective positive spin. Let’s now use this method to assess our dry(ish) basement. We had originally planned to finish off a good portion of it, making a play room, a dark room, and two office spaces for Megan and myself. Moving forward, I feel that we’d be foolish to blithely disregard our basement penchant for getting wet. Even with a sump pump installed, we’re still talking about a potentially damp environment from time to time. I don’t want to put our computers and their peripherals down there. So now what?

Well, we’re considering an addition. Right now, two of our three bedrooms are being used as advertised with the third servicing as an office/craft room. But if we’re going to expand our family (a serious possibility in the next year or so) then we are going to need to revert that third bedroom to a nursery. With no extra space for computer stuff, an addition may be just the thing. So the estimate gathering has begun, but I have to say how very nerve-racking this is. If anyone out there has a better idea, I’m all ears.

At the very least, we can always depend on Hazel to take care of clean up.