Learning to Relax

Once I was anxious about everything.  I had too many rules to relax.  I was days away from the point of counting the times I touched a door handle.  I had eating disorders, I had cleaning disorders and I had comma anxiety.  I don’t remember hitting bottom and thinking, “Something’s got to change,” but that could be because I was too busy rearranging dangling participles and bookshelves. 

Something changed somehow.  I’ve focused my punctuation problems, my calorie-counting, and my over-orderliness on one thing and one thing alone: parking spots.  I’m an irrational parker.

Even if I’m not the one driving, I can’t help but search out the perfect spot.  It’ll be the end spot, right under a tree surrounded by the nicest landscaping.  There’ll be a small car parked in the next spot so there’s plenty of personal car space in which to get in and out.  It’s the closest one to the door of my destination.

I love walking and running when I’m not injured, and I go to the gym every day.  But parking far away and walking?  It’s against my parking rule to expend more energy than necessary.  I’ll drive in circles and wait for a good, close spot.

If you lived with me before, you know it’s easier to oblige me my preferred parking spot over trying to get me to eat or stop rearranging the kitchen cupboards. 

There are some situations when my parking obsession can get to be a bit much.  Saturday, for example, we decided to waste a perfectly good workday on the Oregon Remodeler’s Home Tour 2004.  There are twelve houses on the tour and twelve potential perfect parking spots.  I promised myself I’d behave.

Before I thought about controlling my parking “suggestions,” we had to find tickets.  We drove all over the Metro area, asking at hardware stores to pay $15 each for tickets to peek in other people’s houses.  Charlie wasn’t bothered by my pointing when I eyed the perfect parking spot.  I tried not to point every time, but I wasn’t successful.  “It’s parking or barfing,” I told him.  “Which is harder to live with?”

Parr Lumber only had one ticket left, and it took me ten minutes of waiting to even find that out.  “Our Cedar Hills store has twenty tickets,” the bug-eyed clerk said.  “If you hurry, they won’t sell out.”

The Cedar Hills Parr Lumber store is the best one.  It’s all the way across town, down the street from our old house, the coastal bungalow.  Driving by our first fixer-remodel gives us a chance to compliment each other.  Charlie and I didn’t waste the opportunity.  We were still saying, “You’re so talented,” to each other when we walked into the store.  I didn’t have to point at a parking spot because there was only one left, and it was good enough for me.

“We’re closed for inventory,” the clerks at the Parr Lumber counter said.

“That explains why you have twenty tickets left,” I said.

“How’d you know?” one of the clerks said.

“The other store sent us,” Charlie said.  “They ran out.  That store sucks anyway.”

“Which store?”

“The one on Stafford Rd.”

The other clerk behind him gets on the phone and starts yelling.  I think I got someone at the Stafford store in trouble.  

“We’re supposed to be closed for inventory,” the clerk said.  “I’ll tell you what: if you have cash, I’ll just stick it in the envelope and forget about it.”

“I’ll have cash,” I said, “as soon as I get back from the ATM.” 

After two hours of ticket-scavenging and a few bad parking spaces, we got into the first house right after noon.

If this house wasn’t near Parr Lumber, we probably wouldn’t have gone.  It was a 1990s McMansion, updated to be even more envied by all the neighbors and friends. 

We parked right in front and walked in to a house empty of sucker remodel tourists.  That’s not good.  We’ve already paid money to walk around; I don’t want to hear a walking infomercial by the contractor and his company, trying to sell us on their services. 

The Principal of this Construction company stood at the door, shook our hands and introduced himself.  Charlie went straight for the trim and started touching it.  “Did you do this?”

“We do wonderful work with trim,” the guy said.  “It’s our specialty.”

If Charlie could touch the trim and not get his hand swatted, I decided it must be part of the ticket price to touch things.  I went right to the dark green entry wall and touched away.

“This is what I was thinking about for our entryway,” I said, “instead of that Crest toothpaste color we have.”

“That’s what you wanted?” Charlie said.  “I like that better, too.  Let’s repaint the entry.”

“Okay,” I said.  “It goes with the rest of the colors in our house, which are the exact same colors as this one.”

“That paint is $75 a ‘eurogallon,’” the Principal contractor said.  “The owner was very concerned about the paint.  He had it shipped over.  As long as it lands on my doorstep, I don’t care how it gets here.”

He watched me touching it.  It didn’t feel like $75 a eurogallon, whatever that feels like.

“It’s very durable,” he said.

I wanted to test it further, but I decided instead to think about the difference in quantity between a four liter “eurogallon” versus a four quart American gallon of paint. 

“Those corners were perfect,” Charlie said as we went upstairs.  “Every miter was seamless.  I looked hard; I couldn’t see a single defect.”

Upstairs a woman with a nametag cornered us.  She chatted and chatted about plumbing.  “I made the guys flush all the toilets upstairs and I stood right here with my ear pressed to the wall,” she said.  “I couldn’t hear a thing if I moved only a few inches away.”  What made her think about this choice of conversation?

While she was talking Charlie continued to inspect the trim.  He found a few spots which looked less than perfect and pointed them.  He didn’t have to say anything, and he was afraid to.  No telling what new conversation she’d start if we showed interest in anything at all.

Another couple walked up the stairs and the plumbing lady ran over to greet them.  Seeing our chance, we ran straight out to the car.  Because we were parked in the perfect spot right in front, we escaped quickly.

After getting lost in the West Hills, we found the second house.  We couldn’t get a good spot, so we had to park way up the hill.  We sat in the car and ate the rest of our breakfast cinnamon rolls.  We might need the energy to fight off contractors.

“I don’t need someone to tell me where to put the pillows,” a woman with an English accent told another woman with a nametag.  “I don’t need a designer.  I need someone to help me decide where to put the bookshelves and help me pick out my countertops.  What I want to know is what does an Architect do?”

The English woman blocked the door and wasn’t going to move.  The nametag person looked trapped, like us with the plumbing lady at the last house.  Maybe this is a bad sign.

This house had lots of sucker tourists.  All the Construction company representatives were busy selling, and staying out of our way.  We headed to the kitchen and ate more than our share of the chocolate truffles sitting on the cat-barf-looking granite countertop.  You don’t want a countertop that camouflages things like that.

Even though this house was on the top of the West Hills with a view of the Fremont bridge, it was less than the sum of its parts.  It looked like someone took everything trendy and stuck it in a fifties ranch house.  It didn’t fit.  We ate more truffles and left quickly.

We parked right in front of an historic 1920s home on Vista Drive, one of the nicest streets in Oregon, and were excited to walk inside.  It’s worth the price of admission just to walk around and make comments about the places people live.  You don’t have to pay extra to peek in refrigerators and closets, which I do.  People have the weirdest stuff.

One closet had nothing but phone books and Japanese lanterns.  More than one huge bedroom closet had cheap acrylic sweaters and Goodwill-looking clothes and nothing else.  None of the refrigerators had anything near as interesting as my Mom’s.  She saves everything and is very creative with sauce purchases.  These refrigerators only contained bottles of water and healthy snacks and for the Construction company representatives.  We ran through several homes without seeing anything good.  Not even the paint.  Off-white was everywhere.

It was raining pretty hard by the time we visited the last house.  We circled around and I didn’t even have to point.  There was only one parking spot open and we took it.  I didn’t even care.  I had an umbrella.

We were getting tired of porta-potties and sales people and boring refrigerator contents.  The only reason we went to this house at all is because it’s on the way home.  It’s in the ‘burbs and it looks like every other house in the ‘burbs.  I hope the inside is better.

“You’ll love this kitchen,” the Principal of this remodeling company said.  “Come here, I want to show you.”

He walked us into the kitchen where another person with a nametag put hot chocolate chip cookies on a plate.  Charlie and I took a couple each to compensate for the price of admission.  We might only take one if we were watching calories, but we’re too relaxed for that.  We’re too relaxed to go finish our own remodel.

“We’re remodelers,” Charlie said.  We stopped being polite a few houses ago.  I noticed he had chocolate smeared all over his lips and chin.  I tried to think of how to tell him without being rude.  He tried to sound professional so the guy would leave us alone.  He looked like a little kid with all the smeared chocolate.  I couldn’t look without laughing.

“Oh, you’re competition,” the Principal said.  “Do you have a showroom, too?”

“No, we buy crappy houses and live in them while fixing them up.”

“We live in them way too long,” I said, still looking down.

“We come to these things to steal ideas,” Charlie said.

“We do cabinetry, too,” the Principal said quickly.

“We’re pretty loyal to Mill’s Pride,” Charlie said.

That shut the Principal right up. 

I started laughing at Charlie’s chin.  “It’s hard to take you seriously when you eat like that.”

He tried to wipe his face and smeared it around further.  The Principal turned to find someone new to listen to his sales pitch.

I shouldn’t have told Charlie about the chocolate.  He’s even more relaxed than me.

A little help? [] 4:11:33 PM