Tag Archives: Disappointment

These boots have souls

Musings, , ,

In 2000 or 2001 I bought a pair of Stonefly boots at The Sea Captain’s Lady in Geneva, Illinois. These boots changed my life as I knew it. They were the most comfortable shoe I’d ever put on my feet. Slipping my feet into these boots was like getting a foot massage. Walking was deliriously comfortable. They hugged my feet like lovers meeting after a long absence.

I wore these boots for nearly everything, except the most dress-up occasions. When we took a trip to England and Scotland in 2002 I wore these boots and walking was a breeze. My feet never got tired and never ached when I wore these boots.

The Boots in London

In hindsight, I should have purchased several pairs of these boots when I could, because when I began to worry about the day that these boots would wear out, I was too late. Stonefly had quit selling these exact boots. Of course I turned to the Internet to find my Stonefly Gortex ankle boots. I found and purchased a couple of pairs on Ebay, but none were exactly the same — they were all too narrow near the toes and wearing them hurt my feet.

A few years ago I noticed that my boots were splitting at the seams and took them to a cobbler to have them fixed. He sewed them and polished them and they served me well a few more years. Now the seams are splitting again, but the soles have worn so thin I can feel even small pebbles when I walk outside in them. Unfortunately they are not the sort of boot that have the soles sewn on, but are attached some other way (glue? heat?). I could try a cobbler again — I hear there is a shoe miracle worker in Washington DC — but I’m not sure they’d be the same with new soles.

The boots

These boots have taken me to a new job, England & Scotland, Seattle, California, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, kids performances, girl scout meetings, wrestling tournaments, and many other places I’ve forgotten. I think it is time they took it easy. I’ve found other shoes that are somewhat comfortable. I’m satisfied with a newer pair of Gortex Stonefly ankle boots — brown this time, but not nearly as comfortable — which took me to Ireland a couple of years ago. I’ve also purchased a fairly comfortable pair of Merrell clogs that I use everyday.

I doubt I’ll ever find another pair of boots or shoes quite as wonderful as my old black Gortex Stonefly Ankle boots. Even Stonefly can’t seem to get it right again. But I’ll keep looking.

Secret Room, Secret Dreams

Musings, , ,

As mentioned before, I like dreams about unexplored areas of houses. I’ve dreamed about new houses with labyrinth-like layouts and about finding secret places in our current house. So, when we discovered that we might have a secret room under our screened-in porch, I was intrigued.

Our house was built shortly after World War II in an area of Bethesda called Huntington Terrace. The street on which the house was built hosts several other homes that look similar to ours — a typical brick center hall colonial common in this area. What is unique about the homes is that the home directly opposite is exactly the same — a reverse mirror-image, but no two other homes are the exact same. Another unique quality of several of the homes was an excavated “secret” room under the screened in porch. At least two neighbors broke through the cinder block in the basement to find an extra 1000+ cubic feet of space. At least two others broke through from the outside and created outside storage.

When we first heard about the room under the porch we joked about opening it up and making a root / wine cellar out of it. We also joked (as did several of our friends) that we may find a body in the room. I didn’t really think seriously about it until we looked at the across the street neighbor’s extra room when the house was on the market. Dean went back at least once to look at the room and not long after that we called the man who refinished our attic (my current office) and asked if he could do the job of breaking through the wall and making a door to our room that we now were sure existed. He wasn’t so sure, but gave us a reasonable estimate price and said he’d call when he had time. Months went by, but he eventually called and said he could start work on a Monday in August.

In anticipation I snapped a few shots:

Basement where the door would go
Basement where the door would go

From the outside
From the outside

Porch
Shot of the porch

On Monday at 9:00 am sharp, Peter and his assistant, Eric, arrived to start work. They quickly set up and while Peter brought things in from the truck, Eric started chipping away at the cinder block of the laundry room wall. Checking out the wall The first chip Making the hole

It didn’t take long for Eric to chip through both sides of the cinder block. He asked for a flashlight and we took our first look into the room
DSC_0318.JPG DSC_0320.JPG

Instead of 61 year old air we saw dry dirt. Peter and Eric both tried to push a crowbar into the dirt, hoping it was not packed into the space, but it wouldn’t give. I called Dean and told him the news. We didn’t have an excavated secret room. Instead we had a room full of dirt that hadn’t seen the light of day in over 60 years.

Peter and Eric did find air instead of dirt directly under the porch, but the porch is only about 4 feet above ground.

Dean did some musing for about a day and a half about how he and Andrew could excavate the dirt through the laundry room and out the basement door but calculations came to far too may work hours to make it a reality.

As you can imagine we were all disappointed. I thought I’d get a wine / root cellar. Dean hoped for some extra space so he could set up his workbench inside instead of having to store it outside under the addition. We’re over it now, but it sure would have been nice.

We wondered why some of the houses on our street had excavated rooms and others did not. I recently found an old Washington Post advertisement about our street and it seems that the homes on the opposite side of the street were finished first. I think that by the time the builder got to our house he figured that there was no need to remove the earth from the area under the porch. Little did he know that his decision would make some future owners kind of sad.

In hindsight I wonder if not knowing would have been best. It was always kind of cool to think that there was a room on the other side of the laundry room wall,  just waiting to be uncovered. Now that we know it is just a space filled with dry old soil, it’s taken away a small, but delicious, mystery.

Life is not like in the commercials

Events, Life

I don’t watch that much television — and rarely watch commercial television these days — but when I do watch broadcast TV, I don’t ignore the commercials. My husband switches channels when a commercial comes on or, if we’ve recorded the program, fast forwards through them, but I sort of like the bit of modern-day “culture” I see in TV ads.

There are three commercials that I remember preceding milestones in my life. The first was a diaper commercial. It featured a young family at the zoo looking at the animals. At the end of the commercial the baby (toddler, I think) is picked up by her father and nods her head — possibly in response to an animal nodding its head. This commercial caused my hormones to scream “WANT BABY NOW!”. So we had a baby, and as wonderful as that baby was — she never nodded to the animals at the zoo. And we didn’t use disposable diapers, so that ad was wasted on us as far as the advertising industry was concerned.

The next commercial that I remember using as a benchmark for my role as a mother was for a brand of beverage that I never planned on serving my kids, but liked the whole idea of my kids friends hanging out at our house. I wanted to be like the mother in this commercial:

For several reasons, some unknown to me, but others known, kids never wanted to hang out here. Maybe I should have bought Sunny Delight after all.

The last television advertisement that I felt an emotional response to was one I just saw the other day. This one, though, I suspected would not be true to life since the past year didn’t live up to my expectations. It did make me cry though:

Note: Unfortunately this video is no longer available and I don’t remember what it was.

After taking Clare to college, it turns out that this was the most true to life of the three commercials. We did have a feeling of dismay when we first saw the dorm room but after making the bed and after her roommate’s parents set up some things they’d bought (not at Walmart) it did look a little more cozy than at first glance.

One thing I’ve learned (the hard way) in the past 18 years of being a parent (and a human being, for that matter) is to avoid having set expectations about life events. Life turns out the way it is going to turn out — one cannot know exactly how scenes are going to be played out and one should not expect that everything is going to be exactly like one has planned. Sometimes (usually) it is worse. No set expectations improves the odds that it will be better.