We have a bathroom at Renan!

For those of you who have ever seen pictures or videos or have had a real life tour of the family farmhouse we have in Virginia, you may be as surprised and impressed as I am with this picture of our new bathroom! Ben's Uncle Wayne has been working on it and I think it's pretty spectacular looking. Have I mentioned it involves running water and sewer?!?

p.s. Design notes: Everything is off the shelf Lowe's options -- the tiles were the cheapest they had, but I think they have a lot of style for the price. The sink is a bit too small for the scale, but we were really worried about how much space we had. (And with a sink this small, I think we'll be able to get a set of shelves between it and the toilet, which we'll need if we're sharing one bathroom with the houseguests we envision -- yes that would be you -- once we get the house livable.)

On Hosting Hurricane Evacuees

My in-laws are in town after fleeing Hurricane Ike. Two weeks ago, they evacuated for Gustav, luckily a short evacuation without any actual damage. Three years ago they stayed off and on for six weeks during Rita and the recovery thereof. In sum, Ben and I have just a wee bit of experience with hosting evacuees. Here's what we've learned that might be useful to others hosting evacuees from Ike.

1. Give them their own space. While you might get a good visit in, this isn't a social visit. It may drag on longer than any of you expect. The best way to avoid questions like "Can I do this? Where can I set up my computer?" or the "Why is all this stuff here?" sorts of issues, designate some parts of the house for their use for the duration. In our house, it's the front of the house -- the guest bedroom, the formal dining room for an office, and the smaller sitting area. They can spread out as much as they want there, without asking permission. We occasionally "visit" those parts of the house, but for the most part we leave them alone. The flip side -- when my father-in-law's newspapers start encroaching on my living room, a glower or a reminder from my mother-in-law sends them back to their half of the house. Along the same lines, I've cleared a shelf in the bathroom for their toiletries so they don't have to carry them back and forth. If you have a lot of evacuees, you might consider dedicating a shelf of the refrigerator for their snacks.
2. Food. Since this isn't a social visit, you don't need to go out of your way to impress your guests. Your guests, however, are a bit out of sorts, stressed out, and needing the comfort of routine. We find sitting down to dinner is a a nice gracious bit of normality in a definitely-not-normal experience. Now's the time to stock up with preprepared food from HEB or Costco, or serve sandwiches or canned soups. Nothing fancy, but comforting, easy to prepare foods. Don't forget to give your house guests tasks to help get dinner on the table -- either take turns with preparation, or give someone the salad and someone else the job of setting the table or getting drinks. Remember -- this may last longer than you expected, so don't take on all the work yourself.
3. Drinks. They're stressed because their home may be blown away or underwater. You're stressed because you have unexpected houseguests. I recommend wine -- our prosaic tastes lead us to a big box of riesling in the fridge, but anything with alcohol would do.
4. Parking. Consider parking your cars on the street and giving your guests the garage or driveway. They probably have most of their prized posessions in their cars, and securing them better or making it easier to fetch things in is a small way to lighten their load.
5. Naps. Your guests may have been up all night packing or driving, which in addition to the stress of a hurricane and evacuation is exhausting. A "quiet time" -- with naps encouraged -- will put everyone in a better mood and better able to handle anything that comes.
6. Get out. Take advantage of additional help around the house for built in babysitters, or plan dinner out with friends in town to give both of you time away from each other. This is especially true once you get past the first 3 or so days.
7. Communications and information. Make sure your guests have access to whatever information sources they need to keep up with the weather and it's aftermath. For us, it's internet access -- and sending them down the street to Waterloo ice house when TV is needed. Also realize that they'll be on the phone a lot, checking on and commiserating with their neighbors and friends.
   

One of my evacuees read over this and gave it her nod of approval from the evacuee instead of host perspective. I'm sure other people have more ideas, if you want to chime in in the comments.

In case you haven't seen us lately...

Other people's accomplishments

Wow, my sister had one of her flickr photos used on one of the NY Times blogs.

Cool, huh?

One Hot Mama

My sister is home, and going through old photos. Here's one she found of my Mom, at about 25. Doesn't she look like the sexy Kansas farmgirl she was? Although this would have been after she left Kansas to see the world via the Air Force.

(p.s. All that hair -- it's fake!)

Eulogy for my father

When I was a little girl, I had a favorite book called “My Daddy can fix anything.” You can guess why it was my favorite – because I had a Daddy who really could fix anything. Yesterday I fielded a call from someone looking for my dad, and my mother’s comment when I told her who had called was “Yeah, they call Dad whenever they have something they can’t fix themselves.”

He started learning this ability to fix things during his youth, working with his stepfather in construction -- where they tended to take a job first and figure out how to build it the night before they started.

He enlisted in the Army, then switched to the Air Force. His career in the Air Force included being “on the front line of the cold war” by running radar evaluation squadrons as far away as Labrador and being the officer in charge of a missile site. He graduated from the Air Force’s Office Candidate School in 1963. He was a member of the Air Force and National Rifle teams, and a gunsmith.

While his intelligence was what enabled him to fix anything, I personally think it was his integrity and stubbornness that made him successful. To start and run a business for 27 years – over multiple economic “slow downs”, flirtations with bankruptcy, and changing markets – took an incredible amount of stubbornness.

It’s this integrity (and stubbornness!) that meant he had a marriage of 36 years; even though *his* parents were divorced and remarried multiple times. It began with a first date in a junkyard in the rain – Mom’s roommates said if she saw him again it had to be true love – but ended as husband and wife, business partners, parents, and grandparents who enjoyed working, dancing, reading, and dining, all done together.

My dad was not given to casual displays of affection – although hugs and kisses were available when requested – but to more practical displays of affection like driving to rescue me after my 20 year old Mercedes starting dropping pieces of itself on the Houston streets.

He used his intelligence & integrity to raise two daughters, giving them opportunities he never had, letting them (finally!) discover he didn’t know everything, and letting them go – as far away as Africa and Turkey – to become independent adults.

In the end, no one, including my Dad, could fix his cancer that grew so fast and put him in so much pain. [He was stubborn and persistent until the end, holding on until we all told him it was all right for him to go.]




(More or less the eulogy I gave Thursday night at my Dad's funeral.)

Find my sister's here (minus her creative storytelling).

RIP Jim Carlstead

James Edward Carlstead, 67, of Buda passed away at MD Anderson in Houston Texas, December 4th, 2007.
He was born in Keytesville, Missouri on September 25, 1940 to Francis Pauline and George William Carlstead.

A 20 year veteran of the Air Force, Jim performed many duties for his country including running radar evaluation squadrons; officer in charge of a missile site “on the front line of the cold war”, a member of the Air Force and National Rifle teams, and gunsmith. He graduated from the Air Force’s Office Candidate School in 1963.

In 1980 he started Carlstead Truck Sales, which did business in the Buda, Texas area for 27 years. He served on the Hays Youth Athletic Association Board from 1987-1989, was a member and officer of the Austin Rifle club, coached the UT Rifle Team for 10 years, and enjoyed square dancing with the Waterloo Squares.

He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Ellen; his daughters Cristi Carlstead of Istanbul and Sara Carlstead Brumfield of Austin, a son-in-law Ben and a granddaughter Josie.

The funeral service will be Thursday, December 6 at 7PM followed by a visitation until 9PM at St. Anthony Marie Claret Catholic Church, 801 North Burleson Street in Kyle, Texas. Graveside service will be held at 9:45 AM Friday, December 7 at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

In lieu of flowers memorials can be made to the University of Texas Rifle and Pistol Club; c/o Lee Patterson; 2112 Guadalupe St., Room. 512; Austin, TX 78705 or to the St. Michael’s Academy Endowment; 3000 Barton Creek Boulevard, Austin, TX 78735.

Bye-bye Daddy. I will miss you more than I can imagine.

Dad is dying.

This is an odd forum for this sort of information, but since we don't all live in the same small town and talk over our fences, it seems like the closest equivalent.

My Dad is dying. He was scheduled for surgery at MD Anderson the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to remove a tumor, but that Tuesday we discovered the tumor had quadrupled in size in the previous month (not normal for sarcoma at all) and was no longer operable. He started chemotherapy on Thanksgiving day. By Saturday he was in the hospital with neurotoxicity -- a reaction to chemo that causes a lot of confusion and, in his case, paranoia. He also couldn't really walk, mostly due to the tumor (we think). They watched his kidney function, which was slowly getting better, but when the white blood cell the chemo was breaking down starting hitting this weekend, they just couldn't handle it. (We decided not to do dialysis, which would only have been for more chemo, which he really wasn't handling well at all, and wouldn't have helped the tumor enough to be operable...) He's basically in kidney failure right now, slipping into a coma, and waiting for the stress to start affecting his other organs.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Family & Happiness

Two thought provoking tidbits from Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project blog:

• Pierre Reverdy observed, “There is no love, there are only proofs of love.” Keeping these journals to be a link between himself and his children is an active proof of love. We think we act because of the way we feel, but in fact, the way we act shapes the way we feel – so performing loving actions boosts loving feelings.

I'm taking this as a reminder to do, not just to contemplate, especially in my family affairs.

• Studies show that one way to boost happiness is to keep happy memories fresh. Happy people don’t have more pleasant experiences than unhappy people, but they remember them better. Keeping a journal (which for most people skews toward the happy experiences) will help keep good times memorable.

One of the smartest things I've done for keeping memories alive is to order an extra copy of Josie's yearly photo alblums (I use MyPublisher's Bookmaker) and keep it under the coffee table with Josie's other books. We pull her first year out regularly to look at it -- unfortunately the second year one isn't done yet.

Smokin'

So my mother recently purchased a smoker. Being an extrememly frugal person, she feels she has to 1) make her money back on the purchase as quickly as possible and 2) max the output of the smoker each time she runs it. What this means is we have a plethora of smoked delicacies, most sent home as leftovers for us to cook with over the week. As a sample, here's what was on the menu last week:

* smoked chicken and smoked cheddar quesadillas
* smoked portabello mushrooms with smoked port salut melted on top
* enchiladas made from smoked colby, topped with Mexican Garlic Cumin Sauce mixed with Fire Roasted Tomatoes.

Not to mention some random smoked meats.

Smoked cheese is pretty incredible. I don't think we've eaten so well in a very long time.

This week it's Ben's turn to cook, and he's starting with a smoked brisket that is very tasty. Last night's dinner was a stewish sort of creation with more of the fire roasted tomatoes, a lot of wine, and the aforementioned brisket (diced), served over rice. It was delicious!