Oklahoma City July Visit – Part 1

Wonder or Ponder Absence
Yes, it has been over two weeks since my last Wander or Ponder post on July 29th. That post described our home updating efforts that took place the week before my back-to-back travels to Oklahoma and North Carolina. I returned home from travel July 19th with a yucky, humongous case of the travel crud. I saw my doctor who started me on a full court press of antibiotics, antihistamines, ear drops, mucus thinner, nose spray, nose cream, and cough syrup with codeine. That sickness hung on for well over a week and I was in no condition for blogging.

Once back home, I did upload from my cell phone the over 400 pictures I took as the doting grandmother of two adorable, and constantly moving, grandchildren but did not have enough energy to sort, cull the blurry ones, and pare down a selection for this blog. I published the post about the updated lighting first because it came earlier than the trip chronologically and because I had already uploaded the pictures before I left for travel. End of excuses. On to the trip. Oklahoma City July 6 - July 14 and North Carolina July 14 - July 19. Despite it being over one month from the start of that trip, I will try to remember what occurred during that fun period in July. Well two thirds of that time period was fun - when I was not sick!

Thursday, July 6th – travels
Frank and I were leaving from Oakland airport and flying on Southwest through Las Vegas to Oklahoma City. I dropped him and the luggage off curbside at the terminal and went to park the car. We figured he would be exercising his hip joint enough in the airport itself – you never know if your gate will be the farthest  out – so we avoided him walking the ⅓ mile or so in the parking lot as well, especially dragging luggage.

Since at the end of a week he would be returning to Oakland and I would be traveling on to North Carolina with my sister, it was imperative that he know where I parked the car. I would not be with him to help him find it. I took a cell phone picture of where I parked and texted it to his cell phone then joined him at the terminal, immediately giving him the parking stub.

We were in the pre-board group to be certain Frank would be able to get a seat where he could extend his right leg. The very first row had two seats remaining in it so we were settling ourselves there. The down side of the first row is that all your carryons  have to go in the overhead bins because there is no under-seat storage at your feet. Being distracted with the logistics of getting situated, I did not not realize that the women in the third seat of that first row was wearing the identical top as me. She pointed it out and we had a laugh. She too was traveling on to Oklahoma City. It was also a topic of discussion among the stewardesses, asking if we were related and if we had planned our outfits. Nope. Just an amusing coincidence. She too was traveling on to Oklahoma City but we did not happen to sit adjacent to each other on the flight out of Las Vegas although we did visit briefly in the terminal waiting for our connecting flight.

I noticed some cute yellow icon signs along the hallways and wondered what they were.

I guess many airports are now outfitted with this pet convenience but it was new to me. It was even installed with a crew placed right where the dog's eye would be and embossed in Braille at the bottom. How considerate!

Our flight to Oklahoma City was just a bit delayed but arrival was on time. The rental car counter however took F-O-R-E-V-E-R. We were there close to 90 minutes with just two customers in front of us.

Autumn tried very hard to wait up for Grandma and Grandpa but she was very soundly conked out when we arrived after midnight.

Friday, July 7th – just chillin' 

Part of it was the two hour time difference and part of it was that travel wears us out, but Frank and I slept in until noon on Friday while the rest of the crew went off to work and daycare. We did get up to gives hugs and say hi but I was amazed that we went back to sleep. That evening we did the traditional suitcase exploration of goodies we'd hauled out there. We'd brought 3 boxes, 30 buns each, of Svenhard's individually wrapped Swedish pastries that are available in California but not Oklahoma.

A mask book we'd brought for Isaiah was a big hit. He loved peeping through the eyeholes and echoing the final lines of each page. The opening character in the book was a superhero and that is Isaiah's favorite topic right now. He can recognize and name all the Marvel comic figures. Per the mask book, Superheroes know just what to do. In this mask shout, TO THE RESCUE!

  

There was advice for a scuba diver. Wear this mask in the sea not the tub. Hold your nose and say GLUB, GLUB, GLUB!

A hockey player needs a mask, too. With this mask, a puck, and stick, Score three goals and call HAT TRICK! Initial fretting about Isaiah's speech possibly being delayed due to multiple ear infections, is a concern of the past. His vocabulary has blossomed and the new words and phrases in the book were a cinch for him to pick up, repeat, and memorize.

Autumn generally shares her brother's love for action figures – and somewhat violent play I ruefully add. I was especially pleased that the mermaid doll I'd made was received with such enthusiasm and intense creative play.

Her love for the doll does not diminish her enthusiasm for superheroes. Autumn and Isaiah had a blast at Comic Con held two weekends after we'd left at the OKC fairgrounds.

Saturday, July 8th – home hang time

Mid-morning Robin and I took Autumn to her swim lesson. When we returned home Autumn tried on a fairy dress-up outfit I'd brought for her. I may have missed the mark a bit as being too feminine, but I suspect once her dance classes resume, so may her interest in the ruffly, flowery costume. Note from her socks that My Little Pony is still in favor.

It does seem a bit incongruous to me to see a frilly fairy playing with Maui, that brawny, beef, densely-tatooed demi-god from the Disney film Moana.

Isaiah was out on the front porch enraptured with playing with the bubble generating firetruck we'd brought. He loves bubbles but wants to blow them himself, a skill he has not quite mastered without a lot of spillage of the sticky bubble fluid. This truck fit the bill because it allowed him to hold his hand in the upright configuration and be successful. He loved it! He consumed and entire bottle of bubble fluid, but fortunately, the toy came with two bottles. 

Unfortunately, when Robin went to switch the empty out for the full, she cracked something in the firetruck. Less than fifteen minutes later, when neither she nor Grandpa could fix it, Robin was on Amazon, ordering Isaiah two more of the firetrucks and four more bottles of bubble fluid. When a kid likes something, his mom will go to any length to satisfy him!

Later in the day there was lap time with Grandpa for reading. 

There was also lap time with Grandpa for tickling.

And that silly old $4 bargain clearance mask book continued to be a big favorite.

In the evening Robin, Jeremy, Frank and I played Sushi Go!. This was very unique card game for Frank and me, especially since the different food selections of sushi are totally foreign to us, being an entirely new vocabulary lesson. The game also has a strange and funky quirk that after you play a card from your hand, you pass the entire hand to the person on your left. Huh? What happened to my logic and strategy? Can I remember what I just handed off? It was fun and moved quickly since you really could not plan too many plays ahead.

Sunday, July 9th – church + water, water, water

After a mid-morning church service Frank and Jeremy got to male bond. Jeremy's sister August sprung a major leak under the porch in her newly purchased home and Frank and Jeremy went over there to see if they could help out. One of Isaiah's pre-birthday presents from us had been a water table. It kept him and Autumn engaged and happy for hours. We'd set it up in the shade on the front porch. They played happily while the adults just got to relax and visit. There was a wheel to crank and balls to toss down the central spiral.

Watching brother and sister playing peacefully side by side is to be enjoyed.

Hmmm. Those squirting toys sure are a mouthful.

And of course it is fun just to get soaking wet on a hot day!

I am watching from a safe, dry distance.

 After dinner, in the evening, we went over to the neighbor's pool.

Monday, July 10th – routine day + house tour

Since Robin was taking Isaiah to a routine doctor appointment before heading off to work, we took autumn to daycare. She was dressed to be cool in the hot weather and had let Grandma braid her long blonde hair.

A lovely Victorian home just around the corner from Robin and Jeremy's was up for sale and we had scheduled a time with a realtor to look at it later that morning. It was quite majestic from the outside. We had admired it for all the time since Robin and Jeremy had moved into that neighborhood and so we were quite curious to get a tour of the inside.

I do love color but we were a bit dismayed at how bizarre the interior decor was. The painting budget to make it a bit more conducive toward relaxation within would have been huge. The layout was strange as well. We were glad we had satisfied our curiosity in taking the tour but our imagined longing for the home did drop down a notch or two. We thanked the real estate agent profusely for giving us her time, and wished her luck in procuring a successful sale.

That evening when all had returned from work and daycare we gave Isaiah another advance birthday present, A Spidey Pillow Pal, almost as big as Isaiah. So far our gifts were batting a thousand. Autumn got her fair share of cuddling Spidey, also.

Tuesday, July 11th - chair assembly + Maxine arrival

In the afternoon Frank assembled a Spiderman chair we had gotten for Isaiah. It had just arrived form Amazon. Do you sense a theme going on here? 

And yes, we could not think of one big present for Isaiah's second birthday so we got him several smaller ones. He was excited about the chair.

His old standard favorite toys though are a set of foam swords that Robin had gotten him. They got a lot of use! He also loves his light savers. He is wielding them with all the strength of Game of Thrones! I think Frank may just be losing in the next photo. The force is definitely not with Frank at this time.

Later that evening my sister Maxine arrived from North Carolina. 

Maxine was to spend the rest of the week with Frank and me in Oklahoma getting to know her great niece and great nephew. Then she and I would head on to North Carolina on the weekend while Frank headed back to California. But first, the Oklahoma City adventures would continue.

Updating Our Lighting

BEFORE
Frank and I had been noting for quite a while that our lighting was inadequate as our eyes aged. We had been contemplating an update prior to his fall from the ladder in November and then other priorities intervened. So in late June, before and during our county fair and firework outings, and just one week prior to leaving on travel, we proceeded with a contractor to update the lighting in our family room/nook/kitchen. Crazy, huh? Timing is everything.

My daughter Robin advised me to take pictures before making any changes, a good reminder for something I rarely remember to do. Here is the family room with its two hemisphere fixtures on the ceiling.  They were very dim and I scornfully referred to them as the two boobs.  In the day time, since there is a eight foot sliding glass door at one end of the room, the lighting is passable.

But at night, the room is dull and we were constantly trying to maneuver task lighting and safely relocate lamp cords in order to see to read, play games, or do puzzles.

The nearby kitchen has a dropped ceiling which housed four ballasts and eight fluorescent light tubes. We do have under counter spot lighting and a few accents over the sink, but most of the time I felt like I was cooking in my own shadow.

Then we had someone point out to us that the center island looked like an autopsy table with its overhead fluorescent lab lights. Once noted, the similarity was difficult to deny and even harder to ignore. That somewhat morbid observation sealed the deal for an update.

Having come this far we would update the nook eating area as well. A stained oak box on the ceiling had been an afterthought at the time of building when a hanging chandelier proved to cast insufficient light. I have never been a fan of fluorescent lighting but at the time it was the most expeditious option.

While we were at it, we would also have a contractor remove the wallpaper and texture the walls in the eating area so that painting would be an option.

Painting. Ahh, yes. We had started to do that before Christmas, trying out some gray hues on different walls. Before he'd broken his hip Frank, had painted the stairwell wall to get an idea of how the change from peach would look.

Then he "painted out the brush" and we looked at the color on two other walls. This is the wall opposite the sliding glass door. A color sample of the more beige, "warmer", gray option is tucked under the clock.

This is the fireplace wall around the television. I was procrastinating on final selection of a color until the appropriate lighting had been installed. Once we had a contractor lined up and ready, though, I went with the sample we had started with. After all, we had being living with those peach/gray patchwork walls for over six months. 

DURING

The lighting installation was first to occur and was to take three days. All the furniture was moved and the floors were taped over with brown paper. There was an exploratory half-day to locate the joists for running an additional line for a dimmer on one of the circuits. Frank could not just sit still. He used his stud finder and marked the ceiling joists with blue tape. Eee gads - he did get up on a ladder again much to my protests! He rationalized, "Only the first step and only to put tape directly overhead. I will get down with care and move the ladder at each piece of tape so I am never leaning."

The joists ran orthogonal to the path of the line, of course, and so many, many, small rectangular access holes were cut out from the ceiling in order to drill a path through. The end goal was twelve lights around the perimeter and four lights in the center on two separate circuits that could be dimmed individually.

The central inset area of the kitchen ceiling was planned for six lights. An offset joist changed that plan and we were forced to go down to a matrix of four, and those four could not even map out into a perfect rectangle – but close enough.

Determined to have the lights installed before the painters were due to patch and texture, the electrical contractor called in seven electricians from three job sites, all at once, to finish the job that third day. I seriously do not know how they stayed out of each others' way. Frank and I had a tough time keeping out of their way!

Our first painter had bid the job as a small amount of ceiling repair around the recessed can installations. I think he was a bit taken aback by the extent of the patching and so reneged. After the electricians had scrambled, we had a two day delay while our contractor found another painter who was willing to deal with all the wall board replacement inserts, patching, and re-texturizing. Actually the break was welcome, giving us our home back for a brief respite.

The new painters came in and wrapped everything, and I mean everything, in plastic wrap. We could not get to the pantry, the cutlery, the sink, the dishes, or the refrigerator.

Every piece of furniture was wrapped.

The walls and hallways were wrapped. Gentle breezes wafting through would billow the plastic sheets like transparent curtains in a haunted house. The mood was eerie and somewhat creepy, especially with the accompanying rustling sound. I kept waiting to hear a low moan emitted from somewhere.

It made me feel like Patrick McGoohan, called Number Six, in the TV spy show The Prisoner, popular in the United States in the late 1960's and early 1970's. I felt like Rover, the thin walled bouncing ball that kept all the prisoners on site and in line, had invaded our home for a short stay.

Frank and I hid out in the living room or upstairs while all this was taking place. Of course the home environment was not quite as bad as the following image from The Prisoner but you get the idea. Fortunately the experience was short lived. 

We were going to remove the wall paper in the eating area and reconfigure the phone. When we originally moved into the house in 1988 we had a corded wall phone centrally located above the kitchen counter – our version of control central for the household. When we changed to a cordless satellite arrangement, the phone needed to sit lower, so Frank fashioned a wooden shelf with a high back to hide the hole in the wall from the phone jack outlet.

It then occurred to us that the main base could be elsewhere and this location could instead house a satellite handset, that did not require a jack. We collapsed the phone jack into the wall, wires intact so no service would be lost. But I marked where it would be relative to the cabinets and documented the location with a photo so we could find it relatively easily if we ever needed to dig it out from behind the wallboard. The wall paper pattern removed had been one of peachy swirls with red speckles.

Having dealt with wall paper removal in our master bedroom, Frank was not going to repeat his efforts. We had the painters removed the wall paper in the nook area. The process really did make quite a mess.

Then the texturing was applied on the walls and ceiling patches. Now we understood better why everything was wrapped in plastic.

The final paint color was applied. I went with the initial choice of Benjamin Moore Harbor Gray, and not a more beige-gray that had been a contender.  I kept my fingers crossed that it would not appear too cold and sterile as some bluish grays are wont to do. 

AFTER:

Here are the updated rooms. I like the way the kitchen looks with the autopsy light removed. It makes the kitchen feel larger and airier –  and cheerier.

We used a pairing of baseboard and crown moulding to dress up the central ceiling inset. Several people suggested pendant lights, but after nearly three decades in this kitchen I could not see myself negotiating around some blobs hanging obtrusively in the center, collecting grease and dust.

The nook, too, seemed more open without the extra huge array of light panels looming down from above. We are trying out the clock where the phone used to be. It may just be a tad too large for the space.

We have not rehung paintings nor the clutter of wall calendar and clocks citing times in different parts of the country. They do serve a function though, so we will need to work out that detail of what to keep, what to relocate and what to part with. I really do like (and use) that oak rimmed clock I got Frank as a retirement gift. It has only one hand, which points to the day of the week.

We had a choice of "temperature" when selecting the LED light bulbs; 2300K is soft cream and 4000K is crisp white. Being a pure color fanatic with my quilting, and doing this project so we had more illumination, I'd thought the brighter white would be my first choice and that the softer tone would appear a dirty yellow.

Not so. The 4000K lights were so white that I felt like I was in a jewelry store that was being protected from being robbed. The softer color was much more homelike instead of business like. We put in a large enough number that the softer toned 2300K was perfectly adequate. In fact everything can be dimmed and we rarely use full power!

All the wall decor is not back but most of the furniture is. We still have some tweaking to do as to placement. The contractors were out of here just in the nick of time for our travels to Oklahoma and North Carolina. Enjoying the updates would need to wait until we return from our travels. At least I could review the pix on my cell phone and use my imagination while we were away.