Standing in my shower relying on warm water to loosen the iron grip of my newly built flank muscles as they encounter cold air for the first time and contract, thinking “after this summer of constantly making my torso sore and too wiped to leave home, just as little as two more years and I can put in a backyard spa!
How did you pick the house? And how did you get a house
I had a sense of how the city would develop and of the general area I thought would get good but was not yet (or in general obvious that it would to other homeowners/buyers)
Went through a realtor that assessed my expressed interest and selected open houses to go to from that, though Karafuto was actually something I found on Zillow three blocks away from one of our tours and had us look at.
Planting lavender outside my sittin’ window means each gust of air is pleasantly and differently scented, “lavender” scents capture one particular balance of aromatics but from live plants in turbulent atmosphere it’s always shifting.
V good call on that, after I’d been looking forward to it for a while.
As I go to bed, once more a note that I do that to the scent of two rose incense sticks and one sandalwood I think of as “Rose Thicket”
Getting quotes for putting lockable, apparently steel-frame doors on the fence like “Oh you think it’ll cost that much? Yeah sounds right, that’s definitely something I have any context for whatsoever.”
I appreciate that when I am coming home carrying something now I can just reach through and put it on the kitchen table before opening the door, but I find it irritating when DoorDashers do it and downright offensive for Amazon deliveries (even though I guess security from “porch piracy” is an appeal there)
Goddamn, that’s the third time now I’ve been stung in arm’s reach of Karafuto. They aren’t that bad (and I wonder that earlier might have just been my body’s first exposure to that toxin and it was reflexing to calibrate the response, this time I’m really drowsy and I wonder it’s not natural antihistamine) but their bite is worse then their bark, you don’t even see or hear them buzzing until there’s a few of them delivering like 6 stings.
Might have to get an exterminator, still dunno what they are of where, seem bigger than a fly but smaller than a bee. Wonder if Badger’s met them yet?
Aaay, met another reader coming through town who got the first real exhibition of Karafuto, and then had enough local context to unlimber all my years of thoughts on neighborhood development, Portland urban politics and Cascadian cultural quirks on.
There might come a point where accessibility to random readers becomes less of a positive but for now I’ve really been appreciating talking with strangers preselected for finding the shit I say worth hearing.
No topsoil today but I think I’ll do a full 3 yards tomorrow, and time permitting get a third bedload for when the yard’s closed on Sunday.
Got a kitchen table & chairs, or at least nice wood folding ones I’ll be glad to have on hand in the garage when everything’s done.
Just left my chair by the side window and went to piss and looked out the bathroom window at the backyard and holy shit, this place is really coming together! Real payoff for not making compromises all those years — or rather, the compromise was putting up with the previous squalor until I had all my ducks lined up to take the next step towards final state.
Realizing from growth rates that the two trees out there in the upper backyard were younger than I’d thought when I moved in, and combining with what I know of the previous residents’ plot arc, “tended by a methhead until he left his methhead girl and kid and she ignored it for a decade” actually explained the shape they were in pretty well.
I am a recent follower and not up to date on the whole rich gentry thing. Did you get rich through work or inheritance? Do you work now, or just do yardwork? Did you work in the past? Why live in Portland and not somewhere more glamorous if you are rich? Why name your house Karafuto?
Yeah you’re not up on the “rich gentry” thing.
Karafuto was the name of the Japanese province on the island of Sakhalin, back when they had half of it.
(They originally won it in the Russo-Japanese War, the Soviets took it back when they finally declared war on Japan in WWII)
I’m going for a Japonisme styling (basically, “Japanese inspiration filtered through Western practice”), so “Japanese territory in range of 50°N that the Russians used to claim, totally ignoring the natives” fits.
After shit-talking Viking ranges and serious vent hoods as status symbols that trickled down from the truly elite who have them for caterers (or regular household staff!) to use, realize I might actually be getting some for Karafuto, because like
- Remember how I occasionally mention I’m rich gentry?
- With ambitions?
- And like, am basically structuring the backyard as suitable for everyday use OR as a 50+ person entertaining venue?
Like, there is a real chance I will have caterers here on multiple occasions.
Ah, so when you said “build a shed so someone can change into swimmers for the hot tub”, the implicit “if they’re shy and don’t want to just skinny-dip” might not be the only interpretation, it could be you want to party. Like, in a vaguely classy way compared to bottom-tier takeaway pizza and some six-packs of beers. The classy dining not being incompatible with hot tubbing sans swimsuit, of course, if you want to party like the American West Coast upper class.
and there’ll be racks for clothing and a bin of towels and as long as we’re running water out back for the tub anyway a shower head, like at the beach, only it’ll spray onto dirt under where I’ve dug a pit lined with plastic and filled with rocks with spokes going off to get water to the areas that get hella dry in summer
And there’ll be a water fountain with attached foot tap and bowl for dogs, and it’ll be dual purpose good for both entertaining or for use when working outside in the heat.
After shit-talking Viking ranges and serious vent hoods as status symbols that trickled down from the truly elite who have them for caterers (or regular household staff!) to use, realize I might actually be getting some for Karafuto, because like
Like, there is a real chance I will have caterers here on multiple occasions.
Have you been buying art and not hanging it for years? Last badger photo looks that way.
Yeah, when everything goes up most walls are already spoken for.
Realized if the hot tub’s relocating then a lot of things suddenly get easier if I just take the other bedroom and use the current one as I’d been thinking for it.
Have awkwardly realized the hot tub would be better on the entire other side of the yard than I’d been picturing it all this time, that however close it might be to passers-by on the path the original idea had been that close to my neighbors’ open first-floor bedroom window
Count this as another success for living in the space as I rebuild it so I appreciate it
Okay did some work in the yard that wasn’t yard work like using the muscles, just some cranking a socket wrench outdoors, and some small things are now better in small ways.
Realized that I can build up to a 100 sq ft garden shed without need for permits, and the idea I had for a dead space under the pine was really only 5'x13’, so way after a lot of other stuff’s finished, I’ll have a little renovation dessert building a teahouse-styled shed (perhaps with attached changing stall for anyone bringing a swimsuit to the hot tub)
Psyched I’ve managed to work up a plan for the house where I’ve basically got to go out in the sun and work out at it all summer
