Words from Jaxley
I was given 5 words and told to expound upon their meaning to me, so here goes:
Dachshunds: My favorite dogs. I grew up in a house that always had at least one, usually two, and occasionally three. They're hounds, so they're generally pretty laid back, (if you avoid the overbred miniatures.) Very smart dogs, loyal, long-lived, and generally friendly, but since they were originally bred for chasing badgers into their holes, they're surprisingly fearless and ferocious when the need arises. (I've seen our Brigid chase a 120 pound mastiff/Great Dane male down the street and clean out of sight, telling him the whole time what she was gonna do to his big dumb ass if he didn't get it out of HER neighborhood right now. That was five years ago, and he hasn't been back.) All this comes in a conveniently sized package, so that feeding a couple won't wreck a budget, and sufficiently hedonistic to enjoy being the perfect lapwarmer/book rest on a cold night. What more could you ask?
Books: (Long pause.)
Where to begin? I fell in love with books before I could ride a bicycle, as soon as I realized they weren't just full of information and fun stuff to know, (yes, I'm one of those,) but were filled with whole otherworlds for the visiting. There were years of my childhood when the most effective punishment in my mom's arsenal was to send me outside without whichever one I was currently traveling in. They set fire to my imagination, and have been feeding it ever since. The ability to step behind someone else's eyes and see some part of time and space as they saw or imagined it may well be our greatest contribution to the universe. Besides, if you can read effectively, you can teach yourself virtually anything. If you can't, you'll only learn what someone else is willing to teach you. Who trusts people that much? I guess, in a way, that means books are a very fundamental kind of freedom.
Florida: It's an interesting place to live for a year, and I treasured the dawn walks on the beach, making the first tracks in the sand, seeing what the sea tossed aside overnight. But it got old. I like my years with seasons, my land with hills, my creeks without alligators, my water drinkable, my dirt just a little sticky, and most of my plants non-toxic. So I came home, and I'm staying put.
Renovation: The most important thing to know about renovation work vs new construction is that new work is a plan stuck in a bare space. Pretty straightforward, really.
Renovation is typically Plan A with 3 foreseen and 12 unforeseen contingencies (hereinafter called F.C. and U.C.,) a prayer, a sledgehammer, and a carefully allotted time frame and budget. This rapidly devolves into 118 times as much dust as you imagined in F.C. #3 or U.C. #7, a multiweek extension of time frame, Plan B with 2 of the previously F.C., the 6 remaining U.C., the inevitable sudden material shortage, and a rough doubling of the budget. It usually starts being a lot of fun in there somewhere, as the as the product of U.C. x Budget rises and your housemate's true religion begins to introduce itself. (By this time you've been praying - for healing, patience, understanding, and a sense of humor- to so many deities that the few more this entails are hardly noticed.) You're also roughly three rooms away from the original project trying to fix a side effect.
It goes like that. Don't take it personally. It will take longer than you expect, even with F.C and U.C. factored in up front. It will cost more than you planned, and sometimes even more than you feared. But if you take your time and do it right, you'll like it even more than you'd have believed. So patience is the key. If you don't have any, hire it done and be available and capable of making excutive decisions. But don't watch.
Fairy godparent: This one's easy. It's the best job ever. And you get to pick your own kids.
;-D
Dachshunds: My favorite dogs. I grew up in a house that always had at least one, usually two, and occasionally three. They're hounds, so they're generally pretty laid back, (if you avoid the overbred miniatures.) Very smart dogs, loyal, long-lived, and generally friendly, but since they were originally bred for chasing badgers into their holes, they're surprisingly fearless and ferocious when the need arises. (I've seen our Brigid chase a 120 pound mastiff/Great Dane male down the street and clean out of sight, telling him the whole time what she was gonna do to his big dumb ass if he didn't get it out of HER neighborhood right now. That was five years ago, and he hasn't been back.) All this comes in a conveniently sized package, so that feeding a couple won't wreck a budget, and sufficiently hedonistic to enjoy being the perfect lapwarmer/book rest on a cold night. What more could you ask?
Books: (Long pause.)
Where to begin? I fell in love with books before I could ride a bicycle, as soon as I realized they weren't just full of information and fun stuff to know, (yes, I'm one of those,) but were filled with whole otherworlds for the visiting. There were years of my childhood when the most effective punishment in my mom's arsenal was to send me outside without whichever one I was currently traveling in. They set fire to my imagination, and have been feeding it ever since. The ability to step behind someone else's eyes and see some part of time and space as they saw or imagined it may well be our greatest contribution to the universe. Besides, if you can read effectively, you can teach yourself virtually anything. If you can't, you'll only learn what someone else is willing to teach you. Who trusts people that much? I guess, in a way, that means books are a very fundamental kind of freedom.
Florida: It's an interesting place to live for a year, and I treasured the dawn walks on the beach, making the first tracks in the sand, seeing what the sea tossed aside overnight. But it got old. I like my years with seasons, my land with hills, my creeks without alligators, my water drinkable, my dirt just a little sticky, and most of my plants non-toxic. So I came home, and I'm staying put.
Renovation: The most important thing to know about renovation work vs new construction is that new work is a plan stuck in a bare space. Pretty straightforward, really.
Renovation is typically Plan A with 3 foreseen and 12 unforeseen contingencies (hereinafter called F.C. and U.C.,) a prayer, a sledgehammer, and a carefully allotted time frame and budget. This rapidly devolves into 118 times as much dust as you imagined in F.C. #3 or U.C. #7, a multiweek extension of time frame, Plan B with 2 of the previously F.C., the 6 remaining U.C., the inevitable sudden material shortage, and a rough doubling of the budget. It usually starts being a lot of fun in there somewhere, as the as the product of U.C. x Budget rises and your housemate's true religion begins to introduce itself. (By this time you've been praying - for healing, patience, understanding, and a sense of humor- to so many deities that the few more this entails are hardly noticed.) You're also roughly three rooms away from the original project trying to fix a side effect.
It goes like that. Don't take it personally. It will take longer than you expect, even with F.C and U.C. factored in up front. It will cost more than you planned, and sometimes even more than you feared. But if you take your time and do it right, you'll like it even more than you'd have believed. So patience is the key. If you don't have any, hire it done and be available and capable of making excutive decisions. But don't watch.
Fairy godparent: This one's easy. It's the best job ever. And you get to pick your own kids.
;-D