Author Archives: Melissa

Keeping the Dream Alive

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This is the time of year when long-term dreams have a way of sliding helplessly into the black hole of winter rain and darkness, and holiday plans. Some days it’s comparable to driving on black ice: you think you’re tooling along just fine when suddenly you realize the car is sliding backwards. Or maybe a better comparison would be the sudden accidental jibe at night in 30 knots and 10 foot seas in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, your heading suddenly 180 degrees off.  Been there, done that.  So I approach the coming winter with fear and loathing, knowing it looms just beyond the horizon and wanting to stay the course.

This knowledge really lights a fire under my hiney to get out here and take advantage of every bit of sunshine that is left in this year. It feels, somehow, just wrong for anyone to have to be working inside when there is so little sunshine to enjoy. So I spend as much time as I can on the boat. In fact, I’m sitting on the boat right now as I write this. Of course, it’s at the dock, but I’m still there.  Heck, if I lived here, I’d be home by now. Sitting in the cockpit with a blanket on my lap, computer keeping me warm, my mind tends to wander a bit, probably in response to the cold. I think about what it would be like if we actually DID live on the boat. Is this what happens when people begin to have hypothermia?

It’s pretty hard to type wearing fingerless gloves and shivering to this degree, but no one is going to call me a quitter. Moonrise is a great boat, I tell you. A perfectly great boat! Especially in the summer when the sun is shining. As soon as we get to Mexico, I’m going to love being on Moonrise in the winter. Of course, in order to GET to Mexico, we have to have a bit of money in storage. You might know we have a child in college. We love our boy desperately and we want him to be in college. So we’re thinking we could save money by renting out our house and living on our boat, thereby cutting our monthly expenses down considerably. It’s a good plan if we ever get to that point.

But could I actually live on Moonrise during the 10 months of the year (more, lately) when the weather is disgusting? Moonrise is a great boat for coastal cruising, but she offers a number of drawbacks for year-round living.  Let’s start with the salon with its one settee. This is the land equivalent of having one loveseat available for lounging. I know there are billions of people who live with less than this, but I am in the U.S. of A. here.  If the table is folded down, the person behind the table will not be able to get up without disturbing the person at the end of the table. Am I making myself clear here?

Another issue is the V berth, our ‘owner’s cabin’. It is very comfortable once you get settled, but I’m a woman of ‘a certain age’ and rarely do I sleep through the night without getting up at least once, usually more than once. Getting in and out of this berth is challenging, believe me. You don’t want the details. There is crawling involved, and pivoting on my back while trying not to kick my husband’s delicate parts. Enough said about this.

Then there is the issue of the ‘head’, which is boat talk for ‘the bathroom’.  Again, I’ll be brief, sparing the gentle reader details that may lead to abandoning the reading of this post. Suffice to say that boaters of all kinds can have lengthy and animated conversations about the problems with the head in their boats. There is no ‘stealth’ bathroom useage on a boat of this size.  It’s noisy, smelly, and on some level you just have to accept the fact that you are sleeping next to a container of raw sewage. That doesn’t keep me up at night when we’re cruising, but I’m not sure living with it for several months would be okay with me. Never mind how guests would feel.

In many boats, there is a shower in the head, but there is not one in ours. We also don’t have hot water on the boat. These little modern day luxuries start to feel more like necessities when I think of long-term living. (Again, I refer the reader to the fact that I’m an American.) I really do not mind heating up water and pouring it over my body during our cruising trips. Many is the time my husband and son have openly laughed at me because I insist on clean hair when cruising. (How can I enjoy that carefree, windblown-hair look when my hair is plastered to my head by dirt and grease?) But I admit that the idea of having a hot shower on the boat creates a lot of opportunity for fantasizing. Darker fantasies revolve around how I’ll possibly look presentable for work.

Then there is the galley. On Moonrise we are fortunate that we have actual refrigeration. But let’s be clear: As much as I do enjoy cooking meals on the boat on my tiny little Easy-bake-style oven, I really get tired of having to take everything out of the top-loading fridge just to find the mustard. And let’s not even get into how tired I get of having the only available workspace double as the lid of said fridge. Think about it. I’m chopping vegetables for a stir fry and suddenly remember I left the garlic in the fridge. I have to move  the vegetables, cutting board, etc, then clean out the fridge so I can find the garlic nestled among drinks at the bottom, which I have to stand on tiptoe to reach. At this point the cabin is a complete mess.  You never see scenes like this in a boating brochure. And I have a sneaking suspicion that there would be fewer top-loading fridges on older boats if the boat designers of the 1970’s had been women. It would be manageable if it happened only once a meal, but as I mentioned before, I’m a woman of a ‘certain age’. Read ‘short term memory’ issues. Are you getting it now?

The little propane oven is really cute and we’ve learned how to bake in it, too! We’ve learned that one ignores the temperature control knob since the only setting one has is ‘high’. That’s right next to ‘incinerate’ unless one knows to prop the door open. Prop it open about an inch for 500F, and about 6 inches for 350F.  Baking gluten-free is always an adventure anyhow, so it’s hard to know if the outcome is due to the uneven baking temperature. I can roast a mean vegetable in that oven, though. Hey, I love a nice charred green bean!

I was going to talk about storage, but I fear the reader will be overwhelmed if I get into that.

I don’t want to sound like a complainer. Regardless of all of its shortcomings,  I sit on Moonrise enjoying the last bit of sunshine of the year, enjoying just being in the marina with all the boats, keeping the dream alive somehow just by being here. I know there will be plenty of rainy and dark days to come when I can be working inside the house. And while I’m here appreciating a boat that I love in spite of her shortcomings, I think about how much I enjoy the fact that just being on this boat feels like a vacation. And then whether that ‘vacation feeling’ would last if I lived on this particular boat for months at a time. And if it wouldn’t, then what do I need in a boat in order to make that feeling last? What kind of boat would suffice? Do you see how my mind works?

And as it begins to get dark and even colder, I pack up and head home to my house with a beautiful bathroom tiled in stone, a steamy hot shower, a comfortable king size bed that I can get out of easily, a toilet that takes sewage to parts unknown,  a full kitchen, and many choices of seating.  And I am filled with gratitude that in my life I have this choice.

The owner's cabin I want but will never have.

Craigslist Lament

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The Shabby Chic table: Sold for $50.

  So, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog and I thought I better get to it. This is the time of year when I feel most like doing nothing; just laying around in bed eating bonbons all day or looking at boats on Yachtworld.com ( a personal weakness that borders on addiction).  But since I don’t eat bonbons anyhow, and I am supposed to be using this blog as the proverbial fire under the hind end, I’ve actually been making progress at home, even if not on the blog.  See?  It’s working!

When I last posted, I was commenting on the sheer number of pieces of furniture we’ve collected over the course of a 29 year marriage. I’m coming to terms with disposing of some of those pieces and now I feel the urge to comment about the use of Craigslist as a tool for selling unnecessary items.  To be more precise, I feel the urge to complain about my Craigslist experience.

The promise of Craiglist, that of easy, free posting of unwanted items which will soon be sold to people just waiting to buy, is a fantasy. At least the second part is a fantasy. Yes, the posting is free, and fairly easy, even if it does take some time. But the part about people waiting to buy said items really must exist only in my rather too-vivid imagination.  To date I have spent around 4 hours photographing and posting items on Craigslist and I have sold exactly one item, a little white Victorian table, for $50, which is $25 less than what I listed it for. That amount of work has earned me $12.50/hour and 1.5 square feet of floor space.  I think the only reason the table sold is that I used the term ‘Shabby Chic’ in the title.

We’ve had a number of emails asking if this item or that is still available, and then when I email back that it is available….. NOTHING! What is wrong with these people? Or maybe they don’t actually want the item, only to know if we still have it, like they need to be reassured that it will be there whenever they are ready.Or perhaps they email only so they can laugh as they expertly dash our hopes of an easy sale.  Or maybe they are  lonely people who email others just for the joy of getting an email back.

I wonder if the problem is deeper than that, however. I wonder if our sales problem lies more within a change that appears to be happening across the country, if not across all western nations. I wonder if the problem we’re having with selling our ‘stuff’ to others is because overall, people are getting tired of accumulating all that stuff in the first place. It’s no accident that there are so many books on downsizing, clearing clutter, etc. and that there is a movement to build smaller houses. It seems like collectively we have already ridden the crest of the wave that allowed us to collect and sell lots of ‘things’. I wish there were data that compared the relative ‘success’ of a garage sale now to one held 10 years ago.

And although many people do not have the extra cash now that they did 10 years ago, this ‘buying less’ mentality is not limited to the cash-strapped masses. CnnMoney published an article this month stating that even the wealthiest people in the U.S. (defined as those making more than $130,000/year) will be buying fewer gifts this Christmas. Maybe I’m not defined as ‘wealthy’, but I can assure you I am among those who will buy less. Patagonia recently announced they are starting a new campaign to get people to buy fewer things, focusing on buying better quality and making those things last. Why, that’s downright UN-AMERICAN! Frankly, it looks like just a smart marketing strategy since, according to a recent New York Times article  people appear to be holding onto things longer across the board; making them last; repairing rather than tossing things and replacing them. Our mothers and grandmothers could give us a lot of advice about this.

Putting two and two together leads me to believe that his evolution of values we are experiencing means that eventually there will be fewer items for sale on Craigslist. So you’d think that people would be rushing to buy our things in anticipation of the times of scarcity! Don’t these people prepare for the future? Maybe I should re-title my listings: THE END TIMES ARE UPON US! BUY THIS NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. ALSO: SHABBY CHIC!!!  I’ve heard that the more exclamation points a listing has, the more people pay attention.  No? Okay. But if that doesn’t work, we’ll have to have a garage sale in December.  Cash only, you pick up at our Lakewood location. Haggling cheerfully accepted.

 

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Collecting Furniture: One Family’s Story

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Living Room Furniture

The velvet chairs, an antique oak coffee table, and my mother's buffet.

We have a problem here at The Cunning Plan household. This is going to be a sticky one, taking all of my resolve and much of my energy in terms of putting the proverbial money where the mouth is, if you get my drift. I may have to rely on Mike for strength. To be succinct, our problem is that our daughter,Claire,  is moving home for awhile as part of her own cunning plan for the future. It’s not what you think. This isn’t a ‘rebound kid’ situation. She has a great job and is a fully formed grownup. We welcome her back and look forward to having her. But not her stuff. We don’t look forward to her stuff.

Actually, to be brutally fair, it’s not really HER stuff we’re not looking forward to. Oh, sure, there will be the usual transition time where we all learn to live differently in the house once more and people wrangle for personal space for their belongings (NOT in the middle of the sitting room, okay?)  But we’ll get through all that. After all, we’re all adults here. The real problem is that she is bringing home more of OUR stuff in the way of furniture. Claire has the most adorable apartment in the world. It’s in an old Victorian house, has a bay window, hardwood floors, and an exquisite little fireplace. And it’s almost completely furnished with our furniture. Ouch. She’s going to be bringing an apartment full of furniture back home. Do I need to explain this further?

How does a mild-mannered family of 4 collect this massive amount of furniture (asks the curious reader)?  Here’s the gist of that:  Mike and I have been married for almost 30 years. Most people collect a myriad assortment of furnishings over that amount of time. In addition to the sheer number of years, I have a tendency to be somewhat…’creative’. Yes. That’s the word. Creative.  And while I love really good, solid furniture that stands the test of time,  I am pretty frugal when it comes to purchasing furniture. Okay, fine! I’m cheap when it comes to purchasing furniture. There is something about putting down several thousand dollars for, say, a couple of chairs, that just gives me pause. I’m getting better about that as I get older, but for the greater part of 3 decades I have had an alter ego that has landed us in this mess. Who is this alter ego, ask the inquiring minds among you? Melissa White: Furniture Stripper!

So much of the furniture we now own are pieces that I found for almost nothing at a rummage sale, or thrift shop, or the like and then nursed back to life. Pieces like the solid maple gateleg table I bought for $25 when Claire was about 5. It had several layers of paint on it. I stripped it, sanded it, stained it and painted the legs black. It’s beautiful. Or how about the solid maple dressing table with Queen Anne legs that I bought from someone for 20$ when Claire was 3? It’s heavy as all heck and has graceful lines. Again with the stripping, sanding, staining. It’s a fantastic piece of furniture and has been used as her dress-up table, my desk, and a sofa table over the years. It’s very versatile.

Then there are the two overstuffed chairs with rolled arms I bought because I knew they were quality pieces. I paid the best upholsterer in town to do them in taupe velvet. They are classic. I probably cannot buy chairs of this quality anywhere. And there is the very old steamer trunk I bought when I was in highschool. It was my first ‘antique’. I refinished the wood on the outside, wrote my name on the inside, and took it to college with me.

More furniture

One of the many upholstered pieces I've resuscitated, and old chest that will likely go, and a corner of the steamer trunk.

This is only a small sampling of the pieces I must decide about. (Oh, those velvet chairs are staying. Let’s be clear about that right now.) So much of our family’s history is represented in these pieces. Many of them I bought when the children were young. We couldn’t afford to buy nice furniture without going into debt, and we didn’t want to do that. But I wanted nice things. So I became pretty good at something I enjoyed anyhow. And we ended up with a home filled with priceless pieces that are personal and lovely and somehow make our home warmer than new furniture ever could. I have an oak dresser that belonged to my parents when they were first married. I have two large book cases that my mom got in the early 1970’s. I have a solid wood buffet that my mom got when I was a young child, now refinished with funky green glass handles.  I grew up with those pieces, and they are really nice. I would choose them again today. They are irreplaceable. How could I possibly part with them now? These choices are going to be really hard.

I had a dream a few nights ago that I was back in college somewhere and someone had stolen my bike. I was late to class and arrived pushing a shopping cart with only one item in it: a bike lock. I pushed that cart across the front of the class, in front of the teacher, and then all the way to the back of the class before being seated.  That dream is pretty clear to me. I do feel as though I am learning new and hard things, lessons for which I am only marginally prepared. I have no idea how I’m going to get from one “class” to the next, as though somehow I’ve been too cavalier in protecting what is mine. I am left with the lock, but my bike is gone.  It’s apparent that between releasing myself from the ownership of things that are intimately entwined with my personal history and publishing this blog to share that process, some part of me is beginning to feel like a homeless person on parade.

I know this feeling will pass. I realize it’s all a part of the process of letting go. But I’m reminded, once again, that reading about something is so much easier than doing that thing. So Peter Walsh, if you are reading this blog (as if…) please be gentle with me. Because I’m not going to promise that I can let everything go in one fell swoop. Maybe there is a reason why this is a 4 year plan.