Drywall, Baby

Yeah, ok. Get off my back. I'm the den mother on a pirate ship and time for pleasure writing comes infrequently.

Here's what's going on with the house. We got the final permit. After being told by the city of Salinas that we had to jump through a number of ridiculous hoops, including sheer-walling the entire structure with a rare type of plywood available only three days a year in a jungle in Borneo, obtaining a letter from the owners who lost the place to foreclosure testifying to the fact that the existing sheer-wall had been installed correctly and then sacrificing a virgin up on the widow's walk (but only when the moon was full) we would be good to go.

Al and the All-Oaxacan Construction Team has been here for two weeks now, and finally, finally, progress is being made. They have insulated everything, there is drywall going up and the electrical is mostly being finalized. We drove to this very shady granite place on Saturday at the port of Oakland and picked out our slab. (How you know you've married the right person? You see a slab, he sees a slab, you both go "oooh" and it's the same slab. While we lack fixtures, we are having Christmas dinner here. If you're reading this and you're a) a relative to whom I'm actually still speaking or b) a friend lacking family nearby, you are welcome to come here. It's slightly less white trash than it used to be.

Pictures soon. I have to find the damn camera cords yet again.

Stress-Induced Nightmares

This weekend we're hosting two of the 11 people from Berkeley who didn't make me stabby. Fred Dodsworth, who's been a journalist, designer, editor, publisher and rabble-rouser longer than I've been alive, and his wife Linda, a saint (you have to be to be married to Fred) who runs the Alameda County WIC program. We're drinking coffee at the Cherry Bean and talking history and Howard Zinn and house issues.

I had three nightmares last night, and I think they're all related to drywall. The house (as you can see from the picture here) doesn't have any. It has Cat-5 cable throughout, because the previous owner was going to turn it into an office building for attorneys or CPAs. It has a gas insert fireplace in almost every room, and the electrical and plumbing are mostly all roughed in.

But there's no drywall.

Someone we trust (as opposed to the first contractor we talked to, who wanted money up front just to give us a quote on the job--do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck??) told us the drywall would run about $4 a foot, which means the ceilings alone would run $20,000. Just the ceilings. Which would bring drywall for the whole interior close to $50,000.

Considering we need a complete kitchen, all of the bathroom fixtures and plan revisions, $50,000 for drywall might be pushing it.

Here, in order, are the three nightmares I had:

1. I was walking down a road and a man holding a baby out of his car window drove past and threw the baby out. He then refused to allow me to help the baby. (Definitely a Salinas metaphor.)

2. I was driving down a freeway and there was a jumbo jet, pulling another jumbo jet, taking off in front of me. The lead jet went airborn, pulling the other jet into the air behind it, and then both crashed and blew up.

3. I was walking down the hallway at my youngest son's school and stopped to talk to our friend Jay, the vice principal who has been in our kids' lives since 1999. He told me Thursday was going to be his last day at work and after that, nobody would ever see him again.

We're going to walk over to the house and show Fred and Linda around. They're suggesting we name all of the bedrooms after themes in Steinbeck novels. I told them they're welcome to stay in the Poverty and Despair Suite any time they visit.