A Bathtub With Eggplant Legs

Today I reached a new high (or new low...I can think of it either way). I did almost nothing and actually felt OK about it.  Besides riding my bike and making organic whole wheat chapatis and curried chick peas....I really don't remember much except everything was comfortably fun.  I remember something about visitors, packing up some shelves to return and sorting the recycling.  Stretching my frozen shoulder a couple times, icing my knee and falling asleep during a movie.  I went to Ione (10 miles south of Metaline Falls) but I can't remember why.  Ione has a bank but that's not why I went.  I remember noticing a guy reading on the bench outside 'Mountain Chicks', the secondhand store, and thinking "Reading a book outside.  What  a nice way to spend the morning".  Leaving 'Mountain Chicks', (without a plug for the bathtub which is not the reason I went to Ione) the reader on the bench was still engrossed in his book which I noticed was a TV Guide. 

Vi

I remember taking a shower AND a bath outside in the bathroom that Vin just finished and could pass as a museum installation.  Vin wasn't that into the idea but made it for me anyway so I feel obligated to use it every chance I get.  He even plumbed it...cold AND hot.  Just like an inside bathroom only outside.  Other than when I helped move the tub a couple of times and gathering a few interesting stones from the side of the road, he did the whole thing himself in 95 degree weather.  A craigslist vintage tub with eggplant colored legs.  Leftover local walkway stone and plumbing hardware.  A salvaged steel post, not originally intended to hold a showerhead, from Ryan the welder.  My shower coincided with the magic hour and sun drenching our field in a intense golden light.  My bath coincided with an outside noise from inside the house which turned out to be the dryer*.    A sock plug kept the 110 degree water at an embarrassingly high level and once Vin turned off the dryer I enjoyed soaking surrounded by 50 degree air and shampoo bubbles.   The moon wasn't full, but it was big. 

My online obsession today was the movie "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" by a couple of local filmmakers just over the pass in Creston BC.  "Just like Vin and me"  I thought.  "Comrades".  Forty-five minutes into my search (I was really obsessed) I connected information that revealed the keynote speaker from a Final Cut (editing software for movie people) conference Vin and I recently attended in Boston (we're geeks) was the young female director's father.  Do you have to know somebody? : (

* dryer , noun

1. an appliance to be used only in case of emergencies

used in a sentence:

It's 1 am and the bedding I washed this afternoon is still wet.  I think I should use the dryer.

Photos top to bottom:

1. In the beginning.

2. Near the beginning. Tub with eggplant legs that you can't see.

3. Vin mounting shower on salvaged steel post.

4.Vin with an un-tanned torso.

5. Dad and Vince.  Dad grew up with an outside bathroom.

6. Outside bathroom in progress.

7. Kathy approaching tub with a sock wondering if it will work for a plug.

Is Plaster Faster?

I should be working on my movie treatment (sounds like a joke doesn't it??) but instead I feel like writing about today....a day in our simple retired life. We're in Metaline Falls. The morning was mostly clean up. A normal retired thing to do. Then, we picked up color boards from the plaster guy***. We met him half way, an hour drive and close by western standards as they say. Gary, the closest (only) plaster guy we could find, showed up with his little dog wearing a football jersey that said QUARTER BARK (the dog, not Gary) with a #! between the QUARTER and the BARK. We could tell that Max was jealous of Quarter Bark #1 because he could be carried around. We treated Max to a walk on the way home at some waterfall...he wasn't impressed...in-fact he vomited.

Back home, 31 degrees and feeling like it was about time for something semi-epic, we convinced ourselves there was enough daylight to ride up Hall Mountain (elev. 6400') We rode to the trailhead and hiked to the treeless peak through meadows with clumps of softwoods and rock outcroppings to a 360 degree view of Washington, Canada and Idaho. The late afternoon angle of the sun tinted everything a rich gold. So far so good albeit a little colder on the way down than the way up. Normally I would have looked forward to the all downhill bike ride but as I suspected my summer weight Yoko gloves weren't even close to warm enough. (UNDERSTATEMENT!) Four hours and a movie later, I can type and feed myself again but that's about as interesting as I can make frozen fingers.

Metaline Falls.
Movie. "Nine". It was neither about an aging Bo Derek nor a musical with Penelope Cruz (not sure where I got that idea) but it was animated...and pretty good. I'm glad we went because then there were six of us in the theater.

House. The tent came down and we moved into a corner of the master bedroom this weekend. The photos make us look cold and uncomfortable but our word for cold and uncomfortable is 'cozy'. Will waking up with a coating of sheet-rock dust in my mouth cause any long term damage?

Back to the movie treatment. I've been struggling with ways to decrease my school work-load and finally got up the nerve to request an audit for Film Studies. I picked up the hot pink 'switch to audit' form at the office one day when there was actually someone in there and filled it out. I started to hand the hot pink sheet to Ian, the professor. "Did you enjoy the assignment?" he asked, all excited. I ended up using the back of the audit form for notes on Nanook of the North.

***plaster.
Plaster is good.
1. We don't have to paint because the plaster is tinted with our colors
2. We don't have to tile because the shower will be waterproof plaster
3. We don't have to trim the windows because our window perimeters will be plaster

Plaster is bad.
1. We have to pick the colors we'll have FOREVER, NOW. Would that make you nervous? It makes me nervous.