holmgrrl.net

This was supposed to be a picture-infested post on how Seamus has discovered painting and Jackson Pollock all at once, but I’m beset with ants, and until late last night, a complately backed up kitchen sink and disposal. Fortunately they’re pavement ants, which, while a right pain in the ass, are better controlled than odorous house ants, which can create massive multi-queen colonies. Patrick’s in Southern California at a wedding, so I’m limited in my current pest-control options, since it all has to be done without child care. I think we’ll clean up the back yard and go up to the hardware store for diatomaceous earth, since that’s fairly safe and will let me atone for forcing the kitchen pipes open with eighty ounces of Liquid Plumr gel in a time of declining fish stocks and dying otters.

The house we live in was built in the middle of the last century as part of the massive development of our neighborhood. The sand dunes braced by Golden Gate Park and Lake Merced were split between two developers who brought a hodgepode of external details to their stucco-jacketed junior-fives: Morocccan keyholes mixed with Spanish tile, plaster friezes, and the occasional turret.

View of our nabe from the reservoir, eleven blocks from our place, Novemeber 24, 1945. Photo from SFPL.The houses from this era have wiggled and settled into the sand, dripped wet with the fog that covers the skies eight months a year. It’s not unusual to see houses defaced to the studs during the dryer seasons as contractors repair water damage. The western edge of the city is home to a wide variety of birds, bugs and beasts, many of which interact with this crumbling shelter stock in ways which irk the human inhabitants. Our first year of renting we thought we had a broken hood fan. Patrick opened it up to look for part numbers and a mummified baby bird tumbled to the stove. Our downstairs neighbor revealed that a roof rat used the ivy covering part of the back fence to travel between the adjacent yard and ours. And the ants return each winter with the rains, finding new entry points. It’s very bad this year.

We’re lucky that we rent. Despite five years here, we can pack up and go if we wish. We can whittle down our accumulated trash and offer it up as another’s treasure, whittle down our choice of cities and neighborhoods, and go fishing among the rental ads or MLS listings. Since we have chosen not to go vagabonding about the country, the latter appeals to me. I’m not looking to play the real estate game, I just want a space that’s ours, with a yard that will let me grow vegetables and raise some chickens. I want to paint walls and kick the pets outside a bit more. I want to host playdates where the kids pull up some veggies for their snack, or plant seedlings in milk cartons to take home. I want my son to have his own room with a door and enough room along a wall for a twin bed.

Till then, I keep practicing my homemaking and caretaking efforts here in our post-war starter, and hope to keep up. I worry that I’m failing, and that at the very least, we will not be getting back out deposit.