The Robot Speaks.

Logan decided he wanted to write something, so he did.

When he finished this post he sent it to me from the other room and prefaced it by saying, "You don't have to post this if you don't think it's good enough."

Ha.

============================================

Our bathroom is, at once, the best and worst part of our over 8 years here. It was inconceivable that we'd live with that room we bought for as long as we did. Mirror tiles! Golf courses of the world! Cheap linoleum tiles on the floor! But live with it we did -- for 8 years. And our vanity took a beating... So did my spirit.

Remember your first home and the joy and expectation and hope of it? I've looked at the fickr set of photos of our bathroom project at least once a day over the past few weeks. To make the transformation real, I think. Because we lived with our crappy bathroom for so long -- putting the improvement of it off for so long to do things like modest vacations up north, and lazy weekends, and soccer games, and Friday-night-out recovery time. It started to seem inevitable that we'd live with that bathroom until we left this house.

It's a fine line to draw between doing what you want to do and what you "need" to do -- in terms of the pay-off of it. Our bathroom has been "in-progress" for over 3 months. A month into the project, Madison asked me if I'd ever spend any time with her doing fun stuff again. That question broke my heart. Living with our crappy bathroom for so long also broke my heart. And started to break my will to rise above it.

There's a phenomenon in our neighborhood that Liss and I have observed over and over. A young, eager couple or family moves in full of life and energy and the excitement of a new home in a new place. And soon enough, things like that old folding chair leaned up against the garage wall get overlooked. Not because it doesn't drive them crazy to see it there every time they come back home after being away -- but because nobody else in the neighborhood seems to mind the folding chair leaned up against their garage wall. And living amidst good folks who don't seem to mind such things day after day after month after year -- it can kill your will to remember how you want to be living. It's tried to kill our will to remember the satisfaction of living up to our dreams. And it's tough, because when it's been a matter of spending time with each other or our kids or spending time making our home what we've always imagined it to be, it's been easy to put the home improvements off.

When we first moved into our house, we spent countless hours, days, months improving -- new paint, new rugs, new furniture, freshly painted trim. And we were very satisfied with ourselves. And then we became satisfied with ourselves for raising children who, even through the worst tantrums and sleepless nights made us very proud to be parents.

There's a saying I repeat to Liss each time she gives me shit for my running habit. I say, with tongue-in-cheek, that good health is its own reward (don't tell Liss, but I do believe it)[Ed Note: Gag.]. Living up to the standards you want can also be its own reward. Whether it's the standard of how you want your kids to grow and learn, or the standards of the environment you want to be living in. Putting off your dreams, no matter how large or small, can kill your spirit. I've felt it for a while now...

I'll be proud to show off our fresh new bathroom to all who enter it. But more than the vanity-depletion-recovery I'm enjoying is the renewal of a sense of urgency I'm feeling to keep the ball rolling. It's hard to keep the ball rolling sometimes, and a remodeled bathroom may not be the best example of a renewed spirit, but I've started to feel the energy of starting a long tough job that's been a long time coming, and getting to the end of it and having it resemble very closely the picture in mind when starting -- and feeling the happiness of overcoming all the setbacks encountered.

And my spirit is soaring...

Comments

[sozzled]

You should be proud, your bathroom looks fab! Wanna come help at our house? My favorite part of the picture though is the, not 1, not 2, but 3 beer bottles on the back of the tank. My kind of home improvement.

[Melissa Summers]

One is Logan's, one is empty and the third is mine. This was 5pm and we'd been working since 9am on that stupid bathroom. I needed cocaine or something.

[Kelly M.]

It couldn't look any better! Great job!

[lousoz]

Not so much a comment about today's entry, but more of a general comment.
Our new house is trying to kill us. I can totally relate to all of your home issues now.

Will Pants be making regular guest appearances now?

[VenturaMom]

Cheers with beers. The bathroom looks great. Congrats on your soaring spirit, Logan. Now go buy something nice for your wife.

[Meg]

Way to go Summers! Can't wait to visit and see the final product! (Hopefully I wont be butt-wasted this time and will remember what I see.) (haha, come on....)

[Meg]

Way to go Summers! Can't wait to visit and see the final product! (Hopefully I wont be butt-wasted this time and will remember what I see.) (haha, come on....)

[madge]

Gah. Well said and inspiring? Logan, come back and visit anytime.

On another note: If your spirit is still soaring, could you take a short trip to Maine and finish up our bathroom too?

Cheers to your lovely new loo.

[Michelle S]

If it makes you feel better, I don't even remember any details about the house I grew up in until I was five or so, then it was just general (Raggedy Ann wallpaper, baby kittens in the window well). So this liberation through demolition really can be a new beginning! And, from my experience, a clean bathroom will sell any halfway decent house. You'll be fine.

[Suebob Davis]

Welcome, Logan. I read your post last night and thought about it on and off. There was just something about it that was bugging me that I couldn't put my finger on. When I awoke and re-read it, I realized that it was this:

..."but because nobody else in the neighborhood seems to mind the folding chair leaned up against their garage wall. And living amidst good folks who don't seem to mind such things day after day after month after year -- it can kill your will to remember how you want to be living."

I think it is cool to have high standards. The problem comes when you start imposing those standards on other people - that is a sure recipe for unhappiness, since you will ALWAYS be able to find people who don't measure up.

And blaming those people for your failure to accomplish what you want to is just a way to avoid taking responsibility for your own actions.

I think it is perfectly acceptable to say "With young children in the house, we just had different priorities than getting the bathroom remodeled." There is nothing wrong with that. Life happens, and enjoying your family is, IMO, more important than fixing ugly bathroom wallpaper.

See what happens? You write a perfectly reasonable blog post and then people come criticize you. Melissa knows all ABOUT that.

I think you are a great dad and a cool husband and that your bathroom looks fabulous. No matter how long it took.

[Melissa Summers]

I disagree. Sorry.

We do take responsibility for some of the stagnation here, for a bunch of reason.

But it's still true, every day coming home here, where people leave toilets in their yard for weeks and don't care if their kid's toys stay in the front yard or if their dog roams the neighborhood and eats the neighbor's garbage. Hell, people don't even care that 5 days ago their shed blew over in the wind...they've yet to upright it.

It's taken the wind out of our sails and we've seen it happen to at least 4 different people that moved in here. They start out meticulously caring for their property and then pretty soon "Wangler Park Syndrome" takes over and sucks your will to do much.

I know you can run into that anywhere, but when you drive down some streets (the streets where we want to live) you see that there is maybe one house which isn't kept up as well as the rest...not over half.

There's something to be said for the 'neighborhood pressure' of a collective group of people who care about what their neighborhood looks like. We don't have that here and never have.

If I'm wrong and we move to a different neighborhood where people care about their property and we still feel stagnant and unable to give a lot of energy to our house, I'll gladly tell you you were right and I'll still be happy because *we'll* be the crappiest neighbors on our block.

[Velma]

It's a simple question of physics, right? Inertia is truly hard to overcome, and once you do work up enough energy to get the ball rolling, it is natural to want to keep it moving. This is why I signed up for Holidailies right after I finished NaBloPoMo. That, and the voices in my head.

[Jennifer]

It's called "pride of ownership" and whether you live in a government sponsored housing development or a starter neighborhood, you can just feel it in the very air you breathe every day when you leave YOUR home and enter the larger environment in which you live.

Some neighborhoods will suck your will to live, because of the nature of the people who live there not co-existing with your own internal nature. It happens.

I KNOW it does.

And really? It has nothing to do with being arrogant or judgmental and everything to do with knowing what you want for you and yours.

Kudos to you, Summers family. Every one of you. For knowing what you want. For going for it. And for, I have no doubt, getting there, eventually.

I'd be proud to call you neighbors.

Just do me a favor. When my recycle bin contents are spewed all over the driveway, let me know before you call me in front of the "Association" to publicly atone for my sins, okay?

:-)

[Nicole Cooper]

If a folding chair has killed your will you should move in next to me!! My neighbor only mows his lawn if it reaches his knees (he's very tall). At least during the summer we got the joy of seeing it mowed once a month, now that the winter has killed the grass I'm guessing we won't get that joy until spring??

[Melissa Summers]

Oh it's the folding chair, and the beer bottles thrown onto our easement, and the shed knocked over in the wind and the toilet left for a blog reader to carry away and so on and so forth.

Why would we want to move where a neighbor doesn't mow his lawn (and I assume doesn't care about his property) if we hate living here where people don't care about their property?

That doesn't make any sense to me.

[Lori]

I love the Sierra Nevadas in the background! Sounds like my kind of project!

I know what you mean about getting the wind taken out of your sails, succombing to the neighborhood. I was in a similar situation in my last job. The office was a tiny little shithole that the girls treated like one, leaving papers, clothes (I worked in fashion), crap, EVERYWHERE. Everyone wore ratty jeans and sweatshirts to work everyday. The first three months I worked there, I decided I would set the standard - wore nice clothes, straightened my hair, kept my desk and my office spotless and professional. By month 6 I was wearing jeans a few times a week. By month 9 I didn't even bother with my hair. After a year I just tossed my garbage in the same piles as the rest of the girls, because, well, they had won. Rather than raise their standard of living/working, I lowered myself down to theirs. I think that has something during inertia, but I'm not a physics person.

You'll get there, I have no doubt - good luck!

[angela marie]

"Putting off your dreams, no matter how large or small, can kill your spirit."

I like that. Pure and simple. My husband and I are tired of fighting battles over finances and selling our house is part of the NOT putting off our dreams. We don't need no stinkin' spirit-killing.
Thanks for the nudge.

[Snippy]

*applause*
Nicely written.

[Bettsi]

Well said, Logan. I'm fortunate to be surrounded by retirees that care about their homes. It has kept us on our toes! I am very impressed with your accomplishment and wish you much sucess in your future endeavors. (You AND Melissa, of course!)

[madame sosostris]

This is a great, thoughtful post! I can completely identify, because it happens *inside* my house. My husband doesn't give a rat's ass about keeping the house nice, and at some point you get tired of dealing with other people's dirty socks/curbside-toilets, and you stop fighting it. Then you slip into the lethargy and screw-it mentality that just becomes circular: depressed because your surroundings are crummy, so you don't beautify, so they are more crummy, and you are more depressed, etc.

You've inspired me to snap out of it!!

(Melissa, I took Nicole Cooper's post as a joke, like, "You think it's bad there? We've got it worse over here!!") :-)

Great job, both of you, on that gorgeous bathroom!

[Colelynnb]

I'm in the same situation, two of my neighbors have killed my will to live in my 'hood any longer. Oprah had on Nate Berkus and they helped a family who needed to sell their condo. Something Nate said hit a nerve-"I think somebody shopping for a home wants to be able to imagine their own happy times." I need to make my house feel happy to sell it. My house is going on anti-depressants come January-LOL!

[Rita Arens]

I do think he has a good point. My beloved is a kitchen bully and has ridiculous standards in many areas, but it's part of what I love about him. He's not going to hand a picture crooked, dammit.