Walk The Commute 2014

\\ I know you're supposed to crop the photo to just get the logo and your face instead of the entire backdrop, but I liked the whole scene //

Last weekend marked the fourth anniversary of The Commute: the 24 hour, 52 mile walking event from San Jose to San Francisco that Derek organizes every year. I am usually a lot more involved in the event, either as a participant or at least a behind-the-scenes volunteer, but this year that baby distracted me from really doing either one. Instead, Emerson and I met everyone down at the halfway point to cheer on the brave souls that had already walked 26 miles and had another grueling 26 to go.

I'd like to think, much like puppy therapy at colleges during finals, a smiling baby waiting for you at the midway point might make you forget for a second that you have a blister on your foot the size of his giant head.

Huge congrats to the determined walkers that made it all the way this year! I'm always impressed with the fortitude I see on those streets, and love that Derek has helped start this movement. 

re: DIY or DIE (and apparently we chose die)

\\ Don, our painter, doing a better job of  painting straight lines than I would //

I guess first it should be announced ... we bought a house*! In San Francisco!

 *(And when I say house, you should know I mean small three bedroom apartment in a three unit building, and that sometimes when describing it I say "bedrooms" with air quotes because I know people with closets that are bigger than what we are calling a unit of living space).

Regardless, I love it, and I am so excited to move in and make it our very own home.

Luckily, the place is pretty move-in ready. I may not love some of the tiles in the bathrooms or the kitchen cabinets, but they aren't falling apart so I'm not complaining. Basically, we just had to re-do a small section of the wood floors and repaint to get it ready for living in. And, after evaluating the amount of work that was to be done, we opted to pay skilled contractors to do it all for us.

I think for Derek (the engineer/craftyman who is always working on something) and I (the person who worked for ReadyMade Magazine and owned the URL diy-or-die.com for years), the idea of not actually participating in the renovations in our new home has felt a little like a personal failure. Especially after the internet seems to be full of dramatic BEFORE/AFTER shots of people that toiled away on a project and by the sweat of their brow ended up in a beautiful, personalized space that cost a fraction of what the rest of us suckers pay someone else to do.

The reality of the situation is that at 7.5 months pregnant, I can't be around all the crazy chemicals involved with stripping wood or painting, and an aching back isn't the best thing for hanging wallpaper. And, let's be honest - if we really had to wait for just the weekends/evenings to work on things inside the house, our son would probably be 2 years old by the time everything was actually ready for moving in.

The stakes also feel a little higher in a place that costs as many hundreds of thousands of dollars as this apartment does. It isn't like taking a risk on sanding down an old table that you bought for $5 at the thrift store...it's wanting to make sure that someone removes the potential lead paint in the right way and fixes the cracks in the plaster that's been around since 1908. Suddenly, any ambition to do it myself is taken over by the desire to just make sure it is done well and done right.

I suspect that after we move in, there will still be plenty of possible DIY projects that will spring up. For now I can just enjoy the fact that we have 40 feet of wallpaper hanging straight in our hallway that I never said one swear word over.