Minutes for the Family Meeting of House 607

Meeting began as planned at 10 o'clock p.m. Pacific Coast Time.
In attendance:
Michelle with the Agenda
Tony with a smile
Patrick with his hat
Matt with no shirt.
Hugh invited the house cat, Clayton, to join and he accepted-staying by Hugh's side for the first part of the meeting.

Meeting in session:
Hugh wants to know if this is a shirtless meeting and starts taking his shirt off but doesn't. Michelle does the same thing but it's not as funny when you re-use someone's joke. Matt remains the only shirtless one.

10:05 pm.
First item on the agenda: CHORES.
We are messy and need to be better at keeping the place clean. agreed by all.
Matt draws a proposal for a chore wheel:

Tony, Matt and Hugh all vote in favor of implementing new chore spinner. Michelle Votes nay and Patrick still isn't in the living room so the proposal is not voted in, since the house runs on a unanimous form of government.

10:07
It is decided by all, after a discussion of possibilities, that the old chore wheel will be re-used because a lot of time was spent making the chores fair and balanced and also because the pointer part is really cool looking because it was designed by previous tenant Ben and he's good at that stuff.
Hana's name on the wheel will be changed to "Hanatthew" since Matt now lives in her old room.
Ben's name on the wheel will be changed to "Benichelle" since Michelle took Ben's room.
Matt completes the names with green sharpie, which he had borrowed from Michelle three minutes before and already rubbed in his bellybutton. Michelle tells him he can keep the pen. Tony says he will probably chew on it later. Hugh pets Clayton.

10:10
ITEM 2: Douchebaggery
Matt proposes and explains Michelle's idea for accountability with household cleaning. Everyone has to be someone else's "douche bag" and has to have their own "Douche bag."  If you are not doing your chores your "douche" will be responsible for heckling you about it. That way no one can ever be ganged up on and everyone will hate each other equally.
Patrick dislikes the idea but doesn't use his one veto power to object.
It is agreed by all that chores must be done by every Monday at 10 p.m. So at least we'll have a clean house for an hour on Monday nights.

10:20
ITEM 3: Kelsey's Birthday Party
Michelle explains the plans to have a tri-level birthday party for downstairs neighbor Kelsey. Each Flat will pick a country and have appetizers and Cocktails to represent the country of choice as well as dress up like the people of the culture. Patrick suggests being England and having bland food. Tony points and laughs at Hugh.
Ideas are tossed around and all decide to be Russia for Party.
Ideas include:
Hugh wants to play "man with the blocks" over and over on the tv because it will be fun- for him at least.
Cocktail ideas are: straight Vodka, Moscow mules, White Russians.
Food ideas: No food just Vodka
Michelle and Tony want to wear the big furry hats and coats as costumes.
Matt can't attend but wants the records to show that he was indeed invited.

10:30pm
ITEM 4: Katie
Michelle's old roommate and dear friend Katie is coming into town this weekend and Michelle asks that the boys not try to sleep with her.
Tony says Michelle has to share her friends, Hugh says she's not very nice for keeping Katie all to herself, Patrick says they have never told her not to sleep with their friends and in fact she can sleep with any she wants to,  Matt says she should start by banging all of the roommates and then invite her friends to do the same...the conversation gets a bit out of hand and everyone agrees that Matt's comment was inappropriate and even more so since he wasn't wearing a shirt.
10:34 Matt takes off his belt
10:34:30 Hugh smacks/whips Matt's stomach with Matt's belt. Twice.
10:35 pm. All agree to steer away from the s&m and back to the agenda.

10:36 p.m.
ITEM 5: Put Clayton on Craigslist (proposed by Michelle to stick to her theme of pretending to pretend to dislike him)
Patrick asks which section they would put him under.  "Escort" is decided.
.

10:40 Since Clayton was brought up, someone asks if he is staying or leaving with Ben. He is staying.
Michelle Wants to know if she has to clean the litter box because she doesn't even like Clayton/secretly wishes she wasn't allergic to him. Matt proposes that since they are both allergic to him they shouldn't have to clean the litterbox in exchange for ending all abuse towards the cat like sitting on him or wrapping him up tightly in blankets or pushing him down the stairs...
Patrick asks Matt if he can commit to that.
Matt pauses for two seconds before responding "no, I can't"

10:47
ITEM 6: DISHES and DISHWASHER
Michelle says she's going to make a magnet for the dishwasher one side reading "dirty", one reading "clean" so it can be spun around when the dishwasher is emptied so the house will know to put their dishes in the dishwasher instead of leaving them on the counter. Hugh doesn't think he can learn to turn the magnet.
A discussion of dishes begins and goes nowhere.
Matt stops paying attention when Patrick is speaking. Hugh is refused permisison to speak on the floor because he's English, Tony is texting someone-probably his girlfriend. Matt gets his Aderol prescription filled on Wednesday and apologizes for not paying attention. No one hears because they aren't paying attention.

10:54
ITEM 7: Everyone in the house, including Clayton should shave their head to prevent hair from clogging tub drain and covering floor because it's nasty.
Instead of head shaving, Patrick proposes a drain cover to catch hair. Michelle says she'll buy it and the vote is unanimous in favor of a drain strainer.
Hugh then decides to use his one veto power to veto the idea and everyone pouts while Hugh laughs evilly. Then Hugh realizes he may have made a terrible mistake.

10:56
Matt notices there are welts on his stomach.

10:56
Tony says he will buy all the TP and papertowels in the house. Matt explains that in America we don't understand that concept and asks what he wants in return. Tony says he wants a bj and all agree it's a fair exchange and vote in favor of the deal. Hugh wishes he hadn't used up his one veto power on the drain strainer.

11:00 a question about the price of beer comes up and Patrick explains how messed up it is that the consumer pays for recycling and the recyclers get money from what is recycled...or something like that. Patrick knows a lot of information most people don't think about and it's great. Michelle suggests the house terminates all recycling habits to stick it to the man.

Hugh brings up the clutter in the living room and all attendees realize  the room is shrinking as stuff builds along the walls and in fact the small space they are sitting in is all that is left of the room. The roommates all vote to mount the flat screen to the wall but no one wants to buy a mount.
Hugh doesn't think there is a need for four tables in one room. Patrick recounts and says there are only three.
Matt realizes they are all sitting around an ottoman and he states that he likes it very much and it is big.
Patrick says it's big enough to be its own empire. Patrick still doesn't see a problem with having so much furniture because it can be moved for dance parties and used to seat many board game players.

11:07pm Patrick says he is going to pick up VHSs this weekend to add to the massive collection of VHSs already taking up all the living room shelves. Michelle asks where they will go and he points to the last remaining spaces around the room. Matt suggests burning the vhs collection, Patrick says hell no. Tony wants to know why there is a need for more VHSs. Patrick explains because the other ones have already been watched. Michelle says burn them, then. Hugh wants less STUFF in the living room.

11:09
Patrick begins stacking furniture on top of Hugh. all agree that it is an excellent solution to the clutter problem and Hugh disagrees "because now, you see, I have become that which I hate." After those words he disappears beneath the pile of that which he hates... never to been seen again.

until 11:13pm:
Attendees decide to make a douchebag spin wheel. Patrick cuts up a beer box to use the cardboard while Tony makes each person choose a hand to pick the little piece of yellow paper that will reveal the picker's first "douche bag." Tony is Michelle's- Michelle is Hugh's, Hugh is Hugh's..oh choose again. Hugh is Matt's. Patrick is Patrick's.... Hugh claims this form of government doesn't work. Then attendees realize the system is the same as the circle they are sitting in and wish they had done that instead of wasting all that time playing "which hand" as tony held his fists out.

11 something p.m. The record player is started and the meeting is adjourned. Next time there will be a tape recorder because there were too many funny seconds missed in these meeting minutes.


Home sweet home in the Haight.
I think I'll stay here for a while longer.

Keep the Windows Open

San Francisco
Is this really happening?

The text message said, "Come to the roof. Margaritas." It came from my neighbor Nicole at noon yesterday. She lives with five other people in the apartment that backs up to ours. Four more apartments back up to us too. We're all connected with a five story staircase that runs past all our kitchen doors and binds our lives together with the roof. And I love it.

About twenty young working adults live in these units. With the exception of a law student and an undergrad. Some are passionate about their jobs, others are surviving, and there are those like me who spend days looking for jobs and going to interviews.

My Roommates are:
Tony from France who, thank goodness, gets into cleaning rolls every once in a while. He writes his nines like "g"s because he's French. And I'm pretty sure he's dating one of the girls from the house full of beauty downstairs.

Hugh, from England, is the perfect example of British comedy and I can't believe I'm the only one who hears some of the stuff he says. I know I'm the only one who hears because if anyone else heard they would be laughing. He walks around with his arm in a sling because a few weeks ago he was too drunk to ride a bike and did. Imagine a younger blond smaller Favio...That's Hugh. Who? Hugh. Hugh? who.

Patrick is looking for a job. He lost his last one for inefficiency which made sense when he tried to carry one grocery bag at a time to the car the other day. He keeps me laughing too. In one conversation with him we ended up googling the answers to ten different questions and then made plans to perform a science experiment to find the answers. Sadly, the same experiment we wanted to do was also included in..fifth grade science classes. That's ok though, because we made KILLER fresh fruit daiquiris on Tuesday with the neighbors and fifth graders can't do that.

Matt lives in the closet off the kitchen and he's from L.A. He is a giant who is afraid of heights. He won't get within ten feet of the edge of the roof and even that far back he takes on a hunched position with his knees bent a little, as if the wind would carry him right over the edge if he stood up straight. One night he made us watch "The Room." It's the worst movie ever made and deserves that title more than any other movie that could and will ever be made. I couldn't bring myself to walk away from the trainwreck of it.

A blue grass band, the Jugtown Pirates, lives downstairs and they play on the stoop sometimes to make money and sell cds. The Tourists EAT IT UP.  They should, it's tasty tasty music. Yesterday Nicole, Amy, Ashley, and I stood in our bare feet and sundresses taking pictures and dancing on the sidewalk to their jam session. We were all bronzed up from our rooftop sun session earlier in the day.

Victor, Bogey, and Geoff live downstairs and they are making their own beer. It's good stuff, too! Victor is a chef and he's helpful to have around when we all cook a big dinner with the random ingredients we can contribute. I learned how to make a delicious fried eggplant the other day and in the process realized what an amateur I am in the kitchen. He'll be helpful to have around.

I'm walking and busing everywhere. I should get a bike if I plan on staying longer because it's the best way to get around and how everyone else does it and I want to fit in....

I found a church with great worship music and a leadership that wants nothing but God to be glorified. Their hearts are focused on what He wants. I'm excited to find friends, encouragers and accountability there.

Still working on finding a job. I've got some interviews coming up. Wish me luck!

Time to walk to the beach to meet my friends.

This is really happening. This is my life. And I can see the city skyline from my roof.

Love you and Miss you guys. Football season is here. War Eagle!

Cleveland, Georgia

Andrew grew up with two waterfalls in his backyard. By back yard I mean the acres upon acres of property that back up to the Chattahoochee National Forest in the landscape of the Appalachian Mountains. Two waterfalls. The first one he took Katie and me to see was 60 feet tall. We could hear it as we got closer to the river. Andrew’s loyal English Lab, Gus, proudly led the way through the quiet woods- the waterfall hidden ahead and our pattering feet the only sounds to be heard. We could hear its power and feel the spray of the mist come from the pounding of the water hitting the river waiting below the fall. Sweet mist. Cool and refreshing even on a cold day.


Cleveland, Georgia is where I found myself after finals on May 9th. Well actually, I got lost. My ‘internal GPS’ couldn’t locate any satellites and I wandered around North Georgia for an hour, calling Andrew every ten minutes to figure out where the heck I was. Even in my frustration, he never lost patience with me or became frustrated with my inability to follow directions or expel my stubbornness to admit I shouldn’t find an alternative route (yet another effort to prove in some small way my independence: listen to directions and then find my own way by altering them slightly… This is NOT a good way to get places). He finally navigated me to a grocery store parking lot where I waited for him and Katie to find me. I have to give him the Medal of Honor-the patience edition to commend him for not being angry with me. And Katie gets an award too for smiling and hugging me when they finally found me, knowing I was angry with me.

After taking in the waterfalls and watching Gus cannonball into the river for sticks and follow them over smaller waterfalls, and after laughing at his unique technique to dive underwater to find sinking sticks, we went to hike up Blood Mountain on the Appalachian Trail. Gus did not attend this outing.

There are times when we are motivated to continue on against better reason. When life may not be perfect or breezing by smoothly but we can’t bring ourselves to complain because it all feels right- those are the moments and the situations we should take note of. There will be times that you’ll find yourself in the moment you’re in, not thinking about anyone but the people you’re with, not daydreaming about another life or scenario that doesn’t exist, but you’ll be right there-with those people, in that memory, and you’ll be happy. I wish for everyone many moments like that, and the ability to appreciate them. Our hike down from Blood Mountain was one of those times for me. At the top we looked out over the mountains from a pile of boulders. Our eyes could barely comprehend the sight and played tricks of zooming in and out, trying to grasp the size of what they were seeing. It was Beautiful up there. It was Quiet. You don’t know quiet until you’ve heard it at it’s loudest.

It started to rain and we climbed around like little kids on a jungle gym. Excited and high from the climb, the view, and the day. I heard Andrew's voice come from a crack between two boulders he was worming his way through. And suddenly Katie appeared above me on a boulder when she had been behind and below me. The rain picked up and the wind blew colder. The view fogged over. If we had been three minutes later showing up, we would have missed the mountain range scene.

We sat in the old stone shelter and read through the guest book. A few people had mentioned recent sightings of a black bear so we planned what we would do if one appeared. We decided we would climb up into the rafters. Andrew’s plan varied slightly; he would feed one of us to the bear. Then if it was still hungry he would feed the other one of us to the bear. “And then if it was STILL hungry….uh…oops. Dangit,” he said with a laugh.

The rain wasn’t letting up so we decided to make a run for it. We were wet and hungry. Katie’s feet started to blister in her Chacos on the way up so on the wet way down she went barefoot. Rain was dripping off our noses and the cold was turning them red. Katie’s feet were going numb in the fifty degree weather. Andrew gave her his socks and shoes, which were double the size of her feet so she instantly got the name Sasquatch as she flopped down the mountain and he looked like a tall mountain man hiking around in his barefeet.

I lead the way for a little while and we ended up sliding down a rockface we weren’t supposed to be on. Katie and I were crying with laughter. And Andrew realized I had led us astray. We remembered his comment at the beginning of our hike, “You’d have to be an idiot to get lost on the Appalachian Trail.” We climbed back up the slippery rock cliff and I wasn't allowed to lead anymore. Fair enough.

So I’m on the path with mountain man and sasquatch and we’re in good spirits even though we’re going to catch pneumonia and die if we don’t get some home made pizza Andrew's dad promised to make for dinner into our stomachs. We talked about making two large pizzas, one to eat and one to wrap our feet in. or maybe one to eat and a GIANT one to use as a blanket to curl up and go to sleep under.

We made it back to Andrew’s but there was no pizza waiting for us like we'd hoped. Though, a change into warm clothes and sweaters fresh out of the dryer were probably more comfortable than being wrapped in a giant pizza anyway.

I share a glass of wine with Andrew’s mom and she talks about her family. She tells me about how different her children are and their school situations: she home schools one daughter and lets the other go to the local high school because she is more of a socialite. Her youngest son transferred colleges after the first year because it wasn’t what he wanted. As she talks, I can hear the pride and understanding she has for all of the decisions they make. The support from his parents is evident in the way they have supported their children's decisions to do what’s best for them, and what makes them happiest. Her children are allowed to pursue their dreams as intensely or cautiously as they are comfortable doing. So, this is the Andrew I know, the mountain man with an incredible support system. His patience makes sense now. He makes a little more sense.

Consider this: if we’re lost and laughing. Are we where we’re supposed to be? How big would a pizza have to be to roll yourself up in it?

Orange Beach, Alabama

      One our way to her home in Orange Beach, Lane tells me about her brother and how hard his decisions have been on the family. She sets up the scene of pains and family warfare. I expect to walk in to her house and feel the squeeze of tensions that have been hanging on walls of her life since she was a teenager.


We walk in and her parents’ faces light up. Her mom’s smile comes with a sparkle in her eye and her dad’s laughter rings from his heart as he catches her up on all she has missed since she was last home.

Later we walk across a lawn, pass the house raised on poles, and look toward the water. The inner coastal waterway is a calming sight and it’s hard to believe it connects to a sea of violent possibility. A sailboat is anchored 100 yards off the end of the shore. A man stands in the water on one side of the dock, working on setting a large fishing net. Some people float around on inflatable rafts laughing and talking. Some others sit on the dock. They are responsible for tossing the floaters more cans of beer when needed. A large wagon sits on the dock, full of ice and drinks; there is no need to cross the yard and go back to the house for refills. Lane tells me these are the people she grew up with. These are the people she loves; I want to love them for that reason. I need to love them; I do.

I am romanced by them, by without their knowledge of it. I’m romanced by their individual histories, their unspoken vivacious stories of identity and how they learned to spend their time. I fall in love with the people they grew up with, knowing that many pieces of my friends’ characters, hearts, and minds that I appreciate exist because of the behavior and influences of those unsuspecting contributors.

I can turn it over and over in my mind and it doesn’t lose its beauty. Where my friends come from is a special ingredient to who they are, who they are becoming, and who they will forever be. I treasure these opportunities I get, to take trips to the unique places they come from. It’s through these visits that I am given the gifts of knowing them more intimately, appreciating them more intensely, and I can’t help but to love them more profoundly.

Eclectic, Alabama

 My gas light lit up orange ten miles ago and a cruel red X has devoured the service bars on my cell phone screen. The clock on my dashboard dimly flashes 11 p.m. I am in Eclectic, Alabama, where I have never been before, and I don’t know how to get where I am going.


 I stopped on the old, broken, holey, paved road where a hill let me have a bar of service to make a desperate call for rescue to Ben. I don’t remember how I met Ben: probably through friends or at a bar in Auburn. He is a dear friend of happy fate and I am going back to his home town, back to his place of growing, to see what makes this Ben I know.

 “Stop when you get to the fork in the road,” he instructed me, “I’ll meet you there.” Two minutes later we were in the driveway of his family home. I took a deep beautiful breath, stepped out of my truck, and remembered why I had made the trip out there.

 The bitter November night grabbed my hand, numbed my fingers and made me question if it was worth sacrificing the warmth of my coat pocket to hold on to my newly opened can of cold cheap beer. With my other arm wrapped tightly around Ben, I sat on the back of the four-wheeler as we sped down the road. Six of us rode on four ATVs up and down and over the dirt roads of Ben’s home town. Despite the cold, I couldn’t help but smile at the Midnight adventure, a re-creation of how Ben spent his days before Auburn. I was in his world. I was getting a trip back to see how he came to be the man I know now and I soaked in every simple moment of the precious experience.

 As the ATVs roared down the road, Ben turned his head; eyes still ahead, voice aimed for me and told me, as we passed a ditch, of the time his friends wrecked a couple of four-wheelers; and when we passed the creek, he let me in on the time he spent an Independence Day floating down it with friends. His free hand danced in the air in front of him as he told me about the time he sunk his new four-wheeler in the swamp three years before. Every story was another piece of Ben, another glimpse into the things he treasures most in life, the way he reacts to events of life and what he takes away from his experiences.

 We journeyed off the dirt road and made the ATVs climb a hill. The isolated path we took wouldn’t have been found by anyone that didn’t know it was there. If it hadn’t been done hundreds of times before, I would have thought it impossible to navigate the four-wheeler to the top. Ben and his friends called this hilltop we were traveling to, ‘the lookout spot’ and I wondered what I should expect as I hid behind Ben’s back to avoid being smacked by tree branches on the way up.

 Reaching the top of the hill was like falling into a world away from reality. When the sound of the ATV motors shut off, silence consumed the noise of the world and became the loudest part of the night. The flat hilltop was no bigger than my apartment, but up there I felt bigger than any issue I’d been dealing with. No tree grew tall enough to block our view, and no star was dull enough to be forgotten.

 Since building a fire was the next brilliant idea we had, Don walked off into the darkness to find sticks and wood to burn. Hannah laughed at Don and told us that the correct term for Brad’s title was her fee-ons not fee-on-say, while Brad quietly started stacking Don’s stick collection in a campfire ready stance. And when Hannah made another joke about Josh being a red-head, he stammered about nothing and walked off with a smile to make sure Don hadn’t fallen off the edge of their hill.

 “Who owns this property?” I asked, wondering who would be upset in the morning to find their bale of hay gone and a black spot of soot in the middle of flattened circular hilltop. “We don’t know,” replied Ben, “we think its Alabama Power or something. A lot of the property around here is owned by them or hunting clubs.”

 My chest felt full of life; ready to burst. They all told stories of their high school mischief. Revealing more of themselves, remembering more of each other. “I have to be honest, Josh; we did set your trashcans on fire that one time,” Ben confessed. “It was fun, but sorry about that.”

 Cold and dew-y at four a.m. we put out the fire and rode back to the house. Alone with Ben in the kitchen, he shared. Pieces of him standing out stronger than the rest, “I was adopted, did you know that?” turned into, “this was where everyone hung out in high school,” to “I know another season of my life is close, I just don’t know what it is.” And finally, “I have nothing without God, he’s my everything. “

“How do you get to your roof?” I asked once the conversation came to and end. A couple months earlier, Ben turned 24 and he told me that on that night, he sat on his parent’s roof, smoked a cigarette, and wanted to jump. We stepped on the couch and climbed through the window onto the second story roof. The roof was steep but the thrill of the unsafe climb made the view from the top settle well in my bones. Were we up higher than the rest of Alabama; how much of his life did he spend above the treetops, more acquainted with the stars than I, in this overwhelming, reoccurring silence? “The silence can be loud sometimes,” Ben said. “During the day you can see water towers from towns all around. You can see for counties from up here.” On our way back down, I heard a thump behind me and grabbed Ben’s belt loop as he slid down the roof, on his way to the ground, far below. He came to rest beside me and took a deep breath, “that’s never happened to me before; I can always keep my footing.”

 As the sun was coming up, I fell asleep in a recliner, surrounded by my new sleeping friends, content and full from the night’s journey.