Supafly.com

I’m in the middle of remodeling my house. I feel like I owe it to the world to report on the untold subplots in the story of upgrading homes and lives. These are the deleted scenes from home remodeling shows. This is the truth:

• I don’t look cool. It’s hard to look at myself in the mirror. For most of my life I’ve prided myself in being a fashionable, well-dressed man. Man at his best. Not anymore! Since I’ll be sloshing around paint and wood stain, I wear my most unfashionable shorts or pants, the ones that I haven’t worn outside of the home in 5 years. I rip the sleeves off of my most faded or awkward shaped T-shirts. These are the staples of my remodeling wardrobe. If I saw some dude dressed like me in public, I’d pity him as a man painfully unaware of his appearance. I now understand why the professional painters who come into the coffee shop each morning wear respectable white pants and shorts. It gives dignity to the untidy trade. It keeps your spirits up.
• People ask me a lot of irritating questions. When your life is uneventful, you start to meddle in lives of people who have more drama. I know this because I’ll have ordinary months in life, I corner someone with more action get the scoop. Since all of my friends, neighbors, and co-workers know my house is under construction, I get pegged with about 10 questions a day. Every day. I might be done with my remodeling by now if I didn’t have to stop and answer questions about why I’m not done yet.
• I spend all my money at Lowes. If you were to make a highlight reel of the last six months of my life, you would see lots of boring footage of me looking for things on the isles of Lowes. Just me standing there silent for three minutes, scanning the wall for the right electrical outlet. Then you’d see more footage, except this time I’m swiping my credit card again and again and again. Here’s your warning: over the course of a house remodel, you’ll make 100s of trips to Lowes and spend a mind-blowing amount of money. It might make you feel better if you invest in stock of the closest hardware store before you begin remodeling.
• I won’t be around to enjoy it. Dad encouraged me early in the construction by saying, “When this is all done, you can enjoy it for years.” I wish! Although I enjoy working on my home, I’ve postponed the true pleasure of living in my home for at least another decade. I’m not settling in this house. So any work I do here is for someone else to enjoy. I’m a contractor hired by the future home owner. So if you don’t enjoy the trades of home remodeling, your only motivation will be financial gain. And life always manages to suck when you are chasing money.
• I feel like my life is spinning out of control. I cannot overstate this. The home is where you are sheltered from the dramas of the world throws at you. When your house is in disarray, it only adds the drama. If you live in the house you’re remodeling, you must have an endless source of mental and emotional fortitude. You have to get up in the morning and be okay with the fact that there is sawdust underneath your cereal bowl as your pour milk over your Cheerios.

I am lucky because I’m married to an awesome woman. We’re on the same team when it comes to overcoming the obstacles in life. If you and your spouse are in a rocky point in your relationship, fixing your home will break your relationship. Get your priorities straight and given your marriage an extreme makeover first.

Oddly enough, I have not felt compelled to justify buying a fake tree. I made it through a 7-hour party last week without one word about the not-real tree in the corner of my living room.

The satisfaction of having none of the real tree chores gives me supreme confidence. By getting that fake tree, I saved myself 8 hours of work this December alone. Next year, I’ll save another 8. By then, I’ll have broken even financially. And I’ll keep putting up that fake tree until I have kids that need a good Christmas memory.

While Candyce was at Mass on Sunday I watched an episode of MTV Cribs dedicated to 50 Cent’s house outside of Hartford, Connecticut. (I’m pretty sure he bought this from Mike Tyson’s ex-wife.) I should start by explaining that this estate is massive: 17.6 acres, 48,515 square feet, 19 bedrooms, 19 full and 16 half bathrooms. MASSIVE!

Does 50’s house make him not gangster?

If I were in high school living with Mom and Dad, I might be jealous of somebody with a house that big. It’s the ultimate stage of glamor and success. But anybody who owns a house watched that episode with a different perspective:

1. Maintenance. I know 50 isn’t pushing a vacuum around a house that’s half the size of a Target store. That means he has to hire people to maintain the inside and outside of his house. Think of the chores: mow the lawn, spray for bugs, maintain the pools, remove dead tree branches after a storm, repair cracks in the driveway, change light bulbs, etc. The list goes on and on.

   Since 50 doesn’t want to manage armies of workers, my guess is he got smart and hired full-time estate manager dude. At the end of the day, 50 has to sit down with this guy in the kitchen to find out what’s going down around the house. I’ve never seen this meeting in a rap video. Gangsters aren’t supposed to know about the flowers being planted in the pots next to the front door. That kind of stuff is just supposed to happen.

   

   17.6 acres of manual labor.

2. Relationship drama. My house is just under 3,000 square feet, so it would take 12 houses just like mine to match the size of 50 Cent’s house. Even with it’s diminutive size, Candyce and I get in at least one fight each week day because we’re trying to communicate when we’re in separate rooms. After 30 seconds of playing shout tag, we end up in the same room exasperated and angry:
   

   What were you saying? I answered you didn’t you hear me?!

   It’s gotten a little better each month since we’ve been married, but I can’t lie and say that we have this whole thing worked out. We get mad a lot.

   Now, if 50’s girlfriend is at the house, how are they supposed to talk to each other? If she makes a “quick trip” to the kitchen 300 paces away, how is 50 supposed to find her when she gets lost? It’s a funny scene to imagine 50 and his hotty girlfriend trying to find one another, almost like a hip hop version of Marco Polo or hide-and-go-seek. What if half way through this game 50 stumbled upon a groupie from 3 nights ago who got lost on her way to get a get a blanket from the closet? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing.

   Let’s presume 50 is monogamous. If he and Hotty want to keep the relationship sweet, the most reasonable solution is for both of them to carry walkie-talkies everywhere they go. When 50 struts to the game room to get a lighter for his cigar, he’s got a walkie-talkie in one hand. When she steps into the boudoir to slip into something more comfortable, she’ll come back to bed carrying a walk-talkie. That’s just not sexy. No gangster points here.

3. Losing Things. When I lived in a 1000 square foot apartment after college, I never lost things. I lose things ALL THE TIME now. And it’s not because I’m losing my mind; there is just a lot of space to devour my stuff. Poor 50 Cent. If he loses his keys in his 50k square foot home, he won’t make that 10 O’clock meeting in the city. He’d be smart to chain down his TV remotes. Because once they’re gone, they’re gone! He’s stuck watching the same channel because he’s too tired to make the 40 foot roundtrip to the TV and back. No gangster points there.
4. Bumps in the night. Anybody who owns a home knows what it’s like to hear a bump in the night. Even if you have a security system, you hear something like that and assume that somebody is breaking into your house. With a modest sized home, you can pick up your baseball bat, do a couple laps around the house, and be back in bed in under 2 minutes. It could take 50 Cent 45 minutes to scope out the joint. He might even have to stop half way through the rounds just to make coffee to stay alert.Now that I think of it, I bet 50 doesn’t even hear most of the bumps in the night. Again, if you consider how large the house is, it’s the equivalent of me waking up at night because I heard my neighbor knock over a vase 3 houses down the street. So in 50’s palatal home, people could come and go as they please. There might be members of Eminem’s D12 setting up camp in a remote corner of the west wing. Really, Kanye West could break in and film a music video while 50 is fast asleep. To give Kanye the gangster points he deserves, you’ll have to take ‘em away from 50.

I guess 50 Cent has realized his house is not that gangster, which is why it is for sale for a cool $18,500,000. I doubt 50 will get that much money for it, but he only paid a modest $4,100,000 for it back in 2003, so whatever he gets for it will give him a hefty profit.

Now that’s gangster.

Traveling for Bored Travelers. I’ve traveled so much over the past decade that the idea of “traveling” is not exciting on it’s own. You might be able to impress a 20-year-old intern with tall tales of glamorous business travel, but any frequent traveler will tell you that flying is isn’t much more glamorous than riding a city bus across town.

Even if you fly first class, you still have to go through the same drudgery as everyone else before and after a flight: checking bags downstairs, passing through security with no shoes and no belt, waiting for delayed flight, occupying your time before takeoff, etc. This bland reality of traveling has forced me into various experiments to amuse myself.

For instance, I got back this morning from a quick overnight trip to Ontario, California. The only thing I brought with me were my cars keys and my cell phone. No luggage, no toiletries, no computer. I left the house as if I were driving to the coffee shop for an espresso. It was a little weird wearing the same clothes two days in a row, and my mouth was raunchy after not brushing last night or this morning. But other than that, it was a no-hassle way to travel. If I fly anywhere just for a night, I’ll probably do it again.

Welcome San Bernadino Residents. It was exciting to see all the people who traveled from the far corners of the Inland Empire to come to the event. I remember in high school how exciting it was to meet teenagers from other towns, so I can imagine how exciting it was to be at the event last night. You had 250 new best friends. How much fun is that?

Second generation youth leaders. Last night a dozen or so of us went out for a late night dinner. It was bizarre and exciting to realize that most of the adults at the table actually came to events I spoke at when they were in high school. Now they’re involved at leaders in their churches and community.

Coziness. It’s been a chilly afternoon for Phoenix, so I bought some Christmas coffee to commemorate the event. The house was already feeling Christmasy because Candyce decorated the place when I was gone. Once the fire was blazing in the fireplace, the house was cozy enough to the shoot photos for a Christmas catalogue.

Tivo is awesome because it’s like renting DVDs but not paying for them. This afternoon we watched Elf (funny), Sweet Home Alabama (alright), and Bringing Down the House (dumb). And we watched a Suns game. After such a difficult week at work and trip out of town, today was perfect day to rest my body and relax my mind.

My pool is a major source of drama in my life. First of all, I should explain that the pool is the centerpiece to my backyard. I have two floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the pool for anyone in my living room. At night, the pool radiates sexy blue light into my backyard. I call this “Miami Vice lighting.” And I like it.

(Since I’m on the subject, I was never able watch Miami Vice when it originally aired in the 80s. I suspect that my parents believed it was too titillating for my young eyes. From the commercials I knew that the show about cool guys who drove cool cars with pretty girls. And every scene had a neon sign. And I liked it. There were two occasions over the last five years when I was feeling nostalgic for the 80s, and I recorded two random episode with Tivo. The first episode was kind of cool, a mafia episode set in Cuba. The second episode–recorded 3 years later–was not cool because it was the same episode from before. What are the chances? It’s like asking a girl out on a date, only to realize you two already dated in high school.)

So anyway, my pool adds a good vibe to my backyard, especially at night. The next afternoon when it’s hot, the pool is a fantastic way to cool off. But for the past month, I have not enjoyed either aspect of the pool. Because it was green, green, and green. I say that three times because three times I applied the $50 concoction of medicine from the pool store (as prescribed by the all-knowing pool store employees) and all three times it did absolutely nothing. Green. Green. Green. Do you know how much that sucks?; After the third batch of medicine, the pool looked as bad as when I did absolutely nothing. All that responsible action and no results. It hurt my self esteem.

Tired of losing the fight, I decided to drain the pool on Saturday morning. This is one of those rites of adulthood that is intimidating because it’s something I’ve never done before.; Who knows what could happen? What if I burn out the pool pump? What if I drain the pool and there’s a dead ox in the bottom?

With half the water gone on Monday, I suspected that the pool pump didn’t have the muscle to suck all that water out of the hole. Dennis at the pool store confirmed this: “Draining your 20,000 gallon pool with that little pump is like driving in reverse for 20,000 miles. You could do it, but it doesn’t mean you should.” How can you argue with that? I just wish he imparted the same Confucian wisdom when he prescribed chlorine doses last month. So that night I went to Home Depot and rented a drop-in pool pump.

This was a pretty cool machine. It’s the size of a fire extinguisher and has an electric cord and a fireman’s hose that come out of the top. I held the hose in one hand and the electric cord in the other, then kicked the pump into the pool. It soon disappeared into the green lagoon. Seconds after I plugged the cord into the wall, the water surface started to ripple as the fire hose torqued and inflated with water. Then the end of the hose exploded with gallons of water.

All of a sudden I had a pool pump and a pressure washer. This was a rare opportunity to clean off my patio, so I dragged that water-breathing dragon to the far side of the patio near the yard, then steadily sprayed the dust off the concrete towards the half-empty pool. Within five minutes, I pushed the muddy waterfall over the pool wall.

It was pretty fun. I wish I had friends over because we could’ve squirted each other or played rodeo games. But it was just me standing in the dark of the night, dripping wet and satisfied that something was about to finally change. The greenish brown water would soon be gone.

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I told myself that when I grew up, I’d buy a house with a pool, and then drain it so I could use it exclusively for skateboarding. I thought about the girls that I wanted sitting on the edge watching me and my friends do cool tricks. What could be better in life? This fantasy was not my own. It was modeled after the opening scene of thee 1991 skateboarding movie Gleaming the Cube with Christian Slater. I envied the rowdy teenagers that had enough courage to find an empty pool in their home town and claim it as their own little skate park. I knew I could never be that reckless with someone else’s home, but converting my own swimming pool into a skating pool would work.

Here was my chance, and I couldn’t do it. My friend Jeff warned me early in the project that the plaster could be damaged if I took too long to fill the pool back up with water. If the plaster was that sensitive to fresh air, I can’t imagine it could’ve held up to the abuse of a skateboard. I could damage the plaster and then have to pay some company $3000 to redo the whole thing. It’s a lot easier for me to go to a skate park five miles from my house. Or maybe take the $3000 saved and start a real skate park on the other side of my yard (sometime not now.)

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With each new day of adulthood, I realize there are inescapable chores that will follow me through every year of life. For most of the years since college, I’ve hoped that if I could just get done with my current to-do list, a new life of leisure or adventure–my pick–would be ready for me the next day. Since this new life has yet to happen, I realize I need to adjust my attitude.

So last night I pulled my humble garden hose from the wall and stretched it to the edge of the empty pool. It was a gentle moment after such a dramatic week of work and worry. Just for fun, I walked down the pool steps and sat in the shallow end to watch the deep end slowly fill with fresh water. I laid down and looked up at the autumn stars through the palm trees. I just laid there, quiet, enjoying the solitude. I laughed at the thought of me pretending to be a fireman the night before. I smiled knowing that the battle with the pool was over, and it was okay to relax.

This is life, and it’s the only one I have. So I need to enjoy it and appreciate it for what it is.