Open Mic

Its been a relentless construction season and I haven't been able to prioritize blogging. I have prioritized positive thinking though. Still I muse over the larger issues of the day. My son and I went to the Vonnegut Museum over fall break. My son had recently finished Slaughterhouse Five and was able to recap the strange plot line to me in great detail . After his retelling I said I thought the book was about trauma and out of body experiences, to which he said, "yes that too". I picked up a copy of Breakfast of Champions while at the museum and shortly after starting it I felt in the mood to write some dark poetry (Vonnegut will do that to you). 

I want to get back to writing nice posts about home maintenance and sustainability, but until then we will have to settle for an open mic session. Here is the latest creation -

Climate Refugees

The moon cycles methodical madness
Wax and full and wane again again
Its bright bodied pearl a calling
card in the sky

Remember us, your one true love
We carry only the imprint of a belt:
Felt in the marrow, narrow-
the voyage to be better

From our burning planet
We escape only to capture tears in jars
And the urine we bottle
Who would leave the mollusk in the desert?

Little blue marble ignites like the
Cuyahoga at noon seen from the cosmos
Ancient ones tried to warn us of thirst
Now we swim in a starry sea of drought 

 

Here on Earth

There's a thimble in my coat pocket. I fiddle with it as I try to convince my mom to go to the dentist. She won't budge, but she will give me sewing supplies. She has all the makings for a poodle skirt - a nod to the fifties and sixties decades that she grew up in. The models on the cover of the pattern envelope have on saddle shoes with bobby socks with the curly frills on the ankles. I can see that she is going to win this round. It occurs to me later that mental illness might be a form of advanced intelligence. Its almost alien in the way it can operate around the mundane details of modern life. 

I will pack up the Prius and drive myself back to Indiana. I will go back to the male dominated world of architecture and engineering. I will go back to the projects that I love. I will look for gratitude in moments that are overwhelming or lonely. I will find strength in the obstacles that I have overcome. I will contemplate the rotation of the earth and the revolutions around the sun. I will think about how even Vladimir Putin is beholden to a horizon and how war and darkness will be penetrated by light and understanding. I will ponder if the pandemic has made us better as a nation. A friend says that everyone looks older. I look around me and think she is right. The lines on people's faces are deeper and more sincere. Is there a cure for colossal grief?

I will think about my own journey of healing. How it has taken years to recover a sense of myself during raising a child on my own. Finally having the space to breathe and think thoughts as big as the universe. Its what I dreamed of in my adolescents. A corner of the world that was all my own to dream and ponder. One foot in front of the other is the only cure to grief I have found.

I read an interview with Zelinsky, the Ukraninan prime minister who is facing down the darkest evils, but he used to be a comedian. I'm struck with how he embraces this role with a Shakespearean resolve. He notes that the jester was often the speaker of truth and bringer of light. I marvel at his perspective, but my skin crawls at the modern world being compared to Shakespeare's violent and malevolent masterpieces. 

Yet it is spring, marvelous spring. Kids hunt easter eggs and the crocus and daffodil have their day. The birds seem to burst with morning gossip before the sun comes up. The dog whines anxiously at the door to frolic and chase squirrels in the backyard. There is the promise of renewal and rebirth. Its that short window when the world as ancient as it is feels new again. Finally we celebrate Earth Day with our homemade granola and kombucha in the sunlight as it filters through the trees. I offer an agnostic prayer for an evolved attitude towards our shared home - may we care for ourselves and the corners we inhabit with gentle care and loving kindness.

Hammer Time

I usually fail to winterize my lawn mower by draining the gasoline from the tank before the cold hits. In the spring when the grass is growing again I find myself unclamping the hose and draining the tank of spoiled gasoline. I make my usual trip to the gas station and fill up one of those red portable gas containers. I know I should switch to electric, but the gas mower still works and to my neighbor's chagrin I don't use it very often. I read that I can use up freeze exposed gas in my passenger vehicle since it has a larger engine then a lawn mower. Doing this requires a trip out to the garage and digging up one of those red canteens and giving my Prius a sip.  

Its funny how garages are associated with masculinity. My dad who is a master of 2x4 construction has built himself an office in his garage completely out of this material. Its a place where he feels most comfortable. I can't say I would ever put an office in a garage, but I do like to have my tools organized so when something comes up that needs to be repaired I can do so without spending half my time looking for the right tool. 

When I was 23 and seeking to gain admission into the college of engineering I wrote an essay about hammer hooks on my son's pants. My son was only 3 years old and yet many of the tiny pants that were marketed towards his age group had hammer hooks on them. I was 23 and had rarely found a pair of pants in the women's section with decent pockets let alone a tool storage component on them. 

My young self questioned this in that essay. Who had failed at recruiting me into engineering sooner? Was it my lack of savvy or was it a larger failing of society to not instill in me the perceived tool belt needed to pursue the degree? Criticism sometimes pays off.

Engineering does teach that problem solving does require tools. Skills and techniques are referred to something you  "put it in the toolbox". The problem is girls are not marketed pants with hammer hooks or tonka trucks; let alone tool boxes. Early in this profession as a women, I probably spent as much time crafting the proverbial tool box as I have the tools. That's a disadvantage when it comes to participation and competition with peers who may have grown up with pants with hammer hooks and by extension the pursuit of both tangible and intangible tools. 

Yet, tools or tool boxes alone or not enough to solve problems. The person wielding the tools has to have the fortitude and resilience to be able to keep at a problem until it is deconstructed and redesigned. Fortitude and resilience are traits that have no gender and not anything that can be purchased. People at a disadvantage will overcome a lack of resources with an overabundance of tenacity. 

Complex problem solving requires complex problem solvers. As we fund civil infrastructure by the billions, recruitment of designers is crucial to paving the path forward. We need people with tool boxes, tools, and the tenacity to use them. Hopefully, that path is paved with a diverse work force, recycled materials, pervious pavement, solar charging stations, and a generous amount of vegetated oases. Unfortunately, we are behind the 8 ball as that type of recruitment and training takes years. There's no time to waste to get hammers in the hands of girls and other non-traditional candidates for engineering degrees.

 

 

The Year of the Possible

There's mold in the upstairs closet. I don't know where it came from, but I know that removing it will involve moving the clothes out of the closet and a bucket of hot soapy water. I will have to get down on my hands and knees and scrub away the evidence of a neglected space. 

Maintenance can be uncomfortable, because you have to face down the things you've been neglecting to do. I visited my mom last week and she has been neglecting going to the dentist for years. By the end of my visit I had her repeating that 2022 was the year of the dentist. Covid has been hard on my mom who has limited mobility. Quarantine took away her shopping trips which were her main way of participating in the community and provided physical activity for her. 

People have a hard time grasping what it is like to have a schizophrenic parent. They don't understand the amount of neglect and hardship this has on a person and their family members. I know from first hand experience how incredibly difficult it has been.  With over 30 years of experience in caring for a parent with a mental illness I can say that it never gets easier but my ability to cope with it gets better. 

I have integrated this care into my career and have talked to my employers about needing to work remotely so I can spend time with my mom. Having that small amount of transparency has helped with my ability to handle the responsibility of a full time career and part time caretaker. I am fortunate to work for an employer that offers unlimited flexible time off. I only wish everyone had this sort of padding in their lives.

My mom has lots of people in her life who support her, but mentally ill people often have difficulty accepting the medical care they need. My mom trusts her children more than anyone and that puts a weight on my siblings and I to help. In return my mom has offered unconditional love and shown me what success is by an entirely different standard than then our status driven work orientated lives would lead us to believe. 

Success can be caring for oneself and caring for those closest to us. As much as I enjoy be celebrated as a seasoned professional it only takes one conversation with my mom to remind me to take none of it for granted. We don't know when illness or injury is going to trip us up. Embracing this truth on the deepest, scariest of levels is the thing that makes the victories all the more sweet. Here's to 2022 - the year of the possible!

 

Slow Down

A small victory was won when I changed the filter on my furnace. Using the maintenance tracker app I have logged when I perform a task and schedule when I need to do the task again. Its a low hanging fruit item on the spectrum of home maintenance, but when you are lost in the haze of project deadlines and getting dinner on the table for a family it can quickly drop off the radar. 

As an empty nester, I have time to move methodically through my maintenance tasks. This slowing down in my life has allowed me to slow down in work. In projects I can sit with problems for longer and not feel the pressure of heading a household also weigh on my shoulders. I like this not just for the obvious reasons, but because complex problem solving is a process of digestion and repetition which takes time.

One of the main problems of civil engineering is the handling of stormwater. The root of the problem is the impervious surfaces (roofs/pavement) we experience in our day to day lives causes stormwater runoff which has to be handled somewhere else. The public's expectation of runoff is out of sight out of mind, but for a civil engineer the teasing out of a solution is a symphony of factors. 

We see our environments as a backdrop to our lives, but when we take small steps to interact with our environment we become more than actors on a stage. A task as small as changing the furnace filter can become a shift in perspective: we become stewards of our environment.

According to a research study 76% of my son's generation place our environment as their number one societal concern. People of his generation will choose to not have children in order to reduce their environmental burden. This elective empty nesting is saddening to me because people who are willing to make that sacrifice are also the type of people that make good parents. 

Finding time to slow down and methodically solve problems is not exactly a movie poster solution for the climate crisis, but it is imperative as we develop more land in the twenty first century to do so before our nests are preemptively empty.

Butterfly Effect

What's lurking behind the fridge? We've all spent more times in our home over the past couple of years and perhaps for you like me its time to look behind the fridge. Its a task I would rather avoid as it involves awkwardly sliding the fridge out and then facing the dirty truth of the matter. I resolved to face my fears and cleaning the coils can help my fridge run more efficiently.

After reading Project Drawdown a couple years ago, I was surprised to learn that refrigerant management was one the biggest opportunities for us to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Refrigerants have a global warming potential that far exceeds carbon dioxide. Once release into the environment they act effective heat traps for our planet (more here). While cleaning the fridge might not seem like a big deal - it's the small acts that connect us to the larger picture.

Now, I can feel the critics asking me why does everything have to be a butterfly effect? I understand that the internet is full of people's voices and one silly blog post about refrigerator maintenance feels unnecessary. I can't offer a justification beyond it is helpful in that it keeps me accountable to my goals of implementing more sustainability into my own life.

Sustainable thinking demands that we act more responsibly about the materials and equipment in our lives. I feel like my grandparents would call much of this common sense, but my generation is facing challenges that weren't present in my grandparent's lives including a decreased amount of homeowners among millennials. Ownership is critical to upkeep which is critical to our success here on planet earth. Let's not pretend that it is just common sense we are lacking.

As an engineer I don't want to fall short on the upkeep of designed systems (i.e. the fridge). I ask that owners maintain the systems I design like stormwater facilities and I want to participate in this culture of upkeep which seems counterculture to the culture of consumerism that we are steeped in on a daily basis. 

So there you have it - a deep clean of the fridge leads to a deep dive values which are expressed through habits such as cleaning behind the fridge on a regular basis. In my own small way, this is the path I seek for 2022.

Window Problems

There's condensation on my windows and I can feel a draft coming in from the cold January air. In keeping with my resolution to do home improvements and blog about them I check the window next to me to see if it has storm window in it. Alas, I have left the screen in the window, but luckily a quick swap out gets my office window winterized. First step taken, but what about the other windows in my house? I do a quick check and some never had their screens in them to begin with so that job is done. Kitchen windows are not latched all the way so I get the step stool and secure them. 

I go up to the bedroom in the cold attic. I often leave the windows open even when there's air conditioning on because it gets really stuffy in the summertime. Its cold now, but I assume that is because of the need for insulation in the attic (another blog post coming soon). I pull away the curtain and gasp... the window hasn't been closed and the screen window has iced over. Shoot, darn, and call me a hypocrite!

In sustainable design we spend a lot of time on the selection of quantity and quality of windows and insulation. I'm feeling my most millennial self in declaring that I have window problems, but the larger problem we face with windows (glazing) is that they are conductors of temperature (even when closed). So while a building with a lot of exterior glazing might be flashy it causes a lot of energy consumption over the course of the building's life. Imagine having plastic panels punched into your winter jacket!

In sustainable design we also spend a lot of time on ventilation systems - another function of windows. Turns out these windows that open at the top and bottom are supposed to function as a ventilation system in the summer. Crack the top part 3" and let the warm air out and crack the bottom part another 3" and let the cooler air in. Why on earth am I just learning this now? 

I have a 30 year mortgage, but no established game plan for regular maintenance. I found an app that I can use to program reminders for regular home maintenance and am happy to say I've got my windows schedule for 90 days from now. What reoccurring maintenance item have you been pushing off that is a potential "window problem" in your life?