more normal than not

Here’s another great Kirsten Dirksen video about a couple who built a container home in the San Diego hills.

It’s kind of cool….and kind of hard.

Sometimes things that are hard can be good.

I like that they aren’t going to paint these containers….that they like the fact that the damage and scrapes are integral to the aesthetic of the home.

This house is about 720 square feet….but, because of how it’s sited and the height of the ceilings, it feels like a bigger place.

These guys are pretty creative….

I don’t know what I think about container homes….other than wondering if all the work you have to do to adapt them is worth the effort.

I’d be happy if I could do it as well as these guys seemed to do it.

There sure are a lot of containers out in the world.

We have a lot of stuff that needs moving around, don’t we?

Did this on Jenny’s minivan last night.

At the beginning of any of these jobs, especially if they start before dinner, Jenny is curious how long it’s going to take to finish.

This is either a fast and easy job….or a horrible job that takes a while….depending on what you find when you start turning (or trying to turn) any of the fasteners.

I ended up cutting the bottom nut off on the side that I decided to finish last night.

“Horrible” is relative…but the job didn’t go really easy.

One thing that I notice in these videos is that it seems to be a lot more ergonomic to have the car up on a lift than it is to lay in the gravel.

That looks a lot more comfortable.

This isn’t a horrible job, really, but the simplest things can get hard if the nut is frozen on and the space is tight.

I’ll hold my tongue the next time I tell somebody that “it should be easy”.

Here’s another video that shows a mechanic working through the problems you’ll potentially run into…..

(He doesn’t have a lift!)

Sparrow, our youngest child, told me the other night that she was afraid of the “pretend monsters”.

Knowing they’re the “pretend” monsters doesn’t help to not be afraid of them.

They’re real to her….even if she knows that they’re only pretend monsters.

I wonder how big my list of pretend monsters is?

All the financial stuff….decimal points and digits out in the cloud….filthy lucre….

Maybe social status or the things I might do on occasion to “keep up appearances”….

Aging…

Relationships….

I wonder how any of them are more real than the pretend monsters that bother Sparrow sometimes in the night…..when the light is going away and the shadows rule?

I need to learn to not be afraid of the pretend monsters, too.