All posts by jah

Fire, Home & Garden

Have You Seen My Childhood

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Circa 2023 after it was professionally cleaned from an April 2016 fire at my mom’s house, but before my January 18, 2024 fire.
Summer 2024 after it was professionally cleaned a second time.
Replacement from Warsaw, Poland with me on November 22, 2024.

Yes, I know this blog title is a corny Michael Jackson song, but after what I’ve been through this year, indulge me for a moment, as this is quite the saga. I always stress that NO material thing matters nearly as much as the five precious souls I lost with my dogs taken from me that day. Still, through some miraculous connections, a bit of my heart (I’m sure my siblings would agree) was restored today when a hand-carved (or is it?) piece of furniture that I mistakenly thought was one-of-a-kind was delivered from Warsaw, Poland, of all places.

The original piece, which my parents bought when we lived in rural Catalonia, Spain (my dad was in the United States Coast Guard and was stationed there in the mid-1970s), was transported with our military moves, in the normal course, from Spain to New York and then to California, where my parents retired. In 2016, it survived my mom’s house fire and was professionally cleaned. After my mom died later that year, I kept the piece, which my siblings did not want, only for it to get pretty incinerated in my own house fire this past January 18.

At first in the chaos of my soot-laden wrecked home, I had it in the junk pile on my driveway, but it meant so much to me. The damage seemed somewhat superficial, so someone convinced me that I could have it professionally “cleaned” again and/or repainted. Unfortunately, it came back even after being treated still smelling of fire, so I’m storing it in the rental house’s garage for now. I was frustrated by the daunting task of having it professionally restored to what it looked like in the pictures. I was ambivalent about whether it would be worthwhile.

On a whim, I posted it on social media, and a friend of mine who I used to swoon over regularly on the subway when I saw him during our commute years ago when I lived in New York chimed in and said he found a replica for sale in Warsaw, complete with the Polish language e-commerce link. I contacted the seller, who spoke no English. With the assistance of a translator website, I explained my unique interest. I was pleasantly surprised that it was selling for only 1,000 PLN, which amounted to about US$255. I knew the challenge would be shipping. I asked him if he would ship to California and he said he would not. I think he was only looking to ship within Europe.

Periodically, over the last several months, I would check the Polish site. It continued to be on sale, which blew my mind, but I’m sure it’s a niche market. Several weeks ago it occurred to me, after a few false starts with distant connections to Poland, that I had some of the people on my annual holiday card email list who I have been in touch with for years who are Poles. So on another whim, I wrote an email to all of them with the the before and after pictures and the Polish e-commerce link. I think there were 19 who had working emails, and one of them who I’ve had a reciprocal crush on since at least 2008 replied. His English is excellent because he lived in the UK for a while, so he was a perfect candidate, especially because he also lived in Warsaw.

At first, my handsome cub friend Artur suggested that if the seller was unwilling to ship it to California, I could have it shipped to his house and then he would facilitate shipping it to me. It turns out, that by having him communicate on my behalf, and after securing a quote for shipping that I obtained from DHL at his suggestion, the seller agreed to let it be picked up from his location. Artur, who I’ve never even met, even took care of the Polish customs paperwork for me! It was then purportedly en route! I could hardly believe I was able to track the progress online. I remained on pins and needles, thinking it would take months, but spending US$717 to ship it was enough to get it here in under two weeks. It arrived today, just in the nick of time, because Shea and I are getting on a plane to Hawaii tomorrow morning. To my glee, I didn’t even have to make arrangements for it to be brought inside from the pouring rain.

It’s now safe and sound in my rental and will be ready to transport to my home months from now when my house is ready. I want to take some pictures of the two cabinets side by side at some point. I’m also still contemplating what I should do with the original. I might use it for gardening supply storage outside if I can avoid it getting water-damaged. That way any remaining smell will hopefully diminish, but I’ll still have it on the premises and can tell this story. It will make a fine storage cabinet, as long as I don’t let it succumb to the elements in my mild climate here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

So for under a thousand dollars, I have a beautiful nostalgic piece in excellent shape to look at, together with the two very similar tapestries that my siblings and I had growing up. For the rest of my life I’ll be able to enjoy the memories that pieces bring me, even if they are facsimiles of the originals and they are pieces I would not have bought if I just saw them in a store myself.

As for what I’m putting in the new cabinet, I think I’ll start with the ashes of the beloved five dogs who I lost that day.

Activism, Family, Health, Memoriam, Tobacco

Dad Gone 34 Years

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Thanks to Big Tobacco, today marks THIRTY-FOUR years since my dad has been gone because of his smoking. He was only 50 years old when he died (the same age as his mom from her smoking), so he could very reasonably be alive today at 84.

This is one of my favorite pictures of him with me. He knew how much I hated his smoking and he thought it was funny when I would draw “Cancer Cures Smoking” signs and tape them to his nightstand. One year for MY birthday, he bought a smoking cessation kit for himself, because he knew how much I wanted him to stop, and this was all before his quintuple bypass at age 48.

Even that didn’t stop him from resuming smoking a month later and within two years an aortic aneurysm caused him to hemorrhage to death in rush-hour traffic on Highway 92 here in the Bay Area. He never regained consciousness and it turned my entire family’s lives upside down, including my immigrant mother who was somewhat lost without him. I had no choice but to step up and protect her and her household with my two younger siblings, so I grew up very fast knowing at that moment what I wanted to concentrate on with my activism when I went to law school (I was still in college on the other side of the country).

Activism, Tobacco

Vallejo Tobacco Retail License First Reading

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I spoke on the consent item with Vallejo receiving about $930,000 in California Department of Justice funds to facilitate the forthcoming Tobacco Retail License.

I also spoke on the action item regarding the first reading of the TRL.

While it isn’t the most robust TRL I had hoped for, finally MY CITY and a second jurisdiction in Solano County (the largest city by far) has now started the process of addressing the historically high commercial tobacco youth sales rates that had no enforcement. This TRL will reduce blights and food deserts, and facilitate far fewer youth from becoming addicts who will die miserably after suffering from tobacco-related illness.

I spoke on the consent calendar and the specific action calendar item with many colleagues and amazing Vallejo youth (some as young as 13). The hashing out of some of the details by the council was frustrating, but at least it’s a pretty strong TRL. The one-time seven-year grace period with which to sell the businesses with the tobacco license exemption to strangers is at least a date certain (January 1, 2032). Still, the licenses to sell to close family members are in perpetuity, unfortunately. Still, we should be able to chip away at the 100 retailers and get it down to the goal of under 50, depending on the population of Vallejo at that time.

I’m very disappointed at the lack of understanding of the penalty structure by most city council members. More years during which time to accumulate the penalties is actually better for enforcement. Still, the council decided only to make the retailers forego the privilege of transferring the license if they are caught three times in one year. Without even ONE mandated check on businesses per year, and all the whining about the lack of resources and the challenges of hiring a coalition partner like Bay Area Community Resources, the odds of any of these bad actor retailers getting caught three times in a year before the tabulation resets is extremely unlikely. We’d have to have the efficiency of the best surgeon to accomplish that kind of monitoring of a single retailer.

Entire discussion on the TRL.

Friends, HSNB

My friend, Miss Vallejo Tri-City!

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Congratulations to my friend and HSNB Volunteer (that’s how I originally met her) Tonya Johnson on winning the title of Miss Vallejo Tri-City!!! She’s an amazing and well-traveled young lady with a passion for animals, so I know she is very deserving of this opportunity.

Empress Theatre, November 18, 2024.

Several weeks ago we ran into each other at a mayoral candidate’s forum.

Taken October 2, 2024.

Fire, Home & Garden

Filipino Tapestry

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Thanks Patrick Sheehan! The Filipino traditional dance tapestry that my parents had bought when we lived in Spain in the 1970’s has arrived. The original one with the blue background survived my mom’s fire in 2016 and was then professionally cleaned. However, it was then incinerated in my fire in January. Now it is officially replaced thanks to Patrick’s efforts in finding this redder, reflective version. It’s still very nostalgic for my siblings and me. The fact that I have a Filipino partner now makes it even more cool. The pictures below demonstrate what it looked like with my cathedral ceiling before the fire. When my house is renovated and I move home I intend to replace it with this new one and uplight it with my smart home at sunset every day like I used to do. It was really cool to look up and see this when one walked into the foyer, even though it was nerve-wracking getting that high on a ladder to hang it.

Nature, Rowing

20241117 Row

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This morning’s row had some excitement. We could see snow on Mount Tamalpais in the distance, but much closer a seal was sitting on a rock, similar to the picture I took last year on Christmas Eve from my kayak. Unfortunately, I only got one shot of the seal before we had to get back to practice, but we saw it move and we didn’t want to disturb it by going too close.

If you look carefully at the mountain peaks, there is snow yonder!

Snow and seals may be in the distance in the rest of the photos from today.

Rowing

20241116 Row

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It was a bit brisk when we started, but let there be no doubt that we row YEAR-ROUND. I’m thankful that we are able to do that due to our wonderful climate. Believe me, the chill goes away once you start rowing hundreds of times within an hour. During this row, I got some cool shots of the other boat “Joey” from Jeryn Lynn.

Home & Garden

A Tomato Grows in Vallejo

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It’s so cool that they can still grow this time of year. I know one tomato may not seem like a big deal to other people, but this plant was almost discarded as a weed from a “junk pile” of compost buckets at the site where my house is being renovated after the fire. We got one cherry tomato from this plant already, which we split and savored, but this second one is now coming in, so it’s all a bonus to us. You can barely see it coming in at the top of the plant in this photo.

Fire, Home & Garden, Pets

Ottoman Repairs from Fire

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Some of my patio furniture (that I loved placing all over the backyard so there were places to nap in the sun as it moved across the sky) was completely incinerated in the fire. Some of it was untouched, but others were scorched and damaged, perhaps even in the chaos of the firemen and moving things around for the first construction to secure the house.

While they look like simple pieces of furniture, I’ve enjoyed having these large ottomans to turn a regular couch or chair into a lounge. They are also specifically enjoyed by my dogs, including the blind ones. However, when you have blind dogs there are certain furniture accommodations one should make.

First, you should not arbitrarily move furniture around if you don’t have to. You should also not have ROCKING chairs that are likely to catch tails or paws. Gliders are far safer! Lastly, you should not have cushions that slip off as soon as a dog jumps on them. That was one of my biggest problems with these.

Below are all the steps I took to fix them after the fire, but here is a gallery of the damage and fixes.

Both of these ottomans had one or two legs each which had broken. I was going to throw them out, but one by one I fixed all the problems.

  1. Legs Broken Off – With at least one of the ottomans I could sit it down and have it look even, but the moment it moved a millimeter, it was lopsided again. One morning I thought I had nothing to lose, so I took very long screws that were literally discarded in the garden of my home under construction and drilled them straight up the legs for these, not caring what they would look like or if they would scrape on the concrete, and regardless of how much rattan material had come loose on the leg. To my amazement that fixed all the legs and so the lopsidedness was gone on both ottomans. If the screw head gets scraped, no big deal.
  2. Stains, Rips & Residue – As you can see in the pictures, some of the cushions through the fire were scorched so they have holes. Some of them were ripped and torn. Turning them over to make sure their “best sides” were showing works well, but then some of the residue from the damn velcro pads remained. Velcro is what these pieces originally came with to supposedly hold them in place, which never made sense to me because the cushion covers were sold as “washable.” How are you going to wash something that necessarily needs to be stuck with velcro in five different places? Not only that, but when I put my legs on the former velcro sticky areas, it stuck to my pants. I’m sure it would have stuck to my legs and was probably unpleasant for the dogs as well, so something had to be done. I used AI to search best ways to remove sticky residue from fabric and one of the options was to use baking soda. I had accidentally ordered a lifetime supply of baking soda, so I liberally applied some and used a silicon scrubbing pad to remove almost all of it. The footprints for these velcro patches remain, but the appearance of that side of the pillow is still devoid of tears and scorched holes, so it reminds me less of the fire and is still the best choice to be facing upwards. You have to struggle to see the orange discoloration from the fire on the pillow when it is face down, so that is also a good argument for the former velcro side being up. So much of the residue is gone, that one can now comfortably use the cushion without any resistance.
  3. Adherence to Rattan – Speaking of velcro, as I mentioned, the velcro that came with them was always insufficient and never quite seemed to fit right. The pillows always seemed to be askew. Recently, when I bought brand new ottomans with glider lounge chairs I noticed that these new ones came with clasps like in the picture below. I thought to myself how brilliant it was. I Youtubed and Google’d and AI’d the best way to buy them, but the problem persisted on how to adhere them to the cushions. Then I came across this guy in the video below, whose cushions would always fly away. I also live in a windy area and have learned that especially in Spring I need to weigh or tie things down. Well his solution of using a sharp object like an ice pick (I used a small Philips screwdriver) to poke a hole next to the piping of the pillow at a diagonal, allows one to poke a zip tie through. I then put the zip tie through the rattan and voila, no more floating pillows! My blind dog definitely appreciates this when she jumps up on the ottoman and everything stays in place!