Happy Birthday Domesticus!

birthday cake

Domesticus turns one today.

One year since I’ve had this blog! The year has whizzed by, but somehow it seems like I’ve had the blog forever.

I’m having so much fun with it. I’ve learned so much.

I’ve explored everything from classic cars to hackers and their wiles in selling diet pills to chicken parades, with a couple of fake celebrity interviews thrown into the mix just for the hell of it. Who knows what I’ll write about next?

There’s nothing like having a blog, your own domain where you are CEO and CIO and editor-in-chief and star writer. You can do anything you want…but with no deadlines or financial rewards, sometimes it’s hard to get started. Once you do, though, it’s hard to imagine a life without your blog. To me, not having it would feel like losing my vocal cords. An irreparable, catastrophic, panic-inducing loss.

I should blog more regularly. But even if I don’t,  just having the ability to do it at all is magical.

If you’re thinking of starting a blog but aren’t sure who your readers are, don’t know if you have the time, don’t know how to set it up, or have any number of other excuses, you should ignore them, make like a Nike ad, and JUST DO IT!!! Once you do, there’s no going back.

That said, I also have to admit that the subjects I write about and the reasons people find my blog are often highly divergent.

Over the past year, 11,084 visitors came to Domesticus, led here by an enormous variety of search terms. But a common denominator does stand out. I guess you could call it the lowest common denominator. Let me explain.

Back in May, 2012,  I wrote a post about a plant I grew from seed. I’m not much of a gardener, so it was inspiring to me to watch this plant grow…and grow…and grow. One day our landlady came over and saw it, and seemed taken aback. Later I realized why: my plant–lupine, a hearty Northwest native–happens to resemble a certain other plant that some people use for smoking purposes.

So I blogged about that.

Well!

ONE blog post that mentioned the m-word has brought me more visitors than any other subject by a mile. Actually, more like 400 miles. For example, w–d plant was a search term that led 142 p–heads to my blog. M— dragged in another 128. Other variations on this theme pulled in another hundred or so.

And then there were the doubtlessly disappointed, ahem, cultivators who turned to me for specific growing advice: w—plant growing (7), m— flower (7) c—s— flower (hint: Latin name) (7), and even w—plant pictures (6).

Sorry, guys. I don’t even smoke the stuff–though it’s now legal in Seattle–much less grow it.

On the other hand, 110 people who haven’t already bookmarked my site typed the letters d-o-m-e-s-t-i-c-u-s into the search bar just to find me. Thank you!!

Many other people did specific searches for the classic car models I mentioned in posts about the annual Magnolia Car Show, and were rewarded with Bigfoot’s dazzling photos.

And 28 of you came looking for fake celebrity interviews, which I have only done two of, but I can’t wait to do more.

It’s my blog, dammit, and I can say which I have only done two of  if I want to! (See do anything you want above.)

Seriously, it’s been a long, strange, and wonderful trip along with the stoners and the spammers (who get caught by my spam filter like hair in a drain strainer) and everyone else who has come to visit me over the past year.

Thank you so much for coming!

Except for writing more often, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Though I might stay off the topic of gardening for awhile.

 

For Whom the School Bell Tolls

school house

Who are Seattle’s kids counting on? demands the oversize glossy color brochure, illustrated with cute kiddie drawings, that arrived in my mailbox today. Renew Seattle School Levies–Vote YES!

The brochure is from Schools First, whose website describes the group as “the campaign organization that works to help pass Seattle School levies.”

Not that passing school levies is a cause that needs much help. They’ve gotten voter support regular as the rain here–including mine–in recession or boomtime. After all, what is more important than education, and who doesn’t want to help kids?

This time,  the school district wants money f0r a variety of things, including building six new schools–at a cost of $42 million per school.

That’s at least 20 percent higher than normal, according to the Seattle Times.

How can a school building cost that much? the Times asks. Larger schools, higher construction costs. (Why?) And then there’s this:

Finally, there are “soft costs,” for planning, design, permitting, taxes and reserves.

Seattle says its soft costs would be 51.75 percent of its construction costs, adding about $14 million.

 

 

 

I have a hard time with soft costs.

And I have a hard time with Magnolia Elementary, a school in my neighborhood that has sat vacant for 20 years and deteriorated so badly that it has lost most of its value and may be beyond repair. If you owned a building, would you let this happen?

If you live in Seattle, you do own it. Your taxes are paying for it, and for several other schools left to rot. Not sold when they were no longer needed, not rented, just left to rot. Now the same people who “managed” them want more money. The old schools are decaying because of their neglect, so they want to build new ones.

Hmmm.

Still, I could almost shrug my shoulders and vote Yes anyway, after seeing the pathetic pictures of the speech therapist with no office and the hideous portable classrooms kids have to put up with.

Expensive? Well, why shouldn’t we spend a little more and give our kids nicer-than-average buildings? Too much bureaucracy and “soft costs”? Well, there’s bound to be some waste, nothing is perfect, and we shouldn’t punish our kids for the imperfections.

But what about this: a criminal investigation into Seattle Public Schools money that went to pay for work that was never done, at least not on school projects.

How much money are we talking about here?

Oh…$1.8 million or so. Give or take. Not that anyone at Seattle Public Schools is really counting. Arithmetic is a lesson you learn when you’re spending your own money. When it’s other people’s money, math skills tend to get weak, numbers fuzzy.

It’s my money they’re wasting and spending illegally.

That’s bad enough, but there’s something that bothers me even more, something that finally led me, after all these years, to vote No.

It’s not the money itself, but the values.

Should we open our pocketbooks unquestioningly to people who lie, cheat, and mismanage funds? Should we teach our kids that such behavior is OK, that the ends justify the means?

Who are Seattle’s kids counting on?

Let’s hope it’s not the people running the public schools.

 

New Year’s at the North Pole (aka Seattle) 2013

Who is that Eskimo?

Who is that Eskimo?

 

OK, it’s not really the North Pole. Though I’m dressed for it.

In fact, it’s not even freezing, nor even cold by Seattle’s standards. In our first winter living here, the winter of 2009, the mercury dropped to the single digits. Early mornings, driving to yoga, I thought How can anyone LIVE in weather like this?

So this New Year’s is…not that.

It just feels that way. I don’t know if it’s the humidity, the wind, both, or something else entirely but even with temperatures in the upper 30s and lower 40s,  it’s bone-chillin’ cold!

My friend Linda, who is from Canada no less, says the winter weather here has two speeds: warm, gray, and rainy or clear and cold.

It’s clear and cold.

But as you can see, I’m bundled up like an Eskimo in my puffer coat, fake-fur hat, scarf, and fur-lined gloves. Enjoying it. Except for my fingers, which are like icicles no matter what.

At least the clear air is good for photographs. Bigfoot got some nice ones, which I’ve posted below.

Enjoy, and here’s to the New Year–Skoal!!

Mt. Rainier rising over the Port of Seattle

Mt. Rainier rising over the Port of Seattle

 

Ducks at the Ballard Locks

Ducks at the Ballard Locks

 

Tree full of crows

Tree full of crows

Crow in winter

One flies away.

 

 

 

I’m telling the world: He said he fired his Chinese employee for beating him at ping pong!

It was a joke, though.

ping pong

I’m at the gym, gliding along on the elliptical with my brain set in writerly mode, looking around and observing people. That guy on the treadmill in front of me, could he be a Marine? Oh look, there’s my friend from church, the one who speaks with a lilting accent, I must try to remember where she’s from, is it Panama? And behind me, a man with a booming voice is having a jokey conversation with a friend as they walk along the main corridor.

I miss most of the conversation, but when the man says “I’ll fire her!” in his booming voice and he and his friend burst out laughing, I swivel my torso around to get a look at him. It’s an awkward swivel if you’re on the elliptical, and what do I gain from it? Nothing, only This is what two businessmen sharing a laugh together look like, this is what the man with a booming voice looks like. He is a rather slight fellow with a mustache, as it turns out. His build doesn’t match his voice at all.

I pedal on and forget about him until a few minutes later, when he suddenly appears at my elbow, lightly touching it. At first, I don’t recognize him.

Excuse me ma’am,  just want to make sure you know I was kidding.

Kidding about what? And who is this guy? I wonder.

You know, when I said that about firing my employee.

Oh, that guy. I didn’t hear the whole conversation, I say. I was just being nosy, pay no mind, I don’t say.

Well, I was telling my friend my Chinese employee beat me at ping pong. She beat the pants off me, actually. But I wouldn’t fire her anyway, she’s the best employee I’ve got.

Oh, I say. I laugh a little, and he is gone. It takes me a moment to figure out that when he boomed I’ll fire her!, he was referring to her thrashing him at ping pong. Now the joke makes sense.

But his behavior astonishes me. After reflecting on his words, he came all the way back across the room to the woman who had turned around on the treadmill to listen to him–me. To explain himself. As though he had to. To me, a nosy nobody.

Why?

Did he think, Who is that woman who swiveled around to look at me, could she be a friend of my employee’s who will tell her about the conversation?

But even if that were the case, the employee would surely get the joke. That she might worry her boss would really fire her because she beat him at ping pong doesn’t seem like a realistic possibility to me. I’m sure they joked about it at the time, especially given his jovial, outgoing personality.

What else, then?

He wants to make absolutely sure nobody ever thinks he would fire his Chinese employee for beating him at ping pong. Not even the nosy lady on the elliptical whom he’ll probably never see again–nobody.

Because you possibly could, if you were particularly obtuse, interpret his joke as a racist or sexist remark. And racist and sexist are about the two scariest epithets you can hurl at someone these days.

I want to run after him and shout, Wait, it’s a joke, I get it! I want to shout, It’s none of my business anyway! I want to shout, Even if you meant it literally, don’t apologize, you have freedom of speech!

But it’s too late, he’s gone, leaving me wondering, as I pedal on, about freedom of speech and what it means. Doesn’t it mean some people have a right to express their racist, sexist opinions, even if they are highly offensive to other people?  If the offenders aren’t at the workplace, where their comments have a direct effect on the people who work with them, the answer is yes. We have the right. But what good is it if we’re afraid to use it?

This guy was not only not offensive, he was so worried about being perceived that way that he felt he had to explain himself, to protect himself. Presumably against the possible pc patrol on the elliptical.

And if we feel we have to police ourselves from people at the gym, how free are we?

 

 

 

 

The Pumpkin Man

The Pumpkin Man

Every fall in the Seattle neighborhood where I live, pumpkin vines begin to sprout all across the lawn and up the front entrance of the house of the Pumpkin Man.

The vines are fruitful and multiply, and in the weeks leading up to Halloween, the Pumpkin Man’s yard becomes a child’s dream of giant orange and white delights.

Big pumpkins–some weighing up to 500 pounds. Messy pumpkins, sprawling willy nilly all over the place like toys that refuse to be put away. Pumpkins that suggest your front yard does not have to be a place of carefully-tended rose bushes and grass that must be weeded and mowed and leaves that must be raked. No, it can be fun and wild and free, like the setting of a Dr. Seuss book.

Well, maybe not your actual mom’s lawn. But maybe your lawn, maybe someday. The potential is there.

In reality, growing a yard full of huge pumpkins that later must be mulched or recycled or buried is a lot of work. Why does the Pumpkin Man do it?

“I like seeing people enjoy it, I like seeing a smile on their face,” he says.

But exactly why he got started, even he is not sure. It was back in 1970, and Greg Shaw, who was not yet the Pumpkin Man, had just left the Army. He was a tenant in a small house and planted some jade plants in the yard. Then he built a small greenhouse for them.

“I just liked growing things,” he says.

He had never grown pumpkins before, but for no particular reason planted some Big Max pumpkin seeds in a pot. They grew to a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk height of 20 feet. They produced a 100-pound pumpkin. Shaw was hooked.

But he had to leave his new hobby behind for several years while living in an apartment and attending the University of Washington. Then in 1981 he moved back to the Magnolia neighborhood where he’d lived before, and this time, planted Big Max seeds in his yard. Big pumpkins came up. They were even more unusual a sight then then they are now, and he got quite a reaction. Every year, his pumpkin patch grew larger. Then he moved into a different house across the alley and started again.

Shaw became a real estate agent. He told a successful colleague what he was known for, and asked the man’s opinion.

“Do you want to be thought of as a Pumpkin Man or a Realtor?” the colleague asked.

He abandoned his pumpkin growing for four years while growing his career as a realtor. Then he started planting his seeds again.

His pumpkins are an eye-opener here in the city, but when he took one weighing 170 pounds to the rural Puyallup Fair one year, it failed to win a prize. The winner was a 569-pounder. Since then, Shaw’s pumpkins have hit 500 pounds, but he doesn’t enter competitions anymore. Some growers have now produced fruits surpassing a ton.

Size is not the point for Shaw. For him, it’s all about the reaction he gets.

One year, some 30 years back, there were pumpkin thieves afoot, and he placed a baby monitor in his yard to watch for prowlers. His footage didn’t show any, but it did expose plenty of people screaming and yelling with excitement at his pumpkins.

Cool!!! they would say. Or Holy ____!!

The Pumpkin Man does not use expletives. But he understands how his yard causes others to do so, and it’s OK.

There’s something magical about the pumpkins, and it’s not just their size, it’s their rate of achieving it. When Shaw says he likes watching them grow, he means it almost literally.

“There was one around 20 years ago that grew ten feet in 24 hours. That’s half an inch an hour,” he says.

The hardest parts of pumpkin growing are weeding the plants, and cleaning it all up when the harvest is over.

Shaw can’t quite claim to be an organic gardener–his fertilizer contains a fungicide–but he uses no pesticides. His two cats take care of rats. Occasionally he has a problem with squirrels who don’t quite get what a pumpkin is.

“They think it’s a big nut or something and they try to chew on it.”

The Halloween harvest ends with a ghoulish chain saw massacre as Shaw cuts up the fruit and fills his truck with over 2,000 pounds of it, headed for the yard waste recycling center. Or sometimes he buries it, as he did last year. One year, he donated pumpkin guts to a food bank to make pumpkin pie.

By April 21st, he’ll be ready to sow another year’s crop. As long as he’s able, he’ll keep doing it.

One time a man came by with his child, and Shaw heard him say, “When I was growing up, my parents brought me here to see the giant pumpkins.”

That’s motivation. Two generations so far, and the Pumpkin Man’s still growing strong.

To sell your house or get free pumpkin seeds, contact Greg Shaw at 206.579.5475206.579.5475, gregshaw@windermere.com.

Pumpkin fieldpumpkinspumpkin growing on vinepumpkinpumpkin field in front of house

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Seven Years on a 31-Foot Boat

Today I thought I’d share with you the adventures of my friend Wendy Hinman, who spent seven years traveling around the world on a 31-foot boat with her husband.

Then she wrote a book about it. It’s a good book, too!

Listen to Wendy describe some of her adventures in this video.

After all that, Wendy and Garth are planning to do it yet again! But on a larger boat next time.

I know I’m too much of a wimp, but what about you? Do you you dream of sailing around the world? Would you dare to actually try it?

A Business by Any Other Name

What’s in a business name?

Plenty, it turns out. Especially for women.

That’s what I realized after talking to a successful entrepreneur about my writing and editing business, which I named Teresa Meek Communications. A simple name that says who I am and what I do. Does the job just fine, or so I thought.

But no, my friend says, my first name makes it sound too personal, too much about me, not businesslike enough. I need to take my first name off and call it Meek Communications–or something else entirely. He was quite insistent about it. And he runs a multi-million-dollar business, so he should know.

Though I already have a website, a logo, and business cards,  making a change from Teresa Meek Communications to Meek Communications is not such a big deal. If I do it, my friend says, I will make more money. People will pay more for Meek than they will for Teresa. Meek sounds like it could be a company full of smart people, instead of someone who’s clearly a sole operator. And Meek is serious. They might not even realize it on a conscious level, but potential customers would take more seriously a company using a last name or a business name than one with a first name in the title. He didn’t say so, but I suspect having a female first name in the title compounds the problem. Or perhaps even is the problem.

I think of Mrs. Smith’s cookies. The Mrs. makes it personal and clearly feminine, but even she didn’t use a first name in the business title. But what about Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix and syrup? Hannah’s Cupcakes? Wendy’s hamburgers?

So there, I want to shout. They use first names in the food business. Female first names, too.

But maybe that’s because women have traditionally been associated with the kitchen. Everybody’s mom is the best cook in the world, so it stands to reason that a product or a company with a female first name would sound homey. As in familiar, homemade, fresh from the oven, delicious. A selling point, no question.

Outside the food business, though, I have to admit I’m initially stumped. There’s Barbie, but that’s a product, made by Mattel.

I’ve got it: Suze Orman, who after first working as a waitress, then making her way up the ranks at Merrill Lynch and Prudential, founded her own empire and named it the Suze Orman Financial Group.

She used her first name, and a diminutive-sounding one at that, but it’s a Group. A bunch of smart people, as my friend would say.

Like the Oprah Winfrey Network. Martha Stewart Omnimedia.

I could be a Group too. I’ve seen women in PR and communications use this trick. To take a hypothetical example, someone named Beth Jones calls her business Jones Media Group. Sets up an 800 line with people answering the phone for the Group. Must be a bunch of smart people working at that busy company. Who would ever know it’s just Beth?

It doesn’t work for me, though.  I don’t judge people who do it. I get it. But we all have our own comfort level when it comes to putting our best foot forward, and being a Group exceeds mine.

But you don’t have to do all that, my friend says. Forget the Group, forget the phone line. Just a simple name change.

I’ll think about it, I say.

I think about it. I decide my friend is probably right.

But I can’t do it.

Like most women, I identify much more with my first name than with my last. For one thing, my last name is my husband’s name. I wasn’t born with it and didn’t grow up with it.

But then, I wouldn’t feel comfortable using my maiden name either. Though it was my last name for 20-some years, it always felt like my father’s name more than mine.

The only name I feel comfortable using is Teresa. It’s who I am. Always has been, always will be. For my website, I even tried to get Teresa.com by writing to the owner, who doesn’t appear to be using it anymore. She didn’t respond, and who could blame her? If I ever got Myfirstname.com, I’d never give it up either, even if I stopped using my website. Even if the whole internet went down forever.

Next, I considered other names. Having a business name that has nothing to do with me is fine. It’s just the last-name thing that’s a problem. I thought of cutesy names like The Write Stuff (taken), SEO-driven names with Freelancer in the title, names with Writer, Writing, and Business in them. But none of them felt like names I wanted to be associated with.

I seem to be stuck with Just Teresa. Now there’s a name! Personally, I love it. But would you hire a Just Beth or a Just Rick? Probably not. Sounds like they don’t think much of the service they provide, so why should you?

I’m proud of the writing and editing service I provide. I would never denigrate it, but I don’t want to boast about it either. I’m fortunate because I’ve found something to do that suits me perfectly. It’s really an extension of who I am. Maybe that’s why the only name that seems to work is the one I’ve got.

So it will have to do. At least until the day comes when I can’t handle everything myself anymore.

It’s hard to envision a Network or Omnimedia in my future, but then, you never know. I started off as a waitress. Like Suze.

 

 

 

 

 

Magnolia Car Show 2012, Part 6: Cars from the 1960s and later

In the 1960s, cars were still interesting and pretty to look at. After that, it all went downhill.

At least that’s my opinion. But for all your die-hard car fans out there, here are the later-model cars from the show.

 

1960 Lincoln MKv 430 V8

1960 Lincoln MKv 430 V8

1960 Lincoln MKv 430 V8 - Side View
1960 Lincoln MKv 430 V8 – Side View

1970 Dodge Challenger
1970 Dodge Challenger

2009 Dodge Challenger
2009 Dodge Challenger

1977 Pontiac TransAm

1977 Pontiac TransAm

Hood ornament, 1988 Rolls Royce Silver Sprint
Hood ornament, 1988 Rolls Royce Silver Sprint. This car’s for sale for just $24,950.

2004 Ford Thunderbird

2004 Ford Thunderbird

2004 Ford Thunderbird - Detail

2004 Ford Thunderbird. Notice the art-deco-style circular rear window

That's all folks! See you next year!

That’s all folks! See you next year!