It's About Time for a Tim Update

Remember Tim? The rather overwhelming remodeling project we have going on here at Woodhaven? The one we started in March? The one that we left the country for two months to escape?

Yeah, he’s still here. But he’s starting to pack his bags to finally leave. YAHOO!!!

Ugh. And that was with a dust barrier.

I haven’t posted much about Tim because, well, we weren’t here. And blessedly, there wasn’t much to write about.

While we were frolicking about, Randy very kindly sent us progress photos, and Mel texted a few updates. Largely, we went on the “no news is good news” theory and correctly assumed that our implicitly trusted contractors were handling any minor questions that arose.

Tim (and Randy) in late May right before
we left for the 33-day cruise.

I spent a few panicked weeks from afar after the walls were painted. The warm yellow and soothing blue that we so carefully chose suddenly looked BOLD and BRIGHT in the photos. I kept telling myself to trust the process and our decisions. To trust the extensive time I had spent with the "La Luna Amarilla" and "Vast Sky" paint chips placed in so many locations in different lighting at different times of the day.

It's crazy how different the color is even in
different parts of the room. Regardless, it's
a lot of yellow. Or, rather, La Luna Amarilla.

At times the blue is even bluer.
But this was bluer than I expected. 

The very late night we returned to Woodhaven, I tried to sneak a peek at the yellow to calm my nerves. But our back door wouldn’t open. I was too tired to sleuth (it was an over-achieving floor trim piece that has since been replaced), so I waited until the next morning to look. I sort of freaked out. The yellow and blue were indeed bolder and brighter than the little one-inch swatches had promised. I cringed.

Even more yellow. And you can see a VERY
blue wall of our breakfast nook poking around the 
corner. Also note the first 4 panels of the cabinetry
compared to the second 4 panels. We call this
foreshadowing.

I told myself again to trust the process and our decisions. And thankfully, as the swirly quartz countertops arrived and black appliances were installed and the next round of protective floor covering was pulled up, the colors – and my nerves – calmed. I now love the yellow and blue, even though we still have another week or two to go before I see all the decisions come together.

It’s been hard being home the past few weeks. Our wisdom to leave for 2 months was confirmed quickly, as we had multiple contractors flowing in and out, a driveway filled with construction trucks, so much noise and dust, and the need to deftly bounce from decision to task to conundrum. By Day 2 of Re-Entry, we were pretty fried and longing to be back on a cruise ship. Jet lag didn't help.

Countertop installers. I think the 
electrician was also there that day.

On Day 6 of Re-Entry, we got new carpeting in our master closet. We had quite a bit of surplus from the recarpeting of our dining room, so it seemed genius to replace the 22-year-old stuff in our closet “for free.” Genius until we realized we had to completely empty the closet to avoid covering all our clothes, shoes, and accessories in carpet dust. Fabulous.

Still jet-lagged and trying to quickly regroup to fly to Southern California for a family situation on Day 5 of Re-Entry, we interrupted laundry and breathing to relocate our closet to the only surfaces we have access to: our bedroom. We stayed in a hotel for two nights until we put the newly carpeted closet back together. It looks fantastic! And it is so delightfully squishy! So as the frantic Closet Relocation memories fade, I can say that the effort was totally worth it. Especially since we will not have to do it again for another 20 years. 

Not shown: the source of me finally
conceding I perhaps have a lot of shoes.

I’m profoundly relieved to say that Tim has behaved quite well throughout this adventure. The biggest surprises have come from the cabinet maker, and all since we have returned from our travels.

One wood panel was stained incorrectly and had to be removed, remade, and reinstalled. I felt sorry for the uninstaller, as that panel was never supposed to budge. 

When we were texted the photo, we hoped it was
just a cell phone lighting thing. Nope. Not only was
the stain different, the finish was different, too.
We're all mystified how it got as far as being
installed without anyone noticing.

We also discovered a section of the toe kick under the wall oven was strangely stripey. That fix is still in the works, along with some missing hardware and a few other decorative pieces. I was starting to lose faith in the cabinet folks, but Randy assured me they are very good and are making fewer mistakes than average on a kitchen remodel. Yikes!! I clearly have high expectations, which I thought were just normal expectations. Sigh.

The best guess is the stain wasn't dry when the
board was put on a rack.

In MUCH better news, there have been significant signs in the past couple of days that we are nearing the finish line. YAHOOOOOO!!!!

Melissa (BLESS HER!) started the “post-construction deep clean” today. She will be back tomorrow. And probably a third day. So. Much. Dust.

We got the green light to schedule Yury to come next week to move back all the heavy furniture he Jenga-ed into our living room back on March 26. Almost exactly 4 months of using our living room as a storage unit.

Our Amazon account has been re-awakened with deliveries arriving soon of curtains and chair pads and placemats. I will get to nest and decorate soon!

And today our bedroom door to the rest of the house was unsealed! We are free to move about the cabin!! We don’t have to traipse through the backyard to leave the house, go upstairs, do laundry, answer the front door, or get a snack out of the garage fridge! The freedom is heady!!! I can retire my extra house key and flashlight!! The exclamation points are not an exaggeration! This is a GLORIOUS DAY!

I never appreciated how awesome
this door is when it is open.

With any luck, we will have Woodhaven largely back together by the time my beloved Fair starts on August 7 (FAIR!!). I’m already having chats with my eager, goal-oriented self about the importance of balancing what my heart wants with what my body can do. Prayers needed and appreciated!

The painters are coming tomorrow to deal with all
the little blue tape markers.

Here’s the Story – Part 2

Back in February 2020, right before the world got super duper weird, Rob gave me one of the best gifts EVER. He drove me to North Hollywood to see the Brady Bunch house.

I won’t go into detail – my February 6, 2020 blog about that visit can fill you in. Suffice it to say, I am a HUGE Brady Bunch fan. HUGE. Enormous. Big Time Brady Fan Girl right here.

Back in 2020, the best a superfan could do was drive up to the house and gaze at it from across the street. There was a security guard positioned in the driveway preventing any lingering, and absolutely no approaching the front door. But that was good enough, since visiting the interior was completely incomprehensible.  

Fast-forward to September 2023. HGTV decided it had gotten all the ratings it could from totally renovating the house’s interior to match the studio sets the series had been filmed on. The network put the iconic house on the market and a fellow Brady Bunch Superfan named Tina snatched it up for a groovy $3.2 million. Reportedly Tina’s husband, the former CEO of HBO, had only one question for her: “Have you lost your mind?” Apparently he thought his Gen X wife wanted to live in the house.

Oh, to be so lucky!

So what did Tina actually want to do with the house? Well, first she got it designated as a Historical-Cultural Monument by the City of Los Angeles. Then she decided to share it with fellow Brady Superfans.

The Bradys' house is the first property in
Los Angeles to get this protection
as a filming location outside of a studio lot.
The designation protects the outside AND
the inside. How groovy is that?!

WHAT?!?

Yes, you can buy tickets – with proceeds going to Tina’s favorite animal shelter – for a one-hour visit inside the totally furnished Brady Bunch house!! Truly! Yes, I pretty much bounced off the couch chanting, "Take my money!" when I learned this.

When I first read about this opportunity, I thought for sure it was only for fancy people. Connected people. Industry people. Not for a 58-year-old woman whose only Hollywood connection is once posing for a photo with Ted Danson and an alpaca.

Back in 2011 when we were all
much younger.

Because I have the most amazing and supportive husband EVER, today I was a passenger princess as Rob drove across the trafficky Los Angeles metro to make my dreams come true.

Yes, we spent an hour INSIDE the Brady Bunch House today! IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!

I was just a few yards ahead of Rob out of 
unbridled excitement to GET INSIDE!!

When I knocked on the front door as instructed, it slowly opened to reveal a friendly woman in a blue maid’s dress welcoming us inside. We were asked to take off our shoes, wear provided socks and booties, and not touch anything or sit on the furniture. “Treat it as a museum.” We could, however, take photos with abandon and wander on our own.

The door knobs are PERFECT!
It felt surreal just standing there.

Fortunately, all of this information had been provided ahead of time via email. Because once I was inside The Bradys’ house, my listening ears turned off. Instead, I heard the voices of my adopted TV family speaking a mishmash of dialogue from 117 memorized episodes. I spent the next hour walking around with an enormous smile, wide eyes, and a couple of times, tears.

OH. MY. GOSH!!!!!!!!!

I was not expecting to feel so emotional in The Bradys’ house.

I gasped at the sight of The Staircase. I smiled at the couch in Mike’s den where Jan sat and lamented, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” I stared at the groovy 1960s rectangular art at the foot of the staircase, realizing how it is instantly identifiable by any fan. It was all absolutely perfect.

I wanted to touch EVERYTHING!

There it is!! Every Brady fan knows
that paneling!

The tears came when I entered the Brady girls’ bedroom upstairs. I stood in the middle of the room, taking in the three pink bedspreads, the giraffe stuffed animal in the corner, Kitty Karry-All on Cindy’s bed. It was so familiar, so comfortable, so nostalgic. Suddenly, it struck me.

“Oh my gosh. I grew up in this bedroom.”

This was after the tears. And please ignore
the fashion booties.

And that was it. That was the emotion. The Brady House was home. My home. I grew up there. I watched multiple episodes every day after school for years. When I told my mother-in-law a few days ago that we were going to see the inside of the Brady Bunch house, she asked if there would be a tour guide. My reply? “I don’t need one!”

It was fascinating to me which rooms I felt the most drawn to. The girls’ bedroom was the strongest. The kitchen, too. And Mike and Carol’s bedroom. And the dining room table. And the couch in the living room.

I hate to cook and yet, I totally
wanted to hang out in this kitchen.

The screen behind us really got me. I have
no idea why. But wow, it was important
to me to see it.

Sadly, the best photo I have of the
dining room table. It was hard to balance
being present, being in awe, and being 
a photographer.

I wasn’t as emotionally drawn to Greg’s attic bedroom or the family room or the boys’ bedroom or the backyard. I have no idea why.

It took me about 30 minutes to take my first lap. I then sat on a step in the entryway and tried to be fully present in one of the most surreal moments of my life. It sort of worked.

I still can't believe I was there.

On my second lap, I tried to notice all the little Easter Eggs that were scattered around the house, each a reference to a well-known storyline.

The architectural drawings of Beebe Gallini’s powder puff-shaped factory. Marcia’s drawing of George Washington that was mistaken for Mrs. Denton. The box of Safe Detergent in the laundry room. The egg on the pylon at the front of Mike’s convertible. The stack of letters to “Dear Libby.” The book about Jesse James that got Bobby in trouble. The typewritten gossip column written by Peter. The silver anniversary platter. Alice’s white sneakers. Jan’s wig.

Mike's drafting table in his den!
The powder puff is on the left, the
plans on the right are HGTV's plans
for renovating the original structure.

Marcia drew George Washington.
Then Paula found it and added the unflattering
note about Mrs. Denton. Marcia was in 
BIG trouble when the teacher found it.
Luckily, Paula fessed up and all was well
within 24 minutes.

The letters each of the kids and Alice
wrote to an advice columnist.

Alice's Keds!

The recreation of the Bradys’ house was astounding. The attention to detail was incredible. I kept forgetting the series was not actually filmed in the house. It was so real, so perfect, so complete. I was even more incredulous when I was told that there was only one original item in the entire house; everything else had been tracked down through antique stores and online searches to replicate what had appeared on the show. The Love of Brady runs deep.

The red sleeping bag is the only 
original item. It was in the episode
where Marcia has a slumber party.

Rob and I were the last to leave. We found out that Tina allows a maximum of 8 people to come inside the house each day from 12:30-1:30pm. There were just two other couples walking around with us, equally mesmerized and lost in memories. We all looked about the same age, all giddy and appreciative. We were mostly quiet, with whispered, “OH, WOW!” and “Come look at this!” One woman softly laughed and asked, “Why are we so quiet?”

I smiled at her and answered, “Reverence.”

My 8-year-old and my 58-year-old
brains are both utterly flabbergasted
by this photo!!!

The Longest Day

As far as I know, nobody in my family was involved in D-Day on June 6, 1944. The closet possibility was my grandfather on my dad’s side. He was in the Navy at the time and was just 21 years old. But he was hanging out on a destroyer in the Pacific Ocean when the tide almost literally turned in World War II on the other side of the world.

Today – on the summer solstice, literally the longest day – Rob and I visited the beaches of Normandy, France. We docked in a town called Le Havre about 2 hours away. The port city is the second largest and busiest in France (Marseilles gets top honors), and it was entirely rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s since it was essentially flattened during WWII.

A division of Siemens is located at the Le Havre port.
They manufacture and export windmill blades.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Normandy.

A few weeks ago while at sea, I watched the D-Day movie “The Longest Day” to refresh my memory. By all accounts, the John Wayne/Henry Fonda classic is one of the most authentic depictions of the day that was both tragic and victorious. Today I was struck seeing geography, topography, and wartime artifacts that looked familiar from the movie but, more importantly, were authentic and untouched except by time.

Other than the vacation beach rentals, these 
cliffs are what the soldiers had to scale after
landing on the beaches.

A crater from a mortar. The landscape was
peppered with them.

A German bunker at Pointe du Hoc that
was critical for the Allies to take out
of commission. They were stunned to 
find it unoccupied and unarmed.

It felt heavy and creepy to have this view
from inside the bunker.

I saw a number of these jeeps motoring
around the area. I have no idea if they were
personal cars or tours.

Artifacts in a museum. It is still very common
for locals to find remnants of the war.

We spent most of our time on Omaha Beach – one of the two beaches that the Americans landed on (the other was Utah Beach – both named on the fly based on where a couple of proximate soldiers said they were from). The two beaches take up quite a bit of coastline – about 15 miles. Utah Beach saw about 200 casualties on D-Day; “Bloody Omaha” saw nearly 3,000.

Standing at Pointe du Hoc looking west towards
Utah Beach.

Standing at Pointe du Hoc looking east towards
Omaha Beach.

We didn’t see the beaches stormed by the British troops (Gold, Juno, and Sword – all named for fish, with Juno replacing Jelly since that name was far too cheerful). Instead, we spent time at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial where over 9,000 bodies are buried, not all of them identified.

Now is probably a good time for a map.

Part of the wall listing the 304 names of
military personnel who are missing in
action as a part of Operation Overlord
(the codename for the Battle of Normandy)

View of Omaha Beach from the Cemetary

Most American military people buried here were killed on
D-Day or in the battle that followed. Others who died
during the ensuing fighting during WWII are also
buried here at the choice of their families.

Most of the buried have Christian 
crosses as headstones. There are 151 Jewish
Stars of David. No other religions
were recognized at the time.

Unidentified bodies have markers that read
"Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God"
There are 304 of these headstones.

I was surprised to learn that the Cemetery is considered American land. It was given to the United States by France in honor of the American role and losses on D-Day, and to allow proper commemoration and memorialization of the area. There’s some nitpicky legal stuff, but the gist is, for a brief time today, we were back in the good ol’ US of A.

Rob and I were two of only three Americans on our tour of 14. Since our ship is predominantly Australian, today’s Normandy tours were uncharacteristically small since most Normandy tourists are American, British, or Canadian. Most of my Aussie cruise-mates melted in Paris instead (heatwave currently hitting most of France, except, blessedly, Normandy).

Feelings of pride, patriotism, and respect swelled as I walked through the cemetery. I took photos, I stared at the seemingly endless rows of marble crosses, and I tried to understand what had happened on the ground I was standing on.

Then – as part of a nearby ceremony – the United States National Anthem started playing, followed by Taps. As the evocative songs played, I stopped, stared at the two American flags lightly billowing at the front of the cemetery, put my hand over my heart, and silently honored the lives that had been sacrificed for freedom and peace. But to be honest, I still didn’t really understand.

Omaha Beach was very strange.

The beach itself is lovely. The tide was out, so it was an impressively wide, flat, yellow swath of sand that stretched for about 5 miles. The cliffs above were beautiful limestone covered with green grasses, and the waves at the shoreline looked calm and inviting.

It really is a beautiful beach.

So it should not have surprised me that families were making sandcastles and couples were having picnics and dogs were chasing balls on Omaha Beach.

But it did.

The beach felt sacred. Many lives ended on that sand with horrible sounds and too much blood and survivors witnessing things they likely never talked about. Seeing the beach and the surrounding area now used as a sunny vacation destination and weekend getaway for Parisians jarred me.

But then I listened more closely. I heard people speaking English. Others were speaking French. A family was speaking German. All happily, all freely, all without fear of one another.

Maybe that – that shared freedom and carefree enjoyment of a beautiful sunny day on a beach – was the very best way to honor the land and lives sacrificed at Normandy.

Maybe I’m starting to understand.

I personally would have a hard time
walking past this on my way to set
up a beach umbrella.

"Omaha Beach Hotel & Golf"
It just sounds wrong.

The beach is right behind me. There had been homes
and structures lining the beach, but the Germans
destroyed them long before the Allies showed up.
These are now primarily vacation rentals.

A perfectly lovely little town nearby
where we had lunch. The area is
beautiful and reminded me a bit of
Whidbey Island in Washington state.

An old gun emplacement has been made into a
memorial and monument. Note the hang-gliders
on the right over the cliffs.

Smiling for photos felt weird.

Next stop: Bruges, Belgium!