My *%@&!# House Burned Down!

"I swear I'm going to have a f&*#ing aneurysm before this is over"

Those are the words I barked into the phone to the hapless demolition contractor last Monday morning. It was not quite 9 a.m. The contractor kind of had it coming yet kind of didn’t deserve it, but I had reached the end of my rope and being loudly expressive, shall we say, seemed the only way to get him to understand this.

 

Many of you have emailed me asking why I haven’t posted anything in more than a month. The answer is because not a goddamn thing has happened since the beginning of the year. Did I mention that this utter lack of any progress whatsoever has caused me to swear a lot? If you think I’m bad you should hear my neighbor Alice, who has uttered profanities that I didn’t even know existed.

 

The past 2+ months have been such an exercise in red tape, bureaucracy and total bullshit (oops, there I go again) that trying to write about it, which usually helps me, in this case only fueled frustration and aggravation that had already overshot levels I had previously not thought I could reach.

 

But since this episode possibly, maybe, perhaps seems to be nearing a close, making this more of a story than a rant, I will share:

 

Our tale begins in mid-December, when my insurance company and Alice's insurance company authorized the demolition of our houses. To save time and money we opted to demolish both houses simultaneously, using one contractor. How we each feel about the demolition of our burned-up homes is complicated and I’ll write about that some other time, but for the purposes of this episode it was a good thing as it signaled the first tangible step forward in the long march toward rebuilding.

 

In my town at least, you can’t just hire a company and knock down your house or anyone else’s house just because you want or need to. You need multiple permits and those permits have an array of prerequisites. First, the homeowner has to file a request with the utility company to cap the gas lines, a task that in turn requires the utility company to first obtain a permit from the city before it can actually do the job. It never occurred to me that the utility company needed a permit to do this since this is the kind of thing it does all the time but, well, I got the rationale when I was informed about it. Some of my neighbors are already pretty pissed off that seven months after the fire these two scorched and scary-looking houses are still looming over the neighborhood. I can’t imagine the mood would improve in my favor if the demolition crew accidentally blew up the joint due to an improperly capped gas line.

 

That is the first step. Once the utility company gets its permit and does its thing, the demolition company can file its request for a permit. In our case, the city also required that the demolition company submit with its permit request two arborist reports, a dust mitigation plan, an erosion mitigation plan and multiple other documents. All of these things take time and money.

On December 20, I filed my request for a gas shut-off with the utility company. After hearing nothing for two weeks I followed up and was given the phone number of the man in charge of this work. The number had been disconnected so I called the utility company back and was given a different number. This time the man answered the phone. Mike was his name and Mike told me nothing had been done because it was so soon after the holidays. He explained the process, which basically amounted to confirming the location of the line, filling out some paperwork and submitting the permit request to the city. There also had to be a transfer of $1,400 from the utility company to the city. He said it should take two to three weeks.

 

Three weeks later nothing had been done so I called Mike. So did Alice. We were nice, and tried to explain that since we are already looking at two years of displacement, every week counts. Mike was nice too and said the utility company should probably be able to get the paperwork to the city the next week.

 

A week went by and nothing happened. I called Mike, as did Alice. Should be done next week, Mike said. A week went by and nothing happened so we called again. It had rained, Mike said, and the utility company can’t work in the rain, so most likely next week. We called the next week. Should be next week, Mike said. You can see where this is headed. Every week a reassurance, every week nothing done on the first step of many steps required before the demolition could be done. Alice and I talked about Mike a lot. How could we motivate him to fill out that piece of paper, we wondered. And why couldn’t Mike work in the rain?

 

Unfortunately, Mike did not spend as much time thinking about us as we did about him, as despite talking to us every week since the year began, he could only remember us by our addresses. “Are you number 15 or number 19?” Mike asked me when I called him for the seventh time in seven weeks.

 

Now I have no doubt that Mike would find this description grossly unfair. He is busy, he has procedures to follow and then there is always that problem he has with the rain. However from where Alice and I were sitting (often near our phones, waiting in vain for Mike to call) it was taking more than two months for a piece of paper to be filled out and delivered to the city. And so our frustration mounted, and in my case at least, becoming near-rage. Because in the world I live and work in, it just doesn’t ever need to take that long to do that kind of a task if someone is working with any sense of urgency or creativity. I certainly don't expect these people to care about my situation but that they seemed equally content taking six weeks or six months to do a job literally made me hyperventilate (and curse).

 

And then, two weeks ago, the unthinkable happened. Mike called, he remembered my name, and told me he had just delivered the permit request to the city. I was effusive in my thanks and praise to Mike, then hung up and called Alice. We screamed like schoolgirls at a Jonas Brothers concert. Then we both emailed the demolition contactor to give him the news, as the demolition contractor had vowed upon his bulldozer and his children that the very nanosecond after the utility department delivered its documents he would call the city and do whatever he could to expedite its approval so he could then submit his own paperwork. A week later he hadn’t made that call or done anything for that matter, and that’s why, first thing Monday morning, I dropped F-bombs all over him him. The city had received the $1,400 for Alice’s house but not for mine, he said, and since this was the utility company’s issue, not his, there was nothing he could do except wait. Besides, he said, it was raining. I told him to call the city, find the right person and ask if he or she would take a personal check from me. I would eat the cost and figure it out with the utility company on the back end. I gave him until the end of the day. Lo and behold, he found the right guy, who said of course he would take my personal check as collateral while the city waited for the utility company payment. Further, he would sign the permit and send it to the utility company the minute I brought the check down to city hall. I did that the following morning, and the city emailed the permit to Mike a few hours later. The next day I got a call from Mike, who had heard about my plan, informing me that under no circumstances would the city ever, ever accept a personal check from me and we’d just have to wait until the utility company’s finance department found the missing check or reissued a new one – something he could not help me with in any way whatsoever.

 

Mike eventually read his email, then called Alice and me and told us that since he had the approved permit from the city and the city has its money, the utility company would cap the gas lines on Wednesday for sure. Unless it rained.

Mashup House!

Letmetellyouwhatitisliketodesignanewhousereallyreallyfast.

 

Many of you have built homes and remodeled homes over the years. I remember your stories. There was thoughtful planning, many careful iterations of the design and countless hours of reverential pondering over things like cabinets and tile. What would be your ultimate aesthetic muse, you wondered, as you spent yet another Saturday afternoon on the couch tearing out pages from Dwell and Architectural Digest.

 

That is not at all how it’s going down right now on Susan Gale Court. We are moving fast. We are making decisions, picking out materials, getting bids and turning documents like there is no tomorrow. Have I received a settlement from my insurance company? Not yet. However, we are all hopeful that a settlement is coming soon, and when it does wewanteverythingdonesowegettheplansapprovedandstartconstruction.

 

This manic push to finalize the architectural plans means that while I’m sure the new house will be much better-built, better-configured and way more super-cool than my former home, it is going to reflect an odd combination of influences, ideas and inspirations, all of which got poured into a kind of aesthetic blender and whirred together over a period of a few weeks. If your abode murmurs, “French Country,” mine screams, “Mashup!” And to whom will I owe my mixtape of a house? Let me list them:

 

1.    Hoffman-LaRoche, a giant Swiss pharmaceutical company that acquired my beloved Genentech in a hostile takeover this year. Also maker of everyone’s favorite H1N1 antidote, Tamiflu. Last month I was summoned to a meeting at the company’s private compound outside of Lucerne. One of the perks of corporate life is that occasionally you get to access to things you wouldn’t be able to touch with a 100-mile pole in your normal life, and this was one of those occasions. A few years back, Roche acquired an enormous nature reserve on the shores of Lake Zug. Imagine dense forests that open into rolling green hills that spill into the shores of a pristine lake surrounded by the Swiss Alps. Spectacular doesn’t begin to describe it. The company decided to build a private conference center on the property and they hired the Big Deal, Pritzker Prize-winning architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron to do it. These would be the gentlemen who brought us the de Young museum in San Francisco and the Beijing Olympic Stadium, among other buildings. I can’t remember much about the meeting at the conference center because I was super jet-lagged and thus not paying much attention to the presentations. However, since I was jet-lagged, I stayed up for what felt like 158 hours straight and every free moment of those 158 hours I spent marveling at that building. It sat unobtrusively yet strikingly in the midst of all that natural beauty – a lean, minimalist structure that was boldly painted red and blue on the exterior yet seemed completely at home between the forest and the lake. The entire back side of the building had huge walls of glass that took every advantage of the lake and mountain views. Probably noticing that I extended every coffee break by 20 minutes to skulk around the place and take pictures, my host gave me a tour. One key element of the building, he noted, was that the architects had limited themselves to only a few materials. And as I looked around the main public area, I noticed that he was correct: Herzog and de Meuron had only used dark wood for the floors, unfilled travertine for the interior walls and the outside surfaces, and copper for the accents. That was it. It was simple and beautiful and, I thought, just incredibly confident. When I got home I told Brian, my architect, that we were going to design the interior of my house with the fewest number of materials possible and see where it took us.

 

2.    My friend Sara’s sister Susan and her husband Bruce. Susan and Bruce did a significant remodel of their house in L.A. a number of years ago that featured stunning walnut floors. Mostly I’ve admired them from afar. When I see Sara, I ask her how Susan and Bruce, their three charming sons and those beautiful walnut floors are doing. Occasionally I’ve been invited to an event at Susan and Bruce’s. “I love you, walnut floors,” I’ve whispered when no one was in earshot, gazing down with adoration at the wood’s muted yet luminous brown-gray color. During our first planning meeting, Brian had hardly walked through my front door, when I said, “I just want you to know that I want my new house to have walnut floors just like Susan and Bruce.”

 

3.    Matthew Perry. Back when I was married, I also had a house in the Hollywood Hills. The house was the classic post-and-beam structure that you see all over that part of Los Angeles. It was on a decidedly non-glam street and needed a ton of work (most of which we never got around to) but it had great views. One summer, the elderly man across the street passed away and his rambling mid-century house, which needed two tons of work, was purchased by a guy who refurbished and flipped houses for a living. I forget his name but the guy knew his stuff and so during the year or so he was building the new house I would stop by and he would graciously give me a tour of what seemed to be turning out to be a modernist masterpiece.  I remember walking through it when it was finally done and thinking how perfect it was: big without being cavernous, minimalist without being austere, muted in color without being boring, sucking in tons of light without being harsh. Now I am almost never prone to envy but I was outraged that someone else was going to get to live in a house that I so clearly should be living in if only I had the money. Which of course I didn’t, since the man had priced it at well over twice what the next most-expensive house on the block was worth. Only a fool would buy a house this big and expensive on our working-stiff street, I would tell myself as I bought another lottery ticket in a desperate attempt to be that fool. The house wasn’t on the market more than a month or so when I heard from the gossips on the block (read: everyone) that Matthew Perry from the Friends TV series had bought it. Sure enough, a moving van pulled up not long after that, and although I rarely ever saw him, it was painfully clear that Matthew Perry was living in my house. “I hate you Matthew Perry,” I would whisper most mornings as I stood on my porch and watched my dog Bart mosey across the street and hoist a furry back leg over one of Matthew’s bushes. Needless to say, Brian the architect was handed pictures of Matthew Perry’s house from The Real Estalker blog and told to figure out how to take back what should have been mine to begin with.

 

4.    My friend Brent. Much like the man who built Matthew Perry’s house, my friend Brent buys houses then remodels them to perfection. Brent has ample talent and years of experience in this area and so I called him and told him I would provide him with as much good food and alcohol as he could bear if he would fly up from L.A. and spend a weekend reviewing my architectural plans and helping me pick out materials for the house since, of course, everythingneedstobedonenownownow. Brent, bless his heart, spent almost three days refining the plans and dragging me by the ear to stone yards, tile stores, appliance stores and flooring stores. It’s amazing, really, to watch someone who really knows what they’re doing as they do their thing. I’d stumble down the stairs in the morning, gargle down some coffee and watch as Brent reworked the kitchen layout, sketched out ideas for the master bathroom, and made about 50 other incremental changes that really improved the basic design and which my untrained eye never, ever would have seen. At the appliance store he patiently explained which models are designed to align with kitchen cabinets and which were not. As an added bonus, he found a Miele refrigerator with such fabulous interior lighting I fully intend to stand in it while someone takes my head shot, as the glow from the freezer smooths the lines around my eyes like you wouldn’t believe. We probably spent close to two hours at the tile store one day and walked out with choices for the kitchen, public areas and all the bathrooms that completely hang together. Left to my own devices I would have stood in the middle of the store, felt overwhelmed and walked out after 15 minutes. I’ve had the tile samples laid out on the kitchen table for a month and I still love them. And if I didn’t love Brent so much I would hate him because some of that Ann Sacks tile is hideously expensive and while I tell myself I’ll find something similar at a lower price I also know I’m totally full of it and it will all end up coming from Ann Sacks.

     So that’s the house, coming (please, please, please) in early 2011 thanks to Jacques, Pierre, Susan, Bruce, Brent, and that selfish bastard Matthew Perry.

The Life List

I think I may have mentioned previously that a critical component of the insurance process involves “content.” Basically, if you turned your house upside down and shook it, anything that fell out would be considered content. I am entitled under my insurance policy to be reimbursed for my content up to a certain amount of money. The trick to getting that money is that I have to present a list of every item that was in my house at the time of the fire, along with an estimated age of each item, its current retail price (plus applicable sales tax), the name of the store where I purchased it (or a comparable store where such an item could be purchased) and all the required verification such as invoices and appraisals.

 

As you also may recall, I hired a company to do this type of work for me. Otherwise my brain would explode. A really nice young man named Bryce spent a week mucking around my house in hip boots noting every identifiable detail of every item that he could find. An equally nice woman named Heather spent who knows how many billions of hours going through receipts and trolling the Internet to figure out the price of everything Bryce found and the store where it could be bought again. The result was a 60-page excel spreadsheet that lists, room by room, the more than 2,000 items that were in my house. It is, literally, a catalogue of everything that was mine.

 

I’ve had this spreadsheet for three weeks and I’m still not sure what I think about it. I don’t know anyone else (except my neighbor Alice who is in this mess with me) who has ever had his or her entire life captured in quite this way. Really, it doesn’t provide a snapshot of your “stuff” as much as lay out in stark relief a lot about who you are.

 

If an item was included on this list, it was by definition damaged beyond repair or totally destroyed. So I would have thought that seeing the sheer number of items on the list would have been upsetting. But for some reason it didn’t feel nearly as bad as I had anticipated. If I had to put my reaction into one phrase I guess I would call it just an overwhelming shock of recognition.

 

The guest bedroom incurred the least damage and the guest bedroom was where I stored things I didn’t wear and/or use that much yet didn’t want to dispose of. And so that section of the list is a veritable memory lane of vacations, events, jobs and adventures over the past 25 years since I am one of those people who doesn’t consider an event to have actually taken place unless I have purchased a t-shirt or some other commemorative schwag. Here are just a few examples from the list:

 

“Herbie Hancock Sound System Concert Tour 1984 t-shirt”

“29^th Annual Telluride Film Festival baseball cap”

“Elton John Rocks Vegas beach towel”

“1982 San Francisco Examiner Bay to Breakers 10k t-shirt”

“Paul Simon Graceland concert t-shirt 1987”

“Grateful Dead tie-dye concert t-shirt 1990”

“1998 California AIDS Ride cycling jersey”

 

I haven’t worn that Bay to Breakers t-shirt in at least five years, ever since some pimply-faced kid at the gym looked at me as I was running on the treadmill and said, “WHOA, that’s the oldest Bay to Breakers t-shirt I’ve ever seen!” But, jeez, I’ll miss it.

 

I have always been vaguely aware that I spend too much money on clothes, especially for someone who wears jeans whenever possible and is often walking (in flat, comfy shoes) the fine line between fashionable and fashion disaster. But I still gasped out loud when I saw the list of shoes, sweaters, coats, handbags, etc. that were in my master bedroom closet, each with its ridiculous retail price noted neatly in the middle column. The spreadsheet makes clear that I am afflicted by a dim-witted designer consumerism. (There is actually a notation in this section of the spreadsheet that reads, “Does the ‘H’ logo on items 801-807 indicate Hermes or something else?”)  It also confirms that I am incredibly lazy: Most of what I bought came from four equally overpriced department stores, three of which are located not more than 100 yards from each other in downtown San Francisco. That means I couldn’t be bothered to walk more than three minutes at a stretch for the privilege of spending stupid amounts of money. And since I was there during those three-minute walks I can confirm that’s exactly what usually happened.

 

My mundane fetishes are also neatly displayed on the spreadsheet: Why, I wondered does a woman with such short hair buy so many hair care products? These would be items 400-412: Hair goop from Bumble and Bumble, Kerastase, Kiehl’s, Frederic Fekkai, Shu Uemura, Rene Furterer and Phyto, among others.

 

And to venture into the realm of Too Much Information, item 590 on the spreadsheet notes “22 bras, all from high-end stores.” I literally reeled back in my seat and almost knocked over my glass of wine when I saw that one. “TWENTY-TWO?” I yelled to no one in particular since I was on an airplane at the time. Where in the house had they all been hiding, I wondered since I could never find more than maybe six and had wondered for months where the black one had disappeared to. How and where had Bryce discovered them all? That will remain one of the great mysteries of the fire, since I’m too embarrassed to call him and ask.

 

The list also lays out the arc of my marriage in its own strange way. Item 1128 notes “assorted Waterford crystal wine glasses.”  Those would be the wine glasses that Gary and I registered for when we got married. I don’t think either of us knew exactly why we picked Waterford; it just seemed like the thing we were supposed to do at the time. In any event we rarely used them, instead quaffing wine from the cheap Crate and Barrel glasses that we bought over and over again when they invariably broke in the dishwasher. Item 989 is the vintage Eames lounge chair that I purchased right after Gary and I split up. In my mind at the time, the chair was my mid-century statement of independence after years of the usual marital compromises around furnishing a home. It was also really comfortable, conformed perfectly to my butt and had enlightened me as to why my grandfather never let anyone sit in his favorite chair.

 

Like I said, the list doesn’t make me feel entirely bad even though it represents all that is gone. And at the very least it confirms my belief that your stuff isn’t always just “stuff.” So while it’s good to cringe about one too many Prada bags, it also feels fine to embrace line items like #1765 (“Reindeer Christmas dishes,” which were kind of ridiculous but I loved them and love Christmas and so used them every year), #1201 (“mandoline,” which I used often when I cooked even though I was scared to death of it due to its sharpness) and #171, which is a Zabar’s sweatshirt, since I would live in Zabar’s if I could get away with it. After I’m done reviewing and approving the list I’m not going to file it away or throw it away. I think I’m going to put it in a safe deposit box.

Alice and Me

I’ve mentioned a few times that the fire destroyed both my house and my neighbor’s house.  The phrase “my neighbor” seems a bit impersonal considering the circumstances so I thought I’d provide some context.

 

Alice (not her real name, though she has an Alice-like name) and I have been neighbors since I moved into my house seven years ago. I know she moved in several years before that.

 

Honestly, we hardly knew each other, which is kind of a hard thing to accomplish when you live in townhouses that share a roof. But I was always working and traveling a lot and she was retired and traveled a lot too. We were friendly – on the infrequent occasions we saw each other getting the mail or pulling up into our driveways we’d say hi and chat for a few minutes. But that’s it. I had never been in her house and she had never been in mine.

 

When I drove up to my house that evening, I saw my roof ablaze and my neighbor to the left (I own the middle unit; Alice owns the one on the right) running out of her front door with her cell phone. “I just called the fire department,” she yelled.  Several of my other neighbors had come out of their homes and we all stood under the big oak tree in the middle of street listening for the wail of the fire engine sirens. It didn’t take long and a few minutes later a ladder truck was in front of my house and two firemen carrying a hose were busting through my front door. We all watched as a second truck arrived, and a couple more firefighters climbed on my roof and started hacking through the skylights with axes. We were all pretty shocked and kind of mesmerized by what they were doing and I don’t think it occurred to any of us to ask, “Where’s Alice?” Her garage door was closed, she wasn’t out with us under the tree and I remember having a dim assumption that she must be out of town.

 

And then Alice came running out of her front door. She wasn’t out of town. She had been in her kitchen talking on the phone, heard footsteps on the roof and had come outside to see what the hell was going on. (Why neither the fire department nor the police department knocked on her door remains a mystery – we’ve never gotten a clear answer on that one.)

 

So Alice joined us under the tree as we watched the increasingly chaotic scene unfold and not a whole lot of time went by before the fire started moving from my house to hers. Alice looked at me and said, “My house is going to burn down too.” And she was right.

 

I had never thought about what I might say in the event my house would seem to spontaneously combust (the official fire department report calls the fire’s origin “inconclusive” but points a finger squarely at a very new and very expensive major kitchen appliance with no previous history of problems) and then light the next-door neighbor’s house on fire. “Sorry” didn’t seem to cut it and as Alice and I stumbled together through the first surreal days after the fire I struggled to find any combination of words that would articulate the sickening sense of horror and guilt I had about what had happened.  Nothing seemed even remotely adequate. And then a week or so later, when Alice and I were temporarily living in our respective hotels, I called her and told her how badly I felt and that I would happily have my house burn down a second or third time if it would bring hers back. And I meant it.

 

“What happened was not your fault,” Alice said. “And I certainly don’t blame you. I just wish that if my house was going to burn down that it had been my fault – like I had left the iron or something.” It was a blunt, graceful, and as I’ve learned, an Alice-typical response.

 

As the first couple of weeks turned into the first couple of months, Alice and I would talk on the phone or meet up in front of what was left of our houses to trade notes on what our insurance companies were up to, how we were feeling, and generally trying to make sense of the situation. It made me feel better about my own state of mind that Alice seemed to be tracking through the situation in a similar fashion. For example we both went through a period where we would go back into our condemned homes looking for any possessions that were salvageable. We weren’t looking for anything of value; we were just trying to find something – anything really – that was recognizably ours. The city building inspectors made it pretty clear that if they caught us trespassing they’d throw the book at us since our houses were both red-tagged as dangerous. We both pretty much ignored them. It made me feel slightly less crazy to know I wasn’t the only one willing to risk injury just to have an old sweatshirt of my own even if it smelled of smoke.

 

And then somewhere along the line Alice and I just joined forces. We never talked about it but we recognized we needed to stick together if we were ever going to get through this situation with our sanity and finances intact. We’ve hired the same public adjuster, the same architect and now we’re interviewing contractor together. We have also established a few joint personas: Most of the time we are The Industrious Women of Susan Gale Court. We make phone calls, do errands, schedule appointments and generally divide and conquer. And when it’s necessary we are The Pissed Off Women of Susan Gale Court, riding herd on the insurance people, grilling vendors and a few weeks ago yelling at the cable company. A $750 bill for not returning a cable box that melted in the fire? Alice calls the cable company, yells a the supervisor, gets her bill refunded, gives me the name of the same supervisor and then I call and yell at the supervisor until I get my bill refunded too. Here’s a snippet of the conversation Alice and I recently had with some of the people on our homeowners association board:

 

HOA Dude: “Well the bylaws state that you need to start rebuilding within 90 days.”

Chris: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Alice: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

And sometimes we just talk. Occasionally this event feels isolating and some of it is hard to explain to people. But since Alice and I are the ones in the middle of it, unsurprisingly we’re the only ones we can talk to sometimes in order to feel understood. One day several weeks ago, Alice had given me a ride home after a meeting with some people. We were in her car discussing one thing or another and suddenly Alice got quiet. She tapped her fingernail on the steering wheel and stared out through her windshield into the distance. “I’m done crying,” she said. “You know what I mean?” And you know what, I did.

 

I have a mom and Alice has grown kids, so we’re not surrogate family on this one. And there is much I don’t know about how she really feels about being 70 years old, losing everything and having to start over. I know it’s hard – much harder than it is for me at 45. My neighbors and I all agree that Alice is the one who really got the raw deal in all of this.

 

So Alice and I stick together. It’s remarkable and odd, really, that two neighbors who barely knew each other three months ago could have their lives linked together in such a direct and intimate way.  We don’t confide everything to each other – we both have other friends and family for some of that. Yet I talk to Alice more frequently than I talk to my family and I can’t imagine taking a step forward in this process without being sure she has taken a step forward too. We’re rebuilding our homes and lives together and then we’re going to move back home and live next door to one another once again.  I have no idea what we’ll both do when we finally reach that day (latest estimate: Spring 2011) but I can’t imagine we’ll just wave to each other by the mailboxes.

And Then Jesus Appeared In My Garage

I thought that headline would get your attention.

 

A month or so ago I wrote about an art gallery owner who offered to replace a number of photographs that were destroyed in the fire. Many people have emailed me about this story and I think we all kind of agree that what he did was pretty extraordinary.

 

I know that for my part this man’s kindness really helped me turn a corner emotionally in the aftermath of the fire. It had only been a couple of weeks and I was still kind of a wreck because it just felt that not only was everything gone, almost everything about me was gone too. It’s hard to explain but you build a life and a home – in my case a home filled with art – that means something to you and when it gets wiped out you really feel unmoored. But I swear that the second I hung up the phone after this man called and offered to restore some of the artwork I assumed was lost forever, I felt for the first time after the fire that I had a chance to get my life back. Yes, that is incredibly overdramatic and overblown in hindsight but like I said I was in a state and I just felt that lost. His call got me pointed in the right direction and I’ve been making progress ever since. At this point, I feel like my old self about 95% of the time.

 

Which brings me to Jesus. One of my favorite photographs, which the gallery owner and I agree is a hidden gem in this particular artist’s oeuvre (I’ve ALWAYS wanted to use that word because it’s so snotty and now I have my chance), is what many of you always referred to as “the Jesus photo.” From what I can tell, most of you didn’t like it. You’d stare at it for maybe 10 seconds and the expression on your face was kind of a cross between “OMG” and “Ew.”

 

Not that I cared. I thought it was an extraordinary image and when I went into the house after the fire and saw it hanging on the wall burned beyond all recognition I literally felt sick to my stomach. The photo was taken in Buena Vista, Iowa, in what appears to be the dead of winter.  It depicts an old electrical power pole on which someone has mounted a crucifix. At some point the leg apparently fell off, so someone has reattached the leg – upside down -- to the pole so it doesn’t get lost. It sounds kind of unholy except that if you look closely you can see that there is also a spotlight attached to the pole so Jesus can be seen at night. I can only assume the spotlight is siphoning electricity illegally from the pole. I’m not at all religious but the photo has always struck me as quietly and unassumingly reverential, and I like that. This photographer shoots in 8x10-inch film so the color in this photo is subtle and icy and subdued and seems to go on forever.

 

Since occasionally agreeing to disagree is part of being friends, I’m writing this post to let you know that Jesus arrived at my house today on the back of a delivery truck, after a long flight from the Midwest to San Francisco, along with the other replacement photos. In all seriousness, I thought I would hyperventilate or have a heart attack or maybe both I was so incredibly overwhelmed to actually have the photos back. I haven’t unwrapped the other images yet but I did take the Jesus photo out of its plastic cocoon and just like the other 10,000 times I’ve looked at this image, I felt calmly and quietly reverential. Art heals.

Helpful Homeowners Insurance Lessons Part 2: After the Fire

As promised, here is Part 2 of my Helpful Insurance Lessons for Homeowners series. I got a lot of email from people regarding “Part 1: Before the Fire,” so I may continue with periodic updates if I learn anything interesting and/or useful. (And since this whole event feels at times like an alternate universe I think the chances of me discovering something “interesting/useful” are pretty high.) In any event, here’s “Part 2: After The Fire.” I promise that subsequent posts won’t be nearly this long.

 

Many people have asked exactly what happened the night of the fire, so here’s the quick recap: I was driving from my office in South San Francisco to San Jose Airport. I was a little early and had forgotten my earplugs (I NEVER travel without earplugs) and so I made a quick detour home to pick them up. As I drove up the hill to my street, I saw thick, black, billowing smoke rising in the sky. Not barbecue smoke, not “I built a cozy fire in the fireplace smoke” but angry, dangerous smoke. I could tell immediately it was coming not just from my street but my side of the street. I hit the gas, screeched around the corner, pulled up in front of my house and saw that my roof was on fire. Neighbors had already called the fire department and the first fire truck arrived right after I did.

 

I had no previous experience with a fire but within about 15 minutes I could tell that the fire was going to destroy my house. They could send in as many trucks as they wanted (22 were eventually involved) but they were never going to catch up with that thing. If I have any advice to give on this point it is to respect the power of the earth’s elements. I never would have believed that a fire could take down two houses (the fire jumped to my neighbor’s house) that quickly. People kept saying how calm my neighbor and I were that night. I did feel oddly calm considering the circumstances and I think it was because it was so clear to me how things were going to end. And that leads to…  

 

LESSON ONE: THERE REALLY ARE AMBULANCE CHASERS AND THEY WILL ALL SHOW UP WHILE YOUR HOUSE IS STILL BURNING DOWN TO SELL YOU THEIR SERVICES. DON’T TALK TO ANY OF THEM IMMEDIATELY.

 

I would say that at least a dozen people showed up on my street within the first hour to shove business cards into my hand and my neighbor’s hand. I still have cards from lawyers, construction companies, salvage companies, board-up companies, public adjusters and restoration companies. They clearly all have police/fire scanners because they beat even some of the fire trucks to the scene. All of them will tell you that they’re sorry for your loss, but here’s how they can help you if you will just sign the contract. Now. With the benefit of hindsight I would tell you that there is nothing you need to commit to that quickly. The only thing my neighbor and I actually signed a contract for that night was to have our houses boarded up, which we were told the insurance companies would want done for liability purposes. The fee was reasonable and the fire department, while not recommending the company, said they were reputable, so we signed. But in truth we could have waited and we both signed simply because we were scared and didn’t know what to do.

 

The first fire truck showed up at about 5 p.m. and they didn’t wrap up until about 1 a.m. At that point the fire captain took me aside and said two things: First, that in his opinion neither my house nor anything in it was salvageable. Second, that he’d need me to be back at the scene around 9 a.m. “Everything is gone,” he said. “I just really need you to try to get your head around that by the time you get back here.” He was not unkind. Indeed the firefighters could not have been more compassionate or communicative with me while they risked their lives in their futile effort to save the two houses and their successful effort to protect the neighborhood. Nor was the fire captain oblivious to the fact that I was standing there covered with ash and reeking of smoke with possibly no place to go. No, he had just been through this many times before and he already knew there was a lot of work ahead and he needed me to just suck it up and get to it. This leads me to…

 

LESSON TWO: YOU WILL BE DOING A TON OF WORK FROM THE SECOND THE FIRE IS OUT

 

There is simply no avoiding it. If a fire, flood, earthquake or tornado damages or takes your house, you are in for an enormous amount of work that will stretch for months and possibly years. (If I’m in my house by the end of next year everyone involved will consider that a good outcome.) So as the fire captain told me, “Get your head around it.” Indeed, I was back at my house bright and early that morning. They slapped a hard hat on my head and ushered me inside to inspect the damage.  We literally stepped over piles of debris that were still hot and smoldering and dodged charred beams that were dangling from what was left of the ceiling.  The photo above was taken a couple of days later. I had been in the house three or four times by then to help the investigators and as you can see I still have that “Holy Crap” expression on my face but have already gotten really cavalier about wearing a hard hat and face mask.

 

I’m using this long preface to underscore the point in my previous post that your insurance company is not going to hold your hand, do the work, advocate on your behalf or explain much to you. They are there to negotiate what they believe is a claim that adheres to the obligations of your insurance policy. You are largely on your own and responsible for your outcome.  And the quality of that outcome is directly correlated to the degree you can suck it up and the amount of work you put into it. If it sounds hard, trust me it is. And that leads to…

 

LESSON THREE: YOU JUST MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO DO IT ON YOUR OWN.  This is probably the most important lesson, because the insurance industry business model is clearly designed around the assumption that at some point many homeowners will walk away leaving something on the table because they just can’t take it anymore.  I’m not saying insurance companies are evil but it’s important to understand that insurance is similar to a Vegas casino: The house always wins.

 

For example, say you have $300,000 of insurance to replace the content of your home at current retail prices. Which sounds good, except you are the one who has to remember every single item you had in your house down to your toothbrush and the number and type of coat hangers, provide appropriate verification, receipts, appraisals, photos and invoices and then PRICE ALL OF IT AT CURRENT RETAIL YOURSELF. Is your insurance company going to help you do this? Yes, if you consider getting a brochure of what is in a typical home to be super helpful. If any of your stuff survived the fire and you have it moved, stored and/or cleaned, the exorbitant price charged by the vendors (it will be in the thousands of dollars, trust me) will be counted against your content limit. Will your insurance adjuster tell you that? Maybe, though mine didn’t.

 

And just for laughs, let’s assume you were able to remember everything you had, provide sufficient documentation and find the current retail prices for $300,000 worth of stuff, since that’s what you are entitled to. Will your insurance company cut you a check for $300,000? No they will not. They will take your list, depreciate every item on it and give you a check for an amount substantially below $300,000. In order to get the retail reimbursement you are contractually entitled to, you will have to submit to the insurance company a receipt and itemization code FOR EVERY SINGLE THING YOU NEED TO BUY. So, for example, when you buy a new couch for $3,000 you’ll have to go back to the insurance company, which has only given you $2,500 in depreciated reimbursement, and make a claim to get the $500 you are owed.  You will have to repeat that process for every replacement item you purchase. From what I’ve been told, many people just give up at some point and leave money on the table because this process is too aggravating and just takes too long. The full extent of the advice I got from my insurance agent who, I must remind you, works for an insurance company that is considered one of the good guys, was, “You’d better learn how to use Excel.” Is she a bad person? Of course not. I asked her to write a homeowner’s policy that covered me sufficiently for the worst possible scenario and that’s what she did. Her job does not require her to do anything more.

 

And what about your house? Let’s assume that you, like me, are entitled to a settlement that enables you to rebuild your house as it was before the fire, no matter what the final tab. Is your insurance company going to help you come up with that number? No they are not. They are going to provide their own number based on their own preferred contractor’s estimate and if you believe it to be too low you will have to provide an extremely well-documented “scope of work” to demonstrate what you believe to be the true rebuild cost. Oh, and it will have to be presented using the software program that only the insurance companies use. Do you have that software? No you do not. Are you able to purchase it? Sure, if you are a licensed professional. Is it expensive? Oh yeah. Would your insurance company teach you how to use the software even if you could get your hands on it? What do you think?

 

It took me about a week to realize there was no way I was going to be able to do all of this and so I hired what is called a public adjuster. I had never heard of this profession until the night of the fire. Basically they are your advocate and act as the interface with the insurance company and all of the related vendors and bureaucrats. They create, submit and negotiate your content claim. (A very nice guy named Bryce spent probably a week in my house, dressed in hip boots and a facemask, photographing and itemizing everything that could be identified.) Similarly, they create the scope of work to rebuild your house. (They are in the industry so they have the magic software as well as professionals who know how to do this type of task). Many are former insurance adjusters so they also know how the system works. For their efforts they take a percentage off the top of your claim. Some are fly-by-nights who take too much of your money and don’t add much value -- they were among the throngs that showed up with the firefighters holding out their business cards. However, I hired a reputable firm, and my case is being managed by two women who are as anal-retentive, bossy and stubborn as I am. Needless to say we all get along great and I am nothing but satisfied so far. I am confident they will help me obtain a settlement amount that exceeds what I could get on my own and also exceeds the amount they are charging me. If they don’t, I’ll let you know.

 

LESSON FOUR: DON’T BE A BUTTHEAD

 

I am an occasional butthead but not a practicing one, if you know what I mean. I know most of the people who are reading this blog and none of you is a practicing butthead either. But if you know someone who is, tell him or her to knock it off. I say this because an important lesson I have learned is that while it may be “your” home, a lot of people contributed to making that house a home and you will definitely need their help to bring it back. If you have treated these people well, the chances of them providing that much-needed assistance is much higher than if you’ve been a you-know-what.

 

For example, I used the same contractor for all of the extensive remodeling of my house over the past six years. We are not friends, exactly, but we like each other a lot and we have both put a lot of effort into upholding our respective ends of the relationship. Scott is very good at what he does. He is fastidious, conscientious, talented and cares deeply about his work. He is also loyal, using the same small cadre of subcontractors who are as talented, professional and committed as he is. I like and respect them all very much and for my part I have tried to be a good client: I’m decisive, I’m calm, I do everything I can to help Scott and the guys do their jobs efficiently and well, and I pay on time.  In the wake of the fire, Scott devoted dozens and dozens of hours to document all the work he has done for me, since I needed it – desperately – if my scope of work was to accurately reflect the true cost to rebuild my home. He went through his files and found literally every single invoice, receipt, bill, plan and photo for every single job.  Matt, Jose, Louie and the other subcontractors also put in a ton of time and the result was meticulously detailed documentation for every single aspect of the renovation work. In the most literal sense, my ability to get my home back has hinged on their willingness to help me when I really needed it.

 

It is very hard to need a lot of help and to need to ask for a lot of help -- to know that your future really is going to be better or worse based on whether or not people will give you a hand. You feel vulnerable and anxious and kind of embarrassed and I’ve really struggled with that.  But this is one of those situations where you just need to do the asking and hope people will respond. And when you’ve all tried to be good to each other simply because that’s what you all thought you should do, when one of you needs help, the others are more likely provide it.  I will never forget Scott giving me a hug after I asked him to take on this enormously time-consuming task and saying, “We built it once and we can build it again.”

Helpful Insurance Lessons for Homeowners Part 1

I’m going into Month 3 with the fire and at this point I thought it would be helpful to share some of the lessons I’ve learned thus far.  This is a serious post and kind of long but bear with me. I’ve had to absorb an enormous amount of information, learn what felt like an entirely new language and make some critical decisions that will have a very direct impact on my future. I had to do a lot of this literally before the smoke even cleared and at a time when I was unbelievably stressed and basically just completely freaked out. So far I don’t think I’ve made any major mistakes so I thought I’d pass along what I’ve done and what I’ve learned thus far. I’m going to divide it up into two parts: Before the Fire and After the Fire. I hope you find it useful.

 

BEFORE THE FIRE

 

Lesson #1: Pay attention to what my grandpa used to say.

 

I haven’t once thought, “Why me and not someone else” since I just don’t think that way. And I don’t believe for a nanosecond that the fire is some sort of cosmic retribution for past sins I’ve committed or future sins I might like to commit. All of that is a load of crap as far as I’m concerned. I agree with what my grandpa used to tell me, which was, “If you live long enough at least a couple of really s****y things are going to happen to you.” My grandpa was a bartender and also drove a forklift. He tended to make this statement while clinking the ice in his glass of bourbon and squinting through his cigar smoke. He taught me to shoot pool when I was 7 years old and bought me my first tennis racket and my first acoustic guitar. Suffice it to say I adored him and I listened to what he had to say and so I HAD A TON OF INSURANCE ON MY HOUSE.

 

Basically I had as much insurance as my insurance company would allow me to have. And if my insurance company had let me buy more insurance I would have done so. I’m kind of a hardliner on this topic:  As far as I’m concerned, if you can afford to buy a house you can afford to fully insure it. When I was a starving reporter just out of college and supporting myself on $800 a month I still had renter’s insurance and took a second job to pay for the health insurance my newspaper was too cheap to provide, so I kind of don’t buy the argument that appropriate homeowner’s insurance is just “too expensive.” I’m pretty shocked that a few of my neighbors, who literally stood next to me in our little cul de sac and watched my house and my neighbor’s house burn to the ground, have told me that they are “still getting around” to upgrading the insurance on their under-insured homes.

 

Lesson #2: Insurance companies mostly focus on the four things they will have to write you check for: Structure, Fine Arts, Adjusted Living Expenses and Content

 

Like I said, I covered myself pretty heavily in all four areas, which has helped me maintain my financial stability as well as my sanity thus far. Here’s how:

 

Structure: You have all sorts of options as to how much coverage you can buy to rebuild your home if it is destroyed or severely damaged. I purchased a “rebuild” clause in my insurance. So while there is a number attached to my “structure” that indicates how much the insurance company will pay to rebuild my house, in fact I am entitled to a settlement that will enable me to rebuild my house exactly as it was five minutes before the fire even if that amount is well above my “number.” I also increased my coverage for my home as I remodeled over the past five years so I was covered for the fabulous bathrooms, beautiful kitchen, cherry hardwood flooring, etc. that I had installed. This is important and many of the fire professionals I’ve dealt with since July have told me that most people don’t bother to do it. So when their houses burn down they are basically covered for the old laminate floors that came with the house, not the mahogany flooring they just had installed. Remember those custom-made birds-eye maple cabinets that I had in my kitchen? I am entitled to get them back under my policy.

 

Fine Arts: As I have mentioned, I had a collection of photography as well as antique textiles in my home, all of which were destroyed by the fire. Most of these works were listed in a Fine Arts rider in my insurance. Most people do this, however many people forget to get the works reappraised on a regular basis and to adjust their insurance coverage accordingly. I did get the work reappraised though probably not frequently enough – as it happened, the fire occurred less than a month before my latest appraisal upgrades were due to kick in so I may be out a bit of money on that. It’s not a huge deal since it’s not like I’ve been collecting for 30 years. However, it can be a major financial loss if one has an art collection but has never increased the coverage to a level commensurate with increased value because in a Fine Arts rider you ONLY get the itemized value. Try arguing that the work of art you acquired 10 years ago is now worth a lot more than what is written in your policy and your adjuster will just shrug his or her shoulders.

 

Adjusted Living Expenses (ALE): Your homeowners insurance typically covers ALE – essentially the money required to pay for immediate needs after a calamity, such as a hotel room, food and clothing. It also covers things like housing until your home is rebuilt. As bizarre as it felt, I really did need clothes, food and a place to stay during the first three weeks after the fire because a rental house wasn’t yet available. I slept in three different homes (infinite thanks to David, Dawn and Patty for that) and also spent a week at the Rosewood Sand Hill, a very nice spa hotel less than a mile from my home. My point is that I was already so wigged out by the fire that had I been forced to stay in a dodgy motel by the freeway due to having inadequate ALE coverage, I seriously might have gone right over the edge. That my insurance company negotiated a rate with a hotel that was quiet, comfortable, safe and in my neighborhood really did play a role in keeping me emotionally stable during that time.

 

My ALE also covers “commensurate” long-term housing, meaning that I am entitled to live in a house and in a neighborhood that is just like my own. In fact I AM living in my own neighborhood – just around the corner from my former home in a newly remodeled, three-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse. I can’t even begin to explain how much of a stress-reliever this has been. Much has changed in my life due to the fire. But I am dealing with it all much better than I would have otherwise since some aspects of my routine haven’t changed: I still have the same neighbors, the same grocery store, the same route to work, the same safe, quiet neighborhood, etc. I also don’t have to worry about getting booted from my rental house in six months because my insurance covers me until my home is rebuilt.

 

Content: If you turned your house upside down and shook it, whatever fell out would be considered “content” – everything from your socks to your sofa. But not your artwork, since you would have been smart enough to cover that separately in your Fine Arts rider. If you weren’t that smart, your art will get counted as regular content, which can really screw you up financially. For example, if you are covered for $300,000 worth of content but also have $250,000 worth of art that you didn’t insure separately, you’ll likely end up having to choose between your art and something else, like furniture or appliances or clothes. Here too, your insurance adjuster will just shrug.

 

Content, like everything else about an insurance claim, is tricky (something I’ll get into in Part 2). My advice is to make sure that the dollar amount in your insurance will actually enable you to replace everything you lost. Also make sure that you are entitled to full retail replacement cost, NOT just the depreciated cost of each item. If you cheap out and just insure yourself for depreciated value, that $5,000 dining room set you bought 10 years ago that will now cost you $15,000 to replace – well, let’s just say you’ll be footing the bill for the difference. (I am not exaggerating. The guy I bought most of my furniture from told me that the price of that furniture has increased about 7% per year EVERY year since I bought it six or seven years ago.) Now imagine having to pay the difference between the depreciated value and the current retail price of the 5,000 things you own. Hopefully you are now frightened enough to cover yourself for full retail replacement cost of your content.

 

Lesson #3: Choose your insurance company wisely. I have had a lot of interaction with dozens of “fire people” as I call them: firefighters, fire forensics professionals, restoration and salvage companies, builders, public adjusters, etc. They all work with insurance companies every single day as part of their jobs. So say the name of certain insurance companies and their eyes light up, since those companies are known for being professional and actually paying the claims as they are supposed to rather than trying to nickel and dime the homeowner into insanity. Name other insurance companies and these people sigh, stare at their shoes or look uncomfortably over your shoulder into the middle distance.

 

As it happens, my insurance carrier is one that makes many of the fire people breathe a sigh of relief. In fact, several fire people also use this carrier for their personal insurance since they have seen the company in action so many times before. And I must say that my insurance company has been nothing but professional thus far. Now it is still very early in a very long and complicated process. I also haven’t yet submitted my claim yet so we’ll see what happens when it’s time for my insurance company to cut the checks. But so far I honestly have no major complaints.

 

The reason I’m focusing so much on insurance coverage in this post is that probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that sufficient coverage is, at the end of the day, just what you are supposed to receive under your contract with your carrier. And that’s all. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get much, if any, help, guidance or support from your insurance company. They are not your advocates – it’s just not their job. It’s basically all on you to manage, navigate, research and negotiate every one of the seemingly 8 billion details in order to receive the amount you are due under your insurance coverage. It is daunting, stressful, complicated, confusing and at times intimidating. Since that’s what one is up against after the fire, my advice to you is to at least insure yourself adequately since in a lot of ways that’s the easiest part.  Also, a final note: The reason there is a picture of a rubber duck in this post is that he was the lone survivor of the rubber duck collection in my master bathroom. He is a bit sooty but basically fine (like me) and as little as he is, he’s as completely insured under my coverage as the big stuff.

Happiness Is (Yet Another) Cashmere Sweater

One comment I’ve heard since the fire is that amidst all the disruption and angst is the opportunity to remake certain aspects of my life.  I am starting with a clean slate, people have said, and thus can now do all the things I had meant to do but hadn’t gotten around to doing and fix everything I have always wanted to fix but never had time for fixing.  Basically, that I can use this event as a jumping off point to a brand-new, and much better, me.

 

Maybe, I guess.  The reason I’m somewhat skeptical of this theory is because it flies in the face of my own theory that most of us don’t change that much at all. Oh, I know that with a lot of work and help from the people who love us we all can and do become better, happier people. I also believe that I will come out of this event a better person who has learned some very important life lessons.

 

But I don’t believe that our personalities are infinitely malleable. In many ways we just are what we are, which I’m not so sure is such a bad thing. I guess the point is I just don’t really buy into the idea that I’m going to rise, phoenix-like, from this event as a fundamentally new person. Frankly, it sounds exhausting and I’m already really busy. Which totally sounds like something I’d say. See what I mean?

 

In fact, eight weeks in, there’s already plenty of evidence that in at least one area where I think we can all agree I could use some improvement – and you guessed right that we’re talking about fashion -- things are probably going to remain as bad as they ever were. Or, put another way, the one thing that seems to be rising phoenix-like from the ashes is my lazy-ass approach to my wardrobe.

 

Everyone knows I have a standard uniform. There have been some minor variations along the way but basically it has always been as follows: jeans, cashmere sweaters (winter) long-sleeved t-shirts (summer) and flat shoes. The jeans aren’t expensive; the sweaters and shoes usually are, creating a high-low combo that works except when it doesn’t, though I’m often not aware of the difference.

 

And as unwavering as my uniform has been, so has my vow to buy some strappy heels, wear the occasional skirt to work and stop being such a tomboy. The problem has always been that after making this vow, inevitably I get distracted, usually by a new pair of Asics running shoes or a soft, v-neck, three-quarter–length sleeve cashmere sweater -- like the one in the picture above, which I purchased via iPhone photos and text messages in about three minutes last week from a sales associate at a New York store who is well-versed in my uniform.

 

Nothing in my wardrobe survived the fire except what I was wearing at the time (for the record: Lucky Brand jeans, Tod’s loafers and a long-sleeved Majestic t-shirt).  So if there were ever a time to start anew and right a lifetime of sartorial wrongs, the summer of 2009 would have been it.  However, as much as I hate to break it to the New Beginnings people, the first hint that I could, by sheer dint of personality, completely ignore that opportunity emerged less than 24 hours after the fire.

 

My evidence of this is in the notebook that I obsessively carried with me everywhere during the first week or so after the fire. I did not have easy access to a computer for several days so I wrote down every important piece of information in that notebook.

 

The morning after the fire, I sat down with the notebook and made a list I labeled “Clothes to Buy.” I am looking at that list right now and the first thing I wrote down was “socks.” I wasn’t wearing socks the night before and apparently a future in which my toes might always be uncovered was making me very uncomfortable.  “Jeans,” “hoodies,” and “cycling gear” also appear very high on the list. And very close to the bottom, way below “sweaters” and “hiking shoes,” is “nice clothes,” followed by a note in parentheses that states, “this can wait.”

 

That afternoon, I commenced a one-hour search-and-destroy mission at Stanford Shopping Center, and this is what I bought: three James Perse t-shirts, some Seven jeans, a pair of North Face trail shoes, socks (ah!) and an Agnona cashmere sweater. Just like old times!

 

And guess how many cashmere sweaters I have now? Six. How many pairs of flat shoes? Four, not counting a pair of tennis shoes, a new pair of Asics running shoes, two pairs of flip-flops and a pair of Uggs. And have I purchased any Louboutin platform pumps? What do you think?

 

What I’m getting at is that part of the deal with events like this is while they give you the opportunity to change, they also give you a chance to finally accept certain aspects of yourself and let them be.  There are just some personal foibles and idiosyncrasies, such as my fashion failure, that at the end of the day really don’t cause too much collateral damage. We may cringe, but we’ll probably both survive. And if these flaws laughed in the face of this fire they are probably also going to laugh at any more of my half-hearted attempts to defeat them. So I’m just going to declare a truce and move on. And that, I must say, feels really good. Just like a well-made cashmere sweater.

Art and the Kindness of Strangers

This is a story about art and the kindness of strangers.

 

As some of you know, I had a fairly large collection of photography in my house. I also collected old Navajo rugs as well as old Kurdish tribal rugs. They are all gone. After the fire I went through the house literally hand-picking through the debris in search of these works. Most had simply disappeared – burned to ash – and the rest were in a state of ruin along the lines of what you see in the photo above.

 

I did not expect the loss of the art to hit me quite as hard as it did. But really, “grief” is not too strong a word to describe it. I would stand in that burnt skeleton of a house and look at where there once had been a wall and on that wall had hung something beautiful and amazing and feel like I had been punched in the heart.  And I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. I lived with these works and absorbed what they had to give every day for years.

 

I also felt enormously guilty about losing the art. I have always felt that possessing art comes with it an obligation to the artists – a conscious, active respect for their work and their talent and their sacrifice. It would, on the inside, take a nomadic Kurdish weaver in the early 1800s five years to weave by hand a 9x12 rug. Brutal, tedious, extraordinary work that would turn sheep’s wool and colors drawn from the earth into a luminous piece of art.  Depending on the time of day and where you stood in my living room, the rug I am thinking of could look completely different by the hour. It was mysterious and complicated. It held your imagination and generously gave to you all the color and light it could muster. It had survived who knows how many situations in who knows how many countries for almost 200 years and could have easily survived another few hundred years except for the fact that it came to my house, where it died in a fire. I felt like I had just completely fallen down on my side of the agreement with all of the art I had owned and the people who created it and I felt horrible about it.

 

It was in this state of mind a few weeks ago when on an impulse I emailed the owner of an art gallery who represents a man who is flat-out my favorite contemporary photographer. I had purchased three of this man’s photographs over the years and they were not only among my favorite photos but also among my favorite aspects of…kind of my day-to-day experience now that I think about it. In my email to the gallery owner I explained what had happened and that I completely understood that nothing could be done since each of the photos I owned had been one of only a very small series of maybe seven or ten the photographer had printed but, well, if anything could be done, let me know. Even though nothing could be done and I understood that.

 

I sent the email, which in my own defense is the only truly pathetic email of that type I have written since the fire occurred. And I really didn’t expect a response since the way the art world tends to work nothing could be done, not to mention that the photographer had become kind of a big deal since I had bought his work and I hadn’t even bought the photos from this gallery since it is in a state I never visit.  I can’t even say that sending the email made me feel better – I was just upset one night about the photos being gone, looked at this photographer’s work online, got more upset and then wrote the note.

 

The day after I sent the email, I was driving in my car and my cell phone rang. It was the gallery owner. He introduced himself and I did the same, explaining the situation again in a bit more detail and when I finished talking the first words out of his mouth were, “I will fix this for you.” He said that art is important, what happened to my house was very unfortunate and that he would ask the photographer to reprint my photos, which he was completely sure the photographer would do because that’s just the kind of person he is.

 

I started to thank him profusely since it was so unexpected and I was so completely overwhelmed that anyone would do this for me. The gallery owner gently cut me off and nicely said, “Don’t worry. I will take care of this.” We spoke for a few more minutes about the particulars – he needed confirmation from my insurance company that the photos were considered a “total loss” (an oft-used phrase in my vocabulary right now), copies of my original invoices and a few other things.  I started again to thank him and once again he nicely interrupted me, saying, “Don’t worry about anything.” We ended the call and I, who cry perhaps twice every decade, pulled my car over to the side of the road and burst into tears.

 

I cried because the mere possibility of having those photos back was almost too much to bear. Sometimes you’re just not quite ready to feel so much all at once. I also cried because I had dumbly, blindly stumbled upon a man who so obviously could only conceive of treating a complete stranger with matter-of-fact generosity, kindness and grace. And I think I cried too because it just felt like I was being given a second chance to do right by art.

 

Wrap Rage

 

You may have heard of Wrap Rage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrap_rage), which is basically what happens when you go completely insane trying to open some sort of product (usually electronics) that has been diabolically encased in some form of impenetrable plastic. Tens of thousands of people end up in the emergency room each year – usually bleeding profusely – because they went out of their minds trying to open up the clamshell packaging containing an HDMI cable or something like that and cut themselves either on the package or on the completely inappropriate and very sharp item with which they attacked the clamshell. I had a full-blown episode last week and thought I’d share:

 

Since the fire, I have been on what can only be described as a shopping death march. Pretty much everything I had either burned up, melted or was ruined by smoke and ash. And that means that every time I want to do something, the first step is to go to a shopping mall or big box store to make a purchase. Want to watch TV? Gotta buy one! Need so walk outside? Off to the shoe store! You get the drift. The shopping death march also means that I am constantly tearing through wrapping paper, stomping down cardboard boxes, chasing down runaway packing peanuts, loading batteries into things and reading installation instructions that have been translated into English from Norwegian by the Japanese.

 

So I was already teetering on the edge of Wrap Rage when I bought from Best Buy a 2-gigabyte memory card for the replacement Sony Cybershot digital camera I had bought the week before but hadn’t noticed that it CAME WITH NO MEMORY WHATSOEVER. (Note to Sony: Really?) Clearly, memory cards are a hot item for shoplifting because when I got home (I’m in a rental house now) and took it out of the bag I noticed for the first time it was encased in a thick plastic case with metal hinges and no discernible opening. I spent a few minutes trying to open it with my bare hands, succeeding only in scraping several fingers. I then thought, duh, use a hammer and a screwdriver, but remembered that my tools had all melted in the fire and dammit I hadn’t made it to Home Depot yet to buy any replacements. I scoured the house to see if the owner had by chance left any tools, but came up empty-handed.

 

And that’s when Wrap Rage kicked in. Irritated and sweating slightly, I went into the garage and found a metal pole about five feet long. I have no idea what the pole’s real purpose is but I used it to pound the crap out of that plastic case, which I had placed on the concrete floor of the garage. The pole didn’t even dent the plastic, though now I had a genuine, bleeding cut on my hand. Sweating even more from the exertion and now swearing, I wandered through the house looking for sharp and/or heavy objects. Stopping in the master bedroom, I tilted the solid wood dresser back, placed the plastic container under it, and then let the dresser drop on it. I did this about 10 times. Still not even a crack in the plastic.

 

I was now in the full throes of a Wrap Rage attack. I grabbed my car keys and the plastic case, went back out into the garage, jammed the case beneath the rear tire of my car, started the engine, threw the car into reverse and rolled it over the container. Nothing! Forward, back, forward, back, forward, back over the case I drove, until the garage got a little hazy from the accumulating exhaust fumes and I got a little dizzy from inhaling them. Then I got out of the car and examined the container. Still totally intact.

 

The interesting thing about Wrap Rage is that it is something of an out-of-body experience. You are completely aware that you are committing acts of lunacy and posing a danger to yourself and yet…yet…after you drive your car over your memory card 20 times you still carry it back in the house and grab any convenient sharp object in which to carve out the evil soul of the plastic case that entombs it.

 

Since I still don’t have much in the way of cutlery, what I grabbed was a corkscrew and a pair of scissors. As I mentioned, I was completely cognizant of the fact that I was probably going to end up in the emergency room but as my Wrap Rage peaked, believe me, I just didn’t care and I bet when it happens to you, you won’t care either. (I actually made a mental note at the time that I live maybe five minutes from Stanford University Hospital and could probably drive myself there.)

 

Driving over the case multiple times with an SUV hadn’t cracked it open, though it had expanded the seam on one side a fraction of a millimeter, which enabled me to jam in the business end of the corkscrew and the scissors. Working them into the seam simultaneously, I finally heard the sweet, sweet sound of plastic cracking. Shards flew everywhere, including into my forehead, drawing a bit more blood. But there, lo and behold, was my two-gigabyte memory card. I held it in my hand and felt Wrap Rage dissipate.

 

And that’s another funny thing about Wrap Rage. As quickly as it overtakes your senses and turns you into a corkscrew-and-scissors-wielding psycho, the second you are able to hold your memory card/camera/ iPod/USB cable in your shaking, bleeding hands it just disappears. I couldn’t decide whether to weep or take a nap. Then I noticed that the corkscrew wasn’t bent all that badly so I popped open a lovely Sancerre, poured a glass and tried out my new Sony Cybershot with the 2-gigabyte memory card.