all men, all older than me

I've worked for M now for the past seven years (that one year in Mexico notwithstanding). And I've always been the sole female on staff.  Not that that issue has ever been problematic for me.  But there is a small part of my brain that takes note.

I have been very fortunate to have avoided most sexism in the job site.  But it is there.  M will go to the male on staff to get feedback on how to deal with a particular issue rather than coming to me.  Other trades on job sites will turn to the male on staff to get questions answered even though I am the lead on that particular job.  I even had a full forehead-to-toe-to-forehead visual sweep once when I was delivering cabinets to a job site, with the question "you're a cabinetmaker?", tossed at me.  But in general it's been pretty low-key, the sexism.

This past week and a half I've been the lead on a job install.  I was the main person building the job in the shop, and now I'm the senior person on the job site for cabinetry.  And everyone around me has respected that.  They come to me with questions, with quality control, with need for feedback on any particular situation.

And they are all men, all older than me, all with many more years in the trades than me.

Odd.

I've never dealt with this level of respect before.

And I like it.

The reality is that I am the one with the most knowledge about the cabinets.  I built the cabinets, I made the face frames, the doors, the drawer faces, I put the whole thing together in the shop.  They have been hired as contractors to help me install.  Or they are the General Contractor, who knows a lot about running the job site, but not so much about the cabinetry we are putting in.  And they respect me, and my position.  They know I know everything about the cabinets, they know that I am the one who has the authority to make decisions, the one who will make decisions and take the heat if the decision is wrong.

And they have no issue with that.  They don't even notice (in that way) that I am female.

I am the senior person on staff when it comes to cabinets.  And it is  so refreshing to have that level of respect paid to me.

I think I've always known how skilled I am, but have never really admitted it to myself.  Nor have I had that respect reflected back to me from my previous co-workers, nor from my boss.

I.  Know.  My.  Shit.  And this time I am getting that reflected back to me.

So I am reveling in it.  Not lording it over anyone, just giving myself the credit I rarely give myself.

Nice.

Good Love/Bad Love

I recently made a playlist for a friend who was going through the wringer of Love.  Here it is:

Bad Love
A New Shade of Blue - The Bobby Fuller Four
Try To Quit You Baby - Buddy Guy
All Cried Out - Dusty Springfield
Just How Lonely - Southern Culture on the Skids
Tainted Love - Social Distortion
Funhouse - Pink
What Did Love Ever Do To You - Hank Williams III
Turn On Your Love Light - Bobby Blue Band
Divorce Song - Liz Phair
Heart of Glass - Blondie
You Are Never Nice to Me - BR5-49
Bye Bye Baby - Detroit Cobras
Break My Heart - Judybats
The Bed’s Too Big Without You - The Police
Mean Man - Detroit Cobras
She’s Going - The English Beat
Piece of My Heart - Janis Joplin
Bulletproof - La Roux

Good Love
Love Rollercoaster - Ohio Players
You R Loved - Victoria Williams
I Love You - Asie Payton
Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
He Sends Me - Nellie Lutcher
Make a Little Love - Alex Chilton
Love is the Drug - Roxy Music
Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield
When a Man Loves a Woman - Marvin Gaye
And Be Loved - Damian Marley
Lovelight - Robbie Williams
Love-a-rama - Southern Culture on the Skids
Chuck E’s in Love - Rickie Lee Jones
Someone’s Daughter - Beth Orton
Thing Called Love - Bonnie Raitt
You Give Me Fever - Buddy Guy
Crazy Feelin’ - Roy Hamilton
It Must Be Love - Madness

Hometown

So I arrived. In one piece. More tired than I realized. I had woken up
at 6am on Tuesday, worked 8 hours, then jumped on a plane (well, two
actually), that whisked me off to Chicago. I got a mere 3 hours of
plane sleep, and arrived at 5:12am local time. Or 3:12am Portland
time. I wandered around the airport a bit, trying to take photos (an
attempt at continuing a photo series I had started a while back). Then
I jumped on a CTA train, switched to a bus, and arrived at my home fir
the week at 7am. Almost 24 hours of being more or less awake.

And then I slept. Until 11am. I can tell I'm still a bit fuzzy. But
I'm going to venture out and go pay my respects to the lake.

Silly me, I didn't even think to bring my bathing suit!

Since this story is endless, I might as well end it here.
--Margaret

Nerves...

The reality is that I'm nervous about going home.  I haven't been there in over 10 years, and most of the people I'll be visiting I haven't seen in twice that amount of time.  What if they aren't who I think they are.  What if we don't have anything in common any more.

Plus, I haven't been on a plane in, oh.... probably 5 years or so.  And I can get a bit claustrophobic.  Gah.

Nerves are on high alert today.....

Again with the negativity.

I had a bad interaction with my boss on Friday.  We had been asked to replicate some crown molding that had originally been made at least 50 years ago.  The customer only needed about 20 linear feet, so paying hundreds of dollars to have a special cutter head made to match that profile was out of the question.  The other way to make crown is to piece it together - make separate pieces then glue them together to make the full molding.  My boss and I discussed how to go about making it and away I went.

First I needed to purchase a new router bit.  There was a bead detail at the bottom of the crown that we couldn't match with any of our bits.  So my boss sent me to our local blade sharpening shop to see if they had the bit we needed.  They don't stock many bits, and the woman there suggested I go to another local store as they would have a larger selection.  I decided to just go to the other store rather than call my boss to see if that was what he wanted me to do.  There isn't any need for me to check my every move with him, I can make these decisions on my own.  Or so I thought.

At the second store they had what we wanted for $40.  I had looked online for this bit and knew that we could get it for about $32 (prior to shipping, which would essentially bring it up to $40).  Since money is tight, and since I know my boss, I decided to call him and clear this purchase.  Well, he wasn't happy.  Why didn't I ask at the first store if they could order it for us?  $40?  That's a lot for a router bit.... and on, and on.  Well, ok, go ahead and buy it.  So much anxiety over a frikkin router bit.

I get back to the shop and start working on the molding.  The top piece was easy enough - a basic bullnose - so that was done pretty quick.  The bottom piece was going to take some more planning.  I slowly moved my way through the process of making it.  Two passes with a box roundover bit; eat away a small amount with the dado blade.

The next step could have been done with either the router table or the same setup I already had with the dado blade.  I opted for the dado blade since it was already set, and would minimize any tearout.  The downside would be that it would require more sanding to get rid of the marks the blades left, but we were using a fairly soft wood, so they should sand out quickly.  The router table option would have taken some time to set up, I would have had to make multiple passes on the setup, and there was a higher possibility for tearout.  So I figured it was easier and quicker to use the dado setup.

After the dado blade, I had one more setup on the router, with the new bit.  I had to run the wood on it's edge, which makes for all sorts of possible mayhem if you don't plan carefully.  I re-set the power feed to accommodate the wood running on it's edge, added two feather boards, and one straight board on top to keep the wood from rising up as it passed across the router bit.  A test board came out nicely, and I ran the real wood.  This setup also took multiple passes as I had to run the bit pretty far into the wood.

All in all, it took about 5 hours to make this stuff.  But I was proud of it.  It was a very close match, and since the final product wasn't going directly up against existing molding, close was acceptable.  Very close was extra nice.

I sanded the bullnose and was about to start sanding the lower part when my boss came back to the shop.  He looked at the two parts of my molding and started to criticize it.  I saw him look at the bullnose with some suspicion, but he didn't comment.  Then he saw the saw marks on the lower part and asked why the marks were there.  Dado blade, I said.  Well, he said with a big sigh, that's a lot of sanding.  And this part here, the bead detail, this doesn't seem to be right.  It looks like it wasn't set up right.  That's not good.  Another sigh.

I said that the dado blade was the cleanest option for that section of the molding.  I wanted to add, Well Mike, you aren't going to be doing the sanding, so don't fret.  I looked at the bead detail and there was a section that needed a bit of sanding to improve it, but it was in no way defective.

Really I wanted to slap him.  I know this is part of his personality - he is Chicken Little personified: the sky is falling - and he rarely sees the positive in life.  I've gotten used to that for the most part.  But, really.  I had just spent 5 hours working on a task that we aren't necessarily set up to do most of the time.  Sure, we can replicate old molding, but that doesn't mean that we can do it quickly or as perfectly as a shop that specializes in that sort of thing.  But nothing is ever fucking good enough for Mike, it seems.

For some reason, this time his complaints really hit me harder than normal.  It really pointed out how negative he is.  And how exhausting that is for me.  I'm not always Little Miss Cheery, but I sure as hell can see the positive in most situations.  Not Mike.  And working with someone like that wears on you.

Mike walked back off to his office and I proceeded to sand the bottom part of the molding.  It took a little bit of work, but I have tricks up my sleeve, and got 20 feet sanded in about 45 minutes.

Then, as I was leaving for the day, Mike asked me if the crown was done.  It's been sanded to 120, I told him, now it just needs to be glued up and final sanded.  A small frown crossed his face.  Did all the saw marks come out, he asked?  If one of our designers wasn't sitting there at that moment, I probably would have said something snarky to Mike.  Did he really think that I'm so fucking incompetent that I would have left saw marks?  I've been doing this work for 9 years now, I think I can sand properly.  But out of respect for the designer and for Mike, I merely said "of course".

Really.

This whole thing just lit a hotter fire under my ass to find my next career.

LA visit

So I went down to LA to visit some friends for Thanksgiving. I spent way too much time in the LA airport.  I took some photos.

I also spent some time in TJ:

Small World

A little background: I used to live in Atlanta and worked at an ISP called MindSpring. I now live in Portland, Oregon and work as a cabinetmaker.

So I recently met a really cool woman here in Pdx named Julia. She and I are in the same yoga class and have met a few times through meetup.com events. She rocks. She's just like me. 8^) We have a lot of interests in common and one of them is the Hong Kong actor Chow Yun Fat. So we decided to have a Chow Yun Fat film fest evening. Julia offered her house and invited a few of her female friends who she thought might be interested.

I arrived at her house and we jumped directly into conversation. Eventually her friend Dalia showed up and joined in. Dalia is a terribly interesting person. She was born in the US, but grew up Israel, and had tons and tons and tons of crazy stories to share. I sat next to her on the couch and was totally absorbed in her stories when she mentioned her son, Zohar. I shook my head and sat up straight. Julia asked me what was up. "I think I know your son, Dalia". What does he do for a living? Computer programming. Where does he live? Atlanta.

Oh. My. Gawd. I know your son. I used to work with him, waaay back in 1997 in Atlanta!

Here I am, 15 years on, living on the other side of the country, having a great girls night gab time, only to find out that the engaging woman to my left, with all the great "adult themed" stories, is the mother of a former co-worker.

Writing this now, I'm sure it doesn't seem so crazy an event to everyone else, but it was a bit of a time/space continuum warp moment for me.

The Reasoning

Are you the type of person who believes in reasoning in the universe? I guess I am because whenever I think about my situation and consider that there must be some reason for me being where I am right now, I feel better.

I think right now is one of the lower points in my life. Not to sound all dramatic and “poor me”, this is just reality as I see it.

So what is the reason behind my current situation? Humility, learning how to survive on very little, learning that I am the only one I can ever really trust? Learning how to recover from what feels like a devastating blow? Learning that live goes on, no matter what? Changing my attitude to resemble something like “I will survive” rather than “why me”? Getting out of my cave and asking for help? All of the above?

I’ve been hiding from these thoughts for a while. They have been fumbling around in my head for months now, but it’s easy to ignore them – they aren’t an immediate concern. But I have to face up to them now. I have to take a hard look at myself and figure out who I really am, what I really want in life.