What a Week!

It is probably my just punishment for leaving my family in the lurch, so to speak. Not that I'm rescinding—the "strike" is still on, and probably will be permanently.

We've had a crazy week! First of all, Mom went on strike. Since I quit being the housekeeper, I discovered that the kids will actually do a fairly decent clean up; it's just that after they've done their job once for the day they think they are done. So if the kitchen's been cleaned and then five people each get out three dishes, two butter-knives and one cup . . . and the milk and bread and two jars of peanut butter and three flavors of jam . . . then those things all stay out until the next day. And somehow nobody ever sees the dirt on the stove-top. But I do have to say that Ryan did a superb job on the kitchen last night. I think we are getting it.

Well, on Saturday all our drains backed up and flooded the basement. This could have been sheer catastrophe—and expensive. But the kids discovered it early and used the wet/dry vac in the basement. And my marvelous husband rented a power snake and got the line clean and working again. Yaaaay!!

Monday evening I was thinking our house didn't smell so good. Did the cat or the dog poop somewhere? By Tuesday night I had it figured out. Nobody had done any laundry after the drain thing happened. And there was a LOT of laundry in the basement when it flooded. Ugh!

Yesterday (Wednesday) I drove my kids to school and then stopped at Wal-Mart for Oxy-Clean and Febreeze; when I got back out to the van it wouldn't start. It really wouldn't start. My parents came to get me and we left the van there. I came home to a rather disastrous house, with no time to work on schoolwork, and I had to figure out how to get the kids home from school. At least that last one wasn't too tough—just a phone call, since their cousins also go to Entheos.

School got out at 3:15; the kids called me at 4:30 to ask what was going on. By 5:00 Bruce was heading out to see what was going on, when the kids finally got home.

I fixed dinner in a really dirty kitchen, we ate, and then we were going to go back to Wal-Mart so Bruce could have a look at the van. With my nerves all a-jangle, I ignored all the cleanup that had to happen and tried to soothe myself by playing the piano instead. Pretty soon the little girls were shrieking and dancing behind me; older kids were getting ready to go to Mutual; Bruce was on facebook; Michael was on his computer. I felt like the saloon pianist in a cartoon—the guy who just sits there playing, hunched over the keys while bullets whistle around his head.

At last, in the rain, Bruce and I drove his car back to Wal-Mart so he could check out the van. It's not the battery. It's not the starter. It's probably the fuel pump. But he couldn't do anything in the Wal-Mart parking lot, in the rain, in the dark. So the van has to stay until he can get back to it. We went back to his car and guess what—it wouldn't start! One of the battery cable/clamps broke. So we called a friend to take us home; the car will stay there until Bruce can get to it after work today.

At least all this is happening over Spring Break, which is good. That is the silver lining. Because I don't really have to go anywhere this week. Hopefully the car stuff will be worked out by the weekend and life will be back to normal.

Or is this normal?

The Great Kitchen Project, in Progress . . .

Last weekend I did finish phase 2: the painting of the kitchen walls. And I went down one side of the hallway as well. And, on top of that, Bruce finished phase "somewhere down the road," too. Unfortunately, that phase needs to be redone. I'll tell you all about it:

At about the time I started on the kitchen, our microwave totally pooped out. This isn't such a big deal—I pretty much grew up without a microwave, and didn't have my own until after 10 years of marriage, after all. Hmm. It was very convenient for re-heating leftovers though.

Well, last weekend Bruce and I were shopping at the D.I. (the local thrift store) for a much-needed bookshelf. They didn't have the bookshelf, but they did have a white, over-the-range microwave oven for $10. We took it to an electrical outlet and discovered that it worked, and also that it still had a Corelle plate with a paper towel and a chicken nugget in it. Yuck! Then we saw another one that looked even newer and better (but no chicken nuggets inside) and it still worked too! So we bought it, and Bruce installed it. This was a bigger job than you might think, involving adding a new outlet and moving the cabinet above the stove up a little higher. But he got it done, it looked lovely and it worked. For 24 hours.

See, our house was wired by idiots. Seriously. The living room, all the kitchen lights, some of the kitchen outlets, the front yard light and, I think, Brandon & Ryan's bedroom, and maybe the garage door-opener are all on the same circuit. This means that if, say, in the winter-time when it's dark in the evening, we decide to vacuum our house while someone is cooking dinner, all the power in the living room and kitchen goes out. Well, guess which breaker the microwave ended up on?

So while we were working in the kitchen, and Kaylie was watching TV, and Rachel was coloring in the living room, someone decided to reheat something. It tripped the breaker—twice. The third time it just blew the fuse in the microwave.

Undaunted, Bruce went to get another microwave. He is going to find a different way of wiring it and get it installed this weekend.

And I will be working on phase 3: counter-tops. "But, wait a minute," you say. "Paint? On the counter-tops?"

You'll see. Exciting things are happening in my kitchen!

Fall Break

Fall break officially started yesterday for Michael and me. Michael has taken advantage of this break by sleeping in, reading, and playing games. I am taking advantage of it by mixing paint for my kitchen !!, spray-painting a vase to cover the color I didn't like (not sure if I'm making things better here), and doing lots of homework and mid-term projects.

I'm pretty excited about the kitchen paint. A month or two ago I sent out a call to all my friends for leftover whitish/creamish-colored paint that they may have. My sweet friend, Bethannie, has a sweet husband who is a contractor. They had lots of leftover paint. So I took the paint she gave me and mixed it with some caramel-colored sample-size paints, plus some rust-red paint that we had, and I've come up with 2 1/2 gallons of a color that's very similar to the paint-chip I picked out at Home Depot. Yay! Today I'm painting all the walls that touch my kitchen counters. We actually only have three walls in the kitchen; I'm painting two. The third wall extends into the living room and will be painted an accent color—probably the rust-red. I guess this means I will be painting my living room, too. Darn! ;-)

Anyway, the plan is to slap a coat of paint on the kitchen walls this morning, then do homework while that first coat dries. I'm hoping to have all ten square feet coated and re-coated by the time I get the kids from school this afternoon. Cool, huh!

It Takes a Woman

Our bathroom has problems—not the least of which is ten of us sharing one bathroom. But I am talking about actual, physical problems that need repairs.

For one thing, due to a long-time but difficult-to-find leak, we now have a hole in the floor which can only be fixed by taking out the bath-tub and tearing out the floor. Well that's not going to happen until we get a shower (and walls, and a sink, and a door, and lights) in the basement bathroom. And who knows when we'll be able to manage all that? It will take some major moola. (You remember that the kitchen remodel is everything that can be done with paint. This is because paint is relatively cheap—compared to new floor, new flooring, new everything . . . for both bathrooms). Yes, this is a big problem which requires a big solution.

But our bathtub also has another, smaller problem. Somehow it got chipped, and the bottom started to rust (not all the way through, thank goodness). So we went to Home Depot and bought a $20-ish porcelain-bathtub-repair kit. It's this stuff that you just paint onto the bottom of the bathtub, let it set for 48 hours, and voila! Good as new!


Except that instead of setting up hard, it just made a rubbery layer of stuff that peeled right off.

So Bruce and I wondered if we'd done it wrong, if we should buy another kit and try again, or just what. I thought, What we need is something we can paint over the hole, that's waterproof, that is hard and long-lasting.

Hmmm.

I've got it! Fingernail polish!

So that's what I used. I washed and dried the tub, then applied about three layers of clear undercoat, and eight layers of white nail polish, followed by two more layers of clear topcoat (with 15 to 30 minutes of dry-time between each coat).

Smooth, hard, durable, waterproof. Voila!

It works great! I've used this bathtub-repair method three times now in the last year or so. One application of nail polish on your bathtub lasts four to five months before it starts to crack and chip. Then you just get out the nail-polish-remover, clean it all up and do it again. And after three applications I still have half a bottle of clear-coat, and half a bottle of white. Bathtub repair for about 66¢ a shot.

Seriously, a man never would have thought of this! ;-)

More Updates . . .

Well, I've been in school for three days now. So far all my classes look interesting; the least exciting is Intro. to Fashion—an overview of the fashion world. Actually, the lecture was interesting, but the 50 minute fashion review video (lights out, sound too low) was not so great. Weird clothes on skeletal women. Nice. But I'm excited about my pattern-making class, and the body image class sounds like it will be fascinating.

AND

Now I have more pictures of
THE GREAT KITCHEN PROJECT
(Can you just hardly wait?)

To paint the front of the cabinet the right way, I had to remove the back panel first (so the dishwasher door wouldn't be in the way) . Not very attractive. But it's all back together now, and quite lovely.


before . . .

in progress; I did do some drawer repair. Yay, me!

all finished!

So, it's coming along! Next up: Repairing and painting the walls.

Kitchen Update

The Great Kitchen Project . . .

Well, two weeks into the project, phase 1-A of the kitchen is done: I've got all the upper cabinets painted and the doors re-hung. It took a little longer than I'd hoped, what with back-to-school shopping and physicals, and re-tinting the paint—and so having to apply about a thousand coats.

But I did finish 1-A—this morning, in fact. This afternoon was spent in really cleaning the kitchen; for the first time in two weeks, it is bee-yoo-tifully clean. Aahhhh. ☺

And, lucky you, I decided to post pictures of the work as it progresses,

so you don't have to wait to see my colors.

An unexpected side-effect of the new paint color (which is called "Phantom Mist" —which always makes me think of "Phantom Menace" (do we see too much Star Wars around here?). Ahem. The unexpected side-effect is that the mauve countertops don't look quite so obnoxious when they're paired with the Phantom Mist. I still don't love them, but they are more palateable.

This will never do

Phase 1-B is to sand and paint the bottom set of cabinets. I wonder if I can figure out how to repair, reinforce, reconstruct, my flimsy drawers while I'm at it. The kitchen drawers—not my unmentionables!

Kids, wood, and knives don't mix

I'll keep you posted as I go!

more of . . .

. . . The Great Kitchen Project

it continues:

On days 11 and 12 (July 26-27) I took the cupboard doors out into the garage and sanded them. And sanded them and sanded them. This took several hours, and the vibrations of the electric sander—three hours at a time—made my hands and arms ache for days. But then, what do you imagine they'd feel like if I wasn't using an electric sander?


On days 13 and 14 (July 28-29) I started painting the sanded cabinets and some of the doors. I will not tell you the color. Ha!!


Well, first I had to empty all the cupboards.

Then I had this terrific idea that I could use acrylic craft paints to paint the cupboards—it would be inexpensive, easy to mix colors, it lets the wood-grain show through a little, and it's easy to clean up. I figured I could just cover over it with an acrylic sealer/varnish and all would be well. After I'd painted more than half of everything, I started wondering if this was really such a brilliant idea. So I talked to the people who make the craft paint, and I talked to the people at a paint store. And I learned that all of the good things I thought of were true. But I also found out that the required three coats of polycrylic sealer would be much more expensive than the one gallon of latex paint I'd need for the whole project. Hmm. So now the plan is that the acrylic craft paint is the primer coat, and tomorrow I'm going to get a gallon of acrylic-latex paint to do the top coat. The upper set of cupboards will be all done this week. :-)

More to come . . .

The Great Kitchen Project

Today is the first installment of
The Great Kitchen Project


Days 1-4 (July 16-19): I'm still using the "think system."

Days 5-6 (July 20-21): I removed all the upper cabinets' doors, washed those cabinets and sanded them. I think that just cleaning up all those greasy dust bunnies that collect up top should count as a remodel all by itself. Icky work! And after all my scrubbing, the electric sander still removed an amazing amount of built-up goo. It occurs to me that sanding your cabinets is a truly marvelous way to get them clean. Of course, this may lead to problems in the size of your cabinetry after a while.

On Day 6 (yesterday) I also removed the hood/vent from above the stove, thinking that if I really wanted to do a good, beautiful, professional-looking job I would paint behind the hood too. And, besides, it really (really) needed some extra scrubbing. When I saw the idiotic—and probably not quite code—way the thing was wired, I changed my mind about my "professional" paint job that would include painting behind the hood (because I also saw that it would include re-routing the wires in a decent way and doing a major wall repair. Just keep that hidden behind the hood, thanks). I did still label all the wires with different colored markers, and some with different types of tape, and took the hood down and spent an hour and a half scrubbing it. Unfortunately, while I was cleaning, some of my tape slipped off of some of the wires. I put the sparkly-clean hood back, but how on earth do the wires go back together?

Day 7 (July 22): Bruce is trying to figure out and repair my hood-wiring fiasco—apparently the wires connected to the hood are also connected to the outlet we use for the stove. Fortunately it's just a regular outlet and not a super-duper 220 outlet (because we have a gas stove); so we could plug it into another close-by outlet. Still, we gotta get that fixed!
And today I need to get the kitchen clean before I can really do anything else. Perhaps I'll sand the doors today, if there's time after the cleaning and the mom-stuff.

Exciting!

I am going to remodel my kitchen! Well, at least I am remodeling everything that can be done with paint. That counts, doesn't it? And I am so excited!

I have discovered that I am simply the kind of person who is just plain-old happier with a big project to keep my brain—and my hands—occupied at all times. Well, I've known this for a while. But it's sinking in more that this is not such a bad thing. So I'm going to re-do my kitchen.

Later today (when the kitchen is clean) I will take some "before" pictures to post. And I'll keep you posted as the project rolls along (watch the sidebar). Wish me luck!

Notice the mauve countertops, yellowish, piney-colored cabinets

and white walls. And the curtains—when all else is done,

they may need a change, too.

A Rotten Adventure

The foulest stench is in the air, the funk of forty thousand years . . .

Actually it's just the funk of a couple of days, which is much worse, because in forty thousand years the stench would be completely gone.

Yesterday Bruce noticed that our garage was rather stinky. I did not notice—at first—because our garage is full of smelly things like bug-killer, fertilizer, lawn mowers, and gas cans; and also because I've had hay-fever for the last three weeks which means I have a very stuffy nose. But by 10 p.m. it was definitely reeking out there, and Bruce figured out why: someone had unplugged the chest freezer we keep in the garage. Now this story would be entirely different if this had happened in the dead of winter when we can use the entire garage for a freezer; but right now we are in the longest, hottest, sunniest days of summer. What is with us and rotting meat? If it's not a dead mouse, then it's a freezer full of poultry! Ugh!

Trash pick-up day was yesterday morning, so we were stumped to find a way of disposing of the mess. We couldn't leave it rotting in a black trash can, in the sun, every day for the next week. My parents' trash day is today, but I was sure they were already in bed at 10:30 last night and wouldn't answer the phone, and I didn't want to just sneak a lot of rotten meat into their trash can. Finally we decided to just plug the freezer back in; I figured everything would freeze back up which would clear away the smell until next week when we could put the meat into our own trash can and then we could clean the freezer. Well, it turns out that last night was a hot, hot night; was it possible for everything to be frozen again? The smell in the garage—which had Tucker delicately sniffing toward the door as if he could smell some sweet perfume—and the swarm of flies around the freezer (which sits right next to the door into the house) convinced me that we had no such luck.

all those years of ballet classes were not wasted: I had to stand on my toes and lift my other leg to be able to reach into the bottom of the freezer.

I tried calling my parents to see if I could still sneak the stuff into their trash can, but they didn't answer the phone. Then I called Melanie to see if—by any miraculous chance—she knew when their trash pick-up was. She didn't; but, by a stroke of luck, her trash hadn't been picked up yet today. So I rushed over with about 60 pounds of semi-thawed, smelly meat, and some formerly frozen apricots. Getting it out of the freezer was gaggy: that sick, sweet smell that meat gets, in combination with a vinegary smell from the apricots. (I know . . . thanks for sharing, Loralee!) After I dropped my disaster into Melanie's trash can (with her permission, of course) I washed my hands and then drove away with a feeling of paranoia that the truck wouldn't go through her neighborhood for some awful reason and then she'd be stuck with the stench, and the fly-factory, until next week. Oh, that would be terrible—I'd feel guilty forever!

On the way home from Melanie's house I thought perhaps I'd better ask Michael to finish cleaning the bathroom for me so I could get right to cleaning the freezer. (I stopped in the middle of that job so I could get to Melanie's before the garbage truck did). And then I had a most clever—perhaps bordering on conniving—idea! The kids were already cleaning the house this morning; they were doing the kitchen, living-room, and laundry-room, while I did the bathroom. They were almost finished with their work when I got back home. So I gathered them all together; praised their work, and told them that we had to do three more jobs this morning; I'd do one and they could do the others—and they got to choose which two they'd do. The jobs were 1. clean the inside of the van, including vacuuming; 2. mop the kitchen, hallway, and bathroom; 3. clean out the smelly freezer.

After I finished up cleaning the bathroom I went out to tackle the freezer. It was a very nasty two hours; but with a bandanna to cover my nose and mouth, a wet-dry vac, old rags (which I threw away as soon as the job was finished), some bleach, and lots of water, I got it all done.

Which was worse? Cleaning up after 60 pounds of spoiled meat, or cleaning up after a 2-ounce mouse? The mouse was definitely worse.

And anyway, at the end of this rotten adventure I also ended up with a clean floor and a clean van!

I think I can talk about it now

This should be a Halloween story, not a Thanksgiving story!

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, before Thanksgiving, there was a horrid smell in our kitchen--like something rotting--and it seemed to come from the refrigerator or pantry area. (I know, horrible thought.)

As we tried to figure out what the smell might be, I remembered the way Abbi had been acting a few weeks earlier. Staring intently at the space under the fridge, ready to pounce there if she could. A sure sign that we had a mouse. When I saw her behave like that I moved the refrigerator out, cleaned underneath it and left some mouse poison there.

None of this is anything new; every fall mice come into the house. When Abbi starts acting funny I put poison under the fridge and under the stove--where our pets and kids can't get at it. After a little while I might find a mummified mouse or two (in our dry, desert climate the mice just dry up). And then I make Bruce dispose of the little corpses. Not nice, but no big deal, and never smelly.

Well, back to the big stink.

I figured a mouse must have died underneath the fridge. So Tuesday I pulled the fridge out again and, sure enough, as I moved it the smell got stronger. Yuck! But, there was no mouse to be seen! I swept and cleaned out the space and put the fridge back. And it seemed a little better for a while. But the next morning it was worse than ever.

We were super busy cooking for Thanksgiving all day Wednesday, and cleaning the house, but Bruce took another look. Nothing to be seen; we weren't really sure what to do about it. A mysterious, vile odor that came from an invisible source near the refrigerator. Then that night I thought perhaps a mouse had crawled into the refrigerator coils and died in there. Not a pleasant thought at all--how on earth would we find it, let alone get rid of it?

Well Thursday was Thanksgiving Day, and we spent most of the day at my in-laws' house. It would have to wait until Friday.

First thing Friday morning Bruce and I got up and went straight to the fridge. He pulled it out again and removed all the back panels that could be removed. Oh the stench! We thought we'd throw up. He started vacuuming out some major dust-bunnies, and kept his eyes open for a dead mouse. And he found it. The refrigerator coils are about an inch off of the floor, and right above the coils there's a metal tray--probably there to catch any extra condensation. And in the corner of the tray, about nine to twelve inches in from the back of the fridge--and just out of reach--was a dead mouse lying in a puddle of water.

OK. It's making me sick to write about it.

Well, Bruce couldn't get his hand in there to move it out. We couldn't vacuum it out. No, it had to be my smaller and more dextrous hand. So I tied a bandana around my nose and mouth--which lessened the smell considerably--and tried several tools to get the nasty thing out. (The "tools" were mostly long sticks, but they were too thick to do any good. At one point I did get desperate enough to wrap my hand in lots of plastic and try to just grab it out. But I couldn't quite reach it--which didn't break my heart.) Finally, after lots of prodding it around, we realized that even though it's body would move, the tail (which was even farther back, where we couldn't see it) was stuck to the tray.

I had been trying to lift it out with a bamboo skewer (no, I did not stab at it. Ugh! How gross!). And every time I touched it, some of it's fur would scrape off. So it looked like a pinkish-gray; slightly translucent slug; and it was totally limp like Frieda's cat. (Frieda is the Peanuts character with the "naturally curly hair" and the cat that just hangs over her shoulder.) Everything I tried to get it out would twist it or turn it until it's nasty little body was twisted halfway round. This job was so repulsive that I was shaking. At one point I'd put down the skewer to try something else, and when I picked it up again I grabbed the wrong end and got slimy mouse fur on my hand. Is there a word, or even a sound, for how disgusting that is?

Finally I got a second skewer--a metal one this time, with a loop on one end--and while I used the bamboo skewer to hold the body down, I used the metal loop to scrape the tail loose. At last the mouse was free. I could now scoop it up with one skewer while I used the other to steady it. I got it all the way out of the fridge, dropped it on a waiting pile of old plastic bags, and then wrapped all of it--the mouse and both skewers--in several plastic bags, which Bruce promptly took out to the trash. (Fortunately the garbage truck hadn't come around yet, and we wouldn't have to live with that thing rotting in our trash can for another week.)

When my foul chore was done, and the mouse was safely out of sight, I went and scrubbed--and scrubbed and scrubbed--my hands. Then I prepared a bleach solution for Bruce to use to clean up the condensation tray; I was not sad when I spilled bleach on my hands. While Bruce sprayed bleach into the tray and vacuumed it out with our small wet-dry vac (several times) I worked on other things in my room, wanting to cry the whole time.

Even though the stench was gone, I couldn't bear to eat anything in that kitchen; we had plenty of good food in the kitchen that Friday, but I was starving. All day long I had visions of slimy, limp, hairless, dead mouse dancing in my head. The whole morning was so upsetting that I couldn't even blog about it that evening.

By Saturday I thought I was over it, but cooking dinner almost made me gag that night. Today I'm doing OK. But thinking about it and writing about it is . . . sickening.

Oh! Will this trauma burn in my mind forever?

Hooray!

So, at about 9:30 this morning all the guys went out to look at the van again. Yep. It was still stuck, but everything was a little drier.

Plan One was just to get in and see if we could miraculously just drive it out. That one failed.

Plan Two: They connected a come-along to the front of the van and to a tree in the backyard, then Jason ratcheted the come-along while the van was in drive, but Bruce was not applying the gas pedal. It may have moved an inch or two, but the strap was not heavy enough to haul a 3000-pound van, and it kept breaking.

Plan Three: They called the neighbors to see if someone had a chain. Our friend, Joe Rodman, had a chain, and a son (Philip) that he brought along to help us out. It was a little nerve-wracking to see Joe squatted astride that great big tight chain, with the cable for the come-along pulled taut in front of his face as he worked the ratchet-lever. I went in the house for that part. But they decided that wasn't working too well anyway. That's when they looked inside the van door and discovered that the van weighs 3000 pounds, and then looked at the come-along and discovered that it was only rated to pull 1000 pounds. They abandoned Plan Three.

Plan Four: They jacked up the back end of the van and shoveled rocks and dirt and sod into the holes under the tires, then let the van down and tried to rock it back and forth to get it out. But since the trailer was behind the van they couldn't back it up enough to get the forward momentum they needed. Next!


Plan Five: They re-hitched the trailer to the van and tried to back it out. That worked as well as it did the very first time.


Plan Six: They chained the back of the trailer to the Rodman's van; Philip drove their van. So the Rodman van pulled the trailer, the trailer pulled the North van, and Joe (who is a professional cross-country truck driver) backed everything out beautifully—missing both the corner of the house and the big tree in the front yard. Hooray for the Rodmans!!

Joe backs the trailer out.

And they got it done just in time, because this is how the weather was starting to look:





And this is what our yard looks like now:

See the tire tracks?

This is how the lawn looks.

This is how deep the holes got.

It takes a professional to do the job.

But I've got my van out and working! Hooray for the Rodmans!!

The Continuing Drama of my Garden

On Memorial Day I used my wicked wiles to get Bruce, Michael and Jason to dig out the weeds and till the garden. Not only that, but they started digging up some sod to make a space for me to put in a second garden that I've been wanting. Yea!

By the end of the day (Memorial Day) the guys were pretty wiped out, so my second garden wasn't quite as big as I wanted; but I was pretty happy, they had worked hard all day, and I wasn't going to press it. Instead I thought I'd work on it myself. After an hour and a half, a few days later, I had moved about 2 square feet of sod. That was it for me. So that afternoon I bribed Jason ($$) to finish it up.

But now the second garden needs to be filled in with more dirt. Well, at the water-treatment place you can get some nice stuff to use in your garden, so yesterday Bruce, Michael and Jason borrowed a trailer and got some. Yea! They got home with a big trailer of garden-filler, and started to pull it into the back yard. And then there was a problem.

This is perplexing.

See, we hadn't considered the fact that it had been raining pretty much all week, and our ground was very soft and wet. So Bruce got the van up through the front yard pretty well, but when it got to the side, where he intended to drive through to the back yard . . . well, bad things happened. The van got stuck on some bumpy curbing that used to be the edging for a little flower bed (put in by the previous owners, but the the flowers are long gone). And when Bruce tried to get past that the tires just spun out and dug big old holes in the ground. So now the van was sitting in four mud-holes, in the rain. We tried everything we could think of yesterday to get it out, but there it sits. :-(

Well, today the sun is shining, the skies are clear and they're working at it again. Can they get the van out? Or will it sit in our side yard forever more, while a trailer full of dirt sits on my front lawn?

This actually doesn't look so bad, unless
you consider it as a permanent thing.

Tune in later . . .

Nature Girl

I hate gardening! Well, I can't really say I hate hate it, because I do like a few things about it. I like seeing my little plants get big and flower and, best of all, produce food for me to eat. I really like that! It's just everything else about it that I don't like. At all.

Last night I decided that if we're going to grow a garden this year, then I'd really better get busy on it. I have talked about it in the presence of my family (hint, hint) for weeks; but I've had no takers. So at about 7:30 p.m. I went out and looked around at our garden spot. We had some really nice rain a couple weeks ago, and the weeds really have appreciated this. They were a couple feet high. Unfortunately this means they were probably also a couple feet deep into the ground too. Work, work, ugly work.

I'm not normally against working; I think it's a good thing. But here's why this particular work is ugly:

1. I hate trying to get a shovel in under the roots of the weeds. I'm not strong enough to just shove it down in there. No, each scoop takes me about five minutes, I swear. Because I have to use all of my weight and strength to dig up the ground, and then I have to squat or stoop to finish pulling the weed and shake the dirt off of it's roots. Once or twice is OK, but not for a couple hours straight.

2. I hate trying to find the real root of the problem. Our local weeds have roots that reach all the way down to . . . Hades. And if you chop them off, they just sprout back stronger than ever. No, you have to get the entire root out.

3. I HATE bugs! I don't mind spiders and praying mantises if they don't touch me (since they eat other bugs); and the bumblebee that was hanging around last night was really cool. But I hate, despise, detest, abhor the crawly, shiny bugs that live in the dirt. The very dirt that I'm plunging my hands into so I can attempt to destroy the weeds. Eeew! And worms! This morning I unearthed a 6-inch worm that was as fat as my finger. Then I discovered that actually I chopped him in half, so there were two 6-inch worm pieces crawling around where I was working. Gross. I've often seen my dad pick these guys up and toss them aside, but no way am I going to do that—no, not even with gloves on!

4. I hate that I'm slightly allergic to our indigenous weeds. I come in sneezing and covered with a rash each time I weed the garden.

5. I don't really like being in the sun all that much. Although 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. aren't so bad.

6. I hate that it takes me two hours to clear about eight square feet of garden, when I'm perfectly aware that it took Bruce, Michael and Jason two hours to clear the entire garden last year.

I confess, I do like admiring any good work that I've done—and getting everyone else to admire it. But I'd be happy to admire someone else's work in this case.

I suppose the real problem is that I am a feminist. Not the "anything a man can do, I can do better" kind that you're thinking of. No, I am a true feminist: the kind that believes in classic femininity. The kind that believes that men really are bigger and stronger than I am, and that they can do some things better than I can—like digging up the garden and preparing the soil. And so I believe that if I have three strong, capable men in the house, then they should do the gardening. At least the yucky part of it. (In Jason's defense, he did help me last night. And Bruce was working. But Michael . . . Do you feel guilty yet?)

Some women, like my mother-in-law, my mother, and my sister Melanie, actually like gardening! Go figure! Margaret (my mother-in-law) assures me that when I am less busy with little kids I will start to like this task. No. I don't think I'll ever like the back-breaking part of it. Putting the cute little plants or seeds into the ground, watching them grow, seeing the flowers, eating the fruit; yes. I already do like those. If that's all there was to gardening I would love it!

This is me holding up my trophy-weed; one that's nearly as big as I am. Unfortunately, it got away: the broken end of the root I'm holding is as big around as my thumb
—that means there's still a lot more of it down in the ground. >:-( And, just to clarify, the smile is for the guy behind the camera—not for the sheer joy of pulling weeds.

Even the Kitchen Sink

I think my kitchen faucet is broken. :- /

It Stung Me!

I have a new bee in my bonnet that keeps buzzing around and around. I want to redecorate my living room! Well, I've wanted to do that for a long time—almost since we moved in. But now I really want to redecorate it. First I want to attack the fireplace. Yes, I do mean attack; with a sledgehammer.

Before we bought our house the entire thing was PINK: pink carpet throughout, Pepto-Bismol pink walls in one bedroom, pink roses on the wallpaper in the master bedroom, mauve countertops. Ugh! A product of the 80's, decorated by a lover-of-pink. Our fireplace is made of faux stone, in reddish-brown to pinky colors, and I just don't really like it. I guess I don't entirely hate it, but I don't care for it. So I want to pound out the stone and redo the fireplace in tile. I looked at it pretty closely a few days ago, and I really think it would come out fairly easily—provided I can muster up the brute strength it will require. It would take 35 square feet of tile to refinish it, so I think it could be a less-than-$100 project.

Jessica, as Vanna, showing off my tile selection. I'd use a darkish-brown grout.

Here are my swell fireplace drawings that I spent hours and hours on (mostly because I just kept measuring wrong—also I am apparently incapable of making parallel diagonal lines). The shaded tiles are 4-inches square, in an accent color (the ones I like are kind of bronzey). Which tile layout do you like best . . .

. . . the diagonal layout (above), or the straight layout (below)?

The diagonal layout would require more cutting of tiles, and would take a few more tiles than the straight layout. But that's not a terribly big deal. I think. (No, I'm not painting the walls in a white and blue plaid pattern.)

I also really want to paint. Our walls were done in cheap, ugly white paint just before we moved into the house in April 2000. A lot of it has chipped and peeled, and what's still physically intact is just plain dirty. [Hmmm. I'm afraid I am making my house sound incredibly unattractive. At least, for the most part, it isn't pink any more.]

Well, anyway, I want to paint most of the walls in a creamy-tannish color (the actual color I chose is called "Almond Oil"), leaving the doors and casings white. Then I want to do the wall behind the fireplace in a deep color. I had a hard time choosing a good color because that particular wall continues into the kitchen, which is open to the livingroom. And while the living room has sage-colored carpet, the kitchen counters, you remember, are mauve. But I finally did find a color that matches both rooms nicely; kind of a brick-red (actually a lot like the current fireplace color).

If it's possible to do nicely, I'd like to repaint the iron railing that's between the kitchen and livingroom and follows down the stairs. Right now the railings are painted with cheap, white, peeling paint; I'd like them to be matte black. And if it could be done well, I'd like to put a wood cap on the tops of the rails too.

And then, if money were no object I would also replace the sage carpet for wood or laminate flooring. That would be nice! And I would replace the mauve countertops with something much more neutral. Maybe re-do the kitchen cabinets while I'm at it. And put tile on the kitchen floor. And buy a new couch. And hey! New chairs for the kitchen, too!

But for now I'm just dreaming of doing the fireplace and the painting. Who knows? Maybe in a couple of weeks . . .