I can't begin to describe the depths of my hatred for that drawer

You know, I never know if I should comment about a long break between posts. This time I will, and I'll say that I haven't been posting because I've been too busy putting the finishing touches on the kitchen. These "finishing touches" are naturally taking forever, because the kitchen is as determined as ever to thwart us in our remodeling plans. "We'll just clear off the pantry shelves and shore them up before we reload them. It will only take fifteen minutes," we'll say, mere seconds before the pantry shelves fall completely off the walls. Why didn't they fall down before, when they were loaded with heavy, fragile, expensive things? Your guess is as good as ours. But I will say that these Closet Maid support brackets are the dumbest design ever.* They hook onto the top of the shelves despite the fact that gravity generally pulls things bottom-ward, so if anything bumps into the support bracket, the shelf pops out of the hook and it's all over.

Today we bought new shelf supports and Andrew installed them, and then, while I was trying to sort through our hundreds of baking dishes, Andrew installed the cabinet drawers. Except he didn't, because the house's complete lack of right angles struck again and we were thwarted. Thwarted! After about an hour of painstaking drilling, measuring, and leveling while crouched inside a small cabinet, Andrew discovered the drawer is not so much a rectangle, and does not fit on the carefully squared and leveled drawer rails. It's not even a parallelogram. No, the best the drawer can do is "quadrilateral." It's incredibly frustrating, but it does at least explain why this particular drawer used to fall off the rails just about every time we pulled it open.

So. The kitchen is progressing, but slowly. The good news is that the cabinet hardware might actually be here by the time we get the drawers and countertop installed, so the after pictures won't make you say, "That looks really good! Except... are those the door pulls you are keeping?"

The kitchen was not able to stop me from meeting my blogging friend Becca, however. No, I was able to mess that up all by myself. Becca, Ryan and Charlie were going to stop and visit with me and Jack on their way from Maine to Cape Cod last Wednesday. They called me when they crossed into Massachusetts, just like we arranged, and right on time! Jack and I were miraculously ready to go when they called, so we headed down to the ice cream shop I selected for a meeting place. It was right on their way, it only required they get off Route 128 one exit early and - post ice cream - get on Route 93 one exit late. I gave them fantastic directions, complete with landmarks and amusing commentary. Well, fantastic except for the part where I said they wanted exit number 28 when in fact they wanted exit number 38. In my defense, I did say exit 28 FOR route 28 - the correct route number - so I am not entirely responsible for their near miss at divorce. Still, I am very sad that Jack and I did not get to meet the lovely Becca and her toddler who dances like this. Becca and I have eerily similar interests, by the way. On her site, she has sidebar links to cloth diapering, church choir music, and Matlab. We're clearly meant for each other.

In other general news, Jack is still sleeping in his crib, but we put some pillows down in case he ventures over the rail again before we get the toddler bed set up. We experimented briefly with putting the mattress on the floor - it didn't go over well at all. He also gave himself five a bunch of times the other day. He'd slap his own hand and say, "Aw-wight!" He did it about twenty times. It's just getting more and more fun, people.

*Second place goes to the bottle for Method dish soap. Look at it! There is absolutely nowhere to grip it if your hands are slippery, like if they are, say, COVERED IN DISH SOAP.