The cons of autumn

I love fall. Fall in New England makes February worth it. I especially love fall in the city where I now live. There seem to be just so many more types of trees around here compared to where I grew up, and so many of them are huge. The house next door to us has a simply enormous oak tree and two gigantic maples in their yard. Every year, they turn the most glorious colors, and when the afternoon sunlight angles in and hits them just right, they glow.

So. Huge, beautiful trees turning gorgeous colors: Pro.

But do you know what happens to the leaves after they're done glowing on the trees in the afternoons? They fall off the trees. Into your yard. And have to be picked up.







Do you see the size of that leaf pile? Nora is standing up in that middle picture. In the top picture, Ann Marie actually got stuck in the pile as if it were leaf quicksand. And that's not even all the leaves in the yard! I didn't bother with the part in front of the side door or the section around and behind the swing set. Why not rake all of it and be done, you ask? In response, I present the trees directly above our yard:



That's a lot of leaves up there. And over the past eight years we have learned that these trees shed their leaves last.

Actually, the past eight years have given me the chance to make some observations of the natural world. First, walnut trees turn yellow and lose their leaves in September when Norway maples are still lush and green; Norway maples turn last. Second, the first leaves to turn are the ones that get the most sun. This is a particularly nice effect because of the afternoon sunlight angling in and making them glow, as I mentioned. Third, trees in a clump turn colors starting from the outside in. My theory here is that the inner trees are kept warm by their neighbors and thus get the temperature signal to go dormant only after their neighbors have shed their leaves, but the takeaway message is that in a copse of Norway maples, the ones in the middle lose their leaves dead last.

These?



The middle trees in a copse of Norway maples.  So yeah, we've got several weeks to go. We will be raking up those leaves in late November, when it is really really cold and there will be a distinct lack of joyful jumping into the leaves. There will instead be a lot of grumbling about cold hands.

Late November freezing cold raking of leaves: Con.

Ah, well, I still think the pros outweigh the cons.

A post that should probably have been three separate posts

1. Last Friday I had to take the kids to buy shoes. I also had some things to bring back to the Gap, so I decided to take them to the Stride Rite Mall B instead of in Mall A, my default mall, because the last time I went to Mall A and tried to return something to the Gap I discovered that Mall A no longer has a Gap. I know! I mean, if the Gap isn’t at the mall, where is it? (Incidentally, you know what Mall A now has that it didn’t used to have? Yogurt shop.)
   
   So anyway, I had to go buy three pairs of very expensive full-priced shoes, because I had managed to put off the shoe-buying until the last minute which unfortunately landed me between sales at Stride Rite. I would have taken them to Marshall’s, but I was buying Ann Marie’s very first pair of real walking shoes, so I needed an actual trained person to measure her feet. I also would have taken them to the shoe store near my mom, but I had to return that stuff to the Gap, so Stride Rite it was.
   
   I loaded them all into the van, and halfway to the mall Nora needed to use the bathroom. Twenty-minutes-in-a-Dunkin-Donuts-bathroom later, I loaded them all into the van again. We got to the mall and I went straight to the Gap. Halfway through my returns transaction which was complicated because one of the things had been a gift, which included a gift receipt, but they would nevertheless only give me the value towards a purchase right then or else mail me a gift card. Why on earth they couldn’t just hand me a gift card then, I will never know, but there you are. And everything in the store was 30% off, so I wanted to maybe buy something right then. But before I could look, JACK had to use the bathroom. So I took my gift back and off we all schlepped. While Nora, the baby, and I waited outside the men’s room for Jack, I scanned the directory for a Stride Rite. Which, as it turns out, Mall B doesn’t have.
   
   I wailed and moaned and gnashed my teeth, Jack emerged, and we all schlepped BACK to the Gap where I was going to BUY something for 30% off SO HELP ME. I chose a pair of pants and exchanged my gift for them while noting to the cashier that they were definitely not going to fit, so I was going to have to come back anyway. “Oh, we have a dressing room that the stroller will fit in,” he said. Meanwhile, it was 4:45 pm and my children were race walking (no running allowed!) around the store. “Not worth it,” I told him.
   
   After a stop at Kids Foot Locker for (full-priced) shoes for the older two, I found myself once again loading three kids into the van for a drive down to the strip mall that is about halfway between my house and Mall B because there is a Stride Rite there. We pulled into the parking lot, and you will never guess what is next door to Stride Rite. Literally next door. Not even at the other end of the strip; it is the storefront immediately to the left of Stride Rite. Yep. The Gap.
2. Kelly tweeted some time ago about noticing an under-mounted sink on a television show rather than noticing the attractive actor. I can relate to this, because I keep zeroing in on window treatments. My house has a lot of windows, and I lost momentum four rooms in. The problem lies mostly in that window treatments cost a bajillion dollars. You know what television show has some gorgeous window treatments? Parenthood. The oldest brother’s house has, at a conservative estimate, $5,000 worth of window treatments. Valances! Curtains! Tie backs! Fancy hardware! Custom Roman shades! Do you have any idea how much a custom Roman shade costs? ONE BAJILLION DOLLARS.
   
   But even though I lost momentum, window treatments became an issue when we took over the downstairs apartment. The sheets and towels clamped to the window frame weren’t really working for me. Because we had so many windows to cover, we decided to just buy inexpensive vinyl shades, which don’t feel that inexpensive when you buy them in bulk. Then there were a series of ridiculous problems which resulted in no less than five trips to three different hardware stores, an extra set of useless shades that we can’t return and don’t fit anywhere, and the kids’ room having shades just slightly too narrow. And there are still five windows without shades in the dining room and kitchen!
   
   I gave up and decided to rehang the blinds that we bought for the windows before we rented the place, but none of them fit. This seems impossible, but it’s because I threw out the blinds that were in the kitchen because they were gross, and the kitchen windows are apparently a quarter inch wider than any other windows in that apartment. Meanwhile, we had the woodwork around the dining room windows replaced, and the new trim is about a quarter inch narrower than the old trim. But that, at least, I thought we could solve by just asking Home Depot to recut them. I figured it would be easy; we had bought them at Home Depot originally. The label even says “Home Depot” right on it.
   
   Yeah, they wouldn’t cut them. And it’s not because they were just being jerks, it’s because their machines do not cut the plastic blinds, “But, you cut them when I bought them,” I said. “No, we can’t cut those,” he said. “But… they DID,” I insisted. “If they did that,” he said, “they weren’t supposed to. It’s against store policy, and they ruined the blade and destroyed the machine. We can’t cut those.”
   
   It was the “If” that rankled. “If” they cut them? They cut them. Believe me, 22 7/8 inches is not a standard width for plastic blinds. And that “if” really made me want to get him to admit that they at least USED to cut them, so I asked him how long he’d been working there. “Two years.” So OK, fine. I bought these seven years ago, when they apparently had different machines, because THEY CUT THEM. Which he never admitted. But he did give me some replacement mounting brackets for free, so I forgive him.
3. This has nothing to do with shopping or home improvement, but here is what I would like to happen on Sunday mornings: First, I want to sleep late. Second, I want to have a leisurely breakfast. Third, I want to go to the early mass so that the rest of the day is free.
   
   Somehow, I do not think I’m ever going to have all three of those things happen together.

Skunked

Let’s start this post with a brief recap: I have had suspicions that a skunk was living under our shed for about four years. I chose to deal with this problem with denial. But then I saw the skunk, and, forced to confront the situation, spent my time fretting, Googling, and calling exterminators. My regular exterminator wanted $495 to get rid of the skunk for a guaranteed six months. A competitor wanted $200 to get rid of this skunk, but $200 “and up” - depending upon the extent of the work and materials needed - to ensure that another skunk couldn’t come set up housekeeping under the shed. It was the “and up” part that concerned me there. Especially because our shed is basically built on top of a sand pit where a hot tub was kept once upon a time, so it’s really easy for skunks to burrow under it. Yes, we know NOW that we shouldn’t have put it over the sand pit, but where were you seven years ago, hmmm?

So instead of paying someone, we chose to toss some mothballs under there and cross our fingers. And it seemed to work! We stopped smelling skunk! Until last week! We just barely had time to start denying it when it snowed, and I found this in the driveway:


If you Google images of skunk tracks, you see… basically this.

And THIS:
How many ARE there?

At this point, I became convinced that we had not just one skunk, but an entire extended family of skunks, that probably grew fat on the tulip bulbs that I planted last fall. I mention that awkwardly here only because I already missed my chance of using the eaten tulip bulbs to foreshadow the skunk discovery, but I still wanted to complain about it because I’ve wanted to plant bulbs for years and this was the first year I ever remembered before the ground froze, and even still I ended up doing it at the last possible second on the last possible fall Saturday during the last possible moments of daylight. I suppose I have no PROOF that that it was the skunk and not a squirrel or cat or something else that ate my bulbs, but I choose to blame the skunk.

I followed the tracks back to the shed and I think I may have determined the point of entry:



That’s where I put all the flour down last summer but never saw any tracks. There are actually plenty of ways to get under the shed though, because of the whole “built on a sand pit” thing. So maybe this entrance is the winter entrance.

AT ANY RATE. I started calling exterminators again. The prices were all over the place. Lots of places don’t do skunks, but of the places that do, I was quoted:

$155 for the first trap, $75 for every additional trap
$495 no matter how many skunks there are, guaranteed for six months (my regular guy)
$325 for eradication with a one year guarantee; $50-$100 additional for exclusion with a lifetime guarantee
$150 per trap; $150 “and up” additional for exclusion
$125 just to come out and inspect, price quote after inspection

Now that last one is for a humane removal company. When I expressed surprise at the charge just to inspect, he said “You’ll pretty much find that across the board.” Clearly, I did not. Maybe other humane removal companies would have charged for an inspection as well. There’s not much to inspect, really, when you’re just setting a trap.

To make a long story short (too late!) we hired the $155 guy. And I’m also going to find out what he charges for yearly ant spraying, because it turns out my regular guy has outrageous skunk removal prices, even if he does have a flat fee no matter the number of skunks. I now think (hope) there’s only one, because the guy said those tracks could be from one skunk going back and forth on the same path, and also it’s too early for kits as it’s not quite mating season yet. In a perfect world I’d lead the skunk peacefully to a nice warm den in a cozy forest by a meadow, but that is not in the cards for the skunk under our shed, I’m sad to say.

So the trap is set. The traps only go for $50 or so on Amazon, but let’s be honest, we’re not paying for the setting of the trap, we’re paying for the REMOVAL of the trap. THAT is the part I wanted to avoid. Last summer, the man at animal control told me that it is against the law to release a trapped skunk, that we’d have to kill it, and I remain flummoxed at the idea that anyone would TRY to release a trapped skunk. Do you load the trap into your car and drive it out to the woods? How? I know an animal in a trap can’t bite or scratch you because it can’t reach you, but I’m not worried about skunk BITES.

In other totally unrelated news, I am typing this out in our former bedroom, now our office, and it is absolutely delightful to have a room dedicated to office work. We are plugging away at getting the house set up and getting used to the two-floor living, but it’s pretty awesome. Our space literally doubled. We have a playroom now. A playroom! Right now, there are virtually no toys in the living room at all. And we got to move the changing table/dresser out of the kitchen and put it in there and now our kitchen is huge.

They Gleam

We had our floors refinished this week. This is huge. Huge huge huge. For one thing, when we scheduled the work with the floor guy, he said we’d be able to get back into the house on Thursday, so we made plans to repaint our living room on Thursday since Andrew serendipitously already had that day off. Today was Thursday. Do you know what we did today? We painted the living room! Because the floors were finished when he said they would be! It went perfectly smoothly! I’m still reeling a bit from the shock of it.

For another thing, I thought that refinishing the floors was at least a year or two away because of the expense and logisitics, but it was something that I dreamed about doing because our floors were terrible. No, they were terrible. No, no, you don’t have to be polite. They were TERRIBLE. Look:

Dining room


Living room


Landing


Kids' room


Our room


Where they put down the can of popcorn ceiling stuff

When we bought the house at the peak of the market, we were young and stupid and thought, “Oh, we can fix that!” about a lot of things. And while we have, in fact, fixed quite a lot of things, it is taking a lot longer and requiring a lot more dollars than we ever imagined it would. And when we tore up the (disgusting) rugs in the upstairs apartment, we discovered that what appeared to be finished-if-damaged hardwood was actually only finished around the edges of the living and dining rooms, and the middle of these rooms was unfinished pine, because why bother finishing boards that are only going to be covered by a rug, sayeth early-20^th-century builders. Later owners apparently sayeth the same about protecting the wood while painting and applying popcorn ceiling. What is the point, really, if you’re just going to put down wall-to-wall, right?

So. That is what we were dealing with. And it was fine, whatever. You get used to stuff. It was unpleasant, and it was hard to clean under the dresser in our bedroom where the popcorn ceiling detritus basically acted as Velcro to dust, and there were hug e gaps between the pine boards into which the children could insert quarters, and spilling anything wet on the unfinished part of the floor meant that that beverage was absorbed into the wood forever, but, honestly, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. First of all, despite how terrible the floors were once we tore up the rugs, they were better than the RUGS were, because, Lord, those rugs were nasty. There was a CRUNCHY spot in the bedroom. So, yes, I hated the floors, but floors are only a small part of life, you know?

But, man, I love our floors now.

Dining room


Living room


Landing


Kids' room


Our room


Where they put down the can of popcorn ceiling stuff  

Upheaval

We are having our floors refinished. This is major, folks. Really major. It came about when my father-in-law helped us take up the rug in what will be Jack’s room in the downstairs apartment – wait, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

We own a two-family house that contains two two-bedroom apartments. We rented out the downstairs apartment until last year, but we have three children and two bedrooms and it was getting crowded. So we are taking over both apartments. Because our children are young, we can’t sleep on separate floors, since that would be sleeping in different apartments. So the plan was to convert the downstairs living room into our bedroom and put the kids in the downstairs bedrooms. Yes, it is going to be weird, but we will be used to it very soon, because people get used to things like this fast. And yes, in a traditional house the bedrooms are upstairs, but the upstairs kitchen is leaps and bounds better than the downstairs kitchen. So this way makes more sense.

We hired a guy to drywall and replace woodwork in the downstairs living room and we were all set to start moving in when, whoops! Turns out our entire house needed to be rewired or our insurance company would drop us! Ha ha ha! $6500 later, our contractor informed us that the main gas line in the house, which was original to the house, ran the entire length of the attic (so as to better feed the gas-chandeliers, you see) and was old and liable to snap at any moment. Ha ha ha! $1500 later, and our house is much, much less likely to burn down. So that’s good. But it also brought us to September or something, and left a lot of patched up holes in the walls. But! We soldier on.

We spent the winter thinking a lot about painting and choosing colors and actually doing some painting while also talking about rugs and floors and furniture layouts and so forth. This was all around regular living, and we are very slow renovators. Eventually, we painted all the rooms that MUST be painted before we move, and it was during this time that my FIL saw the state of the floor in what would be Jack’s room, and was horrified. Fair enough, because the floors in my house are, frankly, horrifying. I’m not talking “those cheap laminates are not to my taste,” here. I’m talking, “The living room and dining rooms have huge unfinished pine in the middle and the finished boards in all the rooms are all covered in stains and paint spatter and spackle and who knows what all.” In our room, for example, you can actually see where they put down the can when they were painting, because the spatter left a nice paint-can silhouette.  But we’ve been living with it like this for seven years because floors are such a pain and are expensive, and we had to do other things first. (Did you see our “before”kitchen?)

BUT THE TIME HAS COME. On Monday, a guy is coming to refinish all the floors except for the downstairs living and dining rooms because 1) they have wall-to-wall that we put in so they’re in decent shape and 2) we need those rooms to pile all our stuff into while he does the rest of the house. We will hopefully do those rooms in the summer when we go away, but we shall see.

I am so excited to have this done. The floors are truly terrible. And as a bonus, we are going to paint the upstairs living room which is long overdue, but which we have been putting off because moving the furniture out of that particular room is so daunting. So we will strike while the iron is hot; ie, while the furniture is out of the room for other reasons, at any rate.

I have a bunch more boring details that I am refraining from telling you, about how we chose the paint colors, and how we rushed out to buy paint before Sandy and before last weekend’s blizzard but then of course did not paint during either storm (I can’t remember why for Sandy, but we were a smidge busy with snow removal last weekend). (Oh, wait, now I should explain: We are going to paint the downstairs dining room the same beige as the upstairs living room. We can’t paint upstairs until after the floors because the furniture has to be out, but we thought we might try to paint downstairs.)

It’s happening agin. I’m becoming the person who talks endlessly about paint, rugs, floors, curtains, etc, etc, etc. And I’m on a Lenten Twitter fast, so you will get to hear ALLLLL about it in the upcoming weeks.

I will post some before and after pictures, but Andrew and his dad moved a bunch of stuff downstairs today, so I have to dig up some before pictures of the furnished upstairs apartment so you can see the nice new living room color.

And after we finish painting the two living rooms, the dining room, the main entry way, and the two bedrooms, we get to paint a kitchen, two bathrooms, another bedroom, and two apartment entryways.  And then break through a wall. But more on that later.

Don't shake it! DON'T SHAKE IT!

When Jack was four months old or so, we left him with his grandfather for an afternoon as a test run for my upcoming return to work. Andrew and I used the baby-free time to go find some bedside tables at the unfinished furniture store. We found some perfect ones and bought them along with some stain and poly. The man who helped us pick out the poly made very clear that we were not to shake it when it was time to mix it, as that would introduce bubbles. He even wrote "STIR" in black Sharpie on the lid so that we wouldn't forget.

And so we didn't shake it. Any time we rearranged the four trillion paint cans we had, we made sure to pick that one up and set it down again without shaking it. We were very careful.

So when I finally did stain the first of the bedside tables a few months ago , I knew there would be no bubbles in the poly. And when I opened the can, I found out I was right! There were no bubbles at all! It would have been really easy to see them if there were, because bubbles show up very plainly in solidified polyurethane.

Just sitting here on the couch, internetting

So about 50% of my laptop battery ago, I got home from dropping the kids off at their grandparents’ house for the whole weekend. Yes, I said “weekend.” And yes, I said, “whole.” As in “two nights.” TWO NIGHTS. Clearly, this is a golden opportunity to get a billion important home-maintenance things accomplished, and so I naturally flopped onto the couch with my laptop the instant I got home and have been here ever since, dirty kitchen be damned. Oh, and I have a bunch of work to do that requires quiet and concentration, so I’m wisely using this quiet alone time to tweet important breaking news like:



It’s true! And you have to act fast, because several of the $10,599 Birkin bags have already sold out! Plus, I am sorry to report that you will be unable to purchase a hideous rocking-horse print silk scarf for a mere $359, as they are long gone, my friend. LONG GONE.

All that being said, I did not drop the kids off for a restful weekend of internetting. No, Andrew and I have big plans. This is the weekend we clean the attic. And as not-fun as that theoretically sounds, I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to it. We borrowed my in-laws’ truck so that we’ll be able to haul stuff to donation sites and I just cannot wait to get rid of 75% of the stuff we have stashed up there.

You may or may not recall, but in January I made three resolutions, and one of them was to have an assigned place for everything in my house by December 31. I am supposed to be spending at least fifteen minutes a day decluttering, and I have to admit that that trickled off by late February, but I did get a lot done. I sort of hit a wall, though, because there are a bunch of clutter-troves in the main living area that cannot be decluttered until the attic has been dealt with, because I need to store some stuff up there, but I refuse to put any new things into the attic until there is some sort of organizational system up there.

See, we have a huge walk-up attic that runs the length of our big two-family, so it’s 1800 square feet of emptiness. And it WAS empty when we moved in, save for a pool table that the previous owners left us because it was easier than moving it out. But it is not empty anymore! Oh, no. It is stuffed to the gills with things that we “just stuck in the attic” until such time as they could be dealt with, which turned out to be never.

I did explain before, but it bears repeating that it is quite difficult to clean out the attic because it isn’t insulated. This means that there are about eight weeks a year during which it is neither too hot nor too cold to spend any significant amount of time up there. So while it’s always possible to run up the stairs and “stick something in the attic” to deal with later, it’s no easy feat to spend a large chunk of time sorting and organizing. And lest you think we are just too wimpy to deal with the temperatures, may I remind you that “no insulation” means that the attic is JUST AS COLD as outside in the winter, and that is usually in the twenties. As for summer, the attic is actually HOTTER than outside because it just bakes all day and the heat gets trapped overnight. Just ask the bird that got in last year and simply dropped dead on the stairs from heat. True story.

So this is the big weekend. The attic will get miraculously organized and I will be able to sort through the rest of the stuff in the main living space and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get this house cleanable by the end of the summer. (Please note that I am not saying it will always be clean, I’m saying that when I NEED to clean it, I will be ABLE to clean it, because I will be able to just put things away instead of standing around wondering where I’m supposed to put all this stuff. Because a big pile of toys pushed against the wall just isn’t doing it for me anymore.)

In other news, Jack’s preschool spring show was today. He was a raindrop. I was almost late, because I wasn’t incredibly early and therefore had to park at the park and walk over, which is actually a pretty long walk. But I did make it, and while he had an initial look of worry on his little face when he couldn’t find me right away, there was a lot of waving and “Hi, Mom!” –ing throughout the show and it was adorable.

You know what wasn’t adorable? Jack’s school sent home about five separate notices about the spring show, largely concerned with the parking. We were allowed to park at the school, across the street at the town hall, and overflow parking was at the park, a five or so minute walk away. It was made perfectly clear over and over again that the police were not allowing parking on Smith St., By my estimation, there were 10-12 cars parked on Smith St. at the start of the show. Sometimes I hate people, you know?

But I don’t want to end on a sour note, so I’ll tell you that I made one short video that will hopefully be audible; if so I’ll post it for your viewing pleasure. But I didn’t get any of the “Hi, Mom’s!” on tape, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. He also gave me a thumbs up after one particularly satisfying song. And I died.

If any of you are still reading, you should go over to A’Dell’s blog and leave a comment telling her that she is awesome and that the baby will come out eventually, because she is approximately 74 weeks pregnant and is understandably kind of depressed about it. And then go drop by Arwen and let her know you’re thinking of her because she is ONLY 33 weeks pregnant (with twins!) and the babies are a little over-eager to make their appearance. Irony’s a bitch, eh?

Giveaway winners

As expected, those of you who wanted a cookbook had excellent odds. The only one of you out of luck is Jessica, because Jessica is the only one who wants something someone else wants, and Heather R wins because I can just hand it to her when I give her back the big bag of toddler pajamas the next time I see her. Sorry, Jessica! My laziness is your loss.

So here are the winners:
Diane: place mat
Tracy: Fix It and Forget It
Bailey: Kitchen Survival Guide
Heather R: Biggest Book of Cookies
Swistle: All of the rest of the cookbooks

Winners, send me your addresses! Swistle, I already have your address, so look for a very large package stuffed with cookbooks to arrive any day now.

Giveaway! It’s at the end so feel free to skim!

I have three resolutions for 2011. The first is to run two 10Ks. That one is progressing reasonably well considering it’s virtually impossible to run outside right now because of the ice and snow and darkness, but I did join the gym on Monday, so there’s that. The second is to email and call people more, and to turn non-phone friends into phone friends. This one is harder than you might think as I have a phone phobia. I know that phone phobias are disproportionably common among bloggers, but I am a person who, on numerous occasions, has introduced myself to strangers and set up play dates. I usually do this under semi-normal circumstances; for example, asking a mom I’ve been chatting with for a while at the park for her phone number. Or setting up something with the mom of one of Jack’s school friends. But a few weeks ago, I stopped a stranger on the street who was pushing a double jogging stroller. A total stranger! I had seen her around in the past and had wanted to meet her since she had kids, liked walking, and clearly lived nearby. So when I saw her walking on the same side of the street as me, I grabbed my chance and introduced myself. And it turned out great; she’s wonderful. We’ve already gotten together once and our kids get along AND she lives up the street from me AND AND is home during the day. So if our kids’ preschool schedules didn’t completely clash, we’d be able to hang out all the time!

So why, then, if I am willing to accost strangers on the street, am I afraid to call people I already know and like? I think it’s actually a dread of awkward silences. In person, you there are visual signals and things to look at or sip or hold if the conversation hits a lull. But on the phone there’s… nothing. There’s just the two of you, on the phone, waiting for someone to start talking. As a result, I have very few phone friends; friends I feel comfortable calling just to talk without a specific thing to talk about. But I need more phone friends, because I get very very lonely round about 3:00 on a day when I’ve spoken to no one over the age of four, and I need people to call! Thus, my resolution to just bite the bullet and call more people. It’s almost the end of January. Have I done this yet? Sort of. The other day I finally worked up the nerve to call one of my Twitter friends, but I got her voicemail. Half credit.

(Incidentally, here is a tip for those who would LOVE to make friends with other moms at the park, the library, or walking down the street but don’t know how: For the first get-together, suggest meeting at a park or somewhere else outside. This gives both of you an easy escape if one of you turns out to be crazy. You don’t even have to give them your address! You just need an email or phone number. And remember, most stay-at-home moms are dying to make friends with other stay-at-home moms. So your friendly advances will probably be most welcome. Imagine how you would feel if that mom you always see at the library asks for your phone number!)

The last resolution, and the most important for my mental health, is to find a place for every single thing in my house. Lately, any time I try to put something away or get something from a storage area, I feel as though clutter is raining down on my head. I can’t live like this. So from now on, if I cannot find a place for something, it has to go.

I like to think I’ve made a lot of progress on this one. I’ve cleaned out many drawers. I’ve removed the giant, counter space hog of a knife block from the newly-toddler-accessible counter and put the most commonly used knives in a holder on the wall. I’ve given away cookbooks, purses, bags, clothes, toys, and various other things that I am happy to see the last of. I’ve thrown out trash we’ve been storing for years.

I’ve done a lot, but there is still a long way to go. We have an enormous walk-up attic that is a disaster area. If I allow myself to think about it as a single job, I start to panic, because it is IMPOSSIBLE. The attic is walk-up, but not insulated, so there are about four weeks total out of the entire year in which it is neither too hot nor too cold and bearable to be up there for more than three minutes. This means it’s very easy to run up there and dump a pile of junk, but kind of tricky to sort through five years of accumulated junk to organize it. So my plan is to have a place for everything in this house, including everything in the attic, but I’m honestly afraid it can’t be done in a year.

But! Thinking about the attic today, a day when I cannot do anything about it, will do nothing but upset me. And so I present you with this: I am making myself spend at least fifteen minutes every day decluttering. Any efforts made towards decluttering count, whether it be looking up places that are willing to accept half-used cans of latex paint (local high school drama club) or packing up twenty half-used cans of latex paint to donate. (Why so many half-used cans? Because we are very bad at picking paint.)

And thus, we have arrived at the giveaway portion of today’s blog post. My fifteen minutes today includes selecting and photographing some cookbooks and enticing you, my blog readers, to comment in the hopes of winning them. If nobody wants them, I’ll freecycle them; the last batch of cookbooks were snapped right up. But I recently learned about shipping books cheaply via media mail, and I thought one of you might want a cookbook!

Here they are:



We’ve got The Kitchen Survival Guide by Lora Brody. An excellent resource for someone new to running his or her own kitchen. My mother gave this to me when I went to grad school, and I got a lot of use out of it, but I feel my skills have passed the point where this is useful.

The Taste of Home 1999 Annual is a good one. Taste of Home recipes are handy ones to have around because they’re all based around ingredients you have already. And they’re tasty. My favorite is the pumpkin pie, which I copied down.

Also shown are the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook by Dawn J. Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good and the Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Cookies. I was thrilled to receive these books as gifts several years ago. THRILLED. And then I never opened them once.

Finally, we have 1973’s Good Housekeeping Cookbook. This one is… not so useful. Unless you want to make brains* and scrambled eggs? Oh, the seventies. How we miss you. I’ve only kept this one around only because I thought Andrew had sentimental attachment to it, but it turns out he doesn’t. So perhaps one of you has a vintage cookbook collection?

And, as an added bonus, the blue thing in that picture is a rubber placemat that suctions onto a table. It also has a little pocket that hangs off the end of the table to catch food. It’s an excellent product, and I used it all the time when Jack was a baby. Then we redid the kitchen and got a new table which has a wood grain that prevents the suction cups from sticking, so it became useless to us. Our misfortune is your gain!

If any of you who have actually stuck around long enough to read this far has any interest in any of the items pictured above, leave a comment telling me which one(s) you want. I will choose a winner on February 3 (my birthday) by picking a random number, but I’m willing to bet your odds will be excellent. Good luck!

*One pound of brains makes about four servings. Plan accordingly.

Vacation!

Hey, there, Internet. Were you wondering where I was all last week? No? Well, I didn’t miss you either. Nyah. Because we went on vacation! It was a secret vacation, because Consumer Reports told me not to tell the internet if I was going away because it’s like saying, “Hey, robbers! Come to my house! It will be empty!” Except now that I think of it, I may as well have told you as the house was not, in fact, empty all week because the tile guy was here. He was cleaning the grout, re-caulking the tub, and switching out a few tiles for us that were damaged. It was supposed to take him a day, maybe two, but we are idiots and forgot to leave the tiles out for him which made it challenging for him to switch out the damaged ones. He tried to call us, but our cell phone reception was surprisingly bad, so we didn’t get the message until we were on our way home. Fortunately, he colluded with the neighbor who had agreed to water our plants, and they braved a trip to the billion-degree attic to find the tiles. So he did manage to finish, but it took him all week. And our caulking is no longer a biohazard! This is so thrilling to me, I can’t tell you.

Speaking of the billion-degree attic, I had to go up there myself yesterday to put away the down comforter, because just the sight of it in heat like this is enough to make me feel ill. On the way up, I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the bottom step that I thought was a hammer or wrench or some such. On the way back down, I got a better look. You want to know what it was? You don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway. It was a dead bird. A DEAD BIRD. We have some sparrows nesting in our gutter. We are aware this is bad, but we figured we’d let them finish out the season and then seal it up for next year rather than pull down the nest full of babies. So my theory is that the bird got through the flashing or something into the attic, couldn’t get out, and dropped dead from the heat. I didn’t step on it, but I am still fairly traumatized.

And now is the part of the blog wherein I force you to look at my vacation photos. We rented a cabin on a small lake with one of my sisters and her family, and we got to go for a week. A whole week! We haven’t had a week’s vacation in over four years, so we were giddy with excitement. And it was awesome. AWESOME. My only worry had been that Nora wouldn’t sleep, but she did! Not through the night or anything, but she gave us the critical few hours between her bedtime and our bedtime, and that is all I wanted. Plus, vacationing with my sister’s family ensured that we didn’t get sick of each other and also that there were enough adults there to give both Andrew and me legitimate time off. I spent one afternoon just reading on the beach. And I got to go running as much as I wanted.

Other highlights include a trip to a little kids’ amusement park, a motorboat ride (Nora: not so much a fan), and a day of swimming with a bunch of cousins. We checked a lot of things off Jack’s life list last week.






First smore


Bliss




I KNOW.






Yaaay! Boats!


Why are you making me wear this enormous orange torture device? And I am getting WET. DO NOT LIKE.


That's a lemon.


See?



(Let me explain the life list: Jack has a habit of saying things like, “Mom, I’d like to ride in a blimp some day,” and I always reply along the lines of, “Yeah, that would be fun, Jack. Maybe someday we can!” Recently I started saying, “Let’s add it to the list!” But we don’t call it a “life list” or anything. So now we have fun listing all the things we’d like to do someday, and if we’ve done it already, we say, “CHECK!” And nothing is too trivial to be added to the list. Example of checked items: Swimming in a pool. Riding a scooter. Riding in a motorboat.)

I am going to post this even though it’s terrible because I need to feel like I’ve accomplished something during Jack’s preschool time. We’re in the middle of a heat wave, and the heat’s making me feel anxious and distracted like I did when I was post-partum with Nora. Or as though I’ve had six cups of coffee. It’s quite unpleasant.

We don't actually have a lake

How do you like our lake?





We thought the swingset might be more fun as a waterslide. But hey, at least we're not our back neighbors. Do you see their yard? Look closer:



It's been raining here for about 36 hours and damn. That's a lot of water. Poor Andrew slept on the couch last night so he wouldn't disturb me when he got up once an hour to go sweep water towards the pump in our basement. Our "water-proofed" basement. Granted, we only had them water-proof one wall because that used to be the only wall where the water came in. We think we'll be calling them to come back.

And now I get to spend the rest of the day going down there every hour to sweep water towards the pump. Methinks we will be having take-out for dinner tonight.

Oh, hey, speaking of dinner, last Wednesday Jack helped me make "pasta pie." He stirred it.







There were... a few extra dishes to wash than if I had done it myself. And I found some hardened cheese on the wall behind the mixer yesterday. Hey, I'm just glad there was none on the ceiling. (checks ceiling)

The results, howevere, were delicious, and I might post the recipe for you because mmmmmm. This was the same day that I spent three hours making Cook's Illustrated potato leek soup that Jack touched his tongue to and pronounced yucky, but Jack is insane because it was so good.

But here's the thing: I didn't expect Jack to like the soup. That's why I also made sausage pasta pie, which tasted like sausage and cheese and which I assumed he would love. And I let him help me make it! And while making it, he ate multiple fingersful of raw sausage (tofu! tofu sausage!) and liked it, so I was sure the meal would be a home run.

And then he wouldn't even try it. After the brush with the potato leek soup, he declared that he "didn't want this dinner" and that he "was leaving."

"Oh no you're not," I said. "You don't get to just leave the table. You have to ask to be excused." This went on for a while until I could feel myself starting to lose it and I said, "OK, you're excused. Go. I'm getting mad, so leave."

Ten minutes later, after absolutely no intervention from me, he came back and sighed, with an air of long-suffering, "OK. I'll try it." He took a bite, chewed, and spat it out, and had a banana for dinner.

But here's the reason I'm subjecting you to this story. We had pasta pie leftovers on Friday night. I simply put some on Jack's plate without comment along with some beets, which I know he'll eat. And what do you think happened? Yes. He ate it with great relish, said it was "so good", and asked for more.

I win this round, Jack. Ha.

Edited to add: I just watched the news, and am feeling a bit less sorry for myself. Also, Andrew is home because I had to send for him since I could not keep up with the water AND tend to the children. Those darn children, always needing something.

The new bedroom

I’m sorry for the lack of TCG updates, but for the past four days, Andrew, Mr. Pickles and I were a little preoccupied:



Yes! We finally, FINALLY painted our bedroom. I realize I started talking about this weeks and weeks ago, but there was a delay. “A delay?” you are saying. “A delay in a home improvement project?” I know. I was stunned as well.

This particular delay was caused by, of all things, the duvet cover. I ordered one from West Elm back at the beginning of January, but then I had to wait until it arrived before I could choose a paint color. Unfortunately, it was back ordered. Fortunately, it was back ordered for only two weeks! Unfortunately, after two weeks, West Elm emailed me to say they were so sorry, but the duvet cover was back ordered even further. Fortunately, only for two weeks!

And so it went. I was reminded of the time Andrew and I were waiting in an airport for our flight, and every twenty minutes they announced that the plane was delayed for twenty more minutes. After the third or fourth twenty-minute delay announcement, I overheard the ticket agent comment to her friend that the plane that was supposed to have taken off from New Jersey with us inside had not actually left Boston yet. Needless to say, we did not leave twenty minutes later.

But this time, I did not fall for it. After only the second delay of “two weeks,” I cancelled my order. I did not have time to wait for the cotton to be grown and harvested. (Note: this duvet cover isn't even on their website anymore.) So I ordered another one, and after a few other boring scheduling delays, we were finally able to PAINT THE BEDROOM!



Andrew was distressed at the size of the paintbrush I gave him:



Oh, hush. He only used that one to fix up the edges, and it only took ten minutes.

But no matter how much painting we do – and we do a lot – we are still very bad at estimating how long it will take. We primed on Friday, and it went so well, we were done for the day by 6:00. This made us think we’d be able to paint everything, put the room back together, AND go buy Jack a new mattress, all before 8:00!

Yeah, not so much. Instead, we painted and painted and painted and Andrew finally made me stop at 9:30 with half the baseboard and one window still not finished. Thus, we spent Sunday painting some more and putting the room back together. Naturally, there were delays – issues with the ceiling fan wiring. But we finally finished.

So while the weekend itself was sort of awful what with all the hard physical labor and all, it was worth it. I don’t have any before pictures handy because we forgot to take them, but believe me when I tell you, the before pictures were awful. Awful awful awful. It was the bedroom version of our old kitchen: peeling, dingy wallpaper, crumbling ceiling plaster, and a grimy, disgusting ceiling fan.

And now it is… better. We still need curtains and pictures on the walls, but here’s what we’ve got so far:







Mr. Pickles approves.



****
Speaking of Mr. Pickles, let me address a few more questions you have. Yes, there are three sizes of chickens. The middle sized ones are Mr. Pickles. The tiny ones are Mr. Pickles’s brother, Mr. Pickles. The giant ones don’t have a name, because they didn’t exist (or at least I didn’t have any) when The Doktah and I named the chickens, but if you want to buy those, feel free to go ahead and call them Mr. Pickles. Do not over-think things! (But I can’t condone a dinosaur covered in feathers, because that would be The Dinosaur Game. However, The Dinosaur Game is probably equally fun.)

This entry was written in haste

First, everyone should go congratulate Arwen on the birth of her son!

What was that I said about autumn in New England being worth the winter? I have been rethinking it.



That is a picture of the snow in my front yard. I took it from a standing position. I am five feet eight inches tall.

I KNOW.

Now, we didn’t actually get seven feet of snow this weekend, it’s just that we have a four-car driveway and the front yard is just about the only place we can throw the snow. Our front yard is maybe twenty square feet, and it has been snowing about every three days since December 20th or so. Thus, the pile in the front yard is getting… large. Yesterday, it snowed all day. Andrew and I both shoveled in the morning and Andrew went out again in the late afternoon with the snow blower after it had finally stopped. But then! It snowed again last night! Five more inches this morning!

So, yeah, whine whine whine. But can you blame me?





Let’s change the subject, shall we? Have you ever noticed that there are certain items that, when you go out to purchase them for the first time, you nearly have a heart attack at their price? This happened to me when I tried to buy sweatpants and then again when I tried to buy socks. I didn’t buy either of them on the first go because I thought I was being ripped off. Socks and sweatpants, are items that ought to just GROW in your dresser drawers, don’t you think? And I’ll tell you, even though I was fourteen the first time I tried to buy sweatpants, I didn’t buy them then and I haven’t bought them yet. I can’t seem to get my mind around spending $50 on something that I can’t wear outside the house. So I just wear Andrew’s.

The reason I am bringing this up is because we have been replacing the window treatments in our living room and dining room. Have you ever bought window treatments? GAH. We wanted to get Roman shades, but you can’t cut those to fit and we don’t have a hundred billion dollars.

And, hey! I never posted pictures of Christmas! Well, since I will be putting my “Christmas” cards in the mail tomorrow, this seems almost timely.


Jack seemed very suspicious upon emerging from his room Christmas morning.



We got Jack a kitchen, and just this morning he made me a sandwich and then some pasta and sauce. He got a coffee maker and some cups from his Aunt, so we had some coffee with it. Then, this afternoon, we had a tea party with imaginary cookies and juice. Jack is very into pretending lately, and it is utterly charming in every way.

I’ve officially graduated into maternity wear, so I will have to start taking some photos of the growing belly. It’s not much now; when I’m dressed, I still don’t look pregnant. I just look like I’ve gained a bunch of weight. But this time I started wearing my good maternity jeans immediately instead of spending two months wearing cheap, saggy, hateful, loathsome pants. My unsolicited advice to newly pregnant women is always to spend money on at least two pairs of nice maternity pants. So worth it.