Just like everything else in our house, figure out the approximate time to accomplish a task and then double it to fix repairs made by previous owners, who like us had no idea what they were doing, but unlike us were too stupid to hire someone to fix things.  This picture is showing our old floor, and the floor underneath that, and then the subfloor which revealed itself to be not only water damaged but patched with drywall compound.  I guess it’s a step above the toothpaste I used to patch wall holes in college.

The fridge is currently residing in the dining room.  And also the dishwasher is on the front porch and we have a great black hole where the dishwasher used to be.  Luckily we have a contractor who also happens to be a good friend or ours and since he will likely be eating dinner in the completed kitchen and visiting regularly he has a vested interest in making sure this little project is done right and so we have a new subfloor!  Woot!

Amazing the things you get excited about when you’re smack in the middle of renovation hell.  That was yesterday.  Today the new floor went down and the new subfloor didn’t like it and they are trying to break up with each other by creating big air bubbles everywhere.

Next, I’ve finally updated the blogroll and have many lovely new additions.  I looked at it the other day and it’s been so long since I’ve done anything blog-maintenance related that I couldn’t remember how to edit it.  It seriously took me an hour tonight to figure out how to update the links.  This update was prompted by an award from one of my yogi friend/bloggers, Janaki. 

A Lemonade Award is given to bloggers who show a positive attitude, gratitude, and a willingness to share their ideas, support and online friendship. In other words, people who make lemonade when they get lemons!

Hooray!  I’m going to break the rules of the award and nominate everyone in my new blogroll.  I did some serious trimming this time, and although there are a lot of blogs left that I only stalk there are a lot of community friends too.

Finally, moving on to potty training.  Today was our first accident free day.  Another WOOT!  Of course the poor kid hasn’t pooped in two days because he likes to wait for the diaper, but it’s progress.  I need to write a whole other post documenting this from start to finish because I think that it’s entirely possible that I’m going to block out the first painful weekend and not remember the basics when it’s Emily Kate’s turn.

First rule of remodeling – it will always take longer than you thought.

April 21, aka Before…knotty pine oh how I hate you.

Lesser known rule of remodeling – potty training while remodeling a kitchen is one of the dumbest ideas ever, since your aggravation level is already high and tolerance for more messes low.  Also, when you have to wash bottles in the bathroom sink because the kitchen sink is in the front yard, make sure to clean the sink first since you have been rinsing pee-stained underwear and shorts in there for the past week.

Cheeks!

Second rule of remodeling – plan for the kitchen to be non-functional for a few days while the countertops are built and installed.

sink?  what sink?

Lesser known rule of remodeling – eight straight days of rain storms, hail, and tornado watches will always begin the day after the kitchen becomes close to non-functional when bringing kitchen back to fully operational status will take a lot of work that is best performed outside.  Like sawing.  And glueing.

messy, messy, MESSY

Third rule of remodeling – set aside time before starting to clean out the cabinets and store things in a safe out of the way place.

I’m kind of getting used to not having to open doors to find things, and yes I WAS raised in a barn, why do you ask?

Lesser known rule of remodeling – if you are too lazy to clean out the cabinets and put things in a safe place, you should not be surprised when you end up with sawdust in your vodka.

fiber, that’s all it is

Granted trash day WAS on Tuesday and we Brett hadn’t yet rolled them back to their rightful place.  (I don’t actually know where that is, nor do I want to for the same reason I don’t want to know how to use the grill – smelly, hot, dirty, etc.)

I drove to work on Thursday morning counting all the houses that still had thier cans out to reassure myself that it wasn’t a terrible crime against humanity to let your cans out a day after trash day.

“There’s one…HA!  And another!  Although, they do still have thier Christmas lights up…”

Then, Friday morning I walked outside and found this:

Oh hey!  That’s the gutter…

…just peeling away like Fruit Roll Up

Umm…yeah.

.

The best part is, I slept through the crash. 

Our street is pretty nice, but the neighborhoods we drive THROUGH to get in and out are a little more…colorful.

When we first moved into this neighborhood, we spent a lot of time giggling at the antics of the people with a washer, dryer, and obligatory car rusting in thier yard who tried to unsuccessfully build a goldfish pond using a garbage bag as a liner.

Or the people who spent a few weekends one summer putting on a new roof, and driving by in the late afternoon could almost guarantee that you would a) get a roofing nail in your tire, and b) see the neighbor, his relative, and/or buddy passed out on the roof because they would have started drinking at 9.

Just this past weekend, I chuckled as I drove past the guy who had taken it into his own hands to cut down a giant tree and was currently struggling to free his tiny, toy chainsaw from deep within an eight-foot section of trunk.

As I stared at our dirty, mossy gutter swinging in the breeze, it occurred to me that we really should get around to replacing the middle number in our address.  And maybe fixing the busted hinges on our fence.

When we bought this house, we drove up to it exclaiming, “Look at the mature landscaping!  So much better than those new houses that don’t have any trees!  Or flowers!”  The problem is, I’m just not that interested in outside work because bugs, heat, humidity, dirt, and anything distasteful are just not my forte, and lovely mature landscaping requires WORK.  Outside.  Ugh. 

No one told us that mature means OLD and IN NEED OF REPAIR/WORK.

The first year, that mature landscaping resembled a patch of the Amazon jungle. 

The second year we tried really hard, and found that unless you fore-go work to spend your entire day into the evening gardening and planting and weeding and mulching that there was no freaking way to stay on top of things. 

The third year we Brett mowed the gardens then sprayed weed killer on them.  The end.

There hasn’t been a consensus on what to do this year, but I think one thing is pretty clear – our house apparently needs more maintenance than just doing the dishes, and we are totally out of our league in managing this. 

I have a vague suspicion that we should have performed any number of things that will prove expensive and annoying in the near future, but not the faintest idea of what those things might involve.  This is how it starts I fear…next thing you know we’ll be dragging a couch onto our front porch.

the shoe abyss

I stare at this photo, and the only matching pair I see are the twee little sneakers right in front. 

Tiny shoes.

Pointy shoes.

Dirty shoes.

Not in pairs.

Last week, after I took this picture I cleaned out the shoe closet and arranged everything in neat rows.  And this morning it looked exactly like that picture. 

And we were gone for four out of the last seven days.

Argh.  Someone tell me how to organize our shoes.  Note that there is a plastic, crappy shelf in that closet, which is obviously no match for the combined might of 837 single shoes speed dating trying to find a match.

“MAAAAMMMMAAA….OOOOOOHHHH!!!”

“Mama…coooheeeyyyah!” (Mama…come here!)

Escalating laughter…

“OOOOOOOHHHHH!”

“Waaahhhaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Finally, he came running to find me, grabbed my hand and led me to…

Note deflated cow in background…

Everyone is excited about the new washer.

(And the hair?  I know.  For the record I wasn’t the one who further butchered it fixed it.)

1) ours decided that self could not possibly be expected to keep up with the laundry generated by one very spitty baby, one dirt/sand/ketchup loving toddler, one mama who is newly obsessed with hot yoga and in the past week has sweated through 5 sets of workout clothes and an equal number of towels, and one daddy whose laundry lurks in all corners of the house so we can’t really be sure how much there is but it’s a lot and I never find it all until I’m on the final load

2) in a fit of misplaced confidence, I let our home warranty expire (you know the one where they replace your stuff if they can’t fix it and has paid for itself many times over with the timely death of the A/C, shortly followed by the water heater, and miscellaneous other applicances).  Because see, once I actually gave in and admitted that our oven (made by General Motors in 1962) would never die of it’s own accord and under duress purchased a new one, why on earth would I need to continue coverage, ha ha ha!  I think once the mighty oven was gone, the weaker appliances that were afraid of being laughed at are just throwing in the towel. 

Now, I’m faced with either

a) finding and paying a repairman to scratch his neck and tell me the washer has kicked it and then purchasing a new washer

b) sucking it up and buying a new one, but always wondering if ours was really fixable because of something dumb, like say the plug falling out.  (We are not total idiots and did check that…)

c) renewing the home warranty and waiting a reasonable amount of time to call in the brokea$$ washer

Remembering that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE here because people, we cannot go longer than a few days without washing spit cloths, what would you do?

It looks like turds on toast(er oven) does it not? 

My pet bunny did not escape and poo all over the toaster oven.

Actually, this is what happens when you:

• absentmindedly get out a bag of black beans, fulling intending to make black bean and corn chowder for dinner one of these nights
• leave said plastic bag of black beans on top of the cheap-ass toaster
• make not one, but FOUR rounds of toast without realizing the bag is there
• try hopefully to lift up the bag on the one-in-a-gazillion chance that it hasn’t melted to the top of the toaster (it has)

The first charity rejected the futon and left it in our driveway because it had cat hair on it.  Not blood or pee stains or rips…cat hair.  Of course, now it’s covered with much worse from sitting in the garage for 2 months.

What happened to ‘beggars can’t be choosers’?  This is a local charity that routinely preempts my TV with telethons begging me for money!  I’m trying to help the kids!  Take my hairy futon!

Right?

Or am I the beggar in this case, pleading with them to take away some of my materialistic guilt over having too much stuff?

What I should have done was have a garage sale.  Except that I am too chicken or lazy to have a garage sale.  When I look over the inventory we’ve given away in the last three months, I could have made some serious coin if only I were willing to sit in my yard for an entire Saturday and haggle while watching strangers paw my stuff. 

Garage selling veterans have warned me that garage sale shoppers will show up at your house hours before the sale starts and pester you while you’re setting up, ask to use your bathroom, and generally act like people in Sam’s Club which I totally couldn’t handle.

So alas – furniture, clothing, luggage, home decor - you name it and we’ve given it away. 

My main shopping vices are home stuff, clothes, baby stuff, and organizational stuff.  You see the correlation right?

Therefore, my new shopping policy is this - before purchasing something it has to fit one of the following criteria:

• Home decor must have a home in my house before it leaves the store.  There will be no renting of space on the kitchen counter or in the guest bedroom until I decide where it should live.
• Clothing and shoes must be able to pair with something I already own and/or replace another item.  That means if I can’t think of at least 3 outfits to wear it with, then something else in my closet must go to make room for the new guy.  Also I must really, really want it and be totally 100% (ref: reverse shopping).
• Baby stuff must have a reason, AND be on sale.  Good reasons do not include, “But look how cute it is!”
• Organizational type crates and boxes and drawer sorters must have a pre-determined location and a pile of stuff that is waiting to go in it.  There will be no purchases made with a vague notion that if I just get those toys or papers sorted then all of a sudden the house is clean and the baby is smiling and all is right with the world.

It will be hard, but as I said before, I am strong.  And overwhelmed by clutter.

My severe inability to express myself in describing what I needed hampered me from finding the rubber thingy and resulted in purchase of several might-work-if-you-can’t-find-me-a-rubber-thingy things.  Even after I MacGuyver all these things together I’m pretty sure they will not work, and the thing I need is so simple I could draw it.  I just can’t ask for it.

I described it to the helpful Lowe’s weekend part time old guy, who probably works as a Wal-Mart greeter during the week.

“What you need is a rubber washer,” he said, showing me a rubber washer.

“No, that’s too flat.  Do you have anything like a rubber washer but squishier and fatter?”

He ran a hand over his buzz cut and gave me an odd look.

I dug deeper.  “It needs to go between the mirror and the frame and when I tighten the screw it will keep the mirror from tilting back and hitting the wall.”

He stared at me, so I just kept talking because you know, that’s what I do.

“Because you know we have this vanity and we just had the walls painted and I don’t want the mirror on the vanity leaning back against the wall and marking up the new paint job.”

“You need a rubber washer,” he repeated.

Okay.

What could I say?  It was .92 cents.  I bought a rubber washer.  And also some non-skid feet in hopes of sticking them to the rubber washer to make it squishier and fatter.  Which is not going to work because the feet are square and the washer is like a tiny doughnut.

Defeat Number 1.

Now let’s talk about paying for the .92 thing that was destined never to work anyway.  In fact the whole point of this post is really to rant about the crappiness that is the SELF CHECKOUT LANE.

When I went to check out, I found ONE regular check out lane open, but FOUR self checkout lanes open. 

There were 5 people in line at the regular check out.

Around the self checkout was a mob of confused looking shoppers wandering and bumping into each other like atoms, helplessly looking sheepish as they tried to figure out why they were having such a hard time performing a minimum wage job.

Have we strayed so far away from politeness and customer service – a time when employees were there to actually help customers – that we now think it’s a fun little novelty to scan your own goods?

It’s not.  It sucks.  The same way that ATM fees suck.  It’s cheaper for the store to NOT have to help you in any way whatsoever.  I’ll repeat – it is not a novelty, it’s a TOTAL SCAM.

A scam made worse by the bored, bitchy cashier who is there to “help” you if you get stuck with self-checkout, but whose help consists of looking at you like you’re a moron because you can’t get the digital voice to stop saying “Place your item in the bagging area…place your item in the bagging area” even though IT ALREADY IS.

And also helping by yelling from her perch across the aisle that you need to re-enter your credit card number three times and not give up after typing in 16 digits only twice.  Obviously, it isn’t her fault that the machine won’t scan your card.

So when you get pissed off at the lack of help, and lack of air conditioning (or maybe you are just pregnant and hot all the damn time) and decide to loudly say screw it (except starting with an “F”) and walk away leaving your transaction open and unfinished and your items in the bagging area, so that she has to get off her now outraged lazy ass and actually walk over to the register to cancel your transaction, feel a tiny bit better knowing that you stood up to the man.

And then turn around to those open mouthed customers behind you and yell, “Wake up lemmings!  The reason you are having a hard time is because IT’S NOT YOUR JOB TO CHECK YOURSELF OUT.”

And only then will you avoid Defeat Number 2.

I am happy to report that we no longer have any fish stenciled on any walls in our house – trout or otherwise.  May they rest in peace under their layers of primer and new neutral colors.

Damn, those previous owners loved them some stencils…

The guest room doesn’t look like this anymore.

My lilac and green crib bedding came yesterday and I am TOTALLY IN LOOOOOVE with it.

Before you laugh at me, I only got the bedding so the room is not nearly as spastic as shown here.  Focus on the quilt, people, the quilt…

(Now I just need a crib to put it in, which should arrive ANY DAY NOW HA HA.)

I can actually walk into our master bathroom and not despise it for it’s ugliness.

There is no woodwork in our house that is any color other than white or natural wood.  Previous colors included teal, blue, tan, lime, PINK, and a sickly off-white.

Soon, all the relic MDF furniture from my college days will be gone and in it’s place will be furniture that screams thirty-something.  

All our mattresses live on bed frames.  With headboards. 

I’ll post pretty pictures as soon as I’m done hanging pictures and arranging.  And by arranging, I mean directing Brett to relocate the dresser 10 times until I’m satisfied with the placement.

I feel like I stumbled into someone else’s house.  It’s awesome.