Eat Salt and Die

my heart's aflame my body's strained but god i like it

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I wanted to be other things too--a vet, a translator, a consultant, a spy, a diplomat, and I'm more than half serious about going into the remodeling business with my cousin E (design twin!). But the one thing that I never changed my mind about was writing. I wanted to be an author.

About six years ago--post college, pre-current glamorous job--Mom and I were driving somewhere and she asked me what I wanted to do with my life.

"I want to be a writer," I told her.

"I don't think you do," she said. I remember going into defense mode--she just didn't understand, she didn't support my dreams, all that teenage angsty crap I really should have grown out of by then. "If I thought you were serious about it," she added, "I would support you 100%. But you're not."

"But I am!" I protested. "I'm writing!" And I was, sporadically, on some abysmally horrible vampire book I'd been messing with for YEARS.

"But what have you finished?" And what she said next is still as fresh in my head as if she'd said it yesterday. "If you were serious about it you'd be writing every day. You'd be taking classes. You'd find a writing group to get feedback. You'd be finishing short stories and sending those out. But you're not."

And she was right.

Maybe six months after that I finished my first short story. And I submitted it to magazines. It didn't get published, but I did get some really great personalized rejections. A year after that the zombie book was finished. Then I signed up for a class, and met my amazingly talented and all around awesome critique partner (hi J!).

The whole agent-contract-NYT bestseller-bajillionaire part hasn't worked out according to plan (YET!) but if I hadn't started taking my writing seriously I'd probably still be "working" on that really, really, really bad vampire book and wouldn't have the zombie book, with funny, kick-ass Cami, or the ghost book, with my most favoritest Zeke.

And yes--once I started taking it seriously my family did too, and now they're as supportive as they are loud (which is very). I <3 them.

Not that I've got it all figured out. If my 3am writing binge last weekend taught me anything, it's that I can write a hell of a lot more at a time than I've been letting myself get away with. If I can crank out more than 4,000 words in a 5 hour period, sticking with my 250 words a day goal is pure laziness. And if I want to be able to write full time someday I need to be able to produce more than one book a year.

Hence, THE PLAN.

1) re-re-revise the ghost book (including new beginning, streamlined inner bits, and clarified ending [should probably also be a less-depressing ending, but I love it so]). To be finished no later than the end of February.

2) WHILE working on step 1, send out the zombie book again.

3) Once step 1 is finished, re-write query letter and send out ghost book again

4) WHILE working on step(s) 2/3, start new book. Finish this in 4 months.

The last one is the most intimidating, though in theory it should be totally doable. If I'm looking at a 70k book (which is about standard for YA) that equates to about 17,500 a month, or about 583 per day. Keep in mind my goal has been 1 (handwritten) page a day, which I now know averages more than the 250 words I was estimating, so doubling that (piddly) goal really isn't that much of a stretch. Especially if I turn off the TV and put away the cell phone and turn off the internet and actually work.

So yeah. Total cakewalk.

But hard or not, this needs to happen. I think I've accomplished a fair amount in the last few years, but like you should dress for the job you want instead of the job you have, it's time for me to start writing like I have the job I want.

Plus, should the whole agent-contract-NYT besteller-bajillionaire thing happen, maybe the new regime will mean I won't have a nervous breakdown and become an official one hit wonder. Win/win!

and high up above or down below

2012-01-24T07:35:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since something in this house spectacularly exploded, so I really should have been expecting this.

Last Thursday I spent some time organizing the basement and decided to check out the utility space behind the basement bathroom, just because I hadn't in a while and the doors are usually blocked with junk.

See those PVC pipes? Those are the lines coming from the water supply for the house (in the ceiling) to supply the sink, toilet, and shower in the super-scary basement bathroom. They look like they were done so professionally, don't they?

It's hard to tell from this picture, but they also looked like they were leaking. A lot. The right hand valve (the shut off for the cold water line) had decided it didn't want to be a valve. It wanted to be a spout. There was no way to stop the leak without turning off the water to the whole house, so I put up that trash bag to keep the drywall from getting wetter and to divert the leak into a bucket underneath it.

By the time I got home from work on Friday the bucket was almost overflowing. Awesome!

After consulting with our super-contractor (aka Dad) I made a trip to Lowes for new pipe, some joints, and two new valves. Might as well replace both of them while I was at it, right? (Not like we're not going to have to re-plumb that whole mess when we finally get around to fixing that unholy mess of a bathroom, but let's not get into that.)

So once I was home I cut my new pipe to size, primed it, and pulled out the PVC cement to start assembling my pieces.

The cement was congealed. Useless.

So I went back to Lowes. I bought cement, and just because I wasn't interested in being there a third time, two more valves and 4 more joints. Just in case.

Back at home I found all my parts again, checked to make sure they were ready to be glued, and pulled out the cement.

Which I couldn't open.

I don't know what mutated superhero they had closing those things at the factory, but that effer WOULD. NOT. OPEN.

It's at about this time that those of you who are friends with me on Facebook probably saw a series of increasingly, um, agitated posts. Involving some, let's say, salty language.

I really don't like plumbing.

After several long, hand-bruising minutes of trying to get that thing open, and after finding a can opener to cut the lid off entirely, I found a pair of vice grips that thankfully weren't included in the last "give Dad's tools back" purge, and got the cement open.

So after an hour and a half of working on this level-one plumbing repair (as Dad put it) I finally had my pieces--new valve connected on either end to 6 inches of new pipe and a connector.

Back to the basement. I used a hacksaw (also from Dad) to cut above the non-broken valve, which gave me this:

Then I sanded (with a belt sander belt, because I couldn't find actual sandpaper) the pipe, primed it...

...and glued the new section in.

Voila.

Then it was just a matter of measuring where to cut the lower section, sanding/priming/gluing, holding, and hoping for the best.

Yeah, I know it looks exactly the same.

The pipe with the broken valve was much grosser looking, so who know how long that thing had been leaking. The process was the same though; cut, sand, prime, glue, repeat. And then I had two new valves.

And they didn't leak! I've checked repeatedly since Friday night and those suckers are still nice and dry. My facebook status after that discovery was much less agitated:

"Hmm. Since my repairs aren't leaking, does this mean I'm obligated to display some plumber's crack?"

I did not, for the record.

Oh! Speaking of things that people don't want to see. See that silver tubing poking down from the ceiling?

That's from the exhaust fan in that bathroom. Just, vented into nowhere, so all that moist air could make happy little mold colonies on the back of the utility space doors. One more lovely problem I'm looking forward to fixing.

I really need to start applying to those "fix my scary mold-ridden house" shows on HGTV.

he be coming home late, yeah he's coming home late

2012-01-18T13:40:00.000-05:00

First off, here are some links for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDX8Lyl16Qs&feature=share

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

SOPA/PIPA=not cool, guys.

Second, SHORT STORY.

As in, I wrote one.

I've been writing my butt off the past year and a half, first on the ghost story, and then MORE on the ghost story, and then EVEN MORE on the ghost story. I haven't kept track of the word count changes between drafts (without going back and looking at each file and adding it up and I love you, people, but not enough to do math) but the latest draft clocks in at 80k? Ish? I think one of the earlier versions was as low as 70ish. Plus fifty million different query letters, the hated synopsis, and I would take credit for blog entries but seeing as how there were only a (shameful) twelve, I won't.

How does 150,000 sound? I'm gonna go with that; might be high (probably not), might be low (I hope so), but it's a good, round number. (For non-writery folks, amount written is measured in words, not pages, because depending on font/format/amount of dialogue/a billionty other things, the number of words on each page can change drastically. At an average of 250 words per double-spaced, typed page, that's about 600 pages written.

Which really is not a lot, now that I look at it. Cry.)

Let's pretend that's a lot of writing (really it should be more, but whatever). Yay writing! Boo none of it being new stuff. I did want to write a whole new book last year, and, obviously, didn't. Enter my little I-can't-take-any-more-of-this-or-I'm-going-to-lose-it break. No ghost book to work on. No new book idea thought out/interesting enough to start working on.

Wait, I thought. I'll write a short story! It'll be quick, it'll be unrelated to anything, and if it sucks, who cares? I can't do anything with it anyway! (short story markets are pretty impossible to break in to, plus I tend to go on and on and on too much to fit into the word counts. SHOCKING I KNOW.)

Then there was the little thing about how I thought "write a short story" was on my list of 2011 resolutions, and with all of December ahead of me, I thought I could be accomplished. YES I KNOW THIS IS SAD. 10 resolutions is not a lot to remember, right? But look. I seriously can't remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday. I wouldn't be able to remember what I had for breakfast THIS morning, if not for the fact that I eat the same thing every day I'm at work.

Wait, which means I remember yesterday's! But yes, seriously, I had to logic it out like that. I don't know if this'll make you more or less sad for me, but just a few weeks ago I had to get out a calculator to find out how old I was turning this year, because I COULD NOT remember (I'm a year older than I thought :( ), and while talking to my brother the other day I seriously thought 1990 was like ten years ago. INSTEAD OF 22.

And see? Now I can't remember what I was talking about.

Just kidding. Mostly.

STORY. Right. So anyway I started writing this sucker early December, thinking even at my slacker pace I could finish it before the new year. And I did not. Surprise. But I kept poking away at it, and filled up a bunch of notebook pages, and it was coming along and I didn't hate it but suddenly January was halfway over and my "quick" little idea was starting to take up a lot of time, and I was starting to get itchy about getting back to my "real" babies, the still-homeless books.

I had a 4 day weekend last week, between my regular day off and a holiday, and I decided that I was going to finish that puppy before I came back to work on Tuesday. Did I work on it on Friday? Not really. I think I added about a page to it. Did I work on it on Saturday? Meh. Maybe another page. Sunday?

Nope.

So at about 930 Sunday night I looked at it, thought, "I'm almost at the end", and decided to stay up until it was done. Couldn't take more than a few hours, right?

THIS WAS THE MOST WRONG I HAVE EVER BEEN.

That I can remember, but let's not get into that again.

I wrote. And wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote and drank soda and wrote and ate chocolate and wrote and got glared at by the dogs and wrote and whined on Facebook about how this thing WASN'T ENDING and wrote and wrote and wrote and then finally I hit that space where you're so tired you're suddenly not anymore (I have a vacation home in that place. It's nice.) and then I wrote and wrote and wrote some more.

And I re-remembered that I really, really suck at estimating how much of a project I have left to finish, and learned that the dogs get really cranky and annoying when I keep them up too late, and that if you wait long enough the cats will get even greedier than they usually are and will demand a third supper.

When I was finally got to "the end"--and I did! I finished it!--it was 3 in the morning.

I spent pretty much all of Monday typing up the beast (one of these days I'll have to give up on the spiral notebooks, I think) and learned that my skills for underestimating don't just apply to how close I am to finishing something. They also apply to word counts.

When I went to bed Monday morning I'd estimated I'd written about 3,000 words of a 6,250-ish long story. No. Oh, no no no. Turns out I'd written 4,768 words of a 8,561 word story. That's over HALF. In roughly 5 hours.

(which comes out to 953.6 words/almost 4 pages per hour.)

What have I learned from this experience? One, that I need to stop thinking I'm almost done with something, because clearly I never am. And two, that I need to up my daily writing goal from one page to a lot more than one page, since obviously I can handle it.

ANYWAY.

I am trying to decide what to do with said short story. I'm a lot more fond of it than I thought I would be, but I'm also not willing/able to devote the time to chopping it (not sure it could be, anyway) and trying to place it, when I've got the books to deal with. Should I put it up here? Or save it for that far off day when I'm rich and famous and can release an anthology of all the weird stuff I couldn't stretch into full length books? Decisions, decisions.

i never knew if i could face myself to change

2012-01-17T15:20:00.000-05:00

Oh, resolutions. How I hate you.

In case you don't remember, last year I went over my stupendously failure-iffic resolutions from 2010, and made new ones for 2011. Here they are again, for you click-shy folks:

1) TOP SECRET
2) write a new book (vampires? superheroes? japanese monsters?). In 4 months.
3) put in wood floors
4) de-ugly the yard
5) new mailbox
6) prettify my closet
7) crown molding downstairs
8) half bath
9) walk the dogs at least 4 times a week
10) blog at least 3 days a week

Looking at this list now I'm kind of wondering what the hell I was smoking. So how did I do? Let's find out!

1) TOP SECRET NOPE
2) write a new book NOPE
3) put in wood floors YES! (and I know, I need to blog about it already)
4) de-ugly the yard NOPE
5) new mailbox YES! (another long overdue blog entry!)
6) prettify my closet NOPE
7) crown molding downstairs NOPE
8) half bath NOPE
9) walk the dogs at least 4 times a week PARTIAL CREDIT
10) blog at least 3 days a week HAH! (12 times in the entire year is totally better, anyway)

Like I said. I was seriously smoking something. To be fair, some of those weren't total failures. No, I didn't write a new book, but I DID do an almost total rewrite of the ghost book. Crown molding didn't happen but we ARE halfway done putting in new baseboards and shoe molding. And...well...ok, all the others were pretty much total failures, but whatever. We're looking forward!

Now that I am older and wiser and not interested in failing what could be my last set of resolutions (it is 2012, y'all) I've decided to keep it real this time. So! 2012!

1) TOP SECRET
2) revise the ghost book. Again.
3) finish the sub list for the zombie book
4) blog more than once a month
4b) at least a third should be related to writing
5) finish the baseboards
6) pulls for the freaking kitchen drawers already!
7) write a short story
8) walk the dogs at least 4 times a week
9) write a new book (in 4 months!)
10) think up a number 10

And guess what?

1) TOP SECRET

2) revise the ghost book. Again.
3) finish the sub list for the zombie book
4) blog more than once a month
4b) at least a third should be related to writing
5) finish the baseboards
6) pulls for the freaking kitchen drawers already!
7) write a short story DONE
8) walk the dogs at least 4 times a week
9) write a new book (in 4 months!)
10) think up a number 10

BAM.

Okay okay, don't get too excited or start thinking I've been possessed or something. In all honesty I thought I had a short story on my 2011 list (until, um, right this second) and started it the last week of December. I didn't finish it then, of course, but this weekend I knocked that puppy out. Resolution completed!

I'm so proud.

Dear 2011,

I'm not going to lie. You and I? We've been through some things. I can't say I enjoyed them at the time (and I can't particularly say that looking back I enjoy them any better), but they were probably things that needed to happen. And they could have been worse than they were, and you were still a hell of a lot better than that jerk 2010, so thanks for that. The thing is, I've been talking to 2012, and I'm kind of excited. I think this might be the one.

But let's keep in touch, okay?

Me

it's gone and you're dead again

2011-12-21T10:32:00.000-05:00

Y'all in the mood for some weirdness?

After dinner at Mom and Dad's on Sunday the dogs and I were driving home when something darted in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes--dogs flying into the front seat (yes, I know, I should make them wear their stupid doggy seatbelts) and saw a fat little black shape hurry across the road. That looked like a chicken, I thought. Why the hell would there be a chicken in my neighborhood?

So I park the car and the dogs and I walk back down the street a bit, where I see a little blob-ish lump sitting in the road under the street lamp. It still looked like a chicken.

BECAUSE IT WAS ONE.

Now, I'm not going to spill any details about my neighborhood, STALKERS, but let's just say that I am so not in a rural area. Like, so not rural that the closest thing I've seen to livestock around here are the beasts currently begging me for a rawhide. So chickens? NOT NATIVE.

It was hard to get a good picture on my phone (yes, I am that crazy lady taking pictures of things at night in the middle of the street), what with the dogs and the clucking and the creepy beaky wobbly comby thing that could have come charging at me at any moment, but I did get some proof:

"It's a blob," K said, when I texted her the picture. So I did what any ~~crazy~~ normal person would do. I put the dogs in the house and got my camera and became that crazy lady taking pictures of things at night in the middle of the street with her flash.

AND THEN I WAS VINDICATED.

I kept peeking out the window and the little chickeny blob was still out in the road until I went to bed, so I'm not sure what happened, or where he (she?) came from. There was a box with some feed-looking stuff in it on the curb beside it, so maybe somebody dumped it? The box and chicken were gone in the morning, so maybe/hopefully someone with fewer bird dogs than me took it in before it froze to death.

OH I forgot the best part. Right after I parked I called Dad, because if I'm going crazy and hallucinating chickens in my street, I want someone else to know about it.

Me: "Dad I almost ran over a chicken that was running across the street!"
Dad: "Did you ask it why?"

In other news:

I have been thinking a lot lately, about a lot of things. Like how I created this blog to talk about writing, and how I'm supposed to be working on either a)querying the old book or b)writing a new book or c)both, you slacker, and how I'm doing none of those things. Why haven't I been doing them? As much as I want to roll my eyes at myself for saying it, I think I am burned out.

So I've spent the past two months "rewriting my query" (translation: doing nothing of the sort) and painting baseboards and decorating Christmas trees and getting my hair dyed shiny red...

Holy gigantic forehead, Batman!

...and going to bed early and re-reading all my favorite series (Mercedes Lackey, I love you) and basically acting like I was no sort of writer at all. And I cannot tell you how nice it was, once I got past the whole "how can I be a professional writer if I can't even survive the query process without losing it?" guilt. And today there was a breakthrough. I worked on my query--and I didn't want to barf. And then I thought about rewriting the beginning of TDYK, and still didn't want to throw up.

Progress!

I'm still not itching to dive into a new book, even though I need to. I've got an idea for a short story I think I'll tackle first, and while I'm doing that (or after, depending on my multi-tasking abilities) I'll give TDYK another go and get it out there again. Because that book is awesome, dammit, and I'm not ready to give up on it.

And I'm glad I feel that way again.

In the meantime, I'm glad I took a break from it (and I know K was glad of the break from my freaking about it), and I'm glad I took the time to do some "non-productive" things, too. (hint: when people say that writers must be readers? It's not just because you can learn what does/doesn't work from a published book. It's because reading something you love can remind you how awesome it is to create your own stuff, too. True fax.)

And to get back to the whole blogging about writing thing, I'm not sure how I'm going to do that. Maybe I'll post short stories? Or snippets of whatever I'm working on? Or annoy you by babbling about books I love? It'll be something book related, and I want to try to do it on a regular basis. Maybe I'll even do something painfully cutesy and alliterative...Writing Wednesday? (Ah, cutesy alliteration. Never stop making me want to hurl.)

guess she gave you things i didn't give to you

2011-11-17T12:22:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I'm basically a gigantic dork. Like, huge.

I'll pause a minute so you can reign in your shock.

Ok, so yesterday K went to give blood and I got a little bored, so I texted her this:

I want your blood, Sookeh, I mean, K-eh!

But then something happened and I couldn't stop and, well, I think I'll just let you see what happened.

Your blood should be mine! Bill cannot even spell your name.

Don't make me step in and (permanently) end this, boys.

...You're going to put on a sterile pair of gloves first, right?

Oh, I've got a glove. But it's not for my hands.

I'm sorry.

(and yes, I amused myself so much that I almost choked on my own spit. CLASSY.)

won't you lay hands on me

2011-08-18T09:39:00.000-04:00

So K has a couple annoying habits, like never putting away her shoes or leaving the lid of the ice cream container in the freezer after she eats the last of the ice cream. But she also has this habit that is not at all annoying, which is buying me random presents.

Did I mention this habit is not at all annoying?

Yesterday I came home to find a Hayao Miyazake movie I hadn't seen (Castle in the Sky, which so far is, um...better than The Cat Returns, which was the worst Miyazaki movie I've ever seen. So that's something?) AND one of these:

Specifically the red one.

Yes, it's a particularly loud squeaky dog toy, but it reminded K of Zeke, and is CUTE, and I love him. Unfortunately, so did the two residents of my house who felt that this toy was designed, and meant for, them (nevermind the fact that K got each of them a toy, too), and proceeded to do anything in their power to get it.

Especially Beau. Just watch:

So now Zeke2 is safely on top of my dresser with Zeke1, taunting the dogs with their fleecy bodies and squeaky insides. From now on, just call me the Dog Torturer.

So many things were left unsaid

2011-08-13T12:20:00.000-04:00

So. I mentioned a few posts back about an encounter with a cable man who worked for a company that starts with V and rhymes with "erizon", who tried to "help" us with our flagstone patio. A few weeks after that I had an encounter that got a lot more, um, heated. And I probably got myself added to some terrorist watch list..

Let me explain!

See, when we moved in we tried to get Comcast to come out and hook us up. After a month of missed appointments, technical difficulties (verizon cut the line! We have to reinstall!), and general annoyingness, we were still cable/internet-less and D got fed up. So he called "erizon" (name changed to keep any company googlers from stalking me), who came out and got us set up.

Great, right? Well, not really.

First, they had to run cable from where it came into the house, across the room, to our TV, on the other side. They made this as subtle as possible, by stapling it along the wall, at eye level.

Then there was the box.

Apparently there's a need for some wall-mounted box to supply power to the system, or some such crap. Typically this is hidden in the basement, but since ours is finished the technician lazied out and installed it in our living room. I don't have a picture of ours, but it looked sort of like this:

When D moved out K and I tried to get the account switched into our names, which erizon refused to do. We could create a new account, yes, but no, they wouldn't give us the new customer discount. They would also have to shut off our service while the transfer was taking place, so we would be without tv/internet for a week or so.

After they hung up on us several times and were general idiots, we decided to go back to good ol' Comcast. They cancelled service, we mailed back their modem thing, end of story. Not.

There was the matter of the box.

K unplugged it, with the plan that the battery would die and we could unplug it and get rid of it. Except it beeped. And beeped. And beeped. FOR HOURS. So at ten o'clock one night I gave them a call.

M: Hi. I recently cancelled my service and I'd like to make an appointment for you to come remove the box from inside my house.
V: We don't remove the box.
M: What do you mean? I am no longer a customer, your box is using up half of one of the two outlets we have in our living room, it is sucking our electricity and WON'T STOP BEEPING. Come and get it.
V: We won't be doing that.
M: You cannot force me to keep your property in my house.
V: It's a public utility, ma'am.
M: No, it's not. You are a cable company. I am no longer paying you to provide cable. Get it out of my house.
V: There's a phone line in it. It's a public utility.
M: THERE IS ONLY A PHONE LINE IF I AM PAYING YOU TO PROVIDE SERVICE.

This is the point where I went a little off the rails.

V: Ma'am, I'm not sending anybody out to remove the box. If a future resident wants erizon they'll need that box installed.
M: I own the house. I am not moving for at least another 5-10 years. I refuse to believe that, in that time, technology will not have advanced to the point that the box will need to be replaced anyway.
V: It's a public utility.
M: IT'S IN THE MIDDLE OF MY LIVING ROOM. Public utilities are OUTSIDE the house. Your box on the OUTSIDE of my house can stay. THE BOX IN MY LIVING ROOM MUST GO.
V: We're not removing the box.
M: I'm going to rip it off the wall.
V: Ma'am, we can charge you for damaging our property.
M: It is in my house. On my wall, in my living room, using my electricity, and keeping me from remodeling the house and walls THAT I OWN.
V: I'm going to transfer you to our service department. Maybe they can make you understand.

K is now sitting in the other room, out of explosion range.

VS: You're calling about removing your power box?
M: Yes.
VS: Ma'am, we don't remove those boxes; the technician should have told you when--
M: The technician told me nothing. I was not there when it was installed. I did not sign the contract. The person who did was a renter who is no longer here. I never gave permission for this box to be installed in the middle of my living room and I am not giving permission for your property to be stored in my house STORAGE-FEE FREE, sucking up my electricity.
VS: Ma'am--
M: Your property, INSIDE MY HOUSE, is stopping me from using MY PROPERTY the way I see fit.
VS: If you decide to go with erizon in the future that box is necessary--
M: I will never go with erizon again. At this point I may never move out, just so that nobody in this house ever can, either.
VS: But it's a public--
M: IT IS NOT A PUBLIC UTILITY.
VS: Ma'am, I don't know what to tell you.
M: If it gets removed or damaged during the course of my remodeling, will I be charged for it.
VS: ...I don't recommend--
M: Will. You. Charge. Me. For. It.
VS: I don't see how we would know, since it's inside your house.
M: And you're not going to come remove it.
VS: No.
M: I want to talk to a supervisor.

When the supervisor called the next morning I was googling how to cut fiberoptic cables, just in case.

M: Hello?
V: Hi I'm a erizon technician you want your power box removed?
M: Yes! I do!
V: Um, are you available now?

Guys, this dude was TERRIFIED of me. I told him I'd be home at 4, and I swear when I pulled up to the house at 4:01 he was WAITING IN MY DRIVEWAY. It took him less than 2 minutes to remove the box, and most of that was him trying to break the news to me that there would be some holes left in the wall. (Um, has he seen the rest of my house?)

I'm not proud of going a little psycho on some random phone service people. But it should not take that level of aggravation to get a company to respond to a customer. Also, were they serious about storing their stuff in my house? Who does that??

If it helps at all, to make up for losing the moral high ground, when the Comcast guy came out I didn't bribe him to cut erizon's line, even though I really, REALLY wanted to. That has to count for something.

got a curse i cannot lift

2011-07-26T21:41:00.000-04:00

guys.

GUYS.

You know that revision I've been working on? Version 8 million, seven hundred thousand, three hundred and sixty four? (seriously that's what it feels like)

IT'S DONE.

DONE!

Right this minute my awesome volunteer readers are giving it yet another go, which means that barring version 8 million, seven hundred thousand, three hundred and sixty five (god please don't let there be a version 8 million, seven hundred thousand, three hundred and sixty five), it's almost ready to be sent out again.

And I am TERRIFIED.

I'd gotten so good with the whole query process; it was exciting instead of scary, I could fire off emails or stamp envelopes without even flinching, and I'd even gotten used to seeing those messages pop up in my inbox. Well, not any more. I can't even check my non-writing account without flinching at those damn "bling" noises my phone makes.

So. This is the plan:

1) take one last look at the beast, making the last changes and corrections and rearrangements
2) tweak query letter. AGAIN. Just in case.
3) send book back to agent who requested changes (with copious amounts of butt-kissing, in thanks for all her awesome suggestions)
4) simultaneously cross fingers and try not to throw up from nerves until word comes back
5) LOTS OF DRINKING (whether in celebration or in mourning, I do not know)

IN THE MEANTIME.

There is lots of house action going on, and I really really am going to start, you know, posting about it. I swear! And did I tell you that yet another of my trainees has quit? That's a grand total of three, people. My reputation will be a fearsome thing.

Okay. Must go work on step one so I can get to step five, already. Also, I am watching Harry Potter.

Priorities. I have them.

Ooh I wanna take ya

2011-06-29T14:24:00.000-04:00

Last week I was here:

This week, I am here:

See the guy in the white hazard suit in front of the window? We had an anthrax scare! Exciting!

Not. Fair.

Aruba was sunny and relaxing and sunburny and now that I am back I'm supposedly rested and ready to take on the approximately fifty kajillion projects I have to finish, namely the floors.

Yes, I know I owe you a real post with real pictures, and you'll get one.

Eventually.

But there's something else I want to talk about today. Namely, this book, by Stephanie Perkins:

I've been following Stephanie's blog since right before she got her agent, which was at the same time I got mine. Obviously our writing careers have taken VERY different paths since that point, but I've been looking forward to reading her book since it came out.

I can only trot out the same house/book/work excuses as to why I didn't read it before now, but on our last day in Aruba I finally did it.

Guys. I love this book so much I can't even tell you. Like, if I were still in school I'd write our names on my notebook and draw big puffy hearts around them, I love it so much. I'm glad this was the last book I read on vacation or I wouldn't have read any others, but at the same time WHY didn't I read it first??? I'd have had all week to read it another fifty times!!

I am not joking. I read it again on the plane home. I read it that night, when I couldn't sleep. It's in my purse right now (I carry ginormous purses) so I can read it at lunch.

I could not stop smiling the entire time (times!) I read it, and I am smiling now just thinking about it. Anna is hilarious. I am in love with St. Clair. I even want to go to Paris, a city I never wanted to visit before now.

Books like this make me want to get published even more, so I can have the chance to be writer friends with the people who tell these stories (even if this book actually makes me a little sad my books are all dramarrific and angsty, instead of fun and happy. [But only a little...I love my poor angsty characters.]).

Seriously. How could I not love this book when it has sentences like "'Trust me, you don't want to sleep in my bed.' He laughs, and I have to turn my face away, because I do, holy crap do I ever." or "I sniff his hair. Not out of weirdness. It's just...there." or or or "I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent. I love that.".

Too. Adorable. For. Words.

Anyway. While I try to crawl up out of my post-vacation, back-to-work depression, you have an assignment: Read this book. Love this book. And if you don't like it, I don't want to hear it, because you are obviously a crazy person.

how could it be any better than this

2011-05-20T10:00:00.004-04:00

The bottom of our deck steps used to be grass, which quickly turned to bare dirt (two rampaging dog-beasts will do that), which turned into a huge lake of mud with every rainstorm. Not attractive. We'd been talking about putting some pavers down, but you know how those things go. It was too hot out, and then it was winter, and then it would be fine until it rained, and then other projects would come up, etc. Plus we were cheap and didn't want to spend any money on it.

But then our parents dug up a flagstone patio they'd built at the base of their paver patio and offered up the stone AND the stone dust underneath it. Jackpot.

K decided that this would be a quick afternoon project, which we could finish before some snow that was supposed to be coming our way (this was in late march, for the record. Stupidly late for snow.) When we called Dad to ask if we could borrow the truck to make off with our goods he asked what our timeline was, and laughed and laughed.

We're used to this by now.

Needless to say, after a good couple hours of digging K and I were the proud owners of an in-ground pool.

The next morning K went to Mom and Dad's to steal as much stone as she could while I kept digging (we wanted the patio to wrap around to the basement steps, where there were pavers that were slowly sinking under the cement stairs and were trying to break someone's neck.) Unfortunately there wasn't enough stone dust for us to have several inches under all our pavers, so we got to make a trip to bLowes, who of course were idiots. For the record? SAND DOES NOT GO UNDER A PATIO. Unless you want it to turn into quicksand with every rain, that is.

But whatever. The Stone Store is less than a mile from our house, and with Mr. Truck it took less than 30 minutes and under $30 for us to get a half-ton of stone dust.

I'm going to pause the story: At this point some dude selling verizon shit came by and tried to sell us his shit. I was in the truck, shoveling gravel, K was in the back pounding it flat and assembling the flagstone. When I told the dude that we weren't interested, he offered to help me haul the full wheelbarrow to the back, since he didn't feel right that a girl was doing all that work.

Excuse me?

First of all, Verizon dude, what help, exactly, will your one trip be? IF you manage to get it into the back yard without spilling it all over the grass, which I doubt, are you going to stick around to help with the other 50 trips? Second, how do you think we got the rest of the stone back there? Did some burly man materialize to help us? No. We used our puny girly muscles. Also, you are about as big aroud as my arm and have clearly never done physical labor in your life. Get off my lawn.

Anyway.

Stone dust went into the hole, graded so that water would run into the grass and hopefully not under either set of steps.

This is when K, who helped Dad build every one of his three patios and several retaining walls, went to work.

Beau got sick of supervising and left his assistant.

A few hours (and a few smashed fingers) later we (mainly K) were done.

Beau was happy to take all the credit.

I'z a hawd worker.

and got so far

2011-05-19T13:06:00.000-04:00

Things I have learned over the past few months:

1) K and I are still the queens of getting discounts from bLowes. "Hey. Floor dude. Before you ring us up for that monstrous 1,000 square foot order, throw a 10% discount on there. Good boy."

2) This thing?

Is called a tape measure. Not, as my supposedly loving father allowed K and I to think all our lives, a tape measurer.

3) When bLowes says they will deliver to your driveway, and not actually into your house, they are not kidding.

4) Said delivery will come on a truck so huge it cannot actually get down your cul de sac. It will have to be delivered on this:

5) That image is exactly as nightmare inducing as it looks.

6) 1,000 square feet of flooring is a lot.

(that's just over half of it, by the way)

A LOT.

7) our tiny house is actually very big.

8) our beautiful painted subfloors are as unlevel as it is possible to be. This is what it would look like if you took a cross-section of the floors:

9) that wasn't much of an exaggeration.

10) K and I bought our very first power tool!

We <3 it.

And just because who knows when I'll blog again (SOON HOPEFULLY) here is an incredibly not-to-scale teaser of our progress...

Clearly I should have majored in art.

(I'm pretty sure nobody is reading anymore, but I should explain my absence anyway. Life is basically sucking my will to live, and any free time I can scrounge up is going right into the house and the book [which should have been done ages ago and isn't, blah blah blah]. The good news is I have lots to blog about, the bad news is that blogger and/or my iphone haven't yet figured out a way to suck entries directly out of my head. It's a shame, really.)

headspace within the hardwood and the ceiling

2011-03-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

Did you know that when you are good at your job, people like to give you more of it to do? And that going from one full-time trainee to 3-8 full-time trainees means 3-8 times as much work? And that going from 1 trainee to 3-8 trainees does not, in fact, give you 3-8 times as many hours in the day? Because it does not! I am working 60 hour weeks here people and in case you've forgotten, I'm a federal employee. This level of effort is UNHEARD OF around here.

Plus there's the house and the book and family and there's this thing called sleep? I think that's what it's called. I can't remember.

(pause to answer trainee question)

MOM I AM ON MY BREAK SO DON'T EVEN SAY ANYTHING ABOUT BLOGGING FROM WORK.

So--(another trainee question)

Okay.

The wife and I are on the hunt for some big-ass rugs to cover the wood floors that we'll be putting in someday, both to make our feet happy and to keep a few certain someones:

and

from destroying it with their monstrous dinosaur toenails.

Also, the cats need a nice place to barf, I guess?

Anyway, I was doing some overtime at home last week and took a break to check out overstock.com. I've never found anything I liked on their site, so I've never ordered from there before but I had rug envy for the lime green beauty Young House Love just got, and that stupid "o.co" commercial kept playing on the TV. And I was bored and sick of doing overtime.

So imagine my surprise when I searched for wool rugs that were at least 8x10, and for under $300, and I found this:

Wool, 8x11 feet, $280. Free shipping.

Awesome, right? Even more awesome is that K liked it too, and within minutes of finding it we purchased the last one. It got here yesterday and after I about gave birth to myself trying to get the f*cker in the house we rolled it out. Guys it is so nice. It covers basically the whole dining room (so you can't see the nice floors we'll put in, which also means that the animals can't destroy them!) and is cushy and soft and I don't care if it falls apart in 5 years, it was less than $300 and I <3 it.

And I'm not the only one.

...yeah, I've got no explanation for that.

but what am i so afraid of

2011-02-16T13:16:00.000-05:00

I've never been into Vday. I mean there's the usual "oh you're just bitter 'cause you're single" BS and ok, maybe there's a little of that, but mostly I don't get why people feel like they can't express their love, or buy gifts for each other, without some Hallmark-sanctioned holiday. Hell, the wife and I buy each other little presents all the time (gotta do this starter marriage right, folks) and we're not even a couple.

(sidenote: sometimes I like to make my references to K and our relationship as convoluted as possible, because thinking about any newbies reading it and getting really, REALLY confused makes me laugh and laugh.)

This year I was feeling crafty and procrastinatory and hadn't been really aggravated by a project in a while so I decided to attempt something I saw on i am baker last week. Oh yes. I'm talking about the heart cake.

(image obviously not mine, as I couldn't take a picture like that if my life depended on it.)

That heart cake, to be precise.

There's a really good step by step on her blog so I'm not going to get into that, but I will say this much:

1) holy crap is this a messy project

2) one of the layers tried to commit suicide

3) I ended up with a level 4 layer cake anyway

and

4) I'm getting pretty good at frosting things, actually!

The bad news about this cake, of course, is that there's no way to know how you did until you cut into it. (While I was making it [it took me ALL DAY] my dad texted to say "i heart you!". I wrote back, "I blob you!" because let's face it, the odds of ending up with a blob cake were FAR higher than the odds of ending up with anything even vaguely heart shaped.)

So how did it turn out? You guys be the judge:

It's heart-ish, at least. Also mostly bear-monster-ish. But not really blob-ish at all, which is better than I was expecting! And as far as taste goes...It's like eating a mouthful of cavities. Seriously. My teeth hurt just LOOKING at the thing after spending all day making it, but actually eating it gave me instant diabeetus. Yes I deliberately spelled it that way. Box cake and box icing are always super sweet but when you mix icing with cake and then stuff another cake with that cake you're getting into obscene amount of sweet, folks. I'll go ahead and tell you straight up that we all had one piece and hit our limit, and now the rest of that monster is sitting in one of my pretty glass-fronted animal-proof cabinets, wishing comas and tooth decay on all of us.

Anyway, happy belated ~~vday~~ bear-monster day--I <3 you guys!!

but your voice was too loud

2011-01-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

Dear Mary,

Yeah. I'm writing a letter to you. Myself. Whatever. It's crazy, sure, but I'm a writer (sort of). I'm allowed to be eccentric.

Just go with it.

You've gotten into some really bad habits lately, Mary, and it's time that we had a little come to Jesus meeting about it. See, you have this tendency to ask for things, and then to complain about them when you get them. You wanted more responsibility at work, you got it, you complain (even though you're kind of mostly enjoying the work). You wanted an agent, you got one, you complained about it (it was too easy! It shouldn't be this easy! Something's wrong that it was this easy!). It got less easy. A lot less easy. And guess what. You complained about it.

I get that complaining is cathartic for you. That otherwise all that crap just builds up in your head and starts partying with those never ending house-related lists and next thing you know you're lying awake for hours on end and go in to work feeling like the zombies in that agented, then not, book you wrote. (That you complained about.)

But it's annoying, okay? Really damn annoying. And really damn ungrateful, and petty. Because these problems of yours? They're not problems. At all.

Which brings us to your latest "issue". It was last week, I think, when you were freaking out YET AGAIN about the ghost book, and how it's not doing well, and how can it not be doing well when the zombie book was so easy, and what are you doing wrong and WHY won't anybody just tell you how to fix it?? (By the way, K deserves chocolate imported from cloistered Peruvian monks, or slippers knitted out of bottle-fed baby Alpacas for not punching you in the neck during that particular bit of loveliness. Seriously.)

Once again, whatever thing or force that is running the universe heard you, and because you are stupidly lucky for some reason, decided to give you what you asked for. That rejection letter you just got? Is amazing. It's probably the best gift you've ever gotten. EVER. This thing must have taken hours, between reading the book and writing the letter--a not insignificant amount of time this agent could have spent on a client, someone who is actually earning her money. But she spent it on you. DON'T WASTE IT.

Yes, fixing the book could be a lot of work. Sure, you might put in the effort and it still might fall short. But that's publishing. Hell, that's LIFE. Chances like this don't come along every day. So here's the deal.

Shut up. Right now. Before you even say a word. Pull on your big girl panties, take some notes, and get to work. You can do this.

Also? Quit acting like blogging counts as being productive. You're not fooling anybody!

Love,

Me

P.S. You can't actually afford cloistered Alpaca chocolate for K. Godiva will suffice. (Plus then you can get some for yourself. Win/win!)

gotta win let me win

2011-01-19T18:39:00.000-05:00

I think, perhaps, that my 11th resolution should have been to spectacularly fail at least one of the other ones. Like, oh, I dunno, blogging three times a week? Cuz in that case I would be totally golden.

Anyway.

Despite my cheerful, sunny disposition on this ol' blog of mine, I can actually be pretty mean. (Some day I'll have to tell you about how I made one of my trainees cry, and another one quit after only a week--both of which sound worse than they are, admittedly, but they are still funny stories! My ex-mentor is calling me "Bonecrusher" now.) I especially love being mean to the people at hardware stores.

I'm not sure why--it probably has something to do with the amount of money I've spent there, or how despite the fact I've been in the local Blowe's at least once a week for the past TWO YEARS I still cannot get a dude to help me when I need one (let's not even get in to part where I managed to find a dude [or dudette] and knew about eightybajillion more than them about whatever problem I was having. So much for the home improvement folks.) Or maybe my heart is three sizes too small or my shoes are too tight. Whatever. I saw an opportunity, I took it, and not only do I not have any regrets, it is one of my proudest moments.

Let me explain.

Our house came with a washer and dryer. Well, it came with a washer and a machine that tumbled clothes. There wasn't so much of the "drying" happening. Luckily for us, Mom and Dad replaced their machines soon after we moved in, so we took their dryer off their hands, which gave us this:

The washer, which perpetually smelled of mold, and the dryer. Functional, mostly. Aesthetically pleasing? Not so much. But y'all know what our home improvement list is like, and in case you've forgotten, a new washer and dryer were nowhere on that list.

Fast forward to a couple months ago. I was at work (back in the good ol' pre-training days) and got an email from Home Depot. They had appliances on sale. I usually just delete those sale emails, but for some reason I clicked on this one. And what did I see?

Oh yes. That beautiful redhead, normally $1200, was on sale. For $600. The best part? She had a twin.

Also on sale for $600. Free delivery, free installation.

Now comes the fun part.

After K and I decided to go ahead and take the plunge (after K came home from work to a washer full of mold-smelling laundry she'd forgotten...talk about timing) we decided to try to see if Blowes would honor HD's price. I mean, they price match, right?

Yeah. They do. But they do NOT do it happily.

K and I went to Blowes and waited in the appliance section. I tried to put out lots of "I want to spend money" vibes. About fifteen minutes later a dude came over to where we were admiring the closest thing Lowes had to our redheaded beauties and asked if he could help us.  "Oh yes," I said. "You can. You price match, right?"

"Yep," said the dude.

"Great."  At this point I whipped out the prices I'd printed from the Home Depot flier and handed it to him. "We'd like those."

He turned a little purple.  After fifteen minutes of him checking things on the computer, and saying things like "these are special order" and "how are they selling them so cheap?" and "the store can't even buy them for that price" he gave us a very sad face and said that yes, they could match that price. He then had to fetch a manager to approve this deal, a process that took--no joke--half an hour. When the manager came back he looked at us like we were crazy and asked why we didn't just go to Home Depot to buy the machines, if they were so cheap there.

Please tell me you can see where this is going.

"Thank you for your time!" we said, and started to walk away. At which point the sales dude said "Wait!" and glared at the manager, who finally approved the sale, and then said something that makes me smile to this day. "We're losing a thousand dollars on this sale."

Aren't those the most beautiful words you've ever heard?

After the manager left the sales dude kept talking, and apparently he looked our names up in the system, and was aghast that the manager would be such a pill to people who've spent approximately seventy kajillion dollars there in the past two years. (Paint is expensive, folks.)

Two weeks later our babies arrived. Blowes got some revenge on us by knocking our main plumbing stack loose and causing some minor flooding in the laundry closet (nothing Super-Dad couldn't fix) but since then our darlings have been churning away, looking totally out of place in the world's crappiest bathroom.

I <3 them.

paying for the things i never done

2010-12-31T09:00:00.003-05:00

I hate to say it, friends, but it's that time of year again.

Resolutions.

*shudder*

I don't know why I keep thinking I'll actually stick to these stupid things, but I do. Maybe because I think failing is fun? Who knows. Now, before you can say it can't be that bad, let's look at last year's list:

1) Finish the ghost book
2) TOP SECRET
3) Write another book
4) Write a short story
5) De-ugly the yard
6) Put in wood floors
7) Remodel fireplace
8) Remodel half bath
9) Walk the dogs at least 4 times a week
10) Average more than 5 hrs of sleep per night

Not too bad, right? Let's look at how I did:

1) Finish the ghost book SUCCESS
2) TOP SECRET FAIL
3) Write another book FAIL (seriously what the hell was I smoking??)
4) Write a short story FAIL
5) De-ugly the yard FAIL
6) Put in wood floors FAIL
7) Remodel fireplace SUCCESS
8) Remodel half bath FAIL
9) Walk the dogs at least 4 times a week EH (partial credit for this one)
10) Average more than 5 hrs of sleep per night HAHAHAHAHA

In conclusion? I was clearly smoking crack or meth or whatever it is people smoke nowadays and I either need some more of it, or should give it up entirely. 2.5/10 is pretty grim.

But is that going to stop me from making a list for 2011? Of course not.

1) TOP SECRET
2) write a new book (vampires? superheroes? japanese monsters?). In 4 months.
3) put in wood floors
4) de-ugly the yard
5) new mailbox
6) prettify my closet
7) crown molding downstairs
8) half bath
9) walk the dogs at least 4 times a week
10) blog at least 3 days a week

If I can get even half of those done this year I'll consider myself accomplished.

Dear 2010,

I had good hopes for you, I really did. I thought, at the very least, we'd make kick ass progress on the house, or that my TOP SECRET issue would finally be resolved. But no. Neither of those things happened. I keep trying to cut you some slack--I know it hasn't been a great year for anyone--but I'm getting very, very tired of your excuses, and frankly I'm ready for you to be gone already. So you and 2009 go hang out in the corner where you can pretend that you weren't giant balls of suck and the rest of us will be over here talking about how ridiculous you look in that dress.

2011? Don't be like your older siblings. Seriously.

Me

yes, yes, yes you look wonderful

2010-12-29T15:26:00.001-05:00

Was y'all's Christmas as awesome as mine was? I really hope it was! My family totally outdid themselves this year, and I think I had about a 95% success rate for the gifts I got for people (mainly ruined by the two books I bought for K--both of which she already has. My bad timing is spreading!)

The best gift ever takes a little bit of backstory, though.

1) So I wrote this book. It kinda sucked to write. A lot. Maybe I mentioned it? At least once or twice. Well, for every time I've mentioned here I've whined to K about it at least 5 times. She probably knows the book better than I do at this rate, and I swear that if I even *think* about it she gets a pained look on her face.

2) One of the main characters in my book is a ghost named Zeke, who actually is a demon only pretending to be a ghost. Whatever comments people make about my book, good, bad, or inbetween, 100% of readers agree that he is awesome. I think authors are supposed to love all their characters equally, like parents love their children, but Zeke is pretty much my favorite.

3) Zeke likes to call the main character, Angie, "Cupcake". It annoys her.

4) Zeke wants Angie to make a deal with him, and lose her soul.

5) Here is Zeke revealing himself, in this never before seen (because it's not published, obv) excerpt from my book:

He throws up his hands. “Fine. Joke about this.” Drawing himself up tall, taller than is physically possible, Zeke stretches, lengthening and shifting until he towers over me. His skin ripples, darkens to a shimmering black, his eyes flush blood red and a row of horns erupt from his forehead like a crown.

“You—you’re a—” I struggle to make words. My tongue won’t cooperate.

“Demon,” Zeke prompts. Between his lips I see flashes of teeth, razor edged and dully silver.

6) Christmas morning I went to load the dogs in the car so we could go have breakfast at Mom and Dad's. Someone was sitting in the front seat. This someone:

He had a tattoo on his butt:

K ORDERED ME A CUSTOM STUFFED MONSTER BASED ON ZEKE!

MY FIRST EVER MERCHANDISING!

I'm so happy I could pee. Which is gross, I know, but seriously. I have the best wife in the world.

Do you think it would be weird if I included these pictures with any new query letters I send out? I figure the cuteness alone would outweigh any potential agent eye-rolling.*

*No, I would not actually do this. But it's tempting!

i know my mom and dad can't fly like that

2010-12-22T09:00:00.002-05:00

It wouldn't really be Christmas without the annual Guess-how-many-strands game I play with my parent's tree, now would it?

Here's this year's contestant in her naked glory:

Ginormous. Now remember that last year took 19, and the record is 27. Place your bets!

Just like last year, it might look like I'm getting close. But no.

Not so close.

17

This is one for the records, folks. I've never managed to put the same number of strings on a tree two years in a row! I will say that I deliberately went a little light (haha) this year, and looking at that last picture is actually driving me a little crazy because I see bare spots. Hmm. I guess that's what ornaments are for, right?

i think i love you

2010-12-21T09:27:00.002-05:00

Y'all know I love you, right? So much, in fact, that I did the unthinkable, just for you.

That's right. I cleaned the kitchen. And took pictures. Which I'll post next week!

Just kidding.

Not many of you were around back in the beginning, but let's just say that our kitchen was a mess from day one. The cabinets were covered in grime so persistant that nothing we tried removed it. Nothing. Shelves were broken and missing, the fridge and stove were so toxic we had to replace them the day we moved in, the counters were stained and paint splattered (that last bit might have been our fault), there was a poorly wired security system in the wall and gross orange sponge paint peeking out around the edges of everything. It was very, very ugly.

Baby, you've come a long way.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Now for some detail shots!

It's like Ikea made these curtains especially for us.

Made-by-Dad custom bookshelf...

...and custom winerack!

Now let's talk budget. Initially we decided we weren't going to spend more than $5k, a number we pretty much pulled out of thin air. We hadn't researched what things would cost and had no idea what fixtures we wanted. About halfway through we got sick of compromising on every. single. thing. and added another thousand. I mean, 6k is still a stupidly small amount for a complete kitchen redo. So how did we do?

Cabinets: $2500
Soapstone slabs: $1400
Faucet: $200
Sink: $250
Tile: $500
Knobs: $150ish (stil working on these)
Chandelier: $15
Dishwasher: $300
Paint: $30
Random crap: $200
Total: $5,545

Even if you factor in the cost of the fridge and stove (the vent hood was a house warming gift from our folks) and the floor we'll be putting in soon (I HOPE) we still came in under $7,000. For the entire kitchen. K won't let me watch kitchen shows on the DIY network anymore, because whenever they mention a "small" budget of a "mere" 15-20k I laugh and laugh and laugh.

Now before you start to think that we actually finished a project, let me tell you otherwise. Still to do!
-floor
-pulls
-crown molding
-baseboards
-cover panels (for upper cabinets)
-trim work
-paint above window (I kinda, um, forgot to do that...)
-replace outlet behind buffet

So that's our (mostly) new kitchen, friends. I hope it was worth the wait...I know I think it was!

(By the way, if anybody is interested in a source list/more specific prices, let me know! I'm also putting together a post about our experience with our Swedish cabinets, so look for that sometime after Christmas.)

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

2010-12-20T09:00:00.001-05:00

I cannot belive I am saying this, but I am legitimately bummed that there was apparently a big snow front and while lots of people (including all you Knoxville residents) got inches of snow we got exactly 2 flurries.

Yes. Two.

Not that I am in any way, shape, or form asking for a repeat of last year (Dear God please don't give us a repeat of last year) but what's the point of all this freaking cold weather if we're not going to at least get some snow out of it? LAME.

For the record it's supposed to be like 28 degrees out the rest of the week. With no snow. So I have no reason to hope the government will give us a snow day.

:(

I mean, how perfect would it be to sit in the living room with the snow blowing outside, puppies warming my feet (slash back slash butt slash lap slash face since we all know my dogs are not well behaved enough to stay on the floor) while we look at our beautiful Unicorn Puke tree? (Which, by the way, I lit in exactly one night! 14 strings, baby!)

K calls this the Bailey ornament, since it's all spotted and funny looking. It's my favorite.

So pukily pretty, even without the tinsel we had to leave off, thanks to a certain animal trying to help us decorate last year.

I left K a love note to commemorate the occassion. Aren't I thoughtful?

You're welcome for that.

Oh, yeah. Supervisor Cat helped.

"Helped", anyway. And my God he's gotten fat. Leadership has not been kind to him!

AND how can I forget our very first major home improvement project, which we didn't have in time for Christmas last year? I'm talking, of course, about this baby:

Look how pretty she is!

Now before you get your hopes up, let's look at the full-room view.

Wouldn't want y'all to think we weren't still living in a construction zone or something. Yucky approves, anyway:

Oops, almost forgot our awesome chandelier.

I love Pier 1.

Oh and that's our remodeled kitchen in the back. Great after picture, right? NOT. Now, listen. I KNOW. I'm super lame for STILL not having them up. Good news is we have knobs on the doors, and maybe this weekend we'll get the cover panels and quarter-round up, and then K can re-oil the counters and we'll call it done for now? We still have to figure out the pull situation but I figure y'all will let my painter's tape pulls slide for a bit longer.

Also I have to clean before I take new pictures. (You can act surprised about this.)

Ok, enough distracting me, people. I have to go figure out my Christmas shopping nonsense or I'll be at the mall on Christmas Eve AGAIN. I don't need that kind of stress in my life!

like a lightbulb

2010-12-04T09:47:00.001-05:00

K and I were going to the mall last night and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" came on the radio. "This song is ridiculous," K said.

"Why?"

"You know all the obscure reindeer, but you haven't heard of the famous one?"

I can't say that I disagree with her, after thinking about it that way. (Also, Rudolph is a better person than me; after all that teasing I'd have told Santa to take a hike.)

In writing news, the first page of my book made it into a pretty awesome contest. Anybody can leave comments on it, and while they don't affect the outcome I'd love for y'all to see what I've been complaining about for the past year! My entry is here:

http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2010/12/21-ya-fiction-devil-you-know-bakers.html

Though you should read all of them--there's some good stuff up!

after the hurricane comes a rainbow

2010-12-02T07:47:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but K and I are in the midst of a little remodeling project. Did I tell you about that? How we decided that we could redo our whole kitchen in a month? This would have been about, I dunno, three months ago.

Not that this in any way means I will ever be willing to pay somebody else to do this sort of work, but I'm beginning to see why other people do. I am so tired of it.

BUT! We are making progress! A lot of progress, actually, and I might actually have some honest-to-God after pictures to share, but those are going to have to wait until we get some real pulls installed. (I was hoping that would be this week but the ones that just arrived are kind of ludicrously tiny. I am not pleased.)

How about some countertop details instead?

Okay. So neither of us like granite, which is good because it's crazy expensive. We wanted to do quartz, or the recycled glass composite stuff, but again with the crazy amounts of money. Soapstone it was! Luckily we both liked the way it looked, and found a place where we could buy DIY slabs.

Unluckily, that meant we had to a) drive to New Jersey and b) cut and install our own stone.

Did I mention New Jersey?

And that soapstone weighs approximately 25 pounds per square foot? And that these slabs were about 3x8 feet? That's 24 square feet. AKA 600 pounds.

But let's start at the beginning.

I've blocked the whole hellish trip to and from Jersey from my mind, but here's my first ever view of New York:

Hello, people in New York! Some of you (you know who you are) should call me!

Then after 1,800 pounds of stone, 4 severed tarp straps, 1 squashed stinkbug and about a million hernias the counters were in.

And by "in" I mean "in our house".

That's sort of the inbetween color of the stone; naturally it's a very light gray, and oiled it's black. We'll call that color there "still some dust to scrub off".

I'm not going to lie. K, Dad, and I were terrified to cut this stuff. We didn't know how the stone would react to our fancy diamond tipped blades, we didn't know if measuring 1,000 times was really sufficient, and we SO did not want to eff up and have to drive to Jersey to get more slabs.

Getting the suckers outside was another nightmare, and there may have been an incident where someone (*coughmecough*) rolled a stone-laden furniture dolly over someone's (*coughdadcough*) foot and might have, um, left it there, but that first someone totally got the same finger smashed TWICE when actually installing the slabs so I--I mean, that someone--figures it all evens out.

Ahem.

We seriously measured the stone for 45 minutes before we made our first cut. And then we got the saw lined up and ran inside to measure again. And then we all got lung cancer.

Holy crap guys this stuff made some dust. It looked like Mt. St. Helens erupted in our backyard. There's STILL dust out on our deck. I'm sure our neighbors were very impressed with our latest and greatest show of white trashiness.

Not that I care. I mean, look at it!

We got to oil that piece right after we installed it, since we didn't have to glue it to any other pieces. Best instant gratification EVER.

Just look at the difference between the soapstone and the crappy laminate. And even when the sink piece was still there (I apparently didn't take a picture once we got that middle section in) it looks like an entirely different kitchen.

See my paint swatches to the left of the glass cabinets?

Not surprising, really. It IS a different kitchen.

Next up, the backsplash!

come on get happy

2010-11-23T09:33:00.000-05:00

I wish I had some thrilling reason for why I'm been a super lame blogger lately, but there isn't one. Well, I can't upload pictures from work any more so my lunchtime blogging habit has taken a hit, but other than that it's been business as usual. Work is worky, the house is a construction zone, and I've put off my pre-Thanksgiving list to the last minute and now have approximately eleventy-billion thing to finish before Thursday. Woo.

Then there's the whole querying nonsense, which is going as well as I should have expected. Which is to say, not well at all. I'm not getting into all the whiny details (and believe me, they are whiny), but I will say that after six weeks of querying the zombie book I had multiple offers. I cannot make the same statement about the new book.

Blah blah think positive blah.

So to hopefully give my friends a break from listening to my pity party I'm going to post pictures of things that make me happy. Things like this:

and this:

Or like cats that think they're dogs,

And dogs that think they're cats

Really good Johnny Depp impersonators are always worth a smile:

As is a little bit of artistic expression from the recycling dudes.

Should I include a "WTF?!"?

Yes. That car has a tail. There's a nose on the front of it, too.

And I can't forget about the blanket I bought to keep dirty animal feet off my duvet, which has the amazing power of not only making animals comatose, but making them symmetrically so.

See?

And because I'm a tease, I'm happy about this:

But you'll have to wait until next week for the rest.

Happy Thanksgiving!

i've got the magic in me

2010-10-27T08:00:00.001-04:00

I've been at loose ends since finishing that horrible second child of mine--

Sorry, I have to pause and state this for the record. I know I went on and on and on about how miserable it was to write the ghost book, and how it never behaved and I thought it sucked and couldn't be saved.

I'm already forgetting all that.

Seriously. If you asked me today? Writing the ghost book was fun and exciting and not at all anything approaching a struggle. I'm really glad I was blogging about how much I hated writing it because now I have documented proof I can look back on when I start hating the yet-to-be-started book three. I never believed K when she told me I had just as many issues writing Eat Salt but hopefully now I can skip the whole "I'm a talentless hack; who the hell was I to think I could pull this off?" phase. Fingers crossed!

ANYWAY I've had time to catch up on a lot of house-related things, like vacuuming and weedeating and pre-Thanksgiving list making, and of course some crazy crafty stuff crept in.

I made a pretty cork board for my office (cheap cork board covered with cheap linen from Michaels):

And some shadow box Halloween art (though if you think I'll be putting this away after October 31st you're going to be sadly mistaken):

And an awesome/tacky wreath for inside the front door (this, on the other hand, will be going to the basement come November):

After that things got a little crazy, I'm not sure how. I remember I was watching TV, and then I looked into the living room and thought again that I wanted a slipcover for the camelback sofa...

Yes, I am aware the house is a disaster. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that until we're done renovating SOMETHING we're going to be living like hoarders. *shudder*

...but didn't want to spend eleventy billion dollars on one, and remembered that we had a massive drop cloth in the basement. So I tried draping it over the couch to see if we could DIY something, and next thing I knew K dropped a new sheet set from Target she ended up not liking in my lap and then there were a million staples and three hours of my life was gone and we had this:

Which is, um...different? The technique is sloppy, obviously, and I'm not so much loving how we went from overly green to baby's-room-appropriate, but in theory I still like it. If I run out of things to do (hah) I might give it another go before the family comes up for Thanksgiving, but if not I will be doing the same thing to the wingbacks until K and I decide on a more permanent, less crappy solution.

Or, you know, we win the lottery.

these bright lights have always blinded me

2010-10-15T08:38:00.001-04:00

K and I have been struggling to find a new light fixture for above our kitchen table for months. Lots and lots of months. In the meantime our ugly upside-down e-collar light fixture (which is made of PLASTIC I discovered last weekend) has been getting filthier and filthier and I'd say it was getting uglier and uglier but really, we all know that's not possible.

I mean, look at that thing.

Like D's cowboy boot collection?

Hideous.

The problem, of course, is the two of us agreeing on something. We came close a few times--this Hundi lantern from Pottery Barn,

or this Moravian star light,

Y'all have to help me convince K to let me remove the flashing from our front porch roof so we can bring out an electrician and hang this light above our front door. Seriously.

but price and worry about the need for more light in our kitchen always stopped us from buying something.

(It was mainly the price.)

Meanwhile, I kept seeing this neat idea online, where people took functional but ugly lights and made them shiny and new.

I'm talking, of course, about those ubiquitous brass chandeliers and my BFF spray paint. I found a bunch of pictures to send to K and after a little negotiation she was convinced. (By "a little negotiation" I mean "the project total would come in around $20. Max.")

See, when we replaced our dining room light I insisted that we keep the chandy that came with the house. I think the original intention was to re-hang it when we moved someday, so one of us could take the new one, which really was a dumb idea because an ugly light fixture wasn't going to magically become less ugly by sitting in our basement for five years. But whatever. We had our free light! (and by "free" I mean, "$300k")

Obviously we needed a bright, happy color, and since my stand mixer and my favorite gargantuan mixing bowl are red we decided to make it a threesome.

Yeah. It was not a good thing.

At all.

Which meant another trip to bLowes and another week of sporadic painting (seriously, why is it always raining when I need to get outdoor stuff done?) but finally we had this:

More boring black, but whatever. It looked a lot better.

Unfortunately, I had to hang it then, which was a pain and a HALF. Find wire cutters. Trim wire. Trim chain. Remove old fixture. Wire new fixture. Screw new fixture onto support bolt. Attempt to attach cover plate. Fail because support bolt doesn't extend past the cover plate so it won't attach to anything. Unwire chandelier. Redo support bolt. Rewire chandelier. Try to attach cover plate. FAIL BECAUSE THE STUPID BOLT IS STILL NOT DOWN FAR ENOUGH. Unwire. Redo support bolt so that only the tiniest bit of bolt is still in the mounting bracket. This is going to work, so help me. Try to attach cover plate AND FAIL because the cover plate is thicker than the entire length of the GD support bolt. Storm away from ladder and half installed chandelier before transforming into Hulk and SMASHING everything. Have restorative Diet Dr. Pepper. Have brilliant idea. Take cover plate from old plastic light and compare to new cover plate. Old cover plate is much thinner. Race outside during break in rain to spray paint old cover plate. Wait impatiently for it to be not wet (waiting for "dry" would take too long"). Unwire chandelier. Undo support bolt. Switch out cover plates. Rewire chandelier. Attach to support bolt. Which is now too long for my new thinner cover plate. Unwire. Redo. Rewire. Unwire. Redo. Rewire. Unwire. Redo. Rewire.

Seriously guys it literally took me two hours to get that stupid thing installed and now I have to touch up all the chipped spots because yeah, spray paint is not so durable when wire cutters and pliers are involved.

BUT.

It looks totally awesome.

Yeah I know it's hovering maybe a foot higher than it should be (never decide how high to hang a chandelier while standing on a ladder, folks) but lord that thing is like our very own supernova and after living with it for a week, debating if there was enough patience in the universe for me to take it down, add more chain, and rehang, K and I think that if it were any lower we'd all be blind by the end of the month.

Man there's not a single thing that hasn't changed in that picture. Except the curtains. Ugly laminate floor is gone (replaced by ugly painted subfloor...), great-grandmother's oak table ~~stolen~~ rescued from the parental furniture store, two chairs from the dining room set stored in our basement, cowboy boots replaced by sad dog toys, new cabinets, of course.

And I'm saying publicly that from the instant K saw that black sisal rug and wanted to take it home I hated it. I hated it in our last house, I hated that it was scratchy, I hated that it was black, I hated that it is annoying to vacuum and impossible to clean messes out of but God bless it that is the only rug in the universe that has taken daily stampedes from our two rampaging wildebeasts and has not shifted AN INCH. With every other rug we've put there I'd come home to a bunched up, sloppy mess shoved under the kitchen table that I'd have to readjust, and readjust again every time the dogs heard a knock at the door or they wanted outside or they saw a cat or smelled food or I don't know, every time water was wet. I haven't had to mess with that rug ONCE. And that is why it will stay there forever and ever amen.

there's certain things that should be left unsaid

2010-10-11T17:55:00.000-04:00

So the book is done. Now what?

If you'd asked me that questions a few months ago, I'd have said revise, turn in to agent, hope she likes it, hope it sells. But since we're talking about NOW, it's going to work a little bit differently. Mainly because I don't have an agent any more.

It's not a big dramatic story or anything, and I'm not going to get into the reasons, so I probably shouldn't have mentioned it, except as a previously (and currently) unrepresented author I hated seeing only the happy ending stories online. I wanted to know what happened if things didn't work out with an agent, if your book didn't sell or you had to go through the querying nightmare again. (Be careful what you ask for, guys. Seriously.)

So! Y'all are lucky and get to see the step-by-step process of (hopefully) landing another agent. Try to contain your excitement.

Step one: Revise the crap out of your book. Literally and figuratively. Now is the time to find some honest readers; you want them to find all the rough spots, all the weird language and spelling mistakes and plot holes and boring parts, and you want them to tell you about each and every one. This will suck. I'm not going to tell you that it won't. But this is the only way to make your book better. Check your local community college for writing classes; lots of times they're taught by published authors, and for $50 or $100 class fee you can get an expert's opinion of your masterpiece. When I finished the zombie book I took a class at AACC with Ann Crispin, and her ideas about my book and submission materials were amazingly helpful. That's also where I met my crazy-talented critique partner.

If you can't find a local class, hit up any of your literary-minded friends, and I've heard good things about Critters Workshop (if you write fantasy, sci-fi, or horror).

If all else fails check out your local library. Here are some books that I found really helpful (still do, actually):

On Writing, Stephen King
The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Renni Browne
Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

I don't want to bore all of you into comas so I'll talk about the other steps later this week. And obviously take all of this with a grain of salt--I am by no means an expert, and while my take on the required steps worked for me once, I've yet to see if they'll work a second time. It'll be a learning experience for everyone!

there's a blaze of light in every word

2010-10-06T08:23:00.000-04:00

The nine stages of writing a book.

Stage One:
You have an idea for a book and it is the awesomest idea anybody has ever had. Ever. If you thought you had interesting ideas before you were wrong. This is THE ONE, the idea that will be right up there with Twilight and the Bible. You're so excited it's the only thing you can talk about, even when it's obvious that your friends and loved ones would rather chew on a box of tacks than hear about it one more time. You can't wait to start writing it!

Stage Two:
So you start writing it. And it's just as awesome as you thought it would be. You can't get enough of your setting and your characters and all the clever/horrible things you're going to do to them. You could write this book forever.

Stage Three:
Then you run out of the stuff to write. Those brilliant ideas you had? Those scenes are written, and as awesome as they are you know that a book is not made of a half dozen un-connected scenes. You need character development. You need dialogue. You need...what was that? You need a plot? Something with a set up and rising action and a climax and a conclusion?

Shit.

DON'T PANIC. You can do this. You'll think of something. Just keep writing and it'll come together.

Stage Four:
It's not coming together. Your characters are doing things and you don't know why. Something about the world you've set up is really, really not working. Your friends and family begin to miss the days you went on and on and on about how great your book was going to be; you're still going on and on and on about it but at least then they didn't have to worry that you might be on the verge of having a psychotic break.

Stage Five:

But before it gets to that point something clicks and the book becomes fun again. You're happy to give up sleep and a social life and healthy eating habits--you're hitting your word count every day! Your dialogue is snappy and realistic! Your descriptions are vivid and creative! That plot you threw together? It's actually pretty original!

Stage Six:

Then a little bit of procrastinatory Googling ruins your life. Your original idea about a teenage loner who falls in love with the moody high school prom king vampire who is also a kraken shapeshifter? It's already been written. Worse, it'll be on bookshelves before you even have a chance to get your first rejection letter.

Stage Seven:

This is when you get a little bipolar. There's no point in finishing your book--it's already been done, probably better, by somebody else. No; you have to finish it--lots of books have the same plot. Yeah, but your book is the worst thing since PE class. It's not that bad. Yes, it is, and in fact, you're defiling the English language by even considering continuing it. No I'm not. You should just quit now.

Stage Eight:

Call it determination. Call it grit. Call it i'moverititis. Whatever it is, suddenly none of the above matters. Someone wrote your idea first? Who cares. A one-armed monkey with ingrown toenails and a nasty case of parasites could string together better sentences than you? Good. You're never going to write another word for as long as you live? Fine--but so help you God you will finish this first.

You cut out all unnecessary time-sucks. Chores. Hobbies. Sleep. Personal hygiene. You smell a little funky, but that's great, because people are finally leaving you alone and you're making progress. Odds are good that the stuff you're putting on paper doesn't match the hastily assembled plot threads in the first half of the book and you're so delusional from lack of sleep that what you're typing is probably nothing more than gibberish but you only have three chapters left to write. Then two. Then one.

Stage Nine:

i'll hold you like the sun holds the moon

2010-09-27T09:00:00.004-04:00

There's this great salvage place in Baltimore K and I like to go to. Not because it's cheap, because it's not, but because we like to make ourselves feel sad and poor.

So far we've had little luck on our trips; the reclaimed mantles we wanted to use on our fireplace were all very damaged and very $500 and up, the kitchen and bath fixtures are super old and super powder blue (or in the case of one glass shower door, very "one of a kind tiger design!" [I know the name is a little unclear so I'll explain: there's a huge tiger painted on it.]), and all the quirky lights and furniture and tchotchkes are priced as "antiques", not "crap from abandoned houses."

Why do we keep going back? Because I am an eternal optimist, people, and I live in hope.

Also because Dad found some great salvaged lumber there for like $20 on his very first trip and dammit, that's just not right. So help me god I will find something awesome, or die trying.

Our last trip was several months ago, when it was still a billion degrees outside and we were trying to get K's friend to forgive us after we made her help us paint the living room floor. There was also a $5 dollar sale going on, and the cheapskate in me couldn't resist.

The cheapskate in me was going to be sorely disappointed. There was not a thing there, except for a broken little piano bench that K immediately snatched up, reupholstered, and gave to the cats in the hope that they'd leave our furniture alone.

The legs have since been painted white, and it looks much cuter.

Supervisor Cat approves.

Needless to say that has not been the case.

Back to the salvage joint. I was hot and sweaty and annoyed and I was going to get a project if it killed me. I made K and her friend come with me to the warehouse holding all the architectural stuff; doors and lumber and windows.

I found these shutters:

Adorable, right? There were about fifty of them, and I cannot imagine where they came from since there is nothing in this area that I've ever seen that would work with that sort of cutesy aesthetic. I bought two of them, though frankly I probably shouldn't have since it's months later and I've still not done anything with them. Also they're probably full of lead.

But I can't make up my mind! Cute little cabinet for holding gardening tools on the deck? Cute little cabinet for holding towels or sheets in the guest room? Some sort of artwork? And how do I refinish them? I love the weathered look but I'm really not joking about the probability of lead paint and that country blue doesn't so much go with anything in the house.

Leave it to Dad to come up with the solution.

Later that evening, after I'd stashed them in their garage, he called me. "Why," he asked, "Are there outhouse doors in my garage?"

make me a match

2010-09-24T09:24:00.006-04:00

Okay folks, I need an opinion.

We found tile we liked for our backsplash:

And a few weeks ago it arrived.

Home Depot does not mess around with their packaging, folks.

Good news, it looked good in person!

And it'll look great with the cabinets!

Bad news? We're worried that it might be too taste specific. Some of K's friends have told her horror stories about dated tile backsplashes, and as neutral as I think our tile is (C'mon! It's back and white!) if a potential future buyer doesn't like it it's not an easy fix.

So what do you think? Should we go with something simple (white subway tile, probably) or stick with our shiny mosaic? I don't want to design our way out of selling eventually, but at the same time I don't want to spend all this time, effort, and money on renovating only to base all our decisions on what some potential buyer may want in the future, instead of what we like.

This is obviously what happens when we take too long to complete a project; too much time to second guess ourselves!

he takes a lager drink, he takes a cider drink

2010-09-23T09:10:00.002-04:00

Kitchen update!

Let's see...last time I posted the kitchen looked like this:

Today?

Well, it looks almost exactly the same.

It's been a busy few weeks, okay? And we're basically at a stand still until we get the counters in, and frankly we're all really, really dreading the drive to and from New Jersey.

Speaking of counters, how great is this?

It's a soapstone sampler pack! K and I narrowed our favorites down to three:

and when we finally agreed on one we got the prices and are going with the cheapest.

(This should surprise none of you.)

But that's cool, because it was one of our top three, and honestly who can tell the difference between not-so-heinously-priced-soapstone and more-heinously-priced-soapstone? Not me, that's who.

Also on the subject of counters, this is what happens when you don't have any:

I am not amused.

Aaaanyway, here is our new shelfy thing we got to replace the butcher block/hamper combo we had going on before.

Snazzy.

And our new dishwasher!

It's stainless on the inside. I love it.

Did you notice our fancy cabinet hardware?

Yeah. That's painter's tape.

Other than the dishwasher my favorite part of the kitchen is what's on the other side of the sink. It started like this:

and ended like this:

That's right, y'all, we are the very proud owners of a custom wine rack. I guess now we have to start drinking wine! We're going to build another something for the hole next to the dishwasher...maybe a mini shelf for cookbooks?

We're officially at the point where it's looking like a shiny new space, but all the stuff that's left to do is REALLY ANNOYING. I miss having counters. And cabinet knobs. I am tired of stepping on staples.

That's 37 staples right there, all of which came from our smaller pantry (maybe 2 feet square?). There are thousands left to deal with.

I have to keep telling myself it'll all be worth it, it'll all be worth it, it'll all be worth it...Anybody else get discouraged in the middle of a major project?

like a surplus reprieve

2010-09-22T10:04:00.001-04:00

It's been quite a while since I had one of my "I'm fixing that NOW" impulses, so it didn't really surprise me when the urge hit this past weekend.

See, I've been staring at the inside of our front door for over a year now, watching as it got progressively grosser and grosser.

Nasty, right? We're planning on taking all our doors over to Dad's workshop (AKA his basement) this fall so we can bust out the paint sprayer and FINALLY get rid of the dirty beige look, but as far as I could figure there wasn't a way we could take down the front door to spray it, as well. Not without leaving our charming, pristine abode open to intruders.

(haha...can you imagine the look on some burglar's face? "They don't have a front door! Score!" *walks inside* "Uh...never mind."

So while K was napping (she's incubating a cold I'm sure she's going to pass to me) I whipped out our trim paint and got to work. An hour later I had this:

Even though I was lazy and just taped around the doorknob and didn't even mess with the hinges (they were already painted over so I'll be replacing them) it is SO MUCH BETTER. The whole front entry feels brighter and cleaner, even with our half burned out star light and stained plywood floors.

Next up is painting the outside of the door, I think, though K and I are still "negotiating" (translation: fighting) over the color. She thinks we should do black, which is fine, and will look handsome, but since we may still have to replace the door (thanks to some stripped screws) my stance is why not paint it a fun color? Even if we end up keeping it repainting is easy enough.

I mean, come on. How cute are these?

Good ol' Ireland.

Whatever we decide I'm hoping to get it done before the Thanksgiving list goes up. Not because I'm trying to keep things low-stress; oh no. I just want that space for a chore that'll take more than an hour.

For the curious (and for the sake of my own goldfish-memory) here's the pre-list:

-kitchen counter

-backsplash

-prime/paint 2x4s (the base for the crown molding and baseboards)

-cabinet hardware

-paint breakfast area

-paint floors in kitchen, breakfast area, front hall, and dining room

-spray all doors

-replace all hinges/doorknobs
-repaint guest room
-new curtains for guest room
-paint bookshelf thing in guest room
-repaint my bedroom
-unpack last box in office
-install new smoke detectors
-touch up paint around new thermostat
-repair deck steps
-repair deck railing
-paint deck. again.
-clean/paint front porch
-fix fake retaining walls in front
-mark out/dig up future planting beds in yard
-replace ~~bug catcher~~ porch light
-organize hall closet
-fence?

I'm almost ashamed to admit it but that's not even half of the things I want to get accomplished in the next two months. Why yes, I am an overachiever. Why do you ask?

there's some strength left in us yet

2010-09-13T11:06:00.001-04:00

I don't know if it's the cooler weather (seriously--our AC can keep up again! It's chilly at night! I actually debated not wearing flip flops! Okay, it was only for like half a second, but still) or I'm-sick-of-staring-at-my-computer-itis but I'm dying to do some projects around the house.

You know, because the kitchen isn't enough.

But it's so GROSS over here, y'all, I can't even tell you. Now that the nasty carpet and nasty kitchen are gone I'm free to focus on all the other gross stuff, like the dirty handprints on the basement walls (WHY WERE THE PREVIOUS RESIDENTS SO NASTY??) and the crazy-disorganized closets that are making me all OCD-twitchy and don't even get me started on the yard. I want to set it on fire.

So fine. Pre-Thanksgiving list season isn't too far away and when it gets a teensy bit cooler out during the day time I can start ripping up "grass" and covering everything in mulch and K swears that when it hits 70 degrees out there she's finally going to fix the fake retaining walls in front and then maybe our yard won't make me quite so ashamed anymore.

Except I cannot turn off my brain! Here is a snippet of a coversation that happens in my house AT LEAST once a day:

Me: We should change out all the doorknobs before Thanksgiving.
K: We need to focus on finishing the kitchen and the floors.
Me: Well we should paint the front door at least. It looks awful. And we need to repaint the guest room since the yellow doesn't match the new bedding. And I want to paint that shelf in there, and find new curtains. And real bedside tables.
K: Shouldn't you be writing?
Me: I'm taking a break! Did I tell you the closet in the office is a total disaster? I found this great pattern I want to stencil on the walls, and I think I'll add another couple shelves and maybe some hooks for the ironing board? I don't know. What do you think?
K: I don't care.
Me: I just want your opinion! This is why we need to apply for that DIY show. Though I've been thinking and I think we can fix that bathroom on our own, if we build a false wall behind the washer and dryer and remove the doors--
K: If you don't go back upstairs I'm going to return one of your Halloween presents.
Me: I'm going! (gets halfway up the stairs). D thinks the bannisters are ugly too, did he tell you? We could totally replace them.
K: We. Need. To. Focus. On. The. Kitchen. And. The. Floors.
Me: Fine. But we wanted to switch out the outlets in our bedrooms last year and didn't get to it, so we should do that now, since you have to turn the power off to install your new fan anyway. Did we ever paint the trim in your bedroom? I don't think we did. Oh, and since we have to put the crown molding up in the kitchen I think we should go ahead and do the rest of the downstairs at the same time, since we'll have the miter saw and nail gun over here.
K: STOP ADDING THINGS TO OUR LIST.

As annoying as I find the endless lists, I think they may make K a bit more aggravated.

Or homicidal.

Oh--the DIY thing. Assuming I actually do it we're going to apply for "Run My Renovation" and see if we can't get that disaster of a basement bathroom sorted out. It's got all the makings of a great transformation, right? Comic book walls, doors that can't open all the way, lots of sibling drama...I'd totally watch that episode. Granted, the thought of being on TV is about as appealing as squishing a slug between my toes but Dad has got me totally paranoid about replacing below ground toilets (let's just say the phrase "poop volcano" was used) and if I can get someone else to do it, sign me up!

and it goes on and on and on

2010-08-31T12:58:00.001-04:00

This is totally pointless but it makes me laugh every time I go into the kitchen so I had to post it.

Since we tossed our nasty dishwasher (man I hope the Lowes guy was right and they go on sale for Labor day) there was an orphaned connector in our disposal when we reconnected the sink.

Need a closer look?

Your eyes are not mistaken. That is a highlighter taped into the hole. And it's working really well!

Not working so well is the book. I finished chapter 22 last night, and I'm about 90% sure that means there's going to be a chapter 24 and 25. This pretty much means I'm not meeting my deadline. BUT I have still made a crazy amount of progress the past few weeks and I am absolutely going to finish this sucker by the end of the week. Really!

making up for all this mess

2010-08-30T08:19:00.000-04:00

Hanging the new upper cabinets was surprisingly easy; draw a level line, find the studs, attach the support bar thing, slide in hardware, hang cabinets.

The end.

Stupidly I was thinking that this meant the lowers would go as quickly.

Hahahahaha.

Since the cabinet footprint was changing we had to tear up the flooring in the kitchen first, and since I'm not so keen on the idea of stubbing my toe fifty million times between now and whenever we put in the hardwoods that meant we had to tear up the stuff in the breakfast area and front hall, too. But the carpet came up easily, so no big, right?

Wrong. There was big.

The first two layers--crappy slippery laminate and a foam underlay--came up easily.

Do you see where things start to get tricky? Whoever put in the laminate didn't remove the linoleum that the builders put down, and under that linoleum was a quarter-inch plywood subfloor. Superfloor? Whatever you want to call it, that sucker was a bitch and a half to remove. It didn't shatter or break, so we had to rip it up in entire sheets, and that was only after lots and lots and lots of hammering and crow bar use to loosen the hundreds of staples. I am not exaggerating about how many there were.

It took me 15 minutes just to tear that piece up. Also, hello, water damage. I haven't missed you a bit.

I couldn't get a good picture of the staples the first night, and then I forgot and didn't try again, but here's what I have:

Those shiny bumps are the little bastards. Did they come out easily? No! Of course they didn't! I about dislocated my arm trying to pull them out with the needle nosed pliers so I started hammering them down. BIG MISTAKE. It's a week later and they're all popping back up; enough to hurt when stepped on, but not enough to get a good grip to remove them. We're going to have a lot of fun going after them with the vice grips when it comes time to level the subfloor.

On Friday Dad and I spent a disgusting six hours demoing the rest of the kitchen. Want to guess what we found?

You knew that was coming. (For the record, it smelled like death). I'm beginning to understand why people hire out this sort of stuff.

It was at this point that I seriously considered not putting in another peninsula. It was so big and airy! Except for the stove blocking our back door, anyway. (Please note those big black spots above the sink plumbing. I am so sick of finding mold in the house!)

After all that was done we spent Saturday building the support boxes for the cabinets (one of K's work friends has an Ikea kitchen and she was less than impressed with the legs and toekicks) and getting those level took hooooours. On the plus side we now have the most level kitchen in the universe. We even busted out the good ol' pythagorean thereom to square the peninsula to the cabinets on the sink wall. It's a thing of beauty.

I don't care that it looks like a garbage dump exploded in my house. To me, it's beautiful.

Still to do:
-install and level rest of the cabinet doors
-find and order sink
-find and order faucet
-buy new dishwasher
-buy/cut/install soapstone counters
-replace all outlets
-install backsplash
-find and install knobs/pulls
-prime/paint support boxes and exposed 1x3s
-new baseboards
-crown molding

Writing update:
Good news--I have kept to my goal and have written at least 700 words a day for the past two weeks, and most of those days it's been a lot more (2,000 last Thursday!).

Bad news--THE BOOK KEEPS GETTING LONGER. Once I have a finished draft I'm predicting that the delete key and I are going to become very, very close friends.

But look! It's the ending!

And by "ending" I mean "summary of the last six chapters", so while it's nice that I have things (mostly) figured out that right there isn't anything that's actually useful to me. Oh well.

Back to work!

while the rest of them peter out

2010-08-26T14:30:00.000-04:00

My normal daily goal is 250 words. That's one double spaced page.

My goal for the past few weeks has been 650 words. That's 2 and a half pages, basically.

I took the day off work today to lock myself in the library and make some progress. The good news? So far I've written 1,800 words.

That's about 7 and a half pages.

Bad news?

Most of that was in chapters 2, 3, and 4, which, I realized last night, were empty place holder files, and not the "finished" chapters I thought they were. I still have to write chapters 22, 23, and 24. (Maybe a chapter 25? I don't know. This book is growing out of control.) Plus type up all the stuff for chapters 2-16. Plus do a super rough edit so my very brave crit partner doesn't sprain her brain trying to read this sucker.

By Tuesday night.

Cry.

well you're never gonna get it

2010-08-24T09:00:00.001-04:00

This is going to be the shortest post ever because I have SEVEN DAYS until my deadline and I am going to make it, people, I swear to God.

Who needs sleep anyway, right?

Ok. So take one part Supervisor Cat:

And one part Ikea:

And what do you get?

Almost half a kitchen, baby!

Y'all, I love it so much I actually want to be barefoot and pregnant in there, just so I can ogle it.

Okay not really (except for the barefoot part) but you know what I mean.

Hopefully we can get to the lowers this coming weekend, but that all hinges upon me finding the time today and tomorrow to pull up the laminate in the front hall, kitchen, and breakfast area, and then to pull up the linoleum and 2nd subfloor under that, and then we have to build the boxes the cabinets are going to sit on (because we heard through the grapevine that the Ikea legs are crap) and did I mention I only have 7 days to finish my book?

I'M NOT MAKING THIS POST ANY LONGER I SWEAR.

Except for this:

Supervising is apparently very exhausting.

And now I'm really getting back to work.

but with what we have, i promise you that, we're marching on

2010-08-20T09:00:00.002-04:00

If I keep this short this doesn't count as a real post, right? It's like a study break. Yeah. A study break. Let's call it that.

I get these annoying emails from Home Depot every week, and while I usually skim and delete, today I actually clicked the ad.

And saw this:

Yeah. I bought it. Well K agreed, so techincally WE bought it.

Just imagine that as a backsplash between our shiny new white cabinets and our spiffy soapstone countertops. Gorgeous, right? And the brick pattern will tie in with the fireplace of pure awesomeness, without being too similar, and it's neutral but not boring.

Of course, if K's fieldtrip to the soapstone lot today doesn't pan out that lovely tile has to go right back to the store and we get to find something more budget friendly. Hooray.

we'll do it all, everything, on our own

2010-08-19T09:00:00.005-04:00

K and I made a quick trip to Ikea Tuesday night. Only when I say "quick" I mean "we were there for 4 and a half damn hours".

See, cabinets are one of the few things at Ikea that are not self serve, and so we had to wait at the delivery desk, where the estimated wait time is 7 minutes plus 1 additional minute for every item you bought. Seeing as how we bought approximately 50,000,000,000 things, this took a very long time. Then we got to load the truck, drive home ("luckily" it was now 830 at night so there wasn't much traffic to speak of), and unload the truck.

Doing this on a work night was probably not our brightest idea.

And while I knew that the cabinets would come disassembled I really hadn't thought out exactly what that would mean. Namely, 50 million pieces.

Seriously. Nuclear devices have been built with fewer parts.

The plan right now is to install the new uppers this weekend, decide on what countertop we're going with (if K and Dad have a successful field trip Friday we'll be cutting our own soapstone...eek), and then next week will be removing the slippery crappy cheap laminate from the hallway and kitchen (and the linoleum underneath it) and painting the subfloor so we can maybe install the lower cabinets next weekend.

Plus, you know, I'll be writing half a chapter a day. And making up for the stuff I didn't get done while we were stuck at Ikea for fifty years.

Why did I think this was a good idea?

to catch you up on places i've been

2010-08-16T09:00:00.018-04:00

Just a quick post to say that things are going to be spotty for the next few weeks; I've got a self-imposed deadline to finish the book by the end of the month, which means if my estimation of how many chapters I have left (5) is correct, I have to write triple my usual daily goal to get it done. Actually it's more than that, since the first 5 chapters have some pretty big revisions that need to happen before I can even let anybody give me the "can this be saved?" read-through. Wish me luck!

(Probably not as funny as I think it is sidenote: Remember a while back when I posted pictures of the first draft of the zombie book? That's the whole thing right there, neatly contained in 2 notebooks. Not five inches from my left hand right now is a stack of FIVE notebooks for the ghost book, and there are at least two or three purse-sized notepads with stuff I need somewhere in the house. Most of it's crap but that's basically 2 books worth of words, friends. My fingers hurt.)

On the up-side, K and I finally figured out our cabinet issue and we should be placing the order on Tuesday! We're a little afraid to go in, since apparently Ikea carries some of their cabinets in stock, and might have some for us to take home immediately. Yeah...maybe we can just come back in two weeks to pick them up, once we've resigned ourselves to the work we're about to have to do? Thanks.

We also did some more investigating of our floor options, and seeing as how putting in unfinished floors will save us MAYBE $500, we might be back to the pre-finished option. Is anybody else as bad at making decisions as we are? Not that I'd wish this wishy-washyness on anybody else but I'd hate to be the only indecisive homeowners out there.

Okay, K is yelling at me to quit playing on the internet. Back to work...

but nothing seemed to change

2010-08-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

I totally called it.

Last Thursday I came home from work and saw this:

It might just look like a messy kitchen to you, but I saw it for what it was. A certain moose-sized animal had been on the counter.

The fact that the cat food dishes, on top of the fridge, were both totally cleaned out, only confirmed my suspicions.

Then, you know, there was this:

I swear to God I'm going to saw his legs off. Let's see him try to jump then.

tell me what you want to hear

2010-08-04T09:00:00.002-04:00

First things first.

I made a really hard decision last week. I don't know if it was the right one. I think it was. To celebrate, K bought me this:

Does anybody remember the days when Baskin Robbins actually had 31 flavors in their stores? This one had like 12. Maybe.

But more importantly!

Last Saturday my Bailey-monster turned 4. FOUR. How is that possible? WHY IS HE GETTING SO OLD?

It seriously seems like only yesterday I saw his very first baby picture.

And a few seconds after that his second.

Those grumpy eyebrows kill me.

Then he was home, with me, and was busy tormenting his dog cousins and keeping me up at night. (That puppy's favorite game was to fall asleep about 5, wake up at 11, and cry ALL NIGHT LONG. It was awesome.)

Even so, there has never been a cuter dog. Ever.

Still not convinced?

*squee*

And then he was graduating from school;

And went through that emo period all teenagers seem to hit.

Probably because his mother embarassed him.

Or because his little brother is a convict.

But it's okay. Like most of us, he's learned to laugh it off.

How do you celebrate an occassion like this?

With cheeseburgers, of course.

If he looks hungry, he's lying. This is after he ate a normal dinner. (I was a bad mom and forgot his treat, so he got it for dessert.)

Poor starving dog. His life is so hard.

Not.

Happy Birthday, monster! I never thought I'd love a pillow-stealing bed-hog this much, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

you'll never know unless we go so let me show you

2010-08-03T09:00:00.005-04:00

I am so happy I've won some converts to the painted-floor club! We're super cool, y'all.

The worst part about that whole process was the planning--I had no idea how to go about planning chevrons that would be evenly spaced, and of even widths, and the whole thing made me want to quit and just do splatter paint instead.

Thankfully I didn't.

Once I figured out how to do it, though, it went pretty quickly.

So you have your room.

(Or a piece of paper. Work with me here, people.) Start with painting the whole thing one color.

I knew we wanted big stripes, and that I wanted them centered (or as centered as possible), and after some playing around I decided that I wanted 4 chevrons (is that even the right word for the specific pointy things?) across the width of the room, and I forget how many going lengthwise. 10? It was an even number, I think. Anyway, I divided the width and length of the room by how many rows I wanted, and that gave me my measurement.

First I marked the vertical lines I would be using to center everything. I made one for each point of each chevron, basically dividing my future v-shapes in half. I measured from the wall (it was a little over 16 inches for me) for the first row, and then from the previous row of tape for all the others. To do this I took my tape measure and ran it along the wall, marking 16 inches out about every foot or so. Then I took my tape and connected the dots, eyeballing it to make it level. It was so not technical. Then repeat for all the other rows. MEASURE FROM THE SAME SIDE EVERY TIME. I used 2 inch painters tape so I'd have some wiggle room with the roller, so when the left hand edge of the tape was marking my first 16-inch line, when I measured for the second line I lined the tape measure up with the left hand edge of the first tape line. Otherwise you're going to lose two inches every time and it'll mess everything up.

When you're done (ie, after about 50 millions trips up and down the length of the room on your hands and knees), it'll look like this:

Not bad, right? Now mark for your horizontal rows by measuring down however thick you want each stripe to be. Once again, I forget how thick mine are so let's just say 16 inches again. Make a mark every 16 inches on each row of tape.

I drew lines on the drawing to make it easier to see, but in real life I just made tick marks (along the left edge of the tape, since that edge is what's really marking my line.)

I'm sorry. I'm confusing myself, too.

Now it gets trickier. When you start taping your zig zags you have to decide which you're going to paint, and which are going to stay the base coat. Your tape is going to overlap the section you're not going to paint; so at the end of this step you'll have alternating fat and skinny rows.

It's not easy to see in that picture, so here's my crappy drawing again:

The sections we're going to paint our 2nd color (the fat rows) are marked with paperclips.

(For each stripe that is going to be your accent color, when you connect the dots that will make the top border of the stripe, connect the dots with the bottom edge of your piece of tape. When you make the bottom border of the stripe, connect the dots with the top edge of your piece of tape.)

Once that's done you have to remove the vertical pieces of tape from the rows you want to paint. Just peel it up and tear it away, hopefully without messing up the diagonal lines you just made. This is also when you want to make sure you don't have any raggedy tape edges in your "paint" rows (they can be as raggedy as you want in the "non-paint" rows). Neaten up the edges if you need to, make nice sharp corners, all that stuff. If the points of your chevrons don't stick to the floor (because you folded tape ends under to make them neat), don't worry about it. When you roll over it they'll be mashed to the floor and you won't have any bleed through.

After that you get to paint! I used a brush to edge along the walls, but once that was done I got out the roller and knocked those puppies out in about half a minute flat. Once it dried a little I gave it a second coat and peeled up the tape.

(Just to warn you our floors were a little tacky for a while; they were dry enough to walk on after a day but it took about a week before our feet stopped sticking to them. We didn't leave feet marks or anything during that time, though, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. That'll all depend on the type of paint you use, I'm sure, and whether you have 8,000,000% humidity like we have the past month. Also, if you have any animals in your house they WILL find a way to walk on the wet floors, no matter how many barriers you build. Trust me.)

I'm sure there was an easier way to do this but when have I ever done things the easy way? That's right. Never. I can't wait to see all the chevroned floors!

the best colors that you shine

2010-08-02T09:00:00.003-04:00

If anybody thought that I'd be able to stand living on subfloor for longer than about half a second, y'all don't know me very well.

And it's not just a perfectionist/OCD/boredom issue. We live in a freaking zoo, folks, and there's no way that we're gonna make it 72 months (knowing our track record) without a dog tracking in muddy feet or a cat spitting up or a basement-dwelling younger brother having a party, in which case we'll be left with stinky, unwashable subfloors.

No thank you.

The easiest way to fix this problem is to paint. Cheap, quick, and by going with exterior high-gloss it'll be super washable.

Check it out:

Not bad, right? I'm not sure why we ended up with purple, but strange things happen when you have to compromise. In our defense we wanted to do something fun and crazy. Every other decision we're making in this house is with future buyers in mind, so why not go out there with something that'll be covered up eventually anyway?

Speaking of fun and crazy.

Since we're going to be looking at it for several months, wouldn't stripes be fun? Maybe a chevron pattern, since nobody but me thinks doing that in my bathroom is a good idea?

Maybe something a little like this?

Or this?

I know--this:

Oh my gosh y'all I love it so much. K and I have had several discussions about putting in wood floors and then painting them like this for keeps. Maybe even staining them that way. We won't actually do it, sadly, but oh we want to. So so much. And it's so durable! I was worred the monsters would destroy it like they destroyed the deck, but after almost two weeks of living on it there's not a single chip or scratch to be seen.

The ugly furniture, however, is still to be seen. Sadly.

crawling in my skin

2010-07-28T09:00:00.032-04:00

Probably you're wondering what the heck Monday's post was about. "C'mon, Mary," you might be saying. "Who cares about your stupid dirty carpet story?"

To which my only response is a resounding "NOBODY", but I told it anyway, because I love you.

And because it was backstory for today's post.

Ooooh, relevancy.

Ok. So the carpets in my house are filthy. This was my bedroom before we moved in:

More scary stains in the guest room and office:

That's why we had to replace the carpets upstairs before we moved in. We feared for our lungs.

But we left the stuff downstairs because we knew we were going to put in hardwood eventually, and there was no point in replacing something only to get rid of it a year later. Plus we had rugs for every room downstairs, so it probably wouldn't be that bad to live on.

It was that bad to live on.

It felt gross, for one, like an old slimy, matted stuffed animal. It was coming loose from the tacking strips, due to age or stretching or the rampaging wildebeasts I call Bailey and Beauregard.

They're a little hard on the flooring.

It also stank. Correction--it STANK. Like, who decomposed in here, stank. It stank so bad that every so often Bailey would try to dig through the carpet to get to whatever was underneath it.

I was totally not at all embarassed to have friends and family over to my slimy, matted, stanky house. NOT.

But I kept telling myself to deal with it, that it wasn't that bad, that ok it WAS that bad but we could wait for the wood floors. Until I spent 2 days the other weekend on my hands and knees cleaning up, well, I'm not going to say what, because it was gross and it's not like most of y'all haven't dealt with a sick dog before, and I got a whiff of something that I just couldn't ignore.

So I peeled back the carpet to take a look.

OMG.

Shall we take a closer peek?

OMG.

That is mold, y'all. THAT IS MOLD IN MY HOUSE.

It only got worse.

Don't do it, Dexter! You have too much to live for!

Cue instant freakout. I sprayed that crap with bleach and immediately texted K, and told her that I didn't care how she did it, but she had better acquire some mold-proof mask for me STAT because that carpet was coming up. I don't care how long it takes us to do the kitchen and get around to intstalling the floors; I will live on the subfloor like a hobo.

Very conveniently for her, K had plans to go to the beach that weekend, so my poor dad was the lucky winner of an all-day excursion to HolyCrapThisIsDisgustingLand.

I didn't take pictures. It was too gross. I didn't want to contaminate my camera.

But I couldn't resist snapping this one, before we drove away from Mt. Trashmore.

I take no pride in telling you that as bad as that heap smelled when we arrived, it smelled approximately 834023 times worse when we left.

shake it like a polaroid picture

2010-07-26T09:14:00.001-04:00

True story:

When I was in college I had this rug I used in all my dorm rooms. It was my grandparents' originally, and when they redecorated it was passed down to my parents (who didn't need it, so it went to a friend of theirs to use in military housing, and when they moved it came back to me). It had been a nice rug once, one of those hand knotted wool ones, thick and plush and HUGE. It had to have been like a 9x12 or something. Perfect for covering up that dirty dorm-room laminate crap.

But.

This thing was filthy. Like, dumpster filthy. No matter how many times I vacuumed that sucker there was always STUFF in it, and after a few semesters of high pile rug+old dorm vacuum the situation only got worse. I mean, it wasn't really an issue day to day--huge wool tumbleweeds would grow on it, but those were like little dorm-allowed pets, sort of, and if somebody tracked in a bunch of grass on their shoes you'd never know it.

Until it came time to move out. Of course a rug this huge would be heavy, and being full of approximately 50,000,000 tons of accumulated dirt and hair and pizza crusts it got heavier, and considering my lottery numbers always sucked and, hence, I was always living on the top floor of our elevator-less buildings, there wasn't a pretty way to move that sucker.

On the other hand, sledding down three flights of stairs on a rolled up carpet is kind of fun.

ANYWAY, one summer I stored all my stuff at a local U-haul instead of hauling it home (to store in my parents' garage) and then hauling it back, which I somehow managed to do despite the fact I didn't have a car on campus. Probably Dad came down with the truck to help with that.

Because he's awesome, of course.

He didn't see the rug then, however, because two of my friends were staying on campus over the summer, and I was letting them use it until I came back to school.

So that fall (and by fall I mean August, and did I mention I went to college in VA? And that none of the dorms were air conditioned?) Mom, Dad, K, D, and I all troop back down to good ol' Virginny to move me in, and the first thing we have to deal with is the rug. My friends had taken good care of it; the fact that it had only gained 10 lbs or so was, to me, a sign that they had spent half their summer vacuuming it.

To Mom and Dad it was a sign that all college girls were disgusting pigs who couldn't take care of their things.

This is when Mom had a brilliant idea. Before hauling the rug up the steps, let's stop on this open field right next door and shake it out.

I suggested that maybe we shouldn't, seeing as how the rug was A) huge and B) heavy, and C) made friends with a vacuum at least weekly, and so D) was probably just some sort of vortex that stored all the filth in the known universe. You don't want to mess with things like that.

Well, I don't want to mess with things like that. Mom and Dad, on the other hand, did.

That's how we ended up outside my dorm, in plain view of approximately 500 unpacking students, each holding a corner of the stupid fricking rug. Mom stood to the side, simultaneously laughing hard enough she was crying and trying to act like she didn't know us.

Oh the count of 3, Dad said, start shaking. One...two...three! And then he gave it an almighty shake that wrenched it out of mine and K's hands and sent a dustbunny flying into D's eyes.

Maybe that's a sign, I said.

Just hold on to the corner and shake, Dad said. We regrouped, tightened our grip, and tried again. One...two...three!

This image from NOAA is a close approximation to what my fellow students were witness to.

When we were done (as in we couldn't move our arms anymore) we looked like we'd been dipped in ash; dust and dirt and carpet fibers EVERYWHERE. The rug? Still as heavy and gross looking as when we started.

The next day I was unpacking in my dorm room when some of the other girls on the hall stopped by to say hi to my roomate, who was the RA. "Were you here yesterday?" they asked us. "There was some girl out on the field trying to shake out a rug--it was so trashy."

"I saw that!" I said. "I was so embarassed for her."

where the flowers they bloom

2010-07-21T09:00:00.002-04:00

I realized the other day that I never took photos of my garden!

It's not much to speak of, but since Passive Aggressive Neighbor* can't stop talking about it I figured y'all would be interested, too.

Tomatos!

And a cucumber!

An as-yet non-producing bell pepper:

The pot may not have been acquired by legal means. Hypothetically.

Whatever, Mom, you weren't using it anyway!

There's basil, lavender, sage/rosemary/thyme (in the back), and catnip.

Do you like my gerber daisy?

I cannot keep those things alive for the life of me.

But that's okay, because I have these:

I don't know what they are, but I love them.

So far my only regrets are planting a patio tomato, which is basically tiny and not that prolific, and the whole catnip thing.

Which apparently was not doing anything for anybody else, either, as during a crazy huge storm last week it was hit by lightning.

Guess who gets to repaint their deck in the fall? We do!

Seriously. Huge clap of thunder, searing bolt of light, loud crack, and nothing else was even knocked over. RIP, catnip.

I'm liking having a patio garden (no weeding!) but at the same time I'm itching to have the space an in-ground garden would provide. Maybe that's something to consider for next year? After we nuke the yard, of course.

*I know y'all are a bunch of gossip hounds like me. Of course you want to know what she said!

PAN: I'm so happy you finally planted something!
K: Oh, this was all my sister's doing.
PAN: I see. They're all going to die if she doesn't water them.

and someday i know it'll all turn out

2010-07-20T11:33:00.000-04:00

Y'all, I am about to pull my hair out.

See, after Dad approved our Ikea cabinet plan I thought the rest would be a cake walk. Sure, we still have to ~~fight~~ discuss our countertop options (and whoa nelly do K and I have different tastes, apparently) and then there's the whole WORK part of it, but it could be fun, right? And we'd have a pretty kitchen?

Yeah. Right. Because we have to PLAN it first.

Not like it needs an explanation, but I'm a words type of girl. Writing, reading, sign me up. Anything involving math and measuring and equations more complicated than "I have three sodas left, how long must I stretch them out to get through the rest of the day?" or "If I write one more page and then get to bed by [x] how much sleep will I get tonight?" brings headaches and drama and then total brain death.

Seriously--in high school I cried over my calculus homework every night. I had to go to that Sylvan learning center place where some instructor who took smoke breaks every five minutes damn near gave me second hand lung cancer and kept telling me "You lazy! You no work!".

I finished their program faster than anyone ever had before.

And then I went to college and took basic calculus again to get my math credit and STILL barely got a C.

My first one. Which I cried over.

It was kind of traumatic.

ANYWAY.

Before we can order our cabinets obviously we have to figure out which ones we need, and to do that we need to plan out the space. We're not changing the layout, and we're not moving plumbing or electrical or anything, but odds are good that what Ikea sells doesn't match up with what we currently have. First I tried using the kitchen planner you can dowload from Ikea, but it was crap.

Really, really annoying crap.

So I decided to make little scale pieces of paper I could move around and mess with. This way I could even do different views, to get an idea of what the kitchen would look like when we were done. Genius, right?

Only there was no graph paper in the house. And apparently no rulers, either. I could have gone to the store, or to Mom and Dad's house to get some, but I was lazy, people, and why go to all that effort when I had normal paper and a tape measure right next to me?

This is the part where a sane person would have thought well, maybe to avoid spending an entire damn day using a tape measure and unlined paper and no straight-edge to make a scale drawing of your kitchen?

Obviously I didn't have that thought.

And that is why I spent an entire damn day using a tape measure and unlined paper and no straight-edge to make a scale drawing of our kitchen.

Voila.

Now to plan.

We've already decided not to put in a corner cabinet on the peninsula side of the kitchen. Instead we're taking a normal cupboard and turning it backwards, so we'll have access from the back of that row of cabinets and can hide all our assorted animal related junk without having to fold ourselves in half to get around the dishwasher. Then we're putting in a cabinet of all drawers right next to the dishwasher, since we have no drawer space and I'm sick of all our tinfoil and saran wrap falling on my feet every time I open the pantry. Finishing up that section is a 2 door cabinet with a drawer on top, for pots and pans and assorted utensils.

The problem is the other side of the kitchen.

Right now we have one of those blind corner cabinets, where you have to climb inside to get to anything hidden in back. Perfect opportunity to change it out for something with a lazy susan, right?

Wrong.

The only accessible corner cabinet Ikea has is 37 inches, which means we'd have to shift our sink cabinet to the left, which means it wouldn't be centered on the window.

It looks worse face on.

Oh, and I negotiated with K for glass fronted cabinets above the peninsula. I get those, she gets a custom glass shower door when we redo the master bathroom.

I know. I got gypped.

Anyway the off-centered sink might drive us crazy. More importantly, would it drive future potential buyers crazy?

Which leaves us with putting in another blind cabinet. Once again Ikea doesn't have what we have, though, and the only length they have is 49 inches or something insane, so we'd have to shift the stove to the right (doable) and replace the 30 inch cabinet between the stove and fridge with a 24 incher. (Which means we'd have to move the trash/recycling bins currently in that cabinet, etc).

We'd shift the upper cabinets to match the lower ones. Don't worry.

Problem solved, right?

No. Now we have almost a foot of empty space on the wall with the window, which we'd have to cover with filler pieces.

Curse you, Ikea.

I give up.

When K got home from work I demonstrated our options, moving around my little kitchen pieces and showing off how I'd managed to make do ~~despite my laziness~~ with our inadequate supplies.

It was at this point that she picked up the kitchen planning guide I'd brought home with me and said "They have puzzle piece cut-outs you can use to determine your new plan. Did you know that?"

No. No, I did not know that.

And then my head exploded.

tried to be someone else

2010-07-16T09:00:00.002-04:00

I told you how I have a cat that thinks he's a dog.

What I didn't tell you is that I also have a dog who thinks he's a cat.

That dog, to be precise.

And that's fine--I'd prefer if he didn't sleep along the back of my sofas, but whatever. I hate them anyway. The part where he eats the cat food is slightly more annoying, but I can work around that.

What I can't work around is this:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my brother.

And Beau. Standing on the counter.

See, D and I were talking one night, and not paying attention to the dogs. Beau did not like this. So Beau jumped onto the counter--effortlessly--like he'd done it hundreds of times before.

And then he took a nap.

Suddenly I knew how things I'd left on the counters were somehow making their way into the dining room, or upstairs. This also explained why the counters were always so gross when I came home.

Notice someone else up there? Yeah. Meet Beau's inspiration. So imagine how thrilled I was to see this when I came in from watering my garden the other day:

$5 says I find Beau up there within a month.

i couldn't feel so i tried to touch

2010-07-14T08:55:00.001-04:00

One year ago this week we were counting down the days to closing on our house and were busy packing up our rental, while still trying to keep it clean so our landlord could show it to new tenants. This was exactly as annoying as it sounded.

We were also still recovering from the bunny incident, and couldn't wait to be in our own place, with our own securely fenced yard (haha. hahahahahahaha.) where there was no way Beau could do what he did best.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

sorry.

One night we let the dogs out, did some packing, and then went to the back door to let them back in. They did not come back in. They were both by the back corner of the yard, sniffing at something on the other side of the post we'd planted to try to keep them in the yard.

Oh God, I thought, he did it again. K and I ran out into the yard, hoping to save whatever bunny or bird or whatever was hiding back there before Beau remembered that he could leap over the post and squeeze through the gap in the fence.

But there was not a bunny or bird or whatever hiding back there. There was only this.

He was much dirtier, of course, and itty bitty, and LOUD. and Lord did that kitten stink. We gave him a bath, found a collar with a bell (so if Beau ate him we'd be able to identify the remains) and canvassed the neighborhood. No way a little guy like this was a random stray, not as friendly as he was, and not with the little shaved spot where his man-bits used to be.

But nobody claimed him.

Y'all know how this story ends.

So in honor of Supervisor Cat's first year, I wanted to show you what he's up to when he's not busy "helping" with house projects.

He has this thing with bags:

and boxes:

and being places he shouldn't:

I'd forgotton how wretched that fireplace used to be.

Bailey does not approve.

He also thinks he's a dog.

It's so cute.

And sad.

But mainly cute.

Happy anniversary, Dextrose! You may be a confused little pain in the butt, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

an island off the coast of nowhere

2010-07-13T09:00:00.018-04:00

Dad's Adventures in Ikealand

There are three things you need to know about my Dad before we get started. First, he's a perfectionist. You know that whole, "If you're going to do something, do it right" thing? Yeah, he invented that. Except his version goes more like "Don't do a half-assed job", but close enough.

Second, he's big on DIY. Wood floors? Do it yourself. Plumbing? Do it yourself. In-ground sprinkler system? Do it yourself. Electrical? Do it your--well, just don't die. (Don't even get me started on the whole flat tire, do it yourself thing).

I KID. He rescues me and my busted-ass car all the time. (Though the "Why don't you have a boyfriend to do this crap for you?" interrogation package comes standard with that service.)

Third, Dad builds furniture. GOOD furniture.

Furniture like this bookcase in their dining room:

And this desk he and K made for her in college:

Beau is trying to help his mother by distracting us from the mess. Good try, Bobo. (For the record, desk is made of Tigerwood and Purpleheart. Gorgeous!)

and this, one of a pair of tables he designed (!) and built for K and I a couple Christmases ago:

I'd show you the inside except it's full of junk. WHAT A SURPRISE.

K's has a ghost on it.

I'm a little jealous.

He also built this craft table for my mom:

And I've mentioned this little afterthought of a project before:

When we started talking about redoing our kitchen, and our teeny tiny budget, he immediately knew how to get the best bang for our buck. "Just build your own cabinets!" he kept telling us. "They're boxes with doors!" And, you know, he's absolutely right. It wouldn't be that hard, we could have exactly what we wanted, and it would save us a ton of money.

But you know that little problem I have, the one where I start projects and don't finish them forever and ever and ever? Guess who I inherited that from.

Needless to say K vetoed that plan real quick.

So what options did we have? Lowes or Home Depot, obviously, but for what we want (white, uppers that go to the ceiling) we'd have to fork over a hell of a lot more than we wanted. Costco has a cabinet program, but all the reviews I found online had rave reviews about how customers saved "$3,000 off the price of custom cabinets!" Um, no thanks.

Which leaves Ikea.

Everything I found about Ikea cabinets online seemed positive, but no way I'm spending even the "measly" sum of a couple thousand dollars on something major like that without getting the thumbs up from our general contractor.

Enter roadblock number 1. Dad had no interest in going to Ikea. None. He knew all about the Ikea shelf I tried to put above the TV (the shelf he had to replace with an actual shelf from Pottery Barn a month later), the crappy Ikea lamp K bought that broke approximately 5 seconds later. He was not interested in "that Swedish crap".

Not like I blame him, since I have a very vocal tolerate/hate relationship with the swedish store. But it's cheap! And some of their stuff isn't total junk! At least come look and tell me they're crap so I can move on!

No dice.

Until last month. See, Dad's deputee at work is DIYing his house, and a few weeks ago he confessed to Dad that he'd just remodeled his kitchen, and had used Ikea cabinets. I swear to God Dad came home that night, called me, and said "Have you and K considered Ikea for your kitchen?"

That sound you hear is my head hitting the keyboard.

So last Saturday Dad and I had a fieldtrip. To start things on a positive note I picked him up, and once we got to the store I offered to buy him breakfast. "Sure!" he said, and then, "They have crepes!" While we ate he watched the hipster couples (there were ate least 40 of them) who had taken their kids out for breakfast and a play date. "It's like daycare for grownups," he said, and then declared that our $5 breakfast was better than Denny's.

Better watch out, Mom. I think I see a change in your weekend breakfast date coming.

Fortified with food, we started shopping. "Where is the kitchen section?" Dad asked. Good question. Turns out our Ikea was doing some remodeling, too, and the cabinets K and I are interested in were hidden further down the gray cement road than they usually are, which gave us plenty of time to play count the futons and dodge the hippy children.

But finally we found it. Our potential kitchen. Dad went to work, opening cabinets, sliding drawers, inspecting hinges and joints and finishes. He didn't say anything at first, didn't smile or frown or shake his head. "This is particle board," he said finally.

"Yeah," I said. "All the white cabinets are, since they have that foil stuff on them."

"That's better for white anyway." He opened another cabinet and studied the spec sheet, then tapped the side and floor of the cabinet box. I knew what he was thinking--more particle board. This wasn't looking good. Then he crossed the kitchen to check out the glass fronted doors; fiddled with the shelves and checked the weight of the plates stacked on top of them.

"We'll probably cut some wood to use as shelves in those instead," I said. "Since we'll be stacking plates on them."

He shrugged. "This is tempered glass; it's strong enough."

"Oh."

He closed the cabinet, ran a finger over the finish, and then nodded. "Not bad."

Not bad! That's practically a ringing endorsement, when it comes to cheaply made crap!

It gets better. When we came across another kitchen he stopped to check it out, and actually started gushing about the construction--the drawers weren't just stapled together, the finishes were nice, he liked the handles, and even if they turn back into pumpkins when the clock strikes midnight 5 years from now (Cinderella metaphor mine) for the price we could replace every last one of them and still come out ahead.

Which, hello, brilliant point.

But we weren't done yet, dear readers. Oh no. We had to find our way out.

I'm sure y'all are familiar with how Ikea works. There is only one way out, and that is by passing by every single piece of merchandise in that small universe of a store. When Dad saw a sign that said "EXIT" he was thinking, ok, there's the out.

It was not the out.

It was just the beginning of the marketplace. Here is a small sampling of some of my favorite Dad-isms as we tried to leave the store:

"You could Ikea your life away"

"Where is the exit?"

"Seriously. How do you get out of here?"

"Loooost iiiiinnnn Ikeaaaaaa."

"Look at all this. In 2 years this is all going to be in a landfill."

"Watch out--they know we didn't buy anything. We may have to make a run for it."

Once we made it outside I asked him what he thought. He thought about it for a minute, then said "I don't feel that unclean, surprisingly."

Which isn't exactly a glowing recommendation, sure. But I know the truth--I saw the look in his eyes as he ate his crepes and drank his coffee from his Ikea mug ("Made in China? What kind of Swedish store is this?"). He's crossed over to the dark side.

But more importantly, we are cleared for cheap-cabinet launch!

something to do, who we were before

2010-07-12T09:00:00.001-04:00

Lord, has it really been almost a month? Time sure flies when you're doing, well, nothing!

I suck. etc, etc.

And I haven't really been doing nothing, of course. I'm training people (yes, more than one) at work, and over the 4th took a mini-roadtrip to Knoxville (as part of the Miltner furniture exchange program). It went a little something like this:

Me: Man, it's hot out! I'm sure glad the truck has air conditioning!
Truck: hahaha. Not so much.

So that was, um. Sweaty.

Oh! Even more awesome was when I was taking a walk with my aunt and cousin after dinner one night, and we passed a house for sale. I pulled a flier, of course, because I'm nosy, and unlike most of the fliers up here this one had the price listed on it.

This house, this all brick, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house on a nice lot backing to a huge privately owned green space, in an immaculately groomed neighborhood in my dream city, was selling for 60k less than we paid for our house.

Talk about depressing.

Even more depressing, of course, is the state of our house. Needless to say we haven't done a thing to it since the fireplace was (mostly) finished. I'm not even going to try to figure out how long ago that was. A LONG TIME.

Seems like a good time to pick a project, right? Let's check our priority list.

1) replace fence
2) wood floors
3) my bathroom
4) K's bathroom
5) kitchen
6) everything else

We could do the fence, and we need to do the fence, but have y'all seen the weather around here lately? 105 degrees all last week, and this week it's a "cool" 95. We're kind of not feeling the whole heat stroke, skin cancer thing. So that can wait till this fall.

Floors, then. Except Lowes continues to not put things on sale (I mean, seriously. This is a recession! Put things on sale and people will buy them. Common sense.) and we're not paying full price for floors that we just sorta like, and don't love. Then Dad suggested that we buy unfinished floors, so we can stain them whatever color we want. That way we get something we actually like, we save some money, and if the destructomatics damage them too much we can refinish them when we sell the place.

But what about the kitchen, K asked. How will we put in new floors and then not change the footprint when we redo the kitchen?

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

New list. Kitchen, floors, fence. Then my bathroom (good thing I gave it that mini update), K's bathroom, and probably by that point something else will have exploded and we'll have to readjust our list again.

Home ownership is FUN.

Oh! The best part of this new plan? The budget.

See, when we originally talked about all the repairs we have to make to this charming abode of ours, K and I decided that we wouldn't spend more than 10k on the kitchen. It'd be tough, sure, but we could do stuff ourselves, and it's not like we were going to move plumbing or electrical around. In the year since we had that discussion we've seen the error of our ways.

The new budget?

Five thousand dollars.

For new cabinets, new counters (not formica), a backsplash, new dishwasher, and fixtures.

It's gonna be CLASSY.

gonna teach you tricks that'll blow your mind

2010-06-17T14:05:00.000-04:00

During lunch today I was going through some of my old training books to find some examples to show my mentee and came across this:

Guess what I was working on when I should have been paying attention in class?

batty batty bat batty bat

2010-06-16T08:59:00.000-04:00

Drive-by post to ask a question that won't be relevant for months.

How crazy would it be to put this:

in my bathroom when I remodel? I mean, I already have one of these

Her name is Ferdinand.

on my front porch, and as an author of creepy things surely the occasional bat is allowed, right?

If it makes you feel any better it would go on the back of the main door, so it would only be visible if you were actually using the facilities. So what do you think--quirky and cute or just plain creepy?

mirror my malady, transfer my tragedy

2010-06-14T09:00:00.007-04:00

I've shown you some of the grossest, dirtiest, and weirdest things in our house.

But I've saved the best for last.

We have a bathroom in our basement. It's in bad shape, like everything else in our house. But it doesn't stop there, folks, oh no.

Let's take a tour.

This is the view into the room of disasterness. Not too bad, right?

Except I didn't just forget to open the door all the way. That's as far as that puppy opens, thanks to that most inconveniently placed shelf.

It means we can't open the right-hand laundry closet door all the way, either.

So that's annoying.

Speaking of laundry closets:

SCARY. The washer came with the house, and is god only knows old, and the dryer is a hand-me-down from the parentals (ours, like everything else in our charming abode, didn't work). Eventually we'll be replacing both of them, but try as I might I can't see any way to un-ugly the rest of that space.

Short of a nuclear device, anyway. Moving on!

That, ladies and gents, is our storage area. Not supposed to be there, obviously, but since that moocher I call a brother is living in our actual storage space, this is it. And it's not like this is a functioning bathroom anyway. For the record that's bins of Christmas decorations and painting supplies, along with approximately 15 cans of paint. Not to mention the world's ugliest vanity and light fixture.

And a sombrero? Don't ask me.

Leaky shower unit and toilet, and ducting for the intake vent we still need to add down here. Gross.

But that's not why we're here, is it? I know I've talked about how this charming little washroom is papered in comic books. Perhaps you thought I exaggerated.

I did not. From what I've been able to figure out it's two layers, facing each other (pages pulled straight from the book, maybe?) The piece I tore off right there had paint on the outside and this red strappy bikini-ish wearing woman facing that shocked looking dude, which I kept for posterity, but of course now I can't find it.

That's...an unfortunate shape right there. Sorry.

In some spots the ink bled through the coat of semi-gloss somebody slapped on top of the comics. The bit about Ben Grimm below is the first thing we saw when we got some light into this bathroom. We thought it was prison grafitti, or a confession of the crime that had obviously been committed on the carpets upstairs.

Turns out it's from "a fairly pedestrian post-Secret Wars issue where Thing quits the Fantastic Four by shouting "I KILLED BEN GRIMM!" (source)

Nice to know, I guess.

As if papering the place in comic books wasn't bad enough, they didn't even do it well. There are seams and bumps and ripples all over the place. You'd think this would make it easier to peel off, but no. I've broken countless nails trying to remove that crap, and the wallpaper remover I bought can't penetrate the paint.

Which is why this space, at the bottom of our very long to-do list, is already the bane of our existence. Right now the plan is this:

-remove stupid annoying ugly shelf
-new vanity/toilet/medicine cabinet/light fixtures
-paint all doors
-paint ceiling
-new trim
-remove leaky corner shower, install bathtub and tile walls (up to the ceiling, probably)
-replace drywall?

I think we might be in agreement about beadboard or some sort of paneling on part of the walls, but I'm afraid that we still might have to rip out every last speck of the existing drywall; Like I said, the toilet leaks, and while we've shut off the water the...spill...leached up the drywall before we caught it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the vent blows directly into the utility space behind the wall the toilet is on, so there's a lovely little mold farm growing back there. With our luck I'm sure the same crap is blossoming behind every other wall.

I would LOVE to have an attractive, functional laundry area--with doors I can fully open, and a shelf for holding detergent, and some way to hide all that plumbing nonsense. Maybe a fold out ironing board, so I can get our current one out of my office? Something like this:

Oh Sarah Richardson, how I love you.

Yeah, yeah, I'm aiming for the stars here. But a girl can dream!

can you find it in your heart

2010-06-04T09:00:00.002-04:00

Remember this?

Probably not, since that's a super old post. Just pretend. (and read this for a fun follow up!)

Because of that, when I came home and saw this:

and this:

I knew to expect this:

Look at Beau trying to deny it.

I am on to you, bucko! You and your mom owe me another collar!

Sorry, B. Your brother is a brute.

this land is my land

2010-06-03T09:00:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned that our neighbor likes to mow a strip of our yard along our fence, and while it's a totally stupid thing to freak about I've been freaking about it.

That brown strip is what he mows.

Kind of a lot.

So when he did it again a few weeks ago, and was still outside, I asked him about it.

M: blah blah small talk about our decrepit fence. So we've noticed you mow a strip of our yard along our fence; is there something weird about the property line?

Him: Yes, there is. Let me show you. see that little blue marker?

M: Yes.

That blue dot is the marker.

Him: That's the property marker. So it goes from the corner of the fence to there.

Basically, like this:

And because I'm chronically unable to make myself stop being nice to people, even when they're being total idiots, I didn't think to, I don't know, poke the marker with my foot, or to ask "So why is half of my driveway your property, then?" Or to say something like "I've looked at the county records and the plats for our neighborhood and our yard is bigger than yours, so this doesn't make sense" or "So why aren't you mowing the rest of 'your' yard?" or "So why did you let them put up a fence that wasn't along the property line?" or "Why did YOU put up a fence that wasn't along the property line?" (the piece of fence he mows along is his; he's got that segment and another on the other side of his house, so he can use my fence, the fence behind him, and the fence on his other side, to mooch off of because he has a pool. Cheatery cheapskate. WHO THINKS HE OWNS HALF OF MY YARD.)

I don't think so.

The next day, after stewing about it all night, and consulting the not-to-be-used-for-fences-or-settling-property-disputes land drawing that came with the house, I went outside to look at this marker.

I poked it.

IT WAS THE CAP TO A MILK JUG.

I don't know if the neighbor knew that, and was trying to pull something, or if he was just really, really confused, but now we get to spend $700 to have an actual, can be held up in court, survey done, so we can shove it in his face and say, yeah, quit mowing our grass.

Living in a neighborhood is FUN.

i can't control my brain

2010-06-02T09:00:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty sure y'all have noticed that my blogging productivity has dropped down to about zero. Bad me. It's not like I don't have stuff to talk about, or that I don't want to share it with you (because of course I do!) but between getting ready to train my very own mentee at work (pray for her. Really.) and working on the book, time to blog has been kind of nonexistant.

I've heard other authors talk about blogging hurting their productivity, but over the past year I didn't think I was having that problem. Now, though...I may have to rethink that. I didn't intend to make a test of it but the past few weeks of non-blogging have led to a pretty significant increase in book-writing, and in general book related thinking, and made me see how much time I was spending worrying about the blog.

See, my goal everyday is to write at least one page--that's 250 words. This post, by far one of the shorter ones I've written, has 429. That's almot twice what I should be producing for the book each day, in a SHORT entry. And obviously not all writing is the same (and thank God for that, because if you factor in how many words I text during the course of the day...let's just say there's a reason I'm paying for the unlimited messaging option on my phone) but they all take time, and I've only got so much of that.

So...I don't know what I'm trying to say. I like blogging. I have no intention of quitting blogging. But I have a book I need to finish, like, yesterday, so I'm not sure how I'm going to balance that. Probably like I did with all these posts you're seeing this week, all of which were written while I was on vacation last week (aka right now! Where is that pool boy?).

But that's what weekends are for, right? And we're buying our wood floors soon, hopefully, and taking care of our fence, and reno-ing the half bath and, later this summer/fall, my bathroom, and getting fans in the bedrooms (thank god!) all of which I'm dying to blab about, so I'd better carve out some time.

Until then, this is what I've been spending my evenings doing.

There's the desk in my office, lit by the one totally inadequate lamp I have in there, with my dead laptop, my live laptop (for music), and my trusty pen and notebook.

And you know who, being as helpful as ever.

Everyone's a critic.

didn't have a camera by my side this time

2010-05-31T09:00:00.009-04:00

I realized after that last post that I've never put up pictures of my room before. Time for a before and during!

Here is my room when we bought the house.

Dirty blue walls, murder-stained carpet, and all around general grossness. And the now:

I need to repaint, I know that much. I like the color, but I picked it to go with some custom-made, dry-clean only duvet cover I wanted, and obviously didn't get.

Let's stop and look at that.

Custom made (ie, $1500), dry-clean only. 1) Why the hell would I even consider spending that much on a DUVET COVER? For reference, $1500 is what I'm planning on spending to completely gut and rebuild my bathroom. 2) Dry-clean only? Really? In a house with more animals than I can count? What the hell was I thinking?

Also, D, D's friend, and I painted that room in about half an hour (as part of our frantic PAINT EVERYTHING campaign before we moved in) and not 2 seconds after we put away the rollers a certain animal

ran upstairs and rubbed himself all along the wall my bed sits on.

This is after earlier that day, when he left me a present. Let me re-enact it for you.

D: (taking his first view of the house, ever) The carpets are disgusting! (walks upstairs) And there's poop on the floor!
M: Quit being dramatic.
D: No seriously. There's poop in your room.
M: WHAT.

Way too long story short, the quality isn't quite there and the color doesn't quite work. Problem is I don't know what I'd repaint with. Beige? I really don't want to do beige.

Then there's this.

Time for a game of Spot Supervisor Cat!

Yeah. That has to go.

And I have no idea what to do with this random corner.

The chair is an admirable laundry holder, but I'm pretty sure that's not so design friendly.

The wall opposite the bed is weird as well, but I'm a genius and forgot to take a picture so you'll have to take my word for it.

Still to do:
-paint
-get electrician to wire for ceiling fixture
-install ceiling fixture
-build second bedside table
-get closet organization system
-do something with weird corner by door
-repaint door
-change out door hardware
-new artwork for above bed
-finish changing out outlets
-crown molding!

Does anybody else find themselves focusing on everything but their own space, or is it just me? My bedroom is definitely neglected!

i'm sleeping in your bed

2010-05-28T12:23:00.000-04:00

Several weeks ago K was working all weekend and I was ~~desperately trying to avoid working on the book~~ trying to cross some minor projects off my interminably long to-do list, and I decided to tackle a DIY art project. Namely, a frame for the Tree of Cheapness (which you saw above the fireplace) and some artwork to hang above my bed.

Ingredients:

Cheap strips of wood from Lowes and the dullest saw in the world (since I was an idiot and didn't think of doing this while Dad and the chop saw were at my house...)

Even cheaper placemats from Bed Bath and Beyond

And, of course, Supervisor Ca--

Wait.

There we go.

After about an hour of sawing (I cannot overexaggerate how dull that saw is) I had the sticks cut to size, and then another half hour for some paint and staples, I had this:

Which became this:

Which looked, um...Well, it looked like crap. I can admit it. But let it never be said that I was deterred by less than stellar results.

Here they are in action.

Cue the Debbie Downer music. (and yes, I know, my bed is very, very green. And takes up approximately 95% of my room.)

It's fairly obvious that I'm a big fan of DIY. And, lots of times, DIY looks pretty amazing. But there are times, friends, when cheap DIY artwork made from sticks and placemats just looks like cheap DIY artwork made from sticks and placemats. This is one of those times.

I'm not that broken hearted. This was a trial run anyway, to see if I even wanted something hanging above my bed (yes), and if something roughly the size of those placemats would look right (no). Also, I was too scared to try messing with the artwork I'm really considering for above my bed.

This.

That is a piece of washi paper I brought back from Japan seven--seven? God I'm getting old.--years ago. The problem is that it's not big enough, especially when you consider that it's the same pattern repeated 3 times, which would make for 3 very, very skinny pieces of art.

And I'm scared to do something as irreperable as cutting it. Which is dumb, yes, because it's not like I can't order more online.

Now I'm not sure what I want to do. I need something big, to balance out the hugeness of the bed. I was debating botannicals, but everyone and their brother is doing that, and there's quite enough green in my room as it is, thank you very much. I could frame (in real frames) some wallpaper or wrapping paper, maybe. Or...? Any fun suggestions? I'm idea'd out.

p.s. I have to gush about this pillow, because I love it so much.

Yay TJ Maxx!

the taste of love is sweet

2010-05-06T08:00:00.009-04:00

I swear I am not trying to make a habit of the late-in-the-week posting nonsense, but Monday I was lazy, Tuesday I was still lazy, and then yesterday I realized that a certain location (work) where a certain someone (me) sometimes (always) blogs (on my breaks!) BLOCKED BLOGGER.

Seriously, Uncle Sam, WTF?

So now I have to be like a normal person and come home and write things up. The agony.

Aaaaanyway.

While K (and D) and I have tackled a fair number of projects in the house in the year we've lived here, most of them have been pretty minor. Paint, LOTS of cleaning, some yard maintenance, and replacing the upstairs carpets, though honestly the only work we did for that particular chore was signing an obscenely large check. So before we started the floors and before we got into the bathroom remodels we sort of have planned for this year we wanted to cross one big item off our list--something we wanted to get done before the holidays last year, but never got around to.

That, to be exact. The fireplace of extreme hideousness.

I mean, seriously. It was bland. It was boring. It was contemporary in a Colonial house. Wrong on so many levels.

First we took pry bars to it.

Then we found some shiny shiny tile (which I can never photograph accurately...in real life it looks like one of those oil-filled puddles you see in parking lots, all rainbows and pollution. SO ATTRACTIVE.)

and installed it.

Then there was a gap of about two months, and we finally got around to grouting but I never took a picture. Oops! And then there was another gap, until a few weeks ago when Dad and I made this.

And then I spent a week of afternoons in Dad's woodshop, painting, and painting, and painting.

There may have been some vandalism.

Have I drawn this out long enough? I think so.

BAM.

Finished fireplace, baby!

Well, mostly finished, anyway (like everything else in our house...) I still have to caulk around the seams, and there'll be some work to do with trim molding when we do the wood floors, and obviously I have to work on my mantle decorating abilities.

And, um, I need to put away the fifty metric tons of CRAP sitting on the coffee table.

And get a new rug. And reupholster all the furniture. And get new lamps. And pick a new paint color.

Lord I'm exhausted.

Speaking of exhausted! Dentil molding?

A PAIN AND A HALF. I had to use an itty bitty craft brush to paint all those teeth, folks, and god help the first person who dings those suckers because I am not doing it again!

Let's try to do a side-by-side.

Living room when we first moved in:

Living room now:

I was going to gush about how much nicer the "after" picture is but after looking at the "before", where it was ugly but CLEAN, I really can't. Sigh.

So that's our baby. It's shiny and fancy and HUGE and we love it. (I can't stop walking by to pet it. It's my precioussssss.)

I never thought I'd be saying this, but bring on another snowpocalypse--I want to sit by the fire!