Ten Thoughts Tuesday

So many random things in my head – let’s clear them out with a random post.

1. I get to participate in my first podcast this afternoon, sitting around and chatting with two of my favorite co-workers. Can’t wait.

2. Actually, I just remembered I did a video cast for Huffpost a couple of years ago. That was pretty awesome, too. One of the other people on the cast turned out to be a blogger I love.

3. Bathroom project is still moving along, though the shower stall continues to cause problems at every stage. Lesson learned over the weekend: Don’t loan out tools when you have an impending project because you’ll have to track them down and get them returned to keep said project from going down the tubes. Second lesson currently being learned: Plumbing is hard.

4. I’ve successfully converted my life to Google calendars and so far it’s going swimmingly. Three more meetings scheduled for this week (it’s completely insane in my work world currently) and no double-booking. Yay!

5. Tickets tomorrow night to an outdoor theater production of “Camelot.” Campy and politically incorrect, but so much fun. And there’s a fair chance that we actually won’t be rained on for this event!

6. Bought tickets over the weekend for my mom, The Husband, and me to fly out to Baltimore to visit Oldest in October. $99 each way, no fees, non-stop – best price I’ve ever seen offered. Love having this visit to look forward to. And hoping against hope that I don’t come home wanting to strangle my to co-travelers.

7. Haven’t gotten to see “Love and Mercy” (the story of Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s life) yet, but am compensating by listening to the Greatest Hits album that I have loaded onto my phone.

8. Here’s a thing I should never do: Run out of coffee beans. This morning I didn’t get a cup of coffee until I left for work and could stop by a drive-through. That was way too late – by the time I got to work I was fighting a lack-of-caffeine headache.

9. There’s a note on my desk reminding me that sometime this week I need to buy 50 pounds of corn starch. For work. I do some really weird stuff in the line of duty.

10. Yesterday at my annual exam (the memory of which I am trying hard to banish to the dark recesses of my mind) my doc mentioned how really fantastic our three kids are. I think that every day of my life, and I love it when I hear it from others.

Happy Tuesday!

Raising the roof!

Well, not quite. But in six hours yesterday, The Boy and his buddy from middle school/high school managed to measure, cut, and place all the ceiling drywall for the bathroom reno project. Quite a feat, really, considering all the odd fiddly bits that this ceiling is broken up into. And the fact that some of the sections were a full inch off of square.

Not only is it thrilling to have a ceiling with no holes in it for the first time in ten years, it was great fun to have our young friend in the house for lunch, afternoon work, and supper. Laughter, noise, singing, and silliness all day long. Just like old times.

And today…moving on to walls!

Cozy, rainy morning

Steady rain. Not much on the to-do list today. Norah Jones playing in the background. Obviously, it’s a good morning for homemade sour cream scones and chai latte.

  
Later in the day – fingers crossed for a break in the rain – The Boy will pick up the drywall in a pick-up borrowed from his grandfather so the bathroom project can keep moving ahead. And at some point The Husband will come home, and this cozy, raining morning will turn into a cozy weekend. 

As I check in on Facebook today, I see multiple photos of multiple friends who are off vacationing in Cabo, St. Croix, Sanobel. For now I’m pretty content with the bathroom renovation, my family for company, and the comforts of home. At the very least, I don’t have to worry about taking a decent selfie while wearing a swimming suit. I don’t need that kind of pressure. 

Love what you have. Cuz it’s all you’ve got.

Haiku, Day 2

Our wifi is out.

I’m not good at writing on phones. 

Our provider sucks. 

***

All-day work “retreat;”

at least it’s with cool people – 

Ms. Butt-pain’s gone. 

***

“Retreat” is misnamed

when you’re working all day long

and lunch is pizza. 

***

Drywall is purchased. 

Next: Infinite measuring,

then the nails and mud. 

***

Thanks for tuning in;

haikus are more fun than just

writing normal posts. 

The latest handiwork

We’ve been a productive, creative bunch around here recently.
I’ve been knitting like crazy, creating summer-weight scarves with a turkish stitch. My favorite so far:

 

LOVE these colors.

A couple of weeks ago, Middle Sister bought some houndstooth fabric and created a beautiful and functional journal for her also-an-Engilsh-major boyfriend. She had quite a bit of fabric leftover, so yesterday she made this lovely decorative sofa pillow:
 

I used to do this sort of project all the time, but figuring out all the details of seam allowance, inside-out-ness, etc. makes me cry. So glad she did the hard work on this one instead of me.

The Boy put his creativity to work in a different direction, the bathroom reno project. He spent much of yesterday tracing down wiring and creating these schematics to bring all the electrics downstairs into the 21st century:

 

This kind of stuff makes me cry, too. I literally skpped school the day we had our exam over circuitry in my high school physics class. I was that bad at it.

It’s raining out so no photos of this one, but The Husband brought out his skills to effect a minor repair on my car’s exhaust AND take the stereo apart to fix the auxilliary jack so that I can listen to music from my phone while tooling around the suburbs. Joy!

And now, back to knitting – there’s another scarf to finish!  

Shining happy people.

We’re not necessarily holding hands, but we’re having a lovely time working and playing together with 4/5 of us home for now.

Middle made a delicious breakfast bread this morning with butternut squash, homemade applesauce, and walnuts – a nice start to a busy day.

After two weeks straight on the road – due to the catastrophic system failure and subsequent replacement of his truck – The Husband is home through Memorial Day. 

The Boy is back on duty at the farmer’s market bread tent. We visited him this morning before buying our weekly stock of produce, and delivered a nice warm shirt and a mug of coffee against the cloudy, chill morning. When he gets home his father will share some plumbing expertise for the bathroom project, which is coming along messily but steadily. 

   

Formerly the shower stall. We rejoiced to discover that there was NO mold or mildew lurking under the drywall.

 
This evening we’ll risk a thorough drenching (80% chance of rain) in order to support a niece/cousin in an outdoor Shakespeare production. 

Quite a nice start to a long weekend.

You know you’ve lived in a house a long time when…

You find a tool hiding inside a wall and you can’t remember which project led to its being dropped down there.

Yesterday The Boy started taking out sheet rock – both walls and ceiling – in the lower level bathroom project. He uncovered this paddle bit, and assumed that it was one lost when he and his father were running internet cable to the bedrooms upstairs right after he started high school, six years ago.

A text to his father started a disagreement. The Husband said it was from when he replaced the wall oven in our ground level kitchen (when our oldest, 24 years old now, was only three).

Nope, replied The Boy – couldn’t be that because it was in the wrong wall.

Kitchen demolition and re-do, eight years ago? No way – we didn’t do anything inside that wall for the kitchen project.

How about the upstairs bathroom reno project, ten years ago?

Bingo!

Demolition continues today. By the time I get home the walls should be down to studs, and the shower stall on its way to the dump. The three of us at home right now are doing a great job of co-existing cooperatively. The Boy creates chaos in the basement, Middle Sister cooks our meals, and I’ll head home early to mow our Serengeti-like lawn before the next wave of showers and storms hits our area.

It all serves to remind me how much I love our home. We’ve put our blood, sweat, and tears into it over the years – not to mention tons of time and whatever money we could scrape up. When I was a kid our family moved every two or three years due to job transfers and the separation, divorce, and re-marriage of my parents. No place ever really felt like home.

This house we’ve lived and loved in for 27 years, as worn and tatty as it might be, is home.

It starts.

The bathroom renovation project is underway!

I’d be ashamed to tell you how long it’s been since this lower level bathroom began looking like a scene from a disaster film (at least ten years).

First there was my precipitous decision to tear the UGLY wallpaper off, which had been applied right before we moved into the house 27 years ago. Tear it off and paint, I thought! But what was underneath the wall paper was like no wall surface I had ever seen. Imprints of even more ancient wall paper. Some kind of rough, scratchy layer. Another thick layer of paper below that. Hideous.

Then there was a slight detour with an upstairs bathroom repair. It took the husband three holes in the lower level bathroom ceiling to find just the right spot to do that repair.

There was the curious leak in the lower level shower stall, which led to ripping out part of the wall near the floor.

There was the falling off of a towel rack. Why bother to repair the new holes that were left in that wall?

There’s the peeling off, yellowed, cheap industrial grade floor board.

There’s the stained and filthy shower. We gave up trying to sandblast the crud off of it a year ago.

Yesterday The Boy dug into his summer project, and I posted this photo on Facebook:

A good friend posted that she liked the rustic Tuscan look on the walls and she thought we should leave it. Nice spin.

What I noticed was that we may want to replace this ancient vanity with something just a little higher when we get to the installation phase.

The other thing I noticed? This project is only going to get way uglier, way messier, and way smellier before it starts to get better.

Adventure!