the swap meet strikes again!

so today . . . i learned a few things.

1. i prefer mediterranean ocean views to hawaiian ocean views.

2. all palm trees are not the same. some palm trees look like they are coming to eat me.

3. rollie likes paintings of red poppies (yay!)

4. i am a terrible judge of space and size. (and age and weight, but those two aren't really relevant to today's blog.)

5. i need to drink more water.

every saturday morning rollie plays basketball at the church. he leaves early and usually gets home between 10:00 and 11:00. most saturdays this works great for me! i sleep in and just take it easy. but every once in a while, i get this urge to go do something fun. and today, my urge to go do something fun just happened to coincide with a non-basketball saturday for rollie and our need for some new artwork...

that, of course, meant just one thing. orange county swap meet, baby!

we have lived in our new house for seven months now, and there is nothing hanging on our walls. nothing. the furniture is all in place. the boxes are all emptied (well, except for the book boxes--i need to get a bookcase.) we are all settled in. except that there is nothing on the walls.

when we moved, i decided i didn't just want to hang everything back up. we've been looking at the same photos and artwork for the last 20 years, and i decided it was time for a change. so i put all those photos and decorative items into boxes and spent the last seven months looking at blank walls. and that has been ok, but it feels like spring is just around the corner, and that always makes me feel like prettying things up.

in the past, our walls have mostly been decorated with photos. i love photos! but it seems like once i frame a photo and hang it up, it's place is secured until the end of time. i've heard that there are people who actually change the photos on their walls occasionally, but i am not one of those people. once a photo is up, i can only add to the arrangement. i cannot take it down. the result of this sort of thinking is that my walls become "cluttered" with photographs.

i've worked really hard to get rid of stuff and keep our new house clean and clutter-free. it just feels calmer to me that way. cleaning now trumps cuteness. i watch all these shows on hgtv where they come in and redo rooms for people, and they always look beautiful! but now i look at all the stuff they "stage" and think, "who is going to dust all of that after the designers leave?!?" i am done with dusting stuff just because it is cute. i hate to dust! so my solution is not to clutter up every horizontal surface with things that require me to dust them.

this also goes for wall art. i love a good collage wall, but that means a lot of frames that have to be dusted and glass that needs to be cleaned. instead, i've decided bigger is better. bigger means less dusting! bigger means less confusing to the eye. bigger means i feel calmer.

but there is a limit...

our goal today was a nice big picture to hang in our bedroom. for the last ten years, our bed has had a window behind it, but now there is this big, blank wall. we have a vaulted ceiling in that room, and it is a large room, so i thought a nice large painting would be perfect. i've tried to give that room a calm and peaceful feeling, so we have light yellow walls, driftwood colored furniture and white trim. this decor screamed out for a beachy picture. i was thinking ocean, sand, and palm trees. and then we started actually looking at paintings...

i discovered that i hated the palm tree beach pictures. i didn't know why, i just rejected all of them. i was saying things like, "the colors are too vibrant," or "it looks too fake," or "it looks like a picture from a calendar," or "no huts with thatched roofs!" and then there were the snakey, carnivorous palm trees. they looked like they were coming to get me. they looked like if i didn't run fast enough, they would eat me for lunch! they were my worst nightmare!! i couldn't have those things hanging right above me as i slept... or i shoud say, as i tried to sleep!

this surprised me! i love palm trees!! but i was not loving the palm tree pictures...

what i was loving were the pictures of the mediterranean ocean views. we had the good fortune to visit santorini in greece several years ago, and there were some paintings of that location. i really loved those paintings! they were calm and serene, and they reminded me of how much we enjoyed that trip. the problem was, i have a small painting that we bought when we were in greece of santorini, so it seemed like two pictures so similar might be too much.

as we were flipping through all the paintings, we found one of red poppies. i love red poppies! (actually, it would be more accurate to say that i love pictures of red poppies. in person, i'm not such a fan. but show me any group of paintings, and if there are red poppies, that is probably going to be my favorite.) "i love those red poppies!" i said to rollie. "well," he replied, "they are the state flower of california." "really?" i said, "i guess i did not know that. they are just so happy looking." "yes," he said, "i like them too!" this was news to me. i didn't think rollie would be all that enthusiastic about any flower pictures, but he liked the poppies! we quickly decided that the poppies would be perfect in our living room, over the brown couch which will one day be a cool and stylishly sleek red leather couch. i hope.

we were making progress, just not in the direction we had planned. now we had a painting that we weren't even looking for, and we still didn't have one for the spot we needed. we looked and looked and looked, and finally decided on a painting of the marina on catalina island. the colors were perfect for our room, but the painting was really large. we asked if they had a smaller one, but they didn't. that was ok though, because as i said, we have vaulted ceilings...

we walked back to our car, each carrying a painting. and then we got to the car. it's a prius. i was looking at the large painting and looking at the prius and thinking, "we are going to have to call someone with a pickup truck to get this painting home!" have i mentioned that i don't really know anyone with a pickup truck who would be willing to drive all the way out to costa mesa on a saturday afternoon to pick up a painting for me??

maybe i need some new friends. preferably ones with a pickup truck and no life...

rollie was saying, "oh, ye of little faith..." as he put the back seats down and got that big painting into the back of his prius.

ok, maybe i don't need any new friends as long as i have rollie and his prius...

we were all smiley all the way home. we had found not one, but two paintings that we both loved! we were so excited to get them home and get them hung up. we brought them into the house and i propped the poppies up on the back of the couch, just to see how they were going to look. they were perfect!

then we went upstairs to hang the picture of catalina. and that's when the trouble began...

"it's going to be too big," i said. "it isn't going to fit! we are going to have to take it back!!" "let's just get it unwrapped and see," said my calm rational husband. "ok," i said, "but i can tell that it is too big." we unwrapped it and held it up where we wanted to hang it. yep. it was too big.

how could this be?!? it fit in the prius!! how could it not fit on the wall?!?! and what if we couldn't take it back? why hadn't i measured the space? or the painting?? i was getting a little bit panicky.

rollie was not. because even though it wasn't fitting in the space we had, it was close. so we started shifting things around, and we finally got it hung. (that is the short version. the long version included moving the bed several times, taking the 6" risers out from under the legs of the bed, and carrying the painting around the room to see if we had other options. this was all done by rollie, while i stood back and gave my opinion. and then of course, we ended up right back where we started. there are days when you don't want to be married to me...)

our house is starting to show some personality. when you walk into our living room, now it looks like people live here, not just like it is a storage room for furniture. and while that giant painting in the bedroom is a little overpowering right now, i do love it. and i think when i get some smaller things up on the rest of the walls, it will balance out.

at least i don't feel like it is going to eat me!

on a side note... one of the things i was looking for today at the swap meet were seat covers for my car. it sits in the sun with the top down sometimes, and i am worried about the fabric seats fading. there were lots of people selling seat covers, but these are the ones rollie thought i should get.do i even need to tell you what i thought about that??? i didn't think so...

adventures in building...

so today . . . i built a dresser and two nightstands. from IKEA (i used caps to spell IKEA, because apparently that is the only spelling they recognize. when i was looking for dressers, i googled ikea and got the response "did you mean IKEA?" so, i guess it isn't the same if it isn't in caps...)

we needed new dressers. the dressers we had were the ones we bought when we were first married, which was a long time ago. we originally just bought the chest of drawers, because that was what we needed and it was all we could afford. but i finally talked rollie into getting the big dresser with the mirror that matched. my rationale was that if we didn't get both dressers while they were available, we were going to end up with mismatched furniture, because eventually we would need a second dresser. so we figured out how to pay for it and brought it home. i loved the look of those dressers, but over time, my love waned... they were made of wood "products" and plastic, and although they still looked good, they just didn't say "grown-up" furniture to me...

when we moved into our new house, i decided we didn't need any dressers at all! we had this "huge" walk-in closet and i was sure we would be able to get all our clothes and shoes and stuff into the closet! i was wrong. in case you didn't know it, walk-in closets look much, much bigger when they are empty than when you start filling them up with your stuff...

so i went on a search for "the perfect dresser." you know where this story goes... i went to furniture stores. i searched online. i went back to furniture stores and took pictures. i watched for sales. the problem was, i only wanted ONE dresser, and all the furniture stores wanted to sell me a whole bedroom set! plus, i didn't really know what i wanted... and while i love to shop online, when it comes to furniture, i want to see it and touch it and open and shut the drawers, so the online thing wasn't really working for me.

and then we got a sale flyer in the mail from IKEA, and i saw a dresser that i really liked. so one friday after school (while rollie was sick,) i went to IKEA. alone.

if you have never been to IKEA, my advice to you is don't go alone, and don't be fooled into thinking it will be a quick trip. because IKEA stores are like a rat's maze for furniture shoppers! i'm serious!! they don't have rows and aisles which allow you to choose where you are going to go--you just have to follow the path. there are no short cuts. you go around and around and around. and don't even try to go backwards unless you want to feel like a salmon swimming upstream... i did not take my own advice. i went alone, because i was looking for one specific thing--the dresser i had seen in the ad--so i knew it would be a quick trip.

it wasn't. and the worst thing was, that while i was trying to find the dresser and then figure out how to get out, i saw so many cute and wonderful things... which i am sure is the reason for the maze-like layout to their stores. those IKEA people... they are evil geniuses...

anyway, i found the dresser i had seen in the ad, but once i found it, i also found all the matching companion pieces. and boy, were there matching companion pieces!! open bookcases, bookcases with glass doors, double wide bookcases, tv stands, 3 drawer dressers, 5 drawer dressers, 8 drawer dressers, nightstands, wardrobes, desk units... it was mind boggling. and there i was, alone, with my tiny car...

which was ok, because there was no way i could make a decision surrounded by all those choices! so i battled the friday afternoon traffic on the 405 (another HUGE mistake,) and headed home.

i spent the next few weeks mulling and measuring and checking online and printing out specs and looking at colors and checking the checkbook, until i finally made a decision. of course, i was spurred on by rollie's exasperated (yet patient) voice saying, "JUST PICK A DRESSER!!!" (he spoke in caps, because his socks and underwear had been folded on a high shelf in the closet for the last seven months and the stacks kept threatening to fall over. there are just some things that need to be in a drawer...)

the dresser and two nightstands were delivered this weekend. furniture from IKEA comes in large flat boxes. unassembled. that's probably one way they keep their prices down, but if you are not good at following picture directions, do NOT buy anything from IKEA! there are no words AT ALL in their instruction booklets, and even the pictures have minimal detail. let's just say that getting the correct piece of hardware into the correct hole and having all the holes line up properly is about as easy as juggling on a unicycle--it can be done, but not by just anyone...

fortunately, i am quite good at following picture directions. and i LOVE to build things from a kit. i decided to start with a nightstand. i figured it was smaller and would be quick to put together while familiarizing me with how the directions worked. i was very careful. i had to be, because one time, about 20 years ago, rollie put a small video cabinet together (by himself,) and he put the bottom piece on it upside down. did it make a difference in the functionality of the cabinet? no, but it was wrong, and it tweaked my ocd tendencies, and so now i build the furniture. (there have been times when i wondered if he did it that way just so that he would never have to build another piece of furniture, but i don't think so. he was just putting all the nice, wood grained pieces on the outside where they would show. the problem was, you can't see the outside of the bottom piece--it's on the floor! that's the problem with picture directions--sometimes they leave out little details like which side should be up!) since i have teased him about this error mercilessly over the last 20 years, i can't afford to make a mistake...

i got both nightstands put together without incident. and then i started on the big dresser. it was more complicated than the nightstands, and i had some trouble with the hardware. rollie was letting me use his power screwdriver, but i found there was a bit of a learning curve to using it without stripping the screws. rollie's knowledge of tools and how to use them helped me solve some assembly difficulties, but since we don't build well together, he pretty much stayed out of my way.

and then it was time to put the top on. i had the whole framework together and everything was lining up nicely. i lined up the holes in the front and got them secured. i lined up the first two holes in the back and got them secured. and then i ran into trouble...

... because those last two holes were not lining up with the holes in the top. i tried everything i could think of, but it just wasn't working! finally i called to rollie for help. he came in and managed to muscle the pieces close enough that we got one more giant screw into place. but that last one was just not working. after several attempts, we decided to leave it until later...

i spent the next several hours assembling the eight drawers. after the frustration of dealing with the top piece, the drawers were a lot of fun to put together. everything lined up just right!

and while everything feels nice and sturdy, i may be living on borrowed time, because i finally decided the top of the dresser was plenty secure with just seven screws in place. but don't tell rollie. i will never hear the end of it...

:)

mrs. fix it, part 2

**i took pictures to go with this blog, but i am having issues getting them from my phone into the blog, which is why this blog is being posted a few days later than it actually happened. eventually i hope to resolve my problem and add pictures...

so today . . . i planned to spend the day at home. in my pajamas. doing a few small projects, but mostly huddled up with my computer and new slippers. this was my plan. of course, it was thwarted...

my problems today actually started yesterday. with cleaning the sink. and fixing the plumbing. because during those moments when i couldn't work on the sink, i decided to recover our dining room chairs.

we got our dining room set from rollie's parents a long time ago. i love family heirlooms. they complete me :) this dining room set belonged to rollie's maternal grandmother, who i never met. we got the set from his mom, who got it from her mom. i feel lucky that we got it, because it probably should have gone to rollie's sister--you know, from mom to daughter to granddaughter--but since rollie's sister already had a dining room set, this one found its way to our house.

i love this dining room set. i love the reddish color of the wood. i love the curvy cut out chair backs. i love the way the ends of the table drop down so that it can be really small, (even though i never use it that way.) but when we got it, what i didn't love was the color of the seats. the seats were a rose colored tapestry with little blue accents. they were pretty, but they were pink. sort of. and at the time we got the set, pink was not on my list of decorating colors. i was into black and white and red! i wanted a fabric that would sort of go with the style, but not look dated. and what i found had a sort of black stripe with rows of reddish roses in between.

i loved that fabric, and it has been on those chairs for a lot of years. but over time it has faded. and i was just not loving it in this house. but i left it, because i had told diandra that when she got into her own house, she could have the dining room set. of course, i told her that before we bought this house, when i thought that we were going to downsize and not have enough room for it. but now it is in our new dining room, and it looks so good with the wood floors and the paint... so i talked to diandra and we struck a deal, and i'll be keeping the dining room set. for now. i think.

so, it was time to recover the seats! i remembered this as being a quick and easy project. i looked at my pile of fabric and found a piece that i thought would be perfect! so last night after rollie went to bed, i took the old fabric off one of the chair seats and got it ready to recover. but then i got tired and went to bed.

those chair seats were going to be my first project this morning, because rollie was playing basketball which meant i had to put the sink project off until later in the day. and doing the chair seats first had the added benefit of letting me stay in my pajamas. (in case you are wondering about my sudden attachment to wearing my pajamas around the house, i asked for flannel pajama pants for christmas. and i got some! and adorable "hello, kitty" slippers!! and now, that is all i want to wear. they are comfy, cozy, and cute.) so i unfolded the fabric... only to discover that it wasn't one big piece. it was several smaller pieces, none of which were big enough to cover the chair cushions. this was not a good start to my saturday...

i was bummed. i slouched on the couch for a while, but i finally got dressed and announced to rollie that i was going to do some errands. i had decided to go to lowe's to ask someone about my plumbing issues, but the bigger problem was going to be finding fabric. there are just not a lot of fabric stores around anymore. i had seen one storefront across from the mall that said "rugs! fabrics!" but most days they have a "going out of business" sign outside, which i figured meant a limited selection. but i was desperate, so i went in...

... and the angels sang! there were rolls of fabric everywhere! in every color! but you know how i am about making decisions... i knew i was in trouble. and it got even worse, because as i was walking around i remembered that i had been looking for a shower curtain for the downstairs bathroom, and i needed to recover the headboard on our bed... i was like a rat in a maze--a rat who couldn't make a decision. i put rolls of fabric into my cart. i took rolls of fabric out of my cart. i sent pictures to rollie--which is what saved me! after over an hour, i finally found my way out into the parking lot, with fabric for my dining room chairs AND a shower curtain :) the decision about fabric for our headboard will just have to wait for another day.

then i went to lowe's. i don't go to lowe's very often, because home depot is just around the corner from our house. and lowe's is at the long beach town center, AND the parking lot at the long beach town center is like the seventh level of hell--especially on a saturday. but that one last plumbing fixture was bugging me, so i decided to brave the parking lot in hopes of finding an answer to my problem.

i found the plumbing section and a guy in a red vest. whose name was NOT steve! i showed him the picture i had taken of the underside of my plumbing fixtures and he said, "oh sure! you just have to twist this piece here to tighten your fixture."

now. was that hard? no, it was not. i guess if you know what you are talking about, the solution is easy. and now i had a solution! i made a quick detour through lighting to get a new glass globe for the old ceiling fan that manuel had installed in our downstairs bedroom, and rushed home. i had a solution, and i was anxious to finish up my plumbing project. but when i got home, i was once again thwarted, because rollie was taking a nap. rollie often takes a nap on saturday after playing basketball all morning, which is fine, but today his nap was interfering with my projects!

you know how patient i am (not!) but i tried to wait. first i distracted myself by playing with my new fabrics, but i didn't want to get started on a project and then have to drop it when rollie woke up. so next i decided to change the glass part of the ceiling fan with the new one i had just bought. i took the old one off and tried to put the new one up, only to discover that it was too big. this did not make me happy! now i am going to have to brave the long beach town center parking lot again to return the stupid, non-fitting glass part of the ceiling fan!

unless it accidentally breaks first...

i finally decided i could fix the faucet by myself. i mean, i knew what to do, i just had to figure out how to do it all by myself. i poked around rollie's workbench until i found the spray stuff that would loosen the rust. because of course there was rust! the faucet had been loose which meant water was dripping underneath it sometimes. i squiggled underneath the sink and tried to maneuver the spray into position... and managed to knock the long pointy part off. which meant i had to squiggle out from under the sink to retrieve it, reattach it, and try again. which i did.

(can i just say here that it is no easy task to get positioned under our kitchen sink! there is no room to turn over or around, which means you have to go in on your back. which kills so many muscles that i can't even list them all! and then your torso is elevated about six inches from where your legs are trying to just stay out of the way, which is torturous to your back! and THEN to get out, you have to hold your torso up off the floor while trying to get your head clear of the sink, garbage disposal, and all that tubing, which makes your abdomen scream like an angry toddler. now that i think about it, it is probably pretty good exercise...)

after spraying the loosening goo, i waited a few minutes, grabbed my pliers and tried to twist the tightening piece. it wouldn't budge. but the pliers fell out of my hand and landed on my face. fortunately they didn't hit my eyes. unfortunately, they did hit my expensive glasses. i decided maybe i shouldn't be wearing my expensive glasses while laying under the sink holding a pair of pliers in my hand. so i took them off and attempted to twist the tightening piece again. and again, i dropped the pliers. fortunately this time they didn't hit my face--they hit my shoulder, which was a little too close to my unprotected face for my comfort.

i decided i needed safety glasses.

but i didn't have safety glasses! i know rollie has safety glasses, but he was asleep. so i used my sunglasses instead. i have a pair of those fit-over sunglasses that i can wear over my regular glasses. they are big and ugly, but i have customized them with swarovsky crystals, which makes them cuter... they are still pretty big, though... i was really hoping i wouldn't drop the pliers on them, since the only other pair of sunglasses i have do not have swarovsky crystals on them, and since we live in the land of eternal sunshine, i kind of need sunglasses. but i figured if i was going to drop those pliers again, better to wreck my sunglasses than my eyes...

i worked under that sink for about half an hour. i was getting nowhere fast. it finally became clear to me that this was not a one woman project--i was going to have to wait until rollie woke up. which he finally did. and no sooner did his groggy little head move his recliner into the upright position, than i was right there telling him about my morning... the fabric store... lowe's... the plumbing stuff... how we still needed to hang the bathroom mirror (oh there is a story there too, but i think i will save that for another day.) all the poor man wanted to do was watch a little basketball and let his brain wake up, but he could see that i was in "let's get it done" mode. so he came downstairs, gathered a few tools, and watched me head back under the sink.

we finally got that thing tightened! finally! i was the muscle under the sink, but rollie knew which tools would get the job done. if he hadn't handed me some sort of socket wrench with a bendy handle, and firmly held the faucet in place while i used that tool to tighten it, we would still probably be dealing with a wiggly faucet. or paying someone $500 to replace it!

i came out from under that sink today, and i felt powerful!! i felt awesome! i made rollie high five me, and i said, "WE ROCK!" (yes, to diandra's chagrin, i actually say things like that...) and so, now our kitchen sink is clean and shiny AND the faucets work properly...

...and it looks so good, that now i hate to use it.

mrs. fix it, part 1

so today . . . i had an "if you give a mouse a cookie" evening...

"if you give a mouse a cookie," is a children's book that illustrates how one thing leads to another. which leads to another. and another. and that's what happened to me this evening. it all started with cleaning my kitchen sink...

when we moved into our new house, i determined that i was going to keep it sparkly clean and shiny. this is a bigger challenge for me than you might think. we have two dogs and lots of stuff. this means muddy puppy feet walking on our floors, pet hair taking up residence wherever it can find an unguarded space, and stuff that doesn't really have a place of it's own...which means that it ends up on the dining room table... or the kitchen counter... or the bedroom chair... well, you get the idea. and since i have a regular job, i don't have lots of time to dedicate to keeping up with it all. so sometimes my house threatens to eat me.

but when we moved, i determined that was not going to happen any more! the first step was buying a house that would be easy to maintain, which meant wood flooring instead of carpets. which we did. the second step was not to move all of the stuff. which we didn't. i donated a ton of stuff to charity and filled a small dumpster with the things i was pretty sure no one else would want. the third step was to find a place for everything in the new house--if it didn't have a place, i was going to get rid of it--that way everything could be put away. which i mostly did, but i admit there are still a few things... and the last step was figuring out some sort of system for cleaning. because if i don't have a system, nothing gets done. it doesn't always get done even when i have a system, but at least it has a chance... so i got a microfiber duster, two roombas, a spin mop, and decided i was ready...

...and then i went back to work. and everything house related sort of started falling apart. i managed to keep my head above water, but just barely. so of course i started looking for solutions (that's where the microfiber duster and the spin mop came in.) i made lists. i downloaded apps on my ipad. i cruised the internet. and one day, while cruising the internet, i found a site that said keeping your house neat and orderly all starts with cleaning your kitchen sink. well, i wanted my house to be neat and orderly, but the method of cleaning the kitchen sink sounded very involved! and that's not all--once it was cleaned, you were supposed to keep it clean and shiny every single day! and you know how i am about doing anything every single day. so i chose to ignore this particular site.

which i did. until today. because today i was home all afternoon, and so i decided to put the christmas dishes away. but that meant i had to wash a couple of them, and that put me in close proximity to the sink, which made me start thinking about having a clean sink, and a clean house, and the next thing i knew, i was filling the small sink with hot, bleachy water...

i filled the small sink with hot bleachy water, because i wasn't really sure how this was going to turn out. and our big sink is big! and deep! which means it takes a lot of water to fill it up. so i decided to start with the small sink. i let it soak for an hour. then i followed the rest of the directions for a sparkly clean and shiny sink. and then i moved on to the faucets. and as i was working on the faucets, i realized that they were loose. and the soap dispenser didn't work. so i fixed the soap dispenser (i think,) and scrubbed the faucets, and dried and shined everything up, but those faucets were still loose. and now they were bothering me, because my small sink looked so good!

i thought there had to be a way to tighten them, so i took everything out from under the sink. and put it on the counter. now my previously clean counters were full of stuff, but it was nice and clean under the sink. i flopped down onto the kitchen floor and squiggled my way into the empty cabinet. it was dark in there. and i didn't have a light. so i squiggled back out and got a clip-on flashlight and dove back under the sink.

there is a lot of flexible tubing under my sink. and the sink is extra deep. and there is also a giant garbage disposal under there, which made it hard to move around. which is why i was under the sink instead of rollie. but i knew i was going to need help. i couldn't tighten whatever had to be tightened without someone holding the faucets steady. so i yelled for rollie, and he came to see what i needed. but all he could see were my feet and legs--the rest of me was buried under the sink...

"i need help!" i said. although i'm pretty sure those words weren't necessary. i'm pretty sure that it was fairly clear that i needed help. "what do you want me to do?" he asked. "just hold the faucet still while i try to tighten it up." this sounds simple enough, but over the course of the next half hour, rollie retrieved tools from the garage for me to use, he tried not to step on the part of me that was hanging out of the cabinet, and he finally handed me my phone so i could take pictures of what i was dealing with. because just like everything else that the previous homeowner decided to do himself, these faucets had not been installed exactly according to the directions...

i had rollie pull me out of the abyss, and i announced, "i'm going to home depot. i'm sure i need parts." rollie said, "let's just buy a new faucet. we can have manuel install it." but i had looked fancy kitchen faucets up online--i knew how expensive they were. "no," i said, "i think we can fix it." so i grabbed my phone with the photos i had taken, and the checkbook, and went to home depot.

home depot was no help at all. "yep," steve said, (i think every male employee at home depot is named steve. it may even be a job requirement, because every time i go there for help, the guy's name tag says steve!) "it looks like you need some parts to fix that. we don't sell those parts." of course they don't. "if you know the manufacturer, you might be able to get parts online." thanks, steve, thanks a lot...

i was not ready to give up. i came home and started looking online for my faucets, and miraculously, without a manufacturer or model number, i found them! and then i found installation instructions!! yessss!!! i could see by the installation instructions how to tighten one of the faucet pieces. so i yelled for rollie and stuffed myself back under the sink. i figured out a way to prop my flashlight up so that i could use both hands, and prepared to tighten. but there was a problem. of course. the fitting wouldn't budge.

this is where the expertise of a guy with a fully stocked workbench comes in handy :) "it's stuck," i said. "i can't move it." "wait a minute," rollie said, "i'll be right back." and he disappeared. and i waited. twisted like a pretzel under the sink. but it was worth it, because when he came back, he handed me an aerosol can of something guaranteed to unstick stuff. so i sprayed it (and hoped it wouldn't drip on my face,) and waited. and it worked! i was finally able to tighten the fitting so that one more piece of our faucet was tight. but as i emerged from under the sink, i realized that my shirt and hair were wet. this is never a good thing when you are working under a sink. i felt the floor of the cabinet, and sure enough, there was a good sized puddle. "uh oh," i said to rollie, "i think something is wrong..."

did i mention how many pipes and flexible tubing and stuff were under the sink? and did i mention how i just barely fit under there?? and did i mention that it was impossible to maneuver without bumping into something??? well, apparently in all my squiggling about, i had bumped the drain pipe in the big sink and dislodged the connection. i was now really, really glad that i hadn't filled that sink up with water and bleach to soak! i ran to get towels while rollie reconnected the pipes. and then he went to bed. i think he had reached his "help julie with whatever impossible project she has decided to tackle" limit for the day.

did i mention that rollie gets a little uneasy when i get into "i can fix it!" mode? just because one time i tried to fix the washing machine with a screwdriver without disconnecting it... sheesh.

anyway, now there was only one piece left. this one was going to be a challenge. this was the one that steve at home depot said needed a part that they didn't have. but i had sort of reached my plumbing "fix it" limit for the day since rollie had gone to bed, because that meant there was no one to extract me from under the sink if i decided to go back in...

...which brought me back to cleaning my sink. because i had only done the smaller one earlier, just to see how it turned out. but now that all but one of my faucet components were tightened, i decided to clean the other sink. so i filled it with hot, bleachy water, and waited for an hour, and shined it up, and now it looks beautiful!

of course, now the countertops are filled with all the stuff from under the sink, but i can fix that tomorrow. tomorrow i am going to figure out how to tighten that last faucet component...

...or drown trying!

handyman? or addition to the family... ??

so today . . . the home improvements continue...

it seems like everything that needs to be done turns into a big, hairy deal!

it's been about a month since our handyman, manuel, was here. he came in sort of an emergency situation at the end of august to put in a doggie door. our pups need back yard access, especially when we are not home, and since we were getting ready to be out of town for several days, we needed a doggie door. right away.

it shouldn't have been an emergency situation. i have known from the time we bought our house that we were going to need unrestricted puppy access from the house to the back yard. and if our family room had sliding glass doors, that wouldn't have been a problem. but it doesn't. it has french doors. you cannot easily install a doggie door in french doors...

each french door has a "sidelight" next to it. i had never heard the term sidelight, until i started scouring the internet looking for doggie door alternatives. but once i realized it was a real thing, with a name and everything, i thought that surely i could get one with a doggie door in it.

i was wrong.

but i was sure i was right! so i spent weeks and weeks following every little rabbit trail that google decided to send me on, trying to find a doggie door that would fit in that space. and what i discovered what that no one makes such a thing. oh they probably will, in a few years, now that french doors seem to be the popular choice for back yard entrance. but as usual, i am ahead of my time. i need one now!

i considered putting a doggie door flap in the door that leads from the garage to the back yard. but then the pups would have to be in the garage when we weren't home--not an acceptable solution for us. i contemplated replacing the french doors with sliding glass ones--but i really like the french doors. i even thought about cutting a hole in the wall for a doggie door flap! yes, i was getting desperate.

and the clock was ticking...

because the first time we went out of town, for our vacation, not having a doggie door created problems. and we were getting ready to leave again. twice. this problem had to be solved...

so we went to petco and bought a doggie door--the kind you use for sliding glass doors. our plan was to have manuel just cut the hole a little bigger in the sidelight and pop the doggie door in. it sounded so much easier than it turned out to be! manuel measured. he went to home depot. he came back and looked at the sidelight again. and his conclusion was that it couldn't be done.

which was ok with me, because i didn't really want him to cut into the sidelight anyway! i mean, we want a doggie door now, but what if a time comes when we don't want a doggie door? what if (heaven forbid) we have to sell our house? we would need the sidelights to match, wouldn't we? so manuel and i discussed it, and decided that he would take the sidelight out, and put the doggie door into the space, and frame around it. which was what i had wanted all along...on that same day, manuel also installed my dining room light and the new light for the entry way. which is a good thing, because that entry way light was slowly killing my soul! it was heavy, and elaborate, and HUGE, and every time i walked through the front door and saw it, it made me feel cranky!! so we can all thank manuel for my improved mood :-)

then we went out of town. twice. and my mom and dad came to visit. once. and i went back to work. every day. and things got busy... but i kept seeing things that still needed to be done.

so i called manuel to see if he could come back today to tackle the list again. he came, and he brought a friend. i think his plan was to finish everything on the list. today! as it turned out, he was just a bit optimistic. it seemed like everything they tried to do resulted in problems...

they tried to get the remote to work for our ceiling fan. but guess what? when the fan was installed, they apparently threw out the signal thing for the remote! who does that?!?!? who installs anything without using all the pieces??? did they just look at that little signal box and think, "oh we probably don't need this..." and throw it away???

they tried to install a light in the ceiling of one of the extra bedrooms. but first they had to find the center of the room. which they did. only to discover that they couldn't hang a light there. so after cutting the first hole, they had to cut a second one. and then then had to cut several holes in the wall to disconnect the electrical outlet from the switch. because apparently in 1967 it was popular to switch an outlet rather than install a ceiling light...

thankfully they also know how to repair the holes.
they tried to move the downstairs bathroom light so that it would be centered over the vanity. because the vanity in that bathroom was the first thing to go when we moved in. i hated the one that was in there. hated. it. so rollie replaced it. and the sink. and the faucets. and now it is beautiful! but since the new vanity is smaller than the original one, the light fixture is now off center... so they cut a new hole, but then they looked at the clock and realized they needed to leave. right away!! and so they just put the old fixture back up. for now.
i wanted another outlet installed in our bathroom. for some reason, our large master bathroom only has one outlet. and it is on rollie's side of the counter. but i am the one who needs it! someone said, "why don't you just trade sides?" i'll tell you why... my side has all the counter space. and drawers. and i need that space! but it isn't good if i am trying to dry my hair while rollie is trying to brush his teeth. someone could get electrocuted!! or stepped on... so here is my side of the bathroom with my new outlet. it is the only project that was actually completed today.but it's ok, because manuel has assured me that he can come back soon. i'm glad, because that light fixture in the downstairs bathroom? it is now the source of my crankiness...

i guess this is what home ownership is all about--projects. sadly, we have no skills. well, i think i have skills, but mostly i have good intentions. rollie has skills, but no time to use them. and so, we have manuel. it looks as though manuel will be spending several weekends with us.

i'm starting to think it might be cheaper to adopt him...

they're coming... :-)

so today . . . i thought i could do it all...

my dad is a painter--a house painter. actually my dad has done a lot of things. his main job was as a junior high science teacher, but he has also sold real estate, been a pastor, fished on his own boat commercially, and made gemstone jewelry, in addition to painting houses and probably a whole lot of other stuff that i can't think of right now. i don't recall ever helping him paint, but i was around him enough when he was painting, that i seemed to think that i could paint too. and i have painted. a lot!

but my dad does more than just paint. he can pretty much fix anything on a house. i can remember many times when someone would hire him to come in and repair a bad job they had already paid someone else to do. he seemed to always figure out a way to fix the mess. and so, for some reason, i think i can fix things too.

once, i almost electrocuted myself trying to fix something inside the washing machine with a screwdriver...

so today, when home depot called to tell me that our plantation shutters were ready to be installed, and could they DO IT ON FRIDAY, my plans for the next couple of days changed. because i hadn't really expected the shutters to be ready so soon. and there was some repair work that needed to be done around the windowsills...

so i texted rollie. "good news and bad news. our shutters are here :) but the walls aren't ready :( i guess i'll be going to home depot after school today to figure out how to mud the walls." yes, that was my plan. i was going to go online while my little dumplings napped and look for an instructional video on how to mud and texture walls. then after school i would go to home depot for supplies. and then tomorrow after school i would fix those walls, and by friday everything would be perfectly prepared for my new shutters! it seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan to me.

rollie did not respond to my text.

he was working from home today, so i got to meet him for lunch. "so," i said, "did you get my text about the shutters?" "yes," he said, "but i'm not sure you should try to fix the walls. why don't you just call jose'?"

i'll tell you why i wasn't going to call jose'--first of all, i needed the work done by tomorrow! you can't just call someone up and say hey, can you come do this job for me tomorrow?!? that's ridiculous! and secondly, i was pretty sure i didn't want to pay someone to do something that i was perfectly capable of doing--even if i'd never done it before and really didn't have the time to do it.

i patiently explained this to my husband. who responded by saying, "i don't know. i don't think i've got the skills to do it..." well that was ok. i wasn't asking him to do it. i was going to do it! my dad is a painter and general all purpose fix it guy. i was pretty sure i had inherited some sort of "fix it" gene. after all, i'd sprayed texture on a wall repair from an aerosol can before. i was pretty sure it wasn't going to be that hard. and besides, really this was just a precautionary repair. probably the frame around the shutters was going to cover it up anyway. i was just going to mud and texture and paint where the window trim had been, just in case the new trim wasn't quite big enough.

"really," rollie said, "just call jose'. you know he will do a good job." what i knew was that rollie did not want me to tackle this job. he was probably picturing what might happen. i'm sure he could just see me covered in mud, crying, at midnight when it was too late to call someone else, because i couldn't make the mud stick to the wall or make it smooth or get the texture right... i don't doubt that he knew i would give it a good try, but i'm pretty sure he also knew there was a slight possibility that i might just make a big mess. and my dad lives too far away to come and fix it by friday...

and truthfully, i was sort of picturing that possibility myself, because there have been more than a few nights when i have been buried in a project at midnight, bumping up against a deadline, crying because i knew there was no way i was going to finish on time. so i gave in. i called jose'. mostly because while i might be able to do what needed to be done, i knew it was going to take me waaaay longer than it would take someone like jose' who knew what they were doing. and i knew that while my results might be ok, jose's results would be really good. BUT, if he couldn't do it tomorrow, then i would just have to do it myself.

so i called him. and jose', bless his little pink heart, said he would come over tonight to take a look at what needed to be done. and he thought he could work it out to do it thursday morning. which means i can spend my thursday evening doing something much more fun, and still get my shutters installed on friday...

i am thankful for my mom who raised me to think i could do anything. and for my dad who showed me that there is no limit to what one person can do. but there are times when it is a good idea to step back and let the professionals do what they have been trained to do. and so i am also thankful for my husband who says, "call a professional..."

...because my "i can do it" attitude is sometimes a problem. i should NOT be allowed near the inner workings of a washing machine with a metal screwdriver!! i should NEVER stand on the very top rung of a ladder! and i should probably not try to mud, texture, and paint around my windows under such a tight schedule, when there is no room for error...

thankfully i don't have to. because i know jose' and i am pretty sure he can do anything :-)

it's just paint!!!

so today . . . i agreed to have the outside of my house painted next week. while i am out of town...

i know what you are thinking. "are you insane?!?!?!" i know, i know. i clearly remember the baby boy blue room. i know that the odds that my house will be painted exactly like i want it when i am not here to make sure it is done right are probably slim. but it is either have it done that week or the week my parents are visiting. and i want to get it DONE! so i choose to trust my painter...

i was hoping to have the painting done a couple of weeks ago, but it took some time to get my colors chosen and approved. living in our city is kind of like living in a gigantic homeowner's association. you can't park your car on the street overnight--even in front of your own house. you have to take your exterior christmas decorations down by january 15th. your library card expires every couple of years and you have to go back in and prove that you still live within the city limits. your garbage cans can't be visible from the street...

...and you have to get a permit to do anything to your house. want to replace your windows with new, energy efficient ones or build a covered patio in your own backyard? you need a permit. want to rip out all your landscaping so you can redo it and make it beautiful? you need a permit (and don't even think about astroturf--i'm pretty sure they will throw you in jail for that!) you even need a permit to replace your dishwasher! in your kitchen!!!

so you can imagine that our lovely city is not going to let you paint your house just any old color. oh no, you have to choose from their palette, have it approved, and... yes, get a permit.

i logged onto the city's website to view their color palette. bland, blah earth tones with some darker colors allowed as accents. i was underwhelmed. i drove around our neighborhood and looked at houses and saw... lots of earth tones. some people clearly did not get city approval for their colors, but others were pretty creative with the limited choices on the website. i was starting to debate the merits of just painting the house whatever i wanted and then feigning ignorance if i got caught. but i hate it when people do that! the whole "ask forgiveness, not permission" thing just irritates me--i think it's arrogant--so i was determined to do the right thing and get my paint permit.

knowing that my computer didn't necessarily represent the city's colors accurately, i headed to home depot (yes, i am still mad at their carpet people, but the paint people have been good to me. so far.) the city's website said to go choose paint colors and then bring them in for approval. ok. i liked the sound of that. maybe there would be a bit of flexibility after all. i knew i wanted the body of the house to be a lovely shade of pale yellow--not too bright, not too light--just a nice, medium yellow. i did not want brown, tan, beige, terra cotta, or white. the style of our house just screams, "i am a bungalow! paint me yellow!!" of course, our house isn't a bungalow. it is a 2,367 square foot two story house. but from the front, it looks like a bungalow. i can't explain it--it is like a freak of nature (or architecture.) i was pretty sure there were some nice yellows in the city's palette, so i thought i was off to a good start...

then i needed trim colors. white, of course. how could the city argue with white. the windows have white trim. the garage door is white. surely they would let me use white. but i needed something else for some contrast. what to choose, what to choose...

i'll admit i was influenced by the ugly red painted brick on our walkway. i had asked jose' what we could do with that, and he said we could paint it. he suggested gray. ok! so all the painted brick would be charcoal gray, and then we could use a lighter gray to accent the trim. but i really, really wanted a purple door. i was pretty sure the city wouldn't let me have it, but just in case, i picked up a purple chip anyway...

i headed for city hall. after a quick stop at the sheriff's office to register our security system (they probably even have my shoe size somewhere in their files...) i went to the city planning desk. i was not the first one there. the guy ahead of me had just moved into the city and wanted to fix the hand railing on his staircase. he wanted to make it safe and bring it up to code. you would think this would be something the city would support. you would be wrong.

i listened to him go around and around with the city planner about that hand railing. because apparently if he was going to replace the hand railing, then he had to bring the whole staircase up to code, which would mean ripping the existing stairs out and rebuilding them. which would mean changing the pitch and width of the stairs. which would mean there wouldn't be room for his staircase in it's current location...

you see where this is going.

he was so frustrated. and i was starting to wonder what would happen to me if i just slowly started moving backwards toward the door. i think he was wishing he had never purchased a house in our lovely city. i was thinking just wait until he gets a parking ticket for parking in front of his own house overnight. i hid the purple paint chip in my pocket.

finally it was my turn. i started filling out my paperwork and when i got to the part where it asked for my paint colors, the city planner pulled out "the book." clearly "close" was not going to be good enough. i was going to have to use their exact colors. so i gave him my yellow. i thought that was safe. "oh," he said, "that looks pretty bright!"

were we looking at the same paint chip?!? i don't think so, because the paint chip i was looking at was barely pigmented! "well," i said, "i looked at the palette online, and there were several yellow tones. some were much darker than this." he looked at me like i had just grown fangs and horns! he flipped his book open and found a divider tab that said, "yellow." score one for me, because i am pretty sure he wouldn't need a divider tab if there was just one acceptable shade of yellow. we found one that was almost exactly the color i had in my hand. he then went to his file box, and pulled out the paint chip of the "approved" yellow that was the closest to mine and handed it to me. "what's this for?" i asked. "that is the paint color for your house. take it to the paint store and they will match it," he replied.

ok, i could see how this was going to work. close was definitely not going to be good enough.

we continued. we finally found paint colors that were acceptable to both of us. it was going so well, that i pulled out the purple paint chip. "and," i said, "i was thinking that this would be really pretty, just on the front door..." he didn't even bat an eye, he just started flipping through his book.

i had seen the palette. i knew purple was not a part of it. pretty soon he pulled out a dark reddish rust color. "how about this?" he asked.

eewww. it was not even close. i laid it down with my other colors, and said, "no, i don't think so. i guess if i can't have purple, i'll just use the gray." what i wanted to say was, "are you kidding me?!?! would you put that color on YOUR house?!?! you probably don't even live here. and if you do, you probably sign all your own paperwork..." but i didn't. it's probably not the smartest move to antagonize someone who holds the power to make you paint your house bland and trim it with boring. "ok then," he said, "all you have to do is finish filling out the paperwork."

oh boy. more paperwork. i continued filling in the blanks. and then i got to the part where it said that i would throw my body in front of a speeding train before i would paint even one small brick or stone on my house. whaaaat? NOW we were going to have a problem. because that horrendously painted red brick was not going to look good with the rest of my colors. which was not even the issue. the issue was that I HATED IT!!! there had to be a solution. i could live without a purple door if i had to, but that brick had to be painted.

at this point i was seriously considering just repainting the house in it's current colors, which would not require a permit. but the trim is pink. i am not really a pink person. it had to be changed.

i confess that i thought about lying and then just doing what i wanted to do anyway. the bureaucracy was killing me!! but i soldiered on. i told him the brick was already painted. i told him how ugly it was. i appealed to his sense of color. i tried to explain how terrible it was going to look with my new paint colors, and how all i really wanted to do was to bring the outside of my house up to the city's high standards. (hey, i can throw it around with the best of them!) finally he said, "it is already painted?" "yes," i said, "it is already painted this awful fake brick red. and it is chipping. badly! and i think the charcoal gray will make it look more natural. like stone." he looked me right in the eye. i looked right back at him, with a combination of pleading and thank you for agreeing with me in my eyes. "ok," he said, "i think i can sign off on that."

yes! success!!

and so now i have city approved paint colors. i have a paint crew scheduled. all that is left to do is to explain to the painters which colors i want painted where, and then go out of town...

i'm pretty sure this is where the trouble really begins...

sorry, no blog tonight... oh wait...

so today . . . there will be no blog. here's why...the move is finally happening. i hope. as you can see, there is still packing to be done. we have spent the last two weeks trying to get everything done in the new house before we moved in, but it has been a nightmare for me! decision after decision after decision. and not making decisions. and changing my decisions... it has not been pretty, people!

the interior painting went well. i only had to have the painters repaint one room. it was the man room. everything else looked exactly like i had pictured it, but the man room was baby boy blue, not the muted turquoise i had in mind. i tried to like it, but i just couldn't. i didn't know how they had gotten the color so very wrong! i went to get more paint chips, chose a new color of blue, went back to the house, put it up on the wall, and guess what? it was the exact same color. i don't know how it could look so different up on the wall, but it sure did. when i told jose' he was going to have to go get another color of paint and paint the room again, he just smiled and said, "no problem!" and so, the painting was completed and the new color looks good. and i only changed my mind once!

i spent several days working on the wood floor that was hidden under the awful carpeting in the master bedroom. i spent most of one saturday just pulling up the tack strips and the staples from the padding--over 1300 inches of tack strips and hundreds of staples. and then i spent the next saturday and sunday afternoons cleaning it, square by square. it was a lot of work and every muscle in my body ached! but when i got done, it looked sooooo good!

last weekend we had new windows installed in all the rooms upstairs. i have never seen windows replaced, but since i was on my hands and knees working on the wood floor, i got to see the process. either it was much simpler than i thought it would be, or those two window installers were just really, really good. either way, it didn't take them long and we had beautiful new windows. although, i learned that i should not watch work in progress. i kept thinking, "oh no! the windows are too small! oh no! the windows aren't level! oh no! i can see that foamy stuff all the way around the window! oh no! these are going to look awful!!" i was feeling a little sick and wishing maybe i had spent the big bucks and just hired home depot. but as it turns out, i am glad i went the cheap route, because they turned out really nice.

we have prairie shutters coming (if i can find a way to get my window sills trimmed down--none of my windowsills are level!) i've scheduled grass for the backyard, and i am currently doing battle with lowe's over carpet installation. (i am mad at them. i will never, ever use them again. but i am madder at home depot's carpet people, and i need carpet NOW, so i don't have a lot of options. if i had taken care of this two weeks ago, i would have had more options. but two weeks ago i was busy making paint decisions and trying to get rid of the leftover furniture the seller's left and degreasing the kitchen--which, btw, i am still doing--and so carpet was not the high priority it should have been...)

i also should have been packing. but rollie had a plan and it seemed so simple. he said to just pack the things i wanted to take, and then after we had all that stuff moved, we would dispose of the stuff we had left. it seemed like a good plan. and i especially liked it, because it didn't sound like it required a lot of actual packing. but it does...

and so, that is where i am right now. packing. this is not the fun part of moving. but it is necessary, so i guess i had better get back to it...

...which is why there will be no blog tonight.

super store? or nightmare at 10:00 a.m.?

so today . . . i went to a "new" wal-mart super store. i felt like the dumbest rat in the maze...

one of the things i love about wal-mart is that they have just a few different floor plans for their stores. i like this. i like that i can go into a wal-mart in long beach, california or woodburn, oregon or orlando, florida, and i know where things are. usually i do not go into wal-mart to shop--that's what target is for! no, usually i go into wal-mart to buy what i need quickly and get out...

but not today. because today i had the unfortunate "pleasure" of finding myself in a wal-mart super store.

i like the concept of a super store. i like being able to go to one store to get groceries, toiletries, dvds, shoes (ok, not really. i don't buy my shoes at wal-mart. but i like knowing i could, if i wanted to!) plants, and car parts. the problem is, in a super store i can't seem to find anything...

maybe there are also just a few floor plans for the wal-mart super stores, but i don't know them yet. this is only the second super store i have been in! the first one was a couple of years ago when we were in orlando. i couldn't find anything then, either, but since we were on vacation it wasn't such a big deal. i wasn't in a hurry. i didn't really have an agenda. i just went in to see what i could find. today was a completely different story...

today i had a plan. and stuff to do!! i couldn't spend all day exploring and wandering around this new wal-mart!! i just needed a few things--milk bones, toilet paper (for the new house. i noticed the supplies i had already taken over were diminishing...) vinegar (which i had read online would degrease kitchen cabinets. i don't know what those people cooked in that kitchen, but there were some stubborn grease splatters to deal with,) and a spray bottle for the vinegar. i went whipping through the store, tossing my purchases into my basket... well, maybe whipping through the store is a bit of an exaggeration, because the first thing i noticed about this super store was that there wasn't a lot of room between aisles for carts. i prefer to navigate through stores without a shopping cart. but today, even though i was only buying four things, one of those things was toilet paper. and whenever i am forced to buy toilet paper, i buy a LOT of toilet paper, my goal being fewer trips to wal-mart. so i had a cart.

i quickly discovered that today there were a lot of people with carts in wal-mart. i don't know what is the matter with everyone!! didn't they have enough excitement yesterday??? didn't they have company over for bar-be-que or battle the crowds at the park to watch the fireworks or spend the day out in the heat???? why wasn't everyone at home recuperating from the fourth of july?!?!?! clearly, the independence day celebrations weren't celebratory enough!

but i am a big girl. i have lived in the shadow of a metropolis for ten years. i know about crowds. so as i maneuvered at a more moderate pace than normal, through the unfamiliar aisles of the wal-mart super store, i just kept saying to myself, "at least you are not at work today. at least you only need a few things. at least you get to move into a beautiful house in two days..." AAACCCKKKKK!!! TWO DAYS?!?!?! ok, that didn't help. i just needed to get my stuff and get out of there! i had the toilet paper (24 double rolls, thank you very much!) i had milk bones. i headed to where i thought the empty spray bottles would be. but then i detoured through the kitchen section...

(i hear you, wendy. i hear you saying, "why would you even go into the kitchen section? you hate the kitchen. you don't cook. there can't be anything in there that you could possibly need or want!!!" and to that i say, au contraire my friend, because i am moving my stuff into a new kitchen! this opens up all kinds of opportunities for new ways of organizing things--because while i might not like to cook, i do like to organize!)

i started throwing things in my cart. i had a bamboo silverware organizer (good for the environment and HALF the cost of the exact same thing at lowe's!) and then i saw some cool looking black and tan plastic modular drawer dividers (maybe not so good for the environment, but the colors would go perfectly in my new kitchen!) and then there was a RED dish drainer (and before you ask, yes, the new house has a dishwasher, but i find that it is easier to wash the dishes by hand since we mostly use glasses and silverware.) there was shelf paper, because you know, one cannot move into a new residence without installing new shelf paper. and then i started to throw a bamboo corner shelf unit into the cart, when i finally stopped myself. "wait a minute," i said to myself, "what am i doing here! what am i going to do with this cool corner bamboo shelf? just because it is cool, doesn't mean i have to buy it! i probably don't really need any of this stuff. and i have a budget! a budget!! if i buy all this stuff, i am going to have to do without something else! put it back! put it all back, and go get vinegar and a spray bottle! do it now before i have to threaten you with thoughts of no new carpeting!!!"

sometimes i am no fun at all...

so i put all the extra stuff back and went in search of a spray bottle. i thought the logical place to find it would be with the paper goods and cleaning supplies. i had already been back there once to get toilet paper, and i didn't see any spray bottles, but i thought maybe i just hadn't looked very carefully. (i would like to mention here that in a REGULAR wal-mart, not a super store wal-mart, i would know just where to find everything! sadly, i was not in a regular wal-mart.) i did not see any spray bottles. so i wandered a bit more. i found myself in the grocery aisles (perhaps i should tell you at this point that i had not eaten breakfast yet. when i left the house this morning, i was just going to do a couple of quick errands and then treat myself to mcdonald's. it would have been a good plan if the super store didn't currently have me in it's evil clutches!) and i was hungry. i thought it might be a devil donut kind of day, but i couldn't find the kind i like. curses!! so i bought baby carrots with ranch dressing, and apples with peanut butter. and then i threw in a small bag of crunchy cheetos for nutritional balance. and then i happened upon the vinegar, so i tossed that in my cart, feeling virtuous, because vinegar was on my list!

so was a spray bottle, but i was having no luck finding one.

i decided my only hope was to find a wal-mart employee and beg for help. i pushed my cart through the narrow, crowded aisles from one end of the store to the other, and i did not see one employee. not one. it's like somebody called ahead and said, "there is a lady in a 2001 red old navy fourth of july shirt and denim shorts (which have seen better days,) looking for help. RUN! HIDE! DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT!!!"

ok, maybe i am just slightly paranoid, but i am telling you, i could not find ANYONE in a blue jacket to help me. but i did not give up! oh no i did not! although, i was starting to consider buying a cheap cleaner and dumping it out, just so i could have the spray bottle...

i finally found a guy stocking shelves. before he could scuttle away from me into the next row, i said, "EXCUSE ME!" (i was thinking, "don't even TRY to get away from me. i will run you over with my cart and not experience one second of remorse. i need help! and you are wearing a blue wal-mart jacket and a walkie-talkie. you are REQUIRED to help me!!") he looked at me like i was going to accost him (maybe he could read minds...) but he didn't move. so i continued. "can you please tell me where i might find empty spray bottles?" i said this very nicely, and smiled. he quickly said, "i think they are with the paper goods and cleaning supplies. or you might find a small one in health and beauty." and then he bolted. he was quick.

ok, well i had already looked in paper goods and cleaning supplies--twice--but maybe i had missed it. so back i went. i looked carefully at every product on the shelves, and found exactly zero empty spray bottles. by now, i decided even a tiny, travel sized spray bottle would be better than none, so i took off toward health and beauty. and found nothing.

perhaps i should not have said "might find..."

i had now been wandering around wal-mart for an hour. i was tired. i was HUNGRY. and i had just discovered that when they turned the wal-mart into a super store and added all those groceries aisles, they took out the mcdonald's.

i was not enjoying my morning...

if i was going to get out of this without someone getting hurt, then i was going to need help. serious help. i don't like to ask for help when i am looking for something in a store though, because my friend becky used to be a secret shopper for a chain of grocery stores. i went with her once, and the thing i remember from that trip was that when she asked an employee where something was, they were not just supposed to tell her how to find it--they were supposed to take her there. i remember that every time i have to ask for help. and i hate it, because they always take me from point a to point b in the quickest way possible. what if something catches my eye, and i want to stop and check it out? what if i see someone i know? (ok, i never see someone i know. but it could happen...) what if i change my mind, and they have wasted a trip clear across the store, and then they stand there and look at me like 'really? do you think i have the time to take you on a tour of the store today? i have work to do, you know. serious work. and now you have just wasted five minutes of my valuable time. don't even look at me! i am going on my break!!' but today all those concerns went out the window. i needed a spray bottle, and i needed it now. but the "bait" was no longer enticing me to navigate this stupid superstore maze by myself. i was starting to feel like the rat that says, "the heck with it," and starts crawling over the walls. so i grabbed the first employee i found, and asked if she could help me find an empty spray bottle. and she did.

she took me right to them. they were with the ironing boards. THE IRONING BOARDS!!! i would think a plastic bottle of any kind would be the last thing you would want near a hot iron, but since they haven't asked me to organize the wal-mart superstores yet, i guess that is where they are. i thanked the kind lady in the blue jacket profusely and headed toward the cash registers with my list complete.

i did not pass GO. i did not collect $200. i did not stop at mcdonald's.

i did, however, decide that in the future perhaps i should avoid wal-mart super stores at all costs.

home owners: day 4

so today . . . we discovered that we have sprinklers in the back yard.

our back yard is kind of a mess. among other issues, it has no grass. as someone who grew up in the pacific northwest, this is strange to me. i just think a yard should have grass--otherwise, it is just landscaping...

shortly after we were married, we visited rollie's parents in tucson, arizona. i'd never been to tucson before. i didn't really know what to expect. thankfully it was spring, not summer, and the desert was in bloom! his mom and dad did an awesome job of choosing the most interesting things for us to see and do. i still remember that as one of our best vacations! but when we got there, i immediately noticed that lots of homes did not have grass in their front yards. they were landscaped, but with a totally different kind of vegetation than i was used to. as the week wore on, i came to appreciate the beauty of rocks and succulents and cactus plants... as long as it wasn't in MY yard...

when we started looking for a house a few months ago, one of the things that was important to us was the backyard. rollie's job has more than it's share of stress, and we knew that he was going to need a place to escape and regain his equilibrium. we even passed up a beautifully remodeled house on a quiet cul-de-sac because it backed up to a school field, and we knew our pups would never stop barking and the neighbors would hate us because our dogs would never stop barking and how restful would THAT be?!?!?!

so we needed grass. or a pool...

no, we need grass. we have dogs and dogs need grass for, well, you know what for. at least i think dogs need grass. but maybe they don't. one of the houses we looked at had a pool in the backyard. i kind of wanted a pool. i don't know why--i can't swim, and i get somewhat panicky if i am dropped into water where my feet can't touch the bottom, and this pool was really deep. (ok, let's be honest here. if my feet can't touch the bottom, i will die. i can't swim. i've taken swimming lessons, but every swimming teacher i've ever had has been baffled by my inability to successfully propel my body forward through the water. i kick. i pull my skinny little arms through the water. i hold my breath. and i go nowhere. i use a kick board, and i go backwards! i. can't. swim. and yet, i kind of wanted a pool...) what we found was that the houses we could afford that had pools usually didn't have any grass--the back yard would pretty much be filled with water and concrete. but i noticed that there were two dogs living in this one house we looked at that had a pool. so i scoped out every nook and cranny in the backyard looking for the dogs' bathroom. i found nothing. finally i asked, "where do your dogs go to the bathroom?" i thought that if buying this house was a possibility, i needed to know! "oh," the owner said, "they just go on the concrete in the back yard, and then we hose it off!"

ok, we would not be buying THAT house...

besides, by the time we got to the garage, i was pretty sure the concrete in the back yard was not the only place those two dogs relieved themselves.

maybe our dogs are just spoiled. they have always had grass, and a doggie door to give them direct access to the back yard. so even though our new house doesn't actually have grass yet, at least there is a decent sized patch of dirt where grass could be (and will be) installed.

although our yard has no grass, it does have sprinklers--some were buried, but they were there. so rollie decided to test them. he turned the water on, and half of the sprinklers shot water out into the "yard." success! he turned those off and turned the others on, and suddenly our yard was inhabited by "old faithful!" water was shooting up into the air and flooding a section of the yard. clearly, we were missing a sprinkler head... but at least we now knew where the sprinklers were supposed to be!

i think this is a good sign. it means we won't have to dig trenches and lay pvc pipe to get water--we will just have to buy a few sprinkler heads and a timer. so i consider myself lucky!

because i can live without a pool, but i NEED some soft green grass. and so do my pups.

home owners: day 2

so today . . . my new house is a mess.

i knew that knocking down the popcorn ceiling was going to be messy--that is largely why we decided to do it now while the house was empty. but jose' (our painter,) and his helper have been working for most of two days shrouding everything in plastic.they've used miles of tape!! they started by covering all the floors with yards and yards of paper in preparation for painting, but when i said we had decided to have them do the ceilings as well, that's when, somewhere on the planet, plastic sheeting production kicked into overdrive...

while they made my house look like a construction site, i spent the day cleaning in the kitchen. and waiting for the guy from the gas company to turn on the gas...

i've never really paid attention to the utilities before. i flip a switch and i have power. i turn on a faucet and water comes out. i know we pay for the power and water that we use, but i've never paid any attention to all the equipment it takes to get that power and water to me. but when a house changes hands, you don't just automatically get power and water. oh no. you have to jump through hoops and wait around all day and hope that you don't need power or water until the utility guys get there to turn it on.

when the electric company came, she just read the meter and left. they hadn't actually turned the power off, so that one was easy. when the water guy came, well, i don't know exactly what he did, because that was yesterday and i had my hands kind of full with the locksmith, shutter guy, and carpet guy. i just know that i didn't have water, and then i did.

but the gas company was another story. i guess it's because gas can kill you. the gas company guy was not fooling around! he checked out all the places where we needed gas (and there seem to be a lot of them,) and then he said, "come with me. i need to show you some things..." uh oh. this can't be good. he didn't say it in a "this is your lucky day" kind of voice. he was using the "voice of doom."

did i mention that this guy was HUGE!! he was tall. he was hefty. he looked samoan. he had facial hair. and he looked serious!! i was pretty sure he was going to tell me that our house was just about to blow up if we didn't pour major money into the gas lines...

he proceeded to tell me what he was going to turn on and what he was not going to turn on. i didn't know there were options, but apparently there were. the result was, i would have hot water, but no heat until a fixed hose was replaced with a flexible one, and i couldn't use the fireplace until the damper was removed. this is ok with me. it is june. it will be a little while before i need either the fireplace or the heater...

and he didn't even want to talk about the spa equipment...

remember the spa? the 11 x 7 foot in-ground spa that is now buried under the deck?? suspiciously??? yes, well, all that equipment runs on gas, but since the spa is filled with dirt instead of water, he decided to pretend that it wasn't there at all.

ok, we were making progress!

and then the carpet guy arrived. a new carpet guy, thank goodness. one who did not know my previous history with keys and locks and locksmiths. we went upstairs to measure the bedrooms for carpeting. i waited, and he measured. i waited, and he wrote down numbers. i waited, and he went over to the corner of the master bedroom and pulled up the carpeting. i waited, and he dropped it back into place and moved on to the next room...

when my mom found out that our house was built in 1967, she told me to look under the carpets before i had them replaced. she said that when they built their house, they were given the choice of hardwood floors or wall-to-wall carpeting. they chose the carpet, as did a lot of people. now she wishes she had chosen the wood, but you know, it was 1967... who knew that 45 years later she would have to pay big bucks to get wood flooring. in 1967, wall-to-wall carpeting probably seemed luxurious. and she had two kids with bare feet who played on the floor...

and so i had planned to look under the carpets, but i'd been kind of busy and had just forgotten about it. so when the carpet guy left, i went back upstairs, held my breath, and pulled back the carpet. and guess what? it was my lucky day after all!!

it was wood. there was wood under that awful carpeting! and the part i saw was in really good shape! of course, it was a corner. a corner wouldn't get a lot of wear and tear. so i pulled back some more. it still looked good. i pulled it back about a third of the way into the room. it was dirty, but when i wiped a few squares with a damp cloth, it looked really good! it was smooth and unmarred and shiny. it didn't look like it had ever even been walked on! i couldn't believe it! i immediately texted rollie and my mom and a couple of friends and posted a picture to facebook. i was so excited! not only had i found a wood floor, but it was a wood floor in excellent condition! i was not going to have to sand and refinish it before we could use it. i was not going to have to pay for new carpeting--and let me tell you, in a 500 square foot room, that was a big deal!! i was just going to have to vacuum it and wipe it down and it was going to be beautiful.

and then i thought, what about the walk-in closet? i grabbed some pliers and headed into the closet. and guess what?? yep, more wood flooring in the closet. i was feeling lucky. i was feeling like i had won the lottery!

and then i thought, i wonder if the other two bedrooms have wood... so my pliers and i raced to the small bedroom. i held my breath, lifted up the yukky carpeting, and saw... blonde faux wood vinyl tiles. UGLY blonde faux wood vinyl tiles. i went a little more slowly to the third bedroom, lifted up a carpet edge and found more... ugly blonde faux wood vinyl tiles... which were probably glued firmly down over lovely wood parquet floors.

now i felt like the i.r.s. was after my lottery winnings...

but you know what? even if the i.r.s. takes half of your lottery winnings, you are still left with more than you started with! so i went back into my bedroom and sat down to admire my free bonus wood parquet floor. the more i looked at it, the more i loved it! and i felt lucky again...

...because while you can't win them all, sometimes, you win one :-)