Making God Laugh

There I go again.

In the last six months or so I’ve made a lot of plans.  I decided to go back to school, I decided to sell my house,  I decided not to go back to school (yet) and now I think I’ve decided not to sell my house.  BUT I may have decided to go back to school after all.

For those interested here’s the progression.  I have all these little boys whom I ‘m going to have to feed as teenagers so I decided to go back to school so I could afford to do that but when I actually looked at the scheduling it became clear that there was no time that I could actually attend class (something that’s encouraged in those going to school) until the irish twins were both in preschool at least. Then we had an incident with some of the neighbor kids so we thought that we should try to get out of the hood, maybe stop exposing our kids to some of the influences that are part and parcel of where we live (it occurs to me now that I promised you more “the things that happen in my neighborhood” stories, maybe later).  So this week I’ve been talking to a Realtor and it turns out that the chances of selling our house without taking a loss are bad, really bad, and, honestly, I’ve just gotten our finances to a place that doesn’t give me ulcers. We can’t afford to take a loss.  So moving’s out.  The new plan there is to continue with the FHE and the scriptures and prayers (something that we’re actually really  really good about solely because it’s the only real protection from the neighborhood and the world that I can give them) and maybe step it up a little.  I’d also like to get them interested in something.  Some kind of sport, dance, gymnastics, horseback riding, something.  Something that will give them something to do aside from hanging out with the neighbor kids.

Also, lately I’ve applied for a different job.  Actually, it’s kind of the same job but the hours would be really different, freeing up most of my days, so maybe the school thing could work out after all.  I don’t know about the job, my boss was maybe going to decide today so I may know soon.  (Not that not knowing is going to stop my making plans, I’m still me.)

Overall, I’m actually pretty happy with the way things have worked out so far, I don’t love my neighborhood but I do love my house.  I love my new kitchen, and I think the rest of the house has so dang much potential that I was really sad at the thought of leaving and now I don’t have to think about it.  I would love some ideas from you all about how to make our living here a positive thing for my kids, seriously, how do I keep them away from the things that they will inevitably be introduced to living here (yes, I know that kids can find that stuff anywhere, but we’ve already had to put certain houses in the neighborhood off limits because the “adults” in the house were smoking pot in the house with their kids, and my kids there).  Maybe this is my chance to be a good influence to the neighborhood.  But how?

As to the going back to school, Im not going to put my eggs in that basket until I hear about the job and then we’ll see from there, if I don’t do school maybe I’ll start writing again.  Who knows, anything could happen, and no doubt, lots of things will.  And lots of plans will be made, and most, if not all, will be discarded.  But what the heck, if I can’t be good at least I can be entertaining!

Ta-Da!

It started out like this:And like this (obviously this is a different angle):

And then it looked like this:And then this: Then this:

Then this: Then this:

Then this: This:

This: This:

And now this: Yay!!!!

The exterior is not done.  Before: (notice the darness of the existing wood siding)

Currently: (notice the not darkness of the new wood siding.)

And there is more work that needs to be done inside too:

But as of right now, I’m done.

And I’m calling it a win.

I’m Just … GRUMPY

I don’t feel like blogging.

I’ve still been posting about as often as I usually do.  And if you have a blog, I’ve still been reading, I just can’t bring myself to comment.  Because I don’t feel like it.  I don’t feel like talking and I don’t feel like making small talk and, sadly, I don’t feel like telling you that you’re funny (although you are) or that you’re smart (you’re that too) or that you’re so right (but I mean, obviously) I’m just too grumpy to do it.

Does that make me a bad person?

And then there’s the fact that my computer,Rufus, is freaking out and randomly clicking for me so if I leave the mouse somewhere other than at the end of the line I end up with sentences that look like this: not that th o read, see?  ere’s anything wrong with that but it does make them kind of hard t (of course when I let it go to write that sentence stupid Rufus behaved so it almost didn’t jump at all (actually it did randomly erase the whole paragraph but I couldn’t just leave it like that because it doesn’t make a lot of sense without the beginning of the paragraph) but then it did. Phew!)

And tonight I was going to put together the final kitchen post but my stupid camera is going through batteries like John Mayer goes through starlets so when I pulled it out it just turned itself off.  So I couldn’t take the necessary pictures so now you don’t get that post.  Yet.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”

Maybe it’s the stupid cold, I’m tired of the cold.  Or maybe it’s the fact that the kids are off track, stupid year round school.  Or maybe it’s the never ending list of crap that needs to be done around the house (Kitchen’s done, yeah yeah yeah, but I still have to replace the window and build the desk and then there’s the living room…) Or maybe it’s just that I’m not that nice of a person after all.

Who knows?

I had a dream about an old boyfriend the other night.  It was super vivid and it really made me want to talk to him.  But he isn’t returning my emails so I guess that won’t happen.  Stupid ex-boyfriend.

I did the taxes a couple weeks ago.  When you have four kids and you make fifty cents an hour, doing the taxes is like winning the lottery (a small lottery but still).   That should make me happy.  Meh.

Don’t mind me, I’m fine, talk amongst yourselves.  I’ll be back with a more cheerful post or a meme or a report on the kitchen tomorrow.

Stripping

Apparently I’m stripping my kitchen table.

This was not what I had intended to do today.

Or at all.

See, I got this kitchen table from my sister and it was cute but not super cute (sorry, Mel) and of course everything that’s going to be in my new super cute kitchen needs to be super cute so obviously something was going to need to be done.  I looked at it and decided that it needed a little more sanding to really distress the sort of distressed look that it had going on.  (I’m going with a distressed look because let’s face it, any furniture in my house is going to be distressed anyway because- well, it’s in my house.)

So I got out my sander to do a little additional distressing but I realized before to long that in addition to the paint and the spots of previously sanded off paint (did I mention that the table was already minimally distressed?) the table had been treated with a clear coat of sealer.

Now I know that that is standard operating procedure when going for a distressed look but I can not for the life of me figure out why.  Why do you paint something and then sand it so that it looks like it’s been used for years and then put a protective finish on it?  Why not just use it and then over time your worn in look might look even better because now it’s actually worn in?

Back to my point.  Do you know what happens when you sand polyurethane?  It gets cloudy and makes your piece of furniture, say a table top for example, look dusty.  Not exactly the look I was going for.  So I thought I’d try a little paint thinner, just to take the clear layer off.

It made no difference.

So I spread a little stripper on there, just for a minute, just to take the top layer off.

Do I need to mention that it didn’t work?  Let’s not belabor the point ok?

Funny You Should Mention That

Both my darling sister Catherine and my good Friend Lisa mentioned that when they saw the title of the last post they thought it was going to be about the kitchen.

That just makes me chuckle.  Have you learned nothing here girls?  I’m NEVER going to be done with the kitchen.  In fact I happened to take some pictures of the kitchen right before I wrote that last post.  I kid you not, this is exactly what my kitchen looked like as I turned my back on it to write that happy little post.

La la la la la la la  la.  That’s just me singing  a happy tune.  And how could you not, living like this?

And just for good measure, here’s the sink full of dishes that I didn’t do that morning because I hung some sheetrock (yes, more sheetrock) and then went Christmas shopping instead.

Merry Christmas!

I Hated It Before But Now

I REALLY hate tile.

That is all.

There Is Sunshine In My Soul Today

This morning, in the course of feeding the kids and getting them ready for school and doing all the usual stuff I put a few things away.  Where they go.  Forever.  That doesn’t make a lot on sense until I point out that in the course of this massive construction project that we’re doing (which seems to be growing with every post) we’ve been moving things around from one place to another but we haven’t actually been able to put anything where it GOES because the cupboard that it goes in is in the living room and not in the kitchen where it goes because the sheet rock is leaning against the wall where the cupboard goes.  And the diaper bag has just been sitting on the floor by the door because the cabinet hasn’t been built yet because there are cupboards where the cabinet is going to be but we can’t move the cupboards because the sheet rock is … And around and around we go. But we got the sheet rock up so we moved the cupboards to their spot and we even shimmed them and nailed them down and so this morning I put the coloring books that I found laying (lying?) around into the cupboard.  Where they’ll live.  Forever!!  (And I’m starting to think that it will be forever because after all the work I’ve put into this dang house I’m never leaving, they’ll have to pry my cold dead body off the kitchen floor in about 100 years.)  It was good for my soul.

I also learned a few things today.

1. A two year old and a one year old are not really what one would call help when trying to pry up tile.

2. I love my shop-vac more than I love some people that I know.

3. The Baby only has to fall in the hole in the floor that used to be a vent once before I’ll put the cover back on it (this is misleading because it’s not like I put the cover right back on, he just didn’t fall in again.)  So really this should read:  The Baby only has to fall in the hole in the floor where there used to be a vent once before he learns to avoid it.

4. No matter how careful you are with the insulation you will still itch when you’re done.

Ok Fine, I’ll Write a Thanksgiving Post. Happy?

I’m not going to list all the things for which I am thankful, they are far too numerous.  Actually, if I’m completely honest, (which I try not to be very often) the list of things for which I should be thankful is far longer than the list of things for which I am actually thankful (I’m working on it).  Instead I’m going to tell you about the thing, person really, that I am most thankful for right now.

If you’ve spent much time here at the Wonderland you know about my all consuming huge gigantic project we’ve been working on for the last 4 or 5 months.  We’ve been putting an addition on our kitchen.  (And when I say we’ve been putting an addition on our kitchen I mean we’ve been putting an addition on our kitchen.)  This has been a huge project involving things like hanging floor joists and framing and insulating and knocking out existing walls and wiring and hanging sheetrock and…

So anyway, here we are, we’ve done all this work and we’re more or less (more really) using our new kitchen but we’re still walking around on plywood sub-floor and we only just have the sheetrock hung but we’re looking at the black screw heads every 16 inches or so and well, we’ve run out of money.

Enter aunt Kay.

My mother’s sister sells home decoration type stuff. (Wow, that’s really badly phrased but I’m not sure what her title actually is.)  She’s not a decorator per se but she’s the gal you call when you want to replace your flooring or your counter tops or your window treatments or your closets or your whatever.

So I knew we were mostly out of money but my children are spilling their juice on the sub-floor and we’ve got to get it covered so I called aunt Kay.  And she came over and looked and she had some great ideas but she couldn’t give me a price right off the top of her head so she’d have to call me.  In the mean time I checked the checking account and I found out just how out of money we are.  It isn’t pretty folks.  So when aunt Kay calls and gives me a number I have to tell her that we can’t do it.

“Well, sure you can, we’ll just put it in and you can pay me whenever.”

“No, I don’t want you to have to pay for my floor.”

“It’s fine,” she says.

“No, I don’t think so.”

We went back and forth like this for a while but eventually she mentioned that she has a few other options that she’s looking at and she’ll get back to me.

Well, this could be a very long story but I don’t want to bore you so I’ll cut to the chase.  She’s found us a much less expensive option that we really quite like and she’s insisting on putting it in for us for Christmas.  (We’re still going to pay her back, eventually, for the floor but the install is a gift.)  And while she’s at it she’s sending her handyman over to mud and tape my walls, the prospect of which scared me far more than hanging the floor, because he owes her “so really it’s free” (her calculation not mine).  Oh and he’s going to wire the other interior wall that we want to build.  (Apparently he owes her a lot of money.)

Here’s the thing, I’m not good at accepting help (remember how I hung the rim joists myself?) and I’m remarkably bad at asking for help.  But I have been faced with an amazing family member (who reminds me of my mother) who says things like “I have been very blessed and I need you to let me help you out so that the Lord will continue to bless me.”  I mean really, how do you fight that?!

But honestly I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the woman who’s providing me with, almost literally, a roof over my and my children’s heads.  And for the opportunity to learn how to receive.

I’m thankful for my aunt Kay.

__________________________________________

PS If I can swing it I’m going to have some kind of button on my sidebar linking to her website so that all of you on the Wasatch front can have aunt Kay come out to your house too.  (I can’t promise you the family discount though.)

PPS In reading through this I’m afraid that this comes off as a really uncomplimentary backhanded compliment.  I really don’t mean it that way.  The woman is wonderful, and amazing, and did you read that quote about the Lord blessing her?  I did not make that up.  She saw a niece who needed her help and she’s insisting on giving it and I could not be more grateful.

Boys Will Be Boys

And thank heaven for that.

Now you see it

Now you don't

I moved my pantry today.

There was a dead mouse under there.

Even thinking about it gives me the heebie jeebies.  As previously discussed, I hate mice.  But if there’s anything I hate more than live mice it’s dead mice.

Just seeing it freaked me right out.  As in right out of the kitchen.  And I couldn’t go back in.  And Sean wasn’t home and he wasn’t going to be home for about three hours.

I could not go back in the kitchen with that thing in there.

So I asked the Pea if he’d take care of it.

“Sure,” he shrugged, no big deal.  He grabbed the dust pan and cleaned that right up.

My Hero!

(As an aside, I don’t know if it was my mouse from the other day or not.  I never did do anything about it, I was going to but I didn’t get around to it.  I’ve had mice before and I always just put down poison (I know, I shouldn’t do that with little kids in the house but I can’t help but think that if my kids are eating stuff from behind the stove and under the sink, I have bigger problems) and after a day or two I stop seeing mice.  (And I’ve never smelled anything.)  So I have no idea if this was a mouse from an earlier infestation but basically, I’m just really glad I have a son who could get rid of it.)

Don’t Look Now

I was sitting at the kitchen table in my partially finished addition the other day blogging and wasting time working on the computer when I say some movement out of the corner of my eye.  Now, I regularly see movement out of the corner of my eyes when I’m ignoring my children, blogging working on the computer, but this was smaller movement than I was used to.  So instead of ignoring it I turned my head and saw …

A MOUSE!!!

I can not tell you how much I hate rodents.  I’ve discussed my indifference towards spiders here before, and the same goes for pretty much all bugs but mice.  Ughhhhh!! I’ve got creepy crawlies just thinking about them.

In fact I hate them so much I’m finding myself contemplating getting a cat.

You probably don’t know me in real life and even if you do you probably don’t know about my aversion to pets.  It’s not something I mention often, because whenever I do I find myself castigated as some kind of cold heartless uncaring wretch.  Well, yeah.  But it’s rude to say it out loud.

Anyway, let me just put my pet hating in these terms.  I don’t like pets.  I hate pets.  I hate pets in a I really kind of like the idea of punting your yappy little dog kind of way.  Get it?  So does that tell you something about how I feel about mice.  I thought about getting a cat because I hate mice that much.  But then I thought about the prospect of cat hair and having to change a litter box everyday (EVERYDAY?! I don’t clean my toilet everyday, what make the dang cat so special?) and well, having a cat and I rethought it.

Oh and on the topics of pets someone’s little ratdog (A miniature doberman I believe) first scared the crap out of me while I was trying to unlock my door getting home from a night shift.  It was standing right by me but under my bag so I couldn’t see it but then it sort of whined and sniffed or something and honestly, for a minute I was sure it was just an enormous rat.  And then when I finally did get the door open it squeezed right past me into my house.  Which it could do because it’s the size and shape(ish) of a large rat.  So the Princess who happened to be in the kitchen, grabbed it before it could make it to the stairs that it was headed for, and took it outside and came back in and it squeezed past her into the house, because I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it but it was the size and shape(ish) of a large rat.  So this time the Pea grabbed it and took it outside and headed for the door to come back in but the ratdog beat him to to the door and we were honestly there, discussing through the screen how to outsmart the ratdog so that my son could come back into the house when the Pea said he knew who owned it and he could just take it home.  It was 7:45 on a Saturday morning and Inormally would not let my children go to anyone’s house that early on a weekend, or even on a weekday, but if you don’t keep your ratdog in your house buddy, you deserve it.

So what about the mouse?  Well, the first line of defense is the sheetrock that is now lining all pertinent walls and I’m honestly just hoping that we’ve trapped the sucker in there and he’ll starve to death.  If I see any evidence that that hasn’t worked I skip right over any so called humane “no kill” traps and go with poison.  Why not?  It’s not like I’m worried about my other pets.

——

PS Yes, I’m aware that I’m going to get some serious PETA hate mail for this post. Hehehe.

PPS No, I don’t have any other pets.  Well, except for the rabbit but he (she?) does not come in the house.  EVER!