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Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Satisfying things du jour

ooh goody! a list!

• I finally, finally opened and sorted the box of Miscellaneous Kitchen Things that had been occupying too much space in a high cupboard in my pantry since we moved into this house two years ago. Lo and behold: shelf paper! Drawer liner! Candlesticks! Cookbooks! The last of which reminded me that oh yeah, I'd been wanting to switch the cookbooks and the portable coffee mugs* places in my kitchen cupboards, so I did, and then I decided that I really should sort through my recipe binder and tidy it up, and two hours later here I am, still in my pajamas (they're workout clothes, excuse me, and I just haven't worked out yet today, see), but with a tidy cookbook cupboard and a serious craving for every kind of food I've ever made during the entire course of my sixteen-year marriage**.

*One (1) person in our house drinks coffee and yet we have enough travel mugs to outfit an LA freeway at rush hour, I think. Give or take a few, maybe. It has always been this way. I have given up trying to cut down on the quantity, as I am always met with Very Firm Resistance from certain quarters.

**holy dang, SIXTEEN YEARS (in two weeks). That's, like, the amount of time people's parents have been married. How does this happen?

• This organizational spree was brought on by the fact that last night I canned seven quarts of beef stock, made from the bones and scraps of chuck roasts ($1.27/lb on sale!) used to make and can fourteen quarts of beef stew on Monday, and I am quickly running out of space in my canned-goods cupboard. Which (running out of space in the canned-goods cupboard) is one of my minor goals in life. I would love to have to add on to my house to make room for things that I have put up in lovely secondhand Mason jars. You know which ones are my favorites? The ones that have old labels clinging to them. I bought some jars at a rummage sale once, and when I brought them home I found a label that said "Tomatoes 1966", in that immaculate careful handwriting that girls learned eighty years ago, still barely adhering to the outside of one jar. For some reason, that almost made me cry. I tried to keep it, but it crumbled into pieces when I touched it. (1966 was not so into acid-free adhesive, I'm guessing.)

• After I work with the kids on their school projects just a little more, and after I spend an hour thrashing around on the elliptical machine, and after I shower and change out of my workout clothes, I am going to sit down with a novel and read it. Because I have to, see.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

I deleted this post because it was very whiny.

I decided to make a Mary Sunshine/Pollyanna type post instead. So without further ado, in no particular order, here are some happy, non-whiny things about my life (ooh goody! a list!):

• The giant fire is pretty much out.

• I have so much produce coming in from my garden right now, and so many berries sitting in my fridge that the kids and I picked FOR FREE, that I just now was stupid enough to spend considerable time whining about how I was going to deal with it all. Yeah, that's right, I have too much free healthy yummy food. I swear, what kind of life is this.

• Everyone in my house is healthy.

• We have enough money to live normally if we don't do anything stupid.

• Three people asked me for recipes for things I brought to a potluck today. As far as ego-stroking goes, this is the midlife-mom version of having a modeling agent give you his card. If you want to score points with a woman who cooks, start by asking her for a recipe.

• Our new car is (of course) under warranty, so the fact that I have to drop it off tomorrow to get a new transmission installed (!!!) is a minor inconvenience and not an insurmountable expense. We even have coverage for a rental while they work on it. Plus I get to eat at PANDA! for lunch, that is if I walk two miles first, skip breakfast, and eat only vegetables for dinner to help make up for the onslaught of calories and sodium.

• Smokey, our favorite cat (they're not children; we're allowed to have favorites), is not lost. (He hadn't come home by his usual bedtime so I drove down the driveway looking to see if maybe he hadn't come home from an earlier excursion -- we went to the market for ice cream and as usual he stopped at the end of the driveway rather than going out on the road with us -- and there he was. I'm embarrassed at how squee-fully relieved I was.)

• Did you see that? We walked to the market to get ice cream. AWESOME.

• I took a nap today. WITH MY SPOUSE. I heart Sunday afternoons.

See? Much better.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

pinching them hard

I have been sort of plotting a post about the way costs are rising and how that's impacting our lives, and I sort of touched on it in my last post and figured that was all I would do, but then the lovely (and I do mean lovely) and talented (and I also do mean talented) Beck posted about it and pretty much dared everyone else to do it too, so now I have to, right? Of course right.

So. We already knew we were going to have to tighten things up this year because of the new mortgage, and when gas prices didn't go down but instead kept going up, that became a problem too. We can't afford more than $350 per month for gas without going into a Deficit Spending Situation, and since we aren't the federal government we prefer not to do that, so that means that as gas gets more expensive, we have to drive less. A LOT LESS. I haven't been to the valley in so long I've forgotten what it smells like down there. (If you knew what the valley smelled like, you'd know that this means that every stupid and ugly *$&#*$-$4/gallon dark cloud has a silverish lining. They farm, we eat, I know, and I'm not really complaining, but in valley towns you find yourself checking your shoes for dog poop every time you get out of the car.)

O-K, moving on. So as it turned out, along with the mortgage thing and the gas price thing came the food price thing. The $6 for 18 eggs that cost $2 last month thing. The $4/gallon milk thing. The SEVEN FREAKING DOLLARS FOR 48 OUNCES OF VEGETABLE OIL THING. (bye-bye, once-a-month deep-fried buffalo chicken strips night.) So, with costs for very necessary things at such levels, we had three options: We could accept a few credit card offers and spend a year running them to their limits on groceries, or we could let the bank take our house back and go live with family, or we could economize. Guess which one we chose? Now, we already thought we were economizing, but people, we did not know what economizing WAS.

You might not know this (HAW! I so funny! That's a joke!), but I've always been kind of an imaginative person. The drama queen in me just thrives on a challenge like this. I am no longer Rachel, boring rural mom. I am Rachel, victim of the new depression who WILL NOT GO QUIETLY. So. I don't remember exactly where I first heard the phrase -- probably in a book -- but the economic rallying cry from WWII has become our household mantra:

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

I know, oh so original, right? I swear I am going to stitch it onto a sampler. Maybe even one for every room of the house. Just saying it makes me feel serene and wise and determined and maybe, I dunno, Scottish or something. (There is not actually a single drop of Scottish blood in my veins.) Thriftiness becomes less of a burden and more of a challenge, and when we do it successfully we feel immense satisfaction. Some of the ways we implement our new family motto (so far I haven't made anyone recite it with three fingers in the air or anything, but give me time):

If there are leftovers in the fridge, nobody eats anything but leftovers for lunch, or sometimes, if there are enough leftovers, dinner, until the leftovers are used up. I used to throw away so. many. leftovers. Every time I cleaned out the fridge (which, OK, was not as often as it ought to have been), whoosh, dozens of dollars worth of food (in 2006 food dollars) would go in the compost. Everything from the pizza that everybody loved but then forgot about to the jar of applesauce that sat in the back almost full to the oatmeal that somebody (and I don't cook oatmeal) made too much of -- it was frustrating even before Money Crunch 2008, but it's unconscionable now. People, I ate leftover Cream of Wheat for breakfast on Wednesday. Such is my newfound commitment to thriftiness. And this new policy really has saved us money. It helps if I keep a mental inventory of what we have open and perishable right now -- bread is a biggie. I'm so bad about making sure bread gets used before it goes bad. It just sits there in the breadbox turning blue, all quiet and resigned and wasteful-like, while we gallivant around eating macaroni and cheese or Spanish rice.

Also, I restrict my allowed grocery shopping trip frequency. I mean *really* strictly. Not just because of the cost of gas to get to town, but because, of course, every time I go into the store I risk coming out having spent more than I intended to (although in the New Economy I'm better about that, no doubt about it). The simple fact of denying myself the opportunity to go to the store to get stuff for supper has made me come up with some really tasty meals from things we have on hand. I used to shop like a European when we lived in town -- daily trips to the market, musing over what I'd make for supper that night. Since we moved out of town, our grocery bill has been cut by at least 30%. Next challenge: coupons. I've never been much of a coupon clipper but I am by-golly going to start. I pity the fool who gets into the grocery line behind me once I have it all figured out.

In a related vein, we have all had to learn to like (or at least tolerate) foods we might not otherwise have chosen to eat, because they're nutritious and they were cheap. (I'm honestly glad that I've taken this nutrition class lately, because if I hadn't I might have been inclined to neglect nutrition as I've been scrimping for groceries; not being able to allow myself to do that has made me find out that it really isn't THAT much more expensive to eat with at least some kind of attention paid to nutritional values of foods. In other words, we're not on an All-Ramen-All-The-Time diet.) Fortunately for us, we're all relatively free of food intolerances. T is the only one with any restrictions; he can't eat eggs, bananas, carrots, or sugar. I can only imagine how much more difficult this would be if one of us were gluten intolerant or something.

If we need to build something around the house, if it's at all possible, we use things that we already own. This sounds simple, but it's alarming how many times my knee-jerk reaction has been to take a trip to the hardware store, and yet when I've stopped myself and looked around, I've been able to make do with supplies on hand. The raised beds for the garden, made from the repurposed rickety back deck, are one example of this.

In fact, the garden is a pretty good example all around, although we did have to buy some PVC pipe to run water to it, some concrete for the fence posts, and a roll of chickenwire to use under the raised beds to keep the #$%&* gophers out.

• The fencing we got from a couple of different places. There was an old fenced enclosure -- 6-ft high 4" hogwire -- beyond my carport when we bought this house. Initially we were going to use the area for a garden, until we looked in it and found that it really wouldn't do (many big rocks and also large tree roots). Then it was going to be a goat pen, but goats are not a this-year project; the dog is more than enough in the new-animal department at this point, and before we get into goats we hope to get our chickens going. Anyway, the boards that held the fence up were rotten and falling over, especially when it snowed, which, you may recall, it did a LOT when we first moved here. So we had LT take the fence down and roll up the wire fencing, which turned out to be just right for our garden. My parents had just built a kennel for their dog, and we asked them if we could buy their leftover fence (also just the right height), and they just gave it to us, along with some metal pipe for posts (Dad collects metal pipe for use in welding projects). That, combined with an old gate from the ranch and a WHOLE lot of work on the part of T and LT, made our deer-resistant fence.
  
• Instead of buying dirt (oh how I wished we could buy dirt), we -- well, I -- have been investing the "sweat equity" required to fill the raised beds with actual dirt from the actual ground, which I think I have mentioned previously.
  
• We are using heirloom variety seeds so that hopefully we can save them for use next year.
  
• We are planting enough of the things we use a lot (tomatoes, corn, beans, winter squash) that if all goes well we -- oops, I again -- can preserve some to last us during the winter.
  
• We are about to get our heinies in gear and start really and truly composting our compost in an actual compost bin so that we can use it in the garden, instead of just piling it in a heap behind the carport, where it makes a lovely snack bar for the local wildlife while we buy fertilizer.
  

Some of the other economizing we do is pretty basic, and is essentially an extension of the kind of thing we've always done because we've never been precisely flush with funds, living in California on one income and being rather undisciplined and stuff. For example:

We use propane instead of electricity wherever we can, and we use as little of it as possible. We use wood for heat and a swamp cooler (which only works because "it's a dry heat" -- lucky us) for cooling instead of an air conditioner. Our house came with a solar water heater on the roof, which annoyed us at first (the roof leaks where it's bolted on), but since it's been warmer and we decided to go ahead and hook the thing up, we've noticed a serious difference in the number of times we hear the propane water heater switching on. I use a clothesline to dry our clothes. They can sometimes come in linty, so we have a lint brush, and the towels are scratchy but they actually work much better that way, and you can't beat the fresh feeling of line-dried bedsheets.

Food-wise, when there is an amazing sale on something we use a lot (Vons has $.99/pound bone-in beef steaks this week. When is the last time I saw beef for a dollar a pound?) we buy as much as we can reasonably afford at the time and freeze it. This is pretty much a no-brainer. We are on the lookout for an inexpensive but relatively new (=relatively energy-efficient) chest freezer to make this even more profitable. This means that there has been a shift in the way I plan meals; it is more reasonable under a system like this to build your meal plans around the food deals you find, rather than making a chart for a month's worth of meals and shopping accordingly. Now I plan maybe a week or ten days in advance, based on what I have a lot of in the freezer and pantry.

A Costco membership really is worth it. I kept track one year and the savings in chicken alone pretty much paid for the membership. Also, there's a store in Fresno that we LOVE with a whole area full of bulk bins and the stuff is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP (no membership required). Bonus: It's far cleaner and less depressing than Food 4 Less, where, just as an example, Jenn and I once saw a mouse running across an aisle. Fresno is $50 away (I don't think in terms of miles anymore but in terms of dollars worth of gas; town is $4 away in the car but $8 in the truck, etc; we may not go to Morro Bay this year, much as we love it, because it is over $150 away) but sometimes we HAVE to be in Fresno, and while we're there we always stop off at that store and stock up on stuff. Do you buy those yummy steel-cut oats in a can? Don't. Buy it in bulk; it tastes exactly the same and you can get something on the order of five pounds for the cost of a little 12-ounce can. And five pounds of steel-cut oats lasts even my hot-cereal-loving husband quite a long time. The bulk bin area at Winco is bursting with many such amazing discoveries.

Treats are now genuine bona fide treats instead of daily occurrences. Ice cream, candy, Diet Cherry Coke... all the little things that we used to think of as staples (I wonder why we all struggle with our weight?) Oh well. We appreciate them more when we do have them, right? We have had to give up buying Diet Coke, but we participate in MyCokeRewards.com, and people give us their codes, so we get the occasional pleasure of a free 12-pack.

Store brands, duh. We are lucky in that our local grocery "chain" (it's an independent chain, not sure exactly what the difference is except that nobody has ever heard of IGA, whereas everyone knows about Safeway) has a generic brand that is really quite good on most things. (But never, ever buy anything called Nutty Nuggets.) Even if it wasn't good, though, we'd still be buying it these days. You get used to minor differences.

There are a few little luxuries that we haven't made ourselves give up yet. Our domain names, which cost $15 a month plus $15 a year, seem like an obvious choice when it comes to something we can stop paying for, and I'd be willing, but T... isn't. I've discussed this before. I'd be just as happy at blogger with my $25 a year Flickr pro account. DSL has gone from luxury to near-necessity in the past few years -- so much of how we stay connected with the world and our friends and even (most importantly) my college classes depends on having a solid Internet connection. Also, my cell phone: every time I think about getting rid of it, I almost can, but not quite. It's really so very useful, although it's less so now that we are traveling so little (see above re: $4/gallon). Still, it's worth the cost to me just to know that I have it in case I ever truly need it, like say if I ever break down in that looooong no-man's land on the way home from grocery shopping in the valley when it's 110 degrees out. If things get much tighter, though, these are some things that will come under intense scrutiny.

Oh, my goodness, this got very long. I'm tempted to split it into two entries but I'm not cool enough to need to do that. Maybe I'll post a garden update tomorrow; we've been veryvery busy with it and it's actually starting to get exciting. There are actual seeds in the actual soil! Yippee!

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

dream analysis 101 followed by a wacko introspective about housework

What does it mean if I have had a week of very memorable dreams, all involving either a) world-scale disasters such as nuclear war and comet collisions, b) massive failures in various attempts at important tasks due to my blistering inadequacy at, say, walking, or c) both?

Oh yes. It means today's the first day of school.

********************************

update:

School went fine. Everyone was quite cooperative and so it took less time than I thought it might and actual learning took place. Oh, that's nice, Rachel, you might be saying. Then why is it that your hair is standing on end and your chest feels tight and you want to run far away into the hills? Ah. Well. That'd be because of room-cleaning time.

We give ourselves a bit of a problem in this area, I admit. Well, really, we (T and I) give me a bit of a problem, since I'm the one who has to deal with it on a daily basis and he is not. On the one hand, we can't just bring ourselves to be the bohemian, tie-dyed, parents-are-pals kind of parents who tell their kids, "I don't care how messy it is, just keep the door closed," for several reasons: First, we have to traverse their rooms to get to the laundry room and to the clothesline, and LT has to get through C's room to get to his. Second, how do those parents deal with it when it's time to go somewhere and the child can't find a single thing he or she needs, from socks on up? Third, well, we're just not that bohemian, I guess. We're school-at-home types too. Oh. That kind of parents. Yeah.

On the other hand, though, I refuse -- I patently refuse -- to clean their rooms, especially C's, or even to help her clean it, because it makes me absolutely bananas, even more bananas than I am at this present moment and that's pretty darn bananas to tell the truth, to do the work of cleaning with or for her only to have the room be an utter disaster area again within 48 hours. I am Not A Good Mommy when this happens.

So this leaves us requiring the kids to clean their own rooms. LT is not so bad at this nowadays. He's finally figured out that it's a job he has to do and the quicker he gets going and gets it done, the sooner it'll be behind him. C, on the other hand, will cheerily spend all day -- literally all day -- in her room, supposedly cleaning it and then weeping remorsefully every time she gets scolded and/or punished for not doing so. This makes me absolutely insane. Do you ever feel like having your head explode would be so, so nice, not because you want to die -- that would, indeed, be an unfortunate side effect -- but because the release of pressure would feel so, so good? You don't? Do you... have kids? Oh. Must be just me then. Because I feel this way every time it's time for C to clean her room.

And we've tried so many things. We've tried rewarding her for keeping it clean. We've tried racing her to get it clean (against, say, me folding all my clean laundry) and whoever wins gets a prize. We've tried keeping it lighthearted. We've tried spanking. We've tried taking away privileges (there have been times where she was on computer restriction for three or four weeks at a time, all as the result of one particularly nasty bedroom-cleaning incident). We've tried taking away cherished possessions for various lengths of time. I yell. I explain. I rave. The only things that have ever worked are:

1) T or I stand in her room and tell her what to pick up, continually reminding her to move along and not dawdle, until her room is finally clean. (see above re: wreck in 48 hours and I Am Not A Good Mommy, etc)

or

2) She has to clean it every day before she can do anything fun at all whatsoever. Even reading.

Number Two actually lasted for maybe a month last spring. The difficulty with it is that things intervene -- school, a necessary trip somewhere, whatever -- and before you know it three days' worth of mess have piled up and you're back to square one.

Complicating this whole thing is the simple fact that I am not a good example. Sometimes, in fact, I feel like a complete hypocrite, going ballistic at her for stalling and dawdling when my bedroom looks like a clothing tornado went through it and I have four baskets heaped up with clean unfolded laundry sitting in the living room. I rationalize by saying that I'm trying to teach her good habits so that she won't end up like me. Except maybe I should spend the same effort teaching myself good habits, so that I can stop ending up like me. Hmm.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

thank you all

I told you all you'd make me cry.

Today was a much better day than I've had in a while. I don't want to say that it's because I got up at 5:45 and got some stuff done (even though I didn't get to bed last night till a little after eleven), because that might, you know, obligate me or something -- but it was much better. My bathroom is clean, my dishes are done, I'm closer to caught up on laundry, my bed's made (or was until my husband got in it about ten minutes ago), and I feel a bit more worthwhile as a human being, and a lot more sane, largely because people have been so nice to me. Bless you all. I even found myself thinking journalish thoughts today as I was going about my business -- which hasn't happened in quite some time.

Remember the before/after pictures I did a few times? Remember the piano, how I didn't think it was messy until I took the picture and started cleaning it? No pictures (you're glad about this, trust me) but oh my gosh the bathroom was, um, much more dirty than I had ever noticed, when I started cleaning it this morning. Clumping cat litter, once it's been allowed to sit back in the corner behind the toilet in a fine layer, where it gets lightly moist each time someone bathes or showers -- I think they could use that to stick a space station together or something; it's amazing.

It was while I was scrubbing the bathroom that I realized that I should be the poster child for the phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" -- or at least "A little knowledge can make you look pretty darn idiotic." I was going along with my Clorox-Clean-Up-dampened rag, scraping and wiping, when I started to smell a really rank, odd smell. Now, there are several things* about which I am perhaps unnecessarily cautious (OK, freaked out); one of them is that whole chemical-weapon-gas thing that happens when you mix bleach and ammonia. I actually called poison control when I was a new mother, to find out if it was risky to wash my son's diapers in bleach, because of the ammonia in the urine. They generously waited to laugh at me until after I hung up the phone. Anyway. I confess than when I smelled that rank, odd smell, the first thing to pop into my head was that I was wiping up cat litter, possibly infused with a tiny quantity of ammonia because it says right on the box that it absorbs the ammonia in the cat urine, with a bleachy rag. I did not freak out. Much. I threw away the rag and took the trash right out -- at which time I noticed that the smell was definitely coming from outdoors. Probably somebody burning a milk carton in his woodstove. It's a good thing nobody knew how stupid I was about that. Until now.

*another thing on this list: electricity. For example: while I am perfectly capable of jumping the battery in someone's car, and have done it several times, every time I do it, I read the instructions four or five times and walk around like a maniac with my arms outstretched to avoid the slightest possibility of the electrodes touching each other sometimes even when they're not plugged in to either battery. When I'm done I get this rush of appreciation for life, as if I've just had a near-death experience. Shall we talk about how I feel when my husband (an electronics/telecommunication technician who could wire just about anything blindfolded) changes a light switch without turning off the main breaker to the house? No, let's not.

Didn't want to close without saying thank you again. Even though it ruins my humorous exit. I truly didn't expect that I would be so affected by you ladies' comments; thank you for taking the time to make them. Hugs all around. :)

P.S. Denise, I have an idea about a thin slice of kiwi, backlit, but I haven't worked out details yet or actually tried it. Thanks for the nudge. :)

Thursday, October 06, 2005

life is normal again

....too normal. Meaning, the house is messy again. (however, the piano, desk, and shelves remain organized and tidy. At least there's that.) It is SO DEPRESSING, sometimes literally, how quickly and effortlessly it can get this way. You'd think at least we'd have to have some kind of soulless revel in order to wind up with stuff all over the floor. No, apparently it just requires laziness, which is one thing we have in abundance.

I am even behind on laundry again. Sob. I'm going to fix that today, though.

And hey, I'm reading again (the Mitford series, because she's coming out with a new one this fall too). So all is not lost, right?

So, while I go start a load of laundry and get to folding (sigh) and while the kids clean up their innumerable scraps and sheets of paper from the floor, check this out. It's really interesting, and almost creepy.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

I AM DONE PAINTING

I. Am. Done.

That nasty awful bedroom is painted. And you know what? Now it looks like a 1963 hospital room, with that kind of sea-green color on the ceiling. And you know what else? I don't care. I won't live here forever, it's better than the dark wood, and above all, if I cared, I would have to repaint it which I am not going to do. Nuh-uh.

Besides, it will look better when we nail the trim back up tomorrow. And tomorrow night I am sleeping IN MY OWN BED darnit. With my husband. And maybe Mary will curl up by my feet like she usually does; that sounds nice.

After a lot of discussion with T and the kids, and after scouring the neighborhood, knocking on doors, handing out flyers, putting up posters, etc., we've decided to go to the SPCA tomorrow and adopt another kitty. Not just for us and the kids (although that's a big part of it) but we're hoping that a feline companion will help Mary get back to normal. (I really REALLY hope we're not bringing Mary a feline enemy, because that is ALL she needs right now). Her temperament is just so changed with Molly gone, and she seems to be looking for her sometimes. This feels a little soon to me -- like this will be a designated Rebound Cat, and we shouldn't be getting into a serious relationship at this point, know what I mean? Maybe we should name this cat Bob. Bob was the only bona-fide rebound relationship I ever had -- lasted a couple of weeks, about two weeks after my first and most serious high school boyfriend broke up with me after we'd been "going together" for almost two years. We held hands and walked around in the pasture on the ranch where I lived; we drove to the city just to get Oreos; he proposed to me. Did I mention he was 19 and I was 16? Yeah. A little soon in a lot of ways, there. At least I had the presence of mind to tell him no, right? Bob's mom had just died and he was on his way to Texas to go to seminary, so his whole life was kind of out of whack at that point, I think. Poor guy.

Anyway. I'm sure the new kitty will not turn out to be a mistake. Even though this will probably mean the return of THE LITTER BOX AUGH for a week or so while we get him/her adjusted to the idea that this is home.

Did I mention I'm done painting? I AM DONE PAINTING.

Monday, January 17, 2005

trying to keep that nasty pit-of-the-stomach feeling away

I think Molly is really, really gone, as there was still no sign of her today. And to top things off, now we haven't seen Mary in a couple of hours; she went outside and hasn't come back in yet. My usual anticipatory worrying has begun -- if both our cats are gone, will we get new cats right away, or in the spring when it's kitten season, or never? We don't like keeping cats cooped up indoors for a variety of reasons, but if we're going to get attached to them and then have them get eaten by predators or killed on the highway or what have you, is it worth having them in the first place? And then I try to laugh at myself for borrowing trouble when it's probably just that Mary's having a little moonlit (and platonic, since she's spayed, right?) tryst with her buddy Max/Maxine (we can't tell; s/he never lifts his/her tail), the local feral cat. But I can't laugh. I'm not despondent; I know the difference between pets and people and I'm maintaining perspective. But even losing a pet is painful. And losing two in one weekend would be just downright depressing.

In other news: I reported in the 1001 Days journal about the progress with the paint job. T seems to have been inspired by my decision to actually do a project that we've been planning on doing for somewhere in the neighborhood of six months, and he started sandblasting on his Charger today (the blue-tarp sandblasting tent has only been set up for, hmm, three or four months now). Or maybe he was just trying to keep his mind occupied, like someone else I know. As soon as I stop the aimless rambling typing the yucky feeling comes back to the pit of my stomach. I think I'll go take a shower and then read for a bit (nothing like reading about the Reign of Terror for that "maintaining perspective" thing) before I try to fall asleep.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

******* painting

As I mentioned in the 1001 Days journal, I'm painting our bedroom. I've removed "this weekend" from that phrase because I see no way short of a miracle which includes a team of professional painters that I'll be done by Monday night. This is partly because we ended up zipping down to the valley this morning and didn't get back till 2:30, and partly because, dang, painting takes a whole lot of time. Or rather, preparing to paint does. I HATE PAINTING. I always forget how much I hate it in between episodes of it. T has suggested that I give myself a week and he'll plan on helping me put the trim back up on Friday. Which means a week of me sleeping in C's bed and T sleeping on the couch. That sounds sad. Except it means BLANKETS ALL TO MYSELF FOR SIX NIGHTS YAY.


Sorry, T. I really do love sleeping with you. I do. Really. I'm only tempted to do the 50's-TV-couple-twin-beds thing every ONCE in a while.

In other news: I am wearing a pedometer. I think it grossly overcounts. I am convinced that this is because I am wearing it at the front of my waist, like it says to do, and, well, that's a jiggly area. Which hopefully just wearing the pedometer will fix, right, I mean, that's a fitness regimen, isn't it?

I have noticed a decrease in the frequency -- the event density if you will -- of my Really Stupid Things. For a while I easily tallied up one or two a day. Now (and I don't think this is just because I'm not paying attention), I seem to be slowing down. Maybe it was turning 30. Today, however, I have made up for lost time. Moving furniture will do that. And was it the huge cumbersome mattress and box spring that gave me trouble? Nooo. The chest dresser? No, it was our little metal bedframe. Four measly lengths of angle iron bolted together in a rectangle, with legs and wheels attached, that C could probably have taken care of with very little trouble. Well, maybe not C, who is affectionately known between T and myself (never in her hearing) as "The World's Cutest Disaster". But LT, for sure. Anyway. It confounded me for several minutes and resulted in my incurring two minor-but-painful injuries. Because I am all cool that way.

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

cleanliness elf. But wait! There's more!

Will the cleanliness elf who took over my body over the weekend please not leave, at least until the end of today? Thank you.

Would you believe that the last dirty load of laundry in our possession is in the washing machine right now? I didn't even know my sorting hamper had a bottom -- I thought it was just like that bag of grain in the Bible that just kept being full no matter how much I took out of it. Also, in order to use the clothesline yesterday, I had to go move the rest of the wood that we'd left lying around after taking down LT's playhouse -- so the whole family got into that and now our backyard looks much better. It's still mown, mostly dead field weeds, with patches of bare red soil, but the key thing is that the wood is all sorted and neatly stacked, either on pallets ready to be chopped into kindling, or on sawhorses ready to be built into THE NEW FORT [insert trumpet fanfare]. AND my tomatoes have been watered twice a day since Friday. AND the sheets are clean (mmm, clothesline sheets) on all the beds AND the beds are made. I don't know what's gotten into me.

However, the dishwasher and dishes need to be dealt with, and the living room is in dire need of some one-on-one time with the dust mop, and someone (why is this always my job?) should deal with the kitty litter. I just don't want to take my eyes off that hamper lest it fill itself back up when I'm not looking.

One project we'll be doing in school today will be countdown paper chains. You know, like you used to make in elementary school at Christmas time, where you pull off one chain every evening and watch the chain get shorter and shorter until finally there is only one chain left one chain and I just pulled that one off so tomorrow morning is Christmas it's Christmas I'll never be able to sleep tonight no never! Well, we do not restrict this sort of anticipatory activity to the holiday season, oh no. We're going to make a chain today which will mark the beginning of swimming lessons, the beginning of our beach vacation, and possibly also the Fair, although a chain with 90 links would be pretty cumbersome, so chances are we'll leave that for after we get back from the beach.

Find of the day: If you have a Regal Cinemas theater near you, check out their Free Family Film Festival this summer. I am amazed; I think this is just a great idea. (and I wonder exactly how scummy it would be for me to smuggle in snacks in my purse instead of supporting their endeavor by dropping $20 at the snack bar for two candy bars and three drinks?)

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