dreaming@echonyc.com

our next-door neighbor has a beautiful yard and a gorgeous garden. she and her husband spend countless hours making their property lovely — they actually mow the lawn at least once a week, imagine!

they seem to like mirrored gazing balls, ornamental birdhouses, and those wooden wheelbarrows you put big pots of geraniums in. they also like this cow.

i, on the other hand, hate this cow. it is perched merrily right near the property line, where it is impossible to ignore as we drive down our driveway. i loathe this cheerful menace.

normally, being a cantankerous sort myself, i might suspect they'd put it there just to piss me off. but, no, i know they actually like it. how do i know? because the cow has a security device through the end of its tail, to keep the roving youth gangs of montpelier from making off with it.

Posted by dreaming at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (42)

paul and i were out talking with the burly men about how high to fill the pond area with topsoil. we mentioned that when we replace the driveway, we planned to remove the unsightly turnaround that projects into the front yard.

"i can do that for you," burly man #1 said. "see this crack here? it'd come up real easily right along there." (though he is in general very helpful, he's not fooling anyone — it's obvious to anyone with eyes that he's just looking for excuses to play with the backhoe.)

lo and behold, the crack he pointed to followed exactly the curve i'd hoped to create.

so the turnaround is currently being pulled up, a happy surprise. it's going as easily as he predicted, too.

Posted by dreaming at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (43)

the other thing the burly men did today was to fill in the pond. the pond, as you'll remember if you've seen it in the, uh, flesh, wasn't worth glorifying with the name — it was actually a hole, a hole in the ground about 3 x 5', deep and murky and dry half the year.

it is a hole no longer.

it has been filled with gravel and layered with landscape cloth. we hope it will continue to serve as a sort of dry well, since it's situated at the lowest point of the property.

"are there any plants from here you'd like to save?" one of the men asked me. "i see you have some rosebushes here..."

"i hate them," i told him. "kill them if you can."

Posted by dreaming at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (40)

this morning two burly men arrived to tear the side off our house.

among other projects (finishing paul's workshop with windows instead of a garage door; replacing some rotting basement windows; closing off an exterior door or two), we'd asked them to remove the balcony that protruded off the side of the house.

i'd hated it since before we bought the house. it was badly in need of paint when we moved in, and had only deteriorated, with palm-sized flakes of paint shedding with every puff of wind and the rot increasing with every drop of rain.

and now, it is gone.

enjoy the magic with me, won't you?

Posted by dreaming at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (31)

i'm not ready to take photos yet of my office, but i found a tool on benjamin moore's site that lets you decorate a theoretical room with their colors. behold the cheese room!

i've finished painting the woodwork. today i will scrape the windowpanes and do general-purpose cleanup in there. on wednesday we'll put in the floor. onward!

Posted by dreaming at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (61)

dear people who used to live in this house,

why do you hate me?

now i know you'll protest, "julie, we don't hate you! why, we hardly knew you. how could we possibly hate you?" you might even say, "in the brief time we basked in your incandescent presence, we felt our souls fill with warmth and loving kindness for you and all mankind."

but i must insist: you hate me.

how else can i explain what you did in that room, the room that would become my office?

i suppose i understand the impulse that made you stick glow-in-the-dark stars and moons to the ceiling — perhaps it was a room for a baby, who could thereby lie in his crib and look up to an indoor milky way instead of, you know, a ceiling.

but why did you have to put them up with double-stick tape?

and weren't the stars and moons enough? did you really have to augment them with thick blobs of glow-in-the-dark paint, globs that are impossible to efface without assiduous grinding with a power sander, painfully held above my head with aching arms? globs that then require at least two coats of toxic, fumey primer if they're not to glow through the new coat of ceiling paint?

apparently you did, because: you hate me.

(we will not speak at this point of the way you used that same paint on the bedroom wall to declare your love: i ♥ joe, you painted. but rest assured we will discuss it later.)

but you couldn't stop there. you had to twist the knife. you had to apply still more double-stick tape, to the walls this time. and just when i thought i was equal to the task, i uncovered your diabolical scheme: instead of removing the tape before the room's last paint job, you painted over it. yes, i can scrape it off with the help of several trusty single-edged razor blades. but not without taking the paper off the sheetrock at the same time.

oh, you were filled with hate and rage. shut up! i know you were.

i am a gentle person, a kind person, a person who prefers peace to strife. i do not hate, as a matter of course. but now, after spending hours on end in earnest efforts to eradicate the evidence of your seething hatred, i hate you right back.

yours loathingly,
julie

Posted by dreaming at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (50)

the egg wreath i hung so proudly in my hall is garbage.

last night i was passing and noticed a crack in one of the eggs. i thought maybe one of us had bumped into it while carrying something heavy. no problem, i thought; a single cracked egg would add character.

but on closer inspection i found that all around the wreath, many of the eggs had cracked. i guess it's variations in temperature and humidity. one cracked egg would have looked good, but a bunch of them just make the whole thing look trashy.

back to the drawing board for something cool to hang at the end of my front hall.

Posted by dreaming at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (68)

one day we will forget how horrible my office currently looks. here are some reminders: view of the wall, which currently sports dime-sized holes left by the mighty anchors needed to hold up the shelf brackets; and view of the bookcases, before patching, priming, and painting.

today i slapped a bunch of sheetrock mud into the shelf bracket holes and onto the new closet wall. tomorrow i sand...and apply more mud...and sand...and...

Posted by dreaming at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (45)

the moles just won't leave us alone.

yesterday paul was down in the kitchen looking out the back window when he saw a small, dark creature scrabbling around in the snow around the bird feeder. it was

picking up spilled thistle seed from the snow and taking it back into its den of iniquity.

it did the same thing to the snow as they do to the ground underneath it.

mom, now i want a picture of your possum to add to the gallery of outdoor horrors.

update: arlene kindly (?!) sent a photo of the possum who'd been terrorizing perrysburg. enjoy. or have nightmares. your choice.

Posted by dreaming at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (24)

if you've visited my house in the winter, you probably know that the metal roof sheds snow quite readily, usually in big sheets that are spectacular to see and hair-raising to hear. (under such circumstances, snow's noisier than you might think.)

unfortunately, the snow therefore piles up under the eaves. all around the house there's a high hump of snow. it requires assiduous labor to keep the entrace to the garage passable; if we don't keep it shoveled a mountain develops. going up the mountain in our burly suv is easy. going down it into the garage, though, is a treacherous slide.

i went out today with the intention of bringing in a few loads of firewood. i opened the door from the garage to the back yard and found yet another impassable moraine, this one neatly embossed by the panels of the door.

i manfully scaled the peak, stood proudly atop the summit, filled my lungs with the bracing mountain air — harder than you might think at such dizzy altitudes — then waded through thigh-deep snow out to the woodpiles. several falls and humiliating stalls later, the woodbox was filled and my clothing was soaked.

when i do stuff like that i always think of little house on the prairie, and i imagine how cumbersome such a task would have been without a nice canvas sling and polarfleece (to say nothing of the luxury of a cord of pre-cut, pre-split, kiln-dried logs). i think i might start getting pretty careful about how much firewood i use.

Posted by dreaming at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (66)

coming out of my catless funk for a moment to tell you that last night's low was

we are currently holding at -6.3°. i am wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, a polarfleece pullover, flannel-lined jeans, socks, and shearling slippers, and am perfectly comfortable indoors.

the only thing that might induce me to leave the house today is if it caught fire. and maybe not even then, as i imagine it'd be pretty warm and toasty.

Posted by dreaming at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (50)

the weather forecast for last night called for gusts up to 60 mph. naturally i was terrified that we would wake to find the woodpile crashed to flinders — so worried that i woke several times in the night just to check.

i am happy to report that the stacks stood firm in the onslaught. we did, however, experience several weird power outages; about a foot of snow accumulation; and one of the neighbors' trees falling across our driveway. angry mr. plow called at, oh, 5 am to tell us he couldn't get his truck past it.

until the tree is removed and the driveway plowed, we are housebound. normally i would be overjoyed, but because the cat needs to go back to the vet again today, i'm stewing a bit.

and watching it continue to snow through my office window. check the webcam to enjoy it vicariously.

Posted by dreaming at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (46)

in the proud tradition of my dad, i have bought way too much halloween candy. this is true in the absolute sense, but especially true in the relative sense: last year we had one (1) trick-or-treater. the previous year we had none.

my hopes are high for this year, though. the weather's good, as it hasn't been in years past, and if i have to i'll pull a lawn chair to the top of the driveway and dole out candy there. i am just that desperate.

here is the "before" picture...as in, before paul and i eat any of it.

current weight of the candy (including bowl): 8.2 pounds. current weight of julie: 162 pounds. we'll both weigh in at the end of the evening to see how well we did.

update: the candy bowl is weighing in at 7.4 pounds. we had two groups of trick-or-treaters. i guess the onslaught is over.

Posted by dreaming at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (55)

when i splurged on the 400-count sheets, i also bought a lovely new blanket. it's huge, fuzzy, a delicious cream color, 100% cotton.

imagine my annoyance when i took it off the bed to wash it and chanced to see the care instructions.

what kind of jackasses make a blanket you're not supposed to wash?

what kind of jackass buys one?

wait, don't answer that.

Posted by dreaming at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (29)

because it seems to be picture day today here at the old blogstead, i thought i'd share a couple of views of the yard from this morning. we had snow overnight — the ground's not yet cold enough for accumulation, but i managed to get some shots of the slushy bits while they lasted.

if you squint while looking at the picture of the grass, it's easy to imagine it as the whitecapped surface of a choppy lake. (the waves of long and flowing grass assist in the effort — the lawn hasn't had its final mowing of the season...or maybe, unfortunately, it has.) and the picture of the daphne bush is a nice contrast to how it looked in june. (butterfly sold separately.)

three hours later, the snow is entirely gone. i am assuming it will return sooner than i'd like it to.

Posted by dreaming at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (47)

the greeks had a word for when someone's pride is so offensive to the gods that they strike him down. hubris, they called it.

the greeks, in my opinion, were really, really annoying.

last night was extremely windy. the meteorologist on vermont public radio warned of winds 15 to 30 mph, shifting to the southwest and increasing to 20 to 35, with local gusts to 50 mph in the evening. bastard.

we could hear it howling around the gables of the house, but we were snug and toasty in front of the first fire of the season and paid it little mind. paul did give a passing thought to potential devastation: "i wish i'd had some tiedowns for the woodpile," he said.

this morning we really wish he'd had some tiedowns for the woodpile. (click the picture if you dare.)

Posted by dreaming at 07:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (2)

yesterday at about 4:30 the firewood i ordered arrived. and what an assload of firewood it was! in a classic moment of spack, without asking any questions, i'd ordered a cord — not a face cord, a cord. this difference is important. a face cord, which is what i wanted, measures 4' x 8' x 2'. but a cord measures 4' x 8' x 4'. in short, we ended up with twice as much wood as i'd intended. (click the picture to experience the full impact of an entire cord of wood.)

oops.

the load was unceremoniously dumped in the driveway, exactly as advertised. rain was forecast for overnight, so the race was on to get it hauled to the back and stacked neatly before the monsoon swept in. paul stacked in the back while i ran loads in the wheelbarrow.

it was chilly out, but i was warm as i worked — not from the exertion, but from the woodpile. the wood was kiln-dried, and the pile retained a surprising amount of heat from the kiln. we must have the finest firewood in america: you don't even have to light it to be toasty.

now, you'd think that loading up a wheelbarrow full of logs would be fairly straightforward, but this is paul and julie you're talking about. the logs were the easy part; those went to the backyard for stacking. but the kindling had to be sorted, the interesting burled pieces went to paul's workshop for later dissection, and the odd bits of chunky stuff were set aside to serve as structural support in lieu of good andirons. our firewood is so well organized it's practically alphabetized.

we worked from 4:30 to about 7:30 and did, in fact, get it all stacked. the rain rolled in as expected at about 4 am today; as i lay tucked cozily in bed i heard it begin and felt excellently smug. not only do we have wood for the winter, we have wood for several winters thanks entirely to my ignorance.

Posted by dreaming at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (20)

this morning as i groggily prepared my elixir of vigor^TM, i looked out the kitchen door to see a meerkat on a rock under the maple, sitting up imperiously like he owned the place.

well, okay, it looked like a meerkat, but it was only an extraordinarily alert squirrel. he had a very white belly, and i saw a lot more of his personal business than i'd normally elect to. (click picture at left to enlarge.)

Posted by dreaming at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (36)

some recent improvements to the living room include the hanging of stuff on the walls...

...with the prize find being this iron grille from an architectural salvage shop. ("no, i want the broken one!")...

...and the covering of the seat cushion on the snake chair in a silk jacquard depicting medieval-looking animals at frolic...

intentionally left out of the picture are the horrible universal torchiere lamp and the motley assortment of tables. we'll get there eventually...

Posted by dreaming at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (38)

for terry, some pictures of the stuff i made for the den:

flanged pillow 1

flanged pillow 2

cornice, 1 of 4

goofy little dress for table, view 1

goofy little dress for table, view 2

Posted by dreaming at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (48)

do you know about goof off? goof off is one of my favorite products. it's a liquid that removes latex paint spackers spatters, a godsend to careless painters (namely, me). it also happens to be profoundly toxic.

just opening the little spout on the top releases a whiff of lethal but delightful vapor, reminiscent of gasoline and lighter fluid. (you're not supposed to snort up a big lungful of those, either, or so i am told.) and working with it in a small, unventilated space — say, my front entryway with the windows closed for rain — brings on a headache almost instantly.

just look at all the maladies i probably incurred in the last half-hour:

• liver abnormalities
• kidney damage
• cardiac abnormalities
• brain damage
• severe eye irritation, redness, tearing, and blurred vision
• gi irritation, vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea

now, i'm not pregnant or anything, but i'm pretty sure that my eventual great-grandchildren will be born with gills anyway. in fact, i wouldn't be surprised if even my long-dead ancestors are now horribly mutated in their moldy graves, thanks to my short flirtation with goof off.

Posted by dreaming at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (43)

okay, i'm still a moron, but i'm a lucky moron.

i was sure i'd waited too long to order firewood for the winter — every place i'd called was fresh out, so sorry. but i persevered, and i finally found a place that will deliver a cord. "delivered and stacked?" i asked hopefully.

nope. delivered and dumped. because i can find no one else to deliver, i wasn't in a position to quibble. i suppose the stacking is the price i'll have to pay for waiting so long to arrange the delivery — the moron tax, if you will.

Posted by dreaming at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

hey, look what we just saw in the front yard:

and what we saw standing on the step of our front stairs, looking through the window next to the front door:

Posted by dreaming at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (4)

let's talk for a second about hummingbird tongues. they have them! i've seen one. (so can you.) i was in paul's office the other day pestering him, and i saw a hummingbird on the window feeder. i watched it stick out its tongue repeatedly and delve into the recesses in the feeder. paul couldn't see it, because my big old ass was in the way, but he saw one today.

Posted by dreaming at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

paul got an excellent picture of the bird nesting under our eaves.

Posted by dreaming at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (37)

currently featured in my front yard:

• a host of golden daffodils
• purple hyacinths
• magenta hyacinths
• the burgeoning foliage of my allium from mars
• a million wild violets, foliage thereof
• tulips ready to bloom at the drop of a hat

pictures to come when the current monsoon ends.

Posted by dreaming at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

that tiny patch of snow you see on the webcam is the only snow remaining in the front yard. (there's still a passel in front of paul's workshop.) i think the mound in front is left over from angry mr. plow, who heaps it high at the end of the turnaround.

the picture on the webcam is somewhat obscured by the window screen. the sun shines on the screen and makes a reflection in the picture. i am not complaining. a blurry picture is a small price to pay for plenty of much-needed sunshine.

Posted by dreaming at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

terry's great photo inspired me to take my own.

Posted by dreaming at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

this morning the truck came from agway to top off our heating oil. i practically broke my neck trying to get to the webcam to adjust it so that you could experience the excitement yourselves. (you probably missed it. i pity you poor sad mortals.)

the camera's now pointed to the driveway so that you can enjoy the comings and goings. be sure to let me know if you see any suspicious activity. and tell john ashcroft, too. i'm sure he'll be glad for the help.

Posted by dreaming at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

if i could just hit pause on the snow that's falling i could get a better picture of it for the webcam.

Posted by dreaming at 05:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i've set up a web cam so you can see what i'm seeing as i sit at my computer. look on the right-hand side of the page, just below the calendar. you're really going to enjoy it when it's lawn-mowing season.

i wouldn't be surprised if in about five minutes you see my neighbor come out and start shoveling his driveway. you, uh, probably won't see me doing the same.

i put this together so that betty could enjoy the snow vicariously, but, darn it, you can't really tell from the picture that the flakes are flying fast.

Posted by dreaming at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

six hours later, the mole damage is a lot less noticeable.

Posted by dreaming at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

a lot of the snow has melted from our front yard (only to be covered later today, i fear, by the 6-10" of snow the weather report is promising). every warm and sunny day, the crust receded a little bit. yesterday the melt revealed utter devastation at the hands of the wily and brutal terrorist organization, mole qaeda.

it's much worse this year than it has been in springs past. last summer i went on the warpath and did everything i could to reduce the population of grubs, the moles' favorite plump and wriggly snack. i dug up the rosebushes, which harbor japanese beetles (which is what grubs become when they grow up, if they drink their milk and eat allll their grass roots). i impregnated the ground with milky spore, a bacterium that likes nothing better than to invade grubs and digest them from within. (can you tell i have a taste for grub death at this point?) and i treated the lawn with grub poison. this should tell you how determined i was; i almost never use poisons or insecticides in the yard.

my theory is that some of what i did is working. it looks like the moles have had to hunt much harder for grub snacks. unfortunately, until they get the message that the salad bar is closed, i fear i'm in for more furrows. last year i asked mom what she did about moles in her lawn. she said, "i walk around the yard, stomping down their burrows, feeling diabolical."

get me my mud boots. operation stomp and awe is about to begin. if it doesn't work, that's okay; i'll just say it was tommy franks' plan all along.

exhibit a

exhibit b

exhibit c, a closeup of the view in picture b. it looks like the moles used a goddamn rototiller.

Posted by dreaming at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

houston, we have spring bulb action.

yesterday in the front beds, where the crust of snow has receded a bit from the house, i saw some tender green foliage poking up right where i planted a host of golden daffodils.

then in the other bed, i saw some of the tulips i inherited. the maple tree in the back is red with new buds. the lilac bush, which i grievously murdered last year, has promising-looking shoots. even the new viburnum appears to at least want to live.

i'd take a picture of the radiant wonder that is spring in my yard, but you'd only be sickened by the thick carpet of fall leaves i've yet to rake up.

Posted by dreaming at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

all hail mom and betty, who worked like teamsters painting my living room during their visit. (well, okay, not like teamsters, because they actually got things done.) i couldn't be happier with how it's turned out, or more grateful for the help. thanks so much! this week i hope to spend some time doing touch-ups and painting the woodwork, which will be semi-gloss white.

three of the four walls are off-white, and the fourth wall, the longest one, is cinnamon.

all right, it's orange.

and it's gorgeous.

Posted by dreaming at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

betty, i swear it's really cool.

i think it'll go in the dining room, though perhaps it'll hang at the end of the hall so you can see it from the front entry.

Posted by dreaming at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

good frozen god almighty, it was -16.6 at wakeup today.

betty, play your cards right and you may get some mid-march snow here after all.

Posted by dreaming at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

this morning there was a frantic, frosty-toed lunch under the covers with me, burrowing and huddling very close to my body. i wondered why he was so insistent, until i got up and realized t's -5.3 outside and we're out of heating oil. i called the company and they said, "hmm, looks like we have you scheduled for delivery this coming friday...but that'd be a little late, eh?" damn straight. happily the hot water heater is propane-powered, so i can have a boiling hot shower and then tool off to burlington in the nice toasty car for an appointment. paul, on the other hand, gets to stay home and wait on the tundra in his office, warmed by the heat of three computers, to let the oil man inside to light the pilot on the boiler. good times, good times.

update: the guy came in to light the pilot and said that a lot of their customers had been running out of oil. i guess we've all been using more oil in this exceptionally cold weather. what i want to know is why the oil company hasn't been keeping track of the temperatures and adjusting their schedules accordingly. i'll not rest until i have an answer.

well, actually, i probably will. i rest a lot these days.

Posted by dreaming at 07:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

this past weekend paul built a nice slatted shelf for the pantry to hold potatoes and onions and other rooty treats that require good air circulation. nice job, paul!

Posted by dreaming at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

about two feet away from the iron pole that holds up the suet feeders in the back yard, two gray squirrels in turn backed up, hunkered down, and took a flying leap at the pole. about a foot up, they grabbed the pole with their claws, and tried to shinny up it toward the feeders...

...but instead slid down, down, down until they landed with a bump that made a visible *poof* in the powdery snow.

Posted by dreaming at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)