...where I have root and the fare is liberally seasoned with pith and vinegar.
| The Digital Hausfrau ...where I have root and the fare is liberally seasoned with pith and vinegar. |
|
In a post on echo this morning, someone bade farwell to his housecleaner of eight years, who had recently moved to Arizona. He used her first and last name which, frankly, I found kind of impressive.
So I ask you:
I'll go first.
Lurkers, speak up!
Do you all know about Fly Lady? She's this very sweet lady in the computer who runs a site dedicated to helping hopeless homemakers turn their homes from disgusting pigsties to lovely and serene places. She has a whole plan. And it works. So, if you feel the need to take control of your home in that way, head on over.
Julie and I did it one summer, and it was great, except for two things. First, she loves God just a little too comprehensively for my taste. Me, I like things compartmentalized. Religion over here; girl scouts, dinner, housekeeping, whatever over here. The other thing is, really, my house wasn't that bad to start! Some women would email her to say, "What a great idea it was to clean out my underwear drawer! I found my old nursing bras and got rid of them! Did I mention that my son is now in college?" My situation was never quite that dire.
One of Fly Lady's big things has to do with decluttering. At the moment, I'm feeling very Fly Lady-ish, as I am in a frenzy of clean-and-purge. Yesterday, Andrew took the kids to the Berkshires from 10 am to 8 pm. Imagine, if you will, the luxury of that much solitude! I stayed home to let the dog out every two hours and tackle the playroom, which had transformed itself in recent months from a stimulating place in with to engage in developmentally-appropriate imaginative activities to a Crapatorium. I threw out 4 green garbage bags of broken toys and Happy Meal characters and created a pile about 8x8x2 for charity.
Then I watched some Sex and the City reruns and did the family room toy spots, two junk drawers, and the kitchen windowsill.
This morning: the upstairs freezer and the front closet. Then a walk, carpool, and the grocery store. Keep your hands and feet clear, people. Yo soy enfuego!
Garden photos, as promised:
Is it terribly arrogant, I wonder, to think of my own life as more hectic and/or stressful than other people's? Probably. And yet, I do.
We have a lot going on. Andrew works nearly 100 hours each week, I think. The diabetic dog. Girl Scouts. Sunday School. Dance. Jonah and all of his stuff. The house. The yard. You know, stuff. Maybe the people with less giong on are people like my mother, who has left child care behind and contracts out for the housework and laundry. I don't know.
But, this weekend, we let a lot of it go, in favor of other, more pleasurable things. Friday night, as I fought with my computer (again? still? what-the-fuck-ever), Tina and Karen showed up in my driveway. Apparently, the executive committee decided that we should have have dinner together. I missed the fun trip to the grocery store, but when they got home, we all brought what we had (food, kids, husbands) to Karen's and had a very pleasant and communal evening. My highlight: the first French Martini (2 oz. pineapple juice, 1 oz. lemon vodka, 1/2 oz. Chambord) of the season. Andrew's highlight: All the beef he could hoover up.
Saturday morning, Karen and I left early for the nursery. When we got there (before 9:00!), we had to hover over people in the parking lot to get a cart! I got a bunch of new perennials (violas -- black ones! -- phlox, foxglove, salvia, chrysanthemum) and some annuals (snapdragons, more salvia, and something else) for the front bed, a great assortment (dusty miller, begonias, and something wtih pink leaves) for the bed by the mailbox, pansies for my little plant holders, and tomatoes, basil, and dill for the back. On the way home, we stopped at the place where they sell cute things for your garden, and I got something (you'll never guess!) cute! It's a little metal chair with the seat cut out and a bowl of violas and pansies stuck in it. I put it near the front door. When we got home, I planted all day. Andrew cleaned the yeard and moved the woodpile. I also cleaned the garage. I was SO SORE on Sunday.
Off to the mall on Sunday morning to get a new external hard drive to replace the one that blew out during the Tiger installation (grr, indeed.), then home to cook. Friends for dinner, and a very relaxed evening. Caught up on a project at night.
The Memorial Day Parade with my scouts yesterday. Like the dress Emily's wearing? It looks better in this picture than it did later with blue popsicle dripped all over it.
I'll take some garden shots later this week and show you. Here's a teaser. Remember when I planted the iris? It worked.
A weird but great night at the haus last night...
At about a quarter to five, the entire house went dark. It wasn't raining, the power hadn't flickered, all the lights just went out. The electrician was working in the basement, so I figured it was him, but hope. The entire block was dark. In fact, the entire neighborhood was dark.
Andrew and Emily were on their way to her dance class, so they left, and I remained at home, in my ever-darkening and ever-cooking house, with Jonah. He was hungry, so I fed him crackers and peanut butter by candlelight. Eventually, I made my way to the woodpile with a flashlight, and we spent some time singing by the fire.
Fortunately, I'd made dinner in the afternoon and my stove is gas on top, so, by the time Andrew and Emily returned, i had meatball grinders and caesar salad ready for everyone. Something about the candles seems to calm everyone down, and dinner was quiet. We talked.
More time by the fire after dinner. Emily did her homework that way, just like, as she put it, one of the American Girls. Me, I felt more like Caroline Ingalls.
We kept the kids up later than usual but then it was as if the lack of televisions and computers and incandescent light gave Andrew and me license to admit how really really tired we were (how really tired we always are!) and, by 9:00, we were in bed. It was great how really dark it was without house lights coming in from outside and the glow of the digital clocks, and how quiet it was without even the hum of the firnace. We made like Ma and Pa and went to sleep.
Of course, now I've been up since just after 5:00, because I'm a semi-somniac freak, but you can't have everything, can you?
The basement is coming along! Last night, we finally moved all remaining contents to the now-remediated and repaired garage so that the drywall guys can do their thing starting Monday morning. I have to hire a painter to start December 6, and the carpet should be going in on the 13th. Then, voila! Hopefully there won't be a blizzard between now and then, as the garage is out of commission. At least Andrew's side is. Mine will be usable once I clean the garbage pile out, which consists mostly of bagging some crap and breaking down a million cardboard boxes.
My friend Kelly and her family are coming for dinner tonight. It was Kelly's birthday last week. Chips and salsa early on, then salad, homemade macaroni and cheese (I use Martha Stewart's recipe), and a marble loaf cake with chocolate ganache.
Here's what I can't figure out about the cake, though: it calls for the ganache to go on while the cake is still in the pan. So then, how am I going to unmold it? Usually, I unmold a loaf cake into my left palm, but it's going to be all full of frosting. Chill, unmold, and bring to room temperature? Frost on a rack? I'm cooking soon, but suggestions are welcome.
I've been thinking about Scott Peterson. Specifically, I've been thinking about Scott Peterson and the death penalty. I'm so teetering on the fence about capital punishment. One part of me, the primal part, says it's appropriate to remove people from society if the do something terribly heinous, but the rational, liberal part, which is winning the fight, says all the other stuff about how it's applied inconsistently, there's no national standard, the government shouldn't kill people, it's racist, it's classist, and, by the way, what if we're wrong?
Either way, here's what I came down to: I hope the bastard goes to Oz and lives a long heathy life in Emerald City, suffering every day for the next 40 or 50 years. That seems so much worse than just ending up dead.
Have I ever shared my idea for prison overcrowding? I don't think that Mr. Sanctity-of-Life in the White House would go for it, but it's so simple and elegant, and I love it. Get this: optional assisted suicide for anyone sentenced to life without parole. At any time, these prisoners can go to the infirmary and ask for a bed and a handful of pills and, just to be nice about it, a bottle of Jack Daniels. We don't have to kill them, we can let them do it themselves. Check out. Go ahead, Scottie. We won't miss you.
I am living in Love Canal. The mold in the garage is being remediated. This involves two guys in hazmat masks (although only one is wearing one in the picture, which is probably a bad idea on the other guy's part) removing of all of the sheetrock in the garage. I'm not sure exactly how they do it, but I think it involves sledgehammers. Whatever it is that they're up to, it makes the entire house shake, and Slick never stops barking.
Then, when they leave for the day, they spray some chemical with a godawful stink, warn me not to go through the plastic barriers into the garage and actually breathe the stuff, and turn on some noisy machine that runs all night.
Frankly, combined with the never-ending sound of the contractor's nail gun and the compressor that makes it go, the nerve-shattering racket of the plumber spending the past two days jackhammering through the foundation of my house, and a whopping case of laryngitis, I've about had it.
5914 this is a great plae to play texas holdem online. feel free to try out the http://texas-holdem.big.gb.com for big bonuses! texas holdem poker
Late last night, as I was working or reading or doing I forget what, I noticed Andrew creeping by in the hallway with something in his hand and then I heard him moving around the bedroom, clearly up to something.
Whatcha doing? I asked.
Nothing. Hee, hee, hee.
I kept at whatever I had going on, but the activity from the next room persisted, so I got up to have a peek.
My bedroom had been transformed. Gone was the mess, the detritus of the children, the evidence of our day-to-day lives. Instead, I beheld something made of magic. I was overcome with delight.
Andrew had taken one of the hundreds of leftover-from-camp glow sticks that are hanging around the basement, cut it open, and shaken the contents all over the bedspread. The room looked like heaven, or at least like the planetarium.
I fell asleep last night feeling like I was camping, covered with the sky. It was wonderful.
Of course, this morning, I found out that the contents of glow sticks are made of some kind of oil-based product the approximate color of anti-freeze, and that it can't be removed with Zout, Oxy-Clean, or laundry soap. My bedspread and shams are ruined but, I tell you, it's a small price to pay.
So these two nice guys are here for the second time today, installing my new HVAC system. I brought them some fancy cookies for dessert, and told them I'll be upstairs if you need me.
We'll be down here if you need us.
I asked if I had air conditioning yet, as it's about 95 degrees out.
No. By the time we leave this afternoon, hopefully.
HOPEFULLY?!? It's Friday afternoon, gentlemen. Ain't nobody going nowhere until my house is COLD.
Here's the news report, national, regional, and local:
Nationally, it turns out that, if you are poor and uneducated, you can't even get a shitty job at McDonald's anymore.
Regionally, Connecticut's crook of a governor is (registration required) planning on resigning tonight. Talk about good riddance to stinky rubbish.
And, locally, I am happy to report that all of the plants that I put in have survived. The begonias by the mailbox are thriving (although the marigolds are all but dead), the lamb's ear is so tall that I have to stake it (did you notice the poppy and the blanket flowers in that picture?), the snapdragons are bursting into color, the veronica is coming along, and the violas along the perimeter are flowering like mad.
It turns out that all you have to do is to dig holes and stick stuff in them...maybe water once in a while. Who knew?
Remember when I trimmed the garden? And then, this spring, it became apparent that the brown boxwoods were not just pining; they were dead. It's passed on! This boxwood is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker!
I've put in about 50 flowering perennials and a handful of bright annuals in the past two months and, with a little luck, they'll grow and flourish. We've surely had enough rain to make them happy!
Today I decided to put in a clump of irises in the spot where the tulips didn't grow. I ordered a bunch online. Hey, Lisa won Counting Crows tickets today by knowing that women order more stuff online than men do!
Anyway, these are the ones I picked. Gorgeous, no?
Amity Estate |
Bewilderbeast |
Celebration Song |
Starship Enterprise |
They'll come in July and, I guess, all I have to do is soak them overnight, plant them, fertilize them, and water them. We'll see.
I've been landscaping, or, as Julie insists on calling it, but only when I do it, landspacking. This is because my entire gardening philosophy is "go to the nursery, buy some stuff, dig holes, dump it in, and hope for the best." But so far, it's working!
The tulips are in full bloom and the perrennials are not dead yet (one is even blooming!).
But. On the other hand, I have voles or moles or some fucking things ripping through my mulch. I swear to God, if I ever see one, I'm going to pick it up in my teeth like a cat and shake the bugger to death.
After three years of home ownership, I think that I have finally identified the most difficult chore in my home. It's not cleaning out the refrigerator, or organizing the recycling, or weeding the garden beds.
Nope.
Apparently, it's this series of tasks:
Open the cabinet door.I know that this is the hardest chore in the house because there is only one person who seems able to do it.
Remove fresh roll of toilet paper.
Close cabinet door.
Remove old cardboard core from spring-loaded holder and place in garbage.
Replace with new roll.
Successfully reassemble holder.
In order to fully comprehend the last paragraph of this entry, there are some things you need to know.
First, we call our beloved, if smelly, eight year old mutt Slick a creature of comfort. That is to say, he likes his creature comforts. He likes a nice soft bed to lie on, maybe a piece of whatever it is you're eating, and a warm (but not too warm) sunny day. The list of things that Slick does not enjoy includes kibble, being shooed off the bed so Andrew and I can have sex, and inclement weather. If you know all of that and the fact that he finds it necessary to bark every time a leaf falls from a tree in the yard, you pretty much know all that you need to know about Slick.
Next, you need to know that the wood for our fireplace is stored outside, on our back patio. It used to be up against the house, but a series of fathers and fathers-in-law hyped the risks of various infestations and got us all panicked, so we moved it. It's in a rack under a big blue tarp at the end of the patio, protected from the weather by the deck above it.
So, with all of that information, you are now ready to know this:
Lately, when let out the back door on rainy or snowy or even too chilly for his taste days, if not carefully supervised and directly ordered out into the yard, Slick has taken to peeing on my woodpile. I guess he figures that it's convenient, dry, and all his, his, his.
But I'm not.
The good news is that, thanks to a bit of Tylenol PM last night, I am rested and ready to take it all on. Well, not all, but some.
To celebrate the new furniture, we had a fire in the fireplace last night. Nice.
This morning, I asked Lisa to please close the flue. But something hinky happened and, next thing I knew, she was calling me over because the flat panel that is the actual flue had somehow come loose from the hole that it blocks and was threatening to drop into the fireplace itself. Much swearing and contorting ensued as Lisa held the flashlight and I squeezed myself into the fireplace and used both hands to somehow angle the stupid thing back into place.
I knew I was getting dirty, but what can you do? I was just bummed because I had already showered and put on makeup.
When we were done, I looked like a chimney sweep. I washed my hands like a surgeon, and came upstairs. A little while later, i said, "That's odd. I know I washed my hands." But they were dirty. So I washed again. A bit after that, I said to my mom, "My hair feels so funny. But I don't think I forgot to rinse my conditioner out." Then I looked at my hands, which were magically filthy again. And I realized that it was not Silk Groom that was making my hair stick out like that...it was ash and creosote and smoke and grease.
Not such a beautiful look.
Let's just say that I am back in a bathroom.
We're getting the carpets shampooed today, in preparation for the delivery of the new family room furniture on Thursday. Wonder why? Wonder no more. Between the kids and the dog, it's really quite imperative.
But Terry, you ask...what did you do with all that stuff?? And, in response, I answer:
Our family room furniture is a mess. We've had our sofas for almost 10 years, through two dogs and two kids, and it shows. The big green sofa sags, and the sofa bed is ripped beyond repair. The coffee table and endt able were left by the previous owners!
We spent all of the weekend before last going from showroom to showroom and, on Saturday, I went with my mother-in-law to pick fabrics and make some choices.
Here's the sofa and loveseat:
The sofa is being covered in a warm camel tweed, and the loveseat in a brown, rust, and gold floral tapestry. Throw pillows are coming in a brown with chenille stripe, the same tapestry as the loveseat, and a groovy paisley with fringe.
Here is the comfy chair and ottoman, aka Mama's Throne:
They are being covered in the same rust colored leather that you see here.
Finally, the tables:
Keep yer feet offa 'em.
Remember how I told you that I'm a picker? Apparently, my subconscious extends this philosophy to gardening as well.
What I meant to do was to pull a few weeds. What I actually did was this:
All of that used to be in my front bed, which now looks like this (what you're seeing is the shadow of the house, not the edge of the bed. Look closely to see how big the bed really is):
Now, all I need to do is to buy some nice flowering bushes and wait for them to grow!
Mark Twain once said, or maybe he didn't, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." This came into play in my life again this weekend, as my father set me down the path toward explaining my tree blight.
See, in my front yard, there is this tree, and, last week, for no discernable reason whatsoever, it began dropping its leaves as if it were the middle of October. Seriously, it is raining leaves all over my lawn, on the other trees, everywhere.
So my dad suggested that I call my local Cooperative Extension, which I did, albeit admittedly skeptically.
A nice woman named Carol called me back this morning and, after confessing that the only trees I could identify on sight were the Maple and the Christmas, I began to describe my leaves (I thought it would be helpful if she could figure out what kind of tree it is) and tell her about my problem.
"Anthrachnose!", she said.
"Anthrachnose?"
"A fungus. It's been a wet year. Don't worry about it."
Apparently, it's unsightly but harmless for my tree, which Carol identified over the phone as a poplar or a birch, but which I, with the help of the handy-dandy internet, have identified as a Green Ash or maybe a White Ash (my friend Sue, who knows such things, says "Probably green."), to do this every once in a while.
With a bit of luck, it'll survive, rather than die and fall on my house.
This homeowning thing is going to be the death of me.