All My Little Words

I do not spring clean. This is because I Winter Clean. I New Year’s Clean. I Post-Christmas clean.
Like I said to someone in an email just this morning: “Who wants to clean in Spring?!? Spring is for GARDENING!!!”

It all starts with taking down Christmas. Then we got a new piece of furniture, so the whole living room needed to be rearranged. And cleaned, of course. I’ve had some issues with the kitchen, and how the cabinets over the countertops are too low to out things under, so I had the brilliant idea that removing one that was kind of orphaned on it’s own on the far side of the sink would be a good idea.
Commence with the kitchen rearrangement!

And we switched bedrooms months ago, and I never finished cleaning arranging the bedroom. The process of doing that took ALL DAY TODAY and I am exhausted. But the process of removing the stuff from the room that used to be our bedroom into what is not our for real bedroom caused that room to be cleaned/rearranged as well. So at this point fully TWO THIRDS of our home has been completely cleaned and rearranged. IN THREE DAYS. Holy furniture polish, Batman!

So now I’m going to sink into a coma for the next 12 months, then I’ll do it all over again, I’m sure.

When I was a kid, I think I was pretty well behaved until I was about 3. At that point, perhaps I became a little more…
self aware, perhaps? Because for some reason, at that point, I guess I started testing the waters to see what I could get away with.

As I had mentioned in the other post about spanking, when I was a kid, all kids knew that if you did something bad, you’d get a spanking.
It was definitely the norm back then, although I think the tide was just starting to turn, as I think I thought that I would NOT
get one, simply because I hadn’t ever before. I was really probably just too young for one, or too young to have done anything to
“deserve” one.
I “got away with” stuff for probably about a year before my parents must have realized that reasoning with me was not working.
They told me not to do stuff and why and it went right in one ear and out the other, I guess.

One day when my dad wasn’t home, I was hanging out in the kitchen while my mom had something going on the stove, maybe hard-boiled eggs or something because she left the room with the pot still on. The cookie jar (which I had been warned repeatedly to NOT get into for a number of reasons) was on a shelf above the stove, probably to make it inaccessible to me. I had also been warned to stay AWAY from the stove, ALWAYS, because it could be hot and I could get burned. I saw my opportunity though,
and dragged a chair over and reached OVER a hot stove with a pot of boiling water on it to get that cookie jar, and in the process,
the jar fell and broke.
Of course, I was caught. But I wasn’t worried, because I knew I would just get a talking to, which I did, from my mom.
Then my dad came home, and I didn’t think anything of it when they went to talk in the other room. Then my dad sat me down to give me a talking to, which again, went right in one ear and out the other. Until he flipped me around and started spanking me.
It didn’t hurt, but I was shocked. I did not know what to do at first, but then it occurred to me that I’d heard that kids cry
when they got spanked, so I started crying. I think I wanted it to stop because it made me realize that I was bad. And I didn’t want
to be bad anymore. No one wants to be bad at that age.
So I started to cry and my dad stopped, and then he hugged me and I could see that he felt bad. My mom felt bad. I felt bad for
making them feel bad. But that was the end of that, and I knew now that I could get a spanking if I did wrong. I still did a few things
that I shouldn’t have over the next year, and I got a couple more spankings, but after only one or two more, I stopped doing stuff I
had been told not to.

But I didn’t stop getting into trouble. I think things were fine until I was about 6. I was well behaved, now understanding the
consequences of my actions. I didn’t intentionally do anything wrong, and in fact I made really sure to not do anything
accidentally wrong either.
One night my parents had a party, and I guess they decided that I was well enough behaved that I could just stay in their room
and sit on their waterbed and watch the little tv in there. All fine with me, the waterbed was fun, and I had stuffed animals.
After a couple of hours, I must have gotten bored. My mom had a bunch of posters push-pinned into the walls which I was fascinated
by, so I stood on the bed to take a closer look. I don’t know if I was bouncing and screwing around, or if the bed was just sloshy,
but I must have knocked one of the pins out of the wall. I didn’t even realize it. AT ALL. The poster was over the bed, so the tack
probably landing right on it, and then as I squooshed around on there, it probably bounced and rolled to edge, where it fell
between the mattress and the frame, and poked a hole in the mattress. But it would have been a tiny hole, and I was a tiny kid,
so hours passed with no visible evidence. It probably wasn’t until my parent’s much heavier combined weight was on the bed hours later that it really started to gush.

And my dad got really pissed. And he yelled, and it scared the everloving shit out of me, even though I didn’t even know what had happened until he started yelling at me about how horrible I was for puncturing the bed, and on and on and on.
This was WAY WAY WAY worse than getting spanked, and I hadn’t even done anything. (not intentionally anyway, or that I was aware of.)

I must have been too old to be spanked at that point, so instead, I was grounded. For 6 months. No friends, no tv, no dessert.
That was a billion times worse than the spanking that only lasted a few seconds. Even worse was the fact that my dad didn’t believe
that I didn’t do it on purpose. Even worse than that was the fact that after that, I don’t think he trusted me at all.
Because I didn’t intentionally go against my parents for years, but there were a few more times when I accidentally broke things
(things I was allowed to touch or whatever) that I again got the yelling, and even worse, the long term grounding.
This continued until I was a teenager, and I was accused of increasingly more and worse deeds over the years, and I
probably spent half of every year for the next 8 years being grounded. No wonder I became socially stunted, overly shy,
self conscious and overweight.

So, I guess, in short, spanking worked to straighten out my behavior, but I also got to experience the other side of the disciplinary
coin. I’m not saying that anyone would advocate verbal abuse in any case, as an alternative to spanking or not, but I think
even in the cases in which I was wrongfully accused, I would have taken the spanking over the verbal abuse and grounding.
When I was spanked, I felt like I had hurt my parent’s feelings and it made me feel remorseful.
When we moved on to the groundings and yelling, I didn’t feel like my parents had hurt feelings – I felt like they were angry and
wanted to hurt MY feelings. The pain on my butt would have faded long before the pain in my heart would have, as it obviously
still exists.
Again, I’m not trying to say that no one out there has a better disciplinary plan than verbal abuse or spanking – I’m sure many of you
do. My only point is that, in my case, the spanking wasn’t that bad.
And if I knew anyone today who was whaling on their kid on a daily basis, or for shit they didn’t deserve, or was actually
doing any sort of lasting damage (physical or mental) I would be sure to do something about it.

It is truly the most wonderful time of the year.

Now that we have been in our house for a whole year, I feel like I have a handle on it. And by IT, I mean everything.
It’s amazing.
It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, and I’ve already gotten a bunch of my Christmas shopping done. With that in mind, I headed up to the attic, where I have what could be referred to as “A Christmas Mess” – years and years of random decorations and wrapping supplies, some of which I haven’t seen for a decade. One of the greatest things about owning a house (to me) is that I finally have a sense of belonging. I know how things are, and how they are going to be. I finally have the ability to look at things and know that I don’t need them. There is no more doubt, no more “what if”. There’s no uncertainty as far as where my Christmas tree will go next year and what items I will have room for and not, what will go with everything and what won’t. Now that I am here, I just know, and that is the greatest feeling.

That said, I’ve only gotten rid of a few of the Xmas items I’ve accumulated over the years, but now that I know where everything is going to live for an indefinite period of time, I have finally taken the time to work on re-organizing it all. It’s great to have a space to just open boxes and start pulling stuff out and seeing what’s what, and finally being able to properly store all of it, cozily tucked away under the eaves.

Another project for today is to finish the planning of the Thanksgiving meals. That’s another thing I love about this time of year – the abundance. ‘Tis the harvest season, and shopping yesterday yielded 20 pounds of the biggest russet potatoes I’ve seen. There’s a giant bowl of apples on the table, and three turkeys in the freezer. Yes, three. And yes, I said MEALS when I mentioned Thanksgiving. We’re having our annual Day After Thanksgiving Dinner again this year, and to me it’s a bigger deal than regular old Thanksgiving. Not only will the standard Turkey Day fare be present, but also a giant pork loin roast on the smoker, more pies than you can shake a stick at, and time willing, a bunch of lovely snacks made from the day before’s leftovers. I’m thinking pulled turkey sliders made from the dark meat, and tiny turkey salad sandwiches from the white. We shall see.

It’s also a beautiful day out. I actually enjoy the sunlight in the fall, when it is filtered through clouds, and beams into the yard from a delightful Southern angle, rather than the glaring overhead sun of summer. Everything outside is soaked from the rain, and steaming in the sunbeams, too. It’s brilliant outside, far lovelier than any summer’s day could ever be.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I really meant to get up earlier today, to get the most out of my “Sunday” (last day of my weekend), but sleeping is good, and I’ve had such a good weekend so far…so what I mean by Perfect Day is really Perfect Weekend.

This weekend, the weather really turned into fall, my favorite season. Not only did Alex finish patching the roof like he was supposed to, SURPRISE! he switched our bedroom and office by himself while I was at work on Saturday. We’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, but the prospect of moving several VERY LARGE pieces of furniture was really daunting. I’d not have thought one person could do it alone in a single day! But somehow, he did, disassembling not only a very large corner style desk, but our queen sized platform bed which has a HUGE headboard and matching pier cabinet dressers, and managed to move all the major pieces and reassemble in less than 6 hours. Sometimes, my husband is amazing.

When we moved in, it seemed not only obvious, but only practical to take the front bedroom for the “master”. The previous owners had, it is a teeny, tiny bit bigger than the back, and the back is not only a pass through from the hallway to the solarium, but to the kitchen, via a landing at the bottom of the stairs to upstairs. So in a lot of way, this room is not very private. It is, however, oh so much more pleasant than the front room. We had thick, dark velvet curtains on the street facing window in the front room, even though the house is not right up next to the street, and there are bushes for privacy. We live on a busy-ish street, so there is lots of car and foot traffic, and some of our neighbors are a bit sketchy. But consequently, the plus all the heavy furniture in there made that room a cave. I never wanted to hang out in there, but I would sleep for DAYS because you couldn’t tell if it was day or night!
In this room, rather than having a regular window, we have a big sliding glass door that leads into the solarium, looking out into the backyard. So we have lots of light, but it is somewhat indirect, and a really nice view now. It is more peaceful back here, and pleasant to sit in (which I am right now). The heavy furniture makes it feel cozy, and it’s not like we can’t close all the passing through doors if we want peace and quiet. We really don’t require a ton of privacy during the week, anyway. Alex is so tired and goes to bed so early, and we have the weekends to ourselves.

On Saturday night, we took a break from everything and went to see a movie at the dinner/drinks and a movie place about 15 minutes north of our house. I didn’t think I would love it, but I did. We did. Then, Alex dropped his wedding ring in the dark, downward sloping theater. During the movie. Now we love the place even more, because our server was helpful enough to help us find it! And he was actually the one who saved the day by actually finding it. Thanks Nicholas! I’m pretty damn glad I gave him a good tip anyway!

All of the days of my weekend since have somehow been peaceful, but still productive, that elusive combination which is almost impossible to achieve. We had breakfast at home Sunday, and I went out for breakfast with a friend and had a delightful Eggs Benedict and a mimosa yesterday. Am strongly considering going out to get some champagne for more mimosa today!

I got up into our attic and got the Halloween decos down – before October 1st even! And since I am paring down this year, I should have them up by the 1st, too.

So, I am in a rare really good mood. So good, I can hardly get mad about healthcare reform (even though I had a conversation yesterday about how needed it is – even though we are paying hundereds of dollars every month, I’m still shelling out tons of money for regular maintenance care.) Or Roman Polanski (I’m torn on this issue – obviously rape is never ok, but I also think a lot of time and money is being spent on a very out of the ordinary case, in which the perpetrator has not re-offended in what? 32 years? And I’m pretty sure at his age, he won’t? But we always have to make a point, don’t we? ugh, I don’t know.)

So, maybe I’ll just go get some champagne and forget all about it, in the bliss of autumn and the comfort I have finally achieved for myself for the first time ever.

When we bought our house, we were staidly informed that it had “settled, due to known drainage issues”.
When we came to see it that fateful Sunday, the first thing I noticed was that it was noticeably crooked. I actually told the selling agent when she asked me for feedback about the house that it was probably the most noticeably crooked house we’d seen, (and there are a lot in this neighborhood) a fact which I do not believe she appreciated.
It was bad enough that I almost rejected the house for that reason only. But I loved everything else about it so much, I ultimately decided it didn’t matter.

Our house is crooked enough that every conversation we have about improvements we could do revolves around leveling the house.
We hadn’t lived here but a few months before I developed the theory that the “settling” is due to “known drainage issues” is bullshit. For one thing, even though we have since seen pictures of the front yard being so badly flooded that you practically needed a boat to get to the front door, when we had the inspection, it was dry under the house. Like, drydry, and if there really was that much of a drainage problem, it would probably be permadamp under there, especially after that wet, floody winter, and because last summer was a cool, rainy summer.
Also, we live right in the middle of a bog in which the giant peat layer that lies in the middle of the whole thing has been radically depleted of moisture due to development diverting ground water, which has caused that layer to compress like a dried up sponge. After I read the details of the issues with the bog, I began to believe that that was where the problem lies. Either the former owners and their inspector really didn’t know about the issues with the bog, or they covered up a permanent problem that no one can do anything about with a reparable problem that they supposedly had already fixed by pouring a new concrete with drains and a double sump pump.

But the more we talk about things that we could/should do and the more I look around the house, and at the way some thing are, I think part of the problem may be that janky “remodeling” I’ve been talking about. Some of the crookedness may be due to settling, as the floor is definitely sloped, but supposedly the foundation of the house is fine. We have decided to remove our fireplace, as it it seems like a lot of heavy brick dragging down that side of the house. It’s also right where we like the tv (which is parked in front of it right now, in fact) and is made of really ugly brick. And since we started talking about, the more I look at it, the more I notice things which make me think that either someone added the fireplace after the house was built, or at some point in time it was made larger. I also do not think the front door or the giant picture window that takes up most of the front wall of the house are original. The front door is in a really awkward spot, and appears to be crooked in the opposite direction of the rest of the crookedness, which makes me think someone put it in after some of crooked happened, and tried to compensate somehow. I noticed the other day that the edges of the giant window look odd, as if someone who didn’t know what they were really doing cut a raggedy hole in the wall and patched it badly after adding that stupid window.
To top it all off, I do not think the large doorway leading from the living room to the kitchen is original either. I think there used to be a regular, old single-sized door  or doorway, and someone had what really is the most brilliant of all these half-baked ideas, to open up this whole side of the house.

It really is lovely that the house is pretty open from front to back because of this, but I have to wonder if cutting that giant hole in that wall is also a contributing factor. Because three out of four walls of our fairly large living room may have been signifigantly weakened, I wonder of the weight of the upstairs could be bearing down enough the cause the floor to drop as well.

Add on to alllll this the fact that I think the heavy, heavy chunk of concrete that is our front steps was added at some point (and may actually be pulling the wall away from the foundation, which could allow the floor to drop?) and there is heavy brick on the front of the house as well, I really kind of think that the “settling” is due to stupid people slowly but surely ruining what is now my house.

The good news is that, if I am correct, jacking up and re-stabilizing the house will fix all of our issues just as nicely, if not more so, than having piers installed. That’s got to mean we will save tons of money to fix it.

Let the work begin.

During one of the many hours I spent on the couch during my first, real, three-day weekend, I happened to glance up and to the right, and noticed that the fireplace mantle was, indeed, a fake.
I mean, at first I wasn’t sure, although the soft wood and altogether insubstantialness of the thing had always made me suspicious. But as I looked up at the bottom of it, I was sure  could see the original mantlepiece from underneath.
90 seconds with a crowbar later (and by crowbar I really mean a flat metal tool that is really for installing laminate floor), the whole bulky thing had been removed, revealing what may or may not be the original mantle underneath.
And to think, I had considered placing a 65″ television on that thing for a minute.

As time passes, it seems as if every previous owner of this house has left behind some sort of shoddy “remodeling”. From the even-too-small-for-me pedestal sink in the bathroom (upon which you cannot place even the smallest amount of weight without it pulling away from the wall) to the ill-fated walkway on the side of the house that is barely even accesible which connects to the patio in the back that we didn’t know about for months because the grass had grown over it. Even my beloved solarium has shown enough wear and tear in less than a year that at this point, the only real option is to tear the whole thing down and rebuild it.

In less than an hour, the fireplace insert that we do use, but not enough to actually keep, will be removed. We realized that it is only connected by a few screws at the stovepipe and figure we may as well take it out so we can put the teevee in front of the fireplace, whose days are also numbered.

And in case you were wondering? That show “Big Love” is actually pretty damn good. We watched all three seasons in less than a week.
Next up – “Oz”.

Finally feeling well rested after a long week of trying unsuccessfully to get a bunch of things done. It won’t last last long (re: unsuccessfully) as we have an appraiser coming tomorrow and still have many things to do.

At the very least though, the new raised bed was completed, despite the fact that Alex returned to work last week. Wohoo! He is back at work still this week, but this may be it, then back to furlough. It’s funny how things work out like that, if only work had happened a week later, we might have gotten everything done before the appraisal.
So I will try to leave work a little early to go do some big time last minute cleaning. Easter really threw the proverbial monkey wrench into this whole situation as well. If we had had all day yesterday to get things done, we’d have been in great shape. Instead, we spent the whole day between two families, neither of which are religious. I am fully aware that it is just a chance to visit, but it was a lot of driving on our part to simply eat too much in one day.

I also blew it this weekend by being an old woman and NAPPING, something which I never do. I took a two hour nap Saturday evening, and an hour and a half last night. At least now I feel ready to go home and clean. The final blow to the cleaning/fixing process is that we are having dinner with Alex’s dad this evening simply because he happens to be around today. Worst timing ever. Hopefully, it will be a matter of getting a two hour dinner break and then getting back to the cleaning when I get home. If I can get back on it by 8, then go til 12, I should get a lot done. Then, I plan to get up at 6 and work for another 5+ hours until the appraiser arrives. So hopefully about 11 more hours before it happens, and that should be enough I think. I will be relieved when that is finally over. I think I am pretty near the end of my to-do list, so maybe I will do a little grocery shopping and some more planting tomorrow afternoon, then fall on the couch and die.

Echoing my recent posts, things just keep getting better and better.
Even though I like fall and winter more than most, I am not unhappy about the fact that spring seems to be here, at least through tomorrow anyway. I’ve planted a bunch of seeds (whether or not they will sprout remains to be seen) and yesterday I bought some more new plants, an assortment of flowery and decorative things, and herbs and veggies. I think tomorrow I may go to the actual nursery, if for no other reason than to look for the amazing Rudbeckia variety I saw in a Sunset magazine a few weeks back.
Alex is planning on building a new raised bed under the dining room window, where now there are some tumbled over timbers which no longer contain a mess of wood chips that I could totally live without. The flowery things I bought yesterday are for that particular spot.

In even better news, I had a profitable week at work last week (even moreso than usual) and Alex is back to work this week, at least for this week. If there isn’t work for him next week, at least he will be more officially laid off to be put on the out of work list, but they will still be able to call him back for months to come. As much as him going to work is rough because he goes so early (especially in the winter) it was nice this morning, as I didn’t feel like lying around in bed nearly so much since he wasn’t there. I think each day this week will be easier to get up earlier. As much as I like having him around to do projects, it would be nice to get him out of the house and at work early for summer so that I am up earlier. Even just getting up a little earlier this morning, I was able to get everything I wanted to done, and leave very much on time.

I think I have two more bills to pay for this month, which I will probably do tomorrow, and then I hope to get the mortgage paid and out of the way next week, by the 13th, way early, go me! Then, we can just build up some stores of $$ for a couple of weeks before there are more bills, and everything should be even less costly from here on out with the changes we made to our cell phone plan, and summer coming up (less electricity, no gas, woohoo!) Also, May is a “no electricity or water bill” month. They both come in the same month now, and I just paid them, so next month should be an easy month, and we can get even a little more ahead.

Actgually looking forward to summer for real, I think!

Ah, a hot shower at home, a clean kitchen and dishes, being able to wash your hands…
Such little things, you don’t realize you miss them until they are gone for a few days.

As of yesterday afternoon, our new hot water heater was successfully installed, and works beautifully. We did three loads of dishes yesterday, and our kitchen finally does not look like a bomb went off. I took a shower this morning, and was grateful to be able to do so.

It is a cold, rainy day and quiet here, peaceful, not the worst follow-up to a three day weekend ever. I can’t wait to make those a weekly event!

It is a good thing that tax time is near my birthday and I always file early.
For whatever reason, it seems that things always start to go really, really wrong shortly before my birthday, then a tax refund swoops in and saves the day.

This year, Alex got furloughed, then did not get sent back to work when he was supposed to. (It does not sound as if he will be going to Moses Lake though – he is trying to go back to work with the company he was with before in about another month. He has been told that the ML job is not as big as they are saying.) Then, he felt like we should not go out for a nice dinner for my birthday, as I would be paying for it and that didn’t make sense to him. Emily suggested dinner at our house, but I was getting frustrated about that because I would still be paying for it and it would cost just as much because there would be more people. Then, he gets a $900+ electricity bill from this places he used to live in which his name was on the bill with two other people, and was never taken off, and apprently, they didn’t pay the bill, and have now run out on it, leaving him to pay for electricity he never even used. AND they left the place trashed, which he could be held responsible for as well.
Now? Our water heater isn’t heating water.

I was actually taking all of this pretty much in stride this morning, even though no income tax money had landed in my bank account yet.

It turns out that my tax accountant had it deposited to Alex’s instead. Which is wrong,wrong, wrong, as I won’t be able to pay for some extra stuff with it until it can be put into my account, hopefully today. We’ll see. Now I guess it doesn’t matter if I have to pay for my own damn birthday or not!