Minor Meanderings

Much better today

2012-02-13T10:49:00.003-06:00

There was no midnight stinky-poop-fest last night, and Minnie seems to feel just fine today. Yay!

Worms and other unpleasant, poop-related things

2012-02-12T14:00:00.002-06:00

Minnie ate an errant flea recently and got a tapeworm for her troubles; I saw it waving from her Spot #13 last Wednesday. (Curious about what fleas have to do with tapeworms? Here's some info.) We got her a little bottle of three tapeworm tablets (praziquantel) from PetSmart, along with a bag of Pill Pockets, and she snarfed up 2.5 of the tabs like a good girl (the last two loaded Pill Pockets got licked a lot, but not eaten). The tapeworms should be dead.

I expected her to have some soft poops as a result of the Pill Pockets, which are basically Greenies, which, unfortunately, don't agree with her. But it's two days since she had the last pill and the last Pill Pocket, and she's still having this sort-of diarrhea. The last episode went past the very smelly soft stage to a very smelly liquid with a few bubbles in it.

The smell--my gawd.... It wakes me up in the middle of the night and I have to get up, cover the mess (Minnie's not very diligent about that), wait for it to harden a bit, and scoop.

I think it may be V-E-T time. And, of course, it's Sunday and snowing like mad off & on.

My furry girl is 7 years old (officially) this year. Her cousin, Sammi (Sister A's kitty), is officially 8 years old. I totally missed blogging their joint Gotcha Day last month, so sue me.

Anyway, keeping an eye on Minnie....

New Year's resolution (a bit late)

2012-01-05T13:11:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: Gimme a break, nobody keeps those things, ya make a resolution on January the first and it's broken by the fifth. Well, this isn't a big one, and I think I can keep it.

My New Year's resolution is to not eat any more food that messes with my head (i.e., has way too much salt, thus threatening a fit of Meniere's) or makes me feel like a hippo in a tutu.

This is the hippo in question (thank you, Walt Disney):

Notice that I did not actually resolve to lose weight--those resolutions are frail as dandelion fluff. I'm just going to quit eating overly salted, fatty, swimming-in-gravy things that I know will leave me feeling guilty, too full, and woozy in the head. Like the chicken friend steak dinner I ordered last night at IHOP. Good grief, what was I thinking?? All I can say in my defense is that I was ravenous and we hadn't gone to IHOP for maybe two years, so when Sister A. offered me a choice between three places for which we had coupons (we love our coupons), I went a little nuts.

In IHOP's defense, they do have lighter meals on the menu. And if we ever go there again, that's the section I'll order from. Ditto any other place we go.

It's nearly impossible to avoid salt at restaurants, but there are usually some dishes that are less salty than the rest. That requires checking menus and nutritional content ahead of time, of course, a task made infinitely easier by the Internet and sites like CalorieCount. (Seriously, check 'em out--look up your favorite fast food meal there and see how much it's packing in the way of fat, cholesterol, and sodium. It'll make you cry.) I was doing pretty well about checking that sort of thing (we'll ignore the almost weekly trips to Wendy's that I used to make...not for salads), but I've gotten lazy.

Now it's time to get back on track.

Cheese doodles do not make my tummy happy. Neither does food so salty I can count each crystal, or anything swimming in grease, or desserts that are way too rich. If that kind of thing doesn't make me feel good, I don't need it.

Sounds simple enough to me.

It's CURTAINS for you!

2011-12-29T11:47:00.002-06:00

Sister A. finished the last of the drapes last night. This is a ridiculously huge project--curtains for every major room in the house--that she set for herself shortly after we bought the new house. We had picked colors to repaint the various rooms, and in a moment of insanity, A. volunteered to make drapes for the entire house. So then we went even more bananas picking out way-spiffy fabrics for the drapes. This is what she picked for her room:

White striped damask with big peonies and greenery to go with her green wall color. And last night, in a burst of industry, A. finished this last set of drapes. Et voila!

Trés spifferoo, huh? And with this last set of drapes, everything we wanted to do to the inside of the house is DONE.

A genuine white Christmas

2011-12-25T15:06:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas!

I have photographic proof that we do occasionally have a white Christmas around here....

The crepe myrtles were covered with white blobs this morning.

The neighbor's pine tree.

Snow-laced trees across the street from us.

Grumpy old man with beard? Devoted sentinel? Wicked Witch's henchman?

More lacy trees.

We've had a lovely Christmas day, with an exchange of stockings, oatmeal with raisins for breakfast, a cherry pie waiting on the oven while dinner cooks, and general laziness all around. And, of course, chocolate!

Never shop while punchy

2011-12-23T18:10:00.000-06:00

Replacing my queen bed with a full bed back in July, during the Big Remodel, was a reasonable decision--the queen-size sleigh bed I'd bought for a larger bedroom in my old house was way too big for my smaller bedroom in this house. The bed I bought to replace it, however, was not such a hot decision. We were exhausted with work and lack of sleep at the time we bought that cheap thing and probably should not have been driving, much less shopping for furniture. Oh well, live & learn. Less than half a year later, the no-name mattress already has a sizeable dip in the center. The headboard, of course, was shit from the get-go.

Well, I spotted (online) an all-wood bedframe on sale at what I consider the best furniture store in town. We went to have a look at its construction. It's a good, sturdy bedframe, what they call a panel bed--I guess because the head- and footboards are basically square with basically square designs on 'em. It looked great in the store; it looks even better in my bedroom.

Sammy snoopervised the bed-changing process, of course. Minnie was hiding in the den.

The new bedframe is very close to matching the nightstand and dresser I bought with the queen sleigh bed; the n. & d. are just a little bit redder. Close enough for gub'mint work.

Now all I gotta do is find a sale on a good mattress (top only; I can still use the crappy set's box spring), then I'll be happy.

In kitty news, Gram is doing better and was moved to a nursing home a few days ago, so Annabelle may get to keep her person for a while longer. I know Gram is hoping to move back home soon. We're rubbing our lucky kitty feet for her continued improvement, but we've told her daughter and granddaughter that we'll still be here for Annabelle if/when necessary.

Our little refugee

2011-12-13T12:35:00.000-06:00

We're getting an addition to our household soon, and we won't even have to hire a handyman for it. This one is short and fuzzy and upset right now that her person has disappeared. Meet Annabelle.

Annabelle with her person, "Gram".

Look at that silly face!

She belongs to the grandmother of one of Sister A's friends. The grandmother is in the hospital and it's not looking good for her, so she's worried sick about her kitty. The granddaughter contacted A., describing Annabelle as "a sweet little kitty....She is a smart girl ~ doesn't care too much for men. ;-) ...She's an indoor/outdoor ladies' cat, litter trained and a true snuggler." She's also been spayed and is caught up on her shots.

A. and I talked about it, and we decided to take Annabelle in. I know Sammi would like a playmate (Minnie still interprets her chasing as aggression). We would love for either of our kitties to have a cuddle-mate. We hope the interactions of our trio won't morph into a huge, jealousy-charged cat fight. There's no way to tell how this will go, but we've got room and we'd like to help this little girl. I don't know when Annabelle will arrive, but it'll probably be soon.

We're going to start her out in the sewing room and try to introduce everyone gradually. Wish us luck!

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

2011-11-24T14:44:00.001-06:00

This year I am thankful for:

my good job;
the fact that my good job feels a whole lot more secure than it did early this year, thanks to a new Big Boss who has pulled us back from the red-ink-painted brink, and an Assistant Big Boss who understands that putting out a quality product is a good thing and requires good people to do it, and who recognizes that those people know what they're doing and can offer good ideas about how to improve the biz (instead of ignoring us and treating us like witless peons);
our wonderful house;
the fact that all the remodeling of our wonderful house is DONE and will be paid off in only five years;
our two sweet kitties (OK, mostly sweet)...who, unfortunately, don't get along, but ya can't have everything; and
our discovery last Thanksgiving that Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice is an excellent substitute for folks who can't drink wine anymore (onaccounta it messes with our stupid Meniere's heads). :)

Sister A. has been busy making more drapes lately--she's only got one more set left to go (she left the ones for her bedroom for last). Both sets of the den drapes are now done and looking totally fab.

As you can see, Sammi came to snoopervise the photo session. Minnie did, too, at one point, then she retired to my chair to curl up for her midmorning nap. I was lucky to get pretty good pix of them today, so here are our furkids....

Sammi by the French doors

Sammi on the cork floor of the kitchen

Minnie by the French doors

Minnie in her favorite napping spot, my office chair,
pretending to sleep through the camera flash.

I expect our kitties are grateful to have a nice house to live in with plenty of food and treats and soft places to sleep. Either that, or they accept it all as their due. Being cats, I suspect the latter. Good thing they're cute!

Owed to a Spell Chequer

2011-11-17T09:16:00.001-06:00

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
Eye weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

(I have no idea who wrote this. I was looking for something else on my pea sea (or is that pee see?) and found it tucked away among my favorite things.) :)

A slight dusting...

2011-10-18T12:37:00.001-05:00

On the left is a photo from the Dust Bowl days around here. And on the right is what my neck of the woods looked like late afternoon yesterday (paired photos from kcbd.com).

That's a whole bunch of drought-scorched cotton fields in the air, pushed by a cold front with wind gusts up to 75 mph. It swarmed in like the plagues of Egypt, turning the daylight a dark, rusty brown at 5:30 p.m.

"Brown Monday," indeed.

"Stick a fork in me, I'm DONE."

2011-10-15T17:24:00.000-05:00

When we ordered the new Silestone countertops from Home Depot, we were told delivery would take as long as 4-6 weeks, but we got the call that they had arrived at Home Depot well before the four-week mark--yay! We scheduled installation for the following Monday (the 10th) and the countertop guys whipped through the job in a couple of hours. First, Handy Frank came by to pull out the old sink and the last remnants of the fake-butcher-block laminate. Then the counter guys put up a ledger board to support the Silestone over the trash-&-recycle space.

Then the smaller bits of countertop were installed on either side of the stove....

And here's one of the counter guys working on the big section, cutting the hole for the sink....

(I'm sure our neighbors have been lovin' us to bits during all this.)

Then the big piece went in--or, rather, big pieces, because they had to do this long stretch in two parts. But the seam barely shows.

The counter guys popped the sink in to see if it fit, and we could see how good the finished counter would look.

Handy Frank came back later to hook up the sink, but he didn't have a spot in his schedule right then to do the rest of it, so we had to wait a few days before he could tile the backsplash and do the other last little bits of work we managed to find for him. We were a little worried about the backsplash tile after it was up--it looked kinda dark--but after Frank put the white grout on...oh, my, yes. :)

It's finished. It's gorgeous. We love it. And now the whole project is DONE.

Downsizing

2011-10-01T18:55:00.000-05:00

My bedroom at the old house was bigger than my bedroom at the house my sister and I share now. Until April 2010, I didn't know I'd be downsizing. In fact, I had reason to expect an even larger bedroom in my future shared digs with Sis. We had planned for a long time that, after her hubby pooped off (he's a lot older than she is), we'd throw in together--I would move into her big house in the little town where she lived and take up residence in hubby's old room, which is ridiculously big.

So, about a year prior to April 2010, I decided to pop for a queen bedroom set, because I needed the storage of the dresser and tall chest of drawers, and I like to stretch my legs in bed. Also, I had room for bigger furniture then and would still have room for it in the future. So I got it. Not just any queen bed, though--a freakin' sleigh bed! Talk about fancy! Here it is at the old house:

Big & tall & curvy & not one squeak outta the frame. (I hate squeaky bedframes--they wake me up.) I loved it.

Then life happened, and Sister A. and I wound up buying a house together here in my neck o' the woods instead of hers, and while there were a couple of houses we looked at that had a large bedroom for me, they didn't work for us in other respects.

This house we picked is just right for us. But my bedroom is quite a bit smaller than my old one. There was no room for my tall chest of drawers from the fancy bedroom set; it went into the den immediately for storage duty there. I could just shoehorn the rest of my furniture--big dresser, nightstand, and the monster queen sleigh bed--into my bedroom, but there wasn't much walking space around the bed. Still, I had just bought that set, and I loved my bed, and I was determined to keep it.

During our recent remodel, though, when we had to move every stick of furniture at some point, I finally admitted that my dang bed was too dang big for my dang bedroom. So, dang it, let's sell it and get a more compact, full-size bed.

Here's how much floorspace I had with the queen bed (note the amount of rug showing):

And here's the new, smaller bed, with smaller headboard, and a lot more rug showing:

It makes quite a lot of difference. I don't have to crab-walk between the bed and the dresser anymore--I can just walk in and pull out drawers like a person. And I can walk straight across my bedroom from the bathroom to the window without detouring around the end of the bed. Minnie has a little longer jump from the bed to the dresser, but she can make it. Alas, she can no longer jump from the foot of the bed to her cat tree at the far end of the window, but I expect she'll manage.

The headboard looks nice, although it's made of shit particle board and printed vinyl "veneer". It goes pretty well with the dresser and nightstand from the queen set. The mattress is comfortable, the plain metal Hollywood frame & cheap headboard don't squeak after they're screwed together tightly, plus I've got room to walk around now, so that's what counts.

It's just not as purty.

(Yes, I know, I'm a spoiled little baby.)

Kitchen cabinets and all floors DONE

2011-09-25T19:58:00.001-05:00

The kitchen cabinets and all the floors in the house were actually finished last Saturday--a week ago--but we've been so completely dead since then, catching up on our sleep, I haven't gotten around to putting up pix until now. The week before last was grueling. The flooring guys worked hard and long to make up time lost avoiding contact with the scary asbestos-containing linoleum (or the black "cut-back" mastic under it, or both--I forget the final verdict or whether there ever was one). Wednesday, Thursday, Friday were all late nights for them, but Saturday was the worst--they didn't finish until nearly 1 am. But then, thankfully, they were completely finished.

I wound up taking part of Thursday and all day Friday off from work to help Sister A. with moving stuff around and generally keeping her sane while the guys worked and we waited to jump in and do our next bit. As the guys finished rooms, we put them back together. Keep in mind, we replaced every single floor in the entire house, so ALL the furniture had to be removed from every room at some point. And after the floor was finished in each room, we had to do a lightning vac-&-Swiffer of all the sawdust, cement dust, and general messy-guy dust before the furniture could be moved back in. Some things we could move ourselves; others had to wait for the guys. But it was sure nice seeing the rooms come together again.

Here's Sister A's reassembled bedroom with its new floor, the tiger-stripe bamboo:

The sewing room (a work in progress, obviously):

The hallway, with Sammi, who expresses her approval of the new floors by flopping down on them anywhere and everywhere:

My bedroom, with Minnie, who likes the new floors just as much as her cousin (but, really, what can beat a nap in your very own cat tree?):

By the way, the cats look quite calm and collected in those photos because they were taken this morning. During the worst of the remodel, they were totally freaked out. Sammi managed to stay inside the house (close to Mama!) even with all the hammering and strangers, but Minnie got right the hell away from this place and stayed away until the whine of saws and all that other racket was over. Saturday night, when the guys worked so horribly late, I managed to grab her around midnight and shut her in my room with me until the guys were gone (my room was done at that point). I did lots of petting and cooing to calm her down, but it took quite a while. She wasn't even next door to normal until after I got out of the shower (my bathroom's an en suite, so I didn't have to leave her alone) and the guys had finally collected their tools and dragged their weary bods home. It was a few days before she really believed the noise and workers and displaced furniture everywhere were all over.

Here's the finished living room this morning, complete with relaxing co-home-owner:

The finished kitchen and utility room, with cork floor:

And my den, with bamboo floors and my old WalMart fake-light-oak bookshelves after an espresso paint job (pretty nice results for 14 bucks!):

We are thrilled with how the floors turned out--it really was worth the late nights and sleep deprivation! But we are equally thrilled to be getting the house back to normal. Yesterday, we finally moved the last of our shelves, book-boxes, and bags of Sister A's quilting fabrics out of the garage and into the house, so we were able to put the cars in their home again; A. got the living room books put in their shelves; and I started the same with the den books.

We are wrecked, but recovering, and very happy with the results.

The only jobs remaining are the installation of the new countertops when they arrive, the backsplash tiling after that, and any last little touch-ups for our honey-do man. Then the house will be done.

Progress, a snag, more progress, another snag

2011-09-14T20:10:00.002-05:00

The kitchen cabinets are done, fabulous, and even have some of our wayward supplies in 'em! Here are the south and north banks, respectively:

Notice the fashionable countertops--three sheets of cardboard strapped together with packing tape. They're surprisingly sturdy! The countertop template guy is coming next Tuesday to measure for the real thing, but these stand-ins will do just fine until the real countertops arrive.

Pardon the lousy pix--I didn't realize how dusty the camera lens was, plus I had to shoot from the doorways today because the flooring guys are working in the dining area. YAY! That red stuff on the floor is underlayment.

You may notice that there's a gap at the top of the cabinets; that's because Sister A. is ~~a shrimp~~ vertically challenged and needs the wall cabinets to start no higher than 15" over the base cabinets; otherwise, she wouldn't be able to reach more than one shelf without a stepstool. So the cabinets didn't go up as high as expected. We're going to have Handy Frank add a sort of border above the crown molding that'll go straight up to the ceiling, painted the same color as the cabinets. Frank & A. held a "cabinet meeting" while the installer finished his last little bits.

That was all Tuesday. I took off work Tuesday to help move stuff from room to room for the flooring guys, who were scheduled to start that day. We moved our first little bits into the den and the guys got to work, but then they ran into a roadblock--they found more of the old linoleum and black mastic under the carpet in A's bedroom and the sewing room. The company says it's got asbestos in it, so all work had to stop until the flippin' lino was out. They wouldn't even pull up the rest of the carpet! Thank goodness, they did move the furniture out of those two rooms (and into my now very crowded den). After they were safely away in their non-asbestos-breathing bureaucracy, A. and I ripped up the rest of the carpet in both rooms and I learned how to pry up carpet tack. Golly, what fun that was. But we got 'er done. We left the lino for Frank to scrape up; we didn't have the tools (or the oomphs) for it.

We were totally dead by the time Frank came to scrape up the lino for us, take out huge heavy buckets of carpet tack and other trash, put up the microwave, and fight with the sink connections. That lasted until nearly 9pm. We fell into bed the minute he was out the door. And, oh holy crap, were we sore!

Alley's bed, of course, was no longer in her bedroom--she's camping in the den until her room is finished.

Today, there wasn't anything I could help with, so I went to work to ~~sleep~~ get things done there. Here on the home front, the flooring guys started work, and had even put down underlayment and a couple rows of boards in A's bedroom, when they ran into another problem: the concrete slab floor wasn't level. So they had to pour thinset (cement) to level it off, and, of course, drying it all took time (especially because it's humid today). They found the same problem in the sewing room and kitchen/dining area; more thinset, more drying time. Finally, they were able to get started laying cork in the dining area/kitchen sometime after I got home from work. At this writing, it's after 8pm, and they're still at it. But we'll have a finished kitchen and dining area tonight, by gum!

During all the work today, my bedroom somehow got turned into a supply depot for doors, underlayment, and bits of flooring:

I sincerely hope there'll be somewhere else to put that stuff before I hit the hay.

Cabinet Day!

2011-09-12T19:44:00.000-05:00

"And now...let the wild rumpus start!" --Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

The cabinet installers began work today and, oh my, are the new cabinets gorgeous or what! We are very pleased with them. I was blown away when I got home from work and saw the nearly-reconstructed kitchen. Here are some pix Sister A. took while the guys were working.

The new cabinets emerge from their boxes.

The first two wall cabinets are up on the stove side of the room (south).

The old sink base is gone (along with the sink, of course). There was a problem with the cut-off valves--they were plastic and looked brittle or scary or something--but Handy Frank came to the rescue and replaced them for us. Now the guys can proceed.

The second pair of south-wall cabinets go up.

Next, the installers put up the window-side (north) wall cabinets. And, yes, that is one very muscle-y young man there. Judging by his T-shirt ("Fill the Boot" for MDA), he's also a firefighter.

All the north-wall cabinets are up, along with the valance, which may be my favorite thing in this whole room (so far).

Tomorrow morning, before the cabinet guys come back, A. and I will zoom over to Home Depot to order the countertops and schedule measurement for same. The cabinet guys are due back around 9:30-10am to finish their installation; they figure they'll be done around noon or 1pm. The flooring installers are scheduled to arrive around 11am, so there'll be overlapping work going on, but they shouldn't get in each other's way.

A. and I will be carrying electronics from room to room as the flooring guys work. In between such fun, however, after the cabinets are all in, we shall be happily restoring our kitchen to functionality.

Our poor kitties--more stompy boots & hammering & general destruction/construction in the house tomorrow, all adding to their already freaked-out state. They'll have to hide in the bathrooms for a while, I guess--those will be the only places that aren't being worked in tomorrow...maybe!

In Memoriam...

2011-09-11T13:20:00.002-05:00

Superman & the heroes of September 11, 2001, by Alex Ross

A bigger and better mess

2011-09-08T13:02:00.002-05:00

Turns out the black stuff on the floor is not full of asbestos--our guy said it's basically tar, and if there's asbestos in it, it's a wee tiny amount. But we're getting the rest of the linoleum scraped up--we're halfway through it now, anyway.

As you can see by the photo at left, the flooring arrived yesterday. Holy catfish, it's gorgeous! This is the engineered bamboo that will go in the living room, den (that's the den wall & baseboard it's up against in the left-hand pic), both bedrooms, sewing room, and hall. Cork will go in the kitchen, dining area (basically part of the kitchen), utility room, and both bathrooms. Here's a shot of both of them:

Instead of having all those boxes put in the garage, Sister A. had the delivery guys bring them in and pile them in the den, so it's mighty crowded in there now. Our "pantry", which was sitting on the floor, is now on my credenza, and our few bits of cookware are on my desk. The garage did get some of the floor stuff, though--the underlayment and some mystery object(s) in long round tubes are out there.

And when I came home from work yesterday, the first thing I saw coming in from the garage and utility room was this: our utterly destroyed kitchen and mostly scraped-up floor. But, hey, at least the microwave's hooked up while we don't have a stove!

Nobody in their right mind would live in the house while this amount of hooraw was going on...unless, of course, they aren't rich & don't have a second house. There's that.

The cats were completely freaked out yesterday, what with guys stomping through carrying big boxes and Handy Frank scraping up the kitchen floor. Minnie zoomed under my bed to hide, but found Sammi had already staked a claim there, so she dove into my closet instead. Our poor kitties remained in hiding nearly the whole day.

Cabinet-Fest!

2011-09-06T20:15:00.004-05:00

Our naked dining room is stacked to the rafters with boxes containing the new kitchen cabinets! And all those boxes make for excellent mountain-climbing, as you can see.

Minnie is giving everything a thorough sniffing-over.

I haven't seen Sammi hopping up there yet--that sort of jump might be a little beyond Her Chubbiness.

We haven't gotten the installation scheduled yet, but probably will tomorrow morning. We were hoping it could be done this week, but since there are only three days left in this short week, that's probably pushing it.

Anyway, we have other fish to fry before the house fills with cabinet installation guys. We got a rather nasty surprise regarding floor prep today: the black stuff that we found on some areas of the concrete under the linoleum...

...isn't just a harmless stain from really old mastic. It's a stain resulting from something called "cut-back" that was used to adhere linoleum back in the '60s, when this house was built, and up into the early '70s, when it was outlawed. And whyever would "cut-back" be outlawed? Why, because it's made with asbestos!

Oops. And dammit. And a few other choice words.

The floor-installer-dispatcher-lady said they can't take the stuff out themselves (regulations), so we'll have to arrange to get it "abated" on our own. It'll get done, but it'll cost "a fine bundle of lettuce" that we weren't anticipating. Not so much that it brings the project to a screeching halt, of course (especially since we're in the big middle of things!), but enough to be irritating and kick our final tally up a bit.

Anyway, the clean-up is scheduled to start tomorrow morning. The kitchen/dining area will be stripped down to bare concrete, as will both bathrooms. We doubt if there's any of that stuff under the cheapo carpet, but we'll peel up a corner to peek, just in case.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, flooring is scheduled to arrive Thursday on three big pallets (which I'm told are each a 6' cube!). They'll wait in the garage until we get space enough in the dining room to unpack it all and bring it indoors to acclimate before installation. The floor guys offered to move our installation up a week to next Monday, but with the cut-back situation and cabinets that have to go in before floors, we'll have to stick with our original date.

Utility room done (except floor)

2011-08-20T13:56:00.001-05:00

Phase I of the remodel is complete. Now we can live semi-normally for a while. :)

The utility room cabinets (recycled from the kitchen) are all up, painted, cleaned out, and filled with their normal stuff. Except for the floor, that room is done! We wound up with gobs more storage room in there than we had before, since all the cans of paint are in the garage storage cabinets now.

Our handyman has finished the first part of his work. The kitchen cabinets are due to come in Sept. 6 and be installed probably during the following week. After the new cabinets are installed, Frank will come back and do the backsplash tiling and whatever paint touch-ups are necessary. The floors are due to be installed the week of Sept. 19; we'll need our handyman again during that week to take out the old stove, install the new one after the flooring is down, plus take out the potties when the floor guys rip up the linoleum in the bathrooms and put 'em back in place when the bathroom floors are done. Hopefully, both bathrooms can be finished in one day. We are girls, after all--can't exactly go outside and water the crepe myrtles.

Note the fashionable card table in the kitchen between the old stove and the fridge. That and a smidgen of countertop by the sink is what we have for food prep until the new cabinets arrive. But we're both old Girl Scouts--we'll make it work. :)

Utility room mostly assembled

2011-08-15T19:19:00.002-05:00

The last kitchen cabinet we're saving was pulled out today and moved into the utility room. Handy Frank also got the wall cabinets to sober up and hang straight. :)

He'll be cleaning them up all nice & neat, of course, and the countertop will be cut off at a suitable length, not sticking out like that. But the utility room already looks a lot better with its "new" cabinets.

Frank also got the dining room painted and the new color looks great, but my photos don't show it well. I'll try again after we get all the furniture back in place.

Lots of progress

2011-08-14T14:07:00.007-05:00

First, before the kitchen remodel got started, we chopped down the big tree in the front yard. It was a sick, scrofulous sycamore that Sister A. just hated, so off with its head!

Click that pic to see the oddity outlined in red. Why is there a screwdriver stuck in the stump, you ask? Because the tree man tried to "drill" holes in it (to pour stump killer into) by hammering a screwdriver into the wood. Then he couldn't get the screwdriver out. He'll just have to wait for the stump to rot a bit. Guess tree guys don't often need drills, so he didn't have one.

We'll eventually replace that tree with a fruitless mulberry, hopefully around tax refund time.

Moving on to the kitchen remodel--it's actually more of a utility room/kitchen remodel with some spiffing up in the garage. Our handyman and his helper started demo Monday and have accomplished a lot this week.

In the garage, they took down the pegboard which was in an inconvenient place, took down the wood paneling somebody had put up along one wall (to cover dinks in the drywall, apparently), repaired all the dinks in the walls, and painted (& even textured!) the whole place. It's the nicest, cleanest-looking garage I've ever laid eyes on!

Handyman Frank on stilts, patching holes in the garage ceiling.

I would love to try those stilts, but with my balance problem, it would probably end badly....

Derrick unscrews the under-cabinet jar-opener for us--gotta keep that!

The guys took down the cheap wall cabinets in the utility room and transferred half of them to the garage, so we can store away all the yard chemicals, paint, and other garage clutter out of sight. Then Saturday, Frank put up the pegboard beside the cabinets and we happily organized things out there.

The shrouded thing on the right is one of the old WalMart bookcases I've been hauling around from one abode to another for about 30 years. We decided to spraypaint them espresso and started with one as a "test subject". We noticed while spraying that leaving a little of the grain showing through the darker paint made it look pretty good!

The row of boxes is mostly books and dishes we can live without until after this whole circus is over and all the furniture is back where it belongs. And why is all the furniture moving? Why, because we're replacing all the floors in the entire house, and no one has yet perfected the art of levitation. Darn.

The guys scraped up the old linoleum in the utility room and kitchen (it will be replaced with cork) and took out the threshold in the doorway between the rooms. Then they started taking down the old kitchen cabinets and parking the various parts in the utility room.

Thank goodness for long shirttails.

Here's some dorky old wallpaper that was revealed when one cabinet was taken down. I think the rolled-up image is a basket of fruit. Yikes, how early '60s...or even late '50s!

Next, the old kitchen cabinets started going up in the utility room. The ones over the washer and dryer in the pic below have already been painted with our trim color, Cancun Sand.

The bank of cabinets on the opposite wall, however, look a bit drunk, thanks to an unexpected problem in the wall between the utility room and the garage--the thing's off-level by an 1.25"! The angle of the ceiling is marked in yellow and the angle of the cabinets is marked in red. There's quite a difference between the two!

The guys will reposition those cabinets centered over the base cabinets instead, so the Leaning Wall of Our House won't be so obvious.

Work resumes Monday, with Frank fixing the drunk cabinets, and also painting the dining area and kitchen Mountain Haze if there's time.

During all this uproar, our house is all junked up again...

...our kitchen/pantry is reduced to one cleared corner of the den...

...and while the guys are working, the cats hide under the beds all day. Minnie was so freaked out at the beginning of the week, her fur was coming out in little drifts. That ended, thank goodness, or she'd be one bald kitty by now! Sammi has been a little more mellow about things; she still doesn't like the hammering & whatnot, but she's friendly to the two handymen. :)

Yeah, about that prudent 2-3 year wait...

2011-08-07T17:58:00.004-05:00

It all started with the microwave. It stopped working and we jumped through hoops to get it fixed through our home warranty (bad idea--we'll only use that for big stuff from now on). After nearly two months of fooling around with the stupid microwave, we finally had all the parts to finish it off, the repair guys came, they took one look at the electric cord snaking up into the attic from the microwave, and said we'd have to get an electrician to bring that down to a more up-to-code location. The wrongly-installed plug probably explains why that ugly black 16-year-old monster of a microwave was still there when we bought the place--the previous owners didn't want to mess with relocating the outlet for it. So the ball's in our court now. Can't replace the microwave until the electrical problem's fixed, so we'll do that first, and we have to keep in mind that we'll be switching the stove/microwave into the refrigerator's current location & vice versa when we redo the kitchen in 2-3 years, as planned, so gotta position the new outlet like so, but what about plugging in the microwave now, plug's gotta be higher, and so forth & so on.

Foolishly, while we were at Home Depot picking out a microwave and hashing out the problem of the plug, we wandered by the rest of the kitchen displays, picking out what we'd like for our future kitchen remodel: countertop colors, cabinet style, backsplash tile, wall paint, faucet....

And at a certain point, our minds must have snapped. "Let's do the kitchen now," said Sister A.

"Seriously?" I goggled.

"Wouldn't it be great to have the whole house finished?"

By then, we were carrying around samples of our future floors, our future countertops, our future backsplash.... We had homed in on a particular style, and the precise components of it, A. pointed out, might not be available later.

"So we'll pick something else that's close," I said, trying to hold onto fiscal sensibility against the huge wave of YES, LET'S DO IT! that was building up in my head.

Sister A. fanned the samples longingly. "But these are perfect!"

"Well, yes, they are...."

Long story short: we're remodeling our kitchen now.

This project actually involves three rooms, if you count the garage, which will be getting a spiff-up consisting of repairing holes in the drywall, painting, moving old cheap wall cabinets from the utility room to the north wall of the garage (in front of A's car), and also moving a pegboard from the east wall (to the left of my car) to the north wall. Little garage stuff will go in the cabinets, resulting in much less clutter, the ladders will go on sturdy hooks fixed to studs, and there'll be plenty of room for the stuff that has to sit on the floor.

The utility room, of course, is losing its current cabinets to the garage, but it will be gaining most of the current kitchen cabinets--those sturdy old hardwood things from the early '60s. The base cabinets will end up being a little shorter than the current base cabinets, which will give us more for the ironing board and other laundry doin's. The "new" utility room cabinets will be painted Cancun Sand (like the living room and all our trim); the base cabinets will reuse the countertop from the old cheap base cabinets--we'll just have a bit cut off the end that goes against the wall and superglue the loose spot on the other end. It's in good shape, otherwise.

The doorway between the utility room and the kitchen will have its jamb knocked off and will be sanded down and painted to look like the other archways.

Now we come to the kitchen. The current kitchen cabinet configuration doesn't include enough storage (partly due to a foot-deep, space-wasting soffit above a plate rail), and there's a stupid peninsula sticking out right across from the refrigerator, bottlenecking traffic (especially for two ladies with, um, generous hips). We also want to switch the stove and refrigerator locations. The new base cabinets will extend a few inches beyond the current peninsula. There's paneling (painted) all around the dining area, but we're not going to rip all that out--it's too much more work & mess--so we're just going to have our "honey-do" man snap a vertical chalkline and slice through the paneling with a box cutter (a suggestion from our cabinet installer, that); the raw edge will butt up against cabinets, the countertop, and backsplash tile, so it'll be covered.

The new kitchen cabinets will be white KraftMaid in the simple Shaker style we like.

The countertop will be Silestone, color Absolute Green. It's the speckledy one in the pic below.

We picked 4"-square tiles, color Bright Spring Green (see pic above), for our backsplash, to go in a diamond shape with white grout. We'll have bullnose tiles set square at the left and right edges of the backsplash. They don't have 2" bullnose, so it'll have to be 4", but it'll look fine.

We're also taking out the linoleum in the kitchen, dining area, utility room, and both bathrooms, and replacing it with the cork you see in the photo above. The other hardwood pictured there--Woven Bamboo Tigerstrip from HD--will go down in place of the crappy carpet. Yep, all over the house. Yep, this project is actually touching every flippin' room in the place. Here's another pic of the bamboo from HD, showing more stripes.

It looks purty durn cool. :)

The walls around all these new goodies will be repainted Behr Mountain Haze, much lighter and less in-your-face than our current color.

The pic above seems more gray than the actual color chip, but you get the idea. (BTW, ignore colors Powdered Snow and Deep Jungle--I was just approximating the cabinet and countertop colors in Behr.com's color picker.) Anyway, we saw the color chip in person and think it will all look really nice together.

Our "honey-do" man is lined up to start Monday, fixing up the garage and moving cabinets around. The new cabinets are ordered and should arrive Sept. 6. The flooring will be ordered Monday, now that the measurements are done and back to HD; that will start going in after the cabinets are in. The new stove (just a plain white gas stove, no bells & whistles, but it will match our fridge) will arrive Aug. 30 and sit in the garage until we have the cabinets & kitchen floor in and the gas line moved to the stove's new location. Then the honey-do man will come back and paint for us, because Sister A's head doesn't like the smell of paint anymore.

We're also going to spraypaint the four bookshelves in the den "espresso" so they'll go with the other furniture better. New bookshelves are too expensive.

And speaking of money--no, we haven't won the lottery. All this will be accomplished with a home improvement loan from our credit union, and we'll be living very frugally until it's all paid off. But the results will be totally worth it.

And when it's all finished...the house will be DONE, and we'll never have to pack another damn box full of books or dishes for the rest of our lives!

Catnip pants?

2011-08-05T09:39:00.004-05:00

The weirdest thing happened last night. I had received some new jeans in the mail (well, new to me--after shopping in thrift stores for years, I can't bear to pay full price for clothes anymore, so these jeans, in a style I particularly like, came from an eBay seller) and laid them on top of the hamper in my bathroom to try on later. Come bedtime, Minnie and I troop into my bathroom as usual, me for bathroom business, she for a sink-drink...and, probably, to get away from her arch-enemy, Sammi (it's been over a year and our two cats still don't like each other).

Minnie saw the jeans on the hamper, got curious, and jumped up onto them. Took a sniff, then a longer sniff, then started rolling around on them like they were dipped in catnip! She even got the big crazy eyes like she was stoned! She was rolling & rubbing herself all over those jeans 'til I began to wonder if they were made of hemp!

I went to find Sister A. "You gotta come see this."

I half expected Minnie to have worn out whatever goodie she was smelling on those jeans by the time A. got there, but, nope, she was still rolling around in catly ecstasy. A. and I laughed our heads off watching her performance. After a bit, Sammi came padding around, wondering what all the fuss was about. Minnie caught sight of her, clamped her claws on my newly acquired jeans, and hissed at Sammi in no uncertain terms! Sammi was quite taken aback--she even trotted off to hide behind my bedroom door for a bit, peeking around the edge of the door to stare at Minnie with alarm as my crazy girl resumed rolling around on the jeans.

Eventually, Sammi re-emerged (curiosity & cats, y'know) and A. pulled a leg of the jeans down on the floor to see if Sammi could smell the same goodie Minnie smelled. Sammi sniffed once and jerked her head back, then sniffed again cautiously, sniff sniff sniiiiifffff...and in no time, she was rolling around & rubbing herself all over the jeans, too!

After we got the jeans away from the cats (because it really was looking like they were going to tear 'em in half!), A. and I both sniffed at the jeans thoroughly, but whatever our kitties were smelling was way too subtle for our poor human noses.

These are just plain ol' Lee cotton jeans with a touch of Spandex for the fat lady. They came wrapped tightly in one of those floppy, fibrous USPS Priority Mail bag/envelopes, which was then stuffed into a cardboard Priority Mail box. I smelled what might have been the very faintest memory of cigarette smoke on them, but it might only have been the blue dye. They were sold as used, but didn't look like they'd been worn or washed much.

As for the cats, neither of those girls react to catnip much, if at all. Sammi likes feet and shoes. Minnie has no particular obsessions, other than burrowing under quilts and blankets.

I have no idea what "secret ingredient" the cats smelled on those jeans! But I made sure to put them in the empty washing machine until next wash day. If I'd put them in the rattan hamper, Minnie probably would have destroyed it trying to get to the sniffy goodness!

Does anyone have any idea what made our cats go "crazypants" over a pair of jeans?

Update on our new neighbor

2011-08-03T12:33:00.004-05:00

I've been waiting for a "SOLD" sign to turn up on that house I told my friend MM about, but it hasn't yet, even though the sale was official as of Monday (as far as I know), so I'll just trumpet anyway: he bought the house! We are so happy for him--especially since the seller put up the bucks to replace the hail-damaged roof! We eagerly await the sight of roofing guys crawling all over his new house. :)

Update 2: The roofers are at work!

How to spend a lazy Sunday

2011-07-31T16:58:00.001-05:00

Sammi on the back of the couch

Minnie behind the TV stand
(where I hope she isn't chewing on wires)

"Go away."

Opportunity knocks

2011-06-26T16:03:00.001-05:00

We are confirmed homeowners, Sister A. and I. I haven't had to pay rent or deal with a landlord in over 17 years now, and for A., it's been much longer. The necessity of having to do your own home maintenance instead of relying on a landlord (who may or may not decide to fix things, after all) is far outweighed by the peace of having your own space, without the tramping of elephants from apartments overhead, without loud music or loud arguments from neighbors on the other side of the wall.... And if you want to change or update something in your home--even knock down a wall--by gum, you go right ahead and do it! (But only if it's not a load-bearing wall; otherwise, the house will fall down on you.)

Since we moved to this neighborhood, there've been a couple of houses for sale on our block. One was on the market while we were looking, then it went off-market for a while (probably so the owners could make some improvements), then it went back on the market and sold in a few months. The other house for sale has been sitting empty since shortly after we moved into our house. We've driven by it several times, estimating size and number of bedrooms from its exterior and windows; it's a bit smaller than the other houses in this 'hood, and it has only a one-car garage, unlike all the others. But it looked like a nice, solid house.

Finally, into my head popped a fellow I used to work with--MM, computer-brilliant, single, one car, at or nearing 40, and still renting. I checked the particulars of the house online to make sure the price wouldn't scare a first-timer, then decided to email & ask if he might be interested in becoming a homeowner:

"This is kind of an out-of-the-blue idea, but there's a house on our block that's been for sale since shortly after we moved here (when the PODS guy picked up our POD, he redelivered it half a block away at this house!). It's smaller than the others here, w/ only a 1-car garage & 2 bedrooms, so it's a tough sell in this area, BUT...for a single person who needs an office/computer room, it would be a really nice house. Quiet neighborhood, $69.5K; nice backyard, judging from the pix online; kitchen could stand updating, but only if you mind it; & since the house has been on the market so long, I bet you could get it for a lot less than the starting price....

"You're not a college student anymore. How about settling down? [We] promise not to bug you."

We would be living right up the street from him, see--hence, the reassurance. :)

Whaddaya know, he was interested! He'd been thinking about a house recently, but hadn't quite convinced himself that the extra cost of getting into and maintaining a house was worth it in the long run (compared to renting? uh, YEAH, it's worth it). Anyway, he got hold of a real estate agent with the company handling that house and, yesterday, A. and I got to tag along while he checked out the house on this block and another in a different area. The temperature was a hundred and HOLY CRAP! degrees, but it was fun, anyway. We love to look at houses, see their potential, and fix them up in our heads. Plus, Sister A. has plenty of experience in home-buying, spotting potential problems, and so forth, which--fortunately for us!--was valuable to MM.

This house has good bones. It's part of an estate, and the elderly person who owned it had slipped on the maintenance a bit in their final years, but there was nothing catastrophic going on. Solid foundation, no cracks, no sign of leaks, windows are serviceable (though they could stand replacing), general layout is good, bedrooms and living room are both good-sized, flooring is cheap but he can replace that later. We liked the place--if either one of us had been house-hunting for ourselves alone a year ago, we would have jumped on it. Good brick houses in that price range are mighty scarce.

Oh, and MM liked it, too, on its own merits and in comparison to the other house we saw yesterday. That's the important part. :)

I believe he has another house to look at, but it looks to us like all his initial misgivings have departed and he's seriously on the house-buying road. We are so excited for him!

Move-in-aversary

2011-06-07T10:42:00.003-05:00

One year ago today, Sister A. and I moved into our new house and proceeded to wreck ourselves hauling, cleaning, organizing, and all those other activities that go with transplanting oneself. We've made a ton of progress in the past year--every room painted, both bathrooms almost completely remodeled, some new furniture built, a new patio cover put up in back, new storm doors, new French doors, new windows all around, bricks repointed, new garage doors, new fridge, new fence, and about half the new curtains made. Plus the yard is looking a lot better than it did when we moved in, thanks to Sister A's hard work (she's definitely the one with the green thumb in this household). We love our house. :)

Fence complete

2011-05-28T13:37:00.006-05:00

The fence is done and we love it! The gates are exactly what we both had in our heads--we didn't look at a booklet or anything to pick 'em out, just described what we had in mind to the head fence guy, and they had 'em built to fit the spaces. The fence was supposed to be done last Monday, but there was a delay of a few days due to a broken machine at the supplier who cuts the dog-ears or gothic points or whatever you want on top of the pickets (the machine cuts them twelve at a time!). And the gate latches are backordered until next Tuesday, but everything else is done, and beautifully.

Here are the first boards going up. These horizontal boards are called runners, not rails, which is what occurred to me. They're what you nail the pickets to, obviously.

And here are the pickets starting to go up. Note the huge truckload of boards.

And the finished fence....

Here's a panorama (sorta) of the whole house with the brick columns and gates on either side. Sister A's a good photographer, isn't she? :) And look how well the columns match the house!

We got a new Red Rocket crape myrtle out of this project (the one on the right), onnaccounta a section of the old fence fell on the previous one that was planted in that spot and squashed it flat. The fence company bought us this very nice replacement.

They also gave us a new shut-off valve on the back faucet. Apparently, when they turned the faucet on (for cement mixing), something went flooey (I don't know what) and they decided they'd broken it. We didn't argue.

The final bill will come Tuesday, when they install the last bit of metalwork (the gate latches). It'll be less than the estimate because they didn't have to buy as many posts as originally thought (there were some good metal posts on the east side of the old fence instead of the rotted wooden ones we expected), which is nice. We're very pleased with the entire project. :)

Minnie can walk through the bars of the gate easily. Sammi, who's quite a bit stouter, has to wriggle a bit more to get through, but it works.

Now we can mark the fence project off our list. The only big remodeling project remaining is the kitchen and floors, a few years down the road.

Sign of the times

2011-05-21T14:03:00.001-05:00

Oops, wrong rapture--sorry. My bad.

Fence columns are up

2011-05-19T19:06:00.000-05:00

The fence guys did a great job on the columns that will go around our gates. It sure is an involved process, though! Here's what Sister A. observed today:

This fence is gonna look great...and the cats are going to love the tops of those columns!

New project? New fence!

2011-05-18T21:22:00.007-05:00

We were planning to wait on replacing the old tumble-down fence until next spring, after the windows were paid off, but it started "tumbling" rather seriously, so we bit the credit card bullet and accelerated the plan. Today, the guys took down our old fence (really fast--I don't think it put up much resistance!) and started putting up nice solid posts for the new fence. First, of course, one must dig post holes, using this monster:

Here's a nice line of posts, ready for pickets:

And, looky! Our paving-stone path will actually end at a gate soon! :)

We're going to have brick columns built on each side of all three gates: back, east side, and west side. Here are the bricks; their color is as close to our house brick as possible 50 years after the house was built:

The columns will be filled with mortar and will need time to dry (or cure, or whatever mortar does), so we'll have to do without a fence throughout the weekend. Hopefully, the fence guys can finish up Monday.

The wooden pickets will be dog-eared instead of gothic points. We don't want the cats to have to climb pointy things anymore (at least as far as their home fence is concerned--nuthin' we can do about the neighbor's fence).

Speaking of the kitties, they were pretty weirded out by this development. They went out and sniffed around after the fence guys went to lunch, but only Minnie has returned so far. She seems to have gotten over the latest upheaval, but Sammi ran off when the fence guy turned on the augur again after lunch--she was really spooked by the noise--and she still hasn't come back. Hopefully, she just holed up somewhere during the high wind this afternoon and will turn up again when the wind dies down tonight. We tried to get Minnie to bird-dog her, but she's not being very cooperative. You'd think there would be solidarity between kitties in the face of adversity.

Update: Sammi finally came home sometime after 11pm. :)

RUAQT?

2011-05-18T20:59:00.001-05:00

This morning I saw a perky young thing driving a perky little car with this license plate: "QT 4EVR". I thought, uncharitably, Girl, are YOU ever in for a surprise in a few years! "Cute" disappears with amazing swiftness.

Curtains and other house stuff

2011-05-07T14:42:00.003-05:00

Sister A. has been a busy bee lately, making curtains for two more rooms! First came these colorful damask curtains in the living room.

She had just enough fabric left over to recover that little pillow on the couch. After that (and a bit of a rest), she made the curtains for my bedroom, brown with cascades of shiny copper and gold leaves. They really tie all the other decor in my room together.

(Note the bonus cat asleep in her tree.)

Both sets are gorgeous--mine are fancier than any curtains I've ever had! And my new curtains make the room darker at night, which is always a plus for me.

Elsewhere on the home front, our falling-down old fence became a bit more active in its falling-down process recently. A section was blown down by the fierce winds we had week before last, and when we tried to nail it back together, the old wood started to split. It's just going to get worse from there, so we decided to move up our next-spring fence replacement plan and git 'er done sooner. The current fence is all wood--skinny gothic-point pickets with a wooden gate in the back and another on the east side of the house (for access from front yard to back) that's hanging by a thread. There's no gate on the west side of the house (naturally, since that's where a gate would be most useful). The new fence will have wider dog-ear pickets and red-brick columns around each of three metal gates (iron or steel, we don't know yet) so that we have access from front yard to back on both sides of the house. We haven't picked out the gates yet--Sister A. spoke with the fence man only last Monday--but we just want something plain with bars narrow enough to keep out dogs. Cats are OK. And chihuahuas, I guess--they're small enough for Sammi to eat in one bite. ;)

Now about that bonus cat....

Minnie says hi! (OK, it was more like "get that flashy box out of my face", but I translate liberally.)

And, no, she's not a Manx--her tail's under there somewhere.

Progress?

2011-04-17T13:18:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure the Rescue Remedy is doing much. Minnie has managed to fool me by doing very little of her water-drinking from actual bowls, relying instead on her bountiful cuteness to get drinks from the sink. Or maybe she does drink from the bowl when I'm not looking--after all, I don't keep an eye on her 24 hours a day. Anyway, I now have photographic proof that our two little fuzzballs, Minnie and Sammi, can get along when they try. I snuck this shot through the French doors:

They think they can fool me--hah! (Well, mostly, yeah...)

A touch of nerves

2011-04-03T13:08:00.062-05:00

Kitty nerves

Every time we think the cats might be getting used to--or at least tolerant of--each other, we are promptly disabused of that notion by Sammi lying in wait for Minnie behind a corner or Minnie skulking around the house trying to avoid Sammi. Sammi just wants to play with Minnie (we think), and her favorite game happens to be "chase". Minnie, however, views the sight of a large cat bounding in her direction with alarm and thinks it's a real attack. "What we have here is...failure to communicate." Cue hissing and growling and fleeing. Fortunately, there's been only one occasion of blood-letting--when Minnie turned up with a hole in her backside made by a suspiciously Sammi-like claw.

We were still willing to wait and let the cats sort it out for themselves. But I found a spot on the wall by Minnie's cat tree Friday evening that changed our minds: Minnie had sprayed the wall. Yep, little girl-cat Minnie.

I'd seen her do that before in the backyard of my previous house; that was a territory-marking thing. And once she sprayed a bag of trash I'd left in the kitchen overnight; I don't remember what was going on at the time that would have made her uptight--maybe her sensitive nose just didn't like the smell. But apart from the one time in the kitchen, she's never sprayed inside the house.

OK, time for Mom to do something about the situation! So I ordered a bottle of Rescue Remedy drops--kitty valium--and we'll just hope they help. I've tried the stuff before, when my little orange feral Leo came to live inside and Minnie freaked about that, but it didn't seem to do much. I may not have used it right, though, or as diligently as I should have. I'll try to do better this time, starting with putting drops in every bowl of water in the house (we have them in both bedrooms, the living room, and at their feeding station in the kitchen). Any other suggestions are most welcome!

People nerves

My workplace has undergone another upheaval recently. We're now working directly under the Provost, and several of the heads of the stupid-decision-making hydra that has passed for our leadership have been lopped off via announcements of resignation and retirement. The timing of these announcements follows so quickly on the heels of a recent meeting announcing and (mostly) explaining our upcoming transition that we lesser peons (who actually do the work around here, no matter which lunatic is in charge) suspect that the resigning/retiring management-types were "encouraged" to do so by the Provost. At least one resignee (my immediate boss) doesn't have another job lined up; in this economic climate, that's pretty telling.

I'm of two minds about these developments. On the one hand, I (and the rest of my fellow peons) are delighted that our immediate boss is removing herself from the equation, since she's a pain in the ass in many ways, given to snap decisions, holding grudges, and hysterical, illogical, overblown tirades over what are really rather small problems. And we're pretty dang happy about one retiree in particular, since she and her good buddy in Marketing have been, for some ridiculous reason, a major source of stupid decisions in the past several years, decisions that have contributed to flushing our business down the crapper. Her Marketing buddy remains unscathed so far, but hope springs eternal. :) If nothing else, said buddy is now isolated and, presumably, powerless.

On the other hand, we peons are understandably a little nervous about our own continued employment. Judging from the Proctor's stated attitude toward our college (which is positive), we're almost certain the college itself will survive and grow, and since they'll need folks to do the work, I think all the people who do actually work (including me) will be OK. But it's the uncertainty evidenced by "almost certain" and "I think" in that last sentence that has me a wee bit stressed--that, and the fact that we won't really know how the state budget cuts will affect us until around June. But all I can do is keep working hard, tout my multiplicity of skills to those now in charge, and hope for the best.

I think I'll rub all eight of my lucky kitty feet, too. Better safe than sorry.

Easy like Sunday...afternoon

2011-03-27T18:14:00.001-05:00

Miss Minnie knows exactly how to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon....

Shrubbery, Part 2

2011-03-19T12:32:00.005-05:00

"We want...A SHRUBBERY!" --the Knights who say Nee,
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Our newly de-shrubbed areas around the front of the house now have new shrubs, as of last Sunday. We were originally going to put crape myrtles in the bed by the front door and abelias along the front of the house, but while goofing along in Home Depot looking at all their shrubbery, we changed our minds. Now we've got African daisies by the front door and golden euonymus along the front of the house--lots of happy yellow. We also bought a red Gerbera daisy for a pop of color in the liriope bed along the front porch. It turned out pretty well. Also, the fescue we had seeded in all the shady, bare spots in the front yard is beginning to put out tiny, fine grasses, so the yard should look better this year.

Here's some nice color for ya. The fellow in the first pic is our across-the-street yardman; he came over to check out our work--after A. had dug nine holes for the new plants, of course.

Yes, that is indeed Sister A. wearing a Pioneer Woman sun bonnet. I bought it for her year before last, I think, from a woman on eBay who makes them. A's skin gets weird in the sun--it's like she's allergic to it. And this after a lifetime of gardening! So that's why she's all covered up.

Here are some close-ups of the purty flowers. :)

Pointy business

2011-03-10T14:43:00.001-06:00

Sister A. wrote this about the brick repointing we had done to the house yesterday. At last, I know why it's called "repointing"!

----------ooo00000ooo----------

When we bought this beautiful little brick house, the inspection mentioned the fact that some mortar between the bricks needed replacing. We had already noticed this ourselves and made it a condition of the sale that the owner repair this. Humph. He dabbed at a few places with those little tubes of sanded grout intended to be used for bathroom tile repair. It looked terrible, but was not one of the major things we had on our list of to-dos.

So.....when we pulled out all the old shrubbery last weekend, it became very obvious that *all* the brick that had been hidden behind them all these years desperately needed repointing. That's what re-mortaring your brickwork is called. We decided it couldn't hurt to get an estimate and if it was anywhere near reasonable we would get it done.

The estimate was a little over our wish level, but not so badly that it negated the whole thing. So now we have newly repointed brickwork all over the whole house. They matched the old mortar exactly and if you didn't know it had been done, you wouldn't notice it at all.

Four guys descended on the house yesterday with a total plan of action. Guy #1 went around using an electric grinder to remove loose, cracked or otherwise damaged mortar. Guy #2 followed behind him cleaning out all the joints with a large, stiff brush. Guy #3 came next, stuffing fresh mortar in all the empty spaces. After it set for a few minutes, Guy #4 came along with a tool called a "pointer" and made it look like it had been smoothed out with someone's thumb. You all know how it looks when it's well done. So by this time, Guy #1 and Guy #2 were going around with brushes cleaning up the bricks themselves and wiping away excess mortar. Guy #3 and Guy #4 went around the house a 2nd time, looking for any spots that got missed on the first circuit. It was totally amazing to watch.

In the meantime, the boss showed up every 45 minutes to an hour to check on everything. They were all done and showing me the results in 3 hours. Everything got cleaned up off the sidewalks, patio and yard and they were gone in a flash. We are totally pleased with the results.

Do NOT set your sprinklers so that they water the brickwork on your house. It ruins the mortar after a while. And it leaves a water residue on the bricks that is reeeeeeally hard to get off.

This weekend we plan to start putting some shrubbery back in around the foundation. But we will plant them well back from the bricks and will never soak the bricks when watering them.

Our brickwork looks like new and our flower beds are ready for new plants!

Shrubbery, Part 1

2011-03-05T18:30:00.003-06:00

We assigned ourselves quite a job for this morning: sawing out the nasty, thorny pyracantha bushes and stinky whatever-it-is-that-smells-like-cat-pee bushes in front of the house, to wit:

The top two pix are (left) what we started with when we moved in and (right) what they looked like after I trimmed a buttload of overgrowth off of them. The bottom pic is what we accomplished today--NO nasty, smelly bushes at all. We've put kill-goop on the stumps and will let that do its work for a week, then we're going to plant 2-3 abelias in the part-shade section under my bedroom window and 2 crape myrtles (Red Rocket, if we can find them again this year) in the full-sun section by the front door.

The pic of the abelia below (left) is off the 'Net and I'm fairly sure it's correct, although I don't know what color we're getting. (I'm not a very accomplished plant person--that's Sister A's area.) The second pic below (right) is one of the crape myrtles we planted in the back last year; we want 2 more like that. They're all gonna be purty, and without any dang 4-inch thorns!

The cats were mighty confused by the sudden disappearance of their prime hiding places, and Minnie was particularly incensed. That's where she goes to hide from Sammi! I'm afraid the new bushes won't be big enough to hide behind for quite a while, but they'll get over it. :) Gee, maybe they'll learn to play together instead of Minnie running away from Sammi all the time--wouldn't that be nice!

After our little adventure this morning, we are absolute dead people. If we don't sleep like logs tonight, there's just something wrong with us.

Big beautiful quilt!

2011-02-17T09:14:00.000-06:00

Sister A. finished my quilt yesterday and had it on my bed when I came home from work! Lookie how gorgeous!

It's heavy & warm & I was snug as a bug in a rug last night. :)

New windows!

2011-02-12T16:53:00.004-06:00

Our latest round of remodeling took place yesterday--we had all the windows replaced with energy-efficient, vinyl-clad Andersens, the kind where the sashes tilt inward so you can clean them easily. Here's one of the installers getting started taking down the old living room window.

And installing the new den window:

And here are more new windows waiting for installation. The two little ones are for the bathrooms, of course, and the "obscure" glass looks really nice--a kind of squiggly pattern instead of just a fine grid like the old windows.

The sewing room now has screens on its windows, hallelujah! The old windows had lost theirs somewhere along the way. This room gets pretty hot in the summer, so it'll be great to be able to open the windows and get a breeze into it.

The Prairie-style grids you see in the sewing room window are in all five big double windows. We should have gotten grids in the kitchen window, too, but we were dopes and confused ourselves, thinking that we had to keep the blinds we had up to block the sun...which is now blocked by the new patio cover! What a couple o' maroons....

The front of the house, where the living room and my bedroom are, looks so much better with the new white-framed windows. We're very pleased!

There's a little bit of new wood trim to paint around the living room and den windows, and we also have holes that need filling inside where the old blinds were mounted, but we've already got a handyman lined up for that.

And here's a happy home-co-owner cleaning our brand new windows for the first time. :)

Snow day

2011-02-01T15:46:00.002-06:00

We got a bit of the white stuff last night. Sister A. noticed these squirrel tracks in the snow on our back patio. She had seen squirrels come up to one of the cats' outdoor water bowls before, and apparently one of them paid a visit sometime this morning. Alas, the water was frozen solid. No surprise--the wind chill was about -16° last night!

(Biggify to see the tracks better. Hoppity hoppity hop!)

Here's Minnie looking out at the snow. That's as close as she's gonna get to it today. It's way too cold for even well-furred critters to be outside.

BTW, that beautiful quilt she's sitting on is the one Sister A. is making to put on my bed. :)

Sammi decided to join Minnie on the quilt table. Minnie was not too pleased with that.

"Hisssss!"

Invoking the 'M' word at work?

2011-01-26T16:41:00.003-06:00

This is the front of our beautiful, custom-designed-for-us building on campus:

Now gaze ye upon the old electric utility building downtown, our possible (more like probable) future home (photo slices cribbed from Google Maps):

It's not final yet, but the rumor mill puts us moving there sometime in the spring. Joy.

Why? Because some campus High Poobah wants our nice building for another department.

Home (and health) improvements

2011-01-22T16:07:00.002-06:00

We decided to sell both exercise bikes and put the money toward a good treadmill; luckily, too, a great deal cropped up at Play It Again Sports on a PaceMaster Pro Plus, so we nabbed it. We both use it every day. It's got four programs--cardio, interval, fat burn, and endurance--but we're so completely out of shape, we can't manage to keep up with them for more than two minutes, so we're just setting our own speed & time for now. I'm very pleased with it. It's quiet; it inclines electronically, so you don't have to hop off and reset it in the middle of your workout; and it's got spots for your water cup and the all-important TV remote. Very handy.

I've lost four pounds that I'm pretty sure was water, but, hey, it's a step in the right direction. :) We are trying to be more sensible about meals, though, and cutting down on chockies.

In the home improvement arena, we recently had the screeching old garage doors replaced with insulated ones that work consistently--what a concept!--and are so much quieter than the old doors, it's unbelievable. The difference in temperature inside the garage and outside is quite remarkable in this cold season; that insulation should be a great help in the summer, too, which is when we really need it.

We finalized the order for our next improvement at Home Depot today: new windows all around. The old aluminum windows leak like sieves and have these stupid, screwed-on storm windows you have to completely remove if you ever want to clean the glass outside. Since nobody does that, the windows are just about opaque by now, especially with gaps allowing in loads of West Texas dirt. They're in bad shape all around, with screens missing or torn, single glazing, and one or two that won't stay open without a prop anymore, so they need to be replaced somethin' fierce. The new windows should arrive at good ol' Home Depot (our home away from home) in three or four weeks, then our favorite installers will put 'em in for us. Sister A. says we will then have replaced every aperture in the house except the roof vents! :D

At some point this year, we'll have the fence replaced, too, but the concrete block idea we had originally will probably have to give way to a cheaper wood structure, since we dropped a bunch of money on windows. That'll work for several years, and then we'll redo it right.

Please do not feed the fat lady

2011-01-09T14:34:00.002-06:00

I scared myself the other night--got on the bathroom scale for the first time in months and the dial landed on a number with two big fat zeros in it! (And the first number ain't a one!) Never in my life have I been this enormous--it's completely ridiculous. Granted, it was at the end of the day and I had just eaten supper, but my supper wasn't that big. The next morning, I weighed again and dodged the Big Fat Zeros by about five pounds, but that's not much better. Time to get off my Big Fat Zeros and fix this mess I've made of myself.

I bought a recumbent exercise bike a few years ago, but quit using it after a while because it was hard on my tailbone. So why did I move the bloody thing when we bought the new house? Well, I hoped I'd get back to it. Never did, of course. Anyway, now I'm going to sell it and get a treadmill instead. There's no earthly reason I can't walk for 30 minutes every evening while watching TV.

Sister A. still has the upright exercycle I passed onto her (before the recumbent--I've tried a lot of different things), and we're both sick of ourselves, so hopefully we've reached our limit of tolerance for our own girth and will get active again.

We'll also have to knock off the Hershey's we've been getting into waaay too often. That's a lot harder than walking or cycling regularly!

Happy New Year and Gotcha Day!

2011-01-01T14:16:00.002-06:00

Happy New Year, everybody! And happy official birthday(s) to our two kitties, Minnie and Sammi. Minnie is about 6 years old now and Sammi is about 7. And they're both crabby, but we love 'em anyway. :)

Minnie at age 6, limned by sunlight

Sammi at age 7, playing with her yellow ball

We're having a very cold, lazy New Year's Day here. Both cats are grumpy because they can't go outside. We'll probably relent after the temperature goes up a couple of degrees, but they won't like it--the wind chill is below freezing! There's not a drop of moisture in the air, though, so no snow or ice this year.

"May you live in interesting times..."

2010-12-31T13:07:00.013-06:00

This has been one eventful year--from dealing with feral cats and getting new French doors installed at my old house, to selling that place and setting up in a new house with my sister and our two combative kitties; from workplace security with my old boss and my nice office-with-a-window, through the bloodbath of RIF (reduction in force) and the advent of a new boss (whom, frankly, nobody trusts), to feeling quite a bit less secure (but at least still working!) in my smaller, windowless office; from having practically nothing to do at work because our business is shifting from print to web, to working non-stop (including overtime) on a huge database and front-end web system to better organize our work. At the beginning of this year, I sure didn't expect to be sharing a house with Sister A. quite this soon, nor in this particular city, but it has worked out great. The office mess, well, that's another kettle of fish, but I can't do much about it other than keep my nose clean and make sure the new boss knows what an excellent, useful, hard-working, and multi-talented employee I am. :)

As to the database, that's going well, and--bonus--it's fun (although coding problems do drive me whacko at times). I've had a heckuva time finding info (and code to steal) for PHP 5.3 with SQL Server 2005, but it's working.

Minnie and Sammi still aren't getting along. We've tried letting them duke it out on their own, we've tried breaking up fights, and we've tried keeping them apart--no luck yet. Our next step is to try Spirit Essences, specifically the combination of Peacemaker, Bully Remedy, and Self-Esteem (read about it on their site). I've tried plain Rescue Remedy before on another cat, trying to get him to chill out and quit spraying indoors, but it didn't work--at least not enough to stop the spraying. I've also tried a Feliway diffuser on Minnie with little or no effect. I'm hoping for better results this time, but I'm not holding my breath.

The humans in this house are getting along just fine, thank you. Sister A. is having a bit of a sad this first holiday after her divorce, but time will heal.

I've had a nice, relaxing week-and-a-day of vacation between Christmas and New Year's. I did go to the office a couple of afternoons this week, both to work in the absolute quiet there and to make sure I didn't forget any of my hard-won code learnin', but not enough to "disturb my relax", as Justin Wilson put it.

Here's hoping everyone lives in slightly less interesting times this year! :)

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T16:05:00.001-06:00

"Spot That Cat!"

2010-12-16T18:37:00.006-06:00

Ha! I defy you to pinpoint the cat in these pix. ;)

"And on laundry day, the human's bed grew a lump.
And it was cozy."

Snippet

2010-12-08T10:13:00.002-06:00

Heard this as I was coming in to work today. I happened to be walking behind a couple of people (who were taking up the entire breadth of the hall, or I wouldn't have stuck around to listen). The man was telling the woman about his plans to be cremated after a stint at medical school (not as a doctor--as postmortem practice material). He named the teaching hospital across the street from us as the recipient of his future cadaver. And the woman replied, "Oh, yes, I used to work over there. I've seen y'all's naked bodies!"

It's not nice to burst out laughing while eavesdropping. ;)

Another round of "Spot That Cat!"

2010-12-05T12:10:00.010-06:00

This time, it's Sammi who's found the comfortable spot. The photo is a bit fuzzy, but then, so is she.

As you can see, we have more Xmas decorations up in the living room and kitchen/dining area.

Sister A's cute Southwestern nativity.

Fancy cross-stitch stockings that A. made years ago;
the one on the right was "repurposed" for me with a newly restitched name. :)
Lookit how much room there is for chockies!

Large ball ornaments are too big to fit on our little Christmas tree,
but they make a nice display in this glass bowl atop the china cabinet.

And lastly, our little door wreath.

Christmas is coming :)

2010-11-28T17:47:00.001-06:00

Proximity alert!

2010-11-28T14:58:00.003-06:00

Proof positive that these two critters can get along in proximity to one another, on occasion, if they try.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T14:54:00.006-06:00

This is one of the main things we have to be thankful for today:

Our nice house on a nice, quiet, dead-end street, with nice neighbors and nobody shooting guns in the air on holidays. Bonus!

I'm also thankful that I have a good-paying job that survived the recent RIF (reduction in force) bloodbath, so that we can afford to keep said nice house.

And we're very thankful that we got enough from the sale of my old house to make a lot of improvements on our new house in a short time, without going into hideous debt.

Activity in our house today includes kitties napping, pies cooking, and general relaxation. Life is good. :)

And now it's time for "Spot That Cat!"

2010-11-21T11:39:00.009-06:00

Minnie has found the perfect perch--on top of the neighbor's gazebo. Here she is pointedly not looking at me, in spite of piddling human entreaties. If you can spot her immediately, you win the Kewpie doll!

(OK, I lied, there's not really a Kewpie doll. I can probably Google up a picture of one, though. :)

Sammi has also perfected the "I'm ignoring you" stance, as you can see in this portrait of Her Floofiness.

Any cat who can't snub her humans properly is a sad specimen indeed.

On the behavioral front, Minnie's bum has healed nicely and there's been no further bloodshed. I think Sammi knows we're watching her like hawks, and Sister A. is doing a bang-up job of keeping watch over our two fur-kids during the day. Sammi did try to get in Minnie's face one night last week and got zapped for it, but otherwise, things in the Unpeaceable Kingdom are rolling along smoothly, although Minnie's still nervous around Sammi.

Kitty problem

2010-11-14T12:20:00.005-06:00

Our two cats, Sammi and Minnie, met for the first time during a visit by Sister A. from her then-home in another town. It was not a success, to say the least--they hissed and spat at each other the whole time. We were discouraged from repeating that experiment, so since the cats would never meet again, no problem.

Back in April, though, life happened and A. & Sammi came to live with me & Minnie. Again, the cats hissed and spat at each other. But it was a stressful time, after all, so we hoped they'd eventually get over it and become, if not BFFs, at least tolerant of each other. About two months later, when A. and I bought the larger house together, we figured it would help the feline situation since the cats would be able to give each other a wide berth and still have plenty of individual perching, napping, and playing space. With time, we thought, things would improve between our two pets. So after the move and merging of food and the accompanying messy-poop problems were over with, we decided to let the cats just duke it out until they came to terms with each other.

Not only have they not mellowed toward each other, their hissing & spitting has escalated to short-lived but genuine fights as Sammi has gradually become an outright bully toward Minnie. Poor Minnie slinks around the house trying to stay out of Sammi's way, and Sammi lurks beside doorways waiting to leap out at her. And yesterday evening, I discovered a small wound in Minnie's backside--the work of Sammi's claws, no doubt. No wonder Minnie's so desperate to get outside despite the cold snap!

Letting them sort things out between them has obviously not worked, and we're not sure what to do next. We are not taking the offending bully to the animal shelter--you animal-lovers all know what the result would be. I want A. to be able to keep her kitty (who can be really sweet when she wants to) not only because she loves Sammi, but because one of the things her ex was pissy about was her relationship with her cat--like that took anything away from him!--and she briefly considered giving up Sammi in order to pacify him, which totally made me nuts. (I don't put up with BS from men anymore, anyway, and his jealousy of a cat was just too stupid for words.) I do not want me or mine to be the cause of her finally losing her pet. But both Minnie and Sammi were one-per-household cats before A. and I moved in together; it may be that they can't--or won't--change at this point in their lives.

In any case, aggression will no longer be tolerated. If Sammi tries to get in Minnie's face (as, indeed, she did this morning), we will immediately get in Sammi's face. Sammi was sure surprised this morning when A. plucked her off the potential battlefield, set her in a chair, and held her there until she simmered down! (And in the meantime, Minnie escaped to her cat tree in my bedroom.)

Knowing that Minnie can't even be comfortable in her own home is distressing to both myself and A. If anyone knows of a way to get these two fightin' felines to get along, we'd sure love to hear it. In the meantime, I guess we'll just have to be vigilant in breaking up assaults before they happen.

"Can't we all just get along?"

Art and china

2010-11-07T12:10:00.016-06:00

Our contractor finished repainting the china cabinet and brought it by last week, so now Sister A's china is put up all purty instead of cluttering the countertop. The cabinet was painted "dark truffle" outside and Behr Cancun Sand inside. As you can see from the second photo, some of the larger pieces broke from the "herd" to become objets d'art. The china pattern is called Homespun. The cabinet was a faded off-white/yellow before; its new colors suit the china much better.
Speaking of art, we found some posters at Hobby Lobby that we like and put them in nice frames from a seller on eBay, so now the walls are dressed up a bit more. Here's Sammi having her nap interrupted while I shoot pix of the big white rose pic and the colorful potted flowers in A's bedroom.

I also have new art over my bed, a diptych of autum leaves in rust, brown, and cream, but it's Change The Bed Day and I haven't gotten a round tuit yet, so no pix of the slob's room. :)

In addition, here's a cool piece of "repurposed" art: A. had this spiffy Chinese-design material lying around doing nothing, and during the shuffling of pix & frames, this frame turned up empty, so add a little nutmeg-&-black spray paint and voila!--Art. This is hanging in a corner of my den.

And here are our two living pieces of art, Minnie and Sammi, getting their beauty sleep. :)

Office fun

2010-10-31T13:41:00.006-05:00

My new boss has taken over two other departments and squished them all together into one entity. We're all related, more or less, but I've always been the back-room Production sort, and didn't really think of myself as having the same "mission", so to speak, as the dealing-with-students departments. Nevertheless, that's how the cookie crumbles these days.

Now the B. wants us all closer together, so half of us in Dept. A are being squeezed in with Dept. B, across the hall from our present locale (Dept. C is too big to move anywhere else). That means I can kiss my nice office-with-a-window goodbye, and everyone in Dept. A can kiss our common area, with its nice big conference table, goodbye too. All of that blows chunks. And I would complain vociferously about being moved (and the accompanying stupid idea of renting out our wonderful suite to whoever the hell they had in mind, whether university or civilian) if there hadn't been an employee bloodbath recently. As it is, I'll just shut up and appreciate the fact that I'm still among the employed.

But I'm sure gonna miss my window and my great big desk.

Little Ali's quilt

2010-10-24T12:12:00.003-05:00

Sister A. had her new grandbaby's quilt almost done at this point. Now it's finished and has reached its pint-sized owner. Hurrahs all around!

(It's a girl. Can you tell?)

Latest project done

2010-10-08T19:08:00.007-05:00

The guys finished the last little bits on the patio cover and front porch yesterday, and we are very pleased with the result. Sister A. and I were both surprised to find that having the patio cover felt "normal"--possibly because one of our early family homes had a wooden patio cover that our dad built. (If it hadn't been for a particularly heavy snowstorm one winter, that sucker would still be standing--Daddy built things to last!) The cats like it, too--they now have an escape from the sun if they want it. Sammi, in particular, likes to sit in her favorite chair (the one with the green striped cushion) under the cover like a queen on her throne. :)

We also had the guys put a square post cover around the ugly turned post on our front porch, and it goes much better with the style of the house.

Our contractor is now working on A's china cabinet, which was in pretty sorry shape, being exceedingly vintage (like, from the '30s or '40s, and maybe a Sears or "Monkey Ward" special), and warped from rain or some wet environment at some point in its long life. But Sister A. likes it because it fits her china perfectly, so she did not want a new one, she wanted this one fixed. So, by gum, they're fixing it! I'm sure it'll be much improved when Chase is done with it. And then we can finally get rid of the LAST moving box!

Patio cover progress

2010-10-05T19:05:00.009-05:00

The guys have been working hard on our patio cover. These pix are from yesterday and today. Below, Chase the Contractor welds cross bars to the framework, then the first sheet of steel goes up.

And they're off! Sheets of steel march across the framework.

Here's why we decided to sheathe the underside of the patio cover, too--apart from the fact that birds would nest in all those convenient C-shaped purlins, it was also ugly.

The top side is complete!

Masonite begins to go up on the underside. It will be painted off-white and get white trim to cover the edges and a bit of a gap down the middle.

And instead of an ugly iron post showing, the guys will box it up in this square column cover.

We're also getting one of these covers around the fake (plastic) turned post on the front porch. It'll go with the style of the house much better.

The guys should be done tomorrow!

Sewing assistant

2010-10-05T18:58:00.002-05:00

Sammi performs the very important task of holding down the
quilt-in-progress while Mom pins another piece to it.

Protection, too, is an important job. Lasers on!

Kitty pix

2010-10-02T15:49:00.013-05:00

After the stress of the past week, I think we need some kitty pix. These were taken last weekend, I think. Here's Minnie proceeding to her favorite "wallow" to have a good, dusty roll. I tried to catch a shot of her fuzzy white tummy, but my camera's shutter lag was too slow.

(She was getting a little freaky at this point.)

And here's Sammi lying in wait for Minnie around the corner of the house. She's a champion lurker. Don't you just want to bury your fingers in that luxurious fur?

Now Minnie walks up to the trap, but stops--she knows something's fishy!

Result: a Mexican standoff.

A bit more remodeling

2010-10-02T15:12:00.013-05:00

Well, I didn't get caught in the job upheaval yesterday, thank heavens. As far as I know, I still have a job. I think it was only middle management that got nailed--this round, anyway. That sort of whirlwind-of-destruction sure makes a person feel skittish, though.

On the home front, during the past week, we've had our favorite contractor and his main guy working on our patio. Here are some pix from the project; there are more on my Flickr site. :)

Here, the guys have dug out and framed up in preparation for pouring concrete. The patio had a curve in it so that some previous homeowner could put a flowerbed there next to the house. We decided not to try to reclaim that flowerbed (it's been a long time since there were any flowers in it) and had the curve filled in and straightened so there won't be a mudhole there when it rains.

You may notice that the stepping-stone forms lead to blank fence rather than to a gate. Yes, we did that on purpose. We're going to put the gate in a different place (like, at the end of that path!) when we have the falling-down fence replaced next spring.

Here's what used to be a little overhang over the utility room door. The guys sawed that off entirely so they could bolt the patio cover to the house.

Yeah, those wires (mostly cable, which we're not using) are practically going to be lying on the patio cover when it's finally up. There's not much we can do about it. But at least nothing will be rubbing on the wires, so I think it'll be OK.

Naturally, the guys replaced the siding over the denuded part of the eave once it was flat.

Next, the fellas cut long C-section iron purlins to build the frame of the patio cover. Two long pieces were bolted securely to the house itself; the rest of the framework will hang on these pieces.

Then they started welding the frame to the house, using a temporary wooden frame to hold it up while they worked.

And here are the finished patio cover "bones".

They have to fix one spot where the frame was welded to the supporting post a bit too high (lest it direct rain runoff straight into the house), then they'll be ready to put the steel on the frame. We're having them cover both the top and bottom of the frame, else birds will nest in the C-shape of the purlins!

"My! People come and go so quickly here!"

2010-10-01T12:06:00.003-05:00

There's a sudden employment shake-up going on at my workplace today. My former boss, who was moved out of her position into another one (made up on the spot, probably--it wasn't her idea to move), just found out that her current (made-up) position is being "eliminated", so she's out of a job. She's 50-something. Ditto for at least two other long-time employees. My former boss's assistant boss, who was still working as head of a satellite department, has been fired--according to our head gossip, he's been being documented for this move for about a year (first I've heard of it!).

It's a good thing I'm just a damn grunt.

At least, I hope it's a good thing.

I've worked here for 17 years officially today. Seven more years until retirement with pension and medical insurance. Assuming the money's there when I retire, of course. And assuming I can remain employed here for that long without some ~~butcher~~ manager-type slicing me out of the organization for no perceptible reason.

These are shaky freakin' days....

This weekend's projects

2010-09-19T14:40:00.019-05:00

After taking last weekend off entirely (to rest up following the Great Furniture-Building Spree of 2010), we did a few yard chores this weekend. Yesterday, Sister A. planted liriope (rhymes with "calliope") in the long, skinny plant bed in front of our porch and a small spot at the end of the driveway where we had stuck two solar lanterns. The lanterns will look really nice with the liriopes' leaves blowing around them (after they've grown up, of course). Liriope is like monkey grass; it's a border grass and also great for groundcover. It also sprouts little violet-blue flowers on stalks, as you can see on this site.

We had talked about what to put in those two beds for quite a while before settling on this particular plant. Sister A. loves to garden, but isn't in the prime of health anymore, so heavy-duty tending of flowers isn't the pleasure it used to be. Liriope, however, just goes to town all by itself. Water it, divide the clumps every few years, and you've got nice, long-leaved greenery all year 'round. They also choke out weeds. So since there was liriope in that front bed when we bought the house, we decided that whoever put it there had a good idea, so we just added to it.

There were tons in the order--50 rhizomes! We didn't have enough room for them all, so A. traded them for a free edging job by our neighbor across the street. He's our go-to-guy for yard chores that we can't handle (he has a yard care business). He's got a pond in front of his house that will look nice with tufts of liriope around it. :)

While A. was planting, I was ~~stacking Zs~~ hard at work trimming the bushes around the front of the house again, evening out the height from one end to the other. I also lopped the thick branches a little below the height we want the little branches to grow so I can just zip across the whole thing with my good ol' Black & Decker hedge trimmer from now on.

This morning, I did a little weedeating in the back yard, and also fixed a stencil to spray-paint our house numbers on the curb at the end of the driveway. I made a bit of a mess (held the can too close to the stencil), but we neatened it up with white paint and some small craft brushes. It's good enough for cops and delivery guys to find us.

My personal opinion of yardwork? It blows. But since I don't have to do the regular mowing (that's A's Wednesday job--hey, she set her schedule, not me!), all I have to do is trim and weedeat every few weeks, so I'm not complaining. :)

Google fun

2010-09-15T10:13:00.004-05:00

Roses at Ack! Thbbbt! had a fun challenge today on her birthday. Click the link to read it, then go forth and see what you can Google up. Here's my top result:
Actually, a photo of a perfect stranger was the first result, but I didn't think it'd be cool to put her mug on my blog without her say-so, so I opted for the much more interesting second result.

There were also a few rather smutty results--photos some lady took of herself in various stages of undress and undulation, doubtless for sprinking around adult chat rooms. You never know what sort of mischief folks will get into.

Evans & Smith Construction Co.

2010-09-05T17:24:00.005-05:00

This weekend and last weekend both started out pretty much the same way:

In all, we built six pieces of furniture--two "library bases" that go together to make a credenza, a big desk, a TV stand, a media cabinet (for VHS tapes, DVDs, audiotapes, & CDs), and a sofa table. The only really easy piece was the sofa table; all the others were freakin' bears to build! If we thought we were worn out after building three pieces last weekend, we're completely wrecked after building three more yesterday and today. But we are DONE, hallelujah, right down to storing all the movies and music in their new home and getting most of the cords hidden behind furniture or in cord covers. There's nothing left to do in the den but hang curtains (once they're sewn).

No more screwing, hammering, huffing & puffing, arguing over directions, or swearing--the kitties may now relax...and so can we! :)

Shoe fetish?

2010-09-02T10:54:00.009-05:00

What is it with women and shoes? I'm not exactly a girly-girl, but even so, I'm obviously not immune to the bug. But these slides were clearance-priced and have a comfy suede insole and spiffy colors and they're so cute and, well....

Shuddup, they were on sale.

Call 'em a reward for working hard on a new database and PHP web app lately. :)

We are soooo broken...

2010-08-29T18:35:00.004-05:00

We got the two parts of the credenza and the desk put together yesterday and today, and we are so totally broken into pieces now. But the furniture looks great! I'll put up pix as soon as I can lift my arms to hold the camera. Tomorrow, I'm going to be scuttling into work like a very slow crab and have to type with my elbows, since my hands and wrists are completely wrecked, but the biggest part of the assembly job is done. We have two more pieces to build (and one more that'll probably arrive this week sometime), but they're not as urgent as my desk was.

Holy carp, I'm tired....

More home improvements

2010-08-27T19:20:00.026-05:00

As you can just barely see in the right side of the first photo, our house came with an ugly, out-of-place, rural mailbox on a post; the other side shows the too-small house numbers (partially covered by our new porch light). We recently had the mailbox and numbers replaced, and the entryway of the house looks a lot better. Actually, everything in the second photo is an improvement except for the siding!
That's our favorite contractor/handyman at work (we had a lot of other little jobs for him, too). In the pix below, snug in their shipping boxes, are some more "improvements" just waiting to be put together:

That's my new desk and two-part credenza, plus a TV stand that goes with the end tables we got recently. So guess what we're doing tomorrow?!? Nope, the contractor doesn't get that job--we do. Eh, who needs rest on the weekend, it's so overrated....

Oh, and the smaller, square box on the left is my LPs; they'll go in one side of the TV stand (when it's built). That will leave only one last moving box in this house--the one currently holding Sister A's fancy dishes that go in her little old china cabinet, which is going out for a paint-&-fix-up soon.

Browser Minnie

2010-08-23T09:08:00.004-05:00

I made a web page with Minnie's photo years ago. I park the browser on it whenever I'm done doing other stuff. You may proceed to oooh and aaah. :)

Den/office furniture spree, plus flowers

2010-08-22T11:17:00.028-05:00

Yesterday, we went looking for a proper desk to replace my old L-shaped, spindly, dorm-style desk, separate rolling taboret (which holds all the desk junk that ought to go in desk drawers), and separate filing cabinet. I've been looking online for quite a while, having decided that it's time for a "grown-up" desk, but either the quality was crap, or they're too expensive, or they have hardly any storage. (A desk with one or two drawers, sheesh.... I ask you, how does that make sense?) We dutifully looked at actual furniture stores, which are all very proud of their wares, and finally settled on a desk and cabinets from Office Max, to wit:

+ (

x 2) =

grown-up,
big-girl-pants
home office

I like 'em. They're more modern than the Craftsman/Mission/Shaker style I was originally looking for, but I like the simple style of this set, and the color (espresso), which looks really good with the Almond Toast paint in the den. And it so happened that the store was having a 20% off special, so the total cost was less than we figured. And the desk has plenty of useful drawers. The cabinets, called library bases, each have an adjustable shelf behind the door. All three office pieces should arrive sometime this week.

Having taken care of my office area, we decided we might as well finish the rest of the den, so now a proper TV stand (with room to store my old records--yes, the vinyl kind) and large media storage cabinet are on their way, along with a sofa table for behind (what else?) the sofa, so I can put a reading lamp there. That furniture is also espresso. The introduction of a sofa table necessitated moving out a chest that had been taking up that space temporarily; it now resides in Sister A's closet, being very handy. And while we were in her closet, she decided to go through her dressy clothes and hats that she has noplace to wear anymore and cut a lot of stuff out for our favorite thrift store.

Speaking of donations, there will be a few pieces of furniture for the Salvation Army to pick up after we're done fooling with the den.

And after we have all the furniture in place, we can finally put up pictures and a clock, and that'll finish the room off.

Well, except for replacing the old fake oak bookshelves with new espresso-colored (but probably also fake wood) shelves. The "golden oak" color totally pukes against the light brown walls. But that's a later project. We need to get the patio cover built next.

Sister A. was not left out of the home-improvement jag--she got a new office chair! This is the first new piece of furniture she's bought for herself since 1981. Yeah, I think she's due. That's Sammi on her monitor, of course. I have Minnie on mine. :) I have no idea why that yellow wall color always turns out peachy in photos!

And, finally, here's one of our young crape myrtles, a Red Rocket, doing very well.

Dual dining times two

2010-08-14T18:58:00.006-05:00

On two separate occasions this week, our kitties, Minnie and Sammi, have been spotted eating at the same time within two feet of each other. This is, like, totally unheard of, but there they were, both at the feeding station, and neither raising a ruckus! I didn't get a photo because I didn't want to spoil the moment. If it happens again, though, I'm gonna try to preserve the image for posterity (and bribery material).

We hope this means they'll start getting along with each other someday. It'd be wonderful if they'd learn to play together at some point instead of hissing and staring balefully at each other.

Doors! We got 'em!

2010-08-11T19:10:00.012-05:00

So I can quit complaining now. :) That's the last of the remodeling & refurbishing until we pay off the doors and a few other expenses (it won't take long, thank goodness). Then we'll have our favorite contractor put up a patio cover for us. Nothing fancy, just yer basic lid on posts.

Notice in the first photo that Inspector Sammi is once again on the job, training her lasers on the new doors in search of imperfections.

Front storm door--the right one, this time, with a retractable screen.

The long-awaited French doors (which replaced the crappy old sliding glass doors).
I need to finish painting that trim.

Having finished with the French doors, the installers start on the utility room storm door.

One fairly-cheap-but-quite-serviceable back storm door.
Need to paint that trim, too.

Doors tomorrow

2010-08-09T12:57:00.001-05:00

We hope. The correct doors, and all of them, this time. Doors, doors, doors. Om mani padme gimme some doors ommmmm....

Roses, curtains, den stuff, and hard work

2010-08-01T17:28:00.020-05:00

Yep, still alive here--I've been working like a maniac over the last two weeks trying to finish a project by deadline and have had no time for anything but work, meals, and sleep. But I finally put paid to that sucker Saturday afternoon. Man, I was glad to get that over with! Surprisingly, I didn't rack up that much overtime, but I worked twice as hard as usual during every hour I put in on this project. At the end of yesterday's stint, I was completely done in; I went to bed at 7pm last night and was asleep an hour later!

While I was wrapped up in that crazy project, Sister A. finished the first set of curtains for our new house. These go in the sewing room; they're happy little brown & green leaves on a pale yellow background, which goes great with the Behr Whisper Yellow walls. Here are two views of same (one turned out kinda dark).

She also added shelving to the sewing room closets, to have room for all her tons of quilting fabrics. The closet shown below doesn't have much on its shelves yet, but only because Sammi had to inspect A's workmanship first. Notice that she has her yardstick at the ready.

Working where I do has its advantages, namely the fact that I have a window which looks out on a courtyard full of roses, trees, and other greenery. The roses have been in fine form lately, and I took a few minutes yesterday to take some photos. Here are a few goodies:

I tried out the macro and supermacro settings on my camera for those close-ups; I think they turned out pretty well. There are a few more pix on my Flickr site.

Back on the home-improvement front, Friday evening (I think--maybe it was yesterday--I was reeeeally tired) my 17-year-old Magnavox TV abruptly decided to give up the ghost. I had virtuously held onto it back during the switch from analog to digital TV signals, because it was still working fine, even though some channels had begun to broadcast in widescreen instead of the old square format. Nova had become merely va, and credits on a few other channels displayed only half-names for the cast. So, even though the timing could have been better, I didn't really mind buying a new TV this morning (although they're hideously more expensive than analog TVs used to be!). Of course, I didn't have to go all the way up to 42", but, see, I've got this great big den now and, well, y'know.... Anyway, the picture is great and it's a much better size for the room. :)

Notice my devoted kitty guarding the new boob tube (lower right of the photo).

Two or three days ago, we received a pair of end tables--telephone stands, really--that I'd ordered early in July, and after setting up the TV this morning, I put the tables together. Here they are flanking my couch.

Yeah, they're small, but I'm working with limited space around the couch, and they'll hold all the necessaries. Try to ignore the black-garbage-bag curtains in the background--we're still waiting for the new French doors to arrive.

Last but not least, here's Minnie from a cat's-eye view, obviously telling me to get the flashy box out of her face.

OK, Minnie, you can go back to sleep now. :)

An abundance of bugs

2010-07-24T15:50:00.009-05:00

What's with all the dragonflies this year? I live in a dry area (well, it used to be dry; we've gotten a good deal more rain than usual since about last winter). In 16 years, I've hardly seen a dragonfly; now they're all over the place. Especially near water, of course, but even just hanging around Wal-Mart (maybe they're waiting for their car repairs to be finished). I was walking by a museum yesterday and this squadron of dragonflies gave me an escort off the premises.

Also, biting flies--why? What genius decided we needed biting flies??? Aren't mosquitos obnoxious enough?

Bit of a cock-up on the door front...

2010-07-13T12:15:00.003-05:00

The store managed to screw up our entire order for the storm doors and French doors. Actually, the French door measurements were right, but whoever built 'em sent the wrong size. The front storm door turned out to be the wrong kind, and unfortunately the gaffe wasn't noticed until the thing was already installed. And the utility-room storm door somehow fell off our order completely. So we've got one of three doors installed, and that one is wrong. We hope they'll replace that one with the right kind at no additional charge. The storm door we picked for the utility room is a cheap one that's in stock locally and should be installed soon, but the French door, unfortunately, has to be reordered, which means another three weeks of waiting on that. I think the correct front storm door has to be reordered, too.

Anyway, the present front storm door keeps the bugs out and cuts way down on the heat, so that'll be very nice until we get the right one installed.

OK, enough already

2010-07-12T08:53:00.003-05:00

Dear Asian sex site robots,

Please refrain from commenting on my blog posts. You've already driven me to moderating every single comment that comes through, even from NICE people, which is irritating. Nobody who reads my blog will ever see your tatty links to naughty places, because the minute I see Kanji in a Blogger email notification (laden, as always, with links to some damn porn site), BOOM, it's outta there. So kindly shove off.

Sincerely,
las794

Find the difference...

2010-07-11T14:33:00.010-05:00

...in these two photos. In the first photo, it's green and shaggy and way too tall. It took a lot of hot work to get that monster bush in front of the door cut down to waist height. It's mostly sticks and thorns now, but it'll fill out with leaves eventually. The other bushes weren't near as much work; they had tall shoots, but the main "body" was still a reasonable size.

Tomorrow, the Home Depot guys are coming to install new storm doors on the front and utility-back doors and new French doors in place of the sliding glass doors in the den. We'll be very glad to have good doors up. June bugs and skeeters are getting in through the 2" gap under the old front storm door. The bottom glass pane is missing on the utility-room storm door, so we can't leave the door open for air on nice days. And since the big tree in back was taken down, we've had to tape up black trash bags over the sliding glass doors to keep the sun out. They're ever so attractive, but we're willing to sacrifice them for better insulation. :)

After we get the doors and tree-removal paid off, and save up a few bucks, we're going to call our favorite contractor to put up a patio cover for us.

Another prodigal cat

2010-07-04T17:21:00.006-05:00

Apparently, Minnie thought Sammi was so cool for spending the whole night outside in a howling rainstorm, she decided to do it herself last night. It wasn't raining like mad when I let her out through the garage, of course, just sprinkling a little. Toward evening, the rain began (again) in earnest, but despite my calling & calling at front, back, and side of the house, she wouldn't show herself. This morning, I discovered that she did exactly as Sammi did last week--spent the night in the neighbors' shed. The little stinker just hopped over the fence this morning like everything was normal, trotting into the house all covered in cobwebs and dragging an assortment of debris in her coat and soggy tail. Cats....

Alex came to visit...

2010-07-03T11:11:00.005-05:00

...and he's already overstaying his welcome! Our backyard is a lake and, as you can see, Minnie is dismayed at the situation. It rained all day yesterday and, according to the weatherman, it'll probably continue for the next several days. Like lunatics, we went out for breakfast this morning, but decided to curtail our usual trip downtown (into even more flooded regions) and just cut over to Denny's instead. That area was quite sufficiently covered with rainwater for us. We're home for the duration now. Good thing we have lots of puzzles!

The tree is outta here

2010-06-30T20:33:00.005-05:00

...and the den is a lot hotter now! That should be fixed in a week or so, though, when the French doors arrive. We got the kind with blinds in the middle of the glass panes.

I made a slideshow of the tree removal process (Sister A. took TONS of pix today), but I'm not sure how to share it in my blog. If you're one of my Facebook friends, you can see it there. Otherwise, here's a small sample of the festivities. :) It's hard to tell where the wires end and this guy's ropes begin. One thing I can definitely tell you is that he had IRON leg muscles from all that tree-climbing!

Two more changes

2010-06-29T20:01:00.012-05:00

Tomorrow, this sycamore tree--which is too big, too close to the house, and clearly in danger of bringing down all those wires if any branches get knocked off by ice next winter--will be removed one piece at a time by an outfit called Big Timber. They're accustomed to working with big trees in tight spaces, and they'll be climbing all around it to get it all without dropping anything through the roof, so it oughta make for some interesting photos. Sister A's in charge of that.

The second change, as shown in the photo below, is this majorly cool Crosley phone, a prezzie from Sister A, which has just replaced a cheap Wal-Mart p.o.s., and I LOVE IT! It's a reproduction of a "302" or "Cow's Hoof" phone which was introduced in 1937. The Crosley site says, "This early desk version served as the standard for the better part of the World War II while telephone design efforts were halted due to defense work." It's almost as heavy as the original, and it has a mechanical bell for a ringer. I haven't heard a phone truly ring in years! It goes great with the funky, curly brass lamp we found in a thrift shop several weeks ago, and both will look even better on the Craftsman desk I have my eye on. :)

The desk will have to wait a bit, onnaccounta we're having that tree cut down and two storm doors and a set of French doors installed soon, so we'll have to mind our pennies for a while. There are a couple of other projects on the fairly-near horizon, too--new, insulated garage doors and a patio cover with a bit of cement work thrown in--that we'll have to save for, now that all the proceeds from the sale of my old house have been used up. But we'll get all our improvements taken care of eventually.

Prodigal cat

2010-06-28T12:37:00.004-05:00

Sammi finally turned up this morning--just walked in the back door nonchalant as you please. After having been out all night, though, she was plenty hungry! It must have been a rough night for her--we had quite a howling, lashing rainstorm. I expect she hid in the neighbor's shed. Rotten little girl--made us all worry! Her mom says she's grounded.

So why let our cats outside if they pull this kind of stunt now and then? Because they'd be miserable and go stir-crazy if they had to stay inside all day, every day. Both were feral/stray and are accustomed to a certain amount of freedom. It's just not in their natures to be forever house-bound, even if it means a longer life for them.

Stuck cat, unpacked books, and new pix

2010-06-27T17:50:00.012-05:00

Sammi has gotten herself stuck in the neighbors' backyard, on the other side of a six-foot-high fence with concrete footings (we tried to dig under it to get her out--no go). Minnie may or may not have enticed her fatter cousin to jump over the fence into said yard; be that as it may, Minnie is athletic enough to jump back over the fence to her home ground, but Sammi...well, she seems to be stuck. Sister A. has put a note on the neighbors' door in hopes that they'll come home tonight and let us in to get Sammi. There's not much more we can do but wait--we can't even get water to the little dingbat. I hope there's a birdbath in among the neighbors' backyard landscaping. I also hope Sammi will finally jump over the fence when she gets hungry enough and stop worrying her mom! Cats....

Apart from trying to rescue kitties, our weekend has been busy. Yesterday morning, we started sorting the books into genres, then by alphabet, then by author, and finally got them into shelves. We didn't have near enough bookshelves for everything (before the move, I gave away a few small, mismatched ones; and after we moved into the new house, I gave away another shelf unit that was entirely too big for our space), so we had to cull our joint collection quite a bit more, but we finally got all the books we really wanted to keep into shelves throughout the house. See photographic proof at left and on my Flickr site (along with lots of other house pix).

The den and sewing room are both works in progress, but our bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, and the dining area are pretty much done, except for putting up pictures. Here are some "highlights" for you. :)

And last, but not least, here's Minnie practicing her mountain-climbing technique...at least until party-pooper Mom decided a shower of loose puzzle pieces might not be the best idea. :)

Here's hoping Sammi comes home SOON!

We have...a few books

2010-06-24T21:05:00.006-05:00

Merging the households of two voracious readers, even if they've already culled their individual collections a bit, results in one BIG pile of books! We finally got them all out of boxes and I started going through them a little this evening. We expect several duplicates, since we have similar--and similarly eclectic--tastes in reading material.

And, yes, that is a set of longhorns on the wall in the photo above right--they hung in our dad's house for years. So my den's a little bit of a "man cave". ;)

The cats seem to be acclimating themselves nicely--see photographic proof below (not a very good shot, I admit). Sammi turned her lasers on me before I could get the shot (flippin' shutter lag...). Minnie's ears are a bit owlish, but that's all--no growling or yelling to get out of the house, even with Sammi so close. That's progress!

Finished rooms and other progress

2010-06-19T21:03:00.009-05:00

We have pix of our finished bathrooms and utility room on my Flickr site, for your delight and edification. The one at left is of Sister A's little paradise, otherwise known as the hall bathroom. In addition to functional bathrooms, we have a cleaned-up-and-usable utility room, courtesy of A., and we've started putting away videotapes, DVDs, puzzles, and other things as boxes get opened in our frequent efforts to find a mattress pad or officey thing or whatever that hasn't reappeared yet. Moving is such fun! But we're starting to get a handle on the mess.

The cats have calmed down, hallelujah, particularly Minnie (Sammi's pretty calm to start with). Minnie now mostly acts normal at night, although she still whines to be let out a lot during the day. A. found her laser toy and I ran Minnie around with it for a while tonight. Good exercise! I also engaged Sammi with it for a little while, then both kitties decided they'd had enough, the little party-poopers. BTW, note to self: don't get Minnie revved up with Sammi anywhere in sight--a hissy-fit, if not outright assault, is sure to follow.

Today, we had NO urgent thing we had to do, so we slept late, had breakfast at our favorite place, got our scuzzy cars washed, then poked around a couple of stores. We did have a few things to pick up at Home Depot--regular, house/yard maintenance things--and while we were there, we decided to go ahead and order the two replacement storm doors and French doors (just as in my old house, the French doors will replace the old sliding glass door). HD's installers will call to measure for the doors Monday or Tuesday and start that ball rolling. Tuesday, a guy will come to reglaze both of our tubs; they're cast iron, nice and sturdy, and just need a little facelift to look good.

We've been looking at the furniture we still have cluttering one side of the garage and have decided what we really want to keep and what should be Freecycled as soon as possible. (If you don't know what Freecycle is, check it out! It's great for people who dislike holding garage sales to get rid of stuff they don't need anymore.) Sister A. brought whatever she thought we could use, but we didn't know then how big our new house would be, so now we have some goodies to pass on to folks who can use 'em. I'll get a list and descriptions together and put all that stuff on Freecycle tomorrow, so maybe we can get A's car into the garage soon. (Mine's already there; yeah, I'm the mean, piggy sister!)

To celebrate the closing of both houses, a successful move, and the conclusion of painting and other contractor work, we had planned to treat ourselves to a steak dinner somewhere. Ray the Realtor, who helped us accomplish all this work (including introducing us to the wonderful Chase the Contractor), beat us to the punch and gave us a $50 gift card to the Cattle Baron, and we used it this evening to stuff ourselves with filet mignon and fried ice cream--YUM! It's been a very nice day. :)

Kitty noise pollution solution

2010-06-17T10:05:00.004-05:00

I am reliably informed by a mother (not mine) that ignoring a kid throwing a tantrum will short-circuit it. Danged if it don't work with cats, too! These past two nights, I've refrained from reacting when Minnie lets loose with her high-volume yowling in the most echo-ey part of the house, and in a fairly short time, she quits, having gotten the clue that I'm not going to get up and let her outside. At least, that's the way I'm interpreting it. I've also put a window-height cat tree in my bedroom and left my metal blinds open far enough for Minnie to get up and walk around on the window sill (which is 4-5 inches wide, plenty for a cat to sit and observe the world outside)--that has helped, too, I think. She has even condescended to get up on the bed and sleep with me (for a while, anyway). So things are improving.

We're no longer locking the cats in our bedrooms with us at night; that stopped working on my kitty after just a few nights, and Sammi, A's kitty, really seems quite at home. She's more "mellow" than Minnie.

Pleeeeeze let me sleep....

2010-06-15T15:18:00.004-05:00

Moving with a cat--actually, two cats who don't get along well together--is not the most fun thing I've ever done. Sammi is settling down pretty well, but Minnie is still having trouble adjusting, and nights are the worst time for both cat and cat-Mom. Last night, she repeatedly crashed into the metal venetian blinds, walked along the window sill, then jumped out onto my bed and let the blinds clack against the window behind her. She's still meowing loudly a lot at night, too, despite my trying to limit the stimulation of a big new environment by shutting her in my bedroom with me. And last night, just for a change of pace, she discovered a drawer full of old doorknobs right outside Sister A's bedroom door and scrabbled around in there for a good while. A. didn't know what the heck was going on until she saw that drawer open this morning.

During the day, Minnie wants OUT in a big way, and will drive both the humans in the house nuts with her repeated demands to open the door. I don't sleep at night and then I have Minnie drilling yowls through my skull when I get home...until I let her out, of course. Then it's hard to get her back inside. I'm sure she doesn't think of our house as her home yet because she's not in it much, but good lord, how can I stand to keep her inside when she constantly yells to get out?? It's unbelievable how piercing her voice can be!

I can't take sleeping pills every night, and Feliway doesn't seem to work on Minnie. Anybody who has any ideas about getting Minnie used to her new home--and making a lot less racket--is sure welcome to tell me.

Move complete, house closing done, sprucing up...well, it's getting there

2010-06-14T15:02:00.007-05:00

We had one hell of a week last week, but we're all moved into our new house and the construction/painting work is almost done. OK, the larger pieces of Sister A's furniture are still in the garage, but at least the PODS container has been emptied and picked up and all our belongings are somewhere on the premises.

A couple of my co-workers volunteered to help us load the last of my stuff into the POD Sunday, June 5, so that the POD could be picked up Monday morning; we never would have managed it without them! We also had both of our cars crammed to the gills, with a small space left for one cat each (in carriers, of course). Two people who have lived independently for 30-40 years end up with a lot of stuff, including lots of duplicates, and since the net living space per person in the new house is smaller than I had by myself, we'll be culling our belongings as we unpack boxes. The Salvation Army, Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity, Savers thrift store, and our local library will be getting lots of goodies.

On moving day, we headed off to the new house early, and the cats squalled all the way there. They continued to raise hell upon arrival, and for quite some time thereafter. Sammi (A's cat) is settling down pretty well, but Minnie (my cat) is still pretty freaked out and so upsets Sammi more than she would be on her own. That first night in the new house, Minnie yelled at the top of her lungs nearly the whole night, and with very little furniture in the place yet because the contractor and his guys had their tools & materials everywhere, she had quite an echo to emphasize her displeasure! That probably freaked her out even more. I got about two hours' sleep that night and was thoroughly dead the next day (but still had a lot of work to do--couldn't shirk it, unfortunately). Sister A. has the advantage of one deaf ear, so she can sleep on the good one and shut out all noise, the rotten egg.

We began taking our kitties outside on supervised walks early in the week, and Minnie has the run of the yard now, but I don't know if I can claim it's helped with her stress. Instead of getting used to our house and grounds, she appears to have adopted the neighbors' yard and hops over the fence into it at every opportunity. It's definitely more peaceful there right now, and of course there are no piles of lumber, tarps, and discarded parts on the other side of the fence. She comes home to eat and sleep, but that's it, and she probably wouldn't even stay to sleep if I didn't refuse to let her out again after supper. I've shut her into my bedroom the last two nights so she won't wander around the house yowling all night, and she has calmed down considerably (until around 5am, that is, when she jumps up into the metal venetian blinds in my window with a racket like a whole corps of cymbals), but she's right back to wanting out, out, OUT the next day. And she still doesn't like Sammi. But at least the house is bigger so the cats can give each other a wide berth, if necessary.

I wish I knew how to make her more comfortable in her new home, but there's just no way to explain this sort of thing to a cat.

Every day this week, in addition to dealing with upset kitties, Sister A. and I have worked hard cleaning (the kitchen was especially gross), hauling boxes and smaller pieces of furniture inside, fetching supplies for the contractor from Home Depot and wherever else, unpacking, hauling out trash, cleaning the bathrooms repeatedly as various things in each one get worked on during the day (have to clean 'em up before we can take a shower each night), and generally runnin' & gunnin' from morning to night. The contractor and his guys have run into plumbing problems, wiring problems, and just plain problems caused by weird amateur repairs over the years, which has led to the work stretching out longer than he anticipated (but doesn't that always happen with remodeling?). Just living and working around the remodelers is tiring; add all the rest we've been doing and we are EXHAUSTED. I'm lucky I got to go back to work today so I could get some rest!

But we really like our new home. The colors and tile have turned out great, the new bathroom fittings are going up and look beautiful, A. loves her little living room, and I love my combination den & office. My bedroom in the new house is smaller than my old one, but it works and it's comfortable, plus it has an attached bathroom--hard to beat that! We'll be sooooo glad when the contractor and his guys are done and we can move in the rest of the furniture and get back to a normal life.

AND we finally own the house--we closed on it this morning. So now it's official. :)

Moving and closing news

2010-06-08T22:30:00.004-05:00

I've been offline for a few days, but I'm still alive! Sister A. and I have moved into our new house and are currently in the middle of cleaning, redecorating/remodeling, and getting all our stuff inside and organized. Our contractor and his guys are working hard, and so are we. We are soooo broken! As for the closing, there's been another delay caused by the former owners' stupidity; we hope it'll iron itself out by the end of the week, but we have no way of knowing.

I've got lots of pix to share, but it'll have to wait until the work is done. Meanwhile, rub those lucky kitty feet that the f.o's (and you can fill in those initials any way you want) get their collective act together and let us finish buying the house!

Fabric and paint and ceiling fans, Oh My!

2010-06-04T22:43:00.006-05:00

Is this perfect, or what? This is the wall paint and fabric for drapes in Sister A's bedroom.

The fabric for the drapes has arrived and we took it over to the house yesterday evening to see how it works against the paint colors in the various rooms. It all looks great! I've uploaded photos of it all (plus a lot of other stuff) to my Flickr site for your viewing pleasure. There's been a lot of progress--almost all the walls are painted, trim's getting painted, doors are coming back from the painter tomorrow and will be installed with all their new bronze knobs, and more ceiling fans will be going up. Sunday, Chase the Contractor (whom we might as well put on retainer forever because we totally love him) will swap out the old bathroom fixtures for the new ones--at least the shower/tub parts; the vanities aren't in, so all the associated pretties will have to wait until they arrive (Monday, sez Home Depot). There are various other chores on his long checklist, and we have complete faith that they'll all get done.

We visited the new house again this evening (of course) and I got to see my bedroom and bathroom all painted up byoo-tee-ful. :)

Tomorrow, after the guys are done painting the last bit of the kitchen, A. and I are going over to start cleaning the kitchen, especially inside the fridge and stove. We have a couple of stops to make before that; A. can't set foot in the place until the paint fumes clear out a bit.

"Don't worry, be happy"

2010-06-04T10:22:00.005-05:00

Things are finally straightened out between the underwriter, credit union, and title company, and we can proceed with closing on the new house Monday. The necessary papers are at the title company right now. PHEW! Yeah, I was worried, but needlessly, as it turns out--there's no way they can jerk our loan or otherwise put us out of the new house after we've moved all our stuff into it, because all the essential stuff is already approved and has been for a couple of weeks. Well, I've never done this complex house-buying thing before. I bought my current house from my sister (yep, same one I'm buying a house with now), but that was a simple little VA assumable and I think my biggest expense was the lawyer who shuffled the legal papers around for us. I certainly didn't have to fool with underwriters & banks & whatnot.

I can't get the titular video to embed, so just click here for a dose of happy. :)

No closing Friday, either

2010-06-03T15:35:00.006-05:00

Now it's "promised" for Monday. That's two closings (on old and new houses) on Monday, plus our final move to the new house. It'd sure be nice if we could OWN the dadgum new house before we actually move into it, but who the hell knows...? But everything's scheduled for Monday, so we've got no choice--we have to move. Just rub your favorite mojo that the loan/closing/etc. all comes together like it's supposed to on Monday.

Fans, progress, and bureaucratic BS

2010-06-02T19:36:00.014-05:00

Progress!

This is the ceiling fan in Sister A's bedroom. Fans are starting to go up in the finished rooms!

We were supposed to close on the new house today, but the underwriters requested another document at the last minute. We sent it. Closing rescheduled for Thursday. Today, having heard nothing, A. emailed the underwriter agent she's been dealing with, asking where we stand. Answer: "Clear to close." So we're good for closing tomorrow, right? Wrong. Toward the end of the business day, she got an urgent email from the agent asking for the phone number of our house insurance agent. We've already sent that to them, and to the title company--TWICE. Doesn't matter, we're screwed for closing on Thursday and are now hoping for Friday. A. says this kind of malarky happens all the time, but that sure doesn't make it any less frustrating for us!

Meanwhile, at the new house, the former owner finally moved the last of his stuff out today, so our contractor and his guys can work freely. In addition to ceiling fans going up, the popcorn ceiling in my bedroom, and possibly also in the bathroom, has been scraped off (the guys had to wait for the f.o. to move out of there). Chase the Contractor says all the painting will be finished by Friday (him, I believe!). Saturday, he's going to fetch back all our interior doors from the painter and put them up. Sunday, they'll be putting up fans, shutters, fixtures, etc. We hope they'll be able to install the vanities and vanity tops, too--they were due at Home Depot today, but didn't come in. A. plans to nag HD three times a day until they arrive. Sure hope it's soon--we'd love for all this fixing-up (and closing--that'd be nice) to be done by the time we move in Monday!

Yes, moving is still scheduled for Monday--no snags there. I haven't been able to round up anymore help for loading the POD Sunday, but we'll manage with just us two "mature" ladies and my co-worker. Sunday night, there won't be a stick left in the old house except our two mattresses and the little bit of stuff we're leaving behind. Monday, at some point (we don't have a time yet), the PODS people will shift our belongings to the new house and Chase and one of his guys will help us move everything inside (my stuff in the POD and A's stuff in the garage there).

We'll probably have to bring the cats over to the new house before the move starts and put them in the utility room (in their carriers) at least until the big furniture is in place. They're going to HATE IT, but it'll be over soon enough, and then they'll have a big new house to explore, with smells familiar to both of them.

Hoo boy, what a day Monday's gonna be! In addition to the final move, we're scheduled to close on the old house...assuming the underwriters don't fumble the ball there, too.

Aw, what da heck--have another pretty fan, this time in the sewing room. :) The gaping hole is where the vent cover will go.

"Peekaboo!"

2010-05-31T18:48:00.006-05:00

The Basil green in the dining room looked much better today, and for a good reason: apparently, the lids on two different greens (one Basil, one Palmetto, which is much lighter) had been switched accidentally at the store, and our guys couldn't see the problem while they were spraying the room, because they were basically working in a green cloud. The contractor spotted it this morning, though, and resprayed the room with the right color. Now it's the correct shade.

Colors shown here:

Den: Almond Toast walls with Cancun Sand trim

Dining room: Basil walls, trim not painted yet (but it'll be Cancun Sand)

Living room: Cancun Sand walls and trim

I love it that you can see three different, comfortably co-existing colors right from the front door. :) The effect is better in person, of course (or when shot by a better photographer than I).

Apart from checking on the progress at the new house today, A. and I packed a bit more--everything we could live without until after the move. We now have several open boxes sitting around, waiting for the last little bits to be packed and the boxes taped up.

Getting colorful

2010-05-31T12:32:00.007-05:00

Newly painted den
Originally uploaded by lasmyth

Paint is going on up the walls of the new house and the place is starting to look colorful! They haven't been able to work on my bedroom and bathroom yet, because that's where the former owner has been camped (while puttering about the business of moving out), but other rooms are getting done. The den is calling out to me already--the Almond Toast paint in there makes that big room a lot more cozy. The Whisper Yellow in the sewing room is so happy, and the Olive Grove in Sister A's bedroom will be so gorgeous and soothing with her white iron bed and white & silver accents! The dining room has been also been painted, Basil green, just like we asked--but, holy crow, it looked a lot more "limey" than I expected when we checked it out last night! (Click the photo at right to see more pix on my Flickr site.) A. says the color will look more like what we picked out as it dries, plus we'll be putting our dark dining furniture, shelves, and china cabinet in there, which will provide a handsome contrast.

We're both soooo happy with the way things are going at the new house, excited about the closing June 2nd, and very eager to move in June 7th! Then A. won't have to forlornly visit her belongings in the garage anymore. :D

Organizational progress

2010-05-28T20:48:00.004-05:00

Sister A. and I both got a lot done on the organizational front today. I arranged for utilities to be switched on or off on the appropriate days and found a volunteer to help us load the heavy stuff into the POD on Moving Day Eve, and A. found a crew to help us unload on Moving Day. In fact, the moving crew is our contractor and his guys--jacks of all trades, those fellas! I'll need to find one more burly volunteer among my co-workers to help load the POD, but I have to wait until Tuesday when everybody's back from their Memorial Day weekend trips, binges, or whatever. My back isn't up to hefting my big ol' bear of a dresser yet (if it ever would be!).

We went by the house this evening and got to go inside and look at all the lovely tarps and ceiling scrapings and other signs of progress. It was a wonderful sight. The more I see of that house, the better I like it. :)