You Know You Live In The Sticks When...

...your contractor schedules his visits to your ongoing home renovation project around deer season!

Sadly, I am not exaggerating in the slightest.

I Said "No" Today!

I was asked to do something that I could probably have managed with some trouble, but really didn't want to do.  Instead of figuring out a way to do it and then dealing with the resulting hassle (as would be my normal SOP because I am a sucker), I politely declined!  Catholic guilt complex notwithstanding, it felt fabulous...

I Know Why I Can't Remember Anything Anymore...

Because all of my brain cells are occupied with stuff like this:

This song came out in 1984.  I must have played my tape of it a thousand times that year, but I would swear to you that I have not heard or thought about it since then.

It played on the '80s radio channel tonight--I listened to it in the car as I drove Thing Two back from his doctor's appointment.  And damned if I didn't remember every.single.solitary.word.

Clearly, my brain is full of very useful things.  (ha)

My House Is A Ticking Time Bomb

We bought this house from an older Italian couple whom we suspect were/are mob-connected.  It was an entertaining series of interactions.  His stated occupation was building contractor, which sounded good upfront, but we've since come to realize that there is no way in hell that could have been true based on the work that was done in this house while they lived here.

Case in point: the hall bathroom that we are currently renovating.  The tile guy had to take the sink and toilet out to redo the floor, and in the process discovered that the base and top of the sink were not a matched set (the bowl was attached to the misfit pedestal with shims and caulk.)  Also, the toilet base was literally glued to the floor.  Can't even begin to imagine why.  The tile guy begged me to go out and buy a new sink and toilet, which I did yesterday.

But the icing on the cake was the light fixture.  Ugliest thing in the world: I had already planned to replace it.  I had the tile guy (who is somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades) take a look at it to see if there was anything I needed to keep in mind while choosing a new one.  He made the discovery that there was no box behind the old fixture, which of course made it a raging fire hazard!  The electrician came yesterday to put in a box and install the new fixture, and he determined that the support for the box had been put in incorrectly, which was why the box wouldn't fit.  Instead of trying to fix the support, the previous owners just left the box out completely and installed the old fixture without it.

I shudder to think where else in my house these bombs lurk...I was unaware of that one for nine-plus years!  Thank God it never caught fire.  Wish I could think of a tactful way to ask the previous owners for a list of everything they did in the house so I can have someone else check it!

P.S.: Oh, and Ms. Moon...I discovered yesterday at the plumbing supply store that some people are actually willing to pay $800-900 for a faucet-and-handles set for their bathroom sink.  Must be the same ones who take baths in leftover champagne!!

This Is Why I Am Going Gray

In the car this morning, completely out of the blue:

The Girl to Thing Two: "Do you know a word that starts with P and ends with S?"

Me to her (alarmed at where she could possibly be going with this): "Do you know any words that start with P and end with S?"

The Girl: "Of course.  Platypus!"  (She's a fan of the kids' TV show Phineas and Ferb, which features one of these creatures.)

Me: (greatly relieved)

Not sure if this episode speaks more to her precocious spelling ability or my dirty mind!

Sunday Night

It's been a good weekend.  I have eaten and drunk well with friends (my children asked when we could have them over again when they woke up the next morning!) and laughed and sung and cleaned and shopped and cooked and ordered the Christmas cards.  A total of 18 1/2 dozen Christmas cookies are in the downstairs freezer awaiting icing etc--yes, I went a little overboard, but now I have the cookies for The Girl's school done plus enough for our family holidays as well.  (The more I cross off my to-do list ahead of time, the less witchy I am.)

I love this!!!

And some of the Christmas decorations are even up...the kitchen and family room ones, mostly.  The Girl was highly annoyed to be reminded that the first step to decorating is cleaning (moving furniture to accommodate the tree and dusting) but she had enough fun helping me put out the decorations afterward that she forgot about that.  As a side note, can I just tell you how happy I am that my decorations no longer have to be at least six feet off the ground to keep them from being destroyed by some combination of the kids and the dog???  While the girls put out the holiday stuff, the three boys went tree shopping and came home with a beauty.

And I found a new decoration for my collection today, which was the icing on the cake!  Years ago, I picked up a painted tin Santa on a whim, and then a year later the tin snowman and Christmas tree that really started me on the hunt for more.  I'm up to eight now--today's find was a reindeer.  They are inexpensive and nothing fancy, but I enjoy searching for more...every year or two I find another one.

Yeah, right...

The only fly in the ointment relates to the ongoing bathroom and hall construction, naturally.  One of my projects for the weekend was to buy the new sink and toilet we need, which we planned to do today.  Except that every single plumbing supply store in the area is closed on Sunday and my tile/construction guy hates Home Depot with a passion...I am not allowed to buy anything there because he swears everything they sell is irregular seconds!  Anyway, guess I will be making that run tomorrow...at least I don't need those until later in the week.  I did need to buy the light fixture today, though, since the electrician is coming tomorrow morning--I bought that at Lowe's but fully expect to get an earful about that purchase too.  The contractor-approved stores are open 8-5 during the week, Sat mornings from 8-12, and closed Sunday!  Given that I spent Saturday morning at three consecutive basketball practices, that wasn't an option.  (And I'm a coach for two of the three kids' teams, so this is going to be an interesting winter.)

So...tomorrow morning, I will be juggling the search for acceptable plumbing fixtures, a contractor, an electrician, a doctor's appointment, and a trip to school to read to Thing Two's class.  Starting off the week with a bang!  

Aftermath

Hell of a party.  Ended early because one family's kids had a swim meet in the AM...probably just as well as much wine had already been consumed!  I'm stuffed full of good Cajun food (the gumbo was out of this world) and high on the warmth of laughter with good friends, the kind that leaves your belly hurting afterward.  In this company, it didn't matter at all that our front hall is currently plywood and the downstairs bathroom a vacant shell...there aren't many people I would invite to a construction zone for dinner, but these guys all make that cut.

Comic moment of the afternoon: while in the kitchen getting ready for the party, I overheard Thing Two and The Girl in the family room debating what music videos they were going to play from the on-demand part of our cable service.  I was only half listening until I heard them settle on Chris Brown.  The problem was that I knew they were looking for one of the CHARLIE Brown holiday clips!  Close, but no bananas...glad I intervened in time.  ;)