Playing catch-up here.
Day 6: I am thankful for our church family at First United Methodist Church. Day 6 fell on a Sunday - specifically, the first Sunday of the month. First Sundays bring with them "Children First" services, which are led by Mister Mark, who could give Trout Fishing in America or Laurie Berkner a run for the money. Seriously, he should have a major recording contract, and a concert tour, and a show on Noggin. Until he gets all of that, we are more than content to have him run our Children's Ministry.
Children First services are hilarious. On this particular Sunday, Mister Mark put his own unique spin on the story of Mary and Martha, with his assistant and one of the ministers acting out the story in pantomime. Did I mention that the minister who played Martha was male? At one point, said minister ad libbed a line (in falsetto), and Mister Mark looked at him and said, "You know, Mike, it's really not a speaking part."
LOVE Mister Mark. And the kids love him, too.
Day 7: Thankful to be in my forties. After the Children First service, I headed to a local baseball park, with the fam in tow, to participate in the Junior Woman's Club softball tournament. By "participate," I mean "lead my department's team in a half-dance/half-cheer that I choreographed to Shania Twain's 'Man, I Feel Like a Woman' as part of the opening ceremonies." Girlfriend doesn't play softball - never has, never will. But I do dance, and I did enjoy watching my fellow Encore members, who, for the third year running, came darned close to stealing the title away from the presumptive favorite. This is significant, because Encore is a department whose membership consists of mostly 40 to 45 year-olds. The fact that we more than hold our own against twentysomethings appeals to me. We held our own in the dance/cheer category as well. Personally, I think that we should have won best performance honors, 'cause we kind of rocked it, but our enthusiasm and overall awesomeness obviously did not go unnoticed, as we ended up winning the "Best Sportsmanship" prize.
Good times, with awesome ladies - all of them living proof that life does not end at forty, but gets a heck of a lot sassier, and unapologetic, and a whole lot of other good things.
Day 8: Thankful for my Junior Woman's Club and Woman's Club friends. See Day 7, above. Particularly thankful that my days as president (and immediate past president) are over, and I can fly below the radar when I want to. Flying below the radar is good. Kind of novel, and really, REALLY good.
Day 9: Thankful for my mother, who, according to the Social Security Administration, was born on November 9th. According to my grandmother, she was born on November 10th. I think we can agree that my grandmother probably has the clearer memory of when my mom was born, right? So November 10th has always been Mom's recognized birthday in our family, which is kind of cool, because my husband is also a November 10th baby. (Explains why they occasionally butt heads - they are WAY too alike.) But when Mom retired and had to deal with the Social Security Office for the first time probably since she got married and changed her name, she was reminded of the discrepancy in dates and was informed that, as far as the federal government is concerned, she does NOT share a birthday with her son-in-law. At this point, she gave up the ghost and accepted the 9th as her actual birthday. I still haven't accepted it, and probably never will. But I devoted Day 9 to her, in part so that I could devote Day 10 fully to my spouse.
Day 10: Thankful for - duh - my spouse. Who is, indisputedly, a November 10th baby. We celebrated his birthday by - um, doing nothing together as a family. Because he wanted it that way. I should explain: we all went out to dinner on the 9th to celebrate both my mom's birthday and his birthday, and we had gone out for a big dinner the night before that, and his birthday fell on a Thursday, and he plays tennis on Thursdays, and - for various reasons - he had missed tennis three consecutive Thursdays prior. So when I asked him what he wanted to do on his birthday, he said, "Honestly? Play tennis." And I did not get my feelings hurt. The boy deserves a stress reliever. Heaven knows we're under enough stress right now. And I plan on spending a number of birthdays with him in the future. In our own home, dammit.
Personal Statement
Saturday, November 19, 2011
The Event: A Cabinet Maker Restores My Faith in Humanity
Continuing my moratorium on insurance company- and general contractor-related blog posts. When I have something good to say, you'll be the first to read it.
I'm choosing to focus on positives - like the plan for our kitchen. After some MAJOR waffling, we have achieved (1) a floor plan and (2) a design concept. When I say that I have waffled on the design concept, the picture that you should have in your mind is of a waffle made on THIS bad boy:
Okay, I don't know if this is an actual waffle iron. But it's possible - it appears to have been made in Japan, and the Japanese seem to love to supersize things (like lizards and insects) when they aren't making things extremely small (like hotel rooms). (Okay, yes, I am basing my image of Japanese culture on "Godzilla vs. Mothra" and the "Seinfeld" episode where Kramer turned his home into a capsule hotel and rented drawers to Japanese businessmen. So sue me.)
MAJOR waffling. HUGE. Shaker doors! Wait, no, Craftsman! Or would that be too much visual clutter? Shaker, definitely Shaker - in a ginger maple finish. Oh, scratch that - the countertop would look HORRIBLE next to ginger maple. We need something darker. Chestnut. Ew, no - too red. Okay, something really dark - espresso. But that would make the room look horribly small, wouldn't it? Like a horribly small, horribly dark cave. So maybe we go with a light-colored paint finish. Except stain wears SO much better than paint. Okay - paint on top, stain on the bottom. Um, but what about the cabinets that run from the floor to the ceiling? Do you finish 'em like upper cabinets, or bottom ones? And do I REALLY want Shaker doors? A basic square front would be nice. Timeless. Although Shaker doors are timeless, too.
If you follow me on Pinterest, and you have checked out my "Unexpected Home Remodel" board, then you have a general sense of just how intense this waffling has been. I haven't counted how many kitchen images I have pinned, because I think it would scare me. But, with a little help from our custom cabinet maker, I have settled on a design. Which - no surprise - tracks pretty closely some design concepts that I pinned to a kitchen idea board BEFORE all of this began. Like this one:
This was back in my Shaker phase, but note light on top, dark on bottom (or, at least, on the island). I pinned this one around the same time:
Sensing a pattern? No? Okay, here's two more:
The granite in the last image is similar to what we have picked out, which was a deciding factor in moving to a light-and-dark palette, versus a monochromatic, medium-brown design concept. When I searched for "Venetian Gold granite" in Google Images, almost all of the pictures showed Venetian gold paired with either a light (painted) or a dark (painted or stained) cabinet, or both. The few that featured a lighter brown-stained cabinet just didn't work for me. Too sallow. Too country. I don't do either one of those.
Two-tone suits me. I like light kitchens. I like dark kitchens. I don't like having to choose between two things that I like. And the odds of us acquiring a second home, which would permit me to have an all-light kitchen and an all-dark kitchen, are slim and none. Particularly after the proctology exam that we are going through on residence #1. So light plus dark equals best of both worlds. Light cabinetry around the perimeter and the dark island in the center should expand the room visually. Because, you know, light colors recede and dark colors advance. You did know that, didn't you? My spouse didn't. Bless his sweet little heart.
My only concerns about having painted cabinets are: (1) paint doesn't wear as well as stain; and (2) light colors get fingerprint-y. But having stained cabinets on the bottom will help with the wear issue: chances of dents on bottom are greater, because my boys are still relatively low to the ground, and more often than not they are REALLY low to the ground, in that they like to wrestle. Basically, they live on the floor. So, dark stain on the bottom is good. We'll put handles on the top cabinets to minimize fingerprints. And, also, I'm thinking that "light" doesn't necessarily have to mean "white or cream." It could mean "lighter." Like beige. Or greige:
I fell in love with greige after we painted the home office in Benjamin Moore's Pismo Dunes. Since the home office is adjacent to the kitchen, a greige on the kitchen cabinets would be visually pleasing. And - added bonus - greige is the exact color of fingerprints. So, there you go. (Memo to Benjamin Moore product development team: you totally should market a color called "Fingerprint." Mothers would line up to purchase it.)
Much as I love Pismo Dunes, I don't think I want to duplicate it in the kitchen. It has a lot of purple in it, and I'm leaning towards a more greenish cast in the kitchen. A pale gray-green says "kitchen" to me. I have no idea why: because of Martha Stewart? Kitchens say pale gray-green to Martha, that's for sure. I had Martha green countertops in the old kitchen - I mean, in the existing kitchen, back when it actually possessed countertops. I'm going to miss those countertops. So I'm planning on paying homage to them by painting the walls in the "new" kitchen a pale green. Probably BM's Agnathus Green. Or Tea Leaf. The greige, if I go with greige, will have to harmonize with one of those.
Cabinet Maker Lamar gave me two (large) pieces of wood to play with, and I have several Benjamin Moore samples in the trunk of my car. Tomorrow I'm going to have a painting party, and I'm going to make some color decisions. Oh, if you're wondering why "two (large) pieces of wood," one is maple (the best wood for taking paint, and thus our choice for upper cabinets) and the other is cherry (takes dark stain well, and has the most even pattern and texture, so that's going on the bottom).
For the backsplash, I'm once again going back to the "gray-green that is almost a non-color" well by using a just-slightly-greenish glass subway tile. (The one below is sort of too green, but it gives you the general idea.)
So about Cabinet Maker Lamar. He. Gets. Me. When I advised him that I had abandoned the Shaker door concept and wanted to go with a square front panel (his initial suggestion), he handed me an idea book, and I began to page through it:
"Hmm, I'm thinking about something sort of like this - except not that busy. That one is too busy, as well. Too many layers of molding. That could work, but it's almost too busy, too. That one's close, but there's too much relief between the panel and the edging. It's, um . . . ."
"Too busy?"
"Yeah."
He nodded, walked over to a worktable, and came back with THE PERFECT DOOR. It was NOT too busy.
"Okay, what's THAT?"
"It's something I came up with. I took one of those designs you just pointed out, and I changed the proportions of the panel and the border to give it a more subtle look."
Perfect. Sold.
We talked about beadboard. I wanted it on the back of the island, like this:
Lamar: "The details in beadboard get lost if you stain it a dark color. Not worth the money. Do you like those legs?" (He was looking at the image above.)
"Yes, legs, definitely."
"What do you think of THIS leg?" (He showed me THE PERFECT LEG - a tapered column, with fluting to match my existing door molding.)
Sold, again.
"Do you want molding above the cabinets? Like in the picture?"
"Yes." (HELLS, yes. Keep talking, Lamar.)
"Corbels? Under the open shelves you're talking about putting in over the windows?"
"Yes. But only two shelves. I want a high cabinet over the window over the bar sink. With a decorative glass front. With THAT Gothic arch, THERE. THAT EXACT DOOR. AND I WANT BUN FEET."
Lamar nods.
"Got it. What kind of floor?"
"Eighteen-inch tile. Slate-look. Dark."
More nodding.
"Are they tiling from wall to wall, or are they tiling around the cabinets?"
"I think the estimate calls for wall to wall."
MORE nodding.
"Good. We'll float the cabinets on top of that. With the bun feet, they will really look like free-standing furniture."
YES, YES, OH, GOD, YES. I WANT MY KITCHEN CABINETS TO LOOK LIKE FREE-STANDING FURNITURE!
No, I did not actually recreate the 'big O" scene from "Harry and Sally." But I did nod, a lot. And, probably, I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet. My spouse was present, and I am guessing that, from his perspective, Lamar and I looked like two giant bobblehead dolls come to life. Spouse weighed in from time to time but mainly stayed in the background, as he was slightly out of his element. And, probably, slightly afraid of the giant bobbleheads.
Spouse did ask questions from time to time:
Me (looking at a cabinet in progress in Lamar's shop): "Is that maple?"
Lamar: "Yes."
Me: "But with - is that an MDF panel in the center?"
Lamar: "Yup."
Me: "Seriously? You can bevel MDF like that?"
Lamar: "Yup. It's really easy to work with, actually."
Me: "Can you do that for me?"
Lamar: "Absolutely. It will knock the price down a bit."
Spouse: "Wait. What is MDF?"
Lamar and me, in chorus: "Medium density fiberboard."
Spouse: "Is that, like, particle board?"
Me: "No. Particle board is particle board. MDF is MDF."
Spouse: "And we want it because it's cheaper?"
Lamar and me, again in chorus: "No, you want it because it takes paint better than solid wood."
Me (seeing that spouse is hoplessly lost): "Um [searching for a metaphor], MDF is to solid wood as Silestone is to granite. Silestone is ground-up quartz, right? It's a natural-based product, but it's a natural product that's atomized and put back together, to make it stronger, and less porous, and to give it a more uniform appearance. MDF is just like that."
Lamar (back to bobblehead mode): "But with wood shavings substituted for ground-up quartz. Because the texture is more even - especially in the bevels, here - you don't see splintering, and you don't have unevenness, so the paint goes on tons easier."
Spouse: "Huh."
Bless his sweet little heart. Spouse does not watch nearly as much HGTV as I do. Clearly.
So - plans for the kitchen, moving forward. We've settled on a sink, and a faucet (two faucets, actually - one for the sink-sink, and one for the bar sink), and hardware, and other stuff, but we haven't purchased much, yet, on account of how there's no place to put stuff. As it is, I have a bar sink (hammered copper) and a bathroom faucet (Delta's "Victorian" model, in brushed nickel) in the corner of my bedroom at the apartment. And, soon to be joining the party: two counter-height barstools, because I got a scandalously good deal on them (two of them for the price of what Pottery Barn would charge for one of them!), and because I want to match the cabinet stain to them. Seriously, I'm going to carry one of them into Sherwin Williams, and say, "MATCH THAT, baby." (Lamar says I have to go to Sherwin Williams for stain. This news did not sit well with me initially, given that I am a Benjamin Moore girl. But I have decided that I can be a Benjamin Moore girl for paint and a Sherwin Williams girl for stain. I owe Lamar that much, right?)
These are my barstools:
We went with counter height stools (and a breakfast bar height to match) because of the boys. Boys plus stools with a high center of gravity plus ceramic floors equals a trip to the ER waiting to happen.
Put another way: the lower the kid is to the ground to begin with, the shorter the fall.
We also got a scandalously good deal on a top-of-the-line KitchenAid refrigerator. By "top-of-the-line," I mean an Architect Series, counter-depth, side-by-side, stainless-fronted, ice-in-the-door-and-refrigeration-on-top, "I AM PRACTICALLY A CUSTOM MODEL" refrigerator. By "scandalously good deal," I mean 95% off of original MSRP. You read that right. 90% after we buy an extended, after-market warranty. Does it sound like I'm buying a car? Well, it's a lot like that - we actually bought this one used and, therefore, depreciated (just like a certified used Lexus!), the appliance store is providing a warranty, and KitchenAid will service it after that. Once the extended warranty runs out, you just pay to have it serviced out of pocket - exactly like a car. Most refrigerators, you don't bother to rebuild - it's cheaper to replace them. But these suckers are HARDCORE.
My HARDCORE refrigerator is not being stored in our bedroom, next to the copper sink and the bathroom faucet. Appliance store is kindly babysitting it for us, as it weighs a bazillion tons, and so it's only going to be moved once. I don't even want to think about how they are going to get it into our kitchen. The cabinets are being built around it.
Like I said - HARDCORE.
My admiration for Lamar the Cabinet Guy: also hardcore.
I'm choosing to focus on positives - like the plan for our kitchen. After some MAJOR waffling, we have achieved (1) a floor plan and (2) a design concept. When I say that I have waffled on the design concept, the picture that you should have in your mind is of a waffle made on THIS bad boy:
Okay, I don't know if this is an actual waffle iron. But it's possible - it appears to have been made in Japan, and the Japanese seem to love to supersize things (like lizards and insects) when they aren't making things extremely small (like hotel rooms). (Okay, yes, I am basing my image of Japanese culture on "Godzilla vs. Mothra" and the "Seinfeld" episode where Kramer turned his home into a capsule hotel and rented drawers to Japanese businessmen. So sue me.)
MAJOR waffling. HUGE. Shaker doors! Wait, no, Craftsman! Or would that be too much visual clutter? Shaker, definitely Shaker - in a ginger maple finish. Oh, scratch that - the countertop would look HORRIBLE next to ginger maple. We need something darker. Chestnut. Ew, no - too red. Okay, something really dark - espresso. But that would make the room look horribly small, wouldn't it? Like a horribly small, horribly dark cave. So maybe we go with a light-colored paint finish. Except stain wears SO much better than paint. Okay - paint on top, stain on the bottom. Um, but what about the cabinets that run from the floor to the ceiling? Do you finish 'em like upper cabinets, or bottom ones? And do I REALLY want Shaker doors? A basic square front would be nice. Timeless. Although Shaker doors are timeless, too.
If you follow me on Pinterest, and you have checked out my "Unexpected Home Remodel" board, then you have a general sense of just how intense this waffling has been. I haven't counted how many kitchen images I have pinned, because I think it would scare me. But, with a little help from our custom cabinet maker, I have settled on a design. Which - no surprise - tracks pretty closely some design concepts that I pinned to a kitchen idea board BEFORE all of this began. Like this one:
This was back in my Shaker phase, but note light on top, dark on bottom (or, at least, on the island). I pinned this one around the same time:
Sensing a pattern? No? Okay, here's two more:
The granite in the last image is similar to what we have picked out, which was a deciding factor in moving to a light-and-dark palette, versus a monochromatic, medium-brown design concept. When I searched for "Venetian Gold granite" in Google Images, almost all of the pictures showed Venetian gold paired with either a light (painted) or a dark (painted or stained) cabinet, or both. The few that featured a lighter brown-stained cabinet just didn't work for me. Too sallow. Too country. I don't do either one of those.
Two-tone suits me. I like light kitchens. I like dark kitchens. I don't like having to choose between two things that I like. And the odds of us acquiring a second home, which would permit me to have an all-light kitchen and an all-dark kitchen, are slim and none. Particularly after the proctology exam that we are going through on residence #1. So light plus dark equals best of both worlds. Light cabinetry around the perimeter and the dark island in the center should expand the room visually. Because, you know, light colors recede and dark colors advance. You did know that, didn't you? My spouse didn't. Bless his sweet little heart.
My only concerns about having painted cabinets are: (1) paint doesn't wear as well as stain; and (2) light colors get fingerprint-y. But having stained cabinets on the bottom will help with the wear issue: chances of dents on bottom are greater, because my boys are still relatively low to the ground, and more often than not they are REALLY low to the ground, in that they like to wrestle. Basically, they live on the floor. So, dark stain on the bottom is good. We'll put handles on the top cabinets to minimize fingerprints. And, also, I'm thinking that "light" doesn't necessarily have to mean "white or cream." It could mean "lighter." Like beige. Or greige:
I fell in love with greige after we painted the home office in Benjamin Moore's Pismo Dunes. Since the home office is adjacent to the kitchen, a greige on the kitchen cabinets would be visually pleasing. And - added bonus - greige is the exact color of fingerprints. So, there you go. (Memo to Benjamin Moore product development team: you totally should market a color called "Fingerprint." Mothers would line up to purchase it.)
Much as I love Pismo Dunes, I don't think I want to duplicate it in the kitchen. It has a lot of purple in it, and I'm leaning towards a more greenish cast in the kitchen. A pale gray-green says "kitchen" to me. I have no idea why: because of Martha Stewart? Kitchens say pale gray-green to Martha, that's for sure. I had Martha green countertops in the old kitchen - I mean, in the existing kitchen, back when it actually possessed countertops. I'm going to miss those countertops. So I'm planning on paying homage to them by painting the walls in the "new" kitchen a pale green. Probably BM's Agnathus Green. Or Tea Leaf. The greige, if I go with greige, will have to harmonize with one of those.
Cabinet Maker Lamar gave me two (large) pieces of wood to play with, and I have several Benjamin Moore samples in the trunk of my car. Tomorrow I'm going to have a painting party, and I'm going to make some color decisions. Oh, if you're wondering why "two (large) pieces of wood," one is maple (the best wood for taking paint, and thus our choice for upper cabinets) and the other is cherry (takes dark stain well, and has the most even pattern and texture, so that's going on the bottom).
For the backsplash, I'm once again going back to the "gray-green that is almost a non-color" well by using a just-slightly-greenish glass subway tile. (The one below is sort of too green, but it gives you the general idea.)
So about Cabinet Maker Lamar. He. Gets. Me. When I advised him that I had abandoned the Shaker door concept and wanted to go with a square front panel (his initial suggestion), he handed me an idea book, and I began to page through it:
"Hmm, I'm thinking about something sort of like this - except not that busy. That one is too busy, as well. Too many layers of molding. That could work, but it's almost too busy, too. That one's close, but there's too much relief between the panel and the edging. It's, um . . . ."
"Too busy?"
"Yeah."
He nodded, walked over to a worktable, and came back with THE PERFECT DOOR. It was NOT too busy.
"Okay, what's THAT?"
"It's something I came up with. I took one of those designs you just pointed out, and I changed the proportions of the panel and the border to give it a more subtle look."
Perfect. Sold.
We talked about beadboard. I wanted it on the back of the island, like this:
Lamar: "The details in beadboard get lost if you stain it a dark color. Not worth the money. Do you like those legs?" (He was looking at the image above.)
"Yes, legs, definitely."
"What do you think of THIS leg?" (He showed me THE PERFECT LEG - a tapered column, with fluting to match my existing door molding.)
Sold, again.
"Do you want molding above the cabinets? Like in the picture?"
"Yes." (HELLS, yes. Keep talking, Lamar.)
"Corbels? Under the open shelves you're talking about putting in over the windows?"
"Yes. But only two shelves. I want a high cabinet over the window over the bar sink. With a decorative glass front. With THAT Gothic arch, THERE. THAT EXACT DOOR. AND I WANT BUN FEET."
Lamar nods.
"Got it. What kind of floor?"
"Eighteen-inch tile. Slate-look. Dark."
More nodding.
"Are they tiling from wall to wall, or are they tiling around the cabinets?"
"I think the estimate calls for wall to wall."
MORE nodding.
"Good. We'll float the cabinets on top of that. With the bun feet, they will really look like free-standing furniture."
YES, YES, OH, GOD, YES. I WANT MY KITCHEN CABINETS TO LOOK LIKE FREE-STANDING FURNITURE!
No, I did not actually recreate the 'big O" scene from "Harry and Sally." But I did nod, a lot. And, probably, I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet. My spouse was present, and I am guessing that, from his perspective, Lamar and I looked like two giant bobblehead dolls come to life. Spouse weighed in from time to time but mainly stayed in the background, as he was slightly out of his element. And, probably, slightly afraid of the giant bobbleheads.
Spouse did ask questions from time to time:
Me (looking at a cabinet in progress in Lamar's shop): "Is that maple?"
Lamar: "Yes."
Me: "But with - is that an MDF panel in the center?"
Lamar: "Yup."
Me: "Seriously? You can bevel MDF like that?"
Lamar: "Yup. It's really easy to work with, actually."
Me: "Can you do that for me?"
Lamar: "Absolutely. It will knock the price down a bit."
Spouse: "Wait. What is MDF?"
Lamar and me, in chorus: "Medium density fiberboard."
Spouse: "Is that, like, particle board?"
Me: "No. Particle board is particle board. MDF is MDF."
Spouse: "And we want it because it's cheaper?"
Lamar and me, again in chorus: "No, you want it because it takes paint better than solid wood."
Me (seeing that spouse is hoplessly lost): "Um [searching for a metaphor], MDF is to solid wood as Silestone is to granite. Silestone is ground-up quartz, right? It's a natural-based product, but it's a natural product that's atomized and put back together, to make it stronger, and less porous, and to give it a more uniform appearance. MDF is just like that."
Lamar (back to bobblehead mode): "But with wood shavings substituted for ground-up quartz. Because the texture is more even - especially in the bevels, here - you don't see splintering, and you don't have unevenness, so the paint goes on tons easier."
Spouse: "Huh."
Bless his sweet little heart. Spouse does not watch nearly as much HGTV as I do. Clearly.
So - plans for the kitchen, moving forward. We've settled on a sink, and a faucet (two faucets, actually - one for the sink-sink, and one for the bar sink), and hardware, and other stuff, but we haven't purchased much, yet, on account of how there's no place to put stuff. As it is, I have a bar sink (hammered copper) and a bathroom faucet (Delta's "Victorian" model, in brushed nickel) in the corner of my bedroom at the apartment. And, soon to be joining the party: two counter-height barstools, because I got a scandalously good deal on them (two of them for the price of what Pottery Barn would charge for one of them!), and because I want to match the cabinet stain to them. Seriously, I'm going to carry one of them into Sherwin Williams, and say, "MATCH THAT, baby." (Lamar says I have to go to Sherwin Williams for stain. This news did not sit well with me initially, given that I am a Benjamin Moore girl. But I have decided that I can be a Benjamin Moore girl for paint and a Sherwin Williams girl for stain. I owe Lamar that much, right?)
These are my barstools:
We went with counter height stools (and a breakfast bar height to match) because of the boys. Boys plus stools with a high center of gravity plus ceramic floors equals a trip to the ER waiting to happen.
Put another way: the lower the kid is to the ground to begin with, the shorter the fall.
We also got a scandalously good deal on a top-of-the-line KitchenAid refrigerator. By "top-of-the-line," I mean an Architect Series, counter-depth, side-by-side, stainless-fronted, ice-in-the-door-and-refrigeration-on-top, "I AM PRACTICALLY A CUSTOM MODEL" refrigerator. By "scandalously good deal," I mean 95% off of original MSRP. You read that right. 90% after we buy an extended, after-market warranty. Does it sound like I'm buying a car? Well, it's a lot like that - we actually bought this one used and, therefore, depreciated (just like a certified used Lexus!), the appliance store is providing a warranty, and KitchenAid will service it after that. Once the extended warranty runs out, you just pay to have it serviced out of pocket - exactly like a car. Most refrigerators, you don't bother to rebuild - it's cheaper to replace them. But these suckers are HARDCORE.
My HARDCORE refrigerator is not being stored in our bedroom, next to the copper sink and the bathroom faucet. Appliance store is kindly babysitting it for us, as it weighs a bazillion tons, and so it's only going to be moved once. I don't even want to think about how they are going to get it into our kitchen. The cabinets are being built around it.
Like I said - HARDCORE.
My admiration for Lamar the Cabinet Guy: also hardcore.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The Event: In a Dark Place, Struggling to Focus on the Light
Like many mothers, mine encouraged me to keep my lips zipped when I didn't have anything pleasant to say.
Please accept the foregoing as my explanation for dropping off of the blog radar - and, to some extent, off of the Pinterest radar, and the Facebook radar. Although I am attempting to keep up with the "30 Days of Thankful" concept, because some small part of me is still aware of the fact that I have things to be thankful for. A roof over my head - not my roof, but a roof nonetheless. And a family that is putting up with one of its members shouting one minute and bursting into tears the next.
Seriously - I burst into tears in the shower this morning, and the crying jag lasted for awhile. Trust me when I tell you that crying in the shower is not the norm for me. I'm a "git 'er dun" kind of gal. I get angry, and then I get composed, and then I plow through the problem at hand. But I'm, almost, too tired to plow. And rapidly approaching the stage of actually, as opposed to almost.
Again, not something that I'm used to admitting to myself.
I really do like to give people, and organizations, the benefit of the doubt. It was that spirit that got me past a major molehill with one of C's teachers the first week of school. The first DAY of school, actually. At the time we were knee-deep in the mess that was our relocation (and literally knee-deep in moving boxes), the result being that I was rapidly approaching "too tired to plow" status back then as well. Imagine my delight when the spouse informed me that he had gotten a call home from said teacher, ON THE FIRST DAY, advising of a disciplinary infraction and inquiring as to whether we thought our child was cut out for the accelerated track.
I was, by turns, completely devastated, and terribly angry - at my child, at the teacher, and at the world. I considered a number of responses. I tested out several of them to the air around me. And then I started going through the various syllabi and classroom conduct codes that teachers sent home with C, and I learned that it was this teacher's across-the-board policy to call home after a first infraction. No exceptions.
I tried to put myself in the teacher's place - which, as it turned out, was not terribly hard for me to do, given that both of my parents were teachers. Calling home wasn't a bad policy - it put the parents on notice and, perhaps, allied them to your cause, and it also gave you the opportunity to get a feel for the home situation and the parents themselves. If the parents were supportive of you as the teacher, that would give you cause to suspect that the child was being raised properly and probably wasn't completely irredeemable, and that might shape the way that you view the child going forward.
So I took a deep breath. And I composed an e-mail. I began by telling the teacher how delighted we were that C got his first choice of a magnet program, and then was placed into the fastest of the fast tracks within that program. I told him that we had stressed to C that participation in the accelerated track (allowing him to place out of four or five high school-level classes) was a privilege that he was truly lucky to have. I explained my parents' own struggles to secure similar advanced placement options for me when I was a bored middle schooler dying to move on, already.
I also advised him that, as the child of two teachers, I (1) wanted to do as much as I could to support him (the teacher) but (2) understood that the first week of school was incredibly stressful. We took his call home seriously, and I wanted to make it a priority to discuss with him his expectations of our son, but I also respected that he might want to schedule that discussion for a later time, so I was available at his convenience. I opined that, perhaps, the first week of school was equally stressful on our brand-new-to-middle-school son, who had let it slip that evening that he filled out the blank for his nickname on a first-day questionnaire with "Fish Out of Water." (He explained it away as a reference to him being a swimmer and diver on hiatus from competition, but I didn't believe him.) I described C as a good kid whose typical disruptions skewed more towards the "attempting to teach the class" end of the spectrum. When feeling more like himself, I warned that C was far more likely to get overexcited and blurt out answers than to cut up or act out; however, I reassured his teacher that we recognized that even well-meaning forms of disruption are exactly that - disruptions, not conducive to the learning process - so we had made it our goal to teach our bright child, as early as possible, how to self-edit his comments and overall behavior, irrespective of how innocent his motivation might be.
In closing, I warned the teacher of our impending move, and I opined that the stress of dealing with that reality had to be wearing on C as well. Because it was certainly wearing on me. I disclosed the fact that the insurance company was attempting to put our boys on a sofa bed for the duration of our displacement (most definitely not conducive to the learning process) but assured him that there was no way in Hades that I was going to let that happen.
In the interim, I asked him to be patient, and to be kind.
And here's what happened next: C's teacher determined that I was one of the good ones. That, or he felt sorry for me. Or perhaps some combination of the two. First thing in the AM on Day Two, he sent me a response, thanking me for my e-mail and also for appreciating the demands on his time during that first week. He said that he looked forward to meeting with me the following week, and he advised me of available time slots. He also offered to include one of the other fast-track teachers who had the same planning period, if I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. And he said that he agreed with me that C's first-day outburst was probably just a result of nerved. He acknowledged, and said that he appreciated, the fact that C sought him out at the end of the day to apologize for being a disruption.
Later that day, a third e-mail was added to the string - the teacher again, saying, "I just wanted you to know that C had a wonderful day today."
Since then, we have become e-mail buddies, and I look forward to seeing him at Whiz Quiz meets and other events. He is always there, supporting his students. At one point last month, I did have to get on him for permitting my absent-minded 11 year-old to retake a take-home test that had failed to make it into the backpack. How's that for a reversal? Me taking him to task for being too easy on my child? (His defense: "C breezed through it in five minutes, so I knew that he'd done the work before." My response: "You're WAY nicer than we are. When he called home earlier in the day and asked us to conduct a hard-target search of his room, we told him that he needed to take his lumps, and perhaps he would remember next time to put things where they needed to be. Please feel free to use that one on him the next time, and remind him that his mother endorsed the message.")
Fast forward to this evening. C had a nasty abrasion on his forearm, the result of a fall on the basketball court. C advised that my favorite teacher had witnessed the fall, rushed to help him up, offered to carry his stuff into the main building and gave him leave to go to the nurse to have the scrape cleaned and bandaged.
My response: "I knew I liked him."
Except, for a few hours on the first day of school, I didn't know if I would like him. I was concerned that he and I would be at odds for an entire year - a continuation of an unpleasant experience that we had with a male teacher of C's the previous year.
But I plowed through, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I am so very glad that I did. In that moment, talking to my child in the kitchen at the end of a thoroughly unpleasant day, I was reminded that I do have things, and people, for which to be thankful. For a brief moment, my faith in humanity was restored.
And then, somewhat inexplicably, I got angry. Angry at people, and organizations, to whom I give the benefit of the doubt, and who take that trust and stomp on it. My good experience with C's teacher painted in sharp relief the bad experiences that I have had, and am continuing to have, with others.
Mostly, I got angry with myself, for trusting so freely. But if I hadn't trusted C's teacher, where would we be today? C is thriving in middle school. How many parents can say that? If I had started things off on a negative note, can we say for sure that he would be having the same experience?
So I will continue to put myself out there, with the expectation that most people will rise to the occasion. Everyone makes mistakes, first impressions can be deceiving, and all of that. But if the other party doesn't rise to the occasion - and particularly in situations where their failure to step up puts my family and property in jeopardy of actual, physical harm - welll, I reserve the right to feel betrayed. And to cry in the shower. Or while I'm blogging. Because I know that they are capable of doing better.
My fatal flaw very well may be that I am too hopeful. And, on balance, I'm okay with that. Even if the fallout of that fatal flaw is situational hopelessness.
Please accept the foregoing as my explanation for dropping off of the blog radar - and, to some extent, off of the Pinterest radar, and the Facebook radar. Although I am attempting to keep up with the "30 Days of Thankful" concept, because some small part of me is still aware of the fact that I have things to be thankful for. A roof over my head - not my roof, but a roof nonetheless. And a family that is putting up with one of its members shouting one minute and bursting into tears the next.
Seriously - I burst into tears in the shower this morning, and the crying jag lasted for awhile. Trust me when I tell you that crying in the shower is not the norm for me. I'm a "git 'er dun" kind of gal. I get angry, and then I get composed, and then I plow through the problem at hand. But I'm, almost, too tired to plow. And rapidly approaching the stage of actually, as opposed to almost.
Again, not something that I'm used to admitting to myself.
I really do like to give people, and organizations, the benefit of the doubt. It was that spirit that got me past a major molehill with one of C's teachers the first week of school. The first DAY of school, actually. At the time we were knee-deep in the mess that was our relocation (and literally knee-deep in moving boxes), the result being that I was rapidly approaching "too tired to plow" status back then as well. Imagine my delight when the spouse informed me that he had gotten a call home from said teacher, ON THE FIRST DAY, advising of a disciplinary infraction and inquiring as to whether we thought our child was cut out for the accelerated track.
I was, by turns, completely devastated, and terribly angry - at my child, at the teacher, and at the world. I considered a number of responses. I tested out several of them to the air around me. And then I started going through the various syllabi and classroom conduct codes that teachers sent home with C, and I learned that it was this teacher's across-the-board policy to call home after a first infraction. No exceptions.
I tried to put myself in the teacher's place - which, as it turned out, was not terribly hard for me to do, given that both of my parents were teachers. Calling home wasn't a bad policy - it put the parents on notice and, perhaps, allied them to your cause, and it also gave you the opportunity to get a feel for the home situation and the parents themselves. If the parents were supportive of you as the teacher, that would give you cause to suspect that the child was being raised properly and probably wasn't completely irredeemable, and that might shape the way that you view the child going forward.
So I took a deep breath. And I composed an e-mail. I began by telling the teacher how delighted we were that C got his first choice of a magnet program, and then was placed into the fastest of the fast tracks within that program. I told him that we had stressed to C that participation in the accelerated track (allowing him to place out of four or five high school-level classes) was a privilege that he was truly lucky to have. I explained my parents' own struggles to secure similar advanced placement options for me when I was a bored middle schooler dying to move on, already.
I also advised him that, as the child of two teachers, I (1) wanted to do as much as I could to support him (the teacher) but (2) understood that the first week of school was incredibly stressful. We took his call home seriously, and I wanted to make it a priority to discuss with him his expectations of our son, but I also respected that he might want to schedule that discussion for a later time, so I was available at his convenience. I opined that, perhaps, the first week of school was equally stressful on our brand-new-to-middle-school son, who had let it slip that evening that he filled out the blank for his nickname on a first-day questionnaire with "Fish Out of Water." (He explained it away as a reference to him being a swimmer and diver on hiatus from competition, but I didn't believe him.) I described C as a good kid whose typical disruptions skewed more towards the "attempting to teach the class" end of the spectrum. When feeling more like himself, I warned that C was far more likely to get overexcited and blurt out answers than to cut up or act out; however, I reassured his teacher that we recognized that even well-meaning forms of disruption are exactly that - disruptions, not conducive to the learning process - so we had made it our goal to teach our bright child, as early as possible, how to self-edit his comments and overall behavior, irrespective of how innocent his motivation might be.
In closing, I warned the teacher of our impending move, and I opined that the stress of dealing with that reality had to be wearing on C as well. Because it was certainly wearing on me. I disclosed the fact that the insurance company was attempting to put our boys on a sofa bed for the duration of our displacement (most definitely not conducive to the learning process) but assured him that there was no way in Hades that I was going to let that happen.
In the interim, I asked him to be patient, and to be kind.
And here's what happened next: C's teacher determined that I was one of the good ones. That, or he felt sorry for me. Or perhaps some combination of the two. First thing in the AM on Day Two, he sent me a response, thanking me for my e-mail and also for appreciating the demands on his time during that first week. He said that he looked forward to meeting with me the following week, and he advised me of available time slots. He also offered to include one of the other fast-track teachers who had the same planning period, if I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. And he said that he agreed with me that C's first-day outburst was probably just a result of nerved. He acknowledged, and said that he appreciated, the fact that C sought him out at the end of the day to apologize for being a disruption.
Later that day, a third e-mail was added to the string - the teacher again, saying, "I just wanted you to know that C had a wonderful day today."
Since then, we have become e-mail buddies, and I look forward to seeing him at Whiz Quiz meets and other events. He is always there, supporting his students. At one point last month, I did have to get on him for permitting my absent-minded 11 year-old to retake a take-home test that had failed to make it into the backpack. How's that for a reversal? Me taking him to task for being too easy on my child? (His defense: "C breezed through it in five minutes, so I knew that he'd done the work before." My response: "You're WAY nicer than we are. When he called home earlier in the day and asked us to conduct a hard-target search of his room, we told him that he needed to take his lumps, and perhaps he would remember next time to put things where they needed to be. Please feel free to use that one on him the next time, and remind him that his mother endorsed the message.")
Fast forward to this evening. C had a nasty abrasion on his forearm, the result of a fall on the basketball court. C advised that my favorite teacher had witnessed the fall, rushed to help him up, offered to carry his stuff into the main building and gave him leave to go to the nurse to have the scrape cleaned and bandaged.
My response: "I knew I liked him."
Except, for a few hours on the first day of school, I didn't know if I would like him. I was concerned that he and I would be at odds for an entire year - a continuation of an unpleasant experience that we had with a male teacher of C's the previous year.
But I plowed through, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I am so very glad that I did. In that moment, talking to my child in the kitchen at the end of a thoroughly unpleasant day, I was reminded that I do have things, and people, for which to be thankful. For a brief moment, my faith in humanity was restored.
And then, somewhat inexplicably, I got angry. Angry at people, and organizations, to whom I give the benefit of the doubt, and who take that trust and stomp on it. My good experience with C's teacher painted in sharp relief the bad experiences that I have had, and am continuing to have, with others.
Mostly, I got angry with myself, for trusting so freely. But if I hadn't trusted C's teacher, where would we be today? C is thriving in middle school. How many parents can say that? If I had started things off on a negative note, can we say for sure that he would be having the same experience?
So I will continue to put myself out there, with the expectation that most people will rise to the occasion. Everyone makes mistakes, first impressions can be deceiving, and all of that. But if the other party doesn't rise to the occasion - and particularly in situations where their failure to step up puts my family and property in jeopardy of actual, physical harm - welll, I reserve the right to feel betrayed. And to cry in the shower. Or while I'm blogging. Because I know that they are capable of doing better.
My fatal flaw very well may be that I am too hopeful. And, on balance, I'm okay with that. Even if the fallout of that fatal flaw is situational hopelessness.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Adventures in Party Planning: Glitter Litter Solution
Spilled some glitter? Spilled a lot? No problem - just break out a lint roller.
Ingenious. Feeling like less than a genius for not having thought of this before. But, no matter: it definitely is going to "come in helpful."
Kid Stuff: "Pecific" Theater
Thursday morning, ten minutes before departing for school:
Little Bro: How many days are left in this week?
Big Bro: It depends on what you consider the week to be. It could run through Saturday or Sunday, or if you are talking about the school week . . . .
Mom (interrupting, because Little Bro is clearly getting frustrated): There is one more school day left this week, honey.
Little Bro (overdramatically): WHEW. I am so glad to hear that. I cannot wait for this week to be over.
Mom: And that would be why?
Little Bro: Because next week is BIG. It's a NO DRESS CODE WEEK. Because we raised enough money for the United Way, we get to wear whatever we want, ALL WEEK.
Mom: Are you sure that you can wear anything? Or are they going to have theme days, like Pajama Day?
Big Bro (AKA the "Know It All"): Theme days. It's always theme days.
Little Bro (now clearly beyond frustrated): NO. NOT THEME DAYS. I PECIFICALLY ASKED MY TEACHER IF WE COULD WEAR WHATEVER WE WANTED, AND SHE PECIFICALLY SAID YES.
Little Bro makes me smile. Pecifically when he is being emphatic.
Little Bro: How many days are left in this week?
Big Bro: It depends on what you consider the week to be. It could run through Saturday or Sunday, or if you are talking about the school week . . . .
Mom (interrupting, because Little Bro is clearly getting frustrated): There is one more school day left this week, honey.
Little Bro (overdramatically): WHEW. I am so glad to hear that. I cannot wait for this week to be over.
Mom: And that would be why?
Little Bro: Because next week is BIG. It's a NO DRESS CODE WEEK. Because we raised enough money for the United Way, we get to wear whatever we want, ALL WEEK.
Mom: Are you sure that you can wear anything? Or are they going to have theme days, like Pajama Day?
Big Bro (AKA the "Know It All"): Theme days. It's always theme days.
Little Bro (now clearly beyond frustrated): NO. NOT THEME DAYS. I PECIFICALLY ASKED MY TEACHER IF WE COULD WEAR WHATEVER WE WANTED, AND SHE PECIFICALLY SAID YES.
Little Bro makes me smile. Pecifically when he is being emphatic.
Eat This: Pour House French Toast Hack
When time allows, we like to have brunch after church on Sundays, and my spouse's favorite location for said brunching is the Pour House. The Pour House is (as the name suggests) a bar, but it is a bar with great food, and their brunch menu is no exception. P likes their Mexican egg selections, which he chases down with a Manmosa or Mansettia (I should say "and/or" - typically, he switches off mid-nosh). Manmosas and mansettias at PH are not made with beer, as per a recipe I shared awhile back. These are typical mimosas and poinsettias, just served in man-sized quantities.
Or, in my case, thirtsy girl-sized quantities.
The kids used to get pancakes. But then they stopped serving pancakes. Neither kid is a big fan of egg dishes, so on one of our last visits we decided to try the intriguingly named "Frosted Flakes French Toast." And oh. My. Goodness. Mom and Dad ended up bogarting most of the toast, because it was so ridiculously delish. When it came time to have the frimily over for Halloween, and after we settled on a "breakfast for dinner" concept, I decided that we had to have The Toast - and then I set out in search of an overnight French toast casserole that I could morph into a facsimile of the PH dish.
Lo and behold, Kellogg's had a casserole version of The Toast on their Web site - but it did not involved caramelized bananas, which are a big part of the yummy goodness. So I tweaked Kellogg's recipe a bit, and then I threw in bananas.
DE. LISH. Enjoy!
"POUR HOUSE FRENCH TOAST HACK" OVERNIGHT BREAKFAST CASSEROLE
10 slices slices firm-textured, honey wheat bread
1 (12-oz.) can evaporated fat-free milk
1 1/2 cups refrigerated egg product
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups Kellogg's Frosted Flakes cereal
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
1/2 cup maple syrup, warmed
Caramelized Bananas (recipe follows), sliced strawberries and chocolate whipped cream for garnish
Coat 13-x-9-x-2-inch baking dish with cooking spray. Layer bread two slices deep in dish. (It will be necessary to cut two slices into rectangles to fill the empty space at one end of the pan.) In bowl, whisk together milk, egg product, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Evenly pour over bread slices, and cover and refrigerate overnight. (Check the pan after an hour or so and either push the bread slices down into the egg mixture or flip the slices with tongs.) When read to serve, bake, uncovered, at 375°F for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in small bowl combine cereal and butter and evenly sprinkle cereal mixture over casserole. Bake, uncovered, at 375°F for another 20 minutes more or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Let stand for 5 minutes, then drizzle warmed syrup over top. Serve with Caramelized Bananas, sliced strawberries and chocolate whipped cream.
To caramelize bananas: Slice three bananas into thick coins. Pour 6 tablespoons sugar onto a plate and roll bananas in sugar, until completely coated. Spray a medium size nonstick pan, and heat over medium high heat. Add bananas and sugar and cook bananas until light to golden brown underneath, about 4-5 minutes. Be careful not to overcook or burn them. Gently flip bananas, turning heat down to medium. The second side should brown in about one minute. If bananas won't be served immediately, transfer them to a plate that has been coated with cooking spray so that they won't stick.
Things I'm Digging: IKEA Hacking
My love of the IKEA Expedit bookcase is no secret. Between my office and the kids' bedrooms, we have five of them. Two rest on their sides, three stand upright but all of them are utilized as bookcases.
Apparently, this marks me as a terribly unimaginative - possibly even lazy - person.
Go to ikeahackers.net or one of the other IKEA hack Web sites (IKEA hack is a term for repurposing or improving upon an IKEA product) and you will see Expedits used in a variety of unique ways - as a kitchen island, or even mounted to the ceiling as a light fixture. (Seriously.)
You will also see them embellished, like this:
Cool octopus. Although you might notice that my Expedit features an animal shape as well. Specifically, the shape of our cat, Max. Does the addition of Max to an Expedit constitute an IKEA hack?
Not all hacks involve my favorite bookcase (or "not bookcase," depending) product. Particularly intrigued by the pendant lights constructed out of IKEA cheese graters . . . .
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Thirty Days of Thanksgiving - Days 1 Through 5
A lot of folks are putting daily posts on Facebook, advising everyone and no one of what they are thankful for.
I am one of those folks.
The idea is to post something every day through November 30th. I thought I'd share my "thanks list" here as well. And, yes, I know that it's already Day 5. Hence the title of this post.
Here goes:
Day 1: I am thankful that my middle schooler is happy and thriving in sixth grade, which is not something that we took for granted, or even expected. So grateful, and so aware that things just as easily could go the other way (and have, for some friends' kids).
Day 1 happened to coincide with C's Whiz Quiz meet. I believe that this is our fifth meet, and our fifth win. Watching C and his friends work as a team (and they make a great team, obviously - see "undefeated," above), I could not help but notice how much in his element he was. And with good reason, because the other kids seem to be as well-adjusted, sweet-natured and full of personality as he is. They were all very supportive of each other, and the closest that I saw to negativity was a little sarcastic ribbing from time to time, when someone made a bone-headed mistake. The errant thought ran through my brain: this is like a Disney Channel version of middle school. I halfway expected them to break into song.
And then it dawned on me that C and his friends, collectively, are straight out of Disney central casting.
A: Light-skinned African-American boy, dimples, eyelashes out to THERE - Corbin Bleu, minus the bushy mop of hair.
The Spelling Whiz (I am blanking on her name, but I call her the Spelling Whiz, because she is the team's go-to on spelling questions): Raven-Symone. With a little bit of that girl from the jump-roping movie who occasionally guest-starred on Sweet Life.
W: The kid on Waverly Place who turns into a werewolf. Has a British accent? (The werewolf kid, not W. W's local.)
The other A: Mitchell Musso, but shorter - short like the other kid on Hannah Montana, who's sort of annoying and runs the beachside concession stand.
N: Rocky from Shake it Up. Heck, she's even dressed sort of like Rocky, since it's a no dress code day - denim vest over striped t-shirt, ruffled skirt, Ugg boots.
It then occurs to me that I watch WAAAAY too much Disney Channel with the kids. But I'm happy that C's happy.
Day 2: I am happy that I have the opportunity to watch my younger child come into his own.
Believe me, it's been a long time coming. But more and more PJ is stepping out of Big Bro's shadow. And we like what we see. We knew that he was hilarious, and perceptive in terms of being empathetic and a good reader of people, but now we see that he's pretty clued-in in general, and more like his brother than we ever realized. One similarity: an obsession with creative writing. During Whiz Quiz, PJ had a pad of paper, and throughout the meet he would write out short stories - most no more than a paragraph -using quiz questions for topics. On a few occasions, he only wrote down a couple of words, I guess as story prompts. My favorite: "rainforest canape." Yes, he meant canopy, but I appreciated "canape" more. Perhaps he has a future in catering? Seriously, though, he's a top-notch inventive speller, and as a friend pointed out the other day it's a good sign when kids use words that they can't spell yet - even a better sign when they do a good job of spelling them phonetically.
So, in a nutshell, my younger child is currently the most fascinating person that I know. And I dig that.
Day 3: I am thankful that my parents and grandmother, Parnell's mother, brothers and sister-in-law (and our soon-to-be second sister-in-law) all live within a thirty-mile radius. Okay, I won't lie - this one went on the list the same day that my mom babysat the kids, on our home turf. The only thing better than free babysitting is free babysitting that comes to you! But I have the thought frequently that my children are so much better off than I was, from the standpoint of having the opportunity to truly get to know their family. We were in close proximity to my mom's family for a short time in my early childhood, but then we moved from California to Texas, and thereafter family face time was infrequent. Contrast my kids' experience: because my grandmother lives with my parents, they have benefited from multiple visits by my uncles and aunt, who come into town to see their mom, but both boys are utterly convinced that they are the attraction. They also have very little concept of the fact that my mom's siblings are not, actually, factually, local. "Mom, can you invite Uncle George to my seventh birthday?" "Well, honey, I can, but I don't know if he'll come." "Why not?" "Um, he lives in Virginia?" "Ohhhh. When did he move there?"
It's cute. And, most definitely, a blessing.
Day 4: I cherish my husband - even when we are renovating our home largely against our will and on a breakneck timetable and are therefore fighting like cats and dogs on a routine basis. He is my best friend, and - somewhat notably - he is a great friend to my friends. Case in point: a few weeks back, a Woman's Club cohort mentioned that she'd heard that Parnell would be the auctioneer for one of the Junior Woman's Club departments of which I used to be a member. Huh. News to me, probably news to him, although not outside the realm of possibility for him to talk directly to my buds. The Woman's Club cohort looked embarrassed: "Well, I'm sure that they said that they were going to ask him. Maybe they haven't gotten around to it yet." On the way home, I called him and recounted the conversation, and his response was basically verbatim what I thought it might be: "When would it be? ON A THURSDAY? I have tennis. I don't want to miss tennis. Which department? Who's in that department? Oh, Melissa, Julie, Tammy, and that group? Yeah, I'd skip tennis for them."
And so he did. He was great fun as auctioneer (and darned successful - goal was $3,600 for live and silent auctions and raffle combined, and he brought the live auction in at just under $3,400). And he had fun. I consider myself so fortunate that I don't have to entertain him in social settings with my friends - to the contrary, I can go an hour without even bumping into him, if the room is big enough, and I'm working it in one direction and he's moving in the other. I also consider myself fortunate that I don't ever doubt his motives when he is chatting up one of my friends. Basically, I see my good friends as sisters, and I think he considers them his sisters-in-law. He never had sisters, but he would have been a great "brother to a sister." So he is making up for lost time now, with my buddies. Confident that he would bend over backwards for any of them - in a strictly nonsexual way.
Day 5: I am thankful for my coworkers. We're an odd group - individually and collectively - but, really, who isn't? What is rare is the fact that I respect each and every one of them - there's no one in the mix who isn't a person of integrity, and it's notable that I can, and do, recommend their services to my clients (including friends who are clients) completely without reservation. Trust me, I've seen how things are in other law firms, and in other offices in general, and all is not perfect in Paradise. As a group, we're pretty darned close to perfect, even with (and perhaps because of) our imperfections.
And then there are those moments when I really appreciate them - like Thursday at lunch, the theme of which, evidently, was "let your mind drift into the gutter and stay there." It all started with a conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace generally, and then someone segued into a story about a judge hitting on a female attorney, which inspired the comment: "He enjoyed having her on his docket."
And then the gauntlet was thrown:
"He was impressed by her oral arguments."
"He reviewed her briefs in great detail."
Yes, there was much snickering. Yes, we are all huge geeks. Refer to the part about us being lawyers. But it's fun to be reminded that we are all in this geeky business together. And it's refreshing to be around folks who can laugh. (Refer to the part about being lawyers once again.)
I am one of those folks.
The idea is to post something every day through November 30th. I thought I'd share my "thanks list" here as well. And, yes, I know that it's already Day 5. Hence the title of this post.
Here goes:
Day 1: I am thankful that my middle schooler is happy and thriving in sixth grade, which is not something that we took for granted, or even expected. So grateful, and so aware that things just as easily could go the other way (and have, for some friends' kids).
Day 1 happened to coincide with C's Whiz Quiz meet. I believe that this is our fifth meet, and our fifth win. Watching C and his friends work as a team (and they make a great team, obviously - see "undefeated," above), I could not help but notice how much in his element he was. And with good reason, because the other kids seem to be as well-adjusted, sweet-natured and full of personality as he is. They were all very supportive of each other, and the closest that I saw to negativity was a little sarcastic ribbing from time to time, when someone made a bone-headed mistake. The errant thought ran through my brain: this is like a Disney Channel version of middle school. I halfway expected them to break into song.
And then it dawned on me that C and his friends, collectively, are straight out of Disney central casting.
A: Light-skinned African-American boy, dimples, eyelashes out to THERE - Corbin Bleu, minus the bushy mop of hair.
The Spelling Whiz (I am blanking on her name, but I call her the Spelling Whiz, because she is the team's go-to on spelling questions): Raven-Symone. With a little bit of that girl from the jump-roping movie who occasionally guest-starred on Sweet Life.
W: The kid on Waverly Place who turns into a werewolf. Has a British accent? (The werewolf kid, not W. W's local.)
The other A: Mitchell Musso, but shorter - short like the other kid on Hannah Montana, who's sort of annoying and runs the beachside concession stand.
N: Rocky from Shake it Up. Heck, she's even dressed sort of like Rocky, since it's a no dress code day - denim vest over striped t-shirt, ruffled skirt, Ugg boots.
It then occurs to me that I watch WAAAAY too much Disney Channel with the kids. But I'm happy that C's happy.
Day 2: I am happy that I have the opportunity to watch my younger child come into his own.
Believe me, it's been a long time coming. But more and more PJ is stepping out of Big Bro's shadow. And we like what we see. We knew that he was hilarious, and perceptive in terms of being empathetic and a good reader of people, but now we see that he's pretty clued-in in general, and more like his brother than we ever realized. One similarity: an obsession with creative writing. During Whiz Quiz, PJ had a pad of paper, and throughout the meet he would write out short stories - most no more than a paragraph -using quiz questions for topics. On a few occasions, he only wrote down a couple of words, I guess as story prompts. My favorite: "rainforest canape." Yes, he meant canopy, but I appreciated "canape" more. Perhaps he has a future in catering? Seriously, though, he's a top-notch inventive speller, and as a friend pointed out the other day it's a good sign when kids use words that they can't spell yet - even a better sign when they do a good job of spelling them phonetically.
So, in a nutshell, my younger child is currently the most fascinating person that I know. And I dig that.
Day 3: I am thankful that my parents and grandmother, Parnell's mother, brothers and sister-in-law (and our soon-to-be second sister-in-law) all live within a thirty-mile radius. Okay, I won't lie - this one went on the list the same day that my mom babysat the kids, on our home turf. The only thing better than free babysitting is free babysitting that comes to you! But I have the thought frequently that my children are so much better off than I was, from the standpoint of having the opportunity to truly get to know their family. We were in close proximity to my mom's family for a short time in my early childhood, but then we moved from California to Texas, and thereafter family face time was infrequent. Contrast my kids' experience: because my grandmother lives with my parents, they have benefited from multiple visits by my uncles and aunt, who come into town to see their mom, but both boys are utterly convinced that they are the attraction. They also have very little concept of the fact that my mom's siblings are not, actually, factually, local. "Mom, can you invite Uncle George to my seventh birthday?" "Well, honey, I can, but I don't know if he'll come." "Why not?" "Um, he lives in Virginia?" "Ohhhh. When did he move there?"
It's cute. And, most definitely, a blessing.
Day 4: I cherish my husband - even when we are renovating our home largely against our will and on a breakneck timetable and are therefore fighting like cats and dogs on a routine basis. He is my best friend, and - somewhat notably - he is a great friend to my friends. Case in point: a few weeks back, a Woman's Club cohort mentioned that she'd heard that Parnell would be the auctioneer for one of the Junior Woman's Club departments of which I used to be a member. Huh. News to me, probably news to him, although not outside the realm of possibility for him to talk directly to my buds. The Woman's Club cohort looked embarrassed: "Well, I'm sure that they said that they were going to ask him. Maybe they haven't gotten around to it yet." On the way home, I called him and recounted the conversation, and his response was basically verbatim what I thought it might be: "When would it be? ON A THURSDAY? I have tennis. I don't want to miss tennis. Which department? Who's in that department? Oh, Melissa, Julie, Tammy, and that group? Yeah, I'd skip tennis for them."
And so he did. He was great fun as auctioneer (and darned successful - goal was $3,600 for live and silent auctions and raffle combined, and he brought the live auction in at just under $3,400). And he had fun. I consider myself so fortunate that I don't have to entertain him in social settings with my friends - to the contrary, I can go an hour without even bumping into him, if the room is big enough, and I'm working it in one direction and he's moving in the other. I also consider myself fortunate that I don't ever doubt his motives when he is chatting up one of my friends. Basically, I see my good friends as sisters, and I think he considers them his sisters-in-law. He never had sisters, but he would have been a great "brother to a sister." So he is making up for lost time now, with my buddies. Confident that he would bend over backwards for any of them - in a strictly nonsexual way.
Day 5: I am thankful for my coworkers. We're an odd group - individually and collectively - but, really, who isn't? What is rare is the fact that I respect each and every one of them - there's no one in the mix who isn't a person of integrity, and it's notable that I can, and do, recommend their services to my clients (including friends who are clients) completely without reservation. Trust me, I've seen how things are in other law firms, and in other offices in general, and all is not perfect in Paradise. As a group, we're pretty darned close to perfect, even with (and perhaps because of) our imperfections.
And then there are those moments when I really appreciate them - like Thursday at lunch, the theme of which, evidently, was "let your mind drift into the gutter and stay there." It all started with a conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace generally, and then someone segued into a story about a judge hitting on a female attorney, which inspired the comment: "He enjoyed having her on his docket."
And then the gauntlet was thrown:
"He was impressed by her oral arguments."
"He reviewed her briefs in great detail."
Yes, there was much snickering. Yes, we are all huge geeks. Refer to the part about us being lawyers. But it's fun to be reminded that we are all in this geeky business together. And it's refreshing to be around folks who can laugh. (Refer to the part about being lawyers once again.)
The Event: Pavlov's Dog Experiences Night Sweats
I think it's fair to describe my current mental state as slightly fragile (but please pronounce it "FRAH-JEEL-AY," like in "Christmas Story" - it just sounds better that way).
Exhibit A: On Tuesday, as I was helping the librarian move chairs back to tables after C's Whiz Quiz match, my phone vibrated. I pulled it out of my pocket, and saw that I had a Microsoft Outlook calendar reminder: "Junior League Meeting (Provisional) 6:30 pm, Junior League Headquarters."
[Expletive deleted.] It was 6:15.
I explained the situation to my spouse (by "explained," I mean "shouted incoherently over my shoulder as I sprinted out of the room") and headed for the car, passing C's botany teacher and, basically, dissing him when he attempted to initate conversation:
"Gotta go. Late for a meeting, LATE FOR A MEETING."
Apparently, I had a few brain cells left - that, or I am operating off of muscle memory - because I did manage to puzzle out the quickest route from the middle school to JL HQ. And I made pretty good time; in fact, there was a good chance that I would get to the general environs of JL HQ by 6:30. And that's when it would all go to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks, because JL HQ has the most woefully inadequate parking situation imaginable. As in, the parking lot fills up in a nanosecond, and then the cars start lining up along the side street. At 6:30, I would be looking at a three-block jog, in high heels.
So I decided to be smart and come in at the tail end of the side street, where I was likely to find a space. Again, more evidence of some existing brain function! I mentally awarded myself a back pat - and then, in a flash, as I was proceeding into the University/White Settlement intersection, about three blocks away from the turn-off, it hit me:
Junior League provisional meetings are on Mondays.
It was Tuesday.
But . . . my phone told me that I had a meeting.
Right . . . because, at my secretary's urging, I put all of my extracurriculars into my calendar at work, which feeds into my phone . . . and, given that I'm currently bat-s*** crazy and all, CLEARLY I inputted at least one thing incorrectly.
But, perhaps, I should check. So I drove up to the turn-off, looked to the right where the long line of cars should be - and, yep, nada.
Damn.
Fast forward to Thursday. The attorneys in my office - ALL of them - went to the Fort Worth Club for happy hour. This happens, like, never. Thus, I wasn't in a particular hurry to leave - although Parnell and I did have to be somewhere at 6:30. I texted him to let him know that I planned to push things to the last second - and, before I could put my phone away, there it was:
"Junior League Meeting (General), 6:30 pm, Junior League Headquarters."
Not. Again.
This time, I actually hesitated for a second. I didn't remember seeing an e-mail reminder about the meeting, and they usually send those out. And general meetings never fall during the first week of the month. But, surely, I couldn't have screwed up twice. Better do a drive-by just in case. Shouted goodbyes, retrieved my car from the valets, and again managed to plot out the shortest distance between two points, completely on the fly. Once again approached from the end of the side street, because the parking situation for general meetings is even more horrific than for provisional meetings. I'd be lucky to find a parking place in the same time zone. That is, if there actually was a meeting.
Got to the intersection, hung a right, and had no problem turning around in the JL HQ parking lot, because there wasn't a single car in it. I believe that a tumbleweed drifted in front of me, but I can't be sure, because the howling of the lone coyote on the other side of the sand dune shimmering in the distance distracted me. TOTAL. FLIPPIN'. GHOST. TOWN.
Seriously? TWICE?
Thinking of changing my name. First name: Pavlov's. Second name: Dog. Ring that bell - or chime that calendar chime - and, evidently, I will respond.
I blame sleep deprivation. And, in turn, I blame sleep deprivation on my kitchen. We have spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how to reconfigure it. Goals, in no particular order, are to maximize storage, provide for as logical a traffic flow as is possible in a small space, preserve the "work triangle," and, ideally, obviate the need to move windows and doorways.
Two weeks ago, I thought I had the general layout figured out. Since, currently, there are no floors to speak of in the house (well, they left strips around the interior walls, so basically you hug the wall and crab walk to get from Point A to Point B), we decided that there was no better time to replace the pipes under the original portion of the house. (Pipes in the addition were already copper, and now we have PEX pipes everywhere else - space-age, rodent-proof, can expand due to temperature up to ten times their usual diameter without cracking, and DID I MENTION THAT THEY ARE RODENT-PROOF?) Plumber was instructed to put the line to the sink here, and the line to the dishwasher there. The morning after the day that the lines were installed here and there, I woke up at oh-dark-thirty, JUMPED out of bed, fully awake, and screamed at my spouse:
"THE DISHWASHER CAN'T GO ON THE RIGHT! IT HAS TO BE ON THE LEFT! [EXPLETIVE DELETED, EXPLETIVE DELETED, EXPLETIVE DELETED!]"
I'll spare you the details of why the dishwasher had to be moved, but let me just tell you - there is no worse feeling than having an epiphany about where to put your dishwasher the day after you pay a plumber to put it somewhere else.
Did I mention that I'm a newbie at all of this home construction stuff? Yeah, turns out that my freak-out was entirely for naught. The line to the sink was the biggie - dishwasher line ties into that and can be routed to the right just as easily as to the left. Nothing on that score had been set in stone.
Big sigh of relief.
Over the next week, armed with a chart showing all of my cabinet options by type, depth and width, I painstakingly planned out two walls' worth of kitchen. Even drew an elevation, which, I am pleased to report, looked substantially similar to the one that my husband subsequently generated using a computerized kitchen planning tool. I was so pleased with myself - particularly, with the facts that I had managed to work around all three kitchen windows and had perfectly centered sinks under two of them, with symmetrical cabinet arrangements on either side - that I took a short break from kitchen design. Then our contractor requested a "come to Jesus" to finalize certain finish-out selections, and I knew that I couldn't stall any longer. Broke out the graph paper, penciled in the refrigerator and ovens, drew in the island, and -
"[MANY EXPLETIVES DELETED.] THE ISLAND WON'T FIT."
"What do you mean the island won't fit?"
"I mean, something won't fit if we put the island where we're thinking of putting it. I mean, obviously, everything is going to fit. WE JUST WON'T BE ABLE TO OPEN DOORS TO THINGS. The oven and refrigerator, specifically. I mean, they'll open, but there won't be a place for us to stand while we're opening them. Aaaaaah - here, I'll just show you."
We spent the next half hour recreating door-opening scenarios in the apartment kitchen, using a stepladder to approximate where the island would be. Many lines on graph paper were drawn and erased. Clearly, the oven wall needs to go over HERE - and, if we move the island to the south, all of the appliance doors will clear. Except, we can't move the oven wall THERE, because we won't have enough linear space after we move the doorway to the home office. (At this point, we were resigned to the fact that a doorway was going to have to move, which would in turn involve moving an existing, albeit currently unused, electrical panel - the one that served as the breaker box before the addition was built and the box relocated. Doorway had to move, in part, to enlarge 12 inches of wall space in the corner to 24 inches, so as to permit installation of lower cabinets and a counter-depth refrigerator. All of this made me unhappy, because (1) moving the door would require relocation of a bookcase in the home office on the other side of the door frame and (2) I'm Stingy McStingerson, and moving doors and electrical costs money, people.)
Let's see . . . . If we DON'T move the doorway, then we can put the oven to the right, meaning when you take stuff out of the oven, you would put it WHERE? [More horrible reenactments in the apartment kitchen.] Okay, that would actually work. But now you only have twelve inches of depth on the other side of the doorway. Lower cabinets are 24 inches deep.
But . . . upper cabinets are 12 inches deep.
What followed was a frenzy of excited shouts and pencil scratches. The refrigerator found a permanent home. Next to it, in the shallow space running north to the home office doorway, a solid (floor-to-almost ceiling) wall o' storage, constructed entirely of lower cabinets, stacked one row on top of the other. The aha moments just kept on coming: "Hmm. We still haven't established a place for cookbooks. If we put a 12-inch high row of cabinets right here at eye level . . . most of my cookbooks are smaller than 12 inches square, right? GO GET THE THREE COOKBOOKS THAT I ACTUALLY SAW FIT TO BRING TO THE APARTMENT AND MEASURE THEM WITH A TAPE MEASURE." Cookbooks were measured. Oven wall was assigned a home. In front of the ugly existing electrical panel. Which would now be completely obstructed from view by a floor-to-ceiling cabinet housing a convection microwave, oven and warming drawer.
Aha, aha, aha.
(Two days later, the electrician confirmed that said convection microwave, oven and warming drawer could be wired directly into the ugly existing electrical panel, without the necessity of adding a 220-volt power source. Let's review: doorway, not moved. Ugly existing electrical panel, not moved, completely invisible and, for the first time in twelve flippin' years, actually useful. AHA, AHA, AHA. And, also, YAAAAAY.)
Did I mention that all of this conversating and kitchen sketching went down between 11:30 pm and 2 am?
Yeah, like I said, a little sleep-deprived.
A couple of peaceful days passed. Then, last night, as I was going to bed, I made the sort-of-mistake of asking my spouse: "So, were the cabinet people really impressed with my drawing?'
[Half asleep] "Yup."
"They didn't have ANYTHING negative to say?"
"Well . . . they did mention that the oven/sink thing was going to be pretty tight. But they didn't have a better suggestion."
Pride goeth before a fall, people. I had to ask if I was really that awesome of a kitchen designer. And, now, five minutes before my head hit the pillow, I was living a nightmare.
[Shaking spouse, whose head had hit the pillow, and who was attempting to sleep] "WAKE UP! THEY'RE RIGHT! WHAT DO WE DO NOW?!?"
"Umm . . . put the sink where the cooktop is and the cooktop where the sink is?"
[Actually, factually WAILING] "BUT WE ALREADY PAID THE PLUMBER TO MOVE IT ONCE, AND I DON'T WANT TO MOVE IT AGAIN!"
I took a breath, and caught a grip. Grabbed my graph paper rendition, realized that I had made the oven cabinet three inches too wide, penciled in a trim piece and three inches of extra countertop, ACTUALLY WENT INTO THE APARTMENT KITCHEN AND PRACTICED USING THE SINK, RUNNING THROUGH SEVERAL DIFFERENT SCENARIOS, and finally, breathed a sigh of relief.
McGlincheys 2, Duplicative Plumbing Work 0.
It was ten minutes until midnight. Shook Spouse, reassured him that the sky was not falling, reported my conclusions and got a muttered "Thass good, umm," in response. No, he did not remember the conversation - or my panic attack - the next day.
Spouse: not sleep deprived. Me: barely holding on. And miles to go before we - um, sleep.
Exhibit A: On Tuesday, as I was helping the librarian move chairs back to tables after C's Whiz Quiz match, my phone vibrated. I pulled it out of my pocket, and saw that I had a Microsoft Outlook calendar reminder: "Junior League Meeting (Provisional) 6:30 pm, Junior League Headquarters."
[Expletive deleted.] It was 6:15.
I explained the situation to my spouse (by "explained," I mean "shouted incoherently over my shoulder as I sprinted out of the room") and headed for the car, passing C's botany teacher and, basically, dissing him when he attempted to initate conversation:
"Gotta go. Late for a meeting, LATE FOR A MEETING."
Apparently, I had a few brain cells left - that, or I am operating off of muscle memory - because I did manage to puzzle out the quickest route from the middle school to JL HQ. And I made pretty good time; in fact, there was a good chance that I would get to the general environs of JL HQ by 6:30. And that's when it would all go to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks, because JL HQ has the most woefully inadequate parking situation imaginable. As in, the parking lot fills up in a nanosecond, and then the cars start lining up along the side street. At 6:30, I would be looking at a three-block jog, in high heels.
So I decided to be smart and come in at the tail end of the side street, where I was likely to find a space. Again, more evidence of some existing brain function! I mentally awarded myself a back pat - and then, in a flash, as I was proceeding into the University/White Settlement intersection, about three blocks away from the turn-off, it hit me:
Junior League provisional meetings are on Mondays.
It was Tuesday.
But . . . my phone told me that I had a meeting.
Right . . . because, at my secretary's urging, I put all of my extracurriculars into my calendar at work, which feeds into my phone . . . and, given that I'm currently bat-s*** crazy and all, CLEARLY I inputted at least one thing incorrectly.
But, perhaps, I should check. So I drove up to the turn-off, looked to the right where the long line of cars should be - and, yep, nada.
Damn.
Fast forward to Thursday. The attorneys in my office - ALL of them - went to the Fort Worth Club for happy hour. This happens, like, never. Thus, I wasn't in a particular hurry to leave - although Parnell and I did have to be somewhere at 6:30. I texted him to let him know that I planned to push things to the last second - and, before I could put my phone away, there it was:
"Junior League Meeting (General), 6:30 pm, Junior League Headquarters."
Not. Again.
This time, I actually hesitated for a second. I didn't remember seeing an e-mail reminder about the meeting, and they usually send those out. And general meetings never fall during the first week of the month. But, surely, I couldn't have screwed up twice. Better do a drive-by just in case. Shouted goodbyes, retrieved my car from the valets, and again managed to plot out the shortest distance between two points, completely on the fly. Once again approached from the end of the side street, because the parking situation for general meetings is even more horrific than for provisional meetings. I'd be lucky to find a parking place in the same time zone. That is, if there actually was a meeting.
Got to the intersection, hung a right, and had no problem turning around in the JL HQ parking lot, because there wasn't a single car in it. I believe that a tumbleweed drifted in front of me, but I can't be sure, because the howling of the lone coyote on the other side of the sand dune shimmering in the distance distracted me. TOTAL. FLIPPIN'. GHOST. TOWN.
Seriously? TWICE?
Thinking of changing my name. First name: Pavlov's. Second name: Dog. Ring that bell - or chime that calendar chime - and, evidently, I will respond.
I blame sleep deprivation. And, in turn, I blame sleep deprivation on my kitchen. We have spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how to reconfigure it. Goals, in no particular order, are to maximize storage, provide for as logical a traffic flow as is possible in a small space, preserve the "work triangle," and, ideally, obviate the need to move windows and doorways.
Two weeks ago, I thought I had the general layout figured out. Since, currently, there are no floors to speak of in the house (well, they left strips around the interior walls, so basically you hug the wall and crab walk to get from Point A to Point B), we decided that there was no better time to replace the pipes under the original portion of the house. (Pipes in the addition were already copper, and now we have PEX pipes everywhere else - space-age, rodent-proof, can expand due to temperature up to ten times their usual diameter without cracking, and DID I MENTION THAT THEY ARE RODENT-PROOF?) Plumber was instructed to put the line to the sink here, and the line to the dishwasher there. The morning after the day that the lines were installed here and there, I woke up at oh-dark-thirty, JUMPED out of bed, fully awake, and screamed at my spouse:
"THE DISHWASHER CAN'T GO ON THE RIGHT! IT HAS TO BE ON THE LEFT! [EXPLETIVE DELETED, EXPLETIVE DELETED, EXPLETIVE DELETED!]"
I'll spare you the details of why the dishwasher had to be moved, but let me just tell you - there is no worse feeling than having an epiphany about where to put your dishwasher the day after you pay a plumber to put it somewhere else.
Did I mention that I'm a newbie at all of this home construction stuff? Yeah, turns out that my freak-out was entirely for naught. The line to the sink was the biggie - dishwasher line ties into that and can be routed to the right just as easily as to the left. Nothing on that score had been set in stone.
Big sigh of relief.
Over the next week, armed with a chart showing all of my cabinet options by type, depth and width, I painstakingly planned out two walls' worth of kitchen. Even drew an elevation, which, I am pleased to report, looked substantially similar to the one that my husband subsequently generated using a computerized kitchen planning tool. I was so pleased with myself - particularly, with the facts that I had managed to work around all three kitchen windows and had perfectly centered sinks under two of them, with symmetrical cabinet arrangements on either side - that I took a short break from kitchen design. Then our contractor requested a "come to Jesus" to finalize certain finish-out selections, and I knew that I couldn't stall any longer. Broke out the graph paper, penciled in the refrigerator and ovens, drew in the island, and -
"[MANY EXPLETIVES DELETED.] THE ISLAND WON'T FIT."
"What do you mean the island won't fit?"
"I mean, something won't fit if we put the island where we're thinking of putting it. I mean, obviously, everything is going to fit. WE JUST WON'T BE ABLE TO OPEN DOORS TO THINGS. The oven and refrigerator, specifically. I mean, they'll open, but there won't be a place for us to stand while we're opening them. Aaaaaah - here, I'll just show you."
We spent the next half hour recreating door-opening scenarios in the apartment kitchen, using a stepladder to approximate where the island would be. Many lines on graph paper were drawn and erased. Clearly, the oven wall needs to go over HERE - and, if we move the island to the south, all of the appliance doors will clear. Except, we can't move the oven wall THERE, because we won't have enough linear space after we move the doorway to the home office. (At this point, we were resigned to the fact that a doorway was going to have to move, which would in turn involve moving an existing, albeit currently unused, electrical panel - the one that served as the breaker box before the addition was built and the box relocated. Doorway had to move, in part, to enlarge 12 inches of wall space in the corner to 24 inches, so as to permit installation of lower cabinets and a counter-depth refrigerator. All of this made me unhappy, because (1) moving the door would require relocation of a bookcase in the home office on the other side of the door frame and (2) I'm Stingy McStingerson, and moving doors and electrical costs money, people.)
Let's see . . . . If we DON'T move the doorway, then we can put the oven to the right, meaning when you take stuff out of the oven, you would put it WHERE? [More horrible reenactments in the apartment kitchen.] Okay, that would actually work. But now you only have twelve inches of depth on the other side of the doorway. Lower cabinets are 24 inches deep.
But . . . upper cabinets are 12 inches deep.
What followed was a frenzy of excited shouts and pencil scratches. The refrigerator found a permanent home. Next to it, in the shallow space running north to the home office doorway, a solid (floor-to-almost ceiling) wall o' storage, constructed entirely of lower cabinets, stacked one row on top of the other. The aha moments just kept on coming: "Hmm. We still haven't established a place for cookbooks. If we put a 12-inch high row of cabinets right here at eye level . . . most of my cookbooks are smaller than 12 inches square, right? GO GET THE THREE COOKBOOKS THAT I ACTUALLY SAW FIT TO BRING TO THE APARTMENT AND MEASURE THEM WITH A TAPE MEASURE." Cookbooks were measured. Oven wall was assigned a home. In front of the ugly existing electrical panel. Which would now be completely obstructed from view by a floor-to-ceiling cabinet housing a convection microwave, oven and warming drawer.
Aha, aha, aha.
(Two days later, the electrician confirmed that said convection microwave, oven and warming drawer could be wired directly into the ugly existing electrical panel, without the necessity of adding a 220-volt power source. Let's review: doorway, not moved. Ugly existing electrical panel, not moved, completely invisible and, for the first time in twelve flippin' years, actually useful. AHA, AHA, AHA. And, also, YAAAAAY.)
Did I mention that all of this conversating and kitchen sketching went down between 11:30 pm and 2 am?
Yeah, like I said, a little sleep-deprived.
A couple of peaceful days passed. Then, last night, as I was going to bed, I made the sort-of-mistake of asking my spouse: "So, were the cabinet people really impressed with my drawing?'
[Half asleep] "Yup."
"They didn't have ANYTHING negative to say?"
"Well . . . they did mention that the oven/sink thing was going to be pretty tight. But they didn't have a better suggestion."
Pride goeth before a fall, people. I had to ask if I was really that awesome of a kitchen designer. And, now, five minutes before my head hit the pillow, I was living a nightmare.
[Shaking spouse, whose head had hit the pillow, and who was attempting to sleep] "WAKE UP! THEY'RE RIGHT! WHAT DO WE DO NOW?!?"
"Umm . . . put the sink where the cooktop is and the cooktop where the sink is?"
[Actually, factually WAILING] "BUT WE ALREADY PAID THE PLUMBER TO MOVE IT ONCE, AND I DON'T WANT TO MOVE IT AGAIN!"
I took a breath, and caught a grip. Grabbed my graph paper rendition, realized that I had made the oven cabinet three inches too wide, penciled in a trim piece and three inches of extra countertop, ACTUALLY WENT INTO THE APARTMENT KITCHEN AND PRACTICED USING THE SINK, RUNNING THROUGH SEVERAL DIFFERENT SCENARIOS, and finally, breathed a sigh of relief.
McGlincheys 2, Duplicative Plumbing Work 0.
It was ten minutes until midnight. Shook Spouse, reassured him that the sky was not falling, reported my conclusions and got a muttered "Thass good, umm," in response. No, he did not remember the conversation - or my panic attack - the next day.
Spouse: not sleep deprived. Me: barely holding on. And miles to go before we - um, sleep.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Kid Stuff: My Name is PJ, and I Am a Candyholic
As a small child, my parents found it notable that, generally speaking, I did not eat my Halloween candy. I sorted it into categories (rectangular things, things with sticks) and then I resorted it into different categories (orange things, brown things). And I kept statistics as to how many of each item I received. (Okay, clearly we can blame that last part on the fact that my dad was a mathematician. In fact, if memory serves, I was born the same night that he took the final for his Masters degree in statistics. So, there you go.)
Once I was done cataloging it, it got chunked into a cabinet in my room, where it stayed until my mom retrieved it and tossed it (or ate it - guess it depended on how early she staged her raid).
The bigger kid takes after me. He is interested in how much candy he gets, and what types, and he nibbles on it a little bit at a time. His goal this year, he told me, was to stretch it out until Christmas. Then his math teacher announced that his supply of "attaboy" candy (the stuff he hands out when kids do stuff right) was running low, and anyone who wanted to donate their candy to the cause would get a homework pass. (Math teacher's a smart guy - confiscate it, ration it out a little bit at a time, and keep disruptive blood sugar spikes to a minimum. Oh, and save yourself some bucks, too. While cutting down on classroom absences relating to dental appointments. Genius.)
C heard "homework pass," and that candy was out of our home like a shot.
PJ approaches Halloween candy differently. Basically, he inhales it. If we let him, he would eat it all in one sitting.
But we don't let him eat it all in one sitting. So, as of last night, there was still a little bit left. Looking into his bag, you couldn't really tell how much, because he has an unfortunate tendency to throw the wrappers back into the bag. But there was some actual candy still in there.
So this is how my Thursday began: 5 o' clock AM, and the kids are up, first giggling, and then screaming at each other. Because, apparently, PJ demanded that C help him find his candy bag, and C declined.
Dad, not so politely, advised them that THE REST OF THE WORLD WAS TRYING TO SLEEP, so could they please go back to sleep so that Mom and Dad could attempt to get in a few more minutes of shuteye?
It takes me awhile to go back to sleep, and as is so often the case I finally drifted back to dreamland just a few minutes before my alarm went off. So I hit snooze. And then I hit snooze again. And then, it appears, I just turned the alarm clock. I went into full-on REM sleep. I had a dream about my college roommate and her family. In the dream, we ran into them on vacation. Wacky hijinks ensued. At some point during the dream, I remember thinking, "Wow, this seems like a long dream for seven minutes."
It wasn't seven minutes. When I woke up and looked at the clock, it was ten minutes until it was time to depart for school.
Jumped BOLT UPRIGHT out of bed, went into the boys' room, discovered said boys awake and oblivious as to what time it was - no one had their school uniforms on, and OMG, THE PILE OF CANDY WRAPPERS! PJ had found his stash. I sorted through the bag, confiscated the few pieces that he managed to miss and gave them to Big Bro to help the Homework Pass Cause (although I was mad at Big Bro, too - almost twelve years old, and we can't look at a clock?).
I testily advised Little Bro that next year's Halloween was cancelled until further notice. Little Bro disappeared around the corner, returning a few minutes later with THIS:
You have to read it with the proper inflection (and punctuation): "NO TRICK OR TREATING NEXT YEAR FOR HALLOWEEN?!? WHY did you say I cud [could] not go trick or treating dering [during] 2012, MOM???"
We have a budding Unabomber on our hands - every day, a new manifesto.
I blame the candy.
Once I was done cataloging it, it got chunked into a cabinet in my room, where it stayed until my mom retrieved it and tossed it (or ate it - guess it depended on how early she staged her raid).
The bigger kid takes after me. He is interested in how much candy he gets, and what types, and he nibbles on it a little bit at a time. His goal this year, he told me, was to stretch it out until Christmas. Then his math teacher announced that his supply of "attaboy" candy (the stuff he hands out when kids do stuff right) was running low, and anyone who wanted to donate their candy to the cause would get a homework pass. (Math teacher's a smart guy - confiscate it, ration it out a little bit at a time, and keep disruptive blood sugar spikes to a minimum. Oh, and save yourself some bucks, too. While cutting down on classroom absences relating to dental appointments. Genius.)
C heard "homework pass," and that candy was out of our home like a shot.
PJ approaches Halloween candy differently. Basically, he inhales it. If we let him, he would eat it all in one sitting.
But we don't let him eat it all in one sitting. So, as of last night, there was still a little bit left. Looking into his bag, you couldn't really tell how much, because he has an unfortunate tendency to throw the wrappers back into the bag. But there was some actual candy still in there.
So this is how my Thursday began: 5 o' clock AM, and the kids are up, first giggling, and then screaming at each other. Because, apparently, PJ demanded that C help him find his candy bag, and C declined.
Dad, not so politely, advised them that THE REST OF THE WORLD WAS TRYING TO SLEEP, so could they please go back to sleep so that Mom and Dad could attempt to get in a few more minutes of shuteye?
It takes me awhile to go back to sleep, and as is so often the case I finally drifted back to dreamland just a few minutes before my alarm went off. So I hit snooze. And then I hit snooze again. And then, it appears, I just turned the alarm clock. I went into full-on REM sleep. I had a dream about my college roommate and her family. In the dream, we ran into them on vacation. Wacky hijinks ensued. At some point during the dream, I remember thinking, "Wow, this seems like a long dream for seven minutes."
It wasn't seven minutes. When I woke up and looked at the clock, it was ten minutes until it was time to depart for school.
Jumped BOLT UPRIGHT out of bed, went into the boys' room, discovered said boys awake and oblivious as to what time it was - no one had their school uniforms on, and OMG, THE PILE OF CANDY WRAPPERS! PJ had found his stash. I sorted through the bag, confiscated the few pieces that he managed to miss and gave them to Big Bro to help the Homework Pass Cause (although I was mad at Big Bro, too - almost twelve years old, and we can't look at a clock?).
I testily advised Little Bro that next year's Halloween was cancelled until further notice. Little Bro disappeared around the corner, returning a few minutes later with THIS:
You have to read it with the proper inflection (and punctuation): "NO TRICK OR TREATING NEXT YEAR FOR HALLOWEEN?!? WHY did you say I cud [could] not go trick or treating dering [during] 2012, MOM???"
We have a budding Unabomber on our hands - every day, a new manifesto.
I blame the candy.
Fun on the Interwebs: George Lucas-Approved Christmas Tree Decor
Among the listings under the heading of "Thanksgiving" on Etsy's Web site you will find . . . a felt Yoda Christmas ornament? This confused me, so I clicked on the item - and discovered Nicola Luke's Etsy page. Nicola makes some pretty rad felt ornaments, and I could not help but notice that a lot of them were Star Wars-themed. (Hey, I just noticed that her last name's Luke; perhaps that explains it.) Most of the usual suspects were there: Boba Fett, Darth Vader (in two colors - not sure what that's all about), the droids, etc.
Oh, and Wicket the Ewok:
I'm digging Princess Leia, too. Seriously, I have never seen a whipstitched felt rendition of Princess Leia before. Well, until a few minutes ago.
By the way, do you ever stop to wonder about stuff on your hard drive, and how people would react to it if they were going through your computer files after your demise, without you there to provide back stories? "Um, what's this JPG file called 'Felt Leia' all about?"
Anyway, sharing the bounty with the blogosphere. I seem to recall that a certain reader of this blog happens to display a Star Wars-themed Christmas tree in her garage each year. Things I love about this: (1) She lets her husband have a Star Wars-themed Christmas tree. (2) But he has to keep it in the garage.
I'm thinking that he needs a felt Ewok for his collection.
Oh, and Wicket the Ewok:
I'm digging Princess Leia, too. Seriously, I have never seen a whipstitched felt rendition of Princess Leia before. Well, until a few minutes ago.
Anyway, sharing the bounty with the blogosphere. I seem to recall that a certain reader of this blog happens to display a Star Wars-themed Christmas tree in her garage each year. Things I love about this: (1) She lets her husband have a Star Wars-themed Christmas tree. (2) But he has to keep it in the garage.
I'm thinking that he needs a felt Ewok for his collection.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Kid Stuff: PJ's Long Weekend of Jubilee
PJ's long weekend of jubilee has concluded.
The celebration began on Thursday night, at the elementary school "Read and Treat."
Pictured below: PJ and his friend, T. T is in a Rangers jersey. The less said about last Thursday night and the Rangers, the better.
Storybook parade was Friday, followed by lunch, followed by PJ's cupcake classroom party celebration. THIS is PJ's cupcake cake:
Funny thing about our school district and Halloween: if possible, they are more tolerant about the inclusion of Christian imagery in December "holiday" celebrations than they are of - well, anything scarier than pumpkins during October. So I had to expend actual brain cells locating plates, napkins, etc., that would pass muster. I settled on solid purple plates and black napkins with neon-colored spiders on neon-colored strings. I figured that, if asked, I could finesse the plates with a simple "We cheer for TCU" - and the napkins with a "We're big into entomology."
Then I found the cake, which had spiders on it, and everything fell into place. Cake was a big hit - with PJ's classmates, at least. I'm sure that more than one of their parents was cursing my name that evening, on account of all of the lime green icing stains on their kid's uniform shirts
Whoops.
This is PJ enjoying his outdoor cupcake party with his friend Josiah. They are in missing man formation, as their friend Dylan moved to Austin over the summer. Funny story: when I asked them to pose for me, as Josiah was putting his arm around PJ's shoulder he said, "Hey, Parker? Remember Dylan?" Apparently, posing for a picture together reminds them of Dylan, just as I am reminded of him when I photograph them.
Because I photographed the three of them a LOT.
No, I did not ask them to smile that way.
Saturday morning, PJ requested birthday pancakes. So we had birthday pancakes.
And then we - well, he - built a couch fort. And the dog got inside of it with him.
Here we are testing out a wind tunnel with our own head.
Brother had to get into the act as well.
Then we built airplanes.
Then we tested airplanes using this little launcher thingie.
We stopped for a late lunch in the museum cafeteria, where Birthday Boy chowed down on pizza, curly fries and that dirt pudding stuff with the gummi worms on top.
Could you deny junk food to that face on his birthday? Didn't think so.
On to Dino Dig:
"Can I get my arm all of the way through this hole?"
"Yes, I can." (Note: "Thumb up" is, apparently, Birthday Boy's signature move. I catch it on film A LOT lately.)
Big Brother took it upon himself to completely excavate a bone, in order to ascertain if they really were cemented into the ground. (Answer: Yes, they are.)
We actually take the time to read the cards now. This is a new development. Last year, we were still tossing them on the floor as soon as we confirmed that they did not contain money.
Ace enjoyed watching the gift unwrapping - from the back of Nana's sofa.
Yum. J Rae's. By the way, he picked pumpkin spice for his special birthday cupcake (the one that we topped with candles spelling out his initials). Love the fact that my younger child shares my affinity for spice-flavored stuff. They both do, actually, which is really weird given how picky the older child is. But give 'em a snickerdoodle or gingerbread anything, and they're happy as clams.
This is our Y chromosome version of the Barbie Dream House:
The high-rise portion was a birthday gift from Dad and me. The low-rise portion is old and accompanied us when we moved.
Clayface was a gift from the great-grandma:
I like the way you think, kid.
"Hey, Mom - let's play 'Dark Knight.'" You betcha. It is your birthday, after all.
Sunday we managed to avoid the zoo again. (Yay, us. Big fan of the zoo - when there isn't a special event going on.) Instead, we went to see "Puss in Boots." Two declawed Kitty Softpaws thumbs up on that one.
Monday: Trick-or-treating. More on that later.
Tuesday morning heralded the beginning of November - and the end of PJ's very long weekend of birthday jubilee. Which, based on early returns, was an unequivocal success.
Yay, us, again.
The celebration began on Thursday night, at the elementary school "Read and Treat."
Pictured below: PJ and his friend, T. T is in a Rangers jersey. The less said about last Thursday night and the Rangers, the better.
Storybook parade was Friday, followed by lunch, followed by PJ's cupcake classroom party celebration. THIS is PJ's cupcake cake:
Funny thing about our school district and Halloween: if possible, they are more tolerant about the inclusion of Christian imagery in December "holiday" celebrations than they are of - well, anything scarier than pumpkins during October. So I had to expend actual brain cells locating plates, napkins, etc., that would pass muster. I settled on solid purple plates and black napkins with neon-colored spiders on neon-colored strings. I figured that, if asked, I could finesse the plates with a simple "We cheer for TCU" - and the napkins with a "We're big into entomology."
Then I found the cake, which had spiders on it, and everything fell into place. Cake was a big hit - with PJ's classmates, at least. I'm sure that more than one of their parents was cursing my name that evening, on account of all of the lime green icing stains on their kid's uniform shirts
Whoops.
This is PJ enjoying his outdoor cupcake party with his friend Josiah. They are in missing man formation, as their friend Dylan moved to Austin over the summer. Funny story: when I asked them to pose for me, as Josiah was putting his arm around PJ's shoulder he said, "Hey, Parker? Remember Dylan?" Apparently, posing for a picture together reminds them of Dylan, just as I am reminded of him when I photograph them.
Because I photographed the three of them a LOT.
No, I did not ask them to smile that way.
Saturday morning, PJ requested birthday pancakes. So we had birthday pancakes.
Mom, Big Bro and Birthday Boy then said our goodbyes to said dog, and other pets, and Dad (who had a headache and looked like he REALLY needed a nap). First stop: a local pumpkin retailer. Second stop: the Museum of Science and History, which was Birthday Boy's pick over a Boo at the Zoo trip. (Hallelujah, said Mom. You just KNOW that the zoo had to be crowded on the second-to-last day of Boo at the Zoo season.)
We made it as far as the Fun With Physics Room. (Okay, so that's technically not its name. Neither is Giant Boy-Magnet Room. But that would be equally accurate.) Here is Birthday Boy playing with a beach ball and learning about wind shear, or some such.
Here we are testing out a wind tunnel with our own head.
Brother had to get into the act as well.
Then we built airplanes.
Then we tested airplanes using this little launcher thingie.
We stopped for a late lunch in the museum cafeteria, where Birthday Boy chowed down on pizza, curly fries and that dirt pudding stuff with the gummi worms on top.
Could you deny junk food to that face on his birthday? Didn't think so.
On to Dino Dig:
"Can I get my arm all of the way through this hole?"
"Yes, I can." (Note: "Thumb up" is, apparently, Birthday Boy's signature move. I catch it on film A LOT lately.)
Big Brother took it upon himself to completely excavate a bone, in order to ascertain if they really were cemented into the ground. (Answer: Yes, they are.)
(Fairly sure that sound paleontological practice does not include standing on a fossil while you're digging it out. But having established that the "fossil" in question was a cement replica firmly tethered to terra firma, I suppose we're okay.)
Ta da.
Saturday evening was capped off with takeout hamburgers from Dutch's, cupcakes from J Rae's and PRESENTS - many of them Batman-related (surprise).
We actually take the time to read the cards now. This is a new development. Last year, we were still tossing them on the floor as soon as we confirmed that they did not contain money.
Ace enjoyed watching the gift unwrapping - from the back of Nana's sofa.
Yum. J Rae's. By the way, he picked pumpkin spice for his special birthday cupcake (the one that we topped with candles spelling out his initials). Love the fact that my younger child shares my affinity for spice-flavored stuff. They both do, actually, which is really weird given how picky the older child is. But give 'em a snickerdoodle or gingerbread anything, and they're happy as clams.
This is our Y chromosome version of the Barbie Dream House:
The high-rise portion was a birthday gift from Dad and me. The low-rise portion is old and accompanied us when we moved.
Clayface was a gift from the great-grandma:
Love Clayface. You would, too, if you saw him in person: his upper jaw flips up and back, revealing a hollow space inside his head. You can store an Imaginext hero, plus his gear, in Clayface's cranium which is totally cool, because it means that at least one tiny hero will be safe from the orally fixated menace that is Ace the Batdog.
Nana and Granddad got him a samurai playset - and Parker immediately decided that the dude below was the Liam Neeson version of Ra's al Ghul and, therefore, was wholly compatible with the Bat Cave.
I like the way you think, kid.
"Hey, Mom - let's play 'Dark Knight.'" You betcha. It is your birthday, after all.
Sunday we managed to avoid the zoo again. (Yay, us. Big fan of the zoo - when there isn't a special event going on.) Instead, we went to see "Puss in Boots." Two declawed Kitty Softpaws thumbs up on that one.
Monday: Trick-or-treating. More on that later.
Tuesday morning heralded the beginning of November - and the end of PJ's very long weekend of birthday jubilee. Which, based on early returns, was an unequivocal success.
Yay, us, again.
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