Frick on a Stick

To each their own

2008-07-31T13:40:00.002-06:00

My friend Christine sent me a link to this yesterday, and maybe it's old news and everyone has seen it before. Then again, maybe I don't care. Ever think of that?

You can read a little bit of background story at the Today.com website. It's a neat story, and times have certainly changed.

When they went to Africa to reunite with Christian, though, and he started to pick up the pace and stood on his hind legs - I was floored by that guy's reaction. Maybe if *I* had raised a lion for a year and played soccer with it in a field every day I would have been able to keep my wits about me when a full grown lion started charging me, then reared up and leapt at me. But chances are I would have made brown in my pants.

As if we need help staying up late

2008-07-13T00:02:00.006-06:00

I've gotten Tom addicted to iced coffee. I've never been a coffee drinker or a fan of warm drinks in general, but I vividly remember the day that I discovered Starbucks Frappuccinos. It was a good day. Before long the old miser who takes up residence IN MY SOUL sent me searching for a less expensive (and more convenient) way to feed my addiction and this is the method that works for me. It's not the only way to make iced coffee, and it may not even be the BEST way to make iced coffee - but I'm fairly sure that this is the easiest method you'll ever find. All it requires is a coffee maker, a standard pitcher of some sort, running water, and these two items (brand doesn't matter):

Brew a 10-cup batch of fairly strong coffee - and the only reason it's a "10-cup" batch is because that will fill a standard 2-quart plastic pitcher. So you can make more or less, depending on the size of your pitcher. As for "strong" - that's a matter of taste. A little stronger than you would make your usual pot of coffee, because the condensed milk is going to dumb it down a bit.

As soon as it's done brewing I pour it into the pitcher and add a few handfuls of ice. I'm impatient like that. If you're not on the verge of mainlining some caffeine, then you can stick the pitcher in the fridge and come back to the project later. If I were to put it in the fridge at this point I would forget about it for three days - so I add the ice to get it down to room temperature.

Then you can add the can of sweetened condensed milk. Or if you're my mom, you can add a can of FAT FREE sweetened condensed milk. Or FAT FREE unsweetened condensed milk (if there even is such a thing) and then the requisite amount of Splenda to achieve sweetness. Although I can't vouch for whether or not this would totally suck.

At our house, we simply add a can of fat laden sweetened condensed milk, stir it and stick it in the fridge. Tom will drink all 2 quarts of it in less than 48 hours. Then I scrape him off the ceiling, make him detox for a week, and start the process all over again.

The pressure got to me

2008-07-06T12:23:00.004-06:00

I feel I owe an explanation for my looooooong absence here in the blog-o-sphere. Our blog was hooked up to a feed for HouseBlogs.net, a whole community of DIYers sprucing up their domiciles and sharing their progress on a routine basis for the good of the community as a whole. A GREAT community, and we were pleased to be a part of it, even though in comparison I often felt like we were more the "Special Olympics" of home renovation. Perhaps that's an element they felt was sorely lacking over there? We were happy to bring it.

Problem is, we weren't so much working on the house anymore. Tom hangs up his tool belt when school is in session, and I'm not much in the self-motivation department so if he's not working neither am I. I had started posting mind-numbingly boring things about our daily life in the absence of remodeling news, then I realized the folks over at HouseBlogs probably weren't all that interested in what I bought at Target, or how much my kid hates taking a bath. So I made a mental note to take myself off their feed, and I'll refer you back to my previous statement about lacking self-motivation, and then you might understand why it took me three months to do that. Also I'm still not sure that I did it right. If that's the case then .. I've done all I can. My only hope at this point would be that someone more intelligent than I will get so sick of my rambling that they'll remove me PROPERLY.

After three months had passed I started to wonder what I could possibly have to say. Obvious answer: not much. But now I've decided to bite the bullet and challenge myself to post regularly again. And because I'm a total masochist I've decided that I will challenge myself to post a few times a week throughout July in order to get myself back in the habit. Originally I was all "Hey, I'm going to post DAILY. How cool am I?!" but now that reality has had a chance to sink in I've decided to set my aim low. Also there'll be no apparent theme or goal to my posts, I'm sure.

Speaking of giant let-downs, I also abandoned my Project 365. Turns out life is pretty damn boring in Wisconsin through the winter, and I literally ran out of things to photograph. Also I started to resent the pressure. Some days I'd take three dozen photos that I loved, and others .. no photos at all. So the confines of the "per day" thing really got to me. Once I stopped worrying about the 365 aspect, I found myself taking more pictures. Which I'll still share, but not on a daily basis.

Like this one of Nicholas from Wednesday:

His gills are starting to grow in, and he's dabbling in the art of going underwater. Which is an abrupt change from LAST year where we had to observe strict "no splashing" rules in the pool due to his fear that his face would melt off if water touched it.

The Giant Bullseye

2008-02-27T12:30:00.001-06:00

February is one of my favorite months out of the year for two reasons - both the Global Bazaar and the Domestics departments go on clearance at Target. Which means a smattering of new (and thoroughly unnecessary) things show up around our house every February. We don't need a whole lot of prompting to spend money at Target. You can frequently find both Tom and I among the large population of glassy-eyed Target consumers, wandering the aisles searching for the holy grail of bright orange clearance stickers advertising 60% off something we didn't even know we needed - but then there it was! We have no idea what we'll do with it, or even what it is ... exactly ... but it's 60% off! Who the hell cares?! And what a miracle that we were here on this particular day to find it! What are the chances?!

I started off by ~~wasting~~ spending my money on a bunch of large balls in various colors and textures. I don't have any idea why. Do I care? No. They were 50% off and they were sparkly, I don't normally need any more reason than that. I dropped them all into a large bronze bowl and set them on our sofa table for spring. Had I been sitting in the living room for weeks, wishing I had a large bowl full of large balls over on the sofa table? No. I hadn't. But I'm glad I have them NOW. The most entertaining part was watching Tom feign excitement over my totally insane purchase of sofa table balls. Because that's what you do when you love someone. You enable their insanity by telling them what a decorating genius they are.

Next, Nicholas and I stumbled upon a small silver globe. Was it a more justifiable purchase? Not even a little bit. Did I buy it? You bet. I'm qualifying it as an educational investment. Even though the land masses are only roughly doodled in. But if my son wants to know where China is it will get him IN THE BALLPARK. And that's more than he could say last week!

And I wrapped things up with a small hippo figurine because I have something of a hippo fetish, and it was under $3. When Nicholas was a baby I regularly called him "Nickopotamus" and while that nickname is no longer as frequently used as some of my other nicknames for him (like "Hey you .. the sticky one!") I still have a soft spot in my heart for all things hippo.

On the Domestics front I rummaged through the shelves and found a new duvet cover for our bedroom in a more cat-friendly color (beige instead of robin's egg blue). Also four drapery panels in a silk/poly blend. Curtains are an idea I'm slowly warming up to. I've never been a huge fan. They never hang right, they're visually heavy, and I don't like the look of closed curtains so I always have blinds of some sort on the windows anyway. At that point, why even bother? They're sort of useless. But they can give a room drama - and our bedroom was sorely in need of some drama. So for $8 per panel, I threw them in the cart. Chivus thinks the curtains are "magic curtains", and ever since this weekend when I hung them up his favorite thing to do is wedge his way between the fabric and the lining and sit there - motionless - as if this act makes him completely invisible to the outside world.

I ironed the curtains twice, then steamed them once they were hung, and they still looked like this. Which only proves my point about curtains. Someone told me that if I just leave them alone, time will take care of them. I'm hoping that winds up being the case or I may slowly go out of my mind.

He's baaaaaaaack

2008-02-17T23:11:00.002-06:00

This is what I like to call his "WTF?!" face. I'm on the receiving end of it several times a day, but I rarely have a camera in my hand when it happens.

The Mass Consumer of Financial Resources returned from his trip to Disneyworld yesterday. Hysteria and chaos have been restored to the house, the gray cat has started shedding copious amounts of fur due to the rapid and unpredictable movements of the small human, and Tom and I had to scramble to restock the pantry and refrigerator for Nicholas' requisite 10-12 meals daily.

Last night he asked to watch Indiana Jones: The Last Crusades again (I'm so proud) and then proceeded to curl up next to me under a big quilt for the entire movie - no doubt trying to regulate his body temperature after the abrupt climate shock. I wasn't about to question it because I can't remember the last time he sat completely still through an entire movie that he wasn't on Benadryl for a head cold. Back when he didn't have a "WTF?!" face. Like back when he was 3, and had all his teeth, and wore cute hats all the time that coordinated with his clothes. Clothes that I picked out, and he didn't complain about.

I think it was back in 2006 when I first started seeing the "WTF?!" face on a regular basis. He was right between preschool and kindergarten, we had moved back closer to our entire extended family, and he started to realize that I was NOT as awesome as he had once thought. In fact, I believe that he decided I was actually a major annoyance in his life - with my photo snapping and persistent reminders to get his hands OUT OF HIS PANTS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

But it's back now. Back to remind me that, before I address him directly, I should put some serious thought into exactly what I'm going to say/ask/demand. Because chances are? It's totally lame.

Just rip them all out and I'll suck my dinner through a straw

2008-02-14T14:04:00.002-06:00

I went to the dentist this morning because I've been having on again/off again toothaches in one of my molars - and after many X-rays and much poking and prodding I was told that I'll require a root canal in that one molar. And then, just for fun, a bunch of other dental work on teeth that aren't bothering me at all. Then maybe after that's all done they can punch me in the kidney.

I asked why I would require a root canal on a tooth that only hurts sporadically, and I was told that the tooth probably hurts all the time but that I "have such a high pain tolerance that [my] fear of the dentist outweighs the pain of the tooth." And I wanted to laugh - in fact I would have laughed at her, were I not trying so desperately to keep from throwing up on her. Because having a high tolerance for pain is not something I'm regularly accused of having. Screaming like a sissy every time I get a paper cut? Sure. Spending the whole day at work bitching about menstrual cramps and asking someone to "Kill Me. Kill Me Now?" You bet.

A new toy? I has one!

2008-02-13T23:29:00.002-06:00

And somewhere, the revolution begins ...

2008-01-31T23:07:00.000-06:00

Tonight, the UPS man dropped off a new lens that I purchased for my camera, then I had to wrestle it out of its packaging and leave it on the kitchen counter to thaw out for two hours. I'm not making that up. Nicholas is a ham when it comes to photos. He's your typical only child - he's never had to fight for attention, he just believes he's entitled to it. Just like he's entitled to mac and cheese, cartoons, and my entire paycheck. When he's here I usually don't have to go looking for a subject to photograph, it's as though the high pitched hum of my flash powering up sends an electrical impulse straight to his brain. Then he comes sliding out across the floor, Risky Business style, ready for me to take pictures of him doing the most ridiculous things.

The only catch is, he refuses to let me photograph him looking SANE. I could fill disc after disc with all the outtakes of his photo shoots. I don't know what parents did before digital cameras. Taking a picture of my child usually requires the rapid-firing of about 200 frames and then several agonizing minutes at the computer looking for a couple that actually featured HIS FACE. If I had to rely on film, what I'd end up with is several shoeboxes filled with photos of my son's blurry head while he jumped up and down, and then another couple of boxes of pictures where he produced something out of thin air to hold in front of his face right as I released the shutter. And don't even get me started on his ever-popular trademark "butt shots". I can't wait until the day someone flips through my photos and asks something like "Why do you have this picture of him doubled over looking up at you through his legs while spanking himself on the butt?" Then I can be all "Oh like your kid doesn't do that ..."

Anyway, after dinner I was taking pictures of various things around the house in order to try out the new lens, and that means HE was dashing around the house like I had laced his applesauce with uppers. So I played the oldest trick in the book and told him he had to take a bath.

Then I saw the light inside him dim a little, and heard the faint sound of his spirit crushing, and I knew I had won. Because you know what happens when a 7 year old boy has to take a bath, don't you? The soapy water burns his skin like battery acid, and little bits of his soul are sucked down the drain with the dirty bathwater. Because the essence of who he IS is wrapped up in those little bits of unknown substances all over him. His entire life's emotion is wrapped up in all those blue marker lines down his arms. His very being, his core belief system, and everything he stands for - it's symbolized by the sticky popsicle residue on his face. And his mom seeks to destroy that. Destroy it with soap.

And for that? She must be destroyed.

My cat is more tech savvy than your cat

2008-01-30T22:26:00.000-06:00

This picture narrowly escaped being one of my daily pictures because I get a little "cat heavy" at times. At least with the orange one. The thing is, he's ALWAYS around. The gray cat is like the wind, he's harder to nail down. Not that we do that. Anymore.

Tom went back to school this semester, and it makes for long days. Class until noon, followed by 8 hours at work. Some projects can be accomplished from home, but work is still work, and 10 o'clock is still 10 o'clock. And if anyone understands the need to rest after a long day of work, it's Mo. He's there for you. He understands what you're going through, because that walk from the bed to his food bowl in the kitchen is a long one, my friend. And sometimes after that 40 foot trek across the domicile? You need to take a 10 hour nap. And that's okay!

Dinner conversation with a 1st grader

2008-01-30T21:07:00.000-06:00

The Cast: Tom and Nicholas
The Topic: Nicholas' forthcoming trip to Disneyworld/Orlando with his dad
The (Sub)Topic: Other points of interest in the Orlando area that they might visit

"Are you going to see the ocean?"

"NO!"

"Why not?"

"It's too dangerous"

"It's not dangerous"

"YES IT IS!"

"Why?"

"Because there's the Bermuda Triangle ... and it'll either suck you down into the center in a giant whirlpool ... OR .... you'll get abducted by aliens! I LEARNED IT ON AN EPISODE OF SCOOBY DOO!"

(Like, duh. Totally. Grown ups are soooooooo stupid.)

If he loses anymore teeth, we'll have to purée his dinner

2008-01-23T20:13:00.000-06:00

And yes, he always comes home with "mystery substance" on his shirt. Sometimes it feels like you'll need the lab to run forensics on his clothes before washing them.

Hardware Issues

2008-01-23T12:45:00.000-06:00

We started repainting the downstairs bathroom back in .. uhh .. November. We really fooled a lot of people with our rapid pace in the beginning, didn't we? Now we're just phoning it in! The accessories down in that bathroom were very random, and totally mismatched. The towel bar was white plastic. I didn't even know they made those. Our hardware style is pretty minimalist - both in style and budget. We like brushed nickel, we like clean lines, we like to pay as little as possible to get those things. Basically exactly like these cabinet pulls from IKEA which are similar to the cabinet hardware we wound up buying for the kitchen cabinets (which will be finished in ... August? Perhaps?):

You would think that only having two requirements would automatically keep the price down - but we've found that when it comes to home improvement, "modern" or "minimalist" translates to "maybe you should get a second job?" I mean, it's a tube of metal with two little tubes of metal holding it on. How much can it cost to produce that? Really?

Back in December we made a quick trip over to the Big K to pick up some Christmas ornaments and on our way in and out of the store we have to walk past the Martha Stewart section of bath linens and accessories. We happened to spy these bath accessories on the shelves:

Sweet beans in a basket!! They look shinier here than they do in real life - but they're brushed metal. I was most jazzed about the double robe hook because I'm not one to use towel bars really, and with the way our shower is framed in we have just enough space to hang this sucker right outside the curtain and it will hold two towels and a robe. Even in sets we found in other stores, the hooks left something to be desired. I suppose wall hooks are an afterthought when you're churning these things out, but sometimes it was as though the manufacturers weren't even trying for cohesiveness.

The best part was that we got the whole set (minus the single robe hook) for right around $75. Right now they're on clearance, so we could have saved about $15. But whenever we wait for things we usually miss out.

Oh for crying out loud

2008-01-20T14:15:00.000-06:00

Last night I made a big pan of lasagna, and since my recipe has been problematic the last couple of times I've made it (i.e. it would fall apart when lifting it out of the pan) I finally tweaked a couple of things in an attempt to make it denser - or less "fally aparty," if you will. And as luck would have it those couple of tweaks resulted in a lasagna that was so good it could bring a tear to your eye. Tom seriously cried when he was eating it, and Nicholas and I pointed at him and called him a "crybaby" because that's how we deal with displays of emotion around here. Ridicule.

Ok, so maybe he didn't cry. But it was good lasagna.

We each only had one piece, so there was practically a full pan left. So you know what I did after supper? I put the lid on the pan and set it on top of the cooktop so it could cool off before putting it in the fridge - otherwise all the condensation gets into the lasagna and it winds up being a watery, soggy mess when you reheat it.

Then we sat down to watch Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Nicholas has now seen all of them, and is particularly impressed with all the "face melting off" parts in all three movies. The fact that he doesn't wake up in a cold sweat, screaming in the middle of the night means that he's really growing up. :: tear wipe ::

Then Nicholas went to bed and Tom and I watched two episodes of Las Vegas.

Then we went to bed because it was 1am.

And the lasagna? It sat out all night.

That sound you may have heard this morning was me banging my head against my kitchen counter screaming "WHY!?!?!"

Reuniting with a past love ...

2008-01-18T23:14:00.000-06:00

For starters - it's freaking cold here right now. I live in Wisconsin so my right to complain is practically non-existent, we sign a contract, but on my drive home from work today they were talking about how the high tomorrow is going to be -2 degrees with a wind chill of -30 and if that doesn't grant me a little latitude to bitch then I don't know what does.

When I decided I was going to try the 365 Project the realization that I'll accumulate a large volume of pictures this year hit me like a brick after only a couple of days. For every one picture that I post, there's usually a dozen other ones that I decided not to use for whatever reason, but they're still perfectly good pictures of perfectly good things so I keep them. Like all of Nicholas' "Hey mom! Take a picture of my BUTT!" pictures ... I don't post those. No thanks are necessary, it's a little service I offer to the public. Also as I'm writing this I realize that I am a despicable three days behind on posting my daily pictures online. They're taken, but they're seeking refuge on my camera's SD card until temperatures reach a balmy 20 degrees above. So .... May? Then I add to that all the pictures I take for posterity and whatnot. Like photos of Mo laying somewhere. I could fill a whole disc with my pictures of Mo passed out cold . And I still haven't done anything with my pictures from last year!

So, I've been spending the past week doing some digital scrapbooking. A little over two years ago I finally came to the realization that regular, tactile paper scrapbooking isn't for me. I'm the type of person who wants to bolt out of the house (leaving a Peppermint-sized hole in the front door) whenever a bunch of stuff is laying around, so picking up a hobby that requires LOTS OF STUFF by definition isn't good for my mental health. And when you couple my aversion to messes with my general indecisiveness, my aversion to failure, and my almost debilitating fear of glitter (don't ask!) then it was only a matter of time before someone found me curled up in the fetal position in my closet, covered in glitter, mumbling about not being able to find my random scrapbooking do-hickey. And the entire design would hinge on that one do-hickey, and without it there was no reason to go on. NO. REASON.

So back in 2005 when I discovered there was a growing community of people creating scrapbooks digitally it didn't take much to get me on board. A reason to put even more stuff on my hard drive? You bet! Keep it coming! Where do I sign up? I was enjoying myself, but then I dropped off for about a year and recently returned to find that digital designing has literally exploded onto the scrapbook scene, which helped renew my interest. Well, that and a better camera and the newest version of Photoshop.

Right now I'm just picking my way through my pictures from this past summer, before all the details of each event escape my feeble mind entirely. But I thought I'd share a few of the highlights from what I've been up to, if for no other reason than to keep my "posting v. not-posting" ratio up. Also my laptop generates heat, so I could sit here and type all night just to soak up as much of it as I can.

Clicking on any of these images will bring up a slightly larger image, if that's your sort of thing.

Shabby Princess Festival
ksharonkdesigns Note This Alpha Set

Eve Recinella Trendy Trousers Collection

And my personal favorite that I just finished tonight:

Heidi Williams Seeing Stars Papers

Thanks for looking! And I promise we're going to fix something around the house real soon. Just as soon as we can get out from underneath all the blankets.

My mom has more ribbons than your mom

2008-01-13T00:15:00.000-06:00

If you know me well, then you know that on the weekends I like to sleep until I'm physically unable to sleep another minute longer. That doesn't mean that I manage to pull it off every weekend, but I always give it my best effort. There are several factors that work against me on a routine basis, but I have something they call "tenacity". This morning, though, my mom was scheduled to receive a "secret award" at the annual convention for the Wisconsin Builder's Association. So Tom and I dutifully set the alarm and I only swore a little bit (just a tiny bit!) when it went off. It's not every day someone in my family wins some high-falootin' award so you can bet we'll be there for them when it happens. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my sister won second place in a sauerkraut eating contest this past summer - and I was totally there for her, too. Although it was more like I was "on the other side of the room for her" because this sauerkraut eating contest? You couldn't use your hands.

My mom was the recipient of the WBA's "Rising Star Award" which I like to think is short for "Lots of Ribbons". My mom's name tag is decorated like a livestock stall at the fair. Not to compare my mom with livestock. Maybe she won't read this, eh? The point is that ribbons=good and my mom could totally kick your mom's ass. That's all I'm saying.

She gave an acceptance speech and everything. It had a couple of sports metaphors, which is to be expected, and Tom and I did our part by staring blankly while everyone else nodded in agreement. Prior to the awards ceremony we were subjected to a one hour guest speaker who is a sportscaster for UW Badger basketball and football, and when people start talking about sports around us our eyes glass over and our brains start short circuiting. People were singing fight songs and clapping like ... well, let's face it ... a bunch of crazy people. My mom, knowing that we're not so much into the sports, told us we could leave for that hour but we decided to take one for the team. See what I did there? I made a sports reference. Just when you think I'm going to zig? I zag.

And, uhhh ... I don't know who this next dude is, exactly, but he gave my mom an award so he's okay in my book. People around here seriously dress in Green Bay Packer jerseys for normal, everyday events. And my head? One day you'll hear it explode over this fact.

My mom isn't the type to let something like this go to her head. But Tom and I were talking about how if we won an award we'd have a pedestal built for it in our office and we'd have a motion sensor rigged up so that every time someone entered the room it would cut all the lights except for the single beam shining down on our award. Then for at least a couple of weeks we'd make everyone refer to us as "His/Her Excellency, Recipient of the Rising Star Award". We're humble like that.

Blue is the new ugly white

2008-01-06T12:37:00.000-06:00

The boy's bedroom is all put back together, and this morning I cleaned up all the Lego wreckage and carnage in order to take pictures of it. When I imported the pictures to my computer I wound up putting them in the wrong directory, and in searching for their location I found a folder full of bad memories. A folder named "Original House Pictures". And this was how Nicholas' bedroom looked when we bought the house - back when Nicholas was explaining to our real estate agent, Stacey, all the grand plans he had for it. Our grand plan for the room was "less ugly".

As an aside, I can't believe how tiny he looked in this picture. It was only 8 months ago and I swear he's grown a foot since then.

On our second day in the house Tom ripped up the carpet, and while I have several less blurry pictures of this event, I chose to post this one because by sheer stroke of luck I managed to capture the pet-stained Berber carpeting, a small pool of the powdery "pet stain smell cover upper" that covered the carpeting pad throughout the house, the lacy pink curtains, the wallpapered closet, and all the original woodwork. And Mo, of course. He always has his paws in whatever anyone is doing. You can enlarge the picture by clicking on it, but do so at your own risk because this level of ugliness could burn itself to your retinas and haunt you in your sleep.

This is how the room looks as of an hour ago (with a cameo appearance by "the boy" playing Lego Star Wars II):

I promised him that Bumblebee would receive VIP treatment. This was one of Tom's gifts to Nicholas for his birthday this year. It's almost as tall as he is, and Nicholas' desire to have it hung up on his wall is what drove us to get the room painted.

It's still not done

2008-01-05T11:18:00.000-06:00

Nicholas chose his room color months ago - "Silver Blueberry" from Pittsburgh Paints. I felt that his choice was too dark for the entire room so we compromised with one another by painting two walls in his choice and the other walls in "Pageant Song" which is two shades lighter. Nicholas would have undoubtedly declared that Pageant Song is "a girl color" - so I never told him the name. I only told him that it was exactly two shades lighter than Silver Blueberry, and if he ever asks I will tell him that it's called something like "The Totally Manly Steely Blue Color of Death and Destruction" so that he doesn't demand that I repaint it.

Still haven't hung the blinds up, but I did manage to find his curtains from our old house stuffed in the back of the linen closet. I have high hopes for productivity this weekend. I can hear Tom in there banging on something, achieving some home improvement, even as I type this.

Note: I didn't paint the window slide in this room because the windows in OUR room now require a disproportionate amount of force to open and close. Live and learn. Blinds will cover up any unsightliness. We still hope to have all the bedroom windows replaced within the next two years anyway.

Hair-brained ideas

2008-01-04T22:50:00.000-06:00

I got it in my head tonight that I wanted to install a script to manage my photos for the 365 Project and after configuring the PHP file and uploading everything to my webspace I found that I ... uhhh .. have a Windows hosting plan, which won't support PHP. So I had to request that my plan be switched to Linux, but I'm not entirely sure how long the account change will take. Up to 72 hours, I guess. The only thing the switchover seems to be affecting right now is my image directory.

I can still post a

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

to Tom's dad today. I think I'm just barely making it in under the wire at 11:50 EST, but it still counts! Normally I'd post a picture of some sort, but since my images are down right now it wouldn't make much sense.

In honor of the release of the new Indiana Jones LEGO sets, we're watching Temple of Doom tonight with Nicholas. Tom and I both remember this movie as being very cutting edge back when we were kids. When we watch it now it's lost a bit of its magic, but now Nicholas finally knows why we think we're so funny when he asks what's for supper and we both say "Chilled Monkey Brains".

2008 Resolutions, Project 365, and the OCD kid's closet

2008-01-02T15:08:00.000-06:00

Historically I've never been much of a resolution maker, but for some reason in the past couple of years I've given it a half-hearted effort every year. For 2008 it seemed like I had my resolutions all mapped out before the leaves changed colors. Which leads me to believe that I was prone to pissing myself off in 2007. Tom has his own take on resolutions:

"I think it’s a silly day to set goals on. Goals can be set and achieved any day with my new system: Tom’s Goalsetting, the not gay New Year’s way!"

I'm not going to rattle off my whole list of New Year's Resolutions here, it makes my eyelids a little heavy just thinking about how uninteresting the entire topic would be. I will share that one of my goals this year is to give Project 365 a try, because I have a lovely D50 that hasn't been fulfilling its photographic destiny for over a year now. Tom was the one who turned me on to the idea of tackling this project, and I'm intrigued by the idea of being able to see an entire year of my life through the photographs I took. I feel as though I have a love/hate relationship with my camera which could be alleviated somewhat (if not totally) by using it on a routine basis, so that would be a definite benefit to trying to keep this resolution. I warned Tom last night that it means everyone will have to get used to the sight of my heinously large camera bag around the house. I'm a routine victim of the "out of sight, out of mind" phenomenon. At some point I will have to pick up a smaller SLR case but it's not real high on my list right now.

At the house:

We spent the weekend painting my son's bedroom (finally) but it's not entirely done. So I don't have any "entirely done" photos of it. But I do have photos of how we repurposed his closet a few months ago. To start I stripped all of this lovely wallpaper from his closet.

We tried to convince Nicholas to accept the wallpaper. We told him all about little boys who would KILL to have pink and blue flower wallpaper in their closets but ever since he started school he falls for these tricks less and less. The wallpaper came off about as well as the wallpaper in our closet did, which means "not very well at all". It came off in little shreds of paper and required constant reapplication of wallpaper remover because it sucked it up like a sponge then dried out almost instantly. If I ever experience a moisture problem in my basement I'm going to want to get my hands on some of this magic, moisture absorbing wallpaper that they put in the upstairs closets. If our roof were to start leaking I'd install this stuff on every ceiling in the house.

Since we knew we'd be painting the bedroom a dark shade of blue EVENTUALLY, I wound up painting the inside of the closet a color that looked like light khaki at the store - but in reality it wound up being more of a pale butter yellow. I wasn't a huge fan of it in the end, but it's a closet.

Then Tom tackled the frustrating task of installing the shelving system I wanted in half of the closet. It's a fairly straightforward bracket and standard system, but I never really thought about the fact that we'd have to screw the brackets into the shelf boards. The one other time I had used these particular shelves it was a more utilitarian application where I had bare metal shelf brackets with a lip at the end to keep the shelves from sliding forward. In Nicholas' closet we bought some more aesthetically pleasing white brackets with no safety lip on them. It wasn't rocket science or anything, but there wasn't any wiggle room as far as installing the brackets went because once attached to the shelves they still had to match up perfectly with the notches on the standards. This required MATH. Which is a recipe for disaster for me, but Tom makes up for what I lack in the book learnin' department and it all went up securely - and LEVEL. Imagine that!

The shelves are for Lego storage sorted into plastic bins based on the size requirements of each kit. This is most definitely ME imposing my neurosis on HIM, because Nicholas would be fine stuffing them all in a paper sack. The colorful open-bin storage rack is your basic Target special that he's had since he was a toddler. As his toys become smaller and more intricate, this open-bin system becomes less and less practical for toy storage. For now it still serves its purpose for Transformers and various little boy "weaponry" of the Power Rangers and Star Wars variety. Because I recognize his need to be able to grab his lightsaber on the fly. There's no time to search for these things. I'm a cool mom that way.

His actual clothing storage needs are minimal, so in every house we've lived in I have modified his closet for toy storage in a similar way. I wanted the option to hang his winter shirts and sweatshirts and that's about it. He has a giant dresser to hold everything else. In the wasted corner space we installed some double coat hooks to hang backpacks, robes and crime fighting costumes on. This keeps all that stuff up off the floor. The closet doors are down in the basement being painted. Leaving the closet open like this would cause Tom and I to hyperventilate every time we were in the room, although I'm sure Nicholas would appreciate the easy access. Because opening and closing those closet doors is just one more annoyance in his everyday life, and he's all about streamlining his playing experience.

Once we get the closet doors up and the blinds hung I'll post them. And since I have to find things to photograph every day, the chances are very good that I'll actually follow through with it.

Our family shrank by 4 feet last night

2007-12-01T14:51:00.000-06:00

This morning my mother called to let us know that their dog, Ike, passed away during the night. Ike was, as they put it, "90 years old in dog years" and had been experiencing some health problems for a while. The death of an old dog who has led a very long, happy life is less tragic than when a young dog passes before his time - but it's no less traumatic for my mom and her husband who have been greeted by Ike's big old snarfing face and wagging tail every day when they arrive home. (Although the "snarfing" was a more recent characteristic, part of the respiratory difficulties he seemed to be experiencing in his advancing age.) He's been my stepfather's hunting companion for over a decade, one of the nicest and most finely trained dogs I've known, and his demeanor made it easy for him to endear himself to anyone.

The funniest part of this next picture is the "Warning: Guard Dog" sign on the gate. Ike was about as fierce as an Easter Peep™. Nicholas will be sad the first time he doesn't get to see Ike running up to the gate when we pull into the driveway. He always likes to stick a hand in there to say his hellos to both of the dogs, but Ike's older age made him considerably more mellow and Nicholas could often be found whispering "You're my favorite" to Ike much like he whispers it to our gray cat when the orange one isn't listening. We take care of feeding the dogs a lot when my mom and her husband are traveling, and Nicholas was already aware that Ike was experiencing some health problems and was much older than he is. So while it won't necessarily seem like news that came out of the blue, it will still be sad for him to hear.

My mom and her husband still have an English Setter named Raleigh. He's a young dog, coming into his own as a hunting companion. He would probably best fall into the category of "whippersnapper" - a wily creature with personality to spare. Recently my stepfather dyed his fur brunette for duck hunting season and we all crack up every time we arrive at the house because he looks as though he's been rolling in a mud pit. Apparently it's not easy to make a dog wait the 20 minutes for their hair color to set. Here's Nicholas serenading Raleigh in the summer of 2006, back when he was still a platinum blonde.

Even when they're the furry kind, it's always hard to lose a member of your family. But we'll always have the memories of his big snarfing face.

We've got spirit, yes we do.

2007-11-21T13:18:00.000-06:00

We're hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house tomorrow with my mom and stepfather, my sister and her husband, and their three kids. I love to cook in general, but I especially love the big holiday meals. Even when I lived in Indiana away from the bulk of my family I still put enough food on the table for a small army. My son starts to eagerly anticipate holiday dinners weeks before they will take place, and it's largely due to the existence of mashed potatoes. He'll tell random people at the grocery store that there are mashed potatoes on the horizon. He has seen what the future holds, and he's here to tell you - there are mashed potatoes there. They're in his drawings at school. I find him staring off into nowhere sometimes, and when I ask what's on his mind his answer is "mashed potatoes." He knows I only buy potatoes three times a year, and dammit ... one of those times is Thanksgiving. This morning before we left the house he caught sight of the two 5lb bags of potatoes in the pantry and his eyes literally sparkled with glee. They're on the premises, people! There they are, in their little plastic prisons, waiting for someone to viciously remove their skin, drop them into scalding hot water, then pulverize the living crap out of them. It's a beautiful thing.

A couple of weeks ago while I was looking for a recipe, I saw these pine cone turkeys on the Martha Stewart website. These particular ones were made with small pine cones, but I had a bunch of large pine cones from a Fall centerpiece that I took apart. Armed with a bag of feathers and some pipe cleaners, I sat down at the table on Sunday night and crafted six of these little feathery creatures for our Thanksgiving table:

Here's the whole family together:

It was fun for the first two or three turkeys, but after that it became a bit of a chore. Feathers are messy - and this really should have dawned on me sooner. Like right around the time I was buying a bag of feathers. Adding glue to the equation didn't help matters much. By the time I was done it looked as though I'd spent the evening brutally attacking a flock of birds at my dining room table.

We also put up our Christmas trees this past weekend. One in the living room:

And for the past three years I've always threatened to decorate my second tree but then I never get around to it. Mostly because one of my cats (not naming any names but it's the ORANGE ONE) has an affinity for plastic pine needles and shiny things. When I was out shopping a few weeks ago I found a big box of shatterproof (WOO!!) ornaments for under $20. I couldn't really turn down a deal like that, and the worst that can happen is I have to pick up a few ornaments every once in a while. It doesn't solve the problem of him physically EATING the tree, but it does eliminate the possibility of him eating broken glass. Which he would. You probably think I'm kidding but I'm not.

We set the second tree up in the sunroom because we'll be setting the kids' table out there for Thanksgiving dinner. It's on its own heater, it has direct access to the backyard, and it's far enough away from the adult table that my mom's head won't explode upon realizing that four kids make a lot of noise and sometimes exhibit poor table manners:

Since my sister is coming up for Thanksgiving this year we'll be celebrating Christmas with her at the same time, which is why we aimed to get the Xmas decorations up so early. Also I don't need much of a reason to decorate for Christmas. Basically I just spend 11 months waiting around for this time of year to arrive.

For the mashed potatoes, of course.

Happy Thanksgiving!

He told Bill that if we move his desk one more time, then he's quitting

2007-08-28T15:04:00.000-06:00

My son's computer desk used to be in his bedroom right under one of his windows (and he could see the squirrels, and they were merry). It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. Like rolling your jeans. Or Color Me Badd. The reality was that it left his room quite cramped.

In July a solution came to us in the form of the local Home Builder's Association moving to new offices. They sent out an email to members offering up cubicle walls of various sizes on a first-come-first-served basis. All we had to do was pick them up, which Tom did one afternoon with one of our work trucks.

With the cubicle walls we were able to section off a space in the unused (because of the PLAID CARPET) rec room downstairs into a little computer haven for Nicholas right outside of Tom's office. Not that Nicholas spends much time down there playing on his computer anyway, so the little "room" also serves as storage space for a lot of his old gear - which we keep around because even though he doesn't play with all the stuff his three cousins sometimes stay with us and then we need more toys and we need them all in a place far, far away from wherever we are.

This is another one of those awkward angles that are so prevalent in our house. But here's a wide shot of the whole set-up, which winds up forming a long hallway down to the two downstairs bedrooms that currently serve as Tom's office and our guest room - while giving us more places to store things where people don't have to see it.

But if we take his stapler, he'll burn the building down.

Why you should never put me on speakerphone in a public place

2007-08-28T14:53:00.000-06:00

"Wait! You're in a store right now?"

"Yes"

"And you have me on speaker phone?"

"Yes"

"So .... this entire time I was talking to you, I was on speaker phone?"

"Yes. So don't say any swear words."

"Hey, did that rash ever clear up?"

"Don't talk about rashes while I'm trying on clothes!"

"When is your court date for those shoplifting charges?"

"You're so funny."

"Do you still have that 'peeing in clothes you don't own' fetish?"

Their Royal Highnesses

2007-08-14T07:30:00.000-06:00

I posted back at the end of July about one of our cats (Mo) who was going in to be declawed at the ripe age of 2 (and the ripe weight of 12 pounds). I won't go over my mixed emotions all over again because it's moot now, the claws are gone and he's back to acting like royalty around the house again. As a matter of fact we've renamed both the cats in the past week - Mo is now "Princess" and Chivus is "Duchess" - because the two of them have been laying about the house as though they're on direct orders from the Queen Mother.

The veterinarian kept Mo for two days because with him weighing as much as he does they wanted to keep him off his feet as long as possible. I laughed hard when I hung up the phone because anyone who knows Mo would know that keeping him off his feet isn't exactly a problem. Getting him ON his feet is more of problem. Neither of the cats is much for this thing they call "exercise". Every once in a while one of them will get up and walk to the other side of the room, but then the physical exertion required to walk across the room dictates that they take a minimum 2 hour nap before moving again. But they kept him until Sunday evening and then I was allowed to bring him home - and I had him on pain meds, which he was surprisingly willing to take. (When I got him from a shelter in Indianapolis as a kitten he had an exceptionally vicious upper respiratory infection that required he take antibiotics a couple times a day and I almost lost both of my arms and possibly an eye in the battle).

That Sunday night that he first came back home we were watching television and when it came time to go to bed I reached down to pick him up off the floor to bring him to bed with us - because heaven forbid he would have had to walk in there himself - and he was down there chewing on his left paw and a big (for a cat) circle of bright red blood was soaking into the carpet underneath him. Since it was 11pm on a Sunday night we didn't have a whole lot of options available to us, so I crafted a make-shift bandage that consisted of a cut up rag, a 6-inch section from an Ace bandage and two ponytail holders that were tight enough to keep him from getting the whole thing off, but loose enough that he wouldn't need an amputation the next day. I'm the MacGyver of animal-care. We had to keep him in the bathroom that night with a litter box and his food and water dish until I could get him into the vet in the morning. And despite his best efforts, he never did manage to get that bandage chewed all the way off - which turned out to be a good thing, according to the vet, because it allowed it to clot enough that he didn't require stitches.

From what they could tell, and Mo wasn't giving up ANY information, some surgical glue had run down in-between two of the pads on his paw and it was probably bugging him to have those two pads stuck together. Since it was hard to get down in there to chew the glue out he basically just mangled the paw of his foot trying.

BUT - since the surgical glue was still down in there, and since now it was going to be all bothersome because of the injury, they needed to keep him away from the paw so he didn't open it up again and/or give himself a raging infection from messing with it. So he had to rock this look for a week:

It didn't interfere with his couch-laying schedule or his bird-watching schedule, but it sure freaked the other cat out.

And speaking of the other cat, Mo tends to be a camera hog because, in general, he has more personality and is the lead character in more funny stories. In the interest of fairness, though, here's a glamour shot of Chivus (aka "The Duchess") from this past weekend.

Mo is no longer wearing the collar. I actually didn't even keep it on him for the full week because I checked his paw every morning and after about 5 days that surgical glue had finally worked its way out. Plus they can't groom themselves with the big bell collar on, and Chivus basically ran screaming from the room every time Mo entered - so HE wasn't going to help. So after five days in the collar Mo was starting to smell a little ripe. After the collar came off he must have sat and worked on his hygiene for a solid hour, which is more energy than he usually expends in a day.

Every once in a while he'll stand next to the corner of the loveseat, where the tell-tale signs of the good old days still remain, but all-in-all he's no worse for the wear. Neither is our furniture.

Master Painting

2007-08-13T14:44:00.000-06:00

In an effort to reduce the volume of snotty emails from a certain someone, I figured I would post a little "Hi, how are ya?" on some of the ongoing projects we have been finishing up around the ol' adobe - starting with our master bedroom.

Yes ... it WAS the first project that we tackled in the house, but initially our goal was really only to get it to a point where we didn't have a panic attack and then spontaneously break out into hives when we walked in there. Anything after that was like sweet, sweet Benadryl-laced icing on the proverbial cake. We started by tearing up the carpet to reveal the original wood floors (you can read about it here) and then we spent the next 24 hours soaking ourselves in bleach.

After that, we removed the stunningly retro daffodil wallpaper in the closet, primed all the wood trim and painted it white, and painted the walls a lovely shade of barely-there blue and this was where we left you:

At that point we had to declare the bedroom "good enough" while we moved on to some more urgent projects. Like troubleshooting that aroma that was coming from the dishwasher, recarpeting and painting the living room and all the other things I've posted about between then and now.

What I neglected to share was that right around the end of May Tom managed to finish painting the closet doors white and hung them back up, with a pair of new, brushed nickel "knobby dealies":

He also removed all the old tan outlets and switches and replaced them with white ones, and then THAT is where we actually abandoned the project. Now you're up to speed.

Late last week I started getting a bit irritated with myself for not tying up a lot of the loose ends we'd left in the bedroom, so I spent Friday evening and most of the morning on Saturday painting our two bedroom windows and ripping down the horrific plastic roller shades. In their place we hung these 2" faux-wood (because our last name ain't Rockefeller!!) blinds.

Once I had finished all that, Tom took the time to hang some of his Vegas photography over the bed. We had been avoiding this task like the plague because these particular frames have two hangers (one on each side) - which is nice once they're hung because they always stay level - but the actual act of hanging them equidistant and level can leave the wall looking like it was peppered with lead shot. This time around we bought some of the 3M Picture Hanging Strips (free plug) and while hanging them still required a lot of math and measuring, it was infinitely easier to fine-tune their placement so long as the strips were up in the general vicinity of where they needed to be. You just pop the frame off the wall, nudge it up/down/over where needed, then it clicks back into place. Plus if we decide to take them down or move them, we just remove the strips and we're not left with 8 holes in our wall.

And just to show that no place is sacred when you work for the family business, here's a picture of the nightstand on my side of the bed. If you can't reach us by phone, cell, fax or e-mail within a reasonable amount of time ... chances are we're dead, folks.

We're still not 100% done with the bedroom. Tom is still itching to get the 1/4 round down around the perimeter of the room, then that will need to be primed and painted to match the rest of the trim. Also there have been talks of putting up some crown molding, but that will probably be put off until we've made considerable progress on some of the other areas of the house - like the kitchen and the bathrooms. Never can tell with Tom, though, because the man likes to miter!

Our room is hard to photograph because of its size and the location of its door off the hallway, but despite all that I try to take pictures of the rooms from the same angle as the original pictures we took of the empty house, purely for comparison purposes. So here was the original master bedroom:

And here it is now: