Spring Break = Spring Work

Craig is on break, so of course we're having a leisurely time, ranting about novelty pencils and other nuisances in the world. We sleep in late, drink coffee slowly, and lounge in our pajamas all day long.

Isn't it great to have a rich fantasy life? Yes, Craig is on break, which means that I haven't let him sit still for a single moment. Work! Work! Work! Do this, man. Do that, man. My bidding, I tell you, do my bidding! Hah, another fantasy. Truth: we've both been working our fingers raw.

Project One: Build and install shelving in my office (and also completely clean and reorganize the office, find pictures from ten years ago and laugh until we cry at our younger selves, cringe at stack of old college exams, and die of embarrassment over old journals stuffed in the bottom of a box). This project required that we cut, sand, prime and paint the lumber and 18 brackets (yes, 18 brackets with two coats of primer and three finish coats). It took us two days to go from this:



To this:



Those books have been in storage for four long years. Liberation!

Project Two: Repaint exterior trim on three windows. Three of our windowsills rotted. Yes, our house is old, but the windowsills were relatively new (circa 2003). Don't get me started on why they rotted (caulk does not serve as a replacement for real woodwork). Thankfully, we paid someone to replace the sills, so Craig just got stuck with the finish work.

Project Three: Finish what we started. Remember this?



Back in November, just before the weather turned cold, we started to refinish our front door (genius move on our part). Fast forward 4 months and one sunny day, and this was the scene in our front yard:




What's not pictured are the HOURS we spent stripping and sanding (and stripping and sanding some more). We had one day of sunshine in between rain, and we made it work. By the end of the night the door looked like this:


Now, some might be wondering why we repainted the door. Well, our door's been around the block. It's got wood filler in many places and caulk too (oh, those guys who rehabbed our house loved that caulk), so taking it back to its original glory was never a possibility. However, the work we did will ensure that the paint doesn't chip off all over our front porch (which is why we refinished it in the first place). We still need to paint the topcoat but that requires sunshine.

Project Four: Replace the master bathroom floor.

What can I say? This one is on hold. We're tired and our hands are sore.

So that's us these days. In my mind, it's been a great spring break. We like to work side by side, so it's been good. I mean, vacation on a beach would probably be good too. Okay, it would be better. On the other hand, if we were at the beach, I'd be feeling self conscious about my mommy flab. Instead I'm feeling pretty righteous about our home improvement skills.

done.

The bathroom is finished. It took a few extra days (because I'm a freak when it comes to paint and imperfections make me nuts). I'm not going to post all the photos here (who wants to see a rotten floor, can you say coliform bacteria!). Here's the link though.

Instead, here are a couple of my faves from the last several weeks.

Still here, really

It's just that I've been wearing the same pants and shirt for a week, and even though you can't see me, I was embarrassed.

The reason for same pants? We have been re-doing our bathroom (and thankfully we're almost finished). We hoped to reset the toilet last night, but it just didn't seem like a good idea at 11pm, after a full day of laying tile. I give it three more days (which really means nights when Craig is home) and we will be done. So hooray for us.

Now why did we decide to do this? Well, because the yahoos who rehabbed our house didn't seal the toilet properly and we had rotten floors. Yuck. Don't get me started. Once we ripped up the floor it seemed like a good idea to repaint, and once we repainted it seemed like a good idea to change fixtures. You get the idea. In the end we turned something unhappy into happy, and for that I'm thrilled (if you hadn't noticed it had been a little bit grouchy around these parts). Pictures to come.

Oh and Happy Valentine's Day, the holiday best celebrated by those under the age of ten.

Christmas is like being pregnant

In that I nest. I take on large home projects late in November and early December in anticipation of the big event. I feel a sense of urgency, a requirement if you will, to feather my nest. This year, clearly, I was shortsighted when I prodded my husband into doing this. Mid-job the rain came, followed in short order by cold temperatures (in the 20's! This is Georgia. Cold isn't allowed until January).

For the second It's December Let's Re-Do Something Project, we took on the kitchen floor. Well, I should say, not we, but Steve, because we were smart enough to hire someone else. Checkers, anyone?



And finally, just to round things out with a little more stress, I've commenced repainting all the trim and baseboards (hideous, I tell you, the scuffs, the unknown permanently adhered substances, a mess!). My timing, being poor, coincided with another hacking cold for Julia, so I'm painting with a wee bear at my side, sniffling. Her illness also meant she missed decorating a gingerbread house at school (the tears), and the director called to tell me gingerbread supplies were waiting for us. We rallied (kitchen trim done), and managed to construct a spiffy dwelling.



If only I looked that cute while sick. Back to the trim (while my little bear sleeps).

Day 21: Tropical Snowman and five snippets

First, the artist:




Then, the sculpture:




Next, snippets from our conversations over the last several days:

1. "Daddy, we need to go garbaging again. We haven't gone in a long time."

2. "Don't go into the kitchen, there's a dead mouse on the counter."

3. "You know, the shufflers and the mumblers, the crazy people that live in our neighborhood."

4. "I quit. I'm done being a mother for today."

5. "Is it my imagination, or does our whole house smell like a dirty diaper?"

Day 19: Useless

You might think that with an animal such as this



the local rodent population would be too scared to enter our house.


You would be wrong.

Day 17: Low Expectations

I have nothing today. My creative energies have been sapped dry. For one, Julia is not sleeping, and somehow sleep deprivation with a 17 month old is far worse than with a newborn. Two, I'm working on something for Baby Whitney (pictures much later, rest assured). And three, the only post that's floating around my brain relates to the Mercer Baseball Players who live two houses down from me. Before I publish that post I need to cleanse the document. Profane best describes my thoughts.

I will leave you now with a little bit of fall. It finally arrived.

Masters of the land

Saturday: 92 degrees, partly cloudy, 126 retaining wall blocks, 63 capstones, sweaty, smelly, exhausted, and masterful.



Nearly seven years of marriage, and this man still makes me smile. Additional images here.

Home improvement advice for idiots Craig and Ellen

When your yard is comprised of weeds with very little grass, do not use a "Weed and Feed" product (unless you want your lawn to turn brown).

Wanted: inner domestic goddess

It's been a little over three years since I have had a full time job. I don't count being a stay at home mom as a job; jobs have benefits and retirement. Jobs generally don't include stretchmarks and extreme sleep deprivation as a requirement. I'm not discounting the "work" I do by staying home with my kids. It's easily the toughest work I have ever done. But being at home doesn't include a paycheck, and truth be told, my "bosses" would be charged with harassment if this were an actual job.

I'm not complaining because in reality I don't want an actual job. It's just that some days, well, many days, it kills me to be domestic. That's the tricky thing about being a SAHM. I like a clean house, but I don't really like cleaning it. I like to be organized, but I procrastinate too much for that to happen. I wish I were more crafty (as an artistic outlet), but I don't finish crafty projects well. I don't like to empty the dishwasher. I hate putting away clothes (though I don't mind doing the laundry). I would rather spend time on the computer (mindlessly searching for who knows what) than take charge of our disorganized office or my bedroom dresser (whose surface has not been seen since we moved in here).

I try to psyche myself up for being more domestic, but invariably I find myself reading online articles from the New York Times instead. The one way in which I handle domesticity, and even enjoy it, is in the kitchen. I love making bread. I love to cook. Finding new foods, new recipes, and new methods gives me a kick. I have to wonder though if my love affair with all things food has nothing to do with being domestic. Rather it fulfills both the analytical, sciencey part of my personality and the artistic part.

I think I'm going to give up on my search for my inner domestic goddess. It just isn't in me. My house may not be well organized, but I make a kicking loaf of multigrain bread. That has to be enough.

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I have uploaded more pictures from the past month (including Nina's visit, Craig's return, and Julia crawling). Click here.

Off the grid

Craig is enroute to his field site in southwestern Texas, so it's just us girls at the Byron homestead. My dear friend Nina is staying with me to help with Julia and Grace. She is affectionately known as "my otha motha", and I can't imagine how I would manage this time without her.

Shortly before Craig's departure he informed me that he would be completely out of contact for the duration of his fieldwork. Smart man. He only had to deal with me being weepy for a couple of days. You see, this will be longest stretch that Craig and I have not communicated since we met (even when he was in Vietnam seven years ago we managed to talk once a week). There's no other way to cut it; this is going to be very difficult for me.

Craig and I have been together long enough to have evolved a rhythm of dependence. He takes care of all things dirty (garbage, kitty litter, Grace's potty) as well as all things manly (that is, anything to do with house maintenance or the basement). In seven years, I have become completely incompetent in these areas, happily leaning on Craig to perform all of these tasks (he gets a pretty good deal though since I handle pretty much everything else in our lives).

I think I'll manage (though I may complain about it a bit). I have already had to take over one manly task. Two nights ago our pipes froze (when temps dropped into the teens), so yesterday, I trekked to Lowe's to buy pipe insulating foam and spent the afternoon on a ladder in the basement covering our pipes. I'm happy to report that my labor kept our pipes open (last night the temps hovered around 20 degrees).

Maybe I'm not so dependent after all.

Magic eraser is my friend

Why I choose the holidays to tackle house projects is, what's the word, oh yeah, stupid. Somehow the holidays fill me with the energy I lack at any other time of the year to redecorate or just plain decorate for the first time. Again, it really makes no sense and is, in fact, irrational.

Craig attributes this to some grand vision I have of Christmas. I wish that were the case. I think it has everything to do with the fact that I will have people in my house, and I don't want it to look like "toddlers gone wild". That's a tall order since Grace tends to deposit (or drop or throw) clothes, used bits of paper, play dough, dolls, balls, musical instuments, and the like all around the house. I feel like Charlie Brown, and she is Pig-Pen. I face an uphill battle. I should admit defeat now, drink a bottle of wine, and enjoy the holidays in a dirty, sticky, smelly house. Amen.

The view from here

Call me crazy, but for some reason I decided to join NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month. The only requirement is that I post every day for the month of November. Like most spur of the moment decisions, I put absolutely no thought into the fact that we will be travelling at the end of the month. I'm going to give it my best, but I'm not entirely sure how I will accomplish posting from the road.

I'm also concerned whether or not I will actually have something interesting to write about for a whole month. I hope that I don't bore my family to tears. I'll try to stay away from posts about bodily functions (I do have a three year old and five month old, so that's pretty difficult).

There are some posts that ruminate in my mind for awhile before I put them out for the world (i.e. my postpartum post), so this month may provide me with an opportunity to put a pen to some of those ruminations. The most prominent of which are a series of posts I would like to write about living in Macon, and more specifically, living in a transitional neighborhood. That's where I got the idea for the title of this post, the view from here.


The photo above was taken from my front porch; it is my view of the world every day I descend our stairs and look out the front door. For those who wonder what "transitional" means in the context of a neighborhood, this picture illustrates that concept quite well. We live in one of the houses that has actually transitioned from being derelict to pretty wonderful (watch a video here). Living in an environment of such extremes (e.g. condemned vs rehabed homes) messes with my brain on a regular basis. And I suppose my goal in posting about our neighborhood and/or Macon is to air some of those thoughts and perhaps gain some clarity on our choice of living space. If nothing else, I will have a lot of material to work with.

To help document our life in this neighborhood, I'm going to take a daily photo. This has dual purposes. One, it will get Julia and I out of the house, and two, there's some pretty hysterical stuff to take pictures of out there. So here's to my month of posting, day four already completed.

(And for those looking for pics of Aunt B's visit, go here).