February 25, 2012

That's right. We just got back from the doctor and heard that little 160 bpm heart pumping away in our 2-inch tyke. We are in for a treat and super excited.

Spring Projects

Our friend's brother, Brad Schroth, died last August and we have recently been blessed to inherit his dining room set:

Here it is in our front room. We like it a lot. The walls just look so nehked! So I've been hunting for THE decor to dress them up a little--make it look like a put-together room. My neighbor is re-working her basement and had this picture sitting around and very thoughtfully asked me if I would like it:

That's me holding the camera crooked, I promise. I admit I was a little apprehensive with the darkness of the boats being a little too gloomy; but, for a dining room, I think the "darkness" keeps it a little more formal-ly. Thank you, Daphne. She also gave us her mother's old croquet set which we are very excited to use.

In case you were wondering, our attic is still in shambles. My energy has been re-devoted to the outdoors for the spring/summer/fall and our yards look kinda crappy, but they have improved in some ways. For instance: I moved a shade-loving Mountain Laurel from the front of the house (hot afternoon sun) to the north side, along the driveway. We've dug up several Hosta from an undesirable location and distributed them around the neighborhood, along with some Red Hot Poker (Knifophia), chives, and Joe Pie Weed. 

Mark took on the most horrifying part of our garden one day, the black berry, kiwi, and ivy vine patch. The battle is not over, but he got a good start.

Everything on the ground behind him used to go up to about chest level. It's at least not giving me nightmares anymore.

That garden got a couple more spats of attention that week. I pulled out all the un-fruitful, overgrown raspberries. They are still there, just under control now. The final project I grumbled through was the removal of the bog garden (a bog is a land of saturated mud; things like cat tails and irises grow well in them). I like bogs, but not in my vegetable garden. That just doesn't work for me. I decided that I was going to pull out all of the plants and build the area up to ground level; and, what cheaper way to do that than to make it into a compost pile area?!

Here's me post-bog makeover. I love the previous owners dearly, but did a lot of cursing over the course of those 3 hours, as they had used a plastic tarp under the mud to line the bog. It was still holding pretty strong, and I had to dig it out of the mud! *not cool* I'm glad it's done now, though. I've got a great compost pile going: newspaper, grass, fruit & veggie scraps...blessedly nice potential.

The rest of the summer will be spent working as a counselor for the county's summer camp programs. With week one almost finished, I'm exhausted, but super happy to be busy; and, this camp makes me want kids more than ever. Just as soon as we feel better about Mark's occupation...

Mr. Fix-it

Mark had spring break from school last week. It was VERY needed, since he leaves the house by 6:30 every morning and Monday through Thursday nights does not get home until 10:45. Of course, he went to bed earlier, napped, and got to play on the computer during the week; but, he also got some really great handy man things done. He said it felt so good to accomplish things for US... as in, not because it was an assignment for school or work.

What started it all: our bathroom sink. I used the pipe to hoist myself out of the bathtub once (and never again) this past December and the threaded area where the pipes screw together broke, or ripped...but anyway, we couldn't use that sink--the water would drip onto the floor. Remember we have 2 other bathrooms, so it wasn't a huge deal for us. I was not strong enough to move the rest of the pipe out, but Mark was. So when he finally had more than a Saturday to pretend to replenish his strength, he got in there and removed the old pipe and voila! New and Improved.

Well, that felt so good, Mark proceeded to fix more things. This includes the antenna on top of the car. (we also hadn't been able to use our radio since fall because of a collision with the antenna and the bottom panel of the garage door (both broke). It was early, Mark was tired...

Here's a picture of the fixed antenna. It's sealed with the use of a caulking gun. Kind of laughable, I know. But thanks to Mark keeping a soldering gun handy, he was able to sit on the car and fix the wires back together. What a stud!

Next up: I asked Mark if he'd give the attic wiring situation a "college try" since I can't get a hold of Dom yet. He worked mightily for several hours on that dang thing. It's just that the wires aren't adding up. Don't know what needs to be done. He did get it down to what DOESN'T connect to the light switch.

I'm so proud of him. Such an accomplished fellah. We are really looking forward to when school is over on October 13th. Associates out of the way, and then Bachelors program doesn't start till later. Good luck, Mark. At least I hope your Autumn will be restful and productive.

Touched by Tesla

Mark is the one smart enough to come up with this title. I apologize if it gives away the ending...

What with the weather perking back up and my becoming a pampered chef consultant and busy weekends, I've been (often) purposely avoiding my attic. It's dirty, right? Well, yesterday seemed just right for installing the lights. I needed to wash my hair before dance class, so crawling through this:

 It actually seemed somewhat reasonable; it looks much bigger than it is. I had to crawl to the back to grab the lighting wire I had shoved through a small hole. The blurry stuff at the top of the picture is shouldn't-be-loose, hanging bits of insulation.What's on the other side of the wire?

This. It's burnt insulation from the previous light fixture. It breaks apart and falls on your face with great ease.

And after 2 hours of figuring out how to hold this thing in place (balance it on my head) while I screw & hammer into the 4 suspension locations, this recessed lighting can is in place--essentially and hopefully for good. Hammering is not a forte of mine. Then again, neither is seeing through filthy safety glasses.

At one point, I had dropped a screw and had only one point secured of the 4 required to be able to let go. ok...I have a 5 1/2 foot wingspan and I need to be able to bend down and pick up that screw while still holding up the fixture. The one bit of metal that was secured to the ceiling ripped apart on its way down to the ground. I decided then and there to keep several nails and screws in my pocket for this project; and then I dropped the hammer. RRRRRRR!

Never ever ever did I think I would feel relieved to see this:

The outlet box where the light switch goes.
That's a lot of wires! I'm usually pretty good at putting wire configurations back together if I have a good recollection of what the box previously looked like. I wasn't far off. All the white needed to go together, the two outlet blacks needed to go together, the ground wires attach to each other, and the lighting black wires get pigtailed to the light switch. Sure. Can do! The breaker switch labeled "ATTIC VENT FAX" was off, so I was ready to go. This goes here, those over there... uh huh... now I just need to grab all these white ones and put them together in the little red twisty-cap thing.

AAAH! OUCH! WOAH!

My body completed the circuit and my shoulder and my teeth with metal fillings felt it. Apparently, the proper breaker to switch was that which was labeled "Dining Room." Hm... That's on the other side of the house. It should be labeled "Living Room, Entry Way, Attic."

Could this have been avoided? Absolutely. My dad has this nifty electric-field-detector-thingy that looks like a giant crayon. All you have to do is hold it up to an outlet and it beeps and flashes if there's power there. I'm a huge fan of it and have used it several times, but I couldn't find it and didn't want to wait. Woops. I don't think I"ll ever do any electrical work without it ever again. In fact, I think I'm going to buy myself one. That would be wise.

But wait: the situation got worse! 

 After Mark helped me find the "Dining Room" switch, we celebrated by flipping the light switch at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the attic. The very light switch which acts as a regulation standard second connection to the outlet box up in the attic which I had just operated on. Just a fun little ON, OFF to show that it works. Well, I did not know that light switches are part dragon. Apparently it "arked." The switch actually blew fire as it started flipping up and down by itself.

Here is the "Outlet of Fire" and that shiny stuff just north west of the tip of the screw driver is, from what we could figure, Mercury. I really hope this is going to be a quick fix of simply replacing the light switch. But of course, I can't help but wonder, "How much is this incident going to cost?"

What did I do wrong here? Something about both switches being set to ON or something. I really should get a professional to help me this time around. But I'm not paying anyone. Heck no! I can do this! trial and error, baby. Or education by error, anyway. (Dad's business partner, Dom, said he'd check out my lighting if I wanted. He's out of town this week, but I'll be chatting with him soon.)

The other project with this lighting has to do with the light bulb holding structure within the can. It is currently hanging freely. It's supposed to be secured. I need to figure out how.

Cool Trivial Fact Mark Taught Me:

Thomas Edison showed people the "dangers" of Nikola Tesla's electricity by electrocuting them. As amazing as Tesla's method is, I think it's safe to say that's why Edison won the popularity contest...beside the fact that Tesla went crazy.

Down with the old...

 

This girl

had a very productive week. Can you see what I did? Here I am tearing out those ceiling tiles. I believe they went up with the house in 1948 and they were holey, and drawn on, and I'm glad they're gone. Even with the mask, I still had black boogers. Before I attacked that, however, I removed the wallpaper:

I really didn't want to score the wallpaper, so first I peeled of the top layer, which wasn't terribly hard. I think it only took 2 or 3 hours.

Then I took 8-ish hours to peel off the adhesive layer. I soaked each section in a 3:1 water/fabric softener solution, then it really wasn't that bad to scrape off.

Oreo did her best to help me. It was nice to have her company.

The biggest threats were on this darn south wall. That's black mold alright. Yup. My dad gave me some amazing industry-strength mold killer and some Kiltz to get rid of it. And the other problem presented itself at about 10pm on Friday night. I was up there, finishing tearing down the tiles and came across a large number of dead wasps caught in the spider webs between the insulation and tiles. I asked Mark to come up stairs and keep me company while I finished up and together we pulled and yanked at the tiles till the very end. We found about 12 little dried up mud nests within our ceiling. ew. creepy. At least now we know why we were finding 1 or 2 wasps a week just chilling in the attic and what we can do to prevent it this and all following summers.

So now the attic is naked. The carpet, of course, will be staying down until I'm finished painting the walls and ceiling. Then I'll remove it and paint the floor boards (carefully).

My plans for this week include installing new insulation-contact recessed lighting cans, consider installing a third one, for better lighting and more electrical practice, and put up as much of the dry wall as I can. Since it's just me most of the time, I don't really know how much of that will get done. Poor Mark's always at work or school. Then in 2 weeks, I'll get all the mudding done and change out all the electrical outlets the previous owners  painted over.

I've got my work cut out for me but I'm having fun. I feel empowered with every accomplishment. I'm already laughing at it now, but as I was finishing up my last little bit of wallpaper removal, I started talking to myself about being so good, I could probably build my own house. Yeah...no.

Make Myself Make it Happen

Tomorrow, I have a job interview for a different position in the metroparks. It's only three miles from home and only from late March to September/October. Doable, I'd say. We'll see how it goes.

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If you've been through the "virtual tour" of our house, you may recall our shabby attic.

These stairs I can work with. In fact, I'll work around them.

this is the closet. It's what's to the right when you come up the stairs. Holey cow.

And here's the essential whole of the attic. not terrible looking, I guess, but  not cohesive.

I am repulsed by it. I know that if I get rid of that wallpaper and remove the carpet and patch up the walls, I'll be happy with it. But I don't want to! It's not like I can't handle a rotten project: I spent a large part of January in the basement stripping and sanding our bedroom door so I didn't have to look at the teal anymore (May I add that the teal is ironically the SAME teal as the outside of the house. That's right. There was still paint left over so, "Hey, let's use this outdoor paint on these beautiful doors!"). That was a nightmare project and since I absolutely loved removing wallpaper from my room in high school, I guess that my mind is on a one-nightmare-a-season track and that's why I'm stuck in a rut and not just yet very willing to attack this attic which I loath so much.

I need to make this change happen. I just don't want to. Not at all. Yuck. Eww. Gross.
Anyone dying for a really tough service project?

Amazing Cupcakes

I love magazines. I love going through each one I get and cutting out any great recipes, articles about cleaning a certain part of the house or organizing a party or budgeting... I was cruising the pages of January's bon appetit and came accross a recipe from Society Bakery in Dallas, Texas, for these S'mores Cupcakes. YOW! they're awesome--especially if you love bon fires for the sake of roasting marshmallows, as I do.

Now these beauties are fantastic, but not without a price: they take forever to make: the cake part is a basic muffin mix, essentially, but 3/4 of the flour has been replaced with graham cracker crumbs. After baking, you have to let them cool completely, then dig out a hole from the top, squeeze marshmallow creme into hole, cover with not-hot ganache...by then it's been 3 hours. My favorite part is topping each one with a hand-roasted, homemade marshmallow, lovingly created by me. I definately owe some to people, such as Laura, because it was her birthday yesterday. Sorry, I'm a slacker. But I'll get it done, hopefully by August (happy half birthday?). If you'd like the recipe, click here. Even with all the time they take, let me tell you they are SO worth it.

Beautification: 809 Warwick Drive

I realized this weekend that I have yet to post any pictures of our home in a lived-in state. It's getting along pretty well; and it definitely feels like my home now, regardless of the 4 rooms still lacking furniture. (There's a lot to fill and I don't think I need to be in a big hurry to get a cabinet in my office and a couch in Mark's, ya' know?)

This is our living room, where we spend most of our time. Pretty much every weekend, Mark claims the coffee table as his homework station, docking his laptop there while he watches TV. I was hoping he would us the table behind the couch, but I guess sitting on the floor is much more fun. The table in the back is my "craft table." HaHa. Like I do crafts. It is most always piled up with books and magazines, or has my sewing machine on it. I've added a clock to the wall on the left.

This is my office. It's in the basement. That desk is a tree lawn. I refinished the chair seat and made curtains to match. I love it. My eliptical is also down here, which I've started using again now that I have no guaranteed  excuse that "I'll lose any excess wait at my slave-labor job."

Mark picked this brown fabric for the curtains in his office. He has installed a hanging bookshelf, which is the blue you see on the right of the screen. He's actually done a great job of putting his office together, and when he gets down there, he puts things away pretty well. I, however, just threw a bunch of stuff in there that had been hanging around the TV area, so I won't take a picture of that just now.

This is the front room. It used to be plum. We had some missionaries come over and eat pizza with us in exchange for helping us paint. Secret: I found that Monet print all framed and everything just sitting in the dumpster at an office where I worked a winter of '09. The chair is actually my dad's. We were holding it for him last year. It's now in his new Man Cave and looks great there. There is no other furniture in this very large room except for a mini bookshelf and a table with a gold fish bowl, but I hope to tear out the carpet this year and refinish the hardwood floors, then add some charcoal-colored furniture and a shag area rug.

This is in the master bathroom. The walls used to be a periwinkle blue, but it was very depressing for me, so I stole this sunshiney mustard yellow from my Dad's paint stash and voila! Happiness. Mark put this shelf up for me. I need to paint it, I'm going for white. The opposite wall has a coat hook entry-way picture frame that I've put 2 different waterfall pictures in: one of yosemite falls, and one of a waterfall that I hiked 16 miles to go see in Idaho.


before...



after.

Our crazy retro bedroom was painted before we moved in. I just couldn't handle waking up and seeing that. So here's my nice, plain bedroom wall and trim outside the now yellow bathroom. The basket is full of purses and acts as my night stand.

 

 

Here's our bed in the winter-style. In the warmer months, we just have a pretty, flowery light quilt. This year, I left the duvet cover off and just have an afghan over our down comforter--I kinda like how much lighter it looks. I'm thinking about adding two tiny kinda cast-ironish chandeliers to give the wall some action.

My big goals for this year are to attack the attic: remove the carpet and wallpaper and fix all the holes in the walls and ceiling. I also am working up some great plans for our backyard.

Happy News?

OK fine. I've been procrastinating this entry long enough. Actually, after I wrote that first sentence, I went and made myself lunch.

Over the course of this past year, I exerted more of my energy than I care to think about as a public gardener making $7.50 and hour and driving 100 miles per day (because Mark & I share a car and worked in counties on opposite sides of our county). I enjoyed it except when I was weeding, which KILLED my esophagus (acid reflux). But with that much driving and that little money, we drained our savings. Why did I do it? There's a new park opening in Avon this spring and its a Public Greenhouse! how neat. I'd love to run a public greenhouse. Well, this greenhouse is part of the Lorain County MetroParks and they prefer to higher from within. "So," says I, "I'd better be 'within.'" I applied at LCMP's Schoepfle Garden in Birmingham, Ohio (not found on any map) and was offered to work as a seasonal for the required wage previously mentioned. yuck. ok...if it will help me get a good job, I guess I can work like a slave for a year.

The position was up for application in August and I readily applied. Duh! I'm perfect for this! I have greenhouse background and I'm a real people person. I fit the job description perfectly. But the greenhouse building process was seriously stalled and I didn't get called for an interview until Mid-January. First interview was a screening interview, weeding out the not-at-all-qualifieds--no problem. The next week I was called in for the second interview. It was an hour and 15 minutes and my old boss, who was not the best boss to me, was one of the 3 interviewers. My mind froze. It was a terrible and awkward interview, but I did it. After the Q&A interview, I had 25 minutes to do a bunch of test-like questions as part of the interview process. I guess I did OK there. I then had to wait another week to hear the results. How did I do? Let me first share my favorite proverb:

There was a farmer whose only horse got out and ran away.
"That's horrible," said his neighbor.
"Maybe yes, maybe no," replied the farmer.
A few days later, the horse came back and brought a whole herd of wild horses with it.
"Wow. What a wonderful blessing," exclaimed the neighbor.
"Maybe yes, maybe no."
The farmer's son was out working with the new horses and through incident, broke his leg.
"What a sad and terrible thing," said the neighbor.
"Maybe yes, maybe no."
So, the farmer's son was in bed, healing, and a decree came out from the government that all young and able men had to leave home and fight in the terrible war which was developing at the border. Because of his broken leg, the son was not required to go.

So then I think we can consider that the phone call I got at 3pm of Friday, February 4, saying that the job was given to someone "more qualified" can be a run-away horse. Truthfully, I would like to wail and moan about how the (I'm sure) Man who has 10 years more experience than me probably has severely less people skills and will not meet the required quota of exciting programs that the people of Avon would like to enjoy. I won't talk about that, but I will say that this let-down quickly became a relief for me.

I had pushed my life-long goal of being a good and righteous mother to the back burner. Actually, during the interview weeks, I was even considering the idea of being a full-time working mom my whole life. Uh-uh! That's NOT what I wanted for myself. EVER. So, I'm working on a new course of life direction. Mark and I are not exactly getting by, so it's not like I'm trying to get pregnant right now, although that will be a beautiful and exciting time I look forward to. I'm hoping to get a good job that I can do just sometimes.

Hello!

A few days before I finished my season at Schoepfle Garden, I found this little muffin at the Oberlin Walmart parking lot, hanging out by the Amish parking spaces. How cool is that? Though I was seriously considering a cool black-girl name for her, we decided on Oreo.

Beautiful Lily is taking her time becoming best friends with Oreo, but I've spied them sitting together a few times, and by the time I'm ready to take the picture, they're already pretending to be disinterested again. Funny. They play together a lot. Even at 1am, we hear the "pleasant pitter-patter" of them chasing each other back and forth across the front room.