Time Just Flies ... and so do I

Well, I'm flying to the Boston this weekend, at any rate. With the help of Continental Airlines. The idea is to pick up my baby boy, Future Vet, and buy him some new clothes since he lost so much weight while living in a distant country this past year.

Time flies because it's been two weeks and I have not taken the time to update this blog.

Not that it matters much. Sports Nut and I spent one day sorting through boxes and stuff, but we are nowhere near a bag, box, shelf, or pile a day. Instead, we have spent a lot of time in the yard trying to whip it into some semblance of order. The garden does grow. One sample picture, taken about 3 weeks after we put our plants into the ground:

The work continues on our bathrooms, so some progress is being made towards getting out of Dodge. None of them are quite finished, however. I'd share a picture of Media Guy's bathroom, which looks the most finished, but he's already gone to bed. Smart guy.

It is my intention to post to this blog while I am in Boston. But if we win the lottery while there, the Wizard and I will be too busy shopping for a house. So.... no guarantees.

Delaying Tactic #3 -- Redoing the Bathrooms, update

It's been a productive day on the bathroom remodeling front. Thanks to some scheduling issues with the plumber, they did the demolition on the guest bath today -- and we finally discovered exactly why the shower leaked. In short, the backing for the tile surround was regular wallboard rather than cement board or some other water-proof wall material.

In some ways, it is amazing that we don't have major water damage in those walls. Tomorrow the "guest" bathroom gets new walls and plumbing. Today it got a new shower pan.

And in the master bathroom upstairs, we also got a new shower pan put on top of that extremely sturdy subflooring. No more cracks and leaks for us!


The new shower has the same "footprint" as the old Jacuzzi tub, so it's going to be fairly large. Along that back wall, there will be a bench so lazy people like me can sit down in the shower. Also, the bench will hide that strange little jog in the corner (which is there because of a plumbing issue). Today, they built the support for the bench. Tomorrow, with any luck, the bench and walls will go in.

It always surprises me, but once things get underway, they usually move pretty quickly -- except for the kitchen we replaced in our previous house, which we lived without for 9 months. That was a lot of fun with four young children in the house.

But this whole bathroom remodeling work reminds me of a defining episode in my life -- something that happened long, long ago when the Drama Queen was but a babe.

The Wizard and I took the baby Drama Queen (whose talent for drama was as yet unknown) to visit my parents, who were living in New Orleans at the time. While we were there, the faucet for their tub broke so, as a temporary solution, we were using pliers to turn the water in the tub on and off. A year or so later, we returned to New Orleans (with the DQ, of course) for another visit. The water in the tub was still being turned on and off by using pliers. For over a year, my parents just hadn't gotten around to dealing with this relatively minor plumbing problem.

I decided right then and there that, while my parents had many admirable traits that I wanted to emulate, failing to do minor household repairs was not one of them. I was thinking about this today because, on the one hand we have been living with sub-adequate bathrooms for almost a year. On the other hand, we have been in the process of getting ready to do the bathrooms for most of that year. And we dealt with another major issue -- the kitchen -- during the same time frame. So I'm cool with where we are.

And it's going to be so nice when the new shower upstairs is done. I'm tired of going up and down stairs to take a shower.

Delaying Tactic #3 -- Redoing the Bathrooms

Last spring the Wizard and I went to a Home Show because there were a number of things that needed to be done to and around our house -- the kitchen cabinets were pieces of crap (so this was marginally a de-crapifying project), all 3 bathrooms in the house needed various amounts of work, carpets needed to be replaced, etc. We also wanted to replace a rotting patio cover and get some estimates for screening in the balcony off our bedroom.

We talked to various people who did one thing or another (e.g., kitchen cabinets, sunrooms) and to some general contractors who could do the whole kit-n-kaboodle. People came to the house and looked at what needed to be done, including two general contractors who went over the house with us and discussed every possible thing we could want done.

Then the interesting stuff happened. One general contractor never got back to us. Never. He had had some great ideas that hadn't occurred to us; we were actually looking forward to hearing what he had to say. But not only did he not call us back, he didn't return our phone calls when we tried to reach him. We are pretty sure he's still alive and working in Dodge, because we saw him at this year's Home Show. But whatever.

The second general contractor who came to the house did get back to us with an estimate -- an estimate that was approximately equal to what we had paid for this house in the first place. He wanted to tear down about half the house to the studs, completely replace all 3 bathrooms and the kitchen, including thousands of dollars of kitchen applicances to replace appliances that were (at the time) all working just fine. We didn't quite laugh him out of the house, but it was close.

The upshot was that last summer we replaced the kitchen cabinets using a local kitchen contractor. There were a few small glitches, but all in all, we are happy with the results. We also replaced the patio cover outside Sports Nut's bedroom and enclosed the balcony upstairs with a very nice screened room that the cats (and humans) enjoy on a daily basis. An unexpected bonus to covering and enclosing the balcony is that we no longer get the morning sun in our faces, and the average daytime temperature of the bedroom is a good 5 to 10 degrees lower because it doesn't get direct sun all day.

Ahh... the workmen arrive for the day!

What workmen? This summer we are getting needed work done in the bathrooms. Here's why:

Bathroom #1 (master bedroom):
The previous owners put in a Jacuzzi tub, but didn't put anything under the tub to support it. By the time we had been using the tub to shower in (never as a Jacuzzi) for 5 years, the fiberglass bottom of the tub had cracked.

We tried caulking the crack so that it wouldn't leak, but it wasn't long before we noticed water spots on the ceiling of the bathroom below this tub. Oh, well.

Bathroom #2: Main downstairs bathroom.
We started taking showers in the main bathroom downstairs, along with Sports Nut and Future Vet (who was still here at the time). Then one morning while I was showering, the tile wall of the shower fell in on me.

Obviously, this bathroom also needed some work.

Bathroom #3: Media Guy's room (aka Guest Bath)
In the meantime, the shower in Media Guy's room, which theoretically doubles as the guest room because Media Guy keeps his room neater than anyone else in the family, had a leak. We had already replaced the shower pan and done some tile work, but there was still a leak through the tile into the attached bedroom. A shower curtain inside the shower stall has been keeping the leak at bay.

So this year when we went to the Home Show, we were primarily interested in talking to people who did bathroom work. We talked to several people at the show and one not only came to the house and looked at what we wanted to do, he followed up. And now he and his workers are busy on the first of the three bathrooms that need work -- the master bathroom.

Though I am not personally doing any of the work to fix the bathrooms, the bathroom work has prevented me from getting back to decrapifying on a full-time basis. The Wizard and I had to go pick out tile for all three bathrooms, and fixtures, and make decisions about all the thises and thats. But look what's happened in the bathroom already!

Here's where we started, with a cracked and leaking Jacuzzi tub:

And an adequate tiled surrounding area:

First they took out the tub and hauled it away. They had to cut it in half to get it down the stairs, but that's another story. And then they took down the tile and existing walls to get to the studs.

And, of course, to get to the old plumbing:


Then it turned out that they needed to take up a bit of the old tile floor to get at even more plumbing. We are all hoping that the original tile can be replaced or, failing that, the we can match the existing tile rather than having to replace the entire floor -- which continues out into the vanity area.

Hmm.... lovely old linoleum beneath that tile!

Materials to fix the walls and floor were delivered, just in time for the deluge. (Heavy rain and hail, which our newly planted garden fortunately seems to have survived.)

The work continues. New plumbing is in place. Check out that flexible plastic tubing -- no more copper or PVC pipes for water:


That pipe sticking up in the middle is where the new shower drain is going. I guess the plumber wanted to make sure no one missed it.

And new, extremely sturdy subflooring is now in place as well:

And, as I type, there is more banging going on upstairs. We are not putting in another tub upstairs, just a large and (we hope) luxurious shower. The new shower pan is supposed to arrive today.

With any luck, the Drama Queen will get her laundry done before they have to do something drastic like turn off the water to the house.

Oooh.... the shower pan just arrived!

More later.....

Animal Interlude

This is just another brief and mostly pointless digression, here only to bring you up to date on some of the other personalities who inhabit my world.

Max continues to do well since the last change in his medications. He gets up slowly, moves slowly, and we try to avoid collisions with the other dogs since they cause him to limp for a couple of days. But he is enjoying the sun and the shade, and has even been known to curl up inside his dogloo.

Yuki is happiest when people are paying attention to her, but she settles for a walk every morning and some ball chasing whenever anyone heads out to the back yard.

And Hershey somehow managed to rip a hole in his side. It was superficial -- no muscle involvement -- but he ended up with stitches and a lighter exercise schedule for a few days. He's feeling fine now, even if his humans don't throw the ball for him often enough or long enough.

The weather here in Dodge is fairly temperate right now -- warm but not too hot, that is. So the dogs spend most of their time in the yard, even though they usually prefer to be inside. But with the work going on inside the house (stay tuned for that delaying tactic), we think its best that no one has to worry about them when going in and out the front door.

The cats are another issue. They don't go outside, but we also don't want them in the way of people who are working inside the house. One of last summer's projects was to cover and screen in the balcony so that the cats could go outside. Since it's not too hot (yet), we have been shutting them out on the balcony while work is going on.

Don't let those melancholy looks fool you. They love the balcony. They are up on a level with the birds in the mulberry tree. There is always a nice breeze. There are comfortable chairs to shed all over and to throw up on. There are cat trees, as modeled by Junior, who did not want to come to the slider to have her picture taken.

We even give them food and water out there.

Sports Nut's cats, Malka and Canti, are shut up in his room when they can't be loose. Future Vet's cats are similarly confined to his room. And that's it for the four-feets.

Delaying Tactic #2 -- Gardening

I have just come in from the back yard where Sports Nut and I have been digging a big hole. This morning we bought a Bartlett Pear tree to put into the hole. Late this afternoon, we plan to combine the tree and the hole. And maybe next year, someone will be able to pick some pears from the tree. Not us, though. We hope to be long gone by that time, which is (after all) what this blog was supposed to be about.

However, since it's unlikely that we will be gone before the end of the summer (see the upcoming post about bathrooms), we decided to go ahead and put in a vegetable garden this year. What the hey, it keeps us off the streets.

Last year, we planted tomatoes, basil, corn, peppers (hot and sweet), zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkins, watermelon, cantelope, cucumbers, eggplant, and a few odd flowers. The tomatoes and eggplant did okay, but not spectacularly. While we got a few jalapeno and poblano peppers, the sweet peppers were a total bust, as were the cucumbers. The watermelon and pumpkins did fairly well, considering that we got them into the ground late. The cantelope failed because they also didn't have enough time before it got too cold. The zucchini and squash did really well, however, and we froze plenty of both to get us through the winter.

This year we have cut back in some ways and have expanded in other ways. We are planting fewer types of vegetables, but we have expanded two of the three vegetables plots in the back yard so that we could plant more. The third plot, which cannot be expanded because of its location, has mostly been turned over to fruit -- blueberries and strawberries. Here's the May 1 picture:

The strawberry plants are at the back (toward the gate) and the blueberries are at the front. There are also some cauliflower plants in there because they are the favorite vegetable of Sports Nut, who has been doing the lion's share of the ground preparation work.

That trellis, by the way, doesn't really block the sun. This plot gets 7-8 hours of full sunlight every day. I have great hopes for the fruit bushes -- and, with any luck, fruit-producing plants will make this house more attractive when the time comes to put it on the market.

In case you are curious, here's a shot of what is behind that trellis:

We pulled out countless weeds and cut back all the chamisa last year, but they're back!

The small plot where we planted tomato and basil last year was originally a bigger plot, so we merely extended it to its original parameters. We planted tomatoes, basil, some cucumbers and one bell pepper plant there. If we just add some lettuces, we can have salad! Here's a picture of the small vegetable plot on May 1:

Careful observation this year has shown us why maybe the tomatoes didn't get out of hand last year. At the back of this plot, near the little patio outside Sports Nut's room, the plants get full sun only about 4-5 hours a day. We're thinking of moving plants around a little so that the tomatoes get more sun -- and maybe we'll put that lettuce or other shade-dwellers in the back.

The thing we have to watch out for here is the area to the left (in front of the patio). Last year we found out that the pretty purple flowers growing wild out there were actually nightshade. Fortunately, we were told this by another gardener rather than by our veterinarian after one or more of the dogs had consumed large quantities of it. This year, we will be rigorously weeding this area in attempt to get rid of the nightshade.

The big vegetable plot was carved out of the formerly-grassy area of the back yard last year. This year we extended it so that we could put in more plants. Here's a picture of the big vegetable plot on May 1:

The corner closest to the front (the northwest corner) is reserved for the corn that we plan to put into the ground this afternoon. Right now, the corn is waiting on the counter for the sun to sink a little bit:

Our other ongoing project in the yard is to eradicate puncture vine. Last year we pulled up -- quite literally -- thousands of the horrible little things. They look so innocuous at first:

If we can catch them at this stage, they aren't too bad. Left alone just a little longer, however, they produce thick mats of vining greenery and, eventually, lots and lots of goatheads:

This picture is of a broken goathead. Usually there are more sharp spiky things on each of these. As they break part, each of the sharp spikes can start its own new plant -- and the little buggers can lie dormant for years before deciding to do so.

Some people use chemicals to try and kill these, but the Sports Nut and I aren't too fond of any kind of -cides and we pull them out by hand. When we started two years ago, there were large areas of the yard that were completely infested with puncture vine, including almost all of the slope down into the lower part of the yard. This year, we found small plants for the first time today, so we are definitely making some progress.

But, like Mad-eye Moody, we must practice CONSTANT VIGILANCE!! We know there are still hundreds of goatheads out there just waiting for their chance in the sun. In the meantime, the goatheads amuse themselves by embedding themselves in our shoes or in the dogs' feet and coats. Once embedded, the goatheads get a free ride into the house where they are found by anyone with bare feet. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!

Backtracking to April 19 -- Gotcha, Malka and Canti!

As I said, I probably have 3 big posts to bring this up to date, but I missed being able to share this special day when it rolled around and I didn't want to let it pass by totally unmarked.

April 19 was Malka and Canti's Gotcha Day! Two years ago on that date, we picked up tiny baby kittens who were starving and covered with filth and brought them home. The kitten who became known as Canti was SO hungry, he waded into his food with all four feet.

Once the kitten who became known as Malka had a full belly, she curled up and went to sleep on my lap -- something she has never done since.

Look carefully -- you can see the filth I spoke of in the vicinity of her rear end. Suffice it to say that the first time we rinsed her off, the water turned black.

But they both cleaned up really cute.

And two years later, they are beautiful cats who wouldn't turn around and look at the camera on their Gotcha Day.

Of course, the camera was nowhere near as interesting as this:

That, of course, is just one of the many lizards who spend their days sunning on the blocks outside the sliding door, providing endless hours of cat entertainment.

Malka and Canti, we are all glad that we Gotcha!

The First Delaying Tactic -- Passover

Passover (or Pesach, as it is generally known in my crowd) caused some major delays in our de-crapification process. Nevertheless, I might have posted about the engrossing procedures of getting ready for Pesach if my computer hadn't decided to crap-out (nothing to do with de-crapification) right about the beginning of the holiday.

Digression: Why do we call Pesach a holiday? Merriam-Webster offers this definition of "holiday": a day on which one is exempt from work. Excuse me for an hour or so while I laugh hysterically. For the observant Jew, Pesach is the most work-intensive holiday (using another M-W definition -- "holy day") in the calendar.

First of all, we clean. The idea is to get rid of all the chametz in our possession. Chametz is anything made from the following grains: wheat, oats, barley, rye, and spelt. That includes most breads, cereals, cookies, crackers, etc., etc., etc. When I started looking for chametz in my house, I found some.

There was the refrigerator, of course:

Tortillas, leftovers, some kind of soup, bread, buns, enchilada sauce, and more...

And the refrigerator door:

There may not be much that is, strictly speaking, chametz, but there are open containers of various things that we will use up or discard. And stuff for feeding dogs, which we will move to the refrigerator in the garage. Which is also, naturally, full of food:

Oooh! Bagels and pizza crusts!

And we mustn't forget the freezers. The freezer compartment in our daily-use fridge had more goodies:

Ice cream! Frozen pasta! Mysterious things wrapped in foil!

Hmm.... A bag of oats, lots of nuts. Some squash?

Going through all these spaces at least makes planning meals for the week or so preceding Passover really easy. Though my family all remembers the year we found 3 boxes of Bisquick in the pantry and then had pancakes for breakfast and lunch every day until they were gone.

And there is the big freezer, where we store bulk buys and the things we make and freeze ourselves.
Oh, my. Look at all those Girl Scout cookies. And all those peaches from our tree that we froze last summer. And the tofu and the big paper bag full of bagels. And all the other stuff.

But wait! There's more! Like on top of the refrigerator:

Media Guy's Cinnamon Toast Crunch! Dried cranberries! Other cereal that no one will claim!

And in the pantry:

The pantry actually doesn't look so bad until you realize that we had already cleared out the pantry and put stuff we were going to eat or give away onto the kitchen counters:

And, last but not least, there are the food storage shelves in the garage:

And I almost forgot the cabinet where we keep our baking supplies:

Lots of chametz there, obviously. Now, how to get rid of all this chametz-dik stuff? Some we were able to eat before it had to be gone. Some we gave to food pantries, like all these unopened boxes of crackers and pasta and other things:

Some was given away to non-Jews who could use it. And, inevitably, a few things were thrown away, given to the dogs, or sold.

Sold? It may sound like a legal fiction, but the rabbis figured out a long time ago that sometimes it is a severe financial hardship to get rid of all the chametz you own -- especially since you have to buy new chametz again after Pesach is over. So they figured out a way to sell the chametz to a non-Jew for the duration of Pesach and then buy it back afterwards.

That means I did not have to eat or give away all the Girl Scout cookies that were in the freezer. Good thing, too, since the Girl Scout cookie sale always seems to deliver the cookies about a month before Pesach. So that I can indulge my secret passion for Thin Mints year-round, I sell them through my rabbi and buy them back again after Pesach.

So we got rid of chametz and cleaned the house. And this is what I actually like about Pesach, despite the work of getting ready:

1) The house gets clean!
2) We get rid of things that we are unlikely to eat and thus have been cluttering up the shelves.
3) The house gets clean!

Once all the chametz is cleaned out, we remove our regular dishes from the cupboards and bring in our Pesach dishes. I don't have pictures of all that, though I did have to clear off shelves in the garage in order to have room for our regular dishes:

It's always interesting to see how much we can cram onto the shelves.

As usual, a cat checks out the shelves for stability before we fill the next level.

Once everything -- food, dishes, etc. -- is out of the kitchen, we line the cabinet shelves (with paper towels, usually) and counters (with Contac paper), clean the appliances rigorously, cover the stove top with foil.....

But wait! There's something missing!

What happened to the stove?

Like my computer, it crapped out. The night before the first seder. And we had 10 people coming for the first seder, 20 for the second seder. And the third night of Pesach was Shabbat. I had 3 festive dinners to prepare without a stove.

Fortunately, while we discovered that the oven was non-functional after we had cleaned and kashered it and prepared it for Pesach...

... the discovery was made almost 24 hours before the first seder. The Wizard and I went online and researched ranges, found a local store that sold ranges and that opened at 6:00 a.m., and set our alarm clock. We bought the new range by 6:30 a.m., picked it up and installed it ourselves, and had a working Pesach-dik stove by 11:00 a.m.

The traitorous non-working range was put outside by the front door. As our guests arrived, we told them that we now had a chametz-dik stove and a Pesach-dik stove. Some of them almost believed it. That stove has since been given away to someone who didn't care that the oven didn't work.

The Good Thing was that we didn't have to kasher and cover the new range.

And now Pesach is long past, our kitchen is more-or-less back to normal, and we cleared out a lot of STUFF in the process. And here's another thing I like about Pesach. When we start bringing dishes, etc., back into the house, I make things earn their keep. For example, here's the pre-Pesach contents of one kitchen drawer:

There is stuff there that we haven't used in a long time. Like the pumpkin scraper and the combined spoon-fork thingies and the melon ballers. Things we don't use went back into the bag. If they don't get pulled out and used within a few months, they are gonzo. Yet another way to de-crapify!

Next time: My choice of Back to the Grind, Re-Doing the Bathrooms, or Our Garden.