Finally ... Progress!

Dauntless readers of this blog may recall that last March, Sports Nut did some deconstruction in the kitchen.

Now, after months of living with bare-naked light bulbs up there, we finally had an electrician who not only returned our calls but who also showed up and installed the new light fixture (with fan!) for us:

The next step, as should be obvious, is to fix the ceiling so there are no longer any holes in it. There's some other minor work to be done on the walls and ceiling in and around the kitchen as well. Once all of that is done, I think we can finally declare that the kitchen remodel is officially completed.

On other fronts, I continue to go through as many boxes each day as I can fit in. One day's stack from the past week looked like this:

There are such odd assortments of items in these boxes. Some are full of the offspring's belongings, but others look like someone cleared a table off into a box and stuck it out in the garage. Probably me.

There are two boxes and two paper grocery bags full of papers that need to be shredded. Instead of knitting while watching DVDs, I guess I'll be shredding for the next few days. What fun! If only the kittens did a more thorough job when they shred papers, I'd be all set.

Maybe Time to Call It Quits

... not with getting out of Dodge, but with trying to do anything meaningful with the yard and garden on my own. I looked out the window over the weekend to find that one of the garden plots had been decimated.

Yup. Dug up right down to the weed cloth at the bottom of the box. Expensive soil mix strewn about the yard. If we were still in the Boston area, I might suspect groundhogs. But here in Dodge, the likely culprits are pictured below:

So, I don't know how much more effort I feel like expending on this yard. We didn't get any vegetables to speak of this year, the planting boxes are in disarray, and the yard that we weeded so carefully in July and August is totally overgrown.

Maybe it's time to call in some professionals and see what they can do with this mess.

A Week of Boxes

Last Sunday I had a long conversation with myself about how I really have got to deal with all those boxes in the garage. Today, I am happy to say that I met my goal of a box a day this past week. Sort of.

Sunday:

It turned out that Sunday's box was mostly the Drama Queen's stuff. So that turned out to be easy -- except for the fact that the DQ already has 19 boxes of her stuff in the hallway that she can't find space for. I guess I'll go rearrange the sheds and see if we can fit them in.

Monday:

Okay. I confess. I did not go through this box on Monday. I had a really bad headache all day. No idea why. And I didn't go through it on Tuesday either, probably because I was catching up on everything that didn't get done on Monday. But I did go through it on Wednesday. Good thing, too. I was running out of space tin which to change the day. This box was full of stuff from the upstairs bathroom. Some got tossed, some got put away, a few things were passed along to people who can use them.

Which brings us to Tuesday's box:

Which was also sorted through on Wednesday. This was mostly stuff that just needed to be put in the appropriate place.

And finally! Wednesday's box, which I actually went through on Wednesday:

The Chronicles of Narnia and trash of various types. That was about it. Then, because I was feeling just a little guilty about having fallen behind, I went through some bonus boxes on Wednesday:

The empty bin on the left actually had been full of notebooks and other school papers left behind by Media Guy. I asked him whether he wanted to hang on to these papers or I could recycle them, but he still wanted them. So they are now in his room awaiting his disposition. The box on the right was full of stuff that no one wants or needs and a bunch of cables:

I thought these could be Freecycled, but the Wizard said they might be useful. He carried them up to his lair where he is, no doubt, doing wizardly things with them.

Back on track, we come to Thursday's box:

The contents mostly just needed to be put in appropriate places, or given to appropriate people. But it made me sad to go through this one. This box contained the contents of my desk at the synagogue I used to attend, and teach at, and run the youth program for. I was sad because I worked so hard at those jobs and to so little effect. But some friends of mine got some nice sparkly star stickers out of this box and the household supply of staple removers went from 2 to 7, so it wasn't a total loss.

On Friday, we had friends for dinner. Nevertheless, I went through a box or two. I didn't put a label on them, but these are Friday's boxes:

The box on the left holds a dance pad and the software for DDR. We bought them for the youth group, but I didn't leave them behind when I walked out because there really wasn't a youth group left by then. So I gave the DDR stuff to some young friends of mine. The box on the right had some sheet music and a bunch of Wii and PS2 games and controllers. All were put away where they belonged.

And finally, Saturday's box, which was kind of fun:

Most of these things were in a kitchen drawer that got emptied when we re-did our kitchen two or three summers ago. So they've been in the hot garage for a while, resulting in some interesting amalgamations:

I decided to toss the melted and warped havdallah candles. The candlesticks and candle holders and other candle-related paraphernalia were another matter:

Everything there has a story of some kind. The tall brown candlesticks were the first pair of candlesticks that the Wizard and I ever bought. We got them at a little shop on Royal Street in New Orleans and they were our Shabbat candlesticks for the first year or so we were married. Until we figured out that wood candlesticks could also burn under the right circumstances. My Grandpop Burgess made the short wooden candleholder. I have its mate upstairs, along with a bowl all made from the same burl of wood. So I found room for these things on the shelves.

In addition to all these boxes (I counted 10), we also finally put away the sukkah decorations that have been scattered about the dining room  and Media Guy's room for the past few weeks. We took everything down in a hurry when a big storm was coming through and since they were mostly in Media Guy's room (out of sight, out of mind), they weren't a problem.

Those are the stained-glass fruits and vegetables (and other odds and ends) that we have hung up in our sukkah every year since the year after we discovered that raccoons and squirrels and groundhogs and who-knows-what else were not above eating the real fruits and vegetables we used to hang in our sukkah.

The end result of all this decrapification is 6 or 7 boxes of sukkah decorations moved out to storage in the shed, a wider pathway in the garage, a bunch of things given to people who can use them, other things (finally) put away, and a moderate amount of trash. Not bad, all things considered.

Yes, I Have Been Knitting

Time for a knitting update, such as it is.

I finished the knitting for Sports Nut's blanket! And the baseball season isn't exactly over, even though the Red Sox are out of the game. Until spring training starts in February, that is.

It still needs to be sewn together, but at least we can see how big it seems to be.

I also started on a Wallaby sweater for one of the little boys in my life. I tried it on him at one point:

Just to make sure it fit. Since then, I've made major progress -- lengthened both sleeves and attached them to the body. Now I'm in the process of shaping the shoulders. In other words, this Wallaby is more than halfway done.

I took this boy's big brother over to the store and he picked out yarn for his own Wallaby:

After I finish these two Wallabys (and sew Sports Nut's blanket together), I'll be looking around for something new to knit. Maybe some socks.

I also organized (yet again) my knitting needles this past week. With help from Harley:

I let her file herself because I wasn't sure which ziplock bag of needles she best fit into. All I know is that those needles at the end of her paws are really sharp!

Though I didn't post any oddities yesterday, I thought I'd share one of the strange and wonderful things that I came across this week. Even though I found this in a store rather than in a box in my house, I thought it was pretty neat:

Please note that the bottle is clear glass. We are thinking of trying it out over the weekend. If we do, however, I'll probably have to buy another bottle so that the boys in LaLa Land can have a taste when they come home for winter break.

Time to 'Fess Up - the Yard is a Mess

I have been told that I need to get back to work updating this blog. I believe that I have been told this for two reasons: first of all, the nudger wants the family to, indeed, get the hell out of Dodge; second, I think the nudger is interested in seeing more pictures of kittens. I could be wrong about either or both reasons, but I'll stand by my story.

There are numerous excuses reasons, of course, why I haven't posted anything in two months. But I won't bore myself by writing them out. Suffice it to say that it's just been life as usual.

Since I actually have some pictures of what is going on in the yard (or, at least what was going on a few weeks ago when the camera was still working), tonight I'm going to talk about the yard. In short, the yard is a mess. We worked very hard in the early summer to pull weeds and eradicate puncture vine, but some untimely rain did us in. Everything is overgrown and ugly.

Plus all of our vegetables died. It has not been a good summer for the yard and garden.

I have no idea what these thready things all over the place are, but they appeared one day. Just one of the benefits of living in a desert where plants develop survival skills that let them remain dormant for years until the conditions are just right -- like three days of rain.

The puncture vine continues to be our biggest problem, however. Here's a nice healthy one that we pulled up one day:

See those spiky things? Those are immature goat heads. A closer view of one goat-head "fruit":

And guess what this "fruit" turns into? A whole bunch of goat-heads!

If you've ever studied the history of war, or read a good historical novel, you might have run across mentions of caltrops. Goat heads are nature's caltrops. No matter how they lay on the ground, there's always a sharp pricker sticking up waiting to ram itself into your foot.

Or your Crocs:

Somewhere along the line this fall, it occurred to me that one way to collect goat heads was to tromp around the yard wearing Crocs. Then I just pulled them out of the soles of the Crocs and deposited them in that jar that can be seen to the right of the picture above. The jar isn't full yet, but there's still time.

And just to satisfy those who only want to see pictures of kittens, here is a picture of our baby cats when they were all still living with us. (Two have found their forever home in someone else's house.)

The third, of course, is now a permanent member of the household.

Such a sweet face! That's our baby, variously known as Tuna, Piglet, TunaPiglet, TunaPig, or -- her official name (it's right there on the vet's records) -- Harley.