by mayberry on October 6, 2008
… of the fact that our refrigerator died over the weekend.
- We do have a spare refrigerator in the basement, and a chest freezer.
- My husband moved everything down there.
- (I later paid him back by being the one to find a disgusting dog accident and clean it up.)
- My husband also cleaned behind and under the fridge after I asked him to move it for me so I could do it.
- We haven’t had to throw away any food yet.
- I will probably lose 5 pounds from a) all the trips back and forth to the basement and b) the deterrence factor of said trips.
- The repairman is on his way.
- If the fridge is salvageable, it will be the cleanest it’s been in years, since I’ll scrub it sparkling before I refill it.
- If it’s not, I just read that October is the best month to get a good deal on new appliances.
- It’s not yet cold enough to keep our perishables on the porch.
[grudgingly] I guess I feel a little better. Anything I forgot?
Update, Tuesday: After $62 and the removal of two handfuls of dust and a magnetic dart from inside the bottom of the fridge … it works fine. My husband is mourning the loss of his stainless steel dreams.
by mayberry on September 4, 2008
1. I am the automatic dishwasher; thou shalt not have any other gods before me, and believe that a five-second spin under the faucet is my equal.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the dishwasher in vain, and curse it for not unloading itself.
3. Remember the dishwasher and keep it holy; thou shalt not run it during the dinner hour.
4. Honor thy father and thy mother, and learn to place your dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and not under the couch.
5. Thou shalt not kill your meltable objects by placing them in the lower rack.
6. Thou shalt not cheat by running the dishwasher when it is not full.
7. Thou shalt not steal space through inefficient loading.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness by claiming disposable items are meant to be washed and reused. And that includes 100-to-a-box drinking straws.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, if it has two dishwashers instead of one.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, who unloads the dishwasher in a more timely manner.
This post may possibly have been inspired by the people in this house with whom I share a dishwasher. Maybe.
by mayberry on August 8, 2008
Laptop battery
dies, DVR won’t record,
AC blows warm air
What is next? Am I going to be washing clothes in the stream and cooking over an open fire? I need my technology!
by mayberry on June 11, 2008
After more than three days with two extra adults in the house, I’m ready to move to a kibbutz or some other communal living situation. Sure I enjoy privacy but damn if it isn’t nice to have extra people around to cook, clean, play pretend, and the like. Plus we have time for extracurricular projects:
Jo’s new room color,
with (a sop to the 6-year-old girlie) one pink wall;
and Opie’s new color(s), chosen to complement his “baseball guys”
and his two auntie-made quilts.
Yes, Grandma and Grandpa put down their crackberries, picked up some brushes and rollers, and helped us give both kids’ rooms a makeover. Opie is still grousing that he doesn’t LIKE brown, but I do and I am the one with the credit card so I won that particular fight. The fish (see pink wall) had a near-death experience–accidentally poured down kitchen sink into disposal–but was recovered and now is back in its rightful home. As are Grandma and Grandpa, who we’ll miss very much, but they have businesses to run and banjos to play so we’ll see them again another time. And a month from tomorrow we leave for San Francisco!
by mayberry on February 1, 2008
You needed a bed
No one told me that it would
dwarf you like an oak
Seriously, this thing is huge. But the small boy loves it. He helped build it …
and then dismantle the crib without a second look (saying goodbye to the nuks? not so much).
Big sister is also a big fan. She’s been sleeping in that trundle every single night.
Now, for a nice book …
And then snuggle under the quilt. My mother-in-law had these in her attic for the past 30 years–can you believe it? One of Jeff’s aunts made them for him and his brother, but they were rarely used. Having a packrat in the family = priceless!
Yes, we are going to repaint, by the way. I’m thinking a warmish khaki but that was before I got the quilts. Suggestions welcome (I’d also love to do something fun with that dormer/slope thingie–what’s that called? There’s one on the opposite side of the room too).
by mayberry on October 30, 2007
Several weeks ago I promised to spend my free Friday afternoons tackling the clutter that’s threatening to overtake my house.
I got off to a great start:
Then weeks went by where I wasted my so-called “free” afternoons working. But I did manage to do a 10-minute project this past Friday — culling coats for a coat drive. I pulled out 8 or 9 of my coats and my kids’ and dropped them off that very afternoon. Very freeing!
Here, by the way, is what I found in the pockets of all those coats:
- 4 heart-shaped rubber bracelets
- 1 ghost pencil topper
- 1 pacifier
- 1 daycare tracking sheet (infant room)
- 3 rubber bands, and
- a great deal of (clean) Kleenex
by mayberry on September 14, 2007
Three free hours today
To-do list goes on for miles
Maybe I’ll just blog
It’s Haiku Friday again!
Now that school has started, my schedule has changed and I am giving myself Friday afternoons off from both work and kid care. That means they are on for freelance jobs, household stuff, and maybe once in a while even something fun. My plan for the next several weeks is to slowly, surely purge this house of about a metric ton of accumulated crap. I will pick one closet/storage area/black hole per Friday and devote an hour to clearing it out. Realizing I still had a 15-year-old dress in my closet was definitely a kick in the ass, as was the change in weather that arrived this week. This happens every time the seasons change: I feel like I have no idea how to dress. I need to reset my brain from “capris” to “jeans” and back again, to find the long-sleeved shirts that have been buried under the short-sleeved ones for four months. But since very few of my clothes would really pass the Clinton/Stacy/Tim Gunn test, I feel the need to start fresh.
Wish me luck — and I am counting on you to hold me accountable to my goal. Stay tuned for photographic evidence!
by mayberry on July 31, 2007
In most unfortunate timing, I have two big freelance jobs to do this week–just at the moment when I desperately want to catch up on all the posts calling my name from Bloglines and go visit all the new people I met this weekend. It will be a few days, but I promise I will catch up soon.
In the meantime, please enjoy this video Jo made. She’s not afraid to ask the hard-hitting questions.
by mayberry on July 10, 2007
Who else has trouble defining boundaries with neighbors when kids are involved? Overall, I am very glad that we live in a friendly neighborhood, with lots of other children and also parents of grown kids who love to have little ones around. Surrounding our house we have:
- Next door, Vern (I kid you not) and his wife and three grown daughters, all of whom have names starting with L. (I am the only one in our household who can tell these three girls apart and match the correct name with the correct person.) They are always willing to stop and admire while Jo shows off some new trick or Opie tells a longwinded story. Recently he asked repeatedly, “Where’s Mr. D?” When no one understood him (or more likely, answered him to his satisfaction), he bellowed, “Where’s BERN?!”
- On the other side of Vern’s house, Mr. and Mrs. B and their three high-school/college-age sons. Adore, worship, and idolize are not really strong enough words to convey how my children feel about Mr. B. If they so much as hear his laugh echoing across the yard, they freeze in their tracks and their ears perk up like jackrabbits. Mrs. B. is a close second because she unfailingly provides Fla-Vor-Ices anytime Jo and Opie are within 50 feet of her.
- Next door to the Bs, a cool fifty-ish mom who lives in an awesome three-story Queen Anne with beautiful gardens. She once invited Jo (and me and Opie) inside to see her cats. When she told Jo that one of the cats must be hiding under the beds, Jo immediately toured the entire house from top to bottom looking under every bed.
- Next door to us on the other side, toward the front, a family with four kids between the ages of 2 and 6 has just moved in. Since the side of our house that includes the kids’ bedrooms overlooks their yard, we are already quite familiar with all of their cool outdoor toys, including a battery-powered Lightning McQueen car.
- Next door to us in the back, another family with kids ages 2 and 3 who are very much interested in our dog.
- Across the street from our back gate, Jo’s friend Joe (for the longest time they called each other “Jofus” and “Jofie”), and his two younger siblings.
So you can see why nearly every time we go outside, I am harassed with requests to visit any (or all) of the above. Never mind whether we’ve been invited, whether we’ve been there every day for the past week, or whether it’s 10 minutes before dinner–we have friends and we “just want to see if they’re outside.” I’m finding the fence, while good in so many ways, makes this just a little more awkward. Because now it’s more of an effort to get into a neighbor’s yard, and it makes it seem that much more deliberate when we all turn up on someone’s lawn. They say they are happy to see us but can that really be true? We almost never get the return visits so I have to wonder. KnowhutImean?
by mayberry on June 21, 2007
Since Julie asked, and since you saw the project in progress, here are a couple photos of the finished product:
Detail of patio, bench, planter, and misc. tree. In background: fence designed to contain children + dog. All three have now demonstrated ability to escape. Next picture should rightfully be of me setting fire to a stack of $100 bills. It’s a pretty fence, though, isn’t it? And it keeps the soccer balls on our side of the property line.
There’s the back of the house in all its orangey glory; the benches, the patio, and a bit of the new driveway. And of course, none of it would be complete without the purple Little Mermaid hippity-hop.
Happy weekend. See you Monday.
