Moving moving moving. How fun. In the last four days we emptied both the Billy room and Claire’s old bedroom. As we moved stuff out of those rooms, we had to put them in our dining room, our kitchen, our master, and our living room. It got to a point by this morning where I could not even walk in my house.  Then it was time to paint the new guest room/office. Donna and I both have always wanted a tan room. Do you know how many colors of tan there are!? We got a few samples and slapped them up over the blue on the walls, and we hated them all. We got three more samples the next day. We hated them. They were all too red, pink, yellow, or blah. I had two former students, Stephanie and Anqi, over for tea the other day only because I wasn’t about to cancel on them since I never see them. We’d scheduled this a month ago, and they get sensitive when they don’t see me.  After they left, I was on my way back to Lowe’s again, and this time I took all 6 crappy samples with me.

The lady at the paint section looked over my samples and laughed at me. She said if I wanted tan, she’d give me tan. She gave me four samples and told me that I would LOVE one of them for sure. She also said tan would look terrible over blue, and we’d have to paint for sure. Primer. Two coats. Ugh. Let’s see, my time frame for painting just tripled. Errr…. so I texted Stephanie and Joe and begged for help. They both agreed and we were ready to start in the morning about 10AM.

I got back with the paint after picking up Stephanie, and Claire, Donna and Joe had the room taped off. Then we began to primer the room. Well, I’d love to tell you the short short version, but there isn’t one. We put two coats of primer on the damn walls, I had to run off to the dermatologist for an hour, and Joe had to go to work after two hours. About 1pm I decided to pull out the super QVC roller my mum bought us about 6 years ago. It fills the center of the roller with paint, so you don’t have to dip the roller in the tray. I rolled two full walls in minutes. It was cool until it began to leak all over the place! It splattered all over me, my clothes, and everything around me. Of course the carpet was covered in plastic so we were good! Stephanie followed behind with parts I was missing, and we kept working. Well, about 6PM we finally finished the room! Well we finished the best it was going to get. I was sooooooooo sick of paint! We decided to reward Stephanie (who was still there!) with Dairy Queen before driving her home. Claire and I crashed about 9PM after taking her home.

Today Donna kicked me out of bed at 6:30AM because the carpet cleaners were coming at 8AM to clean the new Guest Room/Office and the Billy Room, which still had furniture and a turtle tank! Donna said we missed spots on the tan room and she was up until 1AM painting. Err… So we finished up in there, emptied the Billy Room and began cooking bacon. Luke from Chem Dry showed up about 8:30AM and we were really itching to put Claire’s new bed up.

Oh yes, Donna’s been searching CraigsList for a new low loft bed for Claire, and we found one Wednesday. I thought it looked ok in the pics online, so I called the lady Thursday morning. She was happy to hear from me, and we made plans to head over there that night. We got there and loved the bed. It was about 4′ high and came with a bookshelf for underneath. It also had a slide and a ladder. The side rails were nice and high, and we immediately bought it.

So now it’s Saturday and waiting for the carpets to dry was like watching paint dry (hehe), and by noon we were ready to put everything together and reclaim the rest of our house! We’ve spent about 9 hours now moving stuff around the house and putting things away. Both rooms rock, but boy am I sick of cleaning!

Claire for one ADORES her new bed and new "Purple Room". She played in there for several hours by herself today. I gave her one of those removable push on/off lights that she could keep in her "cave", but sometimes she just leaves it on. After we put the mattress on, she understood why she needed it because it was so much darker. Although we don’t like the mattress, and we’re going to replace it as soon as possible. It’s just old. Anyway, back to work. I have about 400 books to put away on my shelves.

Got home Monday night after a relatively easy flight back to find my Honey Do List to be lengthy. Donna took it upon herself to finally make an executive decision that yes we are going to flip Claire’s room with the spare room. One of the perks is moving her further from the livingroom and making the spare room/office closer to our living spaces rather than back in the corner of the house. By the time I got home, she had a shelf or two of books packed up and all bedding stripped from the room.

Today my first job was to empty my side of the garage so we could move more books and furniture in there. As I was cleaning, the playground installers showed up. We’d gone back and forth for months about this thing, and we finally decided to go with Dana’s Playground. Part of the appeal was installing it and everything, which they did in about 3 1/2 hours. While they did that, I cleaned out the spare room, which we named the Billy room after the pattern Ikea bookcases in it. Now tomorrow I get to clean out Claire’s room, run test paint on the walls, since we want it a beige sort of color now instead of baby boy blue (which was suppose to be sea foam!). Well, the men got the playground erected, and after Claire’s nap she was out there on it. She totally loved it. Rode the swings (scarily I might add), road her glider and went down the slide a few times. It sure does get hot, but she only complained about that once. She said she’d go on the monkey bars another time when I am there, so that was a relief.

Later in the evening, we bought a new tank for Donna’s turtle because the old one had calcium thicker than the glass itself. We’re going to set up the new tank in the corner of the living room because the old dresser it was on will move to the garage this week. My mother-in-law flies in on Sunday, and she’s eager to see all my wonderful work when she gets here. Fun fun.

We’ve been working on our house for a year or two now, and things have been coming along. But then this last week I was driving by our newly stuccoed and painted wall along the road, and I saw graffiti all over it. Nothing gang related, but stupid kids writing their names, like "JAZ WUZ HERE" and stuff like that. I was pretty annoyed because I am still waiting for Donna to call Sonoran Exterior to have them come touch up the stucco where it’s cracking away; this is now just one more thing. I was annoyed then and now today there was more graffiti, and I am now more annoyed. I talked to my neighbor to see if she knew anyone by the names etched in my wall, and she suggested I call the cops. I immediately called the police and they came out. The cop was really nice, and he interviewed all of my neighbors for me. Looks like I will probably have to paint it myself again and hope it doesn’t happen again, but it wasted an hour of my life so far. Damn.

Over the weekend we had noticed an extraordinary number of flies in the house and scolded each other about keeping the door open too long, or making sure we shut it completely so Claire could not open it. Then I went to Strawberry for the weekend. Monday afterwork, Donna and I brought Claire home from the grocery store and swim class to a kitchen swarming with flies. I would say a few dozen! I went into the bathroom, and there were just about that many there, too. I immediately locked myself in the bathroom with a fly swatter and caused a little fly massacre. I also swung so hard I broke the fly swatter. We did the same in the kitchen, and Claire just giggled and giggled thinking it was so kind of fun.

Donna ran me off to Ace Hardware where I bought a three pack of fly swatters, so sticky paper, and two safe traps (like I wanna let them live or something!). Right before I left we were rooting around the kitchen, trying to figure out where they were coming from. Now, by this point I had personally slaughtered over 50 myself. Donna killed another few dozen, and for all I know, Claire was just beating our dead ones against the tile!

At this point Donna reached into the oven and pulled out our broiling pan. Now, dear readers, believe me when I say that we clean it. We really do. The night we use it, or at latest the next day. Well, I swear I cannot tell you the last time we cooked on the broiling pan. And yes, it was dirty. White fat grease had coagulated in the bottom of it, but there were no signs of fly evidence there.

When I got back from Ace Hardware, Donna had the oven cooking itself… errr self cleaning I meant. Yeah yeah and it was about 400 degrees in the kitchen. I stripped down to my boxers and t-shirt and began scrubbing dishes. Fly juice had squirted all over the room, so who knows what was where. Eventually I got to the part where I wash the broiler. The top of it was relatively easy to clean, and then I flipped it over…

Suddenly this overbearing need to scream like a little girl at the top of my lungs until my voice was like sandpaper ripped from my larnyx!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I began screaming until I thought I was going to pass out, and Claire began crying from the livingroom, and Donna began trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. I forced myself to grade the entire broiling pan that was covered in maggot carcusses and casings, flip it up, and dump it into the large trash can. I grab the can and flew out to the garage, flipping up the door as I ran, slide the garbage can beneath the opening door and dumped the entire thing into our large trash bin. I then marched the bin half way down the street in my boxers to drop it on the sidewalk where the garbage man was coincidentally picking it up in the morning (thank, God).

By this time Donna was in the driveway laughing her butt off, and I just laid there on our driveway breathing. I eventually finished the bleaching of every single cranny and nook in our kitchen, and I can no longer close my eyes without seeing what I saw then.

We’d been trying to figure out who to use to buy a new patio roof since we had our old one torn down last fall, and we finally picked the company that we liked that didn’t want our first born to install the thing. We ordered it in February, and FINALLY they were going to install Tuesday. That was cutting it close since we had to leave town Wednesday. Of course Monday night they called and told us they had a situation with the last install and couldn’t come until Wednesday morning.  How do you tell some guy you don’t know that you’re leaving town and won’t be around without worrying about your house the entire time you’re gone? Donna was relatively diplomatic about it, and the guy told her it’d be a quick install. 14′ X 20′ straight off the facie, no problem. By this point we just rolled our eyes and went with it. I was not about to reschedule, since it’d taken 8 weeks to even get this installed and we’d already paid half up front!

Wayne & Gavin showed up and did a helluva job. Donna was home the whole time writing her paper, and by the time I came home and we prepared to leave for the airport, they were mostly done. Pictures and comments when we get back and see the final product.

The plane ride was ok. Claire’s three now, so she gets her own seat (i.e. I get to PAY out the wazoo for a third seat!). At least we didn’t have to carry her the whole time. The first hour Claire and I slept, and Donna wrote. Then Claire flipped out for awhile and kept wanting to kick the man in front of us. We eventually landed in Philly and I apologized to him. He said he works in LA 7 days a week with 3-6 year old kids, and Claire wasn’t a problem. Thank God.

2008_March_ShedBuilding19, originally uploaded by nooccar.

A lucky little leprechaun brought us a new shed on Monday! It was a trip watching these guys build our entire shed in our side yard. The paint matches the house, and it’s 8′ X 12′. In side you can see the vent, shelf, and peg board. The roof has two sky lights, which lets in a ton of light, too.

Later Monday evening we took most of our stuff we wanted to put into the shed, and we still have a ton of room! You want to see more of them building the shed? Click on the picture above and scroll through the other shed pictures.

I’m sitting here at my diningroom table, looking out through slotted blinds into my backyard. Yes, it’s still dirt and I can see my grill and Emma’s old red slide that Claire inherited, but I can also see the trees in the distance, the window framed by pear curtains, and in the center of it all beyond my mess is three bamboo plants Donna bought at MCC. She said she liked them there, and frankly they are the first plant-like thing neither of us killed in …. well…. ever. They make me feel like I have a real office where I can sit and work all day, where things are green and lush, and definitely not deserty.

Occasionally the landscapers walk by. Today they are leveling all the area left piled up by the fence guy, and they are also installing the dog run. Yeah! They are going being very careful with the dog run, and I think it looks great. They’ve been here since 7AM, but they’ve been working like dogs all day.

Here’s a shot of my work area as it stands right now. It mutates as Spring Break ’08 slowly slips away.

Not much of an update I would say, but I am so itchy to write and don’t care to spend more time working on English 101 tonight, which I have been posting here. I would say I wish Tim would call us back from the landscaping company that painted out house. I even called his boss, and he said he’d remind Tim to call me. I saw another guy in the paper the other day, and I left him a message and am waiting. I just want to get someone to level the yard, put in my dog run and build a shed. Stick some lights here and there, too. Today I went back to Lamp Plus and the "Lighting Associate" who gave me bad advice still wasn’t there. Tonight I got to talk to the store manager who agreed with his Assistant Manager that she gave me terrible advice. One of them xeroxed my receipt and when I think about it, I bet they did so so they could dock her commission pay
since they refunded me about 40% of what I originally paid. The manager even threw in some free light bulbs today.

I also painted the foyer light and hallway light. We used this cool brown speckle paint that turned out very nice. I will install them later this week, but I am more concerned with getting ready for Sunday’s party and getting my garage back, too!

We’re trying to get the side yard ready for a shed, and we hate all the rock we have in the back yard. (Actually we don’t like most of the rock out front also.) The guy who painted our house offered to bring out a Bobcat to level the entire yard and we declined. I should’ve said yes. Last Saturday I shoveled rock to level the area where we want our new shed for a couple of hours, and I was sore for days! Today I went back out there and shoveled more, and I even brought out a spotlight after it got dark out. I think we’re mostly ready for the shed, but I am going to talk with the man at the hardware store today to make sure I have my ducks all lined up before I proceed. Wish me luck!

Ok so we got the stucco done in December, and now they’re almost ready to paint the house. Can you believe how long it takes to pick a color? Of course it’s only the color of your house that you’re stuck with. The company I am using is really good so far, and they’ve been very attentive. They already stuccoed the walls, sprayed the house, torn down our old patio and now they are sealing cracks, holes, etc… They are also sanding the trim before painting it. Saturday we drove around half the day looking at buildings we liked, and we came up with a color called Moccasin, which looks exactly like that color. We want to do it on our walls and trim, and a lighter color for the main house. I think it’ll look great, but it’s been raining here. Our guy Tim said they will have the house painted by the end of the week, so I am sure there’ll be pictures up here soon.