Improbable Things

The Wrong Clock

I have updates on the rat (dead and gone) and the house painting (done and over) but I'm not going to write on that today. Another day, perhaps. Like how someday I'll write up an update on the basement (maybe finished, mostly) and the rain barrels and all of the other projects I start and sometimes finish.

Today is a story about heirlooms. A dear friend wrote a story about hoosier cabinets and family heirlooms and it inspired me to finally write up the story, as I know it, of The Wrong Clock. 

Work In Progress

Just a hint...

The rot is coming off. Painting the exterior is the last of the big punchlist items we have remaining from the inspector's To Do List. That was just over three years ago. I recall, when we finished the tour, my asking the home inspector what he thought. He paused and replied, "Well, you don't seem scared of this house." Nope, not scared, but it remains a work in progress.

Learning to stand, by Cap't Chunky Monkey

Lining up the limbs takes the longest time. Pesky feet end up in all the wrong directions. Then preparing for the launch....

Stand! Or more accurately, precariously hover in place for a few seconds. She's cleverly locking her knees on the slide for stability. WeeC has an intrinsic knowledge of physics. She's obviously be a scientist when she grows up!

Dismount is important at this stage. WeeE provided incentive and entertainment for this photo shoot. In the care yesterday we had a long (for a 3 yo) and remarkably coherent (for a 3 yo) conversation. She used some word we were surprised by.

E: "My almost WordGirl, but not yet." (She still uses third person a lot. It's terribly cute.)

Me: why only almost WordGirl?

E: My just little girl.

Me: Maybe you need a monkey side-kick, like Cap'n Huggyface.

Bill: Maybe WeeC could be your monkey side-kick.

E: No, WeeC is baby pirate! Like me. For Halloween.

Me: Oh right! She can be a pirate capt'n though.

E: She be Cap'n Hook. Like me.

Me: Maybe she can be your pirate monkey sidekick, Cap'n Chunky Monkey.

And with that, it was settled. WeeC is now aka Cap'n Chunky Monkey. She won't be for always, of course, but right now, the baby is one very chunky child. She's 22 lbs at 8.5 mos, keeping her solidly in the OMG HUGE Percentile (97+). And I repeat, this is the small child. Her sister was even larger at this age. They have a lot of limb to build with all that chub.

PeaPod to the Rescue

This post could be about the number of chia pets you can find at Value Village... but it's not.

It could be about PeaPod and my dubious experiment with grocery delivery. It's not, though PeaPod bags play a part.

This post could be about how WeeC is standing, already, at 8 mos. But it's not.

This post is about this:

WTF is that, you might wonder. That is "mommy being nutty" as a certain 3 yo put it.

Dying of the Light

Memento mori. "Remember, you will die." Don't worry, no one is dead over here but I find myself preparing for this conversation with my three year old. Between an ailing elderly dog and a few great-grands who have had precarious moments recently, and the anniversary of the passing of my father-in -law, I feel like I should give this topic a good long think.  I've been trying to figure out how I explain death to WeeE and if a 3 year old needs some form of spectacle in order to grasp and begin working on something bigger than she or I will ever understand.

Spectacle may seem a weird word. Blame my husband, the philosopher. Spectacle is the act of framing an experience. We usually think of something like Las Vegas, dazzling us into forgetting that we are in a crappy casino, but that is only one half of the coin. Spectacle can also take something mind-boggling and reduce it down to something we can comprehend (a kitchy Skywalk over the Grand Canyon). Sometimes it's making a mountain out of a molehill and sometimes it is making a molehill out of a mountain.

We dramatize death, make heroes out of the undead, glory in fictional massacres, veg out to alarming body counts, and buy more papers when there is a gory story unraveling. This is nothing new. During the Black Death, it became common to hide a little homage to death in every painting. Youth with a Skull. Vanitas Still Life. The Danse Macabre. We don't do this to build death up into more than it is. We revel in death to bring it down to something our minds can comprehend. We frame death with spectacle in order to comprehend it. We take it so far into the unreal that we don't notice that we've made it taboo to talk about the reality of death.

Which leaves me where, exactly, when talking to a child? Pretty lost.

Rat update: acts of desperation

We finally watched Over the Hedge. Jeepers, I liked that movie. Even if, in real life, I am the crazy shrill freaking-out woman hiring in the macho Verminator.

My version of the Verminator is a patient, mellow guy who has apparently embraced that part of his job is talking down hysterical home-owners. He came out about 3 weeks ago, pointed out all of the possible rat access holes, taught me a bit about rat behavior and set 4 traps. We've caught nothing. I've considered this failure, but the Verminator advised patience. Rats are smart and trap-shy. If I futzed with the traps, I can decrease the chance of catching one. Ok. Patience. I tried some patience. 

P.A.T.I.E.N.C.E. Ok, enough of that.

Ryan's Green Tudor

So on to more hopeful and creative house challenges. The color. I should send in my requested color today, or Wednesday at the latest. Here is our house with the colors from Ryan's suggested house.

Better? Ignore the door. We are still up in the air about that.

This is not the blue that initially inspired us. Nor is it the traditional brown used on Tudors. I've learned that originally, my wood work was stained and not painted. But I can't go back to that and it costs the same to stay brown or go another color.

One challenge is that this was not a Ben Moore color, so now I have to find it in the Ben Moore line up. Any help finding it is appreciated.

Rodent sagas cont'd

2:30 am the baby and I are woken up because some pest drop a decorative bar of SOAP on the hardwood in the hall. SOAP?! I don't even know where it came from; never seen the lil shell shaped thing before. It looks like soap lifted from a nice hotel.

When sitting in the living room, we can hear they are in my office. Walk into the office and nothing is there. When I stand upstairs, I can hear thumps and scurries ambient downstairs. Walk down the steps and they are vanished. Get insomnia, and I can hear chewing and moving about in the walls. At first it was only the wet wall, a lovely rodent highway through a house, especially when it has a cute door for access. But last night, I heard them in the gabled ceilings of my room, which is a room away. Proverbially it's the sticks from where the action used to be. Hundchen finally noticed something up where one of the beasties was trying to cut their way through the floor of the library MIDDAY. As I type this, I can hear them in the kitchen ceiling.

This is not the first night I've been awake, listening, as though by pin-pointing the noise I could do anything. It's officially driving me mad. We have an infestation of SOMETHING! But I've never caught anything and I've never SEEN anything!

Back when I had the trapping service, we determined this was no longer plain mice. I've had some mice for ages and we co-existed in a fairly benign way. A half a box of dog biscuits hoarded onto an upper shelf confirmed that this was not mice, since mice aren't big or strong enough to carry off medium sized biscuits. But is it rats? He's fairly certain it is. If it is rats, is it one or a family. When I saw one jump from the top of the cabinet, after I removed the biscuits, I reported that it was larger than a mouse, but smaller than a rat. He suspected a juvenile rat, which would mean a family, which officially icked me the hell out.

But we have no proof. I've been putting the fruit up in the metal breadbox and trying to leave less mess out. They've ignored eggplant so I thought the massive green tomatoes were ok on the counter for one night. (I still don't like refrigerating tomatoes.) Yesterday morning something had gotten into the tomatoes. Now that I know that they will steal an old bar of SOAP, I guess I am not surprised, but...

Do rats steal soap? Could I have both rats and the squirrels? I haven't seen any mice in ages so I'm thinking they got gentrified right out of the neighborhood with these new fancier critters.

We plugged some exterior holes of concern already. Somehow though I don't feel that made any difference. I know folks say to look for holes in your kitchen, but you have not seen my kitchen or you'd laugh. When we designed and installed it, we learned that there is nothing resembling a straight line in this whole house. Some of the cabinets stand a solid 3/4" from the nearest crooked masonry wall. Then there is the 3' square hole in the sink cabinet where the plumbing comes in, because we lost the piece to put back in there and never cut a plywood replacement. Although some quarter-round might do some filling of holes, at the moment the kitchen is a crazy warren of hidey holes.

And did I mention that they were in the upstairs bath stealing SOAP?! If they are willing to go after soap, what about baby bottles full of formula?

I did some research on poison yesterday, because, well isn't that what you do? I've held off because of the two curious little kids and two dogs. I saw the faces of the vet techs when the older lady brought in her little dog for rat poisoning and it made clear that this is not a good thing to make mistakes with. 

If anyone can lend some moral support, I could use it. This is a big stresser (among several) and I feel undone by it. My house, my home, is infested. That means unclean, that means unsafe for WeeC to crawl the floors, that means a moral failure on my part. It means being surrounded by this failure, hearing it scratching behind me all the time. It means feeling helpless as things get worse. 

Door Choices

A door is a great symbol. Mine is gorgeous. We bought the house for this door. The wood is soft, smooth, heavy, real.

It's also in disrepair, like everything in the house. For three years, I've been afraid to touch these doors. We are painting the house and I think it's time to overcome some fear.

The wood, I am told, might be chestnut. You can see the discoloration around the belly area, from water and sun. The iron crossbars are decorative and have a patina of age/neglect.

The real problem is the outer door.

This "screen" door blocks the inner door, but also protects it. You can see that the lower lip of the screen opening is what caused the water to splash up and contribute to the wear on the inner door. The top of the arch is wobbly and we always fear it will crack off.

Once there was a real window or something in the screen door. As seen here, it's just got screening stapled in there right now, which someone(s) small and precocious have ripped up.

I've never been given the same two answers on how to refurbish these two. One person says I need to take it off the hinges, dip it, sand it and re-stain the inner door. Another says that I should NOT remove it because it might not rehang properly. One person says to get a new screen/glass door fabricated, but no one seems to do anything like that. One person says that just a little glue will reinforce the wobbly top. Another recommends screws put in at an angle.

Bill suggests painting the exterior door red, perhaps the red from the sign hanging to the right. I'd like to replace the inner window frame with something that will allow us to put screens in during hot weather and glass in during cold weather. It'd be nice to reveal the inner door better, but I don't think anything short of replacing the outer door with a solid glass one will do that. I'm open to the idea, if anyone can name a door manufacturer who is able to make custom doors, preferably for under $1000. 

So, do I leave the main door hanging, sand the rough part and reglaze? Or take it down, dip and re-stain/seal?

Do we screw or glue the arch of the outer door? Paint it cream or red?
Thoughts? This will all go down in late September.

Random Wednesday

... where I don't at all chronicle the start of school, my birthday or the new tattoo. I'm capricious like that.

Reading on American secularism is making me want to shout from the rooftops, "No, it's MY America I want back."

I'm trying to pack lunches and plan meals better. Bill is my guinea pig and I just don't know if I have it in me to become a bento box mom. But I could start packing more creative tupperwares of food that might help keep us all healthy and wealthy a bit longer. 

I'm researching house painters and fighting a losing battle with ROUSes in the kitchen. One jumped from the top of a cabinet last night, igniting a murderous rage in me. So I set mousetraps before bed... and ended up catching a 3 year old this morning. I feel completely undone by the mouse infestation.

No one in the house has managed an uninterrupted 6 hours of sleep in memory. Weeks. Maybe months. This has become the new normal, such that when folks ask if we are sleeping better, I say a grateful yes and I mean it. If they assume that means we get full nights of sleep and are well-rested and clearheaded...I can only laugh. I've ceased having that expectation. Increasingly, I'm convinced that a full night of sleep is a luxury only a teeny tiny sliver of the population of the planet is rewarded with. The rest of us deal with night terrors, snoring, midnight feedings, random insomnia, sirens, alarms going off, smoke alarm batteries failing, bedwetting, night shifts, insurgent attacks, natural disasters, ... really, who on the planet gets to sleep soundly, safely, quietly all night long? It's a tiny minority of the 8+ billion on the planet. So I'm not sure why I expect to be among them.

Listening to an interview with the directer of OPM sent me exploring on USAJOBS which somehow ended me up on an aupair website. Daydreams ensued. An office. A desk. A task and a sense of accomplishment. Friendly co-workers. Coffee run at 10 am. Thoughtful conversations. A paycheck. The memories I have of working full-time have become as inaccurate as memories we have of idyllic childhoods. I've edited out everything that would make a good episode of The Office and just kept the sparkly unicorns and magic rainbows. 

Stay-at-home life has been.... ooky.