The past few weeks

I've probably started new posts a dozen times since the last time I checked in, but I haven't been motivated enough to finish any of them. That's not to say that nothing has been going on around the old homestead. The week before last it felt like I did nothing but drive to Columbus and back. That Monday, Clara had surgery to remove her extra toes.

Waiting for surgery. Totally oblivious.

Those poor sweet feet. :(

She was pretty much conked out for the rest of the day.


Don't think those casts slowed her down, though. A few minutes before the picture above was taken, she was crawling around in the hospital crib, even though it was clear the anesthesia hadn't totally worn off. Three days later, she managed to get out of one of the casts. After a frantic phone call to the surgeon, I was back on my way to Columbus to get another cast put on. The doctor told us not to worry too much if it happened again because the cast was only there to keep her from pulling out the stitches, and she didn't seem at all interested in doing so. Tom played in a table tennis tournament in Columbus on Saturday, and we were on our way there when she managed to wiggle out of the cast again. What a stinker!

When we got back from Columbus for the third time that week, we discovered that our basement had taken on water in a major way. It had always been a little damp and musty, but nothing prepared us for the 10" of water that awaited us. We got record amounts of rainfall in April, and even the driest of basements around here were pretty wet. Even so, I tried to remain grateful that this was the only real damage done at a time when tornadoes were ripping through much of the country. So after Mass and lunch with Tom's family on Easter Sunday, we spent the rest of the day pumping water out of the basement. It was certainly a memorable way to spend the holiday!

We had a guy come over to give us an estimate on finishing the other two bedrooms and adjoining bathroom. While we felt like his pricing was fair, it is still more than we want to pay out. He's willing to just do the framing for us and then let us take care of the next steps. It's nice that he's understanding of budget constraints, unlike many general contractor horror stories I've heard.

So that's all the news for now, unless you want to know how I feel about the royal wedding (gorgeous event, now leave the poor couple alone) or Osama bin Laden (feeling guilty that I'm relieved a person is dead) or the cancellation of All My Children (mad as hell). Lots of other house-related projects in the works, so stay tuned!

Oh, no, not this again...

Now that the weather is more agreeable to working outdoors, I'm ready for The Wall, v2.0. Don't worry, I won't make you read the agonizing details again, just know that it's on its way. I tested the limits of my upper body and the hauling capacity of our poor hybrid car by lugging around 500 pounds of gravel and sand from Lowe's. I think poor Clara has spent more time in Lowe's in her 9 months on earth as most people do in a lifetime!

Our first little rebel

On my daily flower check yesterday morning, I finally spotted our first bloom!

There are several others close behind, rebelling against the still-cold weather we've been suffering. I've been seeing crocus blooming everywhere except my flowerbed, so I was worried that I am a bad gardener after all. A quick Google search assured me that first-year bulbs often take a week or two longer to bloom than established ones. Whew!

Oh, and whether your Irish heritage is real or adopted (or if like me you're not sure), happy St. Patrick's Day!

Cuz everybody loves a good before and after

I finally broke down and gave Clara her first haircut. It was supposed to be a little trim just to neaten things up, but squirmy babies make for bad haircuts. Before:

Ragamuffin.

After:

So now she looks like a boy. I keep reassuring her that this is only the first of many many bad childhood haircuts to come.

The springing of spring

The miraculously warm weather we've been having the past week or so prompted me to check the status of my raised flower bed. Never having taken care of a garden before, I was nervous that I planted everything wrong and that it would all be a dismal failure. But...it looks like the bulbs are as anxious for spring as I am!

Terrible picture, sorry.

Little sprouts are popping up everywhere. I think it's mostly the crocus, but maybe some of the early tulips and a few of the irises as well. I can't wait until they bloom!

Bring out your dead

I'm not dead yet.

Despite my absence, I'm really not dead yet. (I'm feeling much better).

I used to consider myself an organized person. Almost overly organized. Spreadsheets and lists are a compulsion. But sometimes it takes me a while to get into that mode. Take our house for example. No finished rooms = no proper place for anything = big disorganized heaps everywhere. As a result, every project takes much longer than it ought because of the time I spend wandering around the house muttering, "I know I just saw that hammer somewhere."

So, basta. Like everybody else in the world, I've made organization a priority for the new year. I've come up with separate lists (I wasn't kidding about the lists!) of things to do while Clara's asleep and for when she's awake. Lest you think I abandon her completely all day long, know that I still spend the vast majority of her waking hours playing with and loving on the little rugrat.

I've been working on the foyer/front hallway area the past couple of days. The biggest improvement was to get rid of the bags of aluminum cans piled by the door. We used to leave a bag of cans on our front steps for whoever to take and recycle for cash, but we found out that our church collects aluminum cans to help fund their food pantry. I could never find any information about dropping them off, so they just accumulated. I finally got the necessary info and got rid of an entire trunkful of cans within the hour. It felt good! All of the holiday decorations I bought (on clearance, naturally) and plunked down in the hallway have been relegated to the attic crawlspace. I now have a relatively clear space where I can place a workbench and embrace my inner OCD tendencies to organize the hundreds of screwdrivers I can never find. At least it doesn't look like an episode of Hoarders anymore.

Not our entryway.

Baby steps.

MIA

Eesh. Looks like I've been MIA for a month. Sorry. We've been busy with winter and holiday preparations. No huge projects, but things that needed to get done before the cold sets in. We mowed the lawn a final time, cleaned up the yard and back porch, removed/drained the hose, put an insulated cover over the hose bib, covered all accessible plumbing supply lines with pipe wrap (a much bigger project than it sounds like), fixed our basement furnace (because of Tom's brilliance, we didn't even have to call a furnace company, which saved us at least 60 bucks), and got our security system fixed. The monitoring unit they originally installed was junk and continually gave us a "communication error" message. The siren would go off, but it wasn't sending the alarm information to the security company. They're giving us a few months service and upgrading our motion detector to a pet sensitive one for free. It was a favorable resolution to what has been an annoyance for several months.

I was also busy baking for Thanksgiving at Tom's work. I made a big double batch of pumpkin scones and a Mississippi mud pie. (The mud pie was very nearly a disaster. I unwittingly bought one box of instant and one box of cook-and-serve pudding. The recipe called for mixing the two together, which I did before I realized the difference in preparation. Trying to cook instant pudding just results in burned pudding. Bad news. Leave it to me to perfectly execute a from-scratch recipe but totally botch a box of pudding.) We'll be traveling to Baltimore tomorrow, so no big family ordeal for us. We'll be celebrating Thanksgiving together as a family of three for the first time, and that is something for which I'm truly thankful.