Forking Thief

I have earned a reputation as a thief in my household.  Rightly earned it, I might add.

About once a week or more, we’ll be eating dinner and one of the little kids who flank me at the table will be using fingers to pick up a piece of meat or a carrot and inevitably ask, “Where’s my fork?”

All eyes on Mom, who is holding one short fork with her first bite of the meal atop… and a long fork sitting askew to her plate.

“Mom, you’re a fork stealer.”

I can’t be the only mom in the world regularly accused of such a crime.

I’m not sure there’s any hope for rehabilitation.  That is, until my kids reach the ages when they no longer require an adult to cut up their food.  Until then I guess I could give each kid two forks as we commence each meal.

I’d probably just end up with five forks at my spot.  And then there’s all the forking extra dishwashing to do.

Laughing at Myself

I noticed while perusing my blog’s stats page that I’ve had two hits this past week to a post I wrote ages ago titled Rural Landscape.  I didn’t even remember writing about such a thing.  My favorite part of the post:

Dear Rural Landscape Photograph:

I’ve been a bitch to you.  If you will give me another chance, I promise to be nicer to you.  In fact, I very recently made a picture of a straw bale in my garden.  I hope you will accept it as a peace offering.

I will try to get to know you a little better.  I will look at some of the great landscape photography in history and gain some respect for you.  I will try my hand at making you and find out for myself if you can be challenging and provocative.

Love,

Sarah

Clean House, Warm House

For months, I think I was saying it to try and convince myself:

Living in a smaller space is going to be great.  Less room for clutter… easier to clean and care for…

As I cleaned the house for our house warming party earlier this month, I was surprised to realize that this is quite accurate.   A smaller house is indeed easier to clean and care for.  We have only one bathroom floor for a little boy to pee all over.   One shower to clean.  One sink full of crusty toothpaste spit.

The laundry doesn’t get forgotten because it’s not sentenced to the basement.  And the lint and dirt spewing from the dryer gets swept or wiped up every time the little boy overshoots and pees on the bathroom floor.  (This is a nearly daily occurence.)

Even if the kitchen table is covered in games and homework; and the floor is full of dried mud chunks and dog hair; and the living room is full of toy parts and snack dishes… it takes less than an hour to get pretty much everything back into place and wiped off. 

I’ve even been thinking about dusting.  I know.  The apocalypse must be headed our way.

I’ve discovered that I don’t mind sweeping.  Maybe it’s because I’m completely infatuated with our beautiful hardwood floors over which I have bled, sweated and cried.  Speaking of which, I know I promised some photos of the floors awhile back… 

The first two photos capture the living room floor.  It started off stained a dark reddish color. 

And the kitchen:

We had a housewarming party over the weekend, and it was a lovely eclectic group of our friends and family, all of whom had come out to help us in some way with our house, from roofing and installing windows, to sweeping and watching children.  We are so humbled by the long list of friends who came to our aid and encouraged and loved and fed us along the way. 

During the party, we burned the massively huge pile of brush and junk wood that has been growing exponentially since September.  I was a bit concerned for the pine trees to the south of the fire.  They didn’t go up in flames but I suspect that few branches will wither away.

We filled our house with friends and family even though the house isn’t “finished.”  We’re out of money, so it will have to stay that way for awhile.  We are living and functioning well in the new house despite the absence of finished pieces of wood stuck to the walls along the edges of the ceiling, floors, and windows.  

I suspect that moulding will not make my life more meaningful or complete. 

Even so, it was tempting to wait until everything was beautiful and trimmed and finished to have a party. I’m so glad that we went ahead with it anyway. 

The fellowship of people we love is the sort of thing that actually does make our lives more meaningful and complete.

Even better than having a clean house is sharing the house and warming it up with friends!

Grandma

I’ve been sitting on this post.   I’ve been afraid that what I want to share isn’t quite eloquent and beautiful enough. I’ve decided that I’ll just let it be what it is.

I press forward with working, preparing to move, busy house projects and marriage stress.  I even continue to blog about the progress on our house and family adventures and close calls.  (Do you realize that in the past two months we have had two ambulance calls to our house and one rushed trip to the ER?) .

But it’s time for me to take a step back from all the craziness and acknowledge that my grandma passed away a couple weeks ago.  Yes, my most loyal blog fan has died.

Somewhere near the middle of July I pretty much abandoned the blog, but Grandma is the one who motivated me to get back online and update it so that she could check in on me and my family while she was in the hospital. 

Many might see a blog as an impersonal way to stay in touch, but I think that it served as a connection that kept my grandma close to my life’s adventures and my inner-workings.  I would hear second-hand that she was shocked about something I wrote, or hear that she was asking other family members if they had read my latest post. 

The result, I think, is that my grandma probably knew me pretty well, even though we didn’t see each other or speak very often.  We had occasional email and photo exchanges, and she sent a fair amount of lovey dovey angel and teddy bear forwards. 

I am sure of her affection for me.

I feel lucky that I was able to take enough time away from house projects to go and visit her this fall–once when she was first brought to the hospital and once after she was moved to hospice care.  I brought my guitar and sang some seemingly random songs (that were actually chosen quite strategically) with a prayer in my heart to be a conduit of the spirit for her.

God, I love to sing.  It physically feels so good and right.  I smile and close my eyes and and sometimes can’t believe that it’s my flesh moving the air and creating the sound.  It feels like someone else has taken control of my head, heart, throat and lungs and breathed something clear and true out of them. 

When I sang Schubert’s Ave Maria at a funeral for my husband’s great aunt several years ago, I hardly had to open my mouth and the most beautiful and big sound echoed from little me.  Spirit took hold and played me like an instrument.  It left me warm, bright-cheeked and feeling humble. 

Last night I got my guitar out and started jammin’ on the song that came together the last day I saw my grandma alive.  The song had the bones of  a chorus before that day, but hardly a real verse.  And when I sat down to play it for her, it clicked. 

My sister Becca and I sang it at her funeral last week.  Becca added some beautiful harmony and suggestions for pacing and an ending.  It turned out so lovely, and it feels wonderful to sing.

My little J. told me last night that it was good music for jumping.  He was jumping from the couch to the bean bag chair and running laps around the kitchen.  As we set the table for dinner, I was still singing it and when I stopped, two of my girls kept singing the chorus without me. 

I think they actually really like the song.  It made my heart smile.

 

Pray Our Way to the Other Side

 

Hanging on, my friend

This can’t be the end

The path isn’t straight

If we lose sight along the way

 

Let’s pray our way to the other side

Asking forgiveness on the way to the other side

Let’s pray our way to the other side

Learning to trust on our way, on our way

We’re on our way to that other side

 

All the love we have to give

Come to me you say

And together, we’ll pray

On our knees

Hands to the sky

Grace and healing freeing you and me from the lie

We can can trust in Him

To lead us there

 

Let’s pray our way

To the other side

And it won’t be the end

————————

A song was born, Grandma made it to the other side, and each of my blog posts will permanently be missing one loving visitor.

Neither Here Nor There

Okay, so a few weeks ago, a bunch of our fantabulous friends and family showed up and we sanded, spackled, primed and painted…

And the guys finished installing the last of the rodge caps on the roof!

The weather was beautiful and the kids played outside.  With sticks.  And as the saying goes, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye…

Have you ever experienced watching your son being carried into the house with blood gushing from his eye?

I have.

I’ll cut to the good news, which is that little J.’s eye is fine, though it took almost two weeks to get the “all clear” from the doc.  He suffered a hyphema, which is internal bleeding between the cornea and iris. 

It is quite serious and a real threat to vision if pressure builds up during healing, which can permanently damage the optic nerve.  Up until pretty recently, a kid with this injury would have been hospitalized for five days.

All we had to do was keep him on the couch and administer eye drops and ointment twice a day.    Ever tried to keep a four year old boy from running and jumping and doing everything that a normal kid does?  Or given him eye drops?

I have to give Sean the glory on this one.  He came up with the wonderful idea of bribery with transformers.  All J. had to do was cooperate to get drops for a couple of doses let the eye doctor get a good follow up exam and we would drive directly to Target to buy a new transformer.

The best eleven bucks we ever spent.  

J. instantly became the bravest little man on the face of the planet.  Here he is with his metal eye patch after that first follow up eye doctor visit.  (The new transformer is in his lap.): 

I seriously have never felt so proud of him before.  My heart was just bursting with love for my little boy who was being so grown up. The staff at the eye clinic couldn’t say enough great things about well he did. 

Identify some pictures?  Sure! 

Drops to numb the eye? No problem.

Pressure test with a little pen-like stick?  Bring it on.

Shine a light into the eye? Sure, do that too.

It was awesome.  He’s been back for a couple more appointments and has earned two more toys.  The pressure was up at the second visit, but we continued the drops and at his last appointment, they declared him good as new.

And as we nursed J.’s eye, the worked continued…

Our friend Mark braved the cold and ladders to seal the windows, and then he and I cased the interior of several windows.

How much do you love the bright apple green and electric blue in C. and J.’s room?!  I am more excited about the colors in this room than I am about any room in the house–and I didn’t even pick the colors.  The kids did!

Tina painted and painted.  Noel installed an outlet for the microwave and hooked up the electricity in the garage (hooray for not having to run a cord out to the table saw!).  Jeremy and Sean installed basement windows. 

While we worked, our sweet friend Linda took care of everyone’s children!  I think she gets the hero award for the weekend!

This past week, Sean finished sanding the floors, the older girls painted their room, and I applied three coats of floor varnish…

I’ve recently given the camera a break from the dust, but I promise I’ll take some photos of the floor to amaze and astound you.

With any luck, we’ll get the carpet in this week and move in over MEA weekend.  As for me, I can’t wait to be done living in two places and ignoring the kids for the sake of floors and walls. 

For now, we’re neither here nor there.

Push

Watching.

Laboring. 

Waiting. 

Working. 

Deepening waves

leading to this:

 

Push.  

 

Stretching.

Tearing.

Blood vessels

popping.

 

Prized insight:

The prize is in sight.

 

Still.

It’s messy.

 

Push.

 

Anticipating,

fearing

pain.

Squeezing through.

Knowing.

Wanting.

Feeling

it’s close to being over. 

 

Push.

Call for Help (and a Bonfire)

We’re getting so close.  This past weekend Sean and I hung the cabinets This Old House style and thanks to our neighbor Al, the counters are also installed in the kitchen.  Everything is farm house straight:

We also spent a day attending to the yard and putting away materials in preparation for some more excavating work.  We are extending our driveway along the house and adding gravel as well as preparing the site for our garage to be built next year.  As it turns out, we are also having our septic repaired. (Sigh.)  

The project list is shrinking, and we’re feeling the pressure to get the rest of it done… yesterday.

We need some help. 

I didn’t have the walls ready to paint this past weekend because I’ve damaged my wrist (at least temporarily) from mudding and sanding.  I’m going to keep it wrapped and pop lots of ibuprofen this week and do my best to finish the last coats of mudding in the living room, stairway, and one more bedroom so that all remaining rooms are ready for sanding and paint by Saturday. 

If I can hang on and push one more week out of my arm,  maybe our sweet little C. will not have to finish the rest of it up for me:

I’m feeling the burn to get this done.  Can you help us!?  For an hour?  Or four?

Needed this Saturday September 26th

• Sanders (first thing Saturday morning!) and Dust Wipers
• Wall Painters (I know you’re all out there!  About ninety-eight thousand people have approached me about helping with this in the past six months.  The time has finally come.)
• Pressure-Washer Operator (for porch and window trim)
• Cleaning Helpers (to bravely take on The Dust.  Vacuuming floors, walls, window sills; wiping cupboards, ceiling fans and light fixtures; washing  windows and screens, steam cleaning the couch… everything is filthy.  It just has to end.)
• Child Care!  Okay A. and L. are too old to need this, but they are usually game for tagging along if you want to take the whole crew.  Especially if it means getting out of doing yard work or other manual labor on the house.  Or babysitting.
• Meal Preparation and Cleanup.  Cook and serve food to our hardworking friends so that we don’t have to stop working except to stuff our faces! 
• Roofer to finish installing ridge caps, top the chimney pipe and trim the valley shingle edges

Sean and I need to be able to finish installing floor transitions in two doorways and the wood treads and landings on the steps.  The idea is to be ready for floor finishing during the week of Sept. 28 – Oct. 2, and to forge ahead full steam…

Next Saturday, October 3

• Exterior painters for porch and window trim
• Interior trim installers
• Gardeners/Grass planters
• Closet organizer installer
• Window insulator/sill-board installer/caulker
• Child care helpers
• Meal preparation and cleanup
• BONFIRE ATTENDEES!  Yes, it’s time for a party.  We plan to burn a huge pile of brush and junk wood.  (And make merry drinking beer and pop and eating snacks. )  Fire starting around 7-8 PM.  Bring your own chair and a song in your heart.  Be sure to call us to let us know that you’re coming so that we can talk you into helping us at some point throughout the day too. 

If arrangements work out, carpet will be installed upstairs between Oct 5 and 9… and we’ll be ready for the last wave of help by…

October 10

• LARGE ITEM MOVERS! The massively heavy couch (two recliners) is already moved, our giant living room armoire is sold and we are hiring out to move the piano…  (“You’re welcome,” to everyone who has ever helped us move!)   The bulk of what’s left will be managed in small bites as we go but we’ll need help with a few large items:  stove, washer, freezer, desk, dressers…

If you can help with any or all of it, I can’t even begin to tell you how deeply appreciated it would be!  We are SO aware that we can’t do it all alone.

Everything at Once

 

I’ll tell ya what I would do…

If we were sane, we might have listened to the advice of our friends, who at several stages of the tear off said things like, “What I would do, is maybe look into some tile to cover this up.”  It was excellent advice.  I especially thought that as I nursed blisters on both hands from pulling staples. 

When we discovered a few months ago that there was hardwood floor underneath layers of linoleum and plywood, we were determined to scrape everything off of it and restore it, to honor the home and its history.

Well, that and we have no money allocated for tiling another 300 square feet in the house.

So we tore it all out to get back to the original hardwood floor.  It was there, hiding beneath layers of linoleum, thin plywood (complete with no less than 800,000 of the longest, most fragile staples ever installed), peel-and-stick linoleum tiles, and a quarter-inch thick layer of black, tar-like adhesive.

The best we could get it to look after scraping off the adhesive remover:

See the staple in the photo above?  I saw a hundred of them every time I closed my eyes for days.  Every time we thought we had finished pulling every single one out of an area, we would go back over the same area and find three more.

No fewer than five rounds of sanding.  We gummed up countless drum sander belts. 

I love the discolored, damaged look to the wood. Staple holes, minor water damage, even a few holes patched with tin cans.  People pay big money for that “distressed” or “antiqued” finish. 

We just had to sweat and bleed a little.

Kitchen Walls

We debated about whether or not to tear out the kitchen.  We’d probably be moved in if we hadn’t torn it out.

I can’t help but think we made the right choice, even though this is arguably the most work we’ve done in one room yet.

Behold, the wall transformation:

That’s brick-patterned wallpaper.  Complete with soot from some past toaster fire or something.

I’m loving the red walls, complemented by a tasty brown.

This kitchen is going to be awesome.