What? It's November Already?

Well darn. I can't believe it's been a month since I've written anything. I'm betting you all have given up on me and will end up reading this about mid-November, if it ever even comes to mind at all :o)

Lessee . . . we had Barbara come and stay with us for a month. That precipitated a few things, including excavating the "guest room" and finally moving furniture around, which I have already chronicled. We also decided sleep was a pretty cool thing after sampling some, as well as some semblance of social life. So we spent a great deal of the last month seeing people, having them over to the house to inspect the latest transformations, and generally getting rest. REAL rest. We've cooked, spattered grease, had a small cooking fire, slept on the futon, slept on the couch, had S'mores at the neighbor's house, gone out to eat at a proper restaurant, gone to a hockey game, seen friends at their respective houses, and even managed to take in a few movies at the RedBox theater (you cannot beat $1.06 a night rental!).

Cooking fire? you ask? Yes, you read that correctly. We've already determined the limits of our new stove. Our friend Kim offered to come over and divulge the secrets of her creamy (heavenly) polenta, which involves high heat, a lot of stirring, and a bit of praying. Meanwhile, Barbara made her famous meatballs and gravy (in their hamlet of New Jersey, they call it that instead of what the rest of the world calls it, marinara, or red sauce . . . no brown drippings and flour here). Her meatballs are usually cooked in oil, which she has greatly reduced for my stomach's acceptance sake, but, coupled with gravy on one burner, polenta on another, and lots of girly chatter in the kitchen, does not go well with high heat. In a quick minute, she had flames from the gas stove leap into her pan. She quietly took the pan, stepped back into the open room with 1 ft flames leaping from the pan and said calmly "I need a lid." Needless to say, all chatty banter disappeared, the homewrecker appeared out of nowhere, raced to the cabinet, got a lid, and snuffed it out quickly. (He clearly didn't want his title wrested away from him in that manner. If you're gonna wreck a home, it needs to be done properly with sledgehammer and grunts, not fire and panic.)

We checked the over-the-range microwave (1 week old) for flame damage, and thankfully there was none. And now I have a good visual of what can happen in this house, and Rich was able to locate one of the fire extinguishers for anything for the future.

Word of note for you scaredy-cats with electric stoves: in ALL my years of cooking with gas, I have NEVER had a fire. But it's good that Barbara got that kink out of the system early. Now we have a plan if it ever happens again. :o) And we also now know that the gas stove I had in Stepford was a pale imitation of the type of gas cooking you can do.

With ashes rubbed on our faces, and dressed in sackcloth, Rich and I took Barbara to the airport last Monday. We had a great time and did put her to work a bit (at her insistence). She made our curtains and valances in our bedroom (the first time I've had real, proper curtains and valances since I was a child!), as well as helped us with some painting in the LR and the laundry cabinet. However, we didn't want to work her to death, since she'd need her energy for the 11-month-old grandson, waiting for her at home.

Since she's left, we've been trying to catch up on other things we put off while she was here, like Dr's appts, vet appts to comb out and cut out all of Eli's clumps, buying tires for my car, and so on. Yesterday we managed to actually get some good work done on the house.

The guest bathroom is almost completely done. Aside from replacing the fan and painting, all the trim work and such are pretty much done. There's cap rail on top of the wainscoting now (and caulked), there's bathroom niche that can hold magazines, toilet paper, air freshener, and a beer tap (also caulked), there's crown in the area above the vanity, and trim over the wood beam in the ceiling that used to denote the wall where the sink used to be. Now the bath just needs a new fan to better evacuate the moist air, a ton of painting and a threshold, and we should be complete! That sounds like a lot, but in the scheme of things, it ain't much. Perhaps at that point, I'll finally post pictures.

We also installed a dishwasher yesterday, so now that Barbara, our human dishwasher, has left, we felt it imperative to get that done since we've finally committed to using real plates, bowls, etc. instead of paper and foil.

We've also been organizing Rich's man cave/workshop so he can find all his toys and use our time more effectively. Things have gotten out of hand in the garage to the point we can't find anything, so it was time to start organizing again.

The kitchen still has plywood and plastic tablecloth counters and salvage hardwoods in some spots on the tarpaper covered subfloor, but we've just gotten the laminate into the garage, as well as the hardwoods stashed in the living room, so it's just finding the time to do either of those projects (both quite lengthy).

I was actually going to work on the house today, before I showed property and figured out who I was voting for, but catching up with bills, scheduling the properties and researching them, researching voting, and writing this blog has conveniently made it not worth my time to work on the house now. How sad.