What Does That Switch Do?

A post also known as, "I guess our whirlpool tub does work."

I know, you have been missing my little "this could only happen to me" posts. I haven't done one in a long time. Things happen, I just haven't written about them. But this one is a classic, although it doesn't involve rivers of water or clogged toilets. It involves our whirlpool tub.

I have a love hate relationship with whirlpool tubs. I am not, but nature, a bath person. I am a shower person. I am a short and efficient shower person. You can thank my dad for that as I wasn't always such. I was a typical teenager who took her water resistant transistor radio (if you don't know what that is look it up) into the shower so that I could sing along on the AM station with the top hits of 1975. That is I WAS that typical teenager until I routinely would use all the hot water in the tank. Then I was no longer that typical teenager because my dad said, "You can take as many showers as you want...but they can be no more than 5 minutes long. We all need hot water in the morning."  

OK then, short showers it was.

We had a whirlpool tub at OCK, it came as a part of the custom house package. It was one of the few things that I didn't really make a decision on. It was there in the plans. It got put it. And in the 13 years that we lived there I used it less than 10 times. We had a well. Wells are tricky things. That tub used as much water as it would take to solve the California drought. Every time I filled up that tub I could hear my well gasping with distress. I will say that it is nice to get into a whirlpool tub after a long day of yard work...but still....the well guilt was strong.

And then we moved to Chez Knit. And there was another whirlpool tub. When we had Chez Knit inspected before the purchase, the inspector could not get the buttons on the tub to work. We just added it to the list of things that we would eventually fix. It wasn't a priority because there was also a shower (and remember, I am a shower girl.) In the mean time the tub was just the place that we draped wet towels and wet tee-shirts and a ledge to put things on and.....

You get the picture.

I occasionally used it just to soak in the tub with some epsom salts. I will admit that it is a good way to relieve some stress. And add a glass of wine and a good book. I am OK with this.

And then on Wednesday that all changed with one little question. HHBL walked into the bathroom, looked at this innocuous little timer switch on the wall by my sink area and asked, "Hey, what does this switch do?"

I am going to admit that I had never really investigated the switch. It looks just like one of those timer switches that you see in hotel bathrooms that turn on the "heater lamp" so you can be all toasty warm and live out your fantasies about being a rotisserie chicken.

What? No one else has that fantasy? Moving on.

I told him that I wasn't really sure, that I hadn't seen any kind of warming light in the ceiling and had dismissed the switch and moved on. So he turned the dial.

And the tub made a gosh awful noise. 

Wait a minute! The timer switch is at the opposite end of the bathroom from the tub. They can't be connected!  

Oh yes......they can.

We quickly surmised that if you turned the dial on the wall that the jets in the tub turned on, or at least we thought that was what was happening. There was no water in the tub to verify our tentative findings. But I knew the way to find out. It was too late to run a tub full of water on a Wednesday night so I had to wait until Thursday to put the tub jets to the test.

I filled the tub with deliciously hot water (a watched tub spout fills very slowly). I added my lilac scented epsom salts. I walked over and turned the dial for the tub jets....

Eureka! The jets bubbled the water with the same force that Old Faithful does.......I was all ready to get into the tub.....and then I realized that the jets hadn't been used in a LONG time and when they had been turned on they had spewed into my lovely bath water all the gunk that had built up in the them for however many years.

I was not going to get into the water that had black particles floating throughout it. 

Crap.

So, I emptied the tub of my lovely hot water. I scrubbed the tub. Started the water again to refill and went off to do something else so that I wasn't standing there watching the tub fill. All filled finally.....and it wasn't all that hot water....because if you fill up the whirlpool tub twice in the space of an hour you will drain the water heater just a bit. But the water was warm enough. I was not going to be denied. I turned on the timer.

Whirlpool!!!! I didn't care if the water was lukewarm. I got in there and enjoyed the heck out of this gift that we didn't even know we had.

I am ridiculously excited about this folks. But I don't think our water bill (or the water heater) can stand nightly filling of the Bubbling Behemoth. But once a week seems feasible.

Oh yes. Once a week seems very feasible.

 

Measure It? Why Would I Do That?

Laundry hanging on the line. It is one of the best things about doing laundry in the summertime. Who doesn’t like sheets that have been dried out on the line in the wind and the sunshine. Don’t tell me that you don’t like it. You know that you do.

At Old Old Chez Knit (that would be two houses ago) I had a laundry line. I had a MAJOR, 5 line laundry line that stretched 30+ feet from the house to the garage. I could hang out a lot of laundry on that baby. Of course, we had babies at that time. And five of us sleeping in beds that had sheets that needed to be washed. Small children who play outside in the mud a great deal make for a vast amount of laundry.

A laundry line was needed.

Then we moved to OCK and despite the fact that I actually lived in the woods where there were loads of trees and often times you can string a clothes line between trees……there just weren’t the right configuration of trees. PLUS, where I might have been able to string a line was directly across the back yard, otherwise known as the minefield of doggie doolies. Have a clothes line give way in that area and you are going to be washing everything again. Also there was the whole having to “tip toe through the poop piles” in order to hang out the wash. There was the ever present threat of stepping in something as I walked through the yard. My compromise was to hang the sheets on the deck railing. It wasn’t great but I made do. Nothing like having to weight your sheets down with big cans of tomatoes so that they don’t blow off into the woods.

Complain, complain.

And then we moved to Chez Knit, where again there was not a particularly great set up to think about a laundry line. The first summer we lived here was short, we moved in August and I was just trying to keep my head above water after having, in the space of 8 weeks, sold our house, bought a house, had a wedding, moved HHBL’s office and then moved to a new house. All the laundry went into the dryer.

Last year….well last year was the year where we finally got patio furniture and I made do with carefully stretching the sheets over the table and chairs and several folding racks. King size sheets are…..king sized. It was not a great system but you make do.

This year I swore to myself that I would figure out a clothes line. So what if none of my other neighbors hang clothes out on the line. Heck, most of them don’t even come out onto their patios in nice weather. I had been thinking about it and thinking about it and today I executed!

I knew that the only way this would work is if I just got a retractable clothes line that had just one line. Oh how I wish I could have one of those 5 line beauties. But I am a realist, sometimes, and I knew that it would only be one line. The question was 20ft or 40ft.

Of course I didn’t measure before I went to Home Depot! What do you take me for? Someone who thinks the problem through? I knew, right off the bat that the 40ft line was going to be too long. I got out my 10ft tape measure that always lives in my purse and right there in the Home Depot aisle I measured out 10 feet, mentally doubled is and decided that the 20ft line would work beautifully between the two pine trees that I had to work with. It will fit perfectly.

Famous last words.

First I had to cut back a few dead branches off of the two aforementioned pine trees. Nothing major, just a bit of trimming here and there.

Then I had to screw the retractable line to the bigger pine tree. Not a problem with the help of my trusty cordless drill.

Then I had to screw the hook into the other tree so that when I stretched the line out the other end could hook to the other tree. Easy peasy.

I stretched out the laundry line and I advanced toward the receiving tree and I…….

Got almost all the way there. My forward motion stopped abruptly about four feet from the tree. I tugged a bit but no go. I looked back expecting that the line was caught on something…..

And that was when I realized that my on the fly calculations about how far apart the trees where might have been just slightly off.

Dang.

I stood there for a bit, scratching my head in a most Laurel & Hardy like way. No matter how hard I pulled that line wasn’t going to stretch any further. But I am NOT going to be deterred! I raised my fist in defiance and said,

As God is my witness, I will this day have a retractable clothes line! Dangit, I am going have to MacGyver this thing.

So down to the basement I went to root around in my work area. Wire? No. An extension made of old clothes line? I don’t think so. Duct tape? Oh how I wish.

BUNGEE CORDS!!!!!!

I am currently reading The Martian by Andy Weir. I feel like I can MacGyver just about anything at the moment.

I KNEW I Would Use It Someday!

I think I have mentioned, somewhere along the way, the fact that there is a street lamp positioned perhaps 30 feet from our bedroom here at Chez Knit. It is something that we didn’t really notice when we purchased our little home on the hill. Why would we notice it other than to say, “Oh look at the lovely lamp posts!”. We always came to view the house during the day. The fact that the bulb situated at the top of the lamp post puts out about a million candle watt of light ALL. NIGHT. LONG. would not have been apparent to us until we actually slept here. And it wasn’t really apparent right at first even then. We had just begun to wonder about the overly bright appearance of our bedroom at 2 am every night when…..the bulb in the lamp post gave a fizzle and a wink and went out.

Oh how lovely it was to NOT have that lamp burning as a bright beacon of the insecurity of others in the neighborhood. When the annual meeting rolled around and others were complaining about the street lamp that was out…..we stayed silent. We had hopes that it would be permanently out. A dark hole in the overbrightness in our neighborhood that can probably be seen from space.

We reveled in the dark. We smiled fondly on the street lamp that wasn’t. We hoped in vain. Come summer, they fixed it and again the beacon of interrupted sleep shown into our window and lit up our bedroom like a Roman candle on the 4th of July.

And we did not sleep well.

And we were cranky…or more cranky than usual in my case.

In case you are wondering, there was a shade already on the window otherwise we would often be giving the neighbors who walk in the evenings a very rude shock. But that shade only cut the light somewhat. There was still light and plenty of it. What to do…what to do…other than taking the air rifle and shooting the lamp bulb out like some Light Activist Anne Oakley. The police station is just down the road. HHBL could visit me regularly. And it is probably dark enough there to get some sleep.

I struggled with what I wanted to do as far as window treatments were concerned. And lets be really honest here, I am a frugal person (Stop looking at the yarn stash! Nothing to see there!) and I didn’t want to just go out and buy something that I hated in order to cover the window and get some sleep. But it got to the point in December where I threw up my ample digits in frustration, went and got a blanket from the closet (a Mexican “throw” that had been in the family for years) and nailed it up all around the window to block some of the light. Our bedroom window looked like something from a frat house. And it cut the light…..somewhat…..and bought me a bit of time to figure out what to do.

The question still remained what to actually put up. As I was wandering around Target I came upon a curtain rod that I liked so that question was answered. But a curtain rod is not all that efficient without a curtain. And this curtain needed to be fairly light limiting. I was rooting around in my work space and what should I spy but a quilt top that I have had forever. It was pieced by my Great Grandma Maggie Pringle.

Gosh aren’t they just the cutest. This is AJ and Maggie. She had the cutest little chuckle you have ever heard. Have I ever told you about the time they tried to teach her how to drive the car? She had only ever driven horse and buggy. She was behind the wheel of the car and attempting to put it into the garage and couldn’t remember how to stop the thing. She kept saying, “WHOA! WHOA!” …..as she and the car proceeded to go into the garage and then continued out the garage through the back wall. She never drove a car again.

I digressed didn’t I?

At any rate, when Maggie died several months before HHBL and I were married the family traveled out to Iowa for the funeral. After that was all done we wandered around her little place for a time just picking up mementoes to take home with us. I am sure if this happened NOW I would go for pictures and any diaries but then I just wandered around until I spied a quilt top sitting in a corner. It was sad and bedraggled and it was obvious that it had been finished but then someone had, for some reason I cannot fathom, cut a large chunk out of one corner. Really? But I took it and stored it away. It has been carted from Iowa to Illinois to the Frozen Northeast Ohio. It has been stored in one apartment and four different houses. Numerous times I have almost just given it to Goodwill but something always stopped me. And I knew that now was the time to use it. So I sashayed over to Goodwill and bought two very dark and heavy sheets to line the quilt top and give it some extra thickness. I sandwiched them all together and did a bit of sewing magic and……..

I am completely in love with my heavy curtain. I would so love to be able to ask Maggie about all the squares and where the fabric came from. Can the dark come just a bit earlier today so I can see how well it cuts the light.

Adieu to You, Again, Time Warner (kinda)

As of Monday, Time Warner will no longer be supplying us with monstrous numbers of cable channels that we neither want or need or watch. We will be keeping them for our internet but cable will be no more.

It isn’t as hard a decision as you might think. They just charge too darn much for their charms. And if it weren’t for the sports factor at Chez Knit, the whole I cannot live without baseball thing for me and the fact that the Cleveland Cavaliers are going to be good (thank you LeBron) this year, we might not even think about getting cable of any kind.

Honestly, most of my “tv watching” is actually Netflix and Amazon Prime. I hate commercials with a fierce and gusty hatred. I like to have control over what I am watching and not feel the need to flip between two or even three different programs just to be able to avoid watching commercials.

If I am not careful I will get “Commercial avoidance thumb”.

Did I digress?

At any rate, come Monday Time Warner is going to turn the cable off. You cannot imagine how difficult it was for HHBL to get them to do that. They just keep talking and talking and trying to sell you something and ask why you don’t want to date any longer. An HOUR it was before she finally gave up. Thank goodness for speaker phones and the ability to multitask. I am betting that most of the time people just give up and say…

“FINE! Keep gouging me! Just stop talking!”

Thankfully HHBL is a man of steel and determination.

It isn’t that we aren’t going to have cable of some kind. It is most likely we are going to give Dish Network or DirectTV a try. We can have a dish here at Chez Knit just so long as “it isn’t visible from the street”.

Goodbye Time Warner.

I cannot say that I will miss you all that much. If you had just let us pick our own channels we might not have to break up. Your cable charms just aren’t worth that much when there are so many media watching options out there.

Well, This Needs Some Work

This past weekend was “Home Days” in my little town. We just missed this grand event last year because we saw Chez Knit for the first time just after the 4th of July, 2013. Friday night, Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday afternoon and evening the town square just down the street from us was filled with people and food and music.

Friday we had to miss the whole thing because we celebrated the nuptials of Jason and Samantha…but came home a bit early because HHBL was under the weather. Saturday we missed as well because HHBL still wasn’t feeling all that well. But we did confirm a wonderful suspicion that we had about fireworks and our little town. Right on the dot of 10p the noise from the polka band died down and the “mini-fireworks” show started……..and we could see it all from the house. Heck, we could have seen it all in an even better way if we had exited Chez Knit and walked 100 steps down the street.

But I was in my sleeping attire and I didn’t want any of the neighbors to run screaming into the night.

Yesterday HHBL felt a bit better so we walked the 1/4 mile down the street and partook of an Elephant ear with plenty of powdered sugar and cinnamon sugar. We watched the milling crowds. We listened to a bit of music. We purposely avoided any of the rides that were set up. No, I would like to live thankyouverymuch. And then in the evening, just after 10p……..

I got to practice my fireworks picture taking skills.

I need some work.

These would not have been possible without the use of one of my tripods (of which I have 5 of different weights and heights) and the use of my wireless trigger. 5 tripods isn’t excessive is it?

Is it?

Hello?

But I digress.

The tripod was necessary because fireworks happen in the dark. And pictures, even those taken with a camera such as Big Bertha, will be fuzzy as my brain on a Monday morning without some sort of stabilization. I also used my wireless shutter release thingie, which I sort of like but which has a mind of it’s own and sometimes just doesn’t want to release the shutter. It would actually have been easier if my remote shutter release cable had arrived from Amazon….but that won’t happen until tomorrow.

We will be seeing two more fireworks displays this week but I am ambivalent as to whether I will take camera and tripod and shutter release cable to either on of those. The thought of schlepping all of that equipment to an Indians game and to our annual Blossom 4th of July music celebration with 14,000 of our closest friends doesn’t bring joy to my heart.

Last night I just had to walk 103 steps (I counted) over to the hillside that looks out over the town, find a relatively flat area on which to set up the tripod and take some pictures. Not much schlepping involved. It was a bit dicey on the hillside as hillsides by their very nature are not flat. The tripod was somewhat steady but you can bet I didn’t leave it’s side once I had set it up. And I was carefully with my flailing appendages as I was swatting the dang mosquitoes. But I am not complaining because, it was only 103 steps from door to hillside.

No driving.

No parking and then remembering where the car was.

No crowds packed sardine like around me.

And a clean, nicely appointed bathroom readily available.

Just another reason to love my little town.

My Ongoing Zero Sum Game

For as long as I can remember, I was a collector of things….stuff….possessions. Whatever space that I inhabited, I filled it. I remember, growing up, that every surface in my room was covered with a collection of one sort or another. My wardrobe was full of books (no surprise there). My closet had clothes in it and boxes of other things. The space under my bed was a solid mass of boxes holding more things. I couldn’t tell you now what was in those boxes I just remember that I had them. I slept on an antique, four poster bed with wooden slats. If the slats had ever given way there would not have been any change in mattress aspect because it would have been held up by the solidly packed boxes underneath.

When I went off to college I took a boat load of things that I am sure I didn’t need and didn’t use. I brought it all home and took it all back the next year…with a bit more added to it. My room in nursing school was loaded. When I graduated and moved to a condo all my stuff went with me as well as more stuff that I needed to set up house keeping. When HHBL and I got married we combined households and moved to a roomy two bedroom (AND a small study) apartment that was crammed with my stuff. He is and always has been more of a minimalist so I am sure that all the stuff was a drain on him. Books. Stuffed teddy bears. Stuff. Always inflow and very rarely if ever outflow. We moved from an apartment to a very small house….and I added a bit more stuff. We moved from that house to a larger house and had three girls….and I added a bit more stuff. Then we moved to OCK which was TWICE the size of the previous house…..and I added more stuff. I envied people who had more stuff than I did. I am amazed at this now but it was so true then. As is often the case, our stuff expands to fill the space that we inhabit. I am not now nor have I ever been a hoarder (isn’t that what they always say?) but I did love trips to the Dollar Store and anything that could help organize the stuff. Going into The Container Store for the first time was what I can only describe as an existential experience…and an expensive one.

Then we put OCK on the market the first time. The real estate agent came through the house and said, “You need to pack up stuff. You need to pack up a lot of stuff. You need to pack up HALF your stuff.”

HALF our stuff? There won’t be anything in any of the rooms if we pack up all that stuff. The house will look bare and empty if we pack up all that stuff.

If only……

Somewhere I have a picture of the mountain, and I do mean mountain, of boxes that were packed up and put down in the basement in anticipation of selling and moving (which didn’t happen then). I formed my own boxed possessions pyramid. I cannot find that photo which is most likely good as it will scare the living daylights out of most of you. But I think I can give you a glimpse. OCK had about 1000 square feet of finished basement….and a slightly larger amount of unfinished basement. Those boxes filled up about 500 square feet of basement space.

That is just ridiculous.

OCK stayed on the market for an agonizing 14 months without a single offer and very few actual showings. Most likely the mountain of boxes in the basement just plain scared them away. Once that 14 months of agony ended and we took OCK off the market I went down in the basement and asked myself a very important question.

“How much of this stuff have I actually missed in the 14+ months that it has been packed away from my prying eyes?”

The answer was staggering to me.

Not much at all.

Yes, there were a very, and I emphasize very few things that I had to dig out and unpack during that period of time. Very few. Most everything else that was in those boxes had nothing to do with my every day life. The boxes were labeled…sort of…..but I couldn’t really tell you the exact things that were in each of those boxes. They had no place in my everyday life. And it was at that time that I took the first step on the path to our zero sum game.

If something came into the house, something else had to go out. But before we could even GET to that point there was a lot of work to be done.

And crap to get rid of .

I went box by box, unpacked it, looked at the stuff, took out practically nothing, closed the boxes back up, took them up the stairs from the basement leading directly into the garage (EVERYONE with a big house needs a staircase like this), placed them in the empty garage bay and when that bay filled up I called Volunteers of America and waved the boxes goodbye. Yes, I am sure that many of those things had monetary value to them. I could have spent hours and hours putting price tags on them and having a garage sale. But I had long ago raised my fist in Scarlett O’Hara like defiance and said, “As GOD is my witness, I’ll never have another garage sale again! My time is more valuable than that and so is my sanity!” Yes, I could have taken time and tried to sell the stuff on Ebay or Craigs List…..but I refer you back to my Scarlett O’Hara moment. I understood that these things (some but certainly not all) had monetary value but I just had to let go of that and in doing that I let go of the stuff.

And I began to feel lighter.

That first time I decreased the box load by over 50%. And it felt so good that I went through more boxes that hadn’t even been in the boxed possessions pyramid. More stuff went to the “garage donation bay”, and when it filled up again I called VOA and waved goodbye to more “unnecessary plastic objects”. And if ANYONE can tell me what the name of the singer who said that quote and album that quote came from…..I will give you a prize.

When the VOA truck pulled away I felt lighter still.

Then I started on closets and drawers and cupboards. And I filled up the garage bay again.

Did I tell you that I had a lot of stuff?

We put OCK on the market in April 2012 and took it off the market in May 2013, still unsold. But during that time I continued to clean out and pare down. SOMEDAY we would be able to sell her and move to somewhere smaller and when that time came I didn’t want to move ANYTHING that we didn’t need and use. A month after we took OCK off the market…..we sold her. Never say that the Lord doesn’t have a sense of humor. We found Chez Knit, we packed up OCK, we filled up the garage bay TWICE MORE for donations to VOA (if you are counting that is FIVE times) plus made numerous other trips to the local AmVets station with car loads FULL of stuff. We packed up the rest and moved and STILL had things that we dragged to the curb for that final garbage pick up.

And that is when we really committed to the zero sum game approach to life here. If something comes into Chez Knit, something else has to go out. I unpacked the mountain of boxes that we still managed to move and in the process I cleaned out even more stuff that had somehow missed the other “sweeps.” Stuff is sneaky. It doesn’t want to go to a new home. It likes to stay right with you and hide and breed in the basement and make more little stuffs. All the boxes (or at least 99% of the boxes) are now unpacked and when anything gets brought into Chez Knit….like say the entire CAR full of stuff I brought back from the cottage…..something has to go out…..like the entire car full of stuff I took to Goodwill the next day.

And every time I take a load of stuff to Goodwill (like the 4 boxes I took yesterday) I feel lighter still. One of the progeny the other day said, “Well, you and Dad are pretty minimal.”

I just wanted to jump for joy….

And clean out another box. 

WTF! And That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does.

We all know that I love my little Chez Knit. I say “little” but really, it is medium sized compared to OCK.

But I digress…and so early in the post!

I love everything about it…..

Except the white tile floor that is in the kitchen and laundry room. If the person who made the “let’s put white tile down in the kitchen just as if we lived in Florida” decision were standing in front of me right now….just before I dope slapped them….I would say….

FOR THE LOVE OF PETER, PAUL and Mary and ALL the SAINTS in HEAVEN, WHY? WHYWHYWHY?

Anyone who has ever had a white tile floor will understand my pain. Even Charlie Brown’s friend, Pig Pen, doesn’t collect as much dirt and dust as this floor does. You come in the garage, you step into the house and walk right onto the white tile floor, or as I have begun to call it in my own mind, WTF!, bringing the dust and grime and dirt of a thousand nations into my kitchen.

And then there is the dog and the dog hair and the muddy dog prints and the polydogethane that he lays down as he laboriously licks my floor. Max the Magnificent sneezes in the other room and the dog hair wafts gently through the air and lands on that WTF! And I can see each and every speck of that hair as well as all the bits of detritus that lands on the WTF!

Some day I hope to be able to kick the WTF! to the curb and put in something easily cleanable, maybe beaten earth, and NOT WHITE. But it occurs to me that this will not mean that my floor will be any cleaner. The dirt will still be tracked in by human and dog alike. The stink bugs will still crawl out and try to attack me. The soft boiled egg that slipped out of my hand and exploded on the WTF! will still have to be cleaned up from that seam between the floor and the base of the cabinet.

I just won’t be able to SEE how dirty my floor is.

I can live with that. Out of sight, out of mind.

I SO Love the Midwest in Springtime

Now I know that it is really Spring and working it’s way towards Summer.

Why is that you might ask?

Because last night we had these…..

Oh it was a fun evening let me tell you. Fun, fun, fun. Can you detect the sarcasm in that. Stormy weather is not unknown here in the Frozen Northeast Ohio. In fact, we expect it during the Spring and Summer months…and the Winter as well. But during the winter we aren’t so worried about swirling winds that will pick your house up and deposit it in Pennsylvania.

Honestly, I didn’t even realize that we were in the path of bad weather until it was almost upon us. I was watching “Crimes of the Century” on Netflix. I was knitting. I was enjoying my Laguinitas IPA. It was a good evening. But it seemed to be getting a bit darker outside than I might have expected for that time of the night so I just though I would casually check my iPhone weather app.

Oh dear.

So what did I do first when I realized that the bad weather might be coming our way?

Why I went outside and took a picture of it of course. And then I put it up on Facebook and Instagram. And THEN I went inside and turned on the local news station where the lovely, but unseen, weather girl was talking about the golf ball size hail that had been reported. So it was back outside to move all the plants a bit closer to the house.

Don’t you just LOVE going outside into the OPEN when there is lightening all around.

No?

Me neither.

OK, I am going to go off topic here for just a moment. Not like I EVER do THAT! To all the people who flood the local news twitter feed and Facebook feed with complaints that your precious shows like Dancing with the Stars are being preempted by continuous weather coverage…..please SHUT UP. Sorry, I know that is rude but REALLY! Don’t you think this is a bit more important than finding out whether Charlie White got voted off the dance island. I might be mixing my reality show metaphors there but you know what I mean.If you missed the show last night I have a mind to just TELL you what happened. Personally, I am very glad to be able to watch WALL TO WALL coverage of where the possible tornado might be going thankyouverymuch.

Steps back, adjusts her self righteousness shirt, and humphs along.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programing. Actually, I just went upstairs to check the weather because I swear I hear thunder. My office is in the basement and the only windows are little teeny tiny ones that are that cinder block stuff that you cannot see out of. The clouds are building but no thunder…at the moment. However it is currently 86F and there is always the chance….

At any rate.

Things seemed to be quiet outside, not necessarily a good sign but I was willing to think positively about it. I could hear the thunder, a lot of it, and I could see an occasional flash of lightening but I decided that I would just go and have some ice cream….it cures all things. I had just sat my ever expanding bahookie into the couch to flip back and forth between weather and Bizzare Foods when…..the tornado siren went off.

Dang it! My ice cream! I put my bowl back into the freezer and……

Max and I went to spend some quality time in the basement. Don’t you love his face! It just looks like he is thinking, “Why is Alpha making me take a picture with her during this stressful time?” He really doesn’t like being in the basement. So I monitored the weather from the computer since there is no TV down in the bowels of Chez Knit and occasionally zipped upstairs to check on conditions, which were not all that bad although there was a boat load of rain and thunder and lightening going on. But I have to say that my stress level was in the totally manageable range which was completely different from the 13 years that we lived at OCK.

Big storms with strong winds were VERY nerve wracking when we lived there.

Notice all the trees. The big TALL trees. And off to the right of the picture is an enormous oak tree that you cannot actually see but that was a constant worry to me when there was a big storm. If it fell just the right way it would have taken out…..a big chunk of house. Big storms also brought the distinct possibility of a loss of electrical power. No power meant no working well pump meant no water meant no using the toilets because you cannot put anything into the septic system because the septic pumps run on electricity too and things will be bad if you do.

In the end there was a big bucket load of rain, lots of really loud thunder and a seriously large amount of lightening….but no tornado. And no power outage either.

But lets not do it again any time soon OK?

The Bucket Brigade

For most of the winter I have been mulling over in my menopausal mind about my patio space. It is small. The footprint cannot be changed. There will never be a deck. Just a slab of ugly concrete.

As the snow fell, I pondered. As the winds blew, I mulled (and drank an extra glass of wine). As the winter dragged on and on and on and on and….I thought.

I also watched the pattern of the sun and where it fell over the course of the day. Yes, I know that the sun pattern in the winter is different from the sun pattern in the summer. But I could at least get a feel for what was going to be the amount of sun vs shade. Was there enough sustained sun to be able to grow a few herbs and flowers? Time will tell.

I cogitated on what I should do about plants. I cannot actually “plant” anything in the ground because the ground doesn’t belong to me, well all except for that scant one foot of soil extending out from the house. And I can tell you if I took my shovel to that one foot space and dug it all up and put in a flower bed, well, I would get calls. And possibly strongly worded letters.

But, I don’t have to actually dig anything up to have a few herbs and flowers on the back patio. No indeedee.

This is the beginnings of my bucket garden. Last year these galvanized buckets were a part of the decorations for Shoe Queen’s wedding. This year, planters! I love it when I repurpose things.

To be honest I had been thinking all winter about going in a different direction with this little space of mine. I was actually going to buy some square wooden planters. But each of those beauties cost about $30 and I really hated to spend that money. I hate to spend money in general….

Stop talking about the yarn. There is nothing to talk about. Moving on.

Where was I?

Oh, planters, that was it.

I didn’t really want to construct the planters myself, although I am quite capable of doing that. So I really was all set to spend that money but I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t something else around Chez Knit that I couldn’t use instead. And there they were, sitting on the shelf in the garage, just waiting to be used. On Monday I had gone out and bought some of the plants that you see here, despite the fact that it was still colder that a well digger bahookie in Montana. I also picked up some blue spray paint. Today it is lovely outside so I fired up my painters tape and got out the tarp and painted my buckets and planted my plants.

It is a work in progress. I don’t like that the buckets are all on one level, it offends my artistic sensibilities. But that can be worked out somehow. I will keep an eye open for something in someone’s garbage that will fill the bill. I really had to restrain myself from picking up that lovely toilet in the garbage around the corner. I love those things as planters. Oh wouldn’t THAT just be the talk of the next neighborhood dinner.

Dang, I might just have to do that. Someone, restrain me.

The next thing will be making sure that the four footed hordes deer don’t nibble. I think I am going to make a hot pepper spray and possibly some netting to go over them. It is them or me and I have the opposable thumbs so I am going to win.

And then there are also the bunnies.

When everything is planted and all is set I will take a better picture.

Nail Holes Are My Friend.

I know that this will come as a shock to many but occasionally….

I can be a procrastinator about things.

I KNOW! What a surprise. I am the girl that had my house unpacked (for the most part) and all the boxes left in the basement organized and on the shelves (for the most part) within two weeks of moving into Chez Knit. I do not like disorganization. I do not like clutter. I do not function well in chaos, so you can just imagine what last year was like for me as 2013 was sort of all chaos all the time around here. I was very glad to kick 2013 to the curb and greet 2014 with open arms and a big glass of beer.

But there was one thing that I didn’t do. I kept putting it off. I kept thinking that I couldn’t do it until I had painted walls.

There were absolutely no pictures of any kind up on any wall.

Nada.

Nyet.

Nope.

Bare walls in various pastel shades (gag). If you like very pale yellow or pink for your wall colors then I say embrace the pastel. But that is not my natural color pallet. I run screaming from yellow because we don’t get along. I put on a yellow shirt and people start asking if I am ill because my color looks so bad. To me, yellow is that kid on the playground who was always smiling and sunny and then took your pencil when you weren’t looking. Not that I am bitter or anything. And as for the pink walls….of which there are more than there should be. The only time that you should have walls that are pink is if you are a pre-pubescent girl with a frill complex.

Or if you are my friend, Bonnie, who would have only pink yarn all the time if she could.

For the past almost 8 months I had determined to myself that I wasn’t going to hang up a single picture until those walls were painted. Not going to do it no siree. I was just going to wander through my rooms and look at the blank walls and pretend that I was in a museum of modern art where someone had paid big money for a canvas that was painted alternate stripes of white and light gray and then called it art.

I look at those kinds of paintings (of which there is one in particular at the Cleveland Museum of Art that I am thinking of) and think, “I can DO one of those! Get me a canvas and some paint and you can make the check out to me once the paint dries.” Come on, you know you think the same thing. Jackson Pollock, Jackson Schmollock! People will pay good money for a Debbie Quigg once I get going on it.

Or not.

So here I have been, blank walls murmuring to me all day long, “We are so lonely. We are so plain. We are naked and ashamed, not even a fig leaf in sight.” I ignored them and went on about my day.

And then in a lightening bolt of thought (I do occasionally get those), I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I needed to put all the pictures up on the walls BEFORE I ever painted a thing. I needed to be able to play with the arrangements and where I wanted  pictures to go. Where were the patches of sunlight that would not be good for photos hanging on the wall and all of that. I needed to do all of that NOW because once those walls are painted and all fresh and lovely, I am not going to want to be all willy nilly putting holes in them. I was going to want to be able to put the pictures, paintings etc. BACK up on the walls in their assigned places.

If I waited to hang pictures up on the walls until AFTER the walls were painted then there would never be any pictures up anywhere because I would be too paralyzed with wall marring fear to ever put a hole in any wall.

So for the last three days or so I have been like a crazy woman with putting things on the walls. The hammer has been going with such lightening rapidity that it is white hot. Not everything is up because I have decided to re-frame a few things and there is an “art installation” project that I am not ready to tackle. That can actually be interpreted as I have a boat load of random little pieces of art that I am going to put up willy nilly on our huge bedroom wall but not yet. I am not sure I have quite enough things for that project yet.

Putting things up on the walls of your home just makes it feel even more yours.

Despite those dang yellow and pink walls.

Who DOES that!

That Is Not A Good Sound to Hear

Saturday. I was well into my afternoon of getting all sorts of little things done here and there. I owned my to do list! I had finished another task in the basement woman cave, had come back upstairs and was entering the family room when I heard it.

BWIP!

I stopped in my tracks.

I know that sound.

That is the sound of a drop of water falling from a great height and landing on something that should not get wet.

I looked around. And at first I saw nothing except Max the Magnificent skulking back into the laundry room, have just been caught red tongued licking the floor.

I looked to the left. I looked to the right. I looked straight ahead. And then I saw it. A single drop of water on the arm of the leather sofa.

You know those movies where the heroine sees something horrific and the camera zooms in on it and the ominous music plays?

Yeah, it was like that.

My eyes zoomed in on the drip. My brain said, “Hey that’s a drop of water. That isn’t supposed to be there. Where did that come from?”

It came from above.

Slowly, my eyes gazed heavenward and I saw…….

HOLY MARY AND ALL THE SAINTS IN HEAVEN! That doesn’t look good.

Ceilings are not supposed to develop large pustules of water. Large, bulging, turgid pustules of water just waiting to burst forth like an infected wound.

Too much?

This had to be lanced right away. So HHBL hauled the 10 foot stepladder in from the garage and I got up there with a towel and my big pocket knife and did a bit of emergency surgery. Believe me when I say that in a very short amount of time this would have been a very messy thing. Right over the leather couch. After the surgery I just sort of held the drooping ceiling paint back up onto the ceiling (am I telling that correctly?) and it seemed to re-adhere itself. Yes, I know that is only temporary (more than you think!) but it was a Saturday afternoon and even though I immediately reported this to the home warranty people nothing was going to get done until this week.

And I hoped that all would be well…..

And then Sunday rolled around.

When I did the whole lance the ceiling boil thing again. AND found that the water must be also running down the beam towards the wall because the wet spot extended all the way across the ceiling and ran in a gentle rivulet down the wall, The ceiling in this room slopes by the way so water does naturally move downward.

Dang.

And when I was back up on the step ladder doing some more emergency ceiling surgery I took a good look at the ceiling spackly stuff. And realized that it hadn’t re-adhered at all. It was all saggy like my face when I haven’t had a good night’s sleep. So I pulled on it a bit……

That whole section came off in pieces. Picking the sections off of the ceiling was just about as satisfying as picking a scab. Just one more little bit and I will be done! Just one more bit…..

I might have stepped over a line on that last one.

And what happens when you are standing on a 10 foot step ladder and picking the ceiling scab?

Why you make a mess of course. And what happens after that?

Well, since I was already down on the floor I thought I would just take some pictures at different f stops to see what that clump of ceiling skin looked like.

f10

f5.6

f3.2

f1.4

Oh the ceiling? Well, the roofer still hasn’t called. It has been bad weather after all. And the lovely woman on the other end of the phone line when I called the home warranty people kindly informed me that if the problem stemmed from an ice dam (as I suspect it does)….then it isn’t covered under the home warranty because they consider that an “Act of God”.

REALLY?

Did God come down and smote my roof for some reason?

We will see. It is always something here at Chez Knit. Always something.

Baby Steps

Sometimes it is the little things that finally make us feel at home in the place that we live. At least that is the way that it is for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I have felt sort of “at home” here at Chez Knit Deux since almost the moment that we waved good bye to the movers yuck patooee, closed the door and took in the mess. But you don’t really feel at home until you accomplish some of the things at the new house that you did at the old house.

Yesterday I dealt with 25 pounds of tomatoes that were asking to be made into pizza sauce and pasta sauce. It just feels weird to make those things in a new place. All your movements that you didn’t really have to think about because you had done them so often in your work space now have to be re-thought. I have a third of the counter space at Chez Knit that I had at OCK. I cannot just spread out like Jabba the Hut all over every spare inch of space. I have to think about what I am doing where. But once I was finished with 14 cups of pizza sauce and the I don’t know how many cups of pasta sauce, I felt more at home.

Just a side note. If you have white tile floors AND white cabinets…….making tomato sauce of any kind can be a really interesting experience. By the time I was done yesterday a good portion of my kitchen looked like a very grizzly crime scene.

No one ever said I was a neat cook.

Today I broke out the sewing machine and sewed up something for Chez Knit. In Brecksville I am supposed to put my newspaper recycling in those plastic bags that you get from the grocery store. But only the BLUE plastic bags. I had been stuffing those things in a corner in one of the pantry closets in the kitchen. The blue bag blob had gotten to critical mass stage this week and wouldn’t assimilate even one more bag. I tried. It all came popping out at me. So I just sewed up one of those little tube things that you can store your plastic bags in.

And now I feel just a bit more at home in my work space.

Sigh.

The Woman Cave

When HHBL and I were in the serious consideration phase for Chez Knit Deux we spent a bit of time talking about where our respective work spaces would be. Some couples can share a work space in peace and harmony.

Not us.

HHBL likes to play music LOUDLY when he is concentrating.

I like silence.

I work early in the morning.

He works late in the evening.

I sometimes need a bit of space for all the projects.

He is fairly compact.

Here at CKD we have both a second floor loft and a finished basement area. At first, in my mind, I had laid claim to the upstairs loft area with all of it’s light and sunny climes. HHBL was going to put his office in the basement area. But then he got to thinking about all of the light issues. Really, he needs more sunlight than I do. When he is working from home, especially in the winter, he needs every bit of sunlight that he can get.

Me not so much. In fact, when I am doing photo editing it is better to be without sunlight. Living in the shadows as it were. HHBL came to this realization first and made the suggestion that perhaps we could think about switching work spaces.

I balked.

I hemmed.

I hawwed.

But then, as I started to think about it I came to the conclusion that he might have a point. And when I really started to think about it I could see that the space in the basement was much better suited to me. There was more wall space. I could set up boat loads of shelves for books and cloth and I could even have all my yarn there with me.

It has taken almost a week of working but the woman cave is almost set up. And yes, I know that the walls are yellow and yes, I am going to paint them eventually. But I cannot just hang around and not have a work space until that happens.

All is getting righter with the world now that I have the fabric unpacked and the sewing machine set up.

Now if I just had some time to actually sew something.

The Lord Has A Sense of Humor

March of 2010, Chez Knit was accessorized and put up on the market for sale. We hoped. We prayed. We waited.

The Lord said not yet.

There wasn’t anyone that wanted to buy our house. I was disappointed but if I REALLY have to be truthful…..I wasn’t. I really wasn’t ready to go. I talked a good game. I knew that we really needed to downsize. But secretly I was not ready to go. I clung to my house.

And so we took our house back from Joyce the Stager and went on with our lives. 

We enjoyed the summers. We cursed the winters. I worked in the landscaping and the Community Garden. HHBL looked at houses on Realtor.com (he loves doing that). We continued to clean out what seemed like a lifetime worth of tidbits and big items.

The Lord continued to work on us.

We still needed to learn some things. We still needed to let go of things, specifically material things and what they meant in our lives. The Lord continued refine us. I am using the “royal we” here but you could just as easily put “I” in there because it certainly applied to me.

We waited. And prayed. And sought the Lord’s counsel.

And then last year we dipped our toes back into the house selling market. We fluffed. We buffed. Our hopes soared with each appointment and then came crashing down to earth when no one wanted to stay here and live here and love the house as much as we did. We continued to pray for the potential buyers that we knew the Lord was preparing for us…for some time. The year ticked by. Summer and holidays and winter came and went. The leaves turned lovely colors and fell onto the lawn and we had to spend endless hours blowing them into the woods. We had to pay for another year of snow plow contract. A whole year came and went. A year when sometimes, if I wasn’t paying attention, I would forget that there was a “For Sale” sign prominently displayed in our front yard for all to see. Oh there was a flurry of activity at the beginning of the selling process. And there was a flurry of activity at the end of the selling process. But the flurry at the end was really because our next door neighbor put her house up on the market and realtors like to combine visits if they can.

And as time ticked by HHBL and I continued to clean out. We continued to long for a simpler life style. A smaller and simpler house. We prayed for the Lord’s wisdom and guidance and PATIENCE (that was mine). I know it may come as a surprise to you but I am not always a patient person. We longed to go. I longed to go. I really did. As much as I love Chez Knit and as happy as I have been here I knew that it was time to go. Or at least I hoped that was so.

But the Lord continued to say wait and not yet.

Time ticked by and the wedding of Shoe Queen and Slim Jim came ever closer (AUGUST 9th!!!!!). And as the time ticked closer and closer I began to worry that if someone DID, somehow, someway come along and want to buy our house we might be looking at finding a new house, packing up and moving before the wedding. My poor feeble 53 year old brain (and body) didn’t think it could take the thought of having to look for a house before the wedding and pack and do all of that stuff. Lord you couldn’t POSSIBLY mean for us to do that when we had found just the right place for the wedding, so close to Chez Knit with a nice hotel conveniently located nearby that even had a relationship with the venue. And secretly in my heart of hearts I wanted to see Shoe Queen walk down the staircase at Chez Knit in her wedding finery. I lobbied. I quietly wheedled. I suggested.

And so we took Chez Knit off the market AGAIN and decided that this time we would stay for two, or possibly even three years. We even spent the money to have the riding mower fixed!

That was on May 6th.

And then last week, clear out of the blue, our realtor called and said that there was a couple who had found our house on the internet and their realtor wanted to know if they could come and view it. HHBL said he would ask me but he wasn’t all that confident that I would say yes. But I did. My thought was, what the heck why not. I made sure that the realtor knew that I wasn’t going to fluff and buff the house. In fact I wasn’t even going to leave the house when they came, I was scheduled to work at home that day. They could walk around and open doors to their hearts content and wander in the back yard amidst Max’s open air toilet and I would stay out of their way.

I had no hopes at all that they would ever be back.

I was wrong.

It may be…..

It might be…..

It could be possible……

That we have managed to sell Chez Knit without it even being on the market. Well actually, the Lord sold it. It could only be Him.

They offered. We countered. They countered the counter. We said yes.

Now we still have to get through the inspection process and there is always the possibility that the deal can get squirreled. And if that does happen I am fine with it, not because I want to stay here but because the Lord has given me an incredible sense of peace through out this turbulent period of time. If we go, great. If we stay, great. But as of right now………..

It looks like we are going to need to find a new place to live.

OH, and the whole “the Lord has a sense of humor” thing where I was SO totally worried about having to find a house and pack up and move before the wedding?

No problem!

We have to find a house and pack up and move…..a week AFTER the wedding.

See!

A sense of humor.

Well THAT Was Fun

Yesterday we took Chez Knit off the housing market…..again.

Sigh.

She has been out there for all to see, sort of like Kim Kardashian, for a bit over a year and no one wanted to buy her. No one even came close. No one even said, “Well, there are things we don’t like and we are going to make you a low but reasonable offer and see what happens.” It was a difficult year.

And just as an aside, why is Kim Kardashian famous? What has she ever done to be famous? Explain this to me.

But I digress.

It has been difficult for us to have people come and view the house that we love and then tell us that the wall color wasn’t to their liking or that the fixtures needed to be updated or that the counters weren’t what they wanted or that this and that weren’t what they thought should be in a house “of this size”.

Really?

REALLY?

If you do not like the wall color or the counter tops…..make us an offer, ask for some $ back and then change what you don’t like to what you do like. How difficult is that concept? If you don’t like the landscaping I have the name of several very nice men who would love to put in new bushes for you. Don’t like the garden in the back? Feel free to rip it all out and put in a patio. I am sure that Home Depot would give you a deal on new bathroom fixtures and I even know a really good plumber who would LOVE the work.

Good Golly Miss Molly!!

I can complain about this (and believe me poor HHBL has heard an ear full) and get very down about it (oh there have been VERY dark days) but in the end I have to assume that the Lord is saying wait. Wait now because I have something better in mind for you later.

Oh He KNOWS I am not good at waiting! HE knows!!! I am the one impatiently tapping my toes and sighing last night as the family in line in front of me at Panera took FOREVER to place their order. All I wanted was a warm and gooey cookie for the LOVE of Peter, Paul and Mary. Just order the kid a bagel and get on with life!

I am the person counting the items in the cart in front of me in the “15 Items or Less” aisle because I can see quite clearly that they have MORE than 15 items.

Someone tailgating you? It might be me if you are hanging in the left lane on the highway and going to speed limit. Left lanes are for those of us who go faster thankyouverymuch.

If I am that impatient in line at Panera or Wally Mart then the waiting period that the Lord is asking us to be in…..well……sometimes I am not doing to well with it.

The Lord never says “maybe”. He says yes. He says no. He says wait. And evidently we are still in the waiting mode. And I will be OK with that, or at least I am trying to be. We will fill up every bedroom plus the basement when the big day arrives in August.  And I can sit in the back garden in the afternoon shade and read a book and have peace. The humming birds and I can continue our unrequited love affair and the marauders from the woods deer and I will fight to the death for the last hosta. I love this house, even though…….

On occasion……..

I might be known to send HHBL an email to ask him a question rather than just getting up, leaving my office and walking over to his and asking him the question directly.

But only on occasion.

Still here. Still waiting. Still knitting.

I wonder if I can keep an alpaca in the back yard?