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HOME! Staying!

The inconvenience factor is still rather high, and we are compounding that by having the dog home with us, but there is MUCH to be said for sleeping in one’s own bed, however dusty and smelly it might be.

The floor is done and it looks great. I’m sure that over time the color variations between the sections will even out, but compared to what it was, it’s amazing now. That was the last really big messy thing to get done. Outside of the entryway tile and the upstairs carpet, it’s all relatively small projects from here on out.

Today’s plans include a trip to the gym, then a detour to Babies R Us for a baby gate. We gave ours away last year but we’ll need one for a little while so Piper doesn’t try to eat the builders and/or escape. We also need a series of plastic storage bins which will help me wrest some kind of temporary order from this chaotic mess I’m facing. I’m not even close to being what one would call a conscientious housekeeper, but we are dealing with a level of filth that makes that first bathroom scene in Trainspotting look like surgery prep.

Hi blog! Where have I been? Why do all my posts start like this?

1. We returned to New Jersey just before Memorial Day. Spent that weekend down the shore with friends, then Jillian and I decamped to Baltimore for a couple of days. THEN we came back to NJ to house-sit, but now we are home. It’s not quite livable yet, but it’s getting there.

2. The drywall in the house is mostly done. They hope to have it done by the end of this week, at which time they will start installing the floor where the laminate used to be AND THEN they’ll sand/stain/polyurethane the whole of the front room.

3. Phish @ Blossom this weekend!

4. That’s all for now - I didn’t really have anything to say, I just needed to check that my site was back up and running after I neglected to pay my hosting bill.

8AM and the concrete blocks arrived. Big truck! Lots o’ blocks. The builders got right to work (after graciously moving my baker’s rack from the porch to the front yard so the Freecycle lady could come get it). Building building building. The neighbors are starting to slow down when they drive by.

Eventually I will get around to posting pictures of this journey but today the camera is going with me to NYC to chase after Jamie Oliver.

No progress yesterday on the building, but things inside are moving right along. Essentially, we have to move everything out of the living room and kitchen and into the back of the house so when they take the roof off, all my stuff isn’t exposed to the elements.

I had to pack up my books and all my junk from my bookcases and now my house looks all naked, like we’re moving out. We even took down all the pictures and art on the walls, which are peppered with tiny nails. It looks very forlorn in here.

Today we are tackling the kitchen, which has storage issues, despite its size. My cabinets are… well let’s just say the kitchen is a piece of shit. It looks nice but was VERY cheaply done, and I hate every inch of it. I think the previous owners just went “ooh shiny!” and didn’t stop to think about how the cabinets would actually be used, so there are too many cupboards, not enough drawers, and although there are acres of counter space, little of it is actually in a useful place. Ugh.

ANYWAY, tomorrow the builders are putting in concrete blocks out in the foundation hole. I have no idea what happens after that.

The hole is still there. But now it’s partially filled with concrete! Freddie dropped the ball big-time by not getting pictures of the giant cement truck or the builder buried up to his knees in wet concrete. I’ll try to take some pictures later that give a sense of just how much destruction there is. And concrete! Yay!

The house renovation has begun. After nearly a year of discussion and meetings with the architect and standing out in the front yard looking at the house in a thinky way, we have started construction.

Like all good things, it started with a heavy dose of DEstruction, what with the dismantling of half the patio and a good chunk of the driveway. There was a backhoe involved. A hole was dug around the porch and along the perimeter of what will be the new entryway and stair hall. It looks way bigger as a big, muddy hole than it did on paper.

For all intents and purposes, we are stranded in the house. The builders made a little bridge that we can use when it’s time to take the dog out or when we feel like we have to go run errands, but it’s a pain in their ass for me to be running in and out all the time and it’s a pain in my ass because the dog is not a fan of going over the bridge and Jillian just wants to jump off of it and play in the mud.

Our backyard is wholly inaccessible, which sucks mighty donkey balls. I was hoping to use this 80-degree weekend to get a move on with the garden but I can’t even get NEAR the garden, much less trek back and forth from the truck to the backyard with a bunch of topsoil and sand (that I haven’t actually purchased yet, thank goodness). Perhaps I can still start the indoor seeds and maybe be a little late with the direct-sown plants. We’ll see. That involves planning and I don’t really like to do that with the garden.

With the indoor bit, I spent a good chunk of yesterday emptying my bookshelves in advance of moving them to the playroom. I have way too many books but I already got rid of a lot of them when we moved here, so what’s left is… what’s left. LOTS of books, and it made me wonder if I really need 4 different coffee-table books about U2 even though I don’t have a coffee table. The answer, of course, is yes.

I also realized that I have a lot of cookbooks and food magazines.

The kitchen is also in need of some packing up. We’re losing two walls in there, which means the baker’s rack and my desk are going away. I have no idea what’s going to happen to the things that live on these two surfaces. Despite the relative enormity of my kitchen, the storage in that room is TERRIBLE. The pantry cupboard is too deep, the TWO drawers are way too shallow, and the cabinets are… in need of reorganization. I have to find a place to stash my KitchenAid, my food processor, my steamer, napkins/placemats, extra dish towels, and the fruit rack. Where am I going to hang my bunches of bananas now? We’re throwing around the idea of installing a kitchen island, but as expected, Freddie and I are butting heads on that. He wants to have the guys build something permanent-ish and I want something that is going to cost me as close to nothing as possible so that when I finally get fed up and demolish the kitchen in a couple of years, I can build something better.

Speaking of the kitchen, remember how, on the night before I was too cook a 22-lb turkey my oven conked out? Well, that’s fixed and I’m thrilled. The day before yesterday, I loaded up the dishwasher, started it up, and went to see what Jillian was up to. Not three minutes later, I went back into the kitchen to see smoke pouring out of the top of the dishwasher. I said to myself: “Self! Smoke coming out of the dishwasher is generally not a good thing. Maybe something plastic fell down onto the heating coil, not unlike my Mets water bottle [RIP].” So I opened up the door and FLAMES shot out of the top of it.

“Well, that’s interesting,” I thought. You’d think that the water part of the dishwashing equation would cancel out fire, but you would be WRONG.

The appliance repair guy came out this morning to have a look at it and was all “yep. You’ve had a fire.” Erm, no shit, homey. Apparently parts need to be ordered and that will get us into next week before it’s fixed.

Everything in the kitchen has shit the bed at least once (the fridge twice and the oven three times). The microwave is the only appliance in there that hasn’t tried to commit suicide yet, but I’m expecting it to leave me a note and jump off the wall any day now.

Even though I have the best of intentions when it comes to writing here, my reality just isn’t reflecting it. It’s not that I’m rushed off my feet - in fact, quite the reverse - it’s that… I don’t know. I feel hobbled, somehow.

Anyway, Zeus willing, the house renovation starts tomorrow. The guys are coming to do something painful to my driveway, and something something foundations blah. I have a feeling this renovation process is going to be VERY irritating in the worst way. My whole life is an exercise in Trying To Avoid Irritation, Even Though It Follows Me Everywhere, and a project of this magnitude… well, let’s just say that if *I* were in charge, it would probably go a lot smoother.

In other news, I don’t think this half-marathon is going to happen. I have developed shin splints, which might be a result of new shoes (which are the same as my old shoes, just the updated model) and/or an increase in mileage. After the tailspin that was February, getting back on track has been difficult, to say the least. While I think the body could slog through 13.1 miles, I’m not so sure the mind can do it. I’m too distracted.

I hate it when my life gets in the way of my life.

Sunset and chocolate


Puddle dancing


“This is what I’m talking about!”


Pink and pink


Bathroom gnome

This is only a test, I hope.

I woke up this morning and opened up the computer to find that it had somehow killed everything. EVERYTHING. Music? Gone. Photos? Gone. Everything, everything, everything, gone, gone, gone.

Any programs I’d installed were intact, which was weird, but any data/settings? GONE.

How does this happen? Nobody seems to know. I think Bill Gates got mad at me the other day for telling Windows Vista to shut up. I’m SORRY, okay?

This has created a weird space in my head. This weird space is occupied by the thought that I am incredibly thankful for Howard Stern. Why? Well.

Freddie enjoys the comedy stylings of Howard Stern. I don’t really understand this, since I find him boring and repetitive (not to mention puerile and lowest-common-denominator). So Freddie listens to Howard on the radio. And one of the companies that advertises on Howard’s radio show is for a PC backup service, of which we are customers.

So, when the thing is finished restoring everything I had lost this morning, we’ll see if we’re getting our money’s worth (we’re at 68% restored at the moment). And then I will not say anything derogatory about Howard Stern or his fans for at least a week.

The real test today is to see how well I keep it together. I have been hanging on to my sanity by a very fine thread for quite some time now, since things in my house insist upon requiring repair, which costs me money. It would be one thing if everything was broken at once, but it’s not like that. Something breaks, I get it fixed (because of course it’s a fix that is outside even my crafty MacGuyver skills), I pay for it, and then something else goes. This has been going on since October and I am pretty sure I’m close to my limit of being able to cope without being medicated.

This constant feeling of “NOW WHAT” is going to be the death of me. I’m trying to be all Zen or whatever happy-clappy coping bullshit, but it’s difficult. VERY difficult. I just keep breathing, keep moving, keep rolling. Four years ago, when I was Professionally Crazy, this would have been the end of me. But I know I’ll get through it if I just keep moving.

Drugs would be more efficient, of course, but I am becoming increasingly anti-pharmie in my old age. I don’t want to be That Girl who takes pills for everything because she can’t cope, can’t sleep, can’t get out of bed. I can do all of those things.