Deck the Halls.

The Victim:




The Culprits:





The Solution:




Merry Christmas.

Soap

Andy and Candace sit down to a nice dinner. The wine has been poured, the table set, and the husband and wife say grace over the meal.

The conversation turns to various happenings of the day, banter, and their upcoming trip to Arkansas. Andy remarks that dinner is very good. Candace smiles and says that she’s glad he is enjoying it. The dinner continues thusly until Andy puts his wine glass to his lips and takes a sip. The conversation ceases as he makes a face, looks at his dinner, back to his wine, then up at Candace. He smacks his lips a few times and sniffs this glass. He takes another sip.

“This wine tastes like soap.”

FREEZE. REWIND 30 MINUTES.

Candace is making dinner and multi-tasking as usual. As she cooks, she is unloading the dishwasher, loading it back up, texting Andy to see what time he’ll be home, and preparing pots and glasses for hand washing, and singing whatever song happens to be one their “Bad Ass Road Trip” mix. Kelly Clarkson, no doubt.

Upon Andy’s arrival, she grabs the glasses they used for wine last night and fills them forgetting that she had put soap in them for dish washing preparation.

RESUME ABOVE STORY.

Candace’s face drops in sudden horror.

“What is it?” Andy asks.

“It tastes like soap because I put soap in the glasses to wash them and completely forgot about it. You’re drinking soapy wine.”

Uncharacteristic of Andy, he doesn't just shrug and drink the soap wine. I empty the glasses and fetch new ones. The remainder of the dinner commences soap free.

A typical evening at the Larson household.

Weird, Wacky day

First days back to work are always strange. Re-focusing, remembering where you left off, time change, etc. Today is my first day back from a five day break. Allow me to recount my weird, wacky day thus far (it’s only 10 AM):

Don my sub-zero winter coat, wool gloves, 180 ear muffs, sweater, scarf, tights, pants, wool socks, and snow boots to brave the 30 degree weather (with the rumor that tomorrow will be 15) after five glorious days of 65+ weather.

Arrive at work to find 4 new projects awaiting me—to be added to my already large to-do list.

Call a heating/plumbing company to get a quote and brief explanation of how to fix a sizeable puddle in our basement and slight sewage back up in our downstairs shower. With an apology, I’m told we need a new water heater and some rooting.

Rumors that the severe storm set to hit this afternoon might turn into a snow day tomorrow.

Break my zipper after using the restroom at 9 AM and must go through the rest of the day with my fly down. Sadly, my shirt isn’t long enough to cover.

So far, that’s it but I think that’s enough in 2 hours. Here’s to a better afternoon and staying warm in the storm!

Little Alice Boo.

This weekend Andy and I welcomed a new member into our household.



This is Alice Boo.

She is a two month old, long hair, gray tabby.
She is adorable and loves to get into everything. She has already been crushed by our stepstool (twice), face-planted multiple times, and has been knocked on the head by various objects she pulls off of tables. Alice is a trooper. She shakes it off and goes looking for her next adventure.



She is fascinated (though intimidated) by Mort. She wants his food, his water, and his litter box. Mort, of course, wants nothing to do with her. Someday I’ll have pictures of them together. As for now, Mort is cowering behind the washer and dryer.
Alice Boo loves to be held, loves to play, and is scared to death of running water. My two cats could not be any more opposite. I love them both!

Spiders. (Home projects Story 3)

Our house has kind of a creepy basement. Half of it is finished and the other half is a cold, gloomy room reminiscent of the set of Vincent Price’s The Pit and the Pendulum. Well, not that bad, but it is a little spooky in the dark.

I don’t have a problem with spooky rooms or spending extensive amounts of time in them. After all, I have my iPod and my determination to clean out the basement so one day (soon, hopefully) it will become the comfortable sitting/reading room.

This basement, unfinished and otherwise, is the happy home of many spiders. As the weather is cooling down, a multitude of arachnids have found their way into my basement. Normally, this isn’t an issue as I have a dust buster which sole purpose is sucking up spiders.

I began the five hour process of clearing out my basement. All of the boxes in the finished room had been opened, rummaged through, and left alone for four months. I decided the first step would be to consolidate boxes, break down the empty boxes, and store the full boxes in the unfinished portion of the basement. As I began moving the many boxes around, I kept my dust buster nearby to suck up the eight legged freaks that emerged from the mess.

All was going well until I started putting things into the closet. I had gone down the day before and sucked all of the daddy long legs (8 of them) from the closet. After I put the printer, files, and other computer stuff into the closet, I straightened up and felt a tickling on my neck.

That’s right, folks. A daddy long leg dropped down from a hiding spot in the closet and felt that my neck would be the most comfortable place for it.

I began screaming, dancing, swatting at my face and neck, and finally squashed the culprit. From then on, I just felt like I had something crawling on me. Every few minutes or so something would tickle and I would reenact my spider dance (which is not as cool as the African Anteater ritual dance from Can’t Buy me Love).

Turns out, I had two other spiders crawling on me. Thankfully these ones weren’t large or as creepy as the daddy long legs. But still, I don’t love spiders…especially on me.

Ugh. Thankfully, I lived through it and got the basement cleaned out. Now I’m off to buy some spider traps.

The Problem with Plaster (Home projects story 2)

The problem with plaster is that it’s really hard to work with. My house (built in 1917) is equipped with plaster walls. The exterior walls are plaster and brick. Undoubtedly, you understand how difficult it might be to hang something as simple as a picture on these walls.

Part of my miniature home makeover was to hang stuff on the walls. Andy hung our 30 lbs mirror in our front room by using his trusty drill with the masonry bit (this was on a wall that had brick 1 ½ inches in. As I don’t relish using power tools, I decided to stick with interior walls (plaster sans the brick) and use an old fashioned hammer and nails.

First was the kitchen. I decided to do several pictures of fun places we’ve visited. Out of the 8 frames I wanted to hang, I went through 22 nails (many bent, few victorious), 12 holes (way less than I was anticipating), and two applications of putty to hide mis-measured holes. All that and 2 hours later, my travel wall was complete!

Then I was on to the bedroom. The beautiful room that was painted in this blog now needed some stuff on the walls. I managed to get one nail in on my first try, another picture could be hung on an already existing nail, and I turned to the north wall to hang two small pictures.

I had forgotten that this was once the exterior wall until the addition was put on.

I grabbed my nail and hammer and went to work.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Thunk.

As I unknowingly tried to drive the nail into the brick beyond the plaster, the plaster cracked and dropped a large chunk onto my bedroom floor. I almost cried. My beautiful, freshly painted wall now had a chunk of plaster missing from it.

What did I do? Nothing. I’ll let Andy hang something over it with his trusty drill this weekend.