Amelia

I feel like I just posted and I look and it's been over two weeks, when did that happen?

The painting is done in our condo!!! This is only possible because we had 11(!) family members help over various days. Our parents did the majority of the work, I spent a lot of time nursing the baby, and B. kept being sent on trips to Home Depot and to pick up lunch.

It's really pretty! The living room is mostly gray but with one big dark purple accent wall that goes up the stairs. Baby E.'s room is a mid-tone green ("Manchester Green"), and our room is very teal. The upstairs hallway is the same gray as the livingroom, and the upstairs bathroom we changed from brown to white. The basement is now light blue with a big dark blue stripe. (Rooms we didn't paint: the kitchen and downstairs bathroom.) I hope that at some point there will be pictures, probably after we move.

( Right before E. was born I didn't go through a frantic nesting or cleaning phase, but I did get into reading about natural beauty products and started the no shampoo thing )

The baby's sleeping so I should be too. (I'm also posting occasionally on the baby filter, if you would like in on that just let me know.)

We have electricity! Woot! No internet or cable until Monday though :(
(Currently we are, uh, borrowing from a neighbor. 21st c. equivalent of stealing a cup of sugar?)

Lights are so exciting! and tomorrow I can do laundry! Air conditioning is on, but it's still warm. Our air conditioner is super old so I hope it's just taking it's time and isn't dead *fingers crossed*

OMG lights!

We lost power Sunday afternoon and I haven't read from that point on, so be aware I may have missed things.

During the massive storm I was on the beltway trying to drive to Chantilly for a bellydance hafla. I left at 3, so I was in the middle of the trip between 3:30-4, the worst of it. Between the torrential rain, scary swirling wind, crap in the roadway, and tornado warnings on the radio I thought that I might die (or be a serious accident) a couple of times. But luckily I was fine.

Meanwhile, at home, Denis watched most of the 50+-year-old maple tree directly across the street from us come crashing down. It hit a couple cars (luckily not ours or B.'s, who is staying with us for a couple weeks). It also tore down a bunch of power lines, including the ones attached to our house. So there are lines in the street, and our front yard. A big section of the street is cordoned off, and the top part of the utility pole is torn off and on the ground.

Last night was okay. We ate up the icecream from the freezer and chatted by candlelight. I couldn't sleep upstairs so at 2:30am moved to the basement, which was a little better.

We haven't had power in 24 hours. D. and B. had work today. I went to Bethesda in search of air conditioning and wi-fi (two things that seem to be increasingly tied to my emotional stability, at least when it's 90+ degrees outside). I think tonight we're planning on pretending we don't have a house, except to sleep in. Maybe a long dinner and a movie? (Oh we went and saw Inception this weekend and it was phenonenal, although I had some issues, maybe I'll write a review later.)

Oh and it's very stressful driving around MD/DC without traffic lights. Yeah, no one is obeying the 4-way stop rule. (Rockville Pike was particularly bad.)

I don't know when we'll get power back. Clearly they have to remove the giant tree from the road and reattach the wires before that can happen.

I've had better weeks. Thank goodness no one was hurt, and we were lucky our property isn't really damaged (we did loose some tree limbs and part of the fence in the back, but it's really minor). Hope all of you locals are managing.

Good reminder what a privilege a cool, quiet, reasonably dark, private room with a comfortable seat and internet is. (Also access to a hot shower, the guys got the water this morning since they had work.) :)

eta: Looks like four people died in the storm :(
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100726/ap_on_re_us/us_dc_power_outages

We're having such a nice weekend!

Friday the fantastic flt (and her van) and I went to the dump to get rid of the hot tub-related junk the bulk trash people didn't take on Thursday. It's the first time the yard's been totally clear in a couple weeks. Then we had yummy thai food :)

Friday night was dinner with durdge, Jem, and B. who is staying with them for a while. B. is a good cook and we are looking forward to spending more time with him.

Saturday was lightgetsin's party. Congratulations to her! It was great to see a whole bunch of people I don't see often enough!

We also finished the deck. D. put the spindles on and the railing is back up!

Today we had a BBQ. It started off a little damp (we really need a box to store the cushions in), but it cleared up enough to grill some meat (and some non-meat) and play some cards. It was great chatting with everyone.

I did some house and yard stuff this afternoon. Our next big project is finishing removing the big stumps. Our huge, ancient cherry tree has fruit. I guess it really is a cherry. There is was some talk of pie, but how to harvest fruit when it's so tall? (Maybe 40+ feet high? I'm bad with estimating).

Monday durdge and I started cutting down the big, overgrown, unprunable bushes in front of the inoperable hot tub. D. was making dinner. We did 5/6 bushes. As one was falling an egg fell into my cleavage, down, and through my shirt and hit the ground. Then we realized that there was a bird's nest in the bushes. The mother bird spent the entire evening tweeting and hopping around the deck and the roof, looking for her neighborhood, her home, and her eggs. You guys, it was heartbreaking. I felt SO BAD, like the evil farmer in the rats of Nimh.

The bigger issue was the stumps. durdge worked on two of them not getting either one out. I spent another hour and a half on one Thursday and it didn't wiggle at all. D. comes home from work and gets it out in 30 minutes. It was pretty hot. It's annoying to me that I can't work as productively as the guys, I just don't have the brute strength or stamina. I collect branches, fetch water, maybe dig a little if the roots aren't too dense. Work I do in a half hour takes them 10 minutes. It's ridiculous.

Good thing we bought all those tools. Various things we're using to remove the stumps:
-spade
-pick axe
-axe
-trowel (the bushes are all up against a concrete pad and have ridiculously thick root systems, you can't get a spade between them and the pad)
-clippers
-handsaw (this is mostly me as I am lame and can't use an axe or splitter effectively)

Note one important tool that's missing: a root grinder thingy. drudge and D. got 2.5/6 out so far, so it can be done. We're feeling stubborn so I think the plan is to take the rest out by hand. We'll see how it goes this week.

Saturday the plan was to remove the hot tub. hahahha, we haven't touched it yet. Instead we rented a truck, but not for the times we really wanted, we had it from 7am to 12:30pm. So we got up at 6am on Saturday. Yeeeeah.

We got 2 out of 3 loads of cut-down-bushes brush to the dump, as well as the annoying blue tarp that had been under the sand pile. I wish we had time for the final load, but it was $50/hour in overages so we had to return the truck. :p Guess we will cut up and bundle the remaining brush for recycling pickup. Not sure what we're doing with the stumps.

We also went and bought a linden tree! This was the real reason for renting the truck. Now we have two trees, a redbud in the front yard for me (purple flowers!), and a linden in the backyard for Denis (where the sandpile used to be).

Lindens are a really important tree for Denis. There are lots of lindens in Croatia; the croatian name is lipa. In the currency Croatian "cents" are lipa, and the coins have images of the tree on them. The month of June is named lipanj, because that's the month the lipa bloom. They're actually important all over eastern Europe, check out the wikipedia entry, it's pretty interesting.

Last Monday while D. was cooking dinner he also clogged the kitchen sink. It's been clogged all week, and that's annoying. We weren't home a lot in the evenings so didn't start aggressively dealing with it until Friday. Tried draino, didn't work. Rented a big motorized snake from Home Depot (that we had to return Sat. morning), didn't reach because it couldn't get around all the corners.

D. is a little obsessed with unclogging the drain. Especially since we've already spent money on it. He went back to Home Depot and bought a (smaller) snake and has been messing with it all afternoon while I napped. Drain is still clogged, although now there are some air bubbles *sigh*. My kitchen is a mess, it smells like sewer, and I am ready to call the plumber. He gets points for persistence though :) (He's watching me type this.) OMG now he says he has located the clog and wants to *cut the pipe*. This seems like a really really BAD idea. Not that he can't cut the pipe,* it's putting it back together that concerns me.


*We also bought a sawzall this weekend. To help us take apart the hot tub. Sawzall is the brand name of a small reciprocating saw, isn't it fun to say? sawzall sawzall sawzall Unfortunately now D. has a tool he could use to cut open the pipe. Really, just, no. Hopefully the sawzall will be up to disassembling the hot tub. Which we will get to tomorrow, or some time this week before my dad comes to help us rebuild, patch, something the hole in the deck where the hot tub is currently sitting. Oh and detaching the hot tub means we have to deal with the electricity because it's hardwired. And none of our circuit breakers are labeled. And because the hot tub is broken you can't tell if power is going to it or not. Yeeeah, that's going to go well.

We've been spending a lot of time at Home Depot/Lowe's recently. We've acquired a grill, grill accessories, pick axe, wheelbarrow (FYI an assembled wheelbarrow does not fit in our camry), axe, rosemary plant, hose sprayer, and a bunch of other stuff.

Sunday treewishes, Raoul, gnomad, and durdge came over. D. made yummy burgers on the new grill. R. used his impressive arborist skills to cut down the huge dead tree limb that was hanging over our yard. Yay!

We figured out why the tree is dying: the limb was filled with big black ants. Now have lots of firewood and I think need to call a bug guy? The yard is really close to our wooden shed, deck, and house.

That night durdge and I cleaned out the hot tub to prepare for the spa guy. He came this morning. Our hot tub is really old (20+ years) and has frost damage. We could spend a couple of thousand dollars to jury rig a fix, but it might be better to just scrap it and save for a new one. So we have to think about disposal, and what we should do with this dropped down section of the deck which will have a big hole in it. We'll never find a new spa to fit the hole so we could deck it over and put a raised spa there, but there might be better places in the yard to put one. (I think a new spa is not a project for anytime soon, but D. now has his heart set on one, so I guess we'll see.) What else could we do with that weird deck section? Maybe this means we can just rip out the big overgrown bushes that I don't know how to prune?

Suggestions welcome. ( picture here )

D.'s ankle is better than it was, but it's still uncomfortable for him to walk. My spots are almost better. They're mostly confined to my legs now and slowly healing. I'm still itchy, but I think it's mostly from dry skin. I'm using a lot of lotion, but I'm using a lot less allergy medicine.

Dance!
Depending on who you are I think these DC area Flash Mobs sound like the best thing or the most horrifying thing ever. I'm in the first camp. We might try to do one or two of them. I'm playing with the idea of dropping by Busboys and Poets tomorrow night to check them out. (I think I could easily fake the Jump choreography, it's pretty easy, and I do have a soft spot for Beetlejuice. Help is more intricate and would take more advance practice.) If anyone wants to come by (to dance or just watch) show is 6:30, call is 5:45.

Spent the weekend in VA at my nephew's birthday party. It was lots of fun to see everyone (my parents were also visiting). The party was nice. He seemed to like the presents we got him, carrying around the shovel and water sprayer, using the rake on the carpet, and giving raggedy Ann and Andy big hugs and kisses/face bites. My sister really appreciated that we came. My favorite time was Sunday morning just hanging out with everyone on the deck.

( pictures! )

Since it's spring it's now time to spend even more money on the house. D. and I got some lovely deck furniture at ikea (all wood! reasonably priced! attractive!). Of course they didn't have everything we wanted in stock (why do you have only 1 of this chair, we really want 2) so we'll go back again. We also want to buy a grill and an umbrella. D. ordered a lawnmower (electric, like we live in the future) which should come this week. Plans for next weekend include seeing if the hot tub works and picking up the yard. It's spending a lot of money at once, but it's all on things we should enjoy for years to come.

Daffodils and tulips appeared in our front yard. A lovely surprise. :)

I'm in week 4 of my 6-8 week skin thing. I was going to write a long detailed post, but sufficed to say. 1. it's slowly getting better 2. I'm still really itchy 3. my skin is gross, but in slightly different ways 4. I can't wait until it's gone.

Oh mighty flist, I need some advice.

Music:
I'm driving north for a bonspiel this week and due to scheduling I'm driving by myself. So that's 6-7 hours each way. Definitely doable. I generally like driving by myself given that I have good music. Now, I'm pretty lazy about music, once something's in the car it lives there *forever* (or on the ipod, but I don't want to fuss with the ipod thingy in the car if it's just me) and I prefer CDs to mixes.

( Here's what's currently in the car: )

So what would you suggest? I'm thinking maybe the new Pink album? I'll take pop, folk, rock, even some dance/techno stuff is okay for car. Points for anything I can loudly and overdramatically sing along to or car dance to. Or anything that will make me cry (but not sob, I'll be driving). If I get my act together ellen_fremedon will lend me some Dr. Who audiobooks (woot!), but if I get sleepy or cranky or happy I'll want music. Thoughts?


Plants:

Not only did we buy a house we also bought a yard. I had ideas for the house, not really so many for the yard. This year might be all about maintenance and neutrality (eg buy lawnmower, use lawnmower, deal with dead tree branch, fix door of shed that's falling off, find something to do with pile of sand?, also unused concrete pad?, trim bushes around hottub).

I want to put something out in front at least. Maybe bushes? And then I would perhaps like flowers and maybe vegetables in the back? But I have *no idea* what I'm doing.

Does anyone have any book, website, or blog suggestions? Anything along the lines of "How to think about designing your backyard" to "How to put plants in dirt and make sure they don't die". 101 is great. Is there a gardening equivalent to apartment therapy? Help me procrastinate plan, please :)

D. found this today. So cute!
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A new site for me, Spool No. 72 has pretty clothes and jewelry.
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We have having furniture drama. A couple months ago we found this bed we really liked. The plan has been to buy a bed we both like and move our current bed (a handmedown from my grandparent's guest room) to our guestroom. Well the bed was kind of stupid expensive ($1400) and seemed like something we could wait a year or two on and then buy as a birthdays/christmas gift to each other.

Well, we discovered last night that in the past two months they have stopped selling the particular bed design. Am very annoyed and somewhat disappointed.

The internet provides us with a craig's list posting for a guy selling this bed, king sized (that's our mattress size), for $575. Email reveals that it's still available even though the posting was a couple weeks ago.

The problem: the guy is in Boston. So I'm trying to see if my parents (who are driving down in the minivan with a u-haul trailer with furniture from my grandmother's house, including a dresser set for us) wouldn't mind stopping to pick up a bed, and if this guy doesn't mind that they can only pick it up Thursday night (Christmas Eve). I am also not thrilled about spending an extra $575, but the opportunity has arisen, and it's likely our only shot and getting this bed. (Not that there aren't other beds, I wouldn't be heartbroken if we don't get it, but it's still so pretty.)

So we might be getting a new bedroom from Santa this year. (Guess Santa's identity never really changes.)

Housewarming last night was great, thanks everybody!

Found the perfect material for drapes in the guest bedroom. Unfortunately it's $118/yard. $1000 drapes in the guest bedroom (we have $20 drapes in the livingroom) hahaha no. But I'm still cranky about it.