not a fan

Operation Pave the World continues apace on my block. I hadn't noticed it so much until Paul and Sarah came over, and Sarah said "What is up with your street? I've never seen so much front-yard parking in my life!" And I had to admit that indeed, there was a lot of front-yard parking. Now I can't stop noticing. Up the street one way, three houses got together and covered their entire fronts with asphalt. Yesterday it was the house a couple doors up from us.

"I can't even remember," Lizbeth said, "was it--"
"I'm pretty sure it was lawn." Now it is an expanse of shiny blackness. As you all know, I am not a fan of grass, but I am now freaking out about runoff and water pollution. Stop the insanity! Try interlocking pavers or something! Geez!

Also, it smells funny.

Right now I'm listening to one of the guys doing construction next door shouting about how these other guys "don't appreciate him or value his experience!" I'm like, um, I'm sorry they hurt your feelings, but could you not wake up the baby? 'Kay, thanks.

another post about stuff.

An amazing thing has happened. Our mattress arrived yesterday, and so we set up the bed (which is now hilariously tall, by the way--when did mattresses become so excessive?), and slept on it. I woke up this morning not sore.

I don't even remember the last time I woke up without feeling like dreamkill, run down in my sleep by the 18-wheelers of my subconscious. Wow. Life is a beautiful place of restful sleep and internet surfing and coffee. I may even survive my series of 5:30 a.m. starts this week. Rejoice!

Some pictures of the place. We're still in progress, really, but as people have asked to see it, I'm posting what I've got.

Now if I could just get my cats to stop harassing one another, everything would be fine.

it's a big old house and there's not much room/ but there's nothing that I wouldn't say to you

Hey. We have internet! So I can blog again. We're moved into the new place, and E. is moving in on Tuesday, so there's one more flurry of box-related madness and then we can all start figuring out where things go.

The furniture Tetris is going both well and not well, but there'll be more on that after the rest of the furniture arrives. Mostly we've been working on fiddly bits. I may or may not have mentioned the bit off our kitchen at the back. It's sort of a mudroom and sort of just the stairs down to the basement...I'll post a picture when I find the camera cable. When we looked at the place, I envisioned using it as a pantry, because our kitchen is slightly low on cupboard space. But it was...awful. Grotty and dirty and full of spiders. I wish I had a decent "before" picture, because spook's been working on it and now it seems like part of the house instead of part of someone's garage. Bwah ha ha! An unpromising beginning is no match for our powers of redecorating! The major challenge in this place is the basement, which is pretty much a dank concrete box. We don't need it to be gorgeous, but it's supposed to house spook's weights, and storage, and a laundry area, so it requires improvement. We have some notions. We'll see how they go.

I am anxiously awaiting news of my niece, who ought to be born this week. There'll be pictures of her too, because she will be the most beautiful baby ever, at least through the lenses of my auntie goggles. (The rest of you are free to notice that all newborn babies look very weird, as long as you notice it privately.)

And that's really all the news. I'm looking for the camera cable, I swear. Pictures soon.

before and...during.

I promised you pictures, and pictures you shall have, even though they are at this point pretty boring. This is our new house! I have spent the last two days painting and cleaning. Much, much more cleaning awaits, but the painting is mostly done.




This room with the brownish walls (they're quite a bit grayer in a non-flash light) is our bedroom. The room with the one green wall is the den, and I think y'all can figure out which one is the kitchen.

home sweet home

After much grumbling, agonizing, and poring over online classifieds, we are the proud new renters of a house. A whole house. I'm so...grateful, I had really forgotten how stressful it is to look, not having done it since Sarah and I were searching for what turned out to be House of Chicks.
The skinny on the place: it's two storeys with an unfinished basement, a backyard, front parking pad and a giant shed. There are three bedrooms, living and dining rooms, and the kitchen, as well as a weird little nook in the front of the house which might once have been an enclosed porch. I will put up pictures as soon as we get in and start getting it put together--we take possession on the fifteenth.

This is a very boring post mostly because Tish was the Cat of Evil from four-thirty till about six this morning, and I am subsequently very tired. I'm gonna go drink celebratory wine and watch When Harry Met Sally.