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Life

You are currently browsing the archive for the Life category.

The kitchen floor project

March 1, 2010 in Life | 9 comments

We have a period of time, right after Christmas and before early March that our weather is at its worse and we typically do not do much outdoors. It is a great time to do indoor projects and on our old fixer-upper house there are many to do. One year, Brian added shelves to our laundry room. Another time, we closed in the extra unneeded doorway to my office and remodeled. And in another year, we removed very ugly wallpaper in our living room and dining room and refinished the walls. This year we decided to re-do our kitchen floor. 

The floor was covered with cheap stick on tiles that over the years came loose, curled back, broke off, yada, yada. It was nasty and I hated that it looked so crappy. Several years ago, when we had to pull out the built-in dishwasher for repairs, we saw underneath that our floor was hardwood.

So, on one cold Sunday in early January, we decided we would expose the hardwood to match the rest of our house. The plan was to remove the tiles, sand, stain and urethane. Our best estimate was that we could complete the project in two weekends. On the first weekend, we would remove the tiles and do the sanding. On the second weekend, we would stain and finish. Aaah, the best laid plans… We began scraping off the sticky tiles and discovered a sheet of luaun. We removed the luaun and discovered a layer of linoleum. We removed it and discovered a layer of tar based mastic adhesive. Underneath that was another layer of tiles and under that was another layer of the tar based adhesive. We scraped the linoleum and the next layer of tiles, thus removing the one layer of that tar based icky stuff, but the bottom layer was going to be problematic. We tried scraping, mineral spirits, goo gone, and other products to remove this icky coating, but nothing was working. I researched the internet on how best to remove this stuff and found out that even Bob Vila had no answers. Most sources said it couldn’t be done and to replace the flooring with new hardwood. One source suggested using hot steam.

We wanted to save our old floor, so we got out the iron and tried it. Yes, it did work the best. Heat up that black tarry gunk and scrape. It was hard, arduous work. It was not perfect. That bottom layer of gunk separating us from our hardwood floor had probably been on there for 60 years and probably full of asbestos, too. So, we needed to get the floor as clean as we could before doing any sanding. Five weekends later, we were ready to sand. 

At this point, we moved the range out of the room. We wanted to remove the refrigerator, too, but the only way to fit it through the doorway was to remove its three heavy doors. We decided we would try to work around it, pulling it out away from the wall to work on that area and pushing it back into place while we did the rest of the floor.

It took another two very inconvenient weeks to finish this project, what with not being able to walk on the floor or use the stove or get to the refrigerator, but it is done. Just in time to get out and start working on the outdoor projects.

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Are you a hoarder?

February 21, 2010 in Life, Organize | 36 comments

There is a TV show on A&E called Hoarders. Have any of you ever watched it? I’m not sure what night of the week it comes on, but I happened to watch several repeat episodes while I was cleaning house one afternoon last week. (I know, kind of ironic, isn’t it?) 

A hoarder is defined as a person who has a need to acquire things, but fails to use them or discard them. A&E says its program is about people whose hoarding has gotten so out of control they are on the verge of personal crisis. 

One episode was about a woman whose children were taken out of the home by the Department of Social Services because her house was considered unsafe and unsanitary. She had to clean up in order to get her children back. The therapist and a cleaning crew came in to help get the job done. The work was slow as the hoarder had to touch every piece of junk before she could decide if she could throw it away or not. And, in most cases, she could not. At the end of this episode, the woman’s house is clean, but her garage and basement are stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of the stuff she could not part with and Social Services is not convinced that her home will stay clean for long and she does not get her kids back. 

In another story, a woman had convinced her second husband (the first husband had divorced her over her hoarding problem) that they could never get their current home cleaned up and should buy a second house so they could start over! Eventually, they would clean up house one and sell it, she had promised. So, now, strapped with two mortgages and two out of control houses, she asks for help. Ultimately, the crew of helpers left after barely making a dent, although, the woman said she would finish at her own pace on her own. 

In another episode, a man spent a week and only got his dining room table cleared. Even though his wife had fallen down the steps the previous year resulting in a broken leg because of all the junk stacked there, and even though, she promised she would leave him if he did not get his mess cleaned up, he could not. 

In all of the cases I watched, the hoarders felt overwhelmed and ashamed and really had a strong desire to get a handle on their compulsive behavior, but could not. 

I admit it. I really don’t get it. I do not understand how people could live in such filth and why they have a need to keep so much utterly useless crap. It made me realize, though, that most of us have our own compulsive behaviors.  I am quite the opposite of a hoarder. I must have order in my house. I keep the spices on the spice rack alphabetized. My silverware drawer must be organized and only hold a matching set. There are no wire hangers in my house and clothes must be hung facing the same direction. All of the clean towels and wash clothes must be folded in the same way with the fold facing out and stacked in their appropriate places in the linen closet.

A couple of months ago, I was losing sleep because my sock drawer was a mess! Well, okay, honestly, I wasn’t losing sleep over it, but I was thinking about it everyday. Browns were mixed in with blues and some had no match and I couldn’t just reach in the drawer and pull out what I wanted. It felt very satisfying to clean it. (I do not remember now the exact count, but after I threw some away I had over 30 pairs – more than I could wear in a whole month! Maybe, I’m a sockaholic.)

I have no problem getting rid of stuff. My general rule is that if I haven’t used something in a year, I must not need it and out it goes. The junk gets thrown out, and, I pile the quality stuff in the workshop, planning a future yard sale. I have never actually had a yard sale as I can’t stand the accumulating clutter, so I gather up those things and give them away a few months later.

This is not to say that I am a neat freak. I am far from it! My floors can get dirty, the furniture can get dusty and I usually have a stack of clothes piled on the dresser by week’s end. But, I do clean the inside of my refrigerator every week and straighten the kitchen pantry shelves every time I put groceries away. The more I write about it, the more I realize that people must think I’m  a tad crazy! I am truly a compulsive anti-hoarder. 

I see a reality TV show in the making; people who throw things out only to discover later they need them! 

I’ve got other compulsive behaviors, too. But, I’ll save those for another day!

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Sharing the happy

February 6, 2010 in Life, Life's lessons | 18 comments

Most of you are probably wondering what that Happy Book thing is on the left sidebar of my web site. I hope you are wondering enough to read on.

First, let me start by asking you if you are familiar with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a novel by Ann Brashares (and later a movie by the same name). The premise is that four best friends, spending their summer away from each other, decide to share a pair of pants to keep them connected. Each keeps the pants for a short while and then send to the next friend.

Second, The Happy Book, written by Rachel Kempster and Meg Leder is a book about being happy. It is an activity book that encourages us to discover or re-discover the things in life that make us happy. They (the authors) say their book is more fun that a basket of kittens!

Third, one of those happenstance, must be fate kinda moments in life, I happened to log into Facebook right at the moment when a friend shared a link to Jamie Ridler’s Creative Living Blog, and since I wasn’t too busy with anything else I clicked on the link and read that Jamie had interviewed the authors of The Happy Book and…

Combine these three elements and what you have is Jamie’s idea to send a Happy Book around the world for people to share their happy things!

What a cool idea, thought I, so I signed up immediately, wanting to be one of the few to get in on this happiness sharing thing!

Jamie would accept 26 names, come up with a mailing list, mail the book to the first recipient who can keep it for a week and do whatever happiness she wants in it. Then she mails it to the next person who gets to the same and so on! Considering the mail time involved, it will probably take about a year for the book to make a round trip.

Well, first so many people wanted to do this, that Jamie decided to start 4 books on their trips around the world! I am in the Glee group and I am number 14 on the list. When the book gets to me I can do any or as many of the activities that I want. I can insert pictures or doodles or use crayons or whatever makes me happy! I can share with my family and friends, if I like, but when my week is up, I send it to the next person. If we run out of pages, we’ll just add more!

I know none of the people in the Glee group in real life. But, I know I am going to enjoy perusing what the thirteen happy people entered before me. And, maybe my happy will add some joy to the people after me!

Jamie mailed the books on January 15 to the first recipient in each group. I should receive it, somewhere near the end of July. It will be Jamie’s job to help us keep the book on schedule and she has set up a blog site  for us to follow our book through its journey.

That’s it! I’m in a sisterhood of a traveling happy book and that makes me happy!

Everyone likes to be happy, yes? Let’s use the comment section of this post to share things that makes us happy! Send lots of happy comments, okey dokey? I’ll go first…

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Gotta have milk

February 2, 2010 in Life | 32 comments

I don’t know if this blog post is about milk, or first grade memories. You will have to decide for yourself, I reckon, and then comment accordingly!

First, about milk. I love milk. It is my favorite drink in the whole world. I drink it at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner and sometimes I even have a glass with a snack.

I have not always had this close relationship with milk. Growing up, I never drank it. We rarely ever had it in our house. My dad, the grocery shopper, did not drink milk. So, he bought canned evaporated milk for mom to add to her coffee or to reconstitute for a recipe. 

When I was a senior in high school, Brian remembers coming to the house one morning to see me before school and was shocked and a bit creeped out that I had toast and eggs with a tall glass of Pepsi for breakfast!

At some point after we were married and I was pregnant, Brian convinced me that a glass of milk every once in a while would be “good for me and the baby.” And, so, I began my love affair with milk.

So, now to my first-grade memory. I bought the school cafeteria lunch everyday. Back then, students didn’t get to chose what to get on their trays, they simply got whatever was served that day – a mystery meat, vegetable, fruit and milk. The milk came automatically. But, I never drank my milk because I didn’t drink milk. I didn’t like milk. I never even opened the carton. Sometimes I traded it or just gave it to someone else to drink, but most days, it got thrown away.

Now, after lunch, we got to go outside to play. Ergo, the quicker we finished lunch, the sooner we played.

One day, my first grade teacher, Mrs. Biddleman, who sat at our lunch table with her class, usually across from me so she could keep an eye on me, decided that I should drink my milk. “Think of all those poor starving kids in China,” she said.

“I don’t like milk,” I said. “It makes me sick.” “The kids in China can have it.”(Well, I can’t remember our exact words, but it went something like that)

I’m sure I said something sarcastic that pissed her off, because she informed me that I could not go out to recess until I drank my milk. Now, somewhere in my six year old logic, this was wrong. How could she insist that I drink something that I didn’t want, didn’t like and had bought and paid for with my own (well, with my parents’) money? So, we sat. And, sat. And all the other kids in first through third grades ate their lunches and went outside to play. And, finally recess was over and everyone went back to class. It was then that I got to throw my milk in the trash and go back to class. Triumph! Or so I thought, as the next day, Mrs. Biddleman and I sat alone in the cafeteria for an entire recess once again, while all the good boys and girls got to go outside. But, I had my principles, dammit! When she did it to me for the third day, I began to worry. I worried mostly that I’d drink my milk and barf. Boy, that would sure show her!  But, by the following week, Mrs. Biddleman had tired of this little exercise in six year-old mind control and gave up. I am proud to say that I never caved.  

To this day, I am very picky about my milk and there are certain brands I refuse to drink. All milk is not the same! My favorite milk is Publix store brand. I like the ½ percent milk best, but if I can’t get that, I will drink 1 percent or 2 percent, too. I’m the one at the grocery store going through all the milk on the shelf to get the freshest one, too. Brian is trained to do the same.

I guess I’m a milkaholic. That’s the first step, isn’t it?

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Once in a blue moon

December 30, 2009 in Life | 5 comments

 

My friend, Dr. Rus D. Jeffrey, took this photo of a full moon in June 2009 shortly after his purchase of a new 1000mm lens. He has graciously allowed me to use it here! You can visit his website at http://www.DrRus.com

I hadn’t planned on writing another blog post before the beginning of the new year, but then I read that we are having a blue moon on New Year’s Eve (unless you are from Asia, Australia or one of those other South Pacific islands, then you will get your next blue moon in January)! 

Thinking this was pretty cool, I looked it up. In a nutshell, a blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month, unless you are using the Farmer’s Almanac (which defines a blue moon as the fourth full moon in a quarter year). Who knew?

Now, back in our agrarian days, we lived and died by the moon phases. We knew when to plant and harvest crops and perform other rituals by the moon. There are normally 12 moons in a solar year and we gave folksy names for each of them, such as growing moon, harvest moon, snow moon. The 12 moons coincided with our 12 monthly “seasons” and all was right with the world. Well, except when we had 13 moons. That extra moon wreaked havoc, confused us and generally screwed everything up. So, some brilliant soul gave this extra moon its own name, “blue moon,” thus keeping the rest of the moons occurring in their normal order and at their normal times.

Cool, huh? Here’s more about blue moons:

Blue moons occur about once every two and a half years. Or put another way, about 41 times a century.

The last blue moon happened in 2007, when the first full moon of June occurred on the 1st and the second one occurred on the 30th.

This year, our first full moon this month occurred on December 2 and the second one occurs on December 31. This makes this New Year’s Eve extra special because a full moon on New Year’s Eve happens once every 20 years! (If you happen to believe that the crazies come out every full moon, we are going to have a double whammy this year!)

Our next blue moon – August 31, 2012!

If you are using the Farmer’s Almanac’s definition, next one is November 21, 2010 followed by one on August 21, 2013.

Of course, blue moons aren’t really blue. Unless, it is a blue (the color blue) moon. This is apparently a really rare event. According to Wikipedia, a blue colored moon can be caused by dust particles in the atmosphere, like in 1883 after the eruption of Krakatoa. The moon appeared blue for two years. Who knew?

Oh, there’s lots more about blue moons on the internet. Google “blue moon” if you want to know more.

So, there you have it! On this New Year’s Eve, make a toast to the blue moon.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

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