in which I carry heavy rocks...

We've lived in our house almost 7 years now. During that time we've managed to complete several projects around the house, including a few we didn't exactly plan on.

About two years after we moved in, I had Keith pull out the shrubbery that was along the front of the house. Naturally, I've managed to not do anything about it outside of making plans in my head and research on the internet, leaving the front of the house looking like this:


Isn't that just lovely? Five years it's looked like that. Five YEARS. People, I have the most patient husband EVER!

But Tuesday, that changed.

This is what it looked like after the first trip to Suburban Lawn & Garden:


After the second trip:


After the third trip:


So I've got the outline down finally, and as soon as the ground dries out enough, I'm ordering 5 cubic yards of enriched top soil and filling it in. Hopefully that will happen in the next week or so. The money's already been set aside.

And there's still plenty of projects left to do, including repainting pretty much every wall I've already painted and then some.

The Flood of 2009

It seems like every year, something big goes wrong in our house. Last year it was our upstairs A/C unit. It died. In the middle of August. Which, if you live or have ever lived in the Midwest, you know how miserable it can be without a/c. We've recovered from that finally.

This year, thanks to a potty training princess who liked to use to much toilet paper, we had a flood.

Basically, there was toilet paper stuck in the pipe from a previous usage, and when she flushed it, the rubber stopper in the bottom of the tank did not seal, so the toilet overflowed and ran for 15-20 minutes before I noticed the issue.

Now, I don't have any pictures of the bathroom while it was flooded. In fact, the bathroom has no damage what-so-ever. But there was an inch of water in my bathroom.

The kitchen, however, was not so lucky.



There was half an inch of water on my kitchen floor, and an inch in my stove top.


And the basement under the kitchen? Well...





So now our kitchen ceiling looks like this:

And our basement ceiling looks like this:


As of right now, we have not taken down the sheet rock in the kitchen, but there is about the equivalent of two sheets that need to be replaced. We have taken down the nasty pop-corn crap and Keith has started the refinishing of the non-damaged area so we can paint when it's repaired.

Anyone have a set of sheet-rock stilts that Keith can borrow? His neck hurts.

CHILDREN!

I do not like my son right now. He cut his sister's hair. Not in the front, so I could fix it and pretend like bangs were want I wanted to do with her hair, but in the back, where it's supposed to be longer.

It's like an inch long. Sticks straight up.

I'm in the process of setting up our annual family pictures, too. fanfuckingtastic timing. I'd laugh, but I'm really pissed, mostly because now there's hair EVERYWHERE in my bedroom.

we have a bat...

in our house... of the flying variety...


s/he's sleeping right now... we called animal control, but their long grabby thing wasn't long enough, because s/he is in THE most inaccessible corner of our foyer.

weird.

edited to add at 10:30pm: we are bat-free! and laughing at ourselves for the silly attempts at catching the damn thing!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Thirty-six years ago today my mother delivered a baby, asked the nurse "what is it?", to which the nurse responded "A Baby." And everyone but my mom got steak for dinner that night. (total rip-off if you ask me, I LOVE steak!)

It's become tradition for Keith and I to go out for steak on our birthdays and for our anniversary. The only time we didn't go out for steak was an absolute disaster. (I still need a new hood for the stove, we should get that soon, shouldn't we?)

So tonight we're going out to Nikko's, the Japanese Steak House at the OP Marriott, with my most favorite-est people in town, my family by choice. (We were going to go last year, but we had babysitter issues and wound up canceling, so we're trying again this year.)

Speaking of the Marriott...

Keith and I went to the new club Manhattans last night, the one at 135th and State Line, behind Hardee's. It's a nice club, but their bartenders SUCK. They're aiming for the over-30 crowd, who tend to be a bit pickier about their drinks, and they have bartenders that should be at a college hang-out. No imagination what-so-ever if you tell them to make you something interesting with a specific alcohol. And my lemon-drop martini was the oddest tasting one I'd ever had. They don't have any fresh ingredients and use a mix for almost everything.

Pitchers in the Marriott, on the other hand, uses fresh ingredients for EVERYTHING, including making their own simple syrups. The only mix they use is for Bloody Mary's. Everything else is made the way it was invented. One of the managers (a friend of mine) said that Pitchers will soon be getting a make-over (like the rest of the hotel) and will be much more up-scale in looks. And they're going to stop having "bartenders" and have "mixologists" instead.

I'm sure that it helps having a restaurant to get everything fresh, but if you're going to cater to the over-30 crowd, make sure you've at least got the right kind of bartenders. For Keith and I, we tend to view cocktails as cuisine, not just another drink. Know how to make them right, dammit!

Regaining myself

Faith, I know I promised you this post months ago, but for various reasons, I'm only now getting around to it.

As many of you who read this blog on a regular basis, I've recently lost the extra weight that I had after Josie was born. Sadly, my boobs went with the weight. I went from this:

to this:

And anything you see in the last picture is mainly from Vicky's. My actual boobs don't fill a B cup anymore.

So, calls were made, , research was done, money put aside, and consultations were had.

Then my shower broke. Fortunately, our neighbor is going to help us fix it, and we have a shower downstairs that we've been using, so there's no urgency to get it fixed. *whew*

So I now have pre-surgery appointment with Dr. Bennett on Friday, April 25th (two days before my birthday!), and hopefully by the end of today I will have an appointment for surgery on Wednesday, May 14th.

I'm so excited! May's going to be a busy month anyway, but I really wanted to get this done before summer officially starts.

edited: Appointment made for 11:00am! squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Almost Spring

My flowers are *kinda* starting to pop up.

My tulips.

Columbine

Day Lily

The space in front that has over 100 bulbs in it.

The iris I planted last year.

I took these pictures almost a week ago, and everything has greened up even more, and several of the bulbs have popped up in the front as well. I can't wait until that patch is all green with plants!

And this is a picture that Matthew (Matthew!) took of his mommy that day.

Gah.

Well, does anyone have a reliable and reasonably priced plumber that services south KC they could share with me? It involves replacing the hot/cold on/off section of the pipes in my shower.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

HUGE!

Keith finally got around to uploading about a zillion pictures we've taken since October (including those at Halloween) but never put on the family site.

Sader picture goodness is HERE!

Included in that is over 200 pictures that Matthew took. He likes trains. A LOT.

Returning to normal

Thank the IPU.

The washing machine is working again! YAY!

The drama from NYE is mostly past. There's still a few details left to wrap up, but for the most part, it's over. (If you don't know, you don't want to know, it's just stupid.)

And I'm totally in love with the new Linkin Park CD.

Fuck.

The stupid washing machine died.

Full of water and clothes.

Fuck.

edited to add: not just any clothes, oh no! It had to be JEANS!

Sticking it to the man.

Or, more accurately, the Evil Empire. The Evil Empire in this case being a very popular store that shall not be named, just to cma.

Two years ago, the day AFTER Christmas, I went to the Evil Empire and bought a pre-lit Christmas tree for $50. This was half of its normal price of $100. I promptly took it home, set it up and plugged it in to make sure all the lights worked. They did, so I eventually took it down and stored it away.

Last year, I set it up, and had one section decide to not light up. No matter what I did or how many lights I replaced, nothing worked. I just turned the tree around so that section was in the back and ignored it. I think I finally figured out which one it was after about 4 days of messing with it.

This year, same tree, I had TWO sections out, the one from last year, again, and one at the top, going all the way around, and totally NOT disguisable. So after three days of trying to figure out which bulb needed replacing, I head off to the Evil Empire to get some more replacement lights since I ran out of the ones that came with the tree.

They don't have any. The gentleman working in the area tried to help, and finally told me to just bring the tree back and exchange it. I even told him I didn't have a receipt or anything, he said it didn't matter.

So after making a trip to Target to make sure they didn't have any lights that would work, I took the tree down, packed it in the box and schlepped the family back to the Evil Empire's exchange desk.

Damn, that lady was PISSED. Apparently, the Evil Empire now has a 90-day exchange policy (that they've never had before, and there are no signs speaking of this, unlike at Target), but she has to honor the exchange because the gentleman told me I could return it!

She refunded me the entire $100 plus tax. It was on a gift card, but it was still $50 more than I paid for the tree. So we went to the back, bought an un-lit tree and 10 boxes of lights. The total came out to 2 pennies more than what was on the gift card. I only used 6 boxes of the lights, so I'll probably be returning the rest in the next day or two.

My tree is finally up and decorated, and it looks very pretty. Eventually I'll get pictures posted, but that requires uploading the pictures from the camera, so it may be a few days.

Ugh.

I HATE cleaning. Of course, I never dust anything in my house, so when I do finally get around to doing the deep cleaning, it's quite thick. In most rooms, a swiffer works just fine. But the bathroom where I use all my hair stuff? It's just nasty.

And, I'd rather paint my toenails than clean.