life and puppies

What is going on with me and this blog? Are we even friends any more? I think it’s one of those common situations where time has just gotten away from us and each of us keeps waiting for the other one to reach one … So, I decided today that I’d be the one to do so. And here I am. Hello, old friend. How have you been?

Although I swear I saw flurries in the backyard this morning as Phoebe barked incessantly to be let back in, I’ve decided that it is, indeed, spring and that I must get cracking on my spring to-do list. What does that list have on it? I’m so glad you asked. And so is Aaron.

• Hanging the sewing room chandelier
• Painting the guest room
• Installing some cool board and batten in that same room
• Hanging another roman shade in that very same room (that guest room is going to be ready for all of our summer guests)*
• Figuring out what the he%$ is going on with the attic**
• Wallpapering something (even if it’s self-adhesive wallpaper and the subject is a vase)

And that’s just the indoors! And just the house! Well, what else is there, right? Jk. It’s almost festival season! Oy vey. I just need this weather to start to show some signs of life and we’ll be all set.

*At press time, I’m not aware of us hosting any guests this summer. I anticipate that changing once pics of the guest room go viral.

**More on this later.

I’ve been quiet here lately because I’ve been waiting for inspiration to strike, but I realize that if I keep waiting any longer, I may never write again. So, instead of being inspiring, I will tell you what we did this weekend.

First, let me start by explaining our general plan for the month. You see, in mid-January, AO declared that we were not allowed to make plans in February. Life had just become too overwhelming with plans and he, wisely, said he was putting his foot down. Our list of house projects was not getting shorter and demands on time were getting to be too much. So, we entered February determined to slow down. And this weekend was a good attempt to put that plan into action.

On Friday, I had dinner with two friends and it was super fun.

On Saturday, we took Molly to gymnastics where it was bring-a-friend day, which, for her, meant that a friend of hers from school joined her and they ran around the gym for 45 minutes. We then had lunch with this friend and her mom afterwards. It, too, was pretty fun.

Then it was off to Target and Home Depot, neither of which were very fun, especially because of a certain incident in the light bulb aisle that no one wants to relive so I will move on.

We then went home and Aaron installed a dimmer switch in our dining room and it has improved all of our lives immensely. Molly and I took all of the dust covers off of the hardcover books in the family room and then arranged most of those same books by color.

It’s not a perfect system because we have a zillion paperbacks that I don’t think lend themselves to the same sorting, but I still think the bookshelves look a lot better and I like the overall effect.

On Sunday, Aaron made the world’s most delicious lasagna to have for the week, as well as the world’s most delicious Valentine’s dinner: flank steak with some sort of non-chimichurri, but chimichurri-esque, sauce, broken and tasty frites and swoon-worthy broccoli. During the day, Molly and I cleaned up her toy and art space, even going through all of her zillions of markers and tossing the ones that were too dried out. Maybe not surprisingly, but going through that space took hours. At the end of it, we rewarded ourselves by making the first figure – the ringmaster – from the book, Paper Circus, a fave of Aaron’s when he was a kid. Molly also made me play some weird game she deemed ‘Octopus,’ which, as far as I could tell, really just involved jumping around and then yelling, “Octopus!”

And that, my friends, was how we spent our largely plan-less weekend.

There were eleven top lights in our home that need/needed replacing before we moved in. Now there are just six! [Don’t tell AO; I fear he thinks we’re more than halfway there.]

Every one comes with its own set of horrible challenges. But AO meets every one. For realsies.

What IS that? The rim is wooden and the whole thing is super heavy.

And the medallion, as it turns out, had a piece that came down and hooked into that screw/nut piece. It was altogether odd. I should have taken better pictures of it, but our time was eaten up trying to get it off the ceiling. It took forever. Seriously. I ended up nearly hanging from parts of it in an effort to eliminate it from our lives.

I really wish I could more adequately describe what it took to get that thing off.

It involved AO’s genius idea of using drill bits to get at the screws attached to the ceiling.

Originally, I thought the medallion could stay, but no. She had to go. There is absolutely no place for her in our lives. Or yours. Plus, taking her off the ceiling revealed she is from circa 2004, so there is really no love lost.In her place, we put up this lovely.

And guess what else? We put one in the guest room, too. So come stay!