The Lost Weekend

While Ernst continued to plug away at our ever-shrinking punch list, I was not good for much of anything after Friday. The news of the school shooting hit me hard and it all seemed like too much to even help him paint trim.

My mom and sister live very close to Newtown, and hearing their initial reactions was difficult. When we visit back there, I'm always a bit bummed to come home because it's like leaving Perfectville for Normalville. Last time we were there, I was looking for a parking place in Westport, one of Connecticut's idyllic towns on the seashore. I was thinking how different it is than where we live, a city that does not exactly ooze with charm. Then I saw a seemingly nice looking man walking down the street. He was wearing a t-shirt that said F___ Obama. Such an ugly bit of reality on an otherwise beautiful day. I wanted to say something snarky to him but it would have just been a case of pearls before swine. There are no Perfectvilles.

With three teachers in the family, my job as a school dispatcher, and the facts that this tragedy could happen anywhere are part of what kept me so numb this weekend. The worst things I've had to report at work so far have been a missing child (found), attempted copper theft (caught), and broken windows and graffiti too numerous to recount (repaired at the tax payer's expense). Mostly my job consists of watching people using the school grounds for the good and the bad, taking calls from alert neighbors keeping us posted, and communicating with the custodians and teachers, who call in to say they're putting extra time in their classrooms. Ernst was understanding as I cocooned these last few days, but it's time to get back to life here in Normalville.

Doisprezece Doisprezece Doisprezece

It's December 12, 2012.

12-12-12.

Twelve Twelve Twelve.

In Romanian, for me, it's just another tongue twister - doisprezece doisprezece doisprezece. There'll never be a Seventeen Seventeen Seventeen, but that would be șaptesprezece șaptesprezece șaptesprezece. The funky "s" is a "sh" sound, causing the need for kleenex and some apologies if I say that really fast.

In Romanian, when people are rattling off a series of numbers, this is what I hear: SHPSHTSHIPSHPTSCHSHSHES. Like real people between the ages of 11 and 19, teens are difficult in the Romanian language.

The new sewing/guest room - before and after

The artistic space formerly known as The Pink Room is finally finished. This room's fix-up list was not too long, but it took until now to get completely done. Here is the run down:

TSP the walls, primer and paint twice plus paint the ceiling and inside closets

Remove ceiling fan and replace with a simple light

New wiring to electrical outlets

New windows

Scrape, sand and paint the peeling trim paint and door

New window coverings.

The comforter on the bed is the same one I got at my wedding shower twenty-one years ago. It was a gift from Wendy, AKA "Grandma" from Binkies & Burpcloths. I would call that a winner in the gift department. I got the window shades at Grocery Outlet for ten dollars each and with that we are calling this room done.

I used to sew in the little room off the kitchen, so the goal here is to not let it get too out of hand with quilt fuzz and threads all over. And I need to get all my quilting stuff organized - right now my fabric is in opaque plastic tubs and I can't keep track of what I have. Sometimes I finish a quilt and then find the cutest little scrap that would have been perfect in it. My next project is a memory quilt for a woman from Washington. She's mailing me the fabric from her husband's clothes. And after that one is done, I am finally getting to the quilt for my little friend in Connecticut. Our hope is that by January all the house stuff will be completely wrapped up and we can get on with our previously scheduled programming.

Before

After

Doing laps in the pool house

There is a children's song that I have sung many times through the years. It has fun hand gestures that include first a nice strong fist and then the international sign for SPLAT!

The wise man built his house upon the rock
(repeat 2 times)
And the rain came tumbling down.

The rains came down and the floods came up
(repeat 2 times)
And the wise man's house stood firm!

The foolish man built his house upon the sand
(repeat 2 times)
And the rain came tumbling down.

The rain came down and the floods came up
(repeat 2 times)
And the foolish man's house went SPLAT!

A foolish man built a pool house in our yard years ago. This morning, the rains came down and the floods came up and our pool house went SPLAT! Oh, if it were only a pool house. It is to be Ernst's office and had a desk and bookshelves and semi-important stuff (still in boxes, thank goodness, and up on the shelves). A trip to Emigh Hardware for Insta Foam, a new trench around the little building and some drying out and we should be OK. The stuff? We shall see. What a fun way to spend our Sunday. Our former house flooded too in the little room off the kitchen and a tree limb came down on their car, so either way we were sitting ducks.

The trench dug to alleviate the flooding

The ants were crawling in the freezer and dying , it was such a bad day.

Going Tokyo

It would be nice if that meant a visit to Japan or even a sushi night. Around here "Going Tokyo" is a term for a precarious form of decor/storage.

When Ernst was single and living with Dan, they both had the "more is more" attitude for household items. The problem is eventually you run out of floor area and you must stop taking in more stuff than there is space for. That is unless you go vertical. As in up the walls. Get more bookcases. Go up young man. Go Tokyo.

I don't want our house to look like skyscrapers of stuff. I'm more into the vast empty wasteland of nothingness look. Not Tokyo, more like Little House is the Prairie. But all good things in life involve compromise, so we try for a nice mix of the two styles - a bit of suburban sprawl with some mixed-use buildings, to carry my analogy through.

That is why I spent the afternoon taking down the Berlin Wall of boxes that was our living room and piling them up in the strangely named "Game Room." I piled them pretty high but not enough to crush me if they fell, and in a pattern that I can live with as I walk past on my way to the garage. Oh, yes the garage. That's next. But for the time I'll enjoy my little skyline of french fry boxes.

Words to live by

Living room before

After!

Anyone up for a game?

Going Tokyo - Jessica style

Roasted Brussels sprouts and guests

I roasted Brussels sprouts and we had our first mid-remodel guests. These are not connected in anyway, but the two represent a huge step forward in our house getting completed!

First, our kitchen is a kitchen again. It still needs trim work and a cabinet installed and the dishwasher hooked up and the new window installed that isn't coming for two weeks. But we got the refrigerator in and the stove hooked up. The expression now I'm cooking with gas has real meaning around here. The old stove we stuck back in there works and the roasted veggies made it seem like a real house. Even if they were from the cabbage family, it smelled terrific. The new blue floor is pretty cool, but we're still waiting for the all important plinth installation to make it all jam. This floor is so not going to show the dirt, I may never have to mop again.

Our Sunday game night tradition has been put on hold for a very long time now. But our place is now together enough to have Russ and Arianne over to play Ticket to Ride Asia. My brain was not quite in gear and I almost blew it for Team Ernst and Jessica, but we ended up not too far behind. Just in time for our guests, we hooked up the sink so now we have a toilet, a door and a sink with running water in the bathroom - real progress! The bathtub is still taunting me with unfinished plumbing parts sticking out so we're still doing the two minute showers in the trailer. Patience, patience. It's not a virtue I was born with.

The importance of waterproof mascara

Living through a remodel can be a humiliating experience. Today was by far the worst - probably one of the most embarrassing things I have ever done.

The morning started off great. I got ready and dressed and out the door. That is quite a feat seeing as I have a bathroom with a working toilet but no sink, shower or door. We have a trailer to take a shower in, but that involves getting dressed enough to walk by the two workers and back in the house. I got ready in the bedroom that has a door but no window coverings, I scooted myself into the way back corner and got dressed out of sight, I hope. I left my yellow house in my yellow sweater on a crisp and beautiful Fall day, off to meet at the hall with the Moldovans. The kitchen was off limits too, so add hungry to my tired state, but with the weather and my sweater and my eyebrows all plucked, I was feeling pretty good.

It was all OK until my buddy Daniella asked how I was. Good, a little tired but good. Then Elena came up and asked that same innocent question. Tired, really tired, but good, was my reply. Then the tears came. There is nothing quite so pathetic as tired tears. They come out just like sad tears, but they are just so hard to justify. Vladimir came up to say hello, by this time I was in full-out crying mode, tears rolling down the mascara I'd finally had an occasion to wear. Then I had to tell Peter that I couldn't take his wife and Larissa with me this morning. The worst part was sitting in my car, sobbing like I just lost my house in Hurricane Sandy, but only being able to say, I'm just so tired. Telling that to Peter, a man who was once in prison for not joining the Soviet army, just made the whole thing more pathetic so I had to cry even more.

My memory as I drove out the parking lot was the chins dropping of all the people who think I'm Super Jessica. Then the text messages came. We love you, Jessica. More tears. Soon after I got home, what did Igor and Rafaela arrive with? Flowers from Trader Joes and of course then I cried again. Even with my tear-stained eyes, I knew I had to get out of the house. (Ernst agreed, and so did the two workers.) I called some friends who live five doors down and they let me hang out with them all day. We visited some people with problems far worse than being tired from working on their new house. Now I have to get my Super Jessica cape out from wherever I packed it because tomorrow I see all the Moldovans again. I'll put on waterproof mascara this time.

A moving experience

Moving is a humbling experience. We come face to face with all our material goods and while admitting we don't need half of them and knowing most of it is junk, we find boxes to shove it all in. We hope the neatly written labels on the boxes make it all better.
It must be so wonderful to experience a move with professional movers. No apologies, no lame excuses, just - Here is our stuff, please don't break it. OK, you can break that thing, and it's OK if that falls off the truck, but the rest of this junk has a purpose.
Last Saturday we moved in the pouring rain. It poured right up to the time we moved in the last of the boxes and then the sun came out in time to move the piano. That giant hunk of furniture that I plan on some day playing again, once my hands stop hurting from packing up boxes of junk.
Even so there are blessings to be counted. The dresser drawer full of underwear that was dropped outside belonged to Ernst, not me. All the various chargers are showing up. We have Internet again! The place on our landlord's leg where our dog bit him had a boot on it. (Yes, she did.) And we still got back all our security deposit plus some despite the nip on the leg.
The new house is coming along slowly. The blue floor gets installed tomorrow. The tub surround too. Floors and bathtubs, it's the little things in life that count. Here's where we are otherwise:

• Refrigerator is still in the living room
• Oven is still in the dining room
• Showers are taken out in the trailer
• Lots of trim to be painted, outside and inside
• Doors almost back on in the bedroom and bathroom
• Even some boxes are getting unpacked
• No couches, but they are coming in a few weeks

This has been really hard, much more difficult than I ever imagined. I saw my hair fixing stuff the other day, and remembered those good ol' days when I actually cared how I looked. To keep my spirits up, I'm trying to create what I call Islands of Sanity. Little places in the house that look like people live here. The dining room/library is so cute. The fireplace wall is coming together, Ernst is attempting a fire in our new insert as I write this. The front porch has plants on it. And I have been doing laundry again - clean clothes are not overrated. The Islands of Sanity are helping me deal with the Continents of Chaos. Soon, box by box, trim piece by trim piece, this will all get done.

Looks like rain on our moving day

Ready or not, here we come. Most of our junk stuff is at the new house now, tomorrow comes the heavy lifting of the living room furniture and piano and washer and dryer and Molly's gigantic dog house. And of course all of the junk stuff in the Honey House. We tend to pack up all our favorite things first and the last to get packed are the Why do I even own this, I can't stand to look at it, Where did I get this, I never use this, I'm too tired to even deal with it so I'm just shoving it in this box type items. If only we could arrange for all those last items to fall off the back of the truck on the way over, life would be so much simpler.

The garage sale of all garage sales obviously didn't happen. Fortunately we have a Goodwill drop off station right around the corner. It is so liberating to place junk valuable donations in those wonderful blue rolling carts. Wish I could just roll a few of those carts right up to the front porch right now. Our neighbor Carmen helped me pack up the kitchen today and now Jason and Chase are getting our new garage set up with Ernst. He actually had time to drywall the whole garage and PAINT it, so we are going to have one styling place to stack up all our boxes of junk equipment. Tomorrow we move from this echoing emptied place to our new house with the Berlin Wall of boxes in the front room. And then comes the unpacking of all our junk, I mean junk, OK, it's all just junk.

Something to cluck about - the Chicken Quilt flew the coop

That was a long dry spell for me on Etsy, but today my very best customer in Texas came through for me. She was telling me where the quilts she has bought from Squared Up are now. I'm so glad I name them because I could picture them all as she rattled off their new homes.

This little chicken and farm themed quilt was fun to make and I was sure it was going to fly off the shelf. But it sat and roosted for much too long. They are having an informal craft boutique at my job so I put my three remaining (now two) Etsy quilts there. I figured it was a safe place for them during our upcoming move. Sure enough, that's right when Galina sold and I had to drive over there tonight to pick it up. Tomorrow it gets all packed up and heads to Texas. Once we get this move down in the history books, it's time to get cutting and sewing and sewing and snipping and snipping and washing and drying. Hmmm, maybe I'll just pack myself up with the quilt and take a little vacation in Texas.