Really now...

We have to have the housing inspector inspect the house tomorrow. Ok, really I think he is the health inspector but whatever. It is the same guy that inspected our last place and made us cover our recycling and remove the laundry from the laundry room. Yeah... over it already.

When I called to make the appointment the woman I talked to said that it is a re-inspection, because they failed the last one. She said that it wasn't anything to do with the house pre se, but more the tenants. Things like giant holes in the bathroom wall, no water (How do you live with no water???), they weren't supposed to be here, etc. Basically, they were being evicted and refused to leave. They were being evicted because they trashed the place and decided that if they were leaving they were going out with a bang.

Let's hope that this guy doesn't get out of prison and decide that he wants his house back. And I am sure that the Netflix movies that the post office accidentally forwarded to them will be promptly dropped in the mail when they realize that they are not theirs. Riiiiight.

So today we are going to finish up the last little bit. I also have to go get Christian new swim trunks, because apparently his old ones are too big? If he would just stop growing taller. Sheesh. I want to head to the farmers market while we are out, but Christian is taking so long to get ready I don't know if we will make it.

Alex and Ethan are having Detroit friends up for the weekend, so If you don't hear from me by Monday, assume that I have gone crazy and am wandering the streets in a tutu looking for a lost cat that was never mine. Or something like that.

Weight loss tools

Frame Size Calculator - Using this, I discovered that I am not a small frame like I thought, but a large frame. That means that my weight loss goal was not realistic. Oops!

Take Your Measurements - This is part of a bigger article that is full of great information.

Weight Chart for Women - This site also have a frame size calculator.

Hutch

Seriously, how do you guys stand my indecisiveness? I can barely stand it.

After all of the work and stress I think I am going to take the shelves out of the kitchen and just put my red hutch in there. Three reasons: 1) I really think I would like the openness better 2) I really like my hutch and 3) I really don't want to spend the money for a counter top.

I don't need the storage, really. Most of that stuff fit on the darn red thing at the apartment. If I do decide that I need the storage space, I can always bring the shelves back.

Oy!

Mental health day

We are still unpacking, but close enough to being done that I think we can run the boxes to the recycling center tomorrow. It will sure be nice to get them out of here!

Marty messed up his back pretty badly on Friday. A 2:30am trip to the emergency room had him written off of work for two days. Of course, he only took one off. Better than nothing, I suppose. He is still taking the loopy pills, and luckily was scheduled off today and tomorrow.

Before all of this, I went to a few thrift stores. I found a King sized down duvet for $5!!! Oh yeah! I laundered it yesterday (more on that later) and it is bright white, fresh smelling and quite puffy now.

Since Marty was injured, I declared Saturday a mental health day and went yard saleing with Emily. I found a couch for the basement($5), dining room chairs ($30), curtains and hardware for the dining room windows ($5), camo bean bag chairs (free) ... and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff.

Funny story about the chairs. On Friday, Emily and I were on our way back to my house and passed a yard sale. As we turned around to park, I saw these gorgeous chairs. As we were walking up the the yard, a woman walked away with them. Ugh! So... on Saturday we want to a yard sale where there was two table/chair combos. I asked the woman if she would sell just the chairs, and she said only on the one set because two of the chairs weren't in great shape. I thought about it for a second and decided I didn't want to buy 2 broken chairs with the set. At the very next yard sale, they had 4 chairs that matched the two I had just left almost exactly! I bought them and then ran back to the other yard sale and bought the two. I paid $5 for each chair. So once I finish the 9 million other things I have to do, I will paint and recover them. I think I am going to paint them black and use the same fabric that I recovered the other ones with. What do you think?

What do you think?

We have cut the shelves and put them in place. I just have to decide what to do with the top. Plywood would be about $30 or more (depending on whether I buy cabinet grade. A laminate counter top would be $70. Another option is composite board covered with something.

One thing I have learned about new kitchens in the 50's is that they liked to mix materials. It was not uncommon for wood and metal cabinets, or laminate and stainless counters to be in the same kitchen. So my thought is to wrap the composite in stainless.

I found a tablecloth at the thrift store for $4 that I think might work as curtains in front of the shelves.


That is... if I decide to keep it. As you can see from the picture, it is attracting a lot of clutter already. I am hoping that is because many things still don't have a place, so hopefully that will change soon.

Don't mind the yard sale clutter in front of the shelves. More on that later.

The Perfect Mother

'The Perfect Mother' by Erma Bombeck

Everyone said Sharon was a terrific mother.

Her neighbors said it.

Sharon painted the inside of her garbage cans with enamel, grew her own vegetables, cut her own grass every week, made winter coats for the entire family from remnants and donated blood.

Her mother said it.

Sharon drove her to the doctor’s when she had an appointment, color-coordinated the children’s clothes and put them in labeled drawers, laundered aluminum foil and used it again, planned family reunions, wrote her Congressman, cut everyone’s hair and knew her health insurance policy number by heart.

Her children’s teacher said it.

She helped her children every night with their homework, delivered her son’s paper route when it rained, packed nutritious lunches with little raised faces on the sandwiches, was homeroom mother, belonged to five car pools and once blew up 234 balloons by herself for the seventh grade cotillion.

Her husband said it.

Sharon washed the car when it rained, saved antifreeze from year to year, paid all the bills, arranged their social schedule, sprayed the garden for bugs, moved the hose during the summer, put the children on their backs at night to make sure they didn’t sleep on their faces, and once found a twelve-dollar error on a tax return filed by H & R Block.

Her best friend said it...

Her minister said it...

Sharon was one of those women blessed with a knack for being organized. She planned a “theme party” for the dog's birthday, made her children elaborate Halloween costumes out of old grocery bags and her knots came out just right on the shoelaces when they broke. She put a basketball hoop over the clothes hanger as an incentive for good habits, started seedlings in a toilet paper spindle, and insulated their house with empty egg cartons, which everyone else threw away.

Sharon kept a schedule that would have brought any other women to her knees. Need twenty-five women to chaperone a party? Give the list to Sharon. Need a mother to convert the school library to the Dewey Decimal System? Call Sharon. Need someone to organize a block party, garage sale or a school festival? Get Sharon.

Sharon was a SUPER MOM!
Her gynecologist said it.
Her butcher said it.
Her tennis partner said it.
Her children...

Her children never said it.

They spent a lot of time with Rick's mother, who was always home with them and who ate cookies out of a box and played poker with them.

Look what I found!

I love them all, but the top two are my favorite. The floral is also a close second. I don't think the yellow would look right, but it was too cute not to post.

What do you think?


50s Housewife Scenes Fabric


Retro 1950's Kitchen Appliances


Retro 1950's Kitchen Gals ~ Women Baking


Vintage 40-50's Floral Fabric

So far...

Bad picture, I know. My camera was in the car.

Oh, and remember when the boys teased me because of my ugly chair? Guess who wants to sit in it all of the time now.

Trying to hurry...

They are trying to unplug the computer on me so that they can load it. It turns out that one of the other managers has a truck, so we will be moving everything else tomorrow. The cable/internet guy comes tomorrow, so I have to spend the day over there waiting for him. The phone guy comes Friday. I don't know why the same guy can't do all three, but oh well.

Tomorrow I will get some pictures posted if I get everything done. I can't stand living in chaos, so the majority of it should be done.

Ok, they are really going to unplug me this time.

Just a second...

I have just a second between loads. We are loaded and ready to go, but we have to wait for the darn UPS guy. Marty's new phone is supposed to be here any second.

Yeah... new phone. You know what snazzy $300 phone he got back in July? He accidentally closed it in the van door. It wasn't pretty. He got a BlackBerry Pearl 8120, and mark my words... if this one is smashed he is going back to rotary dial from home. Yes, I would install a rotary phone just for him, thankyouverymuch.

We are almost done with the move, and our "official" moving day isn't until tomorrow. After today, the only things we are going to have to move are my bed, the couch and the tv and computer cabinet/armoire thingies. We have moved everything else in the back of my Town and Country. Marty's boss is loaning us his truck when he gets back into town Thursday morning for the big stuff. Then we will have three weeks to come back here and get it ready. There isn't much that needs to be done (mostly patching nail holes and cleaning the carpet), but we are going to make sure it is above and beyond what it needs to be. They have already made it known that they intend to recoup some of the money that they had to pay me. Ha!

The furniture looks great in the new place, by the way. I just knew hanging on to these family heirloom/junky antiques would serve me well. They match the hardwood floors and crookedness/ not newness of the place perfectly.

Ok, I am done making up words. UPS is here. Gotta go!

Speaking of the kitchen...

Remember how I told you that I wanted to make shelves for under the wall of windows? Done! All I have to do is cut a few things, attach a counter top and make a skirt.

A woman across the cul-de-sac was moving out the other day and asked me if I wanted some book shelves. Yes please! They are the really tall particle board shelves, so I am going to cut them down to size, add some reinforcement and set them in place. Once I figure out what to do with the kitchen I will put a "counter" on top, made of either wood or wood covered by a sheet of laminate, and then make a skirt out of appropriate fabric. All in all, it should take less than an hour to build, and about a year and a half to make the skirt. (Can't sew, you know...)

The particleboard isn't my first choice, but I am not going to turn down free!

Can I ask you a few questions?

1. How do you care for hardwood floors? I have always wanted them, but never had them. I am clueless! We mopped them with this orange wood cleaner from Marty's work, but I don't know what to do for the day to day cleaning.

2. What should I do with my kitchen? My kitchen is right out of the 50's. Teal metal cabinets, sheets of laminate for counter and backsplash. Metal trim around the laminate, of course. I need to repaint the cabinets (they were painted with regular latex paint and it is gummy and coming off around the handles.) So I have 2 options - repaint them the same color and embrace the 50's kitchen idea, or paint them white and try to downplay the 50's. I also need to replace the laminate, so that will be determined by which way I go.

3. If I have a 50's kitchen... now what? Meaning - what the heck do I do? I don't want cliché 50's, with black and white checkerboards and red accessories. I'm not hosting a sock hop. I *think* that if I do a 50's kitchen, I want it to look like you traveled back in time and ended up in your grandmas kitchen in the 50's. Or, maybe Mid-Century Modern.

The neighbor across the cul-de-sac told me that she had the same colored kitchen cabinets in the 50's, and she used blue polka dots for curtains.

Soooo... any ideas?

April Progress Report

You may remember that we decided to put the compact on hold while we move, thinking that we would need all sorts of little things that you would never consider buying used (toilet brush, for example). So far, we haven't had to buy a thing, but we are officially moving in next week.

One thing we have decided to buy new is stuff for the back yard. Our backyard is big but there is no patio or deck, so our table would sink into the soft ground. I came up with a design that will allow us to build a deck that can be taken with us the next time we move. (We will build four separate 6x6 sections that will be carriage bolted to each other, for a full 12x12 deck.) We also plan to buy a gazebo ($200), possibly a new grill ($150 or so. Ours is 8 years old and falling apart) and wood and various soil components for four 4x4 square foot garden beds. We had planned to sell our current patio set and buy a new one, because the wrought iron is rusting (loaned it to my brother while we lived in an apartment in Ohio and he left it out all winter, uncovered) and there are only four chairs for five people. After thinking about it I decided that I like our current set, so we will just paint it and buy a chair that sort of matches so we don't have to keep dragging a kitchen chair out there. All together, we will be spending less than $500, and since we are doing the compact for financial reasons, and we budgeted for this, I am totally ok with it. Justification? Maybe.

Everything else that I purchased falls under the exemptions that I decided on when we started. (Bras, cross trainers, shoes for large footed children.)

We have also decided to take the kids to Germany next summer, so there will be various purchases throughout the upcoming year. (Passports mostly.)

Another thing that I decided is that it isn't fair of me to drag my family along on my crazy adventure. I am the one who decided to do the compact, and it isn't fair of me to force it on them. Of course, I wouldn't hand them money and ask them to buy me something (I think that would violate the spirit of the compact), but I am not going to try to stop them from purchasing new.

So basically, no new purchases for April, but probably plenty for May.

Cross posted at Mamas on the Compact

Books I read in April

One of my 101 106 in 1001 is to keep a running list of the books I read for a year.
January's list
February's list
March's list

Again, I forgot to take note of them as I read them, so this is what I can remember (only because they are sitting here waiting to go back to the library.)

15-minute low-carb recipes : instant recipes for dinners, desserts, and more! - by Dana Carpenter
A cook's tour : in search of the perfect meal - by Anthony Bourdain
Dr. Atkins' new diet revolution - by Robert C. Atkins
Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America: My Story - by Michelle Kennedy
The kitchen garden - by Sylvia Thompson
Kitchen gardens : beyond the vegetable patch - by Carole Turner
The new kitchen garden - by Anna Pavord
Designing the new kitchen garden : an American potager handbook - by Jennifer R. Bartley
Gardens of plenty : [the art of the potager garden] - by Marylyn Abbott
Kitchen garden - by Lucy Peel

Dear anonymous:

Dear anonymous:
Thank you for taking the time to post a comment on my blog. While I appreciate you taking the time to type such a long reply (23,223 words! I don't even type that much and it is my blog!) I do have to disagree with a few of your points:

1. I do not believe that frugality will open the door to teenage prostitution.
2. Pretty sure the Jews didn't have anything to do with "the social deterioration that was the 1960s". Just saying.
3. I am also pretty sure that all Italians are not racists and even fewer like "the high-heeled transsexual's". Maybe you need a new group of friends?
4. I don't believe in God, but if I did I sure as hell wouldn't call him/her a pimp, or say any of the other things you said. Really. Would you want someone talking about your no-no's that way? I think not.

Really, that is about all the further I could read. I never wrote papers in college as long as your comment. So my suggestion to you is to take your meds, have a lie down, and hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for you. Oh, and don't ever comment on my blog again you racist, bigoted ass hole.

And I thought my landlord was bad...

San Francisco landlords charged with tenant terror

• tried to illegally evict the tenants
• Cut the support beams to one tenants floor
• turned off the utilities
• cut phone lines

Kip Macy is accused of three felony conspiracy charges, three burglary charges, two stalking charges, two grand theft charges and one felony count of shutting off service, related to cutting Morrow's power. He also faces one misdemeanor vandalism charge.

Nicole Macy faces three conspiracy charges, three burglary charges, two stalking charges, two grand theft charges, one charge of cutting phone service and one count of misdemeanor vandalism.

Gak!

We picked up the keys at 10:30 and hung around the house for a bit checking things out. (Will Christian's loft bed fit in his room? - no. Do the bedrooms have overhead lighting? - yes.) The lawn guys were there, so we decided to wait a bit before we took stuff over to give them time to finish.

We waited three hours. It turns out that the landlord owns three houses in a row and ours is the middle one so they parked in our driveway. We parked in the driveway of the empty house next door... and then Christian noticed things in the back yard. Turns out? He rented the place sometime in those three hours and the people were already moving in. Ok, I know he didn't rent it in those three hours because believe me, this guy went over our credit report and references with a fine tooth comb, and as everyone knows, fine tooth combing takes three days, minimum.

So Marty and I run to the store for more cleaning supplies and while we were gone the new neighbors came home. I am sure they wouldn't want us parking in their driveway, so we circled the neighborhood. Lawn guys still there. Circled again. Still there. Four circles later, they were gone.

Marty and Ethan headed back to the apartment to pick up boxes while Alex, Christian and I stayed to clean. We got everything done except for the hardwood floors, basement floors and the basement bathroom. I am not sure who is going to clean that bathroom, but it isn't going to be me. The upstairs bathroom took me 2 1/2 hours. No, I am not kidding.

The upstairs bathroom has these lovely (gak!) pink tiles half way up the wall. I am willing to be that they haven't been cleaned in a year - or more. One bottle of cleaner later, and they were done. I still need to do the grout, though. Want a quick tip for dirty grout? Paint it. Yup. Just mix your paint with water (2/3 paint, 1/3 water), use a foam brush and run a quick line of paint over the grout. If the grout was sealed (which I doubt or you wouldn't need to repaint it) just sand it lightly. I can not even begin to tell you what a difference painting the grout makes.

Marty is going to head back over there tonight after work with a mop bucket and giant mop. Once the hardwood floors are clean we can start really moving things in. Let's just hope that he doesn't run into the carpet cleaners that are there sometime today.

Turns out? The previous renters? Chimneys. Yuk.

Keys

We are picking up the keys tomorrow. Luckily, Marty is off tomorrow so we can spend the day cleaning the new place and taking some of these boxes over there. Wait. Did I say luckily? I totally meant unfortunately.

We are going to rent a moving truck Wednesday the 7th and move the rest of the big stuff then. Once that is done we will come back here and clean. Good times. Good times indeed.

So, my to do list for the week is:
1) Finish packing
2) Clean new place
3) Move boxes
4) Continue to work on my German - Have I mentioned lately how bad my German sucks?
5) Possibly start to work on the new yard
6) That pesky school thing we do

I have all of this to do so of course I am sitting here playing on the computer. Not playing. Reading really important things. Yeah... that's it!

Picture from flickr

Weekly Menu - Grillin' & Chillin' Edition

This week is the last week we have to get ready to move, so it is all about quick and easy. Quick and easy around here means grilling, however uninspired it may be. I don't care if it does snow on Monday, my butt will be out there grilling.

Ok, I do care if it snows. If it does, rest assured that I will be in the corner in the fetal position weeping like the baby that I am.

Everything served with a salad, veggie and fruit.

4/27- Sunday
Dinner out - We went to a friend's First Holy Communion Mass, and then joined them out for dinner. He did great, by the way! :o)

4/28 - Monday
Italian Sausage, pasta (for those who can eat it)

4/29 - Tuesday
BBQ chicken

4/30 - Wednesday
Burgers - Maybe I will make one of these?

5/01 - Thursday
Smoked sausage

5/02 - Friday
Grilled chicken salads

5/03 - Saturday
Brats

Picture from flickr

Ack!

I am so done with this move. I just want to do it, already. If only there were people that I could pay who would be willing to come into my house, pack all of my crap and then move it. What a dream world I live in. Ha!

Packing is moving right along. Apparently, some of the boxes we grabbed were of the fuzzy bunny variety, because now you can't get through my garage. The van is full of them, too.

One of the puzzle ladies delivers a stack of newspapers each night. She goes around the complex gathering them from the other puzzle ladies.

We don't have that much stuff, people.

We are at that phase of a move where you have packed all of the stuff you can live without for a while... and then promptly wonder why you are keeping it. I mean, if you can live without it for 2-3 weeks, do you really need it? But I digress.

I broke down and packed the school stuff yesterday. For the next few weeks, we will be doing math and reading only. The boys were devastated, I can assure you.

I won't even tell you what my house looks like. I don't want to shatter the illusion that I am the Martha Stewart of mid-Michigan.

We are supposed to have thunder storms all weekend, so even more of a reason to stay home and pack. Unfortunately, I still have to take my happy butt to the clubhouse and workout. Why can't I just be one of those people who is perfectly happy being fat? Really. Nice self esteem. Thanks mom.

Tomorrow we are going to video archery (archery and video games all in one. How could they not love it?) and a first communion. And packing. Always packing.

I want my money - and I want it in 21 days?

One of the greatest things about living in a small town is just how fast the mail gets here. Nothing else moves fast, so why not?

We went to court on Tuesday and bright and early Wednesday the order of judgment was in my mail box. Basically, they have 21 days to pay me, or we go back to court. First, we file a Discovery Subpoena, which means that they have to come to court and tell the court the address (of corporate headquarters, I assume), what assets they have, where they are located, where they bank and any other information that the court deems necessary. Blood type? Astrological sign? I can only imagine...

After we get that information, the court will issue a Writ of Garnishment. Fourteen days after the writ is issued, the courts will take the money out of their bank account and hold it for 28 days, to allow for the defendant to object. Then, we get the money. All of this time the courts will charge the defendant interest, too. They would also have to pay our filing costs again. (The judgment was for damages + court costs.)

So now we wait. The popular opinion around here is that they will wait as long as they can to pay, and may even make us go for the garnishment, just to be jerks.

I think it is crap that they have 21 days to pay me. They lost. Waiting 21 days isn't going to do anything but make interest pile on. They should have been required to write me a check right then and there, but that is just my opinion.

So far, I have had three people ask me for copies of the pictures we took to court, so that they can file their own lawsuit.

As a side note, the maintenance man has been working his butt off since we went to court. Also, suddenly there were painters at the clubhouse today, painting what has needed to be painted for two years. We will see how long this lasts.

Back yard

I need your help!

Our new back yard is soft... very, very soft. So soft that I am willing to bet that and table and chairs put there would be swallowed up in a matter of days. If we want to use the back yard, we need to do something.

My brilliant idea was to build a deck. Not just any deck, mind you. Oh no! My deck is portable! Yup. When we move, we can just flip it over, un-carriage bolt it and load it into the truck.

Our 12x12 deck will be built in four separate 6x6 sections that will be carriage bolted to each other, for the full 12x12 deck. Four 6x6 panels are a lot easier to move than a 12x12 panel, that's for sure.

We priced it out at the only two lumber yards in town, Home Depot and Lowe's. (Lowe's beat Home Depot by quite a bit, by the way.)

So our 12x12 deck will cost us $446.45, including tax. Not bad for a deck that will last for years if properly sealed. Which by the way... did you know that you are supposed to wait a year or so to seal pressure treated wood? I sure didn't.

We priced 12x12 pavers, and just for the pavers it is $215. So we can spend just over double that and have something that we can take with us.

I am still not done, though. I am going to call a few concrete companies and the city to find out what they do with their big chunks of old concrete. You can make something thatlooks very much like flagstone using pieces of old concrete. If I can get my hands on enough, I might use it for my beds, too.

As for the gazebo. There is a nice one at Wal-Mart for $200 that we might purchase. I really want to make one with an idea I saw years ago, but have no idea where to get what I need. Wait... let me find a picture.

OMG! Look what I found! A picture of the gazebo and a broken concrete walkway.

So we have to decide... money or time? We can spend the money to buy the gazebo and supplies for the wooden deck and be done with it in a weekend. Or, I can spend time looking for concrete and a satellite dish, digging up the yard and laying the patio and then building the gazebo. Probably a 3 weekend job, assuming that I find the concrete and satellite.

The deck is $460 and totally portable. The patio, is gas for picking the concrete up + between $50-$100 for the supplies needed - and not portable at all.

The Wal-Mart gazebo is $200 and goes with us. The satellite gazebo would have to be sold or given away if we moved long distance because I am not going to even try to stuff a 10 ft. satellite into a moving truck!

So, my question is... Considering that we rent and have budgeted for the Wal-Mart purchases, what would you do?

I have decided to just repaint my current wrought iron patio set. It is comfortable, and I like it. The only complaints that I have are 1) the table top is mesh, so to do school out there you need something to wrote on and 2) there are only four chairs. I can repaint it with a few cans of Rust-Oleum and buy a darn extra chair that kind of matches.