I'm getting really tired of the kitchen thing. I try to remind myself that my sister-in-law endured something like 18 months of kitchen renovation and I can surely endure 5 or 6 weeks. But I am very tired of washing dishes in a bathroom sink that's not big enough, making coffee in the dining room, and worrying that my wall-mountable microwave that's now sitting on a fish tank stand will rock itself off onto the floor and add several hundred dollars more to an ever increasing reno price.
I'm also very tired of the dust. It gets on everything, in everything, and goes *everywhere.* My sinuses - already a wreck after major surgery 2.5 years ago - have begun to show signs that maybe I need an emergency visit to the ENT. I was supposed to see him for a follow-up in February when I could have looked like a model patient, taking care of myself and showing up healthy. Instead, I never made it in February since I was on crutches and in physical therapy and it just seemed easier to wait. Now I seem to be on the downward spiral into sinus infection and I will get to go in to be vacuumed out.
My refrigerator is in my foyer. My range is in my dining room. My kitchen table and chairs are in the family room. Everything else is boxed up like we're moving. Which I guess we are - we're moving into new cabinets that are waiting patiently in the garage for the floor guy to finish, the walls to get painted, and the cabinet installing crew to come back on Monday and start installing.
I am too tired to be excited about it all right now - maybe that will change after we go and pick out our granite tomorrow night. Something I'm not really in the mood to do. Which seems bad - I can't imagine one should be picking a major decorative detail when not in the mood. I will psyche myself up with the online photo gallery of luscious stone with names like Mascarello. Sounds like something that should be in an Italian family's kitchen. Good thing everyone else in my family is Italian . . .
And it will all be done soon and I will probably not remember how annoying it was. I will be amazed at how much more my cabinets can hold (apparently the cabinet installers think we have *a lot* of cabinets in our garage - I translate that to mean I can put lots of stuff in them!) and how cool the soft-close feature is. I will stand in my kitchen and try to slam drawers every day. It will be fun.
If I can wait two more weeks, anyway . . .
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Yellow?
I love green. I have 5 rooms in my house painted green - all different shades. I actually didn't realize this until recently when we had to go searching for one of the aforementioned shades to do some touch-up in the boys' bathroom (post-re-installation of towel bar after P *yanked* the thing out the wall trying to free his towel - I do not think I need to worry about the kid's strength).
But we never found that particular shade still lying around waiting to be used for small (or not so small) detail work. We did however find 4 other shades and realized that having achieved a rainbow* in our home, we're a little heavy on the green. (Though I challenge anyone who steps into my house to really pick up on it. I don't think we have an overwhelmingly green aura.)
Now that we are going to have to pick out a new paint color for the kitchen - in the kitchen-project-that-won't-stop - I was aiming for green. Before realizing that I'd have a perfect half-dozen of rooms in that shade. My husband balked.
"I like this one," he tells me pointing to one of the dozens of paint chips taped to the wall - it leans to brown. Yellowy-brown. Dare I say, baby-poo brown. The breastfed kind.
He's not terribly wrong. It's a doable color but do I want doable? I think not. I also really suck at this coordinating stuff. At least five times a day (in line with my shades of green), I wish for an expert to come and tell me what to pick so it all works together - backsplash, cabinet knobs, light fixtures, paint, granite. Someone, please, steer me away from serious error.
Alas, no kitchen color expert has come knocking. So I am wading through tin finishes for the backsplash, different shades of bronze for the cabinet knobs, sheer panic at the light fixtures, and page after page of granite colors.
Which brings me to the point - am I crazy for contemplating yellow granite? It's really pretty:
It has some red - my family room is red. It would work with bronze - the eating area light fixture is bronze. It's *interesting.* I want interesting. But do I want yellow?
And there's no way I could paint my walls green.
*Yes, I have at least one room in each of the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. I may have missed indigo but I'm pretty d*mn close. :)
But we never found that particular shade still lying around waiting to be used for small (or not so small) detail work. We did however find 4 other shades and realized that having achieved a rainbow* in our home, we're a little heavy on the green. (Though I challenge anyone who steps into my house to really pick up on it. I don't think we have an overwhelmingly green aura.)
Now that we are going to have to pick out a new paint color for the kitchen - in the kitchen-project-that-won't-stop - I was aiming for green. Before realizing that I'd have a perfect half-dozen of rooms in that shade. My husband balked.
"I like this one," he tells me pointing to one of the dozens of paint chips taped to the wall - it leans to brown. Yellowy-brown. Dare I say, baby-poo brown. The breastfed kind.
He's not terribly wrong. It's a doable color but do I want doable? I think not. I also really suck at this coordinating stuff. At least five times a day (in line with my shades of green), I wish for an expert to come and tell me what to pick so it all works together - backsplash, cabinet knobs, light fixtures, paint, granite. Someone, please, steer me away from serious error.
Alas, no kitchen color expert has come knocking. So I am wading through tin finishes for the backsplash, different shades of bronze for the cabinet knobs, sheer panic at the light fixtures, and page after page of granite colors.
Which brings me to the point - am I crazy for contemplating yellow granite? It's really pretty:
 |
| Arandis yellow. |
And there's no way I could paint my walls green.
*Yes, I have at least one room in each of the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. I may have missed indigo but I'm pretty d*mn close. :)
Friday, March 12, 2010
Photographer in the rain
Spring has most definitely arrived. Granted, it's still the Chicago area so who knows what next week will bring? But it's been warm and rainy and wonderful for several consecutive days now.
With the rain, we've had a couple of mild thunderstorms, the kind with the distant rolling thunder and lighting that flashes broadly in the sky, almost completely disconnected from its attendant soundtrack.
Having the bedroom windows open has been a novelty for N and a couple of days ago, we were standing in my bedroom, looking out at the trees in the rain. Some rumbles of thunder prompted the question, "Is that thunder?" followed by "Is it going to kill us?"
The best came when lightning flashed bright, all-emcompassing, lighting up the trees and the room and us. He stepped back, surprised, and said, quite seriously, "Hey! Who took that picture of us?"
With the rain, we've had a couple of mild thunderstorms, the kind with the distant rolling thunder and lighting that flashes broadly in the sky, almost completely disconnected from its attendant soundtrack.
Having the bedroom windows open has been a novelty for N and a couple of days ago, we were standing in my bedroom, looking out at the trees in the rain. Some rumbles of thunder prompted the question, "Is that thunder?" followed by "Is it going to kill us?"
The best came when lightning flashed bright, all-emcompassing, lighting up the trees and the room and us. He stepped back, surprised, and said, quite seriously, "Hey! Who took that picture of us?"
Immodesty rules
As I have not posted in absolutely ages, it would probably be helpful to sum up the last several (many?) months. But I won't. The only relevance to this story is this: I am in physical therapy 3x a week for my knee.
My 4yo is generally agreed to be a hoot. It's not just me - it's just about anyone who spends more than tiny bit of time with him. And the word is generally "hoot" as in, "He's a hoot!" And I tend to agree - he can be a very funny little boy. Most of the time.
At my physical therapy clinic - a clinic by women for women - there is a tiny little waiting area for kids. Which is a lovely thing for them to have because then I can bring my homeschooled, always-with-me kids along while I spend 1.5+ hours working on my knee. So I can chase them around again soon.
For the last several weeks, my kids have been tagging along while I walk funny, do weird exercises, stand on a balance board, and am rewarded by a lovely ice pack at the end. The boys watch movies, read books, look at cards, generally play nicely and quietly.
Unless someone has to pee. Which is only ever my 4yo. My 9yo would have to be practically wetting his pants before he got up and used the restroom there (though that's a totally different story).
Wednesday, I was sitting on the table at the very end of my session, enjoying the relief of a very large icepack wrapped around my knee, when one of my therapists walked by the hallway leading to the bathroom and sort of gasped, "Oh, he's using the bathroom!" From my perch, I could see the bathroom reflected in the mirror and there is my hoot of a 4yo, pants around his ankles, standing at the toilet, door wide open and cute little buttcheeks hanging out there for God and everybody. Modest, he is not.
Oblivious to any concerns, he just stood there looking at us, clearly wondering why we were suddenly interested. He'd had to pee, he was in the right spot, what's the problem? The therapist shut the door for him, we laughed, and I was only a little embarrassed.
Because I save the big embarrassed for times when he decides he needs to pee and drops trou *before* waddling off to the bathroom.
My 4yo is generally agreed to be a hoot. It's not just me - it's just about anyone who spends more than tiny bit of time with him. And the word is generally "hoot" as in, "He's a hoot!" And I tend to agree - he can be a very funny little boy. Most of the time.
At my physical therapy clinic - a clinic by women for women - there is a tiny little waiting area for kids. Which is a lovely thing for them to have because then I can bring my homeschooled, always-with-me kids along while I spend 1.5+ hours working on my knee. So I can chase them around again soon.
For the last several weeks, my kids have been tagging along while I walk funny, do weird exercises, stand on a balance board, and am rewarded by a lovely ice pack at the end. The boys watch movies, read books, look at cards, generally play nicely and quietly.
Unless someone has to pee. Which is only ever my 4yo. My 9yo would have to be practically wetting his pants before he got up and used the restroom there (though that's a totally different story).
Wednesday, I was sitting on the table at the very end of my session, enjoying the relief of a very large icepack wrapped around my knee, when one of my therapists walked by the hallway leading to the bathroom and sort of gasped, "Oh, he's using the bathroom!" From my perch, I could see the bathroom reflected in the mirror and there is my hoot of a 4yo, pants around his ankles, standing at the toilet, door wide open and cute little buttcheeks hanging out there for God and everybody. Modest, he is not.
Oblivious to any concerns, he just stood there looking at us, clearly wondering why we were suddenly interested. He'd had to pee, he was in the right spot, what's the problem? The therapist shut the door for him, we laughed, and I was only a little embarrassed.
Because I save the big embarrassed for times when he decides he needs to pee and drops trou *before* waddling off to the bathroom.