Running Stitch

The fourth exploded into our lives with temperatures in the seventies. Seventies! And those temperatures lasted all week and throughout the weekend. It was crazy, unheard of. I think I remember this feeling of warmth? The boys frolicked in the creek, took your-not-coming-in-the-house-till-you-are-no-longer-caked-in-creek-mud/clay-baths on the porch.

They camped in the yard. As predicted, I got no sleep at all. My babies! in the dark alone!

Dad worked all week long on his wall project and we adjourned to the porch. Outside! for dinner each evening.

I spent the week leading up to the fourth volunteering at the Elephant Ears stand and came home both nights with over ten pound of left over dough. (You can just throw ten pounds of dough in the trash can …explosion). I made cinnamon rolls for the neighborhood and then I made some for the freezer, and still we have had cinnamon rolls for breakfast everyday this week.

I tell ya this Christmas in July thing is working, its like vacation! When I tired of cinnamon rolls (14 pan of cinnamon rolls) I made pizza crust and froze it for future pizza nights. Ten frozen pizza crusts. In the midst of the baking I made breadsticks for lunch one day and then I froze breadsticks for another day. Four loaves of cinnamon raisin bread are stored in the fridge and several went to the neighbors, I honestly lost count.

This morning dawned cool and grey and our usual 55 degrees I”m not sure what to do with myself. I guess could clear off the forgotten dining room table. We have been living the life of the sun people, taking every meal on the back porch. It has been simply lovely.

*Good Day Sunshine.

We spent our weekend in the sun, building walls, watching chickens, and of course designing time machines.

How was your respite?

*doubleback-zztop

Sunday morning I thought I’d have some tea, watch some Pride and Prejudice (BBC version) and get my knit on. Maybe even do a little work. But then my husband drug himself from the bed where he had spent most of the week with a nasty cough and a temperature (which he won’t admit to) to pour concrete and build the retaining wall that he has been working on for the last month.

And so instead of being curled up with some knitting, tea and Mr. Darcy. I helped carry, at least eight, of the 48 80lb bags of concrete to the mixer. I furiously shoveled cement as it came out of the mixer and tried to distribute it evenly in the mold.

And today, I’m very, very sore. My traps hurt, my non existent biceps hurt, my feet, my calves, even my finger tips hurt.

Which is why I’m typing this with my nose.

*My head hurts, my feet stink and I don’t like Jesus- Jimmy Buffet

*Knock three times on the ceiling- Tony Orlando-Dawn

Moo’s favorite new phrase. Wats Go Nin on? And we heard it thirty MILLION times today as we attempted some home renovation.

Several years ago (five) when we were blissful DINKs and bought a house that needed some (cue hysterical laughter) work. We could never have foreseen how much we would learn (tiling, sheet rocking, electrical) or how producing one kid, not to mention two would bring almost all home renovation to a grinding halt.

Today we tackled changing the light fixture in the kitchen. I will not reveal at this juncture how long the lights in the kitchen have been out, or how long we have been using this desk lamp on top of the fridge (as well as the refrigerator light) to light the kitchen.

Because it is extremely pathetic.

One thing we learned very early on in the renovation of Casa De Stitch circa 1926, is that it wasn’t going to be easy. Some of the problems can be briefly covered in a short history of our house.

Originally a log cabin. Sometime in the 50′s they added a basement. Yes, a basement. The house was lifted as supporting beam put in (the bain of my existence and why we can’t get rid of the stairs of death.) In the 80′s they added the right non log cabin part of the house on. Two giant rooms with skylights, that leak. Thank you very much. And a metal roof. So you are sure to plummet the three stories to your death should you attempt to caulk the skylights yourself which is why your hysterical five month pregnant wife will cling crying to your leg begging you not to do it. (Which totally worked btw)

Back to today. Or rather that day several weeks? months? ago when the kitchen light, oven light and microwave light all bit the dust the same day. Thank God for the refrigerator.

So yeah the light in the kitchen? Out. Today we had a free day. No family obligations, no homework, no birthday parties, nothing. And we deemed today fix the kitchen light worthy. Which in your typical home reno crowd would probably be a three hour gig depending on how far you live from your favorite (or only choice) home reno store.

Ours was more of a three hour tour. By the time we loaded the clean diaper baby and the newly emptied bladder toddler into the car it was lunchtime. But unwisely we proceeded forth. To that place, where we were helped by no less than three “uhhh” employees who could locate the track lighting, yes. But had no advice or helpful hints other than “I could call my manager?”

Super.

One hour later, back home for lunch. In the darkened kitchen.

Scott loses interest and heads off to the studio to throw some pots. (In his defense, its hard to work around peanut butter and jelly hands that are hanging from your pants while you stand on a stepladder-wimp).

When he returns he begins installation only to discover (shocker) the previous home reno dude’s (loosely used term and more appropriate than what we actually call him) electrical work is, ahem. Sub par.

Back to the store for some (insert technical electrical jargon).

While he’s gone the boys discover the boxes in the kitchen, and the stepladder, and the electrical tester and you know, light bulbs. It was super.

When he returns this time, I’m in the middle of dinner (that’s right over six hours and still no actual work being done) for the boys.

“Dad? Wats Go Nin On?”

Track Lighting. Fabulous. Behold the glory.

Hours to Completion: 8ish.

So, what’s go nin on with you?

We’d like to take this commercial break to share pictures of our cutie pies. I would post them to the Moo’s family site, but Blogger is down again today. SEW HAPPY that I’ve moved to WordPress, even happier that the Mighty Zoot made me all pretty and stuff!

Now that she is admitting her pregnancy, (15 weeks! phew!) Maybe I can admit that I want to make her a baby quilt. Any ideas? You gotta share the love, especially when peeps make you all pretty and stuff.

Mr. Moo is sleeping and I’m trying to teach myself website stuff. By teach myself I of course mean, email The Man every five minutes to ask him a question and then get all irritated with him when he can’t READ MY MIND and tell me exactly what I want! Sheesh.

I’m having a non housework day (stop laughing! sometimes I clean!) While I was following the Moo around on one of his destroy the house passes this morning I realized, MY HOUSE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION! I mean, duh!

My house is not just trashed because I’m messy, my house is trashed because the entire upper floor (baby’s room and sewing room) now live elseswhere in the house. Elsewhere being pretty much our bedroom. The sewing machine and a few of my tupperware containers are in the bedroom, as well as the changing table and all the baby’s clothes. While the co-sleeper/playpen/detention area are in the room (along with most of the toys) with the Woodstove.

Feeling better about this realization I immediately stopped worrying about cleaning and instead have been SCREWING OFF ALL DAY.

And if you believe that….i’ve got some farm land in the Okefenoke for sale.

Mr. Moo’s room is scraped clean, and awaiting the sander. We’re thinking we will go ahead and rip out the carpet in my still under construction sewing room (really we haven’t done anything in months) and then sand the entire upper floor. This could be a sinus nightmare, so we are contemplating when the best time to do this would be.

The Man is thinking, probably while Mr. Moo and I are in Philadelphia. But that is two months away. So we’ll see what happens.

Off to pack the car full of baby supplies (bassinet, baby tub, boppy, baby chair, for the soon to make an entrance baby Mad Quilter) for Mad Quilters. We leave tonight (its a four hour drive) to make sure we can get as much quilting in as possible tomorrow…and eating (*grin*).

The Octopi quilt is packed and ready for some serious quilting.

You may be seeing an under construction sign up on this site now and again, I’m trying to teach myself how to manipulate wordpress……It seems so easy, but I just can’t get it. I have managed to make everything disappear, now if I could only get them to appear in the right place. Bear with me.

…now about breakfast….

Mr. Moo’s new time schedule “Hi, Mama!! It’s 4:30am lets get up!!” Makes those early morning runs easier to get up for…because hey, I’m up.

Here we are dressed for success, notice it is STILL DARK. Oh, well did an easy 3.5 this am with The Queen Bee, back from Boston, her hubby did the Marathon in 4:30. Have I mentioned that he is sixty five?! Uh yeah. I’m impressed.

I didn’t get any quilting done yesterday (but check out Talia’s link today she posted her last BOM quilt) because I spent the majority of the day ripping out the carpet in The Moo Cave. Jonah (my favorite) decide the baby’s room was a great place to relieve himself on Tuesday night. He did this two or three times when the Moo was about 4months old (when he first moved from the co-sleeper to his crib) and he has never done it since.

I stepped in the “presents” he left in the middle of the floor, in the middle of the night, in the dark. And he urinated all over my favorite rocking chair.

Jonah and I are not talking.

So The Man and I decided the carpet (ugly anyway and hey the last owners BURNED THEIR INITIALS into the floor) had to go. And it went. Guess what? Hardwood floors…under the lineoleum. Yeah, baby Yeah!

Check out The Man’s blog for pics of this adventure.

sewing room

So this is what my Sewing room looks like to date. The Man talked me into keeping my room instead of switching with Mr. Moo. His theory being that the Rug Rat doesn’t need a bigger room because, he will play all over the house.

For example, the stairs are AWESOME! Let’s go up and down, and up and down and up and down them! Have you seen these furry black kitties? Let lick them all over and hold on to their tails and giggle at the noise they make. LOOK! A toilet, it’s like the bath tub only Mama makes loud noise and picks me up whenever I play in it. It’s great. HAVE YOU SEEN THESE FISH TANKS? It’s better than eating the dirt off the floor! Did you know that if you put your face up to the window and smear it around you can then LICK YOUR OWN SNOT OFF?!!! HAPPY ! HAPPY! JOY! JOY!

So I can kinda see the man’s point, and after all I like my sewing room. So now to continue on with the reconstruction and building of bookshelves and so forth. In the meantime, it stinks to not be able to run up stairs and make a giraffe or what not.

Although I’ve been thinking about bringing my machine downstairs, because really the only time I have to sew is when Mr. Moo is sleeping, and he is sleeping on the same floor as the machine.

I actually was hand sewing a border on to one of my quilts last night (usually I machine piece, and hand quilt) just because I wanted to do something that wasn’t homework. Speaking of which, enough procrastination. Back to paper writing.