Tu(n)esday

"Annie" is my favorite song off this new album, Piety and Desire, but there isn't really a video for it. Have a listen anyway. Gill Landry's voice is to die for.





You can also check out some of his photography on his web site - I especially like the ones of Oklahoma!

First Days of School

The house is silent except for the sounds of the garbage truck outside and my typing fingers on the keyboard. I have eaten my breakfast and poured my second cup of coffee and sorted through our photos to find the best ones. The reeling thoughts in my mind are settling down into actual sentences and there is no one here to interrupt me. Today is the first day so far that Maggie and Kate have both had school at the same time, and let me assure you that I am not weeping into my hankie about it. I feel like I'm taking a big, deep, relaxing breath; a sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to miss those girls. But I'll be that much happier to see them when I pick them up from school later. We'll all four have our own separate stories to tell tonight over dinner. I'm looking forward to that.

 

***

 

Let's take a quick detour through some photos of the girls picking apples with their Gram and Grandpa a couple of weeks ago. I can hardly believe it's already apple picking time, but the Macs are ripe and Kate has been begging for apples. We went up to New Hampshire on Labor Day to our favorite orchard, Mack's Apples (since 1732, here's their story), to pick a literal peck of apples and eat some ice cream. The girls had a wonderful time. They love to do farm work!



 

I'll actually be going on a field trip with Kate's preschool class to pick apples again in a couple of weeks. We should be ready for another peck bag by then even though Kate is on a strictly one apple per day ration. She would eat them all right now and damn the consequences if her parents didn't force her to be sensible. I'm afraid of what her college years are going to look like!

***

After our "What?! Apple picking?! Summer is over, Fall is upon us!" Labor Day weekend, we started the slow process of easing in to the school year. Last week we had something to do at school every day even though their actual classes hadn't started yet. We met Maggie's teacher, Ms. K, and did a scavenger hunt around the school on Tuesday. Maggie had an "assessment" on Wednesday - a little test to let Ms. K know where she is on her academic, cognitive, social, and physical development since she's new to school. Thursday was Kate's preschool open house. And then on Friday Maggie had a class visit where all the kids went into the classroom with the teacher for an hour or two and got to know each other while the parents went to a reception with the PTO and the principal in the cafeteria. Just a little bit every day, and a good excuse to get up and be dressed by 9 am! Thanks School, I needed that kick in the pants!

So we were ready. We were pumped. We already knew some kids, we had our school supplies, and we had labelled all our belongings. Kate actually started first, since she goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Maggie's kindergarten didn't begin until yesterday. Kate has actually been ready for preschool since Maggie started there last year and I had to drag Kate, crying, out to the parking lot every morning after drop off. So I wasn't a bit surprised that she charged right in and never looked back. Kate has fun wherever she goes, with whomever she's with! I know they're going to love her.

Maggie admitted that it was pretty weird to drop Kate off at her old preschool and leave with me instead of it being the other way around. And Kate said, "This is MY school now, Mags!" They both seemed pretty pleased about it. Afterwards, Maggie and I drove Mike to the train station and then headed for the book store - our favorite place! I was really glad to have that morning alone with Mags before her all-day-every-day classes start. We had some treats in the cafe, picked out some books, went to the story time in the kids' section, and just bummed around. She was totally eating up being the center of attention! It was a really lovely little quiet morning for us.

Kate just HAD to have this dress for her first day of school. She's very proud of it.



This is a cheesy pic, but I wanted to tell you about this lunch box. Kate told me about a month ago that her lunch box was red with a lady bug on it. I was a little worried that she'd be disappointed when we couldn't find one just like that, but then this one miraculously appeared at Target. Kate saw it and said, "Oh see, there's my lunch box, Mom!" So of course we had to get it! Whew.

Two Little Girls Go Off to School

First School Artwork

Cutting and Pasting

Maggie's first real day of kindergarten was the following day (yesterday), so we went through the whole process of crazy morning, remember all your stuff, quick take some pictures, yes Daddy is going to school with us again today, try to look like you know what you're doing. Kate did NOT have class, which was really nice because we could just focus on Mags. She packed her own lunch the night before (!) and we laid out her new first day of school dress that she picked out to match Kate's (!).

Maggie is often fairly tentative in new social situations and she can really hang back when there's a huge crowd of strange kids - like on the playground at her K-5 elementary school on the first day. But since we'd been through all the orientation events, she seemed pretty comfortable with the school itself and with her teacher. I'm sure it's all a bit stressful for her as she tries to figure out what to do and where she fits in, and she's been pretty quiet about the whole thing, but there have been no tears or refusals. She's a brave girl and I told her how proud I was of her. She came home with stories about the other little girls in her class: Annie, Katherine (!), Elsa, and Clio. They played princesses and Maggie was the dragon, and when she got tired of being the dragon she was the girl who fought the dragon even though she wasn't sure if girls fight dragons! None of the boys in her class seem too mean or too crazy, she says. She got to put a special sticker on a bulletin board in computer class because she helped another student read the word "keyboard." I'm sure they are already starting to figure out that our Miss Mags is a firecracker! Watch out kindergarten, she's going to eat you for lunch.

New dress, new lunch box, new school!

Pretty cute girls! (Kate is standing on her tiptoes, but jeez!)

And now it's Thursday; both girls' second day of school. They are out there in the world now, running on playgrounds, eating sandwiches out of ziploc bags in lunchrooms, learning to raise hands and stand in line, playing girls who fight dragons. And I'm here by myself in the quiet, drinking my coffee, typing. I'm excited for them. They are a couple of happy, tough girls and the world is their oyster. OK, I might cry a little bit about that now, but then I'm going to pat myself on the back and rest on my laurels for a day or two because I think we're all doing great.

***

Here are a couple more fun pictures that Mike took of them a few days ago. No, they aren't twins. They're just doing that to mess with you.

Gratuitous Girlie Pics

Who are these girls with the long, long legs?? I'm afraid they might not be babies anymore.

How old do you think they have to be before we can send them out to pick us up a pizza?

Bathroomageddon 2012 - The Aftermath

So, here we are. I can say that we have a bathroom. I can't say that it's finished. It is functional, and I have taken two whole showers in it (whole in that the faucet didn't fall off mid-way through because the anchor bolt was missing, scratching the tub, scaring me half to death, and forcing me to finish washing the soap out of my eyes in the bath. That is why it isn't three whole showers). We are moving our stuff in and cleaning everything up, so it's pretty much finished.

Let's just say that our contractors had too many excuses and not enough work ethic. They dragged and dragged, were absent more days than they showed up to work, had to be forced to redo so many things that were obviously wrong, and had a million reasons why we were crazy and they weren't screwing up. They were supposed to be finished so many different days, and finally we just snapped. They didn't finish last Thursday, which was their drop dead last day to work on our project because the project manager was getting married Friday and the crew were all attending. So the tiler and the painter said they'd be back on Saturday to wrap up the last bits of finish work. Then the main contractor and owner of the company said he'd stop by on Saturday, too, to look at the (other, previous) scratches in the tub that the sub-contractors had made, so we were expecting them all between 8 and 9 am on a weekend day when we could have been doing something else.

They did not show up. They also did not call. Mike called them three times and left messages, one of which said that if they did not show up that day and finish the job, we would get someone else to finish it and subtract the cost from the money we owed them. He then also sent an email detailing what was left and repeating the threat. They did not come. They did not call.

The following day, Sunday, we cleaned everything up as there was still saw dust and paint sanding dust and grout dust and paint splatters EVERYWHERE and the garage was trashed. Mike hung the towel rods and put in the door knob and the exterior of the shower light and attached one of the electrical socket face plates. He also hung up a temporary shower curtain rod because we are supposed to have one of those fancy double curved curtain rods that screws into the tile, but not only did the tiler not install it on Thursday like he promised to do, but the box is actually missing several pieces of the mounting hardware. So that's just a major snafu all around. Now we have to order the pieces from the manufacturer, and Mike will have to drill into the tile to mount it. Fingers crossed!!

And there are still several things left to do. A new electrician of our choice will be coming this week to put up the light fixture over the medicine cabinet, which should have been easy enough to do ourselves except the box it attaches to in the wall is not really centered over the mirror and vanity. He'll also have to fix the main light switch because it is so deep in the wall that we can not put the face plate on. We will have to sand the drips and smears out of the paint on the door and repaint it ourselves (or hire someone to do it, but we'll probably do it), attach the cabinet hardware to the vanity, and tile the backsplash (it is only about two pieces of tile, but still)! There's also a weird hole behind the toilet we have to fix somehow. Oh, and the stairwell is pretty beat up, so it will have to be repainted, at least in spots. Sigh.

Well, that's the painful part. As for the look of it, I think it turned out as I had wanted it to. Once the pain and anguish blow over and the memory of the turmoil fades, I think we'll enjoy how clean and fresh it is. So without further ado, here is our new bathroom...

(Well, OK, with some further ado: I just feel the need to remind you that I am neither a professional designer/stager nor a decent photographer, so please don't compare these photos to anything you've seen on houzz.com! Yes that's our bath soap in the picture and our toothbrushes don't match the decor. I did remove the potty seat and the wet washcloths draped over the tub before snapping the pictures. Go me!)

Notice the missing drawer pulls and backsplash

There are also no tiled-in corner shelves in the shower. Thanks, tile guy!

Pretty new door, no switch plate

The radiator cover looks much better, and the pipe that used to stick out
 of the floor and burn your foot is under the tile now. Pretty!



Floor tile - duh. Do I have to explain everything to you? Geez.
I think I need to mop it again; there's still some white paint dust in the grout lines.

The medicine cabinet - maybe my favorite part of the new bathroom.
So much storage, so many mirrors!

No light.

That is one of the missing drawer pulls on the counter top as an example of what they will look like.

We need to get the little ring that goes here and probably figure out how
to make the hole a little smaller. Grout? Caulk? Who knows.

  

I'm still kind of mulling over the wall paint color. I had initially thought I would paint them a very light pearl grey, but then we ended up choosing grey tile for the floors and that seemed like gloomy overkill for a room that doesn't get much sunlight. But now it seems VERY white, so I may go back to the grey. I'm going to live with it white for a while and see if I change my mind. Overall, I think the black and white and grey and yellow look nice together and kind of classic-meets-contemporary. Hopefully it will hold up well over time. The girls give it four thumbs up!

Bathroomageddon 2012 Update

The bathroom is awful. Awful. I hate to talk about it. It makes me ill. I went up to NH last week with the girls just to escape from it (and take showers and not have to tell the girls to stop hollering up the stairs to the contractors about unicorns who like tea parties), but it didn't get finished so I'm back at home having to face the beast again.

There was just so much trouble trying to coordinate all the subcontractors during the last two weeks - the plumber, the electrician, and the carpenter - that very little actually got done each day and the delays piled up. Add to this a series of screw ups - yes, you do have to put insulation behind the wall board; we insist you start over - and the project is just crawling.

Here's where we are now. The tiler is upstairs right this second putting in the tile, so hopefully I'll actually have something to show you by tomorrow!
 

The new door (with no trim around it)

Walls!

The plywood is mock-ups Mike made of where the vanity and toilet will sit - slightly off kilter from centered on the wall, but whatever. At this point, whatever.

Mike found this behind the shower. It says, "Remodled 1975 by Joe Luongo 53 yrs. old."

Progress??

The plumber came today, banged around in the bathroom for half an hour, and then left. He'll be back tomorrow with more tools and supplies, but nothing got done today. The demolition crew didn't remove the vanity or tub yesterday because they got worried about the plumbing connection under the sink. The plumber confirmed today that it is so old and in bad shape that he is worried about ending up flooding our house while trying to pull the cabinet out! He's coming back tomorrow with the jaws of life (I assume), and he'll need to shut the water off all afternoon while he cuts the pipe and rebuilds the connection. Or something like that. It sounded like, "plumber, plumber, $$$$, something, something, pipes..." to me. Anyway, that pushes the electrician back to Friday and the walls to next week. Fun, fun, fun!

Tu(n)esday

Old Crow Medicine Show, one of my favorite bands, finally put out a new album last week, four years after their previous album was released in 2008. They've had an original member leave and one come back and new guys have joined in that time, and now they're ready for a fresh start. Carry Me Back (you can listen to it here) lives up to all my expectations, so I couldn't be happier. Banjos, y'all! Who doesn't love banjos?

Ain't It Enough


Carry Me Back to Virginia


Mississippi Saturday Night


Steppin' Out


Levi

Here's a link to the backstory behind this song.