A Box Full of "OMG, I should have cleaned that out before the move."

First of all, I have to apologize.  It's been a big day.  Scott and the girls are back safely from Arizona and settling into their new respective rooms.  And it's lovely that they are back, but this is going to be a post about kitchen things.  Useless kitchen things.  And I'm sorry about that.  I really am.

I just wanted to get my pots and pans unpacked, but I opened this box and found....ack!  A whole drawer of gadgets I probably don't even need.  OK, definitely don't even need.  Except that can opener.  I was happy to see that, I will admit.

What else could I do?  I started a discard box.  Starting with a small frog teapot that really is...just very not-what-I want, from a different box I unpacked earlier:

Additionally, we have a less-than-great colander  with that terrible tupperware garlic press I hate, a pampered chef thing for holding onions or whatever while you slice them (WTF - I just use my hand like a real chef or something...)  Bamboo spoon, strange extra wobbly whisk, and 1 of about 7 bottle opener/church keys in this house.  Oh, and underneath, a classic but non-OXO vegetable peeler (I have 3 or 4 other vegetable peelers.  The question is:  Exactly how many people can I get to peel vegetables for me at one time?)

But wait.  There's more.

A white plastic "Safety Bagel Knife."  I looked at that and said "Yeah.  Whatever."  I mean, I realize that cutting bagels is one of the most dangerous tasks a person can do in a kitchen but is a big plastic knife seriously the answer?  Also, some inexpensive tongs, plastic cookie cutters, analog kitchen timer, little, handled sippy cups and....here's a pet peeve of mine: That big black spoon is nice in a lot of ways but WAY too tall to go in the utensils basket in any normal dishwasher.  Why on earth do they make such long spoons? And spatulas too?  It seems to be vasty out of proportion with any stirring needs I might have and yet I can either hand wash it or lie it down in the dishwasher in a space that would likely be better served by washing, oh, five or six glasses.  Ugh.

THESE little beauties are the real winners today.  Vote for your favorite:

From left to right.  An ugly bottle opener.  Made of plastic.  And without a church key or cork screw.  Why?  Why.

A Tupperware freebie called, as I recall, a "Beater Cheater."  No.  I'm not making that up.  Not even a little.  It is a tiny spatula/scraper whose main purpose in life is to clean between the beaters on a hand mixer.  There is a little hole at the end so you can really chase that batter off of those individual beater tines.  Time well spent, that.  And I can respect that, or could at one point, but look - there is a place where the plastic has split open, a crevice which renders this probably fairly impossible to thoroughly clean and therefore potentially un-food-safe.  Alas.

Next is a lovely red scraper.  Honestly one of my favorites.  But I left it out in a utensil holder on the counter and one of my cats ate the corner off of the top of it.  Not even kidding.  Mmm.  Nothing more delicious than a silicon spatula.  So I replaced it and now store the new one in a drawer when I'm not using it:  Eat my spatula once, shame on you...etc. etc.  Why I didn't throw this chomped up one away, I can't fully explain.  Maybe I was hoping it would randomly regenerate.

The white implement, I puzzled over for a while, not really sure what it was or if I had ever used it at all.  I am pretty sure I have not, and am pretty sure it is meant to be a scraper for a George Foreman Grill.  Possibly.  But it's not going to be the most effective at that due to those cut outs being too big for the ridges on those grills.  I always wash my grill plates in the dishwasher OR with a dish cloth and if I need to scrape it, that is not the scraper I'd actually pick.  If that is what it is supposed to be at all.

And a strainer.  A useful tool, for sure.  This one is kind of rusty and mushed in the screen, though.  Again making me wonder "When is the last time I used this" and "Do I really expect this issue to improve over time?"

Like I said, vote on your favorite BAD Saved Kitchen Item of the day!

There is just So much stuff.  Boxes and boxes.  Not all like this, but every time I open one, I feel like I need to brace for impact.  I am damn well going to make all this work, get rid of the dumb stuff and extraneous stuff and, well, be Functional.  Today I said something about my not being Functional and J said to me that he hadn't realized that I wasn't.  I seemed to talk just fine.

Reassuring, that boy.  Very reassuring.

Well, THAT is done...except that it isn't.

 Shockingly, I failed to post a blog on moving day.  I did not fail to go to a performance of Happy Crazier New Year, however.  What more fitting thing to do on our first night in St. Paul, I ask you?  I ASK YOU!

It all went pretty well, all things considered.  There is still a lot to do at the old house, and we did suffer a broken TV (Which made someone in the family grin like a Fool-Z apparently because he knew that meant he'd be getting the flat screen TV he's secretly been wanting forever).  There is also a lot of unpacking to do at the new house, and there are some key players to retrieve from Arizona later today...though fortunately, we only have to go as far as MSP to get them.

SO in lieu of an actual update, here are some photos of the painting that we did to B's room, oh, earlier this week.  I forget when exactly.  Thursday maybe?

You can see it was petal pink and there was a tiara on the door.

Sara reminded me to take some "before" pictures after we had started the taping.  All I had was my cell phone, so the pictures are notably bad.

There are no "during" pictures.  Here is an "after painting, after moving the big bed unit and bookcase into place picture"  YES, the 14 year old gets a king sized bed.  His is the room where it fits.  What can you do? 

I feel like none of these pictures is a great representation of the color and all...tricky with so many windows.  Overall, we're pretty happy with the result, though.

Here is a pile of dust and debris from the former house.  After the everything was removed from the dining room, there was this:

Woo hoo, binoculars.  Woo hoo.

Moving Eve

This is the part where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.  We had packers here today, packing things, but not everything?  There is a lot of stuff yet to contend with before they come and take apart beds and drive most of the things to the new place and install them and everything.  It is...even when you have other people do a lot of the work, it is still exhausting.  Physically, mentally, emotionally, probably spiritually when it boils down to it.  I will confess to having more than a few doubts at this point as to how agreeable I am going to actually find the new location, living arrangements, house, etc. etc.  BUT.  I can't let that stop me.  There are things to move.  And, unfortunately there was snow today, so several hours spent clearing driveways as well.

I haven't been taking pictures much at all lately, but today, I spent a chunk of time in the coat closet and where it had been kind of full of random stuff, shoes, all over the place, bags of love from Almost, Maine etc. etc...it really looks like the nice thing about this house that it was when we bought the place.

Which brings me to my next observation and that is that I am not only failing consumption, I am also failing at functioning with all the stuff that a consumption-based lifestyle has led me to acquire.   Bags that have receipts from 4 years ago.  Just too many bags.  Too many of almost everything, when it boils down to it.  Yes, I'm moving in to a bigger house which theoretically means more places to put all this....STUFF, but once again, I find that I don't really want it.  It does not make me happy.  And yet, no matter how many things I give away, no matter how many donations I drop off or arrange to have picked up, there is still more.  More!  More.

We also took a day out of this whole sorting, giving, packing THING to paint my 14 year old son's room blue instead of pink, as was his preference.  It was the only room in the house that anyone felt needed paint immediately, so that was....darned lucky.  I need to get some "after" pictures, but it has gone from being a lovely petal pink with white trim and a tiara on the doorway to being...well, it's French blue with white trim, but...I did take down the tiara for him, too.

Back to sorting and packing.  One way or another, tomorrow night, I will be sleeping in St. Paul.

Art Auction Offerings

Well, the fact is, I'm moving for realz to St. Paul this week but there is a situation where there was an art auction at our friend Carrie's church.  The goal, to feed a village for a year.  The problem:  something about donations that did not come through?  Andrew, of course, in his awesomeness got some Chameleon tickets and some Graphic Novels and that sort of thing together.  I said "Oh, I have some canvas and some paint.  I'll do something for you.

Offering number 1 is a Patchwork Crucifix.  It's in the style of the painting I did for Almost, Maine, but with a sort of Christian/crafty theme rather than a sort of romantic theme.  I did have a nice time with the paint and with adding in some additional symbols, not really visible in this photo.  I don't feel it's the most brilliant composition.

I still had paint on the palette and so I grabbed a canvas we had used as a sign for another show and I just sort of slammed that paint on there.  It wasn't bad, but I came back to it today and ended up with this:

Which I liked but was not entirely comfortable with the, shall we say, Georgia O'Keefesque quality to certain portions of the piece.  So...more paint and now it is entirely inoffensive...  The lighting is different.  I didn't actually change the colors:

Gotta have art for an art auction.  And that is a fact.

This has made me think a little more about painting in a non-scenic capacity.  I realized that the only times that I bother to paint are when there is a deadline and an event.  I always enjoy doing studio-type art, but it's not usually my priority unless there is a cause or a show or a...something.  And I'm not convinced it's my greatest gift - my greatest gift is optimizing others, apparently - but...it's nice sometimes to just let the paint do its painty thing.

Crises of Faith

I think I have to haver a crisis of faith about...oh, every three weeks or so.  I manage to re-steel myself and then after a while, I get all uncertain again.

At this point, we are less than a week out from packers arriving to, well, pack.  And I feel like even now my life and my home are both in a state of total chaos.  Well, really more my home.  Cause my life has sort of settled down for a bit.  The kids are out of school, the shows have sort of stopped churning for a brief moment.  I have a half marathon in a few weeks that I'm not trained for but really...I'm not spending much effort on worrying about that.

It always comes down to the stuff.  And the fact that I'm overwhelmed by it pretty much at every turn.  And I feel like I haven't accomplished anything much the past couple of days.  And pausing to write a blog entry doesn't really fix that.

My dear son points out "Well, at least you've had a chance to rest."  But the problem is, I don't think I actually have any rest coming to me while there is still so much to do.

Well, truth be told, I painted a painting and a half today (for a charity auction) and gave friends remote instructions for improving their paintings (for same auction) by remote text, pet-sitting duties for two cats in two separate locations and dropped off a couple of things at the new house.  It is not that I've not accomplished anything, it is that it does not feel like enough.

Earlier today Andrew was saying that it has been insanity since we got back from Weque.  At the beginning of August.  Really, It was kind of insane in Weque, too.  It has been insanity for pretty much this whole year.  Every time we think things will settle down and we can get a grip, something crazy happens or we hatch another insane plan on a ridiculous timeline.

I am also having some second thoughts about the neighborhood.  It's really different from Eagan, in some good ways, but ours is the biggest, craziest house in the neighborhood by a wide margin, and I am not sure how great I ultimately feel about leaving the kids on their own there, especially at night.

It's not good to feel, just...like no matter how hard I have pushed and pushed, we're not ready.  I'm not ready.  And then to feel like I'm not convinced it's a great idea or the right house after all, even though, well, we have it and we're going ahead with it.  I feel like we stopped looking because the house has a workshop (great but unheated, it turns out) and is big enough for all the kids and...and we did not have time to keep on looking for something else in a different location, etc.  Maybe I'm mis-remembering.   I don't know what the resolution is for any of this except to persevere.  And keep on moving through the hours.  I'm afraid there is little alternative.

Odds and Ends from the Past Week

People seem to have the impression that I'm a busy person.  I think because I post about the weird stuff I do, and there is a fair amount of weird errands and tasks, but when things get really busy, that is when I go all near-radio silent.  That's what it's been just recently.  It has been a huge cluster of stress and tasks and things for...however long it has been since I last wrote an entry.  A week?  A week and a half?  I have lost all track.

Andrew's father came to visit during the final weekend of Forbidden Planet, which was wonderful in many ways and also added another complicating factor to a very busy time.  Fortunately, he was very understanding of our frantic schedule and I think he had a good time even as we were scrambling to get things done as well as make sure he was getting a good taste of the Twin Cities.

I saw several shows last weekend, including A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, The Cripple of Inishmaan And A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie.  All three shows were great and impressive in their own way.  I skipped the final performance of Return to the Forbidden Planet for the sake of prepping for strike for that same show.  Which went...relatively OK, I guess?  I'm not sure it could have happened at all without my tools (some of which were bought in a last-minute bit of anxiety shopping) and the numerous enthusiastic cast and band members.  There were SO many staples on that set. I hate staples.  I did also end up both on top of a 7' tall pile of platforms AND in a dumpster, so that is a good day, right?  In the spirit of "Pictures or it didn't happen..." I give you Me in a dumpster with a new small and cordless saw:

Some pieces of the console were too long to fit into the dumpster without cutting.  I had actually cut them by the time we thought "oh, this is too crazy, take a picture."  Thank you Chris Engelhard for taking and the photo and for spotting me as I hopped into and out of the dumpster.  Good times.

After stressing a lot about a lot of things, Andrew and I were talking to the boys about upcoming events and somehow Andrew ended up saying to them that the move was just a lot of work, which we're not afraid of. The thing that had been stressing me out was fear of judgement.  And I realized that is SO true and also such a big waste of time.  As I said on Facebook this week: "I've got things to accomplish.  I should not be spending my time worrying about making everyone happy."

About that, I sent a few mail-order gifts and have a couple more internet gifts to send.  Mostly I am blowing off Christmas again in favor of stuff like building and striking that spaceship show and moving.  And not being insane.  My kids don't have a lot of demands or expectations, so that helps, and I am letting go of the idea that I have to make Christmas happen for everyone, as though it were a very small-scale but far-reaching production.  I am not sure if this is good because it makes me happy or bad because it disappoints others.  But then again...I'm not Santa Claus.

I will say, I do feel like most of the most worrisome things have been crossed off my list.  I am a bit concerned about the impending move.  There is still a lot of stuff in this house that needs to get moved AND a lot of stuff that I don't need or want.  And the fact that they are still fairly mixed up together is perhaps a bit of an issue, but I just need to work on it.  Packers arrive on Friday.  Movers carry our big furniture for us on Saturday.  It will be FINE.

On the positive side of things, I do have the kitchen in the new house fairly well set up, so we really can just start living there as soon as the beds are in place.  I have cooked several meals in that kitchen and really am lacking only a few more items.  The question then becomes what to do with the rest of the stuff that is in my current kitchen?  Donations, probably.  Or if you need a kitchen thing...let me know.  I probably have a duplicate that you could have.

We have been using the Strawberry Fields Wedgewood at the Eagan house this week.  The other dishes are at the new house now and have been making me very happy.  We discussed that at lunch today, and I said that I really had not been enjoying the Wedgewood at all.  It feels...heavy, clunky somehow, and has some silver marks that are not so pretty (at one point I tried to remove them, to no avail).  Andrew said he agreed. B said he agreed too.  I said "So you don't want those dishes when it's time to move out on your own then?"  He looked a little pained and shook his head "no."  Poor  dishes.    They aren't bad, they just aren't really what any of us loves.  Though J says he is "OK with them."  Still, speak up if THIS is your dream china:

Cause I'm thinking of maybe giving it away...

And now...a picture of the cat that I managed to revive.  She found a purse.  I assure you, as cluttery as this counter currently looks, Andrew worked on it very hard to get it to this point.  Here she is, Felicia, the Cranky Cat, who seems to like us more than she used to since her brush with liver failure, but not a lot more:

Up next:  More cleaning and moving, some painting and a lot less time shuffling kids around because...They are on vacation, that's why!!

Downstairs Transformation

It is hard to describe how lame our basement/downstairs looked two weeks ago.  The carpet was old and gross in the main area and older and grosser in the downstairs bedroom that functions as my office.  While we had cleared a lot of items out and put them into storage, it was... not good.  And the carpet smelled somewhat moldy due to the insane flooding we had in Northfield in 2010.  This is not to mention that the walls were best described as "poorly painted dingy grey white." 

And did I mention that it was full of STUFF?

It was full of stuff.

Here's what the downstairs looked like before we started working on it:

Here's what it looks like now:

I took several photos of my office, first when it was full of STUFF:

Then when it was empty, so that you could see the horrendous and dirty pink carpet, as well as the bizarre "texture painting" on the walls.  I'd like to know what kind of drugs the people who did this to this room were on so that I can agitate for them to be made illegal.

SERIOUSLY, WHO DOES THIS TO A WALL???

Austin and Alex and I primed over the weird texture painting, and then I left for three days for work in Rochester.  I came home and the carpet had been replaced, the walls had been painted a light peach (by Austin), and my office was set up in such a way that all the extraneous stuff was in the closets.  (Of course much of it is in our storage unit now, too...)

My desk is still out, complete with computer, printer, and a jigsaw puzzle I'm working on (as well as the usual odds and ends that can be cleared away for a showing), but... wow, this is a whole different room now.  Check it out:

Aside from how great (and unfamiliar) the downstairs of our house now looks, we also put an air exchanger into our house last week.  We've had a lot of condensation on windows in the past and just too much humidity in the house.  It was starting to be a problem, so we decided, what the heck, let's spend nearly two thousand more dollars on this house.  The difference is noticeable; there is no condensation on any window anymore and we don't have a dehumidifier running anymore (which means that I can plug in my special lamp for cross stitching and handwork!). 

So this is all good.  It means that even if our house doesn't sell, our house is a lot nicer than it was.  It doesn't solve the two problems that make us need to sell it, though; 1. we have too much stuff for it (now we are paying for it to stay in storage, UGH) and 2. our kids need separate bedrooms.  If we get desperate we can move Alex downstairs into my office, but the Too Much Stuff Problem isn't as easy...

The Moving Begins, (even as we're not really packed so well...)

The progress at hand is this:  We have closed on the house and are sort of...moving?  We don't have a truck coming until later this month, so for now I am straddling two work sites.  So to speak.  Well, 3.  Because there is strike for Forbidden Planet this weekend.  And it will be mega.

We brought a bunch of Scott's gear to the house today - BIG thanks to Ursula and her truck and her muscles and her sense of humor - as well as some more of my kitchen stuff.

Waffles from now on will have to be prepared THERE, for I have no waffle irons here anymore. The fact that I have 4 waffle irons is patently absurd, really. Maybe we should discuss which I should get rid of. They are all weirdo irons. Two "normal" Mickey's, one "Swedish hearts" and one Belgian Waffle Maker. The question is how often do I really make waffles at all? For myself, I could probably stand to make no more waffles ever.  And - this just in- the reality based reality is that the George Foreman Grill also has...Belgian Waffle Plates.  So.  I COULD, in fact, make waffles here right now, in spite of having moved 4 waffle irons to the new house today, AND I could also be said to have 5 waffle irons.  Insanity.  

I am also thinking of downsizing the dishes. Crazy but true, and yet if we run the dishwasher every night, as we are wont to do, how many dishes do we really need even with 7 people? We could run it after every meal and still need only...7.  Probably.

The problem is...we have 3 sets. One is the nice Denby Regency Green that we picked in 1992. One is the Corelle stuff that is not the nicest but is darned practical, stores in no space, lightweight and nigh-indestructible. The third is Andrew's parent's Strawberry Fields "everyday" Wedgewood from when Andrew was growing up, which was passed to Jeanne and then to us as "something to get us started with."

The bottom line is, I definitely want the Denby and if I have a second set, the Corelle, I think? Not sure what I should do with the Wedgewood aside from put it in a box and don't open it. I'm not sure about donating it or whatever, laden with memory as it may be.  On the other hand, who chooses Corelle when they can have Wedgewood, right? 

One of my boys continues to want to sleep in the new house instead of coming home to the old house at the end of the day. I brought him there after school to do more unloading this afternoon and we just hung out and arranged things for a while.  You can probably imagine how that division of tasks actually went. I feel like I should be doing more here at the Eagan house. It was good to get a bunch of Scott's stuff moved, today, and now we have a great big table in "The Study," so there is homework potential there at least.  I am also going to bring the small desk (from Andrew's childhood) over probably tomorrow, so that if one of the boys wants to study in his room, that is a definite option.  Some people do better with more supervision.  Others do better studying in more solitude.  In this house, we probably have room for both.

I am so lucky.  In a million, gazillion ways, I am lucky. Additionally, unfortunately, I am feeling, as I knew I would, incredibly awkwardly conspicuous from having just bought a ridiculously big, fancy looking house.  People are excited about it and mock-claiming rooms and wanting to see it and plan parties and all, and that is totally understandable and meant, I know, in a spirit of fun and support.  At the same time...here we have found another edge of my comfort zone:  I'm REALLY not a center-stage person in life.  I occasionally put on some other aspect and do showy things for an evening or in performance, but...that's not really me.  Or at least not the greater part of me.  There is a reason I mostly lurk in the shadows and try to make things happen nigh-invisibly:  too much attention just makes me uncomfortable, especially attention for things that feel somewhat personal. BUT...there is no way to make this happen invisibly, and I guess I determined that I just have to push through this uncomfortable part where I feel I'm being mercilessly gawked at.  Well, at least until we get to the part where this is just boring old regular life again. In a lot of ways, I'd rather stay in my comfort zone, but there just wasn't room for this big crazy idea of an intentional extended family in a boring old regular zone, I guess.  So...I'll just have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

More things to prep for tomorrow.  Hopefully we'll hear from Sara soon!

The Answer Please?

Wow.  So the answer to the question of the Clean-Out Challenge is that for me, at least...given all the other stuff I've been grappling with and my general tendency toward doing a lot of other stuff besides what I'm supposed to be doing...the answer to the question is:  No.  I can't go from disaster to move-ready in 6 weeks.  Not if I'm supposed to keep driving kids around, cook Thanksgiving Dinner and build a spaceship out of random stuff at the same time.  Maybe if I had a little FOCUS and maybe if I had a crew, but me by myself in "found time" it did not go so well.  And that is OK, partly because I knew that was the case hen we started and partly because there just aren't that many immediate consequences to my failure.  We'll get it all done eventually, but I'm not that impressed with myself here, but we're closing on the house tomorrow, and I have at least a few boxes packed to take over there afterward to start making the kitchen somewhat functional during this insane interim period.  I am developing new tactics and strategies even as I am realizing what I knew all along:  This was a crazy, crazy plan.  If I hadn't lost my Reality Card, I'd have said "No way!  Too tough!" for sure.

Most importantly, we have an upcoming visit from my Father-in-Law, and that guy has standards!  He's coming to see Andrew's show which is really nice, but I still feel like we either have to somehow keep him away from the house or I have to get at least the main traffic areas looking MUCH more presentable and less like they belong to a Goddess of Chaos.

The good new is:  Well, hey, I did get that bedroom looking miles and miles better, and I've gotten a lot of bags of stuff just gone.  Is there more than can go?  Sure.  Will there always be?  Sure.

In the midst of Rusty's visit, I will also have to take a day out to dismantle and store the set for Return to the Forbidden Planet.  I am prepared to be a little ruthless and say that we are keeping standard size platforms, wood longer than 2', full and near-full sheets of plywood.  And the video screen.  Everything else probably needs to go.

Once that set is all put away and Rusty heads out, I think Scott gets very busy with auditions for Completely Hollywood.  And then off to Arizona.  And the insanity continues.

Even though the challenge is officially over, I don't think the challenge is actually officially over.  What do YOU think?

New Week, New Carpet, And Miscellaneous

The absolute grinding frustration of last week has mostly resolved, in part because our "hit them hard and eradicate them" campaign to get rid of head lice has been very successful.  I did a lot of laundry and vacuuming and some shampooing; Austin attended to the tedious business of picking nits out of J's hair.  (I would have done more of this because it is a very big job, but nits are tiny and I've been putting bifocals off forever... you do the math).

And this week has been pleasant.  I had an unexpected day off on Tuesday for which I still got paid (thank you Paid Time Off and Excused Absences!) and have been busy in the house doing more laundry, reading, and even just hanging out with the kids and listening to holiday music.

The biggest news this week is that our downstairs is being recarpeted this week.  The large area that used to have slightly water damaged, greyish carpet over it now has a nice, high quality neutral beige carpet.  The staircase, which had ancient seafoam green carpet on it (for reasons that I still don't understand the stairs didn't match anything else), have also been recarpeted with this nice new product.  Tomorrow the horrible pink carpet in my office (or what would be a downstairs bedroom) will be replaced with a darker neutral carpet.  Assuming we can move all the crap out of here anyway...

Here is a photo of Austin moving the stuff out of the main downstairs area so that it can be recarpeted:

Notice the dingy grey carpet that is now GONE.  Also Austin's super muscular physique.

Here is a photo of the new carpet, as seen on the stairs:

Pretty!


Additional good news is that there are now people who want to actually come and look at our house.  We are in the middle of scheduling two showings. 

Finally, I have to share a cute story that Austin told me that made me remember why I actually like living in this house.  Our next door neighbor, who works at Carleton with Austin, sent him an email saying that their family was sad when they saw the "for sale" sign go up in our yard.  But she went on to suggest that if we do move, we should "leave the cat in the window, as it provides Scotty [their dog] with hours of entertainment."  I had to laugh at that!  It's good to know that someone is enjoying Apollo's window-sitting.

Bonus Apollo photo, just because:

Apparently he couldn't find any actual people to cuddle with on this particular day, so one of Julia's American Girl dolls had to suffice.

How to Build a Spaceship out of Junk in 10 Days or Less

The purging, sorting, clearing out in preparation of packing has come to a near-total standstill while I paused to build a spaceship from found items as well as supplies mostly, I'm afraid, from Menards.

The set I was building this week was a bit of a doozy and designed by a very talented designer friend.  Brilliant, beautiful, spaceship interior, but big and cumbersome as well.

This is over 400 square feet of platforming all of which includes carpet padding and painted canvas on top, plus a kitchy console, band wall, and projector screen.  Begun exactly 10 days ago with platform pulling and pre-painting of all available exposed wood, installation completed yesterday with final clean-up today.  It has blinking lights and running water.  It can take you into space and I've been over it, under it and in its guts a lot the past week.  It was not my design but I've been fairly engaged in the building and moving of it, and it has been exhausting for a lot of obvious and less obvious reasons.  Juggling the kids while working on this has been tough.  My right hand and forearm picked this week to get all gimpy, painful and pathetic.  And I have not been a happy camper.  When things get challenging, REALLY challenging, I get a lot less friendly.  It's true.  Moderate challenge makes me pretty happy.  Big time-crunch, not so happy.

All this talk about the magic being somewhere outside of one's comfort zone aside...honestly, when I am truly outside my comfort zone doing something really challenging and difficult, I am not even slightly magical to be around.  I think I get serious and brusque and sometimes even...less than nice.  I have made it outside my rather considerable comfort zone a few times this year and I now realize just where that line is.  When there is a chance that I might fail and may other people are counting on me not to fail, that is where it is.  And it is not actually pretty.  I am going to go out on a crazy limb here and say that I've now been outside my comfort zone quite a few times in the past, year or two.  And while perhaps sometimes some magic may happen there, mostly it kind of sucks.  I'm working hard, often hurting, worrying, scrambling. I kind of lose my sense of humor and my patience is just not what it usually is.  Challenge simultaneously brings out the best and the worst in me.  Some people get it, some people get affronted.  Most people are just glad when things settle a little and I start smiling and laughing again.  I'm just glad when I get to laugh at something other than my own shortcomings.  And woe be unto him who dared ask "So how's the packing going?"

Well, now that that is all pretty well in place, I get to go back to worrying about how we're going to clean-out and move all this...STUFF at home.  I'm definitely pre-exhausted!

ISSUES

As Corinna mentioned in a recent blog post, we are both experiencing what she called "ISSUES" in our quest to clean our homes, sell them, and get the Hell out of them. 

Our issues are diverging pretty radically since our lives are pretty different.  I don't have a play to deal with, for example.  On the other hand, I do have a nursing job in another city, so along with the kids and Austin and social obligations (both family and friends) and the holidays... I also have to be out of the house a lot, working.

These are expected stressors at this time of year and in this situation, but in the last week we have run into two more.  One is that this house needs a lot of work, and some of it is unexpected and expensive.  We decided to recarpet the downstairs and then we decided we couldn't afford it... and then I realized I could sell some of my Paid Time Off hours (because I rarely use them) and so we decided we would not only recarpet, we would do it with the more expensive, higher quality carpet.  (This might seem silly but I think it will be a selling point - and if we wind up staying here for longer than we anticipated, we will not have to recarpet again.)

More money issues were piled on that on Tuesday afternoon when our realtor advised us that we should spend $2,000 or so and get an air exchanger for our house.  We have had humidity in our house for a long time; condensation on the windows, and mildew forming in the bathrooms.  It is beginning to damage the wood in the house and it does need to stop.  And we probably can't sell the house it if continues to have this problem.  So... more money needs to be put in so that we can get out.

I was just making myself okay with this and figuring out how to pay for new carpet, an air exchanger, continue to make progress on painting in the house and doing other odd jobs when the phone rang... and it was the school nurse calling to say that Julia had nits in her hair.  Great.  Head lice.  I spent the rest of the next twenty-four hours or so doing 18 loads of laundry, vaccuming all the carpet and furniture, and realizing that nits are tiny and I should really relent and make the transition to bifocals.

And that pretty much sums up last week's issues.

After the lice crisis was under control, I primed the walls in my office, covering up the insane texture painting that some previous resident left (photos forthcoming in a future blog).  And I packed some things up, Austin continued painting, and we even went to a Christmas party on Saturday night and had fun.

This coming week I'm working several days, but we are also getting the new carpet.  I'm hoping it will be a less stressful week overall, and we'll see major progress in the way our basement looks.

Plaaaatforms

These pictures are terrible BUT do show a percentage of the platforms that we painted today.  This is about...I want to say maybe 23%.  Lots of platforms.  Lots of blue and gray paint.  Lots of legs.  My rockstar son painted a hole bunch of legs.  There was one platform that was brilliantly assembled with too-short staples holding the plywood on the frame.  It broke and had to be repaired.   They look like lap lanes in a swimming pool, don't they?

I'm a little bit exhausted.  Load-in is tomorrow and all I can say is:

1.  At least I am not running a marathon beforehand. 

2.  It's nice not to have to clean everything up beautifully for rehearsal.  

3.  There is nothing else.

EXCEPT that I think of all the other things I need to be doing right now.  I think of the opening night of another show and the show of a good friend I'd have liked to have seen tonight and I wonder why I  was  crawling on hands and knees, getting covered in paint, trying to pull everything together, challenging my gimpy elbow.

And thanks to Scott, Emma, Bailey and Chris for coming in to help.  Thanks to Justin for coming in and not making things more difficult.

The MacGyver Holiday Special

We're having "issues" with our mission over here.  There's very little question of that.  ISSUES.  I'm going to let Sara cover hers all by herself, if she so chooses.

As for me, there is a whole lot of Scenic Shuffle going on for The Return to the Forbidden Planet.  I worked on it Saturday, Sunday night,  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.  Thursday I took the day off and helped Ursula with the set for The Cripple of Inishmaan at nimbus theatre, then more Planet today, more tomorrow, and load-in is all day Sunday.

The themes, for me at least, have been "Injury and Innovation."

Injury because somehow my right forearm and elbow decided that THIS was the week to pitch a fit and seem all overused.  It is amazing how much stuff my right arm just takes care of.  Some stuff it's not a big deal to relegate to my left hand.  Some stuff it is a problem.

The thing that the designer, Philip and I have laughed about a lot is that it's only very specific motions that bother this injury.  Lifting a hundred pound platform - no big deal.  Lifting a coffee cup?  Very big problem.  It is all about what I'm asking this one little crabby muscle to do, I think.  In the case of the platform, not a lot - mostly it's other muscles, so...no problem!  In the case of the coffee cup, a lot of it must be on that muscle, so...left hand, you are  on duty.  I am trying to take care of it (KT tape, ultrasound, etc. etc.) while at the same time I still have to take care of business.

As for the Innovation...

Yesterday I went and worked with Ursula and when I work with Ursula during a tech week, my MO is to take and complete the little tasks that she doesn't really want to deal with.  I often staple fabric to things, paint stuff, fix stuff.  This time there was some sanding to do.  I asked if there was a dust mask (gotta respect the lungs) and was told there was and was handed one...that had no strap.  Then while Brian was looking for one with a strap, I decided to rig up the strapless one with safety pins and a couple of pieces of tie line.  It worked and I felt like MacGyver.  But with hair that is both longer in the front and shorter in the back than his EVER was.  Plus, I'm kind of a girl, though he might be prettier than I am.  I am almost positive he is.

Today I had some basic painting to do for Forbidden Planet.  BIG pieces of flat styrofoam and plywood, so I set out the tarp in the big room and noticed for the millionth time that the big tarp had a lot of little bits of dry paint and leaves and stuff.  Since I was there by myself, I thought it was the perfect time to take care of this once and for all with...the shop vac.

When you go to vacuum a loose tarp with a shop vac, the question is:  Do I use the hose or the floor sweeper attachment?  And the answer is:  No.  In both cases, you just end up with tarp suctioned to the vacuum and not a lot of stuff gets cleaned up that way.

So I rigged up these little sled runners to the floor sweeper attachment  (made out of a broken in half paint stir stick and some skinny gaffers tape to provide an enforced gap between the hose and the tarp:

Room for the holy ghost, as it were.  It was not perfect, it's not especially durable, but it got the job done.  Again I have the hair that is shorter in the back and longer in the front and am not as pretty as Richard Dean Anderson, but getting the job done through creative use of materials at hand.  Which I love.

The other cool thing - all those pieces of 2x4 that we really should not have saved because they're kind of short to have saved...well, they're getting used in this show.  And I don't have to paint all the shortie 2x4 legs because a lot are already painted.  Vindicated in my stupidity.  Yes.

Should I be cleaning, folding, packing...something right this very minute?  Yeah, probably.  Because there are so many aspects of my life that can't be made to work with safety pins, tie line, a little tape and a broken paint stick.  But I'm so, so tired and I know there is more tomorrow.  And the day after that.  And Monday...there are also factors, but hopefully I can get back to regular on, say...Tuesday?

Am I Cleaning or am I Building or WHAT?

The only thing I cleaned so far today was the shop so it could be the rehearsal room tonight even though really...it's kind of got more the feel of a shop than a rehearsal room even when there aren't tools and carpentry and stuff going on in it.

It is not that easy to build a big set with a raked stage out of platforms and carpet padding and canvas by day and then clear everything out so it can be a nigh-unchanged rehearsal room by night.  Usually I allow about half an hour for shop-clean-up.  We spent over an hour today and hopefully it was good enough not to merit complaints.  Because sharing space isn't always easy.

Here is a picture of one of my projects today.  It is a cobbled together weirdo platform assemblage.  The exciting parts (if exciting is the right word at all) are:

1.  The two larger triangles at the top of this first picture are the ones that Scott and I built yesterday.

2.  The smaller triangles (Weirdly one is at the front of the picture and looks smaller than the large triangles with cross braces - never mind - are ones that I built for "The Woman in Black" last year.

3.  Philip asked me for 2-4x4 platforms for the middle of these pieces.  I could only bring one - the other was too dificult to extract by myself the other day.  I grabbed 2-2x2 platforms instead.  One of which has the red, black and tiny white diamonds from the floor of "Cabaret" on the underside.  On the upper side, which you can't see here, it is still the "sexy-blue" with big conversation hearts from "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change."

4.  The fact that that platform was made of 2x6 was a source of near-endless hilarity for Philip.

Look.  It is even more evident from this view:

We might have been beyond punchy by the time I was bolting these guys together, because this over-tall platform kept cracking us up.

As did the VERY LARGE ground cloth formerly from True Love.

I don't know if all this falls under the category of "Jobs" or "Who knows what else" from the blog description, but I knew it was on its way and I knew it was going to be a distraction.  I did not know that I'd end up with a kind of a gimpy elbow or that it would push me to be unfairly snippy to a friend on Facebook.  Or that I'd sometimes think I should go back to being just a mom instead of just a mom who does all this other stuff.  But here is a pro tip for those who may be following along:

Don't try to tease me during a Build Week, unless you have been building with me. 
And then you probably get a free pass .

And for reference, the Tech Week version of this for the upcoming Tech Week is:  


Don't tease me during tech week.


Additionally, I realized we close on the new house in...two weeks?  Insanity.

Scenic Prep and a Toddler Table. This is a blog?

No, I'm pretty sure it's despair.  Things are not going that well, and I feel powerless to stop that for the most part.  

Instead of cleaning out the garage, closets, pantry or any of a large number of other things...I've been hitting the scenery HARD this weekend.  There has been a lot of moving-of-platforms, painting of exposed wood on said platforms and this lovely backdrop that had been clouds and whatnot from Suburb and now:  

It's a green screen for magic video stuff.  It's very like my race shirts!  Or the aliens in Buzz Light Year.  Don't you think?  Big, BIG thanks to Dorian and Sadie who also painted a TON on Saturday.  I...there are no words to express how much I appreciate other people painting.

Meanwhile at home, I was facing THIS.  It's a small, adorable toddler table.  My children enjoyed it very much...when they were toddlers and even first graders.  Now we use it for collecing paper and things and stuff and more things.  

Yes.  After working a long day of scenic preparing...I worked on it until it got to the point of having just computer programs, computers and a box of mints on it and a pair of green binoculars under it.  Those binoculars are going in the donation bag SOON, I believe.  Shockingly, this did not even take that long.

Sunday, there was a lot more scenery.  And stuff.  And I got to scale a 7 foot tall stack of platforms.  I tell ya, it is a good thing I can climb!  And then big thanks also to Scott for helping me build triangle platforms.  Because building those alone would have been nigh impossible, I'm here to say.

So the despair...is mitigated by the fact that I'm not working on everything alone AND that at least as far as the house goes, I am starting to see the areas I have tackled and vanquished begin to gain some ground on the areas that are still making me feel overwhelmed and sometimes I even feel like I really can do this.

And the blog...is ONE view away from a thousand page views.  This is simultaneously cool and a little unnerving, maybe.