Abandoned Blog? Not so fast...

We continue to be swamped pretty regularly around here.  It's a crazy, crazy time with four kids, three theater-practicing adults and...well, Skippy, I suppose.  Summer travel and multiple productions already this fall have kept us on our toes and have made taking time to document any changes or progress seem like time that could be better spent elsewhere.

There are days when "just spend 15 minutes________" seems seriously laughable.  Lots of days.

But then during one lull, I made up this job wall - it works pretty well when, you know, we're paying attention.  And when Mitzi, our loaner toddler, doesn't rearrange all the post-its that she can reach. 

Things haven't devolved into total and utter chaos - the kitchen continues to stay largely functional and fairly clean, thanks to the efforts of multiple individuals. 

Our Scott came up with a name for the adult who is home with the kids when the others are out ...well, really, it's always theater isn't it?  It is.  He calls that person PPOD - like BMOD (Board Member On Duty) at TRP and some other theaters, but stands for Primary Parent On Duty.  Some nights we have to designate an RPOD - Roving Parent on Duty, so the kids know which adult to call or text first because they're not performing or sitting in a performance.  Even when it's not me, that doesn't necessarily stop someone from calling to ask where the cinnamon sugar is and do we have any strawberries and when are you coming home anyway?

The yard is kicking us hard as well  - we filled 15 lawn bags this weekend and the leaves haven't even fallen off of the trees for real.  Also, we're doing a bad job of roping the kids in for yard work duty, mostly because we dread an "exhausted" attitude toward it.  Andrew said "That's what childrens are for."  And I said "But that's not what childrens think they are for.  They think they are for video games and eating food.  And parents are for providing video games and food, and driving around and whatever other stuff they think needs to be done, too."  And my 10 year old son just started shaking his head.  Apparently he does not hold this belief, even if he appears through his actions to hold this belief.  He also willingly and gladly stocks every bathroom in the house with toilet paper, and sometimes even remembers to do it on his own.  So that is something.

To the Victor, The Spoils

From...a few months ago.  But it includes a photo and is partially written:


Life just recently has felt like a massive scavenger hunt.  You see, in spite of having sort of moved about 6 months ago, we still have a lot of boxes sitting around.  A lot of it is media of the non-mission-critical...books, DVDs, VHS tapes and other things that do a whole lot of sitting on shelves.

The lack of three or four unexcavated items, however, continued to haunt me, however.  The first is my St. Anthony pendant, an item that I acquired after a previous round of "OMG, where are these damn things?!?" in which said things were found after I followed Sara's suggestion that I give St. Anthony a shout out.  And you know, although I am not the most religous person, I do believe in the good vibe of St. Anthony energy, and whenever something can't be found, if I can tap into that undercurrent of "findingness," it's usually not long before I find the item in question or it finds me.

The next thing on the list was a gamecube game that Justin has been longing for called Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness, which, upon finding it I was coerced into further questing for setting up the Wii (the old one, not the new one) and making the controllers work and on and on.

The next thing I found was a box of dress shoes - mine and Andrew's.  We had no idea where our go-to dress shoes had gotten to and this was becoming a concern as we're going into dress-shoe season.  Or something.

And finally...the Pièce de résistance....The gameboy/ds bag.  The boys did have their DS's and some games, but the real issue here was the quantity of old generation 3 games that Justin was periodically and repeatedly longing for (and hassling me about intently).  These were some of the first gameboy games we ever bought, and the kids still want to play them even now.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the entirity of....Pokemon Gen 3:

No, I'm Not Dead and Yes, We Did Move

Well... it has been a busy past few months.  I apologize for not participating at this blog more, but the pressures of family, friends, work, getting our house ready to move, and ACTUALLY SELLING IT AND MOVING (YAAAAY!) have kept me overly occupied.

I will try to do better, starting with a brief update. 

We had half given up on buying the house that we now occupy when suddenly a buyer emerged.  This happened the day right after our outside freezer died (not a big deal except we had a lot of food in it that needed to be utilized, especially the vast number of raspberries that I harvested and froze last summer).  There were some bumps along the way still, plus all the packing and cleaning and cleaning and packing that needed to be accomplished. 

We made it, though, and are now sorting through our billions of remaining possessions in order to make this house liveable and not stuffed with tons of useless stuff that we don't want.

The upside: this is a gorgeous new house with a lot of new space and we love it.  I don't miss the old house at all, especially the kitchen, which I despised.

The downside: we still have a LOT of stuff.

That being said, we got rid of an amazing amount of old junk.  We rented a huge dumpster that lived in our driveway for a few days.  It was enormous... it took up half the driveway and I think it was larger than the studio apartment my sister-in-law had while she was in graduate school.  There is a flat fee for renting such an item, and it is very reasonable; I believe it was around $130.00.  Beyond that, they charge fifty dollars per ton of stuff to be disposed.  Yes, per TON.  I couldn't imagine we had a literal ton... but it turned out we rid ourselves of 2.09 tons of items.  It is astonishing that the house didn't float away after all of that way removed.

It is true that many of the items included in the dumpster were heavy; an old, unsalvageable couch, a mattress from before time began, the heavy duty Peg Perego stroller that we bought when Alex was born in 1998.  But a lot of smaller items were also disposed of (goodbye useless infant car seats!).  I did think to take a picture of some of what Austin piled up in the garage one day, but of course it is late and he is asleep and I can't remember how to share photos on the blog right now.

Next time I will try to do better, including sharing pictures. 

Promise. 

Spatula City

Sadly, with the Kitchen largely unpacked and set up, the unpacking I have managed over the past few days has not been all that infused with everyone's favorite: kitchen items.  It's been some blankets, shoes, random things.  I am avoiding the books.  Sad but true.

Good news, though.  There was a tragedy awaiting me in the dishwasher the other morning:

Now, you know when your spatula is this shade of "Country Blue" or its complement "Dusty Rose" even, you've had it at this point for a good, well, going on 20 years, and getting whacked by the dishwasher blade is just going to be the last straw.  I said to Andrew:  "We're not old enough to have a 20 year old spatula that just got killed in a dishwashing accident!"  He consoled me with the fact that it was only 19 years old.  Such a relief.

When I went to throw this away after taking the pictures, I actually bent that little piece back and forth a little and it just started cracking into a million tiny pieces.  When it's time, it's time.  And time marches on.  But first one other funny little story about this spatula:

During the first, few years we had this, at some point while cooking a big holiday meal, it ended up getting kind of close to the heat for too long.  I think this is when we were living in Burnsville.  I was smelling burning plastic, discerned what was going on, picked it up and mushed that plastic back into approximately the right shape with my own fingers.  And we proceeded to continue on as if nothing had ever happened.

Ah, a spatula with character.  A spatula that wasn't too tall...until it was.  A spatula that was born out of the fervor over those country geese and their attendant colors and need for full-kitchen coordination, I have no doubt.  It's friends the "dusty blue" spoon and ladle continue on without it.  For now.

I mentioned the possibility of replacing it and was told in no uncertain terms:  No.  We have more spatulas in storage. Ah, but do they have this much character?  Well, one never knows.  I do know that there will never be another spatula quite like this one.  And that is OK.


Edited to add:  This.

Fast Forward

Add us to the long list of blogs started in a fit of enthusiasm only to taper off to nothing abruptly when their authors become distracted.  Given the content of our blog, the fact that this didn't happen in oh, November is actually a bit of a miracle.


It's been over a month since my last post, and what's occurred isn't really a mystery...well, except that it is, perhaps.  I ended up building the truly tall set for "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"  There's a whole long story-thing, but I'm just not going to get into it, and it all turned out just fine.

Meanwhile Sara and Austin ended up selling their house and moving to their new house right around the same time as I was loading the scenery into the theater.  It was a few days off, but...crazy times all around!

They are settling into their new home, and we are currently a 3-show household.  I am a 3-show person, even.  Drood has one more weekend with strike on Sunday, and we are starting production on the final show of Chameleon's season - Five Women Wearing the Same Dress.  Meanwhile Scott is stage managing Treasure Island at Theatre in the Round, and I am about to jump into assistant stage managing that show while assisting with the scenery for it and 5 Women and designing the props for 5 Women.  Which sounds as thought it might be enough to push me over the edge, only...I don't think so.

During all this...mayhem, the unpacking has slowed to a near-stop, at least on my part.  I would love to say "A box a day!  Unpack a box a day, at least!" But at some point in some production, that will become untenable once again, I know.

Today's box features items from the coat tree that was formerly in the front hall but is now in the kitchen and such a vital part of our daily lives that we have rules surrounding it (one coat per person, clear it off if we have a lot of guests coming) and could not possibly loan it for a production no matter the need.

Among the items found are spring jackets, which we will be wanting, and jackets that are now too small for the youngest among us.  Which we will no longer be wanting but washing and donating.

Stay tuned for possible further updates!  (Sara...you don't have to post pictures.  Just say something so they know you haven't totally abandoned me and our blog)

Insanity 101 (abridged)

Once again, I ended up with regular life getting totally and completely derailed by the needs of a play.  This time, it was the scenery and a portion of the props for Completely Hollywood (Abridged) that sort of took everything in my life and put it on the back burner for two weeks.  When people say that I seem so busy based on things I post online, I always say that that is the way it is when I have a reasonable amount of challenge going on.  When things are really out of hand, you won't hear from me.  I've spent the past week recovering from the previous two.

Yes, It was just about three weeks ago that Scott and I moved two loads of flats from Chameleon's hard storage to the rehearsal space for some overhauling.  There was a little construction and a lot of planning and painting and it turns out, curtain sewing to do before they were ready for opening last week.

The process on this set was highly dubious and consisted of a lot of "Well, what they really need is a place to hide their many props and costumes and get from one side of the stage to the other." And a little "What if a grand old movie theater and Brave New Workshop Student Union had a love child?"  Esentially, they needed wings and a proscenium in the black box.  And I did a floorplan, and then I changed it based on the walls that we pulled and then I changed it again based on....well, incubation, I guess.  And further thoughts about sight lines.  And then you can't just put up plain old walls so what should be on them?  And as I worked, it all kind of came to me in a weird sort of process of discovery.  Which is not how it's supposed to happen, but thank goodness it did happen that way because otherwise...no set, I guess.

The paint proved to be problematic - far more translucent than I had anticipated, it took multiple coats and finally a texturizing treatment with an additional color and improvised technique before I was ready to add the gold accents to the walls.

Ultimately, I am pretty happy with the result, even as I realize that what I built was essentially...yes, a bare stage.  All I ever design is bare stages!  And that's OK if a bare stage is pretty much what is called for.  And if the stage that we've got just isn't the stage that the show requires.

In the meantime, things did not completely fall apart on the home-front.  Huge Kudos and Mega-thanks to Andrew for keeping everyone fed, on-task with homework and on time for bed, and Scott for excellence in kid-juggling and a little bit of bailing me out on the set that tried to take over the world and picking up dinner more than once as well. And the kids for...well, patience with me in my highly distracted and, honestly pretty grumpy condition.

It's just a few more days until we take it all down and put it away and then jump in with both feet to the next couple of shows.

P.S.  Yes, we still have boxes.  No, they don't really bother me at this point.  Doom!

P.P.S.  I recently took Bailey to Trader Joe's with me.  As we were shopping, I found myself saying more than once, "Better get two."  Which, I realized, is a phrase I frequently say to myself when grocery shopping these days.

This House is WARM!

Yesterday was the latest in a long line of big events that have been looming large in the minds of, well, at least the adults in the big old house.  The much anticipated "Housewarming Party."  I have never managed to have one before, nor did I ever feel much of a need to have one, but in this case, it felt important to have people over to see the new place while it was still new, and also before the next round of  Total Theater Smack-down started up.  Pretty much....oh, any second now, really.

I lost track of how many people came through the party but suffice it to say, in spite of rather bad-going weather, there were quite a few! It would have been a very different party without the assistance and awesomeness of Jenny Johnsen.  She pushed us through that last push of getting the house sort of party-ready (ignore the piles of boxes in the corner...) and food prep.  Again, thank goodness for Jenny.

Andrew and Scott gave many, many tours, I kept an eye on things in the kitchen and watched the doors as best I could to greet people when everyone else was off on tour, at least until I started in on the bourbon, and then the party got a lot more fun, but I was probably a lot less useful.

Andrew and Scott both separately and in the course of about 30 minutes asked me "Are you going to bake that brie?"  Well, I had not been sure if I would or not, but two requests, I figured I'd better.  And people ate the baked brie with cranberries and almonds and did not seem to be suffering.

Next up, the moving company is coming to pick up the boxes we have already finished unpacking.  I don't know how many we have unpacked or how many we had, but I know that whatever it is, it is not as many as it should have been.  Sigh.  They will give us a rebate on boxes we return tomorrow.  And yet here I sit, typing and typing instead of unpacking.  Brilliant, I know.

We are now at exactly one month since the move and while many aspects are going very well, I find myself wondering "Just how long are we going to be able to maintain this level of goodness?"  Because, like Stitch, I tend to be a little on the low side:

And there is a lot of goodness to maintain here, like keeping up with laundry for seven, keeping the dishwasher either washing or empty.  Not putting paper on the island.  Making dinner on a regular basis instead of eating a LOT of pizza and you know there are more things on that list but you get the idea.

We're also in the thick of production for Completely Hollywood (abridged) and I am realizing how I need to be building a set for that.  And tonight was a meeting about the show after that one, which I am not even ready to think about yet but really must because....or else!

So my goodness level is probably about to take a nosedive as my insanity level increases.

It helps a lot to have a lot of things still contained in boxes.  It helps not at all to realize that my "free time" is about to be a lot less "free" as we start into the second half of Chameleon's season.  Good thing we moved when we did because trying to move right now would be nigh impossible!

The Middle

Well, here we are.  In….The Middle!

My life currently resembles Jerome K. Jerome’s famous tale of his friend Harris leading people through the Maze at Hampton Court.  Collecting all the people in the maze as he goes and insisting he can find the way out, Harris eventually leads them to….The Middle.  It turns out that try as he might, he can’t find the way out and eventually, they have to call for the old maze keeper to climb up a ladder and direct them.  That’s where we are.  I’ve boldly led us this far insisting that it’s all quite simple, really.  You just keep turning to the left.  And now we’re inextricably lost.  Except that there is no old gardener to be fetched to direct us out of this.  And the crowd isn’t getting surly exactly but the charm of being in the maze is not enough to distract anyone from their problems anymore and in fact, there may be problems with being in the maze, even, although everyone is still feeling too polite to say so. But at least we’re not alone.  If I have to be lost, I'd rather be lost in a group.  As long as they aren't throwing things at me and blaming me for their being lost.

The open house is looming large this upcoming weekend.  There is so much that won’t be done in time.  BUT I am going to go ahead and take comfort in the things that are going well.

The kitchen:  Shockingly, it is actually workable and relatively clean.  My kitchen-counter-paper-ban has worked fairly well.  It's not that paper never lands on the island, but when it does, everyone knows it really can't stay there, and it doesn't.

We have even managed to find workable solutions to having the kitchen as the main entryway of the house.  Everyone is allowed ONE coat on the coat tree.  If people are coming over, we put our own coats in the closet which is in the living room.  Mysterious but true.  There are shoe trays as well, and similar rules apply.  There is the bench for backpacks (previously shown) and now the purse/lunchbox landing/launch pad, which leaves room for the step stool (required by the shorter members of the team, such as myself.)

We have a routine for making coffee the night before and the new coffee/beverage station near the 2nd sink:

...is working well and minimizing the morning kitchen jumble (which I mostly didn't mind - it was like an elaborate dance, but the kitchen is definitely less congested now and the odds that someone will end up wearing hot coffee are at least somewhat mitigated.)

The dishwasher is consistently unloaded and reloaded, and running on a very frequent if not regular basis. We even have a child putting her own dishes in the dishwasher on a regular basis (10 points to Slytherin!).  There is a lot of cooking AND a lot of cleaning up going on.  Sometimes I’ll be cooking and someone will delightfully come along and start cleaning up the prep stuff while I am still making pancakes.  I love this.

There is also laundry.  How many times have I complained about laundry?  A lot, probably.  And yet we are managing to stay on top of it, even with clothes for 7 in the house.  Socks continue to be a challenge and those of us who are sorting and matching them on a regular basis (20 points to Hufflepuff!) are getting more ruthless about saying “Whose are these anyway?  I don’t know.  They’re going away.”  And putting them in the donation basket.  Because we need to be able to quickly decide whose socks are whose.  And as Scott said:  "Their drawers are overflowing."  That, as Scott also says, is a true story.  So we can say “These are too small.  These have a hole.  These are too ambiguous.  Off they go.” and feel like we are improving the situation rather than depriving anyone of socks that they will miss.

So far, there are not that many specifically assigned daily tasks.  I think mostly we are all assuming the responsibility for loading or unloading the dishwasher as we go and as we can.  It's a sort of "Shared Responsibility" philosophy that flies in the face of reason - I mean, if it is not someone's specific job, who is going to do it?  And the answer, so far at least is:  whoever is around, notices the thing that needs doing and is able to do it.  One of the reasons this is potentially a good thing is that the adults in the house take turns being just utterly swamped with various things.  In the past, if the person whose job it was to load the dishwasher or fold the laundry or make the dinner was too busy to do it...it just didn't happen unless someone else got fed up with their not doing "their job."  One of the reasons this is potentially a bad thing is that it's vague, not clearly delineated and doesn't teach accountability?  I don't know.  Maybe we're already on the way with getting the kids to sort their laundry into the system and put the dishes into the dishwasher as they generate them.  Step one, as it were?  We can't start where they ought to be, we have to start where each of us is.

I also took a day out this past weekend to crank out a little artwork for an exhibit that opens Friday in association with a play called "Intrigue With Faye," at nimbus theatre in Minneapolis.  It's produced by 20% Theatre Company (I am currently serving on their board) and includes artwork from people involved in the production and the company.  The assignment:  Start with a photo, then create an artistic interpretation of that photo.  The idea is to look at the idea of perception.

I asked my good friend, amazing photographer Austin Robinson-Coolidge (who also happens to be the husband of my co-blogger) if he would like to collaborate with me on this, and he agreed, sending me several photos from which to choose.  Maybe I'll post a photo of the pieces once it is all up.  I am dropping off for installation tonight!

Even though I don't have pictures of bad toiletries or kitchen things or whatever for you today, I will share with you one of my Pathetic Ongoing Resolutions:  Use the lotion.  Seriously.  Cleaning out the cabinets in the old house makes me realize:  If I have this lotion, I'd better use it.  I have hand lotion pumps in the kitchen that I have always used, and some wonderful Burt's Bees hand creme (A gift from Dorian when I was spending a little time with her cat while she was on a trip) that I use on a regular basis, but the other lotion...well, usually I am just out of the shower, dry, dressed and out the door.  I gotta take a minute to put on some lotion or else the rest of the lotion is never going anywhere except the trash.  So there we go:  Use All the Lotions!!!

Generally, in spite of the chaos and the daily challenge of figuring out who is picking up whom from which schools and activities...there is, it feels like, some sort of rhyme and reason to a lot of life now.  And that? That is kind of nice.

Yes, My House Is In Front of the Cemetery. SO?

So we have had some people look at our house, which is nice.  And we usually have decent lead time for the appointments, which is also nice because we can't not live here, and living here involves things like cooking and making small/related messes.  Also, we have children, and it turns out that they are not very neat.

 We haven't had any offers but I'm grateful that at least some people are looking.

But yesterday we had a very annoying experience with people who had made an appointment.  They wanted to look at the house on Saturday afternoon, which we were amenable to.  But it did involve moving a planned event to a whole other city (which, for complicated reasons, involved driving two cars) and at least three hours of extra cleaning.

Towards the end of the hour long appointment time, Austin got a text that these people had decided they didn't want to look at the house because it is in front of a cemetery.

Really?  We wasted hours of time on this appointment and rearranged our lives for people who 1. apparently didn't look very closely at the listing for our house and 2. must be kind of clueless because living in front of a cemetery is actually AWESOME.

At some point I'm going to get over the rudeness of these potential buyers not bothering to cancel or even look closely before they completely inconvenienced us and took up tons of our weekend for no good reason.

But I really don't understand the "I don't want to live by the cemetery" thing.  What is that?  Over exposure to the Poltergeist film series?  Fear of zombies?  Too quiet?  I don't get it.

I'm sure this has something to do with our culture's total discomfort and phobia about death.  But I've lived her for nine years, and the cemetery is a great neighbor.  It is quiet and no one is ever going to move in back there and become noisy.  It's beautifully kept.  And, I guess if one is worried about a zombie apocalypse, you'd be the first to get the warning.  What's not to love?

And now, gratuitous photographs of my cat, Apollo, and my son, Alex:

Racing and Toiletries Talk

First of all there was this:



I wasn't trained.  I finished in one of my slower times ever, but had a good event experience and did not hurt myself, so...that was actually what I was going for.  I wish I were in a place where I could push myself athletically, but that is not where I am right now, so not backsliding is a huge accomplishment in its weird way.  At the same time, this was my 5^th year in a row doing this particular race, my 15^th half marathon in that time period.

While I am proud of this, I also feel that I have possibly done as much as I care to in this department.  I have been faster.  I am now slower (and not really running) and I’ve done this half marathon course enough that the magic is kind of gone.  The fear of the distance is obviously largely gone.  The challenge that it felt like when I took it on (It seriously sounded near-impossible when I first decided in 2007 that I wanted to do the 2009 WDW Half Marathon), well, now it feels a lot more like “no big deal” even though I know intellectually that a half marathon is still as big a deal as it was when I first started training for it.  After 15 of them, though, I know I can do it, even under whatever less than ideal circumstances you might throw at me.  Hot, sunny and hilly?  That was Minneapolis.  Freezing and snow on the course?  Well, there was the Hypothermic Half as well as 2010 in Florida.  Brain injury?  Done.  Knee, hip, foot problems?  Still done.  Full marathon the next day?  Done.  Take ALL the pictures?  Done.  PR?  Done several times.  I enjoy racing with friends now but I am not likely to get that sub 2 hour race, and…you know, I got to 2:10.  It doesn’t really bother me.

This was probably the most restful, relaxing trip to Disney I have ever had.  I didn't tour any parks, I didn't ride a single ride.  I have been spending so much time at home getting things done, checking things off the list, it was nice to just be able to take it easier, not have access to things I needed to achieve and, well, still have a good time but not really stress or make my feet more tired than they were from the race.  I had a wonderful time with friends and especially friends that feel like family.  I had the awesome experience of a friend showing me a picture of her newly cleaned-out pantry (inspired, at least in part, by this blog, she said!).  I loved cheering for the Full in really unpleasantly warm conditions.  I loved the team dinners and ice cream meets and going on a mission for a Skylander character with Jen.  It was ALL good.

I am sending out a Big Thanks to The Dads for covering all the bases without me while I was gone and to The Kids for not resenting my going off to Florida without them.  A race weekend is not the most fun time for the kids to go to Disney with me, and my boys understand that.  They have been along for a race weekend before and know it's a lot of meets and late starts and moving more slowly, but it's not exactly the most self-evident thing upon first hearing about it.

Now on to the Toiletries:
Upon returning home, I decided it was high time I cleared out some toiletries from the old house.  First things first, I decided:  I need to sort out what I've got.  So I made some piles.  Shampoo.  Conditioner.  Lotion.  Hair accessories.  Styling products. Skin care and make-up.  Cleaning supplies.  Office supplies.  Soap.  Dental.  Did I mention this was a bit of another disaster area?

Wait - office supplies?  Yes.  A surprising number of pens, school scissors, desk "toys" and tape have made it into my bathroom.  There is a logical explanation for this.  Well, for the scissors anyway.  The pens and the tape must just have been in my pockets. Additionally, there were a few items that expired in....and this is not the earliest date any of us have seen on a product in the past few months, but still....2004.

It turns out I should never be allowed to buy any more toiletries, ever, without written permission from someone with some sense.  I posted about this on facebook and got the question of "Why change products?"  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  1.  My hair care needs have shifted over the past few years.  I am now, as  everyone knows, a full time consumer of hair color of various types.  When it's kind of blondie like it is right now, I don't worry too much about washing the color out, but when it's bold, darker colors, that color protecting shampoo is important.  2. If you use the same hair products all the time, you can get kind of...build up and they stop seeming to work so well.  Or maybe I'm just buying into the hype.  My hair seems happier if I mix things up sometimes, and so am I.  Because, like my hairstyle, I always wonder if something else is better than what I am currently going with.  Sometimes it is better, sometimes it isn't.  And sometimes I just get distracted.  So I end up with some underfinished bottles.  And they pile up.  It's unconscious behavior but I need to make it conscious and work on getting these bottles out and not letting products I'm not liking linger on.

The fascinating thing I learned today is:  we always have more conditioner than shampoo at my house.  It turns out (via facebook and a real live conversation with my chiropractor's daughter) that other people have the opposite problem!  I could speculate on why but...well, the point is, there is a shampoo/conditioner differential and everyone's is different.  We have 4 full bottles of a kind of conditioner that goes with a kind of shampoo that Andrew used for a long time.  Except after a while, it made my scalp itchy, so I stopped using it.  And as little as I may condition, Andrew apparently conditions less.

I think one factor is that I have very fine hair.  If I use too much conditioner, it gets really weighted down.  For people with thick hair that tends toward frizziness, conditioner may be more beneficial.  The shorter the hair, the less conditioner people probably use as well.  It's a theory.

I have more to do in this toiletries clearing department.  There's a whole dissertation to be written about my deodorant stockpile as well.  I am extra flummoxed because the new house does not have cabinet space for storing multiples of things the way the old house does.  Which is good and bad.  Good because...it doesn't all become easily, invisibly dysfunctional again in the new house.  Bad because...what do I do with all these things?  I am going to have to continue to ponder and think on what sort of cabinet, shelving, etc. I want to incorporate into the vast (and yet somewhat underappreciated) master bathroom.  And then I get to sit back and not shop for toiletries for a very long time.

Just for fun, here is a bear soap-on-a-rope that I got for Bailey...approximately 12 years ago.  It's had a rough time but strangely in 12 years did not manage to get used up.

And here's a little "Hey, check it out - I am not completely dysfuctional" moment.  Being tired of having school things from 4 kids scattered throughout the kitchen and study (yes, we're going with study...cause that's where they study) I found this storage bench that fits perfectly between a counter and the pantry in the kitchen.  It has room for 3 backpacks underneath and 2 on top with a space to sit and put on shoes even.  Now if we can just get the backpacks and computer bags into or onto the cubbies after the homework is complete...

All Systems Are....Systems!

The kids are all back in school now.  That was one sorry excuse for a "vacation," although it was nice not to have to be in particular places at particular times, for a couple of weeks there.  It's also good to get back to what passes for normal or the "new" normal or whatever kids being back in school actually translates to.  Beyond my having 6 hours on my own each day.  Which is something, I tell you what.

I have been focusing a lot of attention on building good habits and new routines in the new home in addition to unpacking and putting away and organizing.  The frustrating thing is that I feel like I am spending less time hauling things out of boxes at rapid speed and more time doing, you know, laundry, dishes, cooking, entertaining.  Well, actually, it's not frustrating, it just means that the unpacking and organizing is a side-project and I'm doing my best to set things up so they function, rather than just getting things out of boxes and putting them wherever.  Recent side-projects have included putting away the remaining holiday decorations.  Another little project was drilling a hole in the back of the rolltop desk so I can keep my computer over there and charging instead of being muddled in with the kids at the big work table.

We have also been looking at bench units for what is now known as "the freezeway."  It had started out being called "the breezeway" and connects the kitchen and workshop.  Fact:  It's not heated out there and as such, Freezeway is currently quite apt.  None of us wants to leave our shoes or coats out there in the winter, but still, we feel a need for some sort of furniture to punctuate the bare walls and cold floors:

I have also selected and ordered a bench to put in the kitchen with cubbies for backpacks.  Far better for  things to have a clear and definite home, rather than just going where kids drop them and where I'm tripping over them.  And good to have a place to sit and put on boots and shoes in the kitchen, too.  If we can avoid letting it get piled up with THINGS.  We'll have to have some sort of guideline to go along with the ban on paper on the kitchen island.

All of this is part of setting up the house to work for the people living in it.  I was realizing that I am very keen right now on rules, guidelines, and systems, systems, systems.

Little stuff can make a big difference.  Sorting socks with Scott the other day, I told him that my theoretical method was to have one kind of sock per person, so it is easy to tell whose is whose AND each of a person's socks match all of the others.  Sometimes it doesn't work out quite right - I bought pink-toe socks from Kohl's initially, then when I went to get more, they didn't have those.  Only yellow toe socks.  Hanes makes it easy to tell the kids' apart with their different color toe thread for different sizes.

Additionally, I am giving up on almost all of my tupperware and going with the ones from ziploc because they stack neatly and compactly and all of the lids match easily.  Well, except we still have some of the previous generation.  I have decided that I don't want those previous generation ones anymore.  Lucy is planning on baking something to give as a gift this week.  Perfect, right?

My theory is that if I get rid of a lot of the non-system-compliant socks and containers, for instance, I won't have to spend any more time matching wrong things to wrong things.  Right?  A savings in time and frustration is possibly worth the initial cost of new socks.  Right?

I also asked Justin to go around to all the bathrooms and put extra rolls of toilet paper in the extra roll dispensers.  Each bathroom now has one, and it is important in a home in which if you holler for someone to bring you a roll, you may not be heard, and even if you are, if you locked the door with the old fashioned little bolt, they won't be able to get it to you anyway.  After he had made all the deliveries, he said to me "I guess I will do that every Monday, then."  The boy appreciates structure and routine.  I am just glad he thought of it himself.

In the meantime, I am very exhausted.  And I hope I can keep this up in the long term.  Change is not easy.  Slipping into old habits is VERY easy.

Fortitude!

Theatre Bonus:  Rehearsals for Completely Hollywood start tonight, and I had to put a bunch of stuff back in place that had been removed when we weren't sure if the lease with this place was continuing at the end of last month.  I fixed the broken table, loaded in tables and swanky new chairs, trash cans, hand soap, toilet paper, paper towels and a mop.  It's better than nothing.

Standing Back and Taking Stock

Time to take stock.  It's been five days since The Big Move and we're all still unpacking, moving things, settling in, but everything has calmed down enough that I can pause and evaluate where we are and where we're going.

I'll say something about the kitchen first of all.  It is coming along and I am feeling pretty happy with it.  There are some differences from the old house, but change is good.  I had a realization yesterday about how to make things work well.  I put away the rest of the glasses and there you go, it's nearly done now and I think I am happy.  It feels like there is a bit less cabinet space than in the old one, but it may also be that it is just differently arranged.  I do have to prohibit people from just hanging out in the "working" end of the kitchen, because it becomes impossible to do anything very quickly if people are racing through or standing around, but that is just the way it is in almost any kitchen.  This kitchen has a good "hanging out" side too, where I am happy to have people just loitering.  It's a learning curve.  So many things are a learning curve, but it's a curve we were already well on the way to getting through in many other aspects.  I still need to organize the pantry and there are a few things still missing, but it certainly feels good to have the kitchen cleared of boxes, at least!

The only question I have is....what is next, and is there really anything more that I need now that the beds are in place, clothes are in dressers and beds are made?  Seriously, isn't the rest of this stuff better off in boxes?

I find that I have gotten all...insanely ruthless.  I feel like I want to clean up all the disasters, straighten up all the piles of stuff, throw out all the trash, recycle all the recycling, pick out the few things that are useful or loved and get the rest out of my life.  I have gotten to the point where I can very quickly decide which things deserve to stay and which things have outlived their usefulness, or have always been hated and need to go.  Mostly I don't hesitate or second-guess.  It feels like a huge rush of cosmic power!  And then I have to stop and make lunch or get the van serviced and then what?  Then I reflect on other aspects of this change.

As for the more human aspect, it's been going pretty well so far.   It feels like we're going from a situation that was logistically challenging in a lot of ways for a lot of the people involved to one that feels, in spite of boxes everywhere, almost entirely functional.  All of the kids have their own room, and each room seems to be well suited to each child.  Scott has his own space.  I am sharing a room with Andrew, but really, given the magnitude of the en suite bathroom, it is two rooms.  He has always been known as "the best at sharing," and given our 18 years of happy marriage, it seems like something that might be entirely expected.  Oh, and our dressers are in the same room as our bed.  Revolutionary.   In short, there is more than enough space here for our expanded family, and if I tell someone "put this in your room," it actually works.  Each person has a clearly defined room, and there is  space within the room.  Perfection.

Now, in any situation where you have new roommates, family members or neighbors, there is always a concern about how you will get along, and if you are living with a friend, whether living together will be so stressful that the friendship will suffer.  And the more people involved, the more complicated the situation is. So far, though, the past few days have felt to me like a huge relief of stress.  Because we have been juggling kids and dog and households together on opposite sides of St. Paul for months now, we are all used to working together, spending time together, and relying on each other.  The relationships are already fairly well established, it's just easier now because there is a central location where we can land so that we aren't worried about getting everyone back to opposite sides of the city at the end of the day.

For example, I was able stay longer at the car place last night and get the brakes  fixed when it became clear that that was what needed to happen.  Scott had all four kids and was able to get them fed, homework accomplished and one of them tucked in and asleep before Andrew and I even made it back home, and the others were all ready for bed, too.  I asked Bailey about how it went and he said "I think he handled things exactly as you would have except...he bought us a smoothie at Panera." This could never happen with a condo in the north suburbs and a house in the south suburbs!  I realize we are only a few days in and it is early to say this, but so far it all seems to be...pretty good.   Knock on wood.  Goodness knows we might not be into the real trenches of it yet, but we'll just have to see when we get there.

Home Improvement But NO ONE CARES

It is probably because it is the very end of the year (and beginning of a new year) and people are all wrapped up in holiday nonsense (confession: I have been wrapped up in this, too), but it is making me a tiny bit sad that our house is looking so much nicer than it ever has and yet only two potential buyers have come to look at it.

Hopefully things will improve in the futuristic sounding New Year of 2013 (assuming we don't all die in some kind of terrible fiscal cliff apocalypse and zombies don't begin to roam the earth lusting for brains or whatever). 

Until then, more random facts about my house and how it is improving!

First, let me say that the de-cluttering continues, slowly.  We put a LOT of items into storage, including most of our books (I haven't counted our books because I don't think I can count that high.  Do we have under three thousand?  Over four thousand?  Only two thousand?  I REFUSE TO FIND OUT!).  And yet... somehow there is still all kinds of crap that we continue to uncover.

For example, the other day I decided to look through a basket of unused yarn.  The basket is a beautiful one that my mother-in-law gave me years ago, an item I have never found a good purpose for, exactly.  The yarn was just some leftovers from crocheting or knitting projects; eventually I can probably find a use for that, even if it's just a giant blanket of some type that I make out of leftovers.  Underneath, though, I found two items that I had forgotten and that I definitely did not need:

1. a plastic bag full of leftover latch hook yarn pieces from a long-ago-finished Winnie The Pooh latch hook kit I made for my son when he was very little.  Pooh can stay; the latch hook yarn from over a decade ago, not so much.

2. a bottle of hand sanitizer with a 1999 expiration date.  That's right; I had hand sanitizer in my house that expired before this millenium started.  And I didn't even know it!  I guess the upside is that all these years later I can recycle the bottle instead of throwing it away.

I also found a small treasure trove of useful items for knitting/crocheting projects, like safety pins and yarn markers (THREE different kinds of yarn markers!).  I will have to choose one of the zillion bags that I keep finding and designate it as a permanent knitting/crocheting supply bag.  Then these things will be useful instead of lost-things-I-can't-find-when-I-need-them.

Along with the constant low-level decluttering, we have two new major improvements in our house this week.  One is that Austin has nearly finished painting our bedroom.  When we moved in nine and a half years ago, the walls were slightly-dingy-white with random dings on them.  (Every time I looked at one particular ding without my glasses on I experienced a slight terror that it might be a giant bug, but thankfully it never was.)  We chose a paint color - pumpkin spice - and Austin has painted three of the four walls.

 The remaining dingy white wall:

(Austin was concerned not just about the clutter on the dresser but about what one of the items in the clutter was.  Can you spot the item?)

Here is what three of the room's walls look like now:

Here is a random picture of Apollo in the room, behind the curtain, just because:

The other change has been the re-re-doing of the entryway floor.  The floor that we had for years was annoying giant grey tiles with pink accents (ugh) and it was crumbling in places.  We were going to replace it with the same tile as in the kid's bathroom, but then our handyman friend Steve offered to do it cheaper with some tiles he already had - the only catch being that it was two different (but complementary) colors.  The tiles in the closet wouldn't be the same.  Okay, fine, let's do that.

So Steve came in and re-did the floor, but then was short one tile to make the main part of the entry all the same.  So he ordered more and we waited several weeks.  Then they came in and were a different dye lot and we just wound up starting all over again with some other stuff Austin and Steve picked out at Menard's.

And... the result is much better than the two-tone idea would have been, and it looks great!

Here is a photo of our entryway, now that it has been re-done TWICE:

 Given enough time, I would like to re-paint that door a color that is not the boring gray (the same gray the first tiles were).  But we'll see.

More kitchen adventure

Last night, I opened and unpacked the last box for the kitchen proper.  There are still cookbooks and there is still, to be honest, more kitchen lingering in the other house, but the boxes here...they are at least opened and emptied if not entirely put away.  I am still deciding what to do with glassware and what of the glassware to keep.  This is not that big of a deal.

Along the way I found a lot of weird, useless, random stuff that had been living in my kitchen.  And sometimes just duplicates.

Among the delightful treasures:
A manual for a toaster oven that we no longer have because it stopped working.  I did not bother taking a picture.

Next, A choice between juice extraction methods.  Is it the Kitchen Aid manual citrus juicer with receptacle or is it the OXO reamer?

There is the question possibly of why I have both.  I have had the reamer a long time and found it to be a good and adequate tool.  I bought the juicer more recently for some recipe.  I don't remember why or what, but can only surmise I could not find the reamer?  Oh, my brain.

Ultimately, I favor the reamer and will be donating the juicer.  The juicer is maybe a good idea if what you want to do is get a whole glass of juice or something, but it takes up a lot of space and ultimately isn't, I believe, more efective.

Ah look.  More ill-conceived scrapers.  The larger George Foreman grill comes with not one but TWO of these beauties, curved and embossed in shiny black plastic.

Did I fish out the other one so we could have a family portrait?  Yes I did.

Next up, we have some measuring spoons.  I have a lot of measuring spoons.  I like them.  I like to measure.  And when I measure, I like to be able to just throw the spoon in the dishwasher and grab another one for the next thing I have to measure instead of cross contaminating or pausing to wash and dry or...what other options are there really?

At one point I got a set of awesome metal measuring spoons.  And they came with this bonus set of, shall we say, classic non-standard measures:

Except apparently now they have been standardized.

And in answer to the famous question from Airplane 2: The Sequel:  "Uh, Miss?  What exactly is a 'tad'" Well...there it is.  Not in space terms, of course.  Because in space terms, well, maybe I should let Elaine explain it:

Moving on...
I found wrapped up neatly together in paper: cords to the electric skillet AND the griddle (one must have both, of course), some pancake molds, teddy bear AND heart shaped (one must have neither, I decided) and a handful of corks.  YES, corks.  Retained for some mysterious purpose, who knows what.

And in the spirt of Sara's near-constant refrain of "Pix or it didn't happen!"

It was New Year's Eve. We had been to the Happy Crazier New Year Show and driven different vehcles different routes to get home.  Andrew went by the Eagan house and picked up a bottle of champagne.  Midnight was approaching and he is a very smooth bottle opener guy, usually.  So he got the bottle and insisted that everyone watch.  I should have been filming.  He popped that cork so neatly and stood there triumphantly holding the bottle for a full 3 seconds...before it started madly erupting champagne all over him and the floor.  Madly.  And then he remembered, he had driven given it a bumpy car ride from Eagan, so of course it was going to do that!

Because this made him look like a post-toast cosmonaut from the Happy Crazier New Year Show (with an upside down heart champaign heart instead of Garret Volmer's right-side up vodka heart), we encouraged him not to change right away.

Happy New Year!