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...