Category: Home and Garden

I was sitting on the edge of our lawn, watching the kids play.

It was a gorgeous day.  The sun was leaning to the West, playing peek-a-boo through the trees.  All the Big things in life seemed, for a moment, to be at peace.

The toe of my shoe kicked a rock in our gravel driveway, and suddenly I caught my breath.

Our driveway is at least a mile long – it is made up of millions of rocks, none of which I’ve ever taken time to consider as an individual.  Those rocks serve a purpose for me, but only if they are together, laid evenly over dirt.

Under the lone rock was a tiny bug.  Minuscule, really.  Had I not taken a moment to focus my eyes, I would never have seen it.  My toe, so small in the grand scheme of things, moved an entire mountain, from the bug’s perspective.

It got me thinking about how, sometimes in the hustle and bustle of daily life, I don’t take time to truly focus on the people I interact with.  If I paid a little more attention, maybe I would notice the little things going on in their lives, the things that may seem like the smallest of pebbles to me, but are, in fact, gigantic mountains to them.

How hard it is to move a mountain when it is looming above.  How easy it is to kick a pebble with the toe of my shoe.

Today, I saw a disheveled man sitting on the curb outside of a convenience store.  Despite the heat, he wore a heavy coat and next to him sat a frayed duffel bag filled to the brim.  I can only assume that everything he owned was sitting there with him.  He was staring at the ground, looking forlorn. 

I walked over to him and handed him my lunch, with a five dollar bill tucked inside. 

I moved his mountain.

As I mentioned before, Jeremy and I love projects.  

You also may have noticed that I’m a bit anal retentive and a semi-compulsive hand washer.  Pardon me for not linking to previous posts to prove my point, that would take me all freaking day.  (Also? Try saying that 5 times, fast).

It’s interesting how all of those fun personal facts about my life come together, seeing as the projects we take on almost always involve a lot of dirt, dust, insects, and the occasional petrified rat carcass.

Jessica of Bern This asked if I could share some pictures of projects we’ve taken on and Oh!Boy! are you all in for a treat!  Just remember, you have Jessica to blame thank for what follows in the coming weeks. 

I’ll start with the projects we’re currently working on.  Wheee!

Last summer we laid a foundation for a 585 square foot addition to our house.

At the time we thought it was a quick, 6 month long project but… not so much.  We toiled away on it here and there, slowly getting things done while life and work and ranch animals and everything else under the sun got in the way.

Just this week we moved into the “final” phase of construction, with the second coat of stucco on the exterior…

 <— front


 <— back

and drywall hung in the interior.



You can’t tell, but I took this picture while standing in a huge gaping hole in the wall of my existing house.

<—- dust!

I said good-bye to my special little nook, but, eh, small price to pay.



In the next few weeks we’ll get the addition textured and painted, and install the flooring.  Then we’ll move Blythe into her new bedroom, and move Alison into Blythe’s old bedroom so we can demo the rest of the wall and finish making our house whole again.

We hope to be done by Christmas.  HA!

In the meantime, I will try not to go crazy from all of the dust being tracked through my home.

Also, as if this post were not already long and boring enough, I’d love to show you the interior of the crack house rental I posted about last week.  You all didn’t think we’d manage to clean that place up, did you?

Behold, the talent of my husband:







No more rotting floor!  No more falling down walls and ceiling!  We’ve still got a long way to go, but if we spend a few more date nights working on it, we’ll get it done. 

As long as I’ve got an ample supply of soap.  And alcohol!

Jeremy and I like projects.  We actually fell in love while remodeling a condemned crack house, eleven years ago.

Who says romance is dead?

This year, we bought three foreclosed properties and have been working on them in our “spare time”, where “spare time” = who the hell has spare time?  It’s more like we work on them when we’re supposed to be sleeping, or having a “date night”, where “date night” = working on condemned crack houses is romantic!

Two of them are now tenant occupied, thanks to my hard working husband, and the third is now in the line of fire.  Guess what?  There’s a reason we saved it for last.

I now present to you, our newest crack house project:



See the floor?  Let’s take a closer look, shall we?



That would appear to be a hole.  In the kitchen floor.  Yes, hmmmm.  It seems they built the floor right on the DIRT, and now it’s completely rotten, giving off a lovely damp, earthy smell.

Know what else we’ve discovered?  They put some walls up to create new rooms but forgot to nail the walls to anything.  So they were just held on with some tape and paint at the joint between the walls and the ceiling.

Yes, people, we do love our projects.  We’re the proudest slumlords you’ll ever meet.

My wonderful husband took Blythe out to play for awhile this morning and I took the opportunity to do some serious cleaning around the house.

For my first task, I chose to vacuum the living room rug.  Not such a huge job, but it never fails to make the whole room look better.

I headed back to the mud room to get the vacuum, and when I opened the door I was greeted by Cage the Dog and an overwhelming stench of pee.  I figured he’d have an accident eventually – he refuses to go outside to pee in the rain, and his bladder is only so big.

I went to grab a towel to wipe his feet and clean up the mess, but while I was gone, he made a run for it, tracking pee through the house on his way to the living room.  I chased him down to wipe his feet, and then back-tracked, wiping up paw-print pee puddles as I went.

I dropped the towel onto the puddle on the mudroom floor, and noticed that his dog bed was soaking wet, too.  Nice.  

I shoved his bed into the washer, and then ran out to the living room to get Cage settled in there.  It was then that I noticed the ashes all over his blanket from the fire we made last night.  So, I shook off the ashes and swept them up.

While I was shaking out the blanket, I saw that one of the kids had put dry cereal in all the little divots the buttons make in the living room chair, and picked them out, sweeping up any that fell.

Then, I had Cage lay down so I could soak his injured foot in betadine, because I don’t care what they say about pee being sterile, I’m not taking any chances.  I wrapped a paper towel around his foot and went to get the vacuum from the mud room.

Oy, but the floor in there was still disgusting, so I finished cleaning up the pee, tossed the pee-soaked towel in the washer with the dog bed, and mopped really quick.

I finally set about vacuuming, and wouldn’t you know – the vacuum freaked Cage out, and he ran across the WHITE living room rug with his gooshy, betadine-soaked foot.

I got him back on the blanket and finished vacuuming, keeping my evil-eye focused on him the entire time, and then cleaned up the rust-colored paw prints as best I could with some Resolve.

Feeling a bit exhausted after all that cleaning, I got myself a drink and decided to check in on twitter for a few minutes.

It’s then that my husband walked in, having given me a full hour to clean the house.  I’m on twitter, and all I’ve done is vacuum the living room rug.  Sweeeeet.

No wonder he thinks I spend all my time on the computer!