1. Had a leisurely childless brunch with J at the Cheesecake Factory on a Sunday morning. This seems like a lifetime ago by now, but we both need to remember how someday, way into the future, we'll be able to sleep in until 10 AM and then eat lemon ricotta pancakes while sitting under a cabana.
2. Spent a small fortune at Lowe's, Target, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart. As in, it isn't hard to calculate what we spent on upgrades as a percentage of the total cost of our house. (gulp)
3. Drove back to Lowe's, Target, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart various times to make returns and exchanges. Or, as J puts it, "I am so sick of hearing the phrase 'Well, I'd better head back to Lowe's.'"
4. Read Don Greene's book on performing and centering techniques. It all seems like it would be very interesting to have incorporated into my practicing, if I'd had any time for practicing beyond the bare minimum for the past few weeks.
5. Disconnected all of our bathroom fixtures. Some (the toilet) more times than others.
6.. Ripped out the old laminate and mosaic tile floors from the upstairs bathroom, then broke up the old layer of mortar underneath. This led to many prayers that the garbage company would actually be able to get the dumpster up into the truck.
7. Took a shower with the hose in the backyard while the bathroom was out of commission.
8. Learned that James is not to be trusted to tell the difference between a bathing suited person who is asking for a hose shower and a fully clothed person who is not.
9. Was approved to substitute teach in the East Irondequoit School District. A bit of a step down, prestige-wise, from the types of teaching I was doing over the last few years, but the price of folly, and probably easier to work around the various orchestra schedules.
10. Ate O'Lacy's ribs for our anniversary dinner. Just as good as I remembered them.
11. Attempted to read Browning's The Ring and the Book. Given that I don't currently know where the book is (I think Owen was playing with it at one point) the effort hasn't progressed particularly well.
12. Scraped and chiseled old mortar off of fifty used pieces of tile.
13. Trimmed the front hedge back down to a reasonable size, though at the cost of many scrapes and scratches and a pair of athletic shorts, but discovering an additional sillcock in the process.
14. Installed and screwed down a wooden subfloor in the bathroom.
15. Windexed and wiped every window and mirror in the house, only dropping the bottle of windex from the second story one time in the process.
16. Scraped and sanded the ancient paint job off of the wobbly rails on the front stoop of the house.
17. Learned how to properly apply aerosol paint
18. Learned how to properly clean a paint brush.
19. Learned that there are no home stores in the greater Rochester area that offer complementary tile cuts.
20. Rented a wet saw from Home Depot. (A wet saw, if you don't know, is a special kind of saw that is purposely designed to be really heavy and difficult to load into the back of a sedan, especially when the back of the sedan is full of carseats.)
21. Hung shutters on the front of the house.
22. Pulled off the hideous old awning over our front lower story window, finding a bee's nest in the process.
23. Attempted (with not very much success) to wash the old aluminum siding that was hidden under the hideous awning.
24. Repaired a garden hose that was scraped open in the front bush and nearly flooded the basement.
25. Attended a Rochester Red Wings game. (The mascot is still there, but only a little scary.)
26. Selected a new ceiling fixture for the library, although a bare bulb hanging out of a hole probably would have looked better than what was in there previously.
27. Hung curtain rods and thermal curtains over all the big bay windows in the library.
28. Cleaned out the brush pile by the firepit, which no longer fit under the storage tarp I'd pulled over it.
29. Painted the garage doors, with the help of J, while the kids were sleeping--maybe the quietest and nicest time we had together aside from Cheesecake Factory all week.
30. Learned how to mix and lay down thinset mortar.
31. Learned how to mix and lay down grout, which for some reason can be a transitive verb while "mortar" cannot.
32. Bought a new sink pedestal after learning the loud-crashing-noise way that the old one was not a single piece with the sink top.
33. Learned about cutting porcelain with a diamond tipped drill bit and after discovering that the new pedestal wouldn't position exactly the same way the old one did.
34. Roasted lots and lots of coffee down in the basement.
35. Visited the NY Wine and Culinary Center in Canandaigua for a brief glimpse at some of the things we'd really enjoy doing if we didn't have kids with us.
36. Learned how to anchor metal railings in cement.
37. Replaced the rotted sill under our back window.
38. Learned about and used more varieties of caulk than I ever thought possible. Caulk seems to be goo that holds together all grown-up projects, kind of like Elmer's glue sticks of the adult world.
39. Resorted the entire garage, discovering in the process an unopened 30 by 36 double hung window, an ancient Christmas tree stand, several pieces of baseboard that must have come from some place in our house, and the feces of an unknown small animal.
40. Planted a crab-apple tree in the front yard. It's a humane and beneficent activity to plant a tree, because it forces you to call the NY state dig line, and the lady that I spoke to was really excited to talk to someone. I think she must be lonely.
41. Performed a soil analysis on the dirt from my dig. Turns out that we have an alkaline soil of the sandy loam variety. (Don't know what sandy loam is, though.)
42. Miserably failed to properly install two different baby gates. As a temporary measure, I sat down Owen and gave him a serious talk about being careful when he tries to crawl down the basement steps. He seemed to understand.
43. Had an Amish Date Night with J. I pulled on black pants, a white short sleeve dress shirt, and suspenders, and she changed into her oldest and most shapeless dress. We turned off everything that had power in the downstairs and laid on the floor with an oil lantern between us and talked for about three hours. It was really a lovely time, although I was so tired I felt like I'd raised a barn.
44. Attended a third birthday party. Owen and James each came home with balloons; everyone came home with sugar headaches.
45. Saw the "finished product" of our bathroom remodel once the new shower curtain arrived and J put on the final touches. [Cue menacing music and plumbing sounds]
46. Attended East Irondequoit School District sub training, which was about 15 minutes of soft spoken Q&A about the phone system and then the presentation of From I-9 document verification.
47. Discovered that our kitchen ceiling was dripping.
48. Called a plumber to look at the ceiling, who declared after having removed the toilet that it "looked complicated" and he couldn't fix it. (Cost: $150)
49. Mounted two repair flange pieces onto the tile floor after the tub was removed, then remounted the toilet a second time.
49. Figured out how to unscrew and remount the kitchen light fixture.
50. Installed backer rod around the front window, and, of course, caulked.
51. Went to the public market to buy every known variety of squash.
52. Convinced J to pose for a passport photograph.
53. Discovered that even if you take your own passport photograph to the correct dimensions, you can't print that photograph out at a Rite-Aid, CVS, or through an online service.
54. Attempted to sell old junk on eBay.
55. Framed and put up the picture M made for my birthday, of James throwing sticks into a stream with George and Steven a la Christopher Robin.
56. Fixed the puck lights under the kitchen counter.
57. Installed a new handle and lockset in the garage door. (This required printing off key labels, since I now have only a one in three chance of remembering which key goes to which door.)
58. Sanded and spackled and damage from the failed baby gate installations and the new outlet in our bedroom.
59. Emptied the filter of the shop vac that I use to suck up coffee bean husks and spiders down in the basement.
60. Swiffered the kitchen floor after I was confident that we'd solved the problem with the leaky toilet and that there wouldn't be another drip.
61. Discovered another drip onto the kitchen floor.
62. Haggled with the old plumber about the fact that he walked off with some of our hardware and contacted a new plumber to come in and attempt to get a real fix on the problem.
63. Tacked up a saggy gutter on the backside of the house.
64. Painted all the window trim to cover up the green aluminum pieces.
65. Cleaned out all the crevasses of the bathroom wainscot. I did not, however, get around to looking up the correct pronunciation of the word "wainscot."
66. Used a circular saw on James' old Radio Flyer Wagon. (But in a good way...for the purpose of making shelves.)
67. Went to Lowe's for plumbing supplies enough times in 24 hours that the wifi began recognizing my phone without asking whether I agreed to the terms and conditions of usage.
68. Taught a trumpet lesson
69. Researched home insurance discounts, thereby ensuring a barrage of home insurance advertisements on my email page for the next few months.
70. Hit every surface in the bathroom I could reach with CLR.
71. Walked down to Netsins ice cream shop with the boys and the grandparents.
72. Generally surrendered all parental duties to J during the course of the projects.
73. Rearranged James' furniture so that he has better access to his bookshelves after I hung the shelves in his room.
74. Fell down the basement steps and got a nasty bruise on my elbow. (Maybe Owen needs to have a stern talk with me about being careful near the steps.)
75. Grew to loathe the Carbon Monoxide detector every time I had to turn off the power to the kitchen outlets when the ceiling started leaking again.
76. Made an emergency run to the Wegmans food bar for lunch when it became apparent we were going to lose the use of our kitchen AND our bathroom.
77. Celebrated our 8th anniversary.
78. Attended a BBQ with the Shewans, in which James competed at Corn Hole with Olympic level intensity.
79. Performed at J's church on a Sunday morning.
80. Began to look at some music for the first week of the Symphoria season, although only in fits and starts.
81. Visited two parks and the downtown area of Canandaigua.
82. Took showers at extremely irregular intervals, mostly due to the issues with the bathroom.
83. Hung a latticed mug mount over the console table.
84. Applied the final re-coating of tub and tile paint to the upstairs tub.
85. Mounted a curved shower curtain rod.
86. Fixed the bathroom windows that had been frozen shut all winter.
87. Had the Corolla's inspection renewed.
88. Fixed the iPod dock in the downstairs living room. (Mostly for the purpose of getting Owen to dance to the Commodore's "Brick House.")
89. Dealt with James' sudden ambition to become a professional garbageman, practiced several times a day by him in the form of emptying an enormous box of his toys into a pile on the floor, then reloading them and emptying them again several feet away.
90. Sustained a basil plant and a cilantro plant through two weeks of life on the kitchen windowsill.
91. Painted the threshold to our garage door.
92. Had the second plumber in to remove the shoe (and my repair flange) from the upstairs waste line, only to have the kitchen ceiling drip again moments after he left.
93. Stayed home from church to meet the plumber on Sunday morning...only to have him never show or call.
94. Attended a Buffalo Bills preseason game with J and the boys.
95. Used a pair of snips to custom fit a plastic pedestal for the upstairs toilet in an attempt to elevate it a quarter of an inch.
96. Completely stood up Calvus for Hebrew one morning after staying up far too late working on the bathroom the night before.
97. Found a dozen different ways for James to "help" with his tools on whatever I was doing without causing any actual damage to his person or the project at hand.
98. Read, sporadically, Homer, Ovid, bits of the Apocrypha, St. John, and some old grammar exercises.
99. Watched a lot of tutorial videos on Youtube.
100. Swore a solemn oath to give this list a thorough re-reading before ever even THINKING about attempting home repair projects again.
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