If you give a parent a paintbrush...

They'll* run to the store to grab just the shade of grey you wanted. To be safe—they'll grab two cans! 

Nonrefundable, of course (because once you tint it, it's yours).

Then they'll* decide they need some white paint to redo the trim. They'll* quickly grab a can and then rush home. 

When they've finished painting the room grey, they'll** realize they have 1.25 cans leftover. That will start them*** thinking about what else they could possibly paint that same colour. 

But they** still have the trim to paint, so they'll** break out the white paint and get to work. 

When they're** finished painting, the parent* (who went to the store to get the paint but didn't help do any of the painting because they had to finish grading so they could submit grades by the deadline) will ask if the painting parent** can simply repaint the banister as well...since the paint is out. 

So they'll** paint the banister. And then they'll** rinse out their paintbrush.

Before and after

Benjamin's walls have successfully been transformed from a light grey and what-were-you-thinking purple... 

Nothing personal

While Rachel and Miriam have been "across the pond," we've been having a fine time here at home.

On Monday morning last week, Zoë came home from swim team practice and immediately began making cookies. She's determined to learn how to bake...and whipped up some delicious oatmeal raisin cookies...while wearing an apron over her still-damp swimming suit. 

Surprise...surprise!

"You're going to want to sit down for this..." the plumber said on the phone to Andrew last night. 

Our water heater had stopped working. The plumber asked what year our water heater was installed. 

"2005..." Andrew said, and that's when he was told to sit down. 

Evidently the life of a water heater is not typically so long. The recommendation: a new water heater. 

Of course. 

So the plumber came this morning and he was like, "Wow! I haven't seen you guys in a long time!"

And I was like, "Thank goodness for that!"

It's been about two years since our last plumbing emergency. Our plumber laughed and said, "Yes—plumbers, dentists, lawyers...all people you never really want to see!"

So, as of today we have a brand new water heater. It's smaller than our old one (which was massive—75 gallons), but is function (which is helpful for running a household of this size). The price tag was a bit of a yikes (which is why we downsized) but, you know, we were living on borrowed time with that thing, I guess. 

These surprising and costly fixes are...getting a little less surprising as time wears on. 

Take a look, it's in a book

It rained all day yesterday and it's been raining all day today. And so of course...we have discovered new leaks in our house.

We literally have people on the roof spreading a tarp right now. Water is coming down in front of the front door, too. Like on the outside of our house. But, like, it's a covered porch so that really shouldn't be happening. So mostly I just want to cry. 

This house has been at once perfect for our family and also a complete nightmare. 

And I don't really want to talk about it right now. 

So instead I will tell you that today I sat Phoebe down for her first formal reading lesson. Don't worry; it's a very gentle program. We start with sounds and word games. She had a lot of fun. 

But first she cried. 

YOYO*...oh, no.

Our dishwasher broke this week (because...why not?). 

Was I grateful for that dishwasher? Immensely. 

Was it my favourite dishwasher in the world? Not remotely. 

So when we got an estimate for how much it would cost to fix it versus how much it would cost to simply get a new machine...guess what we went with. 

Is that environmentally friendly? I honestly don't think so. 

Do I know why manufacturers make machines that aren't easily repairable? Absolutely not.

I mean, I understand that it ultimately means more money for them, but it really feels like it would be better for everybody if these things were simply...easy to repair. 

*****

We're about a month into the semester and things are heating up. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is once again an absolute marathon. 

The dishwasher broke on Monday—and for once not after I had touched it last (both the stove and the washing machine died after I touched them last but the dishwasher is not on me!). 

On Tuesday (my long day on campus), Andrew ordered pizza for dinner.

On Wednesday we had leftovers.

On Thursday we had leftovers.

On Friday our new dishwasher was delivered and installed and...we had leftovers.

The basement!

After two solid months of being in flux, I'm pleased to announce that our basement is finally ready for action. We have things more or less as we'd like them in both the "main room," storage room, and "LEGO room." We sorted through nearly everything we had down there, gifted a lot of things on the Buy Nothing Group (including—fortuitously—a box full of broken dollhouse furniture that I had weeded out from our collection; I was all set to throw it away when I saw someone asking for dollhouse furniture for a diorama their child had to make for school so I sent them a picture of what I had (broken bits and all) and they said they'd take it!), threw out some things that had outlived their usefulness and...we're quite pleased with the results.

Here's a view of the main room (looking toward the stairwell):

I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints...

The last thing our contractor did this week was paint the exterior boards he had to replace on the side of the house. Evidently he spilled a not-insignificant quantity of paint on the ground, which Andrew knew about, and which Andrew warned the children to keep away from. 

I'm sure you can see where this story is going.

For the record, I did not know about this spill or I may have done more than warn the children to keep away from it. I also may not have done much more...we've been so exhausted this week, staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning working on the basement. 

On Friday night the girls—who are finally back at our house after spending three weeks at Grandpa's house—had a fire night with their friends. When their friends went home, Andrew and I roped them into helping us finish putting carpet in the unfinished portion of the basement. They weren't terribly happy about this, since they had planned on showering and going to bed, but they were good helpers nonetheless. 

In order to put the carpet down we had to move furniture, roll the carpet padding out, roll the carpet out, move furniture onto the carpet we had just rolled out, roll the carpet padding out, roll the carpet out...until the room was carpeted. 

Although the carpet was more ore less rectangular, there was more cutting and taping involved than I'd like to remember. We must have put the carpet padding in sideways or something because we had to cut so much of that. Anyway...

Moving furniture

October has been a whirlwind. We've mostly been keeping busy moving furniture and moving furniture and moving furniture.

First we moved everything out of the girls' room and away from the wall in the storage room so the basement could be waterproofed. When the drywall was up in the storage room we started to piece the storage room back together, though it's still quite a cumbersome mess since all the stuff from the girls' room is in there as well. 

Last night Andrew and I moved all the furniture in the LEGO room so that we could lay down the old carpet from the girls' room in the LEGO room (we can't reuse their carpet for their room because the footprint of their floor has changed—they have a closet now and we had to take out some of the built-ins). And then we moved the furniture back onto the carpet we just put down. And then we moved all the furniture from the "main room" into the LEGO room so that we can repaint in there. 

That doesn't sound like a lot once it's all written out. I think what's overwhelming is knowing we have to move everything back to where we ultimately want it (and need to finish putting carpet in the LEGO room).

Our own downfall

We are not precisely early risers over here. 

I mean, sure—Rachel and Miriam attend early morning seminary, so they get up early, but they ride with Grandpa (who is one of their seminary teachers), and thus the rest of us—thankfully—do not have to get up early. I know I spend a lot of time fussing about my poor sleepers because...I've had a lot of those. My children simply take a long time to wind down and fall asleep at night, and then also wake up several times throughout the night, but they've also never (or at least have rarely) been the type of children to want to start the day at 5:00 in the morning. 

All this is to say that we were relieved on Tuesday evening to realize that we didn't have to wake up early to meet the construction crew on Wednesday. Full disclosure: Andrew had been waking up to meet them while Phoebe and I slept. So Andrew was particularly excited for Wednesday morning. 

"Hey! I don't have to wake up early!" he said.

And so he stayed up late working. And when Andrew stays up late working, he really stays up late working. He's a night owl and is often most productive at night. As an eccentric professor, this is his...priveledge.

So it was particularly disappointing when, shortly before 7:30 in the morning, we were roughly awakened by the sound of gas-powered motors roaring to life, seemingly right outside our window. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep for a few precious moments more (I even put my earplugs in), but then another motor started up, and another, and another. 

And then there was a rather big thud.

"The neighbours must be having some trees removed," I thought to myself. "But...why start this early?!"

Tree-cutting crews don't normally begin work that early for...obvious reasons. 

Oddly, the thudding continued. 

"It sounds like someone is walking around on our roof!" I mused aloud.

My tired brain slowly came to the realization that someone was walking around the roof. Our gutter/roof cleaning company must have been paying us a visit!

"Aren't they supposed to give us advanced notice?" I moaned.

"Technically they texted me at 6:00 this morning," Andrew said, putting his phone down. 

So thus it was that our day began a little earlier than expected yesterday morning, after staying up a little too late the night before. But I suppose it was the staying up late that was our own downfall.

*****

When we were flying home from Canada, our flight our of Calgary was delayed by about 5 hours, which wasn't a terrible thing in and of itself, but waiting for that flight would have caused us to also miss our connecting flight home. I called the airline and worked things out, but it meant that our departing flight was an hour earlier than originally scheduled (resulting in a bit of a race to get to the airport in time) and our flight back into Atlanta would be a little later than originally scheduled.

So, here we are snarfing some Tim Hortons for breakfast in the Calgary airport (surprisingly inexpensive airport food):

See what I meant? (See: wet cement)

Our basement was finished midway through the day. Andrew went down to verify that they'd done all the contracted work, wrote them out a check, and the workers went on their merry way. 

Phoebe thought this was a very good thing because earlier in the morning they gave her a good fright!

She had enjoyed watching the workers through the window. We talked about how they were loading up rocks to take into the basement, and that they were helpers—that sounds great, right? They were strangers, but they were helpful strangers, and seemed to just be working in the yard. So that's fine. 

And then—while I was upstairs working and the kids were downstairs work and even Phoebe was downstairs playing—one of the men came upstairs to ask if he could use the restroom. There's a restroom in the basement, but it had been cordoned off behind plastic worksheets and a veritable barricade of furniture. I told him that he was, of course, welcome to use our restroom, and showed him where it was (right across the hallway).

Phoebe took this interaction poorly, and I don't blame her.

How do visitors—particularly strangers—usually announce their presence at our home? 

They knock or ring the bell at the front door and then we get to decide whether to allow them entrance or whether we'll send them away. 

Not so today! 

Today a man she'd never met in her life simply materialized in the hallway—the horror!

She was nervous for pretty much the rest of the day, very clingy, very "uppy, uppy, uppy!"

I took her to watch the workers through the window and reminded her again that they are our special helpers and that she doesn't need to be afraid anymore. But...she's just a clingy kid, so that conversation did little to soothe her nerves.

Anyway, let's see...

Here are a couple of pictures Andrew took from the stairs showing the progress of the trench the workers dug in our basement floor:

A study on curly-hair bed-head

Workers showed up early this morning to dump a (literal) ton of gravel onto our driveway, along with a billion other tools and supplies, so they could start fixing our leaky basement. It was also garbage and recycling day, so there were trucks going up and down the street—beeping, clanging, lifting, dumping, compacting...

Phoebe found this all very interesting.

 

Holding down the fort

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew...you had one job to do while I was away. 

One. Job.

I asked him to hold down the fort. That's it! 

And just look at this mess!

I knead this to be over!

The kids and I were sitting at the table having lunch and discussing Shakespeare (we're reading A Comedy of Errors at the moment) this afternoon when we heard Andrew say from the kitchen, "Alexa, how much time is left on the timer?"

We knew he had dough proofing in the oven; he'd planned to make pretzels for dinner. 

His pretzels are the best.

"You have two minutes remaining on your ten minute timer," Alexa told him.

"UGH!" he moaned. 

Everyone at the table exchanged looks. It's not usual for Andrew to be so emotional.

"Pretty sure you'll survive two minutes," I said, my voice dripping with fake sympathy.

"But I'm so tired!" he huffed. 

Everyone at the table exchanged looks again. Because literally what was his plan at...noon. Nap time?

Now, this is rich coming from a lady who treasures an afternoon nap with her toddler nearly every day. I see that. But, like, seriously, Andrew doesn't usually nap in the middle of the day. And would two minutes really throw off any napping plans that he evidently had? 

He can be so weird sometimes!

*****

The Cursèd Bathroom

We have come to the conclusion that our hallway bathroom is officially cursed. 

When we bought the place, we knew we'd have to redo the bathroom floor. We still haven't done that, but we knew that we would have to do so eventually. The tiles are all just falling apart. 

For a while the shower was leaking into the basement, but we got that fixed.

And then the upstairs bathroom fell into the hallway bathroom (both bathrooms were cursed, honestly).

And then most recently we found out that we'd screwed our towel rack into a pipe in the wall. 

As we stand, our ceiling has "naked" drywall up (to replace all the drywall that fell down when the upstairs collapsed into the downstairs), the tile floor is completely cracking up, and we have a couple of lovely holes cut into our wall. 

Well, today, Zoë was washing her hands and...water started running out of the bathroom cabinet and streaming all over the floor. 

The sink pipes have completely corroded and just...popped apart! 

To fix it, I think we'll have to do something like this (which doesn't look too complicated):

For now we just have a big "OUT OF ORDER" sign taped to the faucet. 

When is a $30 towel rack a $600 towel rack?

We came home from Utah to a leaky basement and ten billion fruit flies in the kitchen. 

Finding the cause of the fruit fly problem was relatively quick and easy—we'd left a singular banana on the kitchen counter. And then let it sit in the house for three weeks. So...fruit flies. 

We're still battling them a bit, but they're much better controlled than they were when we first arrived home. They were everywhere. Why did we leave a solitary banana to rot on the counter? I'm sure I had planned on feeding it to Phoebe with breakfast, or something. And then didn't.

Much like the cucumbers in the fridge that I had meant to prepare to take with us...and then didn't...

Anyway, the fruit fly problem was easy to diagnose. The drip? Not so much. 

Andrew the Optimist

Yesterday morning—before the library had even opened—I was verbalizing my personal itinerary for the day to Andrew. 

"I need to go to the library," I said. "But I think I have time to shower first. And then I need to get started on my prospectus revisions and..."

"Oh, before you shower," said Andrew the Optimist, "We should move things around in the basement real quick and pick up those cabinets from my dad!"

A few things you should know:

(1) Reid recently had his kitchen renovated, including having new kitchen cabinets installed. It looks lovely! And the old cabinets were just sitting there, begging to be used. 

(2) Andrew is the optimist in our house. I'm what he would call a pessimist, though I prefer to call myself a realist. When we have our "Project Saturdays," he'll make a grand list of 8–10 things to accomplish and I'll say, "Cool your jets! You can pick two items...maybe three...though we might not even get through one..." 

I don't know if it's because we're inefficient project doers or what, but sometimes I'm right. Though, to be fair, sometimes he is. Most often we probably land somewhere in the middle, accomplishing more than I thought we would, but less than he dreamed we would. I can't say whether it's better to be a pessimist realist and be pleasantly surprised or to be an optimist and be mildly disappointed.

Though Andrew isn't someone who gets disappointed often. He just is happy with what he accomplishes and moves whatever he didn't accomplish to his next to-do list. So...that's the optimist in him, I guess.

The reading loft (and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff)

Somehow I think the only record I have of Andrew building our reading loft is in a poem in Paradoxical Glory. In the poem I referred to it as a tree house, I believe, but really he built a reading loft in our basement. And somehow I missed ever writing about it. 

If I recall, I think I was "saving" it to write about for when it was "finished." 

I say that Andrew made it because that's largely true, but I will probably default to "we" because I helped...a bit. I'm mostly afraid of power tools, so I didn't help too much, but I did help with what I could. Andrew was oddly fixated on power tools when we first moved out here, which I attributed to his grieving process. I mean, he'd used power tools here and there throughout our marriage before 2019, but right around the year mark of Karen's death, Andrew had this sudden desire to really build something. 

His mom was the power tool user at his house growing up. She built a bunch of things—a little garden bridge, a picnic table set, cute little American girl doll beds. 

He just wanted to build something. And that's not an unhealthy outlet for grief. So we built a loft for the kids in the basement the week after Christmas in 2019 (a little over a year after Karen's death). 

Here is pictorial evidence of our nearly finished product (look how little all the kids were):

Pooping Contests and Grand Pianos

Did I ever  write about the time Alexander noticed the symbol denoting the number of players for a game, in this instance "2–5 players," and interpreted it to mean "pooping contest?"

It took us quite a while to figure out what he meant, while he very frustratedly insisted that we understand what he meant when he asked if we could play the "pooping contest game," in this instance Carcassone, but I'm sure there are other examples. 

This was just last year, so he was 3 or so. 

Well, yesterday we had this beast delivered:

Garage doors, libraries, and high fives

Andrew had to be on campus super early this morning, which was weird for several reasons. First of all, the semester hasn't even started, but Andrew is participating in a data science education workshop, so away he goes. Second, Andrew is not a morning person, but he's teaching a data science seminar-thing at 7:00 am for the next several weeks. It's online, but because he had to be on campus at 8:00 am for the workshop, he had to be on campus by 7:00 am to teach his seminar class beforehand (because he couldn't very well teach while he was commuting). Traffic in Atlanta can be gnarly, so Andrew calculated that to be safe he should leave the house by 5:15 am. 

So he did. 

And at 5:23 am I was (re-)awakened by a frenzied flurry of knockings on my bedroom door. 

I peeled myself away from Phoebe and tip-toe ran across the room to open it, where the ever-polite Alexander stood waiting to be rescued.

"What's wrong?" I asked. 

"I'm so, so scared!" he blubbered.

"How come?"

"I thought I heard...I thought I heard..." he hiccuped. "I thought I heard the garage going up and down! But it can't be!!!"

"Oh, you heard correctly, little buddy. The garage door was going up and down. Daddy has to go into campus today, remember? So..."

"IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?!?!"