Tuesday, March 5
No one was available to play the fishing game with Ella so she decided to play
Saturday, February 23
Cross country skiing is a bit trickier with 30 pounds on your back.
Friday, February 22
Just finished shoveling. Doesn't it look nice? More snow this month than the las
Friday, January 25
Feet
Friday, December 28
Room by Room pt 3
Continuing our tour through our new house, today we're looking at:
ANOTHER TRIPLE FEATURE -- Upstairs Bathroom / Main Floor Bathroom / DownstairsSpiderRoom Bathroom
Who wants to talk about bathrooms? If you raised your hand, it might have to ask you to please leave my blog and never return. They're a necessary part of the house, for sure. And we spend more time there than we probably realize. Plus, our house has 4 of them. Yes, when we get home from a long road trip, we can all run to the bathroom at the same time! If that's not living it up, I don't know what is. I've covered the master bath, so today we'll cover the other 3.
The upstairs bathroom is doomed to a life of elastic bands and blonde hair all over the floor. This bath has the only bathtub in the house, and a fair amount of drawers and storage space. (Like hot sauce and winter weather, descriptions of the size of storage space has as much to do with what you're used to as it does with what you have.) There is some potential dead space in the back behind the tub that has been utilized with some glass shelves that go from wall to wall (it's only 2 feet or so) which is a nice use of space. The mirror is big and nice, and the lights dim, so you can set the right mood for forcing your children to brush their teeth.
One thing that the previous owners apparently didn't believe in is toilet paper roll holders. Neither this bathroom, nor the one on the main floor had one until this morning. While willing to leave the TP homeless and left to a nomadic life sitting on the counter (not entirely fair from me here; the previous owners had a free-standing TP holder) the bathroom does have a very important blow dryer holster mounted to the wall. I'm not sure why suspending the blow dryer 3 inches above the counter is better than setting it down, but surely there must be a reason. The hook total keeps climbing in this room, with 6 mounted on the back of the door for towels and whatnot.
The main floor bath is just a little half bath which hides behind a pocket door. I don't know what, it is about pocket doors, but I've always liked them. This bathroom has a medicine cabinet as well as a small wall-mounted shelf, which helps make up for the fact that there is no enclosed storage underneath the sink. Whatever you put down there the whole world has to look at.
I really like the water-pump style faucet. We need more reading material in there, because I can tell you that the paint job is mediocre. All the bathrooms in the house are equipped with exhaust fans, but this bathroom has one with an additional built in light! Oooooh!
In our first trip to the basement on the tour, we'll take a look at the oft-forgotten 4th bathroom. (I imagine this tour being done in the style of "Clue" (the movie) with us all running from room to room in whatever random order I'm choosing for this tour.) This bathroom has a shower and is fully functional, though clearly not all that nice. But, it does have a TP holder, and a hook for a towel.
I have yet to use the facilities down here, and in the month we've been in the home we've probably only used it once or twice. I've found a few spiders down here, which isn't surprising, and doesn't make me want to start making any regular visits. The purpose of this bathroom is just to save us from an accident when some kid is playing downstairs too long and suddenly realizes that they've got to go RIGHT NOW. In a few more years, I'm sure there will be some sleepovers down there, and we'll be able to lock the kids down there and hopefully not hear from them all night long.
Best thing: The faucet in the main floor bath just manages to beat out the pocket door.
Worst thing: Spiders!
ANOTHER TRIPLE FEATURE -- Upstairs Bathroom / Main Floor Bathroom / Downstairs
Who wants to talk about bathrooms? If you raised your hand, it might have to ask you to please leave my blog and never return. They're a necessary part of the house, for sure. And we spend more time there than we probably realize. Plus, our house has 4 of them. Yes, when we get home from a long road trip, we can all run to the bathroom at the same time! If that's not living it up, I don't know what is. I've covered the master bath, so today we'll cover the other 3.
The upstairs bathroom is doomed to a life of elastic bands and blonde hair all over the floor. This bath has the only bathtub in the house, and a fair amount of drawers and storage space. (Like hot sauce and winter weather, descriptions of the size of storage space has as much to do with what you're used to as it does with what you have.) There is some potential dead space in the back behind the tub that has been utilized with some glass shelves that go from wall to wall (it's only 2 feet or so) which is a nice use of space. The mirror is big and nice, and the lights dim, so you can set the right mood for forcing your children to brush their teeth.
One thing that the previous owners apparently didn't believe in is toilet paper roll holders. Neither this bathroom, nor the one on the main floor had one until this morning. While willing to leave the TP homeless and left to a nomadic life sitting on the counter (not entirely fair from me here; the previous owners had a free-standing TP holder) the bathroom does have a very important blow dryer holster mounted to the wall. I'm not sure why suspending the blow dryer 3 inches above the counter is better than setting it down, but surely there must be a reason. The hook total keeps climbing in this room, with 6 mounted on the back of the door for towels and whatnot.
The main floor bath is just a little half bath which hides behind a pocket door. I don't know what, it is about pocket doors, but I've always liked them. This bathroom has a medicine cabinet as well as a small wall-mounted shelf, which helps make up for the fact that there is no enclosed storage underneath the sink. Whatever you put down there the whole world has to look at.
I really like the water-pump style faucet. We need more reading material in there, because I can tell you that the paint job is mediocre. All the bathrooms in the house are equipped with exhaust fans, but this bathroom has one with an additional built in light! Oooooh!
In our first trip to the basement on the tour, we'll take a look at the oft-forgotten 4th bathroom. (I imagine this tour being done in the style of "Clue" (the movie) with us all running from room to room in whatever random order I'm choosing for this tour.) This bathroom has a shower and is fully functional, though clearly not all that nice. But, it does have a TP holder, and a hook for a towel.
I have yet to use the facilities down here, and in the month we've been in the home we've probably only used it once or twice. I've found a few spiders down here, which isn't surprising, and doesn't make me want to start making any regular visits. The purpose of this bathroom is just to save us from an accident when some kid is playing downstairs too long and suddenly realizes that they've got to go RIGHT NOW. In a few more years, I'm sure there will be some sleepovers down there, and we'll be able to lock the kids down there and hopefully not hear from them all night long.
Best thing: The faucet in the main floor bath just manages to beat out the pocket door.
Worst thing: Spiders!
Tuesday, December 18
Room by Room, pt 2
Continuing our tour through our new house, today we're looking at:
TRIPLE FEATURE -- Ella's Room / Julia's Room / Green Room !!!!
My attention span is way too short to go through one room at a time. And besides, bedrooms are kinda boring. 4 walls, a door and a closet. But, here we go:
The Green Room wasn't just named so because it was our staging room while working on our master bedroom. It's also really green. With, of course, the blue, yellow and red stripes down at the bottom. The room makes me feel like I'm inside a Crayola box. It's easily the biggest of the other three bedrooms, but has the most glaring downsides, which are the color, the very small closet (only about 4 feet wide), and the world's worst curtains. Seriously, they're yellow, barely opaque at all, and remind me of making curtains out of a low quality used Jr. Jazz jersey. But other than that, the room is great! The room is currently empty, because we really don't need it right now. Someday we'll either have some guests to make use of it, or perhaps another kid. We don't have any furniture to go in there, so for now it stays empty.
Julia's room is the most boring of the rooms. White walls, regular closet and non-hideous curtains. She was very excited about the pink light switch cover, though, which was her main reasoning for picking the room. With both girls we haven't worried about the quality or color of the paint on the walls because I don't think we'll ever be seeing it much. Julia has already done a pretty good job of getting her artwork up on the walls. I'm sure Ella won't be far behind. As we now have a basement where girls can play and toys can be messy, we're trying to strike a balance between toys and messes in their rooms vs the basement. Evidently Julia still prefers her room for cutting pieces of paper into confetti. The girls also got to pick rugs out for their bedrooms. Julia very specifically wanted something pink and fuzzy. We went to 5 or 6 stores before finding this one, which didn't quite put her into over-the-top euphoria, but at least made her happy. (She wanted an oval rug.)
Ella's room is very much like Julia's. It's square, same closet, blue and grey walls (very masculine) and ok-sized, but not huge. It came with a move-in surprise, however: the hanging chair! This has been a big hit with both the girls from the very beginning. We weren't expecting it to come with the house, but it did, and we're ok with that. I've been very diligent about reminding everyone that it is a chair, not a swing, even to the point of correcting people if they don't call it a chair. (They're all probably getting tired of that.) Amazingly, Julia hasn't thrown any fits over the fact that the chair is in Ella's room and not hers. She hasn't demanded her own chair, either. All I can think of is that she considers the chair and the pink light switch cover a fair trade. No complaints from her means no complaints from me.
Best thing: The swing chair.
Worst thing: The terrible yellow curtains. But since those are so easily thrown away and replaced, I'll change my vote to the very small closet in the Green Room. If anyone ever lives in there, they might complain about that, particularly if they're a teen-age girl.
Sunday, December 16
Room by Room
About a month ago, we moved out of our apartment and into a house. As both of our blogs went almost completely dark. (Not that my blog isn't prone to doing that from time to time anyway.) As virtually all readers of my blog live far away from here, and realistically will never come visit, I figured I'd give a tour of our home, one room at a time. We gave Shannon's parents a skype-tour by carrying the laptop around the house, but you'll have to ask them if it was useful, or just nauseating.
Least favorite thing: The small shower. This could be partially solved by re-working the shower head so it doesn't stick so far out into the shower space.
We start the tour with: the Master Bedroom
We're heading straight to my bedroom, because it's already had a partial unveiling on facebook. This room is the only one that required work before we could move in. Yes, a purple paint job (with bronze/copper by the windows!) moved the room into the "requires work" category. I think a picture is in order so you can appreciate what we had to work with:
Because we've got 4 bedrooms, Shannon and lived in the Green Room (pun intended) until the master could be repainted. Together, Shannon and I had zero prior painting experience. But, armed with videos from the internet, advice from Home Depot employees and the firm knowledge that it can't get worse than purple, we painted our room gray ("Manhattan Mist") with white trim, to match the already white baseboards. Before I allow anyone into my bedroom, I think I'll make them sign a waiver to never closely inspect the paint job. It's not perfect, but so long as I keep the photos sufficiently small on my blog, it looks pretty good.
The room is 12'x15' or so, with the two window bump-outs. On one side of the room we have a walk-in closet which is probably about 4'x10'. It's sufficient for our needs, and thankfully not purple. On the other side of the room is the master bath. The shower is a bit on the small side, but everything works, and we've got a total of eight electrical outlets. Let's see . . . curling iron, straightening iron, blow dryer, electric razor, air freshener, electric toothbrush (x2) and . . . I can't even think of an 8th thing to plug in. Suggestions? (Christmas present opportunities?) Not that we even own half the things I listed, or regularly use those that we do have. For the record, I'm not sure if all 8 are on one circuit. They're all next to each other, so I assume they are, in which case you may not be able to run all those things at once anyway. Two recurring things I'll be highlighting on our tour are dimmer switches and hooks. We have at least 11 dimmer switches, and close to 40 hooks. (I'm not sure of the number, but we'll all know by the time we're done.) Our bedroom and bathroom both have dimmer switches. I guess it's nice to set the amount of light in my bedroom and bathroom at just the levels I want. The bathroom has 6 hooks for towels and robes and whatnot, and 4 hooks in the closet. Flooring in all the bedrooms is laminate (looks like wood).
A final note about this tour: I'm putting in lots of pictures, and they'll show the house as it was when I decided to take the pictures. I'm not cleaning up for you guys! A lot of the walls are still bare, and things are dirty, and I don't care!
Favorite thing about the room: That it's no longer purple. Also, the bathroom is plenty big for storing our stuff in the various drawers and cabinets, with room for collecting dirty clothes, too.
Sunday, November 4
Non-periodic Self Locomotion Update
I can't begin to call this "monthly" these days. But here's an update:
Miles complete as of 11/4/12: 883.25
Progress vs target: +38.99 miles
The chart below shows how we've done over the whole year. Up is bad, down is good. August we did well (96.3 miles) followed by a weak September (74.2 miles). We gave up a lot of our gains and peaked at just 15 miles ahead of pace near the end of the month. With fall and then winter still ahead of us, I was a bit worried about our prospects of churning out high mileage months as the weather worsened. The solution? Call in Grammie and Opa! Shannon's parents came for a week or so at the beginning of October, and we turned into self locomoting fiends! We logged nearly 28 miles in a 5 day stretch. G&O like walking, so they went out nearly every day with Shannon and the girls (and the girls were much more excited to go on walks if G&O were going too!). Then in the evening or the weekend, it was a lot easier for me to get out and go running knowing that G&O could play with the girls while Shannon was making dinner or something like that. So, basically, the trick to having more time to exercise is to have two people at your house full time to take care of your kids! Who knew?!?! October ended with 102.1 miles, our second highest month of the year. (And it was nice to break 100 after June, July and August all ended between 95 and 100.)
As a result, we're feeling much more optimistic about reaching 1,000 miles for the year than we did a month ago. We need 2.05 miles per day in order to get there. With only 116.75 miles remaining, I figure we're a virtual lock to get within 30 or 40 miles of our goal, and if we get that close, we won't miss it, because in the closing weeks of the year, we'd start doing crazy death marches through the snow rather then end up at 984 miles for the year or something like that.
It's also interesting to note that the girls are at a combined 68 miles right now. The likelihood of us topping 1,068 is very low, which means that you could argue that it will be the girls that put us "over the top". It's fun to see that, because at the beginning of the year we talked about this being a family goal. If I had gone out and run 1,000 miles by myself this year, that would have been pretty awesome and all, but it wouldn't make this much of a family accomplishment.
And finally, our goal of 1,000 continues to look like a very good goal, despite the fact that we just sorta picked a nice round number. Without the goal, I don't think we'd have nearly as many miles logged this year. (Well, we wouldn't have created a log at all, but you know what I mean.) It's probably added two or three hundred miles to our total. The fact that we're just barely meeting it is interesting. Are we capable of more, if we had a tougher goal? What number do we pick for next year? (The girls are less and less excited to take walks with each passing month.)
Miles complete as of 11/4/12: 883.25
Progress vs target: +38.99 miles
The chart below shows how we've done over the whole year. Up is bad, down is good. August we did well (96.3 miles) followed by a weak September (74.2 miles). We gave up a lot of our gains and peaked at just 15 miles ahead of pace near the end of the month. With fall and then winter still ahead of us, I was a bit worried about our prospects of churning out high mileage months as the weather worsened. The solution? Call in Grammie and Opa! Shannon's parents came for a week or so at the beginning of October, and we turned into self locomoting fiends! We logged nearly 28 miles in a 5 day stretch. G&O like walking, so they went out nearly every day with Shannon and the girls (and the girls were much more excited to go on walks if G&O were going too!). Then in the evening or the weekend, it was a lot easier for me to get out and go running knowing that G&O could play with the girls while Shannon was making dinner or something like that. So, basically, the trick to having more time to exercise is to have two people at your house full time to take care of your kids! Who knew?!?! October ended with 102.1 miles, our second highest month of the year. (And it was nice to break 100 after June, July and August all ended between 95 and 100.)
It's also interesting to note that the girls are at a combined 68 miles right now. The likelihood of us topping 1,068 is very low, which means that you could argue that it will be the girls that put us "over the top". It's fun to see that, because at the beginning of the year we talked about this being a family goal. If I had gone out and run 1,000 miles by myself this year, that would have been pretty awesome and all, but it wouldn't make this much of a family accomplishment.
And finally, our goal of 1,000 continues to look like a very good goal, despite the fact that we just sorta picked a nice round number. Without the goal, I don't think we'd have nearly as many miles logged this year. (Well, we wouldn't have created a log at all, but you know what I mean.) It's probably added two or three hundred miles to our total. The fact that we're just barely meeting it is interesting. Are we capable of more, if we had a tougher goal? What number do we pick for next year? (The girls are less and less excited to take walks with each passing month.)
Monday, October 22
Allergy Update
My family likes to be allergic to things. It's sort of a past time for us. We're all allergic to those "normal" things: dogs, cats, horses, things that pollinate. You know, the usual. My oldest sister seems to have won the "normal" allergy lottery. As near as I can tell she is allergic to every plant on earth. While that's certainly no fun for her, I think it's generally manageable, and certainly easy for people to understand.
My 3rd sister, she's the one that got lucky in the "deadly allergy" category. She's allergic to aspirin. (Or, as the people who made her medical alert bracelet like to call it: "aspirn". The last time she took aspirin, it landed her in the emergency room, and, from what I understand, that wasn't any fun. So, I guess she gets to live her life reminding her family and close friends that she has a serious allergy that medical professionals would need to be aware of, and she needs to check medications carefully to see if they have aspirin (or aspirin-like) substances in them. I get the impression that includes more drugs than you'd think.
If you're wondering about sister #2, she seems to have avoided the worst of the allergy-curse, but she did get Dad's crazy eye condition. I'd like to thank her for diving on that genetic hand grenade in order to save the rest of us.
So, this clearly brings us to me. I've documented before about my allergies to various foods: peas, kiwi, fish, refried beans, canned chili, and garbanzo beans. (Pretty much, I'm wary of all beans these days. Black beans seem to be holding out, which seems to make some sense, since I ate them every day for 2 consecutive years and all . . . but I keep waiting for those to join their beany friends on the list of foods trying to kill me.) As I've progressed through my 20s (and into my 30s), the slowly increasing list of food allergies has been partially offset by decreasing allergies in the "classic" category. Dogs and cats aren't instant disasters of red, puffy eyes and runny noses anymore. And I haven't dealt with seasonal allergies for years. I can say all of this without feeling a need to "knock on wood," because life keeps finding other things to keep me all histamined-up.
As of this week, I am apparently allergic to . . . . drum roll please . . . . exercise! Ta da! Now, I'm sure the majority of you are already clicking on that comment button to make a joke ("OMG! I'm so allergic, too!") I want both of you to hold on for a minute. This is no metaphorical allergy. This is a red, itchy, skin with swelling lip and what-the-heck-I-can-tell-from-across-the-room-that-something-is-up-with-your-eyelid, all too depressingly literal allergic reaction.
Let me explain. Last Friday, I went for a run. It was 3.76 miles in a bit over 27 minutes. Neither of those numbers are in any way abnormal for me. (Don't make me produce a graph to prove that. Please. For all of our sakes.) I wore nothing that I hadn't worn before. I ate nothing that I hadn't eaten before. I didn't run anywhere that I hadn't run before. And about the time I got home, various parts of me were swelling up or turning red and itchy. It got to the point that I could see my eyelid out of the corner of my eye. Symptoms lasted perhaps close to an hour before gradually fading away. Awesome. Now I'm allergic to exercise. Because, you know, it's not like I've ever exercised before. It's not like I've run 700 miles in the last 30 months. Or played basketball once or twice a week for the last 2 years. But apparently, last Friday, I had to be allergic.
Upon consulting with both the internet and a doctor, it seems I have exercise-induced urticaria. It may pop up again, but who knows when. It can be treated with antihistamines. It could be serious, but has only caused one death. Or, I suppose, it might never come back again. It can be diet related, and foods that have been implicated include "seafood, celery, wheat and cheese,"* as well as aspirin. (Seriously?!?! Another 10 years of this and I'll be living on rice and vitamin pills.) I'm personally suspicious of my legume allergy that might have contributed to the outbreak. You remember my list of mis-matched allergens? We don't commonly group them together, but peas and beans are both legumes, and on the day of outbreak, an hour or so before going running, I had an unusual (for me) quantity of another legume: peanuts.
Ever the soul of caution, I went for a run the very next day. Did about 6.5 miles this time. Don't worry, I at least made sure my route passed several friends houses, as well as my consulting physician (not my physician, but I did consult with him . . . after this run). The result: no problems at all. Everyone inspected my skin and eyelids when I got home with nary a speck of swelling. So, that's life now. Shannon points out that I'm the ultimate nerd now. Does this seem like a condition that Dr. Sheldon Cooper would have?
* Warning, this link has all sorts of doctor-y words, such as: erythematous, leukotrienes, dyspnea, pruritus, and many others.
My 3rd sister, she's the one that got lucky in the "deadly allergy" category. She's allergic to aspirin. (Or, as the people who made her medical alert bracelet like to call it: "aspirn". The last time she took aspirin, it landed her in the emergency room, and, from what I understand, that wasn't any fun. So, I guess she gets to live her life reminding her family and close friends that she has a serious allergy that medical professionals would need to be aware of, and she needs to check medications carefully to see if they have aspirin (or aspirin-like) substances in them. I get the impression that includes more drugs than you'd think.
If you're wondering about sister #2, she seems to have avoided the worst of the allergy-curse, but she did get Dad's crazy eye condition. I'd like to thank her for diving on that genetic hand grenade in order to save the rest of us.
So, this clearly brings us to me. I've documented before about my allergies to various foods: peas, kiwi, fish, refried beans, canned chili, and garbanzo beans. (Pretty much, I'm wary of all beans these days. Black beans seem to be holding out, which seems to make some sense, since I ate them every day for 2 consecutive years and all . . . but I keep waiting for those to join their beany friends on the list of foods trying to kill me.) As I've progressed through my 20s (and into my 30s), the slowly increasing list of food allergies has been partially offset by decreasing allergies in the "classic" category. Dogs and cats aren't instant disasters of red, puffy eyes and runny noses anymore. And I haven't dealt with seasonal allergies for years. I can say all of this without feeling a need to "knock on wood," because life keeps finding other things to keep me all histamined-up.
As of this week, I am apparently allergic to . . . . drum roll please . . . . exercise! Ta da! Now, I'm sure the majority of you are already clicking on that comment button to make a joke ("OMG! I'm so allergic, too!") I want both of you to hold on for a minute. This is no metaphorical allergy. This is a red, itchy, skin with swelling lip and what-the-heck-I-can-tell-from-across-the-room-that-something-is-up-with-your-eyelid, all too depressingly literal allergic reaction.
Let me explain. Last Friday, I went for a run. It was 3.76 miles in a bit over 27 minutes. Neither of those numbers are in any way abnormal for me. (Don't make me produce a graph to prove that. Please. For all of our sakes.) I wore nothing that I hadn't worn before. I ate nothing that I hadn't eaten before. I didn't run anywhere that I hadn't run before. And about the time I got home, various parts of me were swelling up or turning red and itchy. It got to the point that I could see my eyelid out of the corner of my eye. Symptoms lasted perhaps close to an hour before gradually fading away. Awesome. Now I'm allergic to exercise. Because, you know, it's not like I've ever exercised before. It's not like I've run 700 miles in the last 30 months. Or played basketball once or twice a week for the last 2 years. But apparently, last Friday, I had to be allergic.
Upon consulting with both the internet and a doctor, it seems I have exercise-induced urticaria. It may pop up again, but who knows when. It can be treated with antihistamines. It could be serious, but has only caused one death. Or, I suppose, it might never come back again. It can be diet related, and foods that have been implicated include "seafood, celery, wheat and cheese,"* as well as aspirin. (Seriously?!?! Another 10 years of this and I'll be living on rice and vitamin pills.) I'm personally suspicious of my legume allergy that might have contributed to the outbreak. You remember my list of mis-matched allergens? We don't commonly group them together, but peas and beans are both legumes, and on the day of outbreak, an hour or so before going running, I had an unusual (for me) quantity of another legume: peanuts.
Ever the soul of caution, I went for a run the very next day. Did about 6.5 miles this time. Don't worry, I at least made sure my route passed several friends houses, as well as my consulting physician (not my physician, but I did consult with him . . . after this run). The result: no problems at all. Everyone inspected my skin and eyelids when I got home with nary a speck of swelling. So, that's life now. Shannon points out that I'm the ultimate nerd now. Does this seem like a condition that Dr. Sheldon Cooper would have?
* Warning, this link has all sorts of doctor-y words, such as: erythematous, leukotrienes, dyspnea, pruritus, and many others.
Wednesday, October 17
Paint my bedroom
Alright my legion of readers. I need your fashion design input! You may not have heard, but we're buying a house! It's practically perfect in every way, but one of the features that I don't particularly like is the color of the master bedroom. It's purple. If I had more X chromosomes, I'd probably have a better description of what sort of purple, and just calling it "purple" probably makes it sound worse than it really is. But that's not the point. The point is: I don't like it, and I want my room to be a different color, but I don't know what color I want. This is where you come in. I'm now accepting suggestions for wall colors. There are four walls to work with, and they don't all have to be the same color, so get as wild as you want - but not too wild, or I won't pick your idea.
The room has a wood floor (technically laminate, but it looks like wood) and our furniture is of the "eclectic/not-matchy" style, so I think you can more or less do whatever you want. I await with eagerness your suggestions, because while white is fine, it's also kinda boring.
The room has a wood floor (technically laminate, but it looks like wood) and our furniture is of the "eclectic/not-matchy" style, so I think you can more or less do whatever you want. I await with eagerness your suggestions, because while white is fine, it's also kinda boring.
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