Polish lessons with the Boy in the morning.
Finishing up a project in the afternoon.
around the house
Thursday
Yesterday, we bought a new piece of furniture for Papa. He doesn't have a closet, so we bought him something like a wardrobe. And the door opened violently as we were taking it out of the house (owners moving -- everything must go!) and the door broke right at one of the joints. So first thing this morning: round up some clamps from a neighbor and get to gluing.
I added "fix cabinet door" to my summer to-do list just so I could check it off.
Next, the kitchen counters need resealing and repolishing. The Boy was eager to help. He chattered away the whole time about how important it was to take care of our granite ("Daddy, what's granite?") and how we were such good homeowners to be so conscientious about everything and how it's important to spray all the sealers and polishes evenly (shortly after I told him that -- he likes to do that as it makes him feel adult) and a thousand and one other things.
Late afternoon: K comes back and sets about making another cobbler from the blueberries that are now ripening like mad every day.
And the Boy had to get in on that as well.
Wednesday
Pulled it apart, checked for clogs, cleaned out a bit of gunk, put it back together, and reinstalled it.
Still not working.
Dishwasher Fun
The dishwasher stopped draining. This was what our kitchen looked like at about ten this morning as a result. My hope was that it was the discharge hose — I envisioned hopefully a hose blocked with some something that comes out of the hose when I blast water through it from the backyard garden hose. To get that hose removed required, obviously, removing the dishwasher. And then nothing came out of the hose. Which meant that the blockage was somewhere in the pump itself.
“It’s still under warranty,” I thought. “I’m not going to mess with it further and potentially void the warranty. I’ll just call and have Lowe’s make good on the three-year extended warranty we bought in 2016.” Only, it wasn’t an extended warranty: that would indicate an extension of the manufacturer’s one-year warranty. It gets extended. Lengthened. Stretched. Increased.
Lowe’s verbiage, which I didn’t understand until today, is “Protection Plan.” The protection plan kicks in from the date of purchase, which means for the first year, you’re doubly covered. Which means it’s not an extension but a layering. And the protection plan expired — you’ll probably guess — on May 31. We had 1,095 days of coverage, and 17 days later, we need it.
The upshot of this — if there is one — is that I can now feel free to tinker all I want without fear of voiding the warranty. Because there is none anymore.
The Boy, though, loved the whole process. “You need me to get behind the dishwasher?” was a common refrain.
A Mess
I've been working to clean out our basement this week. Because of some shoddy renovation work -- well, shoddy cleanup -- we had a fair amount of concrete dust coating many things as well as the usual chaos that comes with leaving your basement to grow its on labyrinth of apathetic misplacement of tools and storage bins for four years.
Monday and Tuesday I worked on the metal and wood storage shelves that hold our plastic storage bins filled with camping items, old photographs, clothes the Boy has not yet grown into, and mysterious "why do we still have that?" items. Wednesday was the work bench as well as a few more shelves. (Everything takes so long because each item -- every single one -- needs to be wiped down, and the shelves took a long time because I moved them to one location temporarily to clean them and then had to move them back.)
Today, I began working on the other half of the room and final touches to the work bench. The after picture, as a result of not having time to put everything back in its place, looks worse than the before picture above.
In order to clean a mess, we often have to make one first. It's truism for most things in life, I think, but I often forget it. I want things to move ahead without ever moving back; I want lesson plans to come out perfect the first time; I want first drafts to be good enough to be final drafts; I want our kids to perfect things instantly. It's in the mess that we figure things out, though, and making a masterpiece always involves a mess beforehand.
I forget that when I come into the kitchen as K is cooking, though. I tend to clean things as I go along; K, not so much. The kitchen is a complete wreck when she's done cooking. Yet out of that mess comes little slices and ladles-full of perfection.
Garden
This is the first year we don't have any kind of garden.
At all. It's liberating.
Blossom
Crossing Over Again
Evening Shooting
The renovation project is nearing its end. The final exterior painting was completed today, but K decided she wanted to change one color -- the trim around the new windows will soon match the color of our newly-painted shutters.
The brown shutters seem to tone everything else down. Those old, peeling, white shutters just made the house look unplanned and neglected. With freshly-washed brick and newly-painted shutters, the house doesn't really look like it's from the late sixties -- except for the architecture, that is.
In the evening, some shooting.
Almost
Almost is a word that has so much wiggle room that it is almost meaningless. It can mean anything from "nowhere near" to "just moments from."
"How are you doing with that project?" I ask a student.
"I'm almost done," he replies, and depending on the student and what he's taught me to expect, I understand that to mean "not even started" to "doing final proofreading."
"How are you doing with that project?" K asks me.
"I'm almost done," I reply, and that means nearly done or no where near done, but most often it means, "This is taking me a lot longer than I had anticipated or planned for."
Seven years ago, the Boy was almost here. It was just after we'd gone to bed on a Sunday night that K woke me with, "My water broke." By about half past eleven that Sunday (Mother's Day), we were at the hospital. By one in the morning, we were holding E.
For the last few weeks, we've felt like we're almost done with this renovation, almost ready to move Nana and Papa into their little apartment as they've taken to calling it. The floors are done everywhere; the power is on; the lights are hooked up; the washer and drier are installed; the sink is almost ready. Yet so much remaining. The bed for Papa sits in parts in our living room, with the headboard and footboard set to arrive later this week. The toilet sits in its box, ready for installation. The shower needs to be completed, and the exterior needs painting. There's still so much to do, and so little to do.
Tonight, with a little help from the Boy, I got a little more done: the drainage system is 99% complete. We need a new downspout for the back corner, and as such, I've yet to make the final cuts on the PVC for the drainage outlet there.
I stuck some PVC in to keep dirt from getting into the system while I filled in the gravel and dirt, but ti' about 24 inches too tall at least.
It's relatively smooth, relatively done. Almost -- just like every other almost.