Making our way through May

We had a nice start to the week with a fire in the backyard pit and a meal of roasted bratwurst with side salads, chips, and s'mores for dessert.  The missionaries cannot have dinners in people's homes but they can be with people outside (doing outdoor projects, etc.) so we invited the two sets of missionaries assigned to our ward to join us for dinner - along with Steven and Tamara.  The night was perfect, the fire was lovely (kept going by a very enthusiastic Elder Hawkins! - we actually had to have him hold back or he would have burned all of our wood), and the food was great.  Elder Hawkins is in the tan hoodie, Elder Pottle in the red hat, Sister Park with the longer hair and Sister Hinerman with the peach skirt.

Remember the robin that kept trying to build a nest above our front door?  Well, after we screened off that area, she built her nest above our family room window

and look what is inside!

I hope they grow up quickly and fly away because exterior painting has begun!  James started the first of last week and Steve and I will start this coming week.  James is tackling the high areas and we are doing the lower non-ladder-requiring areas.  You can already see a difference between the old and new...

I washed the shutters and took one down to the hardware store to match the color in order to repaint the front door that had so many chinks in it caused by cello cases through the years.  

 My plan was to remove the front door and paint both sides yesterday - Saturday - and have it up and hung by the time we went to bed.  Twas not meant to be.  First of all, Steve and I could not get the doorknob removed.  Thankfully, James was going to be in our part of town so he came over and managed to get it off and pronounced it so old that we really should get a new one.  So, that item went on a Menard's list.  Then, I washed the interior part of the door to get ready to paint it and look what started to happen....



Yep - the paint just started to peel off like old skin after a sunburn.  Only, it didn't completely peel off and what remained was hard to remove.  I looked up how to remove old latex paint and found ammonia - so, that went on to my Menards list.  But, since Steve had the car right then, I couldn't go shopping so I turned the door over and started painting the exterior side.  It ultimately took three coats and the rest of the day.



I tried the ammonia this morning - thinking it would be a quick fix - and it DID remove the remaining yellow latex paint (however not as easily as I had hoped) but it also removed the paint layer underneath wherever the ammonia touched!  What seemed like a simple project to do today just got more complicated so I have shelved it and will think about it tomorrow - when I can consult with James....

Another complication was that when James took out our old kitchen countertop and installed the new one, look what was wrong... 



Yeah, a back splash where it shouldn't be.  When we ordered this countertop, it was at the beginning of the stay-at-home orders and Home Depot could not send anyone to the house to do the measuring.  So, they had to depend upon amateurs to give them the information.  The measurements ARE actually correct but somehow the word "peninsula" never came up.  So, James took the new countertop off, put most of the old one back in along with the sink so we can have a functioning kitchen while he tries to iron out the problem with the Home Depot employee who wrote up the order (this happened on Thursday - she was off until Saturday - ugh) and while we wait for a new section to be made.  I do love how the new countertop is going to look, though.  Here it is while it was still up...

One positive home improvement note - Claudine Barner, mother to one of my cello students and someone who has a LOT of energy, has told me at least three times that she would be happy to finish painting our entryway that required climbing on a very tall ladder.  After I transcribed four solos from violin to cello (treble to bass clef) this week, I made her an offer - my time on Finale for her painting and she accepted.  She and her husband, John, came over yesterday afternoon and got the first coat on.  They will return tomorrow to paint coat number two and for Ethan to have a cello lesson.  Thus saving a bit of money we would have paid James.

  Of course, we continue to spend money on home items not planned for - like a new garbage disposal to replace the one that was probably original to the house.  And, to pay for a right front tire plus front struts and a right front wheel bearing after Steve accidently ran into a curb yesterday while running some errands.  The car won't be ready until late Monday or maybe not until Tuesday and it is going to be a pricy fix!  Sigh.  But, I really can't put Steve in the doghouse because it could have just as easily happened to me.  And, he outdid himself with a late Mother's Day gift last night:  THREE cards (he couldn't choose which one so he got all three), a lovely miniature potted yellow rose, a bag of Lindor truffles and a pount box of Russel Stover chocolates.  My hero.

Another hero is Steven who first met Steve at Plaza Tire and brought him home and who, later in the day, took me to Menards to buy my doorknob and ammonia.  So, weighing the week, I still think we came out on the positive side.

Mother's Day 2020

Today, for Mother's Day, I get to have Steve back home.  He had an out-patient kidney biopsy scheduled Thursday morning at University Hospital.  I dropped him off at 7:30 am (no family / visitors allowed in the building) expecting to pick him up sometime early afternoon after he recovered from a 9:30 procedure.  Well, routine pre-op blood work showed dangerously high calcium levels (yes - calcium, NOT potassium) and he had to be admitted  so they could hook him up to an IV of fluid and give him some lasix (a diuretic) and they wanted to keep him overnight!  Calcium levels on Friday were such that he had the procedure but again, he had to stay in the hospital Friday night.  Same with Saturday.  And, until about two hours ago, we thought he would be staying today!!!  Happily, I get to leave in a minute to bring him home.  We will not have the biopsy results until tomorrow and, for the unforeseen future, he can have no dairy in his diet.  

The first part of the week was fairly normal.  James has been working here all week - except Wednesday when it was very rainy.  He power washed the house, he worked on our gutters which were not draining properly due to the foundation settling, and he has been repairing our house siding to get ready for painting.  My projects this week were to buy exterior paint and I started washing windows.  I naively thought I could wash all of them yesterday but they turned out to be more involved so I will have to finish this coming week.  Our house windows are old - double hung - made of wood - the storm window tabs are mostly broken off so installing/removing them requires two needle-nose plyers and patience, and the screens do not come out that I can tell.  Bottom line - they do not clean easily.  One has to contort the arms to reach behind to get to all the glass.  And, for all those reasons, I have never really washed the windows in this house the entire twenty-four years  we've lived here!!!   Until yesterday.  And, it was as tedious and frustrating as I knew it would be.  But, when we sell this house, it will be with clean windows, by golly.

After Steve got stuck in the hospital, I just sort of threw routine out the window.  I watched movies and I finished tackling a big pile of Days For Girls sewing.  I didn't actually sew, I just re-assembled a box of cut fabric rectangles that had been prepared to make shields - but had been done wrong.  There were about 250 of these assembled "kits" waiting to be sewn and I discovered the hard way that they were not right.  I sewed about 20 of them a month ago and it was "oops - time to pick out the stitching and try again".  It took a few days and a few movies but all the kits are now properly put together and whoever ends up sewing them will have no problems.   The movies were "The Sound of Music" which Steve and I both watched early in the week, and, on my own, I saw "Sense and Sensibility" (the BBC version), both "Emma" movies (BBC and Gweneth Paltrow), and "Crazy Rich Asians".   

Last night, my friend Elizabeth came over for dinner.  We trade off going to each other's homes for dinner each month and it was our turn.  She had never had pork steak so that was on the menu.  She also had some damaged fuel canisters that are used with faux fire places that she needed to burn off and we have a fire pit so that was on the agenda as well as eating.  Wet conditions and rain had postponed this get-together a couple of times already so, even though Steve, the grill-meister,  was not going to be present, I decided to forge on and have our meal last night as planned.  Happily, I managed to not char the pork, and, it was a lovely night to burn old fuel canisters, even if it was surprisingly chilly.

When we re-planted our front strip to grass last fall, I transplanted these azaleas closer to the house and, happily, they lived and they are blooming.

Finally, my dessert from last week that was to die for.  Gluten-free Krusteas chocolate cake mix with a chocolate pudding filling between the layers and my mothers chocolate fudge icing.  The peppermint was leftover from Christmas.

Happy May!

Steve and Elise and I celebrated the new month with a cookout (bacon wrapped sirloins) and a little bonfire (toasted marshmallows).  The weather was absolutely perfect and there were no mosquitos!

The week began with FaceTime piano lessons with Noah, Lucy, and Quinn.  They are doing so well!  Emily says that they welcome the break from schoolwork to play the piano.  Noah has just taken off with his playing.  I also heard him play his cello and he is great on it, too.  I guess I will have to say "Thank you, coronavirus for making my grandkids so bored that they resort to practicing!"

Some GREAT news is that James has resumed work on the house.  He has been tackling our gutters (which, due to the settling, drain the wrong way) and our deck.  Hooray for moving forward.  Maybe we can list the house by the end of this month???????

I worked at Music Suite two days.  Here I am at work.

Steve and I watched three movies together throughout the week:  "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind", "The Farewell", and "Incredibles 2".  Of course, we had seen Incredibles twice before but it was a first time for the other two where it was interesting to see how different cultures live their lives.  It was shocking to realize that death by famine is still going on!  And, I hope I never have to attend a wedding event in China....SOOO LONG!!!  Oh, and I watched two movies on my own - "JoJo Rabbit" (funny, sad. JoJo and Yorkie are the cutest little boys EVER) and "Tall Girl" (oh, how I remember those days being the tallest girl around!)

I managed to fill my week with various activities:

 -sewing curtains for the downstairs bathroom and a slipcover for the rocking chair cushion so it now matches the piano bench cushion.

-washing door and window trim (all done in semi-gloss white) and touching up the dings in the paint

-working on an oil painting (my first since returning from Arizona)

-riding bikes with Steve every evening

-short stops at Dollar Tree, WalMart, and the post office one morning

Gas prices are AMAZING right now.  As are airline ticket prices.  Yesterday, I booked a trip for late September / early October to Utah and got two round trip tickets for just $411!!!

Lambson version "Groundhog Day"

Is it feeling like that for you, too?  Nothing new or exciting to report.  We thought James would be coming on Wednesday to resume work on the house but, nope.  Is this an exercise in patience or what? Yep.  Is it time to tell him to fish or cut bait?  Good question.  Will we find anyone else to do the work at the same prices? Nope!

In the meantime, yard work continues.  Steve and I got the grass seed planted in the backyard.  I straightened up the bricks that separate the back lawn from the back "wild" area and I pulled out "bad" plants (dandelions, invasive honeysuckle, trash trees) from about one third of that area.  I really believe that in this coming week - which is not supposed to be very rainy - we will have all the areas around the house cleaned out and then it will just be regular maintenance.

Everyone around us is receiving their stimulus checks.  Not us yet.  We just finally got our income taxes prepared on Thursday.  But, at least that is done and we have enough money saved in our income tax savings to cover the accountant, how much we owe, and have 77 dollars leftover.  Not bad!  All of our stimulus money will go to paying for the rest of our remodeling.

We finished up season one of the Mandalorian Tuesday night.  We had a Zoom discussion with Elise, Sarah, and Steven about season one of Picard.  We watched "Solo" on Netflix.  We watched our DVD copy of "The Rookie".  We ventured out to buy groceries one day and to two hardware stores another day.  We made a few ministering visits throughout the week.  One was to pick up some extra produce from Ron M. who got all of it from our local food pantry and he couldn't, or didn't want to, use it all.  This is what he passed on to us:  4 salmon filets, 6 bunches of asparagus, 2 bags of sweet potatoes, a mess of green beans, 3 dozen eggs.  I have no idea what he actually kept for himself.  But the question is......why is the food pantry giving a single man SO MUCH FOOD???!?!?!?  I shared the sweet potatoes and some of the asparagus with others, I froze the salmon and have found a couple of recipes to try, I blanched and froze the asparagus, I cooked the green beans, and I found a sweet potato muffin recipe I want to use since they are high in potassium and Steve can't eat them.

OH!!!  Sarah had a birthday on Friday - all by herself in Ogden, Utah.  She had to make her own ice cream cake for the first time and she did a terrific job.  She had a Zoom viewing of  "Field of Dreams" with some friends.  She went kayaking on Saturday.  We wished we could have been with her.

And, we bought gasoline yesterday at $1.26 per gallon......

Same old same old

Another week down in coronavirus world.  How many more to go????

Good news is that our contractor, James, texted that he hopes to start work on our exterior projects next week....

More good news is that our yard continues to look better and better.  Weeds are being pulled.  The sister missionaries came over Wednesday morning to help move that project along.  While they worked, Steve and I moved dirt from our backyard by-the-house beds (the ones that were surrounded by the landscape bricks I sold) over to the front of the house and now grass seed is planted there. 

Below is the area where the sister missionaries worked.  Next week it will get grass seed.  And below that are the areas from where Steve and I got the dirt AND the front yard all planted with grass seed.  

Friday was a cloudy, raw, nasty day but I went anyway with my friend Elizabeth to Home Depot to buy plants.  She got a whole bunch for her yard.  I just got some snapdragons to put in the pot on our front porch.  

Saturday was sunny, warmer, and perfect for working in the yard.  I bundled up the rest of the deck debris to set out for the trash next Friday.  All we have left are two very long boards that I guess James will have to cut up and haul off....

In addition to deck debris, the garage is full of stuff waiting for coronavirus to end: 

Stuff to take to hazardous waste disposal.

Stuff to take to Habitat For Humanity's ReStore (not the garden tools in front, though)

I WAS able to get rid of three bags of aluminum cans that I had been collecting along Blue Ridge road over the past several months during my morning walks.  I got a whole two dollars for them from a metal recycling place in town.  

Below is how our above-the-front-door looks.  No bird's nests ever since we installed the mesh.  Hooray!

I worked at the Music Suite two days last week.  Steve installed a toilet paper holder and a towel rack in the bathroom.  He is not really into the handy-man scene so for him to do this was a big deal.  I continued to work on Days for Girls stuff throughout the week - cutting & sewing.  And, we watched four movies over the week.  Well, I guess you can't call the Mandalorian a movie but we got in three episodes on Tuesday night.  We also watched "Field of Dreams" (Steve's April movie), "Troop Zero" (on Netflix - cute and quirky but the "bad guys" didn't get their comeuppance like they should have), and "Seabiscuit" (Steve picked this one our of our DVD collection and what a great movie! Glad we have it)

I will close with tulips from our front yard and violets in the back yard (they are my weed of choice)

Easter!!!

Yep, the Easter bunny (or should I say Easter lamb) came to our house!  And to the whole earth, in spite of Covid19.  

The pink blossoms were from a morning walk.  The white blossoms are our apple tree.  You can see from the first picture the purplish stuff growing around the base of the trunk - it is called hensbit and I have been gradually digging it up and putting grass seed in its place.  I have about a four-foot square patch left to tackle.  We had a frost one night last week and so, once again, Steve and I covered all our blossoming fruit trees with sheets.  However, since their radical pruning earlier this year, it wasn't such a difficult job..... the ones below are the apple trees and you can see where the new grass has been planted...

These are the cherry trees in the front yard the next morning and happily, all the blossoms survived the frost (although some of them didn't survive the sheets!  😒)

We sold our Mantis tiller on Friday through Facebook marketplace.  It was a finicky and annoying little machine from day one and so we hardly ever used it.  Since we don't plan to have a huge garden in St. Louis,  why keep it?  We are still trying to sell the chainsaw - our prospective buyer was a no call/no show yesterday.  Gas powered engines are a pain so we plan to buy an electric chainsaw with the profits of this sale.

Friday, Steve and I tackled the kitchen cabinets.  He removed and replaced hardware and I scrubbed off grime and glop.  These cabinets are odd in that they have two holes.  That would make one think that they were made for a handle.  But, they are so close together that there is not a handle anywhere that would work.  So, instead, a backplate was used to cover one of the holes and a knob was screwed in through the backplate hole.  It worked but it also looked dated.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do to solve the problem but I bought a set of 25 black knobs anyway.  And, then on Friday, in a flash of inspiration, I decided to screw knobs into both holes and "ta da"!  With the addition of five new drawer pulls, I really like the results.

 

I spent yesterday in the yard - digging up the hensbit around the apple tree and trying to get the part of our front yard into shape where the piers were placed.  The big machines kind of mixed up the good top soil with the icky clay soil and just plumped it all down in lumps when they finished.  Look up by the house especially.  And, by the sidewalk, the dirt made mud puddles every time it rained.  What I want is a slope of grass going down and away from the house and the driveway.  You can see small patches of grass trying to grow from the trauma it suffered in December.

BEFORE

It is kind of hard to tell but I leveled off the dirt up by the house and dug away the dirt by the sidewalk yesterday.  We have piles of good dirt in the backyard that were surrounded by the landscape brick I sold a couple of weeks ago. This coming week, Steve and I will haul that dirt to this front area and then plant grass seed. 

AFTER 

We have watched a lot of television - Steven came over on Tuesday and introduced us to the first three episodes of the Mandalorian and we finished up Season 1 of Picard yesterday.  We watched the live action Beauty and the Beast on Friday night and Star Trek Nemesis last night (tying in with Picard)  

I will close with a yard sign found in our neighborhood....

First week in April

It has been a lovely week and the warmer temperatures have brought more and more blossoms.  Here are some pictures around our house....

Steve and I have worked in the yard most every day.  One of the current objectives is to plant grass seed where gardens used to be.  Steve worked on the hybrid iris bed near the driveway and I worked on the apple tree area in the back.  As you can see, there is still more to do.  On the left is a weed called hensbit with little purple flowers.  Pretty but not a lawn.  I transplanted a little dwarf apple tree from our front yard to be by the other two apple trees (it is the smaller twig in the front of the other two) so now you could say that we have a little orchard.  I am also happy to see that, even though I pruned the fruit trees very radically, they are still alive and sending out little green leaves.

Elise came over three evenings so she and I could work on her t-shirt quilt project.  She has SO many t-shirts that we are going about it a little differently than other t-shirt quilts I have made.  With hers, we are focusing on cutting out just the actual design. Ultimately, all these small, medium, and large designs will be appliqued onto a large sheet in a free-format rather than rectangles on a grid.  We watched movies while we worked - Monday was "Lady In The Water", Tuesday was "Unbreakable" and Friday was the 1950's "Sabrina" (which Elise owns) because on Thursday evening, while I baked sugar cookies, Steve and I watched the 1995 "Sabrina".  

I decorated the sugar cookies yesterday morning and then we watched General Conference the rest of the day.  Steve is a ministering brother to Teresa Torres who has no access to any kind of internet so she joined us.  When I was not watching or eating or napping, I worked on face masks.  I hear mixed messages as to the effectiveness of homemade masks and I am actually leaning more towards the "they do not help" camp but Beckie asked if I could make some for herself and Kyle and Micah so I made several of two different styles.