Garden of Thought

The conveyor belt of life goes into Grand gear

2020-11-28T02:06:48Z

Wow, what a year amiright? I was stuck in my old house until September with my hubby holed up in the new house because he wanted to isolate while he worked on it and on his online job. This was okay, actually, if frustrating for me as I fretted over the new house's yard getting overgrown and whined about not getting to see the spring or summer flowers so I still don't really know what this yard has in it. BUT I was with my daughter and son-in-law in the old house which also needed work, and got to be there for her through her Expectation, as we are expecting a wee one in just a couple weeks here.

In Sept my hubby decided to head back to our little condo in CA to continue his hermitage so I was finally able to move furniture in and be Home. For about a week. Then our state caught fire and I had to go back to the old house which had a functional climate system unlike the unfinished new one. A couple weeks later, I could finally return so I've really only been "Home" for 2 months though we bought the house over a year ago.

Got a lot of work done on it in that time, and there's more in progress (the saga of the bathroom floor, the epic tale of the woeful furnace ducting, the gripping tale of the bedroom ceiling...)

And now we find they may induce my daughter a little early (still very close to due though, so not preemie time) meaning I am lurching into Grand level life very soon indeed. Next weekend, if all goes as planned (or as planned as such things can be). Time to roll up my sleeves and help a clueless young couple figure out which way is up on a baby!

Hope all is well with everyone out there, I've barely been online so I feel like I've lost track of a lot of you, bless you all.

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The pantry finale

2020-03-31T15:19:47Z

The pantry is finished up! The oversized bird-of-paradise made a good focal point, all of it will be behind metal wire shelves so it had to pop to still show up like I wanted it to. It's crazy enough for a nice zap of color when I want one but not out in daily use so it doesn't overwhelm the overall house feel.

The furnace hole was covered with a painted ceiling tile, and the embedded pipe was capped and painted white, I think I'll probably attach something dangly to it with magnets. Oh, and I put a giant wooden banana cutout over the door because everyone needs a giant wooden banana cutout over their pantry door.

Voila!

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Onward to painting a tropical pantry

2020-03-30T19:02:10Z

Our house weirdly came with two furnaces (one at either end) so we are in the process of notching the foundation and connecting the two ducting networks to make only one furnace. Where the second was pulled out is the perfect spot for a small pantry instead SO I decided that would be the uber-bright snap of color spot since it is only seen when putting away or fetching groceries. This project took me sooo long to do... My own fault for so many colors, all needing multiple layers and touch-ups.
Starting off... random outlining mostly. My only concrete idea was one oversized flower in it.

Details sloooowly filling in:

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So many painting projects

2020-03-30T01:29:57Z

Wow, how did I let this much time lapse over here? Funny how our online habits make us go wandering off sometimes. I've mostly been working on our new house and it's a real time-sucker sometimes.

It was almost entirely grey inside when we got it - putty grey ceilings, walls, grey carpets. I swapped out black light fixtures for crystal ones and put in carpets in minty aqua, forest green, cream and fern-leaf textured golden tones. Walls went from light grey to green, pink, yellow, blue and aqua and then the fun began of painting accents and murals!

SUPER time consuming but I've really enjoyed the new look. And since we've had issues with water pipes and furnaces to take care of it helped fill that time so I wasn't so antsy about moving taking so very long.

First project was the grey ceiling of the third bedroom we're using as the art/hobby/guest room:

And while waiting for the various layers to dry on that one, here's what I was up to at the other end of the house. I was thinking "kind of art nouveau" and this is what I ended up with:

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The Pre-Moving yippy argh time

2019-10-02T00:20:41Z

Sellers just agreed to our repair list and our loan is ticking along through the credit union just fine so I got excited and ordered address labels (hey, they better not change anything now! I ordered, y'know, ADDRESS LABELS). Heh.

Yippy! I get to pick out new paint and carpet! Aaargh! I have to find new paint and carpet that I actually like! What's with all these weird muddy colors out there? Why is so much interior decorating stuff the color of baby food or dirt?

I spent the day dredging stuff out of our lean-to and greenhouse, spreading half-full bags of fertilizer and dirt and such here and there around the property just to get rid of them, yippy! I am the Dirt Fairy! Aargh, why in heaven's name did I save so many plastic pots? I threw some away, others I think I'll take to the local nursery and see if they want to repurpose them. But really - SO. MANY. POTS. If the zombie apocolypse starts this month and the zombies can be held off by putting pots on their heads, I have us covered.

And what do I do with the entire front end of a truck? I'll have to find out where large metal thingys go. Then there's the giant pile of brush and branches that will have to be chipped... dear me. God bless people who are moving, we need all the help we can get.

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Hexagonal house pics

2019-09-22T15:47:49Z

Here's a handful of pictures! The front (everything is angled so it's a half-circle drive too) - even the garage is a slight parallogram instead of a rectangle.

I picked up some paint chip samples yesterday, a big wad weighing down my purse by the time I fished through them all, and next I need to go look at carpet for the bedrooms - I don't have any grey in my house at all and this has grey carpets throughout so they have to goooo.

I want to put shiny, multi-tone tile over the lower fireplace bricks. The kitchen is just off of the living rm -

with the various rooms coming off of the hall at fun angles -

I love the courtyard especially, the pergola has a propane fire pit in it and a waterfall with koi beside it. Guess I'll need to buy fish food!

SO much to do in the next couple of months...oy..... but happy with it!

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We just got a house offer accepted!

2019-09-21T00:19:33Z

Found a house! (been looking for nearly two years now) and made an offer - and now it's accepted and now we're going "Yay! Oh no! Yay! Oh dear! Yay! Oooooh boy look at all the things we have to do! Yay! Aaaargh! Yay!....."

I love the house though the kitchen is a little smaller than I would like, now the inspection has to happen this next week and I have to pray they don't find any 'deal-breakers' in that. It's so wonderfully funky, a mid-century modern with hexagonal living room and a fireplace tower going up to a cupola in the middle of it, an angled courtyard with a little waterfall into a small koi pond, an outdoor fireplace, a pergola with wisteria over it... aaaaa! It's difficult to wait for all the details and papers to work their way through now.

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Here comes a busy 2019

2019-01-01T21:01:57Z

What a crazy year coming up... I feel like a pack mule. I'm busy helping my son prep to move out this next week (hoorah, he finally managed to get a place! Or part of one. A room in a shared house anyway). It's just me and him to move stuff and the room is upstairs so hopefully that will go without too many mishaps.

I'm hosting not one but TWO bridal showers in Feb (one for relatives and then a tea for friends the following week) followed by...

The Wedding in March for my daughter and new son-in-law! With the three bridesmaids being a)in Japan b)working and super busy and c)incommunicado and living far away it means pretty much all of it lands on me. Again. Oogh.

The new couple then need to move from the coast back to the city area to be nearer to his base. Guess who's the main person available with a car to help out? Present!

On top of that, we finished all our loan approval stuff and are actively seeking a single-level house so I'll be moving and selling this house as well (please God, not during the wedding).

I'm looking forward to Autumn already because by then most of this stuff will over. :-p

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The unearthly koosh-ball

2018-08-31T14:47:45Z

My husband liked to juggle but hasn't done it much recently, so when I came across our old basket of koosh balls I thought I'd sort through them. Discovered the really old ones were getting brittle as the rubber had aged, kind of like old rubber bands, so when they were tossed they shed little bits of koosh everywhere. Threw the guilty ones into the wastebasket and forgot about it.

Woke up in the middle of the night to an unearthly glow coming from the wastebasket in my room. Half-asleep me was a bit wigged out for a moment before tracking it to a glow-in-the-dark koosh down among its brethren gamely lighting up their resting place; a kooshy apparition of koosh-balls past. I am half-inclined to keep it and do something with all the glow-in-the-dark rubber bits now if I could think of anything creative with them - any suggestions?

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More of the Same except plus Ouran

2018-05-18T16:13:42Z

This year is vanishing at a rapid rate - I've continued slooowly fixing my house but now that the weather is warming up I get to start sanding and staining boards to finish the deck again as well as being up to my ears in yard work. I used to love taking care of this place but now I'm kind of looking forward to having less land to tend. I may even (gasp) be one of those horrible people who cut down extra fruit trees if the place we end up with has too many, I am SO done with the annual deluge of fruit.

Still looking for that new house (well, sort of new - we actually prefer stuff built before the 80s) checking listings every day and I'll be meeting with a nice real estate lady this week, turns out she goes to the same church I've begun attending down in Salem - that was a fun discovery. And yes! I've finally found a new church, a Foursquare there conveniently right across the street from a Calvary Chapel which I also like so I can mix-and-match with studies and events.

AND I have belatedly discovered this little gem known as Ouran High School Host Club. Hee hee. I've now seen all of it in Japanese and then again in English. ^_^ Whee!

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Wet Library and other Adventures

2017-02-11T06:39:42Z

Where yesterday was spent in a never-ending cycle of battling the incoming rainwater, today was a never-ending packing, hauling and moving furniture to pull up the carpet. 36 u-haul boxes of books later we wrangled the bookcases into the garage and then started in on furnishings. More to do tomorrow. Every muscle in my body aches and I had to crawl up the stairs to go to bed, this is ridiculous.

Wherever I go in the future, I hope it will NOT have a basement. Or be by a river. Or under a waterfall. Or in a fishbowl.

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Books and Water do not Mix

2017-02-10T23:15:09Z

Apparently a huge snow melt immediately followed by large quantities of endless rain was too much for my basement - got up early yesterday to find all the carpets going squishy and water seeping from parts of the walls in the laundry room. 0.o Ran a marathon until bedtime of "put down towels - spin other towels dry in washer - pull up wet towels and replace with spun ones - rinse and repeat". Thank God my sump pump and washing machine kept up. At one point my son said "Did you just pat the sump pump on the head?" "Yes, yes I did. He's a Good Boy."

Water seepage included my library, we were scrambling to put all the lower level books into plastic bags because that's all we could do at that point, I was like the Little Dutch Boy with the finger in the dyke between towels and the wet-vac and couldn't stop. Today we've spent all day packing and moving things upstairs because we'll have to pull up the carpet, it's horrible... BUT I only lost ONE book, a big timeline book with history fold-outs, it was too big to be on a regular shelf and by the time we found it there was no saving it.

What a job. Ugh. On the good side, this is the only time we've had this happen in the entire time we've lived here.

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We got it!

2017-01-26T03:53:47Z

Our offer was accepted and in 30 days we'll have a condo in the San Diego area! It's a relief to have that part done, and though I seriously hate what this does to our debt load for now I'm hopeful we will at least get our money back out of it down the road instead of just throwing it down the gaping hole of Rent. Hubby is very happy that he will have a garage (albeit a tiny one) instead of just a carport and some eucalyptus trees around for greenery. He's quite homesick for greenery.

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A Paperless World

2017-01-24T00:08:49Z

There's a certain charm in the printed word that will never be matched online, as all book-lovers know. But yet - I just put my massive old Thesaurus into my 'going to the thrift store' bag. I still love the process of leafing through it but in all honesty I haven't used it in multiple years, it's too simple to just look up something online as I go. Sorry, thesaurus, it appears there are small victories for the proponents of the paperless world after all.

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Transitions sure aren't cheap

2017-01-23T06:08:09Z

Hubby's new job down in San Diego is going well and he managed to get his car registered, set up a PO Box and find his way around the fancy-schmancy coffee machine at this work ("It even grinds the beans! I love this thing!"). Now we get to the super-expensive part of this and that means housing. He's now shopping for a small condo that we can re-sell later on to try to get some of our money back out after this southern adventure - and YOIKS housing is predictably expensive no matter what you do.

We have one likely one he's going to try for tomorrow, a one-bedroom in a reasonable neighborhood with the bonus of a small garage that can be closed and locked instead of only a carport, I really, really, really, really hate going into debt with another mortgage but it is still way cheaper than trying to rent. Bleah! On the good side, he's content with a classic Guy place - he doesn't care what color the carpet is, is happy with whatever window coverings it comes with and needs only minimal furniture which he plans to get cheap or free where he can.

Now we have to learn how the government views it taxwise - is this a "vacation home" or a "second home" or what? It's not a "rental" I should think unless we are renting to ourselves? How large of a bite will they be taking from it so we can make sure we can afford the taxes? Time to research the taxation labyrinth. :-p

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Here we Goooo into 2017

2017-01-02T01:29:04Z

We're off to a slam-bang starter for this year as hubby is on the road to his new job down south in a car full of clothing and whatnot and I'm trying to find my way out of all the holiday things to put away/throw out/use up. Daughter moved into a rented room on the coast at the same time so she is no longer hotel hopping.

I was crazy-busy overseeing our church Watch Night while they were scrambling and launching from home, managed to get through our annual overnight prayer & worship event complete with breakfast at sunrise and staggered home to a house now only inhabited by Son, cat and parakeets.

Ran out of time to find a new car before he had to go, so he's going to just look for one down there and drive it up when he finds it rather than risk a mechanical lemon as he's the one who knows what he's looking at under the hood. Pbbbblt!

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Time for some new wheels

2016-12-28T03:15:36Z

Can't believe how the time is whipping along - hubby leaves this next weekend for San Diego and we're scrambling to resolve what to do with our fleet of aging vehicles when he is no longer here to play whack-a-mole with automotive whatnot as the in-house mechanic. Spent today dredging out personal stuff and cleaning up the interiors of two of them, we got pics of one and it goes up for sale tomorrow with the other right behind it. A third has so little value it hardly seems worth selling, but it does run so we may offer it for dirt-cheap so see if some tinkering college student might want it. He's prepping a fourth to be his driving car for down south, and trying to finish fixing my big '78 wagon in the garage so it can be sold later on too.

In the midst of all this, I get to go car shopping for a newer car that will be taken care of by a 'real' mechanic instead! All of my cars are old enough to both vote and drink, so looking at a 2007 Subaru tomorrow feels like a visit to the land of the Jetsons! I hope it works out, it would be nice to have one reliable car instead of hopping back and forth between three of them depending on which one is running this week.

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Jobby adventure time

2016-12-20T05:49:52Z

Well, my hubby finally got a job! Woo! This is the good part. On the other side of things, it's down in San Diego - and we're not relocating. This means he heads down there for however long he needs to until we can find something up here in the Northwest again and I hold the fort here - he has an airbnb place lined up for three months and by then maybe we can figure where he will stay and whether to go the condo route or what. He figures he can get furnishings off craigslist or at thrift shops rather than dragging things down and back up,

Crazy times!

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The edges are getting blurry

2016-06-19T15:06:17Z

Hmm - combo of hubby out of work and kids all prepping to get on their own, kind of feels like a transition in the making. I can feel my deeper roots pulling up, the edges of my routine becoming just a wee, teensy bit blurry. We'd thought of downsizing our home in about five years, perhaps it will simply be moved up the timeline a bit.

Started fixing up my church library to slowly get it up to snuff for eventual handoff, also re-painting the church parking lot for maybe my last time as I only re-do it every 3-4 years.

Having a garage sale in July too, which is a good start in that whole process. Sort of like drawing a comb over my household to get out the tangles, amazing the things I have and don't need anymore (or never really needed in the first place). I'll probably be maundering about that here from time to time over the next couple years. If I must move, a slow and gentle drifting from the dock and an amble down the river is always preferred to a tsunami.

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Beach time

2016-02-13T16:10:59Z

An update: Our Pi-Cat has thankfully continued to improve and is pretty much back to her former petite weight (she's only a 7 lb. kitty at her fattest), still no idea what caused her illness so I just hope whatever it was doesn't come back as she's now our Gold Plated Kitty from vet bills. We are grateful that she is with us even when she sits on the keyboard now.

Also, looks like my eldest is headed for the beach! She's been applying for work, etc. along the coast and is making plans to move over there. Ironically the rents around here have spiked so badly with all the out of state people moving here that the beach is no longer the expensive place, it's cheaper for her to live there than anywhere near Portland once you get out of the easy day-trip range of that city. Sounds good to me!

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Suddenly flying away

2015-10-20T04:56:36Z

My daughter and her roomie were given a lead by a coworker that there was a one bedroom opening up in a good complex, so they gave it a whirl - the manager said they could have it if they signed the lease that day and were willing to move in that very night, and so they did! They took sleeping bags and slept in their otherwise empty apartment just because they could - it even has a great view of the pond and fountain that decorates the little rec center. The competition here for housing is fierce - when we went to start moving things in the next day a lady showed up at the door saying she thought *she* was supposed to be moving into it instead the next day, we just shrugged, let her know they already had the papers and the keys and to take it to the manager... didn't see her again.... I hope they just had the wrong apt for their sake, it's a big complex.

And to top it all off, both girls can even walk to work from that location which will save them a fair bit of money. We moved her furniture today, wow what a whirlwind ride - when she woke up that morning who knew it would be the last time she ever slept in our house in her own bed, just like that? Away she flies, and all is well.

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Fledgling wobbles on the edge

2015-10-03T03:12:53Z

Spent part of today helping my youngest with landing an apartment along with her potential roommate friend - it's so hard to find rentals right now, they had three other people all hoping to get it if her application doesn't go through and that was in the space of only two hours - they managed to be the first to apply that morning by happenstance, the manager had only received the notice it would be open this next month late last night. 0.o

Here's praying it goes through, it's in a great location for what they need - my fledgling is tottering on the edge of my nest and I'm really hoping she'll be able to fly.

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Neighbor roulette

2015-08-04T00:16:37Z

Our next-door neighbors have suddenly moved away due to a job relocation and the housing market is hot enough that they've already had multiple lookers and at least one offer in less than a week. Argh! I hate having to wonder and pray all over again that we get decent neighbors, this is the third time on this house since we've lived here.

We're the third back on a triple-flag lot so they're right in front of us and share the driveway, connect to our yard, etc. It used to be an orchard that belonged to our property before the previous owners spun it off and built a house for their son there - a crabby or territorial neighbor in that spot would be bad news.

*nibbles fingernails and hopes for the best*

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Delayed launching

2015-06-23T01:57:49Z

Gosh it's hard to launch kids these days.

I have two grown daughters now, and they both have very good roomies-to-be they've found, everyone now has at least part-time work - BUT now neither set have been able to find even one blinkin' apartment anywhere in this area that they can afford, even splitting the rents and utilities. This is insane.

And all the housing is full anyway, with wait lists. What the heck?

Guess they're all stuck living with us for a while longer...may we all have patience.

:-p

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Parents on Wheels

2012-11-07T18:03:09Z

My mom called me to let me know their house, which they've had on and off the market for over a year with no nibbles, and which they were about to take off the market for winter, has sold! They close on the last day of November. So much for Thanksgiving relaxation... I can understand the buyers being anxious about getting in, they've already sold their old house and are living in an apt with stuff in storage, but my mom is a bit freaked at how fast it's all suddenly moving along.

Thankfully they have a friend with an empty airplane hanger that they can store things in til spring, and an RV. Into the camper they go, weiner-dog, cat and all yo-ho! They'll spend the winter as rolling stones gathering no moss while they check into other people's moss growing at various towns and decide where they want to plant themselves again. I expect we'll see a fair bit of them as my house will now be the 'stability point' for Mom, Dad doesn't need one, he's happy with wheels on his feet.

The cat, Bentley, wasn't too happy with having to learn to wear a harness, but they've gotten him to where he and the dog both get harnesses put on each day ("getting the kids dressed for the morning") and he's finally ignoring it instead of spending the day trying to back out of it, heh. Adventures never cease.

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