Outside of our house where a large limb of our city tree still sits, awaiting cutting and disposal by the city. Participants are unknown to us.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know!”
“Did we hit something?”
“Oh. My. God!”
“What? WHAT?”
“We’re parked on a fucking tree.”
Gee, what was your first clue? The illumination of said tree by your headlights? The feeling of going off-roading while on a paved city street? The loud crunch of wood?
Well, the dresser is coming along quite well. We’ve been very happy with its progress. Sanded down, we managed to get all the gunk off it – at least 40 years of polish, dirt, oil, adhesive (from both childhood stickers and contact paper), gouges from where the miscellaneous 4-year-old choose to claim a drawer for his own, and even cat hair that got itself stuck in the mess. Once we got all of it off, underneath we found that it was really a very attractive oak veneer over a sturdy plywood frame. We’re just amazed at how well it’s cleaning up.
Now the dresser’s been stained in a dark oak color and yesterday we put the first coat of polyurethane on. Today we go back to the workshop, sand it again, and apply a second layer. And then tomorrow we go do it again. Once that final layer dries, we’re done and ready to bring our dresser to its new home in our guest room. Photos coming soon.
The hardware is going to be a bit tricky. Three of the four drawers have lower lip pulls rather than handle hardware; you open those drawers by reaching underneath them and pulling them open via a groove in the wood. The top drawer, though, is outfitted with two metal handles (aluminum? steel? your guess is as good as ours – originally it was a brass finish), and their screw placements are nonstandard – 2 inches, apparently common decades ago but highly difficult to replace now. So instead of hunting around for replacement hardware, we’re instead going to try to refinish the original handles; if that doesn’t work, we’ll try to paint them.
I searched around on the Web and tripped over some references to Rub n Buff, a metallic finish used in arts and crafts. The website I read said that we could find it over at Michaels, and that they made it in dozens of different styles – tarnished brass, several different gold-color finishes, silver and pewter, etc. Seemed the ticket, so off to Michael’s we went yesterday to pick up some. If we could find it, we’d give it a shot with the handles sometime this weekend.
Now I’m going to take you on a tangent completely unrelated to the dresser. So bear with me.
Michael’s is a store heavily loaded down with crap even on a good day. With holidays coming up – particularly Halloween – the usual high junk level spikes into OH-MY-GOD-ARE-YOU-KIDDING-ME territory, and you’re left just to marvel in amazement at the products that not only people dream up, but actually manage to get through budgeting, production and finally market distribution.
And so, I humbly present for your consideration: Tricky Kitty.
It’s a plastic cat. That poops jelly beans.
Seriously: there’s a chute. Appropriately located. And jelly beans come out. Brown jelly beans.
The tagline on the package reads, “His Trick Is To Leave A Treat!”
Now here’s the scary part: go do a Google search for “poops jelly beans” and see what comes up. Turns out there’s a whole genre of cheap toys made based on the simple concept of an animal of some sort that poops jelly beans. Birds. Pigs. Easter bunnies. I’m sure Santa is out there somewhere.
This is what Google has brought to us. Cheap metal finishing products, and jelly beans pooped at command. Thank you, oh Great God Google!
One of the unexpected fun parts about being married is the freedom to be a complete dork without worries of judgment. After spending 20+ hours in the car on the road last week, I realized that I love Rob for so many things, one of which is his weird sense of humor. (I also love that he knows when to dial it back and what social skills are!) But I digress…
We often joke around about stupid things, like when Ruca forgets to that her tongue belongs inside of her mouth and not hanging out like a mutant appendage. Many times during the day I will feel the burrowing eyes of my husband on me, look over at him and see the blank stare and tongue hanging out a la Ruca. It doesn’t take but a few seconds for him to start giggling and for me to shake my head and mutter something about being a dork.
But one of my favorite jokes with him lately is Darla from Finding Nemo. Frequently on our recent travels, I would look at him, shake my fist up and down furiously and yell, “FISHY! WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING?!”
What? It’s funny!
Today was a blustery day by California standards, 40 mile an hour winds and an inch of rain. It hasn’t let up all day. About 2 pm, we emerged from the office and notice several large tree limbs up and down our street. I stepped out on the porch, hoping to encourage Sam to pee already when I heard a large crack coming from one of the 2 large Modesto Ash trees in our front yard. I yelled at Rob to get the car keys and move the car before we lost yet another large limb and have it land on our car. We’ve managed not to have anything damage our property so far and hopefully the worst of it has passed us by. Nearly every yard on our street had at least a few limbs down and we had the fire department at a neighbour’s house to clear away a large tree that had fallen. We do love a good storm around here!
I am officially a housewife. The last week has been about scouring our house, to the point where I actually vacuumed walls. (Wha? They were dirty!) Our bedroom was by far the worst of it. Considering it was in constant use for approximately 20 hours a day, we were glad just to have clean sheets on it.
But last weekend was the time to get caught up. Everything was sorted through and cleaned. We took 9 bags of clothing to Goodwill (mostly mine) and Rob has officially moved his clothes into the closet. When he moved in, I had full control over our bedroom closet and he was relegated to 2 draws below the closet and the guest room closet. So he was sort of due for some more space. It was nice to get rid of clothes I don’t wear anymore. I haven’t had a good sort out since I went to England.
This weekend was a front yard weekend. Rob mowed the lawn and I pulled all the pots off the porch. In the process we found 5 black widows which had taken up residence. I’m not usually a spider freak out person but for some reason, those widows got to me. Especially the ones we found on pots we’d already picked up and moved. Needless to say, I spent that night in bed being all freaked out that something was crawling on me. I felt like I was 8 telling Rob to help me take my mind off it by telling me a stupid story.
It still seems like I’m summer vacation which is nice. But then it hits me that there’s sort of no rush to get to all the things on my mental list. I do one or two a day and that’s it. The rest of the time, we play or Rob works and I find something else to do. It’s a dog’s life. Seriously.. who knew it would be this good to be unemployed?
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