In-Development & a psychology lesson about boys' minds

We are now in the middle of a planning bonanza. MB has been using up vacation time a few days at a time and making vast strides in his efforts.

The plan for the weekend is finish the closets. Very important. It will be so lovely to hang my clothes where they belong! Yippee! Also, I'm going to finish the second coat of "cinnamon stick" in the office so that we can move things in and get them out of the basement!

On the "cleaning out the basement" front there is also the beloved switch to natural gas. MB had the trusted family plumber come check out the house today and he told us about this AWESOME heater that, well it's not just tankless it's condensation using? I don't know, I'm not positive what to call it but it's soo cool! I'm in love already. It super efficient and doesn't take up much room and you never run out of hot water! Great for my legendary hour long showers (hey, I'm a Pisces, I love water, nothing I can do about it). Here's the link if your interesting in bringing a little awesome into your life as well. http://www.navienamerica.com/rearning/tank.aspx?skin=tank

Any-who, that should all go down pretty soon. They need to run the gas line up to our house first (there is middle school down the street so luckily we have gas on our road) and then when we are almost out of oil, MB and his uncle are going to cut the tank in half, rip it out and get the stupid behemoth out of there! That leaves a nice big space in our basement although our cat Finella will probably be upset as she has taken to napping on top of it. Cats are so bizarre.

ELSEWHERE, MB parents dropped off our Christmas present a few (5) months early. Some friends of theirs were selling a very nice metal patio set and they got it for us! It's very nice but now it's just sitting in our yard looking a bit odd and lonely. This means MB's patio plan has been kicked into high gear. Today he went and scoped out some stones and there have been catalogues at our house for a week now. He wants natural stone. OK. You see the thing is I don't really care, well I do, but MB will inevitable, do whatever it is he wants to do. If I happen to disagree it will just mean he'll puff up like a blow fish and pout until I go "fine do whatever you want" and then he's happy. The thing is, even though he's going to do whatever he wants, somehow, I have to be involved in the process. It's a lovely gesture but purely for show and the purpose behind it is beyond me. I say "I don't care". He says, "tell me what you want". I tell him. He disagrees. I throw my hands up in the air and say "why did you ask me then!?" He doesn't know. This is how many thing are accomplished in this house. It's certainly not mean or combative but rather funny. You should see us, on the rare occasion that we eat out, trying to decide where to go and what to eat. It takes HOURS...but I digress.

So here we are looking at stones, or least that's the plan. Last night I was suffering from a kidney infection, NOT in a happy bunny kinda mood if you get my drift and we looked at catalogues but I couldn't even tell you what I saw. So inevitably, this is up to MB, I'll just be there to help out. The major issue with this project now is this: MB has decided to dig out the patio by himself. This, I'd like to point out, is mental. He assumes, with pick and shovel in hand, he will be able to dig our large patio out of the hill in our yard. All by himself. The guy at the stone place concurred with me today (bonus points for HIM). But MB has his mind set and therefore, the madness continues. He has about 3 people offering him heavy machinery that he can borrow but no, it's too much of a hassle and then he owes them. Psh. I'm OK with this though, you know why? I'll be right in the end. :) I want nothing to do with the madness and MB has been informed of that (I'll help laying the stone of course) and I know, when he gets to it, he'll realize he needs the help of large equipment. You should have seen us trying to dig up the small little strip of land next to our walkway for our herb garden. HAH! That was hard enough. Or when MB got it in his head that we needed to move a bush down by one of the trees in our front yard. The hole digging was no easy feat. No I think this is going to be a nightmare but we will just let him find out for himself.

*P.S. that is NOT what our patio will look like I just stole a picture offline :D

Seeing Red and Cutting Out the Oil

So I'm very excited because I think this post will OFFICIALLY, bring us up to date! No more jogging my fuzzy memory for details of things I can't seem to remember the time lines of. This entire thing has been a whirl wind to say the least. I'm sure I skipped a few important points along the way but at least I can post progress as it's happening now.

Although progress on the house has slowed from the original frantic buzzing it started with, it is now picking back up. MB has been talking to a plumber about switching our home heating over to natural gas (to the dismay of our neighbor who works for an oil company "don't do it man!") as our old oil tank needs to go and we want something more efficient. Especially since there are huge incentives for switching over AND, the master plan is with gas heating...comes a gas STOVE (insert ooohs and aaahhs here). Very exciting but SO far off it's depressing to think about it so I wont. He has ALSO been chatting (at a wedding this past weekend) with one of the guys that works with him part time about cutting a patio into the hill. We have this big huge yard and it's very un-usable. So, MB has is dream of cutting a patio into the hill. Great idea. Personally, I'm more concerned about trim on our windows and those silly little privacy things called doors but hey, I'm not here to dictate the schedule apparently.

Well this past weekend I was bound and determined to tackle painting the office so we can finally move all the damn office stuff that's sitting in our basement, to where it belongs. We had decided to paint this room red, much to the chagrin of MB's mom. This, being the major place we differ, other than the backroom but that's a battle for an entirely different day. you see, this office has one window, a former OUTSIDE window (or exterior if you want to be all official about it). Said window now leads into the very dark (although it shouldn't be with 20 effing windows) backroom. I see her point but upon announcing my plan to paint this room red MB's mom immediately countered with "Oh NO! you don't want to do that! No, it would be way to dark. No definitely don't do that." She repeated this several times but I was stubborn and stuck my tongue out at her theoretically speak and bought my red.

Now red was a battle. I LOVE me some cranberry red but MB is heavily against this. I was only able to get an agreement out of him by pointing out that his room at his parent's house is a brick red and met him half way at this brick red. So, we decided to go with "cinnamon stick". I pointed out to MB this past weekend that all of our rooms will end up food. I'm convinced I did this on a subconscious level as I happen to be OBSESSED with food. I love making it, eating it, thinking about it. It's the first thing I think of when I wake up and the most soothing thing I can think about when I go to bed (except for bubbles. I think bubbles are very soothing as well. Seriously, try it once). Therefore, we ended up with an herb in our bedroom "prairie sage", a dessert, one of my favorites as a matter of fact, in the living room with "banana cream" and now "cinnamon stick" in the office. I, personally, see no problem with this.

So I have convinced myself I'm getting pretty good with whole painting thing, not bad for a girl who mere months ago was scared of a paint roller in an very unnatural way. I may be getting cocky but I'm competitive and I need my 'thing' so painting, as much as I loathe it sometimes, I have taken on as my thing. Oh there's painting to be done? Oh that's OK, Lindsey can handle that! So Saturday I informed MB in no uncertain terms, that I WAS painting the office the next day so I didn't know what HE was doing, but that's what I was doing. This of course left him to finish the built-ins in my closet.

I laid out my tarp and began cutting the paint in the ceiling. It doesn't look beautiful because the ceiling and walls aren't seamless but, ehh, whatever. About half way across, and I have NO idea how this happened I got RED paint, on the ceiling. I panicked. I bolted from the room and grabbed a wet paper towel. MB sauntered in to find out what the f-bombs were about as I smugged the paint into the ceiling making it look worse. It now looked like I was trying to wipe up the evidence of a bloody incident on top of the ceiling. Arterial blood splatter perhaps? MB watched this with only mild curiosity. "You'll just have to paint over it, no big deal. your just making it worse." I gaped. I was appalled. I don't DO painting over! It should have been right the first time! I was just beginning to feel rather smug with myself about my totally bad ass paint skills and sure enough, I mess it up. I'm still pissed about this but I plowed on and finished cutting, dawdled a bit, helped MB rip some boards (i.e. stand at the end and act like an extension of the table, whoo-dee) and then finished rolling. It DID come out pretty cool. It's darker than I think either of us expected but I love it. It does make the room darker, I understood where MB's mom was coming from with that but I really like it. It's the only color that breaks up our pallet at all but it still 'goes' with other colors. I love it. It will look even more amazing once the antique white crown molding and baseboard go up too.

Now, just one more flipping coat to go and then we can finally move stuff in!