Month: February 2010 (Page 2 of 2)

We’re never without a project around here. After Ryan cut a hole in the wall of the mudroom, he put up some cabinets in there. You know, to “cover up the hole”. But really, he patched up the hole and painted the wall, so you can’t even tell there was a hole there. But I got some new cabinets anyway. Hooray!

In honor of the cabinets, I cleaned and dejunked that tiny room so that it looked like this.

Notice I said “looked” like this, because we’ve since piled some stuff on those counters, as we usually do. My favorite is that there’s a spot for my big buckets of wheat, sugar and flour, instead of those being on the floor somewhere.

My son,when he saw the cleanliness of the room, said, “We have a sink in there?” Yes, dear, there IS a sink. And we’ve lived in this house for how many years? Almost 9?

Another project that I’m glad to be done with is Natalie’s 5th grade science fair project. I won’t go into a whole bunch of boring details, but what started out like this

ended up like this

And it’s turned in. *Sigh of relief*

Last weekend I also spend many frustrating hours in John and Jenna’s room. I asked them repeatedly to clean it, and they basically ignored me for weeks and weeks (what? Is someone talking to me? I didn’t hear anything!), and when the kids had the day off of school on Friday and began the day by fighting, I sent them up to their room. Let’s just sum up the morning by saying that there was quite a bit of yelling, some crying, some nasty looks, and at lunch time I told them they could leave the room and I would continue on without them. Seven or eight bags of trash and a few to DI, and the room was finally clean. Well, not completely clean, as I hadn’t even started on the clothes closet, but I was tired by then. After rearranging and vacuuming and washing sheets and throwing away and organizing it, I let them back into their room, where they said, WOW! Unfortunately, I did not get a picture in the 30 seconds that it was clean.

I also got some new chairs for my living room. They look kind of like this:

Oh, wait, it’s this chair below, only there are two of them.

I got a SCREAMING deal on them, with both chair delivered to my door for under $300. Anyway, I can now get rid of the silly rocking chair that I spray painted, but then whenever it bumps on the wall, it leaves black marks, and a white wicker chair. The chairs came this week, and I’m thrilled with them. Except that they smell like new leather. Don’t like that. But the kids were thrilled with the boxes, and John has one up in his room and wants to sleep in it. Um, no.

And, Ryan got a whole bunch of parts delivered yesterday from a certain bathroom company, and they are sitting in the garage. If that doesn’t have the word project written all over it, I don’t know what does. We’ll expound on this later.

So, what are YOU working on, Hmmmm?

Oh, what a crazy dream I had last night!

Two bloggers that I don’t know in real life, but I read their blogs, were visiting me. As we were chatting about our kids and such, Cole came home from school. He had a big box of empanadas (#1) that were left over from a friend’s party. I put them in the freezer so we could eat them later. I looked outside the back window and saw a big pile of animal poop right outside the door (#2). “Kids, look at this!” I cried. The kids came over to look, and I showed them the new pile of poop. “That cougar must be close.” While we were looking, the 2 year old daughter of one of my blogger friends slipped outside. We looked, and saw not a cougar, but a strange creature stalking through the backyard. One of the kids ran out and grabbed the little girl and pulled her inside to safety, just as the strange animal attacked. It looked like a lemur, with black and white stripes and a long tail,
but it walked on all fours and had the triangle shaped ears with tufts of fur at the the top like a lynx.
It had crazy cartoon eyes like this Lemur
There were two other cat like creatures with it, but they were not as noticeable. The lemur thing was throwing itself against our back door, trying to get at the little girl. In a panic, I handed the camera to one of the kids, and said, “Take Pictures!” because it’s not every day that crazy animals attack in your back yard, and I wanted proof. (#3) Then I tried to find the number for animal control. (#4) I was looking it up in the phone book (why a phone booK, I wonder? Do we even HAVE a phone book anymore?) and got the number, but I was on hold. Still in a panic, I told the kids to hurry and call the neighbors and tell them to not let their kids outside (#5).
Then I woke up to John standing right next to me asking if I could come downstairs and help him pour the milk for his cereal. Bizarre!

But there are reasons why I dreamed this stuff.
#1-Cole and Megan went to a youth activity last night where they went to four different homes and had a little mini lesson about some other country. They tasted the food of that country and learned a little bit about the culture. At one house, they ate empanadas and talked about Chile. Hence, the empanadas in the dream.

#2-On Sunday, I noticed a pile of what looked like poop way out in the backyard, and I asked Ryan what he thought that black spot was. Nothing, he said. The next day, a neighbor posted on facebook that her kids had found a huge pile of poop and some tracks in their yard, and thought it was a cougar.

#3-Ryan was skeptical that there was any cougar activity when I told him about it, so of course I would want proof.

#4-After several other neighbors commented on about also having huge piles of poop in their yards, neighbor Chris posted that she had indeed called animal control, and they confirmed that it was a cougar, that they follow the deer. They hunt at night, and they shouldn’t bother people or pets, but just to be on the safe side, you might want to bring in your dog or cat at night.

#5-When I talked to a different neighbor yesterday, she said, “Did you hear about the cougar roaming around? The kids are scared and don’t even want to walk to the bus stop alone.” So, of course, in my dream, I would worry about protecting the kids, don’t you think?

So there you have it. We now live in Cougartowne, and it’s affecting my dreams. In a lemur sort of way.