Open Shelving

It's Monday afternoon and the dog has convinced me to join her on the sofa for a minute. Plus I'm not really eager to tackle the next pile of blighted tomatoes that need to be cut into pickle chunks, so I've been flipping through the latest issue of Country Living.

I'm not sure why I subscribe to Country Living. It's not like my log frame home is decorated in a really country style, unless you mean in an eclectic-chaotic-haphazard way with a few quilts, vintage goods, and half a dozen cows out back. Mostly I like to look at the decorating trends and styles featured in the magazine, but frankly I don't think I'd actually try much of what I see pictured.

For instance, take the concept of open shelving as featured on the cover of the September 2012 issue of Country Living. This is a gorgeous picture with the apple green shelves covered with white dishes and contrasted by the dark ladder and door. I love the idea of having open shelves where I could see my dishes on display in the kitchen.

But the reality is that this is not a viable option at my house and probably not for most of us.

1. I have an odd, random assortment of dishes that don't always match. Sure, my everyday set that we received as a wedding gift would look swell on those shelves, but not with stacks of Ally's plastic cups from various child-friendly restaurants beside it. Usually examples of open shelving in a kitchen come from houses featuring childless couples.

2. Floor to ceiling opening shelving just means that the dog has open access to lick any plates she wants.

3. Our house has spiders, wasps, and occasionally birds, mice, and bats. None of which I want anywhere near my cereal bowl and I certainly don't want to contemplate washing dishes before I use them every day.

4. Open shelving would make it a lot harder to stash the leftover Halloween candy if Ally and Steve could see right into the big bowls I use sometimes.

5. I can only assume that people who have open shelving for their dishes must live in areas where pollen is not a problem in the spring. At our house those white dishes in the above picture would be approximately the same shade of green as the walls behind them in only a matter of days thanks to the pollen in our area. And if pollen's not floating about, we still have our usual dust year round.

6. Dishes on open shelves seem awfully vulnerable to a stray ball, frisbee, dog toy, or Steve's remote controlled helicopter.

No, I think I'll keep my dishes in the cabinets behind close doors where they'll stay safe, clean, and away from the dog. And where those leftover Twix bars can stay hidden.

Derechos, Zucchini, Family Dynamics, and Other Natural Disasters

It's the height of summer now and this has just been one long week that started with a little thunderstorm cell in Iowa last Friday. The thunderstorm developed into a derecho that galloped east and ultimately flattened a wide swath of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic states. I was at my parents' house in Poquoson when the storm hit around midnight. I've never seen wind quite like that before and I'm still amazed that my daughter with the storm phobia slept through it all. Thankfully we didn't have any damage at either my parents' house or our house in Christiansburg. My in-laws in Roanoke lost power and still don't have any at their house. The current estimate is that power will return to all of Roanoke by sometime late Sunday night. That's a long time to go without power, especially when the daytime temperatures have been hovering in the mid to upper 90s. We're all out of sorts thanks to the heat, the lack of rain, and our upended schedules.

My garden is also out of sorts. We've been watering regularly for the past week and things look okay but just not quite right. The corn is lush and green, but it's only about waist high and getting ready to tassel. The tomatoes look good, but I didn't get them staked early enough and I really had to wrestle with them to tie them up. I tasted my first half runner last night and it seemed a little stringier than I expected for this early in the season. I don't think I'll have much in the way of zucchini this year, thanks to the squash bugs. They've also taken out some of the cucumbers and some of my pumpkins. I'll have to spray the rest of the vines this weekend if I want any pumpkins at all this fall. My peppers are still pretty small and I think the voles have eaten all the beets.

So it's not quite the garden I had planned, nor is this quite the summer I had envisioned. I was hoping for a little more fun and fewer worries. Such is life: you make your plans and work to bring them to life, but then the universe smacks you on the head and now you have to change your plans. Or in my case, a rock hits your windshield and you suddenly have a meandering 18 inch crack right in front of the driver's side that will require a replacement. Actually I'm not sure what's the better metaphor for my life right now: a bug-ridden garden or a cracked windshield. Neither are truly disasters and certainly they are fixable to a certain extent, but they're still beginning to sap my energy and enthusiasm.

Fewer Clothes = More Laundry

I seem completely incapable of packing for a trip without also tackling something else. Sometimes it's housework, that pile of unfinished projects lying in the corner, or cleaning out my closet. I'll pretend that the act of packing clothes today has prompted me to rethink some of my wardrobe instead of this actually being another form of procrastination. At any rate, I now have a pile of clothes lying in the corner, waiting to be donated to a charity.* (Obviously it's not the corner occupied with the unfinished projects, of course.)

The pants that don't fit well? Tossed. That t-shirt in an odd color of green? Tossed. The fifteen year old pair of shorts? Tossed. The shirt that never seems to go with anything else in my wardrobe, but has hung in my closet for the past five years? Tossed. The skirt I never wear? Yep, tossed.

This act of cleaning has made me realize a few things about myself.

1) My husband's choice of wardrobe colors has begun to affect my own and I didn't realize how many neutral or earthy colors I typically wear now. Steve is a computer programmer and cannot be held responsible for this as programmers naturally tend to wear clothes in the "mulch" family of colors, but I need to get out of this rut.

2) I should not be allowed to buy another brown shirt for at least a year.

3) I really don't have anything considered marginally professional left in my closet. That's okay as long as I keep working as a part-time/seasonal/contract hire, but at some point I might want to rejoin the truly gainfully employed, who don't have the luxury of working in their pajamas or that aging yet beloved t-shirt.

4) I'm still smarting over my mother's suggestion that a new professional wardrobe for me might only entail a new pair of jeans and a flannel shirt.

Anyhow, these are points for me to mull over. In the meantime I suddenly I have more room in my closet. And I don't have to avert my eyes and keep pretending that I don't see those clothes that I really needed to do something about. Being able to jettison clutter is a wonderful feeling. However, experience has taught me that purging my closet often results in having to do laundry more frequently. And now I have even fewer things to chose from to pack for a weekend trip, and it was my desire to avoid having to pick out clothes that led me to clean out my closet in the first place.

*For the record, everything I donate to charity is clean and usable. The fifteen year old pair of shorts will not be donated as they are somewhat out of style. Why bother? Please read this previous post:  http://treedellinger.blogspot.com/2012/02/thrift-store-confidential.html

Early Summer, 2012

A few snippets of early summer for you...

Busy as a .....

Things are busy around here as spring gets under full steam. My seedlings are getting big enough to transplant out into the garden. I'm fighting weeds in the flower bed. So far this month we've had two (2!) honeybee swarms in our house. The coyotes woke me up the other night and last night the groundhogs were fighting. The air is full of wasps trying to make nests all over the back side of the house. My allergies are horrific. Ally will be turning five in two weeks and I'm in the middle of planning her birthday party.

Wheeeee!

Please Canada, Come Take Your Cold Front Back

While we had had some unseasonably warm temperatures earlier in March, we've had a number of frost and freeze warnings in late March and this week. Unfortunately all that warm weather earlier got the growing season off to a great start and now all that tender foliage is susceptible to frost and freeze damage.

Here's a shot of one evening last month, when we had a frost warning. We keep a pile of old sheets and shower curtains to cover things up when this occurs. Our temperatures often fluctuate quite a bit in late March and in April, so there's the yearly dance of sheeting and unsheeting every so often. Removing the sheets in the day is critical as the daytime temps can be high enough to cook the tender plants if they're left covered. Then it's back to covering things up again that evening.

But this week we're also experiencing lots of gusty winds. A cold front from Canada has jumped the border fence and keeps running through our region. Normally some breeze will keep the frost from settling on the plants, but this time it's so cold at night that plants are vulnerable even with the wind. I even saw several snow flakes on Wednesday. And the plants have grown another couple of inches tall so the draped sheets are hard to keep on the plants in this wind, even when weighted down with bricks and scrap lumber. 

So Steve, never one to back down from an engineering challenge, bought some tarps and tented the garden. Thankfully the daytime temps were only in the 50s on Wednesday and Thursday so we could leave the tarps in place for three nights in a row.

After three consecutive nights with frost and freeze warning, if I'm lucky enough to have peony blooms in late April it will be all because of Steve.

Easter Eggs, 2012

So we didn't actually get around to dyeing Easter eggs until Easter Sunday. Ally's grandmother had given us a PAAS egg dye kit but I've been admiring over Martha Stewart's marbleized Easter eggs. Martha's technique didn't look too difficult, at least in the clipping that I'd torn from her magazine a year or so ago. The instructions in the magazine were to dye the eggs one color and let dry. Add one tablespoon olive oil to a darker dye, swirl with a fork, then dip the previously dyed eggs in the mixture. Roll the egg around to pick up the streaks of the darker dye and remove from the dye. Gently blot the egg dry.

Easy peasey, huh? I figured that I could use the PAAS kit for the first dye bath, then add some oil to the darker dyes and get swirled eggs. And so I was still decorating Easter eggs at 6:40 pm last night.

Like many of Martha's projects, reality simply does not measure up to the artistically beautiful and perfect product presented on the glossy pages of her magazines. And inexplicably she doesn't always provide the full set of directions in the magazine. It wasn't until after I gave up on the project that I found the project on her website and I realized that 1) of course she used special liquid food coloring to dye her eggs, 2) the bowl containing the oil and dye mixute should be shallow to create wide swaths of marbled colors (unlike my Solo cups), and 3) you must use organic eggs from free range chickens and cold pressed imported olive oil.

No, I'm making up #3. I'm sure that my Walmart eggs and canola oil cannot be to blame why this project didn't fully achieve the level of artistic vision that I had hoped for.


     

This is what Martha's eggs look like. They're beautiful.




And here are mine.

See the resemblance? Yeah, me neither. Mine are sorta splotchy with a semi-interesting tie dye effect. Not quite what I had envisioned.

So here's what I learned through this um, experiment.

1) PAAS might advertise that their dye tablets will dissolve in under 3 minutes, but I suspect that's only if you use vinegar with the water. I didn't do that as I wanted lighter, pastel colors and not the traditional or "neon" colors mentioned on the packaging of the kit.

2) PAAS tablets will take approximately forever to dissolve in just water.

3) Once the dye dissolves in water, eggs will take another forever to achieve a passable pastel color and not look like they're just an off shade of brown. Thirty minutes was not enough for some colors.

4) Your four year old will lose interest in this project long before the eggs actually look colored.

5) Gently blotting the egg dry with a paper towel will actually remove most of the swirled colors.

6) Also, eggs coated in oil are really slippery and you will crack a shell or two if you accidently drop one into the bowl containing the others. (Ooooops!) Hopefully your four year old has already left the kitchen in search of something fun to do before then.

Still, my daughter declared the spotty pink and purple eggs to be her favorite. I'm merely thankful that all Easter eggs, even if they were done by Martha herself, will taste about the same when they turn into egg salad for our lunches this week.

Thrift Store Confidential

I've been a regular volunteer at our local community thrift store for over a year now. The Montgomery County Emergency Assistance Program Thrift Store, also known as MCEAP (we pronounce it "Muh-keep), puts all of its profits (minus rent and similar expenses) back into the county in the form of financial assistance, the food bank, and the clothing bank for eligible clients. None of the volunteers at MCEAP, including the director, are paid for their efforts, which is amazing when you consider how many much time it takes to run this store. The program's philosophy is to assist county residents in maintaining their households and restoring their self sufficiency. It's a great program, and I highly recommend it to anyone local who's interested in volunteering.

I have greatly enjoyed working with my co-volunteers and serving my community at MCEAP, but this Friday will be my last day at the thrift store. I'll miss seeing friends each week, but Steve's and my work schedules are about to change and continuing to donate 5-6 hours a week will be too much for me right now. I'm sure at some point in the future I'll resume volunteering there again, but in the meantime I'll continue to shop and donate goods to the store.

Over the past year I've learned a lot about thrift store management and human psychology as it pertains to a thrift store. I thought I might share a few highlights with you. Some of these points are humorous, some are pitiful, and all are true.

1. Reputable thrift stores and clothing banks depend on your donations which they sell to produce funds for a charity, organization, or a project. There are some thrift stores that will take your donations, but only a small portion of the money they make when they sell your items is donated to a charitable organization because the store is actually for profit. If you have any doubt about where the money the store generates from your donations goes, ASK for more information. You might even ask how much much of the store's profit goes to the stated charity. If you don't approve of the answer you receive, take your items elsewhere.

2. Most thrift stores gladly accept clean, wearable clothing that is in good shape and not too out of date. Thrift stores do not always have the facilities to wash dirty clothes or repair any that are torn, missing buttons, or lack a working zipper. For some reason, people often donate clothing or items that are not clean or usable.

2a. Let me reiterate that last point, as my experience has shown me that some people do not understand the concept of "clean, wearable clothing in good shape and not too out of date." If you are cleaning out your old uncle's house and you are aware that he had some difficulty with his bladder functions, please do not donate his soiled clothes to the thrift store. If you are donating your toddler's outgrown clothes but you just haven't had the time to wash them and there's still spilled milk (or worse) on them, please do not donate them. If you have cats and your items are covered in cat hair, please do not donate them. If it's missing buttons, has holes in it, and the zipper is permanently stuck? Don't donate it. And that lemon yellow tuxedo shirt with the frills and super-wide collar? You know, the one you last wore with the polyester double knit blue leisure suit to your cousin's wedding in 1973? Yes, don't donate that either. Much of my time at MCEAP is spent throwing away dirty and otherwise unusable clothing that should never have been donated in the first place.

2b. And it's not just clothing. Do not donate any household goods that still contain moldy food, cigarette butts, trash, or any other kind of filth. If it stinks, has bugs in it, or requires hazardous waste handling procedures because of the presence of bodily fluids, DO NOT DONATE IT! The thrift store is not a dumping ground for your trash.

3. Sadly, some people who donate unusable goods seem to have the viewpoint that anyone who receives assistance from the thrift store in the form of vouchers for clothing or household wares should take whatever is available without complaint. It's difficult to fathom why anyone would think these clients somehow deserve dirty and torn clothes. That's a demeaning, disrespectful, and humiliating attitude towards your neighbors. No one needs that.

4. There is no shame in shopping at a thrift store. No one is going to assume you're on welfare or a client using a voucher just because you're in the store. I like shopping at MCEAP because it's economical and I have found some fantastic pieces of clothing there. Plus, a thrift store needs customers because that's how they generate the money. I'd rather have at least some of my money go towards helping my community than have it line the coffers at the headquarters of Target.

5. Thrift stores often have regular customers who show up first thing each and every morning that the store is open. Some of regulars are dealers or re-sellers while others are hoarders. Frankly, most thrift stores couldn't care less what their customers do with an item once it's sold as long as it was paid for.

6. A surprising amount of merchandise will recirculate through a thrift store. I've seen the same jacket show up two or three times over the course of a year, and I'm only there one day a week. I sometimes wonder if an item that I've seen before also got bought and sold at a yard sale before it making its way back to MCEAP again. It's fascinating.

7. People steal from thrift stores. I realize that people steal from other businesses, too, but it's sad when they steal an item that only costs a dollar in the first place. I just hope they really, really needed that shirt or pants or whatever it was that they stole.

8. If you shop at a thrift store, do not be surprised when you discover that the merchandise has been previously worn or used. One gentleman was astonished and announced with great surprise, "These jeans have been WORN!" Well, yes they have been, sir. You're not shopping at a department store.

9. Thrift stores cannot carry all items at any given time. You may not find pool toys in the middle of winter, and don't be surprised if Easter-related items aren't on the shelves in August. The one exception to this rule is that many thrift stores will put out Christmas items year round. Shoppers love to buy Christmas stuff and you'd be amazed at how much Christmas decor arrives at a thrift store in any given week.

10. If you have had a great experience in a thrift store and really approve of what the store is doing for the community or charity, please let the volunteers or staff members know. Most of us have suffered burn out at some time or another after sorting through yet another bag of dirty clothes, and a simple "Thank you for your help!" can get us through an otherwise long day of service. (We also appreciate a bag of candy now and then!)

January 1, Me 0

First Ally got sick. Then Steve got sick. I threw my back out. Then I got sick. Then I threw my back out again.

My lower back this time, but at least the muscles aren't spastic and agonizing. No, this is a kinder, gentler back injury that merely makes me walk around hunched over like an old man. I'm hoping that a day of rest (but not *too* much rest, as that causes the muscles to stiffen up) will suffice and let me stand up straight again.

January, I've had enough of you. You can go now. And somebody please tell me that 2012 isn't The Year of the Chiropractor.

New Year Resolutions, Back Pain, and the 2012 Mayan Doomsday Prophecy

I noticed last week than many of the people I know on Facebook were posting "Good riddance to 2011!" type messages. 2011 was hard on a lot of people for many different reasons. There's a whole other population out there that firmly believes that the world is going to come to an end in 2012, but I'm not friends with them so I have no idea what their Facebook posts might have been around December 31.

2011 wasn't a bad year for me, but four days into the new year I managed to throw my back out. While putting on a shirt, no less. This doesn't bode well for 2012.

My new year's resolution for 2012 was simply to get my act together again and I was ready to do it. We had just gotten Ally back into her school routine after suffering two weeks of holiday craziness and a end of the year head cold. I was coming out of my post-holiday blahs and was actually looking forward to spending the first two weeks of the year cleaning up the house and clearing out some clutter. I finally had an idea of how I wanted to finish a quilt that's been languishing on my quilt wall since April. I wanted to clean out the refrigerator and a few neglected closets. Honestly, I was even going to start exercising regularly again.

But clearly the universe had other intentions for me yesterday. I felt an unusual muscle pain while getting dressed, but it went away after a twinge or two so I didn't give it much thought. It came back with a vengeance, however, and now there's a small area in my mid-back where a muscle has been in more or less continuous spasm since yesterday afternoon. It's tolerable if I take some Tylenol and sit still with a heating pad on my back. However, when I stand up, I've got to have my hand on my back to give the muscle some counter pressure or it will not shut up. And last night, while trying to sleep....words cannot really express that particular agony and the ridiculously bleak thoughts it brought me. At one point I promised the universe that I would gladly throw away all those leftover cookies on the counter first thing tomorrow if I could just get some sleep. Any sleep.

So much for a fresh start in 2012, but there's hope as I was able to get an appointment with our chiropractor this afternoon. I'm taking heart in that the Mayan doomsday prophecy doesn't actually mention anything about back pain in 2012, as far as I know. And I'm fairly certain that my back pain isn't related to timewave zero, Planet X, geomagnetic reversal, or any other New Age, mystical apocalyptical hogwash. Except I'm curious about that predicted galactic alignment, especially if if meant my back would also get realigned as well. I think I could use a little of that right now.

Gather Ye Toads

A couple of weeks ago we found a big toad in our backyard.



The toad was so big that we decided it must be a very old Grandma Toad.



No, it's not a comment on either of Ally's grandmothers.



"Mom, you are in so much trouble with this one."

I did think it was a pretty toad, as toads go. Thankfully Grandma Toad didn't pee on me, like many of her kind seem to do. We let Grandma Toad loose over by the compost pile, which seemed like an ideal toad habitat. I hope we see her again next spring!

Ally Draws My Portrait

Ally's been really having fun doing artwork lately. She likes to draw at the dining room table while I cook dinner. I see a lot of construction paper, markers, glue, and glitter in our near future. Santa might even bring her a whole box of art supplies.



Earlier this week Ally came home from school and announced that she was going to draw a picture of me. She pulled out her supplies and diligently got to work. After about a half hour of intense concentration, this is what she showed me:



"Ta-da!" she announced as she gave me the picture with a flourish. "This is you with your fat stomach in a Hokie dress."

"Uhhhhh, what are those things on my arms, Ally?"

"Those are your bandaids 'cause you were bleeding."

This is the first time Ally has drawn a picture of me, so I should feel flattered. At least my purple legs are nice and skinny.

Holy guano, Batman!

Late yesterday I decided to go ahead and can the tomato sauce I had been cooking down all weekend. It had scorched a little on the bottom while I wasn't watching it, so I'm not sure if you could call it "fire roasted" or not. And while I was going for tomato jam, it might be barbeque sauce or perhaps spicy ketchup. Context is everything, even in the kitchen.

To gear up for canning a vat of tomato product after Ally had gone to bed, I went ahead and drank a cup of coffee around 5 pm. I hardly ever drink coffee that late any more, but once upon a time in grad school I could imbibe a lot of coffee round the clock without any ill effects. I have fond memories of going to the JFG Coffee House in downtown Knoxville at 11 pm and getting a bowl of a latte and a slab of red velvet cake, followed by another bowl of latte, and then getting back to our little UT-subsidized slum apartment and instantly falling asleep when I got to bed at 2 am. And when I woke up at 6:30 am, it was like someone had thrown a switch and I was instantly awake, ready to churn out another 10 pages of my master's thesis. Caffeine was my drug of choice and it was largely responsible for me finishing my degree. (Of course, three weeks after I graduated I learned that I had no fewer than six cavities in my mouth, so perhaps my graduate lifestyle was more about survival than proper health.)

Anyhoo, I got my jam/sauce/ketchup canned and went to bed around 11 pm. I promptly realized that those little caffeine molecules were still careening around my system and they had no intention of slowing down enough to let me sleep anytime soon. Eventually I dropped off and landed into some weirdly fantastic dreams that seemed plausible in the dark but make no sense now. I'd dream, then wake up, fall asleep and dream some more. I remember jolting myself awake to a screechy female voice saying something that sounded like "I won't take the responsibility again!" and not being quite sure if it was from my dream or I had actually heard someone talking. Back to sleep again. Then I awoke to hear what sounded like someone  running their hand over the screen door and immediately afterwards I heard that godawful soft whuff-thwup-whuff-thwup of bat wings in the bedroom. Oh, Sugar Booger.

Same scenario as last time: wake up Steve, scoop up the dog, evacuate the bedroom. Go out on the deck, open the screen door, and hope the bat flies out of the bedroom by morning. Steve went upstairs to sleep in the guest room and I shoved the dog down to the end of the sofa and slept there.

That screeching noise I heard? I think it might have been made by the bat. I also think that the sliding noise I heard was Sugar Booger pushing past the "fur" fringe on the edge of the screen door that normally would keep out bugs and bats and things like that. We'll be closing the sliding door at night until we can find a firm, rubber gasket to install on the screen door. Would I have heard any of those noises if I hadn't been hopped up on caffeine? Would I have been awake enough to figure out Sugar Booger's secret passage way? Who knows?

Clearly we're dealing with no ordinary bat. Also, sometimes a late cup of coffee can be an asset.

The Dog Days of Summer

It's almost the end of August and I cannot wait for the calendar to turn to September just for the psychological fresh start a new month brings. Yeah, the house will still need cleaning, the gardens will still be a mess, and my to-do list will be a mile long, but these will be "start of the month" things to deal with and therefore not so bad. As opposed to the rather depressing "things I didn't get around to doing the entire month" things they are right now.


After an uncomfortably hot July, the temperatures have become much more pleasant in August but it's still bone dry. Thunderstorms rise up and dance all around us before evaporating without any rain. Things are brown and crunchy, a dreary burnt landscape that makes you think more "nuclear holocaust" than "bountiful late summer." I'm about to yank out the struggling annuals and toss them all on the compost rather spend another moment hoping they might recover before cool night temperatures do them in for good. At least the compost pile would look good.


The last half of August has been more than a little stressful. Just in the past week we've dealt with an earthquake, a hurricane, a faulty sensor in the braking system of my car, and now my beloved dog has a suspicious growth on her muzzle. I'm off to the vet's office in just a few minutes to have it checked out. Most likely it's a benign growth and nothing to worry about, but this comes on top of having my house shake inexplicably, wondering if my parents will evacuate before the arrival of Hurricane Irene, and worrying if my car will actually stop when I try to brake down our monstrously steep driveway. I could use a pleasant change, a fresh start, a new month.


Come on, September.


Update, 9:40 am  Official diagnosis: Oscar has an old dog wart and a bad scrape on her head, probably from where she's been trying to extirpate the voles in the flower beds out front. Whew..I can live with that.

May Day, mayday, mayday!

I have no idea how today can possibly be May 23 when I distinctly remember yesterday being May 1. Apparently I have lost a whole month somewhere between yesterday and today. Much of it fell to the wayside when Ally had a fever and was out of daycare for two days, then she got better over the weekend but this was followed by me getting her cold. Then the following week Ally had another fever and was out of daycare for two days but I got better, then she got better, and then we went on vacation. Which is when I developed bronchitis and Ally got stomach flu.

I kid you not. There ought to be a law against getting two separate colds in one month, with a double penalty for getting sick during a week at the beach. Thankfully I had a mild case of bronchitis and Ally only got a touch of stomach flu so we were still able to enjoy our vacation despite the unpleasant production of bodily secretions (I'l spare you the details).

But now it's the first day back home and I'm at an utter loss to account for my month of May. Even worse, things seem to have gone to pot in the meantime. The house needs cleaning. The flower beds out front need weeding. My laptop has developed some unexplained hiccups. My daughter turns four next Wednesday and I haven't planned a single thing for her birthday. The vegetable garden out back has not been planted yet. I'm having a hard time thinking about our menu for the week. There are ants in the kitchen. I haven't updated my Etsy shop in a while. Someone one turned on the summer heat and humidity while we were gone.

So the month of May traditionally begins with May Day, but it looks like I'm going to end it with the distress call, "Mayday, mayday, mayday!"

Black flies and other natural disasters

We get a lot of wind at our house. Our house is situated on the top of a ridge in an former cow pasture in Plum Creek and the wind just races up our little open valley only to plow into our house. Thankfully it isn't as bad during the summer...I think leaves on the trees might have something to do with that, but I dunno. What I do know is that I'm often cursing the wind during the month of April.

The wind died down on Friday. And, hello! It was almost May and the black flies came out.

I hate black flies. They swarm around my head and dive bomb into my eyes and get into my ears. Then they bite. And the bites itch for days.

So after cursing the wind all month, I wanted it to come back just a little. Just enough to keep the black flies off me.

Today the wind came back. With a vengeance. All 24 mph of it. Sigh.

Originally I thought I'd make a post where I whined and complained about the wind, the black flies, the yellow jacket and wasps that are swarming our back deck. Really, it's like one of the Biblical plagues out there.

But I'm just not snarky enough to compare my minor inconveniences to a natural disaster, not after seeing the damage caused by the tornado outbreak last week. There were tornados in Pulaski, VA, in early April, and then Glade Spring, VA, got hit last Thursday. That's a lot of tornado action for Virginia.

I think the storm that came our way was one of the worst I've ever seen. I looked out our back door at 1 am and saw nearly continuous flickering of lightening with very strong winds. Funny thing is, I don't think I heard any thunder, just flash flash flash flash lightening. Really eerie.

And then the news reports began pouring in from Alabama, Tennessee, and other southern states the next morning. The death toll is incredible, more than 300 dead, from a whopping 119 confirmed tornados between April 25-28. Thousands injured, towns obliterated, lives torn apart. The monstrous tornado that hit Tuscaloosa and Birmingham had a track that stretched 80 miles long.

So I'm just going to shut up about the winds that are currently gusting around our house right now. At least they're just gusts and hey, it's keeping the flies and wasps away for a little while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_25–28,_2011_tornado_outbreak

Dining Room Chairs Redone

Once upon a time, Steve bought a dining room table with four chairs. The pretty table had a vaguely Scandinavian look to it, and the chairs were upholstered in a pale cream fabric with a textured weave. The new chairs were clean, with no stains or spills.

Time passed. A puppy chewed on the bottom rungs of the chairs when she was teething. Several years after that, a baby arrived and promptly spilled food and drink all over the chair seats. And the chairs no longer looked that pretty.

I couldn't take the dingy, stained fabric on our dining room chairs any longer, so this past weekend we reupholstered them. After Steve popped the seats off the chairs, I simply cut a doubled thickness of felted wool blankets to fit over the existing upholstery and we stapled it to the underside of the seat. Then I had a couple of yards of cotton upholstery fabric with a tan floral print on a black background just waiting for a good project, so I used that to cover the seats. And now our dining room chairs look like this:

I figure the busy black and tan pattern will hide a multitude of spills for at least a couple of years, or at least until someone spills red Kool-Aid all over them.