To the guy

.....who definitely earns the 'D' in DH

Many thanks for when returning home after your week away and a walk thoughout the house looked a lot like this
and like this

and the project that I started (thinking that I could finish it while you were away) still looked like this

and the lawn looked like this

and our daughter's face looked like this

that you just came in and rolled up your sleeves instead of rolling your eyes. I love you big-time, you know.

Mother's Day

I know that there are a variety of reasons that plenty of people don't exactly enjoy Mother's Day, but, honestly, I haven't ever been able to empathize with any of them. I'm starting to think that maybe it's my favorite holiday.

This year, besides Adam building me some raised garden beds, and then getting to spend all afternoon in my sweats and in my bed without any responsibilities or any guilt, Max made me this PowerPoint presentation at school (it does have sounds and movement, but I can't get that function to work here):

Read this doc on Scribd: I love you, Mommy-max

Now, Adam is warning me that I shouldn't admit that although I was an ace at WordPerfect 5.1 in my advanced word processing class in high school, that I think that was about the point where I peaked in my technology skillz. I've now become one of those moms that can hardly program the clock on the VCR. Anyway, I'm super proud of Max because, just as I've never owned a PDA, used a flash drive, and I still struggle with that stupid mouse button on a lap top, I've also never, ever done anything on PowerPoint. In fact, I could barely post it to this site.

But while I was having my second nap on Sunday afternoon, Max thought that he would help Olivia learn to make one too:

Read this doc on Scribd: Presentation1

Olivia's may be a little rough around the edges, but still, it's a pretty sweet Mother's Day present to see your kids become more than you are. Now I'm only hoping that I can keep up.

I'm a stoner now

The soapstone is in! Here's the step-by-step of how it happened, so there will be a lot of pics, but some people have been asking for the details. And besides, I'm pretty darn proud of Adam pulling this off and doing such a great job. And, did I mention that I love it!!

Here's the 1600lb crate that was delivered to our house:

It took 4 people to carry this piece into our house. After getting it moved, one of the guys commented that it felt like they had just moved a Volkswagen. Actually, moving it in was a bit scary--that sucker was heavy!

Here are Adam and Jesse positioning the slab exactly to get it ready for cutting out the section where the range will be:


Marking and taping for the cut-out:

Here's what they rigged up to support the piece that would eventually be cut out. The support would be slid all the way underneath, of course.
Taping off an area in order to keep all the dust somewhat confined:

And the cutting begins:
As Adam is cutting, Jesse is holding the shop-vac at the blade to try and get most of the dust:
Success! They pull off the cut out piece:
No mistakes whatsoever, and it's only about 1/16th of an inch away from the cabinet. Tight!
Here's the stove installed and the stone all oiled up fir the first time:
One of the sides of the built in area all oiled up:
The next big cut out is for the sink. This one is tricky because the sink is rounded and asymmetrical.

Here's the sink installed:

He did a great job on the cut out and the installation. I purchased the largest possible sink for this cabinet size, which meant that the cabinet had to be notched out for the installation, and it also made attaching the clips to the bottom pretty tricky as there wasn't a lot of space left over. But last Friday night he worked until 2am and now I have water. Happy Mother's Day weekend to me. Hoorah. The only thing left on this is that I still need to do some sanding to on the eased edges to smooth and polish them somewhat more. (The darker spots to the right are just water spots that haven't dried off since I was in a hurry to snap this picture. And the slab has not yet been oiled either.)

This is the only piece that needed to be seamed:

Unfortunately, the company supplying the stone didn't follow our instructions about leaving 2' of the larger piece with an unfinished edge for the butt joint with the smaller piece. It meant that Adam had to slice off that edge and notch it for the seam. It makes for a slightly more visable seam (and that's driving Adam crazy), but I think that in the long run it's not going to matter at all.


Ok, so it's all in. Already I feel like it's changing my life. On the first day of use after the stove was installed the kids got to sit up at the island and work on homework and coloring while I fixed dinner. Now this is the kind of stuff that makes it all worth it.

Happy Birthday to Jayne

I have to give a birthday shout out to my sister Jayne on her big 25th! Not only are you one of the all-over best Muggles around, but we now have seven more reasons to love you even more thanks to your sending us all of the Harry Potter series as audio books last year.

It was a fabulous way to introduce the series and characters to the kids and to Adam, who had never read any of them before. We started listening in the summer for our long road trips to DC, NYC and Cape Cod, but we hardly paused for breath in between each book and disc--listening even around town on errands or on the way to church. By the time we got to The Deathly Hallows (which I didn't read in print when it came out in July since I decided to wait until Adam and the kids had caught up with all the others), Adam and I had to keep listening at night while we worked on painting our bedroom and bathroom. Shhhh...don't tell the kids that we got ahead of them this way. Just sing it like you're Tevye: "Addiction....Addiction!"

Actually, I knew that we were really immersed when one day Olivia was calling for me (and I wasn't responding right away) and she finally yelled out in exasperaion, "Accio Mommy!"

So, dear Aunt Jayne, many, many thanks. To say that it made for a very fun year is a pretty weak characterization of we actually feel. And it was a very bittersweet experience to hit the end of Book #7 and have to say goodbye to not only Harry and Ron and Hermione and all the others, but also to Jim Dale and his fabulous narration performance. He was tremendous. (So it's a good thing that I've found that watching Pushing Daises fixes that hurt just a little.)

But of course, we could never love Harry Potter more than we love you. We're looking forward to seeing you next month, and in the meantime, we hope that your birthday was just as good as a day with some Felix Felicis! You deserve it!

For the record: I tried

During this morning's Battle of the Clothes, Olivia declared: "You always want me to wear matching clothes and I don't want to wear matching clothes anymore!"

So I am officially waiving the white flag and letting the girl have at it. There has to be better battles out there to fight.

Ma Vie En Francaise

I've been dreaming in French again, which is a really lovely experience to have, except for the fact that I don't actually speak French. The last time it happened was while we were living in Berkeley where one of my neighbors and dearest friends there was French. Since she spoke only French to her children, just spending time with her meant that I started to pick up on some very basic commands. Adding to that, there were also three other French-speaking families in our building, so on any given day there was a lot of conversational French (and fabulous food!) taking place in the little outside common area. Let's just say, if I ever visit France and someone tells me to point to my nose, find the cat, get the ball, come with mama, be gentle with the baby, change my pants, look over there, listen to me, and eat the bread and cheese, .....I think that I'll be ok.

So thanks to that mini-immersion, I started having a few dreams in French. Don't worry however, this was no miracle of tongues because, of course, it wasn't actually real French. It was proably more like the kinds of conversations that Isabel is currently having with me. She carries on and on in her English with absolute certanity of her fluency--and, sure, I won't deny that there are plenty of "words" with appropriate inflection, and that there are even some recognizeable sounds, but mostly it's complete garble. And, alas, such is my French.

Well, it happened again. This time it's because we recently watched the movie La Vie En Rose, an incredible (which, if my French can be trusted, you should prounce as "een-cred-ee-bleh", if you don't mind) movie about the true story of Edith Piaf, the famous French singer who lived in the early 2oth Century. And I was so taken with the story and the music that I started listening to the many of Edith Piaf's recordings thanks to our online music subscription. And I mean listening straight....for days on end.

Then...I read the equally een-cred-ee-bleh book, Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. The book is made of two short novellas, the first about Parisians who are fleeing the city on the eve of the German invasion in June 1940, and the second is about a month in a small French town under German occupation. The stories and characters themselves are rich and compelling, and the writing is tremendous, but what makes it even more incredible is that the author wrote these stories concurrent with this history taking place and all while she was in hiding in Southern France since she was born a Russian Jew. Her book was never finished as she was taken to Auschwitz where she died later that year.

And then......since I was leading the discussion on this book for our book group last month, I did a little bit of reading up on French political and military history during and after WWII to get some clarification. (And incidentally, Adam and I also recently re-watched Cassablanca, which, call me stupid, but it now makes soooo much more sense. Phew.)

So, now I'm thinking that I'd better start planning for how I should celebrate Bastille Day this year. Any suggestions?

Addendum: You can't miss the post Anna did for me on her blog in response. Spot on. Merci, mon amie!

Addendum part deux: Per Adam's request, I have made a link of my search results of French military history. It's a good laugh....if you're not actually French, that is.

Floors

Last week the floors were finished/refinished. I had the existing hardwoods in the DR and Living Room also sanded and refinished since I wanted to change the color from a golden oak to a more medium brown (nutmeg is the name of the stain color, actually).




Can I be prideful and vain? I don't have great pictures of these new floors (and they're looking a little redder in the photos than they do in real life), but you'll have to trust me when I say that they look faaabbbbuuuulllloooouuusss. In fact, I think that I love them more than a person should really love a material possession. And considering that I spent more on the floors than we did on our last car, I guess this is only evidence of what I'm come to recognize as a bit of a fetish with fine wood and millwork.

I admit that when I tour historical homes (of which there are plenty in this area) that I spend more time looking at the kind of mouldings, casing or crown is in a room or hallway than browsing through the extensive collection of soup tureens. And while I'm on the subject, can I just say that they don't do millwork today like they used to! Well, I suppose they do (because I have spent more than my fair share of time oogling the displays at a local lumber store), but it just costs a pretty penny. And since I'm already in a braggy mood, can I also just say that I have now learned how to navigate my way around the pieces in the lumber store's millwork aisle and that I can now throw about terms like ogee, feather edge, beading or eased edge with aplomb. Seriously, just try me.

Ok, well that's enough for now. I'm off to stroke the floors before head up to bed.