Rabbit rabbit!

WEEPIPR

My maternal grandmother's habit of saving all types of plastic containers, including yogurt pots and flimsy bowls from microwavable dinners, and using them to eat from every day despite having cabinets full of china, has inspired me to do the opposite. I know my mom would say the same—I'm pretty sure that she began using "special" dishes and cutlery all the time, instead of saving them for "special," soon after the time we stayed in my grandmother's Kansas house and helped her move into an assisted living place.*

Aww, spoony spoony.

I've done the same thing, especially since we were able to remodel and simplify our kitchen. There is one silverware drawer with all the silver we've collected over the years, and one with mainly stainless steel but also a cache of (unmatched) silver teaspoons. I love to use those spoons.


Our next door neighbors moved out abruptly last week. Well, it was abrupt from our point of view, but who knows. To them it may have taken forever. They were renters, from the elderly owners (who moved in with a daughter in Illinois years ago, and may or may not still be living. Before they left, the German retired philosophy professor, famous for scaling ladders and trees to paint his house and do extensive pruning well into his 70s and early 80s, gave Zoë a beautiful typewriter with a German keyboard). Yesterday there was a man with a metal detector combing the yard. I wonder if he was looking for something specific (A lost piece of jewelry? A time capsule buried years ago?), or if that's just a thing people do when they move, just in case. I am imagining the house will be sold. I am really going to miss hearing the kid next door practicing his bagpipes, and yes I mean that sincerely. Mark and I referred to him as "Wee Piper" despite the fact that he is now in high school, because of his mom's vanity license plate, which read WEEPIPR. Also, he was a Boy Scout and sold us an affordable and lovely Christmas wreath every year. And once, he and Mark teamed up to rescue a baby squirrel. They probably lived there for five or six years, right next door, and those are all the interactions I can think of. My neighborhood is weird.



*Mark was there too. We were children, practically. It was fun, and later we found out that there was a carbon monoxide leak in the house that had no doubt put a madcap, lightheaded spin on the whole thing.

Sunday

We bought a kitchen scale, for all the baking I'm (imagining) doing, and plus so we can measure coffee like coffee snobs. In the instructions for the scale, it says, "When the display shows EEEEEEE this indicates an overload." SAME!

I had to put on my reading glasses to read the instructions. I've become a person who needs all kinds of supplies with me at all times, including reading glasses, a sweater, tissues, cough drops. Hmm, kind of sounds like an 80 year old lady, right? I don't actually mind (although I do inevitably forget the reading glasses, despite the fact that I have a couple of downstairs pairs as well as my best pair, which stay with my book beside my bed. #old)--I like being prepared for eventualities. I guess like the Scout version of an old lady.

Anyway, it's Sunday, and after spending yesterday installing the range hood in the kitchen, we spent most of today hiking about, looking at the water and beautiful views, tromping through dried November leaves (and doing obsessive tick checks). Gus met a spunky little Border Collie pup and they had a great wrestle. We met some friendly humans, but only a few (literally three). My phone tells me we walked almost six miles!

Move-in condition! Waterfront!

Love this slightly droopy boathouse next to the Squirrel Point Lighthouse in Arrowsic.

Progress

In the kitchen!

KITCHEN PARKOUR!

Not really. Here is Mark installing our range hood and its ventilation system! It looks fabulous, and finally we have a light/fan over the stove, huzzah!

There are a couple of things we need to finish (too boring to relate), but other than the island/peninsula project, which is a simple and separate thing, this incredibly slow DIY adventure is nearing its end, just in time for Christmas.

July, July

In the continuing adventures of our kitchen, Mark and I voyaged to Ikea yesterday and bought three base cabinets, which will make up about half of the kitchen (one wall, including the sink and dishwasher), once we get them installed. I do love Ikea, and it was a whole new experience doing the kitchen thing, which requires a print out from their special, buggy computer planning tool and a brief consultation with an Ikea kitchen "expert." Each cabinet comes flat-packed in brown cardboard, with plastic bags of hinges and knobs, and long rails and miles of kick plate. We split the project in half so we could fit everything in our little car, and so we wouldn't have to store too many boxes at once, and just to make it feel more manageable. It was an all-day project, and we'll have to do it again (but I don't mind; I really do love Ikea).

On the way to Ikea I saw a sad, sad thing. It was so sad I can't even tell you about it--I honestly don't want it to sit in your head the way it still is in mine.

I'll tell you about the sad thing I saw today, which was the inside of the new(ish) Anthropologie store in Portland, built in what used to be two spaces--the main one was the Chamber of Commerce, and the other was Casco Bay Books for seven years, before it was briefly an ice cream place and then a tea house. Our space is now just a "dressing area" at the back of the store, our former doors and windows filled in and covered up so you'd never know they were there. There ought to be a plaque or something. Hmm, maybe a guerilla plaque installation needs to happen.

Did you know it's July? As in, summer?? Tomorrow is the fourth, which keeps surprising me whenever I remember it (again). My garden is at the awkward place after all the blue/purple stuff is done, and before the yellowish stuff starts going. I planted a couple of things in the hopes of livening up the color combo (a daisy and some pink yarrow). I need to move things around and divide them, too, but it's pretty nice back there, green and leafy.

Here are some nice songs for you, courtesy of my brothers:





And this one, Laura Jane Grace covering Michael McDonald, so good.

Tomorrow we'll start assembling kitchen parts, and there's also the sink and faucet to be ordered, hooray!

Stay in the background and be helpful

Howdy, pals! It's May, and spring is finally, grudgingly, putting in something of an appearance around here. Yesterday was the day we celebrate the birthdays of a certain cat and a certain dog (both three years old, which tragically and strangely means something different in the life of a cat vs the life of a big dog--in other words, Gus is older than Theo in a way. I figure they're both teenagers, though). Theo celebrated last night by finding a mouse in the kitchen. First of all, damn, because after years of mouse issues in our kitchen, we thought we'd eradicated all the little holes in the walls whence they came. Anyway, this mouse ran out from behind the stove, directly into the clutches of our big cat, who was completely clueless about what to do next, though he did have a delighted expression on his face. The mouse escaped easily, and Theo patrolled the kitchen all night long. As far as I know, the mouse hasn't made another appearance since.

I have encountered some things on the Internets that I like. This Reddit AMA by my hero, Mary Norris, is one of them. I'm taking my time with it, and I also have a coveted copy of her book checked out from the 'brary. From the AMA, here's a quote I like:

"A copy editor has got to be content to stay in the background and be helpful and not intrude. The two qualities that make the best copy editors are high intelligence and low ego."

I just like it.


I also like this op ed on Baltimore by Killer Mike.

"...in the days since, I’ve watched Geraldo Rivera and Blitzer pander to the audiences of oppression on TV. Rivera was approached by a very sensible man who said, 'Why are you here? Not to cover a calm and peaceful protest -- you’re here to sensationalize it.' Rivera turned his back on him, and at first I thought it was arrogance, but I think it was actually shame. This half-Hispanic, half-Jewish man who comes from two different communities, who knows what poverty and oppression can do, could have said, 'I want to know the real story.'"


And this review of Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed by (one of my favorites) Choire Sicha is great for many reasons, including

"It so happens that I have been ganged up on online, and I have also been beaten up by actual gangs of men on the street. The actual beating is — surprise! — exponentially worse."

and especially

"For women — and for all gender ­offenders, from gays to trans people — insult and the threat of murder are issued simultaneously. Like almost every other book, then, 'So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed' would probably have been handled better by a woman. Often we send a married, ­middle-aged man who makes $250,000 a year (half a million in a good year, ­apparently) to do the job. It’s fine! Ronson is a sweet and particularly talented man. But the actual problem with the Internet isn’t us hastily tweeting off about foolish people. The actual problem is that none of the men running those bazillion-dollar Internet companies can think of one single thing to do about all the men who send women death threats."

Yep, basically. Okay, onto the weekend my dears. We are so nearly at the point in our kitchen project that will require us to go to Ikea and purchase cabinets that I can hardly believe it!

What have I done but wander with my eyes in the trees?

Late night Settlers of Catan marathon with our boy and a high school friend of his. Theo was wishing he had opposable thumbs so he could play too. It was a revelation to me when I put on my reading glasses, because I could see the board without squinting (#old).

Miss Lulu has gone home, so we are now down to one dog, one cat. Two of Isaac's college friends spent most of this week chez nous and have now departed too, so we are down to one boy. He leaves tomorrow, emptying the nest yet again.

And OH did I show you this yet? We hung an antique cabinet (courtesy of my mom and dad who bought it years ago), and it only took about four hours of discussion/attempts to line up the hole in the wall with the hole in the cabinet (it's all about studs behind the plaster, etc). ANYWAY, it took four humans to do this, and we did it, and it is securely attached and now even full of dishes, which is amazing. Also in this photo you can see our new window sill--it's a gorgeous piece of oak. We still need to caulk around it and sand and paint the window trim where we messed it up. Then it's on to the floor, the last project before we start talking bottom cabinets!

March is nearly over, my dears. April isn't the cruelest month, no matter what they say.