Kinder Kempo, Kooky Cabinets

Yesterday we had a very very very busy day. We had to meet with people at the house in the morning, then go to swimming, then more house stuff after that. Then Kinder Kempo at 3:30, which was hilarious, and then we had to drop something off at Teacher Gina's because Spencer starts one of his Day Camps next week. Then we met Siri and Steve and Travis at the park and played until like 8 PM. Then we finally came home and ate dinner. We all collapsed into our beds about 9 PM. Until about dinner time all I had all day was iced green tea and half a biscotti.

Today Bill is supposed to go to Seattle to work in a fellow luthier's shop. He will not be back until late, late, late. Spencer and I are going to play, go to swimming, wash some strawberries and try to have fun without him. Maybe Spencer and I can do a project of some kind. The cabinets are in the house, and the floor in the laundry room is done. The cabinets have no handles or drawer pulls, we have to go get them ourselves I guess. SO we can do that later. There are no countertops yet, but the entire inside of the house is painted. We have something like 43 days left before we move in, but honestly I want to get all packed totally now as much as we can before it gets too hot. The goat farm HAS AC, but it seems as if the insulation is not that great or something because it is not effective. When it is very hot, we are also very hot.

I will take some pictures today.

MORE complaining!!!!!!

But you know whatever.... Most of the kitchen cabinets are in and it seems there are some mistakes with them and it really annoys me but they guy will be there again tomorrow so tomorrow I will go over there and talk to him about it. I had this great cabinet right near the stove that had these wooden dividers in them. THey held cutting board and cookie sheet pans, bit of which I used a lot because I roasted a lot of vegetables on the sheet pans and I was always cuytting up stuff ont eh millions of cutting boards i had You know, those white plastic type ones. SO this time around I asked for TWO cutting board cabinets. Not only is there only ONE of them, but the dividers in them are not wood, they are these stupid white wire ones that are just gonna be dumb. I could have put those in myself. Then, one side of the pantry has NO shelves. Then also the drawers for the desk are on the wrong side...

Dude.... what the hell were you SMOKING when we ordered these things? I remember he barely even wrote it all down and he blew me off a lot when I told him some stuff I wanted.

I am not in love with the color of the cabinets, but Bill wanted that color.

I know this is not earth shattering either, that I may live through this crisis, its just that I was NOT that picky when it came to what I wanted in the kitchen, I asked for just a few little things and I did not get them. It not like I ordered etched glass cabinet doors, or wine racks or spice drawers or a bunch of the ten thousand other things available I just wanted TWO CUTTING BOARD CABINETS instead of ONE!!!! Uhmmmmm........How difficult is that? It seems like this one section of cabinets is way too short for the granite, Also the stupid wall oven cabinet is like so DUMB it puts the wall oven like 5 inches off the ground... which negates one of the reasons I wanted a wall oven in the first place.. If I still have to bend way over to look and see if the stuff is done then it might as well be on the floor. SO I could go on and on with this, especially because I have had a realllllly crappy day but whatever Even seeing Habib today did not cheer me up However he is so AWESOME. We picked out some slate for around the fireplace. We are still deciding on a bunch of stuff.

I know that guy is going to be really mad when I tell him the stuff that is wrong, or maybe he has a good reason it is complete screwed up. Tune In tomorrow.

The garage door is in, it has no windows, just like Bill wanted. No windows. We are still arguing about the color to paint the outside of the house.

The rest of the day we spent driving in the car to Home Depot far away to look at some stupid tiles that they do not even have because that store is just idiotic. Spencer went to swimming, we went there after that. Spencer is at this age where he NEVER stops talking and I can take it for like most of a day and then after a while, I just cannot stand to hear "MOMMY??????" for the 346 time in a row. He asks questions ALL DAY LONG, after a while I just lose it.

Then we went to our old neighborhood, and everyone was out playing with the kids and stuff, and we were inside arguing about kitchen cabinets. All day Spencer is asking MOMMY????? When are we going to move into our house???? MOMMY???? MOMMY??? MOMMMY? MOMMY I saw a rainbow. MOMMY? I am thirsty. MOMMY what day is it? Mommy? Mommy? do I have swimming tomorrow? Mommy?

This time of year always puts me in a bad mood. My Mother's mother died on Mother's day ,. May 11, 1974; My own mother, her daughter, died on May 11, 1994. Right on Mother's day or after it or something. Then Father's day happens, I had a terrible relationship with him..... and then June 19th is my mom's birthday. Its the TRIFECTA of PAIN for me this time of year, and while I have a great life and not at all anything to complain about, everything annoys me this time of year. Add one exploded house, all that we have been through int he last year to that fact that we have woken up in someone else's house for 422 days now, and have spent over 6 months with a goat and I am reallllly sick of all of it. I need all of this to be OVER, and it seems like it will NEVER END.

I have no right to complain, yet it never stops me.

Tile O'Rama, Helpful Spencer, Battleship paint, and tons of cabinets.

Spencer was extremely helpful at the tile showroom. He brought his tape measure and helped everybody out....

It was awesome. I have pictures but they are still on my phone Right now I have to go to Petsmart before they close. Gawd. Stupid Dog.

OK I am back. I think the goat gave the dog fleas. The sooner I can move out of Green Acres the better.

SO: we looked at many different options. We found some tiles for all of the bathrooms and also for the many weird things I want to do to Spencer's bathroom later. The thing with two of the bathrooms is that one is only 21 sq feet and the other is only 28 sq ft I mean that is what, two boxes of tile? Habib said that since he was gonna be there tiling anyway that we should do those two tiny rooms. So we are doing that. Slate is relatively cheap these days and I have always loved it so we went with a lot of slate and also these weird flat rocks that I really like. We were able to get those really cheap too.

Similar to part of what is going in the shower, along with 12 inch cheap black slate tiles.

My weird flat rocks that are going in the teeny bathroom. Except mine are all black. Yes those are guitar fake jibbets (from dollar store) on Spencer's fake crocs....

As for Spencer's bathroom for later, they have so many cool ideas:

sea life motif

Turtle tile

This is like a Zoo or wild animal theme.... WAY cute But Spencer is a TURTLE. So he needs a turtle bathroom.

ALso there has been a LOT of progress on the house. It is completely painted on the inside. The Lazy Gray and Sleepy Blue have all been applied to the walls. Bill said it reminds him of the short time when he worked for the Navy on San Nicholas Island... Anyway..... and the guy brought about 200 boxes of cabinets over and more are coming. He put Spencer's bathroom cabinet up there, and the master bath set too. On Monday the cabinets are all going in, the garage door is being installed and Habib is gonna start in on the tile. So it is starting to look more and more like a house, and I am realllllly looking forward to living there again, whatever state it is in on July 31. I can take more pics of the inside later, maybe tomorrow. I am so tired from the long day of Tile O'Rama.

LIghts are ordered:

One bowl of Fire Soup, coming up. Actually we pretty much ordered all of the lights I said we would in the last post except that first one for the kitchen. We got that second one instead. ALso I got a stained glass pair of sconces and a stained glass light for the dinig room. So one hangs over the table and then two sconces ont he wall. Probably too much but I set them up so that they could be turned on independently of one another.

Tomorrow we go meet Habib the Tile Guy at Oregon Tile and Marble to pick out tiles.

Tile, Lights, and Bowls of Fire Soup.

Spencer says some pretty nutty things sometimes, and I think a lot of them stem from little games he plays with his friends at Preschool. He will be goofing with me and once in a while will say "I am gonna put you in JAIL." The jail changes. Sometimes it is Tiger Jail, or Feet Jail, and lately he has threatened to put me in "Fire Jail." I asked him what happens to a person that goes to Fire Jail, and he told me "every day for lunch you have to eat a bowl of Fire Soup."

he has been doing the Fire Jail thing for about two weeks I guess. Tomorrow we have an appointment to go pick out all of the light fixtures that will be in the house. On Saturday we are meeting Habib at Oregon Tile and Marble to pick out floor tiles. I have learned to come prepared to these meetings and "picking out sessions" but kind of figuring out what I like ahead of time. Otherwise we either stay there all day and nothing gets picked or Bill and I end up arguing. I have now learned to go in there with some ideas. TO that end, I researched alll the light fixtures on this store's website, and they rep about 25 light manufacturers, so that was a LOT of lights. We basically looked at lights until our eyes started to bleed.

We started by looking for the big fixture that will go in our Foyer, which is two stories high. This light has to be BIG, and the one that was there before I was not crazy about. It was one of those bit BOWL LIGHTS that are sort of suspended by three bars... they are everywhere.

I did not want another one of those but after a million times going back and forth with Bill about "I like this one and he likes that one and that one is ugly.." and all of that, I came upon this one goofy one which was OF COURSE in the style I did not want... BUT Bill and I both thought the SAME EXACT THOUGHT when we saw it: It looks like a BOWL OF FIRE SOUP!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH We laughed so hard about this, and decided that we both could live with it, and thus, tomorrow we are ordering THIS light for our foyer, this nutty fixture that looks like a BOWL OF FIRE SOUP. I think ours will be silver metal instead of black, but other than that, this is it:

Bowl of Fire Soup Light, A tribute to Spencer

For the bathroom lights we are probably going to get these in all three bathrooms:

bathroom lights

and for the kitchen probably something like one of these:

Kitchen Contenders - have changed them 600 times already.

For the outside we are getting these lights. They will go on either side of the garage door.

This is a LOT less fun than I thought it was gonna be. Seriously.

WOW. Pretty sure THIS GUY is having a bad day....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080611/ap_on_re_eu/britain_lost_documents_8

The plastique is gonna hit the fan in the sleeper cell tonight.... or maybe the British left them ? I don't know.. either way what a mess.

Habib the Tile Guy is on board. Seattle, Packing, Freddie Bear

Freddie Bear (above) not to be confused with...

Huggy Bear.. OR


Freddie Mac, or...


Mac Daddy, or....
Mac N Cheese. I am glad I could clear this up.

Well, 50 days left on the goat farm, and the 'Sploded house is coming together. They are in there spraying crap on the walls - not sure what it is and then they will paint. On Monday the cabinets come, and Habib will start the bathrooms asap. Today we also had to pick out what exact garage door we wanted. I chose one that will not fly 50 yards across the street again. On Friday we meet with some dude to pick out the lights, ceiling fans, doorbell stuff like that. The other day Bill and I went in to a place near here called Aurora Architectural salvage. Its this cool place that has all these things from old houses, you name it they have it. I am not so into old stuff though. Maybe one day. To stay sane these days I think of tile ideas for Habib and obsess about that stuff.

Bill worries if we will have enough time to pack to move out of here. Got news for you pal, I was packed three months ago. Today I went to MD appt and then dropped something off to one of the our attorneys. Tomorrow we have Spencer's swimming class, and then on Thursday Bill is driving up to Seattle for the day to work in a fellow luthier's shop. He is once again making the guitars for the radio station contest in San Jose and he is facing that deadline along with everything else. I would like to just pack us all up and go with him, but that guy lives near well some town I cannot remember but it is a real tourist trap. The only thing I would want to do is go to the Seattle Ikea, but I really do not need to be buying stuff right now, just as we are moving. Still it would be nice to get out of town for a day BUT honestly? Once you get to the guy's house there is nothing to do there and it is boring. So, Spencer and I will hang out here. I will take him to swimming and then we can do our usual frozen stuff for dinner.

I am sleepy. I have to go to bed its very very late. Spencer woke me up. Hey here is a warning to anyone who may have children in the future: GET A VERY BIG BED. There are nights where there is barely enough room for me, as I am competing with Bill, Spencer who occasionally crawls in with us in the middle of the night, and the dog. They do not all start out in our bed, but in the morning, there they all are. Spencer is getting better about it but he does sometimes still wake up at night all freaked out and hysterical. Tonight he woke up saying "I am SO TIRED!!!!" And we were like Uhmmm yeah well you are in fact in your bed you could just go to sleep... He is so funny. Tonight we got him back into his bed for once, and of course at night time, Freddie Bear is always with him. I dont have a picture handy of Freddie Bear, but he is Spencer's night time pal.

Picnic, Habib the Tile Guy, Lights,

Bill and Amy the Dawg, at our picnic yesterday

Here are some highlights from the picnic on Sunday. It was pretty fun,. We met our friends Siri and Steve and their son Travis (aka "Donut") at the Maple Street Park in Canby. They brought Subway for their lunch but since we were running late I just made our lunches. I grabbed one of those all in one salad kits from Costco, some grilled chicken, a big bowl, some drinks, Yo Kids, and some fresh strawberries and blueberries. I mixed that salad when we got there and it was pretty fun. Spencer and Travis had a blast, we all did. It has a great playground plus at the other end of the field there was a soccer game going on. The kids played on the toys, Spencer can totally push himself on the swing now!!!

Then today at 12:30 he started his first day of GOLDFISH (level C) swimming class which will be every week day for the entire summer probably, with maybe a little time off to move out of the goat farm. Then, we headed to the Sploded house to meet Habib and his wife and Builder Nick to talk about tile. it was great to see Habib again, and he had some great ideas. And when we are ready for it he is going to totally make Spencer's bathroom into a turtle room.

The house is coming along. Nick says they are going to be painting like tomorrow, and then the cabinets are going in Friday and the garage door. Then we got some lunch and then headed over to this place to pick the light fixtures out. Turns out you have to make an appointment to do this, but we do now have the website with all the products to choose from, so we will go thru that and then be prepared for our appt Friday. I have heard that wrought iron fixtures are kind of on the way out and I would prefer brished nickel, but then that will go out too, like brass did and we will be stuck with it, so we may go with the wrought iron stuff. I will update the blog when we have made these earth shattering decisions.

Probably I will get this for the dining room. It is a chandelier made of Gummy Bears. Bill liked it, but he thinks we should spend the extra money for the one made of Pop Rocks and Jolly Ranchers.

This one will be for the kitchen, obviously. It is made of green teacups, beads and I think a small colander.

We need a BIG fixture for our two story entry, and it needs to make a certain statement. I am thinking this one will do the trick. The statement this one makes is: "We used to live with a goat, and we have been out of our house for so long we could barely locate it, even with a compass and a map."

This is for our Master bedroom. It is very romantic and made entirely of glue from a glue gun. While festive, I hope we will be able to hang it in a place where it will not block the mirrors on the ceiling, or detract from the red velvet walls I have planned.

Tomorrow I have an appointment in the AM in Beaverton and will also drop off some stuff to our attorney. Friday we meet with the Light Fixtures dude. Party On.

Trip to Trader Joe's,FedEx, Costco..Tote Bags, China, Tank Man, YoKids, Prius Envy

Spencer LOVES these tubes full of yogurt. Stoneyfield YoKids Squeezers, and we freeze them They are like an organic yogurt freeze pop.

Woman at left: Devil or Tote Designing Diva? You decide. Though, I gotta say, her friend's vest is a little kooky... reminds me of Sally O'Malley (a Molly Shannon Character on SNL, a dancer who brags that she is "FIFTY YEARS OLD.")

Bill and Spencer shopping in Trader Joe's this afternoon. What a pair. Spencer has his stoner hat on and Bill is wearing a shirt from a guitar string company.

Spencer wore his hat that makes him look like one of those skateboarding/snowboarding stoner type kids you see a lot of in the Pacific northwest mostly downtown or in REI. He looked so funny.

We went to Trader Joe's to get some more Sauce to make Indian food. That is the only place that sells it. We were right by there anyway, because Bill had a ship a dude's guitar from the Fed Ex in Lake Oswego.

Ok here is a nutty little story: back when Spencer was first learning to talk he would see things and just shout out the name of them. He got to know the Fed Ex and UPS truck well because they came to our house like every day for Bill's business. However he had a little trouble pronouncing them correctly at first. When he would see a UPS truck he would shout "LOOK! PS Truck PS Guy!!!!!" That was fine. the trouble came when he would see a Fed Ex truck on the road or just anywhere. He would point, and shout "Look Mommy!!!! FAT ASS! FAT ASS Guy!!!!!" Uh, I think you mean FED EX, right Spencer? "Yes Daddy! FAT ASS!"

"FatAss" Truck

We also needed stuff from Costco - groceries and more importantly, GAS! Costco usually has pretty good gas prices. They also have great prices on fruit I think stuff like blueberries and strawberries, both thinbgs that Spencer would just INHALE if he could. We have discovered a great salad kit they have there two of them actually One is called Parisian Blend orMix or something its like a kit with everything you need to make this great salad: lettuce, dried cranberries toasted almonds, some kind of cheese and this white balsamic vinaigrette. Its GREAT and WAY cheaper and better then the kind you can get at the regular grocery store. Then they also have this great broccoli slaw kit thing you can get to make a huge bowl of broccoli slaw. Not that fattening, has 5 g protein per serving, it is like cole slaw but make from broccoli instead of cabbage. it also has like these soybean nuts in it, dried cranberries the dressing and some other stuff.. it is awesome. And Bill was out of coffee - can't have that. I rarely drink coffee anymore... Bill makes it pretty strong, so that mostly I will take a few sips from his ginormous daily morning mug and that is all I need to hit the ground running.

I am really getting much better at remembering to bring my own reusable shopping bags to the store. I must have like 25 of those bags that I have purchased but I really do use them everytime I go. it is a huge change for me, because i was ADDICTED to collecting plastic grocery bags. I had a HUGE collection of them in a giant Cheerios box under the kitchen sink, with instructiuons on the box to anyone who might happen upon them that they are NOT to be thrown away. I was using them for everything, especially back when we were still in the diapers phase... Long gone, thank goodness.

Now I use the reuseable bags. There is a kind they sell at the Fred Meyer here that are made by a co in Portland called Patty Reed Designs. Her bags are awesome and Fred Meyer has them for like $3 each. They are really festive, strong, well organized and durable. I use the INSTA-TOTES. Here is the Patty Reed website:
http://www.pattyreeddesigns.com/instatote/index.htm

But also here is a woman in Portland who says Patty Reed is evil because her bags are made in China and she sells them to Walmart too.
http://effdupgirl.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/to-patty-reed-designs/

SO maybe Patty Reed IS the Devil, but her bags are really really cute. I do not like any of the other bags out there, and I have tried a bunch. These are cute and they stay that way. They can stand up to me, my dog , my family, all kinds of abuse. One thing I like about them is that they do not have the STORE's name all emblazened all over them. I have like 8 of them at least: I like the Wildflowers one so much I have like 6 of those. I got enough to make sure I could always have them in both cars, so I do not forget to bring them to the store ever.

hearts

fruit on one side, veggies on the other


cherries
poppies

Wildflowers - my favorite one

Anyway. Bill is tired of me buying these totebags. They are made in China and I saw this program recently on PBS called The Tank Man about that guy who stood up to that line of tanks right after the Tianaman Square thing in China. I think it was an episode of FRONTLINE. In fact I thnk you can watch it on their website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/view/
China is a scary place and I wish they would not exploit workers and I do make an effort to not buy stuff made in China I guess but sometimes it is really hard, I mean WHAT ISNT made there now?

So. 53 days left on the Goat Farm. I have to go make a list to pack up the POD in an orderly fashion. Spencer is SUCH a pill sometimes but he has to be one of the sweetest kids EVER. Unlike his complaining mother, he derives such pleasure out of the simplest things. if you tell him that Yes, we will buy some YoBaby Yogurt tubes at Trader joes he is like doing backflips all the way home. I have never been that excited about yogurt. However here is a tip: freeze them. Kids LOVE them frozen. He is awesome. Spencer's favorite is the YOKIDS Squeezers. We freeze them and he eats them like a freeze pop.
http://www.stonyfield.com/ourproducts/kidsyogurt
Also: its not that I do not LOVE my Matrix, but I would LOVE a PRIUS and everytime I see one on the road, which is a LOT here in Portland, I want one. I wish we could have gotten one. Especially now that gas is $4.20 A GALLON. If things get much worse I may trade in my matrix for a Prius later this year.

I have Prius Envy.

Desperation sets in...Goat Farm Parole Countdown Calendar

CHAPINS HELD HOSTAGE: DAY 54

We all need something to keep ourselves from going insane, right? Some people drink, some play video games, some play tennis. My old neighbors, for example: Melinda does her scrapbooking, Shelley gardens, Tammy does crafts, Matt plays golf, John works out and power washes his driveway, Mormon Dave plays basketball. When Bill is going completely crazy get this: he bakes. He bakes cookies. They are really poofy cakelike chocolate chip cookies that EVERYONE loves. I am not a fan of these cookies, as I like my chocolate chip cookies thin, crispy, almost burned. To be nice, Bill usually flattens and burns a few for me. Anyway.

We all need a hobby. I used to needlepoint, before I had Spencer. Now my hobby is Spencer mostly - that, and endless complaining. However I still collect recipes I will occasionally attempt, I read non fiction books, I do a lot of internet research about stuff for the house. However, we have been living at this house since NOVEMBER 11th, 2007. How much can a person take????? I am about ready to lose my mind, but our official move out date is July 31st. Last night I made the Chapin Family Goat Farm Parole Countdown Calendar.

Stupid, huh? Immature, to say the least.

Hey I need this. My dog eats my husband's guitars, preschool is out, my kid constantly smells like chlorine, I have an entire house and two barns to pack into one tiny POD, and at the same time I have to figure out how to live in my new house without furniture or appliances.

SO: There are 54 days left in this hideous, smelly, goat infested, stinky, 1970's time warp of a residence.

What is WITH these animals? Also, Portland Luthierpalooza 2008

A very bad dog sleeping.

Saul's driveway: the scene of the crime. Also, here is the prime suspect.

Exhibit A: Chewed Chapin. Nice going, dog.

Portland bridge, one of about 200 in the city..

Picture of one of the towers of the OHSU tram, as taken through the sunroof. Its just so very "ARTY"... NOT!!!!! hahaha

They never start out that bad. They are sweet and usually a little timid and happy to be rescued by us. Then before you know it, for some unknown reason they start acting reallllly goofy. I am talking about our DOGS and this latest one fits the profile. Like Riley, when he ate screws, carpeting, an entire plastic frisbee and half a bottle of Darvocet. Not all in one sitting, of course, but that dog turned into a shark.

Today we all piled in the car and took a mini road trip to Portland, the big metropolis. Bill had to pick some stuff up from one guy and drop some off to another guy. These Luthiers are all crazy - they are always picking up, dropping off... Anyway Spencer insisted that the dog come with us in the back of the van. Fine She comes with us a lot, no biggie. We went to the first luthier's house, picked up that stuff, and when we got to Saul's (Bill's friend Saul Koll, he builds Archtops, did one for SEAL once http://www.kollguitars.com) house, Bill had to drop off a finished neck. He takes it out of the car, gives it to Saul, and discovers it has been EATEN!!!!!! Yes Amy the dog was very busy in the back seat and none of us noticed. This is the second incident this week. A few days ago Bill was grilling, and put a piece of sausage in his plaid shirt pocket. He pulls it out of the dryer after it had been in the laundry pile and then washed, and there is a HUGE hole in it and the pocket is completely MISSING. I mean there is a five inch hole in the shirt where the pocket used to be.

We are so good to these dogs and they all turn out of be crazy. Is it us???? I mean I can give Amy a little slack because she has been living with a goat for 8 months. We are ALL crazy living here. I hate this place. but COME ON!!!!! First crazy Riley then Boogie, then Missy who eats entire sticks of butter and now this crazy animal who not only eats weird stuff but also snores.

I don't need this. Keep it up, dog. You're gonna be living with the goat, permanently.

Stanley, Ed, Stouffers, and me, the crashing bore.

Red Wings win the Stanley Cup. Again.

Ed is in trouble

Nothing comes closer to home. Especially when you are still not in your home. Its not that bad though. Seriously. I lived on this stuff growing up. I had a single mom.

Well, the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. Shocking!

You know I do not know if anyone actually reads this blog, if they do, they do not comment on it,. ever. Only IPLAWGUY.

I am starting to think it might be boring listening to me complain endlessly about living with a goat and pontificating on which is the best washer to buy. The house is not going to change much except on the inside but I guess I could talk about that.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Today my friend Fetina was going to come over so I could help her redo her resume. She has been on 43 job interviews. WOW, that is a few more than I even went on when I was looking.

Oh and here is the big news of the day: EdMcMahon's house is in foreclosure. I guess Ed has not been able to work since he broke his neck in a fall, and he got behind on the payments.

Well I think this is terrible and I do not LOVE Ed McMahon, I really found him extremely annoying, but there were a LOT of comics out there who just would not have anything had it not been for Johnny Carson. I think Johnny would want them to bail old Ed out. I hope someone like Ellen or Jerry Seinfeld or Gary Shandling or David Letterman or somebody helps out Ed. I mean, have a heart people, toxic mold killed his dog.

You can read about his HERE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/arts/05arts-FORECLOSUREP_BRF.html?ref=arts

Well, I have to go put the Stouffers frozen delight in the oven now. I am done cooking until we are back in our real house. Seriously. I am packing up the pots, pans, dishes food processors, mixers etc.

Talked to Habib the Tile Guy tonight!!!

I would like something like this in the kitchen, this is the Versailles pattern with travertine. I don't care if it is real travertine or not They have so many porcelain tiles that look just like the real thing, and less pinkish but this is the idea.

He is meeting us at the Sploded House on Monday to go over what we want in the kitchen and the two upstairs bathrooms. He is awesome, and he has a real passion for tile and all the stuff he does. I cannot wait to see him again.l We had met with him a bout two weeks before the house blew and we were gonna have him come over and install stuff but we were still making up our minds. Then the house blew and that project was off but i NEVER lost his number. Aweome. I hope somehow we can do a lighter colored tile in the kitchen in some kind of a tri colored versailles pattern. Then in the master Bath we can do a gray or dark tile can be porcelain or whatever, in the shower, around the tube and all over the floor.

Then in Spencer's bath room it is so small the he can just do the floor right now, but I really would like to talk to him about doing turtle tiles in there on the walls and back splash, eventually, and make it into like a turtle bathroom. Habib can do anything he is AWESOME.

Ex of some turtle tiles... You get the idea.

Sex and the Paint Colors: SERENITY NOW!!!!!!

SATC MOVIE: It was just AWESOME.

Frank Costanza: "SERENITY NOW!!!!"

I could not find a clip of SERENITY NOW but here is a top 25 Seinfeld moments clip to entertain you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzkVFqErzJs&feature=related

Last night I went to see the Sex and the City movie, by myself. Do not feel sorry for me, I prefer it that way, because no one I know wanted to go. IF you never watched the series the movie would be dull. I was not about to drag Bill there. It was great.. I got a small popcorn that was I guess about the size of a grocery bag, a small drink which was a mere 450 ounces, and some gummy bears and I sat exactly where I wanted to and kicked the seat in front of me the entire way through. I like to sit near the front, though not TOO close. The movie was AWESOME when it finally started but there were like two hours of previews first. I thought it would NEVER start. It was great to go to the late show on a Sunday night not very crowded. I of course did not get all the way thru the popcorn or the drink, and at some point I dropped the gummy bears on the floor by accident but i was so into the movie I never bothered to look for them.

The movie was SO VERY AWESOME, it really really was and it was one of the most fun things I have done in like 15 months. honestly.

Today we met Builder Nick at the house and picked out Interior paint colors, door knobs and a stairs bannister. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Get this: the house is going to be painted three colors - You can look them up on Sherwin Williams website...
I was not able to download the pics.

the three colors are:

White trim and also on the ceilings
Sleepy Blue
Lazy Gray

You think there might be a theme here?

Honestly, I know it is going to look really nice and we had a lot of exciting colors in our last house - some ours, and some were there when we moved in and we never got around to changing them. But after this year I have had ENOUGH EXCITEMENT.

You know what I was thinking when I picked out these interior colors? Well you have to be a fan of SEINFELD, but remember on that show when George's father keeps shouting "SERENITY NOW!!!!!" like a total maniac? That is EXACTLY what was going through my head when I picked these colors. So one entire wall will be white because it cannot be helped... it is near the foyer and goes up to stories hard to explain but most of the house will be LAZY GRAY. Except a couple of rooms will be SLEEPY BLUE: our bed and bathroom, Spencer's bathroom, my office and the downstairs bathroom.

The Mediation will probably be delayed. Its ok, it needs to be. But we are moving off the Goat Farm by July 31 no matter what. That knowledge is all the Serenity I need right Now.

This is the last week of preschool before it gets out for summer. Starting next week he will be home all day except for four weeks when he goes to Day Camps, all with different themes:

Creative Art Camp June 23-27^th

Simply Science Camp July 7-11

Wet and Wild Water Camp July 21-25

Delightful Delicacies Cooking Camp August 4-8

These camps will all be at his current preschool, so he will know some of the kids, and the teachers. They get out at 1 PM and he will have to leave at 12 15 every day to be able to get to swimming on time, but its okay. Also he will have swimming lessons every day at 12:30 PM for 30 minutes. Also every Tuesday he will have KINDER KEMPO, which is like Karate for Four year olds. Then I will have to take him to my Weight Watcher's meetings while he is still in his little Karate suit. GREAT. Spencer is SUCH a pain in the neck at my meetings, especially when Siri brings Travis.. Then they go nuts. The only way I can keep him behaving is I play this game with him where I pretend he is a dog. he crawls on the floor under people's chairs, but sometimes he sits or rolls over, and he is at least not talking as a dog. I pet him, and hope that he keeps it together for the 30 minute meeting. How dumb is this???? But you do what works, and that works. Then JJ the leader lets him collect the nametags for the raffle, he loves that.

He will be home the rest of the time, but we will be busy packing to leave the Goat Farm so who knows. Hopefully he will somehow stay out of trouble and we do have a babysitter now. We cannot really afford to do with him what we did with him last summer, which was to put him into Learning Tree for the summer. I was working then, which is why we did it.

I just hope that between all that stuff and moving back to the house and maybe the mediation and saying goodbye to the goat that he will be busy enough to at least not have his mind rot. We were going to do soccer too but this summer is really hard for us and we do not have the time to take him to pracitces and go to games all the time. Not this year - we have a little too much going in.

Chapins 1, Earth 0

Chapin Spolded House

Earth.

How many opportunities in life do you have to replace an entire house AND two cars????

Hopefully not many, but we have had this chance. However, we have not been able make use of many Earth Friendly options in either our cars OR the rebuilding of our house due to the prohibitive cost of the materials, labor or lack of knowledge by the building code dept of Canby.

So far we have been able to

• reuse some of the wood from the old house
• replaced the Expedition with a used better mileage Toyota Matrix - 33 mpg v. 12 mpg
  
• got some earth friendly insulation, bu could not do the entire house with it because of Code rules and cost
• we will get energy efficient appliances, EVENTUALLY, including washer/ dryer
  
• we opted for the 90% efficiency furnace
• we are going to TRY to afford a tankless water heater
• going to try to get SOME earth friendly flooring options if we can
• we are reusing the granite that was only a month old when the house exploded
• replacing the washer, dryer, cook top, oven, dishwasher and fridge with energy star ones
  

Here are the things we wanted to but could not afford to do:

• two hybrid cars
• Solar power on roof
• solar water heater
• wind turbine on roof
• denim insulation
• soybean insulation
• bamboo flooring
• recycled glass tiles
• recycled glass countertops or tiles on floors/walls
• concrete countertops
• dual flush toilets
• syncrete (concrete made of garbage)

There were many more, but almost all of these things were just completely cost prohibitive. Some of them save money in the long run, but cost a LOT upfront. For example a tankless water heater is $1400. a regular water heater is like $200. see what I mean? The point is that most people cannot afford to tear down their house and rebuild it, and replace both cars, They just cannot do it. We did that, but we could not afford much in the Earth Friendly category because it is all just sooooooo expensive.

On the good side, I do not use grocery bags anymore, and I always bring my own. My favs are the HUGE ones you can get at Costco for about a dollar each They hold like three regular bags of groceries. I keep them in the back of my car.

COSTCO Reusable totes: $1.10 each, and HUGE. This is not my picture, though.

LOOK how much they hold!!!