Grand Plans

Grand plans, people.  Everyday I have grand plans.  Unfortunately, whereas my grand plans used to usually look like:

• Write grad school papers and read 50 pages+ per day of academic enlightening/nonsense articles/books.
• Make lesson plans and email them to all the other grad instructors I coordinate.
• Teach eager minds the basics of music or the essentials of flute-playing.
• Write my own flute tutor and get it published.
• Pass off extra courses for my degree while enrolled in a full schedule.
• Etc.

Now my grand plans include things like washing poop off things and trying to shower.  And the really grand ones are things like cooking and figuring out how to wipe personal information off an old computer that needs to get out because I can't take the clutter anymore, ack.  (And barring success at the latter, tearing into said computer and removing the hard drive so we can smash it with a hammer, Izma-style.)  But given that I have someone smiling and cooing at me much more often than I ever did in school, it is much more fulfilling.

So having baked cornbread twice this week is a big accomplishment.  (I hate cooking - if I'm going to create something time-consuming, I would rather be sewing.  Or at least trying to get better at piano.)  And I'm kinda sad I didn't try to make gluten free cornbread from scratch before.  Because those dang mixes are expensive.  And the stuff from scratch isn't much more time consuming.  In fact, I'm thinking I'll just make some of my own mixes ahead of time once I know I'm thoroughly happy with my ingredient ratios.

And here's some gratuitous cuteness, since I haven't been able to blog from my stinking phone that has all the pictures:

NaBloPoMo

For the record, I attempted to start up posting for NaBloPoMo, entirely for the sake of my best friend. And I thought I was being smart - I put the blogger app on my phone.  But EVERY time I try to publish a post it says post failed.  So apparently I failed before I even started.  And now I'm typing this from my computer so I don't have cute pictures of my baby.  And let's face it, I'm such a bad writer that the only reason anyone would check my blog would be to see cute pictures of my baby.  So double fail.  On the plus side, I bought a Butterfinger peanut butter cups thing today and it was amazing.  I also managed to put up my Halloween decorations before Halloween.  Still riding that high from last week.  Last year they didn't get put up at all thanks to grad school and ongoing morning-that-lasted-all-day sickness.  And I have an awesome potion bottle collection (me MIL asked me to help her make potion labels one year and I just sort of kept making them until I had around 50.  True story.  Now I don't want to take them down so they may just sit out for the next few weeks and then I'll be super lazy and switch them straight out for Christmas decorations.  Besides, Monkey Bug will likely be able to get into them next year so who knows how long it will be until I get them all put out at once again.

That's all the excitement here folks.  Unless you count the number of times I had to wash poop off myself, the Bug's clothes, and various other items today.  It was around 4.

Accomplishments

So I obviously failed at doing weekly updates. However, I successfully grew a cute human and made it through a year of grad school & teaching. No promises, but I'm hoping to at least get pictures on here regularly. In this first offering, Monkey Bug is happily chirping away at his parents until midnight after a long trip home from meeting the Utah Chapter of his Adoring Fan Club.

Sunday Update

So, I'm going to do a Sunday update every week.  In theory.  We'll see how well it works.  If nothing, I will post pictures every week because that is our new goal: take a couple of pictures after church for the sake of chronicling our family in some way and also to send to Indy's sister on her mission in California.  My goal next week is to remember to do it while we're still at church & other people can take the pictures so it's not a series of selfies.  Don't hold your breath.

See the sling?

And finally, because I had the urge to begin tracking my Sunday outfits for my own morbid curiosity:

Day 1-7: Operation Exorcise Mr. Tinkles

Prelude

My wonderful husband (with the financial support of both of our fabulous parental units) got me a used piano for my birthday.  I knew what I was asking for when I asked for it - a sad sounding eyesore whose greatest hope might be to hold its tune for a whole year.  That's the most we could possibly hope to afford as unemployed grad students. 

The other problem in asking for this marvel was that, even after locating a piano within our budget and within 60 miles on the great expanse of Craigslist, we weren't quite sure how we would get it to our house.  Then a seemingly great solution presented itself: old Kimball piano for sale, hardly been used, located about a mile from our church up the road, and they were willing to deliver. 

There did not appear to be anything glaringly wrong with it other than it being massively out of tune and home to at least 15 cats for the last 25 years.  So we got it.

Fast-forward to bringing it to our house and me immediately noticing that the accompanying smell was more than just cat: it was fossilized cat urine.  Followed immediately by me trying not to vomit or cry and rubbing the whole thing down with Old English Lemon Oil, lighting several candles and going to bed feeling like an idiot.

Day 1 of Exorcism

I look up solution after solution online.  Scour the internet.  White vinegar comes highly recommended and I get to work using every rag in our bucket.  Laundry necessitates a pause in the operation.  I head to Wal-Mart for back up: Febreze plug-ins.  If I can't defeat the demon, I will at least prevent him from possessing the rest of my house.  Somehow.

Day 2

Pungent smell is still vomit-inducing.  Having rubbed down the entire piano with vinegar, I proceed to remove the music-stand as well as the front covers.  Some finish may have been sacrificed to the cause.  Piano tuner arrives.  Manages to get piano more or less in tune although he is powerless to remove certain screws to enable access to certain areas.  Recommends spraying insides of wood with Febreze and closing the thing back up.

Day 3

Desperate and having called in remote back-up from General/Cardinal Knows-How-To-Get-Anything-Out-Of-Everything-And-If-She-Doesn't-She-Knows-Someone-Who-Does Mom, the General/Cardinal contacts her Reliable Inside Source.  The Reliable Inside Source recommends 3 products: Nature's Miracle, Ozium Air Sanitizer, and an antiques/wood furniture cleaner/conditioner.  After a lengthy search, I acquire Nature's Miracle Urine Destroyer Just For Cats and Ozium Air Sanitizer.  I find myself with insufficient funds to purchase the cleaner/conditioner for the only immediately available source and head back to the battleground two-thirds successful.  I will purchase the final product via the internet.  Upon spraying the Ozium inside the top and bottom of the piano, we experience immediate relief.  The demon is beginning to weaken. 

Day 4

I continue to further enrage the weakening demon through repeated application of Urine Destroyer, focusing on its preferred headquarters: the shelf above the keyboard.

Day 5

The demon has finally begun a full retreat from its headquarters.  I take sharp implements wrapped in Urine Destroyer-soaked cloth to grove along the front.  Happy to report success.  Instead I must now concentrate on the rear.  Q-tips, vacuum, and gloves are necessary.  I report success to husband later on that evening.  I choose the unfortunate timing of during the closing hymn of a church musical performance.  I say unfortunate because this was the exchange:

Husband: "We have to record the visual of this demon."
Me: "I'm pretty sure it has multiple heads."
Both at the exact same time: "And multiple penises."

Were forced to excuse ourselves to avoid disruption to the meeting.

Day 6

I realize the final stronghold of this demon may be the bench.  After soaking it through with Urine Destroyer, I scrub the bottom of each leg.  A thorough spray of Ozium to the inside weakens the demon considerably.

Day 7

Air is breathable, with only a trace of the demon.  Almost pleasant.  Still waiting for arrival of furniture cleaner/conditioner.

Early lessons in attraction

I'm suddenly wondering what all I did as a kid that made my teachers question my level of intelligence.

In 3rd grade Mrs. A gave us an extensive lesson on magnets and magnetic attraction.  Then she took us outside with a large, over-sized magnet and let us take turns picking things to test for being magnetic.  All of the other kids picked things like a nail or a paperclip from the ground (yeah, I don't think our school had the safest grounds) or the iron railing for the stairs.  Me?  I brought her a rock.  Every time.

But this was my reasoning:  I knew how magnets worked.  I wasn't interested in confirming what I already knew - that the magnet was going to attract a paper clip or anything obviously metal like that.  She had mentioned in the lesson that magnets were attracted to metal and that the metal was found in the earth, in rocks.  So duh, I wanted to find some hidden stuff I couldn't obviously predict... it was like a random treasure hunt.

I'm pretty sure all Mrs. A thought was, "Oh great, here she comes again.  With another rock.  Did this girl listen at all?  I've already told her that probably none of the rocks her have iron in them.  Seriously, they put this child in gifted and talented?  They must be desperate."  As I came at her with a big stupid smile and another large rock in my hand.

We never did find one that attracted the magnet.

Problems and Solutions

I officially reside in the midwest.  And while the people are lovely and our house is cute, I can't decide if I'll ever get used to it.  I'm reserving judgement until I live through winter.

It doesn't help that my GI track has apparently taken it upon itself to process all the stress of the past three months into less than semi-solid waste.  Thanks, colon.  And whatever my colon missed, my subconscious has absorbed and refined into dreams (involving one particular ex) more bizarre than I thought possible to conceive.  My subconscious thought differently.

The happy part of moving across the country and being only slightly closer to home is that first of all, we have our own home.  I love my in-laws dearly but...  I'll let you fill in the rest.  Even when families used to stay close together, newlyweds almost always built a separate free-standing home on the family land for a reason.  A good reason.  I don't feel the need to further explain these feelings.

The second part is that, thanks to much help from me mam, my house is fairly well organized and on its way to being decently decorated.  I've collected quite a bit of decor over the years as a single person and then even more when I moved to the state of Deseret Industries and regular flea markets, and yet even more after I received my unexpected inheritance from my baby sister.  I use all of it.

You'd be surprised what a trip to the local thrift store/flea market/antique mall can solve.  My favorite solutions to organizational problems were often through a trip to DI.  Like my make-up, hair stuff, and jewelry: all stored and easily accessible in a hodge podge of glass trays & stemware from the thrift store.  Or my extra fabric for sewing: stored in vintage suitcases under my cutting table.  (Someday I'm going to paint those suckers too.  The suitcases, not the fabrics.)  I have never bought a single serving bowl from anywhere but the thrift store.  And I have some lovely glass bowls.  Needed more storage/cupboard space in the kitchen: found two cabinets on sale at the local antique mall.  They are currently curing from their paint facial.  And they look adorable.  Needed more storage for the master bath.  Small bookcase with cute scallop trim? $40 at the antique mall?  Yes, please.  Was it painted pitch-black?  Yeah, it was.  Was.  It is now a charming two-tone green with white trim.  Did I find a set of turquoise ceramic canisters that match my kitchen perfectly at a random thrift store while husband was visiting his Iraqi refugee family?  Yes, yes I did.  Did I pay more than $15 for all 4 of them?  No, no I did not.  Or how about my vintage kitchen table that matches my 50s diner look perfectly?  That's right, it came with sparkly red vinyl & chrome chairs and a bonus bar stool, all for $200.  Thank you, Confetti Antiques and my mothers for giving it to me as a Christmas present.

And finally, in a sad/hilarious turn of events, the garage sale furniture that I bought for myself in my undergrad has made it full circle.  I bought a nightstand for $10, a dresser for $30 or $40, and a desk for $5 when I moved into a house with my sister during my undergrad.  My mom came up for a weekend and spray painted all of it white & yellow to go in my bedroom at the time and gave it matching hardware.  Then I hit the Oregon trail and my sister inherited it.  She didn't care for the yellow, so she made all of it just white.  Then she got married and passed it to buck-buck #3, who used it for the remainder of her undergrad before hauling it off to med school with her.  That is, all but the $5 dollar desk, which when I last saw it was resting next to the apartment dumpster with a "FREE" sign attached to it.  Sister #3 then proceeded to paint the set cream with a black wood crackle finish (so it's really mostly black) to match her cowgirl/western red, cream, & black room at med school.  She also added a cute consul table from Craigslist to the set and changed the hardware.  And now, since she up and left us, I have reacquired my college furniture, conveniently painted to match my living room and the guest room.  But I changed the hardware once again.  At least on two pieces.  I couldn't help it.  (And it's kind of her fault.  She must have meant to get a few more pieces but they don't make them anymore... anyway, I solved that problem.)

Someday, the paint will dry, and I will post pictures of my achievements from the past few weeks.