Archive for April, 2012

Road Rage

I’d forgotten how much I hate driving.

Not driving per se, but the dumb drivers all around who don’t pay attention, yap on their phones, text on the interstate, drive ten miles below the speed limit in the left lane next to someone else driving ten miles below the speed limit in the right lane, and…oh, never mind.

I just hate having to be on the road. Our last year in Fort Wayne, I had to take Derek to school, then head downtown to work and then back. That drive drove me crazy until I discovered books on tape, and suddenly I was so absorbed in chick lit that I barely noticed what was happening around me.

In Knoxville, we purposely bought a house a mile from First Lutheran so Derek could come home for lunch and we wouldn’t waste huge parts of our day burning gas. And now I’m on Alcoa Highway (aka “I’ll kill ya Highway”) every day taking the kids back and forth to school, and the road rage is mounting, and I’ve got to stop yelling at drivers and speeding because my kids are picking up on it. Books on tape are out because Sophia hates radio noise in the car.

Our countdown is 4 weeks. I’m sad that our time at First Lutheran School is coming to an end, but all those hours back in my day, the anger evaporated, and time to make decent meals will be worth it.

Meanwhile, if you happen to notice a van or small SUV with a “Visit the Lutheran Church Near You” front license plate careening around you with the driver mouthing something angry, just pretend you didn’t see it, and know that not all Lutherans are as bad on the road as I am. Is this what Luther meant by “Sin boldly?” I’m guessing not.

Author name:
Publish date:
April 25th, 2012
Discussion:
2 Comments
Tags:


Scenes from home

We’ve been here a week, and I still feel a bit like we’re on vacation in a lovely cabin in the mountains. The kitchen is unfamiliar, the bedrooms have new-carpet smell, and we’re racing back and forth from Knoxville a lot.

This afternoon, while Kate and Derek went on a youth group horseback-riding trip in the Smokies, I put the little ones to bed and got started weeding. Sophia came out eventually and wanted to ride her bike, so I drew a line in chalk on the flat part where she could ride, so she wouldn’t careen down that steep driveway. She added a reminder for herself:

You won’t look at this front yard and say, “Wow! It’s gorgeous!” but before I started there were dozens of thistle plants several feet tall, poking out everywhere and just about to go to seed. The dandelions and clover were out of control, and there’s still a lot of poison ivy I need to demolish. But it’s a start.

Inside, we hung pictures yesterday. One of my favorites is by the front door, so departing guests see it when they leave, and we see it last thing before heading up the stairs for bed. It was a wedding gift from Prof. Pless.

On the coffee table, a gift from our Knoxville Grandma Mary, another favorite.

Our friends Sarah and Christopher gave us the “I love Murvul” sticker. In the south, it’s not Mar-ee–ville. It’s Mrvl, no vowels, said fast, accent on Mr.

My “Simplify” sign used to be in our kitchen, but it didn’t fit with the dove-gray walls. On the porch, where we hope to spend hours and hours lounging, it’s perfect.

And, finally, I love the new carpet. The color is called “Gray Squirrel,” and it’s sort of a cool brown tone, and super plush and fun to walk on in bare feet and lay around on in the playroom…or the stairs, if you’re age five and almost-two.

And the countdown begins for the open house Saturday. We’re pretty much done, except for some more weeding and the arranging of the basement. Several people told me I was “brave” to do this, but we love to entertain. With our old house on the market and trying to keep it clean all the time, it’s been too long since we’ve had a good par-tay.

Author name:
Publish date:
April 22nd, 2012
Discussion:
1 Comment
Tags:


New-house thoughts

We’re pretty much settled in to the new house, except for the two-mile long honey-do list I have for Derek that involves things like screws, hammers, tall places, and (ahem) trying to fix the gouges in our neighbor’s driveway. He’s upstairs now, and I can hear the drill whirring, and that sound makes me happy, because I think that means the playroom bookshelves are being anchored to the walls, and the towel and toilet paper hangers are going up in the master bath.

So. This neighborhood is cra-zy. We’ve come from this urban neighborhood in a fantastic location, near everything, but the kind of neighborhood in which you put your trash out and five minutes later some homeless guy is rooting through it. Now we’re not only in suburbia, on the very edge of town, but the houses around here are unbelievable McMansions.

Our house is definitely the scrappy little house in this ‘hood. It’s about the same size as our old house, with a better layout upstairs, and instead of a front porch, a screened-in back porch, and instead of a full basement, a half basement/half garage (which makes Derek veerrryy happy). I’d estimate that our place is about half the size of these other houses around here, and I have no idea why, when the former owners built it, some contingent of neighborhood association people didn’t make up rules that prohibited this little place from being built. But whatevs. In real estate, it’s good to be the little guy.

That said, I have this weird opposite-shame thing going on, and I know I’m not just being paranoid because a church guy stopped over the other day, and he said when he drove in he thought to himself, “Wow, Pastor’s got money!” And then he saw our house and he went, “Well, maybe not that much money.” I just feel like I came from humble roots, and we as a couple have too, and I don’t want people to think that our values lie in a ginormous house. We’re actually excited about some day being able to downsize, when the kids move out and (perhaps) I am not working from home. But, to be fair, Derek is super-excited about the garage, and the back porch, and the fact that when we go to the local Kroger, we won’t get hit up by panhandlers or have to disinfect the groceries when we get home. Kidding on that last part, but it’s true that everything down here is so…suburban and so nice. Watch me get used to it.

And, to be even fairer, we’ve only met one neighbor, whose driveway our moving truck gouged, and she was incredibly nice.

Anyway, the view going down our road is lovely:

And we had another showing on the old house today, and one scheduled for Saturday. Life is good, we are blessed, and I’ll take photos of the whole house when it’s finished, which will be soon because we’ve scheduled an open house/grill-out for the congregation on Derek’s birthday, a week from Saturday. Good thing my closets are clean. :)

Author name:
Publish date:
April 19th, 2012
Discussion:
5 Comments
Tags:

Addendum

This morning I woke up and realized we haven’t even started the playroom:

So much for box-free. Maybe by tomorrow….

Author name:
Publish date:
April 16th, 2012
Discussion:
1 Comment
Tags:

Movin’ on up

Yesterday morning, our Knoxville house looked like this:

Derek arrived with the truck, and with the help of our neighbor, miraculously backed it in between my crape myrtles, right up to the front porch.

The loading was a breeze. We had tons of help from First Lutheran friends, and we were finished by 11:30, just in time for sandwiches and cookies from Pastor and Gloria, the retired pastor at First. We left Knoxville at 12:30, in plenty of time to meet the Maryville crew at the house for unloading at 1:30.

Except.

The driveway? It’s a little steep. Okay, it’s a lot steep. It’s the kind of driveway we’ll never get down in the winter. A driveway that will force us to experience what everyone else around here knows: don’t budge when there’s a hint of snow, ice, or temps below freezing in the winter, except to run to Weigel’s for bread and milk.

The truck wouldn’t go up the driveway. They tried. oh, they tried. But they actually tried on our neighbor’s driveway, which was slightly less steep than ours. How did that end, you ask? Let’s just say my first meeting with her was me apologizing and offering to pay for the gouges in her driveway.

Nope.

We had an engineer and three military guys working on this problem.

This might work! Oh, wait. Nope.

Plenty of cute bystanders.

Finally, they gave up on the truck and ended up loading pickups down the hill, and driving them up to the house. It actually worked out well, because they drove the pickups through the grass and around to the back door, avoiding a whole flight of stairs. Oh, and we found out from our new neighbor that she couldn’t get a truck up when she moved in, either. Moral of that story: we’re either never moving again, or getting professional movers.

Susie took Sophia and Jonathan for the day, and they came back 100 percent happy and exhausted…perfect for Derek and me, because they took long naps this afternoon.

And now, the house is starting to become a home. We still have lots to do, but it’s coming together. A lady from church came over and arranged my kitchen–how cool is that? I think that’s the most overwhelming part, and everything else came together pretty fast.

We still have tons to do in the Knoxville house, and the basement here is basically a pile of crap that needs to be sorted, and we have pictures to hang and routines to get into, but considering we’ve only been in the place for a little over a day, I feel pretty good that there’s not a single box in sight. Next on the agenda: figure out where the Kroger is, and if there’s such a thing as good beer down here. And sell our old house. Yep, I think that’s it for now.

 

 

 

Author name:
Publish date:
April 15th, 2012
Discussion:
1 Comment
Tags:

Random post-Easter, pre-move thoughts

1. Easter was fabulous. I’m not saying I didn’t miss First Lutheran, because I totally did. Heck, I still miss Zion Lutheran in Fort Wayne. But Derek really gussied up the Easter service at Praise, we had an egg hunt for the kids and a breakfast, and it was a lovely day. The kids and I went home for a nap (Jonathan), candy-eating (Kate and Sophia) and packing (me) while Derek took communion to shut-ins, and then we had the obligatory ham dinner, which I made up for with deliciously fattening cheesy hashbrown potatoes, a big green salad, and some lip-smacking Champagne. It was weird not having a huge crowd over.

2. We move in four days. I should be packing, but I’m sitting on my heating pad because my sciatic nerve is wacked out because I cleaned the new house top to bottom today. Now that those toilets are scrubbed, I feel like it’s really our place. Side note: I really need to go see Dr. Mike, the cute chiropractor who has healed my sciatica through two pregnancies, but the whole “busy packing” thing is getting in the way.

3. Driving down to Maryville all the time, we get to see the beautiful Smoky Mountains. Now, I grew up in Idaho looking at the Rockies. These ain’t no Rockies, but considering we came, most recently, from Indiana and South Dakota, they’re pretty fabulous. I’d rather be blocked in by mountains than suffocated by the big sky.

If these were the Rockies, they'd be five times higher. If I were Jan or Edie, I'd capture them much better.

4. As spring comes around I’m even more sad to leave our house. I’ve spent six years working on the landscaping, and it’s finally starting to look just the way I always envisioned it. I feel a little discouraged that I’ll have to start over again somewhere else. Derek, of course, quoted that Bible verse about sowing while another man reaps. Here are our lovely children in their Easter outfits from Grammy Ardis, and behind them is my low-water perennial garden I’ve been slowly filling in for five years. In another two years, it would be done.

5. I cleaned out the wine rack and ended up with a big pile of bottles that were almost definitely spoiled. But I had to make sure. Uggghhh. Most of them were sent in a big shipment from Chile right after I got pregnant with Jonathan, and I never got around to drinking them. Red wine from Chile often has a distinct vegetal-green pepper smell and taste, and I found out that green pepper scent goes exponential when you let the bottles sit around about 2 years too long.

What a shame, all down the drain.

The one wine that was half-good was a 2003 Reininger Cabernet from Walla Walla. We bought it last time we were out to see my parents, and I was saving it for a special occasion. Dumb. PSA: Just drink it so you don’t lose it.

6. Picnik, where I edit all my photos, is about to close. I need a new free, web-based photo-editing program. Anyone?

 

Author name:
Publish date:
April 10th, 2012
Discussion:
1 Comment
Tags:



This Joyful Eastertide

Video by my mom. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Author name:
Publish date:
April 8th, 2012
Discussion:
1 Comment
Tags:

Good Friday

“Mommy, I know why it’s called Good Friday,” Sophia said this morning. “It’s because Jesus died for my sins, and that’s so good.“

Author name:
Publish date:
April 6th, 2012
Discussion:
1 Comment
Tags:

My hero

Last night I slept approximately four minutes. The other 7.5 hours I was having nightmares about climbing the ladder to cut in the top of the stairwell walls, and when I wasn’t having nightmares about climbing the ladder, I was calculating the most efficient way to go about the job.

Not a good night.

When Derek seemed open to doing the cutting in himself instead of spotting me, I was all over it. We made a good team. He cut in the top and sides with the brush, and I used the roller with the crazy 12-foot extend-a-pole for the walls.

Have I mentioned that I love this guy?

We’re like real professional painters.

Except for the spots we missed. And the spots where we hit the ceiling and the trim. Other than that.

Author name:
Publish date:
April 3rd, 2012
Discussion:
1 Comment
Tags:

Colors

This post is brought to you by the colors Windsurf and Bolero Red. Oh, and LCMS Blue. Because, before I get to the new-house-painting, I must report that the LCMS has changed its (horrible, ugly, non-cross) cross color to blue.

Blue. Which is barely a liturgical color, if you could make the argument that it is one at all (because I am totally a purple traditionalist and will probably ignore you if you tried to say blue is better). Blue. Which doesn’t match the Witness Mercy Life Together logo, which is so beautiful. Blue. Which laughs in the face of the entire burgundy CPH Lutheran Essentials Library, including the just-rolled-out hymnal.

The logo itself, which is straight out of the 80s, could use a “rebranding,” as the press release explained away the blue. Why not go for broke if you’re going to uglify the already ugly logo? How about unveiling a beautiful new logo, one that’s truly Lutheran? I joked to Derek that I was going to check the ELCA and WELS logos and whichever was prettier would be my new church. Sadly, I think ELCA wins this one. In fact, it lapped the LCMS about ten times before crossing the finish line.

But on to prettier colors. The colors I’m painting in the dining room and hallway of the new house.

Here’s one wall of the dining room done (first coat, anyway–that green is a job to paint over). It felt like Christmas in April while I worked on that room.

Even though it needs a second coat, you can see how much better it will look in this one. Seriously, I wanted to cry with happiness as I was painting these horrible colors away. (Side note: I bumped my head on that light fixture approximately seventy-four times. I can’t wait to replace it with something prettier…that hangs higher.)

And here’s the Windsurf color in the entry hall, going over that seafoam green monstrosity. I pulled the color out of our long entry rug.

Tomorrow the clock ticks after I drop Jonathan off at Mom’s Day Out. I have about 4.5 hours to do  second coats in the dining room and one office wall that was seafoam green, and to climb the giant, high ladder to do the walls all the way up the stairs. Frankly, I’m scared stiff about that part. I used to love high places but ever since I was pregnant with Sophia, I’m terrified of heights. Derek, busy as he is this Holy Week, has decided he doesn’t want me falling to my death and will come over first thing to spot me while I do that part. Have I mentioned that I love him? I do.

And these new walls. I love them, too.

 

Author name:
Publish date:
April 2nd, 2012
Discussion:
3 Comments
Tags: