Zatera Ul

I was disposing of some old medication in the downstairs bathroom, and the low-flow toilet there took two flushes just to get pills down.

We’ll be beginning our big move to Eden Prairie next week (we have some overlap with our leases). I’m starting to start to pack.

This Mother’s Day column by Vox Day is one that I keep going back to re-read, when I get too worn out by the constant battle to maintain a level of civilized life in my home. He’s got it right that motherhood is not all cupcakes and cherubs.

I got so tired from building the compost bin because I did all the sawing, drilling, and screw-driving by hand. Not that it takes any great strength to do any of these operations with hand tools; even drilling holes with a hand drill is surprisingly easy. It was the cumulative effort over a long day that got me.

A side benefit of building the compost bin is that I used up a fair amount of our scrap lumber. Less to move.

I spent all day yesterday building a new compost bin, with the help of my young assistant. It is mostly finished, just needs front slide-in panels and maybe another row of mesh around the top. I moved all the compost into it this morning. Today I am very tired.

I’ve quit my job; my last working day was last Friday, and on Saturday I crammed all my work stuff into the car and hauled it over to the office. So that’s why I was so busy last month. I gave my notice at the beginning of the month, and then spent all of May trying to finish up all the things I wanted to get done before I left. I feel satisfied that I accomplished the things that I wanted to accomplish, and left my project in good shape. I left because I had prayed for a long time about when the right time to leave my job would be, and it seemed that the end of May was the answer I got.

My work there is finished.

The process of quitting was a little like dying, though. A few months ago I read through most of Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. She noticed that the dying tend to be in the process of detaching themselves from the bustling affairs of the nondying. I felt that the last few months. My coworkers had have to think longer-term about their projects and the new projects they were trying to start up, while I was winding down my contributions to a single project and looking ahead to a whole new freedom.

I have plenty of projects to occupy my time. First of all, I need to get my household in better order; we will be moving next month. With the drop in income, I’ll be spending more time plugging the money leaks at home. Then, I have a few ideas in mind for starting a microbusiness of my own. Actually, I have very many ideas bubbling up in my mind like a pot starting to boil over. The past month of turning down the creative heat so I could finish my job well was rather painful. But I am free now.

I have another project in OLC. She wants me to read and read and read to her. She is picking up new words very quickly now. Also, she has figured out that words I’m reading are the words on the page, and she has decided that she wants to learn her letters, too. First she picked up O, all on her own, and in the past week or so has followed that with A, T, and Q. It looks like she is now learning M, N, S, K, and B. She studies her Dr. Seuss alphabet book quite seriously. Both MFH and I were quite surprised when she pointed to the Q and said, “Q!” though. MFH learned to read at a ridiculously early age, before he turned three, and it looks like his daughter may turn out the same.

We are still looking for a new place to live, closer to MFH’s work. Since we only have one car now, that means that every time we want to look at a place to rent, he has to drive home from Eden Prairie to St. Paul (i.e., all the way across Minneapolis) to pick us up, and then back over again. A lot of driving and a lot of time.

Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

A small house in Edina, very close to the highway. Edina is the inner suburb where all the Republicans with very shiny cars and very green lawns live, with the exception of one house, which appears to be inhabited by hippies trying to evangelize to the carbon-spewers. Anyway, this house had just been fixed up and remodelled by a flipper, who admitted that she would be renting it at a loss. (Makes me want to start doing credit checks on potential landlords!) The kitchen had been totally redone and over-improved out of character with the rest of the house. At least, the appliances were over-improved; there was practically no counter space or cupboard space and actually cooking anything there would have been a total pain. There also weren’t any grounded outlets in the bedroom we would have wanted to use as an office. Overall, the house was cute on the inside, with lots of little cupboards all over for storage (except for in the kitchen). The rent was on the high end of what we could afford, and when we asked about doing the lawn work and snow removal ourselves in return for a discount on rent, the most we could get out of her that it was possible, but “negotiable”. The use of that word at that point pretty much ended the negotiations right there.

A duplex in Minnetonka, basically the upstairs of a house with outside access to a laundry room in the basement; there was a basement apartment. This place turned out to back right onto 494, and was just too small. Hauling the laundry around to the back of the house with a toddler in the winter would have been fun, too.

A townhouse in Eden Prairie. It looked good, but when we thought it through, it was also just too small for us. Staying home with a toddler, I’ve found that it’s good to be able to move from place to place within the house throughout the day and have a change of scene. This townhouse just didn’t have enough places. Also, the only place to eat was a little table crammed into the kitchen; it would have been hard to fit a high chair in there.

A small house in St. Louis Park. Also somewhat too small, but here the problem was the very, very musty basement. I’m allergic to the musty-mildew-whatever-it-is now, and that place was definitely setting it off. So that was definitely a no-go.

A duplex in south Minneapolis. This actually looked pretty good, aside from little unfinished corners in the basement, and a garage that wasn’t usable for more than storing junk. It was a side-by-side duplex, with a full half basement underneath each unit. The basement had two finished rooms, like a family room and an office, and an unfinished space with the furnace and laundry. So there were plenty of places to be in it. We liked it pretty well, but after sleeping on it and praying about it I have a bad feeling about the place, so I guess we are still looking. That’s ok, the bedroom closets in this place were absolutely tiny.

The way we’ve been evaluating places is to go take a look, and then while we’re driving away, make a list of pros versus cons. That helps us think clearly about the place and better evaluate how it would or wouldn’t meet our needs. Otherwise we would get carried away by our desire to just take a place and be done with it.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a work deadline coming up, and I worked some extra hours to get things done. It didn’t help that MFH was working long days at the same time, plus I ran out of the children’s chewable vitamins that I take. Then I got a sore throat, which turned into a nasty cough. I am still trying to get over it. So I have not gotten much done since the deadline. The up side is that before I got sick, I got things working well enough that I can rest on my laurels for a bit. This week has been more of a “the charge is $1 for tapping the pipe, $99 for knowing where to hit it” work week; I haven’t worked very many hours, but when I finally got down to it, I easily knocked off the task that I wanted to accomplish.

Another hindrance to getting work done is OLC, who loves to climb up on my desk, strew my supplies around, type with my keyboard, open random applications with my mouse, and turn the monitor on and off. My voice is half gone, so I’ve had to cut back on reading books to her. Sometimes, she sits and “reads” aloud to herself.

We are probably going to move this summer, so I’ve been spending time online looking at places for rent closer to where MFH works. Yesterday I crossed several possibilities off the list when I discovered that they were only “pet-friendly” to declawed cats. No way I’m going to take away Kitty’s only defense against OLC. I also think that the “pet rent” that some places charge on top of a hefty pet deposit is ridiculous. My cat doesn’t take long showers or anything like that. Anything she shreds with her claws should come out of the deposit, not the rent.

There are other exciting things going on that I can’t discuss yet. This summer, hopefully.

My off-and-on quest for pretty, wearable shoes in size 11 wide or extra-wide continues. Last week we went to the Mall of America with MFH’s visiting sister, and stopped in a huge shoe store there. I remembered from before that they had a decent number of size 11’s, all grouped together nicely, but mostly less classic styles than I wanted. This time, the shoes were all sorted by style, and I had quite a time even finding a size 11 at all. In the end, I only found three pairs in my size, and I didn’t like any of them enough to plunk down sixty or eighty dollars on them.

Then I sent off a question about how shoes stores are stocked to Hey Tom and he very kindly answered it. So now I know that there’s not much hope for me at the shoe stores.

I’ve heard of Zappo’s, and might give it a try sometime, but I’m not much of an online shopper.

On Craftster, I heard of people repainting their shoes, and I gave that a try yesterday. I took a pair of old black boots, that I mostly wear just for taking out the trash, and sponged on some green paint. Later, I gave it a very light coat of polyurethane; spray-on acrylic was recommended, but polyurethane is what I have on hand. Now the boots look like they’re covered in verdigris; almost too foofy to wear.(Do they go with any of my clothes? Of course not.)

One Craftster also had a link to this site: Make Your Own Shoes. This shoemaking process starts with pouring plaster into your old shoes to make plaster lasts for your feet. I am going to try it out, but first I need plaster!

I had WAY too much caffeine yesterday, and I am still zipping around at three times my normal speed today. Generating lots and lots and lots of ideas for new projects.