THAT was fun!

Sooo, we're in our "new" (18 year old) house and it's Spring.  Our house is surrounded by trees.  Which is beautiful!  But also clogs the gutters.  Which didn't get inspected during our home inspection in February.  Or we would have known they were clogged and the overflowing water lands right next to the foundation.  Add to that the fact that we got an inch of rain in less than 20 minutes in last night's storm and you have yourself a sump pump adventure!

The sump pump was running, thank God.  But it would pump water out, then the entire pipe leading out of the house would drain back into the sump pump.  This is when we learned about check valves!  And that ours was obviously not functioning properly.

Next, the formerly clean as a whistle sump pump well was muddy with leaves and bugs floating in it.  Hmmmm.  We went outside to find the exit pipe running out of the house and into the ground.  And when the sump pump ran, water was bubbling up out of the ground.  Hmmmm.  My brother (the Masters in Theoretical and Mechanical Engineering) explained that the sump pump system was probably sucking up muddy, debris laden water from the ground and depositing it in the well.  Where it would get sucked back up through the sump pump, into the ground, back into the sump pump well...you get the picture.  F-----d up.

Now I have exactly 12 minutes to get to Lowe's to at least buy a check valve to keep the muddy water out of the well.  My husband wants to "wait until tomorrow."  I'm picturing a clogged sump pump by morning.  So instead of arguing, I say "at least let me go buy one and we'll see how it goes."  Read "we're replacing this sucker when I get back."  What he hears, "you're right, we'll wait until tomorrow."  So I get to Lowe's ONE MINUTE before closing, grab a check valve and zip home.  Where I encounter my husband who has started drinking whiskey!  I'm like WTF, we have work to do.  He's all "I thought we agreed to wait."  Needless to say, we replaced the check valve.

Let me explain about my husband and I.  I was raised by a man who grew up taking apart cars at the junk yard for fun.  I wasn't allowed to drive alone until I could a) change a flat by myself, b) change the oil in my car, and c) un-flood the carburetor that regularly flooded in the car I was going to drive.  And just for a bonus, I also learned to tune up the car.  Sigh, I loved my '72 Olds Cutlass Supreme convertible in burnt orange with white leather interior.

But I digress.  Basically, at my house, we fixed things.  We repaired things.  We rarely called in a pro.  We didn't build our own house or anything, although my grandfather did build a summer home.  My brother turned worked as a mechanic before completing his Master's in Engineering.

My husband, on the other hand, was raised by the King of Duct Tape.  If it couldn't be fixed with duct tape, it either didn't get fixed or the pro had to come in.  It's not my FIL's fault, he was raised the same way.  But my husband is hesitant when it comes to any DIY other than rough carpentry.  When we lived in our first home in Enid, OK, the house we rented had screens with a lot of holes.  Holes that let in bugs and many mosquitoes.  I would look at the screens and wonder, do I re-screen the damn things in a house we're renting or just patch the holes with screen repair patches?  Well, my husband took care of the problem before I could decide.  I came home from work one day and there were patches of duct tape on every screen in the house.

Gotta go, when the rain lets up, we have to dig around the exit pipe and figure out how to drain the water AWAY from the foundation of the house.  Then get on the roof and clean the gutters, hoping the down spouts aren't filled with crap too.  Did I mention my husband doesn't really like ladders and heights?

Ah, home ownership.  What a joy!

Going Undercover

That's it, folks.  I'm going to have to shut down my first blog.  I should have used a pen name...I just have too many things to ridicule that are close to home.  Literally, close to home.  Don't get me started on the visit from my new HOA.  Wow, ever see the episode of X-files where a monster eats you if you violate HOA rules?  Yeah, that's what this "welcoming" visit felt like; a warning.

Then again, who am I to call someone uptight?  Last week I was sitting in my house, still surrounded by cardboard boxes, overwhelmed at trying to make a million and one "where does it go" decisions and thoroughly irritated by the grime and dust coating my computer keyboard.

So I took the high (OCD) road.  I whipped out the all-purpose cleaner and q-tips and went to town on this baby.  It literally sparkles!  And afterwards, I was amazingly calm.  I've also been known to spend an hour sorting my sons' Legos into various types and storing them in plastic drawer organizers.  Yeah, you're laughing, but secretly you want to know what categories I used, don't you!

Smells Like Pizza

My garage smells like pizza.  Yes, pizza.  Despite heroic efforts on my part to purge un-needed items twice (once when we listed and once again when we packed for the move), there's still CRAP all over my new house!  I have already filled two big dish pack boxes with donations.  I'm not sure my accountant is going to buy the thousands of dollars of stuff we've donated in a six month period, but I have pictures of everything for the IRS.

So, onto the pizza smell.  One of the items I that had stowed away in my stuff was an older bottle of roasted garlic olive oil.  Old enough to raise concerns of botulism (nice).  So I put it with a pile of stuff to pour down the sink and dispose of.  Instead, my husband (shocker) put the OPEN bottle in a garbage bag and threw it away.  I guess there are worse smells...

Speaking of which, how about feet?  Anyone like the smell of feet?  Wouldn't you just love your clothes to smell like feet?  I don't know if I've mentioned, but we have much less closet space in our new (bigger) house than the old one.  It hasn't been pretty at all.  Especially since my husband has more clothes than I do!  No, I'm not kidding.  Not quite sure what metrosexual issues are going on there, but it's ridiculous.  What makes it even MORE ridiculous is that he wears a uniform five or six days a week!

Anyway, he's trying to scale down, which is good.  Even so, we're fighting for every inch and even had to convert a linen closet into clothes storage.  The other day I walk into our (small) closet, which has two rows of shelves with the rod attached.  On top of the lower shelf, directly beneath MY hanging clothes is a line of shoes.  His MAN shoes that he puts his stinky FEET into.  Uh, are you kidding me!?  Do you really think I want the odors of your shoes wafting up into my girl clothes?  What an idiot.

So, as usual I sign off to return to the task of unpacking and organizing.  How long will this go on?  No comment!  All I can say is thank God it's time to do my taxes too, I hate being bored.

Unplugging

The Packers will be here in an hour.  No, not my favorite football team, the Green Bay Packers.  I wish, Aaron Rodgers?  Or Brett Favre, since he's sort of retired?  Please!  I'll help either of them "load the truck."

No, the kind people my wonderful husband is paying to pack up our stuff so it arrives safely...hahahaha, no, it's so I won't completely lose my mind!  Which I'm well on my way to doing anyway.

I have to have everything I don't want packed by them in a "special" area in an hour.  Then I have to disconnect myself from life support: the internet.  I give my tech-addicted parents crap constantly about how they'd rather communicate through their computer than face to face.  I've actually sat at a table with them, margarita glasses full, and watched them play with their iPhones and not talk to anyone!  But now that I have to unplug the computer?  Uh, hey Pot, how black IS that Kettle?

In the meantime, our Realtor, Dena, was all impressed with the moving binder I created.  Like, how could I POSSIBLY move without a master binder sub-divided into sections pertaining to the various aspects of the move?!?!?  Hello, have you met Karen?  It was so funny.  Wait till she sees the custom printed labels denoting the future location of every box I’ve packed, one at each short end of the box so you can see the label from almost any angle.  She’ll really flip!

And yet, I feel so…DISORGANIZED!!!  Mike’s all “we’re in good shape, no problem!” and I’m all “do you SEE how much shit is not properly sorted, organized and labeled?!?!?!”  Guess what nightmares I’ll have tonight.  It’s thirteen years into the future, I THOUGHT I had unpacked the last box from this move years ago (at which point I cried harder than I did the first time my FOUR year old shit in a potty instead of his pants), I move a shelf and there it is…a stack of boxes that were never unpacked!  Cue the music from Psycho, the shower scene.

Well, in an attempt to prevent such a scene from actually occurring, I'm off to sort and organize as much stuff as I can before 8:30 am.  Hopefully I'll be checking in soon, post move, from my new office in the loft area of the new house!

I Wanna Sew!

And SEW I did.  (See what I did there?  I told you this blog would be funny...)

I've made a little time here and there to sew.  By taking some time for me, I can deal with all the craziness better.  So, I finished all but handstitching the binding on my new quilt.  It's a lap size and the focal point of my decor for the new living room. 

I also made a messenger bag to hold all my Scout stuff for meetings.  (Assistant Bear Den Leader Karen at your service).  The best part is: it's made from Robert Kaufmann Cub Scout fabrics!  So cute.

But today, sob, I have to take down the sewing area, fold up the table and the cutting board, empty the iron, pack up thread and scissors.  On the other hand, the next time it's up and running, it will be in my very own STUDIO in our new house: hooray!

Now I'm all psyched again; off to pack stuff and wash the refrigerator!  Good times.

T Minus Three Days and Counting

Just taking a little break from sorting and packing.  Since my wonderful husband approved the expense of paying the movers to do part of the packing, I'm far more relaxed than I would be otherwise.  I'm in a Zen place: whether I feel completely ready or not, we're moving this week.  Which is why I took time to volunteer at my 5-yr old's school this morning.  Then came home and worked like a fiend!

I'm trying to decide when to empty and clean the fridge.  So I was surfing the net for deoderizing ideas.  I'm going to go with thoroughly clean (duh), then wipe down with 10% bleach solution and finish with leaving charcoal briquets soaked in vinegar in the appliance over night.  Let you know Friday how that works.  But among the many ideas I found, this post killed me:

"After washing out refrigerator using baking soda...put in CLEAN kitty litter to soak up the bad odors. Change out kitty litter in a day or two and keep using until smell is gone. Chris Head, AL"

Really?  People need to be told to use CLEAN cat litter?  Then I thought about it: Yes, some people do need to be told.  Scary.

Life is a Moving Target

Hi, my name is Karen and I'm in the middle of moving.  What a great time to start a blog!  But writing things down seems to help feel more in control (yes, Karen has control issues) and confident about an otherwise overwhelmng situation.  Plus, I have advice!

Luckily, we're just moving across town.  Unluckily, we haven't sold our current house (more on that later).  But the silver lining is that it's not critical that we pack every, single thing we own and don't have to clean as we go.  Not that I want to spend much time here after the closing...I want to get my new house in shape!

That's where the in-laws come in.  They're coming to help out by keeping the 5 yr old and 9 yr old occupied and out of the way.  I'll also put them to work cleaning once the house starts emptying out.  Pretty sure my MIL would make me crazy if she helped unpack...I imagine being asked about 317 times "where do you want this?"  I know I can only make so many decisions in a day and eventually the answer would be "up your...!"

Hypocritically, I'm asking two of my closest girlfriends to come help me unpack.  But they're down to earth women who will be able to logically arrange a kitchen.  The new one is laid out like the old one so, just pack, rinse, repeat.

Onto advice and websites I've found useful.  The first one that I recommend is http://www.movers-edge.com/, a lot of great advice on moving yourself, choosing a moving company, how to decide which to do and the best checklist on the net http://www.movers-edge.com/Moving-Checklist-s/12.htm.  If you find a better one, please put it in your comments to share!  This check list covered a lot of items, then I added in things I thought of and tweaked the timeline a little bit.

One thing I'd like to share: movers aren't all or nothing.  You don't have to decide between "oh my gosh, how can we possibly move everything ourselves" and "it will cost HOW much to have them move us?"  You can have them move only big items, you can have them move critical areas (kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms), you can have them pack everything, you can have them pack only some of the rooms.  This way you can save money and keep track of your personal stuff.

Before I sign off, I have to share the picture of my son's birthday cake (of COURSE there was a kid's birthday less than a week before we move!)  He wanted a Mario Super Galaxy birthday.  I must say, I decorate one hell of a cake.  I LOVE decorating cakes (I also love sewing, hence the name of my blog).  The cake represents a planet, it's covered with grass (fun little tip from Wilton, can also be used to make hair), pathways and mini-figures.  The starbits are pieces of colored rock candy and gold coins.  Everyone was wowed, even the kids!

OK, folks, that's all I have time for today as the movers are coming in four days to pack the house.  I have a few areas I'd like to get more organized and pack myself.