Wanderlust

There's something wrong with me and Jason - that's the only explanation.  Because every two or three years we start browsing house listings, even though we have no intention of actually moving.  And then we get a job someplace else, have to sell the house, and end up looking for a house in a different state entirely.

Well, we've been here for more than three years (second longest in any one location since high school - woot!), and last weekend I picked up a brochure for one of the houses for sale on my usual walking route **.  Not because I plan to move to a house that's only a mile away from my current home, but just because I wanted to look at someplace I could move, if we wanted to.  If we wanted to lose money on our current house, pack up everything ourselves for the first time since 1995, pay closing costs and Realtor fees for the first time since 1995, and go through the months-long hassle of changing addresses and phones and all that jazz.  Not to mention moving away from the friends we've made on the street, whom we'd see a lot less often if we couldn't just pop down the street when the spirit moved us.

So instead of moving to a new house, Jason and I spent this weekend moving things around in our current house.  Same amount of dust and hernia-inducing lifting, fewer Realtor fees.  After planning things out on Saturday (tape measures and graph paper!  Huzzah!), we started moving things around shortly before lunch today.  At one point we had managed to render no fewer than five rooms completely unusable because of the clutter and awkward furniture rearranging going on.  Even now, with most of the worst behind us, I still have a sofa lying on its back in the middle of my living room floor, and it's going to be there until I can get the front door off its hinges and arrange for a neighbor to help us move the sofa out to the garage.  So, like, August, I guess.

I also have a guest bedroom that's up in Liza's old room, a really small television room in what used to be the guest room, and a spacious craft studio (with separate spots for me, Jason, and Liza) and office in what used to be our family room.  We're planning to cancel our cable subscription (again) since most of our favorite shows have been canceled, and we don't honestly have that much TV time in the evenings now that Liza goes to bed a bit later.  So why would we need to devote the largest room in the house to watching television when we actually spend most of our time doing crafts or on the computer?  Once we get the television moved and purchase a loveseat that will actually fit through the door to the new television room, I'll even have a comfy chair to sit and knit in next to the fireplace while Jason works on his Warhammer guys and the kid draws yet another picture of a butterfly.

There's still lots of organizing to do (although frankly, my craft area looks neater than it did this morning in the old room, which just shows how horrifying it was back then) and I get to look forward to a week of evenings going through paperwork with Jason to see what we can get away with shredding, but I feel really good about how it's turning out.  And tonight, while I was puttering around putting my craft stuff away as best I could, Liza and Jason tried out their new haunts.

Despite her exhaustion-induced glare, she had the colored pencils hauled out within five minutes of Jason bringing the table up from the basement.  Both Jason and Liza gave their areas a thumbs-up, which means all of my 14,948 trips up and down the stairs today were worth it.  I'll remember that tomorrow as I chug down 14,948 Tylenol and ice down my aching knees.


**Built in the '80s, and based on the kitchen and bathroom, not remodeled since.  I can vividly remember when my mother's friend Jane got those same kitchen cabinets installed - they were the height of fashion back in, oh, 1983 or so.

Things you need to register your car in Ohio

1. Your title and current registration.
2. Your social security card and current driver's license.
3. A full tank of gas.
4. A bucketful of patience.
5. Someplace to dump your toddler.

So after stopping at the bank to get my Kentucky title out of the safety deposit box, I show up at the BMV today to get Ohio plates for my car. I go inside, find out I have to get an "out of state vehicle inspection" (which means the clerk goes and checks the VIN and mileage on the car to make sure it's not stolen), then get an emissions test, then take the emissions test and the inspection receipt to the title bureau to get the title. Then once I have the title, I can come back to the license bureau and get it registered and get plates.

There's a title bureau right next door to the license bureau ... which conveniently has a completely different schedule from the license bureau and was closed today. So I drove over to the next town over (about 15 miles) where the title office was actually open on a Wednesday, then drove to the town beyond that for the emissions test, then drove back to the license bureau, stopping off at the bank for the second time today so that I could get my Social Security card out of my safety deposit box.

After standing in line for the fourth time (this time with a toddler in tow, since by then I had picked her up from preschool), I am now the proud owner of a piece of paper that says they'll mail me my plates. Woohoo! I'm almost legal!

Next up - taking the written driver's test for the third time in twelve years, which I can only do at either of two license bureaus that are each about 20 miles from the one that's near my house. Anyone want to quiz me on when to stop for a school bus, or what the speed is in a residential area within an incorporated zone? Because I'm ready to rock this test's world, let me tell you.

I figure by the time I'm actually done with this mess, I'll have put at least 100 miles on my car. My god, the suckiness of this system is just not to be believed. And here I thought Kentucky was bad, since I had to walk back and forth between two offices that were a couple blocks apart. Sheesh!

Interesting side note - the clerks at the title office in North Ridgeville are named Jean, Jean G., Caren, and Karen. Um, okay.

Kitchen design, v. 2.0

After our discussion with Mary from Design Tech, here's our current favorite design. Lacks any seating in the kitchen, but it's wide open, and not only can I fit my fancy pantry AND a pot-and-pan drawer AND a built-in trashcan, I can keep my dishes and Tupperware in nifty drawers in the "base cooking center" right next to my dishwasher. Oh, how I want the base cooking center. And the pantry. And a trashcan I won't trip over four times a day.



In other news, I finished the curtains to cover up the storage cubbies above the closets in our bedroom, and I got all the hardware on the closet doors. Here's the before and after:
I'm especially proud of the little decorations on each of the closet doors. When we pulled off the dummy doorknobs the previous owners had installed, it turned out to be practically impossible to patch the holes invisibly. Since I wanted to install smaller knobs to match the hardware on the drawers, I had to come up with some way to cover up the holes. Solution: a couple of those carved wooden decorations they sell at Home Depot, a can of leftover hammertone spraypaint Jason snatched from work, and a couple of really long screws to attach the knobs through 2 1/2" of door and decoration. Voila! They sort of look like they belong!

Next up: finishing the Cabinet of Mature Content. Again. Can anyone say, "forget the veneer, I'm sanding the filler smooth and painting that sucker"? I know I can.

This weekend's home improvement project

The master bedroom "before" shot, with the previous owner's furniture and drapes:

Here it is after a coat of primer on the red wall, two coats of Restful on the whole room, two late-night trips to Target and Home Depot for curtain rods, new drawer pulls, and new doorknobs, and a miraculous flash of inspiration at Bed Bath and Beyond that led me to use shower curtains instead of "real" curtains in my bedroom.

Those cute picture frame curtain hooks are for a shower curtain, too - they're on clearance, so get 'em while they last, which at $5 for a pack of 12 probably won't be too long.

And in case anyone was wondering why Restful looks so familiar, here's an explanation:

(Family room at our house in Kentucky)

To finish the bedroom I still need to put a second coat of white on the built-in drawers and outlet covers and sew some fabric panels to cover up the open storage above the closet. And I still need to figure out how to attach a standard drawer pull to a door that's 1 1/2" thick, when the longest fine guage screw I can find is 1 1/4" long. Can you say, countersink?

The post-guest-room drought is over

Before: plum-colored walls, and unpadded striped seat "cushions" backed by 1/4" plywood and corrugated cardboard. And a table that was varnished in something that never fully cured, so when I would pick up a plate it would go "crrrrrrrruccccchhhh" as it peeled away from the tacky surface.


After: Yellow walls, foam cushions covered in vinyl and slipcovered in cotton that's been Scotchgarded within an inch of its life. Cheap flannel-lined vinyl tablecloth, modified so it doesn't stick out funny at the corners.

The cushions have to be one of the finest examples of BAD reupholstering (no one will EVER be seeing the back sides of them, even if I have to torch the house to prevent it), but a) they're done, and b) we're probably going to rip the table and benches out in a few months to redo my junky kitchen anyway, so who cares if they're perfect? And with a toddler in fingerpainting mode in the house, the cushions were doomed from the start. At least they no longer clash with the walls or cause severe back pain if you sit on them too long. And I DID manage to get the plaid to match at the corner, which is all that's important, right?

Hurray! The second quilt is done!

See? Quilts that coordinate without being twins of each other. The one on the left is pieced, and the one on the right is raw-edge applique. The second one is the version I'll be putting up for sale on http://lazymamadesigns.blogspot.com . Now it's time to move on to making some cushions for the rock-hard benches in the kitchen ...

Toddler art gallery

When we moved to a much smaller house, we had to be creative when it came to finding places to hang all of our photos and art. Since my husband and I are both tall, we tend to hang pictures at our eye level, which leaves guests (and our two-year-old) craning their necks to see. I was feeling a little guilty (and tired of picking up the kid so she could look at family photos) so I decided to make a small display of art at our daughter's eye level, right near her toy area, where she could see it every day and enjoy it.

Those are (inexpensive) original watercolors I bought on www.etsy.com, framed in virtually indestructible metal frames that I think cost me $1.50 a piece at a craft store. Liza likes to look at them and make them swing back and forth on their hangers, and sometimes she takes them down and tries to rearrange them. She's even managed to rehang one once by standing it on top of the one below it ... she's got mad small motor skillz, this one does. And the kids who come over to play always stop to check them out, even though I've never seen any of them take a second glance at any other piece of art in the house.

Once she starts making art of her own, I plan to reclaim some more toddler-eye-level real estate on the upper level stairs to hang Liza's work.

Anyone need a boat? Too bad, this one's sold!

We're selling our 16' Old Town Loon 160T tandem kayak. It's been a good boat, but we hardly ever used it, even before we had 30 pounds of deadweight to haul with us and keep from jumping overboard.

For $400 you get a gently used boat with only minor cosmetic scratches on the underside of the hull, two paddles, a dolly to get the thing to the water, a roller to get the thing into the water, a cover to keep spiders out of the cockpit in the winter, and a set of tiedown straps for use with most standard roof racks. This boat retails for about $700, not including all the extras, so this is an excellent deal.

If anyone is willing to come pick it up in Northeast Ohio, I'd love to hear from you.

UPDATE 6/22/07 - Sold! Gotta love craigslist.com ... this sucker was out the door less than two days after I listed it. Hooray! Now you can see more of our crappy cracked garage floor!

Hallelujah!

Before:

You can't really tell from the picture, but the lower walls are cinderblock that was cast to look like tumbled bricks, which were painted sloppily in vibrant colors. And the upper walls were a lot more yellow in real life.

And now, after two weeks of working on it every naptime despite a two raging headcolds in the family, about 14 trips to Hell Depot, a fun five minutes spent attacking a cinderblock wall with a hammer to knock off pieces that stuck out too far (ooh, that was fun - can we do it again?), a drillbit-shaped burn on my forearm, a large bruise under my thumbnail, three coats of blue paint, half a gallon of white trim paint, and about 3/4 of a tube of spackle, here's our new guest room.

After:

Inspiration for the colors in the room came from these pillows, which I found after weeks of looking in vain for a color scheme for the room. I bought the pillows and everything else fell into place like dominos - sheets, quilt design, wall color, funky little birdhouses that remind me of Jamaica despite the fact that I've never been there.

I am so psyched about how this room turned out that I actually had a hard time getting to sleep last night, I was so excited to get it cleaned up enough to show it to the world. I decided at the beginning of the project not to talk about it until it was done, and it was killing me - keeping secrets has never been my strong suit.

I am inordinately proud of the fact that absolutely I didn't need any spackle to cover mistakes between the trim and the ledge, or the baseboard and the paneling, or the uprights at each end of the paneling ... it all went into closing the gap between the wavy wall and my not-so-wavy ledge, and closing the gap between the wall and the trim under the ledge, which had to be cut short so I could maneuver it in place. True, we managed to buy panel nails that were 1/32" too long and therefore can't be countersunk (so you can see every nail in the paneling if you look closely), and if you hold a string up to the paneling under the window you'll see that it bows in about 3/4" ... but if you're not looking for it, I swear you can't see it. And I managed to get the baseboard and the trim to bow in exactly the same place, so I didn't have to spackle any gaps - which is a total freakin' miracle, if you've seen any of my past trim installations.

Now all I have to do is finish the second quilt and make a valance for the window ... and stain the cabinet ... and buy headboards for the bed ... and find art I like for the big blank wall over the bed and on the inside wall ... and make a matching valance for the guest bathroom, paint the bathroom, and replace the sink and vanity in the bathroom ... gonna be a long summer at this rate.

Another post trumpeting my unpacking prowess

My mantra: open wallspace is a crime against humanity

Those ugly navy curtains have got to go ... after I finish the kitchen valance, and the master bedroom curtains, and the guest room curtains, and the guest room quilts ... looks like I'm going to have to learn to like them for at least a few months.

Not to be outdone, Jason has been busy in the basement and garage:

Yes, the garage still looks like a disaster, and I can't reach half of the things I need, but a lot of the boxes will clear out on trash day, and the rest of the clutter is garage sale stuff that needs to be organized once there's room to do so. Oh, and that chest-high pile of broken-down boxes? It's for sale, if you want any.

Finally, I've got the house finished enough inside that I finally got around to starting the garden. Nothing like a little red-and-white-annual action to draw the eye away from the enormous satellite tv dish we installed 10 feet away, smack in the middle of our front yard. The guy is coming on Wednesday to see if there's anyplace else in the yard or roof we can install it that is a) less of an eyesore, and b) not against our township's zoning laws (oops). We haven't heard any complaints yet, but I'm sure it's coming. Nothing says, "We're your gracious new neighbors!" like planting one of those in the front yard. If only we had a rusty car on cinderblocks to park next to it, or maybe one of those concrete lawn statues ... I'm thinking we hitch the concrete burro (and maybe concrete Mexican guy, too) to the dish, make it look useful. Then install some of those blackface stable boy statues at the end of the driveway, and maybe a Virgin Mary in a grotto praying to the dish. That should offend just about everyone in the neighborhood, right?

What we did today

This morning:

This evening:

Books shelved, "wat-nots" (as the movers labeled them) distributed, lamps lit, pictures and quilts hung, carpet vacuumed, dining room turned into a William Wegman Shrine, kitchen turned into a Sandy Frick shrine. Check. There are still a few miscellaneous bits and pieces to put away (or throw away), but at least you can see most of the carpet and the top of the dining room table.
Meanwhile, Liza was doing some rearranging of her own:

And Jason tackled the basement, just in time to clear a path for the delivery guys to squeeze through to replace our water heater. Nice, HOT shower, here I come!

progress report

Look - carpet!

The Closet of Extreme Fabric and Yarn Awesomeness, including the Tote of Hideous Acrylic Yarn I Will Only Use For Making Disposable, Indestructible Stuffed Toys (grey one on the lower right)

Why it pays to just pack the thread in a shoebox instead of on the wall organizer:

Unloved and unwanted sewing/craft supplies that don't have a home in the sewing room (yet)

Because my mother was right, the old kitchen paint was the color of dried blood. Now if we can just do something about the countertops they faux-finished to look like malachite ... ***

The last of the main boxes - nothin' but books, baby! Four tall, three wide, and three deep ...

What happens when you move from a 3000-sq-ft house to a 1700-sq-ft house? Basement Overload. Not to mention Garage Impairment and Bulging Shed-itis.

Oh, and I found my checkbook - it was in my knitting bag. And, buried under a load of stuff in an unloved section of my "office" stuff, a gift card that a friend gave me two years ago ... guess we're going to find out whether Victoria's Secret was serious when it said they never expire.

*** new kitchen paint color: Butter Up, from Sherwin-Williams, the same as our last house. The semi-annual paint sale is this week, so we stocked up on some of the colors we know we'll be using. Our bedroom will be Restful, the color we used in the family room in our last house. The guest room and lower-level bathroom will be Lupine on the top, and white beadboard from the waist down. We're staining our swingset and deck, too, but I can't find links to those colors. Red and green, respectively, in case you were wondering.

Why I'm going to be sorta silent for a while yet

That's my office/sewing room/Lazy Mama HQ. The boxes are chest-high, and there is honest to god about six square feet of carpet visible around the boxes. I still can't find my regular checkbook, so I had to dig out a book of checks from later in the number series just to pay the bills today. But I found my three-hole punch and my camera, and I cleared off enough room for my sewing machine, so life can continue. Next up - reorganizing the fabric that the movers dumped into boxes willy-nilly, with no regard for its previous arrangement.

But before that I have to hit the hardware store to find something to replace the pins that are supposed to hold my bookshelves in place, since the ones I've had for the past 12 years mysteriously disappeared in the move. I'll find them right after I buy new ones, I'm sure, but for now I need the damn shelves to get rid of the damn boxes so I can start sewing the curtains which will replace the old bedspread and two beach towels that are currently all that stands between our master bedroom and the morning sun. Then there are two quilts for the guest bedroom, a valance for the kitchen, new cushions for the banquette in the kitchen, etc. etc. etc. Luckily, most of the stuff can be adapted to be Lazy Mama projects, so maybe I can count all of this as "real" work. Right?

Oh my god, the tiredness

Packed Monday, Tuesday; loaded Wednesday then drove to Cleveland; cleaned and shelf-papered and painted and fixed Thursday; unloaded and got Liza's room finished Friday; got our bedroom unpacked and finished Saturday; unpacked and organized kitchen and tools Sunday.

We've accepted deliveries: Liza's new bed, two mattresses for the guest bedroom, a riding lawn mower, a washer, a dryer that we can't plug in because the 220V outlet isn't working right now, a satellite dish that we had to put smack in the middle of our front yard because it's the only place with the proper sightline, a new cell phone for me, and a new DSL modem.

Most of the house is still a disaster area, partly because the new house is significantly smaller than the old house, so we're having to plot and plan where to put things - we actually have a closet we're referring to as "The Pantry For Kitchen Gadgets We Only Use Twice A Year But Can't Get Rid Of Because When You Need Them, You Need Them," more familiarly known as "the useless pantry."

My sewing room is particularly bad, since it's now my sewing room/office/global headquarters for Lazy Mama Designs, meaning I've got two desks, a huge file cabinet, my cutting table, computer, all my fabric, all my yarn, all my patterns and books, and all my miscellaneous office stuff. I literally have to move boxes just to get from the door to my computer, and the boxes are chest-high. It's all going to fit, but there's going to be a heck of a yard sale in a few weeks.

Assuming I can find where I put the camera (and it didn't get swiped by any delivery guy or buried under a stufflanche), I'll post some photos soon.

And yes, Liza is doing well. My mother and father are here, and mom's main job is kiddo entertainment. That's mainly involved taking her outside to the new swingset and pushing her in the swing until she falls asleep and/or gets sunburned ... fine by me, as long as the kid isn't underfoot, I don't care what mom does with her. The cats joined us at the house today, and have so far managed to find the cat box and food, even though they have to shimmy through a cat door to get into the basement.

Coming into the home stretch**

We close on the new house on Thursday, title transfers on Friday, and we get possession a week from today. The closing company already has all of our loan docs, all of the title docs, and our money in escrow, and the "sold" sign is up in front of the new house. When we drove past the house this weekend, the garage door was open and the garage was so packed full of moving boxes I'm not sure you could actually get inside. I'm so close to being out of this hotel, I can almost taste it.

After a few weeks of not having much that needed to be done right away, I've had to throw Liza back on the Barney bandwagon long enough to make the last flurry of phone calls to organize utilities and make sure the closing and movers are all set. I spent a lovely hour on the phone today with AT&T ... yes, an hour, but now I have local and long distance for our land line, a cell phone, highspeed internet, and digital satellite tv, all on one bill. Just think of all the money I'll be saving on stamps and checks when I don't have to mail all those bills separately. And the trees! Think of the trees I'll be saving! Just don't think about the fact that I really only did it because I'm too lazy to call four different companies for services that one can provide me.

This past Saturday we went over to Sears to buy a riding lawn mower, since our new yard is actually flat enough to use one and large enough that I will only occasionally call Jason an exercise-avoiding-wuss when he's using it. We needed a new mower, anyway, so it made sense to plunk down the extra few hundred dollars now and get it over with before I decide I hate my kitchen and want to spend all of our extra money on ripping it out and replacing it.

Anyway, we decided to do this errand on the day when we had visited the zoo in the morning, Liza had taken a 45-minute nap on the way home, and we had just finished getting some ice cream and running some other errands. We were just going to stop to check the prices on our way to let Liza ride the escalators (her reward for not using her outside voice at all in the ice cream parlor), so I didn't bother with the stroller. For the first time ever, I got to be one of those parents I pity when I'm shopping at the mall - my toddler dead asleep in my arms, weighing more with every passing moment. I swear, by the time we got the mower picked out, paid for, and arranged to be delivered with the washer and dryer we bought a few weeks ago, that kid weighed at least 75 pounds. No wonder when I looked in the mirror last week I noticed that my left arm - the kid-carrier - is actually kinda buff, while the right arm - the key-carrier - is its usual wobbly self. So if you see lots of pictures from me this summer where you only see my left side, that's why. Photos from this summer are also likely to focus on the tag on my new jeans, the one that says "size 10." They're mutant 10s, and no other 10s on the planet will fit me, and I may have to go commando to zip them up once I wash them a couple times, but by god, there's at least one pair of size 10 pants in my closet.

Ahem. Back to the house. I just can't tell you how good it feels to be almost there.
- I can finally start on the lists I have forced myself to put off making for the past two months (What Stays With The House; What Is Currently In The Attic That Needs To Be Moved To the Basement Of the New House; What Kitchen Items I'm Going To Have To Get Rid Of Because, Dude, We're Downsizing, And Who Really Needs That Much Pyrex Cookware Anyway?; What Things I Need to Fix And/Or Hide So They Don't Get Moved By Accident).

- I can finally start poking around in the local greenhouses, looking for good deals on the obscene amount of mulch we'll need to fill in around the base of the playset in the backyard so that when my daughter falls off when I'm not paying attention, she'll only break something, not die.

- I can buy the plane ticket for my Sainted Mother, who is coming to take over child care while I tell the movers what to do. Did I mention that Jason will be there for the first day of packing, and after that he has to be back in Cleveland for meetings and won't be able to help again until the movers show up in Cleveland on Friday? Definitely going to need the Grandma Distraction Factor.

- I can figure out how we're going to celebrate Liza's birthday (Sunday) when we're supposed to be sorting the junk in the basement, reinstalling the crappy showerheads that came with the house, and we won't be getting to Kentucky until the day before. Wait until a few weeks after the move, when she's more likely to appreciate the festivities, but her grandparents won't be there? Say screw it and have cake Sunday? Maybe I'll have it figured out by this weekend.

- I can arrange to visit my friend in Columbus who has a new baby (who'd BETTER NOT BE READING THIS BLOG WHEN SHE COULD BE SLEEPING, SAHO!!!!). Since my mother is flying into Columbus, which is on the way from Cleveland to Kentucky, this works out perfectly. I can't wait to see her ... and the baby, of course :) I've only waited this long because I didn't want Liza to infect the poor unsuspecting newborn with something godawful ... not that Liza has been sick, but still, you don't want to take the chance.

- I can count the hours until I'm in my own bed, with my own sheets and my own comforter that's been washed sometime during the Bush administration. And the cats aren't. And the clicking, gurgling refrigerator is more than 10 feet from the bed. And Herman Munster doesn't live upstairs and get home at 11:30 every night. And the toilet will have a lid that I can shut and lock to keep toddlers from getting into it up to their elbows. And I can have a nice long cry about leaving my beautiful old home.


**When I was in high school our gym class had to do the Jane Fonda workout video for a couple classes a year, and there's a part near the end where Jane says, "We're coming into the home stretch now - buttock tucks!" with an amphetamine-fueled brightness that will turn your stomach, even if you haven't been jogging in place for 25 minutes watching to see if the video's fake classmember "Richard's" package ever peeks out of his short-shorts. It's ruined the phrase for me, really it has.

I never knew

Sometimes you don't realize how lucky you've been until you have to do things the regular way. Case in point: toddler childcare. When we were in Kentucky, one of the mothers in our playgroup mentioned that there was a mother's day out program for one-year-olds over at her church. I stopped by one afternoon to check out the location, signed my daughter up, gave them a check for $55 for the first month, and we were done.

The center was ridiculously clean and well-stocked with toys, etc. Access to the center was strictly controlled, and children were only released to people on their list of approved guardians whose photo IDs were on record at the center. The classrooms each had sinks and access to child-sized potties. The teachers were super-nice, super-energetic, and super-organized ... they managed to corral the one-year-olds into making crafts, eating snacks without stealing from each other (too much), and even worked with the older kids to start potty training.

photos courtesy of Miss Heather, taken during Liza's last day at school in Kentucky

Once we got past a few weeks of Liza the Velcro Child who screamed every time I left, I was perfectly happy to leave Liza there for three hours every Monday morning while I worked on my Lazy Mama stuff (and retained my sanity). Liza adjusted like a champ, becoming much more social and at ease in new situations, which was the entire intent of sticking her in the program to begin with. One of the big things I was upset about when Jason was offered the job up here was that Liza wouldn't be able to attend the two-year-old program next year. I was really looking forward to having two mornings a week to myself, and for only $85 a month.

Now that we're up in Cleveland, I've been researching potential pediatricians and preschools, which is every bit as much fun as it sounds. After scouring the yellow pages and contacting the state's child care referral service, I had a list of a handful of places that accept 2-year-olds. Apparently "mother's day out" programs are a Kentucky thing, or at least not a west-side-of-Cleveland thing.

All but one of the programs are actually day care centers that happen to accept kids on a part-time basis, and they're priced accordingly. The center I liked best was clean and well-organized, with teachers who seemed welcoming and a vibe that didn't scare Liza into shrieking immediately (unlike the Montessori place, which I thought I would like but gave me the willies and turned Liza back into Velcro Child). Unfortunately, that center costs $280 a month for two half-days a week. Yeah, that's more than three times as much as the church-sponsored place in Kentucky we liked so much.

Today I was finally able to visit the one church-sponsored center that has a two-year-old program, and although it's very affordable, I wasn't especially impressed. Entrance to the school was through one of the classrooms, and the door was just propped open, so a kid would have no problem getting out if they wanted to. The rooms were adequate but not especially inspiring, and some of the toys had seen better days. The teachers seemed nice, but the program for the two-year-olds wasn't very structured. It probably didn't help that I arrived shortly after the dropoff time, when all of the classes had a few minutes of free play, and the place looked sort of like a zoo (but no one was crying or upset to be there - they all seemed to be having a good time). And the program is only one day a week, for two and a half hours, so by the time I drive home and back to pick up Liza I won't really get much time to work.

Since we really can't afford to shell out $300 a month for me to get some free time, I guess it's going to boil down to whether I think Liza will get enough out of the church program to bother. In the meantime, I still have another three pediatricians to visit before I feel like I've done enough research there. Fun, fun, fun.

On being prepared

With all the travel I've done, you'd think I would have participated in more hotel fire drills, but so far I've only been in two ... and only one was my fault. Well, not my fault, really, since there's no way I could have expected that lamp to shoot two-foot-tall flames into the air when I turned it on. That's one way to perk yourself up at 11:30 after traveling all day ... ever try to blow out an electical fire while wearing only your undergarments? You can do it, but it's not pretty, and you have to send your clothes to the drycleaner to get the smell out.

Anyway, yesterday we woke up at 6:45 to smoke alarms and flashing lights. Liza had gotten up earlier in the night and come into our bed, which is right underneath the smoke alarm ... and she didn't even flinch while the sirens were blaring overhead. I guess we're going to have to get one of those special smoke alarms for kids that let you record a message to play instead of beeping. Anyway, thanks to my experience with The Lamp of Extreme Flaminess, I always make sure when I go to bed in a hotel that I have enough clothes on to allow me to stand around in the lobby during a fire drill and not look like somebody's paid companion.

When I looked out the peephole in the door there was indeed a little smoke in the hall, so I grabbed a jacket and shoes, the diaper bag, and the kid and headed for the door. Jason, meanwhile, was running around in his boxers with the cat carrier, trying to find the cats who were hiding from the noise. That's two potential disasters where he's wasted evacuation time to try to save the cat(s), the other being an earthquake when we lived in Japan. It's nice that he likes them enough to not want to leave them behind to fry, but still. I'm telling you, he's like a walking advertisement for why they put the line "LEAVE YOUR PETS BEHIND" in large letters on the evacuation instructions for natural disasters.

Luckily, the fire alarm was for something relatively minor - from the smell of it, one of our neighbors had burned their breakfast bacon or had a small grease fire - and we were able to get back into the hotel room pretty quickly. And Liza got a chance to see a fire truck up close, and she waved to the firemen, so she was happy. Still, not a restful start to the day.

House pictures

They'll look best if you click on them and open them in a new window - there should be three photos per jpg file.

Scenes from a hotel

I've been knitting like a maniac, finishing projects so fast that I swear I'm actually going to run out of projects BEFORE we move into the house. That's a good excuse to allow myself to buy new yarn, right? Right?

Patterns from:

http://www.virtuallydesigned.com/gottamake/patterns/websurfingmitts.htm

http://magknits.com/July06/ballet.htm

That tank top is made of yarn spun from bamboo fibers ... thanks to the properties of the fiber, it drapes like a dream (note to self: only wear sweater when willing to suck in gut continuously) and weighs about twice what you'd think it should. You could smother small animals with that thing, I'm telling you. If I had enough money and time to make a dress out of the stuff, I wouldn't be able to stand up under its weight.

Meanwhile, let it be noted that if I hear several minutes of strange rustling noises coming from the living room, I'm likely to find a scene like this:

Yes, those are the leftover grocery bags we're saving to use when we clean out the cat box. At least she grabbed the unused ones ... which we now store on top of the refrigerator.