Breast Christmas Ever

The blog title cannot be explained. In fact, the entire Wiltshire Family Christmas is always an event that cannot be explained. At least not well enough to do it justice. You really have to be there.

It is always a lot of fun, a lot of chaos, and the occasional odd stocking stuffer. It gets just a little more chaotic with every addition to our ever-growing family. This was Makinley's first Christmas...and she survived. Scott has been a part of this annual event for so long now, that rarely does anything surprise or phase him. Nancy is still fairly new at this, however, and she still occasionally gets that "What in the hell have I married into?" look on her face. Living with me every day for the past two years has helped prepare her, at least a little bit, for the insanity.

Christmas Eve always involves going to the Candlelight Service at church. After that, it's off to Carrie's house for games. This part of the night got off to a rough start when Logan got home after church and immediately went to the play room, where his 16-in-1 game table from Santa was hidden. Only problem was that Santa was still on his way from the North Pole. Carrie really has to get better at hiding gifts. The middle of the play room is maybe not the best hiding place. We'll work on that for next year. Luckily Santa had a backup gift and Logan was none the wiser.

We got Carrie a Kwanzaa gift, since Laura would be mad if got her a Christmas gift, since Carrie was not either of our assigned Christmas gift recipients. The main reason for the gift was so we would have a new game to play on Christmas Eve. I think we succeeded in sneaking it by Laura. At least until she reads this blog. As we were wrapping up another exciting round of Wiltshire Family Trivial Pursuit, Nancy began having some weird stomach pains, so we had to call it a night. Her pregnancy really causes some strange aches and pains from time to time. Christmas Eve 2008 was in the books.

We awoke bright and early on Christmas morning to assemble a few toys and eat breakfast. Oh, and I was just kidding about the pregnancy thing. It is a running joke in our family. They expect a big "announcement" every time we visit. They even keep tabs on whether Nancy is drinking beer or not, in the hopes of getting a clue as to when the announcement might be.

Once Laura, Scott, and Makinley arrived, it was time for opening presents. This event is only slightly less chaotic than yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Take three small children, all the toys from aisles 1 through 17 at Toys R Us, and 3 metric tons of wrapping paper, and there you have it. Mass hysteria. We used to calmly open our gifts one at a time, taking turns along the way. Not any more. Now it's everyone for themselves. No more posing for pictures with each gift, no more thank yous to the gift giver, no more telling everyone what you got. Luckily, Dad set up the camcorder on the tripod to capture every moment on tape, just as he has done every year since camcorders came out. We have yet to ever actually watch one of these tapes, but the point is, we could if we wanted to.

It seems every year there is one stocking stuffer that defies logic and common sense. Logan was the lucky recipient this year. He got a nutcracker. Now this is not the little soldier boy nutcracker, mind you. No, this is a solid steel nut-crushing device complete with sharp metal pick. Just what every 6 year old high on sugar needs. The ironic thing is that he received this gift on the only Christmas in memory that our stockings were not at least partially filled with whole, unshelled pecans and almonds. We got no gouda cheese this year either. Usually a round, red, wax-covered wheel of gouda cheese is as predictable in our stocking as the quiche is for Christmas breakfast. Not this year. I'm very sad about this.

As usual, the kids cleaned up. Logan got every type of transportation device possible, including a bike, a skateboard, and a scooter. Of course, he was much more enamored with his Star Wars toys. Makinley got multiple loud, noise making toys. Nancy and I always make it a point to give the kids the loudest, most obnoxious toys we can find. This year, we got Makinley an entire Bee Bop Band worth of noisy musical instruments, and we got Brynna the singing, dancing, joke-telling Elmo Live.

We scored a pretty good haul ourselves. Enough to fill up the entire back of Nancy's Santa Fe. The only gift I got that I didn't like was the box of Kleenex Laura and Scott gave me, with a note so cleverly included that reads, "Thought you might need these after this season of Aggie Football." Funny. Very funny. Oddly enough, the box wasn't opened. I figured at least a few of them would have been used over the past two years when their team got beat by our sad little team. But it makes sense. Between those two butt-whoopings and all their crying about OU going to the Big XII championship instead of them, I bet they used a whole box...so they had to buy us a new one.

All in all, it was a great Christmas, as they always are at our house. It was fun watching Logan and Brynna make our living room look like a small tornado had gone through. And watching Makinley take in all the sights and sounds and craziness of her first Christmas.

Now it's on to Part 2 on Saturday. There are two more little tornadoes just waiting to make a similar mess of Brandl and Danielle's living room. And Nancy and I, with our loud, obnoxious gifts in hand, wouldn't miss it.

A Hunting we will go

Well, it's here. One of my favorite weekends of the year. The weekend we go to Kerrville and go deer hunting on Nancy's parents' ranch. It's a blast just hanging out, drinking some beer with good friends and family. And I can't thank Paul and Doris enough for letting me come out, and even bring some friends from time to time. I know my friends, and allowing them to come is no easy thing to say yes to.

The ranch is awesome. It's got a nice heated cabin with real beds and a real toilet. We hunt out of box blinds while sitting in cushioned chairs. We ain't exactly roughing it. Nancy knows that the fact that her parents let me go hunting there is the real reason I married her. Well, that and she is kinda cute. She even likes to hunt. She killed a deer long before I ever did.

Last year my parents got to come out, and we had a lot of fun. My Dad likes to hunt, but we have never had a place to really go hunting in Texas. My parents know that I have had "deer lease" on my Christmas list since I was 12, so they approved of Nancy right away. Derrick and Scott also got to come out last year. And we shockingly didn't even run out of beer.

This weekend, Derrick and Tiffany are coming down on Friday night, and Bjorn is coming to hang out on Saturday. This might be the weekend we finally run out of beer.

The cool thing about killing a deer is that we don't have to buy meat for a year afterwards. Our freezer full from last year is finally dwindling down, so I am going to try to find a nice fat doe to volunteer to be a year's worth of hamburger, sausage and jerky. Hopefully Derrick will find one to shoot this year. Last year, he saw a bunch on the first hunt, but not wanting to kill his deer on the first day, let them go. He never saw them again. I bet if he sees one on the first day this year, he mans up and pulls the trigger.

Anyway, we are all packed up and ready to go. The rifles are sighted in and loaded up. The beer is on ice. I've even got a relief vet to cover for me on Saturday. I can't wait.

I know I said I was going to shoot a doe...but when I look into the future, for some reason this is what I see:


I think the doe is much more likely.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Nancy loves to decorate for Christmas. She goes all out...and now that we have a bigger house to decorate, she's really going nuts. And this is the first year that we have a tree. I know it's odd, but with all her decorating she has never had a Christmas tree. The only problem that I have with her Christmas decorating is that it starts somewhere right around Labor Day. And we finally take it down no later than the Fourth of July.

It's not just the decorating either. We have to listen to Christmas music non-stop as soon as they start playing it on the radio. Which I think with XM is around Halloween at the latest. I have found that the only way to get the station changed is to loudly sing Silent Night in German along with every song. The combination of my awful singing voice, the fact that I am singing a different song than what is playing on the radio, and the fact that I am singing it in very poor German (barely retained from a Lorena High School German Club Christmas play 15 years ago) is just enough to get her to change it.

Of course, I then have to listen to Cosmo (as in the tastefully done women's magazine) radio. But I guess listening to sex advice from a teenage radio DJ is better than hearing Jingle Bells for the 403rd time in a week before November is even over. Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas. I always have. I just don't think I love it quite as much as she does. I don't think anyone loves it quite as much as she does. I think even Jesus Himself, by about December 10th would be like, "I'm flattered. Really, I am. But can we listen to the game?"

When we go shopping for Christmas decorations (this really goes for any house decorations), I am really a lot of help. Nancy uses me to rule out decorating possibilities. It's pretty simple, really. If I pick it up off the shelf, and say, "Hey, what about this one?"...then it automatically goes into the NO column. By the time we are done, and I have suggested every (candle, Christmas tree, set of lights, yard decoration...whatever) but one, then that is the one that we buy. It never fails. I'm glad my taste in women is better than my taste in decorating.

Just a side note...we seem to have completely eradicated our garage mouse problem. I think my brutal execution, via broom handle, of the last mouse to get stuck to our glue trap sent a message to all the others that I am not playing around anymore. Final Score: Randy 5, Mice 2.

On to the pictures. I think she did a great job with the decorating. Just don't underappreciate my role in the final product.

Yes, I am still alive and Mouse Wars

Well, I decided to write again after a long layoff. Not because I have anything important to say, but mainly because I was getting tired of having my cute little niece flipping the bird at the top of my page.

Nancy got to see her a couple of weekends ago while she was in Austin. I still haven't seen her since the week she was born, so I'm looking forward to seeing her again on Thanksgiving. How am I going to be a bad influence on her if she doesn't even know who I am?

We have been going to College Station on all of the home football weekends, so we have been staying pretty busy watching our sad, pathetic excuse for a football team. It's still a lot of fun to get to go act like a college student again for a day 6-7 times per year. The group has dwindled a lot this year, due to our team's ineptness on the field. Most of them are bandwagoners who will act like the biggest fans in the world when the team is winning, but are nowhere to be found when we are not. If you can't stand behind your team in the bad times, you won't enjoy the good times as much. That's what we keep telling ourselves, at least. However, if the cesspool that is Texas Tech University wins a national championship this year, I may have to swear off college football altogether. I could not handle such a thing. I guess there's always the Houston Texans to fall back on. Wait, that would be even worse. Between the Aggies, the Texans, and the Astros...it has not been a banner year for our sports teams.

In other news, the vacant land next to our neighborhood is now being leveled and prepped for another section of homes to start going up. One consequence of bulldozing that land is that it has forced many a mouse from his home. I went to take the trash out one night and saw a mouse scurry across the garage floor. Then I made the mistake of telling Nancy about it. From her perch high atop the chair she got on within 2.3 seconds of my sharing the mouse sighting, Nancy screamed at me to do something about it...NOW. The only problem was, "now" was 11 pm, and I am not a cat, nor do I keep mouse traps on hand for this type of situation. So I was "urged" to make a late night trip to the store in search of some sort of mouse getting-rid-of apparatus. I returned with two packages of trusty old-fashioned mouse traps.

I put the squeezy cheese on the trigger and attempted to set the traps. Unfortunately, the traps did not like to stay set and I nearly lost a finger about eight times. I'm guessing that would not be good for my surgery business. Finally, after wrestling with the stupid thing for 20 minutes, as well as a good bit of cussing, I finally got two traps to stay set long enough to put them in the corners of our garage.

The next morning, I fully expected to find the little booger dead as a doornail in one of the traps. Then I would dispose of him and my wife could get down out of the chair. However, it was not to be. You see, despite the fact that the traps have such a hair trigger that I nearly amputated my finger every time I looked at it sideways, the mouse somehow managed to eat every last drop of the squeezy cheese off both of the traps without setting them off. Nancy, from atop her chair, so cleverly exclaimed "Mouse 1, Randy 0". So I tried it again the next night. Same result. Mouse 2, Randy 0.

I had opted for the traditional mouse trap on my late-night field trip to Kroger, instead of the glue traps, because I figured it would be a much quicker way for the little bastard to die. But now I was mad. No more humane treatment for this guy. So Plan B, the glue traps, were strategically placed throughout the garage. I knew now that it was only a matter of time before I got him. Except it wasn't him, as it turned out...it was them. Five so far. All about three inches long, head to tip of tail (But to hear Nancy describe them, they are rats the size of small possums). One even struggled so mightily against the glue trap that he peeled off his own skin. That was interesting. It has been three nights since we have caught any mice...so Nancy is down out of the chair. For now.

Makinley

Laura loves to video Makinley and post it on her blog. It is fun to watch these videos, especially since we don't ever actually get to see her. However, I think Makinley may be getting a little tired of all the videotaping that Laura and Scott are doing. Here is a screenshot from the 0:41 second mark of her latest video. http://www.lebigham.blogspot.com/ You be the judge.

She's already got a little attitude. I like it.

Hurricane Ike

Things have certainly been interesting here the past 36 hours.

I hope everyone in the Houston/Galveston area who reads this blog is doing okay after Ike. I know many of you are without power. Anyone who still doesn't have electricity is welcome to come and stay with us as long as you need to. Also, if you need some help picking up debris or making repairs, please call me.

We feel very blessed and lucky to have come out of this with minimal damage. The Fitz stood up to Ike well. Even our landscaping somehow survived. We never lost power for more than a few seconds, which puts us in the lucky 1% in the Greater Houston area. We went this morning to check on the clinic, which is further east than we are in Katy. We saw alot of relatively minor damage on the way--like downed trees, fences and lots of dangling stoplights. The clinic was thankfully spared from any major damage. there was some minor flooding in my office, but the three dogs that were boarding with us are doing great. We even had power back on by the time we got there.

Those in the Galveston and Clear Lake areas weren't as lucky as we were. We have heard secondhand that our family in that area are doing okay, and we hope that is true. They know that if they need anything, including a place to stay, or get out of the heat, or just take a shower...our doors are always open.

I am somewhat of a weather geek, so you can ignore this part if you want to. It was amazing that Ike became so much better organized and strengthened right before landfall. If he'd had another 24 hours over open water, he would have likely been a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane, which would have wiped out everything from Galveston to Pt. Arthur. The sheer size of Ike made his area of damage much greater than your average hurricane, but it also kept him from strengthening as much as he could have. Just look at the two pictures below. The one on the left is from Friday afternoon, about 12 hours prior to landfall. The eye is ragged and poorly organized, with relatively weak echoes in the eyewall. The one on the right is from 3-4 hours prior to landfall. You can see the eye has contracted down and is very symmetrical, with much stronger echoes in the eyewall, which is a sign of strengthening. If he had done this 24 hours before landfall, it would have been a whole different story. Not that it wasn't bad enough as it was.

We got estimated 70 mph winds with 80 mph gusts in Katy, and we were 40 miles from the eye. That tells you just how big this thing was. I have never seen winds like that. It just howls and makes the house creak and moan. And the rain is literally going sideways. The worst of it came between 4 am and 7 am. I really have no idea how our electricity stayed on. I shot a video once it was daylight, but by then the winds were only 40 mph with 55 mph gusts.

Pray for all those affected much more than we were.

Fixed it For You

My sister Laura posted a very cute picture of our niece Makinley on her blog. She went to her first tailgate party this weekend, which is very cool. However, they decided to dress her in a horrid burnt orange ensemble for some reason. As you can tell by this photo, in which she is clearly giving the "Gig 'Em Aggies" hand sign, she was protesting her parents' choice of clothes in her own silent way. Sort of like the U.S. Soldier in that photo where he is shaking Hillary Clinton's hand, but has the fingers on his other hand crossed, as a subtle protest.

With her clear allegience to her Aunt Nancy and Uncle Randy's alma mater, I took the liberty to fix the photo to reflect what Makinley so obviously would have preferred.

Gig 'Em, Makinley. Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of '30.

It's Been a While

Sorry (to the two people who read this blog) about the almost month in between posts. It's been a really busy month at the clinic, which is a good thing. But it has been busier than it normally would have been because I had two staff members leave at the same time. One has a degree from A&M and was trying to get a teaching job...so it was no huge surprise when she left. The other one caught me a little off guard. But she is going back to school, and I can never be upset about someone trying to better themselves and not just live off the government (or my measly 10 bucks an hour). That left me with two experienced employees. So I had to quickly find a few decent applicants to interview for the two jobs that had opened up.

The process works something like this: I put out an ad in a local classified paper and on Craigslist, and the listing specifically says to apply in person, and in bold says "No phone calls or emails will be answered regarding this position". So of course, every day we have to delete tons of emails from our inbox and answer a ton of phone calls asking about the position. It is my personal rule that we get the name of anyone who calls or emails...and if they do come in to apply, the application immediately goes to the shredder. My goal is to hire people with AT THE LEAST basic reading comprehension skills and the ability to follow directions. Is that too much to ask? Sometimes I think it might be.

Anyway, when the applicant comes in, my receptionist pre-screens them for me to weed out all the riff-raff and ne'r-do-wells. And 95% of the applicants would fit easily into one of those categories. She then brings me the applications of the friendly, clean, polite, intelligent-sounding individuals for me to interview. Someone who is all 4 of those things is like gold, especially if they don't want twenty bucks an hour or a company car. Those that don't quite fit the bill are at least sometimes mildly entertaining.

There was Angie "Bambi" Rhodes (actually how she filled out her name on the application). She came in wearing more makeup than Krusty The Clown and wearing, I kid you not, a feather boa. Her last place of employment was Treasures, a local gentlemen's establishment. This was at my prior clinic a few years ago, and German, a young male technician from Argentina, tried very hard to get her hired. I figured as much as she might attract a whole new sector of the male, pet-owning public to our clinic, it was best if she pursued other options.

There was also a young man that came in and filled out an application for a kennel position. He had evidently been involved in the dog training business as an assistant at a local kennel, which gave him some valuable experience. If only he hadn't listed his former position as "Ass Trainer" on the application. I am pretty sure he meant Assistant Trainer, but I can't take that chance.

There was a young lady that seemed nice enough to our receptionist, so I called her back for an interview. When I called, she was evidently in the middle of a fight with her husband/boyfriend/baby-daddy, who I could hear yelling in the background the whole time. At one point, she said, "Excuse me for a second" and tried to put her hand over the phone so i wouldn't hear her yell, "Shut the F--- up, I'm on the phone with the clinic where I am trying to get a f----ng job!". Then, nice as can be she continued our conversation. I had called her to set
up an interview, but after that I told her I was calling to let her know the position had been filled.

Finally, there was Molly, who came in just last week. She walked in with her resume in hand, walked up to the front desk and set the piece of paper on the counter. She then turned around and walked out the door. Never said a word, never smiled, never used sign language or even pantomime...just walked in, set her resume down, and left. She was not advanced to the next round by our pre-screening receptionist.

I finally found two reasonably intelligent, presentable, non-strippers and hired them. Now the fun part of getting them trained to the point that they don't make us all look like complete incompetents.

I must admit that the reason I am breaking down and blogging tonight is that I am spending the night at the clinic watching over Rowdy, who has a raging case of Pancreatitis. I'm glad I have a shower and a couch up here. Otherwise I would be grumpier and stinkier than normal tomorrow, and probably have to go through the hiring process again after everyone quit.

Green Thumbs

Nancy and I whipped out our green thumbs and did a little landscaping in the back yard last weekend. We really had absolutely no idea what we were doing, so there is a good chance this is the last time you will see any of these plants alive. We planted a pear tree (sans partridge), an oak tree, and some smaller flowers and plants. I basically pushed the cart around Home Depot while Nancy picked stuff out. My only contribution was to veto the plants that would be toxic to Shelby, since she eats everything that doesn't eat her first. We are slowly running out of projects around the new house, and I am quickly running out of things to blog about. I may have to branch out from The Fitz and start discussing ALL the mundane details of our lives. You won't wanna miss it.

Paint-the-fence, young Daniel-san

We decided that, after seeing all the wooden fences in our neighborhood faded after 6 months, we would weatherproof our fence to prevent this from happening. We decided on Redwood Weatherproofing Fence Stain, and naively went to Home Depot to buy a couple of gallons. The math on the side of the can said we would need about 3 gallons to cover our fence. However, we found that the five-gallon bucket was a better deal than buying three gallon cans. So we grabbed two 4" brushes and were on our way.

We woke up bright and early this morning to get started, to avoid being baked alive by the sun. I poured a little of the stain in Nancy's pan, and we each picked a random wood plank to start on. Ten minutes later, after we had each finished a grand total of ONE plank, we decided the brush technique was less than ideal, and that continuing with this method would put us finishing sometime around Labor Day.

Plan B. I went and got the trusty bug sprayer out of the garage, filled 'er up, and got to spraying. Worked like a charm, and certainly covered the wood much faster than brushes. However, sending the gooey stain airborne on its way to the fence gives it the opportunity to also blow into one's hair, mouth, eyes, and clothes. Well worth it, we decided, to avoid painstakingly painting it with a brush. One other problem. The bug sprayer was 1 gallon, which lasted about ten minutes of spraying. So every ten minutes we had to stop and fill it up again. Which also meant that, while much more efficient, this method was using much more stain than the side of the bucket said. We got about 1/3 of the way through and ran out of stain.

We had planned on taking a break for lunch during the heat of the day anyway. So after lunch we ran by Home Depot for another bucket. We decided to go ahead and get 2 more, thinking that we probably wouldn't use the second one, and we could return it. We also bought a 2.5 gallon sprayer made specifically for our task at hand, so we wouldn't have to fill it up as often. Besides, the bug sprayer was getting clogged by this point.

The sprayer worked beautifully, and the rest of the left side fence and the entire back fence went off without a hitch. By this time, Nancy had given up on trying to stay semi-clean, so she was covered head-to-toe with red goop. Then about halfway down the right side of the fence, the sprayer broke. It would still spray, but only if I held it together with two hands while spraying. Add that to the fact that the house next door already has siding up, so we had to be extra careful not to inadvertently paint their house in the process...and the last 40 feet of fence took almost as long as the other 100 feet.

We finally finished just before dark. And we used all but about 1 gallon of the 15 gallons we bought. Here is a picture of Nancy. Without knowing the above story, you would just assume by looking at her that she had just gone on a mass killing spree.

What doesn't show in the pictures is the thick layer of red goop lacquered to her hair like an orange helmet. It is still there, by the way, even after an hour-long shower. She will be spending all day in the shower tomorrow, I bet. She vetoed my plan of dunking her head in a vat of paint thinner.

Anyway, here is the finished product. It was worth it...I guess.

Before

After

On an unrelated note...I talked to my Mom tonight. The first thing she tells me is, "hey, I got my colostomy last week." I almost swerved off the road. Because it would not surprise me for my mother to have major surgery and not tell me. And a colostomy, which involves severing the large intestine, cutting a hole in your side, and re-routing the end of the colon to this hole, where one's poop exits into a nice little plastic bag, is certainly major surgery. I didn't even know she had any colon problems, let alone had anything serious enough to need a colostomy. "Why did you have to have a colocstomy?" I asked. "Wait," she said. "Maybe it wasn't a colostomy. Yeah, it was a colonoscopy." Thanks, mom. You almost gave me a heart attack. Because a minor procedure sticking a camera up your butt is almost the same as re-routing your entire gastrointestinal tract necessitating the need to empty your poop bag twice daily.

Family Time

My mom, dad, sister Carrie, nephew Logan, and niece Brynna all made the trip down to Katy to visit for the 4th of July and see The Fitz. They made it down Friday after an evidently looong and exciting car ride. It takes normal people 2.5 hours to drive from Lorena to Katy. But my family has never been accused of being normal. Especially when you have a five-year-old and a one-year-old along for the ride. It took them about 4.5 hours. There were the requisite bathroom stops, food stops, and plus, I hear, a few poop false alarms from Logan.

The first thing we did was give them the tour of The Fitz. My dad, sister and the kids had never seen it in person, and the only time my mom saw it, it was barely framed. Then we went on a tour of the model home and introduced them to Mike, the sales manager for Meritage. Logan, of course, loved the bug room at the model home. Not as much as he loved the Star Wars Room at The Fitz, though. We don't actually have a Star Wars room, but I told Logan that is the name of the room where he would be sleeping...so it immediately became his favorite room. He spent hours in that room playing with his new Star Wars toys that we bought him. One of the toys was a huge, ugly monster called Rancor, which I think was his favorite. This kid is obsessed with Star Wars. He evn tried to make his mom sleep on the floor since Rancor monster was already neatly tucked in to the bed...and there just wasn't room for mom, too.

Logan also loved our goldfish, Holt, which we kept in a big bowl on the kitchen counter. We had been wanting to get an aquarium and a few more fish anyway...and since Logan seemed to really like the fish, I went ahead and bought the aquarium and fish while he was here. He then promptly tried to name them all...after Star Wars characters.

Brynna is the sweetest toddler I have ever seen. And she is fearless. Turn your back on her for five seconds, and she is halfway up the stairs, ready to jump off. We had to put up the baby gate to keep her on the first floor.

All in all, it was a fun weekend of 1.5" thick ribeye steaks, fireworks, and swimming. We love it whenever we get to spend time with our families...since it doesn't happen nearly often enough.

And last weekend we got to see Brandl and Danielle and Brooke and Tyler, who came to visit for a few hours while Nancy's mom was in town. Wish we got to see them more, because those twins are growing like weeds.

Hopefully, we will be able to see Laura, Scott and Makinley soon, too. Every picture I see of Makinley, she looks cuter and cuter. And I can't believe how big she has gotten.

Bottom line is, we are both very thankful to have such wonderful families...and as crazy as it can get sometimes, we love just hanging out with them whenever we can. Now that we are kind of settled in, hopefully it will be more often.

I finally finished the wall art I did for above the fireplace. I'm not sure how well it turned out, but since Nancy forced me to hang it on the wall, I guess it turned out okay. Especially since I've never done anything like this before, and I changed it a hundred times before I got it right. Our back bedroom-slash-art studio has now officially been declared a disaster area. After this mess, I think I'll go back to painting less abstract paintings, like these:

Here are a few pics of the wall art:

Mad Crown Moulding Skillz

Nancy and I decided to take on the seemingly simple task of trying to put up crown moulding. The plan was to start simple, in the powder room, with its 90-degree angles and horizontal ceiling, and work our way up to the more difficult rooms. First, we had to buy a compound miter saw and 24 feet of crown moulding, which we did yesterday at our new home away from home..Lowe's. Nancy painted them yesterday so they would be dry by today.

After lunch today, we decided it was go time. We ventured out into the newly organized garage. The sweltering 120 degree sauna that is our garage did not deter us. First we decided to "practice" using our new saw on some of the scrap 2x4s from the house going up next door. So far, so good. No severed fingers or mangled limbs. Then, we decided to ratchet things up a notch and try it on the actual moulding, of which we had just a few feet extra. We had bought a nice little Do-It-Yourself Crown Moulding book at Lowe's, which I offered to go get from inside before we attempted this. "No", Nancy (the Geometry teacher) says. "The walls are 90 degree angles, so you just cut each end at 45 degree angles, and nail it up." I reluctantly agreed to the trial and error vs. read the directions approach, since this is typically my philosophy in life anyway.

We made the first cut, held the two pieces together, and...well, they would have fit together better if we had just wacked off the ends with a machete. Eight practice cuts later, and no closer to acheiving even the slightest degree of congruency between the two ends of moulding, we agreed it might be time to go get the book. A few seconds into thumbing through the pages, we soon realized this wasn't quite as simple as we had envisioned. There were charts, that took up three pages, to determine the cut angle of the saw and the tilt angle of the saw, which all depends on the angle of the corner, the angle of the moulding (all crown moulding is not created equal), the relative humidity, the phase of the moon, and application of Newton's 45th Law of Thermodynamics.

Five more practice cuts later, and long since having used our "extra" moulding and halfway into what we had planned on actually using, we finally figured it out, with the help of our trusty chart. The "simple" angles of the cut and the tilt respectively, are 31.6 degrees and 33.9 degrees, by the way, for a 90 degree corner. I'm sure we would have eventually figured that out ourselves.

We took some notes while trying to figure it all out:

In the end, after an entire afternoon of sawing, nailing, sanding, painting, and cussing...we managed to finish the 5 foot by 5 foot powder room. Thanks to Nancy's mad caulking and puttying skillz, it even looks halfway decent.

I think it will be awhile before we tackle any of the other rooms in our house, with all their vaulted ceilings and non- 90 degree angles.

If my Dad has said it once, he has said it a million times: When all else fails, read the directions.

Lost desk parts, Chinese furniture, and a magical cordless TV

It's like magic. I leave at 7 am, put in another day's work saving the puppies and kittens of Greater West Houston, get home at 7 pm and something in the Ol' Fitz looks entirely different. Nancy has been hard at work this week finishing our office, painting the powder room, and painting the kitchen. That is all after a busy weekend of sewing and hanging curtains with her mom (Okay, she didn't do much of the sewing or hanging, but she is a damn good supervisor). I'm just afraid what she is going to do with her time off this summer once all our projects are done, when every room is painted, and every curtain is hung. I fear she may turn to drugs or even worse, Oprah, to fill the hours of the day. She's been very busy, and the house looks great...but I really haven't done a thing. Well, I did help her organize the garage, and I do water the grass on occasion, but all in all I have done about 1% of the work since we moved in.

Here is the "window treatment" (that is a new phrase I learned) in the master bedroom that I forgot to show you last time. Her and her mom used some pillow shams (I think) to make this.



Here is the powder room, complete with elongated toilet, that Nancy painted this week.



She also painted the kitchen today. No, the laundry detergent and trash on the island are not permanent decorations.





Here is a random picture of our formal dining room.

Oddly enough, I think the office is the thing Nancy is most excited about. The pride she exhibited when she first ordered this desk is something comparable only to the birth of one's children. The problem is, she hasn't been able to properly organize the office because the oh-so-critical corner piece was lost somewhere in UPS purgatory before it ever made it here. They never did find it, but they did send us another one. The original, according to the ever-so-accurate UPS tracking system website, is still pending delivery. Of course, it said that three weeks ago, too. The office is not quite finished yet, but the desk is finally complete. It is very versatile, too. It can be used for bookkeeping for a one doctor veterinary clinic, or it can be used to seat a meeting of the United Nations, with room to spare for a few rogue dictators. Why we needed a desk that big is anyone's guess...but we got a great deal on it, and as always, that is all that matters.

We are very proud of our bedroom tv, complete with pre-wiring so that no cords are visible hanging from the tv.

Never mind that our cable box is currently propped up on a cardboard box in the corner, next to all the folded clothes on our floor. At least we do not have those unsightly cords dangling in plain sight. Hopefully, the cardboard box and using the floor as our dresser is temporary, just until our dresser arrives. Our original was damaged at the warehouse, and apparently the only other one like it in the world had to be shipped from China on a rowboat, only after being assembled by hand in a Chinese sweatshop by underpaid 8 year olds using wood harvested from African jungles and carried to China by camels, one board at a time. What I'm trying to say is it is taking a really long time to get here. We are expecting it right about the time that we have all our furniture paid for. Late August of 2011. Until then, we will have to just be content with our magical, cordless TV.

Oh boy...decorating

Now that we are all moved in, I have been diligently working on my Honey-Do List. I have been in charge of not letting our newly laid sod die despite no rain for two months. I don't think I've ever watered a lawn in my life, and now it is like a daily ritual. We may even get it mowed soon. We also stained the concrete on our back patio...which turned out pretty well even though Nancy and I had no idea what we were doing. (Public service announcement: when frantically rolling ACID onto concrete, it is a good idea to wear safety glasses. Some shot up in my eye, which caused me to dance around the back yard like my pants were on fire. Luckily, I still have two functioning eyes. I'm also glad we do not have neighbors as of yet.) We have gotten most of the odd jobs done by this point...except for the big one: organizing the garage. I have put it off so far, but I may actually have to buckle down and do it next weekend.

The current project du jour is interior decorating...of which I am completely clueless. Thankfully, Nancy's mom loves that kind of stuff, and the sewing that goes along with it...so she came down for a few days to make curtains for some of our windows. And she works cheap. Here are some pictures of what they have done so far.

Living Room Small Window



Living Room Big Window

Dining Room

Roman Shade on back door, open

Roman Shade on back door, Closed

I think everything turned out really well, although I am easily impressed. I was in awe that the curtains matched our couch. Turns out they planned it that way.

The shade on the back door is something called a "Roman Shade". It basically folds up like an accordion when you pull the string. Pretty cool, but I have no idea how one would even begin to make something like that. I guess that's why they just tell me to stay out of the way.

To keep me busy and out of their hair, they assigned me the job of creating an abstract painting to go over the fireplace. I think I got this job because I can draw. Only abstract art is not at all like drawing, and I can't recall ever painting anything abstract. So we'll see how that turns out. I haven't let Nancy and her mom see much of it because a) I like to wait until it is finished before anyone sees it, and b) I do not want Nancy to see the horrible mess I have made of our back bedroom. Let's just say oil painting is alot messier than I remember. Hopefully it will turn out decent and be presentable enough to actually hang up on the wall. If so, I'll post some pictures.

That's all the fun and exciting news for now. It's 2 am, so I probably ought to go to sleep sometime tonight.

More Pictures

We finally got everything moved in and semi-arranged. We still have alot of unpacking boxes to do, and some furniture assembly that Nancy is working diligently on, but most of the hard work is done. Now we just have a list of about 500 "projects" to get The Fitz up and running.

Today, they delivered our fridge, dining room table and hutch, tv stand, end tables and coffee table. We may be sending the coffee table back, as it is too big for our living room. And Best Buy forgot our bedroom tv today when they were supposed to deliver it with our fridge. That was the only thing I was excited about! Oh well, it will give me something to look forward to tomorrow after a long day of saving Houston's puppies and kittens.

We thought this house was huge until we got all our junk in here. How we ever fit all this stuff into a 1400 square foot house, I will never know.

Here are some pictures of how everything looks now. I say now, because I am sure Nancy will be making me rearrange it all three or four more times.