Good morning! Hello there. How are you? Did you have a good weekend? I do hope so. I hope you were not attacked by chiggers. I hope you got a lot of chores done!
Chores roll call! I swapped out all the smoke detectors. They are over ten years old and obsolete. They don’t make a smoke detector with two kinds of smoke detection and carbon monoxide detection, so I got a mix. Plus one smart one so, you know, if we happen to actually leave the house and it happens to burn while we’re actually gone, it can helpfully alert me on my phone. If I am being honest, I will admit I miscounted, and I actually only replaced seven of the eight smoke detectors. I have one to go. It is now on order.
While I was on the ceiling I swapped out the control mechanism of Emma’s ceiling fan with one that actually switches, so she can turn her fan on high. I put the broken one in the guest bedroom, for now, so if you come stay here I am sorry but your ceiling fan will only go medium speed, downward. I did receive the little control switch part from the fan makers — for free! They really are so nice. — but I have to swap it out, and that means soldering and soldering is a skill I don’t remember, even though I learned once. I suppose it’s time to re-learn. These things are never as scary as you think they are.
Speaking of which, I got a small, little, quiet air compressor. I’ve always been inexplicably scared of air compressors. They’re fine! Totally not scary. And pneumatic tools are so cheap compared to battery powered ones. And you don’t have to be a slave to the same brand. I am slowly acquiring all the gear I need to redo the floor in the office of the new house, as a beta test for doing the floors of the studio. So I bought a Bostich pneumatic flooring nailer, the kind that rolls along your wood and you thwack it with a hammer to place a staple. Very exciting. Also got one of those little air guns to clean things off. Just fantastic. Air compressors!
The excavator came by and we worked out the plan for the greenhouse, where needs to be flattened, where the wall trench will go. I asked him when he’d get to it and he was a bit evasive but I do think it’ll get done this month. That is exciting.
I took all the tarps off the grass in preparation for the guy. And I washed them, which was tedious AF. And I folded them and put them in their happy bin home. The grass is dead dead dead and everything is ready to go.
What else did I do. More chores! I got the back yard wifi working over there, finally. I covered the greenhouse kit with tarps. I got a lot of chigger bites in my belly button which is somewhat unpleasant. Oh! I also rigged this sort of platform for my crappy wood chipper so at least it can be higher up and chip into a bin instead of that utterly useless small canvas bag that it comes with. Haven’t actually tried it yet — I need an extension cord and the branches I’m gonna chip aren’t quite dry yet. But I am very excited about it.
And look at this chunky cat that is hanging out at the new house! Gate is broken so animals can walk right in right now (that reminds me I gotta call the gate people today) and this cat seems to be very happy at the house. I kind of wanted an outdoor cat over there to scare off the squirrels but Emma dissuaded me — outdoor cats kill too many birds. But now I guess I have a part time one anyway. Maybe it’ll be enough to scare the squirrels away.
And speaking of the squirrels they ate every single one of my literally thousands of grapes hanging from the hoop house. Just utter pigs, those squirrels. This reinforces my belief that all the grapes need to move to the new house. Be hung on trellis wire where squirrels my not fear to tread, but will fall if they actually try and grab a grape.
Saturday morning I got a text (thank you Heather!) that the Hello Kitty Cafe truck was in Durham for the day. So I got Jane through breakfast quickly and we drove to Durham and visited the cafe truck. It was super fun for about 30 of the 40 minutes we waited in line. Lots of people in Hello Kitty attire, a couple in hand-knit hello kitty hats, couple of Harajuku girls in full goth Hello Kitty regalia, a real good time. It was all very last minute so I forgot to bring sun screen, which sucked, and Jane and I forgot her water in the car, which also sucked, so by the end of the line she was very cranky. BUT the girl in front of us in line had the exact same birthday as Jane, which was exciting for both of them. And that girl was shy but she liked Jane. She shared her little Hello Kitty toys with her. She was also a foot taller than Jane, and going into first grade, not kindergarten, because she went to a private school and her mom had a choice. It was crazy! Two kids the exact same age but looked like they could be a year, if not two apart. She was in the 99th percentile in height.
Jane’s heat exhaustion by the time we got to the front of the line meant she was really cranky so there was no time to take a picture of her with the truck, but here is a picture of the truck from their instagram:
Anyway we bought a ridiculous amount of Hello Kitty stuff, for Jane and mommy. I hid a bunch of it for future birthdays and Christmas and whatnot.
They were, sadly, out of the macarons. Also the Hello Kitty Cafe had absolutely zero drinks.
Justa mix for you today. Old and new. Very into this YOU. band. And the new old Sarah Shannon from Velocity Girl EP. And, surprise surprise, Taylor Swift. Oh and George Michael cuz we watched the Wham! documentary. And new illuminati hotties. And old Bongwater cuz I re-listened to their discography. And Japan cuz I was explaining Rain Tree Crow to Emma the other day.
Until tomorrow! Where I will talk about things other than chores.