Morning light at 517

This morning we awoke to a strange yellow square on the wall. It kind of pulsated and we briefly wondered whether Steve Guttenberg and Wilford Brimley would pop up in our bedroom (a fantasy we've had before):

No glowing "Cocoon" aliens and (sadly) no romping with S.G. and W.B. but we comforted ourselves with the realization that the undulating yellow square was...sun! Glory be sun! For the past two weeks, we've awoken to the pitter patter of raindrops and, while it continues to be novel that these rain drops are not landing on our dining room floor, it was getting kind of old. And soggy.

This morning the sun streamed in the kitchen and dining room windows and smacked me in the face as I was eating my oatmeal. Just like old times. It even made our sinister-looking collection of knives look cuddly:


And our giant cutlery looked like it had been through a dishwasher the size of a box car:

Our veggie head prints would have blinked. If they had eyes.

Hardy har har

With the temperatures dropping (For you who don't live in SC, yes the temps do drop. It's not all balmy weather and banjos here.), we started putting in hardier veggies like broccoli, brussell sprouts and Swiss chard. In other words, all vegetables that will make you very sad to be stuck inside after dinner...

Our beets and radishes are thriving after the 2 weeks of San Francisco-like all day rain and gloom:

Nearly all of the bushes we bought are put in and I am sure that they will blossom into a lovely homogeneous tasteful privacy barrier in, oh, two weeks:

The McDonaldland Tree gets a grille

We spent this weekend having an early celebration of my birthday and performing more backbreaking labor in the back of our yard. Woody spent a long excruciating time going at a thigh-sized tree root (thigh-sized if you were a supermodel...but still pretty big to chop through with the maddock.) to put in one of our rhododenrons. I plowed through the tangle of thorny vines and yards-long creepers that had overtaken one of the big trees.

Now I am not one to take up residence in some high branches and weep to loggers about how my "friend" has "asked" me to stop them. I don't name our trees things like Luna. But this poor tree in our yard has seen some tough times. A plastic cord snakes out of the bottom, where the tree has engulfed it. I pried what looked to be a fender out of its trunk. (Our home used to be the site of an "informal auto repair" outfit, remember?) And when I thought I had found what looked to be a vine that grew in a strangely geometrical pattern...I realized a piece of fence was embedded in the guts of this tree. I tried to put a positive spin on it -- maybe it was like a milquetoast tree in Belton getting a grille. But there seemed to be less in the way of bling:

And more in the way of very sad-looking rust:


It just looked so mean to that poor tree. It would be kind of like walking up to this guy:
and saying "Hey Unnamed Happy Tree, guess what Happy Meal surprise I have for YOU? Tetanus! Yippee!" I mean I would definitely mash some gnarly rusty hunk of fence into Ronald's face or even the face of the Hamburglar, but definitely not Unnamed Happy Tree. That's just cruel.

ATB

While we would like to think we have a beagle adventurous enough to need an APB taken out on her, we have what is better described as an ATB -- an all-terrain beagle. She will lounge on whatever terrain there is to be had.

Exhibit A: beagle outfitted for great outdoors and adamantly resisting interaction with anything that might be described as, er, grass or trees.

"Yes, I see the beauty of nature..."

"But I prefer to smell your shoes."

"Or lay on this cozy and decadent concrete."

"You all bore me. I refuse to be some pawn in your pathetic effort to recommune with nature."

Exhibit B: beagle infiltrating the marital bed of Woody & Rachel.

"The word 'consummate' means nothing to me. Now get out of my face."

"You bore me. However, once I fully wake up my doggie derriere
is going on your pillow. And wiggling."

Exhibit C: beagle after rich meal with red wine

"Exposing all eight of your nipples is so much better than just unbuttoning your pants."

Fork you!

Remember "Honey I Blew Up the Kids," the fine sequel to "Honey I Shrunk the Kids"?

Apparently there was a big publicity push for this picture. There were several versions of a promo poster. But this one is the best. Because I can hear that kid with his head between his legs saying "Hey Daddy, everything is bigger? How do you feel about me cozying some of my baby parts into your head?" Well, we have the cutlery equivalent of genetically modified children:
Really, why spend wedding money on curtains when you can buy a GIANT fork and spoon! That way we can eat GIANT pasta! We can also carry Maddy around while singing "A spoonful of beagle makes the medicine go down!" (We haven't tried this but now that I write it, I think that beagle is going to be ladled up very soon...) This is soooo much better than wedding china! There was no knife available. Then again I don't know that the drywall could have taken a full set.

We've rehearsed, now on to the real thing...

So we've been kind of stingy with posts and pictures not only because we've been engaged in the kind of hard work that demolishes all possibility of having beautiful yet chaste bridal fingernails but also because we wanted the rehearsal dinner at our house to be a kind of "Grand Reveal" for our friends (without the "Oh my GOD!!!!"s and tears and hugs you see on HGTV).

We also didn't want our friends' amazing work ethic to show us up. Receiving the Honorary Piece of Disturbing Junk Award for his tireless service to 517 and all foolhardy enough to live there is Eric Stewart. In a ceremony that was not televised (kind of like the technical awards during the Oscars), Eric received this fine coal stove cover pried out of the concrete of the fireplace in our living room:


The more Antiques Roadshow of you might notice that there are two metal prongs sticking out of the plate. This allows the recipient to either wear it suspended from a chain around their neck or to nestle it into any empty hole they might desire. We did not see Eric wearing it around his neck when he left. We stopped asking questions there.

Here is Eric at the untelevised awards ceremony with Woody's mom Nancy. Note how he is leaning slightly to the right. At this point the award had "disappeared." Again, we stopped asking questions:


Without the decorative plate and pounds and pounds of soot-covered brick, the fireplace looks much different! Josh and his business partner Randy came by and completed all the rock work (I suppose you could say they "rocked out") in ONE day -- thank you Josh and Mariah for giving us all the rock as a wedding gift!

A closer look:


We put my stuffed raccoon (literally, no euphemism there) up for a nice slow braise. If it doesn't cook up nice at least we can still use it to continue to terrorize Maddy.

The rest of the living room is looking polished and cozy. Nana Witte and Dan gave us the only wedding gift that Maddy has truly enjoyed -- a rug:

Maddy now no longer needs to expend the massive energy required to jump on the couch and can just sack out on the floor. Much like Woody does when he can't expend the massive energy required to jump on the couch.

The bedroom also looks very posh and huge these days:


It's amazing how much more roomy a space gets when you do not have a 42-inch-television, bookcase, dresser, coffee maker, crock pot, coffee table, love seat, drying rack and, for good measure, a Christmas tree in there. I won't deny that Woody and I got lost trying to find our way back from the master bath at night. But when we started leaving a trail of bacon bits back to the bed things improved.

The guest room in which Eric will stay when he returns in September to work on building our outbuilding, er, to work on the production of Avenue Q, contains no furniture that has to be inflated before being used. We hope that he is psyched about this.

Sweatier than demolishing the kitchen, but more fun

Our absence from the blog can be explained thusly:

Roughly 170 people gathered to marvel at Woody and I parading around freshly scrubbed (yet thoroughly sweaty). Apparently when you wash, apply industrial-strength foundation and get an elaborate hairdo, you are married. I always thought marriage involved jordan almonds, hoop skirts and spectacular meltdowns. But clearly I was mistaken.

Let the sock races begin!

The first coat of high gloss went down on the refinished floors today to be followed by a coat of semigloss tomorrow!


I donned a pair of Woody's socks (smoother than my fancy running socks) and tried a slide down the hallway...no dice. Maybe the second coat will have me gliding from living room to kitchen with nary a snag. Even better, if we polish it extra well maybe Woody and I can treat the hallway like a giant hardwood Slip n Slide. Bellyflopping on pine will probably feel better than the shearing away of tender abdominal skin that resulted from surfing the yellow plastic wave on some gravelly schoolyard lot. Which is the only way I experienced Slip and Slide.

The best Ped Egg ever

In getting ready for the sandals that I have not yet found because they do not sell cute vaguely Grecian/ flat/ pale blue and/or pale pink not satin women's shoes in size 11 (is that too much to ask? Sheesh), I decided to get my feet showworthy. Now, I could have chosen the Ped Egg...


But then I thought, "Rachel, this is your wedding day, are you really going to prepare for the most specialist pretty pretty princessest perfectest romanticist day of your life with something sold on TV???" The answer, of course, is no. No, the only place to truly prepare for bridal bliss is... at Greenville Rentals. For the paltry sum of $40/day you can rent yourself a only slightly less cute drum sander to blast away your callouses and any pesky toes you may not want:

Sure, it's a little awkward to get into position but once you have it laid flat and your scraggly heels against it, it is only slightly more excruciating than having your eyebrows waxed. And, really, you must do anything, I mean ANYTHING, to be a pretty pretty princess. I am that dedicated to having THE MOST PERFECT DAY EVER!!!!

After I swaddled my bloody stumps of feet with gauze and trotted off to try to get into those size 10 Kenneth Cole pumps I bought back into 2001, Woody put the drum sander to other uses:

This is hard work. Very hard work. This is why Woody looks like he is in a contractor version of Footloose. Woody popped more ibuprofen each night than I saw my rowing roommates down in college. But all the hard work turned up beautiful floors! Take a look at the foreground of that picture -- no clods of drywall spackle, no blue paint, no Dr. Pepper cans ground into the flooring. It looks clean! Really clean! Check out the before (lower half) and after (upper half) difference:


Maddy found herself a sunny spot in the master bedroom and settled in...

The living room looks huge...and at last clean...

Since Woody was breaking his back sanding our floors, I decided the least I could do was put together a casserole of enchiladas. While I tried wearing giant ear protector things like Woody in solidarity, I found an apron worked better in protecting me from molten enchilada sauce:

(Here Madison is wondering why I would ever agree to a photo with a face that greasy or a smile that maniacal. But hell, I had just stood barefoot in our living room for the first time in two years, you would be maniacally happy too.)

Like that scary quarantine scene from E.T....

Remember when the bad guys tried to wrap the entirety of Elliot's house in Glad Press-n-Seal in E.T.?
I swear, one little alien and everyone's wearing masks and running fog machines...

That said, our house looked a lot like a 1982 Spielberg flick this weekend:



We were going to invite Drew Barrymore over to do some lines and raise some hell, but we hear she stopped doing that stuff when she turned 11.

All of this taping and plastic means that we are having the floors refinished! The last turn-our-life-upside-down task in the house renovation! In preparation we had to move all our cra,er,stuff once again. Now most of it resides in the middle bedroom

And in the back bedroom, which we sadly had to kick friend /kitchen cleaner/ giant fishtank mover extraordinaire Eric out of as a result. This week Woody's dad and crew come back to B'ton to sand all the nastiness out of the floors in the master bedroom, hallway, living room and dining room. Bare feet! In our own house! Soon!

Back in Black, er, Blue

Two years ago, when Woody and I started working on the house, we made it our mission to vanquish as many of the truly awful color choices made by the former residents of poor embattled 517 as possible with flat white paint. This has been/is an uphill battle. For while these folks were not fastidious in their cleaning habits, they could find nooks and crannies to paint that you didn't think existed (Primary blue on the baseboards? Really?). In fact, I am now convinced that these guys commuted to work in Vegas from B'ton:

Except, maybe not, since if they lived here their irises and pupils would be blue as well. (Incidentally, if you haven't seen the sadly canceled Arrested Development's take on the Blue Man Group, you should. Check it out here.)

Ironically enough, we went from blue....to blue in the dining room. Remember this horribleness?


(The wall color, folks, I'm talking about the wall color, not the chick in the shrunken fleece zip-up.) We've gone from Cookie Monster blue to a blue with a less manic/bingey vibe:


We extended the nice slate blue from the kitchen into the dining room. (It will go up on the left wall as well once some finish drywall work is done.) A view of the windows onto the street:


The only remaining spots of Cookie Monster blue cling to the hutch and the backs of the French doors...but their days are numbered.


In other high gloss news, Woody has finished painting all of the cabinets in the stove surround!


The whole effect is much more regal and grand than, well, us. But as soon as one of you compliments us on our kitchen (and you will...), we plan to brush it off with a "What? This old thing?" and act as if we had always had more than a hotplate and coffee maker indoors.