All we need are a cabana boy and some palm fronds

Kenneth and Kevin returned to 517 today to frame our outbuilding (outBUILDING, folks, outbuilding. We're past the days when we didn't have indoor plumbing. Those days ended like 2 years ago for us.). Right now it looks like a lovely open air cabana right next to our kiddie pool for the dogs.


Incidentally, the dogs wanted no part of this kiddie pool. I shoehorned it into the back of my Mazda today only to have have them lap at the water and refuse to get in even when I sunk a treat in the middle. And when I say "sunk a treat in the middle," I mean submerged a dog biscuit under water. Yes, that's what she said.

Here's another view with better perspective. Woody and I are positively giddy at the prospect of having our closets back for things like clothes. When both a man AND a woman are giddy at the prospect of more closets, you know the storage situation must be dire.

Our version of Twitter

Woody and I decided long ago that we would avoid the whole Facebook/ Twitter universe since we have plenty of things to rid our days of any productivity already. (Things like cuteroulette.com -- don't go there. You will never return to being a productive member of society again. Stay away. Unless you like cuddly wuddly puppies and, you know, have a heart that is not made of stone.)

Yesterday our own version of Twitter made its debut -- three little baby birds emerged from their eggs in the nest on the pergola. Their eyes aren't open yet but their mouths are (this is a family blog, Rachel, leave it at that):




Woody dug two new beds next to the patio this weekend as well, swinging the mattock like a member of a real live chain gang.


Speaking of chain gangs, the Pretenders "Back on the Chain Gang" is worth another listen if you haven't heard it for a while. The video trots out lots of 80s business people and has them using a mattock...to break down what appears to be a fluffy pile of sand. Maybe the men were more milquetoast back then.

The roses on our pergola have gone crazy in the past week!



And our broccoli is loving the new "perfect soil" mixture Mad Dirty (er, Dirt) Scientist Woody put together.

We're not the only ones who are nesting

We have a squatter on our pergola, can you see her?


Take a closer look, she seems very cozied in. We haven't heard any little hatchling chirps yet.


We decided that she is a bird bird of the genus bird and species bird. That's how into ornithology we are.

Amazing how we have come full circle

From cooking outside from August 2008 to March 2009 (that's 8 months with no kitchen) to cooking outside again in April 2011:

Nice, huh? The back of the house has come a loooooong way:

Here it is covered with limbs as Woody, Ginger, Brian, Jamie, Fe and I work to take down some trees:


Here it is draped with tarp before we had a real roof (I had forgotten how classy this looked. Our house looks like one of those motorcycle jackets with the fringe.):


Here it is after the overhang went up:

And here it is today:

We are going to make the "upper patio" our cooking area and put a sideboard up there as well. The lower patio is going to be our dining/ basking around the fire pit area.

Woody has already put in a bunch of veggies -- brussel sprouts, spinach, broccoli -- you know, all those things that will further add to our planet's methane problems...

We also have the concrete pad ready for the construction of our outbuilding. Thanks to some slight miscalculation of how much concrete we needed, we now also have a ramp into the building:

To reassure you that we have not gotten too far from our hovel-like roots, we have a new pile of crap ready for pick up. It is amazing how many piles of crap this house can generate. Wait, did I say this house? I might have meant our plant-based diet.

Do we have grass yet? No, but who needs grass when you can sip cocktails on a patio?

Very dozy guard dog

This is Alice's favorite spot in the world. She loves looking out the window. Even when she is fast asleep...

Guess where we're going to put the hot tub...

Yesterday Kenneth and Woody constructed the forms for the concrete for our grand outdoor patio and garden walkway:




I floated the idea of a hot tub in the left-hand corner of the patio but it was quickly deep sixed. Woody said there wasn't enough privacy. I told him I wanted to have gatherings like this at our house:


Except I don't want to know any of our guests' names and I want there to be more alcohol.

Concrete will probably be poured on Thursday!

Woody demolished our neighbor's shed (with his go ahead)

Manapalooza III...and we still have power and water

Remember Manapalooza I and II? Of course you do. Jane's Addiction was there. Sound Garden was there. I was wearing tiny barrettes, a tiny t-shirt and Doc Martens. Curses, I've fallen into a mid-90s reverie again. MANapalooza. Must focus on MANapalooza...

Manapalooza I, if I can pull you back from fondly smiling about stereograms and Snapple, was the first 517 extravaganza involving Brian's arsenal of large power tools. During Manapalooza I, Brian and Woody brought down many of 517's scary looking dead trees with a symphony of chain saws.

Manapalooza II -- hey! I said come back from the mid-90s! Stop shivering at the thought of Blair Witch, it was a kid in a corner and a shaky camera -- brought Brian's skid steer to 517. Woody tooled around our yard, got rids of shed-sized piles of trash, and succeeded in demolishing our electric meter.

Manapalooza II.2 had its finale in an apparent face off between Woody-in-skid-steer and his father and Woody taking out our water main.

But today, after Manapalooza III, we were able to use our lights AND shower! Given, the entire extravaganza felt less "extreme" as a result. But I guess once you get central heating and air and an indoor kitchen, you go soft...in a domestic sense at least. Certainly not in a corporeal sense. Since September, Woody has lost 45 lbs and my first half marathon is just 2 weeks away. So we at 517 are becoming quite the hard bodies...or at least cardiovascularly healthy.

Manapalooza III brought Brian back to the house with skid steer in tow:

After Woody dropped Brian off back in G'ville, he set about leveling our yard. In a good way. First the giant rotting tree that a local yokel had felled in our backyard was moved onto the trailer for transport to the dump. (Note: the local yokel is not Brian. Brian is an expert at felling trees. This guy succeeded in taking out our neighbor's fence, crushing our wheelbarrow and destroying Woody's homemade saw horses...all for $150.)

View of yard before:

As you will remember, we decided to keep Alice mostly with the hope that, in her teething year as a puppy, she would in fact gnaw away the entirety of this tree. That didn't happen. Apparently she has more of a taste for dirty underwear and socks.

View of yard after:

You can also see here the impressive tracks made by the skid steer. By the end of the day, our yard looked like it did in the halcyon early days of our renovation:


Woody also spread out the large pile of mulch/chipped wood that our neighbor was kind enough to give to us. I am sure this was a great disappointment to the local squirrel population as they had carved out a number of cozy peat condos in it.

A look before:

A look after:

The billowy rows of mulch made me want to go out in the yard and roll around. That and the knowledge that the layer of mulch was thick enough that I wouldn't wallow in a) dog poop b) old auto parts or c) generally nasty sand. I told Woody he should do this every week so I never had to do a dog poo sweep of our estate.

Woody also dug out the space for our new outbuilding. We will finally be able to remove the air compressor from our bedroom and have a closet for things like clothes in the middle bedroom!

Woody in action:


The spot for the guest cottage, er, outbuilding:


Kenneth will be coming by on Monday to start construction!

Happy holidays from 517!

We are still chugging along on the house at 517! The work going on now is more detail and finish work. This holiday break Woody and I are working on getting the home office in shape -- soon there will be a big shared face-to-face desk and more polished-looking bookshelves. Pictures to come soon!

In the meantime, un-redeye-corrected greetings from Maddy and Alice. I would have made them look less possessed but I don't have that kind of Photoshop know how. If I did I would have also made Maddy look slimmer and Alice look more obedient. We didn't do the bells-around-the-neck thing, the groomer did. Woody wanted me to mention that.

Best wishes for a great new year from all at 517!

Bust out with your Clue notebooks

Upon returning home after discovering that someone in Arizona had swiped my debit card number and purchased $3000 worth of furniture at Ikea and $52 worth of food at Jack in the Box (the bigger insult I think. How is it even possible to purchase $52 worth of food at Jack in the Box? Did he purchase Jack's costume as a getaway outfit?), I found this:


No, Alice didn't Houdini Hound it and spirit herself out of her crate. We forgot to put her in there. But boy did she remind us of it when we got home. Not pictured here is our bed. Which she peed all over. Some sleuths out there claim that Madison masterminded this flurry of Kleenex destruction. Perhaps she goaded on the impressionable pit to new heights of tissue paper terrorizing. After all, we know the pup has a propensity for maxipads and premium quality tampons...

So, go ahead, we know the deed happened in the Drawing, er, Living Room. Who was it? Colonel Mustard? The saucy Miss Scarlett? The less saucy but very old Dame Madison? Or the puckish Miss Alice? Please don't leave any of those little metal reproductions of revolvers and lead pipes around. I don't want to find them in Alice's after dinner droppings.

Quivering with excitement for a new school year

It has been a busy summer at 517. I was away for part of May and all of June (with periodic pilgrimages back to SC to visit with Woody and the puppies). Woody was holding everything on the homefront together and completing some impressive improvements to the "grounds" of 517. So when Aug. 18 hit, were we:

1. shocked
2. dismayed
3. quivering with anticipation like the exquisite Mexican jello mold pictured above
4. befuddled as to why our new GPS routed us through Tennessee to get to campus
5. all of the above

If you said "All of the above," you would be covering your arse but you would be right.

So what did we get done this summer? The better question really is what did Woody get done this summer because I mostly sat on my butt in archives. Woody did some impressive stonework in the yard! We now have a flower patch with a fancy rock border:

The pergola on the back porch is covered with jasmine, roses and hanging plants:

Our garden has not been as robust as it was last year. Horned caterpillars and some other guys who pop out their antennae when annoyed (thanks Wanda and David for the tip!) have set about gorging themselves on our tomatoes and parsley. We also have this guy hanging around:

When Woody ripped out the wall around our backdoor he battled with a spider that was Shelobesque in size. The guy in our garden is more like Shelob's flashier cousin. He knows that an accent accessory or two can really lighten up an outfit and be slimming to boot. We're told he's called a Golden Garden Spider. We hoping he dines on caterpillars.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this pole!

Remember when the Berlin Wall came down? Remember David Hasselhoff's rousing performance of his hit single(s) (in Germany)? Remember his super cool light-bulb-covered jacket?

No? Then you'll probably be taking Latin American history with me next semester.

Yes? Then keep reading.

If the Berlin Wall represented all the things that Communist meanies could do (and all the resourcing the Macys could do with the bricks afterwards...anyone get one for Xmas?), then the Tetanus Spear of B'ton represented the last derelict vestige of our home's previous owners. But we did it! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! The Tetanus Spear has fallen!!!!

In an afternoon reminiscent of the Shawshank Redemption, I worked on digging the spear out for roughly 2 hours. It involved: a large shovel, the mattock, a tablespoon (for the detail work), another trip to the hardware store, a smaller new shovel, and rocking the thing back and forth. And yet it stood. It was clear that there was cement footing and/or a root and/or the earth's f'ing core involved with keeping it in the ground. Remember the Tetanus Spear could not be defeated even by Brian's skid steer!

Then Woody had a go at it.

Before:

During:


After: Woody asking the pole "How ya like me NOW?"


Alice resolving her desire to chew everything with her desire to avoid tetanus:

(I cannot get that image to go the right way. Grrr...
You can see the giant HOOK that held this thing in the ground though.)

Alice detects the scent of the first puppies on earth:

Alice is still with us, yes! We found her brother Arlo a good home with our friend Paul and decided to keep Alice in the family. Her and Maddy are getting along well, mostly because Alice is an absentminded eater...and Maddy polishes off the leftovers.

We've decided to fill the gaping maw left by the extraction of the Tetanus Spear with a lovely little fig tree (getting move-in ready here):