Now we just need one of those rolling ladders...

Kenneth came by this morning and was miraculously able to move after one of Woody's famous biscuits, sausage gravy, grits and eggs breakfasts. While I rubbed my belly on the couch or waddled around and asked if "anyone needed anything to drink," Woody and Kenneth moved our new bookcases upstairs! Kenneth built us a full set of custom bookcases for Xmas, they are beautiful and make our office look so...scholarly:


Another set (currently living in the man cave area) will go on the wall opposite. These are specially built to accommodate Woody's collection of vinyl (records, not clothing). After some painting, the books go in!

The Life Aquatic at 517

Woody's 75-gallon fish tank has been home to a veritable menagerie of exotic things -- in its first incarnation it held his high school letter jacket (sigh...to be the type of person who enjoys Grease references...if you do, maybe get away from our blog), a moldering fedora and 3 inches (or more) of blown-in insulation, in its second incarnation for our rehearsal dinner it held this:


Yes, those are figures from:

1. Doom
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
3. random reptilia/puppies

A closer look at the sweet symbiotic relationship these guys enjoyed:


Finally, the 75-gallon's gypsy existence has come to a happy end. And all our strapping (and less strapping) friends could not be happier, as she bestowed hernias on anyone foolhardy enough to try to help Woody push/pull/lift/shove her.

A few days ago Woody filled her up with the teeming water of B'ton and got our fish palace started. I tried to persuade him to make it a lobster tank like at the food store but, once again, I was shot down. Instead, we chose the most exotic of sea life...gold fish:

At 13 cents a piece, we bought a Sea Monkey colony's worth:

They seem like happy enough little guys. We've only had one go down the long watery swish into the light.

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.