Chill Out

Lots of my friends have wine refrigerators. I love them. I love looking at them. Opening them. Seeing the wine all stacked up, perfectly chilled and ready for drinking. I love that right along side the wine and the champagne lives the Stella Artois, the diet Coke, and the kid's juice boxes. It all seems so sophisticated and so family-oriented at the same time. Unapologetic and real.

Last Christmas, Dave's sister Allison gave us a gift certificate from the Wine Enthusiast. YEAH!! We thought about spending it on actual wine, but we knew we wanted a wine fridge in the new kitchen and thought it would be most wise to use the gift towards that purchase. Well, we also thought that 2011 would be The Year of the House and that we could purchase the fridge and install it directly into the new kitchen.

Turns out that was not the case, and the gift certificate was set to expire on December 21, 2011. So, without a moment to spare, on December 21st, Dave ordered the N'Finity 50-bottle wine refrigerator. It was delivered a few days ago.

We are now the proud owners of a brand-spankin'-new wine refrigerator. For the new house.

Which for the time being will reside in the back corner of the kitchen in our old house. Plugged in and cooling off some red, some white, some beer, some juice boxes and lots of champagne because I am now declaring this year to be 2012 :: The Year of the House!!

Everybody better watch out if I have to declare that again in 2013… WATCH THE FUCK* OUT!!

*Swearing per request of DSmoov.

Teaser

Oh.

Yeah.

Right.

I have a blog.

A blog about designing and building our new house. A blog about the process of dealing with the architect and making decisions and pounding nails. The problem is there is nothing to write about when nothing is happening. There seems to be a stall in the action around here. Every once in a while I hear talk of a product like spray foam insulation, but other than that… nothing. I'm hoping the architect finds his groove again, because we really need to get this thing going. I NEED the new house. Staring all day at the multiple cardboard models that reside in the dining room is truly just a tease*. Although the teeny, little paper guy standing on the front porch is pretty cute.

*A little tease for you too.

A weed less ordinary?

Every few weeks I like to go over to the Adelaide property to walk around and see what's growing. Monday night after dinner the weather was beautiful, so we took the kids outside to play for a bit before bed. I decided to put on my rubber rain boots and walk over and see what was up while Dave pushed Simone on the tricycle and Tate ran around. The rubber rain boots are essential for a walk on the property — in the spring it was always muddy, but now there is so much growth that I need them to protect my legs from thorns, sticks and bugs.

It's very green over there right now. Most of the dirt is covered with weeds and foliage, so when there are flowers they pop out very clearly. As expected the orange daylilies were blooming all over the property – in the front, the back, along the fences – everywhere. A great surprise were the sunflowers that are growing. I counted five of them randomly scattered about. They are going to be gorgeous when they bloom. I missed the irises in the back – they had already flowered and died. But, the peach tree!! Oh… the peach tree!! It looked green and healthy, and its limbs were filled with fruit! Last year there were four scragily-looking peach trees that bore no fruit, but we took down three of them and only left the one for some privacy and shade. Well, whatever we did made this little tree super happy and it's just fruiting like mad. Problem is the limbs are all really high. But I guess I'll figure out how to get the fruit down later when it's ripe.

What really caught my eye was one plant in the middle of the property with bright pink flowers on top. So bright, you couldn't miss this plant. The second I stepped up to it, I stopped dead in my tracks. Looked long and hard at the leaves and thought, "Nooooo!! It couldn't be?!?!?!?!" "Could it?!?!?!" The leaves looked like this…

Yup. Pot leaves. Marijuana. But flowers? Do pot plants flower? How would I know? The only times I've seen pot up close it was already rolled into a joint, and my only experience with pot plants are from watching endless episodes of Weeds on DVD. I really had no idea what I was looking at. But it was not a total surprise to see a plant that might be marijuana on this property. Mr. D was a known recreational pot smoker. One neighbor upon returning home from work would find Mr. D sitting in their backyard staring at their koi pond and smoking away. Yes, he would just wander into the neighbor's yard and light up… he thought it was no big deal. So, could he have been growing it in his backyard? Hell, yeah!!

I grabbed a leaf and walked to my neighbor's who stopped cold when she saw it and yelled, "No way!?!?!? Of course he was growing it!!! Is that really pot?!?!" I didn't know. So I went home and showed it to Dave. His reaction was the same, but he told me to go inside and google until I had an answer.

Well, in just a few minutes it was clear that I would not be the Nancy Botwin of Barrington. But instead I was growing Cleome the number one plant commonly mistaken for marijuana. My dreams of a crazy and wild summer were squashed by google and a shitty weed that was not weed.

But I've got sunflowers and peaches. Just as fun, right?!?!?!

Anniversary

We've owned 6 Adelaide Ave for one year today. It's also been a year that the regal kitty Matisse has been gone. Here's a quiz...

Question: I'm drinking wine tonight because I'm....

A: celebrating!

B: sad Matisse has been gone a year.

C: shocked an entire year has gone by!!

D: all of the above

A special thank you to Dave.... for buying the great wine tonight; for believing in my crazy plan to buy this nutty house and teeny, little lot; and for designing us an absolutely amazing new home!! I love you!!

Many Empty Calories

UPDATE 6/12: Thanks Maya for the "Looking good!" and ass slap - I did the extra loop today after your motivation!!

Wherever I go and whoever I see, the topic of conversation always turns to "the house". How's it going? Where are you at? When are you going to start building? My stock answers are as follows: It's going good! We are done with design and ready to start construction drawings! We hope to start building soon!

This is usually enough of an answer for most people. But those who know me well, know that there is more there. They hear the stress and see the angst I'm feeling because there is not a slew of people pounding nails on our dirt patch right now. I get the much needed sympathetic look and words of encouragement. And lately I've been getting this… "You are being sooooo patient!"

I started thinking about that. Patient. How am I doing this. Being patient. I've decided it's the cupcakes. I'm eating my stress away.

If there are not cupcakes in the house, there are cookies. And if there are not cookies, there are brownies. But there are rarely brownies, because there are almost ALWAYS cupcakes!! I had convinced myself I was doing it for the kids. Kids love cupcakes, they'll be so happy. But I finally realized, it is really for me. Homemade nutella frosted, buttery good sugar topped from Whole Foods, or Shaw's cheap mini-cupcakes. It's cake and frosting and they are all yummy! The problem is I'm eating them all. I'm less stressed, but stuffing my face with sugar, butter and white flour is playing havoc with the numbers on my scale. In retaliation against my ever-growing waistline, I've started walking to combat the negative effects of my stress-reducing-cupcake-stuffing.

So if you see me out walking and sweating with a determined look on my face, don't ask how the house is coming. Just tell me I'm looking thin and you don't notice the cupcakes on my ass at all. Because I'm going to need all the encouragement I can get to make it back into my skinny jeans. And if you see me at Shaw's buying the cheap mini-cupcakes, make me put them down and then tell me where to go to buy even better mini-cupcakes. Because I still really NEED the cupcakes.

Thanks.

365 Days

Today marks one year ago that we made the offer, counter-offer, received word that our offer was accepted and then signed a purchase and sales agreement. We are in a bit of limbo right now with the house, so I don't have a lot to say on that front, but I couldn't let today go without a shout out.

I'm having mixed emotions about a year gone by. It certainly doesn't feel as if it's been that long. But, if you told me a year ago that we still wouldn't be in construction right now, I'd have slapped you in the face. Hard. Seriously... really hard. You would have cried.

We have finalized the floor plan (it's fan-freakin-tastic!) and are working on windows right now. We are not doing a traditional double-hung centered in the room type thing, but are exploring a much more modern window treatment with lots of glass and interesting placement.

We just need time. Time where Dave can concentrate on our house and not his clients. It will come. I hope that it comes soon.

For now the house lot sits, waiting, and growing some amazing flowers. The tulips came up by the dozens a few weeks ago and had me out there every few days picking armfuls.

Between now and the beginning of construction, I think it's time to pick up where I left off in the story of how this all came to be... I left off here at the closing. And there is still a lot of story to tell.

When I see someone cry, I usually cry too.

This afternoon while heading out to approve a client's proof at the printer's, we drove by our dirt patch. We do this often. It's good to check in on it, see what's happening. Which is nothing right now. It sits quietly, patiently waiting for backhoes and cement and wood and nails.

But today, it had a visitor.

Someone I didn't recognize was sitting in her car across the street looking at it, while I had stopped in the middle of the road a few houses away to talk to some of my neighbors. She backed up and pulled away, turning the corner toward the water. I followed, I was curious. She then turned down the lane behind our house, got out of her car and headed toward our dirt patch. This got me more curious, so I turned the car around and headed back to the front of the property to see if she was walking around. She was. I pulled over, rolled down the window and nicely asked, "Can I help you?"

"Oh, I'm just looking around. I used to live here," she said. "Cathy?!?!" She smiled widely with my recognition of her and walked over to the car to talk.

It was Mr. D's girlfriend. The one who lived with Mr. D for almost 30 years and loved him dearly. She had come to just look and think and unexpectedly we both ended up in the street, holding hands, looking at the patch of dirt where her house once stood and cried. She wasn't crying out of sadness for the missing house. She was crying over her missing life. Her life with Mr. D, her peace, her contentment. Her memories of the animals, the trees, the flowers, her love.

She talked about the animosity and trouble she received from Mr. D's family, some of it which is still not settled it seems. I didn't understand every thing she said, but I understood her grief. Her grief over losing Mr. D, and her grief over what ensued after his death. She said it was actually easier for her to see the empty lot, than her old house. The empty lot spoke of promise, new life, new love and happiness. She was so glad to learn, way back when we bought it, that it was going to a young family and someone from the neighborhood, that knew her and Mr. D.

I was very relieved to hear her speak those words. I knew she was still in town and that she occasionally drove by to look at the house, and I worried that it would upset her to see the house destroyed. It turns out that the destruction of the house has begun to help her heal, and bring her some closure that she so desperately needs.

I hope that by listening to her today and sharing her tears I helped give her a bit of peace tonight. Because, by listening to her today and sharing her tears, she gave ME a bit of peace tonight.

The past and the future unexpectedly collided in the present, and I'm thankful to the fates that put us together today.