My diamond shoes are too tight! Also, they are full of insects.

At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I'm going to tell you that we just spent a week in Oahu and it was not the greatest trip. I've been to Hawaii once before, to the big island, and it was the most magical week of my life. I might have sobbed at the airport when we had to leave. But this week can mostly be summed up like this:

THUNDERSTORMS
maitais!
rainrainrainrain
HUNDRED YEAR FLOODING
Oh my god, HUMONGOUS insects
maitais!
rainrainrainrain
Oh my god, HUMONGOUS insects
Swimming in the ocean. So nice.
rainrainrainrain

Oh my god, HUMONGOUS insects
maitais!
Swimming in the ocean. So nice.
rainrainrainrain

Oh my god, what is up with the HUMONGOUS insects?

rainrainrainrain
Oh my god, HUMONGOUS insects CRAWLING OVER ME WHILE I SLEPT

rainrainrainrain
Oh my god, HUMONGOUS CANE SPIDER IN OUR RENTAL
no sleep
no sleep
no sleep
Swimming in the ocean. So nice.
rainrainrainrain
Oh my god, HUMONGOUS insects
Finally one day of gorgeous weather, at a resort no less.
Sunburn
Flight home.

It feels terrible to complain about getting to go on vacation when so many people are unemployed, underemployed, or taking paycuts to keep their jobs, but Greg has been working 60+ hours a week and we were so looking forward to relaxing in the sun.

Pretty but rainy.

We still had a good time but Oahu got hit by hundred year flooding just as we arrived, including a tornado to part of the island, and evacuations in the north. It was still warm out but the water was choppy and our stay on the windward side of the island, in Kailua, was kind of a bust since the weather was extra crappy there. As a bonus, all the critters tend to end up inside when it rains that heavily. So one night I awoke to find what I think was a giant cockroach crawling across my chest.

You guys, my biggest fear crawled across my chest while I slept. The only way it could have been worse is if it whispered, You'll always be alone and your mother's cancer is back! while it skittered over my pillow.

That was the last night I got any semblance of sleep in Oahu. We'd been having problems with ants in the kitchen, despite the fact that there was no food or dirty dishes to be had. I discovered they were camping out in the crumb catch of the toaster. So Greg and I were shaking the toaster, forcing the ants out, when a cockroach popped out!

I called the host and said, "Your toaster is in the yard. Please take it far away." Then Greg turned white, looked panicked, and said, "Baby, please don't look over there." Of course, I looked over there and saw a spider the size of my fist. That artwork on the wall? It's an 8 1/2 x 11.

Heteropoda venatoria

Cane spiders are harmless and they are great predators of roaches and silverfish and all the things that were terrifying me on this trip but shitballs, they are SCARY. Our host kindly took both the toaster and the cane spider down the street for us.

We did have fun. I swam in the ocean (rain be damned) almost every day, which is one of my very favorite activities. We had intended to avoid Honolulu and Waikiki beach because of TRAFFIC, OH MY GOD TRAFFIC, but it had the only decent weather on the island. So we ended up there quite a but. I know I'm supposed to hate Waikiki (tourists! beefcakes! men with trampstamps! crowds!) but I didn't mind it at all. We drank $5 maitais at Lulu's and went swimming in the warm water. On our last day we drove to the driest part of the island and spent the day at Ko Olina, which features four man-made lagoons and a bunch of resorts and I loved it. There were no bugs there. We snorkeled, swam, and felt hot sun on our skin for the first time. It was magnificent.

Then we flew home to spectacularly wet and chilly weather. As we were unpacking Greg looked panicked, then said, "Baby, don't look in my suitcase." He had smuggled home a centipede. UNIVERSE, WHY?

I love Greg. He is a wonderful man but bitch. can't. hustle. He sauntered to find a paper towel while I screamed, "You know what happens if you get stung by a centipede, right?" The island remedy is three days of drunkenness to combat the pain! HURRY UP." He took his sweet time removing it and flushing it down the toilet, telling me that I was being silly. Then he looked it up on the Internet and, sure enough, the sting of a Hawaiian centipede is awful. Go google image that shit if you don't believe me.

We attempted to go to Pearl Harbor but it was closed due to lightning strikes. Instead we hit up the Foster Botanical Garden, what our guidebook called, "The only botanical garden on the island worth seeing." I'll post pictures of that soon, once I quit worrying about what else we might have smuggled home.

On the upside, I slept ten hours last night in my own bed (heaven!) and I dreamed that This Old House showed up at our place and fixed everything that needs fixing in the house. Aside from the fact that Roger Cook wasn't there, it was pretty sweet.

Do you ever lie in bed and debate which TOH contractor you'd want on your project if they filmed at your house? Or is that just me? I can never choose.

Is it spring yet?

For me, winter is over when the lady ferns start to pop out of the ground. I've been very anxious for that to happen, feeling like everything will be okay if those lady ferns just return. They usually start to peek up by now and I honestly expected them to come early with this mild winter we've had. At least the bleeding hearts are starting to show.

This area is no longer shady which means these guys won't thrive.

Erythronium oregonum emerges from the ground like synchronized swimmers.

White fawn lily

Did I really intentionally plant these with this distribution? Why not a clump of bulbs, maybe in an odd number, Heather? Sigh.

My flowering currants should be blooming any second.

Ribes sanguineum

The rhubarb is going nuts. I told Greg he has to stick with me until we can harvest some, since I planted it for him. We might be able to harvest some stalks this year but it probably won't be much.

We've had so many birds in the yard, attacking the feeder and frolicking in the baths. They are going to eat me out of house and home. The birdbaths have been freezing over at night, maybe that's why the lady ferns are staying put?

Sadly, the neighborhood cats have been visiting the bird feeder as well.

I can't wait to hook up the hoses so I can spray these predators when they come hunting on my property.

But mostly I would like them to stop using my raised beds as a toilet. I have peas to grow, damn it.

Free bulbs!

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) appeared on our lawn!

Galanthus nivalis

I told Greg he can't mow the lawn until I've attempted to transplant them somewhere else. Unless they are a weed here? They are so pretty they are probably invasive, right?

Hoo ha cherry soda!

I am the Ron Paul of home improvement. My plan makes no sense, everything is backward, but I'm having a good time and people seem content to let me keep on with it because it's mildly entertaining. But I don't send out racist newsletters, so at least I've got that going for me.

I've been painting this alcove for two months. Painting with this color (Benjamin Moore Whirlpool) is a pain in the ass because it essentially goes on white. I don't use painters tape because I can usually cut in with a pretty straight line with a brush. But this color makes it very difficult to see where the white trim ends and your color begins. So there's been a lot of repainting around the trim. And then after I painted it I decided to patch some of the holes. And then I had to repaint those spots.

Then I filled the gaps where the door hinges used to be and primed and painted those sections. Then I slapped a coat of paint on the trim. Then I decided that I should put wood filler on the thousands of dents and holes covering this poor doorway. And THEN I primed it. And painted it. Again. What's wrong with me and why am I at this debate?

I'm sick of having a purple bathroom (it was supposed to be gray) and I've been hunting for the perfect color for three years. With our new gray-with-a-purple undertone house paint I thought, "Aha! I can just lighten up our exterior color and have it put in an interior paint base!"

I had them mix up a 25% mix of our house color and then decided to put it here in the bathroom. Because touching up TWO colors is the best.

Our house color has a blue undertone, not purple. I know this now.

I'm pretty sure the white alcove was painted with Killz primer, something I don't have on hand. You guys, don't do this.

Hoo ha! Cherry soda!

'RON PAUL' - A Bad Lip Reading SoundBite - watch more funny videos

Have you watched the Bad Lip Reading videos already? They (along with that cat from Japan who jumps out of boxes) are some of my favorite things that the Internet ever created.

Final photo!

I've been waiting for a sunny day so I could take non-phone photos of the finished paint job. And then I wanted my before photos to show what it looked like when I actually bought it, arbor vitae in front and all. Guys, between the 30,000 photos (it's quantity, not quality!) I've taken and the two shows filmed here I think I have the best documented house in Portland.

And yet, I don't have a facing shot of the house with the arbor vitae, I guess because you couldn't really see the house behind them. So I have screen shots. I apologize.

I loved my inspector so much. Total sweetheart.

Can you believe I overbid on this crackden?

And then I tore out the arbor vitae with my friend David.

And then we had the rhododendrons removed and painted some swatches.

And now she looks like this!

Sunny day real estate

I'm really pleased with how the paint color picks up the bit of purple in the roof and in the bricks on the fireplace.

And I think it's going to look great with all of the plants (all the plants! all of them!) that I'm going to put in front.

On a stormy day. Still cheerful!

Even with the pink tree, LeAnn.

I love it, I don't care what anyone says. Pink + orange forever!

Bonus Offbeat Green because I'm in love with this scene!

I will get my Offbeat Green however I can

One of the colors we considered for the front door was Offbeat Green:

Greg hated it, I loved it. We had a quart sample so I decided to paint the old window that hangs on the back of the garage with it.

When I first moved in there was a shed on the back of the house that I had to tear down.

My friends Ryan and Zimmy very carefully salvaged the window, which I hung where the shed once stood.

And then I decided to paint the back of the house so it didn't look *quite* so terrible.

And then we removed the cement slab, put in a rain garden, and painted. And now I think it looks a lot cuter and not so much like a junk yard back here.

Of course, all of the shrubs I have planted back here are chartreuse, so I'll probably end up repainting the window orange for contrast. You can't see most of them because they are so small.

I may end up removing the sarcococca and shifting the salal to the left so everything has enough room, even though the sarcococca is a nice dark green. Now I just need everything to hurry up and GROW. The best part of all this is that Greg admitted that the Offbeat Green looks pretty rad with our house color. I may or may not have run a victory lap through the yard chanting, "I was right! I was right!" after that. He puts up with a lot, that poor man.

Two mysteries: one plant, one animal

Okay, birdnerds, I have no skill in identifying birds. Is this a Western Tanager? I googled "fat yellow bird" and this was my best guess.

What are you doing up there?

Mystery 2: I always thought this fern that I rescued from a dark corner near the foundation was a sword fern. But it looks perpetually alert, which isn't normal for sword ferns.

It has small, reddish-brown sori that don't overlap and the teeth on the fronds are smooth and very close together.

The best guess I have is Dryopteris dickinsii, common name "large peacock fern" or "crisped shaggy wood fern" (very catchy, whoever came up with that one). Anybody think that sounds right? And can I propagate it? I want a billion of these in my yard.