Just a girl with a hammer

Tag: love and cyanide

  • Random personal updates

    Random personal updates

    Do you know what happens when you have a busy spring and summer and then your laptop dies? I don’t know either, but you sure as hell don’t blog. Many of you know this already from Facebook, but Greg and I got married in June on the Big Island of Hawaii.

    Getting to have all of our closest friends and families with us for a week was fantastic. I had no idea how much love everyone would surround us with during that time. Getting married is super fun and I can’t recommend it enough. Exactly a week after our wedding, the Supreme Court made marriage legal for everyone in the US and our marriage felt that much more special. We were giddy.

    My family, spearheaded by my eldest brother Chris, spent the six months prior to our wedding making us tiki mugs. The first night in Hawaii we met up for dinner and one by one everyone brought us a wrapped mug that they had carved and glazed themselves, from my little nephews and nieces to my parents. It was overwhelming in the best way.

    Zwucker is our portmanteau.

    Can you even?

    I learned a few things getting married, namely that I don’t understand wedding photography at all. My nieces are beautiful and photogenic, so why not set them up so they look like they’re watching TV while I get my picture taken?

    DON’T LOOK AT ME. DON’T YOU DARE LOOK AT ME!
    ALSO, LAURA YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT WEARING LIPSTICK. I SHOULD’VE DONE THAT.

    Greg and I are not terribly comfortable in front of the camera, but I think we knew that.

    How long do we have to stare at this green screen while she photographs my back fat?

    Luckily we loosened up after a few maitais.

    Me and my sister reenacting a childhood dance

    I’m not changing my name and we’re not having babies, so future big news around here will be limited to the gardening and pet variety (if I can convince Greg to get a dog and a cat).

    In gardening news, I’m barely watering anything and seeing what survives! A roster of the departed will follow soon. Happy Monday! Yay marriage!

  • Oyez! Oyez!

    Oyez! Oyez!

    Please don’t hate me because we went to Maui last week, even though we’d just been to Kauai in November. My brother planned the trip for his family and asked us to come along. My nieces are 7 and 9 and the sweetest kids and I didn’t want to miss seeing Hawaii through their eyes, especially when they’re at such delightful ages.

    I tried to convince Greg to come but wasn’t having much luck. Then my nieces sent him letters, including this one from Tabi:

    Greg hates glitter with a white-hot passion. Only a monster would say no.

    At Christmas I told Tabi she was a genius and she sighed and said conspiratorially, “There’s probably going to be some glitter.” She’s the best.

    So. Anyway. We went to Maui and instead of visiting gardens we hung out with my nieces and swam and ate burgers and swam and swam and swam. It was awesome. How cute are they? They are still, for the moment, super affectionate and not embarrassed to hold my hand in public. So wonderful.

    We went on a sunset sail the first full day we were there and humpback whales were breaching all around us.

    All week you could just look out on the horizon and you’d see whales leaping, slapping their dorsal fins, or shooting plumes out of their blowholes. I’ve never seen a whale in the wild, so that was really neat. We also took a snorkeling tour and got to swim with the biggest green sea turtles. I could lay on the surface of the water and watch sea turtles forever. They’re more transfixing than TV, though you can’t play on the computer in your sweatpants while you watch them.

    Greg and I stayed two nights longer than my family so we could have some time alone. Greg, unbeknownst to me, made arrangements for us to have dinner in a little bungalow by the beach so we could watch the sunset while we ate dinner. Then he shocked the hell out of me by asking me to marry him. After hanging out with my family for a week!

    I reacted, not by crying like a normal person, but by getting really sweaty and forgetting how old I was. Our server asked me my age and I said, “37.” Greg was like, “You know you’re 36 for another month, right?” And I made him pull out a calculator and make sure he was right. I honestly couldn’t remember.

    So I think I got so happy I had a tiny stroke! I went to the bathroom and I saw a miniature frog, which I considered a good omen. In retrospect maybe he wasn’t real? Either way, I’m really happy and I’m sure the feeling is going to come back to my arm soon.

    Our server was so excited about our engagement, she didn’t want to leave our sides. She told us about growing up in the Philippines, her son’s job, the hotel where they stayed in Times Square, the time they went to Washington DC . . . She also took about a thousand photos of me and Greg, making sure to cut off parts of our heads so she could get the table settings in the photo. She was a hoot. She also told us the key to a good marriage was giving in, “And I guess the bible says women should submit?” which made Greg laugh and me shake my head vigorously. She really was sweet but very goofy.

    Now we’re trying to figure out where we can get married where we don’t actually have to PLAN the wedding. Wedding planning sounds like the most boring thing ever. I love throwing parties but most weddings seem like a lot of work toward creating things that no one remembers, like decorations, favors, and ornamental poufs. Instead they remember if the food sucked and if your friend made a super awkward toast.

    So if anyone knows where you can get married by a sea turtle, hit me up. If the turtle could do all the planning, even better.

    Between this and spring coming, I feel like my heart may burst. It makes me feel even more passionately that marriage needs to be available to everyone. How anyone could deny this wonderful feeling to any of their fellow humans boggles my mind.

  • Snug as a bug, slub as a mustard

    Snug as a bug, slub as a mustard

    Since spending an ungodly amount of money on having the house insulated, we’ve noticed a drop in our heating costs. The house is less drafty than before, which really helped when the temperature dropped to 6 degrees. The one exception has been the bedroom, where we have sliding glass doors with a broken thermal seal. The old curtains had thermal liners but they weren’t big enough to cover the whole expanse of glass, and as a result this room was freezing.

    I wanted new drapes anyway and I wanted to try something I’d seen on various blogs: curtains made from dropcloths. I bought the heavier weight canvas cloth in the largest size I could find.

    I had to wash them three times and then air them out for about a month because they smelled awful. I wanted to do pinch pleats on my drapes but, due to a poorly situated seam in the dropcloth, I didn’t have enough fabric. I had picked up a roll of 54″ thermal blackout fabric this summer on clearance, so I used that as a guide for making sure the curtains were square. I have a terrible time making things square, which is why most of the baby blankets I’ve made have been trapezoids. But I think these turned out pretty well!

    They are fully lined, so they’re HEAVY. As you can see, “sewing a straight line” is not in my grab bag of skills.

    Wonky seams aside, these things really work. Our bedroom is a black pit when they are closed and the room is about 15 degrees warmer. And since they cost me less than $100 to make, I bought a new duvet cover.

    Ignore the uneven artwork, I was just experimenting.

    I’ve had my heart set on mustard since before I painted the room. I saw an image on Pinterest of a dark moody room with a tufted mustard armchair. I loved the image so much I didn’t even pin it and now I can’t find it. It was that good.

    Greg really doesn’t like this color and I am deeply in love with it. I get it, it’s a divisive color. I look at it and see curry and goldenrod and deliciousness. Greg looks at it and sees baby poop and old mustard. Tomato, tomahto.

    We both agree that this duvet is incredibly soft. It’s Coyuchi organic cotton and it’s the first time I’ve opened a package of bedding and smelled . . . nothing. It’s dreamy. I recommend it, if you’re in the market for a new duvet (and they come in lots of colors if you hate the mustard).

    ALL THE SNUGGLIES.

    The last step before I declare this room “done” is to replace the bedside lamps with better task lighting. Those lamps suck for reading or drawing or anything detailed. And since I do everything from bed (I’d cook dinner from there if it was possible) I need good light.

    On the upside, Greg really like the colorful pillow I sewed! It has a zipper in it and it’s pretty square and I’m pretty darn proud of it. So, are you with Greg or with me? Help me convince him it’s good. How can you hate on a color called “slub mustard?”

  • Very funny

    Very funny

    I picked up a Begonia luxurians at the end of summer at Cistus for a few dollars, knowing it wouldn’t get to spend much time outside before it had to come in for the winter.

    Greg discovered that the smaller desiccated leaves look like spiders and he thought it would be hilarious to leave one on the floor, call me into the room, then point it out.

    Guys, if Alfred Hitchcock had been in the room with me he would’ve offered me a contract on the spot. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed like that before. I’m tempted to leave one on Greg’s pillow but I know that I’ll see it, forget what it is, and scare myself all over again.

    The upshot is that I had to give a big presentation at work the next morning and I had not a drop of adrenaline left in my body to make me nervous. But still, revenge must happen. Ideas?

  • And lo, there was hyperbole!

    And lo, there was hyperbole!

    Guys, these lights almost killed us.

    I came home from the gym last week after attending one of those classes with an oily bohunk who makes you lunge and lift and squat, all the while yelling, “faster! faster!” while he flexes his enormous, hairless muscles at you. It felt like I was part of a movie montage where the nerds try to get in shape but they’re hopelessly flabby.

    Anyway. I got home from the gym and the electrician had wired up the receptacles we installed and Greg was like, “Should we hang up the lights now?”

    I was like, “Um, of COURSE we should hang those right now. But let me go throw up first and then I think I’m supposed to drink a glass of egg yolks.”

    There were a series of errors, beginning with the fact that the sun was going down, so we were working by headlamp. Next: Greg was hangry. He’s a very sweet man until he gets hungry and then he gets mean. Third: At some point I dropped one of the nuts that attaches the fixture to the ceiling and it rolled away to parts unknown, laughing most likely. Remember how Greg was hangry? This was not our best moment. And we couldn’t install the last light fixture.

    Also: at some point I misplaced one of the Edison bulbs that came with the light fixture and we didn’t have a replacement. We spent 20 minutes tearing the house apart looking for it.

    I went and took a shower, during which time Greg located the missing nut! I came out from the shower and we finished the last light installation. Thank freaking goodness.

    Nine hours after we started this project I flipped the breaker back on and hit the brand new dimmer switch . . . and nothing happened. Sonofabitch.

    There was nothing to be done except go to dinner (at 9:30! so European!) and bemoan our lack of a proper reveal. We assumed the problem was in the dimmer switch, since our electrician seems to know what he’s doing. After dinner Greg decided to swap out the new dimmer switch with the old one and voila! it freaking worked. FINALLY.

    We were missing a bulb but it was still pretty glorious. To celebrate I promptly got a migraine that lasted four days.

    But I’m fine now! And lights! Such pretty lights! Such pretty holes in the ceiling that need to be patched! Boy, I don’t feel like doing that at all!

    But if I’ve learned anything from movie montages it’s that my muscles will soon be huge, I will get the girl, and you will find me either yelling Adwian!Adwian!* or singing We Are the Champions with my buddies** at the end of all this.

    I love movie references. I love lamp***. The end.

    *see: Rocky.
    **see: Revenge of the Nerds.
    ***see: Anchorman.

  • Plaster dust does nothing to cover gray hair, just FYI

    Plaster dust does nothing to cover gray hair, just FYI

    Whenever I take photos of my dining room (which isn’t all that often) I try to crop out the light fixtures. 

    They are ugly and utilitarian and they make a terrible humming noise if you try to dim them.

    Terrible photos, ahoy!

    I never noticed that they’re not even aligned, to boot. It took cutting holes in the ceiling for me to notice this.

    Greg (an engineer) was like, “How have you never noticed that those lights aren’t aligned?” and I was like, “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve just been exploring the wonder of the natural world and worrying about bumblebees. God.”

    Except in reality I’ve been watching The Bachelorette and playing The Simpsons Tapped Out on my iPad. You know, the important things in life.

    ANYWAY.

    I got to use the hole saw to punch those beautiful holes in the ceiling. I wear glasses, which I thought would protect me from the falling debris but I ended up with two eyes full of plaster crud, which was awful. Our electrician went and grabbed his safety goggles for me, but I couldn’t wear them with my glasses so I had to operate the hole saw blind, basically. I qualify as legally blind without corrective lenses, so I’d like a medal for getting three perfect holes in the ceiling (Greg was in the attic) without any blood loss.

    Greg is in here somewhere

    You have not lived until you’ve passed tools back and forth to your love through a hole in the ceiling while trying to discern what the other is saying.

    Mumble mumble barn owls.
    THERE’S AN OWL IN THE ATTIC?!?
    I said I needed a drill bit! Focus, Heather.



    The house was a mess and it took multiple showers to get the plaster out of my hair, but we got the electrical boxes installed and they are ready to be wired.

    This was all a walk in the park compared to picking out light fixtures. I don’t think Greg and I would ever survive a full-scale remodel and all the decisions that come with it, unless Jimmy Carter was involved. We finally found one single light fixture that neither of us hated, based on this picture:

    Greg worked some Photoshop magic to mock this up:

    I thought they were too far apart, so then we switched it to this:

    But the attic beams conspired against us, so the final placement is somewhere between the two. Hopefully our electrician will be finishing up the attic work soon so we can ditch the old lights, patch the ceiling, and hang the new lights.

    Grody carpeting, I’m coming for you next.

  • The happiest place on earth

    The happiest place on earth

    Last week Greg and I traveled to Anaheim to go to Disneyland with my brother, my sister-in-law, and their two girls, along with a smattering of grandparents and friends. We went swimming a lot, rode as many scary rides with my mom as possible (my dad’s not a fan), and I bored Greg discussing the landscaping in and around Disneyland.

    We also spent a few nights at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Room. We love tiki and my brother really, really loves tiki, so we had a great time. I accidentally bought too many tiki glasses.

    The trip was expensive, even staying at the cheapo Best Western, but it was so much fun. Screw dinners and flowers, I think the most romantic thing in the world is Greg voluntarily spending his vacation time with my family and allowing three little girls to demand that he hold their hands, go swimming with them, sit next to them on rides, or not hold my hands so they can. We don’t want kids of our own but I am so grateful to my siblings for giving me such wonderful nieces and nephews. I miss them so much now that we’re back home.

    Phoebe having a staring contest with Greg

    I missed my garden while we were away and it was noticeably larger when we returned. It rained the whole time we were gone, GOOD JOB PORTLAND!

    I tried not to be that annoying girl taking photos of the landscaping, especially when I had such cute little girls nearby, but I snapped a few with my phone. California Adventure was particularly nice, with lots of desert plants, including a mass planting of Agave americana that I wanted to photograph but there were so many strollers between me and it.

    But really, I bought too many tiki glasses. What was I thinking?

  • A gate. Finally.

    A gate. Finally.

    Since we sunk the fence posts a few weeks back we haven’t progressed much. I hung the stringers and outer boards on two of the sections but couldn’t move further until we tore out the old corner post.

    That post was almost completely rotted through and hosting quite a community of insects. Two summers ago, when I replaced that fence, I reused the post, feeling that it would hold up until we were ready to extend the fence, and it did.

    This weekend we had to dig the old one out, re-sink a new post, then finish off the fence and gate. I took the boards off the front and watched in horror as gobs of insects emerged from their nest inside the post. The post lifted right out of its concrete footing and I asked Greg to get it as far from the house as possible, in case the insects I saw were termites. He dropped it right next to the house and I swear I’ve never wanted to marry him so badly, just so I could divorce him.

    I flipped out, he moved it, we were cranky as hell with each other for a few hours. Normal home improvement stuff.

    Next we had to dig out the old concrete, which wasn’t too bad. We dug all around, then wedged a board under the lip, like a lever. Greg stood/bounced on that while I cranked with the pickax from another direction. And now we have this sweet concrete phallus to use as garden art!

    This was an interesting project because I have built all the fences thus far, in some cases without any help. All of a sudden Greg had opinions on the building, and he was telling me to do things.

    Anybody who knows me in real life knows that shit don’t fly. Unless we’re in an emergency and you’re trying to talk me through landing the plane or delivering a baby in a taxi, don’t tell me what to do. Anyway, I am the worst but we got through it. Greg is the engineer so he designed and prepped the gate. We hung it and leveled it (definitely the hardest part) and got it about 95% done.

    Now we need to cut off the tops of the fence posts, rip down some narrower slats (we don’t own a table saw), and stain and seal the boards.

    I’m reusing some of the old boards to close the gaps on our back fence. As the boards have expanded and contracted in the sun and rain, the gaps have grown and we can see quite a lot of our neighbors’ yard (and they ours).

    I’m worried we’ll forget to close the bedroom drapes and give our neighbors’ kids an accidental anatomy lesson. So up the boards are going. They are wonderful neighbors but I’m happy not to see them through the fence.

    But the thing that’s making me happiest of all is the new gate, which means we have TWO entrances to our yard. We can complete one continuous loop through our front and back yards. Extending the gate also makes our backyard feel bigger and more spacious.

    Before

    Now

    Next up: sod removal and the acquisition of a hammock to better enjoy the fruits of our labor. And maybe some sort of screen to block the view of the AC unit.

  • I win.

    I win.

    We were driving to Home Depot to get a replacement blade for the lawnmower and I mentioned that I wanted to get one of those wine barrel planters. Greg was like, “Let’s get it next time.”

    “Why?”
    “We’ll get it next time.”
    “I’m getting it.”
    “Just get it next time.”
    “Do you know me at all? Now I’m getting two.”
    “It’s not going to fit in your Honda. Let’s just come back with the truck.”
    “I CAN FIT THREE IN MY HONDA. NOW I’M BUYING THREE, ARE YOU HAPPY?”

    Anything can be a competition if you try hard enough!

  • Adventures in closet building

    Adventures in closet building

    The closet before

    The boy has a man cold (poor little bunny) but we soldiered on and installed our Martha Stewart closet organizers this weekend. Part of that soldiering on might have been Greg drinking tea in bed while I sanded and painted but I’ll never tell since I made him use the table saw while I cowered on the kitchen steps.

    The system is actually pretty easy, though we had a few extra prep steps. Follow along!

    For starters you’ll want to get rid of this old timey shoe rack. I am totally down to keep stuff that is original to the house, but this is right smack in the middle of where the main closet unit will go.

     
    Hey, that’s the dishwasher! Wave to the kitchen–the kitchen that you can now see from the bedroom!
    Take off the trim that used to hold up the shelf and scream your freaking head off because there’s all kinds of ancient dessicated spiders back there. Make Greg get rid of them and then roll your eyes when he leaves LEGS behind.
    Marvel at the system you’ve jury-rigged in the living room.
    Add 2x4s and drywall to the space where the shoe rack had been.
    Make sure to measure a few things wrong so you have to hack down the drywall with a kitchen knife. Measure a few more things wrong so you have to shim your 2x4s to get the drywall to sit flush with the wall. Then tape and mud your seams with some old joint compound you found in the basement. It’s a little dry, but what’s the worst that could happen?
    Attach the metal rod thing to the wall studs. This is all that lies between your shelving system and disaster, so do it right. Accidentally knock the drill onto your big toe and throw a temper tantrum, declaring that you’re hungry and you need to take a break. Go eat pizza, you big baby.

    Spend a good hour or so trying to make sense of the various boxes that are in your office. Ponder why on earth you would have ordered four sets of 12-inch shelves. Once you’ve made sense of where things are going, hang the shelves on the metal rod thing. But first make sure to sand your new drywall ahead of schedule, ripping the tape. You know what? More dried out joint compound should fix that.

    The smart way to do this would be to stop, let the compound dry, let the paint on the area where the trim was dry, paint the drywalled area and let THAT dry, but meh, screw that. Let’s build it now! You can paint that area the next time Greg goes away on business. You wouldn’t rather be eating a big salad and watching Vampire Diaries and sleeping with all the pillows; you’re gonna want to paint some spot in the closet you never look at.
    Assemble your system. Make the most beautiful pilot holes the world has ever seen and brag to Greg that if people got Academy Awards for drilling holes, there would be a little gold man on your mantle right now.
    Stage your closet like they do on websites, as if people have the room to place one pair of shoes on a shelf. Once the pictures are taken CRAM, BABY CRAM.
    Pour yourself a glass of wine and eat the spaghetti sauce from a jar because you’re so freaking tired. High-five each other incessantly. You did it! You didn’t kill each other!
    Seriously though, we’re really happy with our system. Of course, these shelving units are being held to the wall solely by a notch that attaches to a metal rod. And the notched units are made out of pressboard. These aren’t going to last forever but they’re pretty good considering we spent $350 for the whole system.