House color, I am still in love with.
( home, home again )

http://dannyseo.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/12/organized-linen-closet.html

I'm ready to jump on that Brightly Painted Front Door bandwagon, but I am waffling between an eggplant shade or bright yellow. Votes? (The house is a beige that looked yellow on the chip, the shutters are periwinkle blue, and the roof is yucky red-brown.)

The thought crossed my mind yesterday, while paging through Real Simple magazine, that probably ninety percent of my clutter is "storage solutions." (Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I have all sorts of storage that we're just not using to its potential, if we're using it at all- which is why I fantasize about having the Clean Sweep crew come to our ( Read more... )

Operation Remove the Crabgrass From Around the Mailbox and Replace It With Phlox is underway, though I am renaming it The Great Grub Relocation Project of 2008 ( Read more... )

from Steve Almond, whose essays and book _Candyfreak_ I enjoy ( Read more... )

Menfolk are Sawzall-ing my ceiling.

ETA: I wish they'd warned me about what a fucking mess they were going to leave, ceiling-material-dust everywhere. They shop-vac'ed the hole as they were drilling, at least in the kitchen, and had a box directly under the drilling at other points, but the dining room is buried under like a centimeter of sheet-

This morning around 2:55a, I was woken up by a repeated noise that I eventually determined was coming from outside. (At first I thought it was an alarm, or the dog breathing funny.) It was this rhythm ( Read more... )

Emily has finished her Lyme antibiotics. She ate them without complaint, smeared with peanut butter. She got a Lyme vaccine at the vet's last week. She still has crystals and blood in her urine. We are giving her 250 mg of vitamin C for that each day. The good news is, she eats a chewable happily. (I know, you're so surprised that we found ( Read more... )

... the top 1 percent of earners now hogging more than 20 percent of the nation's annual income. But while the rich clean up, Nan Mooney, a 38-year-old journalist, wonders why so many people like her -- college-educated professionals, members of the storied American middle class -- still struggle to make it financially, well into their 30s and 40s ( Read more... )