Suburbia

We Caved

/ Ally Bean / 22 Comments

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Remember two weeks ago when I told you that I had absolutely nothing planned for the week?  That I was going to spend my days in quiet contemplation with a book or writing or just being?  I was in a very good mood when I wrote that.  Possibility awaited me.

Well, that didn’t happen.  Practicality showed up instead.

You see, without any advanced warning, workers from the sprinkler installation company arrived– and began installing a sprinkler system in our front  & back yards.  A sprinkler system that we’ve tried to do without for all 13 years that we’ve lived here.  A sprinkler system that we reluctantly decided to buy.

A sprinkler system that says to the world: yes, we’ve been assimilated.  We are… suburban.

I remember when we first moved to this area we surprised our friends & relatives by voluntarily living like this.  Suburban, that is.  We’d always lived within walking distances of restaurants and grocery stores and parks.  We’d been in high-rise apartment buildings and historic preservation districts and old-fashioned city suburbs.  But never in exurbia, outside the ebb & flow of a city.

However, be that as it may, for the most part this has been a good way to live.  I’ll admit that.  Having space within your home and quiet outside your house is delightful.  And Z-D loves to come back home from his workplace in the city to an area that is nothing like the city.

So if having a sprinkler system is part and parcel of this choice, then I guess I need to accept that caving on this subject might not be the worst idea ever.  In fact, I suspect that come mid-August I’m going to think that a sprinkler system is the most brilliant thing that we’ve ever done around here.

Having come to the mature realization that: Resistance was futile.

This & That

/ Ally Bean / 23 Comments

{april – monday – morning}

√  I told you something hinky was going on.  If you follow me on Twitter you might remember that last Thursday I tweeted: “There’s a sheriff’s helicopter circling the ravine behind our house & 2 police cars racing up/down the street. This is not normal.”  Over the weekend I found out what had happened right here… in the ravine behind our house… in the middle of the day.

A police officer noticed a car without license plates driving through town.  It was a stolen car.  So, the police chased the four men in the stolen car into a cul-de-sac in our subdivision where the driver of the car crashed the car into a tree.  The police immediately apprehended one man, but the other three men escaped on foot and headed into the ravine that runs throughout this subdivision.

That’s when the helicopter started circling our house.  Eventually, [about 10 minutes I’d estimate] thanks to the helicopter overhead the police caught the other three miscreants without any shots fired or destruction of personal property.  Good job, eh?

√  We planted the pots by our front door with coleus this year.  We chose Mosaic, Jazz Rose + Black Dragon with a spike in the middle for height.  The colors should coordinate nicely with the green pot itself and the surrounding red barberry bushes.  [For an abstract rendering of the colors we’re working with go here to this cool blog called Field Trips in Fiber.]

√  I tried a new recipe.  On Friday I found this recipe, Homemade Chocolate Pudding with Baileys, in a blog called My Baking Addiction.  I realized that I had almost the correct ingredients in our pantry, so I decided to make the pudding with what I had on hand.

Because I used fat-free half & half (instead of heavy cream) + 10 bite-size pieces of dark chocolate candy (instead of semi-sweet chocolate) what I made was more of a sauce than a pudding.  Which does not matter because this was the most delicious tasting almost-pudding I’ve ever had.  I’ll make this recipe again with [or without] the correct ingredients to eat as pudding– or to put on toasted pound cake + vanilla ice cream.

√  As some of you know, I collect Le Creuset coffee mugs.  I have one of each color.  This weekend I got a mug in the newest color, Marseille.  I’d describe it as robin egg blue-ish [peacock blue-ish?].  Alone it is a lovely shade, but in our house it truly goes with nothing.  Zilch.

All of our blues are cobalt, or denim, or rather grayed– and this new color with a touch of green in it looks very out-of-place.  Still, it makes my collection complete, so it can stay.  But nothing else of this color will be entering my house if I can help it.

The State Of Our “To Do” List

/ Ally Bean / 16 Comments

I am glad that it’s the beginning of a new week.  All our doing last week just about did me in.  It was stressful.

On the upside, we finished 3 projects.  The mail box post, which we repaired & painted, is now sporting a new shiny black mailbox.  The inside molding around the new [non-leaky] window in the bathroom is caulked & painted.  And the dingy old sheer panels on the home study’s French doors are tea-dyed a lovely shade of tan, ironed & back in place.

On the other hand, we started about a dozen more projects that for one reason or another we couldn’t finish.  I really wanted to have more projects completed by now, but everywhere we turned we encountered obstacles.  Weather.  Indecisiveness.  Lack of supplies.  Whatever we wanted not available.  No-shows by tradesmen.  Hours spent online trying to find furniture/accessories that will fit into our small room dimensions.  And on & on it went.

Four years ago when we decided to stay in this house & remodel/update it, I had no idea that we’d still be working on it today.  I thought that 1 year– maybe 2 years, tops— would be all the time that we’d need to re-do the house.  Not that I thought that everything in the house would be completely finished, mind you;  I just figured that we’d be where we should be for people living in a thirteen year old house.

However, despite my above grumbling, I will say that the progress we made last week is wonderful & encouraging.  I’d even venture to say that with one more week like this last one, we’ll have all the bones of our house in place.  Then there will be photos for you, my gentle readers– & a long-awaited sense of completion & belonging for me.

Until then, ever onward go I.

{An observation: this situation reminds me of when I got my Master’s degree.  I planned for it to take me 3 years, but for one reason or another it took my 6 1/2 years to complete.  Near the end of my studies, I didn’t care what courses I took.  I just wanted the whole process finished so I could move on with my life.  Same feeling here & now.}

Life, Vacation Days & The Pursuit of Home-i-ness

/ Ally Bean / 12 Comments

Here’s the deal.

Zen-Den, who is usually a very organized sort of fellow, forgot to take one week of his vacation last year.  Well, to be fair, he didn’t exactly forget;  he wasn’t aware that he had another week of vacation until the last week of December when HR told him that he did.

Therefore, as per the rules of the company, Z-D is permitted [required?] to take his extra week of vacation this year.  Kind of nice that his workplace wants him to take all of his vacation days, isn’t it?  Even nicer that said workplace makes allowances for a clueless goof hardworking individual, such as Mr. Bean, to use his vacation days later… once he knows that he has them.

 

The upshot of all this is that this week we’ve decided to stay home and get some projects completed.

And man-oh-man do we have a doozy of a list of things to do around the house. Which means that when we’re not gardening, refinishing, hanging up things, caulking holes, painting trim {et cetera, et cetera}, we’ll be going for walks [maybe in city parks?] &/or just plain lollygagging on the screened-in porch [white wine spritzers, anyone?].


But here’s the thing.

There’s a very good chance that this is going to be the only blog post that I’ll write this week.  I actually have a few other topics to discuss with you, but I don’t see myself as having the time & energy & quietness that I need to put real words to virtual paper.  [I’m a very slow and deliberate writer.]

So now, having shared the who/what/when/where/why/& how of my upcoming week, I’m going to wander off, find Zen-Den and start. being. productive.  Later, kids– projects await me.

[As always, click on photos to embiggen.]