There's a certain slant of light...

I've worked from home three days in the last week, nursing my ankle by avoiding the treacherous hill climb. It's been nice working from home. I've burned through a ton of work that requires more quiet concentration than the office can provide, and the extra 90 minutes of sleep has been divine.

Even better, though, is the rare chance to enjoy my house in the sunshine. After such a dreary winter (fourth cloudiest on record, with only 31% of the possible sunshine), it's been cheering - and revealing - to sit in the house without needing to turn lights on. My home office is particularly sunny, especially with the sun reflecting off the fresh snow. And it's fun watching Collette migrate from sun spot to sun spot - top of the stairs in the morning, office floor mid-day and then the office chair in the afternoon.

On the flip side, the sunlight revealed gobs of ceiling cobwebs and the extent of the dusty neglect plaguing my bookcases.

Perhaps that's what Emily Dickinson meant when she said the slant of light on winter afternoons "oppresses, like the weight/Of cathedral tunes." Maybe she was a lazy housekeeper, too. As a spinster (did she own her home?), did she stay on top of her dusting?

Beer Bottles: An Endangered Species

From the Onion: Empty Beer Bottle Released Into Wild



Aha! So my beer bottle problem was really just a conservation project. Good to know.

(And no, I have seen nary a rogue beer bottle since tossing the four across the fence nearly a month ago!)

Anchors aweigh!

File this under lessons learned: those plastic wall anchors don't have to be flush with the wall before you can insert the screws. Who knew?

I thought it was strange, moving into a three bedroom house, that the bathroom boasted a single towel bar. I did some initial looking at the (insanely expensive!) double bars, but after the boy moved out, it was really a moot point.

At Target last weekend, I was able to pick up a nice, double towel bar for a clearance steal of $17. Then I realized I needed a much smaller hex key to remove the old one. Thirty-five cents later and I was in business.

Saturday afternoon, hopped up on coffee, I removed the old bar and its brackets. Hoo, boy! There were a whopping seven holes behind one bracket and four behind the other. Apparently some previous owners mis-measured? I hoped that one of the old sets of holes would fit, but no luck.

I used a q-tip to gleefully spackle the gaping old holes, then spent a couple blissfully domestic hours killing time while they dried, baking applesauce cake and doing laundry. Then I dragged the power tools upstairs, measured and marked my new holes, and dug in.

Oops. Too soon. The new holes had to be right next to the old ones, and apparently I got too close and ended up with a drill bit full of spackle. Alas. I re-spackled the hole and decided to take a break to go to the movies.

Hours later, I set off to finish the job. The spackle was nice and solid, drill bit ready, and so was I. I leaned into the drill - I've learned that it's a much more muscle-intensive activity than I had imagined - boring holes into my precarious old walls. I knew I was getting close when I heard bits of plaster falling into the void behind the walls. (I've always wondered how far down the void goes - all the way down to the ground floor? Just a couple feet? Might there be treasure in my walls? Regardless, that crumbling plaster sound always fills me with guilt that I'm hurting the house.)

Holes drilled, I pulled out the plastic anchors that came with the towel bar. I used my lighter weight hammer to tap them into the walls. Then a bit more force. Then the bigger hammer. They were stuck, mocking me with the futility of my swings. I didn't want to hit harder and damage the wall, but they just wouldn't go in, and each additional tap only crushed the anchor into itself further.

What was I missing? Strength? I'm not that weak. A rubber mallet that would distribute the force more evenly yet gently? A worthy thought. By this point, it was nearing midnight, and I decided to call it a night.

Sunday, while running errands, I picked up a rubber mallet. Even if it wasn't essential for this project, I'm sure it will get some use in the future. I had plenty of other projects to occupy me (like my taxes) and had plans with Don. By the time we got back, it was late, but I showed him my sorry excuse for an installation. He shook his head, grabbed the bracket and screw, and showed me what I now know forever: anchors don't need to be flush to the wall before they can do their job. (Though on the right bracket, despite perfectly lining up the holes, the bottom one hit the stud while the top one did not - quite the feat, if I do say so myself.)

I plan on using my new-found knowledge to finally hang the mirror in my bedroom that's been precariously balanced on my dresser for the last 10 months.

And I'm also adding that little tidbit to the mental checklist of things to someday teach my daughters.

Saving Prince Charming?

Friday night, my Bunco group met. Yes, yes, very suburban yuppie of me. It's an interesting group of women from the neighborhood. We meet monthly and spend the evening playing the game while gossiping and eating and drinking. All but one are homeowners, and all but one (a different one) are married with children. Naturally, the other single girl and I gravitate towards each other.

She's older than me - 32 - with about four years of homeownership under her belt. She's been with her guy for nearly twelve years and thinks she may be nearing an ultimatum. We started talking about our reasons for buying alone and discovered we shared the same philosophy. When she bought, she had been with her boyfriend for seven or eight years and thought it was silly to keep renting when she could be building equity. She also wanted to prove to herself that she could do it without needing help from anyone else - my sentiments and motivations exactly. She didn't need to wait for her Prince Charming to rescue her and carry her off to adulthood and a mortgage. If her relationship works out and they do get married, she already has a leg up and has built some equity, regardless of where they end up living. If they break up - well, she'd still have her home and everything that's gone into it. As she said, he hasn't shown any impetus to make a permanent commitment to her and to their relationship, so she has to take care of herself, first and foremost.

Which brought us to Juno. My Bunco buddy said her boyfriend is like the Mark character - a man who doesn't really want to grow up. Sure, he's older than her with a teenage son from a previous marriage - but he doesn't see a push to marry. I hadn't yet seen the movie but keep hearing and reading about it. After our conversation, I went out to the movies last night. Among the crowd were several other women on their own, plus a couple couples snickering in the back rows. (It was strange to hear the grownups laughing at such bawdy, witty lines - until I realized that I'm one of the grownups now. Sheesh.)

But my friend is right, as is Kathryn Jean Lopez. In National Review, Lopez relates Juno to Leonard Sax's book, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. Lopez notes:

Mark Loring reminds me of a letter in Sax’s book from a woman named Sarah. She says her husband is stuck on Xbox, and while she loves him and so will tolerate a certain amount of his lack of motivation to grow up, she is “constantly haunted” by something he said: “He said that I might need to lower my expectations in life because he didn’t know whether he could provide them for me. What I find funny now is that I’m the real provider. I don’t feel like I’m part of a team. It’s wearing on me.”

I hear the same thing from many, many, many women my age. Why should men grow up when no one really expects them to?

Which begs the question, Are we waiting for Prince Charming to save us? Or do we need to save Prince Charming?

Waiting for spring

On this, yet another day below freezing with flurries, I can't wait to see what pokes up from the ground in just a few weeks. I planted a bunch of relatively-early blooming bulbs - some crocuses and daffodils, plus more tulips. After last year's toy-soldier tulips lined up precisely 16 inches apart, I purposely planted chaotically last October, so we'll see what pops up.

I also learned my lesson last year about squirrels and their love of bulbs...

Garbage Games

Living in the city, trash day was never really a factor. When the kitchen can was full, I took it out to the alley dumpster which was emptied twice a week by magic trucks.

But in the suburbs, we have Trash Day. Every Tuesday night, I make the trip through the house, emptying the cans, and take it all out to the big can, then roll it to the curb. As a single girl, I don't generate a ton of trash - my recycling bin is actually usually the fuller of the pair - so I can skip a week if time or weather makes the twilight rolling unappealing. This is particularly true in winter, when there's no smell quotient.

The past two Tuesday nights have been snowy, bitterly cold messes, so while I keep adding to the cans, I haven't actually rolled them to the curb yet this month. Last night, while waiting for the car to warm up (it was two degrees), I realized it was time. I also realized that the cans were frozen to both the ground and the fence, stuck in a snow bank a good 18 inches deep.

Now the logical thing would have been to do what Kevin pointed out this morning: grab some hot water from inside, poor it over the bank, and move quickly to free the cans. That, or wait for Don to come over. But hindsight is always 20/20.

As bundled up as I was, I wanted to get the task done then and there. So I leaned up against the cans, trying to dislodge them. I pushed, I kicked, I cursed.

And finally, I walked back about 10 feet, got a running start (thank goodness for YakTrax!) and rammed into the recycling bin. Free at last! Once the recycling was free, the garbage had no choice but to follow suit.

Of course, when I got to the end of the sloping, icy driveway, I realized that there really isn't a curb, but rather a knee-high snow bank, so following the example of my neighbors, I left both cans in the street.

Hopefully, by mid-March, this won't even be an issue.

Squeegee Sunday!

Well, what falls as snow has to get into the ground somehow.

I woke up this morning to lots of rain - and melting snow. The heaps and piles of snow have been diminished to sad dirty shadows of their former glory. The neighbors' snowman's head sunk into his body. And my basement welcomed a good inch of standing water.

I suppose it makes sense. In the nearly two years I've been in this house, I've had water in the basement on three occasions. The first two times were after days of steady rain - one week last summer, we got nearly 5 inches of rain. The ground can only hold so much before it seeps into the basement. And today, when an accumulated 16 or so inches of snow begins to melt - while it's raining - it has to go somewhere. Don and I did the best we could, pushing the water towards the floor drain. I made a Target run and bought a new squeegee mop to get the rest.

So now the basement dries out... until next time.

I need a new couch

The hours of couchtime I've logged in recent weeks have reiterated my need for a new couch. Mine is twenty years old and served hard time in the Anderson household for nearly fifteen of those years. It's giant and sectional and barely curves its way into my living room, blocking both windows.

But the worst part is the deteriorating structure and cushion. While lying on the couch, the wood beams poke through against my back and hips. In one section, the upholstry holding the frame together has disintegrated such that if you sit directly on it, you sink.

Alas. I'll add it to the "when I have money" list...

Hibernating

It's currently three below zero, with a windchill about 30 below. I've been in heavy hibernation mode all weekend - other than a run to Meijer for groceries yesterday, I haven't left the house. I slept way in both days this weekend - 11 on Saturday, 10:30 this morning - took a nap this afternoon, hung out on the couch to watch tv, and yet, I'm exhausted. There were a million house things I could have done - I keep meaning to pull out the fridge and stove and clean behind them, and it's about time to play musical pictures in the living room - but instead, I did absolutely nothing.

Oh, well. Cabin fever has set in. February sucks.

Time for bed under my pile of blankets. I'm sure the cat will join me and purr the night away.

I love my neighbors

After last night's frozen garage door debacle, I spent the day dreading the digging ahead. On my way home, I saw that my sidewalk had been cleared, which was great, but not terribly unusual - sometimes a neighbor will run down the whole block, creating a beautifully straight snowbank.

But as I reached my house, I discovered that my entire driveway was clear, and only the garage was still entombed. Perfectly straight tire tracks lined the driveway, and there was even a tidy path to my backdoor. Now, I've joked with my neighbor Santos on a couple occasions when we were out working on our respective driveways - "Hey, you can do mine when you're done!" - but it was a very nice surprise.

I've baked chocolate chip cookies and will be leaving them on their step in the morning. Thank you, neighbor!

Snow aftermath

It's mostly stopped snowing - just a few pretty flurries daintily floating to the ground - and the winds are dying down.

A couple hours ago, I tried to shovel. After forcing open the back door, I trudged my way to the garage to retrieve the necessary tool. There's about a foot of snow, though in places it has drifted much higher and spilled over the tops of my boots.



I made it to the garage (an attached garage would be nice, but rare in older homes) and discovered that the snow had drifted so high against it, that the lock was frozen solid. I chipped away at it, tried to open it and grumbled in the quiet night. After a bit of chipping, I was able to get the key in and very gingerly turn it, but the handle itself is frozen in position, and I'm assuming the door itself is frozen to the ground. (I'm very, very careful with that lock because a couple months back, Don broke the spare key in that lock, and I haven't found a hardware store capable of cutting a replacement for the small, strangely shaped key.)

Yes, there is a side door to the garage, but Don happens to have both copies of that key in his possession. Oops.

Oh, well. It's a sign that I'm supposed to stay in and enjoy this snowy evening. And besides, Don is always volunteering to help shovel. Well, at this point...

Stop the Rattling!

It's still snowing. When I woke up (and decided to go back to sleep for two hours before working from home), there was snow mixed with sleet. The sleet slapped itself against the side of the house, pinging the aluminum siding. I looked out, saw cars sliding their way down the hill, and decided to stay put.

So I've been working in my home office all day. It's a pleasant corner room - lots of daylight, cozy armchair for the cat, three big bookcases overflowing with books. It has two tall windows on separate walls. One had a fitting storm window. The other does not.

When I moved in, the taller of the two windows was sheathed in plastic. It kind of made sense, as I bought in April and the house was still winterized to an extent. One of my first activities (other than removing the baseball wallpaper from the master bedroom) was playing the great screen-window match game. They've replaced windows over the years, but apparently never thrown out any of the old storm windows or screens that don't quite fit any window. I spent a long Saturday running up and down stairs, back and forth to the garage, trying to find the best fits. I went through the reverse process my first fall in the house house, searching for the right storm windows. This past spring, when making the switch again, I had the foresight to write the rooms on some windows (ie, "Guest room" or "upstairs bath"), but found I had nothing labeled for the taller office window.

As a result, despite my best efforts, I didn't find one that fit very well. Sure, it blocks some of the wind, especially when coupled by the awesome removable caulk I used to seal it up. But today, as the wind howls, it rattles. Loudly. And often. I want to tape it into place to stop the rattling, but don't want to break my perfect caulk seal. Nor can I really reach it from outside, not without a ladder, which isn't happening in the driving snow.

My vow for next winter: don't bother with a storm window. Caulk, shrinkwrap and call it a day.

The Cable Conundrum

Ah, Super Tuesday. The polisci geek's Super Bowl.

But part of my decision to buy my house meant a very conscious and strict budget. And kicking out the slacker boyfriend shortly after moving in meant that money got even tighter. By my calculations, I have a disposable income of about $11 a month.

I've never paid for cable - my most recent apartment was possibly the last surviving incidence of native RCN in the city of Chicago - and am somewhat proud of that silly distinction. Sure, I could argue that I have better things to do than watch TV. That's especially true in the summer, when I spend hours on my bike or puttering in the yard, but this time of year, mindless, easy TV calls me. And sometimes, I miss HGTV or the Colbert Report or the plethora of reruns.

And tonight, as the slush plops down and I follow election returns online, man, I wish I had cable.

Four Letters, Starts with S...

Sheesh, I'm tired of writing about snow. I'm tired of the dirty piles of used up, half-melted snow that turn to concrete when rain is added. I'm anxiously checking my basement every hour to make sure no more water seeps in as the saturated ground tries to absorb more moisture.

But all day today, talk of the Big One has grown to grade-school snow day proportions. They're currently calling for 10-14 inches by mid-day tomorrow. And it's the wet stuff that takes Paul Bunyon's strength and the back of Babe the Blue Ox to shovel.

Though you'd never know it right now. At the moment, and as I walked up the hill from the train, slush was falling from the skies. Not snow, not rain, not sleet - slush. There was just enough ice content to make things potentially dangerous, and my YakTrax were happily drying themselves in my back hallway.

Once it turns to snow, I'm sure it will be pretty. I'm well stocked in cabernet and still have a pot of leftover chili. I'll be fine, and the prospect of another adult snow day - with the sleeping in and possibility of pilates - is prettier than the grey slush currently plopping from the heavens.

Slushy Beer

Thursday night's snow left me with a solid 10 inches of the wet, heavy stuff. In some places, it was drifted to 16-18 inches. Fun, achy back times.

Being the bright ray of sunshine I am, I found the positive. It was pretty and peaceful. There was enough to justify "working from home" on Friday, along with the extra hour of sleep that entails. And it covered the three empty beer bottles I'd been locked in a staring contest with. All that was left was three subtle, soft, snow-covered lumps.

But Saturday morning, while brushing my teeth, I noticed a travesty on the pristine blanket of snow. A new empty beer bottle.

I grumbled and debated, but while debating, Don took matters into his own hands and tossed all four back over the fence.

Maybe we'll have a six pack by spring.