Rain on My Parade

I had my weekend timeline carefully planned to finally finish the door! After staining the backsides of all the trim, I planned to do a first coat of stain on the front side on Friday evening, a second coat Saturday morning, install it all Saturday afternoon, then paint the door and the back stairs Sunday.

Until it started raining Friday afternoon. When I got home from work, it was really coming down. "Meh, too humid to effectively stain," I thought, planning instead to stain Saturday morning and again mid-day.

But Saturday was so oppressively humid that the saturated air wouldn't absorb any more moisture. I waited until the overnight rain dried up (ha!), then applied my first coat late Saturday morning, around 11. I figured it should be dry by mid-afternoon, plenty of time to apply a second coat, and then install first thing Sunday morning.

Every time I checked on my little staining set up - a couple old sheets on the garage floor - things were still wet. The mid-afternoon shower didn't help, either. I kept the garage door open while I was home, hoping that some non-existent breeze would help the process. And since I was working on the outsides of the boards - the pieces I'll have to look at every time I come or go - I wanted to make sure things were good and dry before applying a second coat to guard against smudges.

The last time I checked on my litany of lumber, about 10:30 PM, nearly twelve hours post-application, everything was still tacky. Sunday morning, first thing, before I even read made coffee (too hot for it, anyway), I went out to apply a second coat. Things were even more humid than Saturday, so I wrote off any chance of weekend installation.

And when I went to bed about 11 PM, some of the boards were still damp.

It's been a year since I started this project; what's another week?

Now excuse me while I go move the boards out of the garage. There's more rain forecast tonight.

The Year Without a Garden

I tried, I really did. This year I planned to be even more adventurous with the garden – I was going to grow everything from seed! No more “cheating” seedlings for me, no sir.

I started off okay. I planted dozens of seeds into seed trays. Some of them took right away – I'm looking at you, nasturtiums – but others, not so much. I got a couple marigolds to sprout, and the lettuce took off nicely. But few of my brave little seedlings survived the transplanting, nor the neglect. I tried to make a deal with Mother Nature to water my new plants, but she had other ideas.

The smaller bed has done pretty well – apparently nasturtiums thrive under neglect, and one random bachelor button reappeared from last year. (Not a fan, especially when it's one chalky green stem towering over the lily pad-style nasturtiums.) But the big bed looks pretty bare, and would look even worse if not for the lily that keeps multiplying. (The first summer in this house, it didn't exist. The next summer, it was a single shoot. By this summer, it's starting to take over. I have no clue where it came from. But I'll take it!) A couple brave marigolds survived the transplant, but for the first time, it's a year without zinnias. I've had luck with the zinnias before – my first summer, I planted seedlings and they thrived. Last year, I actually grew a bunch from seeds planted straight in the ground. But this year, after carefully selecting a wide variety and starting some in trays and others directly in the dirt, none of them took.

I think I'll blame the weather.

Crysta the Carpenter

“We'll make a carpenter out of you yet,”my dad said as I knelt on our makeshift saw horse, carefully lining up the saw against the line I had just drawn with my new T-square.

Yes, folks, Saturday was finally Sawdust Day. Still trying to finish the trim for the new door we installed over a year ago, my dad arrived bright and early with his miter saw, wood and numerous other tools to put up the trim. He had come over last Saturday, too, and left when we realized it was far more complicated than we had anticipated.

But this past Saturday, everything went to plan with no real complications. I made all the miter cuts myself, and we set up a makeshift workbench (empty driveway asphalt barrels with a heavy board across the top) to make the necessary traditional saw cuts. After starting my day with a kettlebell workout, my arms were jelly by the time Dad left. My knee has a nice bruise, too, from pressing against the boards as I cut them.

We had to cut some trapezoids (seriously, my house is FAR from square!), and some of the more interesting cuts left the boards looking like skyscrapers, due to fitting around the concrete slab of the foundation, existing trim and tight angles. In fact, the right side looks like the Sears Tower and the left like the Hancock Center.

But everything fits. We put the puzzle together at least three or four times, finding the right sequence and angles, drawing arrows on the backs so we knew which side had been cut an 1/8 of an inch smaller than the other end to appease the house. And, dagnabit, it FIT.

So Dad left, leaving me with everything I need to finally finish the job. I did the first two coats of stain Sunday and will finish the staining process this week. I went to the Depot this evening and bought one more board – a 1x4 would fit above the door, but to mesh with the existing trim, a 1x6 is in order – and some fresh wood putty, but other than that, I am all set.

I'm almost excited about next weekend when I'll have the time to install it all. Of course, fingers crossed!

What's So Sweet About It?

So when my neighborhood had all its, um, problems, one of the biggest sources stemmed from a “candy shop” across the street. When it first opened, it was truly a candy shop for kids – there were always tons of candy wrappers on my yard.

But then, things changed. The shop in question was bright pink, operated strange hours, covered up the windows with blackout curtains and shooed children away. The one time I ventured inside, the bare shelves boasted a few dusty cans of soup, a small fridge with cans of grape soda, and a few t-shirts and hoodies for sale. And lots of annoyed looks from the proprietress at my presence.

Plus, it was the only drive-up candy shop I've ever seen! Cars would pull up, and someone would race to the driver's window, and perform the transaction. They must have had call-ahead service!

Eventually things changed again, for the better. And the neighborhood quieted down. Kids started playing on the block again. It was great.

But now a new sweet shop has opened around the corner. And it reminds me of the old one. Which leads me to ask – why a candy shop as a ruse? Why take something so innocent and retro – heck, my small town never had a candy shop when I was a kid – and turn it into something so putrid? When I first bought my house – and closed on the same day as the pink shop's grand opening – I thought to myself, “How quaint. How suburban. How nice for kids, to have someplace in the neighborhood where they can spend their allowance money on candy.” Growing up in a cornfield subdivision that was miles from anything, I embraced the idea of an older neighborhood designed to allow residents to walk to their needs – and let kids do the same.

So why ruin that nostalgia with something so tawdry?

Hopefully I'm wrong. Maybe it really is just a candy shop, with its hand-made signs and shaded windows. Maybe they're trying to keep the sun out, not prying eyes.