A New Kind of Chaos

We are halfway through a season that is new to us.

(No, it's not the dirty floors.)

(Piles of laundry are not a new sight, either.)

All four kids are playing soccer.

On four different teams.

With four different sets of practices and games three to four times a week.

***

My washing machine works very well.

So does my dryer.

Dishes and Dust

It began less than an hour into our year-long lease.

We were doing the walk-through with the lady from the rental agency when I stepped in a puddle in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Kitchens that have been empty and unused for months should not have puddles on the floor.

Upon investigation, it was discovered that the water was coming from under the dishwasher. So was that funky moldy smell.

The dishwasher was installed right before the owners left the house, and apparently the installer neglected to tighten the water hoses properly. No one knows how long it leaked before the water to the house was shut off.

The house sat empty for three or more months, waiting for us to find it and rent it. And while it sat, the water seeped under the four layers of old vinyl flooring and permeated the sub-flooring with moldy, stagnant water. The mold spores had a little party on the floor, too, and they didn't leave out the wall or cupboards. Generous, those mold spores are.

For a week, I cleaned and unpacked around a disconnected dishwasher in the center of my kitchen, and I dodged fans, heaters, and bottles of bleach while I washed dishes by hand. (My husband took care of the gross moldy work, so I couldn't complain too loud!) We let the mess air out and dry while we were gone for Christmas, and were given the go-ahead to reinstall the dishwasher when we got home.

It was a wonderful few days.

The kitchen still had that funky smell, and the floor was feeling warped and getting spongier where it hadn't been spongy before. We called the rental agency and insisted that they have a contractor come look at it.

The contractor came and looked at everything and submitted a bid for the work. The owners approved it, and work began.

The first thing they did was take out the dishwasher and set it on the back deck.

It sat out there for over two weeks.

The first day they were here, the guys tore out the floor. All four layers of vinyl and the nasty wet sub-flooring. They put in new sub-flooring in the dry parts of the kitchen, and then, mid-morning everything came to a screeching halt.

The damage went farther than the contractor had suspected, and until there had been much conversation between the contractor, the rental agency, and the owners (who are out of the country), he couldn't do anything more.

Of course not. Because now, not only was the dishwasher outside and unusable, but the kitchen floor was rough, uneven, and highly susceptible to spills. And the counters, dining room furniture, and contents of the open pantry were covered in a fine layer of really gross dust.

Lovely.

The insurance adjuster was a no-show for the first appointment (the existence of which we were completely unaware of), and when everyone showed up for the (also unannounced) meeting the next morning, he was over half an hour late. And he was extremely rude and defensive before he even looked at anything.

After a highly tense conversation in my kitchen, everyone left, the insurance adjuster promising to call the rental agency that afternoon, and the rental agency promising to contact us as soon as they knew anything.

Over a week later, we gave up and contacted them.

Still, nothing happened.

Until finally, we were told the contractor would contact us to see when he could come. We made an appointment for the next Monday.

Late that Monday morning he called and postponed it until Tuesday morning.

It was almost not morning anymore when they got here on Tuesday, but they got right to work tearing out and rebuilding the affected cabinet and prepping the floor for a new layer of vinyl.

There was now a thick layer of sawdust over my entire kitchen and dining room.

Wednesday morning brought final preparations and the cutting and laying out of the new vinyl. By lunch time, the new floor was glued into place. As they were moving the fridge back into place a few hours later, the kitchen got very quiet. For a very long time. They'd torn a huge hole in the brand-new vinyl. So they went to Home Depot and bought some thin plywood, which they laid down over the vinyl and told me they'd see me in the morning.

On Thursday morning, the actions of Wednesday morning were repeated, and after the second installation of brand-new vinyl, they successfully maneuvered the fridge into place without damaging anything and got around to finally reinstalling the dishwasher.

And it's been running almost non-stop ever since!

THE END

Naptime

For several weeks now, my three year old has been protesting against naptime. He lays down readily enough and falls asleep almost instantly. That part has never been a problem.

The issue has been that once I announce that naptime is either approaching or imminent, he stages a protest using one or more of the following arguments:

"I'm NOT tired!"

"It's NOT naptime!"

"I don't WANT to take a nap!"

"Naptime is bah-humbug!"

Coincidentally, we have also been working on not talking back.

So, today, with half an hour to go until naptime, he came looking for me.

Mr. Adorable: "Mommy, is it almost naptime?"

Me: "Soon."

Mr. Adorable: "Good!"

He just likes to keep me on my toes.

Mommy's Recipes

I like to eat. So does my family.

Naturally, I started collecting cookbooks. And cooking magazines. And recipes scribbled on 3x5 cards. And ideas printed off the internet or jotted down on scratch paper. I even have a recipe that I found tucked between the pages of one of my grandma's cookbooks. It's a newspaper clipping ... in Spanish.

By 2008, the collection took up an entire six feet of shelving. I was just a little bit overwhelmed.

So I started a blog to help keep track of our favorite recipes. It serves many purposes.

1. Our favorite recipes are preserved for posterity (or at least for as long as blogspot's server lasts) on the internet, where

2. I can access them even when I am not at home.

3. It makes it very easy to share my recipes with friends when they ask. (Hi Amy!) :)

4. And if anything ever happens to my recipe notebook (see below), I can very easily put together a new one.

The blog is handy, all right, but it wasn't helping any with the cookbook clutter. However, moving was a great excuse to purge the cookbook shelves. I recycled magazines, took some cookbooks to a used book store, tossed scraps of paper in the trash...and stuffed two folders full of recipes to try.

Once most of the boxes were unpacked and we felt kind of settled in here, I started another serious purge of the remaining recipes. I typed up and posted on the blog the ones that we've tried and liked, then went through the whole blog and printed out every recipe. I stuck those pages in a binder filled with page protectors and now my recipes are legible, organized, and protected from spills.

Unfortunately, I still have a whole box of cookbooks to unpack.

I have no idea where I'm going to put them.

Which is why they are still not unpacked.

But I can still cook my family's favorite meals, thanks to Mommy's Recipes!

(Does that sound like a cheesy infomercial, or what?!?)

A Tale of Two Shirts...The Saga Continues

I haven't decided which I prefer...all four at once or one at a time.

Can I pick neither? No? Well, I'm sure there will be another round at some point, and I'll get another chance to consider the issue.

Really, though, I'd rather not.

It started Saturday morning with Mr. Adorable. And it was the full deal. Fever, headache, and hurting tummies (complete with messes from both ends). This time around, the kids tried it one at a time, and every one of them did it differently.

It was a very long nine days.

A Tale of Two Shirts

Although we are in Seattle Seahawks country, I am not (yet) a Seahawks fan. So of course my cousin bought me a Hasselbeck jersey. (If you don't speak football or NFL, Hasselbeck is the Seahawks quarterback.)

Wonder of wonders, the Seahawks made it to the playoffs, so yesterday morning when I got dressed, I put that jersey on, because after all, we are in Seattle Seahawks country and the first game of the day was actually in Seattle.

Five minutes after I put it on, Mr. Adorable, who wasn't feeling very well, asked to be held. I picked him up and cuddled him in the middle of the kitchen. Thirty seconds later, I was not only wearing my Hasselbeck jersey, but I was also wearing the remnants of what Mr. Adorable had eaten for dinner the night before.

I threw all of our clothes in the washing machine, and after a shower and a change of clothes for the boy, I got cleaned up too and came out of the bedroom wearing a Tennessee Titans t-shirt. Mr. Adorable took one look at me and announced:

"That's a better shirt!"

I'm pretty sure he meant because it was clean.

(And just so you know, when the Seahawks won their game, I was wearing my freshly laundered Hasselbeck jersey. Because I support my local NFL team. Kind of. At least when they're not playing one of my favorite teams. And when their quarterback is doing a decent job. And for sure when they're the only game on. And absolutely when they're playing against the Saints. Who beat my beloved Colts in the Super Bowl last year. In which my beloved Colts will not be playing this year. Maybe it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is and buy a Manning jersey. So it can get thrown up all over on game day. And then I could change into my Hasselbeck jersey...)

So Here We Are

We did it! With a lot of help from our friends and family, we loaded up the 26 foot rental truck, the van, and the back of the Ford F150, and drove from Tennessee to Washington. We went the southern route to avoid snow complications, so it took us five days instead of four, but we made it!

Moving is always an adventure, but this move has been more eventful than I expected, which is why I am still unpacking boxes (and not blogging) all these weeks later. We also took a week-long break from moving in and went home to Oregon for Christmas. We brought even more furniture back home with us...and inherited a piano too!

And now we are officially living in beautiful, wet Washington. We're not quite settled in, but we're not exactly living out of boxes, either. My kitchen is functional, even if it is not quite all put together, the bedrooms and living areas are set up and mostly clutter-free, and there are only a few more boxes left to unpack.

Unfortunately I am finding that even in Washington, the laundry, dishes, and grocery shopping do not do themselves. But that's something I'm learning to live with! :)