Let’s just say you live near Houston or anywhere else where the temperature is currently 98 F (37 C ) with 93% humidity.

Let’s just say you want to build one of these:

And you want to build it by the end of July because  that is when Aunty Natty is coming to visit and you so much want to LOUNGE!

On the enormous lounger!

With ice cold drinks and the latest trashy novels!

Because that is what sisters (should) do!

Let’s just assume you want to paint it a cheerful color and after some research and many baleful glances at your current, UV-damaged garden furniture you decide on a coat of primer and three coats of outdoor enamel, followed by three coats of Spar Urethane (Count it - 7 coats!). So you cut your many, many pieces of wood. Slowly, with a handsaw, because you can’t cut straight with a circular saw and are too cheap to fork out for a sliding miter saw.

Slowly, with a handsaw in 98% heat.

Then you sand all one hundred and two million pieces of wood in the 98% heat and wipe them all down in the 98% heat.

Obviously, you cannot do this all at once. You know, because of the 98% heat. So this step takes several weeks.

Then you start to paint your boards. You can maybe see where this is going.

Waiting for paint to dry in 93% humidity is like … watching paint dry. Only six hundred times as long. Torturous.

Try and apply the protective coat over this tacky tacky paint and when you sand after the first coat, half the paint will come off with it. I know because I have tried.

I should clarify that The Daddy has specifically requested No Distressed Furniture Within House or Yard.

Now I am the one who is distressed.

So, a friendly warning to anyone living in a humid zone who feels the urge to build an enormous double lounger and lacks an air conditioned workshop:

DON’T!

(Sorry, Aunty Natty. This has now become a winter project. But we do have a hammock!!)

On Sunday on the spur of the moment I decided to pressure wash our concrete patio. Usually this job falls to The Daddy but I am a little (cough) more detail oriented than he is, and I wanted to (cough) see if I could do a better job than he does. An experiment, if you will.

Could I do a better job at pressure washing the back patio than The Daddy? Well after two hours wearing jeans and boots in 90 degree heat, getting splashed with water and splattered with dirt, it turns out the answer is :

WHO CARES?????

Yesterday I was in Lowes, minding my own business, when I happened to pass this toilet seat. And I had to have it, in the way most of you probably just have to have a pair of shoes (whereas for me, shoes, nah….they mostly make my feet look silly.)

So, not only have I stooped to blogging about a toilet seat, I am also forced to admit it was an impulse buy.

You might understand better when I tell you about our guest bathroom (for overseas readers, the guest bathroom is the main bathroom downstairs, the one all your guests are sure to use even if they only stop over for a quick cup of coffee. As opposed to the other 3 bathrooms, which are for family).

We haven’t really done too much to this house since we bought it, almost 2 years ago. And when we bought it, it had (and still has) this interesting quirk: the previous owners had poured money into decorating the master bedroom, including expensive blinds, swathes of drapes and the only wood floors in the house. The rest of the house was simply and sympathetically decorated, if not quite our taste. The guest bathroom, however, the one room everybody is sure to see, is a mess. The wall texture looks like it has been fingerpainted on by a hyperactive toddler. The 1980s fake marble countertop has a huge stain on it and the fake gold is peeling off the faucets. But the absolutely worst thing? The toilet seat. Scratched and beat up and bubbling. Urgh.

When I mentioned this to The Daddy he pointed out that the previous owners looked the type to have no friends and spend most of their time in the master bedroom.

(Ahem. Watching TV. They had their TV in there. What did you think he meant?).

And here I will hold my hand up. Yes, sir, guilty as charged, it has taken me this long to take action too. I was waiting to upgrade the whole bathroom. Somehow it didn’t register that I could buy a new toilet seat for $25 and the room would instantly look 100% better.

We are all enthralled with our new throne. The moment The Daddy arrived home yesterday T-Bot ran to him to regale him with the details of its technical features. Because in the end I spent $48 for an upgrade. And believe me,  the extra money is worth it when you have three children using the potty all day long:

This is a toilet seat which doesn’t bang.

Can you imagine that? Leave it half up and it glides down gently… And silence reigns Inzaburbs.

Well, almost… Last time I looked I still had three children.

I had this great idea where I would do a “Twelve Days of Christmas” thing and blog about it.

Except, instead of “my true love gave to me…” it would be “my true love looked after the kids while I accomplished this long overdue DIY task…”.

Because D.I.Y. -  I am D.I.Y!

(Ahem. This does not mean I am overly good at it. Just that I do it. If anybody is tempted to express surprise at this, just know that in this day and age that makes you a sexist dinosaur, oh yes it does. Also, I do have minor control issues and won’t let The Daddy do anything involving household tools, because I just know he will do it wrong. Except the pressure washer. He can go crazy with the pressure washer. I hate that thing. )

Then, when I got to thinking about it, it became clear that nobody was going to hang around for a blow-by-blow account of resealing the shower, for example. So I have rethought.

But, just for posterity, this is how I plan to spend The Daddy’s two weeks of vacation this year:

1. Reseal the shower before the supports underneath rot through and the whole bathroom collapses.

2. Finish touching up the moldings and baseboards in the dining room I started painting back in April.

3. Oil the family grandfather clock which was delivered to us in March, so that hopefully it will start working. The Daddy is very agitated about this one. Every time I ask him the time he looks balefully at the clock and says sadly “2:05″.

4. Finish pruning the crape myrtles. The aim is to stop those “ghostly hands” tap tap tapping on Baby Sister’s windows.

5. Replace the one crumbling board at the back of the house which is solely responsible for giving it an abandoned look.

6. Turn some funky vintage train wallpaper I just bought into a mural for The Wictor and make some cool stuff out of the rest.

7. Move the guest bed into The Wictor’s room and rearrange his room around it in a way that doesn’t encourage anyone illicitly jumping on the bed to jump right on out the window.

8. Rearrange the TV/Guest room so it is also a computer/Wii room. Put a lock on the door so I can keep the children in there.

9. Replace the following on my car: rear left indicator bulb, windshield wiper blades, key fob battery. Might make driving a little easier.

10. I haven’t thought of the others yet. I may be so tired by this point that I will want a rest. And lots of wine.

And after all that, don’t even think I am going to tackle the ironing pile.

Last night The Daddy and I were going out to meet friends at a fancy restaurant, so I jumped out of my jeans and threw on a very pretty flouncy red skirt (one I didn’t even remember I had!), a little eyeshadow and I was ready to go.

But then, as we were getting out of the car at the restaurant, I looked down and realized I had forgotten to shave my legs. “It doesn’t matter,” I reasoned, “I will walk in quickly and sit down with my legs under the table and nobody will notice”.

Unfortunately, as we walked into the joint, within sight line of our expectantly waiting friends, I glanced down again and saw I had gorilla legs which could not be hidden. In fact they probably already had been noticed, and from across the room. They looked something like this:

You remember when you were in elementary school and you had to write a story so you wrote a fantastic(al) one full of adventures and robots and dragons but then you didn’t know how to end it so you finished off “and then I woke up and it was just a dream” ?
(I still cringe every time I see a childrens’ book author use this technique now. Unless it was Mo Willems, in which case … forgiven. )

Well, I didn’t make it up - it was a real, true dream I had last night, and also an apt illustration of how the little things are getting neglected around here. I am busy and never make it to the bottom of the List of Things To Do. I feel I need to make some small changes.

I really don’t think I should give up any part of my already lightweight social life, although I am currently debating as to whether I should be maintaining a social life at all, given all the tasks which are piling up around the house. While I am pleased to report that as of today the whole house is clean and tidy (yes, you read that right! Ten minutes a few times a day plus dark threats to the children accomplishes wonders) some pesky chores still linger.

Now, after two enforced full nights of sleep, I am starting to think anything is possible. And I had an idea!

I would like to invite you to my house!

Yes, you!

Attention, you are only welcome if you have one of the following skills to share:

…..
1. Sewing skills.
I have my own sewing machine and three pairs of jeans awaiting hemming. I do not like my jeans to go flippety flap when I walk. But I have given up taking them in to the little lady in the room behind the laundromat, as she seems to think the pins I stick in them are just for decoration, and they always come back plus or minus an inch from the desired length. Although I am out of necessity still wearing the last pair which she cut to hang uselessly around my ankle, they do not make me feel sexy.

I will serve you a cup of coffee while you hem my jeans. I will lean on the kitchen counter and we can chat while you sew.

…..

2. Sealing Skills

Are you handy with a sealant gun? The joins in the shower are starting to go moldy and normally this is my job. It is difficult finding a window of opportunity when the shower is dry, the children occupied and I do not have anything else to do. Also, the fumes are obnoxious, I usually run out of rubber gloves, and then I get sealant on my hands and the skin falls off. This does not make me look sexy.

I will serve you a cup of coffee while you reseal my shower. I will perch on the side of the bath and we can chat while you seal.

…..

3. Ironing Skills

Some people like ironing. I am not one of them. I could double my wardrobe and triple my husband’s if I could just bear the squeaking of the ironing board long enough to iron more than a work shirt (one at a time, in haste, around midnight). My ironing basket and my unfolded laundry basket sit next to each other in a closet and guess which one is always more full? These old crumpled t-shirts are the opposite of sexy.

I will serve you a cup of coffee (or three) while you iron my forgotten clothes. I will lounge on the couch and we can chat while you starch and press.

…..

4. Plumbing Skills

Feel free to drop around at any time if you are good with toilets.

We have four toilets and I fix probably one a month. This open invitation is for someone who lives close,  as toilet emergencies often need dealing with fast.

I need to be able to say “Hey! Doing anything this morning ? Why not drop around now?”

I will serve you a cup of coffee, then shout to you from the other room while you plunge an upstairs toilet.

……

Open House at My Place Next Week!
P.S. Don’t worry. You will not be required to shave my legs.

Pity my poor parents, who read this blog. They have to read this blog because it is just about all the news they get of their errant daughter and her spawn. So, just for today, I will indulge them (Hi Mum and Dad!), with some mundane updates on our daily life. Feel free to tag along! 

The T-Bot had his kindergarten graduation on Thursday. Their teachers read out a few facts the children had provided about themselves as they went up onto the stage for their certificates. Most of the the class, model students, liked learning, could read or ride a bike, and their favorite thing was their teacher. (Awwwww! breathed the audience). The T-Bot, however, apparently likes eels, he can smell, and his favorite thing is lunch. 

I am up to my elbows in it. Literally. You see, our garbage disposer broke last weekend, and since then I have been mainly occupied with fishing out everything The Daddy tips down the sink. It seems that in three short years we have forgotten how to live without a garbage disposer. Really, I don’t know how we ever survived without one. 

I have tried to fix it. To be honest, I have been fixing it about once a week for the past month. But this time, it just gave up on me. Threw its little flanges in the air and said Enough! No amount of pushing, pulling, bashing or swearing will budge it. 

Surprisingly, a new one is not all that expensive. I have been checking out the models at Lowes and Home Depot and for only a couple of hundred dollars I can purchase the top-notch double-the-price disposal which will even handle potato peels (hmm, perhaps a clue here as to why our current one is broken?). So, while I am at it, I decided to also buy a new faucet (that’s a tap to you, M&D), because the current one has been leaking since we moved in. And in for a penny, in for a pound, why not a kitchen sink?

I promise I will get someone in to install it all. Otherwise, if my record with painting the dining room is anything to go by, we will be here until Christmas. But hey! Good news! That last dining room wall now has primer!  

It was 35 degrees C today. (That’s 95 for all you Fahrenheit people). We are having beautiful weather right now, very hot but not too muggy. The best thing about not too muggy? My hair semi-behaves. Unlike the children, who are already stir crazy. We worked out this morning that they had totally misunderstood the words “summer vacation” and thought we would be jetting off immediately to some exotic locale, instead of which we threw them in front of PBS Kids and sat typing frantically away. The T-Bot, he of the overactive imagination, had convinced himself we were going to “Japanese”, and when quizzed, thought it would cost about $10. Baby Sister, meanwhile, had her heart set on meeting Cinderella. 

Our one calm period of today was spent sorting out toys for our garage sale, tentatively scheduled for the end of next week. The T-Bot is very excited by the idea and had to be dissuaded from throwing almost everything he owns into the garage sale box. He also wants to take it all down to the garage and hold the sale NOW. Whenever now may be. He is a true shopkeeper at heart… 

Tomorrow we will have to keep our promise and finally take them to the pool. But first, some beauty sleep. Sorely needed.  I will leave you with this: 

The Wictor shows off his first real Play-Doh sculpture. Full marks if you guessed that it’s a “Tut-Tut Train” !

Yesterday afternoon it was suddenly very hot and humid. Very humid. 

While the kids played under the sprinkler, I built this: 

…while drinking this: 

I swear, the bench it is absolutely solid. Not in the least bit wobbly.

However, once I had finished, I looked something like this: 

 
more cat pictures

So, three quarters of the way through painting the dining room, I have run out of paint. 

It was to be expected, really. I let the salesman at Sherwin Williams convince me, against my better judgement, that I would only need one coat of primer and one coat of paint. Or, maybe, “one and a half coats”. 

Actually, he was probably right. The paint went on quite well and under normal circumstances one or one and a half coats would have been adequate. But, leaving aside totally the fact that I have no idea how one applies a “half coat”, both he and I failed to take a few things into consideration:

1. Despite The Daddy’s promise to keep the kids out of my way so that I could paint in peace, I completed much of the first coat in record time while the baby played at my feet with a police car… and a balloon.  I was hurrying because I was nervous that one of the three would rub up against the wall I had just painted perfectly and it would then need a second coat. Which is, in fact, what happened. 

2. Generally, if you go to the hardware store and buy roller covers which then turn out to be not quite up to the job, you make another quick run out to the hardware store for the correct roller covers. Unless, of course, you have three children who are all over the place with sadness that you are paying attention to a wall and not to them, and an upcoming birthday party which needs to use the space, making it a necessity that you complete the painting in one weekend without dragging three whining children to the store in the middle of it. Then you tend to cut your losses and forge ahead with the tools you have. Which means that you end up having to apply that second coat. 

3. Perfectionism. The whole reason I was painting the room myself in the first place, rather than paying someone else to make the problem go away. Also the reason why my second coat went on as thick as my first coat - I wouldn’t want to miss any bits - meaning that the can was very quickly empty. 

4. And then the roller broke, and I had to paint half the last wall with a brush. There’s a reason why people use rollers and not brushes. 

Still, all is not lost. I am hoping that, given that the unpainted wall is a wall of windows, if there is any color discrepancy with the new batch of paint the difference in light will disguise it. I am leaving that job for another weekend.

In the meantime, I am very happy with what has been achieved. The color turned out greener than expected, almost psychedelic (Fun Yellow is not a color to be trifled with), but a few picture frames and some furniture will soon tone it down. Anyway, compared to the previous color - a shade of diarrhea which looked elegant with someone else’s furniture but just depressing with ours - anything would be an improvement. I consider it a job well done.