If You Give A Girl A Paintbrush...

Nearly everyone has to be familiar with the kid's book, "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie", the ingenious story where if you give the mouse a cookie he'll likely want a glass of milk to go with it, which progresses to the mouse cleaning the whole house (where can I get a mouse like that?).

I recently had a day like this, right in the middle of our EPIC MOVE.  Our realtor, who I must say has bolstered my spirits by being insanely upbeat and optimistic about being able to sell our house without losing our pants, did ask that I repaint our front door.  I admit that the door needed painting - BADLY.  It's been on my to-do list for two years now.  It wasn't a good paint job to begin with - the former owners of our house were inexcusably sloppy painters - but what really made it bad was that we'd changed out door handles and locks.  They are a completely different shape than the old ones that the former owners just painted around rather than removing.

So, while Mom continued to cram stuff into boxes, I sanded down and painted the front door, as well as the side window panels.  It looked so good that I decided to also paint the inside of the door with some leftover paint I'd found in a closet.  Then I decided to touch-up the white railings to the porches, which made the badly stained porches look all that much worse.  A trip to Sherwin-Williams had me supplied with deck stain.  A a whole day later I had all three porches spiffed up.

I must admit, it now looks darn good - everything is new, crisp, and clean.

In the process, I also discovered a new item to add to my "Best Things Ever" list:  Frogtape.  I'm not usually one for painting gimmicks that promise straight lines and "easy application", but for some reason I decided to give Frogtape a try.  Everyone who has panted anything and tried the blue tape knows it doesn't work...this stuff does.  It's kind of high-dollar, but worth every penny!

Tomorrow is the EPIC MOVE.  Anyone travelling along Hwy 65 beware.

Memorial Day is coming up - of course the first offical start to summer!  For my family it means *drumroll* gooseberries are ripe!  I know...nobody knows what a gooseberry is.  THESE are gooseberries (watch out for the stickers):

I had to jump the gun a few days on mine this year and pick them before Memorial Day so I could yank them out of the ground for transport.  Did you think I'd leave them???  Not a chance.  My scrawny bushes actually produced enough for a pie and a half this year (this was only halfway through picking):

They make a deliciously tart pie, and eaten fresh out of the oven covered in a good layer of half and half is pure perfection.  The only thing better is to mix half the gooseberries with blueberries and make a "blue goose" pie.  Also with half and half....nom nom nom...

Take THAT, Move

I've been in Mountain Home for the past few days packing up more stuff.  With no pets, no television, and sparse furnishings, it's not been the most fun times ever.  At least I have sympathy...a local radio DJ was talking about his own move, and how he and his wife are trying to improve the house they're moving into, thus drawing out the move into a long arduous process akin to "Japanese Water Torture."  If my cell phone worked worth a darn here, I'd have called to share pity parties.

But, we have decided we can no longer stand the torture and we must change tactics.  We're going to smack this move in the face with a roundhouse Chuck Norris kick by renting a U-Haul, and hiring some burly movers to move our approximately 5 bajillion ton safe and equally heavy Temperpedic bed - which is something like trying to wrestle with a massive jello jiggler.  We need to get our *$#! down the road and into storage until our new house is done so we can sell this house and absorb the financial kick in the pants with what dignity we can before the selling season passes us by. 

I can't wait for our beach vacation!  Looks like I'm going to have to settle for a shoebox of sand and a wading pool.  *sigh*  Did I just whine again?  Sorry.

Just to prove we are making progress, here's the floor in the bedroom/hobby room.  We were very proud to get the closet done:

Pick Axe Pete Revisited

While talking about Pick Axe Pete on my last blog entry, I got a little nostalgic and found this on youtube.  They even show Pete doing the jumping jacks.  I do have to correct a minor "oops" in my description of these games...it kind of came back to me after I saw this commercial.  Pick Axe Pete was actually more like Atari's Donkey Kong, while the Odyssey's "K.C. Munchkin" was the game very much like PacMan.  I'm sure all of you can sleep better now that that's cleared up.  Now, enjoy the nostalgia:

Ode to Squandered Youth

Happy Birthday PacMan!

As anyone knows from Google, today is PacMan's 30th birthday.  Wow I feel old.  While I never had an Atari, I spent many an hour playing PacMan at friend's houses who were lucky enough to have their own Atari's.

Don't get the idea that my brothers and I were unfairly deprived (though I'm not sure not having a video game really qualifies as deprivation), because we too had our own video game.  Unlike 99.9% of other people out there who had their own video games, we had an Odyssey.  What's an Odyssey?  It's what you have when you live in a tiny town and have a Grandpa who owns a furniture/hardware/carpet store that sells Philco TV sets.

As far as I know, the Magnavox Odyssey was pretty much obsolete before it even came out thanks to the awesomeness of Atari.  Still, we loved our Odyssey, and the games we played were suspiciously similar to Atari games.  Atari's signature game was of course PacMan.  Odyssey's signature game was Pick Axe Pete, which was very much the same concept.  Also a game I must say I was Queen of among all our family players.  While in PacMan the goal is to traverse a maze and eat all the little dots while evading Winky, Blinky, Inky, and Clyde (Surprised I can remember all those without looking them up?), the goal in Pick Axe Pete was to also traverse a maze and make it to the key to go through the "door" to the next level while evading boulders you could either smash with your pick (which quickly disappeared...I guess you wore it out smashing boulders) or just jump over them.  The highlight was when you jumped Pete, represented by a poor imitation of a stickman, into the door to the next level, he'd do full-screen jumping jacks.  We always guessed he was really happy to get to the next level, where the boulders came quicker and more frequently.

We loved Pick Axe Pete.  Every trip our family made through Webb City, MO took us past King Jack Park, which has a monument to area mining history and the lead and zinc miners who made the cities of Webb City and Joplin into boom towns.  To us it was simply a monument to our favorite video game, and we never passed the park without exclaiming, "Look!  It's Pick Axe Pete!"  If those poor miners only knew...

Adaptable Pets

It's worth noting that our pets seems to be settling into their new quarters quite well.  Most surprisingly has been Puck, who very un-cat-like seems to take things as they come.  He also doesn't let noisy or messy house renovations get in the way of his daily naps, and has found a nice comfy spot above the fray to take his naps.  Literally.

City Livin'

We're still plugging along, and as we see our once-filthy double-wide trailer slowly morphing into our home, things are looking up.  I'm slowly getting used to Little Rock and living on a military post.

For the most part, base life is quiet.  We enjoy the tranquil surroundings, with our house set on several grassy acres with big mature trees, surrounded on three sides by pretty extensive woods, with only one distant neighbor - a very nice family who mostly keep to themselves except when their dog comes over to visit our dogs.  We're one of only a handful of permanent base residents, and at quitting time there is a mass exodus from the front gate.  In addition, our house is located away from the offices where most hustle and bustle takes place.  Still, there are some things to get used to.  While we're away from the offices and large buildings, we are close to the airfield, and helicopters frequently interrupt the silence.  I can live with that, though.  In the evenings it's a nice area to talk a walk or sit out and enjoy the porch.  The nicest part is that it seems the base housing authority has a true "hands off" approach - we're pretty much free to do what we want.

So far, the biggest annoyance has been our proximity to the officer training classrooms as well as the military programs for "troubled" youth.  Most days cadence calls can be heard in the distance, reminding us that we do live on a military installation.  Now that I've gotten used to it, I really don't mind - EXCEPT when it starts at 4:30 a.m.  I can live with 6:00...but I think earlier than that is a bit much.  It seems I'd just settled into a nice deep sleep when I was ripped from my dreams by "SIR YES SIR!!!  WE ARE MOTIVATED SIR!!!"

Well, lately I'm not ever motivated at 4:30 a.m., unless it would involve catching a plane to a warm sandy beach (are you seeing a theme in my posts lately?).  Usually I'm able to get back to sleep, all the while feeling sorry for the poor schmucks who are out running around in the dark calling cadence.

The trips I make back to The Homestead have made me realize that it's feeling less and less like "home."  The house feels empty and strange.  So, I guess I'm making the transition just fine.  Hopefully soon we'll be moved, settled, and back to the stuff that makes our world turn.

Stay tuned for some pictures...I'm still figuring out my new phone. :)

System Reboot

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!  Especially to my own Mom, who has definately earned her stripes.  :)

I'm back online again, thanks to the purchase of a wireless card.  The reconnection to technology has me feeling a bit bloggy.  Also, having the Internets has brought me closer to sanity than I've been as of late.

To tell the truth, this relocation and house re-do process stinks to high heaven, and not just from the cat pee.  Once again, normal life has come to a screeching halt until the house is done and we're moved.  Judging by the way my brain and body seem to have both rebelled, I think I've reached my life limit of house redo's.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that we JUST finished totally redoing our supposed-to-be-permanent house outside of Mountain Home which we are now fretting about trying to sell without losing our pants or what goes into them before hubby deploys for a year.  Maybe it's all that, plus the fact that in my relatively short adult life, I've been involved in the redoing of numerous houses.  This doesn't include any of the family house redo's and remodels of my youth where I frequently found a paintbrush in my hand.  I firmly believe every home renovation, whether it's simple paint or full-blown remodel, removes years from a person's life span.  Or, maybe it has nothing to do with any of the above, and it's simply that my brain has had to switch gears so many times lately that the transmission is ailing.

My fervent wish, now that I'm in my mid-30's, is to stay in one house for at least five years.  My current record is 2.  While not every move has required home improvement, more have than not.  Every time before when improvements have been called for, I've charged into home remodeling head-first, proud that I don't have to depend on someone else to paint, hang and mud drywall, cut and install trim, and can step up to other similar tasks that crop up when one attempts to improve a home.  This time it's with my feet firmly dragging, though the decision seems subconscious and involuntary.  I'd gladly pay for the word to be done, but after materials, the funds just aren't there. 

My husband recently (very gingerly) commented on my recent inability to make a decision, and I couldn't argue, as I'd just stood in the pant section of Lowes for twenty minutes, body in a state of exhaustion from lack of sleep, caught between trying to decide whether to sit on the floor and sob or angrily curse the fates for making so many shades of similar green....before having a full-blown panic attack when he asked what I wanted to do for supper.

Stress does funny things to a person.

This past weekend, while hubby has been busy writing a paper for a class while buried under a major work load, at his urging I took off for my home town and the quiet, rural familiarity of my parent's house.  I was feeling a bit guilty for cutting out when there is so much work to done, until in the span of one hour I'd tripped over a paint can, dropped the cordless drill on the air mattress, puncturing it with a huge hole, then broke the dog's waterer and removed a chunk of my finger trying to fill it.  Sometimes you just need to walk away.

This small break also coincided with our bi-annual trip to the craft fairs in Northwest Arkansas, where Mom, a friend, and I all happily enjoyed the nice weather while perusing booths, admiring the clever items, pulling faces at the gaudy and ridiculous, and buying stuff we didn't at all need.  I came home with three hand-made rugs, a butter keeper (an ingenious hand-thrown clay contraption that allows for butter to be kept at room temperature for grand lengths of time without going bad, therefore making it possible to spread without destroying your toast or biscuit), a couple of crocheted nylon pot-scrubbers, some old-fashioned milled cornmeal, and a nice big white, yellow, and happily daisy-shaped "Welcome" sign for our new house.

One item I didn't buy, but stopped to read when it screamed for my attention, was a sign repeating a phrase I'd heard before, but it never hit home like it does now.  "While we're busy counting our troubles, we seldom stop to count our blessings."  Sometimes you need a break, and sometimes you need to know when to pay attention.  It's not likely I'll quit whining, and I'll definitely have bad days (probably until things are settled and we get a nice relaxing vacation), but there is a light to the end of this tunnel.  Even if it sounds cheesy or simplistic, it's true...I find myself heading back to Little Rock with a full trailer behind me and an improved attitude.  I should not only be glad for a house and a great husband, but that we have the ability to do the work needed ourselves, as well as family always eager to help us where we fall short. 

I probably should've bought that sign to hang in our soon-to-be-finished home. 

But then, maybe I'll just think of the phrase when I use the butter keeper.