Who Am I This Time?

Things Going on at the Side of the House...and a Side Trip

2010-04-18T19:41:00.014-04:00

The transformation of the side of the house began some weeks ago. It was the one side never painted, because it boasts (well, boasted) HUGE gardenia bushes that I was reluctant to prune until after bloom time. The problem is that I made that decision LAST year and the pruning and painting never happened. This year, Eric was ready to paint, and I had to make the grown-up decision to forgo flowers. So, Eric pruned the bushes drastically, to allow access to the house. I really should have taken a "before" picture. They were wild and crazy big.

Soon the side of the house will be the same color as the rest of the house. Goodbye, pinky-beige!

Eric makes the little house look even littler.

The end of a pinky-beige era.

Now it's my turn. I've wanted to do something with the side forever. This is my chance. At this point, it's more plan than action, but the supplies have been purchased. Like my little green wagon? I love it!

The planting is tricky since the phone line runs through the planting bed (and all the rest of the buried lines come in to the right of this bed). If I cut the wire, goodbye, internet!

A little progress, but I have to call it quits for the day. Other things must get done, too.

A week later:

We interrupt this narrative to show the azaleas just to the right of the planting bed. They only bloom a few days, so we have to appreciate them while we can.

I finished the work the same day as the last photo, but the sun had gone down too much to get a good picture. One week later the impatiens are filling in, but the zinnia on the left side is dying. It's supposed to be a perennial.

I hope that the flowers will fill in to the point that they touch and form one long line of red blooms.

I'm a little worried about the gardenias because they haven't put out much new growth. Next Saturday will be the next time that I'll be home on a watering day (water restrictions only allow us two specific days per week), so I'll put the sprinkler on the bed. That might help.

And yes, raking those leaves is on the to-do list. But not at the top.

Finally, a side trip to the other side yard, where my first raspberries have arrived. Yippee!

Home Improvement, part 203 of eleventy billion x infinity

2010-03-06T12:46:00.014-05:00

"They" may tell you that buying a home is a money and time pit, but you don't REALLY understand that concept until you actually own the home.

My tiny and now 34-year-old house has lost its original luster, such as it ever was. Slowly, slowly, slowly we (and by "we" I [mostly] mean my son Eric: a running family joke) are trying to regain that luster and in many cases add a little shimmer where none existed before.

These are old photos; all this work was done last year. But in documenting this, I must start somewhere, yes?

This isn't quite as "before" as it could be, but I didn't take pictures of the real before. The lower part of the siding had rotted and was quite a mess.

We were going to replace all the siding on the back laundry room, but due to some complications and financial issues and because it really wasn't necessary, we only repaired the damaged section.

During, which includes part of the side where the carport was enclosed, and the back:

The back of the house, before, not showing the siding repair. The paint was a 10-year paint, but it had been on the house for at least 15 years. Oops.

The side of the house. It's been enclosed and mostly primed, but not painted at this point.

The side of the house, after:

Finally, the back, after:

I use Vista and it features that tiny slideshow off to the side. One of the "before" pictures caught my eye today, and even though I knew how bad it looked before, having lived with the "after" for close to a year I was still surprised by how truly ugly "before" was.

Watch this spot. If I don't disappear for another year and if the improvements underway do indeed get finished in a timely manner, I'll be posting the front yard odyssey, too.

Who I Am

2010-03-06T12:32:00.001-05:00

Apparently who I am this time is invisible.

It's Taylor Mali Time

2009-03-23T16:20:00.001-04:00

As I head back to school after spring break, I need a little pep talk.

Help me, Taylor Mali:

Thank you, sir.

No Preventive Maintenance for You!

2009-03-11T09:51:00.004-04:00

A tree in my yard was hit by lightning last summer. It subsequently died.

I confirmed with my insurance agent this morning that removal of the dead tree is not covered under my policy. That's maintenance.

However, if the tree falls and hits my house, I am covered. That's a claim.

Shall I wait?

Springtime in Walmart

2009-03-07T10:38:00.004-05:00

I stopped by Walmart this morning to get something I didn't actually find.

The weather has done a welcome about-face here, and today's high should be 74. The forecast for the rest of the week is even better.

Sunshine, open windows, birds singing....our thoughts turn to flowers, and retailers know it. I spent a very long time looking at the tulips this morning, weighing the pros and cons of taking some home. In the end, I decided that I could take them all home without having to choose one color over the other or damaging my debit card.

And so I did. But because I'm generous, I'm sharing.

Here are your tulips. Happy spring!

As I Am an Honest Puck, or, Just One Time Let Me Put This on a Student's Paper...

2009-03-06T18:13:00.005-05:00

Incoherent.

Incomprehensible.

Nonsense.

Babbling.

Rubbish.

English?????

Are you sure you read the story?

I grade your paper sober. I would appreciate your doing me the courtesy of writing it that way.

(Should a student ever happen upon this blog, know that I love you, and only the occasional paper drives me to this level of despair. If you can read this, you didn't write that paper.)

Groundhog Day

2009-02-28T09:09:00.002-05:00

Today I wake up, survey the disaster that is my home, organize the stack of papers to be graded, grade. With some luck, I'll pull out a few hours to work on the disaster that is my home.

Tomorrow, I wake up, survey the disaster that is my home, organize the stack of papers to be graded, grade. With some luck, I'll pull out a few hours to work on the disaster that is my home.

Monday, I wake up, survey the disaster that is my home, organize the stack of papers to be graded, grade. With some luck, I'll pull out a few hours to work on the disaster that is my home.

It's good to have a plan.

Who Am I This Time?

2009-02-27T15:39:00.000-05:00

Kurt Vonnegut's classic story "Who Am I This Time?" features a woman new in town looking to make friends and fit in, so she joins a community theater company. There she meets a painfully shy and awkward man who becomes someone else entirely when he plays Stanley Kowalski to her Stella. Yet, is he really someone else, or is he the man inside who has up to then been too shy to emerge? The film version stars Susan Sarandon and Christopher Walken, a pair of actors who managed to get a few more jobs after that one.

I'm not necessarily looking to make friends since I have a swell collection of them, but if anything is true of the intertubes, it's that friendships do form between the bits and the bytes. If new friends happen along, welcome.

In the meantime, I'm musing about my own intentions in starting this blog. I'm probably kidding myself if I think I have time to maintain it, but as a recent convert to Facebook, I'm interested in a medium that allows for communication with my friends and family....but without character limits.

So, here's the blog, but now I have to consider the question: Who am I this time? More sophisticated and/or sensitive writers recognize that any piece of writing, especially personal writing, calls for the writer to take on a persona. Am I silly, stuffy, sanguine, garrulous, groggy, grumpy, professorial, pissed off, polished? (Or just showing off my vocabulary?) How much of myself do I reveal? Regardless of the form of communication, we humans always offer parts of ourselves while keeping other parts hidden. (And frequently we reveal other parts unwittingly.) Where is the line between what I have and what you get? Where should the line be?

Vonnegut's story questions the nature of identity and acknowledges that who we are on the inside doesn't always correspond with who we are on the outside (or how others perceive that outside us). Who I am on the blog may or may not correspond with who I am on the outside (or who you think I am). Let's find out.

If You Build It, They Will Come

2009-02-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

Somehow I suspect that this post title has been used before by someone, somewhere.

I have built it, on the easy and cheap.

Let's see who drops in.