Chirky

Since Roger and I bought our first house last March, we've been hard at work remodeling it. So far, we have:

• peeled up the carpet
• tackled the ceilings (and then smoothed them out)
• tore all the wood paneling off the walls
• dismantled a built-in book shelf and furr down in the living room
• (for that matter, we removed furr downs throughout the entire house)
• installed a new garbage disposal and garage door opener
• replaced both exterior faucets
• removed a divider wall in one bathroom (between the sink and the toilet)
• rewired all electrical outlets and light switches
• installed new pipes for running future cable lines to all rooms (including study, media room and bedrooms)
• re-built a wall in the hallway leading to the master bedroom
• stripped hideous wallpaper from the kitchen, breakfast nook and master bathroom
• removed all baseboards and door trim
• decimated the wet bar
• demolished a closet
• built a new laundry room
• converted the old laundry room into a walk-in pantry
• re-textured all walls in the house, including closets

And, after all this time, we FINALLY get to paint. (Thankfully, Roger's parents are coming into town for Thanksgiving. Guess what they'll be doing while they're here? Hey, I'm not against parental labor. I'm an equal-opportunity kind of gal.) We've narrowed our base paint colors down to the following...

1. Barn Owl White, used as a base color in most rooms and bathrooms

2. Nantucket White, for trim and baseboards

3. Architectural Off-White, for ceilings

4. Crab Apple, A little too blue-based, we're trying to stick with yellow hues. Probably won't be used.

5. Expedition Khaki, for the sunny dining room and living room.

Also this weekend, we're laying tile in the laundry room and pulling up the carpet nail strips from around the house.

Here's what we have left to do:

• Install blinds
• Re-finish the edge of the fireplace (jagged from initial build, where built-in bookshelf was)
• Choose and install bamboo floors
• Install remaining tile in kitchen and bathrooms (will not be done until we remodel those rooms)
• Replace sliding glass doors with french doors (living room and master bedroom)
• And then the fun stuff: choosing lighting fixtures, furniture, home accents, etc.

For the past seven months, Roger and I have literally been living in a construction zone - often using construction floodlights to illuminate our paths. And if I were totally honest, I'd tell you that Roger has done 95% of the work. But I'm not going to be honest. Instead, I'm going to take credit for it, too. (By association, you see.)

The one thing I look forward to the most is printing our before-and-after pictures, framing them, and hanging them around the house. And then I plan on hosting an open house, and inviting everyone I know to see what progress we've made. Oh, what progress we've made!

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Three web sites that I've been enjoying lately:

My Super Hopeless Romance: It's kind of like reading teen romance, full of angst and confusion and raging hormones. Except not in a scandalous way. If you decide to read it, start from the beginning. But first, a warning: this story is addictive. It is the first site I check every day, and several times throughout the day, for updates. It's like a good book you can't put down, except that you're forced to put it down because the story isn't finished.

Moshi Monsters: I first heard about Moshi Monsters from iJustine.com (another site worth checking out – Justine is this gorgeous video blogger with a fabulous life, and every time I watch one of her videos, I want to go shopping with her). Moshi Monsters are adoptable pet monsters that you have to feed and keep happy. It is kind of lame, and yet somehow I'm still addicted. Or at least obligated by my deep, constant fear of failure. Must. Keep. Monster. Alive. It's also potentially creepy, because most of the people who have accounts on Moshi Monsters are children and tweens. But really, I'm not creepy. I'm just shopping for my monster at the Gross-ery store.

Ancestry.com: Several weeks ago, perhaps an outcome of pregnancy (before I miscarried), I suddenly decided it was important that I know my ancestry. (Or maybe it was reading that Barack Obama and Brad Pitt are cousins.) Anyway, I signed up for the black hole that is ancestry.com, and thereafter stayed up until two or three in the morning searching for long-lost relatives. I got all the way back to the 1500s on one side of my family, and listen: that site? Is addictive. Especially when you start researching major ports (like Ellis Island!) to see if you can find your ancestor's name among millions of other immigrants. Do not get sucked into the ancestry.com vortex unless you have a lot of time to waste. Seriously.

Edited to add:
Failblog: A chronicle of humanity's stupidity. If you are not reading Failblog, you are missing the best of the Internet. I just started reading it, and already am sucked in. A fine example: Dance Fail. I've watched this video ten times and I'm STILL laughing.

Any sites that you're keen on sharing?

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(This is a series in Weird Things About Me. Part One is here. Part Two is here. Part Three is here. Part Four is here.)

I have two pairs of sneakers, and I dislike both of them. The first are covered in paint – and therefore have been deemed my grubby shoes for things like painting and gardening (Okay, honestly, I don't really garden. But if I did, I'd wear these shoes while digging potatoes and planting onions, the things that I imagine all gardeners do.) – and the second are just a tad too small.

I'm not quite sure when my feet began growing again, but my toe is suddenly bumping up against the tip of the shoes every time I wear them. I'm anxious that they're causing my toenails to split (which, they're not splitting, but I must tell you: I am completely obsessed with short toenails. I cannot stand them to be any length, and my stomach turns when I see people whose toenails resemble claws. In fact, right now – just thinking about it – I started to gag).

So I've started looking for a new pair of exercise shoes, and this is the weird thing about me: they're all so white. And I do not like white shoes. Frankly, they're embarrassing. I feel totally self-conscious while wearing them, as if everyone is staring, blinded by all that whiteness. That's why all my exercise shoes are grey. Grey with pink, or grey with orange, or grey with turquoise, but always grey. White shoes are just too…new looking, I guess. Which brings up another weird thing about me entirely.

I think I have a problem with new things. If I buy new clothes, I cannot wear them for at least one week. (Unless, of course, it was an emergency purchase and is required to be worn that day.) I don't know when I started doing this, but let me tell you: it was a real problem in junior high and high school, specifically at the beginning of a school year and at Christmas.

I never wanted to be that person who wore all their new clothes at once, and then had nothing new after a week. And so I would spread mine out: the first day I would wear nothing new. The second day I would wear a new sweater with my broken-in jeans. The third day I would wear a previously worn outfit with new shoes. And this would continue for two or three weeks, until everything had been worn once (but none at the same time), as if I was introducing each new piece to my school and my friends, even though probably no one cared. Except me, obviously.

I am the same way about food. I can eat food while sitting in a restaurant with no problem. But if I go to a convenience store to get a drink or a candy bar, or if I go through the fast food drive-thru, I cannot eat the food immediately. I am not that person who tears into their fries while pulling away from the payment window. Instead, I require myself to wait until I am out of eyeshot of the fast food joint (or at least out of the parking lot), and then I can unwrap my burrito, or my burger, or whatever.

Honestly, maybe this is the weirdest thing about me. Does anyone else have any similar behaviors? (Or perhaps admitting the full extent of The Crazy puts me in a category all my own. Either way, you choose.) (Like on Election Day*!)

* Okay, not so much like Election Day, but only because the color of my shoes and my distance from the drive-thru are THAT MUCH MORE IMPORTANT.

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