PLEASE, Sparky!

Dear Sparky,

Will you and your twin sister please, please, Pretty PLEASE move into these back-to-back twin houses??????



 

They are mirror twins, just like you two!

Remember when you explained to me what mirror twins are? How you and your sister have the same contact lens prescriptions, only you have to put the lenses in opposite eyes? And you blew my mind?

Okay, well, please consider moving here. You could teach me so much more about twinship and twindom and twinny twin-twin stuff. We'd only be a few miles away, even after we move to our new house. Maybe your sister could play pranks on us by popping by and pretending to be you.

Do you ever try to fool your kid, or hers? Does it work?

And you could totally bring your little sister and Sparky's Problem and Sparky Jr. along, too! It would be so much fun.

Books 7 & 8: People With Dirty Hands & From the Ground Up

I've read a few hundred pages of War and Peace, but I've been so distracted with The House that I'm having trouble spending time with it. So, I quickly re-read a couple of my favorite books about gardening.

People with Dirty Hands, by Robin Chotzinoff, is actually about gardeners rather than gardening. Chotzinoff writes little portraits of various gardeners she meets (and some people who are not necessarily gardeners, but who are involved with plants). There is a tomatophile, chili growers and roasters, rose lovers, urban gardeners, and a Louisiana witch doctor, among others.

It's fun and funny and kind of implies that that gardeners are supposed to be a little kookie.

From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden is by Amy Stewart. She tells of learning how to garden while living in Santa Cruz, California. Her climate is quite a bit different from mine, but some of her lessons definitely transfer to my yard: test the soil and amend it before you start planting, arrange plants so they receive the proper amount of light, and make peace with a garden that looks imperfect.

Stewart also provides a few recipes and specific pruning tips.

Both books also give some resources for ordering seeds and plants (though People is 14 years old).

I've been doing lots of looking at seed catalogs and plant websites and imagining my soon-to-be garden. I'm also trying to amass local info on when to plant different things, and what should be started inside first, and how much to water, and and...

My paint colors have been chosen for weeks, and I know what I want in my garden. Now all I need are the keys!
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New House?

It seems like I haven't been here forever, but it's only been a week. Phew!

My work was crazy-busy for a few weeks, AND we are under contract on a house, so that has been making FEEL super busy even though I'm mostly just moving in there in my mind.

Now, it is only like 90% certain that this will be our house. But our hearts already live there. Within two weeks, it should be completely settled one way or the other. Then I can REALLY start gushing and planning (okay, I've already planned out almost every detail of the entire property, but let's pretend that I am holding myself back just in case it doesn't happen).

Here is the view from just inside the front door.

 

The sellers have allegedly removed those peel-n-stick mirror squares from the wall AND repaired the wall underneath. We'll see.

Please note the wallpaper border in the kitchen. I'll be removing that on Day 1 or Day 2. Hopefully it will come down much more easily and quickly than did the USA VARSITY SPORTS border in our current place.

Here's part of the back yard. There is some grass and there is a lot of rock landscaping. We are thrilled with the rock because we don't have to do anything to maintain it right now. BUT, we can just move it and cut through the plastic liner and put in trees, bushes, flowers, and my garden.

Did you already know that my destiny is to be a Crazy Gardening Lady? Well, get ready for lots of posts about it. I'm window shopping online and in catalogs and have already picked out tons of plants that I HAVE to have right away. Lots of flowers for cutting, and flowers for leaving outside, and things that smell good, and things that are pretty, and lots of food plants: berries, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, melons, grapes, herbs, and so on.

Of course I am also drawn to weird-looking plants, and I'm sure I will include some novelties in the yard.

 

And here is the advertised "Wet Bar" which is dry as a bone. It is enormous and quite perplexing. It is very tall, and it takes up most of that section of the basement, so where would people be hanging out? I don't know if we'll decide we can make it work, or if sledgehammers will finally be coming into our lives.

 

And here's our inspector, Jim, checking out the strange old washing machine. The machine does not have any knob for selecting the temperature of the water. ?????



 

Don't worry, we already chose all new appliances. AND we entered a drawing to win a bright red washer and dryer. If we win, I'll have to adjust my paint choices for the laundry room, but it will be totally worth it.

Okay, I swear I will work on Neighborhood Confessions and try to write a lot this week. Once we close on the house, I doubt I will be able to think about anything else for a month or a year or forever. Probably just a month a two. :)

Stuff in People's Houses

We've been looking for a house to buy, and while poking around in people's homes, you find a lot of weird stuff. Like this maybe-dentist's chair in a basement. What was going on down there? They also left a tanning bed and treadmill stored in the garage, and a pair of strappy silver high heels by the door. Just in case!



What about this 1/2 lizesize white tiger, inexplicably hidden in a basement? If you go to the trouble of locating, buying, and transporting 1/2 lifesize white tiger to your house, I think you should display it proudly!



And this whole house looked like this: a huge mess of stuff everywhere. How do they think they'll ever sell this place when it's so full of mess? There was a VCR in the master bathtub.



Many of the houses we've looked at are only a few years old, but they look like a bunch of destructive teenage boys took out all their angst on the walls and their urine on the carpets for a decade. It's been really surprising to see how badly people treat their property!

We actually pretty much liked one house, but completely walked away when we went outside and the next door neighbor's bad dogs barked incessantly (stirring up ALL the dogs in the whole neighborhood, too). Fuck that. We do not like to listen to bad dogs barking non-stop (or even some-stop).

I'll keep you posted on our adventures in househunting.

Yeah, that's more formal

At my job, sometimes I check other people's editing work and sometimes they check mine. Sometimes I make mistakes or miss something, and sometimes my colleagues make outrageous errors!

Just tonight, someone had left the mistake "prehistoric to gambling" instead of replacing it with "predisposed to gambling." By the way, the speaker was saying that Asians gamble more than any other people. Maybe the editor thought that Asians' love of gambling is rooted way back in time.

This is my latest favorite "correction" of my own work:

I prefer the more formal “without further adieu” vs. “ado”

It just doesn't get much stupider.