Location, location, location

A few days ago when I walked out the front door and a robin fluttered up right in front of me, leaving a trail of sticks and garden scraps, I noticed he/she was building a nest. Right in my rose bush. Right outside my front door!! Not the quiet, peaceful place I would have chosen, though the rose bush is lovely. Today I peeked into the nest and saw she's laid eggs in there. We're going to have baby birdies right outside my door!

In the meantime, every time my housemate gets home from work, the robin flutters out of the nest practically into her face and makes her jump.



I'm just hoping this robin is smart enough to avoid the dogs in the backyard... they are much too quick, even for you winged creatures. For the sake of your babies, AVOID THE BACKYARD!

What have we learned today?

I don't know whether to count today as a minimal success or a complete failure. A few things I've learned:

-- Paint sprayers are finicky. They do make a beautiful, smooth coat of paint, but they are finicky and will randomly spit out paint in drops instead of that nice smooth spray finish. Grrr. Have a mini roller around to smooth them out before they dry.
-- Be careful about giving that extension cord a good tug to get enough room to go where you need to-- it may jump across and mark your freshly painted doors.
-- Though it was a nice idea to have shorter grass under the subfloor painting boards, it was actually a horribly idea on a windy-ish day. The wind keeps blowing grass flecks onto my newly painted doors. Grrr. Good thing this is just the primer which needs to be lightly sanded anyway.
-- A brief 10 minute rain shower can seriously rain on your parade. There they were, doors freshly painted, drying in the breeze... and then the clouds gathered and it started to sprinkle...ahhhh. I covered the doors with plastic which managed to be fine over the doors that had dried a bit, and totally made a mess with the doors that were still very freshly painted. Oh well. Again, this is just the primer and will need to be lightly sanded to remove 1. Cord marks 2. Paint drops 3. Grass flecks 4. plastic marks. So much for a forecast for a perfect day!

-- The project is much simpler when you lock the dogs inside as soon as the paint comes out (which I did because Suze kept dropping her ball in front of me, no matter what else I was doing, duh.)

To sum up... I have primed nearly all (meaning 4 are still drying and will be done in a few minutes) of both sides of all the doors in minimal time. The paint sprayer was both a great help and a great pain in the tush. Maybe someday when I'm a more experienced paint sprayer user, I'll have better luck (tomorrow perhaps?). I have learned a lot. I have apologized to the Almighty God for my discontent over that stinking rain shower. I am enjoying the day off in spite of all of that. And loving spring, most definitely loving spring.

The insanity continues...

I'm taking a couple days off work to regain a little sanity and ultimately to paint some cabinet doors (that have been waiting about six months!!!)

It is a gorgeous day, which means I can do the smelly and messy paint spraying outside. I've never used a paint sprayer and am a bit nervous about getting these doors right. I need to just take a deep breathe and plunge in.

Also, how on earth have my dogs killed two birds in two weeks??? These don't look like baby birds either. Is it just me, or do birds have WINGS and should really be able to escape two black dogs WITHOUT wings. Sigh. The massacre continues. I picked up that second bird, mowed half of the yard (so I've got a mowed surface and some old subfloor to paint on)... wish me luck. Stay tuned (or avoid this blog)-- I'm sure I'll be overdoing it on updates (and probably some whining too). In the meantime, I'm thrilled for a couple days off, the gorgeous weather, spring, and we shall see about this paint sprayer...

One last tiny thing

So... at midnight, as I was finally heading to bed the night of the fridge repair, I looked at the old motor sitting on the counter, and noticed a rubber gasket that appears to hold the fan blade in place (which I thought seemed a little wobbly in the new installation). Darn. I bet I was supposed to move that little rubber part to the new motor since it didn't come with one (this is why repair projects are better done before 11 pm). The next morning I came down, things seemed to be okay, but I was skeptical. When I got home from work, clearly the cold air wasn't circulating in the freezer and the fridge was too warm. Sigh. So I pulled it back apart, added the gasket, put it back together (a 20 minute project this time) and sure enough, the freezer is cold like it should be, the fridge is cool as it should be. No project is ever as simple as it should be... but still, the $50 part and not a new fridge. Still feeling good about that.

Maintenance Man Envy... again...

So a couple weeks ago the fridge started making this horribly loud squealing / screaming sound. Dang. It was in the middle of installing the floor, I just simply didn't have time to deal. So I went on repairclinic.com where I always figure out what is wrong with my appliances and figured out which part I needed... the evaporator fan. Hmmm. $50 and a few days later, the part arrived... and then sat on my counter for nearly two weeks, because the squealing had mysteriously stopped. I kept checking and things were cold... very cold in fact. Oddly the ice maker had stopped making ice cubes and instead made one huge ice dam in the freezer. Hmmm. Definitely time to replace the evaporator fan (which had apparently stopped working altogether).

Tonight was the night. I emptied the freezer, tossing some lost unidentifiable chunks from the far corners of the freezer, then unplugged it and headed out for a walk with the dogs and the homie. Lovely. Just lovely. Have I mentioned how much I love spring?

Back home again, the towels were soaked through and everything except that huge ice dam was pretty well defrosted. So we ate dinner. And waited. And changed towels and dumped pans of water. And waited some more. Finally, when it was 8:30 pm and I still couldn't even access the freezer because of that ice dam, I pulled out the hair dryer. And dried. and dried. and dried. and dried. It was a really big, really thick ice dam.

Finally I melted enough to remove the ice cube bin, enough to chunk off some additional pieces of ice, and eventually access the back panel. Six screws later, there was the fan motor to replace, I made the easy snap on connections, tested it (yay, fan spinning and not squealing) and reattached the back. So simple. Basically, once I could access the back panel, it was a 20 minute job. All the defrosting, and cleaning, and deicing... yeah, that took me the entire evening. Not to mention drying the floor (the towels upon towels that were necessary), moving the fridge, reloading all the food... sigh. It's done. We'll see in the morning if everything gets cold as it should- I am way to tired to sit here and babysit the fridge.

And yes, today was one of those days where I envy all of you with maintenance men... I could have used one today to be sure.

But optimistically, I bought a $50 part and not a $800 fridge. Could be worse. Though sometimes I think it is a curse to be handy (or to think you're handy).

A Friday edition of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

- Spring, glorious spring!

- Letters in the mail from my nephew

- I’m taking a few days off next week to work on painting those cabinet doors

- A new Godson on the way (pray for a smooth delivery and for all the adoption details to work out)

- Softball – doing a low key spring league of our own making, it’s awesome to be out and playing again

- Dreaming about Long Lake with my extended fam a lot lately- I can almost pretend it is coming right up!

- After being really spotty about exercising, I have an accountability buddy and so far I have exercised every day this week. Haven't started dropping sizes or anything, but I'm on the right track.

- Biking with the pups... we just love it. One of these days I'm going to make a video of the 5 minutes between me saying "Wanna go for a ride?" and actually hooking them to the bike and leaving. It's hilarious and involves a lot of jumping, howling with joy, prancing, singing, and howling some more.

The Bad:

- Trim: installing trim, cutting trim, miscutting trim, pretty much everything about trim

- The projects that never end

- The refrigerator that really needs a new evaporator fan (heck, I even have it sitting on my counter, uninstalled)

- No sense of accomplishments or marks of progress at work

- Brain turning to mush

- My mom has pneumonia -pray for a speedy recovery for her.

The Ugly:

- HAHAHAHA! I can’t say my kitchen floor anymore!!! HURRAY!

- The gardens… they really need weeding, renovation, repairs, and planting

- The dead bird in the yard that I forgot to clean up last night

- People looking up my home number to call me about work… really really ugly (just ask my housemate, who gets to hear my ranting every time it happens)