The extra dowel came yesterday to complete our Expedit bookcase. I guess they wanted to be safe, because they sent us six instead of just the one we needed. We started putting it together right after dinner, and it took about 2 hours, as is the case with a lot of IKEA furniture; that's how they keep their prices low. Anyway, Jack did a great job and remained quite patient as Kent endeavored to help, and then I started filling it up right away while Jack was putting Kent to bed.

When Jack finally got a chance to walk out to the living room and see how the organizational part was coming, I asked him whether it made his heart go pitter-patter like it did for mine. I should have taken some "before" pictures of the little metal shelving unit we used to have a lot of this stuff on, because it was pretty terrible. Our cookbooks and DVDs were overflowing on the little metal thing, and now they have such neat little cubbies. I like the fact that, even though it's the same stuff, it has the appearance of organization simply by being in a grid. The baskets at the bottom are for some of Kent's toys, and we have a shelf of his books at the bottom as well, right where he can reach them, instead of the weird round basket we used to put them in, or the piles on the floor where they usually ended up. The red boxes are meant to hold some of Kent's stuff, like his art and his keepsakes like ticket stubs and other stuff we want to save for him. I also have a cubby for a couple of cat figurines and a framed cat picture with a cat playing Scrabble, a cubby for my little glass paperweights and a blue and white vase I randomly bought in college, and a cubby for art that holds a couple of art books and a canvas that Kent painted last year. There are even two empty cubbies right now, but I'm sure I'll find a purpose for them soon.

This bookcase has a ridiculous number of possibilities. I am so in love with this piece of furniture. I want everyone I know to have one. When I win the lottery, that's the first thing on the list. Okay, I should probably start buying lottery tickets or something. Nevermind.

I had a purpose in mind for the little metal shelving unit, too, as soon as we got all that other stuff off of it. It's the perfect size to hold Kent's art supplies so that he'll be able to get them out when he wants and will also know right where to put them away when he's done. I'm starting gradually with that, only putting out his crayons, paper, stickers, and his box of stringing beads for now. We'll work up to having the markers, glue, pompoms, paint, etc. within his reach, but I think he'd just be too overwhelmed if I put everything out at once.

One of the tenets I love about the Montessori program, which is also just good organizational advice in general, is that it's important to have a consistent place for everything so that we know where to find things and get used to putting them back every time we use them. Kent and other small people like him need to have predictability in the space around them, so our lack of organization wasn't doing him any favors. I can already feel within me that this system is going to spill over into other areas of the house and our lives in general.

Now you see why we needed a whole road trip to Houston just to get this. The Expedit is so much more than a piece of furniture. I think I've just decided that I need to make an IKEA tag for my blog.

Labels: house, IKEA, photography

• posted by erica 5/05/2009 09:46:00 AM
•  2 comments

We got a new roof today. We lost a few shingles during Gustav, and after a lot of quotes and an insurance company visit, we learned that it needed to be replaced, so the guys came and did the thing today. Jack promises to blog about it in more detail soon.

Somehow, Kent took a 45-minute nap amidst all the pounding and stomping. What a champ.

Labels: house, hurricanes, photography

• posted by erica 12/12/2008 10:51:00 PM
•  0 comments

A friend of mine recently asked this, and I realized I haven't really posted on my day-to-day existence much lately. Incidentally, sorry to those of you who've sent emails asking how I am... I can reach the most people with the least effort by blogging instead of writing emails, and since my computer time is at a premium for like the next decade, I have to do it this way. Kent has bravely won his first battle against an ear infection, but he's still teething (No Teeth yet, just bumps), so sleep is erratic and awake time is full of irritability. For me and for Kent. We're making it, though.

Friday was a blur of crying and frustration — one of those days when I didn't eat lunch until 2:00 (and then it was only because I drove through someplace and took lunch to Jack's office so he could hold Kent while I ate), and I didn't take a shower until about 4:30. This is not the norm, but it's happened a few times lately, and on those days, I feel completely defeated by parenthood. But once Kent goes to bed, Jack and I spend some time relaxing or watching TV or whatever, we sleep, and the next day is brighter.

I was about to do a run through of the past several days, but I suddenly can't remember anything we did on Saturday. Oh, right. We went to the eye place and I ordered glasses, and then we went to Lowe's and ordered a water heater, which was just installed yesterday. Our old one was still working pretty well, except in the summer when the attic got too hot and the thermostat on the water heater thought that the water was already hot enough, so it stopped heating... that was always fun. The thing that was making me increasingly nervous, though, was the fact that the water heater was as old as our house (24 years) and lived in the attic, so if it rusted through or something, we'd be looking at flooding throughout our house and thousands of dollars worth of damage. Not fun. Now the new water heater is in, heating beautifully and helping me breathe a sigh of relief.

Sunday was a nice day. We went to church for the first time in a month (out of town for two weeks, then ear infection last week), catching up with our friends and getting to see Kent's friend Quentin be baptized. Quentin is three weeks younger than Kent, so we're calling them friends already... especially since the last time they got together, they sucked each other's thumbs. Very cute.

After lunch at home and a short Kent nap, Jack and I decided we should go for a walk out on the levee downtown, since it was a sunny day and we all needed some fresh air. We made a pit stop inside the Louisiana Art & Science Museum, which we'd never visited before but which we decided we should get a family membership to when Kent gets a little older. That place rocked. Then, we walked out on the levee, where it was a tad too windy for us to stay long, but we got some great pictures.

Here's Kent nursing while we sat on a bench. Like I said, it was kind of too windy, but he was hungry, so he didn't mind much. We were both wrapped up in Jack's fleece jacket, making it nice and cozy.


Closer shot of him nursing, taken by me. This is the adorable, calm face I see while he's eating.


I also managed to snap a good pic of the old state capitol building before we left. I love this, especially the fleur de lis fence. *So* Louisiana.

Okay, well, that gets us to Sunday evening, and I still haven't finished this post, though I've been working on it all day off and on. Maybe I'll be like Anne and post in two-day chunks, though her regaling us with tales of their Christmas cruise to Australia is probably slightly more interesting than my tales of water heaters, levees, and No Teeth.

I'll post another update soon, if I don't completely run out of steam. Bath time.

Labels: house, Kent, Louisiana

• posted by erica 1/15/2008 01:00:00 PM
•  1 comments

Jack and I celebrated our third anniversary on Wednesday. =) I cooked a yummy dinner of Chicken and Non-Chicken Castellina (an Olive Garden dish I got the recipe for), and even though we had said no presents or anything this year, Jack brought me home three long-stemmed red roses. He put those in a bottle, and he lit three candles in our crystal candle holders, and we had a really nice dinner. Then, we watched I ♥ Huckabees, which is an odd film in the genre of wacky comedies like Wes Anderson movies (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, etc.). We enjoyed it, but it needs a second viewing, so I think we're going to watch it again this weekend since we have it for a few more days.

Also on the agenda for this weekend is painting our bedroom, since my mom got us paint for Christmas (among other things). We have a light blue color called Woodlawn Blue Angel, which will go in our bathroom and the recessed part of our bedroom where the counter and sink and mirror are, and we have a soft brown with a little bit of pink called Irish Tea to go on the rest of the walls of our bedroom. (I had wanted a different brown color called Dust Bunny, but I couldn't find the paint swatch when we went back to Lowe's, and my mom found this other color that has a little more pink to soften it up, which will be great.) The theory is that the two colors will help separate the bathroom space from the bedroom space. I'll take pictures once it's done and we have everything on the walls. We'll have some new things on the wall, too; we found some cute square cards at Ikea with different heart-shaped things (rocks, feathers in a heart shape, etc.), and my aunt and uncle bought us some white square frames for the cards. I'm excited to see all of it on the walls, especially since we just have boring white right now with very few things hanging up.

I'm working on a Christmas post about our trip to Colorado, but it involves photos, so it's taking a while. Check back soon for more on that!

Labels: house, husband things, kitchen adventures

• posted by erica 12/30/2005 01:01:00 PM
•  0 comments

We just got our new sofa on Thursday, so we've been having a good time this weekend, lounging on it (as you can see) and getting used to having a nice piece of furniture to sit on. =) Our old sofa has made the long journey to the thrift store, thanks to one of Jack's co-workers, who came with his truck on Saturday and carted it away for us. Hurray!

Labels: house

• posted by erica 7/24/2005 05:57:00 PM
•  0 comments

Jack was mowing today, and he spotted the fact that two different flowers in our yard are finally producing blooms!



This is one of our ground cover daylilies, which we hope will soon engulf the little area under our live oak. The daylily patch is surrounded by creeping myrtle, which hasn't done much yet, but after a few years, it should fill in nicely.




Here's one of our Dutch irises that we planted in a small clump next to our fence. We got a variety of purples, whites, and yellows, but the purple came up first. The irises are interspersed with a few mounds of dark green grass, which you can sort of see in the picture, and they're right next to some blue delphinium bushes that haven't had much activity yet.

Hurray for successful gardening ventures!

Labels: house

• posted by erica 5/01/2005 07:36:00 PM
•  0 comments

Jack and I were productive citizens today. We'd been meaning for a while to lay down this black landscaper's tarp stuff that we got at Lowe's to help stop the propagation of weeds in one area of our backyard. We have a large area under a live oak that we thought long and hard about, since it doesn't support regular grass (too much shade). We ordered a bunch of low-sun plants, mostly ground cover, from Michigan Bulb Company last month, and we knew that we needed to clear out that space of all the many weeds before the plants were shipped. They ship things when they're ready to go into the ground, so my hope is that it'll be sooner rather than later! Now that the ground is ready to receive them, I want to see all my new plants. =) Anyway, we both felt very productive after all our raking and pulling of weeds and laying of tarp.

It's been a fairly routine week, but Friday was great. We had our first test in Transformation, and I found out today from the professor that I had the highest grade, a 98. Sko me! I had emailed him Friday afternoon to find out when he thought he might have the tests graded, because I felt good about it but still wanted to know whether I had actually done the things right that I thought I had done right. He wrote me back today and told me exactly which two points I missed--one of them, I knew I had missed, and the other was something I hadn't considered in framing one of my answers. In any case, it was a very well-written test; he required that we not only know the equations and definitions he had given us, but also know how to apply them and answer questions about them. A good test has the capacity to help you learn as you take it, and this one absolutely did that. It made my day!

Also adding to my elation over Transformation has been the weather of late. I love spring in February! It's sunny but not TOO sunny, warm but not humid, and I've had a chance to wear my fabulous new yellow-and-green flip flops from Payless. They're so fun. I'm going to have to find a spot on our new end of campus for productive studying in the sun. There's an amphitheater next to our old building that's really nice for enjoying sun, but I haven't seen much of anything near us except concrete benches with no backs, which aren't too comfy or even particularly inviting. Luckily, my office gets a lot of sun, so it's a nice place to be in the afternoon anyway. Now that we have spring, I wish its loveliness on everyone else in the hemisphere!!

Labels: house, Louisiana, school

• posted by erica 2/20/2005 09:29:00 PM
•  0 comments

We've made it home after several days of driving and lots of fun visits. We had enough time this evening to put up the mirror and shelves that Mimi and Popop got us for Christmas. More updates tomorrow, it's time for bed!

Labels: house

• posted by jack 1/02/2005 11:15:00 PM
•  0 comments

Another week goes by, and I'm faced with another weekend in which to relax, do some schoolwork, and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing to improve my life. The first thing I hope to get done is to get a handle on our backyard. When Jack's mom was here last weekend, she and I talked a bit about various plants we could install and how we can begin to control our weed problem. Yay! So I have to get a giant thing of concentrated Roundup to kill the manifold weeds under our live oak (grass doesn't grow there because of the shade, and the weeds have gotten a bit out of hand since Jack doesn't mow there). We're also going to pull out the large tree-like weeds that are next to the fence we share with our General Mouton neighbor (as opposed to the General Ewell neighbor, since we live on the corner and have one neighbor on each street). We'll only do that second thing if the temperature this weekend drops below 80 during the day, which, after this week, is not looking very likely. We had 90-degree highs two days in a row. Ridiculous.

After we de-weed, we plan to put down landscaping tarp or whatever it's called so that the weeds will be thwarted but water can get through. Once that's down, we need to put down a bunch of mulch, and then we can plant hostas and bulbs. Jeannette directed me to a fabulous place to order bulbs, Michigan Bulb Company, and I've found an assortment of different colored tulips and also some Dutch irises to order from them. I can just picture those in patches among the hosta, and I can't wait to see all the colors! We won't order the bulbs for a little while yet, since they can go into the ground as late as November or December here, because I want to make sure we're actually going to get the other stuff done in preparation for the bulbs' arrival.

When we're not at Lowe's or working in our yard, I plan for us to be inside watching the first season of Babylon 5 on DVD, since I just checked out the DVD box from the public library. Babylon 5 is my favorite television show ever, and though I've seen every episode at least once, Jack isn't very familiar with it, so I must assimilate him. B5 takes place in the middle of the 23rd century on a newly-built space station whose main mission is to facilitate peace among many alien races, so the story is full of intrigue, cultural obstacles, interesting make-up effects, and philosophical/political arguments. My dad always said he thought of it as a political drama in a sci-fi setting rather than just a sci-fi show a la Star Trek. Whereas most television shows are episodic and have everything resolved after an hour, Babylon 5 features ongoing debates and wars, and there's an interesting question from the first season that doesn't get answered until midway through the third (so when it does get answered, it's a fabulous moment!). I just love it. I think that the unresolved aspect is what attracts me most to shows like that, which is probably why I'm so passionnate about 24 as well (since one day lasts for an entire season of the show). I heard that the series creator of B5, J. Michael Straczynski, envisioned the whole five-year story from the very beginning, so each season and, consequently, each episode, is a fleshing out of the story without losing sight of the bigger picture. It adds a great deal of continuity that I find to be lacking in most television dramas.

At some point this weekend, I also need to make a trip to the library for photocopying (ugh) and work on writing my Philosophical Inquiry paper for my research class. I've written my outline for said inquiry already, so my job now is simply to flesh that out with a bit of florid prose and the phrase "Therefore, the premise of this essay is that..." This is a big thing for my professor. She, like others I've learned from, is a big fan of using a catch-phrase like that in assignments so that (1) she'll be able to find the premise easily, and (2) we'll be forced to boil our argument down to a premise instead of hinting at it in several sentences. She admits that we shouldn't necessarily use phrases like that outside grad school assignments (i.e., in actual papers we try to publish), but I'm sure I'd get docked a bunch of points if I left out the essential "Therefore, the premise of this essay is that..."

I made a fun trip to the produce place yesterday, and I was so excited about all my veggie finds (including huge red peppers for 99 cents a pound!) that I came home and promptly planned out several meals on our refrigerator white board. I didn't assign them to particular days or anything, but now I have at least six meals in mind that we have everything for. I get tired sometimes of planning dinners--cooking doesn't bother me, but trying to remember before I get home what we have and figuring out what I might need from the grocery store is a bit exhausting to do every single day. Every once in a while, I tell Jack that he's in charge of dinner, which doesn't even mean that he has to cook, just that he has to figure out what we'll eat. So having several complete meal ideas all ready to go is very exciting to me, especially since they're so enticing: spaghetti squash, okra, and baked apples; veggie sandwiches on bagels with soup; eggplant-ricotta rolls and whipped sweet potatoes; veggie omelets and grits; and fresh linguine alfredo with red peppers and mushrooms. I love cooking.

Bon week-end!

Labels: house, kitchen adventures, school, what to watch

• posted by erica 10/22/2004 04:01:00 PM
•  0 comments

Alright, this week has been close enough to Fall that I've decided I can refer to the season for real. It was almost chilly yesterday, and it got down to nearly 40 degrees last night! Woohoo! I love crispness, even when it's sunny like it was today. It makes me feel quite happy and school-moody. And the cats and I have enjoyed having the windows open; I because of said crispness, they because of all the fun things to see and listen to outside. Celia is downright confused at why the birds are so loud, but they both like to sit in the windowsills and watch stuff.

Jack's parents are coming this weekend, so we're really excited. We'd be happier if they were going to stay past Monday morning, but I understand that they have lives and work. Ann is in Oklahoma or Kansas right now visiting family, and she'll be bringing us a family china cabinet in their truck since her sister got a new china cabinet to go with her new house! Her sister actually bought it in North Carolina when Jack and I got married (almost two years ago), and Ann and Ron kept it at their house until she was ready for it. Ron, on the other hand, is driving his motorcycle all the way from Virginia. We mapquested the journey, and it said that the shortest route was 890-some miles. If he can do a journey of 1000 miles or more in 24 hours or less, he can have it certified (by whom, I have NO idea) as an Iron Butt ride. So he might be altering his route or starting from higher up in Virginia. In any case, he won't be arriving until Sunday morning, and then he'll be able to toss his motorcycle in the back of their truck for the drive back on Monday. Crazy, right?

In preparation for their visit, we took the other half of the pumpkin cheesecake out of the freezer this afternoon because, with Jeannette's help, we went through the first half this week. Mmmmm. It's SO good. By the way, the recipe I used is from recipegoldmine.com, so feel free to try it yourself. I substituted ginger snaps for the graham cracker crust, and it complements the flavor of all the spices in the cheesecake so well! Heed my warning about buying ginger snaps that are too snappy, however. Don't be a hero. Use a food processor instead of brute force.

Labels: family, house, kitchen adventures

• posted by erica 10/15/2004 10:34:00 PM
•  0 comments

After painting in full force yesterday and retouching today, Jack and I decided we had done well enough, pulled off all the painter's tape, and walked away in satisfaction. Once the paint REALLY dries and we get everything back in its place, I'll take pictures. Yay us. We didn't even have to have anyone tell us what to do or anything. I feel so grown-up. =)

Labels: house

• posted by erica 9/19/2004 04:44:00 PM
•  0 comments

After much hulabaloo, we finally got around to buying paint and tackling the guest room. We got started after dinner tonight, so we only did one wall and the edges where I had put painter's tape. Tomorrow will be the main painting day, and I'll have to do the top of the wall carefully so we don't paint the white ceiling. Jack has already gotten carried away with the rolling action and has tried to paint over one of the outlets.

It looks like one coat may do it, but we'll see. In any case, the color (Monet's lilies) is even better that I could have dreamed. Yay, paint!

Labels: house

• posted by erica 9/17/2004 09:47:00 PM
•  1 comments

So, Jack and I were out in the lawn today looking at our giant oak tree and thinking about our fence. We were out there for less than five minutes, and suddenly, my legs began to itch like crazy. I came inside quickly, only to discover that I had gotten roughly ten bug bites on my legs in the short span of time we were outside. Jack got several too, and they're all getting huge and ugly and red. I quickly deduced that we need to spray our lawn to kill whatever swarms of insects are living in it, since the bites occurred on our legs and were likely from things that jumped out of the wild, untamed grass. (Well, it gets mowed, but I still consider it untamed, since we have grass growing on top of grass from years of neglect by previous owners.)

Who has suggestions for products that you've used or heard about for killing bugs in the lawn? We also have a fire ant problem, so some kind of comprehensive spray would be great. And honestly, I don't care if it kills some of the grass, as long as we're left with a little bit. =) I welcome your comments below or emails to me on the subject. Thanks.

Labels: house, Louisiana

• posted by erica 9/06/2004 11:13:00 AM
•  2 comments

I just got out of a cold shower, because our water heater seems to be on its last legs. Fun, right? Luckily, the water heater is still covered under our home warranty, so Jack called the warranty people this morning and paid the $45 fee to have someone come look at it. The nice thing is that whatever they have to do to it will be covered under the $45, including replacing it if that's what needs to happen. It's the only major appliance in the house that isn't new, so replacing it would be fab. The annoying thing is that because this is Friday and we have a long weekend coming up, they can't come until Tuesday morning. However, since we're house-sitting for the Smyths until the end of this month, we can take showers there for the next couple of days, at least. They told us before they left to "make ourselves at home," including doing laundry if we needed to, so we might do a load or two of warm-water clothes. I'm about to start a cold-water load right now, since we have plenty of cold water, but Jack might run out of work attire sooner than we get hot water here.

I was a bit of a bum today, because my morning class (8:40) was cancelled and I asked Dr. Perry if I could miss the sophomore lecture I TA for (it meets at 11:40). This isn't something I'd normally even ask, but many of the students were going to miss class for Fall Fest because Tiger Band had to play the fight song and stuff in the quad, and he had told them Wednesday that whoever came today would just take a practice quiz. Driving out to school for just the sophomore class wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but the parking lot is full after about 8:30 a.m., so unless I came at the normal time and just hung out for 3 hours, I wouldn't have been able to find a spot on campus. Ugh. I had a nice morning of waking up late (9:00), eating grits for breakfast, watching some West Wing reruns on Bravo, and then hopping into a cold shower. =)

The semester is shaping up quite nicely so far. The only drawback is that I'll have three papers all due at the very end of the semester, so I'll be coming up with a personal schedule for the papers so I can get them all done without killing myself. I'll also be tutoring another music ed grad student in theory this semester. She emailed me yesterday and said that she needs to work on theory a bunch, but that she wants to work through a textbook/workbook on her own and come to me bi-weekly with questions or for supplementary material, etc. I enjoy tutoring, and this will be good practice and a small bit of extra money, and since it's only an hour or so every other week, it shouldn't prevent me from getting my other work done! She got my name from the music ed professor who kind of supervised my tutoring this summer (I had free reign, but she wanted me to report to her with the two students' progress), so I was glad that this music ed prof thought enough of me to recommend me to someone else, even though one of my tutees from this summer passed and the other didn't. They both had a long way to go, so frankly, I was happy that one of them passed!

Jack and I are going to Blue Bayou tomorrow, the water park for which we have season passes, since this is the last weekend they'll be open this year. We're going to try to get some things done around the house tomorrow afternoon, and then we're driving to New Orleans to meet Jeannette and Chris for dinner at a yummy Mexican restaurant called Serrano's Salsa Company. I know there are at least two in Louisiana, but I'm not sure if it's a nationwide chain or not. However, if there's one near you and you enjoy Mexican food, even just a little, you should definitely try it. I had shrimp fajitas the only other time we went, and they marinated the shrimp in this fantastic tequila stuff and then grilled it with a bunch of great vegetables. Yum. I'm so excited. We're going to go back to their apartment afterward to hang out and possibly play Mah Jong. I've never learned all the rules having to do with scoring (they're WAY complex), so we'll just be playing it to see who wins each round, but that's probably more fun than having to play 16 rounds anyway. =) Jack and I played 2-person Mah Jong last night, which doesn't really exist but can work for the purposes of what we wanted, and he won about 5 rounds to my one. The one I won was the shortest game I've ever played; I was dealt almost all of a winning hand at the very beginning, but that has never happened before and will probably never happen again. I think karma was just so tired of my losing that she said, "Okay, FINE, win one already!!"

Happy Labor Day weekend!

Labels: eating out, house, husband things, school

• posted by erica 9/03/2004 02:06:00 PM
•  2 comments

Oh my goodness, I love air conditioning. It feels sooooo good in here now. The A/C guys just left. They were here for about five hours to replace all our stuff, check the ductwork, etc., and as it turns out, some of our vents weren't even connected to the A/C before anyway!

Patti hid under the bed the whole time and I shut Celia in the bathroom. The guys kept leaving the back door open when they were bringing stuff in and out, so I figured it was safer just to put her away.

This is all very exciting. Of course, it means we're a bit further in debt, but our house will be liveable! Jack will be extra excited when he gets home from work this evening and it's cooler inside than outside! We were surviving as it was, but I know we couldn't have gone much longer, since it's already in the 90s most days and promises to get hotter. Now we can even cook during the day without fear of suffocating in the kitchen. =)

Labels: house

• posted by erica 5/27/2004 01:22:00 PM
•  0 comments

This may take a minute to load... sorry. =)


Here's the kitchen window before...






And here's the window after...






The curtains are so cool that I've included a detail shot here...






And finally, here are the beaded tiebacks I made for the cactus curtains in the office. Our bedroom will have similar tiebacks after I get all the supplies I need.

Labels: craftiness, house

• posted by erica 5/26/2004 05:30:00 PM
•  3 comments

Here's an update in the continuing saga of "Will Jack and Erica ever be cool?" Well, he's a math major and I'm a music theorist, so my guess is no if we're talking figuratively. However, in the literal sense, we may someday be cool even while we're living in Baton Rouge. We bought a dehumidifier yesterday at Sears (most of the money came from my birthday money from Mom and Bill), thinking that we could at least suck the moisture out of the air in our house and help the heat index, if not the actual temperature. We turned it on last night before we went to bed, and around 1 a.m., Jack left the room for something, came back, and discovered that the bedroom was significantly hotter than the rest of the house. That's right, our dehumidifier was actually heating the air as it cycled it through. They should put that on the package. Anyway, it collected some water, which I used to water the plants, but we decided this would NOT do and took it back to Sears today for a refund. They were very nice about it and gave us our money back. Before we went to the mall, however, Jack got on the phone and called several heating and air-conditioning installers around town to get quotes on the size unit we want, and we found a wide range of prices; the one we're most likely to get is $2300 including labor, and the most expensive we found for the same sized unit is $3400. Whew. The $2300 people are going to come Wednesday to look at our duct work, the platform for the unit, etc., and make sure everything is up to code, but all that labor seems to be included in the price. I suppose if we have to have anything major done to our ducts, it'll cost more, but it'll be worth it to promote efficiency. The problem for them is that they're coming between 1 and 3 p.m., certainly the hottest time of day, and they'll be up in the attic since that's where our unit is. Yucky for them.

I apparently had the wrong idea about what was wrong with our current unit, so if you care, read on. If not, skip to the next paragraph. The indoor unit we have is a 2.5-ton unit, but the one it connects to on the outside, which our idiot contractor installed, is only a 2-ton unit. I had in my head that the whole thing was too small, but apparently, it's just that they tried to cut corners with the outside compressor. I hate them. Something else I didn't realize until yesterday is that we have a coolant leak, so right now, we have no coolant; the air is just being circulated a bit by the fan, but there is no actual conditioning going on. (Incidentally, this is the same problem we have with the air conditioner in his car. The mechanics at the Chevy dealership in Philly, who we also hate, filled up the coolant tank three times before they were able to successfully locate the leak and give us a correct diagnosis of the problem.) I'm sure Jack told me this stuff about our unit back in October when he learned it from the inspectors, but I received so much new information right around then about house things in general that it apparently didn't stick in my head. These problems obviously necessitate the speedy replacement of the current unit, which may be done as soon as the end of the week if we can get financing from them or a loan from the bank in that time period.

Okay, onto other topics... since I didn't keep the dehumidifier as my birthday present, Jack and I decided we ought to use the money to go into our curtain budget, so we looked all over town for curtains and found some nice cactus-colored ones at Bed Bath & Beyond. The one color was being discontinued and was significantly reduced, so we got them for the only rooms in which the color would work: our bedroom and the office. Our bedroom gets especially hot in the morning since it gets the first sunlight of the day for an extended period of time, and usually by 8 a.m. it's been too hot to remain in bed comfortably. The curtains are nice and thick, so they'll block the morning light really well, and then in the afternoon we can pull them back to let in some indirect natural light. We also found a fabulous six-dollar curtain rod on clearance at Sears, so we got it for the guest room to replace the cheap metal bracket that's in there now. Yay, clearance!

We have screens in roughly half the windows in our house. Most of them didn't have screens at all when we moved in, but we got a few for our bedroom and the two kitchen windows. After about 5 p.m., when it's hotter inside our house than outside, we usually open all the windows that have screens, but Jack hit upon the brilliant idea today to move one of the kitchen screens to the office, whose window is the same size, so we can get a cross breeze on this side of the house from the office to our bedroom. Man, this is probably really confusing to people who don't know how our house is laid out. The kitchen-to-living-room cross breeze was cooling that part of the house before, but there's a whole other half of the house that was staying stuffy. Our bedroom is down the hall and around the corner, so it wasn't receiving a lot of the circulated air, but the office is right across the hall from the bedroom, so now there are two cross breezes. It's actually pleasant in the house right now, which makes the wait until we get a new A/C unit seem not quite so long. =) Oh, the last thing I wanted to say is that we're about to go back to Lowe's and buy fake wood blinds for our kitchen window, which presently has no covering whatsoever, because the heat coming through that window in the afternoon is palpable and we'd like to diffuse it.

I spent a lot of time talking about temperature regulation in this post. Sorry for those who were looking for more pet news... here's a little bit to tide you over. Celia and Patti are continuing to hiss at each other, but now, Patti seems to get upset only when Celia runs at her. If Celia calmly approaches her, she's okay, but Celia seems to want to be the good-will ambassador and make everyone like her immediately. She tends to bound and frolic wherever she goes. It worked for us, but Patti remains skeptical. However, we think they'll be fine as time passes.

Labels: felines, house

• posted by erica 5/24/2004 06:34:00 PM
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It occurred to me today that Celia has the look and coloring of a Gremlin. Does anyone remember those movies? I didn't actually see them, because I had the little records that came with McDonald's happy meals, and after I listened to them, they scared me so much that my mom actually had to hide the records. It wasn't enough for me just not to listen to them any more. (I think it's the same phenomenon that makes me turn a page really quickly if it has a picture of a bug on it.) Anyway, I saw part of one of the Gremlin movies years later at my friend Carrie's house, and all I remember is that some guy put one of them through a paper shredder at his office because it was trying to kill him. Lovely, huh? Celia looks like the fuzzy, cute ones before they become disgusting monsters, but I still think it's a weird thing for me to compare her to. It only occurred to me this afternoon as she was screaming very loudly in my lap. She cries like crazy sometimes for us to pick her up and play with her, but even if she's in our laps, she'll often start her wailing, and we have no idea what she wants! It'll be good practice for babies.

She's also taken to sitting on my shoulders, especially if we're on the couch, but the getting up there part is tricky and usually involves her inflicting scratches on my arms. Once she's up there, though, it's the cutest thing, because she's this tiny warm ball of purring fluff right next to my neck and under my chin. =)

Getting the cats to like each other is slow going, but at least Celia has the good sense to back off when Patti gets upset with her. We had an amusing experience the other night while we were watching 24, though. Celia was in my lap and was perched close to the edge of the couch. Patti, in her usually cautiousness, slunk into the room, but she didn't see Celia right away because it was dark. (Apparently, her sense of smell is not stellar.) Patti came up and started sniffing my toes, which were on the edge of the sofa too, and she was about 6 inches from Celia when she suddenly saw her. What happened next can best be described as "Matrix kitty;" Patti sprung about three feet in the air and five feet backward as if someone had just pulled on a cord tied around her waist. Jack and I, being the kind, sympathetic parents we are, lost all composure immediately and had to pause the DVD because we couldn't stop laughing.

Okay, the house is way too hot. Once my bread is done baking (which I guess isn't making it any cooler), I'm going to run some errands and enjoy my air-conditioned car. We're definitely taking out a loan to replace our A/C unit; Jack spoke to the bank people yesterday, and we're going to get some estimates on a new unit next week. The guy who inspected our house told us he could put one in for $2200, but we don't know if that included labor... anyway, it won't be cheap, but we need to do it, so that's how it must be. If we had oodles of money, we'd also replace the cheap windows we have with some that are double-paned to help with the insulation, but that's not really an option right now. It's already in the 90s, and this is only May. Sheesh. Whose idea was it to move here, anyway? Oh, wait...

Labels: felines, house, Louisiana

• posted by erica 5/22/2004 03:24:00 PM
•  2 comments

Watch out. I'm going to become one of those annoying people who talk about their pets as if they're their children.

Since bringing home our little sweetie Celia on Tuesday evening, we've mostly left her in the guest bathroom so she could get used to a small space, but we've gradually let her venture out into the rest of the house. Her ventures started with small periods of time in the living room with Patti locked up elsewhere in the house, and then after we did that a few times, we tried having Patti and Celia meet face to face. A book we read suggested that we keep Celia in a carrier and let Patti hiss at her so she could get used to her on her terms (kittens are fairly resilient, but "resident" cats tend to be territorial and offended when little pipsqueaks enter the scene). The only thing that happened when we tried is that Patti hid behind furniture and refused to look at Celia, so this morning, I thought I'd try putting them a few feet apart. I reassured and petted Patti the whole time and was careful not to show Celia any affection in front of her (this according to popular suggestion), but Patti remained rather sheepish and nonconfrontational and tended to slink away. There were a few times that Celia got a little too close, then Patti hissed and Celia backed off, so that gives me some hope about Celia's social skills, at least. =) I've been letting Celia basically roam free this afternoon (except in the guest bedroom, since there are places she might get stuck), and Patti has remained under our bed the whole time, trying her best to keep a safe distance. I figure she has to come out for food at some point, and maybe then, she'll start to get used to this little mewing thing that seems to have invaded her house.

Celia's a climber. She's not big enough to jump up on furniture, so she scales it until she reaches the top. She's also grown quite fond of climbing her traffic-cone-shaped scratching post and perching on the 4 x 4 square of carpet on top. It's hilarious to watch her sitting up there as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Her balance is astounding. =) She has resorted to some negative behavior, however, especially playing with the curtains and scratching furniture, so she's been met each time with a strong "no!" and a quick squirt of water from the spray bottle. She learns fast, but she's tried so many different bad things that she now has a very wet head. Somehow, she hasn't figured out that the sprays are coming from me, so that's good. =) Basically, she's a rambunctious nut. (Incidentally, Merriam-Webster defines "rambunctious" as "marked by uncontrollable exuberance," which I found to be an amusingly-worded definition. I enjoy the dictionary.) I wish that I lived closer to most of you so that you could meet her while she's still a kitten. This is one of those times when having a video camera would be terrific! I'm glad Jeannette came by yesterday and got a chance to meet her; Celia put on her best silly kitten mood and entertained us both the whole time. I have to say that my favorite thing to watch her do is pounce. She gets low to the ground and twitches her butt back and forth like grown cats do, but when she gets to the point of "springing to action," it's less like a long, graceful leap and more like a discombobulated scamper.

In other news, it's getting very hot here, and our A/C is starting to demonstrate its inadequacy. We knew when we bought the house that the unit was too small for the house (one of the few things that wasn't the fault of the contractors who sold it to us), so we've been considering taking out a loan to buy a new unit. Ugh, right? We don't want more debt (since we already have my car, our house, and Jack's student loans), but I think that since the A/C is basically useless at regulating the temperature during the day, we need a change. Ceiling fans do much to circulate the air, but it's just so hot, with promises to get hotter as we move closer to August! Yuck.

Labels: felines, house, language

• posted by erica 5/20/2004 06:00:00 PM
•  0 comments

Congratulations to Barbara Ann Heller of Winston-Salem, NC, mother of my friend Nicole, for correctly identifying the White Evening Primrose that has sprung up by the side of the road at our house. I'm a little disappointed in the rest of you, honestly... I expected a response to come sooner than a day and a half. Apparently, my fans aren't quite as devoted as I thought, or maybe you guys are just as clueless about flowers as I am.

Thanks, Barb. Jack's instinct not to mow over this flower has proved to be the correct one.

Labels: friends, house

• posted by erica 4/18/2004 10:13:00 PM
•  0 comments