Odds and ends

Cabinets...we has dem.


And now for something completely different.

Safari Park

On vacation this week, we decided to check out a local animal ranch/safari park that we both drive by twice a day, but had yet to ever go to. It was fun. I got to see my favorite, the miniature donkeys. They are my homies and they love me. I know this because they let me pet them. There was an interesting collection of critters, various sorts of deer and cows, giraffes, a rhino, many llamas, many potbellied pigs, and lots of ostriches and emus.

I learned that emus freak me out. Several of them came to my window and started attacking my bucket of feed like a pack of velociraptors. I was shrieking in fear while my husband laughed at me. Such a sweetie, that one.

Here are some highlights.


Do not mess with the vampire deer.


I think this guy may have done some stand-in work for that dude in Legend.

The funniest part about that one is that he would go around to the side and try to nurse, then run back to the back and climb up on her. Little guy had...conflicting instincts.

Wtf, nature?

Scenes from our backyard.

We can't figure out what the yellow jacket has to do with this whole scenario. One's first consideration would be competition for food, but a large field rat seems a bit large a meal for even several yellow jackets. What do yellow jackets eat anyway? A vicious cross-species love triangle, perhaps?

Like sands through the hour glass...

So are the days of my life. The past few months of being internet-less have been eventful. And not the great, wonderful life-affirming kind of eventful. The scary, depressing soul-cracking kind of eventful. Yeah. It's been like that. I'm just glad to say I survived the month of November. By the end of it just enduring was the only thing possible.

But enough about that. It's all maudlin and crap.

It's Christmas time. I decorated my one-foot tall fake little Christmas tree (It's not small IT'S PETITE!) and I hung garland and last night I started present-shopping. I'm determined to get in the holiday spirit and not let teetering glimpse into the abyss of desolate insanity that was my fall affect my winter. I shall hold my chin high. I shall laugh and love and reach out to those in my life that make me grateful they are in it.

Of heat waves and floor paint

It is 101 degrees outside right now. It's 7:30 at night. Seriously. That's like inhumane. It's that kind of thick and penetrating heat. If there is any bright side to that, at least the humidity is only (supposedly) 27%.

So the move this weekend to the new house, ready or not, probably isn't the most genius thing we've ever done. Though we moved to Florida two times, so our judgement on this issue is already suspect.

My dear sweet husband has been slaving away on the new place for the entire week, usually working through the night to get it ready to receive us. Where last we left off, gentle reader, I showed you the process in which all remnants of the former lives of our house were being gently scrubbed off. Actually, it was more like being violently scraped off, but it's all the same.

The living room, formerly covered in carpet and linoleum, under which was an incredibly stubborn layer of paper backing and glue:


And here we have one of my favorite views from our living room, into the hallway and the bedroom beyond:


The floors will be stained tonight and the varnished for the next two days. Move in Day is Sunday. Keep your fingers crossed it's ready in time.

And here begins the saga of the floor paint: Turns out (duh!) that the kitchen and bathroom were not, in fact, the oak that the rest of the house was. They were actually...wait for it...knotty pine. I know. Shocking, considering the 8 metric tonnes of it we tore out of the house initially. So not being the biggest fans of the knottiness, we decided on our limited budget and schedule that we would paint them. Our parents thought we were crazy. No one paints interior wood floors down here. It's considered sacriligeous. Plus, what color would I paint it? We have spent hours picking out colors for the walls, but to just run out and paint the floors a color???

Well, whatever. We can cover it over with tile or something else later, but we got to get our butts in that house in a week, so pipe down unless you've got a better idea. So I called around and found out that I needed a decent floor paint, and it turns out it's a common practice in the Northeast (yankees! Gasp!) so I'm not some sort of flooring maverick. I picked out a color called Camelback. The first coat went on the bathroom floor today. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to install the toilet and the sink in there.

It's hard to see what it will look like until we get the walls painted in there. I think it may be ok. That stuff is self-priming and one more coat and that room is done. And that is awesome.

At least the hot weather will make the floors dry faster.

Edit: They stained the floors for most of the night, stumbling back here at 4AM. I found these on the camera this morning:


And:
Wow!

Tore up from the floor up

So we got one room painted, the kitchen, to be specific. And it's yellow. Way yellow. I like it, though, so it's cool. We only had enough time to get one room painted before we had to start on the floors. Yesterday we rented a big drum sander and got started.



The floors in the kitchen had been covered with several layers of linoleum. The adhesive covering them was black and possibly tar-based. So we let the beast eat last night and look what we got underneath...

Shazam! So the living room and hallway also had linoleum, but the adhesive under that was a blue felt-like paper. That stuff is not as tough as the black gunk, but is still going to be a pain.

Stay tuned!

Putting humpty dumpty back together again

So we're due to move into our new (to us) house on August 15th. That fact makes me a little nervous considering it still looks like a construction zone.



But we've got walls now, so there's that. They are mostly bare sheetrock and mud, though. Speaking of, I have a new thing to hate. Drywall dust. And you think sand gets in everything when you go to the beach! Ha! Sanding drywall creates a thin cloud of dust that clogs up your eyes, nose, throat...you name it. I think I could bleed drywall dust right now.

And let's not forget to mention the super hot fashions it inspires...


And the cheerful attitudes...


Next up is paint. This should be interesting.