Wednesday, July 29, 2009

New House


I am in love with a house. It is gorgeous. It is open and bright and the basement is bright and has a fridge and it is beautiful.

Except...

The basement and the kitchen have wine racks. What do I do with these?

It is in Montana City and that is 15 minutes away. I would be 20 minutes late to everything instead of 5. I couldn't dash home during dance, either. I would be staying.

Montana City is known for trees and views and it doesn't have much of either. I can see the intersection and the refinery among trees.

I am not sure I want to go to the Montana City LDS congregation. I get the feeling they take themselves more seriously than is prudent.

I would be changing counties and the post office is really far away... which isn't a big deal unless most of your shopping comes from the internet.

James would change schools and I would have to kiss up to a new administration.

We would live too far away for our kids to every walk to school. And I would have to petition to get them into a Helena high school instead of the Boulder scary high school.

There are even more problems.

So why am I seriously considering this?

$876.43 + $50= kitchen faucet



So our condo was built in the '80's and everything in the kitchen is from that time. My faucet was falling apart. The handle on the faucet would just spin and spin around and you would have to figure out where the hot water might be. The sprayer was in need of severe help and would come out of the sink in an unhelpful way. So while at Costco, I saw a kitchen faucet for $50. It said, "EASY to install." I bought it. It stayed in my kitchen for two months.

I had a week of visitors to look forward to so I thought it would be a perfect time to fix my sink. Now, I have replaced bathroom fixtures this year and only one toilet paper holder doesn't work. I replaced a closet door, but stained it a totally different color than the other closet door and I hated staining... Two hours after I stained the door, a bird left a deposit on it and it took Kevin a week to help me put it in and now it looks horrible...

So I have had a few warnings to not do things myself. But the faucet was supposed to be easy. As I took the old faucet off, I threw away the pieces so there would be no turning back. When I went to take the main part of the faucet off, I tried to unscrew it under the sink. I tried three different tools. I finally called our all knowing friend Alan and he came over. He took the sink out of the cabinet to get a better view. It was rusted solidly on. And the sink was rusted. And the metal fasteners holding the sink in were rusted and many were broken. So now I needed a new sink.

But we had to take the garbage disposal off the sink and it's fasteners fell apart. And when unhooked, it just stunk.

I went to Home Depot. I decided to get a beautiful deep sink and a really nice disposal and a new faucet... the $50 one didn't seem nice enough now. Well the plumbing for the sink was too high for a deep sink so I had to go back and buy a different sink and then the plumbing expert looked at the pipes I was buying on my third trip and told me my garbage disposal would hook to my dishwasher and I could get rid of one of the pipes so I could use my original deep sink so now I had two sinks and new pipes and a garbage disposal and two faucets. It had been 12 hours and 5 Home Depot trips later. I had Alan come back over. He was figuring out the pipes while I put the sink and faucet in. So I did that part all by myself and you can tell. There is caulk all over the place and the faucet isn't centered. Alan did the pipes and I had to get an electrician over to hook up the garbage disposal.

So I bought a $50 faucet that was to be put in within an hour. $876.43 and 48 hours later, I had a new sink, faucet, and disposal. Of course the disposal makes a funny sound, but I'll worry about that next summer.
(I was able to return one of the sinks so I kept the bill under $1000. I win)

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Watching Television With Seth



Dora:
Say Map!
Seth: No
Dora: Will you help Boots go up the mountain?
Seth: No
Dora: Are you strong?
Seth: No

Mickey Mouse Club
Mickey: Can you help Minnie find the yellow daisies?
Seth: No
Mickey: Can you clap your hands?
Seth: No

Yo Gabba Gabba:
Do you love your family too?
Seth: No
Can you get up and dance?
Seth: No

I'm sensing a theme...

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Katherine's 4th Birthday

There once was a girl
With a girl
In the middle of her forehead
When she was good
She was very very good
But when she was Bad
She was horrid.





When people arrived, she was sitting in her pink chair watching the people walk past with her gifts. She spent 1/2 of the party in the neighbors house watching tv. She spent 1/4 crying because we were singing happy birthday, because people wanted to watch her open her gifts, and because she picked the pinata Dora the Explorer and didn't want to beat her open because she had been talking to her for 2 days. The last 1/4 she had "changed her attitude." The guests had fun. Happy Birthday.