I suppose this should be in ‘Rants’ – we are now on week 3 of no kitchen sink, which makes it really hard to want to cook and then do dishes in the small utility sink. Don’t get me wrong, this is preferable to doing dishes in the bathtub, but still not enough to get me to cook very often. I am really hopeful that this week we will have a kitchen sink back! I am also hopeful that in the near future (i.e., this calendar year), I can invite people over for a meal cooked in the new kitchen.

And one more thing I am hopeful for: that Verity does not take the current state of our house as the way people ‘should’ live… I suppose I’ll know when she gets a little older – if she seems to prefer to have stacks of junk all around her, then I will know this early time of chaos was very impactful on her life. Or if she can’t stand to have anything out of place – this may also be an indication of how the current disaster of our house has affected her. At least we’ll have a little science experiment to show for it?

I would try to attach a photo, but I really don’t want to remember what this looks like

As many of you know, bugs, especially, Mosquitos love me. I’ve got about 6 bottles of various kids of bug repellant, most of which I forget to bring whenever we are venturing to the great outdoors.
Years ago, when we spent the summer in Israel, I had a great need for bug spray but there weren’t a lot of recognizable brands available. I think we were on the Sinai Peninsula so I did the best I could and bought the brand that seemed to say it was that Off! brand. Indeed it worked but had such an industrial scent to it that I never used it again.
Why did I pack it back and why did I save it all these years? I guess it was just the pure sentimental value of all the objects from that trip. And the fact that I don’t own many things with Arabic on them. The photo doesn’t show it well but there are a series of comical pictorial directions on the bottle that seem to indicate you should shower soon after using it.
Alas, I’ve been cleaning out our camping/travel supplies so this little gem had to go.

When Slanky and I got to work cleaning out the basement for the remodel it really hit home that we’ve kept a lot of junk around for a lot of years. I’ve been meaning to introduce a new blog category as a means of tackling my packrat sentimental tendencies. Here’s my first go at it.

Behold, the wedding bouquet.

Wedding Bouquet, almost 10 years old

As some of you may know, I have a thing for dried flowers. I don’t know why. I still have the dahlias my now deceased grandmother gave me from her garden on my first day of college. Slanky ruined a few when we moved and I nearly cried about it. Anyhow, I’ve kept my wedding bouquet around for almost 10 years and the really funny thing is I hated the way my bouquet turned out and so WHY DID I KEEP IT?? I don’t know. Insane. This topic has been rehashed so many times – this is for you, Slanky! – but I’ll say it again. I wanted lavender roses in my bouquet. They were pink. I was pissed. And now? You can’t even tell what color they were, originally.  Yellow and brown? Red and pink? Who knows! For some sentimental reason I kept this thing around all these years. Before throwing it away I took a gazillion pictures of it.

Jonah thought it was kind of fun.

Old life/New life

In the end it wasn’t terribly emotionally hard to give these up and I think the cosmos was telling me something when I went to put them in the yard waste and had to pick out a bunch of wires all over the bouquet. Sneaky little thing.

And just for kicks, to make it look prettier than it actually ever was, here’s one from my phone.

Dried flowers in prettier colors than they ever were alive.

So there you have it. Need to throw something away that you’ve been attached to for a long time? Take a photo, write about it and then trash that sucka!