Posts

Home improvements

We can do it!

I’m back online after spending the second of two weekends on home improvements, and the gods have not punished me yet.

Until recently, our back porch was literally rotting away. This really bugged me  – the steps became slimy in the rain and a couple of weekends ago, I pulled a patch of moss off the steps only to realize the moss had been covering a damp hole in the wood.

The fact that I could stick two fingers through my back step raised my ire to new levels. I decided that my husband wasn’t getting to our redneck-looking back porch fast enough, and so I took things into my own hands.

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Calmly butchering produce on a Sunday evening

It’s finally happened.

I’ve turned into my dad.

This evening, during NPR’s new age music programming, I found myself washing, drying and chopping up every bit of the produce we bought at the store today, and then packing it away in neat little plastic containers. I even parceled out the Greek yogurt into containers and taped a Lactaid tablet to the top of each one.
I had to check myself in the mirror to make sure I hadn’t sprouted a beard. This is exactly the sort of anal-retentive behavior my dad used to display. He’d crank up the space-age music (“Bladerunner” theme anyone? John Williams?”) and hack up a cantaloupe.

You’d kind of worry that he was dealing with some “Alien Nation”-related aggression issues.

Dad used to call the Alien Nation aliens "cantaloupe heads." But then again, he also called asparagus "Fraggle tails."

Seriously though, he may have had a point. Not about the aliens. About the produce.

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Lunch

This morning, I packed a lunch for my husband and myself. I wrapped up sandwiches, and diced fruit and folded napkins and nestled them all together in the picnic basket my mom gave us for a wedding present.

I was amazed by how happy the act of making lunch made me.

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