Rumba, Baby!

Last night we went to our fourth private dance lesson (we've been taking group lessons on and off since the summer), and for the first time it really clicked. We caught onto the new steps faster and retained the old ones better, so for the first time the teacher could help us focus on the details. How to point the toe, hold out the arm, really throw our bodies into the crossover.

But more than that, we clicked with each other. Everything was smoother.

And that goes for how we treated each other, too. We were kinder and more forgiving. We smiled more and bickered less. We didn't blame each other. The atmosphere was light, not thick with tension.

I'm learning to follow better, and Darwin's becoming a better leader.

And this new way of dancing takes some of the tension out of practicing and going places to dance. Before, I had to insist - more like throw tantrums - before he'd consent to anything. And then I'd have to half-drag him through the dances. No wonder I tried to lead, right? If I didn't, we wouldn't go anywhere!

Darwin still doesn't giddily leap up to practice; he doesn't turn on Michael Buble's "Quando, Quando, Quando" and say, "Rumba with me, baby!" But since we started the private lessons, he's become less confused and more confident. Our teacher constantly tells him that he's a "natural dancer" and has a wonderful frame and great rhythm, things that are hard to teach. That would make anyone feel a little more eager to participate.

He won't admit it, but I can tell he's having fun. Now so can I.

All Better Now

The Gimp is back at work today. He was still in pain and walking gimpy until one day late last week when everything magically went back to normal. Almost normal, anyway. He's still stiff and gets a little whingey when he has to stand up for too long, and the doc advised him to wear one of those back brace things the Sam's Club cashiers have to wear, just in case he should have to lift a 48-pack of double-roll toilet paper.

In all seriousness, I'm absolutely thrilled that my man is straightened out. He worried me for a while there.

And it goes without saying, this set back our bathroom work. This weekend was a complete wash, and next weekend basically will be, too, because of that pesky baby Jesus. Fortunately, Darwin has the whole week after Christmas off work, and I expect some serious bathroom work to happen - injured back or no injured back!

This weekend I was sorting through old photos looking for ones I could delete (because my computer is full to the brim, and I urgently need an external hardrive), and I found a folder dated 10-15-2005. To my surprise, it's been more than a year since we took out the carpet in the half bath and started taking down the wall tile in the master bath.

Looking at the pics of the intact bathtub and tile surround and the candy cane bubble bath sitting on the ledge made me feel something unexpected - I MISSED the bathroom the way it was! Obviously, it's going to be so much better when we get it finished, but I miss the long-ago time when I could take a bath if I wanted, when my heaps of bathroom stuff were tucked quietly away in a room no guest ever saw, when I had a bleepity-bleeping master bathroom.

*Sigh*

As I told Darwin last night while he was trying to ignore me and go to sleep, I just really, really, really, really, really want this bathroom done.

The Gimp Lives

With our bathroom, it's always one step forward, two steps back. In Darwin's case, two very gimpy steps back.

On Saturday, we were trying to figure out exactly where to cut the openings for the outlets. I had the bright idea that Darwin should lift the massive cast iron sink and hold it in position on the wall, so we could see if the spot we'd marked would work.

But as Darwin struggled to grasp the beast, I reconsidered. "We can just measure it!" I said. "Don't worry about it!"

Have I mentioned my husband is stubborn?

"I can get it," he insisted.

"At least let me help," I said, but he just laughed and pointed out that I wouldn't be much help.

He was probably right. I'm not known for my upper body strength, and I'd already squashed my finger between it and the edge of the trunk when I was trying to get the thing home.

So I just stepped back and let him go.

The sink was lying on a bed of cardboard across the narrow room from its final position. Darwin half-squatted and heaved the thing up onto his thighs. He turned with it and hobbled toward the wall, then leaned into it briefly with the sink.

"Okay, looks fine," I said quickly, seeing his face turn red and his forehead vein protrude.

Then came the worst part - lowering the gargantuan sink back down onto the cardboard. He couldn't let it drop because it would certainly dent the pine floor and probably shake the house from its foundation. I watched him carefully lower it, his face turning purple now, and worried for him and for the floor.

At last it was down. He straightened, and all was well. He continued on to cut the outlet holes (a dramatic process in its own right, since the circular saw was smoking and the other tools just weren't doing the job).

That night as we got ready to go to the Tuscaloosa Ballroom Dance Club Christmas Ball, Darwin complained of his back hurting. I ignored him because that complaint was mixed in with about 50 other reasons he didn't want to go to the Christmas Ball.

We made it to the ball and managed to have fun in spite of his complaints and initially bad attitude. He danced the rumba like a champ and finally conquered a waltz move that had stymied him in the past.

We went home and to bed in high spirits.

Then Sunday morning, Darwin woke with a pain in his back. He'd had this sort of pain before. For a few days at a time, it would make him walk slowly, bent to the side. Like those other times, I found his old-man walk pretty hilarious and nicknamed him The Gimp.

But then it got worse. He could barely walk by bedtime, and he couldn't find a way to sit that didn't hurt. When I found out he was hurting all the time, it stopped seeming funny.

He woke up first thing the next morning, hoping it had gone away. Instead, it was worse, and he woke me up to show me something weird. Even when he was standing straight up, his torso slanted to the left from the waist.

He called into work - something he hasn't done all year - and I knew it was bad if he was willing to mess up his perfect attendance record 9 days before the end of his work year.

I took off work, too, and drove him to the chiropractor. We'd never been to one before, but his brother had been to this guy, and a 9:15 appointment sounded a heck of a lot better than sitting in the miserable hospital waiting room for hours just to get a prescription for Loritab and a referral somewhere.

On the way, he whined about every bump in the road, which was pretty weird for Darwin. I never hear him whine about much.

While we waited for the doctor, we studied the skeletal diagrams on the walls and tried to figure out which one might depict Darwin's problem.

When the doctor - a young, personable guy - came in, he poked and prodded Darwin and made him bend and maneuver. Darwin couldn't bend over from the waist more than an inch or so, and even that pained him. I'd never seen him really hurt before, and it brought tears to my eyes to see him in so much pain.

The doctor could tell right away what was wrong - a slipped disc. I'd heard the term before but didn't really know what it meant. The doctor pointed to a diagram and explained that a disc doesn't actually "slip" but becomes damaged. In Darwin's case, it had probably been thin for a while and had probably been injured before. The sink just triggered a problem that had been waiting for an opportunity to happen.

The doc took X-rays of Darwin's back and showed us how Darwin's hips had twisted, making one leg 2 inches shorter than the other. The muscles in his back and hips had contracted to protect the inflamed disc, the lowest in his spine.

It was a pretty freaky sight, but the doctor said he could get him straightened out again in about a week. So Darwin has been at the doctor twice a day all week and will continue to go. Today, he drove himself for the first time. He put on his own pants and shoes, and he's walking at almost-normal speed, though his body is still oddly twisted.

I'm thrilled that he's doing better. The spine is not something to mess around with, and I admit I'm scared this won't be the last we hear from that pesky disc.

We both know this will change the careless way we do things in our home improvement. We have neighbors/friends who can help and are willing to help when we need to move something heavy. There's no reason Darwin should risk his health just to be all independent macho man.

Relationship Role Models

I was reading Casa Decrepit's post about how to maintain a good relationship while renovating, and it made me think about the way Darwin and I handle our projects - you know, exactly the wrong way.

In a nutshell, Ayse says we should "be a team," have a good plan, "thank each other for a hard day's work," "order take-out when you're exhausted," "don't blame each other for mistakes," and "pick your battles."

Two out of six ain't bad - oh wait, yes it is. And somehow, I think our supreme affection for eating out hardly counts toward our good relationship quotient.

The wise Ayse (absolutely no sarcasm intended) advises, "I generally don't recommend that couples have one person be the only authority and the main worker. Not only does it lead to a lot of resentment on both sides ("You're always bossing me around!" and "You don't help with any of this work!"), but it's exhausting. Share the load."

Ouch. It was like she came to our house, peeped in the window of the master bathroom reno, and took down notes like an anthropologist studying gorillas in the mist.

We're in a vicious cycle of bad renovation/relationship behavior. It goes something like this:

---

SETTING: Our house on a typical Saturday morning.

Darwin sits on the couch in his underwear, clutching the TV remote like we're in the jungle and it's his last banana.

I come in wearing my pajamas from last night and sit beside him, lean against him, hug his arm.

"Honeypie sugar dumpling head," I say in that super-mushy voice we use when we're alone. "What're we going to do today?"

"I might wash my truck!" he says, too cheerfully. He points the remote, and the Tivo says, "Blip! Blip!"

I frown, push myself up and away from him.

"I mean what-are-we-going-to-do on the house?"

He stares at the television. Doesn't answer.

"Hell-o?" I sit up straighter, lean forward, resist jabbing him in the arm.

"Hey," he says calmly, brightly.

"I asked you a question!"

He sighs, shrugs. "I don't know."

The trouble is, neither do I.

"We have to do something!" I screech and gesticulate with both hands. "Our bathroom is an empty shell! We'll never finish it if we don't work on it!"

Darwin stares at the TV some more.

He sighs, fiddles with the remote, but doesn't turn off the TV.

"Come on!" I demand. "Let's go!"

I wait a beat and then tackle him, trying to wrestle the remote away from him.

"Give me that!" I scream. "I'm stronger than you!"

Of course, that isn't true, and we both know it. Darwin laughs and fends me off with almost no effort at all.

"FINE!" I shriek, shoving myself off the couch and lifting my chin in the air. "If I leave it up to you, we'll be like your parents, living in the middle of a renovation for 15 years!"

He laughs and shakes his head. I huff off to the bedroom and yank on pants, a paint-splattered T-shirt, sneakers.

I stomp through the house, slamming doors. I peek into the living room as I pass, and Darwin pretends to be absorbed in Two Guys Garage. I dig in the drawer for the keys to the workshop, making sure he hears me rattle them.

"What are you doing?" he bellows from the couch.

Light as air, I call, "Cutting the trim with the miter saw!"

I am out the door and halfway to the workshop when he comes out the back door, buttoning his pants.

"Just wait a minute!" he yells. "Don't do anything!"

"It's just a miter saw," I toss back over my shoulder. "They look easy on TV."

Even still, I take my time turning the key in the workshop door, flipping on the light, choosing a piece of trim from the stack against the wall.

By the time I'm searching the machine for the on-off switch, Darwin is there, glaring at me.

I insist on measuring and cutting one board myself, and then he takes over. Docile now, I find something else to do in the workshop - glue shingles on my dollhouse, maybe, or scrape some paint.

When the trim is cut, I trail him inside and hand him things like the hammer or the measuring tape. I look around for something to do myself, but the demo is done, and that's my best area.

Now that the ball is rolling, Darwin keeps working like a champ. I find something to do, something with paint - that I'm good at - but as soon as Darwin gets a break, he comes over to supervise.

"You know, it would work better if you - "

"No," I interrupt. "I don't want to hear it. You do that, I do this. Go away."

"But if you did it like this - "

"No." I keep working, don't look at him. "Leave me alone."

"Fine," he says, light as air. "If you just want to keep doing it wrong, go ahead."

Then I feel like throwing the paintbrush/scraper/heatgun straight at his overgrown skull.

"I hate it when you do that," I say, very calmly. "I've told you a million and one times, and you just keep doing it."

"I can't help it you're doing it wrong," he says, full of certainty that he is entirely right and righteous.

"I'M NOT DOING IT WRONG!" I scream, throwing in a few expletives for effect, wondering briefly if the neighbors can hear. "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!!!"

He laughs - laughs! - and strolls away, shaking his head.

And when he's gone, I start doing things the way he suggested.

Ten minutes later, he's back behind me, circling my waist with his arms. He tries to nuzzle my neck, but I clamp my jaw against my shoulder and attempt to shrug him off.

"Get off me," I say through clenched teeth.

He laughs again, and it makes me want to laugh too, but I force the corners of my mouth to be still. I refuse to relent ... for now.

When we take a break for lunch, I pretend to be mad as he makes me a sandwich. While we eat, I forget I'm mad and start talking. Then I remember and say, "I forgot I hate you." He laughs, and I smile, and everything's okay again.

Until the next Saturday, when it starts over.

---

See how many rules we broke there? We never have a plan. We often blame each other when stuff goes wrong. We are rarely a team. He considers himself the boss, while I consider him an evil dictator. He doesn't seem to mind if I don't take on half the work because he doesn't think I do it right anyway. We yell at each other. We fight every single time we work on a project. We argue over little stuff, like where to put a toilet paper holder, going round and round in circles.

But somehow, at the end of the day, we end up happy anyway. We go out to El Tenampa for dinner or join our friends at Miss Melissa's. I congratulate him repeatedly on the work he did that day. We have a glass of wine. And we are happy.

So here, for better or worse, are our rules for marriage success while renovating:

1. Fight if you want, but keep it clean - no threats of divorce or bodily harm. Swear words are perfectly acceptable.

2. Take time to make out, even if you're filthy. Dirty=naughty.

3. When your partner's on a ladder or has both arms occupied, take the opportunity to feel up his/her naughty bits. Sometimes you will get sniped at for this, but just giggle; he/she will forgive you.

4. When one partner can’t get motivated to work, start working without him/her. He/she will come sniffing around before you know it. If not, he/she is not really in the old house business.

5. Don’t criticize your partner or order him/her about. It makes him/her less eager to work next time. (We have both learned this lesson. Wait, no we haven’t, but we should’ve.)

6. Act like a baby if you want, but make sure you don't mind being treated like one.

7. Help your friends with their projects, and invite them over to help with yours. It’s harder to fight with each other when you have witnesses.

8. Talk dreamily about the future – how the project will make your life better when it’s finished.

9. Set project timelines that seem ridiculously too long, or set none at all. That way no one gets disappointed, and no one gets blamed.

10. Take plenty of time to rest, relax and enjoy other hobbies. Don't try to "keep up with the Joneses" - in this case, the other housebloggers who worker harder and faster than you.

11. Call each other absolutely ridiculous pet names, but please don't get offended if your partner accidentally calls you "poo head."

12. Laugh a lot. When someone messes up, laugh. When something goes wrong, laugh. When someone gets hurt, don’t laugh, you sadist!

and our personal favorite,

13. The promise of Mexican food at the end of the day keeps everyone happy.

A Very Darwin Weekend

This weekend we celebrated Darwin's 30th birthday. I bought him a monogrammed robe and slippers, and I made him "cakelike" brownies, the way he likes them. Part of his present was that we did not go to the Tuscaloosa Ballroom Dance Club's Thanksgiving Ball. He appreciated it greatly.

We went to dinner with friends Saturday night, and we went to dinner at his parents' house on Sunday. Good times were had by all (I hope).

Today, the Very Darwin Weekend is officially over, which means he is required to attend ballroom dancing lessons with me. Tonight is tango and samba night. He doesn't know it yet, but he's going to have a super fun time.

Paint the Town Red

When I was 16, my parents bought a costume and party store. As a teenager, I hated working at the store - being bossed around by my mom at home was plenty. The only time I enjoyed it was Halloween. For the entire month of October, my parents get to the store at dawn and work past closing time. The week of Halloween, they open up extra registers, and still the lines of customers wind around inside the store. They hire every available extended family member to monitor the dressing rooms and off-duty cops to man the doors in hopes of discouraging shoplifters.

It's a madhouse, but it's like one giant party. Or at least the getting-ready-for-the-party, which is always one of my favorite parts. The staff wears silly hats or wigs or flashing pumpkin pins. My mom wears her collection of Halloween-themed shirts. Everybody dashes around like they're fetching defibrillators and life-saving medicines rather than fog machines and green face paint.

You see everybody you ever knew, and all sorts of people you never thought you'd meet. Goth kids, frat boys, sorority girls, drag queens, secretly gay co-workers, your pregnant high school Spanish teacher wanting to dress up as a breast. They all want advice; they're eager and so are you because you're helping them get ready to have fun.

I haven't worked a Halloween in years, not since I graduated college and got a full-time job. But this year Mom and I hatched a plan to open an online store. We started talking about it last year after Halloween, and it's been in progress since then. At first, we wanted a full costume shop, but then we decided to take it smaller and more focused for now - just women's costumes with a good selection of plus-size costumes.

I designed it and set everything up, but the costumes only started arriving from the manufacturers about a month ago. In a frenzy, I put as many costumes as I could on the site before I left for Italy. My parents are not Internet or computer savvy at all, so I also wrote down a VERY DETAILED step-by-step procedure for dealing with orders, including the words "click the link. It will be blue and underlined." My favorite part was teaching them how to cut and paste.

So now I'm back and still adding things to the site - we need to list more accessories, especially - and fixing design problems. It will be bigger and better next year, but I think it's pretty decent this year. I'm proud of it anyway, flaws and all - even though I can't figure out why the blankety-blank search box won't work.

So if you're a woman - or a man, I don't judge! - and you need a Halloween costume, please check it out.

Candy Apple Costumes

Deer Darwin

Last week, we had three visitors in the back yard. I saw the first one when I passed by the back door. There she was, approaching the steps. What attracted her? The flowers on the porch? Or was she only making her away around the house toward the fig tree and its branches hanging low with the weight of green fruit?

I think she heard me through the glass door when I gasped and called to Darwin. She turned and skittered back toward the treeline, toward the gap in the broken-down fence that separates our property from the patch of woods on our neighbor's land.

That's when I saw the other two, a boy and a girl. Her children from a previous season, Darwin guessed.

They didn't retreat all the way to the woods. The call of the figs must've been too strong, and the three deer stood in our yard for many minutes. I imagined the mother weighing the danger against the food, her ears twitching for stray sounds, the teenagers letting her listen for them while they bit at deerflies.

Then we noticed the mother was pregnant. Three lives depended on her to make the right decision.

In the end, she turned and led her children back through the gap in the fence. Gave up the figs or whatever she was after in exchange for their safety. Maybe they came back after dark or maybe not.

But while they were in our yard we watched them with a sense of wonder. It was like glimpsing a bit of a magical world, an alternate realm. (Okay, now I know I've been watching too much Charmed.)



It's hard to reconcile these lithe and ethereal creatures with the disembodied head hidden in the front bedroom. Yes, you read that right. We own - and even once displayed - a taxidermy deer head.

Darwin shot the buck four years ago, in the first autumn of our marriage. He'd never killed a deer so big - an 8-point (which for you non-hunters means he had 8 points on his antlers) - and my mother of all people guilted me into letting him spend the $300 to get it mounted. "It's his first big deer; it means so much to him," all said in the same voice she used to tell me to cook him a grilled cheese sandwich.

Of all the bad purchases and money wasted in my life, I regret that $300 most. It's right up there with the tickets for the Talladega race we didn't get to see. (I'm fulfilling all the Alabama stereotypes in this one post.)

At our previous two houses, Darwin hung the thing in the living room. Yes, yes it's true. I, Kristin, looked a dead deer in its glass eye every single day.

How did I tolerate such a thing, you ask? Believe it or not, I am no stranger to dead deer. As a child, I even liked to pet them, to rub the coarse tan and white hairs, to touch the hard black nose.

My grandfather lived and died an outdoorsman and avid hunter, and he taught my father to be the same way. When I was young, hunting was my father and my father was hunting. My early memories of him all involve camouflage.

But with age, my father mellowed. He realized that what he liked about hunting was enjoying the quiet and that magic nature world, watching the deer, not killing them.

I grew up around hunting, so I don't believe it's automatically wrong. Killing multiple deer each year, just for sport? That makes me a little squeamish. But killing one or two and eating the meat, as Darwin's family still does? I am okay with that. I'm not a vegetarian, so how can I argue that it's any different from eating a cow or a chicken? Besides, deer sausage is surprisingly yummy.

As for Darwin, he let his membership to the hunting club lapse a few years ago, but this year he's back in. He's doing it to spend time with his father more than anything. That's why I said nothing when he told me that's how he'll be spending all his spare time come November. In November, the redneck, caveman, me-hunt-big-deer side of Darwin can come out in full force. He'll wake up ridiculously early and come home late smelling bad and wearing camo.

I am such a patient wife. All I want in exchange is the bathroom finished before then.

Forever the Optimist

We tackled the tub on Saturday before the 3-day-long Father's Day festivities commenced. As always, I hoped the chemical stripper would be a miracle cure, that the paint would cower at the sight of it and yield easily under the might of our scrapers.

As always, things happened a little differently. Darwin bought a "semi-paste" stripper that turned out to be more like a liquid. We had to prop the tub up on a cinder block and a rusty old chair to make it level, so the stripper wouldn't run off. Our first layer of stripper wasn't thick enough, so it barely made a dent in the paint. The next time we poured it on super thick. That - with much vigorous scraping - did the job. Well, most of the job.

The bottom layer of gooey paint is still holding on for dear life. We finally decided to try priming one little spot to see if the paint remnants would show. Yep, they did.

So we've got at least another day of work to go on this beast. We think maybe the wire brush and/or a palm sander will take off the rest or at least get it smooth enough to paint. At this point, I am caring less and less about having a smooth exterior. I just want to get the thing painted so I can move on to something else!

As for the rest of the weekend, we had dinner with Darwin's family on Saturday night, and then Sunday we left for a Lambert Family Pilgrimage to south Alabama. We trekked all over Washington and Mobile counties looking for cemeteries where my ancestors are buried and land my ancestors owned.

We went to Old Escatawpa Cemetery, hidden down a dirt road back in the woods, where my great-great grandfather, great-great-great grandfather, great-great-great grandmother and great-great-great-great grandfather are buried. I was expecting some sort of deep, gut-feeling connection to the place, but it didn't come. I guess seeing their graves doesn't change the fact that we know virtually nothing about that side of the family.



The stories my dad told on the way were more meaningful to me. Like the ones about the great-grandmother I barely knew. She'd buy an old house in Mobile, fix it up, rent out the top floor, then sell it and buy another old house and do the same thing all over again.

Makes me wish I'd taken time to know her before she died a few years ago. We could've had a lot in common.

Swing-a-Ding Kid

You might be surprised to learn that I've guilted my macho man husband into taking ballroom dancing lessons with me. Over the past few weeks, he has done much grumbling and whining, and I’ve been getting more exercise dragging him into the foyer to practice (now that the dining room has a table in it) than actually dancing.

But you might not know that my macho man husband is only half macho. There's the half that works on engines, rides a motorcycle, kills insects without fear, cuts things up with a chainsaw, and hunts Bambi's dad.

Then there's the half that secretly likes to shoe shop and drink Cosmopolitans with me. Oh, and swing dance.

You should've seen him, people. He was a wonder!

We learned the foxtrot, and he squashed my toes. We learned the waltz, and he kept stepping with the wrong foot.

But swing? He caught right on!

The weird thing is, swing is harder than the other dances. But somehow it just feels right together. We had the best time learning the turns, botching them a lot at first but then – oh the feeling when it’s right!

Now I want to become swing dance champions. These lessons (taught by the Tuscaloosa Ballroom Dance Club) only give us two weeks of training on each dance, but I don’t know if I’ll be ready to give up swing after just one more week.

The club offers intermediate rumba and swing lessons at 7 p.m. after our 6 p.m. beginner lessons, and I’m trying to talk Darwin into going.

His macho half is resisting, and I’m dragging the other half out into the light.



(Happy 4th Anniversary, honeypie!)

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

Last week was not my best ever. It started off bad on Monday when I had to take our cat Alistair to the vet. We discovered by accident that he had seriously gross & painful-looking tooth/gum problems that needed to be remedied before they escalated to something worse.

Alistair hates people in general, but he especially hates the vet. He growled and hissed, which is all par for the course whenever he meets a stranger. They had to sedate him to scrape his teeth and do his yearly checkup, so I had to leave him there overnight. This upset me because I kept thinking what if the people I loved dropped me off in a strange place without telling me why, and I didn't know if they'd ever come back? I cried, and my stomach was in knots that whole day and night and next day. He's my baby, ok?

Because he is not the friendliest cat (did I mention that?) they had to both gas him and inject him with sedative. Then the gums were worse than they thought, so they had to laser them to stop the bleeding. While he was out, they did his yearly checkup, which involved giving him every shot in the known world.

Needless to say, when I picked him up from the vet, he was not in the best mood. The last time he was sedated (when he got neutered), he was all wild-eyed when I picked him up, but his face calmed down when he heard my voice. This time he showed no sign that he recognized me or my voice. Or maybe he did and he was pissed I left him at that wretched place.

All I know is I was one worried kittymom. I kept thinking, "What if his personality somehow got wiped out? What if he never remembers me?" Pretty silly, I know, but I just wanted to cuddle my baby and he wouldn't let me and it sucked.

Once we got home he calmed down a lot, though his kittybrother Henry was still terrified of him. Alistair spent most of the night sitting straight up, staring glassy-eyed at nothing, and wobbling slightly. Meanwhile, I cried some more. Maybe it was hormonal.

Fortunately, next morning Alistair was back to normal, purring and rolling around wanting to be petted. My baby is ok! I went and bought a kitty toothbrush and toothpaste, and however ridiculous it sounds I will be brushing his teeth from now on, because I never want to put him (or myself) through something like this again.

But my best week ever wasn't over yet. Just when I started feeling somewhat normal again, I got sick on Friday. I won't go into the details, but it wasn't the sweet little cough-cough/fever kind. Fortunately, I woke up pretty much better on Saturday and then we headed up to our friends' house. The four of us had tickets to the NASCAR race in Talladega on Sunday.

I am not a NASCAR fan, which probably surprises no one who reads this blog. I've never understood the appeal of watching cars drive around in a circle 200-some-odd times. Darwin, on the other hand, is a fan of pretty much anything that involves loud engines, so he likes it. He wanted to go, so I was taking one for the team.

But by race time, I had somehow become revved up for the event myself. There's just something irresistible about being in a huge crowd of people, all excited about the same thing. It gets your adrenaline pumping - maybe because there's always that slight chance the crowd will go insane and begin trampling folks.

Besides, the people-watching alone was worth the ticket price. I've never seen so many overbaked, age-resistant women in my life. Of course, I've never been to California.

Yet our racing adventure was not to be. The day was surprisingly windy, cloudy and cold for the last day of April. The rain held off until the moment the race started. We dashed in under the bleachers and stood huddled together next to a chain link fence, watching the dryer trucks drive slooooowly by on the track and trying to keep our plastic ponchos from billowing in the wind. This went on for two hours before the race was finally called. Postponed until the next day. You know, when we had to work.

Did I mention the tickets are non-refundable? Thank goodness for people-watching. We had more fun in that vein while waiting in traffic on the way out. A lady in tight shorts and an even tighter tank top began dancing beside her van, undulating her belly wildly and twirling her faux-blonde, waist-length ponytail around her head like a lasso. Some dudes walked by with Mardi Gras beads, and I don't have to tell you what happened next. MY EYES! OH MY EYES!

Still, seeing a trying-not-to-be-old lady pop her boobs out of her tank top wasn't enough to kill the disappointment. Darwin was devastated, our friends were devastated - heck, I'm devastated.

The race is going on right now, and we're not there. I heard from a sports reporter friend that probably 100,000 people came back today. The sun is shining, so there's probably lots more boobie-flashing and beer-funneling going on. Too bad we're not there to see it.

I have high hopes for this week. I'm starting ballroom dancing lessons on Tuesday, I'll be attending a wedding on Saturday night (the good kind that serves alcohol), and on Sunday I'm leaving for our annual work beach retreat. This one's got to be better than last, right?

Twinkle Fingers

Darwin and I both got manicures yesterday. That's a pretty good sign we won't be doing much work this weekend, don't you think?

Lest you all think I've turned my poor unsuspecting husband into a "girly mahn," it was almost his idea. He loves me to give him manicures - no polish - so when we saw the nail salon after dinner last night, I thought, hey why not? He was nervous about going by himself, so I generously volunteered to accompany him and get a manicure myself.

As I'm typing this, I catch glimpses of the lovely watermelon pink of my nails. I sort of like this. Reminds me of the days before I became exceedingly lazy about my appearance, and I painted my nails a different color every day. In high school, half the people signing my yearbook mentioned the nail polish. Oh, how I miss the mint blue polish that was my favorite then.

Still, I probably won't be back to the manicurist for a while. I can do this at home and get pretty much the same results. Darwin's manicure, on the other hand (see what I did there!), was miraculous! If he gets any work done this weekend, I bet he'll wear gloves.

Hands

Darwin is like a little boy, always coming home with scabby shins and random cuts and dings the origin of which he can't remember. His hands are calloused and laced with tapered white scar lines.

Here's Darwin comparing war wounds with our neighbor D (who cut her finger on a table saw in December):



It's funny how much a person's hands can tell you about them.

Darwin's are proof of a man who works with his hands, has always worked with them. A man who was a terrible student, yet everyone he meets can recognize how smart he is. A man who people trust to do good work. A man who inspires respect and devotion.

I never pictured myself married to someone who hates to read books, didn't go to college, and uses the word "ain't" with gusto. Yet when he touches me with his calloused, wonderful hands, I know there could be no other option.

Some folks try to get all snooty about people who didn't go to college, as if they're ignorant and useless in the world. But the truth is, where would we be without people like Darwin, who know how to use their hands and their heads?

Who's really the useless one? Take me for example. I was always one of the smart kids, and I was awesome at standardized tests. My parents had a nice house, and they bought me a 2-year-old Mustang when I turned 16. I got a full scholarship for school and breezed through getting internships and a job.

When everything comes easily for you, it's easy to get lazy. I'm possibly the worst procrastinator on planet earth, and I'm a master at distracting myself from the task at hand. When working on the house, I wear out quickly ... a few rounds of dragging limbs to the road, and I'm completely beat.

Look at my hands, and you'll see the whole story. They're plump and pink and smooth. Before buying this house, the only scars on my body were from the chicken pox and mosquito bites.

Now I have two more scars, a faint heat-gun burn on my thigh and a tiny line on the pad of my right middle finger. I got the cut from a shard of ceramic tile when I was demo-ing the bathroom floor (oh God, was that really in AUGUST? No wonder I'm sick of talking about the bathroom). I did the paint scraping and the tile bashing all by myself and with no one asking me to do it.

Forgive me if I'm proud of my scars. Darwin's hands show that he has always been a hard worker. Mine show that I have never been ... but that maybe I am becoming one.

His History and Mine

On Saturday we had Christmas with Darwin's dad's side of the family. Since we live near the place we both grew up, we have a million and one tedious holiday events to attend each year.

But this one turned into the opportunity I've been waiting for. Darwin's dad, Mac, still owns the old house he grew up in, a little farmhouse complete with can house and corn crib. The Christmas event takes place each year in an old schoolhouse nearby, the one Mac and his brothers and sisters attended in the '40s.

For once, I remembered to bring my camera. That's where the opportunity comes in: I finally got pics of the "old homeplace."

No one is certain of the house's age. Mac's parents bought it in 1941, but it had been there for a while before. In fact, before it was Mac's old homeplace, it was someone else's parents' old homeplace.

I know a bit about the middle class-and-up house styles - the Victorians, Greek Revivals, Craftsmans, etc. But I know just about nothing about these spare little farmer’s cottages, the sort of house where every last one of my and Darwin’s plain-folk farming ancestors lived.

It is L-shaped with a simple porch across the front. One side of the L is the front: two rooms with a center hall between. The other leg of the L is the kitchen. A tiny bedroom and a bathroom were tacked onto the back of the house at some point.

The house is not pretty. The windows are a hodgepodge. Some 1950s aluminum, some older divided lights. The exterior is covered with green, faux-woodgrain shingles. The roof is rusted tin. The walls inside are fake wood paneling.

It’s not a house someone took care to preserve, in terms of history. It’s a house people lived in, lived simply with no thought of old or new, or continuity. If a window broke or rotted, they replaced it with anything that would fit. If the top of the stone chimney toppled, they replaced it with brick. If they needed another bedroom, heck we’ll tack one on right here.

Usually, I despise a remuddle. But somehow, this jumbled little farmhouse has a certain nobility. We’ll probably never decipher its age, and it will certainly never be on the National Register. That’s okay. It’s a house that means something anyway. You can see it in the faces of the men in that family, whose hands helped mend the roof and prop up the falling chimney. It is a part of Darwin’s family’s history, a part of my history now.



The can house. This was where they stored the canned goods. (not really in cans, in jars)



The back of the house. The side of the house. The kitchen chimney.



The front porch. The front of the house.



The corn crib. They kept peanuts on top and corn on the bottom level. The curtain from the stage at the old schoolhouse, dated 1939.

Destruction, Gas Shortages

The Sun Herald, the newspaper for Biloxi and Gulfport, has a town-by-town listing of the damage in Southern Mississippi. The historic Jefferson Davis home, Beauvoir, has been destroyed.

The listing for Biloxi:

Water lines ruptured; municipal water may be on soon, but is probably contaminated. . . Pass Road open . . . Legacy Towers condos survive. . . Ryans, Red Lobster, Olive Garden washed away along U.S. 90. . . Lighthouse still standing. Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge gone. Bottom floor of the library and the home of Jefferson Davis home, Beauvoir destroyed. . . . Sharkshead Souvenir City gone. . . Edgewater Village strip shopping center gutted . . . Also gone: the steeple of historic Hansboro Presbyterian Church; Waters Edge II apartments; Diamondhead Yacht Club, the old neon McDonald's sign on Pass Road . . . Massive damage in east end of city. . . almost total devastation primarily south of the railroad tracks near Lee Street, Point Cadet and Casino Row. . . Beau Rivage still stands. . . Hard Rock Casino, scheduled to open in early September, suffered 50 percent damages. The signature guitar, said to be the world's largest, still stands. . . At least five casinos out of commission. . . St. Thomas the Apostlic Catholic Church, which sits on U.S. 90, is gone.

I've been reading the D'Iberville message board at the Sun Herald to try to find some information about the area where my parents house is located. It doesn't sound good. I've heard reports of houses 1 mile NE and 1 mile NW of their house being flooded and destroyed.

Their house is located just across the bay from where Katrina destroyed the Hwy. 90 bridge to Ocean Springs.



My parents were debating whether to go down this weekend to check on Dad's timber in Mobile and their house. They were afraid they'd get down there and then not be able to find gas to get back.

Then just a while ago, my dad heard about a man who shot a gas station owner in Huntsville (two hours north of us) and others who hijacked a Hunt Oil truck. Now they feel it's too dangerous to travel south.

Where I live, we have been restricted to buying 10 gallons of gas at a time because people panicked and starting filling up trailer-loads of gas cans. When I filled up Tuesday night, the guy at the next pump filled up two giant blue barrels - $255 worth.

You'd think watching the footage of the devastation, the lives lost, the atrocities, the crimes and shootings in New Orleans, would make people stop being so damn greedy and selfish.

But instead even safe people up here are turning into animals.

Dirty Romance

You know how in romantic comedies, they always have the scene where the couple plays in the rain, kisses in the rain, or breaks up in the rain? On Monday, we did yard work in the rain. Does that count as romance?

Actually, it was kind of fun working in the rain. It wasn't as hot, for one thing, and we got pleasantly filthy. I haven't been truly dirty in a good long while. Maybe since that long-ago field day at church camp where I got someone's muddy sock print on my shirt.



We cut down the overgrown holly bush (though I made Darwin leave the huge honeysuckle vine where the bird nest sat) and cleared out all the weeds and junk that were growing under it. I'm amazed that neither of us has poison ivy. I plan to plant one of my flowering trees from the National Arbor Day Foundation near this spot.



Then we tackled the weedy flower bed. Darwin cut down the weeds and used Roundup on them two weeks ago, but he couldn't really get to the roots with all that excess leaves and pine straw in there, so we raked and hoed it all out.



Then, though Darwin was tired and wanting to wind down, I started hacking at the overgrown holly tree outside the kitchen window. As usual, Darwin couldn't resist leaping in with his chain saw and taking over. We might cut the tree down one day - it's pretty ugly - but for now it's just cleared out.

After that, we hauled all the limbs and bags of debris to the road, where we made a mountain that blocks the view from the driveway so we are risking our lives every time we leave the house. (Fortunately, the debris-clearing people were doing their thing this morning.)

Then we decided to cut a few of the magnolia limbs to see what happened. There's a hideous hole in the back of the tree now, but from the front, you can see the house better. Our plan is to cut all the trees and seedlings that have sprouted around the two large main magnolias. It will look funny for a while, but in the end it'll be better. They would take over the whole yard if we let them.

But for now, we'll enjoy the extra blooms.

P.S. Today is our third wedding anniversary (five years together total). Happy Anniversary to us! Ah, it makes me nostalgic for the days when we annoyed my college roommate by celebrating each and every "month-i-versary."

The Past 114 Hours

I tell ya, this has been one hell of a week. Darwin got arrested Saturday night for speeding. Though I was able to get him out within a few hours, we still have to go to court and will probably have to pay an enormous fine (up to $2,000).

So I haven't been able to concentrate on the house much or on writing pithy posts.

But I'll give a quick update of our non-arrest-related happenings:

Thursday night our neighbors S&B dropped by with their adorable Miniature Schnauzer to see our house and all the things I bought at the Antique Alley sale. While they were there, Alistair mauled their dog.

Friday night we went with some Eutaw friends to a restaurant that is a restored 1840 house. Very cool place, but dinner took three hours.

Saturday morning we had a joint yard sale with said Eutaw friends, and I made a whopping $80. That's really going to help out with our $2,000 fine. Ha.

Sunday we looked at real estate in Georgia with my parents and sister because my recently graduated sister is moving there next week for her First Real Job. We were on our way there when Darwin was arrested. It was not the most pleasant of trips, for many reasons.

Monday we visited my friend Wendy's kittens, and it made me nostalgic about those first months of our marriage when we lived in a shack and Alistair was a biting, mewling baby.



Isn't he sweet? No, wasn't he sweet? Now he is a snooty, unsociable, dog-mauling beast. And look - he doesn't even feel guilty about it:

Self Reproach

Has it really been five whole months? Working on my house scrapbook this weekend, I realized we've got very little accomplished.

Here's what we've done:

Move and unpack.

Pull up hideous green rug in master bedroom and wax part of the floor.

Demolish ugly '70s built-in desk in kitchen.

Remove old stove vent and install microwave.

Install dishwasher.

Remove old sink and faucet and install new.

Prime and paint most of the cabinets.

Add trim to a few cabinets and paint more trim.

In five months, an entire house could be built.

Then again, an entire crew works to build a house. It's just me and Darwin - with some minor help thrown in from our parents here and there - and just our weekends.

And Christmas interrupted.

And ... and ... I'm sure I can come up with some more excuses if I try.

I read about a million other house blogs (check out Houseblogs.net if you haven't yet), and it seems everybody is making more progress than us. Are we just lazy bums? Are we too busy with other things? Are we making things difficult for ourselves in some way? Or is it because we picked a massive project for our first one?

This weekend we spent half of Saturday working on the kitchen. I primed and painted trim, while Darwin worked on the hinges for the lower half of the kitchen.

Then we went to Darwin's brothers house, where he worked on his truck with his brother, and I hung out with my sister-in-law, niece and nephew.

On Sunday we slept incredibly late (for us) and laid around the house ALL DAY watching poltergeist movies and Office Space. Then I worked on my scrapbook some more.

I am torn. Half of me feels guilty for taking a break, but the other half of me says, "It's OK to take it at your own pace. You'll burn out if you spend every spare moment working on the house." I do not want to burn out because there is a LOT of work left to do.

Maybe I'm just getting impatient. I want my neat, pretty, finished kitchen. And I'm eager to move on to something else - painting the hallway maybe, or the guest bathroom, or the living room or the dining room. There are so many pretty colors waiting to be chosen.

Our House in Miniature

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my parents' house. Darwin gave me a wonderfully comfy desk chair, and Mom and Dad got me an antique replica telephone (so cute!).

But the best present was from my talented sister. She created a miniature replica of our house from balsawood. It's about 4 1/2 inches tall (including the chimneys) by 5 inches wide, and it's very detailed, down to the American flag on the porch and the sconces by the front door. Wowweeee, I can't stop staring at it.



Just compare to the real thing:



It's wonderful to come from a crafty family.

Glitchy Weekend

I discovered a little (OK, big) glitch this morning in the site. As in, I forgot to change the link to this blog on the main page. Oops. Sorry to anyone who tried to access this site over the weekend and got the dreaded Page Not Found.

This weekend was pretty uneventful. We went to the Walters Family Christmas on Saturday, and every last one of my cupcakes was gobbled up. I always seem to make the desserts the kids like. Maybe 'cause I'm still a kid at heart? Do any other adults out there like sprinkles on their frosting?

Sunday we lounged around all day watching a marathon of the miniseries, Stephen King's The Shining on SciFi. It's nowhere near as good as the original - mostly due to that annoying kid who can't seem to breathe through his nose - but it was entertaining enough for background noise while I worked on a doll for a friend and Darwin napped with Alistair on the sofa.

Sunday night we made a gingerbread house from a kit. Darwin turned out to be an expert at making frosting icicles hang off the roofline. The house has saggy windowsills and a crooked door ... some old house lover needs to come along and rescue this thing. Just like many old houses, it looks pretty darn good if viewed from a distance, but if you get too close you start noticing all the work that needs to be done.

Turkey Lurky

Two Thanksgiving dinners down, one to go.

I had T'giving with work people on Friday. Then we went to Darwin's parents' house for an early T'giving dinner on Saturday, so we didn't get much done on the house this weekend. But it was pretty fun. I played with the nieces and nephews (alternating in pretend-world between kindergarten teacher, mommy and nurse) while everyone was consumed with the BIG FOOTBALL GAME. My sister was at the game taking photos for the campus newspaper, but I couldn't see her for the snowy television reception.

On Sunday, we went to Lowe's (our home away from home) and bought all the parts for Darwin to install the new sink, faucet and dishwasher. Also a floor lamp for the living room, which has no overhead lighting. I found a few lovely pedestal sinks with some landing space for all my getting-ready equipment, but we haven't decided what to do about the master bathroom yet. I'm getting better at shaving my legs in the file cabinet shower. That's what I call it because it's about the size of one.

The strange smell that developed in our bedroom last week finally dissipated yesterday. We never did figure out the cause of it.