Live and Let Di

Perfect Harmony!

We moved into our rental house this week and realized that the owners had taken their washer and dryer with them to their new home. Since the washer and dryer at our old house are being sold as part of the craigslist offering to buy our house and move it to your lot, we decided to go ahead and buy the new washer and dryer we will need for the new house.

So I did my homework. I asked around. I subscribed to Consumer Reports. I explained over and over again why I DO NOT like front-loaders. Here's my problem with them...they say you can load as much stuff as will fit in them. But as you are loading, you reach for more stuff to put in and the stuff you just put in is falling out. Had one. Hated it! I was also looking for energy efficiency, so the Energy Star label was important. At the age of 45, I figured out that the difference in the cost of buying a less efficient model, besides being bad for the environment, will end up costing me more in my monthly electric bill. Finally, I decided on:

You are just going to have to trust me that I am NOT being compensated for my endorsement....but I LOVE my new GE Profile Harmony Washer and Dryer.

I am a bit of a techno-geek when it comes to, well, anything. But these really knocked my socks off...and made me not even care if I had to wash them again!!!

First of all, I shopped the internet, the appliance superstores and finally ended up getting the best deal on price as well as delivery and installation from a LOCAL appliance store, Garner TV & Appliance. Second of all, they were able to take my order over the phone on Wednesday and deliver them on Friday! In addition to being a techno-geek, I am also all about instant gratification...which may make the whole "building a house" process a little challenging to me.

And then I actually did some laundry! Wow! Cool, self-explanatory, push-button selections with icons, just in case you are too tired to actually read. I can even set up my "favorites"...also known as the two ways I do wash...regular and whites. But I like knowing that all those other settings are there. There is even a special insert for the dryer for drying shoes, hats (or at least that's what Sharis tells me, haven't tried it yet) or other things that say "don't tumble dry."

When my first load in the washer was finished, instead of letting it sit in there for a day or two like I usually do, I immediately went to transfer it to the dryer. AND THE WASHER STARTED SENDING INFORMATION TO THE DRYER!!! It's like they were doing their own little appliance-language conversation, "OK dryer, she put this stuff in here saying it was colors, regular and play clothes. Now, you just figure out what to do from here. She looks like she's going to put me back to work once I pass this info on to you."

And then the dryer did some little calculations or something and came up with a 25 minute cycle. Ha-ha...I figured I had found the glitch. There is NO WAY that a load of laundry can dry in 25 minutes. But it did...thick towels and everything!!! It was about as pleasurable as a completely non-satisfactory job like laundry can be. Laundry just isn't like, say, paying bills. I mean, if I pay all my bills, there simply are no more to pay, at least until the mail comes. There's this lovely time of peace when the job is really over...at least for a reasonable length of time. With laundry, there is never a time when EVERYTHING IS CLEAN. I no sooner hang and fold the last load from the dryer and when I start to put the stuff away, there, staring at me tauntingly, is at least one piece of dirty laundry already in the laundry basket waiting to be cleaned. It never ends.

Now, I have often said that if my marriage ever ends, it will not be because of financial troubles or infidelity...it will be because of laundry. This was reinforced to me the time I was bitching about laundry and my husband (who wasn't even quite sure where the laundry room was located) said, "Come on, it's not like you're beating it against a F***-ing rock!" He's never quite lived that down. So with the word "Harmony" in the name and the performance so far, I'm thinking these appliances just might help my marriage!

Now...if we could just get the refrigerator into the actual kitchen instead of having a big orange extension cord running from the kitchen to the fridge's home in the garage...

Di

Matrimony

Yes, I heard that sigh of relief when you realized this was a book review and not one of my usual rants on the state of matrimony. I finished Matrimony  by Joshua Henkin several days ago and have been struggling with writing the review.

Two copies of the book were sent to Karen at verbatim by Amber Santos of Meryl L. Moss Media Relations as an Advance Reader's Edition. Karen was kind enough to send me the extra copy. I can't remember if I read Karen's review yet...but I know I didn't read the link she sent me to the NY Times book review.

The strange thing that happened was that on the day I received the book from Karen, I clicked on Amazon (I swear, I wasn't buying anything...just looking up a previous purchase when I was unenlightened and had not taken up the sword for independent bookstores) and Matrimony came up as one of my recommended books [insert Twilight Zone theme here].

It takes some time to grow accustomed to the "flow" of Matrimony. While it is told, for the most part, chronologically, it jumps by years leaving you wondering what happened in those years, how it shaped the characters and their responses to situations, etc. I'm going to assume this was purposeful...the author didn't just say, OK, I'm bored of this character at 23, I think I'll leap to see what he/she is up to at 30. I think this is what Amy (see best picture ever of her here) and I would call a "slice of life" book. The plot is not the thing so much as the descriptions of the characters and the moments in their lives. It was not a disturbing or distracting style, but it was different and made me read it differently.

The beginning of the book captured me because I have wanted to write about my college years, how it felt going to an expensive private school as the poor scholarship student. Now I don't have to because Joshua Henkin has me in his book...only I'm a man and my name is Carter. The college years follow Julian (the rich kid from New York...yup, knew lots of them) and Carter as they become friends and eventually include Mia and Pilar, their respective girlfriends.

Matrimony challenged me vocabularily (a word I just made up)...and I like that. It's like golfing with my friend Karen...she uses words that I haven't heard before...makes our golf educational even when our game is not going well. I marked words and phrases that I had to look up, such as:

"hoist your own petard" - meaning injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others. A petard being basically an old-world bomb.

jejune - naive, simplistic; (of writings) dry and uninteresting

banal - although I knew it meant lacking in originality, boring...but reading it in dialogue made me curious as to the pronunciation. I'm still not sure I have it down to where I would feel comfortable using it in conversation.

metanymically - substituting the name of an attribute to the thing it stands for (example, suit for businessman)

solipsist - one who believes that the self is all that can be known to exist

Overall, I enjoyed the book...primarily because it challenged me both in its style and in its plot points. While some developments were painfully obvious long before they occurred...that's kind of true in life too. We all know couples that everyone else knew would divorce long before they did. It's kind of like real-life foreshadowing. I found some of the descriptions of events far-fetched and over-romanticized...but the characters were real and complex enough to keep me interested.

Di

Thursday Thirteen (Vol. 54)

13 People I Need To Thank for Helping Us Move

Fearing that I'll forget someone, thanks go out to all of the people who contributed to our move on Monday:

1. Zach - teenager who lent muscle and energy (and his sister Missy who would have been there, but she had soccer practice and did help us with eating the pizza.)

2. Rory - who made his own bed...it was very cute, the top of the sheets being on the bottom of the bed and all, but he did it! He also, for the first time moving into one of the 8 houses he has now lived in during his short 11 years, got to PICK HIS ROOM FIRST!!!

3. Haley & Ana Mari - who mostly drove golf carts back and forth between the houses bringing about 1/10 of their weights back on each run...but stayed out of the way

4. All of the kids who PROVED their resourcefulness, a quality I LOVE, by figuring out that the cable company probably didn't turn off the former residents' cable, figuring out how to hook up the TV, cable box, etc. and thus provided themselves with entertainment while all the lifting and carrying was done.

5. Stan - OMG...Stan who lifted, carried, took off fridge doors, left to teach a class and CAME BACK!!!!

6. Tom - who was there with the tools when the fridge stuff got scary

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7. John and Sharis - my angels from heaven friends who contributed the truck, the fridge space, moral support and a much-needed Miller Lite

8. Stef - who had a normal conversation with me after things settled and then called and offered to run my high school car pool this morning!!! Yee ha!!! And who...like always...is perfectly fine with drinking wine out of a plastic cup!

9. Pilar - who not only helped unload the cold stuff from the fridge, but then CLEANED IT OUT...something I probably never would have thought to do. And THEN, a few hours after I mentioned that my husband had gone to Costco and somehow didn't find paper towels, the one thing that EVERYONE who goes to Costco buys...sent over a 6 pack of paper towels!

10. Kevin - who lifted, carried...all the time looking brawny and adorable

11. Kim - who gave me those last two cups of coffee before the excitement started...the caffeine from which may have kept me going as long as I did...plus she would have come over and helped, but we were done by the time she got back.

12. My SIL Lori - who understood that mid-move was not the time for us to chat on the phone about Thanksgiving plans.

13. The people we are renting from - who have been great with working pretty much on a handshake. And the CUTEST thing is that they have to come back and remove the pantry doors and replace them because on the pantry doors are the heights of their children, their children's friends and later their older girls' boyfriends on various dates.

And finally, exceeding my limit of 13, but essential to mention, all the people who contributed all of our furniture in the first place...everything we sit on, eat on, sleep on and store stuff in was donated by our wonderful friends and neighbors! These are the same people who have listened to me whine, bitch and complain during this process...and will probably continue to do so as our building process continues. And anyone who did anything or would have done anything or will do anything...which is pretty much everyone I know. Because I live in heaven on earth and have the most incredible angels as friends and acquaintances.

Di

Insomnia

Woke up...couldn't get back to sleep...end result?

It's not a very good picture, but the message in my Google Reader is "Your reading list has no unread items."

This never happens!

Di

I am humbled...

I am physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, and since I could NEVER blog anything even close to this, I am just going to give you the link and you can LYAO!!!

Yesterday we moved from our house which is soon to be loaded onto steel beams and moved from our property thus making us a little pocket change PLUS saving us the money of demolition and debris removal...yes, we are selling our house on craigslist! We moved into a MUCH bigger house which we are renting during the building process. Our paltry collection of furniture makes it look like a palace...and to us, it is. The location is perfect. The kids can actually bicker and be far away enough that WE CAN'T HEAR THEM!!! The master bathroom is as big as our kitchen was (and it's not huge...our kitchen was just THAT small).

Everyone knows that I suffer from depression, an illness that often announces its presence by excessive fatigue and exhaustion. It is also exacerbated by stress and overdoing. Moving to a new house, even though it's just a few houses down the street? Stress. Physically moving stuff from point A to point B? Overdoing.

Somehow we got through it with only a few glitches...like the doors had to be removed from the refrigerator to get it out of the old house and would not fit in the door of the rental house. And when you plugged it in in the garage, it kept tripping the breaker. And we had already emptied all the cold stuff. So I put it all back in my car at about 7 last night and brought it to my angel from heaven above friend and neighbor's house and loaded it in her two garage refrigerators. Tired? Doesn't begin to describe it. I think I was asleep by 9:45.

I woke up this morning and took the kids to school and went straight back to bed where I slept until about 11:30. I called my husband and told him I was just completely lacking energy and utterly exhausted. He said that was fine and there was nothing that needed to be done immediately. Now, let me preface this by telling you that my husband is a white knight on a steed when I am sick or hit a depressive abyss. But he seemed to miss something this morning.

5 minutes after my call, he came back to the house, called up the stairs and said, "Di? Can you help me with this?" In the back of the borrowed from the same angel from heaven above truck was our dining room table. He wanted me to help him get it in the house...not so we could sit around it as a family and have dinner and discuss our days...but so he could set up his office on it! And I did it!!! Not sure which part of exhaustion and lack of energy he didn't pick up on, but perhaps I need to be a little more direct.

Read the link I recommended. Trust me...it is more fun, more interesting and less DEPRESSING!!!! Thank you to Marcy for providing it!!!

Tune in to this week's Thursday Thirteen when I will thank all of the people who contributed to this move...and will probably have to exceed my limit of 13 and continue next week!

 

Di

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

This year the adults sat on a friend's porch handing out candy to adorable little ones, giving big,barely costumed kids grief about not putting in enough effort, having a few adult beverages and pretty much having more fun than the kids. As usual, I had my camera on hand and some of the pictures harkened back to Halloweens past when these probably-last-year-trick-or-treating kids were so much tinier, not MORE excited, but excited in a different way:

Is it even possible that this beautiful young lady is my child? My baby. My firstborn. The one who never spit up and therefore spent her first year dressed as the princess she was. The she loves me even though I no longer make their costumes like this:

Well, actually, the Gator was my Halloween labor of love that took me a month to make...the year Haley wore it, she was scared of the headpiece and wouldn't wear it unless Daddy was holding her. The year in this picture was her year of rebellion when she insisted she wanted a storebought costume like all the other kids. My lily-skinned, sweet-cheeks daughter naturally elected to be the hot, sexy Esmeralda from Hunchback when she was really a perfect replica of Snow White...we start wanting to be what we are not when we are SO young.

 

A few years later, here they were, in a different state where my son had to express his admiration for the NC State (Were)Wolfpack instead of the Florida Gators. The sweet little girls in the middle are now in their first year of high school, while the boys are in their first year of middle school.

And how about these little witchettes..a pair of twins and their one-year younger sister?

Well, here they are today:

The twins, now in middle school and the younger sister just finishing up elementary:

And if you are thinking they are kind of cute and your son might like to date one of them, just remember that he's going to have to get by THIS guy first:

He is single...he may not be Mr. Right (what with three weddings to pay for sometime in the future, and not being ready to settle down), but he could certainly be Mr. Right Now...or Mr. Every Once in a While.

Must go...there is a golf tournament to play in which I have to try to get psyched to kick the ass of one of sweetest older ladies at our club...

Di

Thursday Thirteen (Vol. 53)

Yes, I know it's supposed to be Halloween themed, but I don't have time to download the photos I took of all the cute trick-or-treaters...many of them my adult friends! So instead we have:

13 Things I Don't Want to Hear Before 6:45 a.m.

We leave to pick up the rest of the kids in the carpool at 6:45 a.m. I get up at 5:45 a.m. and have 15 delicious minutes of coffee and newspaper before all hell breaks loose. These are the things I DON'T want to hear before we leave for carpool:

1. Mom, you have to sign this. (presenting long form with spaces for doctor's name, number, social security number, blood type, insurance information, etc.)

2. Mom, did you wash my gym clothes? (on a good day, the answer is "Yes, they are in the dryer?" ...on a bad day, the answer is "Que? Maid no speak English.)

3. It's not fair!!! (actually I don't want to hear that any time of the day, but it's particularly annoying in the morning...my stock answer is "Life isn't fair" but it might be said at a higher volume before 6:45)

4. I forgot my [insert: Math, Science, Geometry, Paedaia (don't ask!), Social Studies, Language Arts] homework.

5. There's no more milk (no one thought to mention this last night at dinner when they put the milk bottle back in the fridge with exactly three drops left)

6. Where's my phone? (I'm not in charge of it...I know where MY phone is...and it's amazing that they can always find their phones when they want me to pick them up somewhere!)

7. Mom, you've GOT to watch this YouTube video! (OMG, are you kidding? You haven't brushed your teeth in two days...you certainly don't have time to be browsing YouTube videos before school!)

8. Guess who threw three touchdown passes in last night's game? (We don't have that kind of time...I think I can only name three QB's in the NFL at the moment...and that's because they are the cute ones.)

9. Can I have a turkey sandwich today? (This from the child who has eaten bologna sandwiches for the past 38 days straight)

10. I'm tired. (This from the child who insisted that he could stay up until 10 and watch Heroes and still get up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.)

11. Hold on. (My 14 year old has not learned that when I say "It's time to go", I can handle, "Just a minute, Mom, I'm on my way" or "Yes ma'am...just give me a couple seconds"...."Hold on" makes me crazy!!!

12. Do you have an orange purse? (This question was actually asked by my daughter yesterday spawning peals of laughter on my part and a solid foot-stomp, turn and walk away...do they teach that at school or is it just innate in girls and blossoms at 13?)

13. I don't want to go to school. (Well, I don't want you home with me...so guess who wins this one????)

Di