So where have we been?

Have we fallen off the side of the Earth? (long-live the flat earth society!)  Did a herd of buffalo’s trample our computers into teeny tiny bits?  Did I just get lazy and say forget this whole blogging thing?

Nope.  None of the above.  We undertook a HUGE project, that looking back was insane, looking forward, totally worth it.  We basically gutted our whole house, put on an addition, and re-did just about everything inside.  Yes, I realize that I should probably have blogged all about the experience along the way.  Let me tell you something:  when you work a full day, then go home and work another 4-8 hours on your house, you’re way too tired to bother blogging.

So let’s play catch-up shall we?

Here’s what we started with:

this is what we were doing to the house:

This is how we did it:

Demo!

The bathroom and kitchen became the kitchen, the old master bedroom became the kids bath and laundry room.

Framing and roof trusses:

Out with the old, in with the new:

Roof is on:

flooring starts to go in:

siding is up:

I install the kitchen:

drawers and doors:

counters

almost ready for the sink:

now with more sink!

Were there trials and tribulations along the way?  You betcha.  Our electrician was a half-wit.  Our builder was 6 weeks past his deadline.  The floors in the kitchen didn’t match up to the hall, meaning I had to put in a threshold.

Oh, and some drunk did this to my car:

It’s okay, ’cause now I drive this:

Okay, if you’ve stayed with me this long, here comes the cool stuff (to me).

We’re wrapping our kitchen bar 1/2 wall in this:

So what is it you ask?  It’s 150 year old flooring from an old mill.  It’s beautiful, and so totally cool.

In the master bedroom we’re doing wainscoting from 100 year old flooring we got from The Bosses great-aunts house:

So that’s about where we’re at.  After almost a year of cleaning, renovations, building, and cursing our failed electrician, we’re back in business.

 

This weekend, I learned some things

That’s right.  Things.  Many, many things.  Yes, I will of course tell you all about them.  Let me build this up will you?

Now, where was I?  Ah, yes.  Things.  So in order of their happening, here are the things I learned this weekend:

1.  When my father-in-law and his brother are together eating at Wind Tiki, hilarity ensues.  My father-in-law is usually a pretty funny guy.  Get his brother and a few Mai Tai’s in them and he becomes hilarious.  I think I may have peed my pants.  Just a little.

2.  Installing a new front door is not too difficult.  Removing the old door prior to installing the new?  Not. Fun.  At least I remembered to remove the old one before installing the new one….

3.  Weddings can actually be fun.  After spending the entire morning, and some of the afternoon installing a door, the last thing I wanted to do was go to a wedding that we had RSVP’d to 6 months ago and I had completely forgotten about.  I didn’t even remember what I had put down for my dinner…  Turns out I had the steak.  And what a steak.  Perfectly cooked (rare thank you very much), with garlic mashed potatoes (with a bit of skin in there for good measure and the potatoes actually mashed not whipped).  A couple of Jerry Collins and a beer to round things off, and I was very content.  Getting to spend time with The Bosses family was awesome.  They are good people.  We should get together more often.  I’m not sure if my sides can handle it though.  I was laughing way too much.

4.  This may be the most important lesson I learned this weekend:  CHECK THE WATER DEPTH PRIOR TO DOING AN OTTER SLIDE WITH YOUR KAYAK.  Knowing me, I will have completely forgotten this the next time I try it.  Rather than sliding gracefully into the water and popping back up without getting wet, I torpedo’d.

Instead of doing this:

I did more like this:

Did any of the people I was with happen to get a picture, or even more funny a video?  No.  Of course not.  I guess I really will have to try it again….

Dedicated to Mr. B

This is in response to a comment I made in regards to today’s blog post at Lessons from Teachers and Twits.

I wrote that I had a teacher who pushed me to do my best, and challenged me to go above and beyond.  I also wrote that I had an awesome teacher who let me cheat on my final in freshman English.  I was asked to provide some details, so here they are:

My freshman year of high school I had quite possibly the best English teacher I’ve ever had.  Mr. B wasn’t a great teacher, inspiring me to write, to read, or to actually learn the material.  He was a good teacher.  He was a great drama teacher, a great director of plays, and an all around great guy.  I read some awesome books in his class, and did learn quite a bit, mostly about life rather than about English.  Sure we had to read a bunch, write papers, etc.  I think that’s the basic requirement of English class.  We also had vocabulary tests.  He would give us a list of words from some stupid vocab book and require us to learn each definition and how to use the words in a sentence.  Now, my vocabulary was pretty darn good, but HAVING to learn vocabulary words is BOOOOOOORING!  I hated that part of class.  Let me read a book of my choosing and write a paper on it, I can do all day long.  Make me actually have to learn new words?  Fugetaboutit.

So let’s skip forward to the final.  It’s one of the last days of school and I’m about to head off to camp to work for the summer.  I have visions of white water rafting, waterskiing, boating, etc in my head, not some stupid English test.  Our final consisted of 50 vocabulary words which we had to define and use in a sentence and a couple of essay questions.  What. A. Bore.  At the beginning of the test he asked that we all pass our vocab books up to the front of the class where he would collect them.  My best friend (who of course I sat next to) kept his.  I don’t know why, I don’t think he needed to cheat on this stupid test.  As I recall, he had great grades in English (compared to my solid B-).  I saw the book sitting there between the two of us and grabbed it.  I lift it up, show it to Mr. B, and proceed to open it and copy word-for-word each and every definition / sentence for each word on our final.  He looks up when I show him the book, shrugs, and goes back to doing whatever it is that English teachers do when a test is going on.  As I finish, I pass the book to my bud who does the exact same thing as I did.

Years later, when I was a tutor for an alternative education classroom, Mr. B was teaching English.  I sat in our office with the teacher grading math or something like that when Mr. B walks in and shuts the door.  We’re all looking out at our students, some of whom are cheating.  ”Look at that!”  Mr. B exclaims.  ”Those kids are blatantly cheating!  Eric, did you ever cheat in high school?”  ”Yeah.  In your class for the final and in Biology.”  ”WHAT!  What do you mean?”  So I refresh his memory about how I had cheated on the vocab portion of the final.  ”Oh.  Yeah…  I guess I just didn’t care about what the two of you did.”

Here’s to you Mr. B.  For not caring what I did, and allowing me to pass your final with flying colors.  Any bets on how long before my mom calls to yell at me for something that happened 16 years ago?

Things not to say to or call your children

Mom, I’m going to stop you right here.  Do not read any of this post.  It will not be pretty and you won’t get it.  Actually, Boss, don’t you read this either…

 

There are certain things you should never say to your children.  There are certain things you should never call your children.  Most people know this.  Me?  Not so much.  Here are some of the things you should never say and/or call your children.  Most of these will be fictional.  Some I may or may not have actually said.  No I will not tell you which is which.

• We really wanted a dog.  So for the first couple of years you slept in a doghouse.
• No you really did like to eat dog food.  Why not try some now?
• You know you’re really being a douche right now.
• Why don’t you go find a busy corner to hang out on.
• Sure you can play in the street.  Frogger is a perfectly acceptable real life game to play.
• Boys are bad.  Throw rocks at them.
• Girls are worse.  Throw bricks.
• No bones are broken.  Get back outside.
• Apply some pressure.  The bleeding will stop.
• Your period?  You mean when you bleed out and die?
• No you will not be allowed to have your period in this house.
• You’ll just have to live in the shed when it comes.
• Holy crap!  That was awesome.  Never tell your mother.
• You did what?!?!  Can it be traced back to you?  No?  Well good.  You got away with it.
• Will you please knock it off before I knock your block off?
• Why don’t you go play parachute on the roof.  Take the big blanket.
• Sure you can play with knives.
• Cook it yourself, you’re 5 after all.  Gotta learn to survive sometime.

Heaven help me should my kids ever read this….

The big jump

Have I ever told you about the time I hit the big jump?  No?  Well.  That will have to change.  Out in the woods in my neighborhood was a motocross practice track.  The neighbors who owned the property were big into motocross, atv’s, and the like.  For us kids this was one of the best places in the world.  Utilizing their track we learned all about how to jump our bikes, land them correctly (this comes into play later on), and how to rebuild bikes when they break.  One fine summer afternoon we thought we would measure how far we could all jump our bikes.

Of course we couldn’t use actual measurements.  We were too cool for that.  We had to come up with “cool” names for the distances traveled prior to landing.  I think the first one was “Wuss”, followed by “You Suck”, etc, etc.  Eventually they got to be pretty good such as, “Damn!”, and last but certainly not least was “Holy S#!%!”  We would get up a good bit of speed and hit the jump with everything we had trying for at least a “You don’t suck as much as that guy does”.  Eventually we all started hitting the “Damn!” spot (I believe this was about 6 feet from the jump).  We were stuck there for hours.  Everyone had hit it, no one could get any farther.  There was no way I was going to hit any farther with my crappy, beat up, second hand bmx bike.  Not when everyone else had nice shiny GT’s and Kent bikes.

Oh how wrong I was…  Maybe it was peer pressure, maybe it was that I wanted to show the neighborhood that the kid with glasses WAS really cool.  Who knows how I decided to start much farther back along the trail than anyone else had gone.  I pedaled my butt off.  I hit speed unknown to man or machine.  I’m pretty sure that at some point I passed the Enterprise.  I hit that jump going at least 88mph.  If I had a flux capacitor on my bike I would have been instantaneously transported back to 1955.  Suddenly I was airborne.  I quickly passed “Wuss and You Suck”  ”You don’t suck as much as that guy” wasn’t even in the cards.  ”Damn!” was coming up fast!  Would I make it over?  Would I FINALLY be one of the cool kids?  Holy S#!%!  I’ve gone beyond “Holy S#!%!”!  I ended up landing just passed “Holy S#!%!”, about 7.5 feet or so from the jump.  That’s when things went completely wrong.  See the thing we didn’t plan for was the possibility of someone getting that far.  The track at that point turns 90 degrees and is banked.  I flew up and over the bank, flipped over my handlebars catching one in the gut, and thought I had died.  Then everyone came up to me to tell me how awesome I was.  Oh how quickly the body heals when the ego is stoked.  In the end I was the popular kid from the neighborhood for about a week.  Then Billy got a b-b gun and I was regulated back to second citizen status…

How to not get caught sneaking out after curfew

Time for another summer camp story.  Back when I was 13 I started working during the summer at Camp-of-the-Woods.  I worked there for six summers.  I came away from there with a greater sense of independence and a bunch of awesome stories.  My last summer working there, I was a Boat Guy.  What does that mean?  Basically it means I was a slave to a girls camp on the island in the middle of the lake, I gave sailing and boating lessons to people who probably had no business being out on the water, and I taught waterskiing.  I also learned that if you look like you are on official business, people will leave you alone.  Part of catering to the island’s every whim entailed carrying  a radio to be at their beck and call 24 hours a day.  While I hated having to carry the radio, it did have its uses.  My buddies and I loved late night boat rides and hanging out on the lake smoking cigars.  What better way to accomplish this than to leave our bunk house at midnight walking right past the curfew checkers and explaining that you were needed on the island and your buddies were going along to watch for rocks, logs, etc?  Nine times out of ten they didn’t have a radio, so there was no way for them to check up on us.

So kids what can we learn from this?

1. Sneaking out after curfew is fun.
2. Hanging out at night in the middle of a lake on a brand new ski boat is awesome.
3. If you look like you are on official business, you probably won’t get caught.
4. Make sure no one talks.

It’s that last one that will make or break you.

In which I jump from a perfectly good boat

Yup, you read that right.  I have repeatedly jumped from a perfectly good, moving boat.  Where did that land me?  Well in the water for one, and on one occasion in a heap of trouble.  Back when I was 14 I had a little 12′ aluminium boat with a 9.9 horse power outboard.  For me, this was just about perfect.  I had my own boat.  I could take it out fishing, swimming, etc.  A buddy of mine had a similar sized inflatable (think Zodiac) with a 9 horse power motor.  We would take them out, race each other, snorkel from either boat, and just have a great time out on the water.  Somewhere along the way we (along with my cousin) thought it would be cool to get the boat up to speed and jump off the side (ala Baywatch).  We did this for hours on end.  Sometimes we’d all jump with one of us having the kill switch strapped to our life jacket, other times one would stay in the boat and swing around to pick us up.  We never thought about the consequences of us jumping from a perfectly good boat with a prop in the water spinning at about 3000 rpm…  We never thought about hitting the water at 20+mph.  All we thought about was how much fun we were having.

Yeah sort of like that…

So we’ve been jumping from the boat for weeks.  We. Are. Pros.  We could put the “actors” on Baywatch to shame with our skills.  Then of course fate, or karma, or whatever has to intervene.  My cousin and I jump from either side of the boat while our bud stays on board to pick us up.  He swings around to get me, and turns just a bit too much.  I am hit by the front of his boat and forced under.  Fortunately, he has realized that he is going to hit me and pulls up the motor before I get chopped up into chum.  Unfortunately I am trapped under the boat by my life jacket.  I’ve never been one to panic in tough situations.  I also never panic when I’m in the water.  I very quickly assess the situation and realize that there is no way that I am going to get out from under the boat with my jacket on.  I remember unbuckling my jacket, swimming out from under the boat, then reaching back under the boat to get my jacket.  My cousin and friend were amazed to see me alive.  This is why I hate to wear a life jacket.  The only time I wear one is when I’m on our wave runners.  Kayaking, hanging out on the boat, swimming, whatever, I won’t wear a life jacket.

Driving Mr. Rums

Mom, you may not want to read this one….

 

I love driving.  I have since I first took my moms car without asking when I was 14.  I officially started driving on my 16^th birthday.  In reality I’d been driving for a couple of years on and off.  I have driving almost every day since then.  Yes, I know.  Who cares about that.  You want a juicy, possibly embarrassing story.  I’m getting to it dang it.  Let me get some set up in here will ya?!?!

Once I got my license I was “forced” to play chauffeur for my brother.  I may have pissed and moaned a bit, but the reality of the situation is that I would get more time behind the wheel, and this was a good thing.  One night I picked my brother up from a dance at his school.  He told me that we needed to bring two of his friends home because their parents couldn’t come get them.  No.  Problem (I get to stay out later driving around?  SCORE!).

So we take off, flying down some country back road that used to be part of my bus route.  It’s funny how in 2 years you forget where the huge jump is in the road.  This is the kind of bump in the road, that at 25mph in a bus, you hit your head if you are behind the rear tires.  I think we were doing about 60…  Yea Haw!  (People wonder why I’ve always liked The Dukes of Hazzard)  This was the first time I had ever been airborne in a car while I was driving.  I’ll save the first few times I was airborne for another time.  CRASH!  We hit the road, compressing the shocks, then they rebound all the way, then compress all the way again.  Whew.  Made it!

Oh.  Crap!  A 90 degree turn?!?!  Seriously?  Here?  Now?  We’re going to die.  Hold on to your butts!  Needless to say, we made the turn perfectly and I got a quick glimpse in the rear-view mirror.  The two kids sitting in the back seat’s eyes were the size of dinner plates.  They were HUGE.  I’m surprised they didn’t pee or poo themselves.

Let’s here your driving stories!  Post below:

Replacement Words

The joy of having kids is that we get to use replacement words.  Such words have a double meaning, or even a triple meaning.  I’ve used many such words in my 11+ years of parenthood.  My grandma is famous for also using such words.  My grandma uses “sugar” as her favorite replacement word.  Got a hang nail?  Oh sugar.  Just cut yourself?  SUGAR!  Sugar is also shortened to “Sug” a term of endearment.

My newest and most favorite replacement word is Bandersnatch.  I first heard the term from the 2010 Disney film Alice in Wonderland.  In the movie it’s a large hairy creature with sharp-pointy teeth.  In my replacement word usage, it has replaced everything from S#!t, the f-bomb, to any other word(s) that I don’t necessarily want my kids to hear.  “Awe Bandersnatch” is a common phrase to spout from my filthy sailor’s mouth.  At a cook-out on Saturday, we were discussing replacement words.  When I told the group of assembled party-goers my favorite word, they were a bit taken back.  “It still sounds filthy” said one.  I replied in my usual snarky manner that it was because the last half of the word is snatch.  That’s what I like about Bandersnatch.  It’s clean enough that Disney (and Lewis Carroll, though he was NOT that clean) used it, yet dirty enough to be successful in delivering the desired effect. 

Past favorites have been:  sugar (Thanks Gram!), blast, what in the world, and fork for obvious reasons…  Replacement words don’t tend to stick around too long.  Soon enough the kids will find out what word you are replacing and give you that look.  All parents (dads especially) know that look.  The look that says, “I’m telling mom!”  The look that let’s you know that your little girl isn’t that young anymore.  That she knows what’s going on.  It’s the same look you receive when you’re driving in the car and that one inappropriate song in your current playlist comes on.  As soon as they hear that f-bomb or s-word, you know.  You’re screwed.  The Boss’s going to find out.  She’s going to wring your neck.  “Mom!  Dad was swearing!”  “What’d he say THIS time?”  “Well, he said Bandersnatch, but what he meant to say was….”  This usually results in a verbal reaming for both me and The Thing which has figured out what word I was replacing.

Parenting is hard.  If it weren’t for the fun moments, I think we’d all eat our young.

Do you use replacement words?  Which are your favorites?

In which I believe I have killed my brother

Ah the joys and tribulations of growing up the oldest brother.  I’ve always been bigger than my little bro.  Not that he’s scrawny.  Not by a long shot.  I’m just bigger than him.  This often came in handy for a variety of reasons.  You see we used to fight.  A lot.  We fought like cats and dogs.  Like two brothers.  Of course we loved each other (not that we’d ever admit it), but we still liked to fight.  My brother being smaller than I am would fight dirty.  So I often had to take advantage of my size and put him in his place.

We lived in a fairly large subdivision.  The land behind our house belonged to the builder who did the original bunch of houses in the subdivision.  This was their staging area, their stockpile area, etc.  There were often cool bulldozers, front end loaders, and dump trucks for us kids to crawl all over.  Sometimes if we were lucky the doors would be unlocked.  Oh how many times we would sit in the seat of a bulldozer and pretend we were running over our “enemies”.

Since this area was a stockpile area, there were often large piles of dirt and loam.  One such pile stayed around for a long time.  It stayed so long, us neighborhood kids named it.  I can’t recall the name at the moment, but it was probably something cool like “MountDoom”.  Something like that.  We used to climb to the top and horst around.  Of course horsing around leads to dares which leads to “King of the Mountain”.  We would play “King of the Mountain” for days.   We’d push each other around on the top of this hill hoping to knock everyone else down and be able to keep them down with a combination of dirt clods and well aimed kicks to the face.  One afternoon it was just me and my brother playing on top of the hill.  Of course we were playing “King of the Mountain”.  I had just suffered a crushing blow from my brother (the cheater) when I got mad.  I don’t often get mad.  It leads me down a path I don’t want to go down…  So I got mad.  I picked up my little brother, pressed him over my head and threw him off the hill.  Fortunately he bounced a couple of times on the way down.  Unfortunately his head hit a rock.  Remember from my post What I believe is the first stupid thing I’ve ever done, I commented on head wounds?  Yeah, they still bleed.  A lot.  From all the blood that was soaking my brother’s shirt, coming from the back of his head, I was sure I had killed him.

Wait!  What’s that?  He’s moving!  Oh no.  He’s really mad.  Oh.  Crap.  Fortunately I was able to stop him from killing me, and was able to steer him towards home.  I of course followed along well behind.  I knew mom was going to kill me.  There was no doubt in my mind that she was going to take one look at him and launch into a full out Warrior Mom scream and take off my head with one swift kick.  But no!  She’s bundling his bleeding head in a towel.  They’re out the door to the car to bring him to the hospital.  I’m still alive!  Wait.  She’s just prolonging the agony.  She’s going to kill me for sure as soon as she gets home.  Oh why didn’t I have a sister?  I’d have NEVER thrown a GIRL off a mountain.

I am proud to say that I was not even punished for that bit of horsing around.  I think somehow in the rush to get my brother to the hospital, get him x-rayed and stitched up, she forgot all about me.  Today 5/23 is my mom’s birthday.  This post is in honor of how awesome she has always been to both me and my brother.

What sort of trouble did you get into as a kid?  Any good punishment stories? Comment below!