You guys have given me much food for thought re: cabinets. Thank you.
Because I don't think I have nearly enough projects going on, now I will start researching the advisability or lack thereof of starting a little cafe in our town. I feel all warm and fuzzy about the general concept, but it would rule our lives, which is maybe not great. Really what I want is a good shaved ice place.
Last night I went to bed and was asleep probably by 10:30, and then this morning I woke up at 5:30! Without an alarm or anything! Yuck. I wanted my full eight hours. I hope I don't turn into one of those old people who never sleeps. I don't care if I don't need to sleep that long, I want to sleep that long.
The birch tree across the street is dead and is going to fall through the roof of the house, and then they'll never be able to sell it. The house, I mean. They'll be able to sell the tree no problem--just a couple of weeks ago a guy was driving past and came and asked us if he could have the branch that had fallen onto the lawn. John was like, "Uh, we don't live there, but neither does anyone else, so you're probably fine."
At lunchtime I was coming back from the school--there was a small almost-emergency when it looked like we had lost the punch passes for the carnival on Friday, which would be a total disaster--and at the dairy a mile or so west of my house there was a small river of cows that had escaped and were making a break for it to the field across the street. I took a picture of them and texted it to the girl in my YW whose family owns the dairy, saying "Oopsie, some of your cows are out," and she texted back "Oh shit." Then she realized who she was talking to and apologized for the farming words, and I told her NBD, because animals don't listen to anything else. I don't use many farming words about my animals, because they don't stress me out, but John sure does. His farming words are mostly about irrigation, though.
We put our bees in on Saturday. They are nowhere near as chill as last year's batch, but maybe what I thought was chill was actually sickly, and that's why they didn't make any honey. Maybe these guys will be pounding it, honeywise. Hope so. John joked with one of our Goat and Bee Consortium friends that from now on what we're going to do instead of buy bees is just get eighty dollars and set it on fire.
Monday, April 29, 2013
tally me bananas
Posted by Layne at 3:13 PM 3 comments Links to this post
Thursday, April 25, 2013
I forgot what a boring song that is
I have four cabinet doors painted now! Moving right along, I am. Right now I have in the green glass knobs I was using before, but I'm wondering if I should be a total joiner and get some oil-rubbed bronze knobs and bin pulls. They're so played, but they look so good with white cabinets! I already have some in the hall closet, and they look really nice. What do you think? Vote in the comments, green glass or oil-rubbed bronze.
Green glass:
Oil-rubbed bronze:
Posted by Layne at 11:48 AM 5 comments Links to this post
Labels: house
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
but it's soon, catch the moon, one-handed catch
Yesterday on Twitter Mike Birbiglia (a comedian) was opining that we should stop glorifying and celebrating murderers by giving them endless streams of news coverage. I concur. Then on NPR I heard the ridiculous idea that some members of Congress think that Tsarnaev (or Bomber #2, as Mike Birbiglia thinks we should refer to him) should be tried as an enemy combatant in a military tribunal, not in the civil justice system. Unacceptable! What a ridiculous, perverse, dangerous assertion! He is a terrible, horrible person, but he is also an American citizen! What person does not see the slippery slope of denying American citizens who are accused of particularly heinous crimes their constitutional rights? Would our esteemed congressmen also be interested in themselves being tried in military courts when they are accused of one or more of the myriad crimes they seem irresistibly drawn to? Stupid. Everybody is stupid.
Posted by Layne at 12:00 PM 3 comments Links to this post
Thursday, April 18, 2013
and you can just stop with the cutesy flavors while you're at it
HAHAHAHAHAHA IT'S HAPPENING I TOLD YOU IT WOULD.
Surely two articles mean it's for real, right? Plus yesterday Kai Ryssdal was throwing shade at a girl who started a cupcakerie in SF that accepts bitcoins--teasing her about the combination of two bubbles, and asking if she's worried about the future. I don't know if I'm right, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if the guy from Marketplace is voicing concern about your career choice you might should be worried.
Posted by Layne at 4:57 PM 2 comments Links to this post
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
"brain matter leaking out your nose" sounds bad, but I'm no doctor
I love Sherman Alexie's writing, as you may remember from a past book report, and a while ago I thought, hey, I should follow him on Twitter. Mistake. His tweets are awful. He is so negative and self-absorbed that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Plus he only sees the world through the lens of minority oppression. I get why he would lean that way, but buddy, just as an example, the Boston Marathon bombing is not actually about you, and it's super tacky to try to wrench the discussion in that direction. I had to unfollow him.
The Magic Eraser truly is.
Every time we do another season of soccer I want to punch the old me--the me who looked around at all the people who I thought were overscheduled and said "that will never be me"--in the mouth. What did I know? My kids all have one sport, and two of them have a musical instrument, and just those few things keep us running running running in the daytime. I was a self-righteous idiot. Surprise!
Preach, sister. (there is swearing)
Posted by Layne at 7:19 PM 2 comments Links to this post
Labels: ephemera
Thursday, April 11, 2013
all I dream of lately
Let me tell you why starting on May 1st our town will no longer have recycling bins. It's because the sheer volume of garbage, actual, un-recyclable garbage that people keep putting in the container, is so ponderous that we can't afford to clean it up anymore--like, we literally do not have the money to pay someone what it would take to get it cleaned up. Mattresses, boards full of nails (there is a sign saying no wood), glass (ditto), expired prescriptions, tires, and in the words of one esteemed councilman, "bags and bags of dog sh*t."
You stay classy, townspeople! Don't you realize that you're adding weapons to Belle's arsenal of self-aggrandizing arrogance? Shut up, Belle. I hate you. You are a parasite.
But back to the recycling. Most of the people who live here are using the bins correctly. They're full all the time with legit recyclabes. But then we've got residents and non-residents who know about the bins who I guess just want to not drive so far to the dump? So they throw all their shower doors and kitchen cabinets and old sheetrock and recliners in with our milk jugs and cardboard boxes. I imagine this is only one of many outlets for their psychopathy, and they generally suck as human beings. And now they've ruined it for the rest of us. I don't wish them death, but I do wish them harm.
Posted by Layne at 2:29 PM 1 comments Links to this post
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
the end of my australia trip, SAD
My last full day in Australia, sniff. So sad to leave. But I'm excited to see my kids, and considering the abundance of prezzies in my suitcase, they're going to want me to do a vacation like this every year, right kids?
Posted by Layne at 9:32 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Monday, April 8, 2013
people wouldn't lie about my tight pants
That was a nice spring break. We were toying with the idea of visiting Zion National Park, because we are trying to do better at being tourists in our own land, but we decided to stay home and do projects instead. We wanted to get the armoire built, the walls patched in the boys' room, and the cupboards sanded. In typical fashion, because John and I are not what anyone could accurately call "handy," the only thing we got done was the armoire. But it turned out nice, I think.
Posted by Layne at 8:19 AM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: house
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
they're kidding me with this "finding dory" thing, right?
Which is the worst small appliance, do you think? Blenders have a bad rap, although they seem to be a bit more reliable than they once were, and I hear bad things about coffeemakers, but I think we can all agree that toasters are the worst. THE WORST. Always breaking, inconsistent performance, phantom bagel toasting, crumb trays that are only nominally so . . . I have anger in my heart because of my toaster. But it's not bad enough that I can bring myself to replace it with another likely as poor-performing. The devil you know, as they say.
I made pound cake for the first time yesterday, from Tipsy's book. I assume you've bought it by now, and if not, I can't help you. But back to the cake--I have eaten a few pound cakes; enough to know that pound cake is rarely worth the calories. But I was in the mood for pound cake yesterday, and who am I to question the fates? I looked askance at the teaspoon of nutmeg, because I didn't want eggnog cake, but I made the recipe as written, which if you know me at all means I have tremendous respect for Jennifer. She is one of very few cooks whom I trust enough to make the recipe their way the first time, and modify later if needed. And I was right to trust her, because the cake was wonderful. Moist, dense, with a crackly, almost shortbready crust, and the nutmeg is present at the perfect level to add nuance and warmth to the cake without being immediately identifiable as NUTMEG. Or, as we call it at our house, buttmeg. We are immature and gross.
I'm not saying that the "war" that North Korea has declared with us is for reals, but if I were North Korea or similar and I wanted attention, I would absolutely wait until my powerful enemy had overextended itself for a number of years in a series of ill-considered wars and then bring the pain down upon them. Granted, this pain might not exist because I am a destitute and exceedingly poorly-governed country, but then again this pain might exist after all, because by grinding the faces of the poor and oppressing the hireling in his wages perhaps I have found some room in my budget for off-brand/reconditioned nukes. But then again, maybe the nukes had to be hocked to pay for my new vanity palace staffed by flying weasels. That's what's fun about North Korea: not knowing.
I'm beginning to lose patience with the crowd of people dismissing anti-GMO sentiment as being anti-science. We can't feed everyone without them, they say. There's nothing to fear from them, they say. Yes, I see. We must have been studying genetically modified crops for so long now that we know everything there is to know about them and their possible effects on our world. And this nonsense about how we can't feed people without them--there is such incredible waste of food right now that it should sicken all of us. It's not that we don't have enough food, it's that certain segments of the population are consuming far more than we should. I realize that not all GMOs are created equal. Some are malignant and some are benign. Isn't that a good reason to monitor and control them carefully? Let's not be so naive as to think that Monsanto and its friends just want to feed the world and it's our pesky regulations holding them back. If only they didn't have to live every day under the shadow of a potential lawsuit! Then they could really do some good.
I saw a picture of a botfly larva, and now I'm afraid that there were botflies in our hay last year. But a botfly larva wouldn't hang out in hay, would it? It would only be in an animal, right? Ugh, parasites are so gross. And now my head itches.
Posted by Layne at 1:46 PM 1 comments Links to this post
Labels: animals, ephemera, food, government, politics, society