I have a suspicion that I will one day have a kitchen with functional appliances and a broad expanse of countertop, and I will still use one burner and a 2’ x 2’ space of counter for chopping and cooking. 

1. My hosting for this site is about to expire. I wonder if it’s time to hang it up.

2. I think the CNN election coverage is the strangest combination of the Weather Channel and Wheel of Fortune. They do nothing but repeat the same information over and over for hours on end, and they touch screens to make letters and figures appear like they’re Vanna White on politics.

3. I’m seriously bummed that Clinton won Texas and Ohio. I have a bad feeling that (a) the divided Democratic party will be a much, much easier target for the Republicans, (b) the pressure of one side to convince the other to abandon their candidate for the purposes of “unification” will be steady and unpleasant, (c) at this point there’s little difference between the two except personality so it’s becoming more a question of who do you like better and who can be meaner to the other, and (d) I am so fucking glad I am no longer a Pennsylvania resident, you have no idea.

4. I’m still tired and underslept, in case your first thought this morning was, “Gee, I wonder if Morag got any sleep?”

5. The kitchen is scheduled to disappear entirely today, leaving us with a fridge in the dining room and a sink. Wait, no. No sink. I’ll be washing dishes in the basement or in the upstairs bathroom. Last night we moved every last thing out of the pantry, leaving me with the following questions:

1. I own a LOT of different kinds of vinegar. Why?
2. I own even more different kinds of hot sauce. Why?
3. What do I cook that requires so much vinegar?

Regardless of the answers to the above question set, I know without a doubt I’m going to miss each and every bottle of vinegar while I’m making dinner out of the stash of cans and boxes that now occupy the dining room. 

This entry is part solicitation of your advice, and part test to see if Hubby is reading. But mostly, it’s an invitation for you, yes, you, to mythically spend my money.

We need a new roof. The present roof, it isn’t so much a roof as it is an overhang for the woodland village that has moved in under the eaves and scurries around at 3am. If it’s the woodland village that’s waking up my kids, this new roof can’t come soon enough.

We got the quote for said new roof from the contractor yesterday, and let’s just say, there were a LOT OF ZEROS OMG HOLY SHIT. We need the roof, we’re already adding on to the house, and comparatively it isn’t going to hurt too too much but OMG the ZEROS. ZEROS, they do indeed mean so much.

So here’s the part where you spend my money - virtually - and give me much needed advice. Our addition will include a powder room. We have yet to pick out the fixtures. As a general rule, I try to get Hubby gifts for birthdays and holidays that are either consumable or experiences to be enjoyed, and this would probably be a gift that would cover the next 2.3 years of gift giving: should I buy Hubby The Toto Neorest toilet, which, for approximately $5k, has a built-in bidet, air dryer and deoderizer, autoclean function, and a sensor that activates an automatic seat and flushing mechanism? There is no question that this is an obscene amount of money to drop (ha ha) on a toilet, but on the other hand, the roof is a FUCK of a lot more and that’s just going to bar entrance to woodland creatures. This cleans and air dries your ass.

What do you think? 

There is no wall in the kitchen, and while the addition is framed the only thing separating the house from the plywood structure is some insulation stuffed into the back wall which isn’t so much a wall but more of a used-to-be-a-wall.

Since the thermostat is a few feet away from that not-a-wall, it’s often very much affected by the cold since we got a shitfuckton of snow when the weather forecast called for hardly any.

So on the first floor, it’s cold. On the second floor, it’s very warm. And on the third floor, it’s Miami. In August. OMG. I think I got a tan just sitting up there for an hour. 

Came home yesterday to the following.

1. Pipes no longer frozen. Yay!
2. Contractor who had thoughtfully put a ton of insulation in the interior walls temporarily so we’d be warm and the pipes wouldn’t freeze. Yay!
3. No more countertop or cabinets on 3/4 of the kitchen wall. Yay!
4. No cooktop. Hmm.
5. Microwave shorting out the outlet in the dining room. Oh dear.
6. Dust everywhere. YUK.
7. Progress. Yay! Yay! Yay! 

Friday the contractor chipped away the stucco on the back wall of the house, and boarded up the naked insides of the back wall for the weekend. We cleared out the cabinets on that wall and began the setup of our temporary kitchen, which will reside on a wheeled cart, and which consists of the two most important parts of our kitchen: the microwave, and the coffeemaker.

It was cold as balls in the kitchen all weekend, and today we woke up to 10-degree temperatures and frozen pipes in the kitchen. That’s not good. We also have to keep an eye on the furnace, because the thermostat is close enough to the kitchen that it’ll run the heat all day and run down the water level in the boiler.

I keep telling myself, this is just the start of the “fun.”

Construction has started. WOOOO! According to Hubby, there’s a backhoe-y shovel-y kind of thing in our yard, and a bunch of trucks in the driveway. BRING IT ON.

Every time something was annoying with our kitchen this weekend, like things falling off the counter because it’s only 18” deep, or containers rolling around in the bottomless pit of my pantry, I would holler at our not-present contractor, “NEIL! GET ME A NEW KITCHEN!”

Neil, it seems, is here, and the new kitchen shall be kicking ass and taking names very very soon. I hope. If mother nature calms down with the wind storms and ice and crap.