I’m starting to recover from my cold. I skipped yoga yesterday in the interest of resting and then felt better enough that I decided to do some sanding on the dresser I got at the sale last week, which is currently living in my garage. Not surprisingly, all those lovely details which attracted me in the first place – the small drawers mounted on top, the grooves carved across the drawer fronts and down the front – are really a pain in the butt to clean and sand. I did all the drawers yesterday, with the help of a blade on my Leatherman tool.
Today my shoulder hurts and it’s raining and 50F-ish out. Standing out in the damp garage sanding isn’t exactly an attractive option.
Instead, I went to another sale this morning. It sounded promising in the description, but wasn’t all that in person (which is probably for the best!) I did end up getting a collection of handy garden tools though: a rolling seat for weeding (with under seat storage), a pruner, a hedge clipper, and a manual edger. There were many other garden tools as well, but I admit I wasn’t sure what some of them were for! I’ll probably regret not getting more of them at some point in time, but for now I’m happy with what I did get. I imagine that I’ll be more interested in puttering around the yard when it is truly my yard to care for, but I expect to get much done in the way of gardening this year since we’ll be moving in mid-summer.
The curb appeal of the house we’re buying has been severely neglected, but first I need to study up on what zone we are in and how the sunlight falls in the yard. I imagine that when I get tired of painting walls, I’ll start digging anyway. I’m also thinking about doing a brick walkway to replace a plain, cracked, and uneven concrete walk. My husband thinks brick would be hard to shovel in winter though. Thoughts?
Today however, I am going to stay inside. I have several options with which to entertain myself – writing, reading, or quilting. I’m hoping to fit in time for all of the above. I’m going to relish the quiet time – we have four soccer games this weekend and also a cocktail party to go to. I’m tired just thinking about it!
Thankfully I don’t get sick very often – which is perhaps why I am so crabby about it when I do catch something.
I woke up yesterday with half a scratchy throat and a drippy nose and a rapidly declining energy level. With all the pollen and tree fluff in the air, I had hoped it was allergies and not a cold. This morning I woke up with a full scratchy throat and little more energy than I went to bed with.
I stripped the dresser I bought at the estate sale on Monday – getting the old varnish off was like scrubbing off tar – and had planned to start sanding it today. That remains to be seen. Mostly what I feel like doing right now is sitting in my chair. I may catch up on my quilting and a few episodes of House instead.
It’s that time again – garage / estate sale season!
I went to my first estate sale of the new year on Friday and this time I had a mission: we’ll soon have a large new house to furnish! I was actually a little nervous about the sale for just that reason – I didn’t want to get frantic and buy everything I saw, but I also didn’t want to miss out on any great pieces either.
In the end I reminded myself that around here, there is *always* another sale!
The house in which the sale was held had some fantastic stuff – primarily high quality mid-century modern, which just happens to be one of my very favorite periods. The best items had correspondingly high prices as well so I didn’t buy as much as I might have liked. I did find a few treasures though.
(Click any image to enlarge)
Vintage dresser
I found this beauty next to a work bench in the basement. It was only $30 because it needs a lot of TLC.
This piece has such great bones though, I can’t wait to see what it looks like once I strip it and refinish it with Danish oil.
I kind of wonder what this poor dresser ever did to anyone to be treated so badly?
I found this desk in the basement as well, but in a finished part. (Can you believe I fit this desk in the back of my VW Golf? Note the skateboard – my helper when I’m moving furniture on my own)
Also only $30, and it is solid. And look, it has a built-in typewriter table. I imagine my husband will use it as a breakfast tray.
I think that what appealed to me most about this desk is that it had obviously been well-used. When I pulled out the drawers there were old carbon papers jammed in the back. Someone sat at this desk and was busy.
I decided that perfection is overrated and not necessary for this piece – especially since my husband will cover the top with his laptop and all his own paperwork. Instead I opted to wash it with Murphy’s Oil Soap and then buff it with Howard’s Restore-a-Finish.
Voila! All that white film from the old shellac giving out is gone! The top is far from perfect but even it looks better.
Not everything I bought was a project. I was pretty good and ignored the china and crystal and miscellaneous kitchen stuff, though there was an old aluminum sugar shaker I was eyeing, as well as a two-cup dry measure cup (I’ve never seen one of those) I didn’t even try to resist this awesome egg cup or four salt/pepper shakers.
A woman at the sale saw me walking around with the egg cup and commented that she had lived on a farm and raised chickens and would never, ever, ever buy anything to do with chickens. I told her that a ceramic chicken was the best kind to have – no noise and no care required!
This gorgeous ceramic bowl by Haeger was actually the first item I picked up. How could I have resisted? The got the license plate in the background for $1 for my son, who loves to collect them.
The only item I now regret not getting was a (designer) Danish chair but it seemed steep at $250. In retrospect, my husband and I paid more than that for a collection of lamps at a sale last fall so I’m not sure why I was hesitating. I had hoped that it would be there on Saturday morning for 1/2 off but we just missed it.
Oh well, as I said before – there will be other sales…
Why is it that on days when I know that I absolutely *must* wake up on time and get going – like days when I will be traveling – I nearly always wake up before my alarm, alert and ready to go, but on every other day I hit my snooze at least 3x and have to nearly drag myself out of bed and don’t feel human til I’ve had a very large cup of very strong tea?
Why did I pine for foods I couldn’t get when abroad, like cottage cheese or ham, and yet now I never buy them?
Why do I put off doing easy tasks like making phone calls when in fact doing them will help other important things to move forward?
Why do I always remember the one thing I needed most at the grocery store after I’ve already gone home again with 12 other things I didn’t intend to buy?
Why does it always rain after you wash your car?
Why does the current story I’m writing always talk to me when I’m not able to write and then go silent when I have the time to listen???
I like doing housework more than I like doing paperwork.
I hate filling in forms – does your information go above or below the line – or inside a box? And because I have a tendency to over-think everything so questions that ought to be easy to answer become essays.
Yesterday we got a letter of provisional approval on our house loan application – provisional because we needed to answer some questions they had with regard to a few financial transactions as well as some documentation to show a record of successful and timely housing payments. None of the items they requested was unreasonable or difficult to explain but digging up all the bank statements, copies, etc was not. fun. Some of the information they asked for was with regard to our life in Egypt, which isn’t always easy to document because it just wasn’t a very organized place.
I can only hope that we will be living in the new house long enough to have this process become a distant memory!
Now I have to scurry around and clean up the rental house for a showing this afternoon. It’s not too bad overall because I spent much of Monday doing the major stuff – including dealing with a gas leak which was coming from the gas fireplace downstairs in the kid zone. We’ve never touched the thing at all but when I returned from Maryland on Sunday the downstairs just smelled bad. It took until Monday afternoon for me to twig what might be causing the odor. The utility company came out and found a small leak in the fireplace as well as near the furnace.
Guess I need to invest in some carbon monoxide detectors soon.
I don’t know how such a leak would have spontaneously started unless someone who was in looking at the house while we were gone last week was messing around with the fireplace. I had the utility company turn it off at the main valve so good luck to them getting it going now.
Fingers crossed that everything works itself out sooner than later!
I don’t suppose I have ever given the navigation of the Potomac River much thought, but if I had I would have imagined it all to be more like the portion of it that we cruised looking at cherry blossoms, down toward Washington D.C. – wide and flat. In truth, portions of it aren’t very navigable and so there was a long canal build to help traverse the less boat-friendly sections.
The canal itself has many locks built into it as well to compensate for the slope of the land.
Beautiful isn’t it?
Great Falls (Virginia on the other side) Apparently there are some hearty souls who like to kayak in the rapids here. Um… not me!
The water was moving too fast for me to see any fishes, but something caught this bird’s attention!
There is a really long bike path that follows the canal that would probably be beautiful to ride. The day we drove into Washington D.C. to see the cherry blossoms we drove past part of the canal and I saw a tree full of vultures. Unfortunately I didn’t see any the day I wasn’t in a moving car and did have my camera handy. It would have been quilt a dramatic shot!
Easter Sunday marked the end of our spring break and our return to Michigan, but it will hardly be to the same old routine. The travel soccer season is about to kick into high gear and with it, my exploration of Michigan!
We were very lucky to have a some great weather while we were in Maryland. We took advantage of it by getting out and enjoying some of the natural beauty in the area – which is sometimes hard to believe exists when you are caught in six lanes of crawling traffic on the interstate.
Our first excursion was to Sugarloaf Mountain. We arrived late enough in the afternoon that we didn’t do the longest of the possible hikes. That was okay – we expended about as much energy on the shorter loop around the top as I wanted to expend on my vacation!
View from top of Sugarloaf Mountain
The trail going up from the parking lot was quite steep in places and it wasn’t always easy to find a solid foothold in the loose dirt on the trail. Better to go up such a trail than down however (sliding on your butt!)
Saw this beauty off the side of the trail on the way up. I love Jack in the Pulpits.
We rounded the crest of the mountain and there were stairs going down the steepest bits which was helpful. As difficult as it was to ascend the trail on the loose dirt, not sure I would have preferred climbing all these stairs!
(Have I mentioned that I don’t particularly miss our 5th floor walk-up apartment in Cairo??)
After we left the mountain, we took a side trip to Burkittsville, Maryland, setting of the movie The Blair Witch Project and also home to Spook Hill. Scene of a horrific Civil War battle, the legend is that if you park at the bottom of the hill and put your car in neutral, soldier ghosts will push your car up the hill.
How could we be in the area and not test that out??
We found the hill, put the car in neutral (and put on our hazard lights!) and waited. It wasn’t long til our minivan with 6 passengers began to roll uphill. Freaky! What else could we do but go back down and try again, in reverse? The effect is even weirder that way as you seem to be looking downhill as the car rolls up the hill.
We didn’t video our experiment but others have:
There is very likely a rational explanation but I like the ghosts better.
In general, I like to drive. Most of the time, if we are going someplace I am the one who ends up driving. I particularly like to drive alone out on an open highway. Driving is my time for thinking – and for listening to music, loud.
When we first went abroad, to the United Arab Emirates, we didn’t have a car. I didn’t mind so much because driving in a foreign country is a whole other ball of wax (where did that phrase come from!?) even if they do drive on the same side of the road as the US. We started out living in Al Ain, in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and most of the intersections were traffic circles. The leading cause of death in the UAE is traffic accidents so taking a year to get used to the place and either walking or taking taxis was fine by me. When we did finally purchase a car, we decided to get an SUV not because we were particularly interested in dune bashing but because everyone else had SUVs or large cars and we wanted a larger car so it would be both visible and a bit of insulation in the event of an accident. The trick then was to find one that was automatic transmission because I wasn’t going to learn to drive a manual transmission AND navigate traffic circles at the same time.
I avoided the road in the above video as much as possible for obvious reasons!
I quickly mastered the traffic circles and the insanely high speed driving on the highways of the UAE. In the five years that I drove in the UAE, I never had a traffic accident (though I did have my share of speeding tickets – oops!)
We were strongly discouraged from taking our car with us from the UAE to Egypt and in truth, I didn’t not want to drive in Egypt. Again, they drive on the same side of the road as the US, but the traffic in Egypt is insane. Not only the sheer volume of cars, but the driving tactics. The UAE had traffic circles and also traffic lights and for the most part people cooperated and followed rules. Not so in Egypt. A road might be marked for three lanes of traffic but often there would be five lanes of cars. Traffic police? People ignored or fought with them. The traffic in town was slow and frustrating and on the open highway it was high speed and dangerous. I was more than happy to walk where I needed to go on a daily basis (it was often faster!) and call a trusted taxi driver or take the subway for other trips.
Now that we are back in the US, I am back to driving and I do love my little car. I have to say that I am glad we ended up living in a smallish Midwestern town however. I almost never have to get on a highway or interstate and there is no rush hour traffic to speak of. I am visiting my sister in Maryland this week and as luck would have it, I have two friends from my time in Egypt who are now living within 45 minutes of my sister, but in opposite directions. In order to visit them I’ve had to navigate interstate highways around Washington DC that are 5-6 lanes wide, which wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t relying on vocal instructions from the GPS to navigate and simultaneously worrying about road constructions obstacles while going 70mph just to keep up with the flow of traffic. I had to drive back from dinner with one friend as it was getting dark and my nerves were nearly shot when I got back to my sister’s house. I left the second friend’s house earlier so I had the setting sun in my eyes but it was better than navigating in the dark.
It’s a good thing I like driving because I still have a ten hour drive to get back to Michigan to look forward to this weekend, as well as the upcoming travel soccer season which will start up as soon as I get back…
With spring arriving a few weeks ahead of schedule in most parts of the country, I thought that I was going to miss seeing the famous cherry blossoms in Washington D.C. this year – even though I was going to be visiting at what was supposed to be the peak time. My BIL had already purchased tickets for us to take a cruise on the Potomac River to see the trees so we went anyway because why not? I’m always up for a boat ride.
Marina on the Potomac River
We could not have asked for a nicer day for a river cruise – low 60s and breezy.
Is this not the most adorable house boat you’ve ever seen? I’ve never wanted to live in house boat, but I’d consider this one!
A peaceful way to see some of the sights away from the crowds – also out enjoying the nice weather.
I-spy some cherry blossoms!
I was a little bummed out that so many of the trees were already past the blossoming phase, but then I saw a couple of trees still in full bloom not so far from where we were parked. They are even more impressive up close.
I certainly can’t say I didn’t get to see any cherry blossoms!
I’ll be leaving tomorrow to spend a week at my sister’s house in Maryland with my children (my husband doesn’t get any time off). We’ll be driving and I only wish my children would be as cute as this cat as we drive. I hope to make it in one long day. Think I can do it?
I had hoped we’d be able to see the cherry blossoms this year since we left her place in early March last year, well before they were out. It should have been perfect timing this year and then everyone had an early spring. Oh well. A change of scene is never a bad thing, right?
One good thing about being away is that if anyone wants to see the house, I won’t have to worry about it. I’ll leave it as clean as I can and any mess left lying around will be on my husband’s head. I can only hope someone makes an offer soon because then 1) I won’t have to worry about any more showings and 2) no doubt our landlord will be happy to have us out even sooner than we’d hoped. Fingers crossed.
Now I’m off to fill Easter baskets so they are ready upon our return. I let my daughter in on the secret of the Tooth Fairy a few weeks ago and she (eventually) followed the logical chain of thought to Santa and the Easter Bunny. Yesterday she suddenly asked me when Santa stops coming. I looked at her and asked her why he had to stop. The smile of joy and relief on her face was priceless.
I write books for fun so why is it so hard to write my own bio? I am an American recently returned to the US after more than a decade in the Middle East, most recently living in Cairo, Egypt. Aside from writing, I'm a married mom of two, a decent (if reluctant) cook, an encyclopedia of random scientific / medical facts, a wine lover (but not a snob!), and a Capricorn. I love to travel, spend time with good friends, and laugh at life's surprises. View of life - definitely half full.
