The new house

The back yard, from the family room: Zoe is watching bunnies in the yard one morning.


I was fussing with Zoe's camera tonight, the REAL camera my dad got her for Christmas, the one that is nicer than mine, and I found that she had taken a bunch of photos of the new house. I vaguely remember telling her, one day when I was unpacking my sixth box on my fourth cup of coffee, to go take pictures to show her dad the new house just to get her out of my hair for a few moments. Because I'm such a bad mom, right?

The photos are cute. It is nice to see things from her perspective. If the photos seem a little fuzzy, I think it's because I fed her a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.


The dining room, which serves as the holding station for the remainder of our boxes that have no home yet. Which is totally appropriate since I have no dining room furniture. That's the front door to the house.



The kitchen. We just had that range delivered Saturday, and cooked our first dinner -- cod -- in the oven tonight. It made the smoke detectors go off for some reason. Good to know they work, even if they are a little sensitive to fish.



Zoe's room, the first one we set up. And the only one we've changed around several times. Zoe wants to paint it purple. No, pink. No, purple. No, pink.



Mom's room. Note it doesn't have a bed. It would have a bed if State Farm had not denied my claim, saying that after Hurricane Wilma a flood destroyed my bed, and I didn't have flood insurance, but funny how that flood didn't touch the rest of the house, just the stuff under the big hole in the roof over my bedroom that the WIND blew off. But I'm not bitter.


Jacob's room: Sparse, but I'm afraid to buy anything for it since I'm suing the pants off Joe for all the stuff in his house that I bought for Jacob, which is all the stuff in his house for Jacob, actually. We're doing a fish theme in this room eventually.



The hallway closet. Zoe overlooked no details.



The basement.




My dad and my brother have been cleaning out my grandpap's house, and by "cleaning out" I don't mean scrubbing it down with bleach, but removing all the good crap from it and pitching the rest. I was able to snag my own finds, including a bookcase we're going to paint pink (no, purple... no, pink) and put in Zoe's room. And an old pole lamp that is so rocking it is now the most favorite thing in my house.

I wish I had taken a picture of it all put together before I took it apart to clean and rewire it. The sockets are absolutely shot. But since I was a kid, this thing was in my grandparents' house. It has three drop lamps on it, with metal cylinders that fit into glass shades dangling from brass fixtures. So 70s. So unbelievably cool.

Anyway, since I was a kid, these glass drop lamps were kind of an amber color. I thought yellow, and my brother thought maroon, but the point being, we thought they were opaque. I put them in a soapy sink, and all of a sudden, the "finish" started melting away on these shades, and I started to panic, that I was ruining them, by god, a wonderful collectible and I was ruining them!

Then I realized... that coating on the shades was from TOBACCO SMOKE. They were actually clear glass to begin with. Here's a dirty one, and a clean one:



My grandmother died from emphysema. I can't imagine what her lungs must have looked like after decades of this building up inside her.



And finally, I can't resist thrusting my newest upon you:


Jacob and Kipper, both looking pleasant as ever.