Fall is for cross country

Acid Highlighters

Good morning Newbury Park. This is what the field looked like at the beginning of Nathaniel's soccer game Saturday, 8am. They couldn't see the other end of the field. It's a good thing their jerseys are neon or we couldn't see them.
By halftime it was clear blue skies and the temp jumped from 60-ish to nearly 80.

Nathaniel is #12 on the yellow/black team and he has orange shoes. Bright shoes make happy feet.

Go Acid Highlighters!

Nathaniel did great. A good start to the season.

Still working on the bathrooms

I don't know if we'll ever get done with the work on this house. Our main goal right now is to get both upstairs bathrooms in full function. We get a bit done each weekend and I do what I can during the week in between teaching and prepping for my labs and doing all the running around for the boys each day.
Davis decided to run for student body office. We'll see if he is elected next Wednesday. This is his campaign shot. Seems like he's reaching out to poke you right in the chest. Maybe its a "reach out and touch someone" campaign, maybe its just rude to point.

After 10 years of moves I am getting rid of all the boxes. Many of these boxes came from Memphis to New Jersey with my brother Scott 11 years ago and we took them for our move to Los Angeles. Then we moved to S.Pas by Garfield Park and then to our little place on the cul-de-sac. I quote Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce when I say, "I will move no more forever dang-it!" I put a notice on craigslist about free moving boxes and left them in the driveway. They are all gone now.

And then the bathroom trouble heated up. The master bath had no floor because we tore out the carpet and needed serious calking because of the gaps in the tile wall/shower floor junction as shown in the previous post. We were using the hall bath for everyone until we had the master bath fixed up. But then I noticed water on a box in the garage, looked up and saw the wall board (garage ceiling) directly under the hall bath was soaked. We stopped using it and started to get the master bath up and running. After lots of scraping and cleaning, Chris caulked our shower and is 3/4 of the way through getting the vinyl installed. First he laid a roll out cement board substitute over the plywood which smooths out the surface and gives it a good bond with the vinyl. Then he put the vinyl in the shower area before he was exhausted (at about 9pm). Its a big improvement over the plywood and we all using it now until the hall bath is back in order.

Now for the hard stuff. How do I get everyone to put their shoes away instead of leaving them inside the front door at the foot of the stairs? There are usually 3x this many pairs of shoes piled here and pairs of dirty socks. A lovely greeting for any guest. Nathaniel's shoes come with the extra bonus of being filled with sand from the school playground. He has started emptying them outside instead of on the bottom step, so that is an improvement.

And I have to do something about painting the hall bath. It is now a pink sponge-painted nightmare. I would naturally go with a cream colored paint but Chris and the boys wanted something a little more interesting. I tested out some of the colors we have already in semi-gloss. I have a terracotta - it looks positively orange. The "portrait gallery red" looks more like "haunted house burgandy" and a mix of the two is a bit too mauve. Maybe a mix that is mostly terracotta and a little PGred will turn out to be a Taos tile roof color that would be OK. It would be best if it didn't clash with the pink and cream floor tiles. It will be a while before we get to tearing them out and replacing them. The floor tiles are laid directly on the plywood subfloor so the grout cracks and comes out in chunks because the floor flexes. I just bought big bath mats to cover it all for now.

We could just leave it how it is and call it the "Rothko Room". I think he used house paint on his paintings. I wonder if he used semi-gloss or eggshell...

The plumber (from the house warranty company) said it wasn't a leaking pipe, but that the caulk leaked. So, I spend a day scraping old caulk out. There were a few different types of caulk and the top layer was silicone which meant I had to cut it away with a razor blade, try to shave it as close to the tile as I could, and then get the rest off with a silicone-removing chemical. I pulled the shower door frame out so Chris could caulk all of the tub/tile seams and then he re-installed doors. The hall bath will be usable again tomorrow. We'll watch to make sure there is no more leaking.

Oh yeah. Then we get to patch the wall torn up by the plumber. By then I hope to decide what to do about the paint.

Other odds and ends from the house: My visiting teacher cleaned up all the glass light covers. Now they are sparkly instead of gross. What a nice thing to do.

The stained glass chandelier in the loft cleaned up nice an pretty. I just have to figure out an outlet that will work near enough to it.

The sunflower chandelier needs a new fixture. Chris is working on it, but we keep forgetting to get a new cord when we go to the hardware store.

I checked through Nathaniel's old backpack before I put it in the pile to go to the DI and I found all his student cards since he was in Kindergarten. Pretty cute. Glad I didn't throw them out.

When we get the yard cleaned up it will be great for bbq's by the firepit. It is already fun without it being cleaned up.

A little more comfortable

So, what have we accomplished this week? (The major accomplishments were keeping everyone going through a busy and difficult first week of school.) But, after fixing the dryer early Saturday morning, Chris and the missionaries (who were wandering by and always looking to provide service) knocked out the little room in the corner of the garage. Now the Prius can fit on that side along with the bikes, camping gear, and kiln (yes, kiln.)

I painted the inside of the laundry room cupboards so I could put things away.

I unpacked as many boxes as I could to clear out the garage and living room. Now the living room only has living room stuff in it - even if it doesn't yet have a floor.

I unpacked boxes and boxes of books- some that haven't been unpacked in 8 years. Nathaniel was helping me unpack, but its too hard to pack or unpack books without getting distracted when you find one of your favorites.

I cleaned out one of the 3 fireplaces. Yuck. It had sand to cover the gas burner under soot (because they burned something other than gas in it) dust, something that looked like torn quilt batting, spider webs, cigarette butts, used match sticks, and popsicle sticks.

This is just one corner of the shower in the master bath. There was a thick layer of soap scum/hard water deposits/calk/grout/fossils around the whole edge. I had to scrape out every crevice and over every tile. No lime-remover liquid was going to work on this.

The master bathroom is all painted and the tape and plastic removed.

This is my heavy duty bathroom cleaner. I call it "Mr. Spackle Knife". I sat in the middle of the shower and just rotated as I scraped.

No floor in the bathroom yet. I did get all the nails and staples out of the plywood so, until we get some vinyl in there to make due for a couple (2, 3, 4, 5...) years until we remodel, the blue tarp will have to do.

I put our room together yesterday and the shower is finally ready for use after Chris caulked the big gaps in the corners that let water run right into the floorboards and wallboard.

I don't know why the pics are arranged like this. Nathaniel's room is nice and bright and he finally got the red fuzzy rug he was asking for, although in floor mat size instead of wall-to-wall.

Davis is very comfortable in his room.

And the guest room will probably function as Chris' closet until we get shelves and bars in ours (my clothes are in two wardrobe boxes Chris put in the closet). But, we'll clean it out when you come to visit!

First Cross Country Meet

Today was Davis' first cross country meet. He's been running for almost 5 weeks now. He's really enjoyed it so far and I've been impressed how he has handled the increase in mileage (from 0-6 miles a week to about 30).

And he has fast green shoes. Yay Davis!

First day - new schools

The boys started at their new schools today. But first, Monday night and last night they got in the spa with Chris. Nathaniel wonders if the spa-schedule will be like the video game schedule during the school year - only on the weekends. I haven't gotten that far to make spa-use rules.
So, off to school. This is the only day that Davis and Nathaniel will go to school at the same time. Davis has 6am seminary (starting next week) and 7am band everyday (starting tomorrow). He's one of the few teenagers I know who will have no problem getting up and being ready that early. I just have to make sure he doesn't set his alarm too early, otherwise when he is ready 10 minutes later he is in my room trying to get me out of bed to drive him because he doesn't want to sit around being bored for another hour.

Take note of the shoes. Davis always likes colorful shoes and this year Nathaniel wanted yellow converse. But then we found out the school he is going to has uniforms. He was worried they wouldn't let him wear his yellow shoes. The uniform policy didn't decree a shoe standard other than closed-toe sneaker style shoes and just expressed a preference for "light colored" shoes. Well, yellow is light colored. I'll go to bat for him if he gets any negative feedback on the shoes.

5th grade! We walked Nathaniel in to his classroom. He looked less-than-confident when he found his seat and sat down. I hope the teacher does an ice breaker activity. He'll warm up pretty fast when he gets talking to the other kids. Davis just wanted to be dropped off at the high school and was off like a shot without a backward glance. He's been running with the cross country team for a few weeks now so he already knows some kids, he went to freshman orientation and picked up his books and pe clothes, so he's ready to go. No parting picture though.

I found, however, I am not as soft hearted as I thought I might be. I sent my boys off into unknown territory with a dry eye thinking, "I only have 6 hours to get as much done as I can before I have to go pick them up again." Let's see if I can get in a jog, run errands, unpack some boxes, prep my lab slides for tomorrow, and then get to the elementary school on time.