the haps (part 1)

life has been dictated by some significant happenings lately. this is part 1 of a 2 part post. cause i should be working right now...

1. the kitchen update.
our kitchen is 12 years old and it's starting to really show its age. since we'll (hopefully) be selling in less than 2 years we knew we'd need to do something before then...cause grout is falling out of the ceramic tiles that make up the counter and our faucet is about ready to blow. like clay showed me how to turn off the water source ready to blow. the electric COIL cook top only has 3 burners that work...and our dishwasher is so loud it sounds like the el is running through our kitchen. have i convinced you we need an update/upgrade yet?

well we convinced ourselves...but given our struggles with design choices in the past, we decided to hire a designer. fancy, right? um, turns out not so much. 3 weeks + $600 later they presented their design in about 10 minutes. they picked the same granite we had in chicago (that we picked out by ourselves), and some seemingly random photos of a sink, dishwasher, cook top, faucet & drawer/cabinet hardware. and an awesome stacked glossy glass tile back splash...which i had asked for. the problem? we gave them a budget and they came in 68% over. um, yeah.

so we called our realtor to confirm that updating to granite is something we really need to do. she says yes, yes it is. apparently people expect granite in this market. she also gives me the names of some other folks...who come out & tell us they can give us pretty much the same thing for about 20% over our original budget. done. the biggest value? new dude tells me glass tile is RIDICULOUSLY hard to keep clean...that water spots are bonkers bad unless you are constantly wiping & cleaning it.

seriously fancy designer ladies? did you not see the state of my house when you came over? did you not see my two small children? cause you certainly did NOT think to mention that maintenance of glass tile is NOT very functional. what a let down! but, in the end we picked out some different granite that we liked, described a backsplash look we wanted and we think we'll be happy. we picked out a new cook top & dishwasher, and in a few weeks we should have an updated kitchen!! the designer folks said our kitchen would be out of commission for 3 weeks. this new guy said 2 days. now that's what i'm talkin about.

2. the caroon saga.
ugh. so like five weeks ago or so we realized we had something living in the wall right under where the breezeway connects to the house. we've left our garage open for the last year since tallulah moved outside (cause she's an inside pee-er-all-over-er), and in the last few months a raccoon (or a caroon in luci speak...although today she kept calling it a kangaroo) decided a wall in our house would be an excellent place to live. and if i were a wild animal i'd probably agree. we had a trapper man come & set two traps...baited with honeybuns. the caroon was too smart & said no thank you. trapper man said it was probably a smart young male & we were lucky it wasn't a mama with babies. we thought (s)he was gone.

till a tuesday. we heard a ruckus, and sure enough (s)he was back. and we decided it was in fact a she...now a mama with babies. NOT.SO.AWESOME. after some googling we decided to try applying a concoction of chili powder, cayenne pepper & hot sesame oil. clay quickly realized that it wouldn't really work because we couldn't get to where mama + babies were, and if we sprayed it at their entrance he'd be spraying all of the electrical wiring of our house. but the clever man did think of drilling a hole in the wall above where the caroons were and blowing in chili powder & cayenne pepper with a straw. and it worked. immediately we heard mama rustle her way out of the wall. two hours or so later i saw mama leave with a baby in her mouth. we thought that meant success, that she'd surely come back for the other babes. and we thought she had. till today. when i heard babies at lunch. OH NO. so i promptly called mr. trapper man back. he came this afternoon & cut them out of the wall. apparently she was a young mama and he didn't think she'd be coming back for the other two. there has been no sign of her since tuesday when i saw her take a babe away in her mouth. i had read that if you put the live babies in a trap the mama will go in every.time. so i thought he'd do that. but sweet coon peas were too little to leave in a trap...only 7-10 days old. they'd be too cold. so he was going to take them to a rehabber who will raise him them until they are old enough to be released into the wild.




see the orb below? that's the orb that was here, watchin to see if i respected another mama's babies. yes God/universe/whatever you happen to believe...i respect life. no baby bloodshed in this house thankyouverymuch. this is a place of love & life. just preferrably not wild-life.

now we just have a bit of drywall repair to take care of....

k...i know you are all riveted by the details of our life, but i really need to work now ;)