It all began over a year ago, when our 4-wheeler (the Bayou) could no longer be started with the push button and had to be started with the pull start.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to start an older ATV with a pull start, but for those of you with noodle arms like mine, it’s pretty impossible. Well, it just is impossible.  If I were stranded somewhere with the Bayou, I’d have to use the 2 legs God gave me to get out, ’cause there’s no way these arms are going to be able to pull start the thing.  There is a way out of that…and that is to get the ATV rolling down a hill and start it that-a-way.  I hate to call my Bayou a hooptie, but….

So, looking into the start problem, we had 2 problems.  The battery was old and dead and some of the battery cables were bad.  Not a problem, really, if you can pull start the thing, which obviously I cannot.  Since I could neither pull start the Bayou, nor was I willing to roll it down a hill to start it, it sat.  And sat and sat.  And that’s a bad thing for anything with an engine.  So, fast forward and one day last fall, I was doing some yard work and I reeeeeeally wanted the 4 wheeler to have a trailer so I could haul some stuff.  I don’t even remember what now.  We don’t have an official ATV trailer or anything like that, but I figured even the wheelbarrow would do if I could configure it the right way (the ‘barrow has 4 wheels, BTW).  So, Jason decided to get the Bayou running so I could haul some widgets.

Forty five minutes later, Jason comes up the driveway from the bottom of our extremely sloped hill, red as a beet and soaked in sweat with wild eyes something akin to a shark in full feeding frenzy mode.  I looked up and said:

Me: What have you been doing?

J: (out of breath) I have been trying to get this #$%@ 4-wheeler going for a (bleeping)  HOUR!!!

Me: Where is it?

J: Down in the woods.

Me: In the woods.

J: (if looks could kill…)

Me: okay, well, let me help you. (getting up and looking around)  Where’s the golf cart?

J: In the woods.

Me: What?

J: (purely frustrated) I TRIED TO PUSH START THE @#$% FOUR WHEELER DOWN THE HILL AND IT WOULDN’T START, THEN I TOOK THE @#$% GOLF CART DOWN THE HILL AND THE (bleeping) BATTERIES ARE  HALF DEAD AND I’M SICK OF ALL THIS @#%^ THAT DOESN’T WORK AND BY GOD I SWEAR I AM TRADING ALL OF THIS @#%^ IN ON A (bleeping) MULE*!!!

Me: Ummmm, okay.  Okay.

*UTV, not a flesh-and-blood mule, though I would have happily traded for one at that point.

So clearly we were not in any kind of happy mood.  We walked down the hill (45 degree angle, BTW) and there was the Bayou and golf cart sitting there, pretty as you please.  The next idea was to push the Bayou with the golf cart to try and get it started.  This means Jason is on the Bayou and I’m shoving the thing with the cart through the woods.  I guess you probably know this didn’t work either.  As punishment, the Bayou got to spend the next week in the woods alone.  I don’t even know how it got back up to the house, and I sure didn’t ask.  All I know is that for our New Year’s goal, we decided that, come hell or high water (or both), we were going to fix things around here for good and get rid of extraneous stuff.

Obviously, the Bayou and golf cart were high on the list, but we also had our lawn tractor that refused to start and a generator that wouldn’t crank (and many other odds and ends).  I can happily say that we’ve located the problems (mostly) with the Bayou and G.C. , the genny is going and that my lawn tractor is up and running…complete with a trailer.  All I wanted was a trailer in the first place, right?  And this is an honest-to-God cute little mini-trailer.  I hauled about 10 loads of stuff around the farm yesterday with a smile on my face.

Before I go, I’ll tell you how ‘we’ fixed the lawn tractor.  After checking pretty much everything on the tractor, Jason determined that everything was working except for some reason the carburetor wasn’t sending fuel to the engine.  Jason utilized the little known “Old Mechanic Method” and gave the carb about 5 good whacks with a socket wrench.  Runs like a dream.

For the past several weeks, we haven’t been getting any eggs out of my laying flock of hens.  With one egg-ception (sorry).  We do get one monster egg a day out of my Sex-Link hen, and that’s it.  When the days grow shorter (and today is THE shortest day of the year), chickens slow or cease to lay.  But there was something else nagging me.  Usually I would at least have 3 or 4 eggs a day, despite the daylength.  Suddenly, it dawned on me.  My hens are OLD.  At least by hen standards.  The youngest hens I have are going on two years old.  I did not replace any layers this spring, as I normally do, just because I…forgot!

So now for the big question: What to do with the old hens?  Unfortunately for the hens, the answer is The Stewpot in the Sky.  All I can say is that we’re gonna be eating a LOT of chicken around here.  A stew hen is not a roasting bird. Her meat will be tougher than a ‘roaster’, and it must be cooked slow and low to make it good and tender.  The resulting meat can be used for things like empanadas, enchiladas, soups, stews, whathaveyou.  So, likely starting this week, we’ll be picking out who will be first to go.

Of couse, we have some hens which I just can’t stew.  Like Doris, my old rescued Barred Rock.  We rescued Doris, Lily, Gladys, our 2 geese, and an unnamed White Rock from absolutely deplorable conditions.  It was so bad that Jason and I dry-retched quite a few times while we were on the woman’s property.  This was in 2009, meaning that Doris is anywhere from 4 to 5 years old this year, since she was already mature at the time.  Gladys, Lily, the Rock, and the geese were all young birds, putting them at 3 years old this year.  Anyway, Doris runs up to your pants and pecks them.  She has done this since we got her (and her sister did, too) and I can tell her voice from all the other Barred Rocks.

Now it’s time to get serious and decide on the breed I want to keep around for my laying flock, so I don’t have to order from a hatchery anymore.  I’ve been hatching out Silkie/Showgirls since November, and this makes so much more sense!  I’m able to pick and choose exactly what I want to keep in the flock, plus I get to play with lots of baby chicks. 

I brought along two helpers, my dear Jason and one of my dearest bestest friends, JJ (who is also a man, yes we made an odd trio).  Anyhoo,  so as always we hit the ‘Unreserved’ section, which has the highest percentage of the Junk-Which-Is-Most-Likely-To-Come-Home-With-Me.  First things being first, after over an hour in the car, and being as I’m getting older, we had to locate the “facilities”.  Granted, I wasn’t to the “I’m-Gonna-Wet-Myself” phase, but still…

After locating Bathroom #1, I just had to laugh.  There was a line of no less than ten women standing on the outside of the bathroom door.  Yeah, right.  So, after another 5 minute walk, we came to Bathroom #2.  I was initially on the Exit side, and thought, “Oh thank YOU, Lord…no line.”  Well, got around to the Entrance side and there were NO LESS THAN 30 WOMEN in line.  I marched back over to my helpers and wondered aloud the following:

“What are they DOING in there?  Why do women take so long?  I mean, I can really only think of TWO THINGS that you’d normally do in a bathroom stall, and I’m willing to bet that most are in there for the FIRST reason!  Are they having a social mixer in there? This is ludicrous!”  Please allow me to further elaborate that these are NOT the kind of facilities that you’d want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary.  Allow me to explain, please.  First off, if you’re expecting a stall with a door, you’re kidding yourself.  Virtually all of the bathrooms are door-less, but they were nice enough to give you a shower curtain. Okay, I can handle that.  But, where they really went wrong is that the stall depth, when seated upon your potty, is only adequate for toddlers and possibly (is this P.C.???) little people.  I hate to use the word “midget” or “dwarf”, but this is what I mean by little people.  Therefore, at my perfectly normal and average height of five foot four, my knees extend from the stall by a good couple of inches. And they have the dreaded ‘Grade School Height Toilets”.  You know, the ones that you have to do almost a full squat to reach and your legs fall asleep? Yep, that, too.  Also, forget the possibility of any hooks for your bags.  So here you are in a row of about 50 stalls, squatted down eight inches off the ground, trying to balance your cumbersome upcycled, bulky shopping bags/purse, with your knees hitting a creepy shower curtain and sticking out further than your stall, just praying that you won’t topple over into the waiting throng of women and rip down the shower curtain, exposing your bum and spilling every content of your purse/bag on the concrete floor.  It’s a fun game, let me tell you.  I probably have quads of steel after all that exercise, not to mention the balance ability of an Olympic gymnast.

Finally, after we had reached Bathroom #3 (a little known facility next to a tool salesman and a pan flute CD vendor), I noticed there was no line.  YES!  I found an empty stall, and after taking the absolute minimum time, I turned to flush.  No flush.  I won’t go into details, but normally the rule in our house is: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”  This didn’t really meet the “Mellow” category, either.  What to do?  I got out, snapped the shower curtain shut and informed the line of about 5 perfectly good strangers that this toilet indeed did NOT flush and whomever chose to go in would get a ‘nice surprise’.  That’s just how it went down.  Or not.  Anyway.  On to shopping!!!

Fairly quickly, I found my own version of Heaven:  three huge long rows of all items for a dollar.  I quickly snapped up a pair of Japanese tomato salt and pepper shakers, a Japanese ceramic potbellied stove, which was a pincushion and a measuring tape, several old farm journals, a baking pan, some calligraphy pens, and more.  Apparently, dollar tables were a big hit yesterday, because I found every last one of them.  Poor, long-suffering Jason and JJ shook their heads as I oohed and ahhhed over every vintage dollar-priced piece.  “Oh, but doesn’t everyone need a ceramic owl/thermometer?  What about this embroidered Kleenex box cover?  I mean, someone out there put a lot of work into this…”  Jason drifted off to tool vendors, JJ, just being along for the ride and the sights, was stuck with me while I pondered every piece of nostalgia known to mankind.  “Oh, look at this hand-powered sharpening stone! And this hand-powered drill!  Isn’t that awesome?”  I don’t really know why I was wasting my breath;  JJ and I are virtually  incapable of changing out wiper blades on a car and can injure ourselves with a screwdriver.  It’s not like we are mechanically-gifted people. Still, you get caught up in the nostalgia, no matter what the thing is.

After eight hours of meandering through miles of junk-filled tables, we were ready to call it a day.  We typically end our day with the reward of a funnel cake, so that’s what we did.  What I didn’t realize was that the vendor made his funnel cakes the size of a small table.  As he handed us our cake, I wasn’t really sure how we were ever going to even BEGIN to finish this thing, even with three people attacking it.  So, we all were laden with bags, and I balanced the funnel cake waitress-like with one hand and my bags on my other shoulder, and off we went.  I took my first bite and literally inhaled a breath-full of powdered sugar.  Note to self:  Never breathe in whilst taking a bite of sugar-laden funnel cake.   As the guys were laughing, JJ took his bite and also inhaled sugar.  With both of us intermittently gasping for breath/laughing our heads off, I’m sure we looked a pair.  Then, a woman walking beside us sidled up to us and said,”Didja breathe in some of that sugar?” Well, thank God weren’t the only morons who had had that happen before.

Following my pioneering dear, sweet husband back to the truck, I began to realize that we were getting to the edge of the vendors, but I couldn’t see any way to actually reach the truck.  “No, you have to cross the creek.  See?  It’s right down here.”  After nearly falling over a vendor’s trailer hitch and losing the funnel cake and all my pride, I looked down, down, down, and there was Jason, literally crossing a creek.  Not at an official crossing, mind you…no, we had to slide down a bank, walk through the (mostly dry) creek, and climb to the other side.  Now how in the hell was I supposed to balance a giant funnel cake bigger than my head and 5 inches tall, and two bags and make it across?  I couldn’t help but think I’d surely be on YouTube within five minutes of this incident that was about to happen.  Jason crossed first, then JJ.  I somehow managed to slide down the bank with no incident.  As I was attempting to walk up the (steep) bank to reach for Jason’s outstretched hand, I couldn’t help but notice him gyrating wildly, like he had an imaginary hula hoop contest with himself.

Me:  “What are you doing?”

J: “I have to go to the bathroom!!! HURRY!”

Without embarrassing my dear husband, let me just say that when this man has to go, he has to GO immediately, Do Not Pass Go, Do NOT Collect $200, and stay out of  this man’s way unless you want to be injured.  Well, between the powdered sugar, my exhaustion, and the situation unfolding in front of my eyes with a wildly gyrating man with eyes about to pop out of his skull and me balancing my precious funnel cake in a creek, I got to laughing so hard that tears ran down both cheeks.  There was no way possible I could reach up and grab his hand.  JJ was absolutely no help, either.  Holding his sides, he, too, was crying on the banks of the creek.  When I looked up next, Jason was gone and here were two idiots on the banks of some obscure creek in the middle of nowhere, balancing a plate full of funnel cake and 50 dollars worth of dollar-priced items.  Needless to say, with the help off JJ, I did make it up that creek and back to the truck.  Sadly, by the time we got there, the cake was already cold and greasy and none of us even wanted the stupid thing anyway.  But it made for a good story, didn’t it?

Can’t wait to go back and do it all again.  Maybe next month?

If you ever want to be considered a total weirdo, cut off your tv service and tell people about it.  You might as well tell them that you had your dead dog freeze dried so it could ‘live forever’, or that your collectible dolls speak to you.  Trust me.

The truth of the matter is that by ditching tv programs, it gives you gobs of time.   It’s very easy to flip on the boob tube and zone out for an hour or two or more.  You would be shocked at how long the day becomes when you aren’t watching Dancing with D-List Celebrities or Kim Kardashian’s 80th Wedding and Subsequent Divorce.  Now how you fill up that time is just as important.  I get easily sucked into staring at my laptop, which I feel is even worse than tv.  After all, the internet is also interactive…you seek and so you shall find.  And I can look up stuff all day.  So, I’ve been limiting that mostly for when I wake up and right before I go to bed.

Another bonus for parents who scrap the tv is the lack of kid commercials.  No commercials mean no begging for junky toys that will end up at Goodwill or in a yard sale anyway.  I’ll never forget the year that my then-3 year old could sing the Peek-A-Boo Barbie jingle.  It was cute, but also a little scary and a LOT annoying when she would beg for every single toy that came across the screen.

So about a month ago, I asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas, and I told them to pick three things.  Now, normally you know that most kids can fill up pages and pages of toys that they want (we’ve all seen the lists printed in the newspaper, right?), but my kids just sat there.  They thought and thought.  After about 15 minutes, they came up with: pajamas, a gold locket, and a fleece horse blanket.  Nothing name brand, and NO TOYS.  That’s worth losing the boob tube right there!

Last of all is the cost of having service.  We were paying, taxes included, about fifty eight dollars a month for the bare bones minimum service.  That was with 2 receivers.  The fees for service seem to go up astronomically every year.  At one time we could get the same thing for a little under forty dollars, tax included.  So, I am saving almost $700 a year right there, which is going straight into paying off debts.

My husband calls tv the ‘living room billboard’, which, if you stop to think about it, that’s exactly what it is.  You are paying to have endless commercials pumped straight into your home.  And who really likes commercials?  Isn’t that why they came up with the whole TiVo/DVR thing to skip past them?  It becomes very apparent when you have been tv-less for a while and go to a person’s house who has one on.  I swear I nearly threw up while my friends had ‘The Doctors’ on the other day.  I just wanted to stick my finger down my throat.  I’d much rather be out in my garden pulling weeds or sitting in the chicken pen, throwing scratch to the hens.  I suppose that my biggest issue with the entire thing is that it makes you stay indoors, and we are almost never indoors unless it’s very hot or very cold.  I just do not believe that anyone or anything was meant to stay inside for an extended period of time.

So now that you’re squinching up your face, wondering if I talk to glass-eyed dolls all day, I’ll leave you with this:

In eighth grade, we had this fad going where we collected keychains with tacky and/or witty sayings.  My favorite was always “I’m not weird, I’m gifted.” I still have it and I’m gonna go with that!

1.  If I have said this already, I apologize, but here goes:  Don’t plant what you won’t eat.  Sounds ridiculously simple, doesn’t it?  But what another farm woman once said to me always rings in my ears every time I’m wading through 47 tons of banana peppers.  I can grow a banana pepper like you won’t believe, but I don’t eat them.  How dumb is that?  Sure we chop one up now and then and add it in our eggs, and I tried my hand at canning them, but they just ain’t my thang.  So why do I currently have about 10 plants out in my garden fully loaded?  Beats me.  But I’m telling YOU not to do that.  So when I get tempted by those little banana pepper plants in the spring, I’ll toss them to the side this time!  Seriously though, why waste your time and water to take care of something that you will end up composting?  Just don’t!

2.  Good fences make sane farmers.  Okay, just go ahead and forget those idyllic, pastoral scenes of a farm that we grew up with in story books.  If you are to have any sanity whatsoever, you have to put up good fences to keep your livestock contained and separated, and to keep predators out.  Just go ahead and forget that image you have of Mr. Pig, a flock of chickens (many with chicks), Mr. Horse, and various other critters all happily intermingling in perfect harmony whilst standing in your garden.

Let me tell you what really happens.  Chickens allowed in your garden can totally destroy a tomato crop in minutes, not to mention eat up all of the winter rye you just set out (ask me how I know this).  They also make the biggest most God-awful mess you’ve ever seen out of your garden paths.  Oh, and they also loooooove to make their sand bath pits right by your baby blueberry bushes, which leads to their demise.  Not to mention the fact that they enjoy flying over their (too low) fence into the neighbor’s yard, which contains two chicken-eating dogs.

Goats eat just about everything.  That also includes your newly transplanted grapevines and your new herb garden.

Pigs will eat a chicken.  Don’t ask.

Geese leave Chihuahua sized grass poo pretty much wherever you even thought about stepping.

Turkeys love watermelon leaves.  Not the vines so much, just the leaves.  And figs.  Lots of figs.  Hope you didn’t want any melons or figs this year!

The point is, I have seen many people posting about their critters in total desperation.  Either the critters ate up their garden/messed up their yard or porch or whatever/got eaten by a predator.  You can’t just get animals and then have no proper place to put them.  For your sake and theirs, get up some  strong, good fences and a secure place to pen them up at night to avoid those unwanted surprises.  Like fresh goose poo between your toes or your melon patch completely devoid of leaves.

3.  Don’t forget the most important animal enclosure of all….your home!  I don’t know how we managed to stay sane over the past 2.5 winters.  Seriously, last Christmas I was hoping Santa would bring me a blowtorch and a can of gas to rid myself of our freezing abode.  It’s one thing to be a bit chilly in your house; quite another to be wearing 2 pair of socks, 3 pair of pants, 3 shirts, a robe, a hat, and a quilt and still be cold.  I’m pretty sure that the chicken coop was warmer.  If it is at all possible to use some extra funds to upgrade your living situation, I say go for it.  I’m not talking about a 60″ TV, either.  We’re talking about insulation, new electric wiring, new (non-leaky) plumbing fixtures, new roof, etc.  This year was a major year for us in the Home Improvement department.  In February, we insulated the attic big time, and by August, we had invested in a new roof and all new cedar and cypress siding.  Not to mention all of the little stuff we’ve done in-between, like fix leaky pipes and stuff like that.  No reason for the chickens to be living in more comfortable quarters than you are!

Year Three sure was over in a flash.  I still haven’t canned much this year (SHAME!), but I do have a freezer overflowing with tomatoes and fruit.  Guess you can see what’s in my future!  It also came complete with OVER 80 DAYS OF 100+ DEGREE HEAT.  May I long be gone (after having lived to an old age, of course) before that ever happens again!  Well, here’s to Number Four…

Does that font scream Vicki Lawrence or what?  If you have no idea what I’m talking about…I’m not sure we can be friends.  Anyway,to the left you will see a big cabinet. One half of it has drawers and the other half is sliding shelves. On top, notice the funky blue genie lamp given to me by my dearest mother-in-law who was going to get rid of it.  Then, the white sewing cabinet is my standard go-to Kenmore machine.  My mother gave me that machine in 2000, and it was her old cabinet.  More on that in a bit.

Don’t you just love pegboard?  Sigh.

Here is my table and chairs that I got for 100 bucks off of CL.  When I first saw it, I just couldn’t decide if I loved it or hated it.  I had to look at the ad about 10 times before I decided I’d call about it.  As it turns out, it fits perfectly in here.  Esmeralda was the dressform given to me by my mom’s friend.  I have padded her to look more like…me.  Yes, I look like an hourglass.  Hush up.

And there’s my happy little blog on my laptop.  I was thrilled that I could actually get signal way out here.

Here is that metal rack.  I covered it with my $3 garage sale quilt via clothespins to hide all that ‘Junque’ that it contains.  On the lowest rack is my batting/Polyfil/fabric scraps which are stuffed (!) into vintage suitcases.  Yeah, I was too lazy to show you that.  I also spray painted my cheap little radio turquoise and that’s where it sits.

My chalkboard door and my tin wall.  I drew that picture (pointillism study in art class back in ’99), and I just really like it, so I stuck it there.  I doodled a sign on the door just…because.  See my old typewriter?  I own two.  Love ‘em.

This was my mom’s old sewing cabinet.  I should title this pic “Pimp My Cabinet”.  A week ago, it was that hideous speckled 1970s brown.  Now it is Dover White and I sanded all the corners.  I decoupaged the cabinet doors with vintage fabric from my Mamaw’s attic.  Coming soon:  Glass knobs.  I also applied clear Contact paper on the top to prevent smudges.  The paint that I had was satin, so it tends to kinda absorb dirt.

Detail of shelves/pegboard.  The clock was a present from my Papaw.

And here’s my favorite ad on the whole wall.  Because nothing screams class like fine imported cheese, hors d’oeuvres, and cheap domestic beer of the half-quart variety.  You have to love the 60′s.

Hope you enjoyed!  Of course, I’m not done.  Not done until I can fill the walls with tacky vintage items that no one else in their right mind would want!

And here we begin to cut in with our paint.  I love, love, love turquoise.  Is it original to paint your craft room turquoise?  NO.  But I don’t care.  Turquoise is in my own made-up holy trinity of colors consisting of:  Red, Peace yellow, and Turquoise.  It’s what I love!  I thought about light yellow walls, but I also wanted something more relaxing.  So, I went with blue.  To be exact, it’s a Glidden color from Wal-Mart.  Something like Aqua Seacrest or something like that.  I’ve slept since then.  I just knew I wanted it when I saw it!  Here is some more detail to that shelving/pegboard.  The shelf is actually 2 inches thick.  It’s a leftover piece to when we re-sided our house with cypress.  Gotta be STRONG to hold up those old sewing machines!

*note the beer bottle.  “Build it, and he will drink.”  Wait…that’s not right.  Is it?

And a view from the doorway:

Now came some CRAFTILICIOUS FUN.    I had been saving a whole stack of early 1960s ads just for this purpose.  I decoupaged the back wall with them. So much fun and now I really want a perfume with the scent of ModPodge.  Yes, I love it that much.  (No, I wasn’t sniffing ModPodge when no one was looking) Here ’tis:

Now is that some fun or what?  I love the hot pink in the ads, plus my ‘Holy Trinity of Colors’.  Now you can see why I went with Dover White on that pegboard.  I didn’t need any more color!  You can also see Jason installed my fan (not really a vintage looking fan, but hey, it was all we had in town).

Time to add something else…some old tin to the back wall.  We scavenged this tin off of the back part of our property, which we have deemed “Appliance Hill”.  Previous property owners had dumped tons of junk back there, including this cool tin.  I wanted to have a magnetic surface in my room to put up patterns/whathaveyou.

Now came baseboards (1″x6″ boards) and ‘crown moulding’ (1″x4″ boards).  And then caulk…lots of caulk.  Fortunately, I’m the Caulk Queen (a self-designated title), so that went quickly. I also wanted a chalkboard surface, just for some fun, so the back of the existing door was painted with Krylon latex chalkboard paint (2 coats). The last picture was taken on October 1st.  The next weekend, we went and picked out flooring.  There was a laminate flooring on clearance for 28 cents a square foot (!!!), but I reeeeeally didn’t  like it.  It just oozed “Cheap”.  And you know you shouldn’t ever ooze ‘Cheap’.  At least that’s what my mom always told me.  Anyhoo, I went with a $1.69 sq/ft plastic laminate that had a ‘hand-scraped’ look and I looooove it. We put it in by the next day.  So yes, most of this was done in about oh…5 days total!

AND NOW LADIES AND GENTS, I WOULD LIKE TO PRESENT YOU WITH THE NEW AND *IMPROVED* CRAFT ROOM…..(con’t)

In the beginning, there was a window.  It was, well, a fairly (cough) crappy little window with the bottom glass pane that somehow mysteriously hung on despite only being attached to the frame at the bottom of the sill.

Notice the lovely coordinating black plug/outlet which was also slathered with glow in the dark paint.  If you will look at the floor, you will now see the oh-so-lovely plastic trim baseboard. The door opens out to my husband’s Man Cave.

Now, here comes my wonderful husband to start this project right:

And then:

Shhhhh, you have to promise to not tell Jason I have a picture of him on here in his slippers!  So as you can see, he is measuring now to put in my very own door, which I scored for free off of Craigslist.  And here is the door:

And there she is!  Whew, aren’t you tired?  I know I am!  (I broke a sweat watching him install the door while I sat around taking pictures.  I’m a really great help.)

Now moving right along, let’s fast forward through this hideous, sweltering summer and get to some nice fall temps so that we can begin on our little project again.  Picking up on September 25, 2011:  Looking into the room:

Note the Beee-youuuu-ti-ful sponged walls (which we had dubbed Diarrhea Green and SoulSucking Blue), the missing fan, and the holes in the sheetrock, thanks to my parrot.  Here is the A/C window unit that Jason mounted into the wall, and my metal storage rack, chock full of junk:

Nice, huh?  So first we ripped out the plastic molding by the floor.  Then filled the holes in the walls with spackle.  Jason mounted a 4′x8′ piece of pegboard and a shelf for my 19 zillion antique/vintage sewing machines.  After that, we spray painted that pegboard Dover White.  (Note to self:  I think I lost 1/2 my brain cells over that.  Do not repeat.)  Now to prime all the walls!  (continued in Part two)

Something so small and insignificant leads to something big.

So, this morning, I was unloading the dishwasher and when I was 3/4 of the way through, I noticed something rather peculiar in the bottom of the dishwasher.  Please don’t be a roach, please don’t be a roach, please don’t be a roach, I thought.  Upon closer inspection, it was, of course, a roach.  Dead, thankfully.  However, it meant that all the dishes that I just put up had dead cockroach molecules all over them.  Being slightly perturbed (and a lot grossed out), I went outside to tell Jason that we were just going to have to take apart the dishwasher drain thing to get the roach out.  Sighing heavily, he drug out a pair of needlenose pliers and a ratchet.

Naturally, the roach was stuck in the drain apparatus, and with no other way to fully remove the thing, we had to completely disassemble the drain thingy/filter for the dishwasher.  As it turns out, the roach wasn’t the worst thing about the whole incident. The drain and filter/membrane was chock full of total grossness.  I’m talking about food bits, some kind of grey sludge, and something black all caught up in the membrane.  Jason pointed out that we’ve been eating off of dishes that have been ‘cleaned’ with water that goes right through all of this sludge (AKA ‘toxic waste’).

We looked at one another and said, “OUT!”.  So today, the dishwasher was ripped out, with absolutely no plan to replace it.  See, there is no way to pop out the drain/recirculating water apparatus to clean it.  So, all of that clean water is pumped back through that hideous filter thing and sprayed all over your dishes.  Ew.  I wonder if most dishwashers aren’t the same?  So, back to yellow gloves and a drying rack for me.  Yet again we’re ditching a ‘modern convenience’.

Plus, when we ripped out the thing, there were 2 fat cockroaches sitting on the back of the tub, along with a lot of roach poo.  Yeah, that’s what I want in my kitchen!  A cockroach haven.

The good news is that (besides having roach-free dishes) we are going to put some nice shelves back in there to hold more of my baking (crap) stuff.  So, I guess I owe some thanks to that bold cockroach who gave up its life to get stuck in my drain!