thar's a snake in mah boots!

Undoubtedly the scariest call I've gotten from work happened this Thursday, when the director of the chess club that Cal attends after school called that afternoon to say that Cal never showed up, and did I know where he was?  (I was at work and of course freaked out because OMG MY BOY IS LOST.  Long story short, Cal just forgot it was chess club day and so missed the bus that was to take him there--we tracked him down ten minutes later patiently waiting in the principal's office for someone to pick him up.)  So yes, that was scary.  But the second scariest call from home I received the day after that, when our nanny told us that she came home from school pickup to see two large copperhead snakes sunning in our driveway.

Joe and I pulled in from work at the same time, and there were no snakes visible, sunning or otherwise. Joe went peering by the back door to see if the snakes were hiding under this storage unit we keep there for balls and frisbees and assorted outdoor detritus, and said, "I don't see anyth--" before jumping back in the air about three feet.  Because there was this:

I don't think I realized that I was scared of snakes until that day.  I knew I was scared of cockroaches--growing up in an apartment in New York made me more than familiar with that particular evolutionary success story--but I honestly can't say I've really seen a snake that big outside of a zoo, behind a guardrail and an information placard and a thick, reassuring layer of plexiglass.  But now, peering out from the inside of my house at the venomous snake chilling outside, I can confirm that yeah, for sure, I'm afraid of snakes.

I mean, LOOK AT IT.

LOOK AT THAT FUCKING SNAKE!

(Borderline related: did anyone who got the iPhone 5 on release day have any input as to its improvements when it comes to low-light photography?  As someone who lives in a low ceilinged ranch house with not enough windows, I am interested.  Please weigh in if you're in the mood!)

Anyway, I looked at it and screamed girlishly. Then we called the kids to look at it and they did not seem particularly perturbed (or indeed even that interested), though I gave them both a stern talk nonetheless about if you see a snake don't go near it, it doesn't want to hurt you but it could bite you if it gets scared (I left out the part about tissue necrosis and the potential need for serial debriedments and fasciotomies because WHATEVER, TMI).  They shrugged, glanced and the snake through the window again before going back to their Legos.  But I could not be so blase about it because the snake, OMG the SNAKE.

About half an hour later the snake slithered away under some shrubbery along the side of the house, at which point we could see that the tip of its tail was a little squashed from our nanny accidentally running over it with her car when she first pulled into the driveway.  We noted where the snake was headed as we had already called A Snake Guy (I believe his official title was "Wildlife Removal Specialist") to come by and check our property the next morning, and wanted to give him a little help in finding what might be the nest, or as I called it, Snake HQ.

I was on call this weekend, so when I walked to the car Saturday morning (down a poorly lit driveway that my mind inconveniently imagined to be PAVED WITH SNAKES) I did again see one snake lying there in the middle of the driveway, not moving.  I didn't know if it was the same snake as yesterday and frankly I didn't care--I hurriedly got into my car (which was probably teeming with SNAKES) reached into my bag (also stuffed full of SNAKES) and started the engine (ditto SNAKES).

The Wildlife Removal Specialist showed up later that morning while I was at the hospital, and though I wasn't there, Joe said that he got rid of that one driveway snake (it was the same snake from the day before, already dead, probably from the inadvertent tail squishing--and it was inadvertent, because even though none of us like snakes and even though the snake could bite our kids/dog/selves, I don't think any of us has the stomach or cojones to kill a snake), sprinkled some "granules" in the high-suspicion region by Snake HQ (purportedly a repellent of some sort) and put down two glue traps that looked for all the world like the ones I could buy at Home Depot.  Total bill: $230 for half an hour of work.  He did not find a nest or any other snakes in the area, though it's not clear to me how hard he looked--half an hour in an area as dense with ground cover as our yard doesn't seem like a whole lot of time to spend combing the premises.  And the glue traps were covered with leaves by that evening, so it's really uncertain how effective those are going to be.

(This is probably a good point to tell you guys that I'm quitting my job and becoming a Wildlife Removal Specialist.  They have a higher hourly rate than I do and they don't have to pay malpractice insurance.  All those years of medical training wasted, but whatever, sunk cost.)

So that's that.  But what bothers me now--what really bothers me--is this: our nanny said that she returned from school pickup to find two copperheads sunning on our driveway.  Two.  One of them got accidentally squished by her car, and that's the one that we found, and that the wildlife guy removed.  (YOU GUYS HE DIDN'T EVEN KILL THAT SNAKE HIMSELF.  $230?  Really?)  But the other one we never saw again.  So in all likelihood, we may still have a large and extremely poisonous snake still hanging around our property.  He could still be in our yard.  He could be hiding under my car.  He could be calling me on the phone and oh my god, get out, the call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE.

So basically we have to move now, right?

MEGABED and other true stories

We're not a bunch of co-sleeping hippies, I swear (well, maybe a little) but with the exception of Cooper, who snores too loudly, we all slept in the same bed last night.  Let me explain.

OK, so first thing: I don't think I've shared this with you yet, but we...have a MEGABED.  More accurately it is two queen-sized mattresses pushed up next to each other--I would show you a picture but it looks fairly terrible (remember that we, two adult professionals in our mid-thirties have never actually owned a bedframe, let alone a boxspring or any of the fancy bedding accoutrement, unless you count that one weird memory foam pillow Joe has that he swears helps his neck) and anyway, I have more pride than to reveal how terrible our bedroom looks.  But just envision two queen mattresses on the floor, next to each other.  Hell, even pretend the beds are made, it's the world of imagination: NO LIMITS!  So that's a really wide bed.

Our intention was not to make a MEGABED, of course--one of those queen sized mattresses used to live in our guest room, back when we rented a house and had a guest room.  Then we moved to this house, which is a three bedroom, and given that we no longer had the extra space (sorry, guests--sofabeds are groovy!) we stuck the queen mattress in Mack's room and let him have the biggest toddler bed ever.  Eventually, this morphed into a twin-sized Lightning McQueen bed in the hopes that it might actually get him to, you know, stay in his own bed at night (Mack has an unfortunate habit of climbing into our bed at 2:00am--he does it then because he knows when you're WEAK) and while this bribery through themed furniture has kind of worked we still needed a place to put the old queen mattress.  Not having any other options, we just put it in our room.  At first we stacked both mattresses on top of each other, but this option ended up being too squashy, so we just laid them side by side, exposed it to some gamma rays, and that's how MEGABED was born.  (This is called an "origin story."  Technical writer stuff, you understand.)  It's indecently large but it's also like having your own bouncy castle so who's to say if we're trashy with our floor mattresses and no furniture?  YOU?  (Maybe you.)

So Cal was sick yesterday. Really, he's overdue, since he hasn't been sick once this whole school year, but as timing goes this illness is particularly bad, given that the last day of school is literally tomorrow.  (The South!)  Also, it was a gastrointestinal illness, while benign enough, tend to be somewhat more dramatic and, shall we say, exuberant than your garden variety colds. So after it was clear that he was still feeling poorly by evening and would likely be missing school today, we told Cal that, if he liked, he could sleep with me and Joe in "the big bed" overnight. Partially so we could keep an eye on him, you know, but also partially (disclosure: mostly) because I trust that my own reaction time is faster than that of a six year-old boy. We have off-white berber carpeting in all the bedrooms, you see.

Mack, not to be outdone, also insisted on sleeping in the big bed with everyone. He also, for the record, wanted to have a fever and be throwing up and taking medicine, because while he was perfectly healthy and felt fine, he sensed some inequity in the compared situations, and where there is inequity, SURELY THERE IS INJUSTICE. I let him have some Gatorade, but I drew the line at giving him medicine, even placebo medicine (an M&M or the like--Cal likes those grape Tylenol Meltaways) because I don't want Mack to get the idea that medicine is something you can just take because you want to. One of the first Pediatric patients I ever had to pronounce dead was the victim of a Tylenol overdose (granted, it was a teenager attempting suicide--attempting and ultimately succeeding, I guess), and although it's like WOAH, DEBBIE DOWNER, my point is--don't fuck around with medications, kid.

 Anyway, we'd argued about why he couldn't take medicine if he wasn't sick for, like, an hour earlier that evening (note: you will never win an argument with a three year-old, no matter how measured and rational your points are, because they are all insane) so when he asked to sleep in the big bed I was like FINE, WHATEVER, JUST STOP TALKING ALREADY. Mack isn't the easiest person to sleep with, as he tends to rotate between "The Roundhouse Kick" and "H is for Hell" with a sprinkle of "Jazz Hands" thrown in to keep things spicy--but if he was willing to keep the peace I was willing to meet him halfway. Therein is the largesse afforded by MEGABED.

Anyway, I won't say it was the best night of sleep that I ever got, but at least there was sleeping, and no one threw up on anyone else, which I count as an unexpected bonus.

*          *          *

Also to be filed under "Hippies, comma, we are not" is that I cut Mack's hair yesterday.  I've been cutting his hair for a while (I don't think we've even tried to take him to a professional barber yet, given how poor Cal's experience was at this age, both in terms of cooperation and the resultant quality of the haircut) but I think it turned out OK.  Mack's hair is a little wavier than Cal's so it tends to be more forgiving--both in terms of it getting a little too long and in terms of covering up any small errors in the trimming process--but we live in Atlanta and it tends to get hot here, so I like to keep it short, to avoid the matted hanks of plastered fur look.  We can't all be Tim Riggins, son.

Anyway, as I was giving Mack his haircut, I considered if I should take pictures and do a tutorial on boy's home haircuts, but then I realized how very ridiculous that idea was, because really--I don't know what the hell I'm doing.  So my only advice to you is: just go for it, there's only so bad you can screw it  up, and just like all bleeding stops eventually, all hair eventually grows out.  That and make sure you have something good on TV, because that's how you trick them into staying still.

*          *          *

Finally, gratuitous photos of our backyard.  Unexpected how all this greenery is starting to grow on me.  I pretend like it's about us asserting our dominion over nature or some such thing, but really, I just think it's pretty.

Hope you had a good weekend too.

not nesting, just feathering

So I finally figured out what to do with our fireplace mantle.

I've been trying to sort out what to put on our mantle since all the Christmas stuff came down, a decision complicated by the fact that the original print we ordered for the wall actually ended up being too large to fit in the space above the fireplace.  (To be fair, I did measure the space, it just turns out that the measurements provided didn't actually include the measurements of the matting and the frame.  Lessons learned.  But never fear, the Rothko print is now hanging above the couch.)

Anyway, this is obviously not a design blog and I don't know nothin' about birthin' no decoration babies, but what we ended up choosing for our mantle seemed like a nice kind of post for Mother's Day so here you go.  Also I don't have anything else to write about.

This mason jar of sticks I made inspired by AB Chao, who was in turn inspired by this other blog.  (This is known as "proper attribution.")  It was good because we already had a jar, the sticks were free (thanks, backyard!) and the embroidery floss was cheap--it was a good excuse to buy a whole buttload for other projects, actually.  This particular endeavor was easy enough that Cal and I could do some of it together, which is where the Mother's Day part of it comes in.  We actually wrapped most of those twigs this morning (I don't know what your day looks like where you live, but ours is a Very Rainy Sunday) and they were ready for prime time before lunch.  And look how pretty.

The T-Rex wood sculpture is, I think, one of Mack's birthday presents.  The thing of it is that it's actually not a very good gift for a 3 year-old (it came flat packed in literally more than a hundred pieces that had to be assembled painstakingly--think lots of wood grooves and slots fitting together) and it absolutely would not hold up to any kind of rough play, which...well, you've seen kids play with dinosaurs, right? Anyway.  Not the best toy.  But ornamentally, it is fun.  So T-Rex lives on our mantle now.

This is the part that Joe made fun of me for getting (it's one of the few purely decorative items I've ever bought, unless you count pillows for the couch), and he keeps calling them "decorative balls."  Whatever.  I BOUGHT DECORATIVE BALLS.  I like them.  Shut up.  (They're from Target.  I can't find a link, but I'm sure you can find them in the decorative ball aisle.)

This poster I got from the Echo Park Time Travel Mart.  I have a few prints of Amy Martin's stuff and I  really like her work--the colors in this print also match the color scheme of our living room.  Also, it's about fire, which is HILARIOUS to me because we're hanging it over our fireplace.  (I'm easily amused.)  The frame I got from Target, I "matted" it myself by just buying a piece of white posterboard and taping the poster on there before cramming it into the frame.  Whatever, it looks fine.  TAKE THAT, PROFESSIONAL FRAMERS.

(I should also note that the poster is only $20 and part of the proceeds I believe goes to benefit 826LA, which is a non-profit writing and tutoring center for kids in Los Angeles.  You know, in case you need another excuse.)

And now, finally, a pictoral round-up.  Literally.  See, because..."round-up."  ROUND.  I slay me.  Me and only me, I guess.

29 weeks:

30 weeks:

31 weeks:

And...that's it.  How was your Mother's Day?  Mine's not over yet but it's raining and I'm about to go take a nap so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was a pretty good one.

home improvement, outdoor edition

We moved into this house about a year ago, which of course means we haven't really done anything major with the house until maybe the past two or three months.  Oh sure, we did a few things (painted exactly two walls, hung some pictures) but overall we just sort of putzed around as we do, because not being overly fussy we were happy just as long as thing were functional, if not optimized.

I did make one offhand remark last weekend though, which was: "I really wish we had a swingset for the kids to play on outside."

I do.  We have a nice, medium-sized backyard--it was, indeed, one of the things that drew us to the house in the first place (it didn't otherwise show particularly well, it was only because we looked past some of the more glaring, uh, design flourishes that we fell in love with the house in the first place) but it's not really a yard for kids.  It's a gardener's yard.  A gentleman's yard.  A puttering around looking at plants yard.  Not a run around and play ball yard.

It's very pretty, don't get me wrong. Whoever originally engineered this backyard was also very smart in how they planted things (again, it's more of a gardener's yard) in that they staged things very nicely--there's always something blooming or looking pretty somewhere. But most of the yard is unusable for traffic. It's kind of tiered yet sloped at the same time. There's the deck (medium-sized, mainly kind of an entryway to the house--we also have a table out there for eating when it's nice out). Then there's a few stone steps to a kind of small middle staging area, only a small portion of which can be walked on (most of the rest of the hill--I mean, like, 90% of it--is taken up by shrubbery and ivy and pine straw), and then a path up a few more stone steps up to a tiny little third area, which in total is about the size of a medium-to-large-sized Chinese banquet hall table. (Round, I mean.) It's a gorgeous yard, don't get me wrong, and we do love it--it's just not quite for kids. Believe me, I've tried.


KIDS
(Killing each other)

MICHELLE
You kids! Stop killing each other! Go outside!

KIDS
There's nothing to do outside!

MICHELLE
Yes there is! Go play! You're kids! Go do kid things!

KIDS
But it's boring.

MICHELLE
Where's your childish sense of wonder? Go find a worm or whatever.

KIDS
Can we go to the playground?

MICHELLE
Not right now, it's too late/cold/far/I'm busy/gassy etc.

KIDS
(Continue killing each other indoors, where I can unfortunately still hear them.)


I guess Joe had been thinking the same things as well, because upon my single half-baked musing (and granted I was not totally serious, because I figured we just didn't have the right kind of yard for a swing set) he marched right outside and started prospecting the site.

There's this one kind of sloping area--not flat, but as close to flat as you can get in our yard--that seemed amenable. Joe used to do some landscaping in high school, so he started talking about leveling this, putting a retaining wall in that, blah blah blah, and it became evident that, yes, perhaps we could put in a small swingset into the one little plot of dirt that used to be a path and a spice box, and is now a pile of muddy mulch and a weed box. He wasn't sure exactly the scale of the job or how much it would cost, so we had a contractor come by this weekend to weigh in and give us some ideas.

Well, the contracter came, and he and Joe were talking and talking and talking outside, like, a lot.  There was a lot of gesturing in the yard--gesturing in areas where no swingset could ever live.  Eventually I got curious and popped my head out there to realize that the plans had morphed from "level this one little area of the yard" into "level out a full half of the yard, incorporating a swingset area, a flat grassy play area, and building in a stone wall around a fire pit."  Also he suggested that we move the damn shed.





I have to admit the contracter had a good point when he noted that this shed (and it's not bad looking as sheds go, but still--it is just the place where we keep the bikes and poisonous/stabby things) is inexplicably the focal point of our backyard.  I mean, literally, it sits right in the middle of the yard.  He said: I can move the shed to the back near the fence, get it out of the way.  We'll save all the plants, transplant them, move them around.  Let's level out all this shit.  Give your kids space to actually run around.  And then we can put in your stupid swing set.

(He didn't really say stupid.)

I was hesitant at first, because it sounds like kind of a big project (translation: expensive), and we're having a baby this summer, shouldn't we save all our money to buy, I don't know, diaper wipes and nasal aspirators or what have you?  But then the other argument is: we're having a baby this summer, and we have two other kids.  We have a yard that we never use.  We even have a mosquito system in the yard to make it more usable (oh, the mosquitos in Atlanta are the size of small birds, I tell you) but again, why did we put in a bug system into our yard if we're never outside to enjoy it?  I mean, I enjoy our yard--it looks pretty through a window and it's nice to eat out there and have a beer and watch our kids fall down the hill (kids! gravity! two great tastes that go great together), but as uses of space goes, it's not the best for our purposes.

So I think we're probably going to go ahead and do it.  What the hell, right?  We've been here a year, let's make this house look how we want it to look.  Part of me feels a little guilty, because like I said, it is a very pretty garden, and it makes me feel like I'm killing nature or something.  But then I remembered that this yard has already been pretty aggressively landscaped (just not quite to our functionality requirements) and that almost everything growing there is artificially transplanted in anyway.  Besides, the landscapers say that they're not going to get rid of any of the plants, they'll just replant them in other parts of the yard so we can still enjoy them/continue killing them with benign neglect.  So--hooray!  Nature and Man both win!

(Now to start worrying about ways that my kids will crack their melons open by falling off the top of a swingset.)


* * *


Thank you all SO MUCH for all the name suggestions on the last entry, by the way!  (It was, by the way, I think the most comments that I've ever gotten on a single entry.)  I think I also mentioned in the comments (though I realize not everyone reads them so I'll repeat here) that our original name choices for the baby we thought was going to be a boy were either "Ben" or "Beau," leaning towards "Beau"--but we can't use those now, can we?  I know Rebecca Woolf calls one of her twin girls "Bo," but that's short for "Boheme," and though that's such a gorgeous and fitting name for her little girl I really don't think Joe and I are bohemian (ho ho) enough to pull that off.  But you've given us a lot of great choices, many of which we love--and I'm not saying that in a placating Cal way.  Again, thank you!  Best readers on the internet.

your self-esteem boost for the weekend

When we first moved into this house, we noted that the previous owners had added a few design flourishes which were a little bit, shall we say, rococo for our tastes. Some of them came down immediately--the full wall mirrors in several areas, the gold-painted mirror flanked by a roulade and cherub motif in the half bathroom. But some of the others, like the gold (colored) doorknobs on the French doors throughout, while not quite my taste, seemed innocuous and certainly functional enough.

Seemed.

The problem with these doorknobs, I've found, is that I keep getting hooked on them. Not anyone else, just me. Everyone else in this house is either tall enough or short enough to avoid this particular problem, but at my height (5'2" and a half--and if you don't think that half inch is important, you much be much taller than 5'2") these doorknobs all over the house are right at waist height. Belt loop height, to be exact. I keep getting hooked on these doorknobs. And you would think that it's easy enough to unloop oneself, but look at that doorknob a little closer. The loop is a little bit spiralled, like a nautilus. Like one of those barbed fishooks. And once you get hooked, it's actually unusually difficult to extricate yourself.

Yesterday, I went to Costco to do some grocery shopping. We had a nice time in Orlando, but when we came home the food situation in the larder was a little bare-bones, and breakfast that morning was somewhat thin, which inexplicably panicked the kids. (Under normal circumstances I don't think they'd have any trouble with a breakfast of cereal and milk, but the fact that that's all there was to eat suddenly had them eyeing the USDA food pyramid and acting like we were the Joads in Dust Bowl Americana or some such thing.)  So anyway, I went to Costco and stocked up on, whatever, a coffin-sized flat of strawberries, cinder-block sized bricks of cold cuts, the like--and headed back to the house to stick the perishables in the fridge before heading out again to pick up the kids from school.

Only, as usual, I got hooked on the doorknob. One of my back belt loops. And I had turned the home security alarm on before I'd left for the store, so now that was counting down the 40 seconds or however much time I had to punch in my code until the alarm went off. I calmly laid down my drum of peanut butter and body-bag-sized sack of raisins and went about calmly disentangling myself, only to grow increasingly less calm as the second continued to tick by and I was still caught on the spiral of the doorknob hook. Looking at it straight on, it seems like it should be easy enough, but looking at it from above and behind, for some reason I couldn't get my belt loop out.

The forty seconds elapsed, and now the external security alarm started to go off with a loud whoop whoop whoop sound which, in theory, would bring the police (or at the very least, a local citizen militia) running to help defend the old homestead. I began to panic. I had to turn off that alarm, but the security pad was at least ten feet away on the far wall of the kitchen. Plan A, the straightforward plan, was not working, so I thought: my pants. If I can't get my pants out of the doorknob, I had to take off my pants instead.

So I took off my shoes. I undid my top pants button and unzipped the fly. As I started to shimmy out of my pants it occurred to me that if someone did show up to investigate the alarm, what they'd find would be a pair of beige corduroys hanging from my kitchen door, and me, pantsless, standing in a scattered pile of bulk pistachio nuts, BUT NEVER MIND ABOUT THAT NOW, JUST TURN OFF THE ALARM, DUMBASS.

It took a little while longer to realize that it's actually pretty difficult to take off your pants if you can't pull your pants down--the pants were still hooked on the doorknob at waist-level, remember--when suddenly, I was free.  Free!  I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, FUCKERS!  What happened eventually was that the beltloop broke. Thank you, Gap Incorporated, for your shoddy tailoring. I hurriedly punched in the security code, stopped the alarm, and waited for the security company to call and make sure that I was OK, just like in all those commercials where the dark-clothed, stocking capped burglar (in broad daylight, like, nice camoflage job, guy) inexplicably tries to break into that house in where the mom and her daughter are baking cookies or whatnot else wholesome and good.

The security company never checked in, by the way. And while, yes, there was no real emergency, it was just me, my pants, and an over-designed doorknob, for all they know, I COULD BE DEAD. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that no one in this densely populated neighborhood came around to witness my shame, I can't quite decide yet.

god bless the swedes

The real injustice of this week is that it's only Tuesday.  Oh my god, so tired.  Anyway, it's a really busy week at work, and since I'm on call this weekend so it's only due to get worse--however, to placate the voyeuristic and the design-minded, let me show you what we did with the family room of our house this weekend.

OK, so first, the before.  I don't have any good "before" photos, because who has time to take them, right? But here, for your viewing pleasure, are some pictures off the real estate website when the house was listed.  The notations were originally for Anna Beth, who I asked to lend a hand and fancy eye to the proceedings, but they serve as a pretty good general indication of how I felt about this room, which was that it was beige, tile-floored, and felt like a 1980's "modern" living room, which is to say: not very modern at all.  

Anyway, the former owners of this house were amazing and we're more fond of them than we probably have any right to be (seriously though, they are adorable), but an older retired couple with no kids has different living space considerations than we do. (Exhibit A: so many highly breakable things balanced atop so many other highly breakable and questionably balanced things.) It was a nice room they way they had it, and it has nice light both inside and out, but it just felt kind of beige and cold to me, and with all that tile, there was more than a little bathroom-y vibe to it all.

In my rich fantasy life, I thought of a lot of ways to warm up the room--replacing the tile floor with hardwood (or at least laminate) was one.  But we had a pretty tight budget to work with, and some fairly specific needs.  Mainly, we needed a convertible guest room.  Our house has three bedrooms and no basement, and therefore no dedicated guest space.  Granted, we've only had Joe's parents stay overnight up until this point, but remember also that Cal is getting into Sleepover Age and the desirability of an overnight rumpus room in which to put our Wii and contain the restless natives cannot be overstated.  So anyway, we basically needed a room where we could put a fold-out bed for grandparents; if the kids could use the room for recreation and chicanery the rest of the time, all the better.

Anyway, we worked on it this weekend, and this is what the room looks like now.

Again with the crazy rug.  I LIKE THE RUG, GUYS.  Originally I had gotten a jute rug for that area, but between the tile and the walls and the couch, everything just felt very neutral, and I just wanted something warm and vibrant to brighten up the room.  And if that rug looks familiar, it's because you've seen it here and here before.  (Yes, I realize there is still one moving box there by the door, but it's headed for Goodwill.)





A view from the other side.  I prefer empty space to furniture in general, but we needed something to put the TV on, and I insisted that whatever thing we got had doors to hide all the electronic detritus that lives near TVs (remote controls, Wii controllers, what have you). We have the TV balanced on a low open bookcase in the other room, and the sight of all those DVDs and wires flopping around in there is threatening to drive me slowly insane.  I blame too many episodes of "Hoarders" but the sight of clutter really makes me itch now--clutter behind closed doors, however, is still OK.  (The thing we have the TV on in this picture is actually a dining room sideboard from Ikea--Joe used his man skills to carve two holes in the back out of which to poke all our wires and connectors.)

Behind the couch and sitting area I put a little reading nook with all of the kids books, a furry rug, and some pillows to flop on.  Joe thinks it is redundant to have reading nook here when already we have a rocking chair near another pile of bookshelves in a different part of the house (we have what might be charitably described as a crapload of bookshelves), but I reminded him that READING IS FUNDAMENTAL and at any rate, I liked having all the kid's books in one spot, and on low shelves that they can reach.  I don't think I ever told you guys the story about how Cal once tried to climb up one of our bookshelves and ended up pulling the whole shelf down on top of himself (luckily there was actually very little in the bookshelf, which was a blessing but also probably contributed to the fact that it was so easy to tip over in the first place), but there you have it, Child Protective Services. All kids books on the low shelves, heaviest books on the bottom, strategic stabilizing brackets up top.  PHYSICS.

OK, anyway, I just wanted to show you guys what we had worked on.  It's not done yet, as obviously we have nothing to hang on the walls yet and clearly we have, like, way too many Billy bookcases (at present count we own six) but--there it is for now.

Tomorrow I have to present at our monthly M&M conference, which is always a wonderful learning experience but of course excruciating all the same.  To celebrate, or to at least appease, I indeed will be bringing in to work a giant jar of peanut butter M&Ms with the intent of quelling the seething masses.  Ask me tomorrow how that went over.

now if only I had some sort of pollen repelling system

The first thing I noticed when we first moved to Atlanta July of 2008--aside from the heat, oh lord the heat--was the fact that the mosquitoes here are insane. Seriously insane. First off, they are everywhere. Secondly, they are gigantic. I was used to those little spindly mosquitoes in New York, especially in the parks, but the mosquitoes in Atlanta seem easily twice as large, so large that you can actually see these black and white striped markings on them. You can feel them biting you, and it hurts.  Horrifying. Third, the mosquitoes in Atlanta (well, really probably anywhere where there are so many and therefore competition for sweet, sweet human blood is so high) is that they are incredibly aggressive. Our first home in Atlanta, you may remember, was a townhouse, so we didn't have a significant outdoor living space. But even there, just walking out to let Cooper pee before bedtime, I would easily get five mosquito bites just in the forty-five seconds I was actually outdoors. Like I said: ridiculous.

I am also unfortunately pretty allergic to mosquito bites. I mean allergic in the classic sense--the bites swell up enormously, they get huge and hard and itchy. Like if I got a bite on my forearm, I'd have to take my watch off, that's how swollen we're talking about here. Joe, for some reason, doesn't tend to get bitten by mosquitoes (I've been told that it's a blood type thing? Who knows, either way, he got lucky) but the kids seem to have inherited my predilection for being bitten. At our last home, which we were renting, we had a large, relatively flat backyard with a jungle gym for the kids, but unfortunately the yard was surrounded by brush and it was pretty damp a lot of the time, and as a result, there were so many mosquitoes out there that we couldn't even go outdoors until basically November, after which point it was too cold to go outdoors anyway.

At the old place, we had exterminators come and spray for mosquitoes once a month, which...sort of worked for the first week, but after that (or after it rained, whichever came first) there was an exponential decay of the protective coating created by the spray, and then the mosquitoes came back in full force. And, to be honest, I never really loved the idea of having people come spray our yard with stuff where the instructions explicitly stated that animals and kids should be kept out of the yard for a couple of hours afterwards. Because: ew.

Anyway, when we bought the new place and it became apparent that the backyard was going to be some kind of tropical wonderland, I told Joe that we needed to get a better system for mosquito control. Because we had a nice yard, and the fact of it was that neither I nor the kids would be able to enjoy it at all if we didn't have more stringent measures in place. I mean, not only is our yard like some kind of bug breeding haven, but we're flanked on either side by two shady, ivy-filled gulches. "That's where we'll hide the body," I told Joe during our second viewing of the house. (Whose body? Who can say? Therein lies the mystery.) But as was apparent from our previous house renting experience, it doesn't matter how much you spray--if your neighbors don't spray, or (as was in our case) you don't have neighbors, you're going to have mosquitoes all up in your stuff.

Being a city person, I had no idea what kinds of mosquito control methods would be effective. Those giant citronella Tiki torches everywhere? DEET baths? Surrounding my entire yard in a net? None of these solutions seemed strictly practical. Then a few months ago one of my co-workers recommended that we get some kind of built-in mosquito spraying system. (Hi, Sandra!) She had one put in her extremely mosquito-prone yard years ago, and she told me the difference was like night and day. We didn't consider it at the time because the house we were living at was a rental, but when we moved into this place, I got the number and called the guy for an estimate.

Here's the guy:

His name is Chuck, and as you can clearly see, he is adorable. He's also very nice, and went over the system with me in some detail. Anyway, what his bug system basically does is create a perimeter of protection around any outdoor area that you would like to keep bug free. The core of the system is a reservoir tank of pyrethrum (per the website, a low-toxicity insecticide/insect deterrent derived from flower oil) that mists lightly at regular intervals throughout the day--usually sunup, sundown, and 9:00pm--for 30 seconds each time. The spray is administered through a series of nozzles and tubing that are installed around the perimeter of the property you want to protect--Chuck also recommended interspersing a few nozzles in and around our ivy, since its so thick. So the system mists three times a day (there's also a remote control so that you can have it spray additionally if you want, say, right before you go outside or if you're having a party or something), and...that's it. Per Chuck, it just works. I was hesitant about having anything installed (I didn't want it to be too obtrusive and to ruin our yard), and I wasn't so sure if it would work or not, but everyone just raved about how effective it was (including, it should be noted, the actual traditional exterminator who came for his twice yearly maintenance termite/roach spraying), so after some discussion and some looking at our New House budget, Joe and I decided to get the mosquito system installed.

In terms of the aesthetics of the system--I have no complaints. Chuck said that it would be virtually invisible, and it basically is--all the pictures from my yard yesterday have elements of the bug spraying system in them, but you can't really seem them unless I point them out. The most visible parts, frankly, are the nozzles in the ivy and at the edge of some of the flower beds, and even those are pretty subtle--they just look like thin black pipes with a silver tip. Here's a picture of one in the ivy here (I posted this picture yesterday)--you can kind of see one at the bottom right, and one at the top left of the ivy mound.  Also, if you look at the middle of the tree in the center of the frame, you can see some tubing running up the trunk.  The rest of the apparatus you can barely see at all, mostly because our backyard is fully fenced in, and the fence provides both structure and cover for the tubing and nozzles.

Here's another picture of the system doing its sunset spray--this nozzle is near where we planted the tomatoes:

And well does it work?  Well, let me just say that I've been outside basically all weekend (we've had almost every meal outside since we got back, not to mention we were out in the garden planting all day Sunday), and I've gotten one mosquito bite--one--and that was from when we left the protective bubble of the house to go to the plant-buying place.  ONE.  I know that getting "just" one mosquito bite doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you live in Atlanta and you've been outdoors in the spring and summer (and fall) you know: IT IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL.  And let me tell you, it's just so nice to be able to have the kids running in and out of the house (as they do) without having to wrestle them down to rub insect repellent all over them throughout the day.  We had that "natural" kind that comes in a big chapstick-like thing, which made things a little easier to put on and less slimey, but--not really.

As so, did I mention that Chuck has a black lab mix that looks just like Cooper, only her name is Miss Skeeter?  Nothing is cuter than that, friends.  Nothing.  Except for maybe this jacket.

nature's own

Hey everyone! First off, thanks for participating in the head count from the last entry. It occurred to me after the fact that given the purpose of the poll, I probably should have just made the two choices "Yes" and "Yes," because obviously, if you live in Hawaii, you're not going to come to New York for a book event (nor would I--in fact, if I lived in Hawaii, I probably would never leave to go anywhere, ever).  But as an inexact headcount, the poll was more than adequate. Thank you all so much, and I hope (hope!) I will have an event to tell you about soon, at a nice venue in which to meet you all and thank you in person.

Oh, and I should address this one too: someone pointed out that Step I of the USMLE is usually taken around May or June. (I know it seems impossible to those of you entrenched in this process right now, but I actually can't remember in the slightest what month I took any of the three USMLEs, just like I couldn't remember what month Match Day was a few years after the fact. Believe me, once you pass them and place into a residency program, their significance in your mind will drop exponentially.)  Anyway, I'm not even talking about the possibility of this event in specific, I just wanted to say: it's OK to not study for a few hours once in a while. In fact, it's good for you.  So at least once a week, go out to dinner, see a movie, play frisbee in the park with some friends. Your poor, overstuffed brain will thank you for it later, I promise, even if you have to put off for another day memorizing the difference between the different types of MEN syndrome.

(For some reason, that's one fact that sticks with me, that before I took Step I I really thought that knowing the different types of MEN syndrome was going to make or break me.  I'm not really sure why I thought that, all I know is that I memorized the shit out of MEN syndromes and I never got asked about it on any standardized test, ever.)


* * *


One of the things that really drew us to our new house was the backyard. The people that lived here before us (and not doubt, the people before them) were obviously into gardening, and it really shows. It's not a big yard, and it's not a flat yard, but it's all planned and planted and, now that we're officially in the thick of Spring, incredibly lush. Joe and I live in fear that, now that the house is our responsibility, we're going to totally screw it up. TOO MUCH PRESSURE.

Most of the foliage is of the flowering, ornamental variety, and before we moved in we told the kids that once we got moved in, we'd plant something edible, because that's some good clean family fun right there.  So today, we made good on our promise, got a few things from the local plantatorium and shoved them into the ground.  Hopefully they will survive, because in the face of all this verdant growth, it's going to be really embarrassing if they don't.

We planted we little strawberry plants (shown in the first two pictures), two blueberry plants (above), and some tomatoes and peppers.  So anyway--we'll see!  My gardening experience is strictly limited to planter boxes on our balcony in New York, but those flowers didn't die (immediately), so I figure these plants here have an even better chance, because, you know, nature and stuff.

Despite the look of the pictures, our backyard is basically full sun for most of the day, so that's helpful for the photosynthesis and whatnot.  But if anyone has any more detailed advice on how to keep these plants in decent shape, I'd love to hear it.  Do we need to do something to keep woodland critters out and away from our imminently delicious edibles?  Oh, and if there's anything else that's reasonably easy to plant and maintain, let us know, and maybe we'll shove some of those in the ground too.  I mean, if we can find any room back there.  Or maybe we can reclaim some of the planting space from all that ivy, because it's getting a little out of control.

all new surfaces on which to urinate

You'll have to forgive me, but this has been a really exhausting week. Aside from the move last weekend and a busy few weeks at work, I've been literally limp with exhaustion every night. They're the kind of evenings where, in med school, I would have once easily fallen asleep in front of the TV with a sandwich sitting on my chest, only now I have these damn kids demanding time and attention and some kind of moral compass (default answer: be nice to your brother) so instead of watching "Top Chef" and passing out early as God intended, I have been preparing snacks and pushing trains around a wooden track, making pathetic chugging noises symbolizing breakdown. So sorry if I'm a little haphazard with the grammar.

Anyway, here is my grand plan for the living room.

The house itself is in good shape. We just don't have anything to put in it, and the stuff we have looks terrible. The fate of the former med student(s) is Ikea Purgatory, and Joe and I are certainly no exception. In fact, the only room that looks halfway decent is the playroom, and that's because it's a playroom and aesthetic sensibility plays second fiddle to comfy carpet and easy access to Legos.  Here's a little before and after of the playroom--the former owners had used it as more of a solarium, which was very nice and very suited to their purposes as an older retired couple.  We, however, need a place for the kids to amass their impressive array of colored plastic whatnots, and this seemed like as good of a place as any:

The dining room we are repurposing as a dining room-cum-living room, because we rarely eat in a formal dining room, and anyway, we need somewhere to put the TV.  Here is what it looked like when the former owners lived here.

Obviously they took all their furniture and art, as well as their chandelier.  We did a little more paring down by taking down the much-discussed mirrors, and now we're sort of halfway there with what we need to do with the room, given that we've set a moratorium on buying anything large-scale new for the house.

Instead of one oversized dining room (which we will never use), we split the space into two separate areas.  We kept the dining space but moved it a little bit over towards the former mirror walls, and made the rest of the space into more of a living area using our old dog-pee couches.  How do you make old couches look somewhat less terrible?  Well, the grown-up answer is to reupholster them, but you overestimate the investment value of our furniture--these are really, really cheap couches.  So for now, we just got some neutral, bright slipcovers, and I splurged on (well, splurged is the wrong word--they were pretty cheap--let's say sprung for ) some new couch cushions at Home Goods.

I got a neutral jute rug (on the recommendation of the lovely Miss AB Chao--we solicited her advice for the family room but then we ran out of money for anything new, and anyway, the family room became the box room and now it is extra terrible-looking, though STAY TUNED WORLD, we may get our acts together yet) and put it underneath our dining room table.  The main reason I got it is to prevent the chairs from scratching up the hardwood floors, but it tries my compulsions every day--particularly my compulsions to make sure everything is at right angles at all times.

I put up this old poster that we had framed a while ago on the mantle, first because we have nothing else to put up, and secondly, because the colors are going to tie into my next project, which is to recover the dining room chairs with new fabric.

Our dining room tables look...sad.  If you think I was just kidding about us having pee on all our furniture, well, obviously you don't have two little kids and a dog, because, for realsies, there is old pee everywhere.  Kids just want to eat dinner and pee on a chair at the same time, apparently.  IT IS THEIR WAY.

Yes, in retrospect, the decision to cover a dining room chair cushion in plain off-white was unfortunate, but look, this was way before I had so many messy beings in my life.  But it's OK, because this weekend, I'm going to try to recover the chairs, a project that I've been putting off for (literally) the past two years.  And I have a whole bottle of Scotch Guard now.  And it's going to be awesome.  Just try to pee now, you little detrusors.  (No, wait...don't.)  Here's the fabric I picked.

Anyway, we're trying to do one of those "big changes, small budget" things, and look, I'm not saying that it's going to look like the palace at Versailles, but at least it will look a little bit more updated and modern and kid-friendly.  As long as there's two decent rooms that I can spend time in, I can deal with the fact that the rest of the house looks like some kind of cardboard shantytown.