Tag Archives: The Godson

Where Was I?

15 Dec

The Squire and I held our annual Open House on Sunday, the 13th. We’ve done this every year but one since we got married, and that was after Hurricane Floyd dropped a tree on the house.

The Godson came over on Thursday and Saturday to help swing a dust cloth and then acted as our head chef on Sunday.  I baked like a mad woman, gluten-free stuff first and then my more traditional things. The Godson has been helping us for the last four years, so he knows his way around our kitchen, and doesn’t have to be reminded to keep an eye on the trays and so forth. He’s considering a career in culinary arts, so he really enjoys doing this for us.

In between all this, we had a cookie exchange at church and a Christmas dinner with the Daughters of the British Empire, both on Saturday.

Last night I went up to bed at 9:45 and staggered downstairs at 9:30 this morning.  I not only never got out of my robe, but I also took a nap in the afternoon.  Tired? Not a bit.

The Open House was not quite as well attended as it has been in other years, but it was nice. We had a chance to move around and visit with guests, and the weather was warm enough (70!) that we didn’t light the fire.  Eldest daughter came down, bearing oatmeal cookies and crackers; she uses my recipe, but hers are always so much better, and The Squire seemed to think one box of Wheat Thins was enough for the crowd. Sometimes I wonder about that man.  Both of the local grandchildren and their spouses came down, and brought the Little One, who charmed all the guests with her smiles and curly hair.  Blazer wandered from place to place, looking for a handout or a belly rub. We, of course, never feed him, or pay any attention to him.

Somehow, the conversation turned to unwanted phone calls. I don’t answer calls where the name or number is “not available”. If you’re not available, then neither am I. I also don’t speak to entire cities. If I do answer a call with a number I don’t know, I speak Cherokee. One of the guests is from Tanzania and she laughed. “I use Swahili, and just keep saying “no English, no English”.  We have another lady at church who is from Denmark, and she does same thing. Never use French or German, and Heaven forbid you should try Spanish!

The weather here has been incredibly warm. It was 70 on Sunday, and 72 on Thanksgiving day. The cherry blossoms are starting to bloom in Washington D.C., and our forsythia has little buds along the branches. The Squire was joking about  possibly mowing the lawn on more time.  Well, the weatherman is saying we may have snow flurries on Friday.

They were claiming we’d have a hard winter. When it comes, it should be a doozy.

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Not as Bad as We Thought

17 Oct

The Godson came over this morning, and he and The Squire began to remove the sheet rock from the Big Room. As it turned out, the situation wasn’t nearly as bad as we had feared. There was water damage under both the window that had been professionally installed, and the window where the a/c unit had been. (That was our fault.) There was also an unholy mess where the original part of the house joined the dormer we put on when we bought the place, but no black mold or other ickiness. They only had to remove a total of about four feet, instead of the 30 feet we had been told. Whew! The contractor wanted to pull down all twenty feet of the long wall, and the ten feet on the short side, which turned out to be totally unnecessary.

Wainscoting

stock photo

The Squire can install the insulation and replace the sheet rock by himself, but we will need to bring in a contractor to redo the ceiling. The ceiling in the TV room is interlocking square tiles, which the contractor had originally wanted to pull down and replace, until The Squire took him into the attic and showed him the poured-in fiberglass insulation that would come cascading down on his head if he did so. As that point, the man grasped the logic of simply putting sheet rock over the existing ceiling. It’ll make the ceiling a half an inch lower, but whoop, whoop.

One thing I have always wanted to do in there was put bead board over the lower half of the walls, with a narrow shelf of some sort along the top edge. The only picture I could find was this stock photo of a bathroom, with what appears to be window sill for the shelf. I just think bead board is so “country chic” – I love the look! The stuff comes in 4 x 8 sheets, so we will make it four feet high, just to save cutting. Not sure what colour will go on the walls; possibly a dark green. We’ll see.

And, new carpet, since I bought what is in there when I was still at Blue Cross; I left in 1983, so it is probably due for replacement. No need to rush into these things.

I had toyed with the idea of replacing the double bed with a queen, but even going the IKEA route would be very expensive, and getting a queen-sized box spring up those stairs is physically impossible.

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