it’s in. yippee. and husband did such a good job on it too. he laid it out on the computer to make sure he didn’t have to cut any super skinny pieces and that the tiles around the edges were all the same width. now that’s how mavis likes it. he’s probably more like me and my pal monk than he’d like to think (that or he had ulterior motives, hard to say).

i won’t post any more pictures till we finish the baseboards and trim work. then i will give you some lovely before and after shots. anyways, i’m out of here. and congratulations to jill who won the pink, frou frou apron. i’m rather jealous.

actually, it was yesterday. 268 posts with 48,000 happy viewers. (well, except for all those hunting for porn. my apologies to those who searched for “hooters” and ended up with nursing covers. very disappointing, i understand.) which reminds me, the only reason anyone visits me is for that stinkin’ tutorial. i feel so unloved. but i did find this sweet apron at hancock fabrics to give away. i must like some of you.

just leave your name and email. i was going to sew something, i swear. but my internal calendar was over a week off. almost missed it altogether.

almost forgot, i will draw for the apron on thursday. right before i head out of town on the weekend to my little brother’s graduation.

packed up the scroms yesterday to make our weekly trip to the grocery store. and it’s mostly all right. the boys behave and if they don’t they are consigned to holding onto the cart. i still get pittying looks as i’m walking around with three of them in tow, along with occasional pats on the back. it’s not as bad as they think, really. the hardest part is just brainstorming 14 meals when i haven’t got around to planning a menu. that, and when gideon decides he has to pee when we couldn’t be farther from the restrooms and still in the building. jael did wonderfully though. that is until checkout, when she carried on like she was being murdered. brought grandma’s from all sections of the store to bag my groceries and coo at her. and then she pooped all over my shirt. i ended up changing her on the hood of the car, triggering yet another grandma radar. apparently she likes it when strange old ladies talk baby to her. meanwhile i packed the food and tied down the boys. i didn’t do a very good job though, because the trunk popped up on the way out of the parking lot. had to get out and give it a good bang. except i forgot my “electrocute my butt on the side of the car” tactic before touching anything. i got shocked something fierce (it is an evil car). if i were an albertson’s fan, i would just point and click and have someone drop them off.

my husband, the architect, who hates anything that has to do with houses. you should have seen him grin and bear it all weekend. what a nice hubby. and i am positively thrilled with my new french doors.

so the boys pulled off the deck along with some house and a door, etc, and dug out all the rotten bits. the deck was put on wrong so water pooled against the house.

the 2×8 that sits on top of the concrete (that the joists sit on) was all rotted out. so they had to shave it off some, butt the new one up against it and hammer it in, sliding the old one out the back. or something like that. they also had to pull up some of the sub floor in the kitchen and then piece it all back together. then they put the door up. and someday, someday i tell you, someone will put down my kitchen floor. and if you want to check how rednecks get things done, you can see all the pictures here and here.

why do we have to pull the deck off to put in my kitchen floor?

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but it’s true. there was just that little tell tale, rotten spot (to the right of my foot) that compelled marc to check it out on one of his lunch breaks. when i opened the door to check on him, he was busy tearing apart the house. i can see daylight in the basement now. i asked, “um, at which point in this progression of events do i actually get my floor?”. it wasn’t good.

so i called my dad. my brother and him are driving 7 hours and will be here today. so we are going to have a knock out, drag out weekend. with maybe pink, bubblegum vct at the end of it. and new french doors.

i was looking for jehu and found he had put on gideon’s boots and escaped outside. naked butts and rubber boots are the cutest.

on my last post kandi wanted to know why my kids were always naked. that’s because their daddy (when compelled under dire circumstances to change a diaper) never returns them to their original state. so we don’t feel too sorry for him when they pee all over his puzzle.

i put a whole bunch of pictures up too, for the needy/demanding grandmas.

gideon found a 1000 piece tractor puzzle in the move. he’s been dying to get into it. i promised him that when we were moved into the new house he could play with it. well, it was neither the time, nor the place but i finally got it out for him this week. i’ve had a thousand puzzle pieces kicking around my dirty, barren living room ever since. daddy tries to work on it on his lunch breaks, but the boys help too much, rendering the process futile. marc has threatened to scrap the project several times, but eventually he relents.

last night he was back to toiling away when mr. jehu walked up, stark naked, and peed in the cookie sheet, all over the pieces. marc had the dumbest look on his face, he couldn’t react at all. he just sat there and stared while jehu emptied his entire bladder and walked off.

this is how i found him. and amazingly enough, no one else had dibs, so i snatched him right up. but that’s another story.

and sad to say, i don’t have time for stories. i have to go scrape up the mush that is embedded in my particle board floor and wash all the window frames. but i thought i would put up something, was feeling guilty.

they are disgusting and smell like cat piss. i spent all day rooting through one. found all kinds of exciting things.

(she’s missing her leg, by the way. so we decided to let her go even though she was kind of hot.) you can check my picasa for our two week progress. boy got the yard tilled and seeded. i picked a bazillion rocks out of the front yard, painted, and did some grocery shopping. all three kids fell asleep in the car on the way to winco. boy sat out in the parking lot with them and ended up watching ducks duke it out. a bereaved male duck was fending off some sicko, hot-shot ducks. they were trying to peck out his dead girlfriends eyes while she was all laid out in the middle of the sidewalk. meanwhile a gimpy, one-legged duck flopped around the perimeter, cheering them on. i thought it was a very sad story.