Thursday, September 30, 2010
Bug Competition
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tales of the Nightmare Campout
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The Table Picture...finally
Friday, September 24, 2010
Husband of the Year Nomination
Irritating thing nĂºmero dos is that the ol' cell service is patchy in the kitchen. I can't take another "what? Lost you there". I really can't. And then there's the dog who I do love having around but all she does when I'm working is mope and sigh and make me feel guilty for not taking her outside every second of the day. Needless to say, I don't get a lot of work done. So I of course blamed the kitchen and said that I was going to buy a desk to put in the spare room. Before I could even get on the bus to Ikea,Tim built me a desk. And an amazing one at that. Check this thing out. Ok I can't figure out how to upload the pic from this stupid new phone. Will do it soon I promise. Til then, you can imagine...
Love love. Husband of the Year, I'm telling you. At least a nominee anyway.
And I just wanted to share that HOTY and I are currently sitting in the most heinous traffic of all time on Broome St on our way to the farm. If I were in the driver's seat like HOTY is right now, I would be road raging and close to murdering an innocent person or traffic cop. He's damn calm though. Just throwing that out there so I can lock down that nom.
Here's to getting to the farm before 3am...
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Progress Report: A+
The long and short of that story is not to brag about my awesome friends but to tell you that when I sat down with Tim last night for dinner, he told me I was way overdue for a blog post. I was like well what the eff am I supposed to blog about? I haven’t been to the farm in two weeks and I really doubt that people want to hear about my weekend of leisure in a 20 million dollar mansion spent laying by the pool(s) and drinking gallons of wine and vodka. And even if they do, I’m not going to go into it because all of my mom’s friends now read this blog and while they drink more than I do on any given celebratory weekend and certainly will not judge, I will lose the ability to call my mom a lush. And that is really important to me.
So we came to the idea of doing a broad stroke progress report. It has been almost a year since we closed on the farm and we thought it would be nice to do a recap of what we’ve accomplished in that time.
Or, if in our findings, it turned out to be disappointing rather than “nice”, we figured it would encourage us to work harder and spend less time in the Hamptons next summer.
We started looking at the gazillions of farm photos on my laptop and realized that our accomplishments actually transcended our expectations. And while we are behind the arbitrary schedule that Tim had set forth last year- he thought we would be done with the first building by September- ha!!!! – it’s not for lack of trying. I think the goal was a tad unrealistic, considering that we went from a pile of mud and trash to an impressive steel structure in 11 months. As a reminder, in said 11 months, we were only working weekends, and with a core crew consisting of weak ol’ me, Tim, and Tim’s parents. So I think we’re doing okay.
On with the show, which I thought would be easiest to demonstrate best in pictures...
This was the beginning. I give us props for being visionaries who were able to see beyond the piles of slop and nastiness. There's a very fine line between being a visionary and being crazy, I realized along the way but I prefer to stick with the latter.
This phase I call the Holy Shit, Whatdidwegetourselvesinto Phase. I’ll never forget one of my father’s first comments as he furrowed his brow and said “I really hope you guys didn’t get yourselves a money pit.” Silly Dad. Money Pit? Ha! Never.
After the building was torn down, we experienced that which I recall most fondly as The Mud Phase. We even had to sweep the mud as you can see here. You may also notice how much Zelda truly despises brooms. (It's one of the many unique features that they didn't mention when we got her.)
Post-Mud Phase came the Draining the 20-Billion Gallons of Mud Phase. I’m not sure that any photo can clearly capture what a pain in the ass it was to dig those drainage holes and put those annoying tubes in them and then cover them with gravel. So I’ll just tell you: it fucking sucked. And I only partook in like ¼ of it.
(Please try to keep the obvious comments about Tim holding a giant dong-like tube between his legs to a minimum. I know it’s not easy.)
Somewhere in the winter, things began to put us all to the mental test. Perhaps for the health of our marriage, we split up zones for a little while when Tim and his father did their own thing down in the mud and I tackled many projects of my own that all turned out to be useless but kept me busy in the freezing cold winter where your options were to either a) do work or b) freeze to death. I call this phase Annie Got Weird with Herself WhileTim Ignored Her. Some of the things that I did that are now either covered with more overgrowth or completely destroyed: weeding, cleaning up the front yard, and moving rocks that may or not be actually classified as boulders.
**Just a friendly reminder that we had no heat, water or electricity during the winter. Just a reminder.
Once winter finally passed, we had a nice pile of rubble to show for all our hard work in the bitter cold. We’ll call it Phase Rubble. Btw, melted snow makes more mud so you may notice that Phase Rubble was framed by the Mud Phase Redux.
And somewhere in the midst of Phase Rubble, we noticed that Tim had a really bad haircut going on. And why was he wearing a XXXXL t-shirt? Good God.
I was laughing really hard at him until I found this picture of myself. Nice dress but what the hell is that thick yellow mop doing on my head? And where is my face? We like to call this phase the Bad Looking Phase. Hopefully we will not revisit it any time soon, but it’s one of those things you don’t realize at the time and then one day you look at an old photo and are like, oh. My. God. Did I even look in the mirror?
If you were somehow able to overlook that mop on my head, you may have noticed the floor. This was the era of the Floor that Changed Everything. The day that floor was finally poured was a momentous one. The floor was white and smooth and gorgeous and it finally felt like, yeah, there could be a building here. I think I even shed a tear.
And then the biggest step of all; the phase I endearingly refer to as The Steel Erection. The first day of erecting steel was the most exciting day of progress on the farm by far. It wasn’t just because there were cranes and half-naked men running around, it was because by the end of the day, we had a structure for a building. Since that day, Tim and I have secretly enjoyed playing House and we walk around it and say here is the kitchen, here is your office, here is the bathroom, etc like total nerds. We also run around and give each other cooties.
And while it’s true that we have been stuck for what seems like months in the Ol’ Filler-In Phase in which we fill in all the cross bars and girders and beams and crap, Tim finally came to his senses and brought his crew down last Friday. They accomplished a great deal of work, including adding on the entire front section as you can see here.
Let’s just say when you bring young, strong men who are accustomed to working with steel and big machines to the site, the process moves a little bit faster than it does when you have the Old Man and the Wife on the job. Shocking, I know.
As I stop and look back at all that we have done, I’m impressed again and again by the fact that Tim even knew how to do all this stuff. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t have known about all that stuff like drainage and pouring concrete and crap. True that while it’s within the realm of what he does for work, this is his first time doing an actual building on his own. Even though I bust on him all the time, I do so with love because my husband is quite something. He really is.
Mad props also to Tim’s father who we nicknamed The Bull because he just works and works and works and doesn’t stop, sometimes with a tad too much tunnel vision. Like a bull in a china shop, he doesn’t notice the fragile stuff around him and totally destroys it quite frequently. Sure, he’s set us back a day or two but he’s set us forward like 20,000 so we just have to zip it and let The Bull be The Bull.
I’m just kidding. No, I'm not.
While my arms do look nice and all, the real hero here is Tim. He didn’t just say he was going to do something, he is doing it and he is doing it not just for himself but for us and for our future. If we weren’t already married, I’d ask him to marry me. I’d be the luckiest girl in the world if he said yes.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Wolf Strikes Back
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Innings = Chukkers
Friday, September 10, 2010
NRA Wine Club update. Great news.
Tim was kind enough to forward me the email from the NRA announcing their wine sale. It's true not only that Timothy loves a good deal, but that NRA members really love wine.
Do you love a good deal? Do you love good wine? If so, this is an offer too good to pass up. Believe it or not, NRA members love wine and we have a great offer for you.
You could stand in front of a wall of confusing wine labels and search for a special selection...
Or you could take me up on my exclusive NRA Wine Club new customer offer (within the next 10 days, please).
A guaranteed-to-please, easy way to enjoy new wines while you blast your shotgun.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Labor, Interrupted
Things started off okay as we unpacked and unloaded the machines but when we started trying to figure out how to put up this next set of beams, things started getting tricky. Seems the ol' beam weighed 250 lbs and also didn't seem to fit into the location it was cut for. This led to a bit of tension. And with tension comes irritation. And if you let the irritation grow, next you have bickering. The bickering eventually led to one girl leaving the worksite completely, headed for the hills, destined to never return. She would instead start a life on the road, alone, eventuallly ending up on a beautiful deserted tropical island where she could spend the second half of her life discovering edible flowers and making skirts out of dried seaweed and crabgrass. The key word here being alone. She was very excited at the prospect of never having to talk to another human ever again except possibly through her blog which she would somehow find a way to continue, perhaps by carving posts into the side of a tree with a conch shell. What would drive a girl to want to leave society altogether, you might be wondering? A grinding wheel is the answer.
We were having a hard time fitting this heavy piece of steel into the slot that it was designed to fit into. If you've ever had to move out of your home or apt and opted to do it the cheap way (i.e. yourself), it was like trying to fit a sofa through a doorway that is just too small, but there is no way in hell you're giving up because that sofa was expensive and you just know it will fit if you turn it at the right angle. I can tell you right now that there is no way this metaphorical sofa was going to fit. And I expressed that to Cheech and Chong who chose to just ignore me for an hour while turning it this way and that way as the hot sun beat down on us. After an hour of these shenanigans, Chong finally suggested exactly what I had been suggesting all along which was to cut a hole in one of the non-structural beams so that they could slide it in. This was the only way it would work and that was clear from the beginning but some times people think that girls are stupid and they just ignore them. A mistake since the beginning of time really.
In order to cut the beam, Chong, needed a machine with a sharp blade. He had the machine nearby but asked me to go get the blade out of the barn. Chong is usally very bad about his instructions but this time he was actually very specific and said "it's in the Metabo box. I need a grinding blade, larger than this one [shows me blade] but the same shape. A grinding blade." I was like okay and headed off to the barn where I found the Metabo box and the blades. The blades were labeled and it was weird but none of the grinding blades looked anything like the blade he showed me, so I grabbed a few of them, thinking that it had to be one of them and brought them back down to the site. Oh boy, let me just tell you about the verbal explosions. Chong went off on this tangent about how I never listen and he knew I would get the wrong blade and he didn't ask for a grinding blade, he asked for a cutting blade (not true) until the point that I just lost and said F you, I don't want to help any more and walked away.
I grabbed my backpack, stuffed my money and a Vitamin Water Zero into it, and headed off on the 10 mile walk to town. It was on this walk that I came up with my elaborate deserted island fantasy. I was totally immeresed in that world when my phone rang, 3-4 miles in, interrupting my dreams and happiness. I knew it was Chong calling so I didn't answer. But then it rang again and again and again and I finally accepted that my island trip was going to be ruined by my husband who wanted me to come back. I finally answered and said "I'm not turning back" and hung up but then he just drove after me and found me on the side of Route 519, sweating. I didn't want to go back at all but he made me feel guilty because his mom and dad and a close family friend bought us lunch so I reluctantly got in. I made sure that Chong knew that I wasn't doing it for him though. He said, I know. I'm sorry. I said "I'm sitting in the back seat" and I watched my island dreams float away into farm land and I found my way back home, like it or not. That Chong can be such a jerk some times.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Labor, Labour, Labre
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Mail Keeps Gettin Stranger
From COUNTRY WOMAN magazine to the handwritten Kitten Murderer note to the NRA catalogue, ever since we bought the farm, the mail just keeps getting stranger. And now it has even started to hit our Manhattan apartment. I just checked the mailbox downstairs and in addition to the usual mix of parking tickets and bills, I found SCHNEIDERS: VALUE PRICED HORSE SUPPLIES SINCE 1948. Thank God it finally arrived! I haven't been able to sleep knowing that the annual Dura-nylon Ocala Legstrap Blankets sale was coming up. (The cover really does boast "Warm Winter Fashion".)