When we bought our house a few years ago, we knew that it required a few fix-ups. The roof was the first to be done, because no-one wants water leaking into their house (it wasn’t that bad yet, but we like to err on the side of caution). The furnace and A/C were next up, and we were surprised to learn that the furnace was original to the house (about 45 years old?) and the A/C was no spring chicken either (about 25 years old, I think). Both still worked, which probably says something about how things were made, but we didn’t want to take the chance of the furnace dying in the middle of winter when it was minus thirty degrees. The replacement of the windows started last year, and we discovered that they too were mostly original to the house, although, in another testament to “how things were made”, on the energy audit we had done just after we bought the house they still fared better than windows in a 10-15 year old house!

Our house also came with an upright freezer, which was showing its age externally, but was still chugging along. It was always in our plans to get a new one, but it wasn’t high on the list since it still fulfilled the requirement of keeping things frozen. We finally got around to replacing it last week and pulled the old one out from the wall to defrost it before removal.

And found the original delivery tag still attached to the back. From 1981.

They really did make things to last back then.

Reciprocating. Reciprocating. Reciprocating. Reciprocating.

For some reason, I cannot remember the name of the saw that we bought to finish off the fence – I keep wanting to call it a recirculating saw (perhaps because most of the fence was done with a circular saw?) or a retracting saw, or a reverberating saw – anything but a reciprocating saw (which is what it is).

I’m hoping that this will finally cement it in my head. And I hope that the reciprocating saw is the answer to our problem of how to trim down our massive fence posts to a reasonable height.

(Each post is 6″ thick and approximately 8.5′ tall)

Sometimes it takes something small to make someone happy. For Charles, it takes curtains (well, more accurately, window coverings). He dislikes having our house “open to the world”, even though we live on a fairly quiet street, and so as soon as the sun starts to set, the curtains/blinds are drawn (this is slightly at odds with my strong appreciation for natural light, so occasionally I will open up curtains/blinds shortly after he has opened them. But I digress.)

Many of the window coverings in our house are the ones that came with the house when we moved in two years ago. This is partly because we had so many expenses when we moved in – new furnace and A/C, new roof, half of the fence (with the other half starting this summer) – and partly because we just hadn’t picked a colour scheme for the rooms, so we didn’t have a base colour to start with. But when we got our new windows two weeks ago, we took down all of the window coverings and decided that it didn’t make sense to put them back up.

Which left us a bit exposed, even for my light-loving ways.

So, the very next day we did a shopping blitz and bought four curtain rods and two sets of curtains. That day we put up two curtain rods and quickly decided we didn’t like either set of curtains, so with one hour of available shopping time left, we ducked out again, returned two sets of curtains, and bought two more which promptly went up when we got home. The next day we hung the remaining two curtain rods and one set of curtains that we already owned. This still left us with one naked window upstairs, but since it was the nursery, we figured we still had a bit of time.

All of this just highlighted the fact that our kitchen window had been bare since we had moved in two years ago. We bought fabric months ago, and put up the curtain rod a few weeks ago, but I had never gotten around to actually sewing the curtains and so the window remained uncovered and the neighbours, if they chose, could see into our kitchen. And this bugged Charles.

So last weekend I finally sewed the curtains for the kitchen, and Charles has been happy ever since. Who knew that something so small could bring such happiness?

Of course, there are some things that I just won’t do to make him happy – like name our child (should it be a girl) Raindrop. Not even as a middle name.

The puddle may have evolved into a pond today. Either that, or I forgot this morning to switch out the sponge that I have started using to keep the flood waters at bay (which is also entirely possible given my mushy brain these days). All I know is that I wasn’t anywhere near the usual dribble area and yet my feet still got a soaker. And since our new water softener does not arrive until next Monday, until then I shall have to admit defeat. Or scrounge up a larger sponge to handle the increased leakage. I’m already switching it out twice a day.

Today seems to be my day of defeat. I also had to admit defeat at the food store (a.k.a the grocery store) tonight.

I dislike shopping carts. I used to hate them completely, but realized that they do come in handy when you need to pick up one of those water jugs that weigh 40-someodd pounds. But outside of these extreme situations, I avoid shopping carts like the plague and only use handbaskets*. Which is why Charles had to start going food shopping with me (to prevent me from lugging around 40-someodd pounds of random items. I’ve been known to stick a case of pop under each arm and still carry a full handbasket of items. Yes, I’m stubborn). But tonight, I only had to pick up a few small items for a potluck tomorrow, so I stopped at the food store after work and confidently grabbed a handbasket.

Which turned into a bit of a mistake. True, I ended up picking up a few things on top of the items that I needed for the potluck. But they were things like bread. And broccoli. Things that weigh next to nothing. And yet as I walked towards the cash with my not even full handbasket, I felt as if I had two cases of pop and an overflowing handbasket. It felt …. kind of heavy. And it kind of stretched my (pregnant) belly a bit. And that is not a pleasant feeling. I don’t know if I have just grown weak with my forced dependance on shopping carts, or if perhaps the random items did add up to more than the sum of their parts. But whatever the case, it is with great sorrow that I have come to the conclusion that I can (should) no longer use handbaskets (at least for the next four months).

Clearly I must just carry things in my arms.

And if there are too many things to carry in my arms, I will … use … a shopping cart. There. I said it.

* I will use those little wheely “hand” baskets if available – same maneuverability as the handbaskets, but able to hold heavier things!

The first morning that I stepped in it, I thought “Ugh! That is gross!”, but I cleaned it up and thought that was the end of it.

The second morning that I stepped in it, I thought “Ugh! That is gross!” but I cleaned it up and thought that must be the end of it.

The third morning that I stepped in it, I thought “Ugh! WTF??” but I finally realized that it was water, not cat pee and that was actually a bit of a relief – I figured that Charles and I could handle fixing a leak in the pipes for our basement sink (attempting to determine why the cats would pee on the floor would have been much more difficult).

The fourth time (I missed stepping in it!) I finally remembered to tell Charles that we have a leak in the pipes for our basement sink. Except that it wasn’t our sink (that would be too easy). Instead, it is coming from our very ancient water softener.

And that, my friends, is a bit more expensive.

So for two days, I have resisted looking up the cost of a new water softener. We cannot get by without a water softener (our water is waaaaay too hard^*) and I’m not really sure that fixing our current one would be cost-effective, if it can even be done given its age. But with new windows arriving on Friday, and a new fence hopefully arriving soon-ish (I really, really, reeeeaaaaally want our fence) and a baby arriving in September … well, having to shell out for a new water softener is a little hard to take. So instead, I clean up the small puddle (it is a very small puddle) that appears on the basement floor and I cross my fingers that one day it won’t be a lake.

^{* I’ve always heard that Waterloo has very hard water, but never actually remember the number. This helped me out (bolding mine)”… the Regional Municipality of Waterloo has some of the highest levels of hard water (defined as containing large amounts of calcium and magnesium) in the country… Anything over 10.5 grains per gallon (180 mg/L) is considered to be extremely high and is labelled in the fifth category as “very hard”: the estimated average level of water hardness in the Waterloo Region is 22 grains per gallon (376 mg/L), more than twice the level necessary to be included in the top category.” Fun.}