How Now, Brown Cow?

I have a vivid memory of a friend of mine, many years ago, lamenting her plain coloring and describing her eyes as being “poo-poo brown.”  This made a strong impression on me because we have the same color of eyes, and, up to that moment, I had always liked my eye color.  Now “poo-poo” is the first adjective I think of when describing my own eyes or hair.

“Lindsey,” you may be asking.  “I thought you said all you were thinking about these days was the new house.  Why the digression?”  Well, I’m actually leading up to a house-related point.  If you read the comments here, you already know that I decided that I want to pick a shade of brown to be the  main color that I use throughout the new house.  The collection of paint chips in my purse (and spilled all over the floorboards of my car) is ever growing, and I have yet to find a beautiful shade of brown that I feel confident with for my new walls.  The thing is, there’s a fine yet incredibly important difference between an appealing “chocolate” brown and a less-than-appetizing “poo-poo” brown.  It’s as elusive/essential as the line between “inexpensive” and “cheap” or “outgoing” and “obnoxious.”

Now, I’m not dealing with chocolate browns, but poo-poo is still part of my concern.  The problem is that all light browns have strong color undertones, and it’s hard to really see the true color until you have invested in paint and brushed it all over the wall.  Then it becomes all too apparent that the color that you thought would be tan is actually quite olive, and now it looks like a diaper disaster all over the wall.  Or, you get a tan on the wall and it turns out to be very pink, and then there’s no fixing it except to buy southwestern desert prints and decorate like a Motel 6. 

Tomorrow is D-Day.  I have to go back to Lowe’s and make my final decisions.  Fingers crossed!

 

Blah blah blah

Thanks for all the good feedback on the movers question. I change my mind almost every day on what I want to do…today I’m leaning more toward a DIY move, because I’m fixated on wanting a stackable washer and dryer and I need to save every penny to afford one right away. But we’ll see.

I added it up, and this is my fifth summer in a row to move. I am finally tired of moving. I’m looking forward to the new house, and I’m even looking forward to unpacking, but I DO NOT LIKE PACKING ANYMORE. My mom was nice enough to come help me for a day, and together we put a huge dent in the project. I think one more good day of help and I can get it finished. Hooray!

It’s always a very vulnerable thing to let someone else pack my stuff. There’s just no telling what might be hiding behind my thin veneer of cleanliness! Only dear old mom could fish a forgotten bag of potatoes (now, barely resembling spuds in any shape or form) from the bottom of the pantry and not judge me as a housekeeper (at least, not too much).

Anyway, I’m having a great time looking forward to the new place. I’ve been browsing allposters.com for some fresh new wall art, and I am toting a million paint swatches around in my purse to see which one I love most. We’ve gotten to walk through the house a few times in the last week, and I’m having fun dreaming about what do do with the new rooms.

Anyway, packing and planning is consuming my thoughts right now, so I’m not expecting to win a Pulitzer for any of my blog posts over the next few weeks. You’re all great pals for still checking in.

 

On the road again

Well, in case you haven’t heard, we’re gearing up for our annual summer move. True to tradition, we have made sure to wait late enough into the summer to almost guarantee that temperatures will be over 100 degrees on the day of the move. We’re moving to a house in Temple that we’re very excited about, but the current question looming over our heads is this: Do we try to pull off one more amateur move, or do we suck it up and hire movers for this trip?

Either way will be expensive. Renting a truck will cost upwards of $100, plus the cost of gas for a distance move and pizza/water/soda for all of our helpful friends and family. The best deal I found on movers was for $115 an hour for three burly moving men. So, roughly, this would be between $200-$250.

If these guys can move like greased lightning, I’d hope to have them finished (including driving time) in three hours. That gives them almost an hour on each end for loading and unloading, and a little over an hour for driving (round trip). Best case scenario, I think it would cost us about $350. But there’s always the chance that these guys might not move quite as quickly (the guy on the phone estimated seven hours, which I think is outrageous, but even a time somewhere between our guesses would be a significant price increase).

Due to our economic stimulus check and a couple of other unexpected one-time income opportunities, we could actually swing the cost of movers. But, there are lots of other costs associated with this move and getting settled into the new house that I would gladly spend the money on. Basically, it boils down to this: can we actually ask our friends and family to help us move…in AUGUST…for the third summer in a row? (For the record, they’ve all graciously pledged their support. But, at the same time, everyone’s eyes light up when they hear we’re considering getting professionals)

I really can’t decide if hiring movers is compassionate or extravagant. Any thoughts to assuage my guilt either way?

 

Summer Squatters

Well, we didn’t set out to do this, but we’re back in the business of house-sitting for the rest of the summer. We house-sat for some friends in Temple last week, and had a great time enjoying their spacious house and backyard pool.  What this house did not have, unfortunately, was a television or computer with easy access, so Stephen and I had to pass our time with old-fashioned entertainment standbys such as reading, conversation, and watching DVDs on our laptop.

Now we’re back in Waco staying in a house that will be ours until August. There’s no pool here, but it’s a nice house in a beautiful part of town. We took the dogs for a walk yesterday evening, and because we forgot their leashes at home, we improvised by using a pair of long shoestrings that we found in the kids’ playroom. Hands down, we were the most ghetto dog-walkers in Waco’s finest historic neighborhood.

For the most part, house-sitting is easy. I feel no awkwardness reading someone else’s books, sleeping in their bed, or watching their TV. Looking for an iron or nail polish remover is a great excuse to peek behind closet doors, which is a guilty pleasure for a nosy Peeping Tom like myself. Really, the only hard part of living in a house that is not my own is trying to cook a meal in someone else’s kitchen.

Yesterday I got Stephen to bring me some ingredients from my own house (fish, breadcrumbs, and broccoli, the essentials of my favorite meal), and I figured I could fill in the gaps with whatever I could find in the cabinets. It sounded simple enough, but somehow three hours later I was still eating a bowl of cereal.

Roadblock #1 It took me opening every single cabinet and drawer multiple times to find the simplest items, like foil to line my pan, or a spoon to stir my ingredients. I could not make heads or tails of the organization of the kitchen supplies, so every little thing I needed required a major investigation.

Roadblock #2 All I had brought to put on my fish was breadcrumbs, which I planned to season with spices that I found in the kitchen. I have an incredibly rudimentary understanding of food seasoning, so I assumed that any spice I might know to look for would be readily available. WRONG. This family clearly has a very different food culture than I am used to. All of the spices came from a specialty store and had custom-printed labels. I found several different variations of curry, and lots of stuff I didn’t recognize, including something called “Maharajah” (which I only knew as a made up character from Moulin Rouge), but no freaking garlic powder.

Roadblock #3 It’s also really hard to use someone else’s appliances. The oven is really old, and filled the house with a weird odor as it preheated. The odor only got worse as I tried to bake my bland fish fillets. I almost blew my eyebrows off trying to steam my broccoli on the gas stove, and I worried that I would make the house explode or kill myself with carbon monoxide on my first night in this place.

Hours later, we were finally able to eat, and it wasn’t even good. I threw most of my food away, and filled my hungry stomach the rest of the way with a wholesome snack of Kix and a Dr. Pepper. Today I’m going to my house to load up on my McCormick’s spices and my toaster oven. Anyone want to join us for dinner?