To bring you up to date

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it?

Both houses were on the garden tour back in May. We had over 100 people come through, most of them in the first 2 hours (very hot hours!). We prepared handouts on "things to see/know" for the 2 gardens as well as list of favorite things (places, supplies, etc.), since we are not, ah, your typical "backyard garden" on the tour. The handouts seemed pretty well received. After it was over, we were glad to finally not be working constantly in the two yards. Now we just have to keep up with mowing them every 5 days, a chore in itself!

Some of you may remember that last October, Kinder Morgan Inc. announced that it was acquiring El Paso Corporation. That deal closed on May 24, and on May 25, I was one of approximately 500 El Paso employees (across our multiple sites) that was a "Day One" sever, meaning, as of May 25, I am unemployed, a situation far preferable, in my opinion, to being retained by KMI.  I raised my hand to be considered for severance, and, after initially being offered a job doing "something" (not my former job), I got severance. I fully expect many more EP employees to be laid off next year, when they are no longer under the EP severance plan (to say it is more generous than KMI's is like, well, saying that the weather in Houston is not like Portland, OR!).

So, you ask, are we finally fully moved into the new house at long last? My response is just to laugh. Ahem. No. But we are painting again! The final wall of the office has been painted, and we now have a lovely, very pale silvery-lavender room. Roy is pleased. We also have begun painting the master bathroom, having evaluated about 4 different colors, I think, to finally arrive at the current one (not too pink, not too peach, not too ivory, not too...). Despite having the professionals do work in there, I have to fix the air bubbles they had in the texture on the wall above the toilet. Then I can finally paint my accent wall and hang up "wall decor" that I purchased over a year ago for that room.

We've also been installing Elfa shelving in our master bedroom closets, and I think I finally have most of our clothes moved out of the old house, except for the winter clothes stored in SpaceBags.

OH! The piano arrived in April and was tuned a few weeks later. It is very pretty. I should make a post just about it.

We are continuing to apply compost, fertilizer, topsoil, mulch, etc., to the grass at the new house. It is in such bad shape that I think we have applied over 2,000 pounds of stuff to it this year, but it is finally beginning to green up and grow. The new mini-van has gotten used to the indignity of smelling like a barnyard (temporarily) as it has carried the many bags of amendments on the many trips from Lowe's.

I think that gives everyone at least some idea of what has been going on lately. We've just been busy and with the computers still at the old house, I haven't had sat down to write an update lately.

Are we crazy?!?!

With springtime always comes general clean-up in the garden and yard in preparation for the new growing season plus the addition of any newly-acquired plants (such as from Mercer Arboretum's March Mart), but these are occurring with a redoubled effort this year.

Why? Because as has been so aptly (and repeatedly) demonstrated, we have lost our minds. "What now?" ye ask?

We were asked, and have agreed (Roy somewhat reluctantly), to put the gardens at both homes on the Westbury Garden Tour. This year. In 6 weeks. Tickets will be $10, sold the day of the event at the first home on the tour (which is just a few blocks north of us). Proceeds go to benefit the Westbury Garden Club's projects, one of which is the Butterfly Garden at the Westbury Community Garden (yes, we're involved in that, too).

So if you have ever wanted an "open house" tour of our gardens, mark your calendars for Saturday, May 5, 1-4:30 PM.

We are planning to create a handout with 5206 on one side and 5127 on the other side. Some of the things we plan to cover include: Special Points of Interest, Edible Landscaping, Lessons Learned, Long-term Plans, Central Concepts, Challenges, and Favorite Resources (local, web, products, and info). 5127 was specifically invited to be an example of a "work in progress", so we are going to outline the 7 or so major transformations to-date.

Although the season for my Mexican plum to be in bloom has passed, I share with you the picture I took of it on March 5, when I took a last-minute day of vacation to enjoy the glorious (alas, very temporary) weather.

Safety Moment #2 - Never, EVER, Drive into Water

I seem to have become a poster child for safety violations. Two major ones, one resulting in personal injury, one resulting in loss of property, inside of a month! This is the tale of the second one.

Monday morning, I had a 9am appointment for some dermatological allergy testing, located in an unfamiliar part of the new southern edge of the Medical Center. For those in Houston, that is north of OST, west of Cambridge (which is east of Fannin, south of the bayou). The punch line? I was going to have to keep my back dry until Thursday and I still don't have a cell phone. Plus, seriously inclement weather was in the forecast. Thus, the stage is set.

At approximately 10:06am, I left the medical facility in a monsoon, and having lived in Houston for 40 years now, I know a monsoon when I see one. Visibility is nil, and the roadways (Cambridge and OST) were full of water across most lanes. But I needed to get to work, or, at least, home to telecommute, right? So, I slogged on.

At 10:15 am, I found myself in high water, barely making it through it. Minutes later, I crossed through a flooding intersection and minutes later again, I came up to what I believe to be an access road for 610, completely underwater with cars floating in it. I realized then that I wasn't on Fannin (no rail!) and I didn't know where I was. I turned around. And around. And around, as every avenue I attempted to flee was flooded (and none had a street sign).

The only good call I made that morning was to drive back to the Valero at the flooding intersection, where I parked and where, finally, there were street signs. Per the Key Map, it turned out that I was on Knight Rd at Holly Hall, so just east of the old Astrodome.

Then I began worrying about the wrong things - getting to work, getting stuck where I was for an hour or two. Instead of focusing on staying safe, I allowed myself to panic and make a decision that, had I been off that day, I don't think I would have made. I had food, water, our Kindle, shelter, and security. What did it really matter whether I got to work in an hour or not at all that day?

The rain let up some, so I got back out on the road, deciding to backtrack up Knight to OST and try to make it to Main St then home, where I will just request permission to telecommute for the day.

That was stupid, just stupid. I could see that the intersection was still flooded and the Metro bus was still sitting in the middle of Knight, where I'd passed it earlier on my lost way south. I passed the bus, realized the water is higher, I think, than when I came southbound, saw the stalled car in the middle of the 4-lane road (crown is always highest point in a city), went to its right, and immediately stalled out myself.

Yes, I freaked out.

Water immediately started coming in all the doors, so I frantically gathered stuff up - I had our Christmas-present Kindle DX with me, my birthday-present Canon camera with me, plus stuff for heading into work (lunch, etc.).

As I am gathering stuff on the inside of the car, shoving it into the reusable grocery bags in the back seat, a Waste Management trash truck vrooms by me, sending the car bobbing like a boat. Yes, I freak out again. I waited for the waves to subside a bit, then pushed the passenger's side door open against the water, and dropped down into 29 inch deep water (in case you're wondering, that's crotch-height on me), shoved the door a few times to get it closed, and walked back to that Valero that I had so recently left.

After hours of hanging out at the Valero, using their phone to call AAA and Roy, and fruitlessly awaiting a tow from AAA (and sopping wet from pretty much the waist down), the rain truly let up at last, and I walked back up to the car. I took pictures, which are at the end of this update.

I finally decided to walk to the light rail, in hopes of getting into the med center transit station, and from there, on any bus route that will get me within a mile of home. It took 2 rail rides to get to the transit station a mere 2 stops north (they had to transfer us to the actual NB line one stop north of Reliant as the entire rail system was messed up by the flooding - take note, all ye who are certain that Houston is destined for mass transit!!), where I eventually discovered that the buses were simply not running, as no buses for any route had been in or out of the transit center for over an hour. After a futile attempt to get a guard at the UTHSC restricted facility across the street to call me a cab, I walked back over to the rail line and took a 3rd rail ride, to the Marriott Med Center, where I grabbed some water and located a cab and got home.

That was over 4 hours after my ordeal began. It took me over 2 hours to get home once I started. And I've totaled our 1997 Buick LeSabre, which had over 186,000 miles on it, and which we had no immediate plans to replace any time soon. I'm devastated.

Remember, never, ever, ever, EVER drive into water. Ever. I knew that rule and disobeyed it a couple of times Monday before finally getting burnt. Just stupid. Too worried about getting to work and not worried enough about staying safe.

Here are some pictures with captions.

Roy & I went back to the car around 6 to retrieve the rest of my belongings from it. It still had water in it and an HPD officer had just finished setting up flares around it, as it was in a dark stretch of the street. Our repair shop picked it up around 7pm. When I called Tuesday morning, their shop had picked up 35 flooded cars on Monday. He didn't hold out much hope for ours.

By the way, according to the Harris County Flood Control District bayou rainfall data, the area I was in received over 4.1 inches between 9am and 11am during the flash flood. And it didn't start raining until well after my appointment began, so somewhere around 9:20 or so. That is an incredible amount of water being dumped onto flat surfaces in a very small amount of time - it is no wonder that we had flash flooding.

One last sad footnote to this tale: somewhere along the way on Monday, I lost one of the pearl stud earrings that were part of Roy's wedding gift to me. I realized it in the Valero bathroom, and carefully searched my raincoat and shirt for it, to no avail. One positive footnote: throughout the entire mess, I managed to keep my back dry, so the expensive dermatological testing was not ruined along with everything else that day.

Safety Moment

Roy and I both work for oil & gas companies, where safety is always front and center. Every meeting either of us go to is opened with a safety moment either from an attendee volunteer or by the presenter. We both tend to back into (or pull through) parking spaces everywhere, as trained by our companies (in an emergency situation, being able to get in a vehicle and see where you are going and see any oncoming vehicles is a big win, versus having to back out with blind spots). This is an ingrained behavior at this point.

Many of you know that I also began harping on ladder and tree-cutting safety issues after Roy's accident in 1994. And we always are ultra-cautious messing with electricity for any reason.

So, you would think that we'd just be increasing our "days since lost-time accident" counters.

But sometimes, even when an unsafe condition is recognized, it is just such a hassle to get it fixed, and when you aren't around the area, you tend to forget about it. Such was the case of a poorly-anchored "walking board" in the new house's attic. Every time we were up there, and I crossed on that board, I made a verbal comment that we needed to fix that. Someone had screwed it down funny, such that it wasn't really secure on one end. To fix it would mean going down and bringing a cordless drill back up into the attic, unscrewing it, and then repositioning it. But we were always in the middle of something else and couldn't spare the 10 minutes it might have taken to fix it.

On Saturday, 12/10, I stepped on that board and it flipped me backwards, like stepping on a see-saw. My arms flew up in their natural reaction, and the right arm near the wrist came into contact with one of the few braces between two rafters. That stopped my fall and allowed me opportunity to throw my weight forward and steady myself on that fickle board. However, the arm took a pretty heavy hit, and by that night, I couldn't use my hand. Having sat in an ER all day before, I had no desire to do so again. I finally had it x-rayed at the chiropractor's office 4 days later, and no break was seen, though they had suspected a stress fracture.

Day by day, it has gotten slowly better. I was finally able to tolerate bracing it 6 days after the incident and braced it for for a week during the day. I lightly bumped it on Tue the 20th and it let me know that it was still really bruised and did not appreciate the contact whatsoever. On Wednesday, my physical therapist did Feldenkrais work on my arm. It finally started moving better (though after painting on Thursday, it is back to being a wee bit unhappy with me).

So the moral to this story is, do not pass up an opportunity to correct an unsafe condition. Had that brace beam not been there, I could have gone through the ceiling, backwards, or at the very least landed badly on joists in the attic, in an uncontrolled backwards fall. Things could have been so much worse than a banged-up arm/wrist, and I remind myself of that every time I am annoyed at my arm being messed up.

To bring everyone up-to-date on the sheetrock work, we moved back into the new house on the 16th, having cleaned up (most of) the sheetrock dust everywhere, and started decorating for Christmas on Tuesday night - we put up one of my small, 4-1/2 ft tall trees and some lights outside. We primed the Music Hall on the 22nd with one of our summer workers. We hope to get its ceiling painted this week, but we aren't sure of our worker's availability yet.

A Tale of Two Moves

It was the best of blogs, it was the worst of blogs.

It has been pointed out to me by many folks that I have not made an update since before we moved to the new house (always politely phrased in the "I'm subscribed to your remodel blog, but haven't gotten anything in months!"). Yes, we successfully moved on 8/11. We have continued to move things as we needed them (like, cold weather clothes). We are not fully moved out of the old house — our computers and laundry room remain at the old house, because the new house is not yet set up for them. (That's also why no new blog posts — computer isn't where we live.) We also haven't moved any of our gardening or sewing stuff, or 17 years accumulation of other "stuff".

But — much, much has transpired since my last post.

Like, us moving back to the old house yesterday morning! Only now, we have two cats to move, not just one. Meet Rugen, a polydactyl black kitten rescued from our local community garden back in October (is it really December already?!?!).




Why did we move back to the old house, to sleep on borrowed air beds for more than a week, you ask? (and thanks again, Randy & Janette!)

We are finally getting all* of the drywall work completed in the new house. That means, working in both bathrooms, the hallway ceiling and several walls, two walls in the SE bedroom, one wall in the SW bedroom (my office aka Rugen's room), the den ceiling, two walls in the entryway (the only two walls), all of the living/dining room (aka the Music Hall) walls and ceiling, and the breakfast room walls.

Notice what that leaves out? Only the master bedroom, kitchen, and utility room*.

We evaluated living in wet sheetrock mud, lots of sheetrock dust on days they sand, with two cats and we decided that we are simply not that crazy. So we packed everybody up and moved back up the street instead. Of course, we had to move the cats' tower to the old house, so Roy rolled it down the street on the furniture dolly at 7am. Our neighbors are used to our crazy behavior. Or they certainly should be by now!

Once this current round of work is finished, we'll be able to finish painting the office and hall bathroom (one wall each), paint the hallway (color is selected), breakfast room (color is selected), and master bathroom (colors might be selected - we'll see what we think when that dark red/brown is gone and not affecting impressions), then prime the entryway, Music Hall, and SE room (colors are not yet selected). We currently plan to do a lot of painting the week between Christmas and New Years.

*The utility room is still gutted. Our carpenter's schedule and our schedule have failed to mesh for more than a month, so the joists are still not repaired, so there is still no insulation or sheetrock in there. And yes, it is wickedly cold in that room, so we keep the door closed (not that it helps a lot) when the weather is like this (cold and colder, for those of you not in Houston). We are hoping to get him in there Very Soon Now, like maybe this weekend.

Painting and packing

Well, Big Move Number One is almost upon us. The new house is not exactly ready to be moved into yet, still quite a bit of painting to go, and all, and its utility room is still gutted from the mold remediation, but move on 8/11 we will.

Why? you ask...well...

Because we are hosting dinner for a dozen or more on 8/17 for Rice's Orientation Week. We used to do it all the time, then we moved the hosting to a restaurant for a few years, then we just dropped out altogether as we got lazy/overcome with other things. We decided this year that we wanted to get back in the groove as Sid associates.

We had waited til mid-July to make the call as to whether we'd participate so we'd be able to better gauge whether we'd be moved in, and we simply thought we'd be farther along than we are (it didn't help matters that our best worker's family decided to take some last minute summer vacation trips the past two weekends and then this week/end he is on a track field trip - apparently private schools travel for a week to some meet before school even starts, I'm not really clear on the whys and wherefores).

So I hired some MORE new workers who had recently responded to my ad. Are they Rice students? Why, Virginia, why would you ever think such a thing, just because I ran an ad in the Rice student newspaper classified section back in April and May...no, one is a UHD grad who has applied to Rice for post-bacc study and then her boyfriend, who is a current UHD student. They seem to be nice people and have worked with us painting for a couple of weekends now. We also still have Will, who may have escaped mention thus far--he's our token Rice student.

Today was spent prepping bedrooms for a painting day tomorrow, and packing up things from our old house for the move to the new house. For the remaining crystal stemware, we just walked them in our hands down the street. Didn't have appropriate boxes, didn't see the point in acquiring any, either.

That's about all the news that's fit to print; oh, we've gotten the den all painted. It came out a bit lighter than we expected, but it's so much better than the Army olive drab green that it was, we're fine with it. And we hosted the Westbury Community Garden's fall seed packaging event at the house this past Sunday, so we've now hosted 2 events (both seed packaging for the WCG) at the new house. Not exactly social events, but events nonetheless!

On the brighter side

Lest ye think it's all "doom and gloom" at the new house, here are a few developments we're happy with at the new place. (By the way, the new house is also referred to as 5127, the East Farm, Purpalicious, "the other house", and probably a few more things. It is where we plan to actually live — and soon, we hope.)


First, new landscaping. We've been hard at work on this since just about Day 2. While there are many, many more months (nay, years!) of work to do, we're pleased that it's looking cheerier and more like us. (Although with this continued drought and relentless sun, some things are not so happy any longer.)

Second, new windows (Jeld-Wen and Simonton). Big, big panes of glass allow unobstructed views of the outdoors from pretty much every room in the house. We've had big, clear Simonton windows for years in the old house, and very much enjoy looking out of them.

Third, Ed re-purposed the old electric dryer circuit for a whole-house surge protector. Now all of our electronic controls on our microwave, gas range, French-door refrigerator, etc., are protected from power surges coming into the house. Dirty power from Hurricanes Rita and Ike did a number on the last microwave we had.

Fourth, one of the few worthwhile items in the original landscape was this poor, much-neglected fig tree out back behind the garage. We have been faithfully watering it, and it has been faithfully putting on figs. Well, the first figs are finally ripe! We had a few figs over the 4th of July weekend. They are pretty tasty.

Fifth, and this is probably our favorite change of all, Ed hung our Meyda Tiffany pendant light in the breakfast room recently. Roy & I both absolutely love it. It was well worth the hours spent Googling and perusing lighting online, after we had a vague idea of what we wanted (a Tiffany-style up-light pendant in certain colorways). Serendipity? The blue in the pendant goes very nicely with the blue we chose for the kitchen.


There is a sixth major project, however, it is still in progress, so no pictures yet. Hopefully, it will be finished to usability in the next two weeks (there will be additional work later), and we'll post pictures of its time line and talk all about it then.