DrMrNin calls this ‘bumpkinish’. I call it energy efficient.

Once again it’s a windy day here in the bay. A perfect day blow dry my washing in the fresh northerly wind. I grew up with a washing line back in England and having one here now in my own back garden makes our house feel that little bit more like a home. Plus it’s a lot cheaper and better for my clothes than throwing them in the tumble drier xx

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Laundry day

Is that a word? Probably not. But back to the point- LOOK WHAT WE DID! Of course, that’s a ‘we’ in the Royal Sense as it’s all the work of The Good Doctor really. Isn’t he clever? It’s nice to think that if every grocery store in the whole wide world stopped selling food, we would still be able to eat. I like that xx

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as And here begins the overwhelmation

This past weekend a friend of ours came up to visit from Southern California. We spent most of Saturday helping him clear out a storage locker that he’s been wasting money on for the past couple of years, and piled everything into a truck and drove it all up to our house. We’re now going to store the remainder of his stuff in our shed for the next six months in exchange for some of his unwanted furniture, hurrah! A great deal all round, I feel. We’ve now acquired amongst other things an armchair and a set of bookcases which means that I can finally start making up the front room of the house which up to now has been used for our own storage. By default all of this rearranging actually forces us to sort the rest of the house out too and it’s all excellent timing as my parents are coming back for another visit in three weeks, this time with my middle sister in tow as well. So that’s my target to work towards. I have big plans for a house transformation. Hopefully.

Oh yes, DrG also let me play with his Lumix camera DAN. GER. OUS. It’s the Panasonic sister of the Leica D-Lux 4 that I’ve been lusting after since its announcement last February, yet I also want to at some point upgrade my dSLR.  Yes, I used the Lumix to take the photo above. Yes I liked it and yes, I imagine I would like the D-Lux 4 even more. So now the question is, do I break down and divert my hard-saved savings towards aquiring the pocket-sized Leica, or do I keep on saving up and aim toward getting the Canon 5D Mk II/Nikon D700? Hmmmm…..

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Getting Things Done

What better way to indulge in healthy eating than to eat what we’ve grown ourselves. This year ‘we’ (i.e. DrMrNin) planted a selection of kitchen herbs, squash, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes. All organic of course. These past few weeks we have been overrun with squash. It’s going to be the tomatoes coming in next. All six plants of them. I’d better start getting my freezer empty…

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Fresh from the garden

If ever there was a job position that required owning a lot of stuff as a prerequisite, I would be the ideal candidate to apply. I have an amazing talent for accumulating things and I mean *anything* from grocery bags, to hairbands, to craft supplies, pens, books and coats. Really, if you thought my dolly collection was bad (19 Cabbage Patch Kids, 22 Blythes, 4 Moofs, 2 Pippas, Peteena and a Wonderfrog….plus a couple of others, and counting) that’s really nothing compared to my clothes and shoes collection. And bags too now that we come to mention it. This also has probably a lot to do with why it’s also taking such a long time to unpack (but I am also taking things deliberately slowly). Tonight’s project: my shoes.

Remember last year’s ongoing saga of Project Bedroom that I wrote about here, here and here? Well it never did get finished entirely, but then I emigrated and the problem more or less sorted itself out. But all my stuff followed with me so some might argue that there is the potential for disaster to strike all over again. However, I AM DETERMINED NOT TO LET THAT HAPPEN as now that I have a house throughout which to spread my things instead of just one room, there is space for everything… we even have spare capacity and I very much like having it this way. So no, the ‘trouble ahead’ does not refer to the potential for a version of Project Bedroom to explode over the entire house.  It relates to the fact that in the process of trying to arrange my most prized footwear on a special rack where they can be displayed in their full prettinesss (temporary location, I might add, this whole room is very much a WIP), I realised that I am missing at least a couple of rather special pairs of shoes. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

No box shall remain unturned until they can be reunited with their friends. And the outcome of this? Bedroom Carnage (but only temporary – see previous paragraph).

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as There may be trouble ahead…

But a quick glance at the calendar yesterday evening revealed that I’m rapidly approaching the seven month mark, and recent news that a good friend’s sister just gave birth five weeks early has now sent me into a bit of a blind panic upon the sudden realisation that potentially in a few short weeks our lives are about to become very different and that we’re going to have to start buying stuff. (Congrats to ArcticScot’s sister, by the way! Excellent news!)

So last night I started looking at furniture. And we made a baby registry too as some super sweet lovely friends of ours are going to be throwing us a baby shower in a couple of weeks, squee. But back to the nursery. All I know so far is that I would like something traditional with proper wooden furniture; a sturdy crib that’s not going to keel over when the baby is a toddler and starts jumping around when it wakes up in the morning. And possibly one of those cribs that converts in later years into a proper bed which will make it more of an investment (headboards are so expensive, we learned the other day). The room is by no means huge (9 ft x 11 ft; but it’s the exact same layout as the guest bedroom which happily fits a queensize bed) and it has a nice big window and a built in closet and is perfectly adequate for a little person to live in with a couple of pieces of carefully chosen furniture. This is sort of how I have it envisioned in my head right now (using the nifty virtual planner feature over at the Baby’s Dream website):

Now all we have to do is find some furniture to go in it.

*****

By the way, our furnace is now fixed, hurrah! Turns out it was down to a history of poor maintenance and so needed to be rewired and given a good cleaning. Not really anything we could have done ourselves so out came the chequebook and bye bye more money. We were kind of hoping that it would be completely broken so we could claim a whole new (and more energy-efficient) one on the Home Warranty, but at the end of the day, an old heating system that works is better than no heating at all.

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as For those of you asking…

Boxes on the floor as we currently have no master closet, and blankets on the bed because we have currently have no heating- unfortunately we had a power outage yesterday and the furnace didn’t like it and doesn’t want to start up again. Hmm. Hopefully both of these will be fixed in due course when the next few paycheques come our way. Besides, it’s not like I fit into any of my clothes right now, and warmer weather is a matter of weeks away.

This room is going to be for our guests…

Soon it will have curtains on the windows and sheets on the bed, all nice and ready for when our visitors arrive.

And this room is going to be for the baby…

Yes, a baby. Yikes

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as The bedrooms

Laundry matters are also something else over here, with top-loading washers still being pretty commonplace. Yes, top-loading washers. You can actually still buy them in the stores over here. Thankfully now that we have our own home I now have access to front-loading washing facilities which have very much been the standard back in Europe since well before I was born, and are something which I *INSISTED* on ultimately purchasing within minutes after accepting DrMr’s marriage proposal which determined that I would be emigrating permanently across the pond. I’m a housewife of the millennium, not the 1950s thankyouverymuch… aside from the stovetop teakettle, that is. Unfortunately, as for the electric kettles, this latest, greatest, newest ever concept in American clothes washing also comes with a price premium, but I’ve been spoilt by 31 years of English life and VERY MUCH NEED a woollens cycle on my washing machine in order to have a happy laundry experience. Now finding a detergent that actually gets my whites as bright as I would like is a whole different matter, but believe it or not I did actually bring over some British detergent with me when I moved, so with careful rationing I remain a happy launderer (plus my family can bring some more out when they visit). And my goal for this summer is getting a washing line up outside so I can dry my clothes the natural way, rather than ruin blast them in a drier. Again, normal for the UK, not so normal over here.

Now these two things (amongst a couple of other more minor cultural idiosyncrasies) I’ve been able to adapt to of course, and these new modified techniques of performing everyday activies are now becoming the norm. But once in a while I encounter yet another ‘new’thing, and each time I do it completely knocks me for six and sends me completely off kilter. This latest one is pretty major, and it concerns of all things, GRASS.

Here in the new house, we have lawns. One in the front, one in the back. By American standards they really are rather small and could laughingly be referred to as more like patches of grass, but I’m English, and in England everything is usually on a much smaller scale, and so to me we have full on gardens. Gardens which contain grass that needs to be mown on a regular basis.  And here’s where the gripe begins:

Chances are it is probably ME who is going to be mowing the lawn. At least for the time being (i.e. next 6 months) whilst DrMr has his foot in a cast and can’t really be expected to perform such activities. I don’t mind this at all in fact. I thought back to the days when back in England when I would help my parents with the garden and it was always a big treat to be allowed to mow the grass. So relaxing. Young Father looks forward to it, and I don’t blame him, it’s theraputic with the smell of the grass and the gentle hum of the electric hover mower. Read that last part again: the gentle hum of the electric hover mower. That’s what I envisioned we would get too. A Flymo to be exact. Your bog-standard electric garden cutting tool back home in the UK (although the company is actually Swedish).

It may look kind of garish, but it does the job perfectly. Unlike conventional mowers, hover mowers float effortlessly on a cushion of air, without any wheels and they mow in any direction following the contour of the land. Seriously, even the weakest of people can use these things, and can pretty much do it one-handed too. They even collect all the grass up and compress it into a basket which is WAY more efficient than having a gathering bag on the back. And yes, above all they hum gently, so the birds don’t fly from the trees whenever you start one up and you can remain on good terms with your neighbours. Moreover, you don’t even have to break the bank to get one of these either, they are cheap at under £100 (but even that is considered to be on the expensive side).

Why am I mentioning this? Well here in the US of A, THESE THINGS ARE NON EXISTANT. Here, when enquiring about hover mowers, people look at you and chuckle nervously in disbelief, or comment that that sort of compact, lightweight garden tool must be way futuristic when in fact THESE THINGS HAVE BEEN AROUND IN EUROPE AND THE COMMONWEALTH SINCE THE 1970S. Aside from being pregnant, I am also female and therefore evolutionary and biologically not as physically strong as my male counterparts. With a hover mower this is not of any relevance whatsoever, but here in the States it is entirely relevant where mowing tools are all BIG and HEAVY and because of all the raw materials involved they’re also rather expensive setting you back at least a couple of hundred dollars even for a cheap one. And because of their size and excessive use of raw materials, these giant hulks of equipment are also very DIRTY and SMELLY and NOT VERY MANEUVERABLE AT ALL. Heaven forbid should you have a slope in your garden, like we do- it’s backbreaking work. I know this because I mowed our lawns this morning. So much for it being relaxing work and something to look forward to.

This is the lawnmower that we got. The smallest one that we could find with a grass catcher on the back. It’s also electric and cordless.

I HATE IT SO MUCH I WOULD HAVE PUSHED IT INTO THE RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN HAD I HAD THE STRENGTH TO DO IT. Its only saving grace was that it is electric as there is nothing I despise more than gasoline mowers that belch out dirty fumes and are so noisy that they can wake up sleeping babies three streets away. The electric bit was a compromise. DrMr wanted gas, I said no (for the above reasons, and also for the fact that I can never get them to start). The cordless bit was a counter-compromise to compensate for the lack of cable on the electric mower. But it’s still big, it’s still heavy, and I can’t get it to turn corners. It’s not relaxing to use. And it doesn’t even cut the grass evenly.

I did actually manage to find an electric hover mower here. Small, compact, lightweight and perfect for the job. And cheaper too.

I wish more than anything that we would have got it and that mowing the lawn could have been the relaxing experience I imagined from home, but it had no grass catcher on the back, and wasn’t cordless, therefore couldn’t be compromised upon. We could have raked the clippings with a garden rake (excellent job for a small child in years to come, I used to do this when I was small and loved it), or even got one of those garden vacuums to suck the clippings up instead, but it had a cord to power it and it had no grasscatcher. So we got the other one instead. And for the next six months we will probably be paying someone else to cut our grass as I’m female and weak and can’t push the one we ended up buying. The one which doesn’t even cut the grass evenly. So I’m just going to sulk about it and blame it on my pregnancy hormones. And let someone else cut the grass from now on instead.

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Gardening gripes

FINALLY a bit of time to catch up with some blogging…but not for long. The apartment is almost unpacked now and there looks to be just one more carload of *stuff* to get from the old place, so hopefully within the next week I will be able to sit down and settle into some form of routine. I’m one of those people who needs some form of structure to my daily life in order to remain sane, so this will be more of a relief than you can imagine. In the meantime I managed to spend a couple of hours this afternoon catching up with some photo editing and general blog organisation- the photos are all in wordpress now, all I need to do now is write the posts to accompany them!!

Perhaps the biggest change in routine that I’ll have to work out is my blogging schedule. Back home in England, days were spent having fun with my loved ones and by the time the evening came it was time to sit down, relax and play on my computer. Here, the lifestyle is completely reversed: my days are spent alone and thus far I have filled them with Getting Things Done, but come the evening when DrMrNin and our friendly neighbours have come home from work it’s a positive EXPLOSION of social activity. And so my blogging gets pushed to the wayside.  And my knitting too for that matter. And my crochet. And scrapbooking. AND PLAYING WITH MY GIRLS *shock*. I have let it slide for the past couple of weeks whilst we settle in, but I’ve not been comfortable with the sudden disappearance of my little personal routines. I’m sure like everything else it will all settle into place once I feel more at home here. So yes, this little couple of hours spent at my computer was like diving back into my little sanctuary again, complete with a hot cup of tea and some precious English biscuits that managed to find room in my suitcase.

As for the slogan on the mug…. it was a freebie from a geology conference a couple of years ago, something to do with improved precision in radiocarbon dating. Geeky humour I’m afraid We geologists, we’re just so darned funny….

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as WHERE IS ALL THE TIME GOING? (Day 192)

Yes DrMr is flying in TOMORROW, and as normal there’s been the usual last minute rush to get my room clear. As everyone knows it’s been an ongoing saga, but it’s getting better and better by the week. And at least I can say that I have a clean floor now … Look, see? Impressive stuff, eh?!

I know, I know, there’s still stuff piled up around the edges, but you have to admit that overall it’s HUGELY improved since before (just agree with me here). It actually became readily apparent that most of the junk around my ankles was comprised of various parts of my work uniform (easily sorted out, I just stuffed it toward the back of a drawer, muahaha), and the other assorted clutter was 99.9% craft-related so I went out today and bought some fancy storage containers which seem to be doing the trick nicely. You can get a bit of a better view of them here- they’re stacked up to the left. I feel far more organised and tidy already – craftwork in order leads to a healthy mind, in my opition, hehe.

So anyway, as I type, DrMr is currently IN TRANSIT which is all very exciting indeed. And in addition to organising my craft stash today I’ve also been trying to think up a suitable welcoming scene for him at the airport. Last time, Paige came with me…

I want to try to do something similar (i.e. with girls), but also it *has* to be slightly different. I was thinking helium balloons, perhaps? Any thoughts/suggestions/ideas would be appreciated. The guidelines are that it has to be portable, quick to set up and doesn’t take up too much space in the car. Hmm. I’m sure we’ll come up with something.

Oooh, speaking of girls, if my suspicions are confirmed by reality, we might have ANOTHER GIRL joining our clan tomorrow. EEEEEEPS! She’s supposed to be my birthday girl, but my birthday isn’t until August, and…. well, fingers crossed, eh?!

Right, off to bed for me now I think. I need my beauty sleep for The Good Doc, SQUEEEEEEE!!

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Yes, Project Bedroom. *Gulp*

This is how it looked at the end of August 2007, right after all the frenetic wedding activity…

And then I attempted to clear it….

Well, unfortunately it went a little downhill again, partly because I was always working and never at home, and partly because it was too much of an obstacle course to open cupboards and put things away, not that there was any spare capacity in the cupboards anyway. And lo and behold, by the afternoon of November 26th 2007, it had pretty much got back to square one.

But then I managed to clear it again. (Are we detecting a pattern here?!)

And it more or less stayed that way, give or take, actually make that take, a few odd bags so that by the time DrMrNin arrived just before Christmas, it was all still pretty much in as much order as it could be. But that was where it started to go wrong again.

As soon as he arrived his suitcases were dumped on the floor, and the contents of which then immediately projectile vomited around the room and a lot of my carefully placed things got shuffled around in the process (I know not how). And then there was Christmas and I got some more things which all needed a place, and then followed my return to a six day working week with one day off in eleven, and before I knew it….

Yes, that was February 4th, but note in the above photo the stack of boxes in front of the window which represent the start of my packing to emigrate. I was making an effort. Believe it or not, I continued to pack and sort and actually eliminated a good percentage of my wordly posessions, although most of this involved emptying cupboards and chests of drawers, so unfortunately on the surface things didn’t appear to look very different ten days later. But I assure you that they really were. Heck, I even managed to get rid of a whole wardrobe entirely!

But prepare to be shocked and impressed and amazed for since then a great transformation has come about and my room has once again assumed the role of working office to coincide with (as of this past Monday) my having cut my tiring minimum wage job down to just two days each week, giving me time to get back to research and paper-writing which is what I’ve been training to do for the last ten years. I’m tired of waiting around now, I need to get back to my career.

So, brand new focus for my time, brand new look for my room. All will be revealed soon

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Project Bedroom Revisited

Mutti and Young Father are EVICTING me from my room. Not literally, I’ll still be able to ‘live’ in there, but they want to claim the room back for their control, change the furniture around and have me stay in it instead. I will be a guest in the new double guest bedroom. I can see their point really, I’m now married and will soon(ish) be moving into a place that I can call a home of my own, and I now have a husband who needs a place to sleep when he visits at Christmas and all times thereafter, but it’s still come as quite a shock. I thought that whilst I was still here, waiting it out for my greencard to come through (see here), I would be able to happily immerse myself back into family life, and embrace the last few months of living as a sister, a daughter, as a child of my parents, just like the good old days. Once I live in NorCal, I can only come home for visits, a lot of the time with my huband in tow, so I viewed these next few months as a precious last opportunity to live out the nostalgia of a time that I will never be able to have back again. For the best part of my life so far, these four yellow walls and the posessions contained within have been my sanctuary, my hiding hole, my workplace and my place of rest. I don’t know if I’m ready to let go of any of that just yet.

But the clearout they so long for is not something that’s going to happen overnight…..hoooo no! Let’s face it, I’m not the tidiest person in the word, I fully admit that but factor in that in the last six weeks I’ve emmigrated home with lots of luggage, had a wedding and gone on holiday for two weeks, plus add to that all the junk that’s been dumped in my room over the last couple of years whilst I’ve not been there INCLUDING the ENTIRE CONTENTS of an office that I occupied in London for SIX YEARS, and then combine all of that with my amazing ability to always find something else to do other than housekeeping, and the results aren’t pretty.

I want you to know that I thought long and hard before showing the following pictures…

But it gets worse….there’s a big pile in the corner too:

Now, I’m actually VERY ASHAMED that it got to this dreadful stage and in my defense, what with all the events of the last six weeks, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Plus a lot of the stuff that you see wasn’t actually put in there by me- when I left the room after my last visit at Easter, at least the floor was clear. But excuses aside, the room has undeniably reached a critical state. Although I was reluctant to show these pictures, by publicly broadcasting them to the global masses, I’m setting a target that I have to live up to. The room can only get tidier.

So in and amongst playing with Paige, my new Blythe, that’s what I’ve been working on the past few days….clearing. I’m rather impressed with my progress so far- a little bit here and a little bit there and we’re already seeing the floor. Interesting rediscoveries of note so far include a bright red pleather snakeskin miniskirt, a Whitesnake CD and a pair of disco roller boots. I can’t say the same for the first two things on that list, but the roller boots have been quite an exciting find. Did I mention you can see the floor now? You can also see the disco roller boots )

Not bad, eh? Unfortunately in the same way that the camera is said to add 10lb, in the context of living spaces is seems to add 10 giant boxes-worth of contents to a room as in real life it looks much clearer than it is, I assure you. It’s a good start, and so far I’m pleased. However I’m in a bit of a conundrum as to what to do with all my books and papers which make up 90% of the bedrock upon which other stuff is still piled but I’m hoping that will be remedied by a moment of genius initiative that has yet to strike, I’ll keep you informed.

Although I’m rather sad about having to clear out a lot of my worldly posessions, in the long run it’ll make things much easier to move to NorCal. It’s high time I had a clearout anyway, and afterwards the room will be a lot more pleasant to reside in. With all that new space, I might actually spend some more time up there too. Plus there is the added incentive that I’ll get a nice big new giant bed to sleep in which I’m secretly really excited about, hee hee!

But anyway….I’ll keep you informed of the progress, as progress WILL be made!

© Originally published by Nin for |••• PeachyHollow •••| as Project Bedroom