We lived too long with rouge furniture.

It’s been weeks since I took the leap and started moving things around the house, in anticipation of setting the big girls up in the downstairs bedroom, and moving the master bedroom upstairs.  I pulled all the toys out of the bedrooms and stacked them in the hallway.  The kids’ clothes have been in disarray, shifting from one closet and set of drawers to another; trying to stay one step ahead of the move.  The piles of clean, folded laundry on the couch grew to become a fixture, because I saw no point in hauling them upstairs to a closet, only to haul them back downstairs to another closet when we completed the move.

My attempts to move the project along progressed to the point of actually moving furniture a good two weeks ago.  Our small house doesn’t accommodate much rouge furniture, so getting through the transition involved living for a time with a vanity and mirror blocking the kitchen hall, and a very large chest of drawers making its home smack dab in the middle of the living room.

I no sooner got the project to that point that my husband saw an open weekend and suggested we take a break from the moving things around to hold a garage sale – maybe it would ease the whole mess to eliminate some clutter and lighten our load.  I generally argue for Good Will donations, over garage sales, but once every ten years, I concede.  We did the work, held the sale, and remembered more clearly why we prefer to make Good Will donations.  We made a few bucks, probably broke even for our effort, and still have a backlog of stuff we need to unload.  Plus – there was still that chest of drawers in the living room.

Then we had pickups and drop offs for summer camp that occupied much of our free time for a week.  Then we needed to get the taillights on the camper to work, so we could have some hope of actually camping in the thing before winter.  Then the Olympics started.  Then the bills were due.  Then…then…then…

Now that I’ve thought more about it, I’m scared to count back and even know for sure how long we’ve been dancing around a chest of drawers in our living room.  All I know for sure is that yesterday, finally, it found a home.  Not just any home, but an insanely useful home, where it not only has quit blocking my view of the baby when I want to check on her from the kitchen, but where it now stores, with complete visual anonymity, copious amounts of family clutter.  Items that once graced every horizontal surface of our ground floor are making their way into designated drawers, offering me such a massive sense of peace and relief that I might even find it in me to put all those clothes away, and find a better home for the toys.

Yep, it was a real milestone.

Then that time will come when the Lord will give you fresh strength. He will send you Jesus, his chosen Messiah. Acts 3:20

I'm reluctantly sentimental about a tractor.

It was my biggest concern when we considered moving to the hobby farm: the pasture.  In addition to the 2-3 acres of lawn mowing, owning this place was going to mean cutting down another 3 acres or so of pasture as many as half a dozen times every summer.  The seller had been using an antique tractor with a 60” Brush Hog to get the job done.  My husband reasoned, whenever I questioned him, that if a 90 year old could keep it up, all by himself, certainly we could together.

We got the tractor worked into the deal, and it sat under a beautiful, giant oak tree, snuggled under a tarp, all winter.  The image on the fender of a heroic eagle with a flaming pitchfork evoked the era of its manufacture, and reminded us that, with its revolutionary 3-point hitch, this machine had once been the essential workhorse of any Midwestern farm.  The seller had given us a briefing back in October and we had each taken a practice lap around the field.  Yet looking out at that tractor all winter, I couldn’t help but feel anxiety about the pasture.  Would my husband enjoy driving the old beast?  Would he want to come home from a 40-50 hour workweek and spend his free time dragging a Brush Hog around the property in the blazing sun?  Would the noise, the dirt, the grease, and the smells bring him the joy of rural life or the burden of it?  I already knew from my own childhood that mowing an acreage was not my favorite summer pastime, but I hoped he might like it.

On the flip side, even as I considered the possibility we might want to trade our working museum piece in for a modern, wide-bladed mower, I couldn’t help hoping that old tool would become the centerpiece of a new way of life for us.  It might pull a wagon around for hayrides.  It might run a tiller for the enormous garden.  It might drag tree trunks to the woodpile.  I imagined all the possibilities its heroic eagle evoked, and knew this machine was so much more versatile than any modern mower would be.  Who knows, maybe even I might find myself enjoying the work, when it was on my own property?

Getting her ready
for the maiden voyage.

Last week the grass was tall enough; it was time to move from anxious hope to reality.  Sure enough, the old engine started easily, and after airing up the tires and checking the oil, we fired up the brush hog.  My husband quickly found himself at ease at the controls, and mowed down the first section of pasture in short order.  With a big grin on his face, he crossed the creek and began to mow the front section, finding himself completely confident going up and down the hills and around the trees.  Our vision was actually coming true!  I was elated, and I am pretty sure he was, too.  Our stress melted away and jubilation replaced it.

Who smiles when they're mowing?  That's my husband.  Living the dream.

He waved as I passed him on my way out to pick up a kid and our grins matched.  It was, however, a different story, ten short minutes later, when I got back.  The tractor was backed into a brush pile at the edge of the creek, and my husband was leaning over to one side and the other, fidgeting with the controls.  He eventually came in to report that something in the drive had snapped, and the tractor had freewheeled, backward, down the hill.  Because the breaks only nominally work, it was only my husband’s lightning reflexes that had allowed him to steer the thing into a cushion of brush, instead of coming to a hard, possibly limb-threatening, stop by hitting a tree or landing in the creek.

Now, aside from praising the Lord for my husband’s safe landing, we’re back to square one.  While a clutch assembly is a mere $150, installing it requires splitting the whole machine in half then putting it back together.  My dad did that once to his old Case when I was a kid – he winched the front end up to a tree to do it.  We’re not so mechanically adventurous as my dad.  Plus, the thing is disabled, on the far side of the pasture, on the wrong side of the creek.  We may have to rent another tractor, just to drag it out of there!

Check out that emblem on the fender.  Awesome.

All logic tells me that investing in a newer model mower with the widest cutting deck we can afford is our best option, but the sweetness of nostalgia for the old ways, for the possibilities, and the ambition wrought by the image of a pitchfork wielding eagle make it hard to give up on our old 9N.

Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you.  Deuteronomy 32:7

The chickens are going to have to wait.

Imagine the kids’ surprise on Easter morning, when we open a seemingly routine express mail package and out pop – chicks!  Downy soft and ready to eat their first meal, the three day old chicks cuddle up in their warm hands and the girls’ eyes sparkle with delight as our new adventure in hobby farming begins.

We’ve had that image in our minds since we first put an offer on this place.  With great optimism, we imagined that we’d get settled in over winter break.  We’d be hosting sledding parties in January.  We saw ourselves, as March rolled around, rearing to get out there to plant a giant garden and build a chicken coup.

Reality is reining us in yet again.  With the mildness of winter this year, we spent winter break building a shed and cleaning the garage, instead of unpacking the basement.  Old Man Winter withheld sledding until just this past weekend, when we finally got a snowfall that could cover the grass on our hill.  As the dominoes are toppling, I see that our Easter fantasy is fading as fast as my laundry pile is growing.

I am in no way deterred from the vision of what this place is going to be for us, but I am having to rethink the timetable.  We chose a smaller house, and it takes a lot longer to get organized and settled in when you have half the cupboards, closets, and garage that you did before.  My spring chickens aren’t the only thing I have to let go of.  There’s also the extra set of dishes, the spare bed, the computer armoire, that stunning teal sectional…and many, many things that are still in boxes downstairs, yet to be identified for sale or donation.

Finally breaking in the sledding hill last weekend!

We took a lot on, pursuing this vision of self-sustenance and simplicity; it may take us quite a while to achieve even a basic start to all we hope for.  But it was a gratifying moment last week, when my oldest came in after school, dropped her bag and coat by the door, and sighed, “Ahhh…home sweet home.”  Yes, my dear girl, it really is.  And whenever we do get to it, farm fresh eggs and garden vegetables will only make it sweeter.

Hezekiah, I will tell you what's going to happen. This year you will eat crops that grow on their own, and the next year you will eat whatever springs up where those crops grew. But the third year you will plant grain and vineyards, and you will eat what you harvest. Those who survive in Judah will be like a vine that puts down deep roots and bears fruit. 2 Kings 19:29-30

I am hardheaded

The deck needed to be freshened up. We had a day and a half without rain in the forecast, but we were pretty sure we could get it done in one night. After all, the rails and spindles were still good to go, it just needed freshened up. And it was incredibly beautiful out, so I was really looking forward to working outside after spending so much time indoors with the baby.

My husband agreed to hit the hardware store on the way home from work and pick up some stain. He hates making those kind of choices, so I imagined him trapped in the stain aisle at Menard’s, unable to commit to either tan or brown. I wanted to relieve the pressure, so I encouraged him, “just grab whatever, hun, you can’t make a mistake. We’ll use whatever color you pick.”

Those words came back to haunt us both. The baby had just eaten; we were in our paint clothes; we had an hour before dinner. It was time to hit this job. And the stain color is: REDWOOD. You could have pushed me over with a feather. “Red, hun? You want to stain the deck red? Are we living in a doublewide?” But those words were only in my head, as I stifled my reaction. I am, above all else, a woman of my word. I promised he couldn’t mess it up, so I kept my tone of voice positive as I suggested, “With this color, we’re going to need to hit all the spindles and get out the ladder for the outside of the rails.” We him-hawed for only a moment before setting about the task.

I realized five minutes into the job that I was too casual when I mentioned the extra work it was going to be. As he rolled out the dark red onto the deck boards, it gave him time to reflect. It hit him how awful the deck was going to look, if we didn’t get that glorious red onto every nook and cranny. He began to rant and complain about the color choice, “we’re going to have to stain all the rails and spindles. We’re going to be out here for two days, if we’re going to do this right; what possessed us to be so ambitious in our color choice?” It was like he read the rant right out of my head, but now it was our color choice.

Instead of engaging my husband in an intelligent conversation about what color we really wanted to stain the deck, I had charged forwarded, bullheaded, refusing to acknowledge that I was wrong to say I’d joyfully paint any color he chose. He had made his choice with incomplete information. He didn’t grow up in a trailer park, so he had no inhibitions about redwood; he’d trusted the color sample on the outside of the can, which looked more brown than red. While I’d imagined the long delay caused by a choice between tan or brown, I had not actually said out loud that I was assuming we would be using an earth tone. My reticence made me complicit. I was on the hook, as much as he was.

It was not the enjoyable evening I had hoped for, but we did get the deck stained. We even avoided the ugly argument that could easily have developed from our mutual dissatisfaction with the color choice. I was as determined to stay positive about the job, as I had been about not disparaging the color. Once the whole thing was done, we went inside and I played Sammy Kershaw’s Queen Of My Double Wide Trailer for him. He’d never heard it before. We had a good laugh about our "classy" deck. And, for the record, it actually does look really good.

A bear robbed of her cubs is far less dangerous than a stubborn fool. Proverbs 17:12

I’ve become a Suburban Snob.

When we were first married, we were charmed by brick dollhouses and a K-2 neighborhood school. We bought an adorable little two-bedroom house with gleaming woodwork, a small, galley kitchen, and no shower in its one bathroom. We gloated about our short commutes and social consciences. Unlike many, we were going to stay in the city, rather than flee to the suburbs and let someone else foot the tax bill for the urban amenities we enjoyed. Honestly, we loved that house and the basically yuppie neighborhood, full of Hondas and dog-walkers, that surrounded it. There was even a town center with a coffee shop and a hardware store, a half mile walk away.

Five years later, they’d torn down the historic, brick schoolhouse, the crib for our second daughter would not fit in the room next to our first daughter’s twin bed, and my grandma couldn’t visit us, because using the restroom involved a lengthy stair-climb and sometimes a wait at the top. After a winding urban journey through a roomier, but less charming, houseful of ungrounded electrical outlets, outdated mechanicals, malfunctioning casement windows, and an unconscionable hassle to get our older girl into a neighborhood Kindergarten, we threw in the towel and headed for the suburbs.

Going on five years later, I wonder if the suburbs haven’t dulled my sense of adventure. Our home maintenance has been reduced to mowing and window washing. We’ve got a park with a bike path and a fishing pond half a block away; I don’t have to go camping to catch bluegill or battle traffic to take a ride. The school gives the girls a fantastic education, and we are close enough that they walk home together each afternoon without needing an armed escort. They’ve learned to ride their bikes on smooth, extensive sidewalks; no jagged cracks or overgrown trees. When we forget to close the garage at night, nothing disappears by morning.

Then along comes the foreclosure market, and my husband starts getting the itch. There is a beautiful brick house for sale back in the city. It is near a city golf course. It has gleaming wood floors, a ground floor half bath, and five oversized bedrooms. They’ve been asking half the price of our current home, close to the price we paid for that brick dollhouse over ten years ago; we could make a serious impact on our overall financial picture. I agreed to go look.

As soon as we exited the freeway, anxiety started welling up in me. Driving through a neighborhood of small, dingy houses, I couldn’t help but notice how the shrubs were overgrown and nearly every house needed a good power wash. Cars were parked on the streets, because the houses frequently had one or two car garages, but each family seemed to own four vehicles. The strip malls didn’t have Star Bucks and Cost Cutters, instead it was “La Fiesta” grocery store and offerings of payday advances. People looked miserable, huddled at bus stops.

When we pulled up to the house in question, there’s no doubt, it is a beautiful masterpiece. Ornamental brick and stone work, a slate roof. The two-car, brick garage is surrounded by a brick knee wall with an ornamental iron gate. It looks like a storybook castle. But the first thing I noticed was the padlock on the basement access, followed by the stickers, indicating at least two different security services have been employed by former owners. As we toured the home, I looked right past the incredible crown molding and spacious closets, noticing the water stained basement and attic walls and the ancient boiler system for the radiator heat. Every single window gave off a draft of cold air and the two bedrooms on the third floor were not heated at all. Knob and tube wiring, hopefully defunct, stretched across the basement, and we saw at least three different fuse boxes, squirreled away in closets, behind doors, and hanging from a basement rafter at a strange angle.

While my husband, inexplicably to me, toured the house with a sense of awe and adventure, I nearly had a panic attack, I felt so overwhelmed. Even if all the mechanicals were in working order, I saw home maintenance nightmares around every corner, and already pictured the 6 foot fence and German shepherd I was going to need if we chose to live here.

So I’m going to admit it, even though I feel ashamed. The suburbs have made me soft. There was a time when I would have fearlessly plunked down the asking price to live in such a finely crafted home, regardless of the work it would take to keep it up. I would once have comfortably stood at the bus stop with those neighbors, and hardly noticed the variety of smells and dangers that surrounded me. I might even have embraced the idea that “the cream always rises to the top” when I read the ratings and stats about the nearby public schools. There was a time when I myself parked on the street for years on end. But I couldn’t bring myself to accept the possibility of doing those things again.

Now that I have lived in a world of minivans and vinyl siding, where curvilinear streets keep traffic on the main roads and inconvenience would-be criminals, where even my non-English-speaking neighbors wave and smile and spray their lawns for dandelions, I’ve become out of touch with urban living.

I’m a snob. I know it’s wrong.

If anyone secretly says things against his neighbor, I will stop him. I will not allow people to be proud and look down on others. Psalm 101:5

I Didn’t Think to Wear a Painter’s Mask

The basement bathroom is about 8x7. What is that? 56 square feet? Even amateurs like we are can tackle a job that minor, can't we? Well, can't we?

There are some home improvement projects that I won't tackle. I think roofing and plumbing, for instance, should be handled by professionals. But when it comes to the basics, like, say, paint and nails, I've always lived by the old "recipe" method. Even if you don't know how to cook, you can still follow a recipe and end up with a decent meal. It's all about reading and comprehending the directions.

So, with most of our basic housekeeping caught up, my husband and I felt the urge to tackle something bigger, and the bathroom has been on our to-do list for about a year. The fixtures are fully functional, but the walls are unpainted drywall with only a preliminary mud, the ceiling is wide open, and the floor is raw cement. Because we want the basement to be a hangout for the kids as they age, we decided a while back not to do any "formal" finish down there. We thought an open, loft-type feel would be fun for games and hanging out, keeping things fairly raw, but finished enough to be comfortable. The bathroom is our first actual move toward this vision, so, of course, we headed to the home improvement stores to decide what to do.

The first day, we dragged the kids from Menards to Home Depot, spending two hours each place, then moving on to Lowes. Lowes is on the other side of the city. It was a late night. We came home empty handed. But we did know that we didn't need to go back to Lowes, so that was something.

The second day, we took the kids to IHOP to get them warmed up before we broke the news that we were going back to the home improvement stores for another round. Over breakfast (well, by the time we had sat in the parking lot for a half hour after breakfast), we narrowed our choices down to the products available at Menards. The kids were relieved: only one store. Little did they know it would be three and half hours before we emerged from Menards with 4 cans of black spray paint for the ceiling, three rolls of textured wallpaper for the walls, two sections of aluminum duct work to encase the exposed plumbing behind the toilet, and a can of pewter cement stain for the floor and wall. Oh, and a vision.

It was two days into the project and we were finally getting somewhere. We headed downstairs to masked off the fixtures and make speedy progress on blackening the ceiling. Carefully reading the directions on the can, we turned on the vent, opened the downstairs windows, and went to it. Brian found an old, paper painter's mask in our stuff and threw it on. I didn't think much about it. I didn't notice any mention of painter's masks on the can…but, really, that's no excuse. I absolutely knew better than to aim a spray paint can over my head in a small, enclosed room, without covering my hair, eyes, nose, or mouth. Someone hit me on the head with a tack hammer; I am a moron.

Did you know that black spray paint loogies will turn your tongue green? It was not enough that I knew to wear a mask. I needed to put the thing on.

"But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards." Matthew 7:26-27