The next thing I am hoping he will do for us is to build us a new front gate and fence. Right now the side gate and fence are flush with the back of the house in effect making the side yard part of the public front yard. I would like to have the fence and gate brought up to be flush with the front of the house so that the whole side yard become backyard.

Our house was built in 1895 and is what I like to call a plain victorian farmhouse. It is tall, from the street it can look 4 stories high because you see the basement/garage and the very high roofed attic, and narrow but it is a lot of WHITE.

I did some internet searches on gates and gathered some examples on Pintrest. I was originally thinking that we should have a white fence and gate to match the house but then thought it might be TOO MUCH WHITE. So then, black. I thought black would be nice since I plan on having the window trim be black as some unspecified date when we replace the windows, also a black front door.

I did some photoshop mockups.
black:

white:

black:

white:

The other thing in favor of black is that I can think of a ton of lovely california natives that would look good against a black background. Many natives are sort of a dusky gray green foliage color that would look washed out against white.

I was super annoyed when taking those pictures that i couldn’t get the whole house not obstructed by the tree in the shot. This morning I walked across the street to get a coffee and turned around to look at the house and realized that all I need to do to get a full pic is walk across the street… so maybe i will do that later.

The front yard obviously needs work… I was holding off on giving it serious thought due to our need to have a new foundation. Speaking of which, we are stalled on that mainly due to our not quite being up to confronting that architect who sucks. We need to fire him and maybe make a partial payment to him and then we need to visit the oakland planning department a few more times with plans and questions and then take the plans out for bids form construction company’s. It is very daunting.

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Why why do I lag and mope around about all the little boring things that have to happen to make life go smoothly? it’s so easy to just DO THEM on auto pilot and then they are done and one can get on with life instead of being pissed all the time that there is shit on the kitchen counter again and I JUST CLEANED IT and WHY IS THERE LITTLE BOY UNDERPANTS ALL OVER THE EFFING PLACE again and omg I am just going to pretend I am blind and that the kitchen table chairs are not inverted on top of the table for the third day running.

When Moomin was little Liz told me her trick to get him to do shit was to pretend he was a robot and she would talk to him in a robot voice and it totally worked. It works for Jack too and so maybe it will work for me as well. I’ll try it when I get home. ROBOT. MINNIE. WILL. NOW. CLEAN. KITCHEN. START PROGRAM.

+++++++

I am so diseased right now. I have a horrible lingering sinus infection. I thought two days ago was the apex but no. It is seriously impacting my alcohol consumption. I need mai tais people!

Also, I have a weird rash around my eye. It has been there for like a month now. my dermatologist gave me some totally impossible instructions on how to deal with it. some ointment and do not EVER touch it ever with anything at all. in fact, beam that part of your body into a vacuum for two weeks exactly and then call me in the morning.

AND. Now I have a weird allergic reaction to sunscreen on my arm exactly the same as on my honeymoon here. I am gross.

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I am back on with pintrest and am obsessing about wall paper and decorating my house. We bought our house exactly one year ago and I haven’t done a single bit of decorating. There are barely pictures on the wall. I got a card from our realtor about this house buying anniversary and he mentioned coming by to ‘see what we’ve done with the place’. um. That would be nothing on my end. Except making the garden kick ass, that counts right? I need wallpaper.

Here is my bathroom pintrest.

my wallpaper pintrest.

my kitchen pintrest.

The problem with decorating is that you have to make decisions. and once you make a decision you have to buy the stuff and DO IT. and that means that you have to live with your decision FOREVER. and what if you don’t like it? or realize right after that you like something else? I mean, I have shit tattooed on my body for fucks sake. you’d think that picking out some wallpaper for the upstairs bathroom would be LESS of a big deal than something on my body for realz forever.

I think the problem is that it’s pretty clear to me that my body is MINE to do with what I please and thank you very much. But this house is it’s own thing. I’m nervous about doing the wrong thing for it. I need to mentally take possession of this house. It loves me and trusts my judgement in wallpaper. It wants me to make it beautiful. I can totally do this.

+++++++

gratuitous hawaii pic:

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In November we whacked a bunch of plum trees that were taking over the whole back section of yard and we had the arborist leave all the branches. Those branches are precious organic material to make new dirt with, also sort of annoying to deal with. Vim is on about getting a compost shredder and I feel like we should have to sit in the backyard and shred it all with our teeth. Vim eventually made a big berm with all the branches against the back brick wall. And Vim built a low raised bed that we bought expensive dirt for. No chickens have arrived yet.

Here is a picture from June:

everything is looking pretty janky in this picture and the lighting is weird and there is huge pile of junk in the lower left corner. The chickens are in their new penned in run, you can see a new larger raised bed on the left and some squash plants acting weird and lurking in the middle left. Nasty old Burning man rug is out in the hopes that it will start to kill the grass and we put a nice outdoor table from CB2. oh and my fluffy herb spiral is flourishing behind the table a bit.

Here is a picture from July:

We have removed the pile of junk and put the rug and table over in the lower left. so that we can get started on our cover crop plan. I can’t tell from this picture if we have already done it or not… But we did turn over all the current grass and planted a cover crop mixture plus a bunch of fava beans.

Here is the cover crop mixture I used, Green Manure Seed Mixture:

I really needed to use two packages of this per rotation.

What it looks like now:

It’s looking nice and green and fluffy in this one! We dig the cover crop in on Sept 3rd and plant another crop immediately. The front center raised bed will most likely get whacked to make way for some new McMaster-Carr insanity in the form of more huge galvanized steel troughs.

oh! I need to figure out where to put my garlic. I was inspired by the Bay Area Gardening book who said she managed some huge amount of garlic one year. I am eager to try this in our side yard. I will probably do a batch in the side yard and a batch somewhere in the back just to compare.

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Our absurd first time home owner dreams of waiting to move in to our new house until the renovations were complete were totaly horse shit as I’m sure season home owners knew. As if we could plan and coordinate like 4 million contractors all in 1.5 months. WTH? No. Basically we have compromised by getting most of the floor resurfaced and hardwood put into the kitchen. The LEAST crucial of any of the renovations but the easiest one to deal with.

We also didn’t realize how much we would want, nay, NEED to move in immediately. I love my new house.

As soon as the floors are all done we will hire some movers and whisk ourselves in there.

One of the weird things about the house is that the apartment building next door is like RIGHT THERE. It’s like 2 feet away and so you can hear people talking in their parking area or along the hallways and it sounds like they are in your house. So that’s kinda creepy. New insulated windows is the answer. also, privacy film.

BEFORE:

IN-PROGRESS

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I’m dying for a house but am trying to fight it as a totally irrational thing. I know myself well enough to recognize a little bit of that, “if i just have/do/see/remember this ONE THING then everything will fall into place. But damn! I want a house!

The other day I wanted to put my legs up the wall in a yoga pose and realized there there is no where for me to do that. An open floor plan means you lack wall space. I could have done it in the bathroom probably, I guess.

Cross your fingers for us.

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Now I need a house so that I can wallpaper it and then like 2 years later wonder what the fuck I was thinking.

When my mom was here recently she gave me endless shit (hi mom!) about how I do not look my age, i.e. all I wear are ratty old jeans and threadless t-shirts and it makes me, along with the acne and pink hair, look 20. THEN, earlier this week I went to see my dermatologist who I have only seen once before and at one point she causally says “so I imagine kids aren’t in your immediate future” and I say ” yeah well, one is enough”. and she does a double take and asks me how old I am and I say 35 and she says “you are SHITTING me, I thought you were 19.?!” and then I was all embarrassed.

I feel like I have been all through this before. I ask you, what else does one wear when all one does is grub around all day with a 2 year old? It’s not like I am meeting the girls for tennis and cocktails at the country club ffs. When I had a desk job I dressed slightly more nicely… although actually it went in phases.

All of this makes me have hives. On the one hand I do not give a rats ass what people think I look like. On the other hand, I like to be cute to the best of my ability. However, I am NOT going to put in a huge amount of effort see point A, not caring what you think. I think shows like ‘What not to wear” are horrendous. They take a perfectly normal looking person, tell them they are dumb, ugly and horrible and then buy them some generic outfits from the GAP or -insert other mall store here- and then tell them they are okay only if they spend a lot of money on clothes and waste tons of time, effort and mental energy making sure they look like other assholes on TV.

On the other hand, I love to go shopping and certainly don’t turn my nose up at mall stores. I like GAP jeans AND I like generic looking sweater sets from the Limited. So there you have it. I’m humped.

Also, I want these hilarious black and white boots. I would totally buy them if they didn;t have those crappy too high wedge heels. I’ll have to make myself some spats instead.

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