Yes, a huge crash. At about 2 am! My laundry "area" shelves came crashing down... all of them. We have no "laundry room" and no garage, carport or anything that might suffice for any type of storage so these shelves literally contain the weight of our world on them. Needless to say, the next morning instead of starting my seeds we spent the day picking our world back up again. In a way, it was good that this happened since that very night my husband was due to leave on the ship at 7 pm. In military life, we have what is called "a Jody". Some of you may have heard of him, he is the guy who "takes care of" your wife/girlfriend while you are deployed. As crass as that is, it is the unfortunate truth for many servicemembers. Now, I don't have that kind of Jody nor will I. My Jody is the kind who stops by to leave a path of destruction whenever my hubby deploys. You name it, it has happened. Exploded water heater, broken heat pump, broken pipes, unexplained electrical burning smells, sliding glass door shattered, ceiling cave in from a leak, even a fence that blew away in a hurricane! We own a duplex, and live in one side and rent the other out....so you can take all that and multiply is by 2!! So I actually do consider myself lucky that Jody stopped by a day early so my hubby had time to fix my laundry shelves before he left. I have tried numerous times to break it off with Jody, but he won't hear of it. Deployment is coming soon, so I know he'll be back.
There is is, all fixed up again!
Daddy giving hugs as we dropped him off at the USS Truman
How have I lived 39 years and not known the joys of quiche? My kids love eggs so I can pretty much put anything in there and they will most likely taste it. Here's my first quiche, and it qualifies as a garden dinner since I used frozen peppers, little grape tomatoes I had frozen, and fresh chopped leeks. Yum! Now I know what I can do with all those eggs once we get chickens, my kids would eat eggs every day if they had their way. I hear these freeze well, anyone have advice on that? I would love to make these ahead of time for homemade convenience food in the freezer.
So anyways, being the OCD person that I am, the laundry shelving incident lit a fire under me to start reorganizing the house and throwing stuff away. I am definitely not a hoarder, but there are always things taking up space that need to be tossed. Hmmm, for example, the 5 black floor length evening dresses in a size 3 from a prior life that are still hanging in my closet? Yeah, them's not 'gonna fit and nowhere to wear them, LOL. Time to face facts, I am a mommy and chase 2 boys around in my standard uniform of yoga pants and a t-shirt everyday, and they are definitely not a size 3... so out they go! I started my early Spring cleaning by completely emptying out all my cupboards and in an OCD fashion started wiping everything down and putting stuff back in. This took me a whole day and a morning... for what? It looks exactly the same as before. I am not a magician, not sure what I thought I was to gain from this, but at least it's one less thing swimming around my head.
Yes, that's a gazillion pots I washed by hand. I had all my stuff in the shed since last spring so I felt the need to get all the dirt out before I start filling them with dirt again????? Someone please tell me A&E is going to do a show for the opposite of hoarders, and then please sign me up!
As nutso as the gazillion pots look, they all condense down into this neat little stack!
Oh, no! Nothing is worse than a crash in the night! My last one was a maple tree falling and narrowly missing two houses while demolishing three fences. I am so NOT a hoarder. If I even save up a bunch of magazines, all I have to do is watch Hoarders on TV, and I clean out my entire house! Mr. H would be a hoarder if I didn't keep at him about it. Although he does have a hoard of mechanics tools that he seldom, if ever, uses.
ReplyDeleteI wash my pots AND my 5-gallon planting buckets, one at a time, in my dishwasher. With detergent and Purex. I don't think you're a bit crazy! ;-)
Go Vikings!!!
ReplyDeleteOur shelves fell earlier this past fall!!!! Man, it was loud enough to wake the dead. I lost a lot of canning jars and my canning pot got dented, but most of the other stuff was fine, but the mess was amazing.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad things turned out okay for you in the end.
What a wonderful post Erin. Truly showed beautiful insight into a real woman's life. Quiche with without a crust is a flan, and it is very good too. Can't wait to see tomorrow's post. peace
ReplyDeleteYay for seed-starting time! Being further north than you it's still too early for me to start anything, but in about a month I can start my broccoli! I
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Erin and thanks for including so many neat pictures! (Now I'm exhausted and need to go take a nap.)
ReplyDeleteI think you may be my new cleaning idol. I'm not a neat-freak (or I should say "clean-freak") but you so inspire me. (But, good gawd, where should I start?)
I don't have anything Size 3 in my closet (nor have I ever) but I sure have lots of stuff I haven't worn in a few years . . . okay, out they go!
Keep up the wonderful posts. Makes me very grateful my husband is now home full-time.
Oh no! So sorry to hear about your crash. But dang! You are one organized mama! Your musings about "Jody" made me crack up, though. When I was young my father traveled a lot for work (he was previously in the Navy, too, but not at this point). For some reason I always told him "Mr. Smith" came to visit mommy while he was gone.. There really was no "Mr. Smith" and I have no idea where I got that from. I certainly hope that didn't cause my father any unnecessary concern....
ReplyDeleteSo you are officially a single parent again? Kudos to you my friend! How are the boys doing with it?
ReplyDeleteI hope that little shelf experience will be the last of it for you over the next year. Home maintenance just never ends does it?
Wow, you are a busy woman! Your seed-starting area looks much tidier than mine, but you are right to wash all the pots. The chance of transmitting disease from last year, or even insects (if you have ever had, for example, white-flies on your indoor plants) is too great to risk using dirty pots.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great post!
It's probably a good thing we don't live next door to each other, all that OCD would drive everyone away. My problem is the older I get the more OCD I get, but alas my family is going the opposite way..... My husband could be on hoarders, I think I have seen our yard on there, he drags home water heaters and things like that from the job thinking they would make great smokers one day. I am praying he gets a job out of town for a while and then I can set up massive container gardening in our yard, thank God we live in the country.
ReplyDeleteJust in case I haven't said it to you before, thank you to your husband and your family-my son is Army National Guard-I did a thank you post on my other blog, 2 in fact if you ever get time (walkininsunshine@blogspot) to our service people and families.
And lastly as much as I wanted Brett to go to the Super Bowl, I was glad to see the Saints finally get to go. I must say the victory was earned and not handed to them, both teams played well. And Brett, like a weeble just kept getting up, he shamed all those younger players, we should call him Timex, takes a licking and keeps on ticking.