Ordinary Time

We sat down to dinner at 8:30 which was late even by our standards. Usually we get dinner on the table anywhere between 7:00 and 8:00. The reason dinner was so late is that I perpetually underestimate exactly how long it takes to make stuffed spinach pizza . The whole 'change the pony's hoof poultice' routine played a part in it as well, because I underestimate how long that takes as well. But people are willing to wait patiently for stuffed spinach pizza.  For the non-Chicagoans among my readers, thus is a type of pizza particular to Chicago. It's not deep dish because it has two crusts with the filling between (hence the name stuffed) and the tomato topping goes on top of the top crust. It is difficult to find out here on the edge of the onset map, so I'm glad I know how to make it. 

(Welcome to all those joining in the Open House.  Though this post is old, my kitchen looks exactly the same right now.  It was easier to link to an old post than to write a new one. [Well, the children are a lot older and there are nearly twice as many of them.] Lazy, I know. Thanks for stopping by and looking at the big ugly house!) I know you all have hardly been able to bear the suspense as you wait for pictures of our new kitchen. Well, your torture is over..... Our new kitchen, complete with children helping make strawberry shortcake: The inside of the pantry: One side of the butler's pantry: The other side of the butler's pantry: The guest room: Now, about that camera. I have a tip for everyone. If you think your digital camera is broken, try using a different memory card before purchasing an expensive new one. It could just be the memory card is bad. I speak from experience. The above pictures were taken by our old camera and this picture was ...

We have spent the weekend moving into the new kitchen. I love it! I also love being above ground; it feels so luxurious. We can now shed our mole people personas. As I start emptying boxes and putting things away, I'm realizing that I have a major housewares addiction. I'm starting to wonder if my desire for a large family is merely a front for the extraordinary amount of bake ware, dishes, glasses, etc. that I own. My only defense is that I personally purchased very little of it. The majority of it all is either wedding gifts that have survived for 17 years or inherited items from disbursing my grandmother's and mother-in-law's homes in recent years. But still, it's probably safer if I just never set foot in Crate and Barrel or IKEA again. Pictures will soon follow. Right now it's hard to see the actual kitchen for the piles of things waiting to be put away.

We have cabinets! This is the butler's pantry: And the kitchen: The first floor guest bathroom: The landing on the back stairs: The new second floor bathroom (it will be mine and J's): There are still important pieces missing...counter tops, shower doors, appliances...but it's starting to look like a real kitchen. Oh, and I forgot one fairly important item in my last post about timing. My fingerprints were to expire on May 9. But we were able to get a fingerprint appointment last weekend and our new I171H ( a VERY important piece of paper which we will need to obtain K's US visa) arrived today. It was the last detail I was a bit anxious about.

Unlike K's adoption (still no news, or any idea why it is taking so long), the house project is running on schedule...maybe even ahead. The wood floors are in and stained, the drywall is up and primed, and tile starts on Monday. Here are some pictures: This is the kitchen, looking east and south. The sink will be under the east window (staight ahead). You can't tell that the floors are done because they've been covered-up to protect them. This is the north wall of the kitchen, opposite the above picture. The opening on the right goes into the mud room, the opening in the middle (with the ladder) will be the refridgerator, and the opening on the left will be the walk-in pantry. This is the view of the other end of the kitchen (looking west). The door leads out to a side deck. A desk will be under the window, and I'm not sure what we're doing along the wall. The doorway on the right leads to the butler's pantry: And (because I forgot to post it earlier), what does...

To say that life has been hectic around here the past few days would be a gross understatement. I continue to try to prepare for travel...so I'm ready when that call finally comes...and keep up with everything that needs to be done concerning the remodelling, and just manage the day-to-day running of the house, and then there are these six children who could use some attention every so often. You get the picture. I walk around with long to-do lists and most of the time I'm sure that I'm forgetting something. So it was particularly nice to have the quaterly update on K in my inbox. I'm posting a couple here so you can enjoy them as well. The children (especially the boys) have been enjoying this part of the construction. The vents for the air-conditioning(!) are being cut into the ceilings of all the rooms. This means that there are many worker-men in the house and not just in the back kitchen area. The little boys (and a bigger one) have been watching all the work...

When our older children were much younger (and there were fewer of them), we lived in a charming 1894 Victorian house. I really loved the house except for two things: it had only two bedrooms and it had a small kitchen. (Well, I thought it was small at the time...plus it wasn't ugly. If I had only know what I would be "moving up" to, I would have appreciated it more.) As we had more children and were squeezing number #4 into the same bedroom as the other three, I suffered acutely from an affliction I call 'house envy'. I always had a touch of it, but as we outgrew our home I suffered from it more and more. It is a dreadful disease that causes the sufferer to not be able to see the positives about their own living situation but to only see the faults. It is exacerbated by visiting the houses of others, especially if those houses are bigger or nicer or newly remodelled. It got so that there were certain homes which I just didn't want to go into because ...

The work on the house continues apace. The framing is done, the electrical and plumbing are roughed-in, and new windows are being installed. It sounds so easy, doesn't it, just putting in new windows? I thought it sounded easy too, until the large saws started ripping into the exterior brick on Thursday. I had not taken into account the fact that some of the windows are not exactly the same size as the old ones nor the fact that we are adding a couple of windows. To add windows one needs to make holes and to make holes requires great amounts of noise and dust. (Truly, it looked as though the fog had rolled in inside the house.) I've always known that I do better with calm and quiet, but it was not until the past two days that I fully realized how poorly I do with continuous loud noise. By Thursday night I was at the end of my tether...headache, less than no patience...you get the picture. So, by Friday, when it continued, I was seriously wondering if we should take a t...

It should really be three kitchens because to fully appreciate where we end up, you should see where we began. But, sadly, I have no digital pictures of the kitchen we just demolished. So you will have to picture for yourselves a very small kitchen with gray "like plastic" cupboards and (best of all) the reflective metal panelling on the ceiling. Because everyone needs a mirrored kitchen ceiling. Let's just say it wasn't beautiful. Our current kitchen is in the basement. It's not too bad, except I really do miss the dishwasher (despite my earlier post). And I really don't recommend concrete as a choice for flooring. We've lost more dishes to breakage in the past month than we had the past year. So, for those who have asked, pictures of the basement kitchen: Countertop and cabinets pictured here were transported from demolished kitchen down to temporary kitchen (thanks, Pete!). Stove (gift of Bidny-Paleys) is on the site of second water heater, which failed...

The past 48 hours have been so insane that it was almost difficult to pick a title for this entry. There were just too many to choose from. Today was the official starting date of the house remodelling project we are embarking on, but it was the days leading up to it that were the most eventful. First, we just have a lot of stuff, I'm forever giving things away, but I'm sure it all multiplies by itself in the back of dark and dusty closets. It's the only possible reason I can come up with to account for the mountain of stuff that had to be removed. So, this project of cleaning out nearly half our house was daunting, but the weather did it's best to make it more difficult. For the past weekend, the weather in our part of the midwest has been a bit chilly. The daytime high hovered around 8 degrees. The problem is when it is that cold outside, it is correspondingly cold inside. Sunday morning, the bedroom thermometer was showing a brisk 57 degrees...and it's one of the...

These three words pretty much sum-up life in the big, ugly house for the past week. Oh yeah, we had Christmas, too, and stayed up to welcome the new year. But those seemed more like lulls in the middle of chaos than anything else. The day after Christmas, one of M.'s gerbils died. This was fairly traumatic since she has had these gerbils for going on four years. This was the gerbil who would ride around in her pocket. The other gerbil continues to be healthy, although probably a bit lonely. The other death was A.'s new hermit crab (one of five) who were a Christmas gift from her grandparents. This was not quite as traumatic, since the afore mentioned crab had only been in her possession for 24 hours. For those who are interested, the current Curry family pet tally is: box turtle - 1; aquatic clawed frog - 1; fire bellied toad - 2; gerbil - 1; hermit crab - 4; plus the two rabbits we are pet-sitting for the next two weeks. On to the demolition and dust...for the past 6 1/2 years...

You have probably noticed that we call our home the "Big Ugly House". It was built in 1896 and was always big, but not always ugly. Over the years, there have been owners with questionable taste and an inflated sense of remodelling abilities who have left it with areas that, really, the only way to describe them is ugly. Well, ugly and often of questionable structural integrity. The masking tape holding the (live) electrical wires together gives a good sense of what we are up against. In one of the bathrooms (not the ugliest, but in the running) the sink had recently been used to change the turtle's water which caused a few too many wood chips to go down the drain. So the drain became clogged. Blithely thinking that this would be a simple task, surely no more than a half an hour at the outside, I asked J. if he could clean out the trap and unclog the drain. Silly me! One thing led to another and it wasn't very long before the drain was empty. Well, empty and no longer...