Simply Norma

We had our first official backyard visit from a deer. He/she came to eat our plants – well, the plants that the previous owners planted. We have yet to plant anything as we’re waiting to see what grows.

So far, we have had daffodils, tulips, hostas and many ferns that are starting to come up throughout the property.

This little bird sat on my deck for about an hour perfectly still except when it moved it’s head to look at me.

I thought it was injured and worried that one of the local hawks might fly by and pick it up.

But, it eventually flew away into a tree. I wonder if the previous owners of the house fed it. Checking my Audubon Field Guide, I checked to see if I could determine what type of bird it was and unfortunately I could only narrow it down to two species – sparrow or finch.

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Most of this week has been spent prepping the bedrooms on the second floor to paint them. The master bedroom is large but the 2 other bedrooms are smaller than what we’re used to although they are “big enough.”

The master bedroom is a dark red so we have to prime it first before painting it the color we want.

Because our furniture arrived about a week earlier than expected, I’ve had to work around beds and boxes to prime. I started off not taping the ceiling thinking that I could carefully paint around the edges without getting any primer on the ceiling. That didn’t last very long. Normally I get a “blue” painters tape to tape off the border and window areas but we decided to try a generic brand of Frog Tape. It didn’t work too well though as the tape stuck a little too well and I had trouble getting it off after the painting was completed.

The primer I used is called Fast Prime 2 by Zinsser. I bought it at a local store called Menards (similar to a Home Depot). It worked pretty well and had very low odor.

Once the master bedroom was primed, I took out a new brush I bought for painting the corners with the paint I bought. I used a 1 1/2 inch brush for the corners prior to painting the whole room. The paint brush worked amazingly well. The brand is Painter’s Collection and when I finished with it the brush cleaned seamlessly.

Then it was time to paint the whole room. I selected a color called Thunder Bay by the Water’s Edge Home Collection.  It looks like a light teal with a tad (very tad) bit of gray. I say a tad because it does not look like it’s white-based. Very pretty.

It looks very light but when it dries it looks a little it darker — much different than the red that was on the wall.

Unfortunately, once I painted the walls, the ceiling now looks dreary. It looked very nice and white until I tried to wipe off some dust in a few areas. Because it’s a “knock-down” ceiling, it doesn’t clean very well. All it did was make a darker blotch.

So – sometime in the future, I will have to paint the ceiling.

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We haven’t met our neighbors yet since moving into the new house. The door bell rang the other day and I was so excited that I dropped what I was doing and ran to the door to see who was there. Alas, it was just my husband testing the door bell. Grrrrr …

We see people walking in the neighborhood all the time especially with their dogs. Uphill, one neighbor was using a wood chipper (a machine that cuts wood into very small pieces). We might have to get to know that neighbor really well as we have lots of branches and a couple of felled trees in our background.

Overall, the neighborhood is fairly quiet especially since the neighbors aren’t right next door.

At night, everything is dark, quiet and peaceful.

With the arrival of our furniture and all of our possessions from Seattle, we are getting to the point of feeling overwhelmed with everything there is to do. Part of the problem is me. I’ve started projects that probably could have waited but in anticipation of getting them out of the way, I decided to slowly begin.

Most of the boxes are opened but with things still in them. I’ve decided to paint the 3 bedrooms on the second floor. The master bedroom is barn red and the other two smaller bedrooms are a grayish blue. I have yet to select the master bedroom color but one of the guest rooms will be yellow. I’ve decided to put chair rails in both of those guest rooms also which should spiff them up a bit.

The master bedroom has been partly primed – mainly the ceiling edges. On Tuesday, I hope to complete the priming with Wednesday being the day that the room gets the new color. Unfortunately, one wall has to remain barn red since we have to decide on draperies or blinds before we take down what is currently there — vertical blinds. They are pretty dirty and can’t be cleaned.

A strange problem we’ve noticed is that the laundry room smells like a laundromat. Every time I wash clothes (which has been a lot since all of our packed clothes smell musty) this smell permeates the laundry room. At first I thought maybe the septic was having problems with the detergent I use but my husband said he didn’t think so. He’s cleaned up an area behind the washer where the hose goes down towards the septic. We hope it works.

Last evening I wish I had had a “night” camera. I couldn’t sleep and got up around 1:30 in the morning and made my way slowly in the dark to the family room. Looking through the window, I saw hundreds of stars in the clear sky. It was so beautiful and within the hour I was asleep.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I use an application on my cell phone to read different Bible devotions. Last night took me to one in Psalm 127, verse 2 which was very appropriate. It says:

In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat
for He grants sleep to those He loves.

I couldn’t turn my brain off from everything that I had to do. I had risen early and here I was staying up late. Then I said to Father “you’re supposed to grant sleep to me because you love me, according to the verse I just read.”

His response was “If you wouldn’t drink coffee at 7:30 pm you wouldn’t be awake now.”

Okay, okay — He’s right. I know not to have coffee at night and it’s rare when I do. I can’t remember why we had dinner so late either.

Tonight I’ll sleep like a log — I wonder where that phrase came from as logs don’t sleep.

When we first came to look at the Lake Elmo property that we just moved into, there was a huge trampoline in the backyard. Now that the previous owners took that with them, we have a sand box. It’s a huge sand box.

I can remember when I was younger going to the playground and playing around the sand box. I never played in one though. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to experience one.

I’ll have to get some sandbox toys for, of course, the grandkids.

The Mayflower truck pulled up yesterday morning. I was happy to see it but hesitant as I couldn’t remember everything that I had packed. The truck looked small but it took 3 hours to unload. I was given one task — check off the inventory as it was called and taken off the truck. Easy enough.

The workers would pull the dollies up to me and say “where do you want this?” The worst part about all of this is that the boxes I bought all had the labels on the top. So, unless I had a note on the side (not usual), I had to have them move the boxes so I could see where each one went. After awhile, the workers did that work themselves once they had a feel for where things were going in the house.

Then they left. I thought – alright! Now I can start unpacking. I walked into the house and was a little overwhelmed. Where did all these boxes come from?

The first room I wanted to tackle was the kitchen. All the kitchen boxes were lined up for me. I started out unpacking one box at a time but then I thought “I should open each one to see what’s inside and then unpack.” So — knife in hand — I opened each kitchen box.

The plethora of kitchen utensils was daunting. I had just come from an apartment where I had 4 pieces of each type of silverware, one large spoon, etc. It appears we have quite a few of each item now. Hmmm … what happened to downsizing?

I’m happy to say that half of the kitchen is completed. The other half will be finished today if all goes as planned. Only 2 kitchen items were broken – a quiche plate and a bowl.

Since I had used some towels as buffers when packing, I picked each one up and smelled them. They smelled musty – probably from being in storage for 5 1/2 months.

As a matter of fact, all of our clothes smell musty and must be washed. I’m not sure how much a water well can handle between the dishwasher (I like things rinsed out) and the washer (things must be clean before hanging).

I decided that since we’ve lived with our current clothing “allowance” for 5 1/2 months, we can do without more clothing for a little while longer.

We did have a moving accident. One of our dining rooms chairs was cracked when we examined it. So far, not too bad in terms of what is damaged.

By the end of the day, my calves and feet complained mightily since I had been in slippers all day. From now on I’ll be wearing my gym shoes with orthotics.

I regret not having hired a cleaning person when I moved in. That’s something that should have been done although the house was fairly clean — just not clean enough. I figured I had all week to do that work until I found out that the furniture was coming this week. Now, before I put linens away, I have to clean.

Oh well, live and learn.