It's a heat wave

In case anyone hasn't read the news lately, the sun has apparently settled directly over the Pacific Northwest and normally mild, 85-90 degree summers are now a boiling 100-105 degrees with some reports predicting 107 in Portland.

We don't have AC...or I should say we didn't have AC until about 10am this morning when we finally gave in, went to Standard TV and Appliance and offered our first born for a window AC unit.

Fortunately for Max, they refused, preferring instead to empty our bank account.

Whatever, it's not 100 degrees in the house.


In other news, I harvested our pathetic little red onion crop two days ago. Next time I will plant them were the dog can't trample on them.

(Don't) Do it Yourself

So, one of the most annoying things about my house is the kids bathroom. Unbeknown to us, the former owner had decided to do one of those "make it sell" details by painting the bathroom floor. Not tiling or re-laying vinyl for $500, but spending $30 for a can of paint and splashing it down on the floor over the current vinyl.

All of this would have been fine if we didn't have...boy children in our house. As anyone who has raised children with penises knows, they don't really master the whole "aim" thing until long after college so after a few days the bathroom starts smelling like a homeless shelter if you don't go in there with bleach and scrub brush. Imagine my surprise the first time I did this and floor started bubbling.

A year and a half passes and the bathroom floor looks like this:


So, we went to Lowes to find out how much it would cost to replace the floor. Lowes essentially fed us a bunch of crap and demanded $40.00 to come out and measure the room, even though we came in with measurements. They also said they couldn't do it even though they did the exact same job for us in our Beaverton condo. We thought "ok, we will just scrape up the paint" like this:

After a few days, it became clear that we were tearing up the vinyl trying to get the paint off so I went to Floors with Flair where I found out we were actually scraping up some asbestos(!) with that paint (it lives in the glue and felt in pre 1986 vinyl). Despite having two screaming children running around, the sales guy was very nice and took me into the warehouse to view "the absolute cheapest vinyl available because, seriously, this is a kids bathroom and it just needs to be durable." I found some remnant for $30 and made the deal to have the whole thing done for $380.00 including labor and materials.

The next day they came out and now I am looking at this:


So, despite being total DIY people, don't do this at home, just have the professionals do it in 2 hours.

Summer Fruit Popcicles

Ingredients: 2 pints fruit (this was supposed to be 1 pint of raspberries and one of blueberries, but the raspberries did not quite make it all the way home.) 2 cups apple juice.

Wash fruit thoroughly.

Add apple juice to fruit and smash.

Use child labor as appropriate.

Pour into Popsicle molds (note there are only 5...I have no idea where the 6th is).

Freeze overnight.

Enjoy!

Sparkle, sparkle, boom!

As we all gear up for our BBQs and other assorted 4th celebrations, I just want to spend a little bit time on the document that started it all, the Declaration of Independence. This document, crafted by 13 colonies who had just had enough. Enough of tariffs, enough of military occupation, enough of...everything. I imagine those who signed the document must have known they were committing treason against England, I mean, of course they knew...but how terrifying it must have been to risk everything, none of the men who signed the declaration were poor and they all had plenty to lose by declaring themselves a sovereign nation. Yet, they did it.

How radical a notion our country is founded upon: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Summer is here!

I finally got around to planting most of the plants that were hanging out in our kitchen window, including the pumpkin. I'm really hoping the dog doesn't trample it, because Max is really proud his pumpkin grew so well in the plastic cup from kindergarten.

I'm giving our onions a 50/50 chance of making it to the end of the season.


We also released 1500 ladybugs into the garden, to eat whatever has been eating my precious potato plants. The next morning they were still there, so that's a good sign.

Here are some ladybugs on my tomato plant.