Laundry Room Renovations

Two weekends ago, the clothes dryer finally died.  It came with the house, eight-plus years ago, and I have no idea how old it was before that.  Combined with the washer giving periodic fits, this became the spark for Mary to declare the time had come for the laundry room that she has always wanted.

Instead of the industrial sink, washer, clothes rack, and dryer all next to each other on the wall, her vision was for a stacked washer-dryer pair, and a bench with shoe storage underneath as a place for backpacks to land and shoes to be stored, with cabinets overhead.  After going back and forth about it, we are keeping a sink, but encasing it in a dark brown ("espresso") wood cabinet to match the bench and cabinetry we're installing.  The old linoleum floor has to go, in favor of new broad-format tiles, and the walls will be painted slate blue with white vinyl wainscoting and trim.

Progress has been...halting.  Between the time to engage with the new puppy, go skiing, and handle multiple competing pressures at our respective jobs, it's taken awhile to get started.  We do have some deadlines, though: the new washer and dryer are to be delivered and installed on the 7th of March, so we have to have the floor installed, the dryer vent rerouted, the dryer power outlet moved, and the drywall repaired and painted behind it, before then.  I keep flashing back to the $4,195 dishwasher project from three years ago: what started out as a simple replacement became a major initiative.  This time around we're doing almost all the work ourselves; staggering it properly and getting everything done will be the challenge.  I am learning drywall repair as I go, as well, so we'll see if the finished project is acceptable.  But it will be different, and more modern, and more colorful, and one more piece of the "there's gonna be some changes" aspect of 2013.

Our Family Ski Weekend

This past weekend, the four of us drove to wild, wonderful West Virginia to the annual Troop 688 ski weekend at Canaan Valley.  This was the first time that the ladies had joined David and me; Mary is not a skier and doesn't enjoy getting cold, and Sarah had not previously been interested, but this year announced she wanted to try to learn snowboarding.

Confidentially, I had low expectations for her snowboarding adventure; I thought that despite the 90-minute lesson, the repeated face-plants into the snow, and a little snow down the parka, would quickly turn her interest into tubing or just watching TV at the lodge.  How little credit I gave her!  Sarah gamely strapped into her snowboard, and I caught up with her at one point during her lesson, as she was maneuvering quite impressively.  After her lesson, over lunch she enthused about the experience; after lunch, she and I headed to the bunny trails and lift to ski/snowboard together.

During our first run together, she impressed with how long she was able to stay up before catching an edge and tumbling over; I managed to catch this particular run on video:

We then made a second run together, to the two bunny trails that make the long loop from the top of the bunny lift to the bottom.  Not only did she stay upright coming off the lift, but she completed the top leg of the trail without falling, and nearly made it to the bottom of the second without falling as well!  This with only one 90-minute lesson: color me impressed!

However, the next time wasn't as fortunate.  She elected to try the broad trail that runs directly underneath the bunny lift; it turned out to be a bit steeper than she had expected, and she lost control and fell nearly at the bottom, bruising her left knee and taking her out of snowboarding for the rest of the afternoon.  Before the weekend was over, though, she did say she thought she'd be back next year, and I certainly hope so, as it was a special time skiing with my daughter.

David, of course, continues skiing and trying to win races among his fellow Scouts.  Their favorite trail to do so winds from the top of the mountain to the bottom, and is called Timber Ridge.  Once, I tried to stay caught up with him on Sunday, and this was the result:

David is the skier principally in the frame, but several times his speed takes him far off or around his friend John on the snowboard; once, he soars up through a wooded cut-through onto the bottom part of a black-diamond trail, Gravity, that I finally mastered this weekend; he is next seen as the rocket shooting through the frame in a tuck, and well off into the distance for the final sprint to the finish.  By my rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, he's averaging about 18 mph on this run...not Olympic speed, but fast enough for his little 14-year-old heart to get a thrill.

Despite Sarah's injury we all enjoyed the weekend.  It's nice to get away as the four of us and to try new things, again continuing with the theme of 2013: there's gonna be some changes!

Meet Fergie!

The first of the big changes of 2013 has come about: on Saturday, February 9, our family grew by one (and four paws), when Fergie came home with us from the Fairfax County Humane Society.  Here's Sarah with our girl out at the HSFC farm:

After months of "I wanna puppy" and talking about how things would be different, that morning we went out to meet the dogs and especially Fergie, whom we'd seen online and who looked like a sweetie.  She greeted us very warmly right away, with a whipping tail that showed how happy she was to see us.  We met one other dog that day, but kept coming back in our hearts to Fergie.  We were so happy to be able to take her home with us that day.

Fergie is about two, maybe two-and-a-half years old, a blend of black lab and what looks like doberman in her face, maybe some pit bull in her eyes, and a touch of boxer in her stance, and brindle-brown down her legs and muzzle with a white chest and a couple of white toes.  She was found as a stray down in Page County on July 31, 2012, and taken to the Page County Humane Society, where she received her current name.  She was clearly someone's pet, because when they took her to the vet for a checkup and to be spayed, they found she was already fixed.  Additionally, she knows how to "sit" and was (nominally) housebroken.  Page County's is a kill shelter, but they hung onto her, knowing she was something special; but in December they ran out of room and asked Fairfax to take her.  Someone's apparent loss is our most certain gain.

She has a lot of her puppy energy sometimes, and loves playing fetch and tug of war; her "lab" side comes out in how she has to shakeshakeshake every toy to make sure it's well and thoroughly dead.  However, she also has a cuddly side, and will settle in with you on the couch to watch TV and just be scritched.  We're learning more sides of her personality all the time; she snores; she can play-bite and roughhouse, and then be just a puppy-eyed charmer (now who wouldn't want to take this face home?):

We're all learning to adapt to having her with us: there have been "accidents," and we have to master the fact that even when it's pouring, Fergie needs to go out.  She also displays some "leash aggression," growling or barking at other dogs while she's on her leash (but plays well in off-leash, apparently, according to HSFC).  We also wonder if the crate and the basement were the "bad dog" places at her former house: she won't stay in her crate willingly, and while she'll run up and down our main stairs, she will not go down to the basement no matter who or how many of us are down there.

We start dog-training (really, people-training) on March 2 with her, and we hope to reach our mutual levels of comfort and routine shortly.  Our lives have certainly been changed--it's almost like having a new toddler in the house again--but look into those eyes and tell me it's not worth it?

There's Gonna Be Some Changes

Twenty-odd years ago, a good friend and I would greet each New Year's with the same promise: this year, we said, "there's gonna be some changes."  One year it was when I got married; another year, she promised she was going to get a new job.  The dreams of each new year sounded big, and impressive, and maybe just a little scary at their immensity.

The first 31 days of 2013 suggest the old trope will actually be coming true this year: there's gonna be some changes, in 2013.  As the shine of New Year's resolutions fades and we confront in February the gritty realities of the year to come, there's still quite an extensive list of things we're planning to do this year:

• Tomorrow we go to visit the Fairfax County Humane Society's dog farm and look at doggies.  After months of "I wanna puppy I wanna puppy I wanna puppy," we're actually going to do it.  We've bought the food and water dishes and baby gates (to mark off space in the house so Doggy can get used to it gradually instead of Whoomp all at once), and we have our eye on one dog we're hoping to meet and who might come home with us later in the month.
• In mid-January Mary and I went to the Home and Remodeling Expo and began, formally, the process of spending tens of thousands of dollars.  The hope is to be able to redo the master bathroom and some portion of the kitchen; we've already contracted with one outfit do redo Sarah's and the master closets, and we've already met with three contractors (fourth is coming up) to see what they can do and how large a bag of money we'd need to come up with.  But one way or another, one room or another (if not both) will be done in 2013.
• After years of inaction, we're beginning to redo the living room: scrapbooking supplies are moving to the rec room, which brings us to...after years of inaction, work (of a sort) is starting on the train set, too!  I'm making the executive decision that some parts of the train won't ever be set up, and so I'm repurposing parts for later use.  The scrapping station will go where those unused train set parts are stored.
• I bought myself my own drum kit, which is now also ensconced in the rec room.
• And, perhaps inspired during my time at Harvard last month, I have started some writing projects, one of which I want to see through in the coming year.

And that's only the first 31 days! May the good starts begun in January bear fruit throughout the year and into the years to come...