Doing Something About It

You might remember the kitchen in The Serpico House....


It's functional, yes... mostly... but that orange counter-top... what the hell? And the drop ceiling... and the carpet... and the mini-stove. I just don't know what the hell they were thinking. I really don't. At least the cabinets are basically... well... OK, they're not great, but I think new hardware would probably make them a lot better.

But we really want to do something about it.

So we figured we'd just have to replace the counters in order to get something nicer. Or do we?

Check this out: RustOleum Counter-top Paint.

I just saw an ad for this stuff on TV last night, and I went to the RustOleum site to check it out. I dunno... it looks promising. According to the info available, all we'd have to do is paint this stuff onto our counter, and... new counter-top.

This dude got a good result, I think... His accent is kind of amusing, and I don't particularly care for the color/finish he chose, but you can't really argue with the positive impact he got from the product.

I'm considering it...

More Painting. Why Not?

We had/have some not-so-secret shameful elements in The Serpico House.

You've seen our living room. It looks nice.


But then there's the upstairs hallway... Not as nice.




In case you're keeping score, this is a photo from when we first uncovered the floor in the upstairs hallway. You can see the small chunk of rug still left at the top of the steps. On the plus side, the carpet is long gone. On the minus, the walls in the hallway were still the same dingy white... until about a week ago.


Downright shameful that we waited this long to handle that business, but I'm glad we did. Ol' Painty Pants and I had a "painting date," and we got it done. It's the same color as the living room--"Basketry." Except for... umm...

Well, there's the whole area above the steps that is gonna be hard to do.

See, the whole area above the stairs is problematic. As the stairs head downward, the walls just keep going upward... and that's a tough area to reach. The experts recommend using scaffolding or extension ladders or something. Um. Yeah. We ain't got none of those. So... We'll have to figure that out.

Adding Art

What you see right here is the first thing we've actually hung on any of our walls with nails. Considering the number of nails and nail holes we've removed and filled in The Serpico House, you can imagine that we've been somewhat reluctant to make new ones.

Anyway, this is a painting that was done for us by a good friend. We like it.

We need to have it framed... or maybe learn to make a frame for it, but it's nice to see some art on our walls.

Xavier is a little luckier in the art department. He has some great Eric Carle wall decals. They look like these....


He personally oversaw the application of these decals, and he frequently comments on his friends "Brown Beyah" "Burdie" and "Goggie" during diaper changes.


So this naturally has me thinking about wall decals for grown folks. A lot of them are not our type of thing... phrases, etc. Fine with me if you dig that kind of thing, but I can't picture living with some kind of quasi-inspirational quote on the wall. Now, if they made quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War on decals, I'd kind of consider this idea, but so many of them are phrases like "Always Kiss Me Goodnight" or "I'm Everything I Am Because of You." Now, while these sentiments certainly apply, I'm pretty sure they can go without being seen on the wall every day. And the hearts and such? I can't take it. Too damn mushy.

Some of the graphic decals are nice, but... eh. I think we should should probably stick with framed art.

Art and Clusters

OK, so most of The Serpico House is looking pretty good these days. We've got the humidity thing in the basement under control. The rooms are, for the most part, painted the way we want them. The kitchen is... the kitchen, and I guess that's not going to change anytime soon, so we're just going to live with it for a while longer. We have the yard sort of figured out with our lawn-cutter guy, and we've actually gotten the gutters cleaned--by the way, it hasn't rained since we had the gutters cleaned about two weeks ago. Figures, right?

Eventually, we plan to have the big tree in our yard trimmed back so that it's not hanging over the house, and we do eventually want to handle the ivy on our back wall, but those things will also have to wait a while.

All of these things are great, but we haven't really dealt with art or hanging stuff on the walls. It's not like we don't have any art to hang, either. For example, one of our dear friends made us a lovely painting, and we really like it... but we haven't hung it yet. We also have a bunch of neat prints, posters and carved masks, too. Now, in my younger days, I probably would have just bashed a bunch of nails into the wall, popped the masks and paintings onto the nails and called it a day. As for my myriad posters, prints and other items... well, let's just say that I used to be a big fan of scotch tape and staples. I know, I know... tacky, right?

So, acting as an adult here, I'm thinking about frames and arranging artwork around the house. Dig on this photo for a minute or two.....


Granted, we don't have a white couch (and I'm pretty sure we'll never get one!), and we don't have any funky wallpaper, but that cluster of framed artwork on the wall speaks to me. In fact, Avy and I visited some friends recently, and I really wish I had a picture of one of their walls to show off here--they have a really wonderful amalgamation of neat, framed stuff on their walls, from music-related posters to personal photos and works from local artists. It's visually arresting and compelling. The lady of the house says she snagged most of the frames at thrift stores. I think the key here is that all of the art is framed. Most anything looks more important when it is framed. For example, this poster is just kind of a band poster for a show that has already passed...


But I bet if I had it in a nice black frame, it'd be a cool thing to have on the wall. A conversation piece, even.

I want to get on this as a project and hang up our art. Soon.

It's Not a Dry Heat

The actual onset of warmer weather is really here. For the folks who don't live in the Mid-Atlantic region, let me explain--we don't get much "springtime" weather here. Nope. We go from "Crap, it's COLD!" to the proverbial "It's like a sauna out there" in what seems like two weeks. Sure, we get some nice flowers for a while, but the reality of living in an area primarily built on reclaimed swampland eventually strikes home every year in the form of pretty serious humidity. Just lately, we've been experiencing damn-near rain forest weather--temperatures in the mid-70s/lower-80s and rain, drizzle, sun, torrential downpour, sun, rain... at least it hasn't been necessary to water the new plants. But it's been humid. Really humid. And humidity is unpleasant inside the house. It fosters mold and mildew, it makes things smell funky, it creates an environment for all kinds of gross bugs... it's just unpleasant. Additionally, a humid basement affects the floors directly above, which means the basement won't be the only stinky, buggy part of the house--the first floor will get icky, too.

If you remember this post, I mentioned the need for a dehumidifier in our basement. We made it quite a while without one, but after about three weeks of mixed rain and sun, it became obvious we really needed to do something. All of the tell-tale signs were present (funky smells, extra moisture in the air, etc), and the basement really had a damp atmosphere. Now, I know most fully underground basements smell a little "off," but ours was actually getting a little... err... reeky.

Let me back-track a little here. We haven't really done much with The Serpico House's basement yet. Every other week, Avy and some friends hang out and do some belly-dancing down there, and I have a little amplifier and some guitars in there, too, but it's basically just an empty, carpeted room. It's nice... or, rather, it was nice... until the humidity started kicking in. Starting after Avy's dance rehearsal the other day, when the ladies emerged from the basement, there was a distinct aroma of something other than that of natural human exertion. It was a sort of moldy, vegetational smell.

And that's when I knew we really needed to get a dehumidifier.

So, I started looking around online... the average price for a consumer-level, standard-sized dehumidifier sits somewhere between $160-$350. Most dehumidifiers work by drawing moist air over a refrigerated coil with a small fan. Since the saturation vapor pressure of water decreases with decreasing temperature, the water in the air condenses and drips into a collecting bucket. Dehumidifiers are rated in pints (25-pints, 45 pints, etc), and this refers to the amount of water it can remove from the air in a 24-hour period. The higher the pint-rating, the more powerful the dehumidifier.

After digging around for while, we decided on this one...

It's an LG 45-pint unit. We bought a refurbished model because it came in at a pretty reasonable price when compared to a new one, and the reviews were all at least four-star our of five. It showed up last night, and I set it up right away. My first impressions were that it is somewhat larger than I expected, and it's pretty weighty, too. It didn't take much to get it going--set it down, plug it in and that's it. A fan noise starts up (it's not too loud to me), and you don't notice anything special happening right away.

I guess I started it up around 6:30pm. We went about our usual evening routine, and around 10pm, I went into the basement to check it out. I may be somewhat overly ambitious, but I am pretty sure I noticed that the basement had less of a mildewy odor. When I checked the collection bucket under the unit, it was about 1/2 full of water. I dumped the water and turned it on again. We went to bed about an hour later.

This morning when I woke up, I checked the dehumidifier, and it was still running. I checked the bucket, and it wasn't completely full (the unit is supposed to turn off when it's full), but there was a lot of water in there. I dumped it and started it up again. I could imagine this getting a little old... luckily, this thing is supposedly equipped with a hose-draining option (that sounds naughty!), which allows you to attach a length of garden hose to the unit and lay the other end in a sink or drain. This allows you to set the humidity level for whatever you like and let the unit run when needed without dumping the bucket. I think we'll eventually do this.

For now, the bucket works, and I foresee that the basement (and the rest of the house) will be more pleasant.

Like, Wow, Welcome...

When we first looked at The Serpico House, one of the the bits of furniture left behind was this vanity. It used to sit in what is now our guest/turtle/computer room.




Avy really liked that little vanity, and she wanted to put it in our bedroom as a, you know... vanity... a place to sit and put on make-up, etc.

But she made the error of putting it at the foot of our bed when the cable TV guy came to hook up service. As a result, one the TV was hooked up, the vanity became a TV stand by default. See?



That kind of sucked for Avy, because, with the TV on top, this thing is not very useful as a vanity in the traditional sense.

So, when we had the opportunity, we decided to wall-mount the TV and put that vanity into its intended place and make things better.

We ordered a wall-mount. We even ordered a little shelf for the cable box. It was going to be so sweet. Except for one thing... our bedroom LCD can't be wall-mounted. Yeah. Lame, right? It happens to be a little older, and LCDs from 2006 apparently weren't all made according to VESA standards for LCD mounting screws. Long story short--that TV ain't going up on the wall without a lot of extra work... so, not wanting to be defeated, we ran out to Wal-Mart and bought a little cheapo desk to use as a TV stand. It's an ugly desk, really, so we covered it with a tapestry. Here's the result...


It gets the job done, I guess, but it kinda makes the bedroom look something like one of those new-age bookstores. We'll figure out something better in the future. This works for now, and Avy gets her vanity back...

We're going to hang a mirror on the wall in front of the vanity, and I plan to build Avy a picture-frame jewelry holder. More on that later...

Surprise... Landscaping!

Well, in my last post I mentioned that I had a landscaping pro coming to work on our yard soon.

I guess I misunderstood when we spoke--I thought he was coming a week from this past Friday. I was wrong. He came this past Friday. It was so cool.

When Avy, Xavier and I arrived at home, we obviously noticed there was a strange truck in the driveway. Everything became clear to me right about then...

And we were happy.

Here's the newly cleaned-out back yard.

I don't know if this picture does the work he did in the yard proper justice.... there were a lot of branches and left-over leaves laying around, making the yard look smaller and messier. He also cut the grass.This is the top of our driveway. I don't have a "before" shot right now, but take my word for it--that area was full of debris. Now it's clean and neat. It's so much nicer.


These are the bushes in front of the house. I was frankly kind of embarrassed at the amount of leaves that were underneath these. Landscaper dude got 'em out of there. Nice.


This is the tree in the front yard. Landscaper dude didn't do anything to the tree, but it's pretty, and I actually was incorrect in identifying it in previous posts. I thought it was a Japanese Maple. It is not. This is a Dogwood. And it's pretty sweet.

This is the front of the house. The grass is nice and neat, but, if you look off to the right, you can see a big pile of leaves right near our neighbor's house. Those were all in our backyard. I wish I had taken a picture of the landscaper's truck--the back was almost overflowing with leaves. He said he'd been there since mid-day. He finally left around 8pm. That's a lot of work for one guy.

So, what have I learned? Well, I really need to pay better attention--I need to listen when someone tells me a specific day they'll be showing up. That way I won't be surprised by stuff like this. I have learned that gas-powered lawn implements beat the crap out of electric implements. Big time. The drawback is that nasty gas smell. And I have learned that sometimes it is pretty satisfying to pay someone to do a job that you want done well. I walked around all weekend saying, "I love this yard."

Odd side note: It seems like every one of our neighbors took a cue from our yard work--for the rest of the weekend, all you could hear were lawn-mowers, weed-whackers and leaf-blowers on our block. I must say, it's pretty nice to live in an area where the folks really take pride in their homes.

So... Minor update.



I called a landscaper to get a price for lawn work.
It breaks down like this:
They're gonna come and clean out all of our old leaves and whatnot, trim the bushes, edge the lawns, straighten out our flower beds and cut the grass. This first appointment will cost us $220, which seems kind of expensive... but that's because there is a lot of work to do.

After this, they'll cut our lawn once a week for $30 per cut. This includes edging, hedge trimming and waste removal.

The ivy removal will have to be a separate project for later in the summer.
Can't wait to come home and see the yard looking all spiffy!

Paying for Green?

I park my car next to this loveliness every evening. Honestly, things could be worse. As the weather continues to warm up, we're seeing more and more color popping up around The Serpico House. Some of it is almost startling--I need to take a picture of the enormous number of green stalks popping up next to our front steps. Mrs. Serpico, my hat is off to you... so many plantings!

Something I've been considering lately... it may make sense for us to hire out for our first lawn-cutting and Spring clean-out... mainly because we don't have a lawnmower yet, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper to hire someone to handle that than it is to buy a lawnmower. It already sort of looks like our front lawn is getting a little crazy... we can't let it go for too much longer. Ugh.

Another thought... a "Green Lawn" guy stopped by our place yesterday, trying to sell us his service. Dude doesn't cut grass or work on flower beds. Nope. All he does is come around about six times per year to fertilize the lawn, put down weed-killer and spray some kind of insect repellent. OK, I guess that flies with some of the other folks in the suburbs, but no. Not me. First of all, I don't care if my lawn is perfectly green and insect free. I don't mind crab grass. That shit is in nature, and I'm fine with it showing up in my yard. It's really no big deal. I was polite to him, and I told him we felt our money was probably more wisely invested in a landscaping company. I can throw down fertilizer and grass seed on my own. I wonder how many of my neighbors are going for this? I think it's like $50 per treatment. Screw that. I'll pay that to some kid every other week to cut my grass.

Spring Sprung

See them thar things above? Yep. Flowers. In our yard. Pretty, huh? As the weather gets nicer, it's becoming evident that Mrs. Serpico really liked to plant things, because we're seeing little sprouts and full-on flowers popping up everywhere in out yard. I'm bad with flower/plant names, but I know we have tulips and forsythias. So that's cool.

And remember the ivy-removal project? I got a quote from a landscaper on that--the dude says he needs $350 to get it all out of there, mainly because it's all wrapped around the fence, and it'll be a lot of work. I think I'm going to get another estimate on the job, but I think $350 isn't too bad... it really does look like a lot of work. Having said this much, I can't help thinking I might haggle with this guy a little and see if his crew will add a leaf clean-out for that price. I also think I'll want to get a second estimate from another landscaper. Someone else might come in a little cheaper, and there's pretty much next to no way that they can mess this up.

Another thought, though... I really need to discuss this whole thing with our next-door neighbor before moving forward with the full ivy-removal plan. The ivy is growing heavily on the fence that separates our yards, and he may want it there for some reason. It definitely gives his yard more privacy, that's for sure--I actually can't see into his yard at all from ours. I really hope he's OK with getting rid of it. Obviously, if he doesn't agree to this, the ivy on his side of the fence will just creep back over into our yard in time, making our efforts and expenditure in vain.

So... we shall see.

The Yard

After making yesterday's post, I realized it makes no sense to just say the yard needs work without actually showing what I mean....

So this is one of the flower beds towards the back of the yard. I've swept out enough of the leaves to show the nice shape. It's cool, right? If we pull out all of the weeds and truly clear out the leaves, it'll look really lovely. But we've got to do battle with stuff like this first...

First, you can see the massive amount of ivy and overgrowth. There's actually a raised bed with a short retaining wall around it, but it's covered with ivy, which is also covering the entire back stone wall. And, as a testament to Mrs. Serpico's failure to maintain the yard diligently, perhaps you can see the "mystery lawnmower" under that bush... alongside a plastic trash bag of... something. These items became visible only after the leaves fell off of the trees. I'm guessing we'll need to get them out of there eventually.


This is the corner of our yard next to our neighbor's yard. They obviously don't mind the ivy, but the amount of ivy in our yard is ridiculous. It's out of hand. Too much. I don't think we can pull all of that ivy out of there without some serious help. Hell, I don't want to pull that ivy out of there.
Yes, somewhere back behind that ivy is a nice stone wall.

OK, I've convinced myself. I'm calling a landscaping company.

Warming Up to the Land

Well, it's almost April, and winter is begrudgingly loosening its icy grasp on the Mid-Atlantic area... Having said this, the weather person said something about snow in the forecast this morning. Lovely.

Above, you can see a picture of my grill. I love my grill. I love grilling. Some folks only like to grill when the weather is warm. I am not one of those people--I grilled in the snow, sub-zero weather, rain, whatever. And now that the weather is looking up, you'd better believe I'm gonna be a grilling machine.

We had some friends and family over for a semi-impromptu gathering last Friday (no pics, sorry), and I grilled everything I could find--burgers, chicken, tuna, sausages. Twas most enjoyable.

By the way, my grill was looking a little gunky when I got home yesterday, so I cleaned it with (what else?) Goo Gone. Took about five minutes and a little elbow grease. Holy shit, that stuff just eats through anything. In the above picture, the grill looks like it's glowing. That's not just a light trick... that grill is super clean now.

The actual grilling surface itself is also in great shape--I keep that scraped and neat with a wire grill brush and olive oil. I'd say it's "seasoned" by now.

But the warmer weather also means it's time for an outdoor reality check. Our yard is huge. We're going to have to deal with it. By "it," I mean the grass, the overgrowth of ivy in the backyard, the bushes, the trees, the excess leaves from this past fall, etc.

And I am not too proud to say that I'm looking for a way to avoid handling these things. In fact, I'm really, really considering hiring a landscaping company to deal with our yard. Mrs. Serpico clearly loved this yard (as evidenced by the multitude of flower plantings greenly presenting themselves in the past few weeks), but she was also a lady who had no job, so she had the time (and inclination) to fool around in her yard a lot.

We do not share Mrs. Serpico's passion for such things, but we do like the yard, and, upon investigation, it has become obvious that the back yard has some truly attractive flower beds. In fact, in the course of minor raking adventures, I was able to discern a gracefully curved bad near the back of the yard. It's got a really nice reverse s-shape. But... it's full of invasive ivy and other such annoyances. In fact, the entire perimeter of the yard has been somewhat overtaken by the aforementioned ivy.

A younger, more adventurous version of myself would have embraced the idea of attacking this ivy with a machete (actually, that still sounds kind of cool in some ways), but I'm pretty sure I don't feel like fooling around in that ivy too much.



Too bad they don't make Goo Gone for ivy and weeds. Actually, I guess they sort of do, but the idea of using a heavy-duty herbicide in our back yard makes me feel like the worst kind of ecological terrorist. Long ago, in another life, I did some landscaping, and I am fairly certain that a small crew of folks could walk into our yard and clear the ivy and weeds in about six hours (probably less if they're motivated.)

I think I need to call someone.

Steps and Small Bear's Room

First things first... I think we've landed on a nice set-up for Xavier's room. His room is incredibly sunny and bright. I actually had to pull down his shades most of the way in order to take a picture that wasn't totally white.

He's got a great-looking foam floor mat thing, courtesy of his Bubby and Zaidy, and he loves it. He calls it "Zayy-bee-yur's Affabet," and he really enjoys yelling out the letters and numbers. He's also got an igloo tent and a mini play kitchen. And yep, a big-ass crib. The crib is supposed to convert into a daybed and a regular bed, but by the time I managed to rebuild it (after struggling to get it apart), the only type of sleeping surface I could approximate was the crib. I'll make it into a bed before he starts high school, I promise. We need to get some artwork on his walls (Yo Gabba Gabba stuff, I think), but, for the most part, I think his room is looking good.

Having said this, there are still some projects to do in there. The ceiling fan, for example, is basically worthless--there's no light fixture on it, and the fan doesn't work. That's lame. I guess we just need to replace it with a functional one. We have a lamp in his room now, but it's not ideal. At night (or even at dusk) his room is shadowy and almost spooky. Of course, Xavier doesn't care--he's not afraid of the dark... or anything else, it seems.

And now for something that's not even close to being done...
The front steps.

No, that's not the entrance to some ancient, crumbling edifice... those are the front steps to The Serpico House. In all fairness, they were never in good shape, and a harsh winter with many snows and thaws was not kind to these truly dismal and disintegrating concrete steps. I had a feeling they'd get bad, but wow... this is pretty sad.

I know there are ways to fix these up, and I'm sure I am capable... I'm not even scared to do it. In fact, now that the weather has improved, this has to happen pretty soon. I can just picture the mail-carrier falling on our steps and suing us... Yeah, I better get on this.

Mini Paintypants.

The pink bathroom. It's just... erm... pink.


We've grown to accept the pink tile. It's fine, really. I mean, yeah, OK, it's pink, and that's not our first choice for bathroom colors, but it's fine. The carpet was bad, and that's gone.

What really sucked the most was the ratty, dirty, pinkish paint... complete with bad settlement cracks.



You can see the pinkish hue, and, yeah, those lines are cracks in the plaster. I filled the cracks with spackle, and that made things a little better, but the walls looked crappy and dirty.

So, this weekend, I tried to make it better.

I finally ditched the pink curtains, which made the room look a little bleak, I think, but the clean white paint brightened the place up quite a bit. And we don't have to look at cracks in the walls anymore.

However (there's always a "however," isn't there?), I managed to snap a hunk out of the plexiglass cover that sits in front of the light above the mirror when I was cleaning it. I was so irritated with myself that I didn't take a picture. Having said this, I hate that damn fixture and mirrored medicine cabinet. The whole thing is ancient and ugly, and I want it gone. Avy thinks I broke it on purpose, but I didn't... I didn't mean to break it before we could replace it, though. Now we have to look at a broken hunk of plastic every morning until we can replace it. Ugh.

Painty Pants Rides Again

You may remember our bedroom in The Serpico House.

Yeah. Rose-colored carpet. Chair rail.

And you might remember that we ripped up the carpet. That left us with some pretty nice floors, and it reminded us that we had a HUGE bedroom.


We also removed the chair rail. I still don't know why it was up there in the first place. Isn't chair rail something you mainly want in the dining room?

This is how the bedroom looked when we finally moved our things in...




We both thought it was a nice improvement--hardwoods, no chair rail. Pleasant.

But wow, that's some dismal while paint.

And when I say dismal, I mean it was scratched to hell and full of nail holes. Look at that picture over the bed in the first picture... I think they moved it about seven times to get it to the right height, so this is what it looked like underneath.




All of the lighter areas are places where we had to fill holes with spackle. This was pretty much the case for the entire room.

Xavier was visiting his grandma, so obviously it was time for Ol' Painty Pants to return...

The color?

Glidden Aztec Gold. Satin finish.


Our methodology was simple--Avy would "cut in" (use a paint brush to get the areas of the walls closest to the trim and ceiling) , and I would do the major parts of the walls with a roller.

After one coat, it looked patchy and kind of uninspiring.

You can't see the patchiness too well in this cell phone shot, but it looked kind of... eh. However, the second coat made all the difference. Here's what we had after the second coat went on the walls and we got the furniture back in place.

We're really happy with the way the room looks and feels now... it's very warm, very cozy, very comfortable. The new paint makes the room seem new and clean. Now, the next step will be to mount the TV on the wall and moving that little vanity to the other wall for its intended purpose. We'll also be adding a mirror to the wall above it. That way, Avy will have a spot to sit and apply make-up, etc. It's gonna be cool. Someday.

All Hail the Mighty Goo-Gone

You may remember that our upstairs bathroom was in a state of carpetedness (yes, I invented that word--you can feel free to use it if you wish) when we moved into The Serpico House.

When we removed the carpet, we found nice pink tile. It was in fine shape, except for the adhesive the installers used to make it stick to the floor near the door. Interestingly, that was the only area where they used adhesive or anything other than gravity to hold the carpet down to the floor. I don't know if this represents shoddy workmanship or what, but at least we only had to deal with one cruddy-looking area of the floor.

And, believe it or not, that stuff didn't want to come up with the use of a mere scraper.

It looked like this...



Kinda gross, right? I know. Worse, we left it that way all this time... mainly because it didn't want to come off. This past Sunday morning, I walked past the bathroom and said to myself, "Maybe I'll try something else..." (cue "I Control, I Fly" by Monster Magnet--good song!)

Goo-Gone. That's what I tried. Yes. It worked. Took about 15 minutes total to get this....


There's one more annoyance off the list.

Laziness and Snowblower Abuse.

I think this happens with a lot of folks' home improvement blogs--they have a lot to say and show off at first, but it starts to taper off over time. This is for an obvious reason--there are a lot of big things to do before and right after a move, but once the pressing concerns are handled, there just isn't very much to say. And the blogging gets lazy.

In my case, I find this to be true--we're basically settled in and enjoying life in The Serpico House. Things are cool. But there are still a zillion things to do. We still haven't painted our bedroom, our guest room (I've started calling it "the turtle room" or "Mack's Room") still needs a desk and some other things, we need to replace our dining room's light fixture, the kitchen is awful, etc, etc.

But, for right now, let me tell you how I failed at the technology of living in the suburbs.

I'm guessing most of you are aware that the northeast portion of the U.S. has gotten a smidge of snow in January. Yep, it's true... a couple of minor storms, one big 'un and some icy rain. All told, I think maybe we've gotten about 25 inches of snow or something. I'm not complaining, really. I don't mind snow, and taking some days off due to snow provided us some nice unexpected family time.

Now, due to utter procrastination, we've failed to procure a new shovel for dealing with all of this snow. Yeah, we're still using Mrs. Serpico's old shovel. I should really get a picture of it--the thing is pitiful. It's nearly impossible to move snow with this thing. But we've managed to make it work... sort of.

If the condition of a person's driveway could, in some way, be correlated to the lifestyle or functionality of the relationship of the family that lives in the house behind that driveway... erm... well... let's just say our household discussions would look like something out of a John Woo film.

(My film school friends/former video store co-workers are snickering right now)



In short, our driveway is a mess. It's really a good thing that my car is an SUV with All-Wheel Drive. On the morning of the day after we got our last big snow, the view from our front window was this...


Yeah. That was taken around 6am. We got 15 inches of snow that night. This view would normally show our lovely front bushes and porch. After such snowfall, we just had white lumps that merged with the whiteness on our porch. It was kind of crazy.

When the snow finally ceased, I assaulted the snow on the porch and driveway with Mrs. Serpico's shovel, and I was sure I'd be able to clear enough of the mess to get my car out of the driveway. Well, I made a path to the car, and, foolish man that I am, I tried to back out of the situation. Yeah, that didn't work--I wound up getting stuck around mid-way through, where the snow was higher than my vehicle's axles.

Luckily, my wife's aunt (she calls me her nephew, so I should call her my aunt, too, I guess) has frequently offered us the use of her snow-blower. Now, she lives on a small Philly side street, and her house has a fairly diminutive footprint---I have no idea why she owns a snow-blower... other than that she likes gizmos.

My neighbor, Josh, had wisely paid one of the many roving gangs of snow-removal specialists (snow-opportunists? Snoppertunists?) to handle his driveway and sidewalk duties. However, since we were a bit light on cash (those dudes wanted $60 to do the driveway and sidewalk!), I was resolved to do this on my own.

Josh was nice enough to drive me over to my aunt's place, where we dug out her driveway and sidewalk in return for the use of her gas-powered snow-blower.

Now, not being familiar with the use of things like this (my last lawn-mower was an electric one), there was definitely a learning curve involved in making it work. Josh helped a bit, and we managed to get the thing started, and I found the lever that made the "snow-eater" work. I got into pushing the snow-blower into the huge mounds of snow and seeing the resulting spray of chopped-up snow fly off to the side. Pretty awesome. But... well... it was really hard to push the damn thing. I mean really hard to push it. The snow-blower weighs about 100lbs, and the snow itself was very wet and fairly heavy, so I was pushing it up and down my driveway by inches for an hour, dying from the exertion.

People who know how to use a snow-blower are laughing right now.

I almost shat out my spine before I realized that the wheels needed to be engaged with the motor--the engine makes the nubbly wheels turn and help push the machine along through the snow and ice. I didn't know about that. You have to pull on an extra lever to make it happen. In other words, I was shoving 100lbs of machine against that deep, heavy-ass, wet snow with no assistance from the engine. I didn't get hurt or anything, but I surely felt stupid when I realized how much extra work I was making for myself.

Avy offered to help, but I was so annoyed with myself that I just kept working. I know, I know. Typical male, right?

I finally cleared as much snow as I could, dragged the machine into the garage and went inside the house to dry off and warm up. Xavier was taking a nap after a tiring round of snowman building with Avy and a neighbor kid. I changed into soft, warm, dry clothes and took an Advil. I then planted my ass on the couch and went to sleep.

The damn suburbs kicked my ass that day.

Since that day, the snow has been melting fairly steadily, and the driveway has been looking better and better. Nature clears out snow better than I do.