New Thing #355: Ornamentation

It's not the idea that's new today - we decorate for Christmas every year in this house. And it's not so much the decorations themselves, though some, like the Jets ornament you see at left (a gift from a friend who knew I didn't have a Jets ornament) are in fact new.

It's more the way that every year at this time, even the same old thing can feel like a New Thing.

I told you earlier this month about how decorating the outside of the house with a New Thing helped spice that up.

Inside the house, in addition to the Jets football ornament, there's that Mets ornament hanging next to it, in which there's a picture of me and my nephew at his first Mets game from two summers ago. This is its first year on the tree.

That's part of what's special about all of these little knick-knacks hanging all around the house this time of year - remembering certain events or certain people or certain situations in which you were given these knick-knacks.

But the other special thing, I'm trying to find the words for it.

I love my in-home decorating. This is my favorite thing:

It's the moulding (I'm not sure exactly what to call it) over the entranceway between our dining room and living room, where we have our tree. To the right is a series of "Our Family" ornaments. Each year we get a new one (I've learned to get them early in the season so we don't miss out…and this sometimes means I'm buying a Christmas ornament in late October or early November, which I have a big problem with, but I need this ornament each year), and pictures of our family throughout the year stretch down that ledge.

To the left, above, and to the right of the overhang is where I tape up the Christmas cards we get. Usually the cards fill both sides of the wall.

I don't know why I love this so much. Probably because of a couple of things: 1) It's a tangible reminder, right where we sit so often as a family, of all of our family and friends, and 2) I really love getting Christmas cards. I love how the collection starts with one or two shortly after Thanksgiving, and grows and grows, and by the time it's today, the Saturday after our last day of school, and we're on vacation, the walls are covered with cards and it's like it's Christmas already.

It makes me happy. Every year.

And it's one of the oldest traditions in the books, I'd bet.

But every year it feels like a brand New Thing.

New Thing #351: Snow Parking Rules In Effect...In My Driveway

This New Thing has its roots way back in New Thing #40 back in February. And really, it reflects the fact that after 8-plus years as a homeowner, I'm kind of figuring things out.

I mean, I try…but I have no clue what I'm doing most of the time.

Every so often, though, I learn from something I did or did not do, and the next go-around I do better.

This is one of those times.

Every time it snows it's not the shoveling I mind so much as it is the digging out the cars.

We don't park in our garage - it's basically storage. That's another story for another day.

So, for eight years, when I dug out from a storm the cars would be parked side by side and I'd shovel a path between them and then shovel out the foot of the driveway.

Before the blizzard earlier this year, in the spirit of trying New Things, I wondered if it would be beneficial for me to park the cars one in front of the other. I'm not sure if it was, but I kind of liked it better, mainly because I only had to dig out one side of the cars.

I did the same thing on Sunday. It wasn't the largest snowfall we've had - it was only about 6 or 8 inches I think. But Sunday's snow presented other problems - the top layer was ice, and it was a heavy snow to shovel. The plow residue at the driveway's entrance was really difficult to move. But once I had the sides and fronts of the cars shoveled out, I moved the front car to the open side of the driveway, and I was able to get to work digging them out of the snow.

I'm not sure if this strategy saves me any time or if it's definitively better than the other way I used to shovel. But I like the idea of clearing out that whole side of the driveway, and how it looks when I reach the end of the driveway.

And on cold, wet mornings in the midst of some heavy-duty shoveling, feeling like it's a better way is just as good as having a better way.

New Thing #317: Chasing Daylight

Weekends in November are almost exclusively reserved for raking leaves. And, not quite redundantly, raking leaves is exclusively reserved for weekends in November.

It's rare that I take part in that activity at other times. (Until I killed the big tree out front. Since its leaves start falling in May now I get a jump on those leaves and I don't wait until November for them. But that's not what I'm talking about here.)

This year, though, due to a number of reasons, I'm needing to squeeze in the raking at other times.

Which is how I found myself racing home on Monday afternoon to take advantage of what little daylight was left so that I could do some outside work.

Here's the confluence of events: I'm down a November weekend of yard work because we have to go to New York this weekend, it seems like the leaf collection stops a weekend earlier this year (or it could be because Thanksgiving is so late and the next week is December my internal leaf calendar is off), and my wife's busy work weekends have all forced me to accelerate my leaf-picking-up and take advantage of gathering leaves when I can.

So on Monday I had the rare (these days) opportunity to leave (no pun intended - leaf! Ha!) work at 3:45 and try to get home before it got dark (roughly 5pm) and do some weekday afternoon leaf pickup.

It helped that it was Veterans' Day - I realized when I left work that traffic was not going to be an issue. (Vegetable pickup was a slight issue - I had to swing by the farm for our Monday veggie pickup, but that's directly on the way home so it was only a minor - if any - detour.)

The picture above gives you a good idea of the amount of daylight when I got home - not quite dusk yet.

I was able to run inside, get into some sweats (yes, I'm at that stage where I don't care if I'm picking up leaves on my lawn in sweat pants. Who do I have to impress?), and pack two of those big bags with leaves. (That's in addition to what you see above, bringing this week's total to six bags, in addition to the 10 from a week ago. If history is any indication, there's still 10-15 more bags worth of leaves to be gathered.)

It was a productive afternoon - I felt like I snuck in some extra time, which was the whole point.

And, you might not think this way, but here's how I think:

When I'm finishing up my leaf pick-up for the season the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd (although I'd love to have Thanksgiving weekend to finish up every year if you're listening, Town of Framingham), I'll remember this extra bag and a half that I snuck in on Monday and I'll thank myself. (Ha! Thanksgiving. Pun not intended.)

New Thing #307: Yard Work, Times Two

I'm not the biggest fan of yard work. Actually, once I'm immersed in it, it's not too bad.

The bigger problem is - I have no idea what I'm doing out there.

I can mow the lawn and I can do some weeding…but I'm mostly just faking it.

I'm doing what I think I'm supposed to be doing…and I'm probably not doing it well.

Which is probably why, for the first time ever, I ended up having to do some stuff over again this weekend.

It's November, and in my front and back yard that means it's time to pick up the zillions upon zillions of leaves that have accumulated.

In the front it's especially tedious - our driveway is like a wind tunnel that attracts all of the neighbors' leaves. (Though - bright spot! - due to what I believe is my negligence but could be due to a blight of some kind, the big tree in our front yard that used to produce even more leaves has pretty much died. So each year it loses its leaves in April or May, and by October/November it doesn't factor in to what I have to pick up.)

This summer, though, when I wasn't at school working, I took advantage of the girls being at camp to work in the yard. I did significant work back there that I had neglected for a couple of summers. So I had a bunch of bags sitting in my yard, under an overhang, filled with yard waste, waiting for the fall for when my town does leaf pickup. (Framingham sets certain weeks where, along with the trash pickup, they come to get our leaves and sometimes brush. These were all things I didn't have to worry about growing up in Queens and living in Boston before becoming a homeowner.)

Anyway, what you see in the picture above is  one of those bags filled with yard waste. As you can see, it's ripped. And what was in it is falling out of it. And that happened with all ten or fifteen bags I worked on this summer.

Apparently, the bags are very biodegradable. Unfortunately, that means the rain and other conditions since July have worn the bags away to almost nothing.

I discovered this circumstance when I lifted one of the bags to bring it from the back to the front for the garbage pickup. The bottom fell right out.

So not only did I spend Saturday picking up some of the leaves in the front, but I also had to buy some new bags to move the contents of each of the old bags into in order to get them to the front of the house.

There's only one thing worse than doing yard work once…and that's doing it twice.

Or, actually, just as bad is finally getting all of the leaves off the ground, and then watching the last leaves fall onto the pristine driveway.

It'll be a while before I'm facing that situation though.

I still have a lot of cleaning up to do.

New Thing #222: Not Being Scared Of A Baby Bunny

Listen. I'm a city boy. I'm not used to animals running around in the human world.

Growing up, we had a dog, so I'm fairly fine around dogs (though my default setting is I don't trust them around kids), but I don't like cats.

I think this is in no small part due to the fact that there were a lot of random roaming cats in my neighborhood when I was a kid. (OK, maybe there were like 2.)

They'd frighten me when I'd see them.

But I was lucky to not have to deal with mice or deer or raccoons.

Until I was an adult.

But this week, I manned up around that cute little baby bunny you see there.

All right. As has been my writing style recently, before we move forward we must move back.

1999, Boston University on-campus apartment, Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts. I'm sitting around on a Saturday morning and I see something move among the mass of wires behind the television. I was home alone and I darted out of that apartment so fast I didn't even finish putting my sneakers on until I was on the sidewalk. I went to some friends' dorm, spent most of the day out. That night we watched Saturday Night Live and I swear I saw a mouse dart into the bedroom. My roommate wasn't so sure. He decided it would be a good idea to lay out a Pringle in the kitchen, just on the floor, to prove whether or not we had a rodent. (I hate that word.) Woke up, the Pringle was gone. Worst sleep I've ever had, those couple of nights. We trapped it by Monday or Tuesday.

When I lived in Watertown, probably in 2003 when I was working overnights, I was leaving for work at around midnight and saw a raccoon the size of a dog dart across the street. Working overnights was pretty terrible. Never more terrible than the next few nights when I had to go from my apartment to my car.

Every night before I go to bed I say a little thank you prayer that I have not had a rodent problem where I have lived since college. (But I don't pray to Saint Francis of Assissi. That dude just wouldn't understand.)

Every so often something gets close to the house - once a possum walked across the porch. You'll remember there was this back in June. And, quite often, there are bunnies.

I've been spending a lot of time cleaning up the backyard this summer, trying to make up for a couple of summers of too much neglect. This week when I was back there, for the first time this summer really, I saw a couple of critters. First was a chipmunk. This'll happen every now and then, but it ran away from the house, so we were cool.

Then I saw something dart across the yard and hide beneath some brush. I didn't really recognize it but I thought it was a bunny. It just didn't seem that big. I heard it rustling and rustling. It was close. But I didn't run away. So I know that was good progress for me.

Then, I saw it kind of hanging out on a brick ledge. Not only was it a bunny - it was a baby bunny!

I went up close and snapped a picture. Then it scratched its ear with its little hind leg (which, even on a baby rabbit is quite big) and I thought I should take a video. I thought then it would make the perfect Vine! (I'm waiting for the right moment for my first Vine New Thing. I thought this was it.) I recorded it pretty much doing nothing for the 6 seconds.

Somehow I deleted that video. Very frustrating. But let's focus on the positive - I was real up close to something that wasn't a person or a dog for, essentially, the first time in my life. It was kind of thrilling. I almost wanted to touch the baby bunny. But I didn't. I'm not a crazy man over here.

So, turns out, I like baby bunnies.

Or, at least, I don't hate them.

Or, better yet if we're being honest with ourselves, I'm not scared of them.

OK. I'm less scared of them than other things.

And I'm already recognizing the big problem. If I have a baby bunny in my backyard...well, chances are it's not the only one.

You know what they say about bunnies and proliferation.

If I come across a bunch of baby bunnies at once...well, that might be a whole other ballgame.

Hope no one takes a Vine of me if that happens.

New Thing #193: Re-Organizing The Pantry

I wish I had taken a "Before" picture so you could see just how impressive this effort really is. But I only thought to take a picture once I had cleared out the pantry.

Suffice it to say - those shelves were filled with 8 years worth of clutter.

And then we'd add groceries every week.

I've been slowly and steadily doing a re-organization of all of our kitchen cabinet space, and this was a big one.

I'm proud of the work I did...and you'd better believe I remembered to take an "After" picture.

Ta-Da!

To be honest, I'm still working on the finishing touches of the pantry.

There's more room for me to move around some stuff from some other cabinets - especially on the floor there. (For example, after the "After" picture I moved the breadmaker to the bottom right part of the floor.)

But this is a world of difference from what we were dealing with before.

I'm particularly proud of the baskets and organizers we bought from the Container Store. (I'm hopeful that if you click the picture it'll enlarge and you can better see the details.)

Let's start with the baskets - on the right side of the third shelf from the top you'll see a two-tiered basket. That will now house the loose snacks that the girls pack for lunch rather than the big box of the snacks that takes up way too much space. I forget what my original vision was for that bottom shelf, but my wife and I decided to put the girls' applesauce snack down there. Again, this eliminates a box that takes up too much space.

Under the next two shelves you'll see hanging organizers - those are for kitchen towels and placemats, respectively. I never thought these things would work, but they are awesome. They hang off the shelves perfectly, they don't take up too much space, and we had no good spot for our placemats. It's so organized now! By far the best part of this whole re-organization. (We also bought a basket that hangs under the shelf - that's in a different cabinet and now houses my wife's Keurig cups.)

After we organized the pantry we were able to create some room in other cabinets and then discovered a whole bunch of baby bottles that we no longer need and could throw away.

We're doing a lot of re-organizing and I'm not going to bore you with every little thing. But the pantry is a big key to the rest of our kitchen re-organization.

And it was so successful that I had to share it with you.

New Thing #165: What Is In My Backyard?

There I stood at my kitchen window Tuesday morning, preparing some food for my daughter, when I spotted something moving outside my window. I saw some brown, figured it was a cat, but something about the way it moved made me look twice.

It wasn't a cat.

But what was it?

I'm still not sure.

I'm going with groundhog. But I'm not 100% sure.

This is like nothing I've ever experienced. I've had an opossum walk across that porch - that was a one-time deal. Never saw a possum again in that area. As I've mentioned, there are cats. Sometimes a neighborhood dog gets back there. And things like rabbits and squirrels - once even a red squirrel. They're quick darters. Chipmunks. And I'm sure there have been raccoons back there, but I like to pretend not. I've only ever seen a raccoon out my front door and window...and I hope it stays that way.

This animal, though? It didn't quite freak me out as much as it would usually. Especially considering it was broad daylight.

I had the presence of mind to snap the pictures you see above and at right. I observed it for a few minutes. It did the standing up thing you see it doing here and kind of sniffed the air. I was struck by what good posture it had.

The worst thing that happened was, since I was preparing food for my daughter, I went to give her the food. When I came back to the window, the animal was gone.

That's when I got scared.

It could be anywhere.

Then we left town for a few days. Who knows what the backyard will look like when we come back.

Maybe he'll move in with his entire family.

That's the real shame of it here. This is the time of year I like to spend time relaxing in the backyard. I'll read the paper or just sit out on the porch sipping a drink waiting while I barbecue. Now I don't know if I can do that with my mind at ease.

Or at all. I might never go back there again.

I can only think of one reasonable solution.

It may be time for us to move.

New Thing #151: Conjoined Lightning Bugs

Maybe this is something you see everyday. I sure don't.

It's bug season.

The ants are out and around the house.

I can't walk two feet without going through a spider web.

And the other evening, I saw some lightning bugs crawling around the outside of the house.

But I never saw a lightning bug like this one.

These ones?

Look - it's a conjoined lightning bug.

I saw it on my door when I came home from work. (Sorry for the blurriness in the picture - the camera kept focusing on the wall you see through the glass beyond the bug[s]. As though the wall is worth focusing on more than a freak bug!)

Later in the night, and the next night (yes, I looked for it), the bug(s?) was (were?) gone.

Which I'm a little disappointed by, because as you can see, those lightning bugs are conjoined at the lightning end. And I can't really think of a better science experience than taking a look at these bad boys at night. Do they both light up and form some kind of super lightning bug? Does the conjoinedness make it so that neither has their nether lightning-regions?

The world may never know.

At least I got a picture.

New Thing #137: Refinancing Our Mortgage

I don't even know really if this is OK to write about. We're refinancing our mortgage.

And by "we" I mean "my wife" is refinancing our mortgage.

I'm just going along with it and signing the papers.

That's not 100% true - I am trying to follow along with all of the information.

It's just...finances. It's a hard thing for me to wrap my head around.

But you know what I like less?

When the lawyer comes to our house for some signatures.

That was Thursday's deal.

So it involves tidying up, making sure the girls are set for bed...and pretending like I'd rather be signing papers than watching the Rangers playoff game.

The last time we had someone come to the house for a situation like this I had to give blood and pee in a cup. I asked my wife if we needed to do that. Apparently that was not for any refinancing. That was life insurance.

But still I'm suspicious the whole time - why do they need to come to the house? Are they going to be looking at the house to assess its value? (Good thing I mowed the lawn last week! Does it matter that we have a tree slowly dying outside our front door?) Are they suspicious of us like I am of them? Why would they even be suspicious of us? Why would I even be suspicious of them?

Everything went fine - it took just a half-hour. It was essentially like doing a closing. I signed lots of papers, and I was able to get back to watching hockey. (For those wondering, my wife watched 'American Idol' live, and 'The Office' series finale would wait until Friday on the DVR.)

What did I learn? My wife is a slow and soft signatory (does that word apply to a single person? or just, like, large entities like countries?) while I really lean into my signatures. And I get awful at writing my 'J's after a while.

All in all, it turned out the lawyer was just here to collect signatures (no bodily fluids), and we were just trying to take advantage of current rates and cut ourselves a deal.

Is that right? Current rates? Did we get a deal?

I need to go ask my wife.