I'm still getting used to working from home. It's been in the 80's this week and my office gets sun all day, so it gets pretty warm in there. Opening the windows doesn't do too much unless I open the door, too, so the air circulates. However, the kids also assume that if the door is open, they can come in and "work" with me.
This week I was on a phone call with a coworker in Virginia and Travis came in and climbed up in my lap. He was quiet, only occasionally calling out people he recognized in photos that were popping up in our screensaver (ere dada! 'ere mama! or just gasping and pointing at them), or asking who people were (wha dis?)
He wasn't too loud and my coworker also works at home with her 2 kids, so she's pretty understanding. After a couple minutes, Travis stopped talking and just watched. Then I realized, he was asleep!
No one has ever crawled in my lap at work and taken a nap!
Something else I've been meaning to post for some time is some of the funnier expressions we've heard from Sophie:
Cinders and ashes! (seriously, she said this when she was surprised)
Bust my buffers! (can you tell someone has been watching Thomas the Train)
and the other night, she got out of bed and sat at the top of the stairs insisting "I can't find my bed." Add that to the list of excuses for why she won't go to sleep.
I wrote previously about the project I've undertaken with our dining room. It's turning into one of those projects that is taking so long I'm losing momentum. Right now I'm waiting to decide the paint color we (i.e. Lisa) want to put on the top half of the wall. I haven't painted the bottom yet because gravity being what it is, I feel like I'd end up having to repaint the bottom anyway after I got done with the top.
In an attempt to kick start it again, we went to the man mall this weekend to pick up the paint. Lisa was looking through the paint samples while I tried to distract the kids. After 10 minutes it appeared that Lisa was trying to see how many paint samples she could hold at once. Somewhere in the subconscious recesses of my mind I realized I wasn't going to be painting this weekend.
While Lisa busied herself finding ever more nuanced shades of brown, I took the kids to pick out the material I needed for another project that's been on the back of my mind for a couple weeks. I showed up to the checkout with 2 2x4 sheets of 1/4 inch plywood, adding $15 to the bill. We paid for it with the remaining balance on the gift card I got for my birthday.
When we got home, Lisa got started paining the walls with the color samples we bought and I pulled out my table saw!
The project
Our cookie sheets, cooling racks, cutting boards and beloved baking stone have been sitting in a heap in one of our cabinets for a year. I wanted to make some compartments to better organize and store them all. I don't have a true before picture, but here's the cleaned out cabinet.
I cut grooves on a piece of 1/4" plywood to put on the bottom (really, this is just an excuse to put a picture of the tablesaw up here to prove that while it was totally a spontaneous purchase - I do use it). The one mishap was that I accidentally cut a groove only 1" away from another one - so I filled it in with wood putty. In the end I had enough wood for 5 dividers and the bottom piece so they were spaced 2.5" apart with 1/4" grooves.
I cut a similar sized piece out of 1/2" plywood for the top and cut deeper grooves. I attached some pegs and stuck them through some predrilled holes in the back of the cabinet (you can see similar ones in the bottom left of the photo below). This kept it from getting pushed up or wiggling. In the front I attached some shims to the side of the cabinet track to keep it from pushing up (you can barely see them in the photo below - it's the white vertical line).
Just for fun, here's a posed shot of me showing off my handwork. It's been a long time since I've been able to start and finish a project in the same day. I think I got my groove back - perhaps we'll have the dining room painted next week after all!
I've never been so excited to put away the cookie sheets! With all that space at the top, now I'm thinking we need bigger cookie sheets!
Not too shabby, 1 day, $15 (that really wasn't even out of my pocket), and something to show for it! Now if I can get my brother or brother-in-law down here, I can tackle the built in bookshelf project! You know who you are - come help me play with my tools!
