It’s Dump-o’Clock Somewhere
I am continually surprised that one of the things about buying a house is that you have to take care of it. Taking care of the house, and the people who live in it takes up a lot of my time. For example, right now I am going to stop writing to empty the dishwasher and fold some laundry. Then, I have a few other house-related updates for you, some random musings, child updates, and dumps. That's the agenda. Take it or leave it.
Fall is here and I listening to fall-inspired musical stylings. I am drinking the bottom of the pot and contemplating more coffee.
Hope your Tuesday is off to a banging start.
House story Number 1
Picture this. A few weeks ago, I was walking around in my basement, and I opened the Larry Bird closet (so named for the large Larry Bird poster) on the door. Sometime in the spring, I moved an old dresser into the closet and had taken to storing basement stuff in there: user manuals, light bulbs, electrical cords, etc.
Black mold looks more dramatic in black and white
The dresser was covered in white mold. The room, which I thought may function as a practical wine cellar, was too damp and lacked the airflow necessary not to be a bastion for the stuff. So in my exploration of the dresser, I started wondering about the other storage spaces in the basement.
Leen and I found the basement bedroom and laundry closets to be clean and mold-free. Unfortunately, when Leen checked in the only closet we don't have a simple name for, I heard a lot of "No! Oh No! Oh Wow. No!" You see, she decided it was a good spot for her wedding dress. Out of the way; not taking up valuable space in our upstairs closet.
That's when we discovered the black mold.
It had eaten through her dress and devoured a good corner of the closet. It somehow left my records untouched.
We ripped the carpet and layer of floor insulation up and found more mold. It was gnarly. 0/10. Would not recommend.
Luckily we have a handyman on speed dial. He came out and used bleach, baking soda, knives, and a lot of sweat to stop the spread and rid us of our mold issue. In addition, he lay down some new laminate flooring in the closet. We're hopeful that we're in the clear since he also addressed the drainpipe issue that caused the moisture.
We contemplated moving and or burning the house down. The handyman was probably the best option of the three, and we're happy to have a new closet floor that hopefully remains mold-free.
House story 2:
A few weeks ago, Leen saw a mouse. Or she thought she saw a mouse. She also thought I had spoken to her at length the night before when I hadn't. So was it a mouse, or was she losing her mind? It was hard to say, and since I didn't see the mouse, there wasn't second-source confirmation. So we let it go. Then, a few days later, she saw the same mouse in the same place. So, armed with plastic strips and peanut butter, I lay traps in the kitchen, hoping to lure this guy to his demise.
Leen contemplates the couch-in-the box dilemma.
Many people suggested cats. Instead, we took the opportunity to have an exterminator come out and explore the property for infiltration points. He didn't find any (not ideal), but he lay some feeding stations and will come back in a few weeks to see if he could identify where they are hanging out. My guess is the mouse arrived one night when we left a door open or something. Still, we are practicing the "better safe than sorry" style of homeownership.
Along those same lines, I recently sold our 8-foot living room couch on Craigslist for more than I bought it. Some people questioned the ethics, to which I say: ethics, shmethics — it's a couch on craigslist. We want to re-style the living room, and when you have an 8' couch in an 11' room, how do you say: limiting. So we've downsized, though wait on its arrival (thanks Obama) for a new couch. This delay has prompted a flurry of styling choices, like removing shelves and selling other unneeded items via Facebook Marketplace.
One of the things the former owners left was a plethora of old paint options in addition to poorly finished drain pipes. I cataloged and recycled all of them when we moved in if we needed to do some touch-ups. Well, today was the day. And wouldn't you know it, the first one I tried to touch up was the wrong color. They seemingly painted our house like 15 different shades of tan, and finding the proper tan for the right space is proving more difficult than I would've like to imagine. I'm now considering just going with a bold color like Aegean Teal for the whole house. I certainly do not ever need to read a story titled: Ten Whites We Can't Live Without.
If you are moving soon — you know who you are — do your future owners and leave them with the paint guide to your house. And while you're at it, the same for any weird landscaping tricks. For example, I've got a Smokebush on the side of my house about 15' now, and I want to know what I need to do with it. Trim it down to the stump as the internet suggests? Unfortunately, these are the sorts of details that didn't get passed on when we closed.
Eliot enjoys our decorative gourds
Life update 1. Eliot
Eliot no-showed picture day at daycare this week. It's okay; he was reluctant to sit on a chair and smile for a stranger with a camera. So that's good. On the other hand, he was content to sit in the stranger's lap. So two steps forward, one step back. We have a lot of cute photos of Eliot, so I am not that worried about him missing this one.
There was a period this summer where he wasn't hitting us with many words yet, and we were… slightly worried. I don't know if you've heard, but social media can be toxic. Anyway, we saw a speech therapist just to see what was up, but eventually, words started popping out. He hit me with a cock-a-doodle-do this morning, and wow, was it adorable. His favorite color is probably PAAANK or Puwpull. He really enjoys eating pankies and cheweoos for breakfast. He likes to find trucks and dirt and mixers on walks or drives.
We're still battling daycare germs, and he seems to get a fever just about every week, but we're pros of dealing with it now. And he really likes taking Motrin (Yum!) but hates taking amoxicillin (Yucky!).
He turns two on the 14th. Last year, I used the dump space as a place to publish the letter I wrote to him for his birthday. This year, I will just send that directly to his email address.
I ordered a cake for his celebration. Don't tell him, but he's getting a pink pair of fur-lined crocs because of a delivery error that we hope he likes as much as he likes his lime green ones. We're getting other things too (something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read), but the pink crocs are what I suspect he will like the most.
His first swing was a success
Life update 2: Roman
Roman is out of the "fourth trimester." This means fewer, but ideally longer naps, more smiling, more engagement, more awareness, and just basically: more everything. He's left that "I'm a tiny egg" stage and is now in the: "Woah, what's that?" phase. He's just about ready to roll over, so we're on alert for that. One day they're rolling, the next their crawling, and pretty soon, they're flying their drone to capture photos of people sunbathing naked on a beach in Ibiza.
The big news for him is that he is in the midst of what I think is the Four-Month Sleep Regression. Basically he sleeps like garbage and keeps us up for longer than he has in months. It’s a bummer but it’ll pass. He’s good company, even at 1 am.
If you want more Roman or Eliot updates, I am always happy to share, but I just read Ryan Gosling's position on child consent, and he suggests waiting to share too much until your child can decide one way or the other. Rolling over does not beget offering consent to photos being posted on blogs, so while we wait...
I took a few hours out of a day recently to listen to an episode of "All Fantasy Everything," a podcast where the hosts draft random things and explain why they picked it. The episode I listened to was Dad-things. It featured picks like stroller walks, taking too long in the bathroom, liking wars (specifically Civil and WW2), and low expectations by society.
The fathers pointed out the double standard set for them. If they manage to take two kids anywhere, someone will say something like THANKS FOR STEPPING UP, or Oh wow, you're such a good father.
On the other hand, moms get no such respect. And they typically have to do the meal planning. I know that in my house, this is true. Leen and I have discussed this. I am confident that in an era before I met her, I used to cook, though what, it's hard to say. Every so often, I do, but I usually take longer and make a bigger mess, so, most of the time, meal planning and prep fall on Leen's already extensive task list. She is a hero, and I suspect whoever does the meal prep and planning in your life is as well.
This is a story; it's short, it'll make you chuckle about meal planning.
As an aside, we recently started using Hello Fresh to aid in the meal planning, but shit, even that shit takes time to make. And the times that HF suggests or states are way off. Have you ever tried to caramelize onions in under 15 minutes? (Full disclosure: I haven't. I thought caramelizing onions meant pouring caramel on them.)
Dump 2: Drone photos
In the earliest days of the Dumps, before people were taking good pictures with their phones, we had to look for good images on the internet. I used a site, no longer with us and posted photos of photos often. I know everyone pivoted to video years ago. Still, sometimes it's nice to look at a picture everyone so often and just marvel at something you don't get to see every day.
Here are some select photos from this year's Drone Photography Awards 2021. Check out the award winner (birds) but don't sleep on the surfing, lava, sheep, or turtle. I believe that this is the type of content on Twitter that would be called a timeline cleanser.
Dump 3: Playstation 5: the most important journalist in the world
I used to be a gamer. Not a gamer in the way that people get those gamer chairs and headsets but in the way that I used to spend 100+ hours running, riding, and sailing around Ancient Greece as an Assassin tracking down masked figures who controlled a shadowy underworld and the mysteries that came with it. These were the halcyon days of Doha when I could run my FIFA dynasties years into the future.
Now I am lucky to find 15 minutes to read a chapter for the book I am supposed to read later this week when book club convenes. Parenthood is an absolute priority shifter and, to be honest, time sucker. I say that lovingly! I love my kids! But last year, my brother gave me his old PS4 in hopes that I could help him and his band of cowboys in the digital world of Red Dead Redemption 2. I haven't even taken it out of the bag he brought it in.
Future Gamer + Podcast host
If you are someone who still has free time, maybe you are also searching for a PS5. If so, you possibly need to be following this guy. Buzzfeed sat down with the PS5-locator, or as they called him: the most influential journalist in the world. Basically, he is the go-to-guy for knowing where you can find a PS5. Sometimes it’s a drop at a Best Buy or it’s an Amazon restock. One thing is clear, not even influence can get you a PS5 these days, as Ronan Farrow is still searching for his, despite being Ronan Farrow.
Dump 3: Podcasts making news
I've covered my transition away from music in favor of podcasts time and time again in these, so it's nice to see that a simple google search of "podcast news" turns up ample fodder for content. If you, like me, listened to 2018's Caliphate, you may have seen that the whole thing was fake. The man who pretended to be a reformed ISIS fighter recently admitted to prosecutors that he made the entire thing up. The fallout from the fraud led NYT journalist and host Rukmini Callimachi to be moved from foreign correspondent to higher ed reporter. Guess you're less likely to get duped in college stories than you are in foreign ones.
What pods are you listening to these days? I haven’t found anything terribly gripping lately, so just listening to lots of NBA-season previews at the moment and getting ready for the season.
Dump 4: Kieran Culkin
From time to time, and probably more in the next few weeks, someone asks me if we named Roman Reed Hasler after Roman Roy, the youngest, most inappropriate child in the HBO show Succession. We didn't. As we were running through names, and Roman came up, I remember thinking: Oh, like the guy in Succession. But we used that data point the same way we did with Roman Reigns, or Roman Mars. More of an "Okay, so those are three people called Roman" rather than a "Hey, let's name our unborn child after him." Leen and I are just about to complete a rewatch of Season 2 in preparation for next week's premiere of season 3, and I'd forgotten how genuinely wild Roman is as a character. Looking forward to seeing what sort of hi-jinx and drama ensues!
It was nice to read a profile of Kieran Culkin because he seems, as silly as this is to type, relatable. The profile has some great details about Succession, parenting, and growing up with a famous brother and an absentee/abusive father. Kieran seems like a good hang, which I think is about the highest form of compliment you can give someone in 2021.
That’s all I have for you this week. Keep in touch, or get in touch.
Sam
