Farewell first house

Many may know that since May of 2012 my wife and I have been trying to sell our previous home. With us moving closer to family we vacated the old home and put it on the market with high hopes. We had completely redone the wiring and had redone the cabinets, counters, and floor in the kitchen. We tore out old carpet and put in blinds which required a hammer-drill and masonry bits. We put money, time, and love into the house while we lived in it and were hoping that our work would pay of at sale time. But as my grandmother pointed out, "Any improvements you do are for your own benefit." The house sate on the market for over a year and a half. Finally selling a few days after Christmas. Ironically, it sold almost exactly two weeks and four years after we bought it. We did get some money from it, but nothing like what we initially thought we might. Yes we were disappointed but we were also very excited that we would no longer have two mortgages to pay each month. While we did have renters in it for about a year, the last seven months or so it's been empty and soaking up money. But we are free at last and can now use that money for much more worthwhile things.

While I am very happy to have that particular debt cut from our collection of them, I do have fond memories of that house. It was built in 1956 during a period of growth and is the same basic floor plan as almost every other house on the street. We bought it from the daughter of the original owners who had passed away only a handful of years before we moved in. Built of cinder block exterior it sat on a narrow lot that had an alley running along the back property line. The alley was useful for getting stuff in and out of the back yard. It was a little smaller than we originally wanted, but it had enough good stuff going for it that we were excited to move in. One of the biggest things that we liked was that it was in the same church boundaries as our apartment so we were able to continue to attend the same ward as before. The price was also something that was worth while. We knew that we would have to fix it up but with my in-laws help we knew that we could do it. We even liked the challenge that it presented.

It wasn't long before we were tearing into the electrical and replacing two pronged plugs with three pronged ones and pulling wire through every inch of the floor and walls. We added outlets, we fixed light fixtures, we increased the original 8 circuit breakers to 16 and then 20. We removed an old sliding door and framed in the wall, furring the entire surface out almost a full inch to accommodate wiring and a window sill we couldn't remove. We tore out three levels of flooring (while Tigger took a nap down the hall) and replaced it with laminate. We painted the night we signed the closing papers. We did a lot of things that I have never done before. I learned a lot about home repair. My tool box didn't just come into being, but actually began to grow with things I used often. I got to purchase the biggest, baddest drill ever! I have a collection of spare screws and nails. I wish I have taken some more pictures before we started, but here is a collection of before and after.

And after.

 

It was a good house. I hope the next owner appreciates what we did to it. I know that I will always appreciate what it did for us.

Remembering the sting

Today I posted the follow on Facebook:

I had just finished some sprinkler work this afternoon and was putting things away when I was attacked by a swarm of wasps. Luckily I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, but two made it through, stinging me, one on each arm. I yelled for my daughter to get in the house and stormed into the garage. There I found several more walking in circles because their stingers were stuck in my shirt. I beat them to their respective pulps with my leather hat and a roll of packing tape then scraped by arms with a tape measure to clear the two stingers. I went inside to check on my daughter and took her into the bathroom to show her what stings look like. There another wasp (from my leg?) made an appearance. I shooed by daughter out and shut the door. We battled to his death and I flushed his broken body down the toilet. Twenty minutes later I was downstairs and pulled something out of my pocket and another wasp came with it. Again, we battled around the room. At last I pinned him between a towel and a pillow and I punched him to death against the wall. His body too was flushed down the toilet. When my son wakes up from his nap I am going to get a wasp trap and spray. This cowardly attack against my family will not go unpunished! I've felt the sting of wasps before and do not fear it! Cower before me, you who wear the colors of yellow and black for your day has come!!

I'm not normally this adamant against wasps. In fact I'm normally quite calm and collected. This in no way means that I like them or even tolerate them much, but rather that if they don't bother me, I don't bother them. In fact, the nest that houses this particular swam is built into my shed and I've not done anything about it because it wasn't a problem - until now that is.

I've always been under the belief that if you act calm and cool around bees and wasps that they will leave you alone. This has been my experience before. While serving a religious service mission in Russia my partner and I were helping straighten metal fence posts when we disturbed a hive of wasps. Munoz, my partner, took off running before I even realized that I was surrounded by wasps. He screamed at me, "ASA!" when I didn't understand he switched to English. "BEEEEEEZZZZZZZS!!!!!" I still chuckle about his reaction as I looked up, said, "Oh" and calming walked towards him away from the nest in the post. Granted, that is not always the case. I found out that bumble bees with quite literally bite you when I was weeding a flowerbed and happened to be next to the bumbler's hole. I ignored him for a bit figuring that he was brushing against my ear but that changed when I felt a very distinct chomp. The wound actually bled and was there for two weeks. Not fun.

I like to think that my reaction to bees and wasps is due to desensitization because of a particular, rather traumatic episode when I was about seven or eight. Muscles, one of her friends, and I had just returned from swimming somewhere when we noticed that our neighbor's horses were up by our back fence. We grabbed a bag of carrots from the fridge and ran out to feed them. I was still wearing my eighties bathing suit (short shorts) and I think I still had my towel. We fed the horses for a bit and then I remember screaming and running for the house. My mother was standing there in the open doorway and she just let me barrel on through the dining room into the living room where I smashed into the couch and saw what was attacking me. A wasp fell out of my hair and landed on the couch right in front of my face. I remember screaming even loader (a feat that I'm sure surprised my mother). She mushed it with a dish towel and I felt her swatting the towel all over my body as I crouched there and sobbed. I remember saying a prayer and then I remember paramedics checking me over. I was fine. My sister and her friend looked to be in worse shape and they had only been stung a half dozen times compared to my full body acupuncture session. We figure that I had stepped on a hive that the wasps had built in the irrigation ditch behind our house.

Since then, I've mentally told myself, "I've been stung a whole lot. There isn't much fear for me now." With that said, when I saw the wasps stuck to my clothes I was quite irate and there was some shock akin to that time the wasp fell out of my hair onto the couch. But otherwise when I was stung today I wasn't afraid of the stings, I was really made. Livid might be a good word as well. Indignant may be the best one yet. I had kept my side of the bargain  I didn't disturb them and they attacked me! It wasn't until after I got in the house that I remember about that particular nest and then remembered that in my cleaning up from sprinkler work I did in fact send some major vibrations through the floor of the shed. So, it turns out I did disturb them. However, when you have small children who like to play in the back yard it is better that you get stung twice and get the drive to remove the nest than your kids suffer for your hands off approach. The traps been hung and I've got two new cans of wasp killer. Nobody messes with my family. The trick will be getting to the nest and doing so when they least expect it.....

So Excited!

You know the saying, "Simple minds, simple pleasures." That's a pretty good description of me most of the time. Those who know me understand that the reasons I get excited are not always the most exciting to others. You have been warned!

Last night we were enjoying the beautiful, post-rainstorm weather and I was playing Traffic Jam while sitting in the shade of our fruit trees. As I was sitting there it occurred to me and Angel that we had no idea when we should pick the fruit. She checked the USU extension site and started describing what the fruit should look like. I was thinking, "Hey! Our peaches kind of look like that. Hey! Our apple are about that color. Hey! The pears are kind of how they described them." So, we started poking and prodding (or rather pulling and gently squeezing) and ended up with a decent collection of peaches and apples. The pears were not quite ready to leave the tree, but they will be soon.

 We brought them in and made a fruit salad for dinner. I was also able to prepare the remaining peaches for freezing/lunches. We need to research additional ways of preserving fruit as we have limited experience and time to do it. Freezing is easy and we love putting the frozen fruit in smoothies for breakfast or milkshakes. I often silently thank Darpa and Muscles for their wedding gift of a nice blender whenever I make a breakfast smoothie. Darpa is quite the master of "blender" drinks and so felt that every couple should have a good blender. I'm looking forward to putting them in my drinks. We'll have to look into it a bit more, but I think we will need to thin the peaches early in the season. The largest we found on our tree is smaller than my fist (which is a decent size) but most are about the same size as a large apricot.

That is easy for the peaches, but the pears and apples don't freeze well. My father often makes (or helps my mother make) Pear Honey, a mixture of pears, pineapples, and sugar that you cook down and bottle. It's great on toast and other breads, and I imagine that it wouldn't be a bad marinade or dessert filling/topper. That is what I would like to do with our pears.

We happen to have three apple trees and they appear to be different varieties. We believe that one is a gala apple, but don't know what the other two are (one looks like a green delicious). Angel wants to do fruit leather and I would love to do apple butter or apple juice concentrate. We'll have to borrow equipment either way, so we'll see how many apples we get and what we can do.

We are very excited about having fresh fruit and have been hoping to get fruit trees in the past. Moving into a house with fruit trees was an added bonus. This weekend is Peach Days in Brigham City and it's kind of cool that we have a peach tree as well. So excited!