So, let’s check in on the dollhouse, shall we? Despite the fact that they came about *thisclose* to being saturated in pee, the dollhouse furniture that I so craftily, uh, crafted, remained safe and dry for Lily’s birthday. But, because I’m obsessed nothing if not thorough, I thought the house could use a few extra little touches.

What dollhouse would be complete without some poorly stitched teeny little curtains? Aw!

(Lucky told me that I was bordering on insane with this little addition. He’s checking me into the nuthouse if I add the baseboards I think would look so cute…)

Fully furnished! Because, again, I’m obsessed thorough.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the rooms. (Hey, I didn’t promise riveting content. Just content.)

Here’s the kitchen:

Hey, look! My Lily’s dollhouse family is so tidy. Looks like they’ve cleaned up the kitchen for the evening. All of the dishes are stacked neatly in the hutch and the chairs are tucked in to the table.

And the bathroom:

Yep. There’s the scale, front and centre. Why does Dollhouse Mom always have to torture herself with that thing? Weighing herself first thing in the morning and then again right before bed. Honestly, Dollhouse Mom, what do you think is going to change in that time? Quit torturing yourself already. People are going to start thinking that you have obsessive-compulsive issues or something… What?

And what have we here? Itty bitty toilet paper on the roll. Lucky actually, physically rolled his eyes at me over this one but honestly, what happens if someone needs to use the toilet? Dollhouse Family is prepared, man.

Let’s just overlook the fact that the toilet lid doesn’t actually open, okay?

The bedroom:

The Dollhouse Parents don’t exactly have a room of their own. They’re selfless that way and let Dollhouse Daughter have the only bed. She’s under the lopsided luxurious homemade covers right now.

Hmm. This is a familiar sight. Lily… I mean Dollhouse Daughter… is wide awake when she should be sleeping. Just go to sleep already, Lily Dollhouse Daughter! Sheesh.

Which brings us to the living room:

Wait a minute… What’s going on in here? (Aside from the freakishly large magazine on the coffee table.) Let’s have a closer look.

Oh. Never mind. That looks about right. All he needs is a bowl of popcorn and the remote control and you’ve got a scene straight out of my living room.

And, yep. That spacey, glassy look is about right too. Take off your shoes, Dollhouse Mom! Get comfy. Just don’t start to drool. It’ll leave a mark on the couch fabric. Not that I would know anything about that at all. *cough*

And finally, the attic. Uh, nursery:

Looks like Dollhouse Baby is fixin’ to grow up a little gender confused here. Methinks Dollhouse Parents were hoping for a boy this time. Oops!

I think things are shaping up pretty well in this little house. Over time, I’m sure we’ll add some more little knicknacks, but for now? Well, I’m going to back away slowly and pick up a more adult obsession. But not that adult. Perverts.

Filed under: Keepin' it Real, Me, Offspring, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

So, I just got back from a wonderful, relaxing two week vacation to, uh, Uruguay. That’s why I haven’t updated in so long.

No?

Well, then, I was just, uh, rescued from the, uh, mine shaft that I slipped and fell down two weeks ago. It was dark and scary, but I made it out okay and that’s why I haven’t updated in so long.

Not buying it?

Lucky and I decided to take a back-to-nature approach to living and shut off the electricity for two weeks. We figured that if the Amish can do it, so can we. So you can see why I haven’t updated in so long.

Wow, tough crowd.

Okay, fine. Here’s the thing. Whenever I go too long without updating, I end up with multiple stories in my head and instead of just writing them down one at a time, I can’t decide which is most important, or whether or not I should smush them all together into one giant post, and then I procrastinate and read other people’s blogs or watch TV or goof off on Facebook and then, before I know it, it’s bedtime again and I’m too tired to write anything but I swear I’ll do it tomorrow and then I end up repeating the whole cycle all over again the next day. It’s like when you go too long without folding the laundry and it just keeps piling up on the living room floor and slowly morphs into a giant mountain of clothes that you’re too afraid to actually dig your hands into just in case a family of rabbits has decided to nest in there so you poke it tentatively with a stick to see if it’s moving but instead of just biting the bullet and folding everything, you just click “save draft” and all of a sudden you have, like, ten partially-written posts but after you look them over for the second or third time, you’re wondering what you were even thinking when you started to write them because CLEARLY they’re not blog quality posts so then you get totally overwhelmed by your own mediocrity and end up watching the last ten minutes of Life With Derek before giving up and going to bed.

Wow, hold on. I need to catch my breath. I’m just going to put my head between my legs for a second.

Okay, I’m back.

So, in the time I’ve been gone, my daughter has turned five, my mother has turned, uh, older than five, and I’ve become somewhat obsessed with my daughter’s dollhouse (pictures to follow once I actually upload them onto the computer.)

Oh, and I had the most superfunawesome Saturday night EVER. And, instead of getting all neurotic about whether or not I should separate that out into its own post, I’m just going to go ahead and tell the riveting tale right here, RIGHT NOW.

So, without further ado:

How I Spent My Saturday Night
by Lynn

I spent the week or so preceding Lily’s birthday putting together and painting dollhouse furniture. It wasn’t something that could be completed in one shot, so I stashed my work-in-progress in the unfinished-except-for-the-shower bathroom in the basement each night. Up until Saturday, each evening was the same: open bathroom door, grab supplies, turn on TV to something too horrifying to actually watch and listen to at the same time *cough* Love Court *cough* as background noise, get to work. I went downstairs on Saturday night expecting more of the same, but Saturday night had other things in store for me.

Saturday night, as it turns out, isn’t quite as gracious as the other nights of the week. Saturday night is actually kind of a trifling hobag. Stupid Saturday night.

As I opened the bathroom door to retrieve the furniture kits (on the aforementioned hobaggy Saturday night), I was greeted by an unexpected and completely revolting aroma. I scanned the bathroom looking for the cause of the stench and saw that the base of the shower was filled to the brim with brownish-yellow water. Oh, shit. Literally.

I raced up the stairs to inform Lucky of the situation and, since we had been using the shower as a storage-space of sorts, started to double-bag some garbage bags together. Lucky called his dad for some advice on what to do when one’s shower is filled with backed-up sewage as I hopped from one foot to the other, thinking, “Duh, we need to call a plumber.”

“We need to call a plumber,” I stage-whispered to Lucky as his phone conversation droned on and on. (When one’s shower is filled to the brim with detritus, one should really focus on fixing the problem and not on chatting it up on the phone.)

“Clean that out,” Lucky snapped at me, phone in hand.

Wanting the stinky nightmare to be over as quickly as possible and also knowing that it was the stress of the situation talking and not Lucky, I let the comment slide, rolled up my pant legs, donned some plastic gloves and tied Safeway bags over my feet. Then, full-body cringing all the while, I lowered my hand into the cold, murky water and retrieved a throw pillow, saturated and dripping.

By this time, Lucky was off the phone and in my face. I asked him to get me some more bags and when he asked me what kind, I (in no mood to be patient) lost it all over him.

“What kind of bags? Are you kidding? GARBAGE bags!”

“No. YOU CALM DOWN. Get me the fucking bags!”

Lucky, being the stubborn man that he is, refused to let it go. He insisted that I was being entirely too rude and was bent on “talking it out” while I held dripping wet poop cushions in my grossed out, waste-covered hands. I’m sure you can guess how well that went over. I kid you not, I was *thisclose* to rubbing my filthy rubber gloved hands all over his obnoxious face, just to let him know, once and for all, that I AM NOT KIDDING HERE. I’M SERIOUSLY GOING TO LOSE MY MIND IF YOU DON’T GET ME SOME FREAKING GARBAGE BAGS SO I CAN CLEAN OUT THIS GOD-FORSAKEN SHOWER AND GO BURN MY CLOTHES. Now is NOT the time for this!

It was right about the time that I started waving one dripping hand in his face that Lucky’s self-preservation instinct kicked in and he went off in search of more bags. Once I had cleared out the shower of all the junk, Lucky used the Shop Vac that his parents bought him for Christmas one year to suck the nastiness out of the shower and then marched his plastic-bag clad feet down the driveway and over to the storm drain to dump it out. Twice. It’s actually pretty amazing how much water the base of a shower will hold…

“Do you think anybody saw me dumping pee water into the sewer?”

“It could happen.”

(Clearly, Lucky and I are the very model of grace and rationality under pressure. It’s a gift.)

In the end, it turns out that only one of the two main pipes running through our house was blocked and so we were able to shower and change into clean clothes that night. Lucky’s dad came over the next morning and the two manly men rented a manly power snake to clear out the blockage in the pipes. (They even managed to do it without threatening to fling poo at each other, so kudos to them.) Now that it’s done, I can say that I am so immensely grateful for that shower. I don’t even want to think about the mess we would have been faced with if we’d had a backed-up grate on the floor…

The End.

** I know what you’re thinking. After two weeks away gathering life experiences all I could give you was a story about poop. Bet you wish I had waited a couple more weeks before posting again, hey? **

Filed under: Confessions, Just My Luck, Keepin' it Real, Me, Pity Party, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

So, you know how this blog has been somewhat, uh, lacking in content lately? Well, here’s why:

This dollhouse kit was bought for me by my parents when I was a kid and it’s been sitting patiently in storage for over twenty years, waiting for me to finally get off my butt and build it. Over time, it became less about me wanting to build it for myself and more about me wanting to build it for any future daughters and then, finally, morphing into me wanting to build it for Lily. She’s the ultimate girl’s girl, so I knew she would appreciate it. Plus, she’s been eyeing the box for some time now, asking when she can have a dollhouse.

(This kit is so old that the original makers have moved away from dollhouse kits and are now making full-sized furniture.)

I’ve brought the dollhouse with me each time I’ve moved with the silent promise that someday I would build it. Over two decades later, I decided it was now or never and broke open the old, yellowed box.

Then I fainted. Then I woke up and began to sort through all of the pieces.

Then I fainted again.

I’m not going to lie, building this dollhouse was a painstaking task. There were about a kajillion little pieces to sand, paint, glue and nail together. The shingles had to be glued on one by God-forsaken one. Even the stairs came in pieces. The instructions (typed on a typewriter with black and white pictures photocopied on afterward) gave the estimated building time as 3.5 hours. Multiply that by ten and you’ve got the amount of time it took me.

(Granted, I don’t think they counted the amount of time it would take to paint and “wallpaper”* the rooms, add the shingles and decorate the front.)

Here’s what it looks like (more or less) without the harsh glare of the flash:

And here is the inside of the dollhouse. Aside from the crib, I didn’t have any dollhouse furniture waiting in storage. Thankfully, Lily’s Ponyville stuff seems to do the trick nicely.

(Is it weird that I’m now kinda, sorta, seriously thinking about buying some little tiny baseboards and crown moulding to really finish it off? Did you know that you can buy dollhouse hardwood floors? Or wire them up so the lights actually work? Does it make me a total dollhouse geek that I kind of want to try that stuff? It does? Well, never mind, then. Forget I said anything…)

* I used some scrapbooking paper from my stash to wallpaper the rooms. It was a quick way to hide any flaws and was actually one of the fastest steps in the whole process.

Now that I’m finished with my latest spur-of-the-moment project, maybe I’ll get around to cleaning the house writing on this here blog. One can dream!

Filed under: Me, Offspring, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 4 Comments →

Fish out of water stories are funny, right Backpacking Dad? Well, here’s one involving yours truly:

A week or two ago, a friend of mine invited me to go to a concert with her. It was free and involved copious amounts of country music. I don’t listen to country music. Ever. At all. But this was a rare opportunity to get out of putting the kids to bed the house for a night out with a friend. Country music or not, I just had to.

I got dressed up in my favourite brown sweater (which should really be known from now on as the country music sweater, considering that it is my go-to wardrobe item of choice when I am about to subject myself to music involving pickup trucks and cowboy boots), hopped in the car with my girlfriend (where “girlfriend” means “friend who is a girl” not “girlfriend-girlfriend“) and headed off to the concert.

First up was a guy playing a violin (oops, I mean fiddle). Then a woman sang a song. Then a group of people situated themselves all around the stage and took turns singing. (I’m real edumacated about country artists). One guy sang, and I kid you not, about his “Pa“. I lost track of the number of times someone referenced his pickup truck. And don’t even get me started on the “I’m just a country boy” references.

Next up was this guy:

He had a wicked southern accent and named two of his children after cities in Tennessee. (The third one is named after a fabric that looks like this). All I could think as this guy was twanging away was that not only is he NOT from Tennessee, he’s not even American! Every time the word “y’all” came out of his drawling mouth, all I could think of was, “You’re from ALBERTA, dude!” I always thought that if people were going to affect an accent, British was the go-to accent of choice. Madonna thinks so… Apparently, you can’t be a legit country star without a southern accent to go along with it.

It was about this time that the group a couple of rows in front of us came back with their fifth or sixth round of beer and one of the guys, hoping his beer goggles would have the reverse effect and by some miracle, a girl (or ten) would find his drunken ass attractive, started hitting on anything with boobs.

He macked on four or five different girls and even managed to convince a couple of them to go dance with him, thereby missing out on the main event, this guy:

I don’t know if you know this, but he’s kind of a big deal in country music. Too bad I can’t ever seem to remember his name (without prompting).

He’s married to Faith Hill. Uh… Oh! Right. Tim McGraw.

Timmy played several songs and then decided to “take us back a few years.” He then launched into a couple more songs that sounded exactly like the first few. If you’re listening to it through my ears, country music knows no decades. 1990. 2000. 2009. It all sounds the same to me.

He was tall, though. And fit. Which was nice to look at. Plus, his country accent was legit, which was endearing. And, between watching Timmy shake hands with about a hundred girls and watching drunkboy hit on anyone he could, it was an entertaining time.

The concert started at 7pm and Tim was still going strong at 11:30pm when we left. Out of those 4.5 hours, I recognized enough music to fill up 4.5 minutes. The fiddle guy played “Amazing Grace” and then fake-accent guy covered Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.” Everything else sounded like a variation of the same song. The song known as “Country Music.” I don’t have a refined ear for the stuff, apparently.

As my friend and I were attempting to get out of the parking lot, we came upon a herd of cattle group of people walking down the middle of the road. Despite the line up of vehicles behind them, they continued to trudge along, not even attempting to move off to the side. I couldn’t help but laugh about it. We went from listening to cowboys singing about their horses to herding our own set of cows out of the parking lot, just like real ranchers. Yee haw!

FYI, I had fun at the concert. Even if I didn’t know any of the words to the songs, or even any of the names of the artists, it was a good time. But, Kel? Next time we go to a concert, I’m picking the band.

Filed under: Keepin' it Real, Me, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →