More on book minimalism

Is it the onset of warm weather that makes me so desperate to clean my house? And not just tidy it, but rip through it and get rid of everything we don't need or use?

The problem is, we have so much little stuff that just hides away in closets, and then when you try to get something done, the little stuff all jumps out and says, "Ha ha ha, what about me?" and then you're left looking at picture hanging kits and canisters of 35-millimeter film and instruction manuals to stuff you know you have around here somewhere. And what can you do? You can't get RID of it, for heaven's sake! What a waste of good 35-millimeter film.

However, I'm making some progress.

("Why don't you tell us about it, Katie?")

Okay!

Online indie bookstore Powell's has a neato feature called Sell Us Your Books, wherein you can enter the ISBNs from any books you're looking to get rid of and they'll either bid or not accept it. This is a heady and addictive process, let me tell you. Before you know it, you'll be scouring your shelves just to find books that they'll take. "Accept me, Powell's!" you will say. "Let me and this copy of Angela's Ashes into your exclusive club!" (Spoiler: that's an ix-nay on Angela's Ashes.)

They're not offering hundreds of dollars. They offer a couple dollars for hardcovers and less than a dollar for most paperbacks. After a while, you start to get an idea of what they're into, and you start trying to guess whether something will be accepted.

Here's the exciting part, though: if Powell's doesn't take it, you can't put it back on the shelves. You have to put it in a stack of books that will go the the thrift store or to a library. Because if you were ready to let it go for 75 cents, you can let it go for free. Let's be real here, fellas.

Anyway, I have a box shipping out today (pre-paid), so that's exciting. I actually made almost enough room on my shelves for all the books that I used to keep in the sewing room, but had to move when my fabric stash overtook the space.

What's that, you say? When am I going to purge the fabric stash and sewing room?

I'm sorry, I don't have time to talk about that. I have to go shoot fifteen rolls of 35mm film.

*runs away*

My life as a pioneer woman.

Two days ago, the unthinkable happened:

I had finally managed to lure the husb down to the sewing room. I often try to get him to come hang out with me while I work, but he doesn't particularly like going downstairs. But on this day, the top story of the house was very warm, and the basement level was nice and cool.

Almost immediately, my sewing machine broke. Something happened where the needle thread gets caught under the little plate where all the secret, magic stuff goes on. I tried repeatedly, but couldn't fix it.

Then, the next morning, as I was sitting at the computer, the husb comes in and says, "I need the computer for a shoot we're doing over the next two days."

I beg your pardon?

But these mythical "shoots" are apparently more importantly than my voting on lolcats over at I Can Has Cheezburger, so I surrendered the machine (with great misgivings and lots of whining to show how serious I was, naturally).

That night, I got home from work to find that the shoot was still ongoing, thereby robbing me of the third of the four essential items in my home (my husband--the fourth is Winston, but he was grouchy). Add this to our chronic lack of groceries and the fact that our DVR is full of high-def episodes of CSI: Miami (don't ask me why, I gave up on David Caruso a loooong time ago), and I was marooned.

I wandered around the silent house, occasionally pausing to look at the empty desk where the computer belonged. Then, clearly driven to madness by the starkness of my situation--

I went downstairs and started... cleaning. On a weeknight.

The big room downstairs has become a bit of a catch-all, especially with the new outdoor-type supplies that have to live inside. I rotated the couch and started organizing and making various little piles and putting things away.

Eventually, I hit a wall and went back upstairs. I found something random to eat and sat down to watch The Stepford Wives, feeling strangely like a Stepford wife myself. That movie is so strange. Especially now that it's so ingrained in pop culture--every time they say, "There's something wrong in Stepford," you want to shout at the screen, "What do you expect? It's STEPFORD! The place with the wives!"

Last night, knowing there was neither sewing machine nor computer nor husb waiting for me at home, I stopped and meandered around the grocery store a little. Then I got home and found that the DVR had made room for America's Next Top Model (which I am starting to have a problem with, as none of the winners actually go on to become, you know, MODELS). I prepped a little food, sat down on the couch, and watched Tyra Banks ham it up.

This morning, like a dream, I woke to find the computer back in its spot. The husb is also in his spot, and Winston is more sleepy than grouchy. The sewing machine has not yet been repaired, but I have a loaner.

Close call with reality, eh?

PS - Bath math:

getting conditioner for hair + looking at face wash = conditioner all over face

PPS - Winston is three years old! His birthday was Tuesday.

And so it grows...

(or, "Wishful Thinking")

We recently had some landscaping done in our backyard. What was once just ivy is now a terraced little yard, and what was once a deck that belonged to a monstrous 1980s party hot tub is now refinished and furnished with barbecue supplies.

Because of this, and also because of books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Omnivore's Dilemma, I have taken a keen interest in trying to grow some plants. Some edible, some not.

I have a history of killing plants. Or, more euphemistically, not keeping them alive. So I decided that maybe growing things from scratch would give me more of a sense of involvement and responsibility. I bought some seeds and planted bell peppers and oregano in a couple of little pots. Two bell pepper seeds sprouted, but the oregon was silent. So one day, when I was bored, I took a few garlic cloves that had sprouted in the kitchen and stuck them in the oregano pot. Naturally, four days later, hundreds of little oreganos sprouted out of the soil.

Last weekend, I transplanted some things and planted some new things, and now we're playing the waiting game.

I was right about being more invested, too. I water those little buggers every day.

Here's a tour of how things look right now.



This is my shade garden, at the side of the house where the hammock (a $15 cloth number, criminally comfortable) is... mostly shady, especially later in summer as the sun goes off behind the trees. This is all new planting. The tall guy at the back will be a fern; so will the terra cotta round pot. The two in the foreground should be begonias. No, will be! Will be begonias. Positive thinking.



This is a place under the overhang of the downstairs balcony where I dropped some of the oregano sprouts. I can't believe that so many of those seeds sprouted at once. Talk about an embarrassment of riches, and poor planning. I stuck this ball of dirt here as an afterthought, hoping it might decide to fill in the awkward area between the ivy and the little curb. That big green thing is new; it's not oregano. I don't know what it is. I am also trying to grow a leather strap, apparently.



These are my sunny plants. In the back are Peruvian Daffodil and asparagus; then some garlic (thriving! go figure), mint, and oregano (assuming they pull through); the rectangle is my bell peppers, although I'm losing hope because they've been that size for weeks now; and in front is another Peruvian Daffodil.

The front daffodil pot is notable because something has dug through it, and I'm not even sure the bulb is still in there. Apparently skunks will root around in pots and eat bulbs. This makes me exceedingly sad, but I don't know how to check without potentially destroying it, so I'm just going to keep watering it and then maybe eventually plant some basil or something.

So that's the excitement in my life. It's amazing how much more fun this stuff is when you're a grown-up than when your parents force you to do it as a child.

I'll provide updates occasionally, and if anything exciting happens. Cross your fingers, and we may have a full-blown leather strap plant before long!

Oh, and the big news, thanks to this post by Jemima Bean is that we have a peach tree! I saw the photo of the flowers and asked her what they were, because we had some. She replied that they were peaches, and sure enough when we looked more closely at the tree, there were fuzzy baby peaches on it! Hundreds of them, actually.

The guy we bought the house from knew there was a peach tree but never remembered it bearing any fruit (probably because it used to be so shady in the yard). But now... peaches! Peaches! Peaches! We pruned the tree ruthlessly, as apparently is the way to maximize peaches, and now we are just waiting... waiting... waiting...

Ant ya ever coming back, ant ya?

The husb heard some snooty-foodie radio show about parsnips. He told me they look like white carrots and are supposed to be delicious. I said, "Hey, they have those at the co-op grocery near my office." So I bought some parsnips, but they were actually daikon root, which I thought was a fancy name for "parsnips". I was, as usual, wrong. Unsure exactly what to do with them, we left the bag on the counter.

Two days later, the ants arrived.

I have a history with ants. I hate them. They always seem to show up just when I'm at some breaking point or another.

Incident 1:

I was in seventh grade, ugly and unfashionable and unpopular and all zitty, and we had just left our old house to live in our new house. Life in the new house was super stressful, because the people who lived there before us somehow hid the fact that they were horrible slobs. The day we showed up to move in, they were like, "Oh, our daughter needs to stay another day, is that okay?" And they left so much crap in the house, including dirty dishes in the dishwasher--that we were all a wreck. I hated my bedroom, which was dirty and gross and the closet was filled with these creepy tiny glass animals.

So, I woke up one morning, feeling all defeated (this was a daily occurrence), and found that there were GIANT ANTS swarming in my bedroom. They were on the walls, on the bed, in my clothes, all over the floor--canvassing the place. We called this type "carpenter ants", and they were 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) long. I couldn't even get dressed because they were in my open dresser drawers. I even remember what I wore to school that day: my denim vest/shorts combo, over a turquoise faux polo (fauxlo?), with my turquoise Minnie Mouse socks, which I had totally intended to stop wearing after sixth grade. They were the only "safe" clothes, and I was quite aware that I looked even more unfashionable than usual.

Just another day of feeling ugly and gross (I believe the clinical term for that is "middle school"), made 100 times worse by ants.

Incident 2:

The day I moved to California--flew across the country, anxiety eating me alive (because I am not really a wandering spirit, and pretty much moved out here because the someday-husb was moving, and I couldn't think of anywhere else to go after college), I got to the apartment complex where he'd found a one-bedroom, and it was in the ghetto and there were a lot of ladies of ill repute living there (although the place was fortress-like and nicely kept, but let's face it, don't go outside the gates at night, and if you are one of my friends who makes fun of me for not liking to leave my house, have some compassion because I think it all started there)... so I went to put my stuff away--

And my suitcase was FULL of ants. Just overflowing with them. Ants everywhere, in and on all of my clothes, etc. And it was horrible, horrible, because I didn't even know where to start to get rid of them. I ended up soaking everything in the tub and then laundering all of it. And getting bitten.

Incident 3:

(Present day.) So anyway, there's this never-ending line of ants, and we have no bug spray in the house (that stuff is noxious anyway), so I went online to look for natural remedies.

#1: Cinnamon. Sprinkle some cinnamon on the ants, and in their path. They dislike it and will go away.
I don't know if they loved the cinnamon--they definitely didn't sit around eating it or anything--but as a deterrent, it was roughly as effective as a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday!" would have been.

#2: Vinegar. Mix a solution of 1 part water and 1 part white vinegar and spray it in their path. They dislike it and will go away.
I enthusiastically sprayed not only the floor and counter but also each individual ant. This technique did not seem to please the ants, but it did not deter them.

#3: Soap. Make a solution of dish soap and water, and spray lightly on the ants' path.
As an added bonus, this may ruin your floors and also create a horrible slipping hazard. Floors slippery? Check! Ants gone? Nope.

#4: Baby powder. Sprinkle baby powder liberally in the ants path.
At first, this seemed not only incredibly messy but also silly. Like the cinnamon, the ants seemed intent on avoiding the baby powder, but did not seem to take it as a message to turn around and go home. But as I sat there, watching individual ants, something amazing happened--

It worked! One of the most fascinating things was that you could dip your finger in baby powder and trace a circle around an ant--it could even been so faint that you couldn't see it. But the ant in question would be like, "Whoa! Don't want to go that way! Whoa, don't want to go that way! Whoa, don't want to go that way... wait a second...!"

So I sprinkled it liberally (understatement alert) all over the path the ants had taken. I sprinkled it on the wall they were walking down. Then I went to bed.

The next morning, no ants. None. And since then, no ants. None!

Baby powder wins. And then you just wipe it up with a damp paper towel. Who knew?

Cloth napkins: the sordid truth.

No, just kidding. I just thought "Cloth napkins" by itself was kind of a boring name for a post.

A few months ago, I decided that I was tired of wasting paper towels. When we ate at the table, we'd grab one each, just to kind of have, and 90% of the time, it would go into the recycle bin with maybe a smudgy fingerprint on it. We use the kind that are cut into smaller sizes, so you can get a half a paper towel, but it still felt wasteful.

So next time I was at the fabric store, I found two gingham remnants (with different size checks, though you can't see it in the photo) and brought them home. Gradually, I sewed them all into cloth napkins, which I then stuck in a napkin holder and set next to the paper towels, like so:



The bin to the left is for dirty napkins, although the nice lady who cleans my house every two weeks thinks it is just a place to stash whatever weird stuff happens to be on the counter. Any time I'm doing a load of laundry (except whites), I grab the dirty napkins and toss them in.

I've found that we definitely use a lot fewer paper towels this way.

There's quite a variety of shapes and styles. At first, I ironed every hem, all the way around each napkin, but that got old really fast. Then I tried making a double-layered napkin, but that burned through the fabric too quickly (and now, using those as well as the single-layer ones, it's a level of protection I really don't need). Then I decided just to fold them hems as I sewed. Voila!

The sizes are varied, ranging from about 9" square, to the about 13" square (I like the bigger ones better). I just keep them all folded together and don't try to match up sizes or gingham square size when I pull them out to use.

Here's a top view:


Even though it's a napkin no-no, my gingham fabric is 100% polyester. Cotton would be more absorbent, to be sure, but for my casual crumb-catching use, the polyester works fine. Also, it doesn't wrinkle (like the single 100% cotton napkin I did make, which I always feel like I want to iron), and it doesn't attract lint in the dryer. Plus, it was half-price.

The husb and I are trying to take stock of our lifestyle and make little changes that we hope will add up. I recommend cloth napkins to anyone who finds themselves using a lot of paper goods and throwing them away barely-used.

Happy Tuesday!

PS - Stephanie contacted me and we really do think we want to start a "One Project From Every Book" mini-movement. So start browsing those pages! More info soon.

It's all fun and games until it starts to smell like the thing it looks like.

Nothing was wrong with any of our plumbing until I called the darn plumber, and then the house like to fell apart.

That little leak in the downstairs bathroom. And then all of a sudden our shower drain backing up.

So today, in a fit of houseproud ambition, I unscrewed the shower drain cover, got the pliers and the trash can (PS - do not borrow our pliers), and set to work. I admit that I take a grody and perverse pleasure in emptying backed-up drains (toilets pointedly excluded). I mean, sure, it's gross, but talk about instant results!

So I plied out a few nasty tufts of miscellany, and then I grabbed something and pulled, and it was like "The Old Man and the Sea", and this thing and I were battling it out, and finally I proved victorious. I lifted out of the drain a mixture of items that, no kidding, looked like a drowned rat.

In fact, so much like a drowned rat that I cackled to myself and called to the husb, intending to hold it up for him and tell him I found a drowned rat in our shower drain.

And THAT is when the smell hit me.

And the smell filled up the whole bathroom. And I'm not squeamish, but I had to drop the prize specimen in the trash can before I could even wave it in the husb's face.

So the husb comes running in and I'm like, "Turn on the fan! Open the window!" and he makes a horrible face and does as asked, and then we both complain about the smell for a minute and I show him the rat in the trash can.

But the moment was ruined.

Alas.

(Winston totally dug the smell, though. He was Highly Intrigued.)

Update

Busy week. Finished up with work on Wednesday and have been housewifin' it ever since. Thursday was dedicated to putting together those mythical earthquake kits everyone is supposed to have in their cars. Not only are they expensive, but they also take up a lot of trunk real estate. But thanks to the hurricane I'm too paranoid to be unprepared.

The hurricane! Unreal. I don't have the energy right now to say anything except that I love New Orleans. I hope it recovers. Chris and I spent two very formative weeks there early in our relationship while working on a student film.

Saturday night we went to the Hollywood Bowl to see John Williams conducting the LA Philharmonic. He played mostly his own stuff. During the Star Wars music, people throughout the bowl raised their cheap plastic lightsabers and waved them in time. It was pretty funny. The concert was good. Didn't blow my mind the way a couple of others have. But that was probably the combination of wine and music blowing my mind rather than strictly the music.

During this time, Winston was making himself a guest at an establishment called LA Dogworks. It's a doggie daycare and boarding place and he despises it. He's terrified the whole time and constantly cons the staff into carrying him around. Plus he smells like chemicals when he comes home. He had an awful time Saturday and unfortunately had to go back yesterday while Chris and I drove to Malibu for Cricket and Ron's wedding. Which was lovely.

I think we'll try to find a dog daycare and boarding facility closer to home and perhaps smaller. Winston is just not cut out to be in an enormous room with dozens of dogs.

I need coffee. This blog entry is boring. Next time: my horrifying experience in the Mystic Tan booth.

Saturday Morning

The cleaning ladies are coming today, so it's going to be a busy morning of cleaning before they get here. There's that age-old joke about not wanting them to see how you really live, but for us, it's more that they will stack each and every item we leave out. So the dirty shoes go into the clean laundry basket, the gardening gloves go into the utensil drawer, etc. It's really awful, because, for instance, the glove-utensil incident happened six weeks ago and we still can't use anything in that drawer. If we had a dishwasher that would be different, but the dishwasher happens to be typing in her blog at this moment, so that's a no-go.

We watched a movie last night. Sideways. Hateably indie. I don't care how meaningful that lingering shot is -- if it's a shot of a bad actor reading stupid dialogue, I'd rather get off it sooner rather than later. One movie left until I can make a call on Best Picture.

Then on to Best Supporting Actor.

Aside from cleaning the inside of the house, it's really time for us to focus on the pool. It's green. Dark green.

No plans for the evening. So far.