The Great Cherry Tree Massacre of 2013

So the lovely and overly-laden cherry tree in the backyard of our new place first suffered this indignity at the hands of recent storms...

   

And then we realized that some of the branches were pressing rather dangerously onto some power lines (probably thanks to their newfound cherry-weight.) We called the electric company to take care of it and... well... they certainly did.

 

 

The fact that they were using a cherry picker did not fail to amuse me.

   

That poor tree is right by an electric pole with wires going off in two different directions, so it basically got its ass kicked in a bid to avoid disaster. I'm glad it's safer now, but it does look a bit sad. And now we have a clear view of the pole. Yaayy..........?

   

I'm sure it'll cheer up and fluff out a little next year. From what I've read you're supposed to prune cherry trees pretty thoroughly anyway so that they produce better fruit, so... here's hoping this counts! Certainly means there'll be fewer cherries for me to clean up, I guess. I wish I'd gotten a picture of them shoveling all the cherries off the patio, haha. It looked like a cranberry harvest out there.

PS: this is what it looks like when a robot brontosaurus throws up:

   

I don't know why I thought that was so funny. Probably because I'm a child.

Must Paint... Everything Clean... Everything New... Paint....

In the depths of my paint-induced hysteria, I can't get this clip from Southpark out of my head. Meanwhile, my sister (who came to help today because she's either a saint or insanely bored, I'm not sure which) can't seem to stop pretending to be Bob Ross and mumbling "Happy Trees... Happy Walls...."

We all cope in our own ways.

   

After two days, we have one bedroom at about 97% and one at 70%, I'd say. Left to do is the hall (small), the living/dining room (not small), and the kitchen (small, but we still need to pick a color.) My right wrist is a limp noodle and I'm getting sort of a paint-brush-holding claw thing going on. This shit is way more tiring than I remember.

We're using Mythic paints, which are crazy overpriced but smell even less than acrylic craft paint, which pleases my sensitive little self very much (honestly we don't have much choice- I wouldn't be able to live in a place that was paint-fumey.) The cans lied to me, though- it said that each gallon would do 400 sq feet...it's becoming very apparent that is referring to a single coat, and you most definitely need more like 2 or 3. Which means another hundo or two needs to be plunked down on paint. Awesome. (And no, I'm not using primer, because we're painting over very pale colors, and because I'm not entirely convinced that there's actually a difference between primer and flat, white paint anyway.)

The other nice thing about Mythic is that it seems not to make you go blind immediately if you get it in your eye.

   

That'd be my sister's bespeckled contact lens. I can't tell if she was just lucky and ONLY hit the lens, or if she hit everywhere else too and it just dissolved. I told her to wear the goggles!

In other displeasing news, my laptop's power cord has decided to pretty much stop working, despite my many attempts to save it. A replacement has been ordered but for some reason the predicted shipping is like, 22 days (WHAT?)... hopefully it'll be much faster than that, but if my presence becomes spotty, you'll know why. (But probably only a little spotty. It's not like I have multiple other internet-enabled devices or anything.) I'll line up tomorrow's post but the rest of our fixin'-uppin' posts will probably go up well after the fact. Overdramatic Siiiighhhhh.

Home is Where the House is

I haven't said much about this publicly because just about anything can happen with real estate and I didn't want to make any premature announcements...but this morning, we closed on our first house!



 

We're not moving far, just a few towns over, but it's a bit bigger of a city and a bit more popular with our age bracket, so we're really looking forward to that. Not to mention the part where we have a house. I've been making Zoidberg cracks all day.

The woman who sold it (who we met this morning and who could not have been any sweeter) had lived there since the 80's and taken fantastic care of it. We're going to paint, swap out some fixtures, that kind of thing, but it really doesn't need much work. Nevertheless, I thought I'd do a little video tour to record what it looks like right now, so we can compare it to the "afters" somewhere down the line. 

It's... a little shaky. Sorry about that. I still haven't figured out how to film with my phone while walking without making it all queasy. If you'd rather just check out the photos, they're here. (Also, I promise my husband isn't quite such a twit in real life. Cameras really bring out the best in him.)

I am super excited to jump into the home-decor-n-fixin-uppin's (I ended up with memberships to two different hardware stores before I even made it home from the closing today.) Expect some DIY posts, starting with the table I magically turned purple...