A "lady of leisure"

There are only 4 weeks left of this summer, a thought which simultaneously makes me want to cry and heave a sigh of relief. Soon, it will be back to piles of papers, hours at debate tournaments, and more teenagers than you shake a stick at. (Where does that saying come from anyway?) But in some ways, that sounds kind of nice.

As I began my second summer as a teacher, I can't even count the number of times I was asked what I was going to do with myself for a WHOLE SUMMER. Someone even said, "So...you're just going to be a 'lady of leisure' this summer, are you?" Yes. A summer of spending day in and day out on a chaise lounge, perfecting my tan, preferably being fanned and fed peeled grapes. (Do I make peeled grapes? Only if they come in a tube. All my love to you if you catch the reference!)

But really, a lady of leisure? As the school year ended, I started to get worried. You see, I'm not good at not being busy. I'm one of those people who feels gross at the end of the day if something wasn't accomplished. What WAS I going to do with myself for a whole summer? I started thinking about calling my former boss to see if they needed a temp this summer. Matt told me to get a hobby.

So what have I done this summer? To be honest, I feel quite proud of myself. It's been a summer of firsts. I doubt this will interest many of you, so I'm just chalking it up to recording my summer for myself. :)

The yard: If you know me at all, you are probably aware of my aversion to dirt. And bugs. And allergies. But, the dirt, bugs, and allergies have become my companions of many hours this summer. I really wish I was one of those people who loves to garden. One of those people with a "green thumb." But I'm not. I just really don't like sloppy, unkept yards.

I have spent hours, and hours, and hours in my yard this summer. I have pruned, weeded, planted, weeded, mowed, weeded, cleaned 40 years of junk out of a shed, weeded, swept, raked, potted, window-washed, weeded, Preen-ed, Round Up-ed, and attempted (very poorly) to edge. No one will drive past my house and gasp at the beauty of my yard, but no one is going to gasp at how bad it looks either. When we moved into our house, I don't think anything in the yard had been touched for years. HUGE flowerbeds were essentially knee-deep in weeds, the lawn was dead, and the shrubs had grown over our wall out to the street. So, whether or not I'll win an award for best-looking yard, it feels nice to know how much better it looks. When Matt and I drive anywhere, I spend the ride looking at people's yards, and I am happy to report that we're better than most, and not as good as some. Not a bad place to be for someone who really doesn't like working in the yard.

*Lest you wonder where Matt is in this process, he has helped a TON, and I feel guilty doing nothing while he is hard at work, so I have done lots of the yard work while he's been doing a real job.

The front porch with my new welcome mat, petunias, and Uncle Sam.

A view of the front yard. Check out the cute chairs under our tree and the plants (not weeds!) in the flowerbeds.

We have since purchased a bigger (and matching) table and chairs, and the peonies have given way to daisies!

The bathroom: We live in my great-grandparent's home. At some point, my great-grandma didn't feel like she could scrub floors as well as she wanted to, so she decided that she would be able to keep things cleaner with carpet. Hence, a carpeted bathroom. (Anyone with clean phobias like myself probably just got the shivers. Try being here when the carpet was pulled away from the walls...)

When Matt's sister moved back East this summer, she generously gave us a huge pile of tile she wasn't going to be able to use. So Matt and I embarked on the bathroom project. First, we primed the wood-paneled walls and painted the bathroom. Instant improvement. It looks so much brighter now! And then came the part I had been dreading. Pulling up the carpet. Feeling ambitious, I went downstairs one morning to pull out the carpet while Matt worked, armed with elbow-length rubber gloves, fully prepared to pull my t-shirt over my nose and mouth to avoid breathing in anything scary. Needless to say, I pulled the carpet about 6 inches from the wall before my gross-out meter went to high and I waited for my knight-in-shining-armor to save me from the microbe-infested carpet.

Soon we were carpet-free, and then the hard part began. Tiling. After entirely too many trips to Home Depot, we began our first attempt at laying tile. I can't believe it, but I put down at least half a bathroom floor of tile, all by myself! We still need to cut tile for the edges and then grout and seal, but the bathroom is looking awesome! I'll have to post again when it's done.

Matt stretching out his sore back. I love how the pose and the bandana make it look like he's preparing for something much more serious that tiling a bathroom floor. :)

Me tiling.

Bread-making: The final achievement I will bore you with is making my very own homemade bread. Why didn't I discover the joys of this before!? Matt is a CARB-A-HOLIC. He loves noodles and bread. A lot. He was talking about pulling out the breadmaker again, but since my clean obsession means I have an aversion to stuff cluttering up the counter, I decided to try it myself. Armed with my big Tupperware bowl and a wooden spoon (yes, a wooden spoon. No Kitchen-Aid bread mixer for me! Take that!), I decided to try my first batch of homemade bread. Holy yum! We ate our way through that whole batch--awesome sandwiches, late night jam and bread--and the second batch is rising now, with some slight alterations I think will make it even better. And as it turns out, this 100-degree weather is good for something. The dough rises in practically no time at all! I think this is something I'll have to keep up.

Yummy!

So, in short, come visit me for a weed-free, tiled, and carbed up good time.