With the junk in the basement relegated to the shed, it opened up a lot of space in the basement.  Where space=possibilities.

When we first moved into the house it had a finished basement.  The basement had been claimed by the teenaged son as his pad.  Think “Johnny Bravo”.

Immediately after we moved in, our noses led us to believe that Johnny Bravo had a going away par-tay in his pad.  The smell of stale beer, smoke and smokin’ was overwhelming.  So on the evening that we closed, the Husband ripped out the gross carpet and tore down all of the smoke saturated ceiling tiles.  As an aside, he found a few interesting items stashed away above those tiles, but “nothing of any quality” in his words.  The only further change we had made to the basement since those early dark days of home ownership, was to install an exterior-grade door leading to the bilco door.  Johnny must have frozen his nads off sleeping down there, the only door he had between him and the outside air was a leaky storm door.  Groovy.

Unfortunately just clearing out the basement didn’t re-sheetrock the marred walls, cover the cement floor stained with the ghosts of carpets past or add ceiling tiles to the ceiling scaffolding, it just made space.

With a full-on rec room/man cave not in the near-term budget, I made just a few small changes.  I made swings for the girls.  For little Thing Two, it was as easy as buying a bucket swing from Home Depot and installing a couple of study screw-eyes into the ceiling beam.  For Thing One, I made something a little more homey.

I bought a piece of oak about 6″ wide, 2′ long and about 1″ thick, and a length of nylon rope.  First I cut the wood to 18″.  Then I drilled four holes in the wood, each about 1″ in from all sides.  I sanded the board to ease the edges, and gave it some coats of spray polyurethane.  Using strong bowline knots (thanks Dad… the rabbit comes out of the hole, around the tree, and back down the hole) and more screw eyes, the swing was ready!

Both kids love their swings, and have been a great diversion during this exceptionally rainy spring.  Groovy!

I have been busy lately.  Too busy, it seems to keep up with my Ideal Blog Posting Scheme of 3 new posts a week.  The best laid schemes…

So here is what we have been busy with.  First off we got a shed.  Typing the words “we got a shed” can’t encapsulate the joy I feel in having a shed.  Let me see if I can try to capture my feelings a bit better….there,  I think this does it.

A shed.  Why so excited about a shed?  We have typical suburban backyard, a couple of gardens, a couple of kids, a swimming pool and a one car garage.  So lots of outside stuff with little outside storage.

This meant every fall, our basement would fill up with pool stuff, lawn furniture, garden implements, bikes, etc etc.  As we would pack the stuff away in the fall, I got the feeling that we were just a few small steps away from having a path from the sofa to the fridge to the bathroom.

So every fall, I would hunt around to try to find a good price on a well-built shed and I would get a couple of leads on some good sheds for the next spring.  But once spring came round again,  most of the stuff in the basement would go back outside where it belonged.  I would feel less shame and start thinking maybe we didn’t really need a shed,  and other things would come along and move the shed down the budget list.  Like a new furnace.  Or painting the house.  Or two 10+ year old cars (really bad planning there).  But then fall would come again, and my frustration would build again and why didn’t we get a shed last year?!

We (I) went back and forth quite a bit over this shed thing.

Finally, there came this spring a golden opportunity.  I found a good shed guy on craigslist. There were no budgetary crises.  The time was ripe!

May I present:  The Shed.

I have so many pictures of this damn thing being built, I could make a flip book.

I was so excited when it was done, I suggested that we sleep out in it before we moved stuff in.  And we did, on a 45 degree night.  It was pine-y and wonderful.

Today was a long day for no exotic or unusual reasons.  Thing Two woke up early, and is still a little sick with a drippy nose.  She is also in the–”I won’t eat anything and will fuss unless I can use my own spoon.  Unless it is yours, then I will beg for your food off your spoon.  Not my own identical food, not my own spoon, not my own bowl.  Your food.  Your spoon.  Your bowl.  My drippy nose — phase”  This leads to a lot of truncated meals for me, and thrice-daily bathing for Thing Two.  I hope this phase ends quickly, I don’t remember how long it lasted with Thing One.

She is also doing a lot of climbing. (I post this picture hoping you won’t call DCF on me.  I had the camera in my hand when I found her like this.)

Her degree of difficulty is improving, although she is still having problems with the dismount.  The feline judge is particularly harsh.  With Thing One, we solved this by lashing loose chairs to table legs and radiators so she couldn’t drag them around the room to use them to climb higher.  I think we are going to revisit that solution soon.

On the meal front, the calendar says spring but the weather still says late winter, so I have been making unseasonal hearty fare.  Here is one I had the other night that was really tasty that I call “The Kitchen Sink”.

I made chicken and rice (rice cooked in broth with spices, then add cut up chicken breast for the last 10 minutes) the other night and it was a hit with the kids…although hard to clean off the chair, table, floor and hair.  I had some left over, so I sautéed some garlic, added a few whole cherry tomatoes and cooked them until they burst.  Then I added chicken stock, a few shakes of smoked Tabasco and left over chicken and rice.  I topped it with a poached egg and it was yummy.  Thing Two thought so too, until I put some in her own bowl and then she wouldn’t touch it.  I think I remember calling this stage the Seagull Stage with Thing One.  Constantly swooping in and stealing your food.

For dinner tonight, it was another off-season meal.  Roasted chicken parts (shh we don’t say that too loudly around Casa de Loco Pollo) and smothered cabbage.  The smothered cabbage recipe idea I got from a Marcella Hazen cookbook, but I am hesitant to tell you how I changed it; I have read MH is quite a stickler for following her instructions.

I’ll be brave though.  First you shred a head of cabbage.  Then you sauté some onion (she said half, I used a whole…please don’t tell).  Add in some garlic, then add the cabbage and turn it to coat in the olive oil (MH said use half a cup (!) I used less than half of that.  Is she lurking?)  Add a little salt and pepper and cover and cook over low for an hour and a half until all tender and melty.  This is where I went a little crazy.  I thought it was a little dry and lacking in flavor (maybe because I drastically cut back on the oil), so at about an hour, I added a cup of beef broth, and simmered it until it was fully absorbed.  It was delicious, but please don’t tell MH, just say I followed the recipe.

I used the cabbage as a bed for the roasted chicken.  Yummy.

But it wasn’t the meal that made tonight’s dinner special.  Tonight, I was all excited because I tracked down this wonderful white wine we had when the adults went to the big city for dinner.  The cheese and meat boards were delicious and the meal was great, but for me the most memorable part was the glass of white wine I had.  I usually don’t enjoy wine very much, and only order it because I am supposed to be a grown-up, but this one was great.  It tasted to me citrus-y without being bitter or acidic and it felt thirst quenching.  I could picture having a bottle of this cooling in a stream as I tended my olive trees in late summer.  Stopping for a noonday break I would get my bottle of wine out of the stream and sit under a tree.  Lunch would be a hunk of bread, a piece of cheese, a pear and this wonderful clean, thirst-quenching wine.

. . .

Sorry I was in a reverie for a moment there.  Here is the wine.

Domaine La Hitaire, 2009, Les Tours.  a blend of 3 grapes.  Pairs wonderfully with cheese, chicken and long days with climbing toddlers.