Half a Chandelier

"You won't get half done," said Marilla pessimistically. "I never yet planned to do a lot of things but something happened to prevent me."

--Anne of Green Gables--L.M. Montgomery

After a burst of horticultural virtue, I've been kicking back a bit. Matt's been putting in his cactus bed, which is no mean feat, but even he's not quite up to full steam. (The previous owners had installed a big ~8' square sandbox on top of part of the cement pad where the shed used to be. Matt has a thing for cacti and other perverse succulents, so all that sand is perfect for him. He's been shoveling it out of the sandbox and into a bed he's edged out in the back yard.)

Meanwhile, several big projects have been in abeyance:

1. put down baseboards in the master bed, study, and hall
2. finish all edging, weed-barriering, and mulching everywhere
   
3. finish the !3@#$ bath tubs. I may have to sacrifice a chicken and summon demonic aid to do it, though. There are parts that still aren't dry from the last coat a month or more ago. I'm going to have to strip those bits with xylene and replace them with the thinnest possible faint sheen of epoxy--how, I don't know.
4. various electrical projects, including the chandelier, additional outlets, and the bathroom fixture.

At present, we've uninstalled the fan in the dining room. However, it was installed off-center, so we need to move the electrical socket-thingy to the middle of the room and hang the chandelier there, which will entail a whole passel of other bother, so the project's been suffered to take a short sabbatical while we gird up our loins.

Matt contemplates a caddywumpus electrical connection with quiet despair. The new chandelier (sans shades) is partially visible behind him on the table.

The old ceiling fan will replace the noisy fan in the study, which will in turn go to Cathy, whose house is sadly lacking in ceiling fans--and thus the cycle of life continues.

In other news, we've finally ordered a new Queen-sized mattress to replace the sadly puny and archaic full that I've had since my undergrad days. It's to be delivered next Tuesday and has--oooo!--memory foam! I'll finally be able to flail about freely in my sleep and Matt and I won't have any more arguments about bed-hogging. Or maybe we will, but it will be just for the fun of it and not because our bed is too darn small.

We also ordered a set of honeycomb blinds for the master bedroom (no more tissue paper and painter's tape--yay!). I was going to get plantation blinds like we got for the living room, but JustBlinds.com was having a sale on these cool blinds that open from the top. I wanted something like that because we have a lot of pretty greenness outside of our bedroom window but I hadn't thought I could afford them. However, these were something like 1/6 the price of the ones I had initially considered, so I jumped at the chance. Here's a picture:

Honeycomb blinds with top down/bottom up upgrade.

And finally, we've had some lawn mower difficulties lately. Matt struggled valiantly to beat the beasts into submission. (Here he is fixing the lawn mower with--yes, that's right--duct tape. It worked for a while, but he was only able to stave off the inevitable for so long.) Fortunately, his folks have another spare riding lawn mower that we can have. I'm told this one is decorated with painted-on flames. I can't wait--it's a muscle lawn mower. If only it had a horn that played "Dixie"...