Growing like a weed

The other night Ryan was complaining. His leg hurt. His hand hurt. His arm hurt. Blah blah blah. I suspect this multitude of aches and pains were the result of the chores we had been talking about that needed to be done. Not wanting to straight up call him out on it I said, "Well honey, you probably have growing pains. You're growing like a weed!" After a long pause, and through clenched teeth he replied with, "Then reach in and pull that weed OUT."

I blinked

I blinked and Ryan is in second grade. 

I blinked and Lauren is one. 

A friend of mine said the days are long, but the years are short. Wow is that true. 

I'm overwhelmed. I don't get a shower every day. My house is a mess. The laundry seems to have a life of its own, multiplying faster than rabbits. I can barely keep up. But then I glance over and see those faces. And those little smiles make up for all the rest. Except maybe the shower part. Cause that's just gross. 

Apparently I forgot I had a blog...

The last time I posted, Ryan was getting ready to start Kindergarten. He's now half way through first grade. I was working at Providence. I haven't worked outside my home in seven months. I had one child. Now I have two. In my last post I was daydreaming about what I would do with a few uninterrupted hours in the morning. I was thinking about and planning for all the things I would do with my new found freedom. Well, it was fun while it lasted. And I didn't even really do much. I was still working at night and so I basically used all my new free time to sleep. Boring.
Then I got the surprise of a lifetime. Literally. In February I found out I was pregnant. PCOS, insulin resistance, inconsistent/ nonexistent cycles be damned. A little girl was going to wriggle her way into our hearts and family no matter what the obstacles. And so she did. I quit my job so I could spend my last "one-kid" summer with Ryan, spend the entire 41 weeks puking every morning, and basically freaked out for nearly a year. And then she was born. And it is totally different. And I freaked out for nothing.

 Turns out, a baby without colic is pretty cool. A baby without colic basically sleeps, eats, poops, and sleeps some more. A baby without colic is totally do-able. I'm not saying I'm not exhausted. I am. I'm not saying I'm not a tad overwhelmed. A wee bit more than a tad. I'm not saying my house isn't a disaster. It is.

But I can totally see now how it is that people choose to have more than one child. If Ryan didn't have colic and was like this one, I can see how I might have had a second child sooner. Ah, well. So now I have a six and a half year old and a two month old. Nothing like starting over.
It really is totally different this time around. And not just the colic thing either. I'm different. I'm older, wiser (ha-ha), more relaxed, and I've "been there, done that." I'm not as scared this time. I'm not as worried. Well, at least about baby stuff any way.

So now you know why I forgot I had a blog. The good news is I'm not working anymore and Ryan is in first grade now. Which means he's gone for six and a half hours every single day. So I can write in my blog in all my hours and hours of free time. Oh, wait. Now I forgot I had a baby. Free time. Hah! See.....I told you I was exhausted.

A New Era

Ryan starts Kindergarten tomorrow. Gone are the mornings of sleeping in, watching cartoons, and eating cereal. Now we have to tackle breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth, and getting out the door and to school all before nine in the morning. For me this will be nothing short of a miracle. Having totally grown accustomed to my work schedule, it's not uncommon for me to go to bed at two am, get up with Ryan five hours later, pour the cereal, and go back to bed for a little bit. How I am supposed to actually get up and function, I have no idea. And drive too. Since we are in the "walking zone" there is no bus to pick him up in the morning.
Given that I can accomplish the huge feat of actually getting him to school....what then? Three hours every day of peace and silence. Three hours of opportunity. For the first time in five years there will be a consistent, daily block of time that is all mine. Completely empty time. To be filled however I want, with whatever I want. A new era. How strange. I think Kindergarten will be as much of an adjustment for me as it will be for Ryan.

Easy Artisan Bread

I saw a post for this bread on one of my favorite blogs, Frugal Living NW. It looked so easy I had to try it. Here's how it went.
Easy Artisan Bread
yields 3 loaves

3 cups luke warm water
1.5 Tbsp active dry yeast
1.5 Tbsp coarse salt or Kosher salt, or 1 Tbsp regular salt
6.5 cups all purpose flour (I used half white flour, half wheat flour)


1. Dump all 4 ingredients into a large container. The instructions suggested a large ice cream container since it has a lid and you'll need to punch holes in the lid later. I just so happened to have a spare one of these hanging out in the cupboard, so voila! Using a wooden spoon mix it all together really well until the flour is all mixed in.

2. Put the lid on (with holes punched in for gas expansion) and let it sit in a warm spot for 2 hours. Pretty easy so far, right?


This is what it will look like at the end of the 2 hours. It will have expanded to fill the container and will look nice and bubbly.


3. Shape the dough into three loaves. Make sure your hands are well floured or else you will become one with the dough. Each loaf should be about the size of a grapefruit and nice and smooth.


At this point you can wrap the other two loaves and stick them in the fridge for 1 to 3 days or freeze them for later. I didn't have foil to wrap them so I wrapped them in parchment paper.


4. Using a serrated knife, slash the top a few times. Place the loaf on a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet and let it "rest" for 40 minutes. For an added artisan look you can roll the bottom of the loaf in cornmeal.

Place a shallow pan (like a cake) pan in the oven and fill it with water to create steam. Bake in a 450 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes until the outside is golden brown and it sounds hollow when you tap on it.


And there you have it. Homemade bread in four steps. If you want to see the post I read to get the instructions go here. http://www.frugallivingnw.com/frugal-homemaking/making-artisan-yeast-bread-from-scratch/

If you want more bread recipes like this one, check out the book at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312362919?ie=UTF8&tag=frlinw-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0312362919

In the meantime, enjoy!

Which one you wanna pick?

So for a while now we've been working on choices. I give Ryan two choices, both of which I can live with, and he picks the one he wants. This way, he does something I want him to do while at the same time giving him the sense that he has some control over the circumstance. For example, "Okay Ryan, you can brush your teeth and then pick your jammies, or you can pick your jammies and then brush your teeth. Which one do you want to pick?" This way he has a choice but in the end is still brushing and picking jammies.
I have also started on the idea of "chores." Before I go to work I tell Jason and Ryan that they have "chores" for the night. It goes something like this. "Okay guys I'm leaving now. Here are your chores for tonight. First, finish dinner. Second, put your dishes in the sink. Third, put your dirty clothes in the laundry basket." Then I'm off to work. Getting chores done before Mommy gets home seems to be good motivation for them to do stuff.
This afternoon Ryan presented me with a strange mix of these two concepts. Here it was.
"Okay Mommy. You have five chores. Number one, you work and I go to Dylan's and play. Number two, I go to Dylan's to do chores. Number three, I go to Dylan's and do some work. Number four, I go to Dylan's and do some more work. Number five, I go to Dylan's and do some more work again. Okay. Which one you wanna pick?

Sorry, lost my mind for a while

Apparently, I have skipped an entire season. Sorry Fall. What can I say? Ryan started pre-school. Jason started working in Bend. I got a new job back in the lab at Providence. And time flew. Now it's the week before Christmas and a family sized bout of pneumonia has slowed us down to a crawl. Literally. So I thought I'd write, catch up a bit. Nah, at this point pictures will do a better job. Here we go.

Here are some shots of Ryan when we went to the beach last summer. He was posing on some driftwood for me. What a big boy!



Also last summer, he discovered cowboys.
And super hero's. More on that later.



And here is his very first day of preschool.


Ah, the beginning of the Spider-man obsession.


And as we got closer and closer to Halloween, Ryan found Iron Man, and then it was all over.



When Jason started working in Bend and I was working at Providence, Wednesday night became Ryan's night to stay over at Uncle Greg's house. Here is a shot of his bedroom. He is so proud of it.




During part of the long Thanksgiving weekend, Jason took Ryan over to Bend to stay the night at his hotel and play in the snow. They made snow angels, had chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa, and Ryan was so excited to tell me, "I threw a smowball at Daddy's beans!"



And finally, the most recent picture of me. Lovely, isn't it? Here I am in the hospital, on oxygen and IV antibiotics. Happy to be breathing and taken care of by the wonderful nurses at Willamette Falls Hospital.



And that's about it. At this point, my biggest Christmas wish is that my family is healthy enough to enjoy the holidays ahead and thankful enough to appreciate all the fun days behind.

Ryan the pirate

Ryan walks up, hands me the hanker-chief and tells me he wants to be a pirate. I put the hanker-chief on his head, absent minded. I am not paying attention. I look up to see him walking away. Totally naked. Except for the pirate scarf on his head.

My not so green thumb

Okay, so it was not the best year to dive into the world of raised bed gardening. Let me also put it out there that I hate doing yard work. So I have no idea why I thought I would like gardening. Didn't think that one through very well. I like house plants. I always considered myself to be sort of a green thumb as far as they were concerned. As it turns out though, what I like about a garden is the idea of a garden. And that's where my affection ends. I don't like weeds, hard dirt, ants, snails, plants that don't grow, plants that die, sun that doesn't shine, rain that doesn't stop, weeds that masquerade as "herbs", flowers I mistake for lemon cucumber starts...the list is never ending.
I should begin by saying that when we looked at this house I was thrilled to see four raised garden beds in the back yard, basking in it's full sun glory. Our first house was a rental and had about two square feet in the front to plant a flower, which I did every year we lived there. Impatiens. It was super shady. Our next house was on a huge lot with a huge front yard and an even huger back yard. While we lived here I worked full time until our son was born. Totally overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place, I continued my previous routine of planting a couple small flowers right by the front door and calling it good. Then we moved to Washington. Our housing development, we discovered later was built by a rock quarry. This became evident the second I tried to plant some shasta daisies my uncle gave me. They died and that was the extent of digging in the dirt at that house. Then we moved again. This time to a nice sized lot with a nice sized front yard and a cute little back yard complete with raised beds. It seemed my dream of a garden was about to come true.
Since we moved here in the middle of the summer, I didn't plant anything last year. And then came the Fall when I got a new pair of pruning shears and all hell broke loose. I completely hacked five fuchsia bushes to the ground. Convinced I was doing a fantastic job, I clipped and snipped them into oblivion. When I stood back and looked at what I had done, I almost cried. I was barely able to prune back the two hydrangea's before I put the clippers away and vowed never to touch them again. It was a long, barren, fuchsia skeleton filled winter.
Spring came eventually though, and with it some life in the form of blooming lilac bushes. Then came the oh so wonderful daphne bush which made me happy every time I smelled it. The peonies started blooming and before I knew it, it there was lots to do. I had made a decision. I was going to plant a vegetable garden.
I knew I needed to turn up the soil and get it soft for planting. I read articles on the internet about raised bed gardening. I downloaded a pdf file that was full of tips of what to do when. I got and read a couple of books. Then I waited for the rain to stop. I waited for a very long time. When it finally did, I went out there with my little tools and, over the course of several days, turned the soil of three of the beds. I was so proud of myself. They looked pretty even without plants in them.
Next came a trip to the store to buy seeds. I had decided to start from seed because it was cheaper than buying plants. Bad move. First, I had no idea what I was doing. Second, I had no idea what I was doing! After waiting another few weeks for a relatively nice day, I planted marigold seeds in the bed I was going to put tomatoes in later, cilantro seeds, lemon cucumbers, carrots, and nasturtium. I started hot peppers inside in an egg carton. Then it started raining again. A lot. So I waited some more. I am still embarrassed at what happened next.
I never did see any cilantro or marigolds come up. They must have died in the cold wet weather. The nasturtiums germinated well. The lemon cucumbers took off like gang busters. At least I thought they were lemon cucumbers. They were in the spot where I planted the lemon cucumbers at least. There were so many of them I wasn't sure what I would do with them all, so I posted free lemon cucumber starts on freecycle. I had several complete strangers come out in the pouring rain to dig up little starts and take them home to their own gardens. It wasn't until several of the "lemon cucumbers" sprouted up in the other beds and in between the beds that I realized they weren't lemon cucumbers at all, but the little orange flowers I had seen the year before in that spot. I still don't know what they are called, but they are resilient little guys, I'll tell you that. I was so angry at those damn flowers I pulled every last one of them out of the ground. Until a couple of more weeks went by and more sprouted in their place. Then I gave up and let them have it. I never did ever grow a single lemon cucumber.
I did, however, manage to grow a few carrots. Which is where I discovered the gigantic ant nests. Millions and millions of little black ants. Hundreds and hundreds of little white ant larvae. Makes my skin crawl just to think about them. I was so freaked I ran into the house, got the box of Borax, and dumped almost the whole thing on the ant nests. There were three of them. Unfortunately for the carrots, Jason looked up Borax and ants and the whole thing on the internet after he came home from work that night. I suppose I don't blame him for being worried when he saw the three huge piles of white powder mixed in with the carrots he would soon be eating. As it turns out that's not the way you are supposed to do it. Something about mixing the Borax with water or some other liquid and putting little bowls out for the ants to crawl into and eat it. Something about Borax causing cancer after lab rats ingested it. And that was the end of the carrots.
I can't remember exactly when but I know it was sometime after Mother's day when I bought two tomato plants and stuck them in the ground. I was going to plant basil seeds in that same bed, but since the marigolds and cilantro never came up, I caved and just bought a plant. It was completely obliterated by snails in two days and now only the little plastic marker remains to remind me how much I hate those snails. As I was inspecting the ground trying to find any remaining shred of basil evidence, I realized what I thought were weeds nearby were actually mint plants shooting up. I had completely forgotten that I had planted a mint last year. It must have gone to seed and those seeds must have been dormant in the soil or something. Half of that bed is full of mint now.
Around that same time, I planted the hot peppers I had grown in the egg carton. Then we had a heat wave and all but one died. It's two inches tall now. It's the end of July. It's not going to happen.
About ten days ago, I found the packet of sunflower seeds I had forgotten about in a drawer in the kitchen. I all but threw them on the ground and left them to fend for themselves. They are a foot high today. Eaten by snails yes, but holding their own so far.
I haven't decided what I will do next year. The beds themselves are in pretty bad shape. One of the sides of the second bed is literally crumbling away. I, apparently, am like the opposite of a gardener. The plants I try to kill won't die. The plants I forget about are taking over one of the beds. The plants I nurture and put effort into either never sprout or die almost instantly. The only seed I planted that actually turned into anything remotely resembling anything were the nasturtium flowers. Which my mom says you can eat, but since they are in the same bed as the Borax, we'll pass. At this point I am seriously considering digging the whole entire thing up and planting grass. Or letting Jason plant the grass, since I'm sure he'll want the grass to actually grow.
The only saving grace of this whole gardening experience are those five fuchsia bushes. They came back. Well, four of them did anyway. And they look beautiful. They are full and blooming and lovely. See? My thumb is a very light shade of green after all.

Questions and answers

I observed the following conversation between my husband and my son tonight.
Ryan, "Hey Daddy, why are our buns on the back?"
Jason, "Well, uh, because that's where they are honey."
Ryan, "Why aren't our buns on our front?"
Jason, "Because our peeps are on the front. How would we go peep if our buns were on the front?"
Ryan, "Well, if took our peep off, we would have room for our buns."
Jason is totally stopped in his tracks....."Um, well that would hurt."

Sometimes the explanations are as funny as the questions.

After our rest

My dad is notorious in our family for saying super funny stuff when he is tired. Beyond tired really, into the silly zone. I think a tiny bit of this has been passed down to Ryan, because I swear some of the greatest stuff comes out of his mouth right before he falls asleep. Today at nap time was yet again, another blog worthy moment.
We are laying down ready for nap when Ryan rolls over, and the conversation goes like this.

Ryan "Hey, I have an idea."
Me "What's that honey?"
Ryan "After our rest we could go to Fred Meyer."
Me "What do we need at Fred Meyer honey?"
Ryan "Well, we could go to Fred Meyer and look at the clothes, and get some steak, and some ham, and some sugar, and some food for Weedie. Did we run out of Weedie food?"
Me (trying not to laugh) "No, I just got some food for Weedie."
Ryan "Well, then we can get some food for Sammydo."

And then he rolls back over.

Warm tats

I am working at the computer in the office. I am wearing my jammy pants and a t-shirt. Ryan comes in and hands me a tank top he found in the clean laundry pile. "Here, Mommy. Go ahead and put this on." I decide to play along. I put the tank top over my t-shirt and look to see his approval. He smiles hugely, pats my boob and says, "see, now your tats will stay nice and warm."

Ryan's nap time story

Sometimes when we are all snuggled down and ready to take a rest we will tell stories. If I am telling the story they always start with, "Once upon a time there was a little boy named Ryan..." and then I make stuff up from there. Lately Ryan has been telling me stories. His start like this, "Once upon a time there was a great Mommy..." No kidding. It is so cute. So here is Ryan's story from today. I will try to get it as verbatim as I can remember.

"Once upon a time there was a great Mommy. And she was a super hero. And she would fly around and around and around. And she would get bad guys. She was a great super hero. And she would get them with her laser arm. The end."

And less than two minutes later he was totally asleep. It was awesome.

Apparently my faculties are no match for the new facilities

Is it me or have public bathrooms become sort of mind boggling? Between automatic sensing faucet control, auto soap and paper towel sensors, and toilets that flush themselves, I seriously cannot keep up. I find myself doing a new sort of body sign language in the bathroom now. Either the auto flusher flushes while I am still actually using the toilet, which scares the crap out of me (no pun intended), or I end up standing on one leg, sort of high kicking the toilet sensor with the other foot. Then the gesturing continues at the sink. I glide my hands under the faucet over and over to get enough water, under the soap dispenser, again under the water, and if, miraculously, all that goes well, find myself waving hello to a large black box mounted on the wall in the hopes that it will dispense the two square inches it thinks will be sufficient to dry my hands.
But here's where it really gets bad. No two public bathrooms are alike. Some have auto toilet flushers, some don't. Some have handles to flush the toilet, some have those little black buttons it is impossible to depress with your shoe. Some have sensors that turn on the water, some still have (gasp) handles which allow water to flow freely at the users discretion. Some bathrooms have manual soap pumps, some don't.
And as if all this variety isn't bad enough, the diversity in paper towel dispensers is downright silly. You've got the hand crank, the pull out and another will follow, the little finger holed side turney knob, the automatic dispensers, the trifold single sheets...the list goes on and on. I actually once dried my hands in a high powered suction contraption made by the Dyson vacuum cleaner company. I held my hands in this little hand slot, which of course sensed them automatically, and this super loud, moderately scary suction began which literally sucked every ounce of moisture from my hands in like less than 20 seconds. Bizarre.
So if you see me in a public bathroom gesturing with arms and legs, bending at the waist to look at the faucet, waving at various inanimate objects over and over again, staring blankly at a faucet which clearly has an old fashioned handle and wondering why it won't turn on by itself...don't worry. It's just me trying to wash my hands.

Top ten worst things about being a perfectionist

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Comparison vs. Contentedness

Maybe its just me. Maybe its my out of whack brain chemistry, a product of my childhood, a bad habit allowed to run free for too many years, I'm not sure. Do other people do it? Does she do it? Who knows? But there I go again, comparing myself to others.
I think there is a natural tendency to judge ourselves, to evaluate how we are doing in life. How are things going? Are we accomplishing our goals? How do we need to adjust to our current situation? Comparing who we are to who we want to be, to who God made us to be. How else do we grow? I think this kind of comparison is good to do. But the other kind, the kind where we compare ourselves to other people, that's where we can start to go off track.
She has a better sense of style. She is skinnier. She is more spiritual. She has nicer hair. She is a better decorator. Her kids are more well behaved. Her kids go to bed at a normal hour. She is this and that and the other thing...better than I am. Nothing can destroy the possibility of being content with what you have/who you are faster than comparing yourself to someone else in this way. And sometimes we don't even realize we are doing it. We just have this vague sense that we are inadequate. And this is definitely not taking any thought captive. This is the opposite. This is letting our thoughts drag us through the mud.
From 2Cor. chapter 10:5 "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
Okay, so what exactly is the knowledge of God? What does God know about me (besides everything)? Wait. I think that's the point, actually. He KNOWS everything about me and still calls me His workmanship according to Eph 2:10. Whoa. So I need to demolish the argument that I am inadequate. And how do I do that exactly? By Phil 4:8 that's how. "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy- THINK ABOUT SUCH THINGS." (my emphasis) How will I have time to compare my self to other people and consequently feel crappy about myself if I am thinking about such things?
So, the fact that I have bare white walls, wear my hair in a pony tail everyday, and don't own a pair of high heeled shoes IS FINE. It's not that I am okay in spite of these things. It's that I'm okay because of these things. Because He made me who I am. I am His workmanship. And if His workmanship has bare white walls and wears a pony tail everyday and flip flops instead of cutesy girlie high heels...I can be content with that.

Couldn't they have given him a different name?

Several weeks ago we borrowed the movies Toy Story and Toy Story 2 from a friend. I can't even begin to guess how many times we have watched them. This was around Easter time, so instead of a traditional Easter basket with candy, we got Ryan a Buzz Lightyear toy. Apparently, however, Buzz wasn't enough. He also wanted Buzz's companion, Woody. We waited a couple weeks, enduring the asking that turned to begging, which turned to negotiation, which turned to delusion. "But Mommy! Today is my Birthday! Can we get Woody for my Birthday?" Yeah right, like that's gonna work dude. But in the end, much to my husband's dismay, I caved. It was Walmart that did me in. We were there to buy dog food, and we walked out with a Woody.
Enter me and my mind in the gutter, and the constant giggling that was the rest of the afternoon. Ryan..."Mommy, tell Daddy I got a Woody!" "Buzz, see my new Woody?" The best though was when we were on the phone with Gramma Mo. Having not seen either movie, she had no idea who Woody was. "Gramma Mo! Guess what? I got a Woody!" Stunned silence on the other end of the line. Little giggle. Me, glad I'm not the only one, "Mo, Woody is a cowboy character from the movie Toy Story. Ryan got the Woody doll today at Walmart." Mo, "Oh, okay (giggle, giggle) I was wondering..." Sheesh, couldn't they have given him a different name?

I wanna be Stephenie Meyer

I want to wake up from a dream so great, so real, so captivating, that I drop everything (except for the kids breakfast) and write it down. I want to be so consumed with it that I continue writing just so I can know what happens to the people in the story. I want to get to know them, picture what they look like, and immerse myself in their world. Then I want to publish that story and become a bu-zillionaire. Right. Like that's ever gonna happen.
Instead, what I do is find myself awake at 3:47 am coming up with blog titles in my head. I actually started writing one this morning at said unholy hour. It was brilliant. It was witty and engaging. I have absolutely no idea what it was about now. O well. Maybe I'll put one of those little journals on the nightstand so I can jot stuff down in my sleep. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll have a Stephenie Meyer dream and a cascade of brilliance will flow over from my unconsciousness.
Yeah. Maybe not. I guess I'll settle for that little journal.

Is it me or...

Are the toilet paper rolls getting narrower?
Is it always rainy when I want to go outside, and sunny when I want to nap?
Are Jim and Pam like the greatest TV couple of all time?
Is having a dog like having a baby, a preschooler, and a teenager all rolled into one? Always cleaning up poop, always putting toys away, and always loading up a food bowl...
Do headaches seem to strike at the worst possible times?
Have Facebook games lost their appeal?
Is there absolutely no point to caffeine free pop?
Does my shirt actually say "Wipe your nose and/or face and/or hands on me?"
Did the movie Food Inc. make anyone else want to become a vegetarian?
Is anyone else extremely grateful for the drive through pharmacy?
Does anyone else wish they would make a drive through post office?
Does Sam always seem to bark right as I am falling into unconsciousness?
Does that giant tub of yogurt always seem to go bad before I can finish it?
Is Friends the best TV show ever?
Did my b**t get bigger, or did these pants get shorter?
Does the phrase "solitary confinement" actually sound pretty awesome sometimes?

Spring Cleaning

I don't know if it is a real phenomenon, or if it's just because I am reading about other people doing it, but the spring cleaning bug has hit me hard. Instead of doing regular things like dishes and laundry, I find myself doing things like moving furniture and scrubbing baseboards. Just the other day I used a too strong solution of Pine Sol to scrub said baseboards and burned off at least two layers of skin on my hands. No joke. I even emailed the Mrs. Meyers customer service to inquire about their Rhubarb scented Spring Cleaning Kit they sold last year and when would it be available this year? It won't by the way, just in case you were looking forward to it too. I have washed windows, bleached curtains, purged the magazine stack...I even toyed with the idea of removing every scrap of paper, finger painting pictures, and magnets off of the refrigerator. I guess this entry will serve as a warning. If you come over and see dishes spilling out of the sink and laundry in the hallway, and then notice I am missing some furniture and a few layers of skin, you'll know whats going on.