home wrecking

I'm taking an LJ/dinner break.

I don't have half of my bathroom demolished yet. I'm a bit behind schedule, mostly because I haven't had any full days to work on it. Hopefully, tomorrow, I'll get enough of it dismantled that I can run the plumbing on monday.

I'm doing the archaeological thing. I'm finding layers and layers of previous bathrooms.

I do have to say this, though: When installing a bathtub, first put up the walls. Cover the studs with cement board, or drywall or something, because if you put the tub up against the studs of an outside wall, cold air will get in around the underside of the tub, and it will always be really really cold. Okay?!

Memories of Christmas past

My mother makes a little gingerbread house, barn and church. Every Christmas, she puts them out in her living room. They've got gingerbread sides, with cookies on the roofs for shingles. She's got them in a snowy scene, with little trees and a fence and Nativity scene and carolers and all kinds of stuff. She's been doing this for about twenty five years. She doesn't make them all every year, though. She keeps them around for a while, and makes new ones when they start looking bad (no, they never get moldy or anything).

One year, the church looked especially bad. Embarrasingly bad. I don't know if was older than usual, or if time had just treated it badly, but my sister and I thought it looked awful. We probably said so, but mom didn't seem to care.

After Christmas was over, she packed them all up and put them up in the closet, like usual. We were worried that she'd try to use them again, the following year. But I was going to make sure that didn't happen. Some time later in the winter, when mom was gone for the evening, I took the church outside, set it down at the top of the hill, and (with my friend Phil as documentarian) ceremoniously kicked it down the hill. She wasn't supposed to know this, but...


One evening some time later, my mom needed to pick me up from work so we could go somewhere. I said that my pictures had come in, and I needed to pick them up. She was in a hurry for some reason, and said she'd pick them up for me. I said, "no, that's okay," but she insisted. I remained hopeful that she would respect my privacy (or at least respect my desire to see my own pictures first) and not open them up.

I got in the car.

She said, "So... what's that picture that looks like my church?"

( Umm.... )