Riley's day

Riley's birthday falls close to Thanksgiving. When the boys were little we would hit my family's Thanks giving and Tom's family. Two feasts in one day. We did not celebrate at home. As a result, Riley liked the tradition of having an early Thanksgiving feast to celebrate his birthday. The whole turkey and stuffing and yams and potatoes with the fine china and sparkling wine glasses on the table. Riley would sit at the head and host all his friends to a fancy dinner. He asked for the same this year.

I Invited all his hold friends and arranged for an out of town friend to come stay for a long weekend. It was lovey. Riley was thoroughy entertained. I do have to say though that I spent enough feeding the hords and going to the store to buy more groceries than if I had just taken Riley and a couple of friends to the movies with popcorn and bought him a gift. I did not buy Riley a gift other than paying an enormous grocery bill. I bought a huge ham as The feast fell so close to Thanksgiving this year that Tom asked if Riley could opt for another meat other than Turkey as we would be inundartted with Turkey again in just a few days. Riley opted for a spiral ham.

I overestimated our needs and bought a whole ham to cook up. We will be serving left overs on Thursday with a fresh turkey. There was so much ham I had to freeze some for use later.

A storm came through on the day of the party. We lost power mid afternoon for a short while. Luckily all the dishes were done and could still be served. The power was not out for long, but while I waited I got out lots of candle sticks and candles to be prepared after dark.  I filled hurricane lamps with oil and set them in the windows. The house looked lovely.

A disturbing and upsetting moment came when I could not find the salad plates to my favorite table setting. My special events china that I store in padded china bags is missing a bag full of salad plates. I served on them last Christmas, but for the life of me I can not find where I stored them from last year. I am still in a panic.  My mom says not to worry, that they will turn up. If she is not distressed over the missing plates, I will try not to stress.

She says I need to be more organized. When we bought this house she warned me there was no storage anywhere. It is a very modern home with clean lines and open floor plans. Even the basement is just one big open space. I have spent a year putting up shelves and trying to find good spots for everything.

Without a pantry and a tiny kitchen, my dishes are scattered in various locations and some are still in boxes in the basement. I had an interior decorator come. She gave me some brilliant ideas on pantry location.

As we lie in bed at night Tom tells me he loves this house. He asks why I don't love this house. It just needs some tweaking to make it good is all, but without that tweaking there are serious flaws.

The storm last week had water coming in the window again. All that caulking we did this summer was not enough. WE will need to replace the siding next summer. Meanwhile I have towels on all the window sills whenever a big storm blows in lots of water.

The PUD came out for an assessment. They will pay $6 a square foot towards the cost of replacing the windows. It works out to about  a 30% discount toward each window. Of course the estimate is $10,000 for all the windows and they don't include sky lights. But knocking $3500 off the bill is no small change.

I am grateful that we took the trees down last week as the storm this weekend was a doozy. Tom and I kept looking out the windows watching the trees in the distance sway in the heavy winds. There were limbs down in the roads all over town. Flood warnings were out for high water.

The water bucket I use to capture ground water in the basement during heavy rains had to be emptied a couple of times. That bucket does the trick at capturing water and keeping the basement dry. A simple and cheap solution to the PUD's box leaking below ground level. They told us we would have to pay for the box to be moved above ground level to stop the water using their cables to drip inside the house. Tom said he would readdress the problem later, but meanwhile a cheap plastic bucket set under the drip, occasionally emptied in heavy rains, solves a whole lot of water issues. Love the simple solutions.

The simple solution in the kitchen according to the interior decorator is that the kitchen is out of proportion too small for the house. The kitchen should be expanded into the family room area with a  set of pantry cabinets on  the long wall. It was so easy to see once she said it, and such a simple solution. 

She came from a house with the laundry and the master on the main floor so she didn't quite see the laundry issue. She told me though that I needed to find my worst anxieties and issues with the house and solve them first and to completion. The kitchen would give me the most bang for my dollar. She recommended taking out the floor and making the floor all one big room. I had no argument with that. She just affirmed what Tom and I had already thought. It was a lovely visit at $65 an hour, but cheaper than a therapist and for me more effective, and she makes house calls.