Speaking of which

Our Mike in Greenville

A week ago last Saturday, a bunch of us went to Greenville.

That's a less-than-two-hour drive from Columbia.

The reason for our excursion was for Mike to meet my relatives who live there: my big sister Kay, her husband, Pierre-Philippe, and of course Henry, my mother's widower. I have two nieces and a nephew who live there too, and Mike met one of my nieces -- Susanna.

In one car it was Mike, Audrey, and Dagny -- hereafter collectively known as Maudag.

In the other car -- mine -- was me, Erica, and Baby Elliot.

Dagny was put to work grinding coffee beans

TG went in the other direction, to Charleston, that day, to see a basketball game at his alma mater, The Citadel.

Rhett stayed at home with his dad, Chad, who is using all of his spare time to complete a room he is building onto their house.

It's going to be pretty great when it's done, and he's getting it closer to completion.

We set out mid-morning, bound for my sister's house first, where we were set to have coffee, with coffee cake supplied by me.

Which meant I had to make a stop to buy said treat, and as it turned out I paid too much.

Audrey got her hands on Baby Elliot

Hint: If you need a coffee cake, go to either Walmart or Aldi. The exact same thing will be significantly cheaper -- as in, half as much -- than what you'll find at any other grocery store.

Anyway, no big deal but I did stop and buy the cakes and when Erica and I arrived at Kay's, Maudag were already there and the introductions had been made.

My brother-in-law put Dagny to work grinding the beans that he would use to make our coffee in a French press.

Then he made one pot of strong, hot coffee, and then another, so that there would be plenty.

We had our cake and coffee and about an hour of pleasant conversation.

I paid too much for these but they were really good

In addition to it being her first time to meet Mike, my sister had also not yet met Baby Elliot, who is five months old. She was still in cancer treatments when he was born, and has since been recovering from those.

She's doing well and in anticipation of seeing TG's and my youngest grandson for the first time, she had bought him some teething toys in the shape of tools. 

They came with ribbons and clamps to attach the teethers to his clothing.

He's been munching and drooling on those teethy tools ever since.

That visit concluded, we hugged and kissed our goodbyes and drove the three-or-so miles to Henry's house.

My sister had bought Baby Elliot some teething tools

He was waiting for us, and we had a nice time chatting with him.

He and Mike sat in Henry's sunroom slash home office and conversed for about twenty minutes while we girls rested in my mother's great room, which still looks exactly as it did when she was alive.

Henry had pulled some books and other materials and made piles on the dining table, for each of us girls to take.

Mine included a few coffee table books I had given to my mother in the past, and a picture album.

He hadn't planned on parting with the mirror-framed portrait of Kay and me and our mother taken in late 1958 or early 1959 just yet, but when I was showing it to Mike, Henry insisted that I go ahead and take the picture home with me, along with its wrought iron easel.

Elliot is partial to the blue hammer

My mother gave me a copy of this picture many years ago but to my shame I must admit that I don't know where it is. Probably packed away somewhere.

So now I have the splendid photograph in its splendid frame, and it is on display in my front room.

Speaking of the front room, we've made other changes there.

For many years the far wall -- even the chair rail -- was painted black, and a I used it as a photo backdrop.

Then for several years I erected an actual temporary backdrop framework and hung various photographic backdrops there, for various occasions.

Dagny posed first with her Great-Uncle Philippe ...

In recent years I'd moved the whole thing forward about twenty inches so that I could store seasonal decoration bins behind the backdrop. 

These were apart from my Christmas bins, which are huge and heavy, which for all the years since we moved into this house in 2005, were stored in the attic.

The problem with that was that the bins were much too heavy for TG to move down from the attic each fall, by himself. And I'm sure you know that I was no help.

For the past several years, Chad has always come over to help TG get the Christmas bins down, and then to put them back up there in January.

It was a huge hassle. And storing the rest of the (much smaller and lighter) seasonal bins behind the photo backdrop was not exactly an elegant solution either.

... and then with her Great-Aunt Kay

If you didn't already know they were there you would never know they were there unless you went prowling around back there, which no one ever did ... but still.

Another hassle was two sheds -- well, more like one shed and one much smaller shed-like outdoor storage cabinet -- that we inherited from the previous owner of our house, out back by the pool.

The cabinet one stored TG's pool supplies and the larger shed was just full of pool toys and tiki torches and similar junk.

Also the doors would no longer stay closed on the larger shed and we had to bungee-cord them shut.

Precious.

Heirloom photo of (L to R) me, my mother, and my sister

So, just before Christmas, TG ordered a new shed and took down the two old sheds.

Construction of the new shed was completed a few weeks ago, and all of my storage bins for all of the different seasons, are now stored in there. 

Enough room was left over for decor pieces I am not using right now, and related stuff that I can now retrieve easily just a few steps from the doors leading out to the pool.

(The last hurdle will be, our entire deck needs to be rebuilt. And that includes the decking platform upon which this new shed stands.)

(Chad and TG are going to redesign and rebuild the deck after Chad finishes with his and Erica's room addition.)

Front room with back wall repainted

Then, once all of the bins were out of the front room, TG painted that far wall the same color as the rest of the room, and we moved my mother's leather recliner into that space, along with an extra side table that had been in the sun room.

I say my mother's leather recliner because it was her special chair and she left it to me when she died in 2020.

It had been in the sun room where I normally sit when I am relaxing or working on my computer, only I did not sit in it because I have another chair out there that works better for me and my pets.

It's a chair-and-a-half, so it's large enough for all of us in that I can sit there with them and still have room to put my hands on this keyboard. If Sweetness the tuxedo cat is not sitting on it, that is.

Speaking of Sweetness, I had to swathe my mother's leather recliner in a quilt because she (Sweetness; not my mother) would not keep her claws off it and was threatening to ruin it.

It looks like a larger room now

Yes she has a TALL scratching post a few feet away from the chair and she knows better but, in the absence of supervision and being yelled at to get off, she would scratch the leather. 

As they say in one of the pirate movies, If we was any kind of decent, we would remove temptation from their path. And so that's what I did.

Funny story about the paint color in that front room, though, which color it has been since 2016 when we did a phase-one remodel.

Phases two (kitchen and powder room ceiling smoothing, repaint, and board-and-batten added), three (upstairs bathroom remodel), and four (master bed and bath complete remodel) took place in 2020, 2021, and 2023, respectively.

Phase five was just a few weeks ago when we removed the carpet from our TV room and added LVP flooring. I showed you pictures of that.

Sweetness threatened to destroy my mother's leather recliner

Phase six will be soon, when we replace the tile in our kitchen with the same LVP that's in the TV room.

Knowing me, there will additional phases until the cows come home or I am called home to heaven, whichever occurs first, and I will faithfully report on every aspect of same.

Anyway, back to the funny paint-color story. TG tutors a young lady whose parents sit in our front room together while the tutoring hour takes place in the kitchen, at our dining table.

I stay out of the way for the most part, but there have been times I have sat and chatted with the parents.

Several months ago, I am almost certain that TG told me that his student's parents wanted to know the name of the paint color in our front room.

Another comfortable place for you to sit

I remember searching and searching until I found it (what I don't remember is where I searched or where I found it), writing the information on an index card, and giving the card to TG to give to the couple when he saw them next.

Just after Christmas this year, when I wanted TG to paint the wall at the far end of our front room to match the rest of the room, I had to supply him with the name of the paint.

So I began searching (again, I thought), for that information. However. Not only could I not find it, but as I looked, I became certain that I had never found it in the first place, for the couple who I believed had asked for it.

In fact, I became convinced that I had dreamt the whole thing.

I even asked TG to ask them if they still had the index card I made for them, with the paint name on it.

For context, you can see this new seating area from my coffee cart

No, they said. They did not have that card.

They were here in my front room last night but i was tired and did not have any makeup on my face and I didn't feel like telling them that I may have dreamed that they wanted to know the name of the paint color on the walls of the room they were sitting in.

Yes I know that there are other ways to match paint colors; in fact, TG found the used can of paint and finished the room, so it appears that I flapped around about it for literally nothing, but still.

It worries me that I may have dreamed finding the name of that paint color and writing it on a card for TG's student's parents, and that it never happened at all except in my mind.

Maybe next time they're due to come over, I'll look presentable and we'll have that conversation.

My new robot vacuum leaves lovely lines on the carpet

I'll let you know. In the meantime, the name of the paint is Misty. By Sherwin Williams. Just in case you were wondering, and even if you weren't.

When we left Henry's house a week ago Saturday in Greenville, after visiting first with my sister and then with him, we headed down the road to Travelers Rest, where lies the cemetery in which my mother is buried.

After paying our respects at her grave, we hurried (because it was cold and windy) across the street to Northwest Grill, a Travelers Rest institution. 

The Northwest Grill is a hole-in-the-wall hamburger-and-fries and meat-and-three place where we almost always stop for a meal after visiting Mom's grave.

I wrote about it at least once, here.

I put her to work the first night I had her

From there we went to a nearby Starbucks for coffee, and then home. It was a most pleasant day and now Mike has met almost everyone except for several of my children's cousins who do not live in South Carolina.

Speaking of living in South Carolina and of cousins, one of my children's cousins -- my sister's daughter, Rebecca -- and her husband are soon to be moving to our state from South Bend, Indiana, where they have lived for many years.

Rebecca's husband is a doctor, and he has accepted an offer to serve as Director of this facility in Lexington, eight miles from my house.

We are thrilled and can't wait to be able to hang out more with Rebecca and her brood.

They will be moving to the area in June, but she will come to Greenville next week to see her family, and from there to Columbia where she will spend one night with us, and I will show her around.

We remodeled our bedroom last spring

Speaking of round, I made a purchase that I'm pretty excited about.

They say that nature abhors a vacuum, but I would change that to, Jenny the Pirate abhors vacuuming.

I told you recently that Audrey has cleaned my house every two weeks for the last ten years, since she has had her own house cleaning business.

But she is so busy now that she barely has time for me, and Dagny has been helping me.

I was already keeping up with things between Audrey's cleanings, but the big problem was always the floors.

You need some cork lights

There are so many of them.

And when you begin the task of sweeping and mopping a twenty-three-hundred-square-foot house, it instantly seems to grow to a five-thousand-square-foot house.

That's before it shrinks to a fifteen-hundred-square-foot house when they all come over at the same time.

In the past, more than once, I had been struck by, but always resisted, the urge to buy a robot vacuum.

But a few weeks ago, once again faced with a real deal on a super-fantastic robot vacuum, I succumbed.

The shed holds my decor bins, my wreaths, and lots of other things

It was this one. Except, when I bought it, it was one hundred twenty-nine dollars. I told you it was a real deal.

And although I don't think I would have wanted to pay any more than that amount for this nifty gadget, now I am wondering what I ever did without it.

I pick up drapery ends and so forth off the floor and put her on the wall-to-wall carpet in our room, and close the door.

When I come back twenty minutes later, the whole room is vacuumed -- even under the bed, where there is nothing but dust.

All those lovely vacuum lines are there.

The platform needs rebuilding, but that will have to wait a few weeks

I pick up everything off the tiled kitchen floor and put her down. Twenty minutes later, I come back with a Swiffer Wet mop, work for ten minutes more and, Bob's your uncle, the kitchen floor is squeaky.

She does the TV room and the sun room and carpeted bedrooms upstairs. I make her work every day except for Sunday.

When she's done and I empty the receptacle and see all the dust and dog hair she collected, I marvel and rejoice.

It's amazing. I'll never again be without a robot vacuum.

Tell me in the comments if you have any experience with one of these.

Cherica had perfect weather for their recent trip to Beaufort

Also tell me if you've ever heard of cork lights.

The plastic "cork" holds three tiny button batteries -- included when you buy these -- and then you stuff the fairy lights down into a bottle, and they twinkle beguilingly inside the bottle.

I was influenced to buy these by an account on Instagram that is devoted to upcycling tips.

They're positively charming and BTW they don't have to be shoved down into a bottle -- they can be put anywhere you need a string of fairy lights with an unobtrusive battery pack.

Speaking of positively charming, Cherica took a trip last week to beautiful Beaufort, South Carolina.

Rhett saw a marsh for the first time

It is situated in what's known as the South Carolina Lowcountry. And it's pronounced BYOU-fort, not BO-fort.

Chad had work responsibilities there but Erica had two days free to roam the area with the boys.

They have taken this trip before and Erica loves Beaufort. They had rented a cute Airbnb. The weather was ideal for being outside with littles.

Rhett wore his neon-green-and-navy-blue Spyder puffer vest -- a gift from Andrew and Brittany for Christmas -- and saw his first marsh.

Baby Elliot clung to his mother and enjoyed the fresh air.

The Lowcountry is Trump Country

Speaking of fresh air, Mike and Audrey -- Maudrey -- posed outside in front of Cherica's house, where Dagny would spend the evening, last Saturday night before they went out on a date.

They were going for a lovely dinner at Saluda's and then to a performance of American Rhapsody by the South Carolina Philharmonic.

And they had a truly wonderful time. Don't they make a handsome couple?

Mike is currently in China for two weeks, on business. All day yesterday I used FlightAware to track his travel path from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to Pudong International Airport in Shanghai -- a flight that took nearly sixteen hours.

He landed in Shanghai at about three o'clock this morning our time and is now thirteen hours ahead of us in time.

Maudrey on their way to the SC Philharmonic

I'm not an international traveler but it's interesting to know someone who is.

Have you ever been to China? Tell me in the comments, right after you tell me if you have, or have ever had, a robot vacuum, or any cork lights.

Or you can tell me anything you like.

Meanwhile we have been to yet another party but I'll tell you all about that, next time.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Tuesday

Comments

[Plain Jane]

I love my robot vacuum. With a crawling baby in the house, and enough animals for a small zoo, it comes in handy to keep all the hair up off the floor.

[Jennifer]

@Jane ... Isn't it amazing, all of the hair and dust it picks up in a clean house? Haaahaha xoxo