Insert obligatory CAN YOU BELIEVE [X MONTH] IS ALMOST OVER exclamation here. But for real, only one more weekend before it’s Back to School Time here in Pittsburgh. Even though Chooch isn’t physically returning to school just yet, I still have that lowkey summer sadness.
Anyway! Happy thoughts.
The weekend got underway Friday night with some porch hangs. This has been one of the few highlights of the summer – chilling with the cats on the porch. Drew and Penelope are both extremely skittish cats so it was pretty shocking when they both expressed (tentative) interest in coming outside back in June.
Penelope will only venture all the way out onto the porch once the sun goes down. But even then, every little noise makes her do the Scooby-jump and dart back into the house.
Drew is much braver at night to the point where Chooch has to put a harness on her now, just to be safe. Haha.
Meanwhile, inside the house, Henry actually hung the neon sign! I was floored that he got it up on the wall on the same day it came in the mail and didn’t leave it laying on the floor for 6 months like he did with the Mouse Attack sign. The reason I’m so astonished is because there’s no electrical outlet on that side of the wall and he had to actually install one — I didn’t ask any questions, but there was a lot of drilling involved.
Henry was an electrician’s apprentice way back in the say, or so he says, and he apparently apprenticed his ass off because he’s definitely done a lot of electrical wizardry here in our house.
But you guys, I am so thrilled with how the neon sign turned out. It really brings the whole room together and fulfills the vision I had from the very beginning! Without it, I think some people might have been like “how is this an 80s kitchen though” but now the vibes are real. The other day, Chooch and I blasted In the Air Tonight while standing in the kitchen and it for real for real felt like Sonny and Tubbs were going to come through.
In weekend book news, I tried to pare down my TBR but only managed to knock out Such a Fun Age.
Then I dumped all of the photos I brought home 4 years ago from my grandparents’ house into photo boxes, so now I don’t have a giant, beat-up box, a giant wicker basket, and multiple plastic bags full of photos loafing on my bedroom floor anymore. I didn’t even bother to sort the photos – I just fucking dumped them into the boxes and called it a day. There are like 5 decades of pictures in there!
Fuck that.
Sunday morning, Henry came outside and sat down and I was like WHY AREN’T YOU WORKING ON ANYTHING and he said because he was eating breakfast and I was like BUT YOU HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING YET TODAY TO EARN A MEAL.
Don’t worry, after he ate, we went to Construction Junction because really funny story (actually it’s boring): we somehow lost a drawer. No, not during this recent kitchen redo, but like, years ago. We’ve just always had a gaping hole in lieu of a drawer for literally as long as I can remember but I feel like it must have happened 10 years ago when I originally wanted to fix the kitchen and Henry never got any further than painting (very half-assedly) the drawers and cabinets a teal color. He kept saying that that one drawer must have “dropped down” during that time, whatever that means, but I think what really happened was that he took all the cabinets off and drawers out, and in the process he broke one and just didn’t care.
We had a party a few years ago and someone jokingly pointed out the gaping drawer cavity and I was like, “Oh yeah, I always forget about that damn drawer.” Like, I just got SO USED to a drawer not being there that I stopped questioning it.
But this time around, I was like, “hey Henry….what are we going to do about that missing drawer?” I mean, we spent so much time fixing this stupid room, and then what…just leave that ugly gap there? Like the sink area lost a tooth?
So we went to Construction Junction, which is like a home reuse place that is exciting to me for about 2 minutes and then I’m like, “Can we go now can we go now can we go now.” Anyway, Henry managed to find a drawer thingie that was the same size as the bigger drawers we have so he was like I CAN GET IT DOWN TO SIZE AND BLAH BLAH BLAH and I was like “That’s fine, whatever, can we go now can we go now can we go now” so went to the check out and guess how much it cost? FIFTY CENTS, BOY.
Compared to like, $60 that Lowe’s and Home Depot wanted for basically the same small slab of crappy wood.
Thanks, Construction Junction.
See the gaping hole over there? Like, who loses an entire drawer though. I think Henry is hiding something from me. Anyway, he already cut the drawer to size and it just needs painted, then we will have normal-people kitchen cabinets and drawers! I can’t even handle it. This is also the first time I’ve been able to take a picture of this side of the kitchen without feeling rage!
This is the current situation ^^^.
VERY CLOSE to being done! The handles for the drawers came in the mail today and I put them on all by myself! We also are getting personal photos of ourselves from the 80s turned into small magnets for the fridge; we need a cover for the ceiling light (Henry has vetoed EVERY SINGLE ONE I HAVE SENT HIM); we have a small curtain to make for the door window using fabric that features illustrations of Robert Smith, David Bowie, Siouxsie Sioux, Adam Ant, and Cyndi Lauper which I’m very excited about!; and Henry still needs to figure out what he’s doing with that sweet-ass Conair telephone I bought from eBay. I think that’s mostly it. Oh! I want to make a shelf out of several books published in the 80s, which is why the neon sign isn’t centered (I’m sure that was making some people on Instagram twitch!) and I also left some space above the spice rack in case I stumble upon anything in the future that needs to live on the kitchen wall. You never know.
Here’s what it looks like from the back porch:
When covid peaces out, I’m having a big house party because we put so much work in this damn space and I need my friends to come over and enjoy it with me!
The best part is that now that all the big stuff is finally done in the kitchen, Henry has been able to move onto other back-burnered projects, like the coffee table, which is finally painted and put back together, just without legs and without the finished top. Then maybe he can finally work on the Seoul subway sign?!?! (Except that we promised Chooch we would redo his room before school starts since he’s doing online school and needs a good space in which to do so since I will working from home until at least the end of October at this point.)
I hate that this summer has been filled with so many adult things, like gardening and going to Lowe’s. :(
Also on Sunday, we went to 350 Bakery on the Southside to grab some, well, baked goods. We totally double-dipped this weekend because I sent Henry there right when they opened on Saturday to get us some hand pies. I really wanted to try their homemade poptarts though so we swung by on the way home from boring Construction Junction. I stayed in the car, and when Henry came back empty-handed, I started to clench, which is my defense mechanism when confronting UTTER LETDOWN head on. Yeah, they were sold out of poptarts, so he just left the line? Like he didn’t even bother to ply me with consolation carbs? So we left and for a solid 5 minutes in the car I ranted about how he should know that when I AM MENSTRUATING, I fucking NEED SUGAR so he should have JUST BOUGHT SOMETHING ELSE and he was like “do you want me to go back” and I was like NO BECAUSE YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT IN THE FIRST PLACE and so then he was like “OK we will continue to drive home” so I was like OH WOW IF YOU EVEN REALLY CARED ABOUT ME….so then he was like, “OK I am going back to this bakery no matter what you say, what do you want, something chocolate, or….” and I was like I DUNNO WHAT I WANT WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME DECIDE I AM SO SICK OF MAKING DECISIONS FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE JUST FUCKING CHOOSE SOMETHING FOR ME BUT CHOOSE WISELY BECAUSE IF YOU GET THE WRONG THING I FUCKING SWEAR TO GOD I WILL END YOU.
Anyway, great news! When it was his turn to enter the bakery (one customer at a time, plz), the girl behind the counter whispered to him that she found one extra poptart if he wanted it and he was like THANK YOU FOR SAVING MY FAKE MARRIAGE, BAKERY CLERK. And then she gave him a chocolate chip cookie for free so now he thinks he’s like big shit in the bakery circle.
I’m not even being melodramatic when I say that the poptart was fucking everything I needed and I’m actually kind of annoyed that I was generous enough to split it three-ways.
That thing on the left is a chocolate babka which I’ve surprisingly never had before even though I am part-Polish and was born and raised in Pittsburgh but I am here to say that it was worth the 41 year wait.
350 Bakery has a generic name, but their goods are anything but!
I’ve spent a lot of time outside this summer, reading books in the morning but I admittedly get distracted a lot because I like looking at all of our flowers and noting which ones have gone through massive growth spurts. Flowers are weird and fun.
I’m excited to start planting shit earlier next year! We got a late start this season.
Well, that was my weekend. Boring house project things and baked goods.