Drawings from 2015 onward.
Sam’s father used to work at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant. I thought it was pretty interesting that he was a nuclear engineer.
And while we have more coffee mugs than we know what to do with, when we were packing up her parents house this was just too interesting of a mug to not take.
There are a few things I care less about than what color my house is. Which isn’t really true. I don’t want something outrageous like bright red and neon, or anything like that. Apart from that, who cares?
But because we’re having the side of our house, we’re done with stucco. We have to pick a color for our house. Sam is settled on a blue grayish color tint. So really it’s narrowing down exactly what kind of blue gray.
The contractor wants us to narrow it down to a few colors so he can get some swatches for us and eventually buy the paint, even though he has a couple more coats of stucco before he can paint the house.
And he’s been asking for over a week.
So last night Sam and I sat on the couch and looked at paint online. Specifically colors of paint that are designed for stucco.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have a great eye for color. There is not a lot of color in my wardrobe. And give me two tints that are similar and I’ll just shrug my shoulders.
I only see a minor difference between Teton Blue and Quay Blue. Especially when we’re living with it long-term. I’m not sure we notice any difference. But those are the two that we’ve settled on.
Pretty sure the sketch today shows how much Sam and I really looked forward to sitting down and staring at a computer screen and our phones to look for paint colors. The sly smile hidden behind the tired eyes is quite accurate.
When I pick Marceline up from her preschool, I always bring a snack for her and Edith to eat on the way home. Which is a little ridiculous considering that we are a 6-minute car drive, at most, from her preschool. But it helps get Marceline into the car some days, as she wants to stay and play at the Nature Center as long as she can. Edith too.
So this week we had some granola bars to eat as snack. I just bring one and break it in half for the girls to split. Not quite half, Marceline needs a bigger piece because she is older you see. So like two-thirds to one third. Which means Edith just inhales her snack while Marceline takes slightly longer, mostly seconds longer really.
On Monday Edith devoured her piece while Marceline I notice Marceline just stared at hers. So I made high pitched voice that said “Hi Marceline,” as if it was coming from the granola bar. So said hi back. And really, at first it was cute like most of our imaginary play. Marceline talked back and forth with the granola bar, randomly answering the questions I had the granola bar ask…. about preschool, how she was doing and other such nonsense.
Then I had the granola bar ask what she was going to do with it. And she said eat it. I pretended (as the granola bar) to be shocked. Marceline tried to explain that granola bars were tasty and that she was hungry. And that you were supposed to eat granola bars. The granola bar insisted they could be friends and friends don’t eat friends. Marceline again tried explaining how you are supposed to eat granola bars.
She then said to me, “Dad I want the granola bar to stop talking so I can eat it.”
Yeah….. I think I may have traumatized her.
It probably didn’t help that after some quiet time Marceline started eating the granola bar and then I had it say “Where are my legs, I can’t feel my legs.” Marceline said she ate it, playfully this time. I had the granola bar ask if the legs were tasty and if she was going to eat the rest of it. She said yes to both.
So Sam and I pulled the trigger on getting the exterior of our house redone. It definitely needed something to happen. With siding not being an option, we had to pick between paint or stucco. We choose stucco. We didn’t have too many options for stucco here in Cleveland, but after some research we found someone well reviewed, who knew their work, got a good estimate and got the work started.
Two days of pressure washing and scrapping the paint off our house and things were doing good, unitl our weather broke. Went from 80 degrees to 40 here overnight with rain, hail and snow. Can’t work with stucco during that weather. But having removed all the downspouts, and with on and off torrential rain showers, we started having water pool around our house.
So we needed some creative solutions to manage the water run-off. I think we did pretty well.
I don’t have this great need to look at my past and wonder where I’d be if I taken one route for another.
I don’t know if that makes me unique, normal, abnormal, whatever. I know the path that got me here and I’m glad for all the ups and downs that led me here.
I can honestly say I’m pretty content with my life. Again I don’t know how that compares to other people, but I suspect I do less reminiscing than most people.
We visited a park on Sunday that was in Sam’s hometown. It is her 100% favorite childhood park. Lots of memories for her and she was finally able to share.it with me and our girls.
And it was nice too. Beautiful day, if a little chilly. Quiet, not too busy. Pretty ideal for us to visit because we don’t have many reasons to visit Sam’s hometown, and don’t know when we’d have the chance again. The park has changed a lot from what Sam remembered. Not in a good or bad way, but was just different.
On the way there Sam pointed out places and memories that are important to her. We had, for a brief moment, considered moving there and Sam asked if I thought we could have made it work. I replied that we could have – which is the truth. But I think we could make just about anyplace work.
Visiting my hometown is different for sure. I have family there – which is always the driving force for a visit there, but Sam’s parents have passed and her brothers live elsewhere. So a visit to her hometown is filled with mostly memories, not people.
What’s that saying, you can never enter the same stream twice, or something like that.
We played robot villains today. I was a Tickle Robot and chased Marceline and Edith around the house.
Marceline was in her Supergirl costume and would “freeze” me with her freeze breath.
Marceline isn’t good at understanding where sounds are coming from. I hid in a closet and when she was right outside the closet door I yelled “I’m hiding in your room,” and she ran to her bedroom while I moved hiding spots.
It was pretty glorious.
