Another post about the cottage...(yawn)....

Lorenzo left on Wednesday night, he'll be coming home tomorrow afternoon. Another weekend with the teenagers and their gangly throng of friends tromping through my kitchen, eating all my food, making endless racket. What's with teenage girls? They seem incapable of having a conversation that isn't punctuated with spontaneous shrieks and screams. And they eat all the ice cream - giant bowls of it. Then the boys come in and have a fit. It's just so joyous and heart-warming, all of it. Best summer ever!

I should take up marijuana - just sit there in my slippers in a haze of weed fumes, not caring what happens to my house. Adopt a bunch of cats and fill the house with lava lamps. Instead I feel like Cinderella, left to clean while everyone else is having a ball. I made the kids deep-fried chicken strips last night. I even bought a thermometer so I'd know when the oil reached 350 degrees. They turned out amazing. But my house smelled like an east-end diner today and it was sickening after awhile. So I washed all the floors, took the stove and the stove fan apart, and pretty much spent the whole day de-greasing. Fun fun fun!

Here is what Guido the Great managed to do this time. He installed our new front door...

I think it looks very cute. Then he finished ply-wooding the kitchen area. See that black pipe above the stove? That's because of the new bathroom upstairs. Lorenzo did his best to hide it, but I think it looks a bit weird...

I have to remind myself that this is a cottage, not my primary residence. Once it's painted and I stick a few Green Party stickers on it, no one will even notice...

Lorenzo also panelled the king beam. Our idea of running wire down the posts was a great idea, but it made them so huge looking because of all the wires. Anyway, here's a before and after comparison...

I haven't decided if I'm liking this or not...I've never seen posts wrap around a beam before, but whatever. It's a cottage. At this point, Lorenzo could install orange shag carpet and I don't know if I'd care... That's not true. I'd care. I grew up with shag carpet and it was hideous and every room in the house had a different colour. Ah, the seventies! Best era for music, ghastly era for interior design, fashion, and hair styles. The kitchen I grew up in looked a lot like this: dark brown cupboards, A&W orange counter tops, goofy swag lamp over the colonial dining table. We even had the exposed brick behind the stove. And this was in a Victorian house! It deserved so much better...

Well, that's all folks. I think I hear bickering in the other room. Oh, the sweet sounds of summer! The kids have been free as birds since the middle of June, which means that for nearly two months I've been listening to daily mayhem. And there's no solution for it. Three kids born within seventeen months - they can't live without each other, they share the same friends, they do everything together, and they never stop bickering.

A few weeks ago, Lorenzo called a family meeting in the living room. I think this was after the fight about the flip-flops. He asked each kid to express anything that was bothering them. My daughter was upset because one of her brothers keeps referring to her friend as "chunky."  Silence in the room. My son's face start to twitch. His brother buries his head in a pillow, laughing so hard the whole couch is shaking. So you see, it's pointless. On the bright side, they did weed the front lawn for me today, so I guess they're good for something.

Well, my hard working husband will be back tomorrow. Yay, the cavalry is coming!