I mentioned last week that I’ve been in “spruce up” mode as far as our house is concerned. This mode seems to hit me about once a year, and it’s usually accompanied by numerous trips to HomeGoods and no small degree of standing in front of various pieces of furniture and staring off into space.

It’s a very precise, scientific method.

One of the living room dilemmas that seized my attention last week is that we have a large, gigantor, enormous coffee / cocktail table that sits smack-dab in the middle of the room, and sometimes I wish that there was something a little less, um, LARGE in its place. Plus, since it’s so big, its surface area tends to stay covered with remotes and books and whatnot, and that drives me even crazier than the size of it. So, I looked around on Pinterest and found a couple of replacement ideas that intrigued me – but they cost more than I wanted to spend. I found a great-looking table on Joss & Main, but it was sold out, so I decided to scrap the whole idea and give up and FINE, FORGET IT, THE SPRUCING UP IS OVER.

While I was sulking about my new table plans being RURNT, JUST RURNT, I thought about a coffee table that was sitting under the windows in my bedroom. D bought it when he was fresh out of college, and while it’s real wood and rock-solid and all that, I never cared for the light oak stain and the utilitarian look. Even still, we’ve always found a place where we could use it, and for the last two or three years it’s been sitting next to a couple of chairs in our bedroom. I’ve never thought about giving it a make-over because using it always felt temporary; plus, it didn’t really strike me as something that fit into the over-all look of our house.

Last weekend I off-handedly mentioned to D that I was thinking / pondering / considering / activating a prayer chain about maybe re-purposing that table, and much to my surprise, he was all for it. I thought he might object to putting paint on top of that real-live wood, but he told me about sixteen times that it didn’t make a bit of difference to him if I painted it / stained it / sawed it in two if I thought that I could really use it.

(I couldn’t help but think of our first year of marriage when I asked him 95 times if we could please buy a TV armoire to replace his black laminate entertainment center – complete with smoked glass and magnetized doors – and he honestly couldn’t fathom why I minded that the bottom door liked to fall onto my toe every third time that I opened it.)

(We’ve come a long way in fifteen years.)

When Sister arrived on the 4th, I barely gave her a chance to sit down before I started talking about all the little projects I had in mind. The first big thing was picking out fabric for new pillows in the living room (more on that in another post), and the next big thing was D’s old coffee table – and what we might be able to do in the way of a make-over. Once those two topics were out of the way, I segued into I DON’T THINK I LIKE WHERE ANYTHING IS DO YOU THINK WE COULD ANGLE THE RUG AND I REALLY WISH I COULD MOVE THE FIREPLACE, AMEN.

Really, the best thing about me is that I’m so even-keeled and rational.

Initially our plan was to move the big coffee table out of the room and replace it with a re-made version of the smaller one. BUT, over the course of a couple of days – after talking and shifting and moving some furniture around – we realized that the smaller table was completely dwarfed by my sofas. Looked like dollhouse furniture. For better or worse, that area by the sofas needs something bigger and chunkier there. Clearing all the books off the big coffee table’s glass top helped to create some much-needed visual space, though it still left us with one final question:

What in the sam hill are we going to do with all of these books?

And that, my friends, brought us back to the smaller table, Pinterest, and my sister’s mad carpentry skills.

(I should add that taking books out of the living room is not an option in this house.)

(Because books multiply in this house.)

(And I have to have somewhere to stack all the books that are currently in rotation or I will start throwing said books through the windows.)

(Seriously. They’re everywhere.)

(So what I’m saying we decided that some sort of library table would be a great option. Nothing for permanent storage – just a place for the books to rest in the living room while they’re being referenced and/or read.)

(And if there was any way to wrangle a little extra storage out of said table, all the better.)

(I have officially over-parentheticaled myself.)

Here’s the before picture of the aforementioned utilitarian coffee table.

Only took me about 850 words to get to the first picture. That is some serious wordiness, my friends.

Sister and I talked about what sort of look I wanted to achieve in the end, and we made a trip to Home Depot for all of our supplies. I can’t take any credit whatsoever for getting the right stuff, but Sister knew exactly what we needed: a cut piece of wood, casters, screws, washers, and paint.

Once we got home, I rounded up the drill, then spent the next couple of hours lending moral support. That’s all I seem to be able to do when any sort of assembly is required.

Sister, on the other hand, got after it.

She drilled holes in the center of each coffee table leg.

And after she drilled holes in the new piece of wood (she’d measured and lined it up with the coffee table legs), she used screws to attach the wood to the table.

Then she attached casters and flipped over the table. I helped with the flipping, but for all intents and purposes, that was the finale as far as my helping was concerned.

Next she added the first coat of paint.

I know. The light was lacking.

But here’s the final product, and y’all, I love it (thanks, Sister!). In addition to giving us storage (basket on the left is for all our emergency stuff – weather radio, flashlights, etc. – and the basket on the right is home to the little man’s DS, games, and charger), it gives me a place to put some books. Plus, it fills up what has always been dead space in our living room, so I feel like I’ve gained a new little area.

I sealed the table with two coats of polyurethane. I added the books and baskets after it dried, and then I just smiled and smiled. I would’ve never, ever believed that D’s old coffee table could look so much better – and add so much function to our living room at the same time.

I’m tickled, I tell you. TICKLED.

And I’m now free to stand in front of other pieces of furniture and stare off into space before I make a few more trips to HomeGoods.

Hallelujah.

Well, I think we’ve finally recovered from the 4th. My parents, sister, and brother-in-law were at our house for the festivities, and I cooked way too much food, including seven-layer salad, a dish that I WORE SLAP OUT when D and I were first married but was just as tasty as I remembered. After we polished off our lunch with some homemade ice cream, we all pretty much backed away from the table and threw down a white napkin of surrender.

This is riveting, isn’t it?

Anyway, there was all sorts of fireworks fun and etc., but the thing I’m most excited about telling you is that Wednesday morning I stepped way outside my comfort zone and tried something that some of you have been encouraging me to do for years.

I BAKED BACON.

I did! I baked it! I normally fry it on the stove because, in my opinion, that makes it far more delicious than microwaved bacon, but for whatever reason, I decided to give baked bacon a try yesterday. So, I covered a cookie sheet with foil, laid about six strips of bacon across the cookie sheet, put it in a cold oven, turned the oven to 400, then baked it for 20 minutes.

IT WAS PERFECT. And delicious. And wonderful. And all the things that bacon should be.

I’m pretty sure that it’s going to completely change my morning routine once school starts. What with the not getting popped by grease splatters at 6 AM and all.

Today Sister and I didn’t bake any bacon, but we did do some other fun things: pedicures, Home Goods, fabric store, Steinmart(s), etc. I found some fabric for my living room pillows, and I was so oddly decisive that I wondered if I hadn’t been secretly medicated. Not that I’m aware of a medication that makes a person more decisive, mind you, but it was an odd change of pace for someone who has been known to stand in the cereal aisle and just AGONIZE over what would be the best purchase.

Completely normal. I am completely normal.

By the way, Sister and I ran across this little fella when we were in Home Goods this afternoon, and we feel that it bodes very, very well for Mississippi State’s 2012 football season.

(IT’S A SIGN.)

(Before you make too much fun of me, please remember The Symbolic TJ Maxx Trip of 2010.)

My only hesitation is that I’m not really aware of any point in the college football regular season when a team is crowned as king, but I will not let that pesky detail interfere with my unbridled (blind) optimism.

BECAUSE THE BULLDOG IS TOTALLY WEARING A CROWN.

Anyway, I hope y’all had a great 4th – and I hope you get to bake some bacon very soon. While picking out fabric. And getting a pedicure.

Just as the good Lord intended.

Happy Weekend, y’all!

I don’t know if y’all are aware of this or not, but the weather has been a little warm for the last four or five days.

I’m guessing that you probably knew that. What with all the Instagram pictures of people’s car thermometers and whathaveyou.

By the way, I only figured out how to use Instagram a couple of weeks ago, thanks to a a very patient and thorough tutorial from my sweet friend Annie. I still haven’t worked the Instagram into my routine like I have the Twitter, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. Nonetheless, I’m boomama205 if you’re also on the Instagram and would like for me to add one picture every two weeks to your Instagram stream. Eventually I hope to work up to a picture a week, but I can hardly commit to such a lofty and prolific photography goal.

So anyway.

We spent most of the weekend running errands that were directly related to my recent decision to spruce up our living room a little bit. It’s time, I think. Most of the furniture in our house is somebody’s old something-or-other, and while I love that everything has a history (like the fact that our breakfast room table was my aunt’s, or our dining room table was my friend NK’s, or the chair where I’m typing this post was my brother and sister-in-law’s), we have a few pieces that are barely hanging on in terms of function. And after fifteen years of being the Home for Wayward Occasional Chairs, I also feel like we’re teetering on the verge of cluttered, especially in our living room and bedroom.

WELL.

Friday afternoon I ran across a yellow ottoman in Home Goods, and oh, it got the decorative wheels a-spinnin’. Once I got home I realized that if we moved this and sold that and swapped that piece with something in the next room, I could give Ye Olde Living Room a little shot in the arm.

So you know what that means, don’t you?

It means that I was at Home Goods as soon as it opened Saturday morning. And just look what I brought home.

Don’t worry. It’s not staying in that exact spot.

And please excuse the coffee table clutter.

Also: on a scale of 1-10, the dog’s decorative interest level is peaking at a solid 1.5. I think I make her really tired. And maybe a little angry.

By the time Sunday rolled around and I’d crossed everything off the round one living room to-do list, I reminded D that the little guy has been talking a LOT lately about wanting a basketball goal. I am all for another GET THEE OUTSIDE activity, and since his interest in basketball has been pretty consistent for about a year, I feel like we’re in a reasonable safety zone in terms of buying some of our own equipment.

I learned the safety zone lesson the hard way after I committed way too quickly to buying a few of those Lego Harry Potter kits.

I would say that Lego Harry Potter was a short-term hobby, but that would imply that it lasted longer than about four days.

So D and I went to Academy (my mama is in town, so she and A stayed home, and I recognize that you don’t necessarily need that piece of information, but I’m oversharing, so we’ll run with it), and after we picked out and purchased a goal, we loaded ‘er up and brought ‘er home. Since it was in a big ole box, I knew that there was going to be some assembly involved, but I didn’t concern myself with those pesky details, mainly because assembling things is one of my husband’s spiritual gifts. He is the polar opposite of me in that he is 1) patient and 2) thorough, so he’s rarely overwhelmed by the task at hand.

I’d love to know what that’s like, by the way.

Because sometimes I feel like I’ve been overwhelmed since approximately 2002.

Maybe that should be my slogan.

Since I’d been the head let’s-get-a-basketball-goal cheerleader, I thought it was important for me to make a show of goal-assembly unity and stand outside in the 102 degree heat while D put the blasted contraption together. I knew that I wouldn’t be of any real help, but I figured I could say encouraging things and provide cold beverages. Maybe set up a box fan or something.

Initially I thought we were looking at a thirty-minute process, tops, but I quickly changed my mind. When I saw D remove all the pieces and parts and nuts and bolts from the box, I knew with great certainty that putting the goal together was way beyond my skill set because it was GOING TO TAKE SOME HOURS. D wasn’t intimidated, though; he read through the instructions, then grouped and categorized everything according to when he would need it. I don’t mind saying that just looking at all that stuff made me sixteen kinds of nervous.

Listen. That was just one tiny little group of materials. And all I wanted to do was stack it up and kick it over and scream “JENGA!” while I ran back into the air conditioned comfort of the indoors.

However, I completely ignored every single instinct that I have and stayed outside with D. When he got to the part of the instructions that specify that assembling the goal requires two capable adults, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye to make sure that I was in fact qualified. Yes, I have the adult part of the equation covered, but capable? Of putting a basketball goal together? NOT SO FAST, BILLY RAY. We’d developed a little bit of a routine, though, so I decided to stick with it. D worked and figured and analyzed and assembled, and I, well – I kept my foot on the base of the goal so that nothing tipped over after the primary pole was attached.

Oh. It was realllllly complicated. You can’t see all the subtleties of the weight distribution from my foot in that picture, but it was an intricate operation. I think the instructions actually recommended that someone with an engineering degree should be in charge of keeping the base stable, but I guess I’m just a natural in terms of being able to put my foot on things.

I know. I know. It’s a humbling gift.

Once the primary pole was stable, D moved on to the backboard portion of the festivities. By that point I’d moved on to heat comparisons in my head (It’s not as hot as Ecuador, but it’s definitely hotter than it was that time we went to the State / Louisiana Tech football game, which wasn’t quite as bad as when our church re-did that house and it rained all morning and it felt like it was 416 degrees outside), and I kept telling myself that even though I wasn’t actually, you know, doing anything, I needed to get over it and be a gamer and remember that nobody has ever died from lending moral support during the assembly of a basketball goal.

Have they?

Much to our surprise, it started to rain, and after we moved all the tools and instructions and whatnots into the garage, I realized that light was getting scarce and I could provide a valuable service by shining a flashlight on whatever part of the backboard demanded D’s attention. I handled that flashlight with great precision, and (70’s sitcom alert) I couldn’t help but think of when Hot Lips Houlihan would assist in surgery. However, my noble calling still couldn’t distract me from All The Heat, so I very cleverly sat down on the kitchen doorstep and cracked the door ever-so-slightly so that the frigid AC air would hit the side of my back while I continued to SACRIFICIALLY HOLD THAT FLASHLIGHT, AMEN.

Once the backboard was assembled, D quickly moved us through the final five or six steps. Those steps required that I put down my flashlight (horrors) and actually engage in physical labor, and somehow I managed to push through the heat and lift some things. About an hour later, it was ALL DONE, which meant that we could fill the base with water while I talked about how much cooler it was once the post-rain temperature dropped to about 95 degrees.

Seriously. In comparison to earlier that afternoon? It was downright frigid.

And behold! The finished product!

I think it’s safe to say that it would’ve NEVER come together if not for all that quality flashlight holding I did. Not to mention putting my foot on the base and leaving it there for upwards of fifteen minutes.

(Sometimes I like to kid myself.)

(It helps to get me through the day.)

Well, well, well.

Will wonders never cease?

It’s been one year (to the day) since our last podcast, but the stars aligned and the computers behaved and the connections stabilized and we actually recorded some new content.

As always, we feature some very sophisticated topics: Miss Mississippi, the new Dallas, hermit crabs, dermatologist visits, expressions that get on our nerves, The Bachelorette, Mad Men, and so much more.

You might want to pace yourself as you listen, especially considering that we’ve been averaging a podcast a year. So if you play about five minutes a month between now and next June, you should be all up to speed by the time we record episode 23 in 2013.

Oh, we are pitiful.

Also, you should probably be aware that I sound like I’m verrrry far away for the first fifteen or twenty seconds, but it gets much better after that. Apparently it took me a minute to make the final adjustments to my microphone, which is hardly surprising considering what a well-oiled broadcasting machine we’re operating. Really, we’re just a hair shy of talking to each other on CB radios. And truth be told, that might be easier.

But please do enjoy.

You can click here to listen. Or here. Or, as always, you can subscribe on iTunes if you’re feeling particularly fancy.

Edited to add: the Miss Mississippi live feed didn’t work Saturday night, so we didn’t get to have a viewing party after all. We’ll try again in 2013!

Well, after three big days-o-fun in Texas, I’m home again. My flight left San Antonio early this morning, and you can imagine how upbeat and chipper I was at 5:45 in the AM, especially considering that the three-day total for sleep came in somewhere around the 12-hour mark. But oh, we had us some fun. And some laughs. And some REAL good food.

I didn’t get a picture of our Mexican food from Monday night, but Tuesday at lunch we took a little road trip and had some spectacular fried food. Exhibit A: Chicken fried chicken. With French fries and fried okra. And, you know, a salad. Just to keep it healthy and all.

There was also homemade chocolate pie with a wee bit of meringue.

Oh have mercy it was good.

And last night, much to my delight, I finally got to experience the wonder of a Chris Madrid’s tostada burger. Melanie has been telling me about them for years, and now I absolutely understand why. It was spectacular.

Please note the ring-o-cheese that surrounded the burger, and I don’t mind saying that in the days to come, when I think about that ring-o-cheese, I will sigh. And then I will hum old Air Supply songs.

(Yes, I realize that all my pictures are sideways.)

(I have no idea why.)

(So be careful not to sustain any sort of neck injury when you look at them.)

I slept all the way home this morning – didn’t even read the first magazine – and the sleep was an unexpected blessing considering that I was sitting next to someone who apparently dipped himself in a vat of Axe body spray before boarding the plane. He was young (bless his heart), and I get that it takes awhile to figure out the delicate balance between using enough cologne so that people notice that you smell nice and using so much cologne that people develop insta-migraines and grab several blankets from the overhead bin in an attempt to turn seat 26A into a scent-free cocoon.

Anyway, since we’ve been to the library and the grocery store this afternoon, it’s time for me to start cooking supper. But before I do that, I want to make sure that you know that this Saturday night, June 30th, is the Miss Mississippi pageant. Last year we had such a blast watching and commenting together, and I’d love to have a repeat of all the fun this year. So, I’ll embed the live pageant video here (8 pm central time), and we can all hang out here and watch and applaud and have us a big time.

Who’s in?

This afternoon I flew to the Texas, and right now I’m sitting on Melanie’s couch and watching The Bachelorette. We’re discussing how one trend this season is to assign Emily the role of tour guide in the various cities they visit, and while it’s a little awkward, it’s also pretty delightful to hear her explain various cultural landmarks before she and her date settle in to dine in some sort of local cave and then watch fireworks on a nearby barge. ALL IS WELL WITH THE WORLD.

Also, Mel just picked up on the fact that John told Emily that she and his mom would be “two peas in a pot,” and there’s a sense of completeness in my life that was missing before.

However comma I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Emily and Jef’s puppet show left a legacy of awkward that may be unprecedented in the Bachelor / Bachelorette franchise. I just…well…wow. That was something else.

We had some excellent Mexican food tonight and even better conversation, and we have high hopes for more of the same. I’m excited about all the relaxing that’s going to keep us very busy. And I will do everything in my power to meet my personal relaxation goals.

See y’all in a couple of days!