What's Better Than Building a Well in a Developing Country?

Building 2 wells!

After the heart-warming, inspiring, and even miraculous response to my friends' and family's project to raise money to build a well in a developing country, I was ready to rest on my laurels for a while, or at least on my comfy chair.

But...Someone had different plans!

Last week we found out that a Generous Soul is poised and ready to MATCH what my friends and I come up with over the initial $5,000. If you visit our donation page at Charity: Water you'll see that I've "upped" the amount we hope to raise in the remaining 22 days of our campaign.

The beauty is, we only have about $1,400 left to raise before the Generous Soul chips in enough to finish funding Well #2. That would be 2 wells in the same time-frame in which we thought we couldn't possibly fund ONE!

So, Friday night we got right to it and Jake and Molly had a lemonade and brownie stand to catch people on the way home from work. They made $50 in one hour's time and would have made more, but it started to hail! Hail, yeah it did!

So, as you can see, there's something bright and wonderful happening around here to take our minds off of Possum Fever, or whatever the heck we've got in this house. If you would like to help, please visit our donation page. I have been overwhelmed by your generosity and encouragement during this whole process.

It feels so good to know that in a small way, we are making the world better. What an honor!

I can't wait to share with you the exciting things that transpire over the next 22 days!

Master of My Domain...Name

A great big thank you to the person who donated this Victoria Hagan Target end table to my local thrift shop. SCORE at $7.50! Both Tom and my daughter said, "When are you going to spray paint it?" Guess they know me pretty well. For now, I'll enjoy it au naturel. The table, not me, you silly goose!

As I was snapping the pic of the new table, I started thinking about An Inch of Gray. I mean, what is it? A house blog? A "mom" blog? An online journal?

Sheesh. I'm wondering if my blog, like my life, just reflects a "jack of all trades, master of none" approach.

I LOVE house blogs, and for the very reason I love them, I know this doesn't qualify as one.

Many readers come over from one of my faves, Young House Love, and they must take one look and say, "What the heck?" After all, we read house blogs for eye candy and tips. We want to build an idea file. We want an escape. House blogs are like a glossy magazine, showing how life COULD be. People coming to my blog are more likely to read about PMS, flatulence, and my general anxiety, which are not really conducive to dreaming.

Also, the facts that I couldn't take a good photo if my life depended on it, and that the windowpane right behind my cool new table is covered with cardboard and painter's tape pretty much disqualify me from ever reaching house blog status.

Mommy blog? I don't know. As my kids get older and their lives get more complicated, they feature less prominently here. They know how to find my blog on the computer, and that scares me.

All of this is so typical for me, anyway. I've never really known where I fit in and can never seem to jump whole hog into anything. I probably never would have gotten married if an ex hadn't called me out on always trying to keep my options open.

This has been the case with friends, too. My dear friends from college start reminiscing and invariably I have no recollection of the event. I've already shared that I was "less festive" than they were in college, so to an extent they were sheltering me, but there's something else. They dove into very close friendships with a tight group of people, hanging out together and at select fraternities. I may have made this party, or that one, but I also might have been with the black turtleneck wearing English majors, complete with fake British accents, the InterVarsity Youth Groupies, my roommates, or more likely alone with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and my comfy pants. I was all over the place.

So those who love house blogs are probably wondering why the heck I write about getting my brows threaded or "celebrating intimacy" with my husband.

And the rest of you are probably wondering how many more times you'll have to look at my yellow lamp-- which the entire family HATES, by the way.

Maybe the blog is random and always will be, like me, and like this list that just burbled up in my head:

Current Fave TV Show: Modern Family

Book I'm Reading: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Dinner Tonight: It's 6 pm already?

Next Movie to Watch: It's Complicated

Low Point in School: The Physical Fitness Test...always!

Night Owl or Early Bird: Night Owl

Current Self Esteem depleter: Seeing pics of parties on Facebook that I'm not invited to
Flaws: Diarrhea of the mouth, defensiveness, low blood sugar freak outs (and many more)

Greatest Hope: To Do Something Meaningful

I guess I don't know what this blog is, but I want you to know I'm sure grateful to you for reading!

Holy Craft!

Molly and I took an ornate gold plastic frame that didn't sell at the yard sale, and covered up the small oil painting with painter's tape.




Then we gave it a light spray painting with Heirloom White spray paint. I forgot to wipe off the cobwebs first-- oops! Yes, I know my legs look like Hilary Clinton's. Please focus on the "artwork." We left some of the crevices unpainted for depth.




When I realized I didn't have any chalkboard paint, I just grabbed one of my adhesive chalkboard rectangles that was on my pantry door, cut it with an exacto knife, and stuck it right on top of the painter's tape.



For a different look, I grabbed a peice of corkboard left over from another project, and stuck it right on top of the chalkboard. Then I added a family picture and an ampersand thumbtack.



So now I have 2 fun, virtually free projects in one frame. Please tell me... which do you prefer?

Linking up at Reinvented today.

Meat: It's NOT What's for Dinner, OR, You Can Call Me "Tenacious See"

Sorry I’ve been AWOL all week. This has been the longest I’ve gone without blogging and I’ve missed you!

We’ve been working on figuring out more details about what’s going on with Molly health-wise. This has involved missed work and medical tests. There have also been some sleepless nights hanging out with her on the couch watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I cry every time I watch, do you? None of these sleepless nights has involved my breastfeeding her.

I’ve been meaning to share with you a happy postscript to my meat-buying saga. To refresh your memory, I went from mild-mannered mama to raging carnivore when two shady characters showed up in my driveway at dinnertime offering meaty morsels for me to buy. They used some pretty strong sales tactics. I fell for them, and was soon the not so proud owner of $739.00 “worth” of meat. Yikes.

I am happy to report, that against all odds, I received a full refund from the company, Capital Meats Incorporated!

I put their real name here not to brag about their stellar customer service, but rather because the meat is gone, the refund check has cleared, and I want to help prevent my brothers and sisters in blogland from following in my gullible footsteps. If this shows up on Google, so be it.

The hoops I jumped through to get a refund were numerous, and much of the time I felt hopeless and vulnerable. Certified letters to P.O. boxes in one state, unanswered emails, full voice mailboxes in another state, and out of service phone numbers were commonplace. There were many layers to keep me from ever encountering a real person in management of Capital Meats, Incorporated. I was THIS CLOSE to giving up.

I am convinced that if all of my correspondence had not included the credentials of the man I occasionally sleep with, who has the letters JD after his name, it all would be for naught. I documented every single effort I made, but if they had not eventually given in and picked up the meat, I was out of options. The Better Business Bureau is rife with complaints about this company, but there is no real physical location, and the salespeople are very hard to find.

Since this event, I have talked to others who have been pressured in similar ways. Perhaps it is by the flocks of magazine sellers each spring involved in programs that “turn the lives of youth around.” I heard one “promising” youth call my neighbor a f-ing b* last year when she didn’t buy a magazine. Lovely.

Maybe it’s a tree trimmer

Or it could be my former furnace guy, who told me my furnace was from 1970 and needed replacing when it clearly manufactured in 1996.

I do not mean to disparage those who offer services to make an honest living. I truly respect people who can do the myriad things I can’t.

I guess I just want to remind us to be wary of hard sell practices. If someone needs you to make a decision TODAY, you might want to think twice. If someone says he did work for your neighbors, look into it. Take a deep breath. Sleep on it. It’s your home and your money.

You are the consumer and you have a right to make an informed decision. Don’t feel bad if someone has spent time explaining a product to you and you decide to decline. Reputable salespeople and contractors know that taking the time to talk to potential clients may not pay off in a sale now, but it could bear fruit later.

Be honest when you decline, but don’t provide excuses. An excuse is an invitation to a slick salesperson to pick apart your reasons bit by bit. When the men came to pick up the meat and I was alone I felt intimidated. “Won’t you reconsider? Can't we work this out? We are just going to have to throw all this away!” they said.

I had already chosen my mantra and repeated it calmly. “I changed my mind” was all I said, quietly and firmly. I didn't disparage their products or complain about their tactics. I didn't blame it on my husband, or say it was too expensive. My thought: Keep it simple-- you just can’t argue with a woman changing her mind.

Thanks so much for all your kind words about my crazy meat crisis. Now I’m off to the grocery store—I have an empty freezer to fill.

How to Piss Off Your Wife in 527 Convoluted Steps, OR, A Formula for Anger

Okay, I’m mad at Tom and I thought I’d give you the joy of crawling inside my psyche to see just how I got here.

Topic of Anger: Baby Formula.

Now before you point out to me that my “babies” are almost 9 and 11, I’d like to say, “Hold onto your hats, it’s going to be a wild ride.”

Still with me? Okay.

So when Molly was born, she was tiny, even scrawnier than her scrawny older brother. Sleep deprivation and the fact that I somehow forgot everything I had learned about babies from number one, left me a basket-case on child number 2. That she was yellow, nursed constantly, and took nearly a month to regain her birth weight did not help my confidence.

I remember walking into the kitchen and seeing a teeny tiny rotisserie chicken on a plate and bursting into tears. With those scrawny little appendages, the bird looked just like my baby—but with no head! Let’s just say it was a stressful time.

SOOOO, when the doctor advised us to give her a few bottles of formula to help her gain weight, we did and then went back to nursing for the rest of the year. Even though everything turned out fine, those days just remind me of fear (Will she ever grow? Just grow. Please grow!) and guilt (Is my milk in? Is my milk out? Is my milk skim? Please, Molly, please!)

Fast forward to her first birthday. Her daddy wrote her a sweet note to give her when she was old enough to read it. I know you are ooohing and aahhing right now about what a great guy he is. Fine. But let’s remember whose blog this is and get back on task.

In the note he shared several memories of their year together and his number one memory was—wait for it-- “Feeding you bottles of formula.” Really? 12 months of daddy/daughter time and that’s what you come up with? Sorry to steal your thunder, but did I not spend the first four months of her life “sleeping” in the guest room with my nipple in her mouth?” This human pacifier couldn’t even get up to go pee, yet you give her 3 bottles and that tops the damn birthday list?

Okay, let’s move on. So a couple years later when I was slightly less psychotic, slightly more amorous, and finally open to discussing the possibility of a third baby, I threw out what I thought was a brilliant concept. After nursing both kids for a year each, feeling more comfortable in my own skin, and becoming a lot more flexible about the whole topic of bottle-feeding, I lobbed a proposal I knew was win/win.

I shared with Tom an arrangement our friends Nicole and Trey were using with their new baby. Nicole would breastfeed her, but Trey would bottle feed her once in the middle of each night so they could bond and Nicole could sleep. I told Tom I’d be open to having another baby if he would do that (remember he just loooooooooves bottle feeding, right? It’s apparently the zenith of his parenting experiences) His response? “No. I would be too tired at work the next day.” "Seriously?" "Seriously." End of discussion. I was pissed. Thanks for the honesty, Tom. Our still fictional 3rd child thanks you, too.

Fast forward to today. I’m finally over my nausea from last week’s flu outbreak and it’s been nearly 16 hours since I’ve cleaned up any vomit or diarrhea. The 18th load of laundry of the week is spinning happily in the dryer, and I’m cruising the Internet. What pops up on my screen? A Parental Control, set up by Tom. Fine.

And what is the Password Clue? Out of every possible clue in the UNIVERSE?

Is it my Mother’s Maiden Name? Childhood Pet? Winningest team in the NFL? Dream Vacation? Square Root of 8674? The name of the sled in Citizen Kane?

Of course not.

It is: “Baby Formula.”

Thanks. In one fell swoop you get the trifecta of reminding your wife of the absolute lack of credit she got for nursing your offspring for 24 months, you've taken her back to a very stressful, anxious time when she worried she couldn’t provide what her baby needed, and you've even managed to conjure up bitterness about her nonexistent third child!

This, on top of micromanaging her computer access. Woohooo!
I pound the keyboard with SIMILAC. INFAMIL. GOOD START. Nothing. Is it ENFAMIL with an E? My blood is boiling.

And these parental controls? I AM a parent. And it’s not like I was trying to look at porn. I was trying to look at house plans, which is my kind of porn, but still.

So, I don’t know how to wrap up the world's longest post except to say that while I am NOT against baby formula, I am against baby formula ever, EVER, being mentioned by my dear husband in any way.

And Tom, if you are reading this: I just found out Nicole and Trey are expecting a 4th little “whoops!” bundle of joy. Looks like their unorthodox feeding plan didn’t make Trey too tired after all.

Monday Can't Come Soon Enough

So I'd LOVE to tell you that all is well in the See house, but that would be a lie.

Jake and I are home today with the stomach bug, and even the dog has been barfing, thanks to our neighbors who like to leave food out "for the animals."

The fact that it is once again Friday is not lost on me. Looking back at our recent weekends we've had:

1. Anna and kids out of town.
2. Tom's sister, brother-in-law and 5 kids in town.
3. Molly's strep--- Urgent Care
4. Molly's Scarlet Fever and Puking--- ER. Tom out of town
5. Anna and Jake Sick

And next weekend, drum roll please:

6. Tom's parent in town!

These 6 weekends can be interpreted in many ways-- missed soccer games, sleepovers, and trips to the zoo. From a 40 year old male's perspective, it means that Tom has not and will not be celebrating intimacy with his wife anytime soon.

And although I feel too weak to write a long post today, I have a question to leave with my bloggy friends.

When a blog has a giveaway, does it strike any of you as a little...awkward... to read the comments:

"Enter Me!"

"Enter Me Please!"


Okay. See you when the fever breaks.

Do You Sea What I Sea?

Why pay the big bucks for Pottery Barn's beautiful coral?


When you can take some seriously UGLY faux coral from the thrift shop ($1.95)



Spray on a little Heirloom White paint



And bring a touch of the ocean to your home?



Can you tell I wish summer would come?

May your day be cheap and chic!

Linking to Transformation Thursday at the Shabby Chic Cottage!