Showing posts with label florida grandma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label florida grandma. Show all posts

1.30.2012

wonky windows #23.

never a dull moment in miami. here are some windows into my day-to-day encounters with my city.

i was in line behind this lady and i was kind of mesmerized. and that's all i am going to say about that.

i see this bumper sticker semi-regularly. no comprende. i mean if you want to share with the world that you love and/or hate jesus, that is fine by me. but to be honest, with this bumper sticker, i am not sure whose side you are on.

a little old lady, who needs a walker, jaywalking across a six lane road. during rush hour. the epitome of a florida grandma.

5.30.2010

just call me grannie.

for some reason that i cannot explain, i have a lot of little old lady tendencies. i generally carry candy in my purse. i drive ridiculously cautiously and often rather slowly. i make quilts. i have a basket on my bicycle. and i have a weird obsession for muumuus.
 vintage muumuus. my dream.

my muumuu infatuation has recently taken over my life. in college i owned a mustard yellow muumuu, but upon graduation i gave it back to the thrift store whence it came. clearly these days i am pining over my loss. i actually experienced a serious case of envy when i crossed paths with my 80-something neighbor and she was wearing a classic muumuu. how come she has one and i don't? not fair. it should come as no surprise that i added "housedress" to my list of sewing projects.  i spent a while searching the internet looking for a muumuu pattern. only problem being that i thought muumuu was spelled "mumu" so all i managed to find was this website that provides information about finding modest clothes. for those of you in the market for pettipants,  culottes, and caftans, this is the site for you!
orange pettipants. yahoo!!

since my pattern quest was unsuccessful i changed direction and decided instead to make a cute drawstring dress, as if a housedress has the potential to be cute. whatever. i can dream. that plan seemed great until i tried it on and realized that i somehow managed to make a hot pink tent. oops. so i made some alterations and the tent now resembles a housedress. sort of. and then i discovered the correct spelling for "muumuu" and found some directions for sewing a proper muumuu. it's back on my "to do" list.

5.18.2010

the joy of the flush.

the mister and i live in a cozy one bedroom apartment. well, technically it is a condominium, but using that term makes me feel like i should dye my hair purple, sit in the sun until i am crisp like bacon, and develop an i-used-to-live-in-new-york accent. i am not yet that florida. maybe someday. 
back to our munchkin house. despite its wee size, our home actually has two bathrooms. the master bath and the half bath. as a child i was always suspicious of those half bathrooms, assuming that they only had a half of a toilet. okay, so that childhood assumption was a bit off, but our wee water closet does sometimes feel so teeny that one has to wonder if it was designed to only fit half a person.
seems silly to get all worked up about a little bathroom, but then the toilet started leaking. for three days every five or six weeks. whaaat?! what is this nonsense? either we have a leak or we do not. this is pure craziness, but cross my heart, our toilet only leaked at its discretion. great. kind of hard to diagnose a leak that is not always present. grrrrr. to make matters worse, the stupid porcelain contraption stopped working. is it a coincidence that the mister lost a nail brush around the same time? nope. ummm...super. so now our finicky toilet is choking on a nail brush. i gave up. we turned off the water, closed the lid, attached a sign that said "me no worky" and turned the bathroom into a storage closet. problem solved. and then visitors arrived. suddenly our bathroom turned into the only bathroom. egads. this is so uncool.

clearly we needed a solution fast! so we waited two years. actually, we would still be waiting except that mommy rolled into town. mommy is the world's greatest handywoman, so she can do random plumbing in her sleep. lucky us. she informed me that we were going to remove the toilet and hopefully find the nail brush, solve the problem, and fix the leak all in one fell swoop. uhhh...oooookay? i guess. how do you remove a toilet? you need a toilet ring? what's a toilet ring? uh huh. sure. sure. yup. right-o. we're good. needless to say i was sort of baffled when we were in home depot looking for toilet rings and i found out they are made of WAX, but i am trying to roll with it.

 for those of you who are not in the know...this is a toilet ring.

when we got home we removed the toilet. oh. my. god. the used wax is positively disgusting. gross. yellow beeswax everywhere. gag. glug. yuck. i could not bear to take a picture of the filth that was under our toilet, so instead i am sharing this picture. it does not do justice to the horror we discovered, but at least it gives you an idea of the goo factor.
we found the nail brush. yay. and mommy discovered that our previous ring was not properly installed. we got everything cleaned up and put it all back together. yay yay yay. and it worked. even more yay.
you know that's not the end, right? i mean that would seriously be way to easy. obviously. so naturally when the mums goes to check on the toilet there is water everywhere. arrrrrrrrg. now i am typically an upbeat person, but i was instantly catapulted into a dark and dreary depression. mommy told me all would be well, but i was not to be convinced. the next day i replaced half of the moving parts in a last-ditch effort to make the sun once again shine in my world. shockingly, amazingly, and wondrously, it worked. and it is still working. yes folks...our half bathroom is once again functional and i use it every chance i get.

now that i am constantly visiting our little bathroom, i have officially concluded that it needs to be revamped. i have always known that the lavender is sadly lacking in saturation. i mean seriously, it is practically white, which is the color of the toilet. and the sink. and the cabinet. and the hardware. and the frame of the mirror. blah blah blah. but not to worry....my current plan is to reinvent my grandma's hot pink powder room.

a$$-kicking hot pink.

of course painting the entire bathroom hot pink might be a little much for the mister. do not fret. the lovely miss K wrote about fancy pants stenciling, so before she has a chance to boss me into stenciling the bathroom, i am going to choose to stencil the bathroom. clearly this will be a small nightmare with lots of misery, but i am sure there will be plenty of joyful cursing.

 a dizzying design that might just be perfect.

anyhow, i am thinking i will paint the walls hot pink and then stencil a design in either silver, dark gray, or black all over. or maybe i will paint the walls white and stencil hot pink over them. that might look better with the bah humbug white accessories. obviously now that the toilet is working the bathroom project has entered a new phase, which means a new saga. just what i needed, because you know, i don't already have enough projects planned. obviously this will not be the last you hear of these 7.2 square feet of our home.