How the International Space Station ruined my Wednesday morning.

Remember a few weeks ago when the White House issued the "This isn't the petition response you're looking for" response to the request that the US build the Death Star?  I was reading it, and laughing, when my older son asked what was so funny.  He is a Star Wars fan, so I read part of it to him.  He was pretty interested in the International Space Station, so we followed the links in the response to NASA's page, where we learned how to see the Space Station in your own back yard.  It turns out NASA will e-mail or text you when the Space Station should be visible in your zip code.

My son was thrilled.  He received a much-wanted telescope for Christmas, and was just certain he could use it to get an even better look at the space station.  We are learning how to use the telescope, but I doubt our ability to capture a moving object, so I suggested the first time we received notice the Space Station would be flying overhead, we just try to find it with our naked eyes.  We live near an airport, and he insists that every plane he sees flying above us must be the Space Station.

Tuesday night we received our first e-mail that the Space Station would be near us.  The e-mail detailed that the Space Station would be visible for four minutes, appearing in the northwest, and heading towards the southeast.  All starting at 6:25 a.m. Wednesday morning.  Unfortunately, it was raining Tuesday night, and the cloud cover was forecast to last through Wednesday.  I told my son I'd wake him up, and we would just have to see what we could see.

I had dreams of going to watch the Space Station all night.  I dreamed I was back in the house I grew up in, gathering my neighbors to watch.  I dreamed we watched from our back deck in Boston.  It was sort of nuts.  I woke up at 6:15 and checked the cloud cover.  There were a lot of clouds, but you could see some of the sky, and some stars, so I thought it was worth a shot.  I went to my son's room, and told him he had to wake up to try and see the Space Station.  He shot straight up.  This never happens.  He is a terror to wake up in the morning.  His pleasant reaction did not last long though.  He tried to get out of bed, and immediately started crying because his foot was asleep, and he couldn't walk.  He started crying that he was going to miss his only chance to see the Space Station.  I told him I'd carry him down the stairs.

We turned off the house alarm, and headed outside.  He saw that it was cloudy, and started crying again.  He was never going to see the Space Station.  It wasn't worth it!  (Still not sure what he means by that.)  He went back inside, where he said he wasn't going to eat breakfast or do anything else.  I tried to convince him to go back outside with me, explaining that by staying inside, he had a zero percent chance of seeing the Space Station, but if he went outside, his chances could only improve!  He was having nothing to do with logic.  I said fine, we'd try again next time, but he was convinced it would be cloudy again then.  He will never see the Space Station.  I told him if that was going to be his attitude, I'd turn off the notifications, and we wouldn't worry about it.  He proceeded to pout through breakfast.  As he was getting ready to go out the door for school, I asked why he looked so sad, and he almost broke into tears again, and said that I said I was going to take away his telescope.  Goodness gracious child, I said nothing of the sort.  Nothing would convince him that I wasn't going to take away his telescope.

And then I got into a fight with my husband over the shirt my son was wearing because we were all short tempered from dealing with the Space Station spotting debacle, I was pissed off my whole commute in, and ended up packing absolute crap for my breakfast and lunch because I was just throwing food into the bag.

So NASA, my son has a request.  The next time you make the Space Station fly over our house, can you make sure it isn't cloudy, please?

The saga of our new door, or, how hard can this possibly be?

Back in the first week of August, the glass on our front door cracked.  The next day, one of the cracked sections fell out.  The door was old, needed a lot of work if we wanted to keep it, and we didn't really like it all that much anyway, so we decided to replace it.

What should have been a short process led to us not getting a new door until a few days before Halloween.  Home Depot dropped the ball a few times, by not returning phone calls, and not communicating between the retail staff and the installation team.  Then, once our door was finally ordered and delivered (one month after we ordered, rather than the two weeks they had estimated), we had to send it back, because they had pre-drilled holes for the hardware, but those holes didn't line up with the existing spots on the frame.  This was fairly obnoxious, as they require that an installation team come out and measure everything before you can even order a door (we have to pay for this), so I am unclear as to why the correct measurements weren't available.  We finally got the door installed, and the handle now sticks, and the deadbolt requires almost enough force to break the key to get the key to turn in the lock.  I am not pleased, and really don't think we'll use the Home Depot's installation services again.  Every person we dealt with was exceedingly polite and apologetic when things didn't work out they way they should, but there were just so many missteps, that I don't think we could confidently use them again.  Additionally, I felt as if we were being pushed to purchase an entire frame and replace the perfectly functional glass panels on the sides and top of the door frame.  The door we wanted to buy was actually a few hundred more than the one we ended up buying, but we could buy it only if we also replaced all of the panels around the door, which more than tripled the price.

The door was finally installed, but we had to paint it ourselves.  We debated between a dark green and a dark red for a while (turns out we had plenty of time to decide).  Our house has red brick, and we recently replaced our black shutters with forest green.  I was a bit worried that a red door with the green shutters would look a bit too Chirstmasy all the time, but I was also having trouble finding a green that I liked.  I took several walks around the neighborhood looking at doors, and almost all of my favorites were red.  So I brought home something like 30 red paint chips from the store (still Home Depot, I like shopping there).  We rejected most of them right away once we had them out in the sunlight, and narrowed it down to 3-5.

We decided on Raw Cinnabar, from Behr.  I had read a few blogs from people who painted their doors red, and almost all seemed to mention that the red they choose was not what they expected when they started painting.  So I bought a sample pot of the Raw Cinnabar, and of another red, Tuscan Rose, and painted some cardboard swatches.  We brought them outside, and still liked the Raw Cinnabar the most, so I bought a quart!  I think I probably could have just stuck with the sample pot, but wanted to get the paint & primer combination, and it will be nice to have extra in case it needs to be touched up later.


I started by taping off the hardware.  I really want to replace it -- not only does it now not work smoothly, but I think it is the original hardware from when the house was built, and it is showing its age.  I was shocked at how much replacing the door handle will be though!  The least expensive option I saw at Home Depot was $93.  Ugh.  I started to tape off the glass, but the oval shape made that very difficult, and I figured I would just be careful, and wipe off any mistakes.  That turned out to be an ok decision, but it was nerve wracking working around the edges!

I had purchased a small roller, but ended up using just the brush and a small foam brush.  There were so many small areas and trim areas, that by the time I was done with those, it felt like 80% of the door was done.  It seemed like a waste to use the roller for the small areas left to do.  Looking at the picture now, I see that there was more unpainted area than painted, but I swear getting to this point took 45 minutes, and the rest of the door took 5.

I finished the first coat, and let it dry for a few hours before shutting the door.  I was really excited by how well the paint & primer combination gave such good coverage.  I was trying to make the paint coat as thin as possible, but even after just one coat, there weren't many glaring areas where the door color still peaked through.  Up close you could definitely see that a second coat was needed, but from the street, it looked great!

As I began to paint, I realized that the door was going to move, and I didn't want to have to hold on to it the whole time.  I looked for something heavy to put behind it, and used our huge Rubbermaid storage tubs - one filled with flour, the other with brown sugar.  That seemed to do the trick.  I also realized as I started painting the top that I was in danger of getting a bit of the red paint on the white trim, so I added a few strips of tape to the top of the trim.  I also added garbage bag drop cloths to our floor.

For the second coat, I did not bother pulling out the rolling pan.  I hadn't used the roller yesterday, so decided to avoid the potential mess that comes when I pour paint out of a can, and just dip the brushes directly into the paint can.  I think it turned out well!

Rant

Yesterday was a bad day.  But not so bad that I should be feeling as crappy as I do.  I hate feeling this way.

Closing on our new house was delayed two days because our mortgage company can't get its act together.  The boys were terrible at dinner, and hardly ate anything.  We settled on a restaurant with more kid friendly food, and then they spent most of the dinner making a mess.  My husband hates one of the pictures I used for the Christmas cards.  We didn't order enough of the cards anyway, so I offered to take more pictures and order different ones for his family, but he doesn't want to do that either.  My boys wanted to have a sleep over in our room last night, which meant I spent most of the night shoved to the very edge of our bed, freezing, because middle child wanted to sleep right next to me but *hates* blankets.  I had trouble getting to sleep, and when I finally did, our stupid cat decided to claim my pillow.  I kept having weird dreams about people I haven't seen or talked to in 10+ years.  My boys are spending the day with my mother-in-law, and I'm going to miss them.  The foundation repair people, who left a total mess in our backyard when they were here before Thanksgiving, and then "forgot" that they weren't done with the work, are late.  They were supposed to be here between 8:30 and 9:00 this morning.  It is now 10.  I wanted to go for a run this morning before we had to take the boys to my mother-in-law's but I woke up feeling so crappy I didn't go.  Now I'm mad at myself for not.

On the bright side, the fat little rabbit rolled over for the first time today!