FORTY-FIVE

This girl is so happy nearly all the time. She was just splashing water off of a chair at the park, but look at that joy!

2014 week forty-five

You guys. It's almost Christmas season! I will admit I did not skip over O Little Town of Bethlehem when it popped up on my shuffle. And down here in Texas it feels very much like Christmas weather, socks in the house, sweaters and scarves and a high of 65 :)

We went for a windy rainy walk and left the wild thing cat outside the whole time. She was a lot more humble when we got back. V loves going for walks and pointing to the airplanes and picking up leaves, and making bird sounds. Outside is her best side.

I took a bath after a trying afternoon. This stink bug kept asking to get in. I kept saying "no." When I got out to dry off, she jumped into the draining bath water as fast as she could. She loves baths and any sort of body of water, including purposefully spilled water from her cup. 

Yzma The Beast Creature

Oh dear Pinterest. You inspire unfounded confidence in everyone's DIY skills. Just because one person somewhere made a designer handbag from toothpicks and glitter, or something, does not mean we all can.

On Friday I fell into one of those moods where everything in my house disgusts me, and it is all filthy and cluttered, and how-can-anyone-live-in-such-conditions sort of sentiments. My dear toddler and the daycare baby were soundly sleeping like angels and I took a wrong sort of sideways glance at my oven, and it truly offended me. I saw fingerprints and unidentifiable crusts and the dreaded drips between the glass. I hate those things. How do they get there? Well that sideways glance induced a craze that can only be described in pictures:

Then in my "I can obviously accomplish this" sort of mood I remembered a pin that I saw. I never pinned it, I never even followed the link, I just saw it, and from that once-glanced-at photo that was stored in my brain (my brain that forgot the cat's vet appointment -twice) I knew that I indeed could clean all the things. This was the pin btw:

That's it. With nothing else to go on, I opened the oven and brandished my screwdriver. And this the story of how I nearly broke the oven.

I opened the oven door, which promptly fell apart in about 5 layers of "what on earth?". Then I cleaned the glass, because that is what I was here for! Then I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how each layer of "what on earth" fit back together with the oven door hanging half open. Then I started to panic.

Luckily I live in an age where I am not required to rely on my own set of skills or another's particular set of skills. I have Youtube. And Youtube has at least 400 videos dedicated to trained professionals telling me I can reassemble my oven door and never have to pay them a cent. It turns out I had to completely take the oven door off of the oven and lay it all out on the living room floor.

10 video views, 3 hours, 7 slices to my hands and fingers, 1 really audible swear that Vera proceeded to repeat for the rest of the day (chagrin) later; I reassembled that oven 6 freaking times before I realized what I was doing wrong. And then when I finally got it all together I thought I broke the oven hinge (insert the swear word here). But the good news is that I got the oven door back together AND back on properly, I was able to fix it in time to bake the bread for our dinner, I only got a little bit of fiberglass in my hands (still itchy) and I know how to assemble an oven door now (and I didn't pay in cash, only tears and begged prayers).

The bad news is, after trying for so long to get the oven back together, the inner glass got dirty and smudged.