Put your prongs in the holes of my sweater...

Um, yeah, I'm still alive.

Barely.

Moving BITES.

We haven't moved in six years, and in that time, we've added two more kids to our family.  And I'd like to consider myself a minimalist - I regularly purge unneeded items from our house - but somehow, some way, we moved about 1,000 pounds of stuff to the new place.

The first night we were here, Ben and I were lying lifeless in bed, and I realized, as I lay there, that I was WARM.  That our house is really, just...warm.  Our old house was just plaster inside, bricks outside.  And that was it.  This house has actual insulation.  And it's just so dang luxurious to feel warm.

You learn a house's quirks as you live in it, and we've found that the floor in our living room is freeeeeezing.  We figured out why - we have a "rock room" in our basement.  A big room, sealed off from the rest of the house, full of rocks.  Back in 1979, when this house was built, it was built with solar panels on its roof.  Apparently that didn't work out so well, because there is no sign of said panels, though in the attic, you can see the piping that went from the panels into this rock room.  I'm no expert on this kind of thing, but apparently, the sun would hit the solar panels, the warmth or energy or whatever would go down these tubes and heat these rocks, and the rocks would radiate heat into the house.

So they didn't want insulation surrounding that room.  Because it needed to radiate the heat.

The knowledge of this rock room is driving me crazy.  It's a huge room full of rocks.  It could be the last bedroom we need.  A nice, big room.  What a waste of space!

Word on the street is that there is a house...um, on my street... that had a rock room.  There are lots of houses with rock rooms in our division.  And these guys broke into the room, got those rocks out, and made it into usable space.  That's what I want to do, guys.  It will be a huge pain.  But imagine it with me.  You get a back hoe and dig up against the foundation where this room is.  You cut out a big square - big enough to create an egress window.  You get a huge dumpster thing and stick it in the yard.  You get a conveyer belt going from the basement to the dumpster.  And you get in there with your gloves and throw these rocks onto the conveyer belt.  You cut a doorway on the other side of the room.  You insulate it, sheet rock it, put a closet in, paint, carpet, and voila.  You have usable space.

So this is my dream.  We'll see if it is ever fulfilled.

For now, to help with the freezing floor, we brought one of our oft-used space heaters from the old house over:

Want to see our fireplace?  It's come a long way, baby.  From dry rot and huge wasp nests under the floor:

To this:

Could you die???  The minute Ben told me he wanted the front of the fireplace area to be corrugated metal, I immediately yelled, "YES!" I love corrugated metal.  As you can see, he's off-centered the hearth and the mantel.  It took me awhile to feel okay about that, but now that the metal is on, it centers the design and looks really great.  His plan is to put cement on the hearth.  Not sure what he wants to do with the mantel.

Ben is so handy.  I'm lucky to have such a handy and artistic man.

Speaking of artistic, he is watching Cirque du Soleil on Netflix right now.  On purpose.  Talk about artistic.  I don't think I know any other man who would do that.  He also suggested we watch The Nutcracker on Netflix on Christmas Eve.  It was a really, really jacked up version.  Dr. Drosselmeyer was having, like, pedophilia feelings toward Clara.  And when Clara goes into the land of sweets, she becomes a woman.  And she and Nutcracker are in love.  And Dr. Drosselmeyer is competing with the Nutcracker for her love.  And there is no sugar plum fairy!!!  Clara does the sugar plum fairy dance!  Duh!  What IS this nonsense?????  Oh, and Dr. Drosselmeyer doesn't give Clara the nutcracker for Christmas.  He gives her a dollhouse.  And the nutcracker falls off the tree and Clara prefers the nutcracker to the dollhouse, further complicating his pedophilia feelings toward her.  Weird, weird stuff.  You got it wrong, Pacific Northwest Ballet Company.  So, so wrong.

Anyways, today Ben was getting some kind of wire thing prepared to put on the hearth to put the cement on, and he decided to quit working for the evening.  And where did he put the wire thing?  Onto my pile of clean clothes.  Piercing my sweater.

Ah, that man.  Obviously, as soon as I snapped this picture, I removed the offending prongs from my sweater.  But it reminded me of that song that I'm so in love with right now, called "Sweater Weather," by The Neighbourhood.   It really is quite fitting:

"And it's too co-o-o-o-old
For you here and now
So let me hold
Both your hands in the holes of my sweater..."

Kay, it's not entirely fitting, because it's about a person's hands, and not the prongs of a wire thing, but the cold part is right, eh?  And the sweater part?....Too much of a stretch?