I haven’t done a “three things” post in a while.  Probably because I’ve been struggling through nagging fatigue and dealing with a few house issues…

Thing 1: The Garage

Over the course of the two years we’ve lived in our house, I’ve parked my car in the one-car garage for a total of about 1 month. Seriously.

Every time we clean out the garage and get it organized, a major purchase (ie a snowblower) throws everything out of whack.  Once the garage is out of commission, it suddenly becomes a holding space for any number of things.  Having a party? Toss the 13 pairs of shoes sitting next the front door into the garage!  Unexpected guests?  Throw Frank’s suitcase out there stat!

But today, I make a stand against abusing the garage.

We cleaned it out – sorted through boxes of collegiate memories and threw out an entire garbage can of randomness that we have, sadly, moved from an apartment in Illinois to an apartment in Wisconsin to a house in Wisconsin to a house in Illinois.

::Sob::

Oh the money we spent on moving garbage!!

But never again – we shall prevail.  Our garage will house a vehicle, or my name isn’t Emily…

 

Thing 2: The Basement.

We are working on cleaning out the basement next.  We started it a few weeks ago, but realized we were mostly moving things out to the garage for donation purposes.  Tomorrow, we are going to ferociously re-approach the basement.  So Help Me, we will not be defeated in this mighty endeavor!

 

Thing 3: Our Microwave.

You may recall that I previously mentioned that we have some weird electrical things going on in our house.  Of course, Frank thinks that I’m crazy, but I promise you, I might be crazy, but something weird is going on.  We replace lightbulbs in this house like it’s our job.  At one point, half of our appliances in our kitchen were not working.  One of those appliances, our dishwasher, stopped working due to an (dah dah dahhhhhh….) electrical fire!

The other appliance that isn’t working is our over-the-stove microwave.  It worked for about 2 weeks after we moved in.  It was a delight.

Then one day, it just stopped working.

My mom generously gave me an extra microwave that we stuck next to the fridge.

One day, in the midst of cleaning out the kitchen (yes, we’re on a roll with the cleaning), I expressed my dismay at having so much junk on top of the fridge.  We took the cereal boxes down and tried to find a home for them, but seeing as we don’t have a pantry, they had to sit on the counter.  Frank complained about how unsightly and inconvenient it was to have the cereal boxes on the counter and I said, “if the microwave worked, we wouldn’t have to have the extra microwave next to the fridge.”  Because Frank is brilliant, he decided to start storing the cereal boxes in the broken microwave.  Genius!

Thinking that no one else would notice, we went on with our lives.

We recently hosted an engagement party for our dear friends.  The party was a lovely success and until about midway through the party, I’d forgotten about the aforementioned cereal boxes.  In mid-conversation with my long-time friend Kate, she asked me, “Um, hey, Em, are those cereal boxes in your microwave?”

“Yup,” I replied.  I didn’t bat an eyelash and pretended that it was totally normal.

“Okay….” she said.