we have doors!

We have eave closet doors! Which you can't see yet! Because we still need to paint them! But still! DOORS!

Six years, you guys. Six years we've had big gaping holes uncovered closet openings in our attic eave walls. To say that we are overjoyed to finally have doors for those damn closets would be an understatement so gigantic it has its own gravitational field.

Of course, given our track record, it'll probably take another six years to get them painted, but let us hope for all our sakes that it does not. Let us hope that the preliminary plan of attack we came up with for getting them painted in a reasonable and timely manner actually, you know, works.

We also, also got doors for the kitchen shelf space that is actually the back side of the dining room buffet. Those doors also need to be painted, and we need to get glass for the inserts, but the frames, at least, are done. And even unfinished, they look wonderful. I can totally see why some people prefer to renovate with a checkbook instead of a table saw.

We didn't get started on the painting this weekend, however. Sal had to work for a bit yesterday in preparation for the big James Beard Award event taking place at OCI today and he was also fighting off a nasty cold. And I...well, I just played around in the studio all weekend.

Which means I have no good excuse for my sad little bento today, nor for not having a dinner bento for tonight. I am not proud of this bento. This is a bento composed entirely of laziness, sloth, and procrastination, with a side sauce of not-giving-a-crap. But, I figure I should post the bad with the good, so here, let me inflict it upon you.

lunch, pink natural lunch:

• orange ginger chicken
• Thai sticky rice with green onion for garnish
• orange ginger chicken sauce

All items are courtesy of last night's takeout leftovers from the neighborhood Thai place. Which is delicious. And is probably the main reason I have a lunch today. Clearly, it's time for a vacation.

more like daylight suckage time

I'm normally not a strong Daylight-Savings-Time hater, but in the days immediately following the spring switch, I can understand why others are. Yesterday was all out of whack; today isn't quite as bad, but combined with a tight schedule, I think it's going to take me longer than usual to adjust.

Sister, Guy, and the Fabulous Miss M were here for the weekend, so that actually did make it a nice weekend despite the time change. While they were at the Shamrock Run yesterday morning, we played with Miss M, then per our now annual tradition after such things, they returned bearing treats. Specifically, a box of Voodoo Doughnuts. Hence the appearance of a few odds and ends in today's lunch. Then they left with an extremely sugared up and overly exhausted 3 year-old, and I'll admit, I prayed for their sanity. I haven't heard anything on the news about them being committed for psychological observation so I'm assuming everyone survived the remainder of the day.

After they left, we hit Rejuvenation to pick out hinges and handles for the new cabinet doors we're having done for the display shelves in the kitchen. I haven't talked about that much yet, but it's part of the project to get the attic eave closet doors done; the contractor we chose didn't charge much extra for these three cabinet doors, so we figured it was a good time to scratch that little side project of our list, as well. Afterward, we stopped at Miller Paint to pick out a pretty color -- the doors will have glass inserts and we're going to paint the shelves and interior to reallly make it spark. But you'll have to wait to learn more about the color, because you know how I am about the big reveals....

lunch, blue bunny & moons:

• wee potatoes with cheddar heart
• teriyaki chicken meatballs
• steamed broccoli
• Fuji apple half with heirloom carrot sticks
• a few random bits of Voodoo doughnuts: buttermilk bar, powdered sugar doughnut, peanut doughnut leftover from yesterday

dinner, pink Natural Lunch:

• ham, barrel pickle, and cream cheese in a sundried tomato wrap
• heirloom carrots
• Fuji apple half

progress on this work in progress

one of the eave closet openings before the trim was up; there are FIVE of theseWe've gotten the quote on getting the doors done for the attic closets and it's...not too scary, actually. We'll have to hold off until after the first of the year since we have the Sooper Sekrit Project coming up in December, but it looks like we'll have doors on those damn eave closets by the end of January, just like a real house! If you had told me ten years ago that the prospect of having closet doors would fill me with the kind of excitement most women reserve for large expensive jewelry (or in my case, large gift cards to Powell's), I would have scoffed openly at such hilarity.

these built-in shelves in the kitchen are actually the back side of the built-in buffet in the dining roomThe estimate also includes cabinet doors for the open shelving in our kitchen. We think it originally had doors similar to the rest of the kitchen, and in fact we did find a cabinet door in the basement that seems to fit one of the openings, but they were removed at some point. It's a pretty nice use of an otherwise unusable space, and perfect for all of Sal's cookbooks, but because our kitchen doesn't have hood for the stove, it's hard to keep them clean. So we'd like to have doors with glass inset to protect the books, but still display. We'll paint the interior something rich and spicy -- the color of saffron or paprika, maybe. Should look pretty neat when it's all done. (Of course, it'll make the rest of the kitchen look even more in need of a makeover than it already does, but baby steps, baby steps....)

lunch, Laptop Lunch:

• PB&J, using peanut butter and red currant jam on buttermilk bread
• peas and carrots
• half a Fuji apple with a carrot shape garnish and a few raisins at the corner as gap fillers
• red grapes and a bit of ranch dip in the condiment container for the carrots

A kind of American-style lunch box theme today with the PB&J. (No chips or juice box, though!) I'm famished today so it was nicely filling lunch. But I must say that with the cooler weather, I'm craving soups and casseroles. And chili, lots and lots of chili.

Hmmm...we do have a ridiculous amount of peppers from the CSA to eat up, and some onions...oh, and nice bag of mixed greens from our latest share that would make a delicious salad with some cut up rainbow carrots that were also in our share...yes, I do believe a big batch of chili is in my future....