It's tired girl summer I guess?

1. They are constructing a new fire station across the street. The empty houses they demolished to make space were a hazard and an eyesore, so it was lovely to see them gone! On the other hand, they cleared most of the trees on those lots, and we didn't really realize in advance that once they did that the entire north face of our house would be exposed to view down the highway all the way across the roundabout, even though our house is a block away from the highway. The view from all the windows on this side of our house is now full of neon signs, which makes it extremely ugly. I suppose the absence of the empty houses, which were ruining the view in a different way, is probably still worth it, though. And we're enjoying following the progress of the project. The site has been leveled and excavated and filled with gravel and groundcloths and now they're pile-driving.



2. The first episode of the new season of Interview with the Vampire, which has now had its name changed to The Vampire Lestat to reflect which books they are adapting, is out! We watched it yesterday. People were saying that it had 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, which I think is deserved, but still surprising. It was a very good first episode, and a very fun time.



3. Wax's brothers are planning to help us build a catio for Wax's birthday, and she wants to put it on the balcony, which currently doesn't exist. You might remember that we were in the midst of removing the rotten boards from the steel frame of our balcony nearly two years ago when Snookums died and we had to part with Anubis. Last summer we did not do any work on the balcony, so it is still just the steel frame waiting to be rustproofed. I suppose it's good if this spurs us to finally attaching the new decking to the balcony. On the other hand...
   
   The original wooden front door to the house has been getting worse and worse and now it's so bad that the screws holding the handle fell off because the wood is rotted. Bits (nails from the outside face, splinters of wood around the improperly installed locks from the previous owner) are falling off it.
   
   This is not a weatherproofing or security emergency, because the proper door is between the cold porch and the house - modern, insulated, with a lock. This outer door just needs to open and close and looks cute. But on the other hand, we do want to keep the rain out of the cold porch.
   
   We're gonna have to do something about this door, but we don't really have the skills or the collection of power tools, or enough money to splurge on having it refurbished by professionals. (A couple of years ago before it was this bad, Wax's brother and SIL were here with her mom and stepdad and her stepdad - that is, Wax's brother's wife's stepdad - was like "You should let me fix your door! It really needs it! I know just what to do!!" and we were like "No, haha, it's fine!" because we don't really know him all that well etc. OTOH we translated his doctoral thesis for him and he was able to get several papers out of it, which I also helped him translate (for money though, but he was grateful); maybe that's enough. We should've said yes, because it got WAY WORSE after that. The door presumably needs to have multiple dutchmen, as well as needing to be thoroughly stripped and the outer layer of wooden paneling probably replaced at minimum (totally possible that more pieces of it - like the outer vertical frame piece - will need replaced as well). Even when I was thinking that it could be our main project over Wax's summer vacation this year I was not sanguine about our ability to fix all these things on the door, but if we are actually spending that time on the balcony...? And yet we have to be able to open and close this door... if only by removing the lockbox so it no longer latches. Replacing this door would probably be even harder than fixing it, though, because in 1950 when our house was built they weren't standard sizes, and the house is stucco, which would make any change in the doorframe non-trivial.



4. I've been struggling for weeks to get together the energy and executive function to bake cookies. I haven't baked cookies for... maybe a year? I keep getting tripped up by the need to take butter out to soften several hours before you start. And today I FINALLY did it! I haven't decided what kind of cookies to make yet though.