use real butter

It’s amazing how your entire day can whittle away as you tend to small chores. We managed to get a lot done. The gear room/area is at 25% completion. Pics to come when it’s done, Ro. You’ll dig it! In my efforts to conserve water, I collect warm up water (when you wait for shower or kitchen sink water to warm up) or produce rinse water and administer it to the various plants in the yard that need it. The fun part is, I can get to some of them from the deck:

**Jump for more butter**

No, not the house, but for all intents and purposes, the kitchen – she is done. I had been toying with asking my neighbor for some aspen log cuttings so I could build some bookcases to go under the kitchen bar. But the more I looked into the various materials, the more I desired some pre-fab, particle board, DIY kit, cheap thing… my answer came today in the form of a $25 bookcase that ACTUALLY FIT the dimensions I needed, while looking for faux wood touch-up marker at McGuckin’s for my crappy busted particle board bookcases that got dinged yet again… Me and particle board – we go way back. These two bookcases fit to within 1/2 inch of the space needed (b/c there are drawers and cabinet doors to the right).

**Jump for more butter**

First – for Ro:

This is the flourescent strip lighting we installed under our cupboards (3 in total). My biggest problem with these is that the glare is quite strong if you are a short person. I don’t consider myself to be too short at 5’5″, but my grandmother is probably less than five feet now, and standing at that level, I can see the bulb which is bright and annoying. We had to compromise between setting it further back (best for short person viewing) versus in the middle (best for overall lighting).It got so hot this afternoon, but we were mostly working on the two lower floors, which was a little more bearable. Still plenty of things to take care of, but at least now we feel like we live here. In the evening we took Kaweah for a walk around the circle and followed a spur trail up to and past the school. It was still warm for Ned standards, but it was delightful. Easy to see that the flowers are past peak.

Tonight, at Jeremy’s behest, we made some smores:

…and then proceeded to arrange the master bedroom rug and furniture. Then we shut off all the lights in the house and sat on the couch staring out our picture windows at the night sky, coming around to accepting that this is our home.