I only had to wait an extra four months but now, at looooong last, my kitchen is complete.

“Complete,” of course, is relative. The hideaway stand that the mixer sits on isn’t stained. The island toekick remains unfinished. I never figured out lighting/shelving/art for my desk area, and I still haven’t found a swivel bar stool. My coffee station is still stolen goods (thanks, Pop!). We need different light bulbs in the hanging colanders. Etc, etc.

And then there’s the routine disintegration of the once-finished parts. There’s no handle on the microwave. The blinds are broken and wonky. The original cabinets need to be repainted. One of the drawer bottoms is, well, bottoming out. Floor tiles are cracking. A knob broke off the stove.

But!

BUT.

Now the entire kitchen, from one end to the other, is spectacularly serviceable, and the very last missing piece is complete: a set of open shelves built to match the already existing ones.

I had to keep asking (i.e. politely suggesting, writing it on strategically-placed to-do lists, fussing, pointedly huffing at) my husband to build them for me. I’m not sure what got his attention, but eventually he got to work.

The shelves took him all of a couple hours to build (of course), and then we had to wait a couple more days while the paint cured, and then — glory be! — I could actually use them.

Now all the drinking cups, mugs, and wine glasses are on that side of the kitchen, along with the coffee-and-tea station, and whatever beverages are in the fridge. With the glasses out of that tight corner, traffic is more evenly spread around the kitchen.

(The water pitchers are still back in the corner, but they’re used less frequently. Besides, I like the all-ceramic look of those shelves versus the all-glass look of the new ones.)

My cousin-in-PA gave me the lovely vine-y plant a few months back and it’s been going nuts. It’s the ideal house plant for me: lots of lush green for practically zero maintenance. Plus, it thrives in shade so it’s the perfect hit of bright in what would otherwise be a gloomy corner. Just the other day, I pinched a few starts off the mother plant and stuck them in a glass of water — I’ve decided I want a whole forest of these plants.

I took these photos first thing the other morning, in a rare moment of calm when the kitchen was all tidy clean. A couple hours later, it was, as usual, bubbling with projects and messes.

Which is exactly the point of a kitchen in the first place.

This same time, years previous: wrangling sheep, crispy almonds, fun and fiasco 2, I went to church with a whole in my skirt, Easter chickens, chocolate peanut butter eggs.

This same time, years previous: feeding my family, gado gado, right now, the quotidian (4.13.15), the quotidian (4.14.14), fun and fiasco 1, wild hair.

My younger son continues to make home improvements to his little top-of-the-stairs bedroom nook.
The other day he built a little stair-step footstool for his plants.

He’s growing a whole menagerie. (Can one have a menagerie of plants?). From a letter he wrote to his grandmother back at the beginning of the month:

I’ve planted tomato plants, and it’s been 14 days and half of them have grown about 1½ inches. I have around 60 tomato plants. I’m hoping that we can transplant them into our garden. I also have two spider plants that are babies but are growing fast. I also have two aloe plants; one of them I took from Mom’s aloe plant, and the other I got from Grandmommy, and two peace lilies, one from Grandmommy and one from Mom’s peace lily that is not doing too well, but is still alive. I’m trying to grow an avocado tree from a seed from an avocado. I have a grape vine that I hope will grow. And finally, I have one stalk of corn.

In lieu of a closet, he built himself a stick-out wooden bar upon which to hang his Sunday shirts (that he has since determined can probably go up to the attic, taking into consideration Covid-19 and all).

And also built a towel rack to hang on the back of the door.

“I should’ve put it up higher,” he told me when I stuck my head in to check it out. “My towel hangs down over the hook for my backpack, but oh well.”

As I already mentioned, the kid gave up added sugar for lent. When Covid-19 hit, and I began using baked goods for emotional boosters, he was forlorn.

“You can quit,” I told him. “No one expects you to give up sugar on top of everything else you’re giving up. God will still love you.”

But nope. He never even wavered.

Which kind of annoyed me. Now that we were all at home, I wanted to bake more, but without my trusty human garbage disposal, I kept getting a backlog of food. Plus, some of our foods, like rhubarb crunch and granola bars and monster cookies and granola and baked oatmeal, are actually substantial parts of our meals but, since they had added sugar, he declared them off limits.

He ate a lot of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and when I bought him an entire Costco bag of celery sticks, he was over the moon.

All week, he’s been counting down the days until Sunday. When I said I was going to make pumpkin pies this week, he pleaded with me to wait until next week, but I didn’t listen. I did, though, save the last piece for him. It’s tucked in the back of the fridge, along with a bowl of wilting whipped cream. 

This same time, years previous: fifteenth spring, when popcorn won’t pop, Mr. Tiny, an evening walk, deviled eggs, on fire, lemons and goat cheese, cream of tomato soup.