Single-Ply

Not much is new around here, but I figured I’d fill everyone in on the latest since that’s the purpose of this blog.

Kolby has been working non-stop lately. He had heard that substitute teaching gigs in this area are hard to come by, but once again, being a male English teacher has proven to be a hot commodity. He no longer has to go through the “sub-finder” website or call logs; he now gets personal phone calls from the school principals requesting him by name. For the past two weeks, he’s been teaching language arts at a nearby junior high. There was an SAT test this past weekend, so he’s been double-timing it at the college prep center as well. Some days he goes straight from one job to the other and works more than 12 hours straight, and he has also been teaching several SAT classes each weekend. So he’s been my little worker bee lately, but things will slow down for him soon. SAT season is pretty much over, so he’s switching to just substitute teaching a few days a week and will concentrate much more on grad school since the fall quarter began at the beginning of this month. He’s really enjoyed all of the work, and we’re certainly thankful for all of the hours he’s getting, but he’s ready to switch his focus back to his writing.

Staying this busy causes Kolby to lose weight because he just doesn’t have time to eat enough calories. His high metabolism drives me nuts. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to lose a few of the many pounds I have gained since we’ve been married and him stepping off the scale and griping about how his weight just keeps going down. I was giving him a hard time about it the other night and he said, “It’s OK honey, we can meet in the middle!” Very funny.

Kolby claims it’s hard work trying to maintain a sufficient caloric intake, but it’s difficult to feel sorry for someone who spent the last two weeks chipping away at a HUGE chocolate cake some friends brought over.

You’re right, dear; having to eat large quantities of delicious chocolate cake straight from the pan must be tough.

In other news, we have tree roots infringing upon our plumbing which caused our sewer lines to back-up twice in less than 2 months. Fun! The plumber that we called out this last time also detected a semi-broken connection near our house that he thought was probably a main compounding problem because toilet paper can get caught up there and cause a clog. Replacing the broken connection would cost around $700 and addressing the tree root problem is incomprehensibly expensive, so we’ve opted for a hillbilly fix--- a switch to single-ply toilet paper. A plumber may totally disagree with this logic, but I have to figure that septic-safe, single-ply toilet paper will dissolve much better and decrease the likelihood of clogging the pipes. Right?!? That’s our plan for now, and we’ll make a decision on what to do next based on how long we go before it backs up again. I apologize in advance for those of you who come visit us and are relegated to using toilet paper comparable to that which is found in gas station restrooms. Oh the joys of home ownership!

We’ve had a lot of visitors to our house lately, which has been really fun but also reminds us of all of the stuff we still need to do to the house. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t really notice that we don’t have any curtains, that all of the bedroom walls are completely bare, that our office is a total wreck, that we have a kitchen cabinet with two huge holes in the back of it, and that we have a massive pile of fence-building materials in the middle of our backyard… but giving people a tour always serves to remind me of what is still on our to-do list. When I go over with Kolby what needs to be done, he says we should just sell the house. We're just tired of house projects!

But you know who never gets tired of a single thing about this house? Maya. Boy does she love this place. She loves her fun yard, she loves that the front window has a sill that's the perfect height for her to sit up and rest her chin on as she keeps watch over the house, and she especially loves the glass back door.All in all, things are going great here. We've had a string of very eventful weekends that I'll post about once I get some pictures together. One thing worth mentioning now, though, is that we went and saw Where the Wild Things Are at the IMAX theatre and it was fantastic. I would highly recommend it!

Welcome, Welcome!

I kept waiting to show you guys our new house until it was completely put together and complete, but I don't know if that will actually happen anytime soon so I figured I'd just go ahead with a tour.

So, without further adieu.... welcome to our first home! We fall in love with it more and more each day!

Here's the view from our front yard. I may be biased, but I think we have the cutest little house in the neighborhood!

When you first walk in, we have a small entryway. The living room is to the right, the dining room/kitchen is straight ahead, and the hallway to the bathroom and the bedrooms is forward and to the left. *Maya loves to have her picture taken so as soon as I got the camera out she was trying to pose in front of every shot. I got her out of the way for most, but she insisted on being in this one.

Here's the view of our living room from the entryway. The doorway on the left leads to the kitchen. Here are two shots from the other side of the living room, facing towards the entryway. *We are planning to lower the mirror above the entry table a bit... we just haven't got around to it yet :) Here's the kitchen. This picture was taken from the doorway between it and the living room.
Another shot of the kitchen. The oven is original, from 1957.
This is my favorite part of the kitchen. Check out how spacious this cupboard is. No more digging around in a tiny bottom cabinet for what pot or pan I want to use!
The kitchen has granite counter tops and a marble tile back splash, which was a great update. We replaced the old vent-a-hood with this new black one and are in the midst of a renovating the cabinet above it, as you can tell.

This is the pantry that Kolby's grandfather built for us. He built it to match our other cabinets, so it looks great and gives us a lot of extra storage space. The pantry is directly across from the end of the counter with the stove, and you walk between them to get from the kitchen to the dining area.
This is our dining area. The doorway in this picture leads to the entryway and the hallway to the rest of the house.
Here's a shot of the entire dining and kitchen area. We replaced both light fixtures and painted the walls taupe. On the left is the glass door that leads to our backyard.
The back door is Maya's FAVORITE spot. She loves laying there and keeping watch over what's going on outside.
Our house has one hallway and the first stop is the guest bathroom.
I LOVE this vanity. We love all of the updates that the previous owners did to the house, namely the kitchen counter tops and the complete renovation of the bathrooms, but this is my favorite thing that they did. Just for fun, here's a shot of the beautiful shower.
One great thing about this house is the unbelievable amount of storage space it has given its size. This is a cabinet in the guest bathroom and it is as deep as that shower wall. So nice. This is the aforementioned hallway. This photo was taken from the guest bathroom. Just to put the floor plan into perspective: the front of the house is behind me, the living room is to my right and is at the front of the house, the kitchen/dining area is to my right and is at the back of the house, the guest rooms are the first and third doors to the left, and the master bedroom is straight ahead. The other doors in this picture are closets, including a laundry closet. The entry, living room and hallway are all painted the most beautiful green paint color I've ever seen. I would never have had the guts to paint my house this color, but we both absolutely love it and it works perfect in this house. Please note the fresh WHITE trim in this photo... it was such hard work but it turned out so great. The same goes for the new hardware on the doors.
We use the first spare bedroom as an office. This is the room I'm most embarrassed to post a picture of because it is certainly our biggest work-in-progress, but I'll just put up some better pictures once we get it more in order. Eventually, I'll have a nice clear desk to use, Kolby will have his own large corner desk to use, I'll have a folding table to use for taking care of bills, filing, etc., and Kolby will have recliner to sit and read in. We use our second spare room as a guest bedroom. We inherited this furniture from my college roommate who didn't want to take it back to Florida with her when she graduated. We stored it last year but decided to pair it with an air mattress and use it here because having a twin bed makes the space more roomy and we aren't expecting too many overnight guests since the majority of our friends and family live nearby.
We decided to keep the armoire that goes with our master bedroom set in this room for now. You'll notice all of the bedroom walls are bare because we haven't gotten around to decorating them yet. One day, maybe. Also, we aren't in love with any of the bedroom wall colors but we like them enough to keep them as is until we feel inspired to repaint. It'll probably be a couple years, though; they just aren't that bad and I have no idea what I'd want instead.
I keep all of my work clothes in the guest room closet. There's so much room in there and it keeps our master closet from getting too crowded.
We have a built-in telephone stand, which I think is really neat. We're hoping to find a vintage black telephone to keep there at some point.
Finally, here is our master bedroom. Again, there's nothing on the walls yet so I'm sorry for how bland it looks.
We have three large windows in our bedroom and they all face our own backyard, which is nice.
Here's our bathroom.

I had to stand in the shower to take this picture, but I wanted to show off the wall of cabinets we have :). It's a ton of storage and is much more convenient than having just one cabinet under the sink like a lot of bathrooms this size have.
Here's a shot from our bedroom back into the hallway, and our closet is there on the left.
I had never even heard of these before, but we have an attic fan. Apparently this is what they put in houses before central A/C came along. Our house does have central A/C now, but this thing is so nice to use during the spring and fall because we can open the windows and turn it on and the whole place stays cool without using hardly any electricity at all.
Well, that pretty much concludes the tour. I'm throwing in this last picture so I can spend a moment talking about how much I love our wood floors. They are original to the house and are the pride and joy of this place. They creak with every step and the sound brings joy to my heart. At first I was nervous about the color because it is lighter than what is in style these days, but I've completely come around on it because it provides a great contrast to all of our dark wood furniture and the floors show NOTHING. We have a husky, so we're no stranger to dog hair around here. But the floors don't show it at all, and when we want the floors clean--- we can sweep and mop and know that they are spotless. Our apartment had nasty burber carpet and Maya's hair clung to it like velcro so the floors were always covered in dog hair, despite endless vacuuming attempts. It was sick. But not anymore! And speaking of cleaning, we can plug the vacuum into the outlet in the guest bathroom and vacuum the entire house without having to unplug it. That's how we know this place is just our size!

So there you have it! Once we get our new fence finished and stained, I'll post some pictures of our backyard.

We are head over heels in love with our house and feel so blessed to have found such a perfect place for our family. If you're ever in the neighborhood, stop by and see us!

Santa Fe: A Retrospective by Kolby

Friends and Family,

Here's a quick synopsis of my time in Santa Fe and my thoughts surrounding this graduate program. Better late than never, right?

I am currently enrolled in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Seattle Pacific University. The program utilizes a low-residency model, which is becoming a pretty trendy thing in the field of creative writing. By pooling resources toward the twice-a-year residencies, the school is able to afford terrific visiting faculty. And, due to the nature of the curriculum, there are even advantages to this distance relationship with faculty.

Some have asked what the point of such a program is. A valid question. An MFA isn't exactly the most employable degree. Technically, it is a terminal degree for the arts, but because it isn't a true Ph.D., most colleges will probably hesitate to give me a gig. While it could also lead to publishing, I am in the poetry concentration of the program and I'll let you figure out whether or not even the most celebrated poets actually make a living from publication.

Truthfully, I am in the program because I am still trying to follow a train of thought that left the station when I was quite young. It's what led me to poetry in the first place, what excites me about teaching, and what keeps me frustrated at this ever obscured view of my future vocation. What I mean to say is that for no small length of time I have felt deeply that I have something to say. I mean I think that I have something that is truly worth the speaking. Believe me, I have wrestled like Jacob with the angel over whether this is a part of my semi-enormous ego or some real call. Heck, I wrestle with what it means to have a call. But I digress.

It seems poetry is the best way to say anything. I won't go into the details on that, you'll just have to trust me. So I took up poetry some time ago. This may come as a near surprise to some of you, and that's understandable. It's never been something I've felt too comfortable speaking about at length. I find it usually isn't conversation for social gatherings.

Seattle Pacific is allowing me to pursue this interest that I have within the context of a community of faith. The program is specifically interested in writers who are engaged with matters of the Judeo-Christian tradition. My particular interest is in looking at the Christian scriptures outside of a typical evangelical modernist perspective.

My inaugural residency was a few months ago in Santa Fe--a pretty glorious place in which to begin an artistic endeavor. The program holds two residencies a year, with quarterly classes in between. This first residency is held in conjunction with Image Journal's Glen Workshop. If you are a Christian interested in the arts, you should absolutely sign up to attend. Guests included Lauren Winner, Marilyn Nelson, B.H. Fairchild, and Luci Shaw. Of course there were more, but you wouldn't believe the feeling to get to spend over a week rubbing shoulders with people who are doing precisely what it is you want to do with your life. Fantasy Camp for the literary nerds.

I will try to wrap up this convoluted post by saying that so far I have found the program to be a pretty affirming experience. The people I met were really great and everything I have experienced so far tells me that this is a great spot for me to be at this time in my life.

House Guest

We had our first house guest last week--- Kolby's college friend, Jarrett, came all the way from Illinois to visit us. Kolby has been working like a dog on the house for over a month now, and having one of his best friends in town for several days was a great way celebrate the fact that we finally finished the house! Jarrett was due in on Wednesday so Kolby and I stayed up late on Tuesday night finishing up some painting in the kitchen and tying up some loose ends (like installing a new ceiling fan in the pitch dark with only a faint flashlight to help us, etc.). There are a handful of small things that still need to be done, but for all practical purposes- we're saying the place is complete. And just in time!

Kolby and Jarrett lived the dream... playing catch in the backyard,

going to a Rangers' game, hitting golf balls, talking about life, eating out, staying up late (past 9:30, at least!), and playing lots of Super Nintendo.

Over the weekend, we headed down to my parents' ranch and then on to Austin. The guys rode around on the 4-wheeler and dirt bike, shot guns,
and hooked up an electronic scanner to my dad's nice telescope (star-gazing/astronomy is Kolby's new favorite hobby since the sky is so clear down there).

On Saturday we met Kolby's family at their ranch down in Wimberley and had an eventful evening-- eating BBQ and attending the UT vs Texas Tech game.

Since we were +1 in the car, I got to ride in the backseat with Maya, who come to find out also sleeps with her front paws crossed. She does this all the time while she's awake and laying down looking out the back door etc., but seriously... is it totally necessary while she's asleep? Always a lady, that one.

We had such a great time with Jarrett in town and we are certainly rooting for him to relocate down here once he finishes grad school!

In other news, on our walk to the park tonight Kolby asked me to please hold Maya's leash while he tests out the new slides at the park playground. I may not have mentioned this before, but we moved into the same neighborhood that Kolby grew up in. We live just a few blocks away from the playground that he spent hours upon hours playing at until his family moved when he was 3rd grade. Apparently the City recently renovated the playground and put in two huge slides. So yes, Kolby did in fact slide down both of them tonight.

Kolby started substitute teaching today. And he's getting tons of hours at the SAT prep place he teaches at. And the next term for his graduate program starts on October 1st. Busy kid! I'm still working on getting him to write a post about his time in Santa Fe and his grad program in general. I noticed he started it the other day but I'll remind him to get it finished sometime soon.

Now that the house is put together, I'll take some pictures and post a tour. I haven't decorated anything yet because I can't bring myself to go shopping for decorative stuff and we don't have much from our apartment. But I don't know when I'll get motivated to decorate, so I may just take pictures as is. We'll see.

Speaking Of

Here is the family picture from Labor Day that I finally got off of my mom’s camera.

Speaking of getting pictures off of cameras… here is one from my birthday dinner that I just stumbled upon. Kolby has his hair in a mohawk because it was my birthday and I asked him to. What a sport, that guy. Speaking of sports, you will never guess what I did on Tuesday evening. On our daily after-dinner walk to the park, I broke into a jog. Yep, for the first time in my entire life--- I went running.* I know this comes as an earth-shattering shock to anyone who knows me well, but I swear it is true. And no one was even chasing me with a knife and I wasn’t participating in an organized sport. I didn’t last long and the whole time my body was saying “what is this?”, “what are we doing?”, “who do you think you are?”, “what’s the plan here?” etc. I survived, though, and I even ran again on Wednesday while Kolby was playing golf with his dad. It’s all part of my new healthy lifestyle… a concept that has been foreign to me for the past 21 months (aka since I got married and no longer had to worry about fitting into my wedding dress). It all came about when returning from a Labor Day weekend of Olympic-level overeating coincided with the unpacking of our scale. And the fact that we’re in a new place and a new house and can start our new life here however we want. Why not get back in shape and pay more attention to what I eat? We’ll see how it goes….

Speaking of our new house, it is SO CLOSE to so many people and so many places. Here are some drive times, for example:
My parents’ house: 22 minutes
Kolby’s parents’ house: 12 minutes
Brad & Remy’s house: 24 minutes
Tommy & Alayne’s house: 28 minutes
Katie’s house: 22 minutes
Brittany and Andrew’s house: 14 minutes
My office: 17 minutes (28 minutes during rush-hour)
Schools where Kolby will substitute teach: 3 minutes, 6 minutes
Grocery Store: 3 minutes

*OK, maybe the term “running” is a bit strong. Kolby and Maya were basically able to continue walking beside me. And the path to the park and around it is probably less than 2 miles total, and I walked a lot of it. But as I’ve said before, Webbs don’t run… so I’m calling whatever it is that I did this week astounding progress. You have to start somewhere, right?

House Progress/Labor Day

Here’s what’s new in our household these days.

We’ve been in our house for 12 days now and have spent the vast majority of our waking hours doing work on or around the house. For the first 10 days or so, the tag line for our progress seemed to be ‘one step forward and two steps back’. Every project either didn’t work out like we thought it was going to, or cost way more than should be allowed by law.

Botched project number one was repainting the doors. We removed all of our interior doors to sand them, paint them, and replace the old brass hardware on them with nice new oil-rubbed bronze ones. During the sanding of three of the doors, one of the MANY previous layers of paint started peeling off like crazy and the damage was irreversible. So, Kolby had to manufacture three new doors out of large pieces of wood. Then, when we went to re-install all of the doors we discovered that although the doors measured to be the same size as one another, 50+ years of shifting and warping had caused each door frame to only fit one specific door. Of course we didn’t think to label any of them, and the screw holes for the hinges were way too stripped to risk playing merry-go-round with each door. Other compounding problems were that the new hinges are the slightest bit thicker than the old ones, and Kolby mismeasured the doorknob holes on the new doors. Long story short, we now have all of the doors hung but only two of them can actually close all the way. Plans to fix this problem have been postponed indefinitely. Live and learn, I guess!

Next on the list was getting the dryer fixed and the outlet in the living room grounded so that we could get our cable hooked up. After three visits from various Sears repairmen, we dropped $400 on fixing an old stackable washer/dryer that the previous owners had left for us. It started out at $160 but then other things kept happening and once you spend any money to fix something you feel obligated to finish fixing it so you don’t just lose the initial money you spent. Oh well. Then, can you believe that electricians charge $300 to ground an outlet? Sheesh. We found someone who could do it for cheaper but it turns out he didn’t actually do what we paid him to do and ended up becoming this battle between us and the electrician company that I don’t think anyone ended up winning.

There was also a huge issue with the water line to the refrigerator and also the news that we have tree roots infringing upon all of our plumbing, but those aren’t worth delving into. I ultimately reached my breaking point when we went to install a gate for our driveway and it just flat out failed. It is a massive, heavy wooden gate with a metal frame that we found laying behind our garage and it was way too much for the fence post that we were attaching it to to hold. We should have foreseen that the post wouldn't be strong enough, but we didn't.

BUT, we made it through the series of unfortunate events and things are looking up. We now have cable and Internet and we even sprung for DVR and are loving it! We installed our pantry and although the doors aren't on it yet, it looks great and is providing some great kitchen storage space for us. On Thursday, Kolby's dad came over and we constructed a shorter, picket fence-type gate for the driveway that the pole was strong enough to hold. So Maya finally got an enclosed yard and was able to roam around off-leash. She enjoyed tasting all of the various leaves and plants---enough so that she threw up afterwards. She said it was totally worth it.

We have a friend coming in town to visit us on September 16th, so that's the date we've set to have the house finished. It may be a lofty goal, but I think we can do it. It'll be so nice have everything done and to just enjoy it all!

***

In non-house news, we had a delightful Labor Day weekend at my parents' ranch. My dad's side of the family all got together for the whole weekend and it was so nice to finally have a place that can fit all of us! My dad only has 2 sisters and they each have three kids, but since a lot of us cousins have gotten married, we are now 22 in number. It's quite a brood, but we're all really close and we have so much fun when we're together. We played a ton of games (in typical Webb fashion), ate a TON of food, tooled around on the dirt bike and 4-wheeler (with three mild injuries... also typical Webb fashion), and chatted the nights away out on the back patio. It was a great getaway for us and I just love, love, love spending time with family. My brothers and I each have our own bedroom at the ranch but we all slept in Brad & Remy's room this weekend to make room for everyone else. It was fun to feel like kids again-- sleeping on bunk beds and laughing until we fell asleep.

As usual, I wasn't great at taking pictures. Here are a few, and I'll post a big group shot once I get that photo off my parents' camera.

Part of the gang playing dominoes.

A family game of whiffleball.

My cousin Kyle is by far the biggest, strongest person I've ever known. Russell should have taken this fact into better consideration before following through on Kolby's/Brad's/Tim's thought that "wouldn't it be funny if someone snuck up behind Kyle and hit him in the back of the knees with the whiffleball bat?"

A similar event happened a few years ago when Russell was dared to give Kyle a wet willy. Some kids never learn.

Under Construction

It was a crazy week trying to get our house ready to be moved in to, but we survived and the place is looking really good already.

Here's Kolby helping his grandfather cut some wood for the pantry cabinet that he made for us. We haven't put it in yet, but I know it'll look really great and we're so thankful for Grandfather's hard work!

Our dads/handymen making room for the pantry cabinet.

Kolby using the drill to take the hinges off the doors. Unscrewing hinges that had been painted over for 50+ years was not an easy task!

Me just sanding away at one of the door frames. You never realize how much trim there is in a house until you have to sand all of it!

Here's a picture of Kolby's grandparents, who came in town for a few days to paint our kitchen for us. Thank you, again--- it looks amazing!

When we moved our stuff in on Saturday, Maya recognized all of our furniture instantly and just plopped down in our bedroom like nothing had changed since May! She definitely knew that we were finally HOME.
It was a long series of full days and late nights, but we got all of the sanding and the majority of the painting done before we moved our furniture in (our main goal). There is still a lot of stuff to be done and everything seems to be taking much longer that we anticipated, but we make a little bit of progress every day. We don't have any of the interior doors re-hung yet and all of the new light fixtures that we bought are still in boxes in the garage. At the top of our priority list for the weekend is putting a gate across the driveway so that our backyard is enclosed for Maya and then installing an automatic gate opener for it. We also hope to put in our new pantry cabinet so we can get our kitchen organized.

I'm really excited to put together a photo tour of the house to show everyone, but I want to wait until we get more settled in. Right now there are boxes everywhere and nothing is decorated. It could be a few weeks, but know that I will make it happen at some point!