Saturday, April 26, 2008
Fun House in the Garden
I'm building a "house" for Lily in our back yard. I started a few months ago, putting posts in the ground and cementing them in, one at a time... with a lot of pondering and cogitating between posts. (Hmm, sounds a bit like the way I write this blog!) It took me ages to line up the posts in a perfect square, what with the slanting terrain and all, but finally I had them firmly in place. From here on, it's going to be fun!
The idea was originally to build a fort for Lily. Every time we drive past a playground she starts yelling, "Playground! I wanna go to the playground!" and it takes a while to convince her that the playground we just passed is rotten and full of bugs and is about to collapse and likely to blow up and whatever other excuse we can come up with. (Okay, we're not really that mean, we usually just say we can't stop right now, we're in a hurry.) So anyway, last Christmas we bought her a slide and I installed it. She likes it, but we had to laugh when she confided in Mom and said, "It's not big and yellow though, like in the playgrounds." Apparently a relatively small 8 ft green slide just doesn't cut it.
So we decided we'd build her a fort. It would consist of four posts and a platform (with fence around) from which we could hang huge yellow slides, climbing frames, and all that good stuff. But, after I got the first couple of posts in the ground, ideas started to fly and our planned fort became a small house, with enclosed room at the bottom, deck on top, pitched roof above that, and a larger deck area to the side. We also decided that if anyone wants to buy things for Lily's fourth birthday in June, then they can chip in and buy playground-type stuff that we can install on the fort.
Let's stop calling it a fort then. Fun House is more accurate. Some of the ideas I had go back a year or so, when I thought it would be fun to build a small house that had secret passages and things. But in practice that's just too much hard work. So we'll just stick with a fun little house that will have a door, some windows, a little table and chair set... maybe electricity and air conditioning, with a plasma screen filling one wall and —
Sorry, getting carried away again. As you can see by this early picture, we have a way to go yet. But, time is now of the essence. We're leaving for England on May 5th, returning May 26th, and our deadline is June 30th (Lily's birthday) which gives me about five weekends after we get back plus any time I can find during weekdays.
By the way, when you dig a hole for a post and fill it with cement, you end up with a pile of dirt. What's to be done with it? Well, rather than spread it out across the lawn I decided it would be better to dig a hole to put it in. Trouble is, then you end up with another similar pile of dirt. Grr! Anyway, I now know how to get around the problem: this afternoon I'm going to dig another hole, only this one will be twice the size.
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Keith may be joking with the plasma screen but Lily's not. Last night she told me she wanted a microwave and a refrigerator in her little house. A girl after mine own heart! Who needs a cooker or sink! Cooking and cleaning up is for other people.
I'll have to make sure my 5 y.o doesn't get to hear of this, or he'll be lobbying for something similar, and my (and my husband's) DIY skills are just not up to it!
Nigel, you rotter! Fancy not letting Simon see that police box. Well, I actually went into a "real" TARDIS when I was in my early teens, when we went on a family trip to Longleat House, where the Doctor Who Convention was being held. The entrance was through a police box door. Peter Davison was there and I got his autograph. But that wasn't as interesting as having a 30 minute conversation with Janet Fielding (aka Tegan) when she arrived for a book signing in Aldershot. I was almost the only one there! I also must mention the time a friend of Nessa's came over to England to visit us when we were living there; it was her first time in the UK and we drove up to Loch Ness and back. On the way back she wanted to stop at Bannockburn, to see the field where the battle took place. We were tired and really didn't want to stop, but she insisted and we were pretty fed up. But hey -- she may never have gotten the chance again, so she was right to insist.
I have my work cut out when I return from my trip. Got to go and buy a load of two-by-fours and get to work finishing that playhouse!
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