A Curious Kind of Life

Tag: Everyday Discoveries

  • We Had a Plan. Then There Was a Squirrel — excuse me, Mr. Squirrel.

    We Had a Plan. Then There Was a Squirrel — excuse me, Mr. Squirrel.

    There are certain moments in life when you realize that you are completely unprepared for what is happening in your own house.

    This was one of those moments.

    It started out as a completely normal evening.

    I came home, and my husband was upstairs ripping out the carpet in the hallway. We live in a tri-level, so one of the nice things about our house is that it is really easy to keep track of where everyone is.

    My husband was upstairs.

    My son was downstairs in the dining room eating snacks.

    Don’t judge me and my son’s life choices. He was hungry. He needed snacks. This is not the part of the story we are here to discuss.

    I had just given Finn, our dog, his ice cream treat, so he wandered off toward the fireplace.

    Everything was normal.

    Until Finn started whining.

    At first, I thought he wanted another treat.

    I mean, I had just given him one.

    I basically told him, “Dude. You just got ice cream.”

    But Finn wasn’t looking at his empty ice cream cup.

    He was looking at the fireplace.

    And that’s when I thought:

    Oh, God. What is in there?

    Then I heard it.

    Scratching.

    Something was actually in the fireplace.

    My son heard it, too.

    We immediately yelled for his dad.

    “There is something in the fireplace!”

    And this is where my brain decided to skip approximately seventeen reasonable steps and go straight to disaster.

    Because obviously, once we opened that fireplace door, whatever was in there was going to come flying out at us.

    I would panic.

    I would start swatting at the floor with absolutely no direction or purpose.

    I would probably hit my husband with whatever object happened to be in my hand.

    The dog would start barking.

    Then he would chase the poor terrified creature around the house.

    The creature would run around even more because now it was being chased by a barking dog and three screaming humans.

    Finn would probably bite it.

    Then we’d have to go to the vet to check for rabies.

    My husband would have a concussion because I had accidentally hit him in the head with a broom handle.

    We’d have to call professionals.

    Someone would probably ask why we didn’t just open the door.

    And honestly, I don’t know.

    So I did what any sensible woman would do.

    I went into the garage and found an empty box.

    Because obviously, if a critter was going to come flying out of the fireplace, the most logical thing was to provide it with a box.

    I also informed my husband that I should probably not be standing anywhere near him when he opened the fireplace door because I didn’t think that was going to bode well for either of us.

    We were prepared.

    Finn got another treat so he would go upstairs to the bedroom.

    The box was ready for the critter to jump into instead of onto one of us.

    My husband put on gloves.

    We were ready.

    He opened the fireplace door.

    Nothing came out.

    Instead, whatever was in there went higher up into the flue.

    My husband closed the door and started jiggling the flue opener back and forth.

    And then—

    DROP.

    The critter fell.

    Into our fireplace.

    Inside our house.

    Our son, right on cue, asked:

    “Where is it now?”

    My husband said, “Well, it’s in our house now!”

    Fantastic.

    Our son then asked the question we were all wondering.

    “What is it?”

    My husband looked at it and said:

    “It’s a squirrel.”

    THANK GOD.

    It’s a squirrel.

    Not a raccoon.

    Not a possum.

    Not some unidentified creature from the depths of the fireplace that would eventually require an exterminator, a priest, and possibly a new house.

    It’s a squirrel.

    And because apparently we needed to make this situation even more personal, my husband decided to name him.

    Mr. Squirrel.

    I don’t know where that came from.

    I don’t know why he needed a name.

    But apparently, once you have a squirrel inside your house, you become the kind of family that names the squirrel.

    So now we had Mr. Squirrel.

    My husband tried to coax Mr. Squirrel into the box.

    Mr. Squirrel was not interested.

    He was scared.

    He had just fallen out of a fireplace into a strange house filled with humans and a dog who had been relocated upstairs.

    I can’t really blame him.

    So Mr. Squirrel decided he had other plans.

    He left the fireplace.

    And that’s when things got interesting.

    Because now there was an actual squirrel running around our house.

    Mr. Squirrel, excuse me.

    It looked like a pinball machine to me.

    You know when you’ve been holding that little lever forever and then finally let it go and the pinball shoots around the machine at approximately the speed of light?

    That was Mr. Squirrel.

    He was zooming around our house with absolutely no idea where he was going.

    At one point, he sprinted directly toward me.

    I screamed.

    Like, really screamed.

    I told my son to get out of Mr. Squirrel’s path.

    That obviously worked about as well as everything else we had planned.

    So we moved on to Plan B.

    Or C.

    Or D.

    Honestly, we were running out of letters.

    We opened the front door.

    Except we have a screen door.

    Because of course we do.

    Mr. Squirrel could see the way out, but he couldn’t actually get out.

    So onto the next plan.

    We opened the garage door.

    Which was near me.

    So there I was, holding the door open and using it as a shield between myself and a squirrel approximately the size of a baked potato.

    I don’t know what I thought the door was going to do if Mr. Squirrel decided to come after me.

    But apparently I felt safer behind it.

    Meanwhile, my husband was trying to reason with him.

    “Come on, Mr. Squirrel. We know you’re scared. That’s not the way out.”

    Sir.

    Mr. Squirrel is a squirrel.

    I don’t think he understands the concept of following directions.

    Every time Mr. Squirrel came anywhere near me, I started screaming again.

    At this point, our neighbors probably thought I was practicing for an opera audition.

    I was not.

    I was being pursued by Mr. Squirrel.

    Eventually, Mr. Squirrel apparently decided that he had seen enough of our house.

    He found the open garage door.

    He ran through it.

    And off into the night he went.

    And just like that, it was over.

    Mr. Squirrel was free.

    Our house was squirrel-free.

    Everyone survived.

    No one was bitten.

    No one needed stitches.

    My husband did not suffer a concussion from an errant broom handle.

    The dog did not get to chase a squirrel around the house.

    And I did not have to explain to an emergency veterinarian why I was standing there holding a squirrel-shaped box.

    So what did we learn from this experience?

    That sometimes Plans A, B, C, D, E, F, and G aren’t enough.

    Especially when your unexpected houseguest is a terrified squirrel who has just dropped down your fireplace and decided to explore the entire house at approximately 900 miles per hour.

    Also, apparently, if a squirrel drops into your fireplace, you should have an empty box nearby.

    I don’t know if that’s an actual wildlife recommendation.

    But it felt right at the time.

    The only other thing I know for sure is that our dinner was late that night.

    Because apparently Mr. Squirrel had plans, too.

  • We Remodeled Our Kitchen Ourselves. We Survived.

    We Remodeled Our Kitchen Ourselves. We Survived.

    When we moved into this house, the kitchen was basically not a kitchen.

    Kidding.

    It was a kitchen.

    It was just a very small kitchen.

    The cabinets were basically one row above the sink, and you had to open one cabinet door before you could close the one next to it. You know…because apparently cabinets don’t need to get along. 😂

    And counter space?

    Let’s just say there wasn’t much.

    If you were cooking and had dishes sitting around from your mise en place, you better wash those things QUICK because you were going to need that same tiny countertop to put the food you just cooked on.

    It worked.

    But it could definitely work better.

    So we decided this was a project we needed to tackle.

    The before….

    Enter IKEA

    Off to IKEA we went.

    For starters, we decided to get a kitchen island and a tall pantry cabinet for one of the walls. We figured that would give us some extra storage and counter space until we were ready to tackle the other part of the kitchen.

    We also rearranged where the refrigerator and water dispenser would go.

    Then, while I was browsing IKEA’s website, I discovered their project planner.

    And that’s when things got interesting.

    Because apparently, IKEA thought it would be a good idea to give me the ability to design my own kitchen on a computer.

    Tinker I did.

    I made sure the dimensions and square footage of the kitchen were right. I moved things around. I changed things. I looked at it.

    Then I changed it again.

    And again.

    And again.

    And again.

    I would come home from work, sit at my computer, and work on my kitchen.

    One good thing about our kitchen was that it was basically just one wall.

    But that’s also the thing.

    Imagine if it wasn’t.

    I probably would have spent YEARS trying to figure out what I wanted that kitchen to look like and never actually gotten around to enjoying the finished kitchen.

    So I kept tinkering.

    And tinkering.

    And tinkering.

    I think I redid that kitchen project A LOT.

    And when I say A LOT, I mean A LOT.

    I’m pretty sure my husband was starting to lose his patience somewhere around revision number 100.

    Finally, he looked at the latest version and basically said, “It looks good.”

    Now, when my husband says, “It looks good,” that’s my signal.

    That’s the sign that I should stop.

    BUY THE FREAKING CABINETS.

    So that’s what we did.

    The Computer vs. Real Life

    We had everything delivered instead of renting a U-Haul and trying to haul all those pieces home ourselves.

    And thank goodness for this: all the cabinets and accessories I added to the project were included in the cost and delivered.

    That made my life SO much easier.

    Then the boxes arrived.

    And suddenly, the nice little kitchen I had been moving around on my computer became a very real pile of stuff sitting in our house.

    That’s when I discovered something IKEA’s project planner doesn’t really prepare you for:

    Moving cabinets around on a computer screen is VERY different from moving real cabinets around a kitchen.

    On the computer, you click, drag, and voilà!

    Cabinet moved.

    In real life?

    Not quite.

    Real cabinets are heavy.

    Real cabinets don’t magically snap into place.

    And suddenly you’re dealing with walls, floors, measurements, gravity…

    …and water.

    Because, you know, the sink needs water.

    Otherwise, the sink isn’t going to be all that useful. 😂

    Apparently, when you’re moving things around in a virtual kitchen, it’s easy to forget that some of those things have actual plumbing attached to them.

    Who knew?

    Divide and Conquer, Baby!

    We weren’t professionals.

    Obviously.

    But we figured we could do this ourselves.

    So we divided and conquered.

    My husband took out the old cabinets while I assembled the new ones.

    And I assembled.

    And assembled.

    And assembled.

    By the end of the day, I could barely open and close my hands.

    I’m pretty sure I was assembling cabinets in my dreams.

    Talk about a nightmare. 😂

    We just kept going.

    Eventually, the cabinets were done.

    Then came the countertop.

    Then the tile.

    Because apparently, finishing the cabinets didn’t mean we were finished.

    At that point, I was running on fumes.

    But we soldiered on for the love of DIY.

    And, let’s be honest, because having someone else do it meant paying someone else to do it.

    That wasn’t really in the budget.

    So…

    Down more coffee.

    Maybe an energy drink.

    And let’s do this thing!

    The during…

    And You Know What?

    We did.

    By the time everything was finished, we were pretty darn happy with how it looked.

    Was it a huge kitchen?

    Nope.

    But that wasn’t what we were trying to accomplish.

    We weren’t trying to completely change the layout of the kitchen.

    We were trying to make the space we already had more efficient.

    And we did.

    We had more counter space.

    We had more storage.

    And we could actually use the kitchen without feeling like we were playing countertop Tetris every time we cooked.

    That felt like a win.

    So, What Did We Discover?

    For starters, I discovered that I can apparently redesign a kitchen approximately 100 times before finally deciding that the latest version is good enough.

    My husband discovered that saying “It looks good” can apparently bring an end to the process.

    We discovered that computer cabinets and real cabinets are two very different things.

    We discovered that IKEA cabinets have a LOT of pieces.

    And I discovered that I apparently have the ability to assemble so many cabinets that I can continue doing it in my sleep.

    Most importantly, though, we discovered that we could actually do a pretty big project together without killing each other.

    That’s saying something, right? 😂

    Would we do another project like this?

    I think so.

    But not in the near future.

    We survived this one.

    We don’t need to get cocky.

    And maybe that’s one of the things I like most about this kitchen.

    It isn’t huge.

    It isn’t some giant kitchen transformation.

    It’s just our kitchen, made a little more functional for the way we live.

    Sometimes you don’t need to completely change something.

    You just need to figure out how to make what you already have work better.

    And if you can do that while keeping your marriage intact?

    I’d call that a successful DIY project.

    Now excuse me.

    I think my hands just remembered those cabinets.

  • Things That Should Have a “Where the Heck Is This?” Button

    Things That Should Have a “Where the Heck Is This?” Button

    There are times—actually, most of the time—when I’m cleaning an area of the house and I find something that shouldn’t be there.

    You know the kind of thing I’m talking about.

    It’s not trash. It’s not something I don’t need. It’s actually something important.

    So, naturally, I do the responsible thing.

    I put it somewhere safe.

    And then I lose it.

    Not immediately, of course. That would almost be too easy.

    No. I put it somewhere that I am absolutely, positively certain I will remember.

    “This is a safe place,” I tell myself.

    “I’ll remember this.”

    Future Me has apparently never been consulted about this arrangement.

    The Case of the Missing Universal Plug

    A perfect example happened with one of our universal travel plugs.

    We travel with it because, well, it’s a universal travel plug. It comes with us when we’re packing for a trip, and it’s one of those things you don’t want to discover is missing when you’re standing in your hotel room in another country.

    So imagine me cleaning up a bedroom.

    I find the plug sitting somewhere it shouldn’t be.

    Rather than leaving it there, because I’m trying to be a responsible adult who keeps things organized, I put it somewhere safe.

    Somewhere I won’t forget.

    Or so I thought.

    Fast-forward to the next time we’re packing our luggage.

    I need the universal plug.

    I know we have it.

    I’ve seen it.

    I have personally picked it up.

    And yet…

    Where the heck is it?

    Suddenly I’m searching through drawers, cabinets, closets, random containers and every other place I could possibly have put it.

    And the most frustrating part?

    Before I cleaned up that bedroom, I probably saw the thing all the time.

    It was right there.

    In the wrong place.

    Annoying me.

    Waiting for me to put it away.

    But now that I’ve actually cleaned up the room and put everything where it supposedly belongs, I can’t find the one thing I’m looking for.

    Apparently, I made it too safe.

    The “Safe Place” Is Not Actually Safe

    This has happened more times than I care to admit.

    I’ll find something while cleaning and think, Oh, this shouldn’t be here.

    So I move it.

    I put it somewhere logical.

    Or somewhere that makes sense in that particular moment.

    And then I completely forget where that logical place was.

    Sometimes I’ll even remember the thought process.

    I moved it because I didn’t want to lose it.

    Great.

    Where did I move it?

    No idea.

    And that’s when I start retracing my steps like I’m investigating a crime scene.

    Okay… I had it in this room.

    Then I picked it up.

    Then I was cleaning this.

    Then I thought, “I should put this somewhere safe.”

    And that’s it.

    The trail goes cold.

    The item has entered witness protection.

    Is It Just Me?

    This is the part where I started wondering:

    Is this just me?

    Because surely I’m not the only person who has a designated “safe place” that is apparently so safe that even I can’t find it.

    And if you have ever cleaned your house, moved something important somewhere “better,” and then spent 45 minutes looking for it later, you already know where this is going.

    There may actually be a reason our brains do this.

    When we’re cleaning or putting something away, our attention is often focused on the bigger task rather than creating a detailed memory of exactly where we’re placing one particular object.

    And when we put something somewhere unusual—especially because we’re trying to make sure we don’t lose it—we may not create the kind of strong memory that helps us retrieve that location later.

    In other words, our brain may basically say:

    Got it. Thing is safe.

    And then immediately move on.

    Thanks, brain.

    Very helpful.

    Maybe Future Me Needs a Little More Help

    I’ve started to wonder if the problem isn’t necessarily that I’m forgetful.

    Maybe the problem is that I keep assuming Future Me knows what Present Me was thinking.

    Present Me:

    “I’ll put this right here. I’ll definitely remember.”

    Future Me:

    “Who are you?”

    😂

    Maybe the solution isn’t another storage container, another organizational system or another drawer labeled “IMPORTANT.”

    Maybe I just need to stop creating mysterious little hiding places and calling them “safe.”

    Because apparently, a safe place is only useful if I can actually find it again.

    Until then, perhaps what I really need is a button.

    A big one.

    Right in the middle of the house.

    WHERE THE HECK IS THIS?

    Press it.

    The house pauses.

    A tiny alarm goes off.

    A voice from somewhere in the ceiling says:

    “You put it in the drawer under the printer.”

    And I would like to formally request that technology make this happen.

    Until then, I’ll keep looking.

    And when I finally find that universal plug?

    I’m putting it somewhere I’ll definitely remember.

    Probably.

    Maybe.

    Let’s not get carried away.

  • Welcome to Everyday Discoveries

    Welcome to Everyday Discoveries

    I have a tendency to wonder about things.

    Sometimes they’re important things.

    Sometimes they’re completely random things.

    And sometimes they’re things that probably don’t need to be questioned at all—but now that I’ve thought about them, I need to know the answer.

    Why do we do that?

    Why is that so difficult?

    How does that even work?

    And, perhaps most importantly, why didn’t anyone tell me this before?

    That’s where Everyday Discoveries comes in.

    This isn’t going to be a collection of product reviews or a list of things you should buy. I’m not here to convince you that you need the newest gadget, the latest must-have item, or another thing to add to your Amazon cart.

    I have enough stuff.

    What I do have is curiosity.

    So this is where I’m going to follow some of those little questions that pop into my head while I’m going about my everyday life.

    Sometimes I’ll start with something that happened to me.

    Sometimes I’ll notice something I’ve never really thought about before.

    Sometimes I’ll wonder whether something that’s happening in my house is just a me thing—or whether the rest of you are doing it too.

    And sometimes, I suspect, I’ll go down a rabbit hole and come back with far more information than I ever intended to have.

    That’s okay.

    That’s kind of the point.

    Because I’ve realized that everyday life is actually full of things worth noticing.

    We just don’t always stop long enough to notice them.

    So consider this my invitation to pause for a minute, get curious about something ordinary, and see where the question takes us.

    We might learn something.

    We might discover something completely unexpected.

    Or we might just end up laughing at ourselves.

    Honestly, I’m good with any of those.

    Welcome to Everyday Discoveries.

    Let’s see what we find.