Yoo 473 - Our Dream House: Inspiration

Our dream house has fruit trees. Lots of fruit trees. Peach and cherry and apple and avocado and lime and orange and lemon. Give or take. But no squirrels.

Ok, maybe one squirrel. A really resilient one that can be my nemesis. It won't knock down all the fruit..just a few here and there so I can run around with a rake and yap about "that darn squirrel". I'll have a name for it and it will always be one step ahead of my efforts to oust it. Like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

The springs will be full of blossoms and sunshine and bumblebees. We always joke about wanting to own bees and it could be a fun idea. Especially if we have a kid with bee allergies...kidding! But really, bees and honey.

Despite the squirrel's best efforts, the falls will bring bountiful harvests. We'll fill the back of an old red truck with baskets of fruit and take lunch breaks sitting on the open tailgate. I don't have any grand plans for all this fruit, but I can guarantee I will try to make applesauce fruit leather.

I think I want a big garden, just like my grandparents. But it takes so much time! This garden will have to be naturally weed free. Wait. Just enough weeds for the kids to pull. AND ABSOLUTELY NO SNAKES. There will be no snakes. Anywhere.

The garden will magically turn every plant into an annual and be otherwise maintenance-free. The beans will can themselves, the corn won't need shucking, and maybe the watermelons will turn blue when they're perfectly ripe and delicious...just so there's no guessing.

I can pick the raspberries, though. I am more than willing to "pick" all the raspberries.

On a slightly less ludicrous note, the shed. The vine-covered, rustic shed.

We both want this old shed filled with tools and equipment and piles of junk that might some day be useful. We'll fix things. Like my grandpa. And my dad. There is no running off to the store every time something breaks for them. I like that. Also, projects. I'll have an arsenal at my disposal for whatever my imagination can conceive.

Flowers are acceptable everywhere. Let's pretend there's a whole garden just for wildflowers. I wouldn't hate it if there were a ditch running thru all of this, either. I have quite the fondness of ditches. They provide kids with hours of entertainment and temptation and give adults more things to holler about.

"Stay out of that ditch!"

One day I'll be able to yell it just like Grameez.

Basically, I love my grandpa's yard and I gain a lot of inspiration there on sunny afternoons.

I wouldn't hate stealing their view of distant mountains...though I think that'll be hard to come by in Texas. Maybe even harder than a magical garden.

Have a great day :-)

Yoo 470 - Our Dream House: My Office

Last night we discovered baby tomatoes on our, you guessed it, tomato plants, and that was exciting.

This morning I ate a combination of leftover chocolate cake and graham cracker frosting sandwiches for breakfast, and that was delicious.

Now I'm going to write all about our dream house. Or at least start with my office.

But first, let me preface this *air quotes* dream house *end air quotes* a bit, if those air quotes don't already sum it up. The Greggerly spouse and I walk and hike a lot together. And to fill those miles with everything but silence, we usually hash out our plans for the future. Which mainly revolve around this house. That, as you can imagine, long ago landed on the very far end of the fetched spectrum and has only "progressed" from there.

With that in mind, I present unto you, the Kyoo Office.

First and foremost, I will have an office made out of an old helicopter that overlooks the kid's playroom. I'll probably call in the Kyoo dad to engineer that one, but it's going to hang from a (very large) corner wall. Not really the tail part, mostly just the front end...with at least one of the blades jutting out. Like it's coming thru the wall without all the explosions and destruction, I guess. But I'm not opposed to it looking like it busted thru the wall. That could be cool, too. It might give the kids a bunch of blocks and rubble to climb on. Or something.

Oh yeah, and this room will have at last 20-foot ceilings to accommodate.

So this helicopter. I imagine it will have a rope descending from it that I can use to climb into the cockpit, and then fast-rope down. It'll be part of my workout routine. Also important, the kids can use the helicopter skids as an indoor jungle gym. It will be really safe.

 via

The pilot and co-pilot seats will each be replaced with very large and very comfortable recliners. All ergonomical and stuff. With heating and cooling and massage. I say two, because I might allow my copilot to accompany me on occasion. But his main office is the library and that's another post.

My side will have two large monitors jutting out of the top of the dashboard and I'll probably have to replace the cyclic stick with a keyboard and mouse, but the navigational displays will stay. Let's not forget the Mac with an infinite hard-drive, either.

 via

Most important, this helicopter will be armed with big guns, sticking out the front and fully operational from the cockpit.

One will be loaded with marshmallows (really healthy marshmallows, like ones that are sugar-free and loaded with protein and fiber and vitamins and minerals and probably fluoride, too, but no weird cancer-causing substances and still incredibly tasty, marshmallows). So when I notice a kid being super awesome, I'll shoot a marshmallow at them. Not hard but, you know, it'll get there. They'll probably catch it in their mouth. Or maybe the dog will jump in and intercept the marshmallow mid-air. There are a lot of possibilities.

 ^^ i'm thinking the guns won't need to be this big...(via)

The other will be loaded with Nerf darts that have punishments listed on them. So when they're being a brat I can (mostly gently...) pelt them with a Nerf dart that instructs them to "take the trash out" or "massage mom's feet for 5 minutes" or "sing a silly song with larry the cucumber" or "do 100 squats" or something else. I mean, these are just ideas...

So I'll have my helicopter and my workstation and I can watch my kids play and praise and punish them with an aim and press of a button and let's not forget there will be Bose surround sound installed in the cockpit, too. And some kind of Siri feature that can decipher and respond to commands like "play that one song with the thinga that goes buh-buh-buh-bah-dump".

I'll probably rarely be in my office, but I'll sure feel like I'm doing something cool no matter what I'm working on.

Wait. This just in. The whole helicopter might be on a flight simulator base so I can actually pretend to maneuver it and have it respond. Probably with real-life landscapes being projected on the windows as I "fly" around.

This is what happens when I have time to brainstorm.

Still on the topic of helicopters, Alisha, remember that one time we took a helicopter tour of New York City on EASST??

There was Keith and then a steal of a deal and then a long wait with much gloating of how "facebook-worthy" it was going to be and then 45-minutes of "ohhhhhhhs" and "ahhhhhhhs" and then this picture fail:

Majorly EASST-trunky right now.

Have a great day :-)