Very true.

What brand of saw was it? 

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I hope someday you have a showplace. You deserve it.

the prior owner’s whole family was institutionalized on the same day for mental illness (according to an old man who stopped my mother in the grocery store one day).

What helps me is to look at a job where it’s being done right. This is one of our guys:

Not a complete disaster by any means, but when I was a kid my father decided to completely renovate our kitchen and laundry room by himself over the course of a summer. My dad is the type of dude who a) is inexplicably competent with almost any hands on task or manual labor despite working in pharmaceuticals most of…

they probably don’t identify as a woman

But that is truly what I don’t get. I’m cis. Straight. White. I am also uncomfortable with gender roles being forced upon me. My brain inside matches with my body outside. I was always under the impression that is what gender identity is all about. It is about what your mind is in relation to your physical body, not…

Not so much a renovation disaster as an attempt to renovate a disaster:

YUP. I honestly wonder how many newly identified“non-binary” formerly cis-women these days are really just trying to express their discomfort with societal gender roles pushed on them, and not actually feeling like their sex assigned at birth doesn’t match their innate gender mentally. Like, not wanting to wear pink…

If you ever met him, you’d know that’s on the tame side of his behavior.

My parents bought a haunted house in the country from my grandpa because we couldn’t afford in-town taxes anymore. He bought the farmland the house was on and since we weren’t going to take that away from him, everybody wins, right? Except we were CHILDREN and when we were digging up the dirt-floor basement to pour…

It’s a story old as time. Bathroom remodel. New sink and fixture, toilet, flooring, tile around the tub (kept the tub), shower doors. Just a nice refresh. Carefully picked out everything, measured more than twice, drew detailed diagrams with attached parts\supplies lists in a notebook purchased specifically for this…

A fine genre with a wealth of material.

100%. My folks have been in the southeast since before the US was a country, as sharecroppers and whatnot. There was definitely some intermarriage with Native women along the way, but of course the only reason my family members were hoping to confirm it was to attempt to take advantage of education benefits and/or…

I see this all the time in genealogy Facebook groups but 99% are trying to find their Cherokee great grandmother with black hair, dark eyes and high cheekbones. So many want an ancestor who walked the Trail of Tears. Their DNA shows absolutely zero native DNA. But that doesn’t deter them.

I’ve been doing Postmates/DoorDash during this whole thing as a side gig. So I’m considered “essential”. At times, I get a little bummed that the people I’m delivering food to probably won’t be put out if I died from Covid, just as long as it doesn’t interfere with them being able to get their food.

I believe I mentioned my husband is one of the people making deliveries right now.

thanks for responding. it's really interesting to hear your perspective.

Worth noting: everything you say here has always been true, pandemic or not. I come from a fairly poor upbringing, and have always been annoyed at the ‘twee’ lifestyle shift of people ‘discovering’ canning, preserving, gardening, etc. Poor people have always done that, and not to post to their blogs.