The Butter Knife

I used my only butter knife to make a peanut butter sandwich yesterday afternoon. I remember washing it when I was done.

Today it's gone. I can't find it in the silverware drawer. I can't find it in the dishwasher where I put my dishes to dry after I washed them by hand. I reached down the garbage disposal in the sink to feel around for it but it's not there, either. I looked in the fridge and in the cabinet where I keep the bread and peanut butter. I looked in all the other cabinets and drawers, too. I even looked through the kitchen garbage can and on the floor around the cabinets.

No knife.

One of the benefits of living alone is having my stuff stay where I left it. Nobody moves my things, nobody puts their own stuff in places I don't expect. That's important.

A few months before I moved my wife decided to rearrange the kitchen without telling me. The corn chips don't belong here anymore, they belong over there. The rice should go here. The canned soup will go over there. The blender lid belongs in this drawer now, not that drawer.

It threw me for a loop.

The missing butter knife is throwing me for a loop, too. A loop of smaller scale but of equal consternation. It's just one utensil, not an entire kitchen, but I'm at a complete loss trying to understand how this happened.

I'm an early riser. Now that I'm by myself I've been getting up between 4:30 and 5:00 most days. It's early right now while I'm writing this. When the sun comes up I'll go search the kitchen again. I've checked the dishwasher twice already but I still think that's where the butter knife has to be. I'll know for sure when there's daylight.

* * *

The four smart plugs I bought for Alexa aren't Amazon. They're a different brand, compatible with my Alexa but only after their own app is installed on my phone to allow them to interact together.

I spent a few hours trying to activate one of them yesterday. I still can't get it working. I get to a screen in the app telling me to connect my phone to the smart plug's wifi signal but when I look through the available signals the only ones I see are my ISP's and those of my neighbors. The plug's wifi just isn't on the list.

The YouTube video explaining how to connect them mentions I have to have my phone set to 2.4g something or another for it to work and I suspect my phone just isn't configured to recognize the smart plug's signal. I'm way too blind to read text on a phone screen so I don't have a way to verify or change the wifi settings. I tried installing the app on my laptop instead but the app doesn't allow me to do that.

I'll probably have to wait until one of the kids comes to visit. I'm in over my head enough to know anything else I try has a good chance of wrecking something already working instead of fixing something that isn't.

* * *

Work on the new house is coming along. I've made quite a few small repairs and modifications already. A mud and tape guy is coming to patch some holes in the drywall this week. I'm going to tape off the downstairs outlets and put drop cloths on the carpet after that so my parents can help me paint the downstairs when they come next month. I'll have to move upstairs while all that's happening but I'll be back in the comfortable darkness soon.

My mud and tape guy said the crack in the wall upstairs happened because there's no stud behind the joint where two sheets of drywall meet. He said he'll fix the crack but it will just reappear.

Lucky for me the crack is just a few feet away from the attic entry. I want to get up there and hold a board in place while he screws through the drywall sheets and anchors both of them into the board. I think it will work - it should if he's right about the problem being a lack of a stud. But fixing it is a two man job. I can't hold the board in place while securing it with drywall screws from the other side of the wall. I'll have to wait for my mud and tape guy to help me out.

The only other thing to do upstairs is to replace the kitchen island. It's original but the rest of the kitchen cabinets are new so they don't match. I want to match them, maybe shrink the island a bit, and add an overhang with bar stools on the living room side.

Downstairs still needs a lot of work. I'm trying to figure out if I want to paint it, wainscot it, panel it, or wrap the entire thing in tongue & groove.

Sheet paneling is cheap, easy, and fast, but I'm not sure I want it. It can be beautiful when it's done right (the Bexar County courthouse, most corporate boardrooms, etc.) but it looks cheap, easy, and fast when it's done cheap, easy, and fast.

Tongue and groove is probably my favorite, but it's the hardest, most expense option. It's also very masculine. I think I room should have a good mix of masculine and feminine, both strength and elegance. Upstairs feels maybe 40/60 but I think we can bring that into balance with slightly more masculine furniture. T&G in a room with wood floors is 95/5 already and no amount of lacy frills can balance that much masculinity. It's fine for a bachelor pad or a hunting cabin or a man cave but not for a suburban home.

Wainscotting seems like a no brainer - the best of all the other options mixed together. But the hardwood flooring the seller left for us is rough hewn white oak. I don't want that on the walls. Rough sawn or quarter sawn wood looks sturdy and strong on a floor but intimidating on a wall. When I try to imagine a wood grain and color to compliment the white oak I draw a blank. If I wainscot it I'd probably have to paint the wainscotting white. I really don't like that idea. It might not be illegal to paint over hardwood beadboard but anyone who does it deserves to go to hell when they die.

That leaves paint. Painting isn't a bad option. The upstairs is painted and floored with rough sawn white oak and it looks very tasteful. The downstairs would look the same. So why am I hesitating?

Call it vanity or ego or narcissism but I want to add something of myself into this home. I want a basement that feels like the Star Wars room in San Antonio - unique, distinct, and undeniably mine. Turning the downstairs into a kitchenless version of the upstairs is probably the safe and smart thing to do but I didn't do the upstairs - someone else did. If I mimic their work I won't have space to be creative.

If you read the blog about the Star Wars room you'll understand.

* * *

I'm eating better and drinking more water here. I took me until yesterday to figure out why.

In San Antonio I hesitated to leave my bedroom. There were untrained pit bulls in the house. There were dog turds and puddles of dog pee on the floor. The kitchen was always a mess. Sometimes when I pushed the button on the microwave to open the door the door would swing open and knock something I didn't see off of the counter and onto the floor. I spent as little time as possible in the kitchen so I could get back to the peace and safety of my room.

That meant microwaving burritos and keeping a two liter bottle of lukewarm Diet Dr. Pepper in my bedroom.

Now that I'm finally in a clean, safe environment I don't feel rushed in the kitchen anymore. I can take the time to cook healthy. When I'm thirsty I no longer hesitate to go to the kitchen and get myself a glass of water.

I knew I was thriving here, now I'm beginning to understand why.

If I could just find that butter knife...