Help! What cleans wax stains from bluestone? / Our patio makeover details here!
Mitch here!
Copying Kelly today and jumping in with the first 10+ things that come to mind:
- Edith Olivia Designs made my year by creating this incredibly thoughtful Lucy painting for us. I’m not sure if I can can really describe here how much I love it, but I will say that I immediately had it framed and plan to keep in on display in my office from here on out. Find Edith Olivia Designs at her site, Instagram, and Etsy. I plan to commission her again and again. Thank you! And, as always, shoutout to Framebridge for the perfect framing job. :)
- Kelly and I stained the bluestone steps with candle wax last year and didn’t realize it until recently. Help! Anyone know how to remove this? (Or whether it’s even possible?) We heard acetone, but thought there might be an expert here so I figured I’d run it past you guys first!
- I want to start a weekly advice column called Dear Mitch because I think it’ll be fun and entertaining… and who knows? Maybe helpful?! (Though probably not.) Click here to submit questions… you know, if you’re in need of advice from the husband of a stranger you kind of know on the internet. 😉
- I’ve been leaving Travel Remotely up on my laptop throughout the day. Travel Remotely is a clever little site lets you walk or drive or train around cities of the world with customizable time of day and ambient noise. You can even listen to live local radio stations. Like most, all I want to do right now is travel… and this reminds me that I’ll soon be able to do that!
- I’ve reached the stage of adulthood where I watch old war documentaries until the middle of the night. Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War—streaming on PBS, not that many people will care—absolutely blew my mind and I binged all 18 hours of it in about a week. Unfortunately, my wife doesn’t care for incredibly gruesome war footage to end her day, so we spent our evenings apart. To her credit, she is very good at pretending to be interested when I relayed the events of the War back to her the following morning.
- If you follow Kelly you’ve noticed large piles of boxes in the background of all her Stories. I run a small retail business and the pandemic has destroyed our supply chain and warehousing capacity. But if Kelly is reading this, I SWEAR the boxes will be out by the summer… or fall… or winter… of next year.
- Shout out to my favorite app, Libby, for being for being free enough for a cheap guy like me and simple enough for me to use. Libby lets you check out e-books and audiobooks from the public library, and it’s been a lifesaver for me during lockdown. I’m currently reading The Boys in the Boat and, despite it’s title, setting (1930s Seattle) and topic (college rowing teams) it is absolutely fantastic! I prefer audiobooks because I have a terrible attention span and I enjoy crushing books during found time. I buy the books that I love so I can put them on my shelf and feel proud.
- Though Saint Patrick’s Day has passed, I refuse to admit that corned beef season is over. I’m still coming up with excuses to eat the stuff at least on a weekly basis. Ironically, Irish people don’t really eat corned-beef, but Irish-Americans are quite the fans.
- Emma is a lego fiend and she’s tearing through the Lego Friendship series. I, on the other hand, am apparently unable to accomplish even the most basic lego-building task. The rate at which Emma is getting better at things than me is a little terrifying.
- For her part, Lucy has discovered the many delights of YouTube Kids and their team of incredibly irritating music videos. I’m working on a list of the 10 worst kid videos on YouTube, but I can’t finish it because it get so annoyed everytime I sit down to write it. UGH. Luckily, I finally figured out how to block videos in the YouTube Kids app. Total parenting game-changer.
- Both girls agree, however, that the all-time best activity in the house is kinetic sand—a toy that is so incredibly destructive that it actually caused me to go to bed early this week.
- OK, one last parenting story. Lucy is finally interested in playing with Emma, but the only game she likes playing is deliberately falling to the ground, holding up her hand and crying out, receiving a hug and comforting words from her sister—”It’s okay, Lucy, I’m always here…”—and then getting up and shouting “Oh, hi Da-da! Hi, Ma-ma!”
- Soothing Rooms of Youtube: No explanation needed here.
Mitch. OUT!
