I made these yesterday:

Unity Cookies! The Black and White! As made immortal by Seinfeld (“Two races of flavor living side by side in harmony.”)

They are vegan, so my son can have them, and they are divine. They are TOO divine. I am still on shaky stomach ground and the last thing I need is a dozen palm-sized discs of pure ambrosia just sitting there in the kitchen. On Valentine’s Day, no less, when dessert calories are FOR FREE. Sigh.

So I’m back to eating more-or-less real food (if cookies count as real food), and back to working, which means I can only tangentially check in with the Olympics from time to time during the day, which is just so sad. But while we’re talking Olympics, some random thoughts on that:

Why was Sochi selected as a Winter Olympics location, when it was like, 18 degrees Celsius there yesterday? Clips I’ve seen of the city show palm trees – PALM TREES – and no snow on the ground; snow on the ski slopes is said to be icy and they are actually salting it (which I totally do not get) to keep it in good shape. I should probably just go and Google for info about the climate of Sochi, but I’m too busy eating cookies and watching coverage. But I do wonder: what made them think this was a winter-type playground area?

And this: I watch a lot (A LOT) of figure skating, and I have noticed that Western/American culture seems to be the de facto culture of figure skating. There were Russians skating to The Addams Family and Jesus Christ Superstar, Germans skating to the Pink Panther, I saw some guy from the Czech Republic skate to Dueling Banjos. What’s that about? Are these people training in North America, maybe? Or is The Addams Family actually a world-wide phenomenon? I am mystified.

And lastly: I have discovered I have an endless appetite for any and all Olympic sports, except hockey. The hockey games (which, amusingly, feature the exact same break-time cheers, like DAY-O and We Will Rock You and CHARGE!, meaning, I guess, American Culture really IS universal, and the unity cookie was right all along) are just like any other hockey game and I can’t get invested. Meanwhile, listening to the commentators for things like snowboarding and biathlon and luge is SO charming, because they are so deeply passionate about their sport, and know all the inside details and scoop and history, and when they start squealing with joy over the tightness of the competition it’s just delightful.

Now I’m off to work, and eat cookies, and sneak glimpses of the figure skating, and ponder race relations. Happy Valentine’s Day!

So we watch our fair share of home decorating shows, and there’s always a Moment Of Drama on those shows where they discover something about the house that was previously unknown, that is going to be an expensive fix. And now, part of the family’s Big Plans must Come Off The Table, and it’s a tense and emotional moment, then there’s shots of the designer huffing and puffing over a calculator and some sheets of paper (likely grocery lists), while they try to stretch the budget and dip into contingency reserves and otherwise stress about designs.

But surely, that would not happen to us! Our basement remodel was so simple! And our guy had already done two others on the street, with no problems and big success!

FAMOUS LAST WORDS.

So our basement project is, supposedly, in its final stages, at least for the professionals. They should have been wrapping things up today and tomorrow. But as they were laying down the subfloor, it became apparent that our concrete slab is warped. Like, really, really, warped.

Usually basement floors have some ups and downs, and the contractor can work around that with a little shimming and fancy woodwork. But ours is beyond saving. There is a high point in the centre of the house, and the edges slope away, ending up several inches lower at the outer walls. There is just no possible way to lay down the subfloor and actually have it turn out level.

That means that we cannot possibly put down a laminate floor, because the floating floor would crack and buckle because the subfloor is not level.

Remember how we paid extra and went way out of our way so the stairs could be wood? To match the laminate? And there’s a whole other story about the laminate itself that I won’t bore you with, but to sum up, we have been through a bit of a wringer at two different stores just to get the stuff we wanted. So to be told now that our best solution is to accept the sloped floor, and just cover it up with carpet, taking a loss on the stair work and flooring, is not going to work for us, I’m afraid.

(Well, it might work for us as a last-ditch solution. But first we are going to look into every other possible answer.)

So now we have halted all basement work while we a) get an engineer in here to figure out why the foundation is so slanted in the first place, b) get a concrete company in here to talk about re-pouring the basement floor, c) have our basement guy rip out a bunch of stuff he has already done, and d) get resigned to having even MORE of the basement crap on the main level, for an even longer amount of time.

Not to mention the possible expenses involved – at the moment we have no idea what any of this will cost, and if we’re looking at a serious foundation problem it might even mean the entire basement is off the table for now, and instead our budget will just go to repair work.

So the lesson here is: before finishing your basement, you should have it inspected for possible foundation problems.

Live and learn, I guess.

Ugh, I am just so very, very sick. Last night I was finally able to keep down about a half cup of Gatorade, which I guess signals a turning of the tide. But this morning I am back on the couch, making those little groaning noises of pain that drive my husband up the wall, sipping Gatorade slowly and wanting to feel better.

But of course, I still have the energy to blog, because: PRIORITIES.

Also, Nicole from the boy house tagged me in a meme, which means I don’t even have to be creative…someone has done all the “ideas” work for me! Meme it up!

1) If Jane had 3 apples and John had 78 nails, how many layers of clothing are you wearing (how is the weather in your neck of the woods?)?

I hear it is back to Nuclear Winter level temperatures outside this morning – something like -19 degrees. However, I haven’t moved off the couch in two days, so I’ve been kind of shielded from all that. One thing I can say is that I am almost never without my Dead Kitty Socks, which are actually T-Max Heat socks from Mark’s Work Wearhouse. They only carry them in the fall so are mostly sold out now until next winter, but if you can find some, BUY THEM. We call them Dead Kitty Socks here because the inside is so soft and fuzzy, it’s as if they made them from the skins of dead kittens. But I will gladly walk all over those dead kittens for the powerful, powerful warmth involved. They are AWESOME.

2. What is keeping you sane during these long winter months?

Um…very little? The basement remodel has taken a left turn into Expensive ProblemsVille (more on that later, I’m sure) and the cold and the sickness are a drag. Oh, but the Olympics! Olympic coverage, 16 hours a day, every day! I love it so much. I even re-watch the same stuff I’ve already seen. Three or four times over. I’m a junkie.

3. If you were on a boat with a box of chocolate and your Mother In Law, who would you throw overboard?

Now why, exactly, are we throwing anything overboard? Are there chocolate-loving sharks circling? Or are we having a lifeboat weight limit issue? I need more info on this one.

4. What’s in your underwear drawer besides underwear?

Ha! Exclusively underwear. I have SO MUCH underwear, it’s ridiculous. This is because I can never seem to find the perfect combination of fit, flattering look, and comfort. So I continue to buy packs of new underwear to try, but am unhappy, so must buy more new stuff, yet cannot get rid of the other stuff that I’ve only worn like, twice, and so yes, I have an entire drawer dedicated to nothing more than underwear.

5. Do you trust yourself with sharp objects near your face? (as in, do you pluck your own eyebrows? Do you have any eyebrow horror stories?)

I do pluck my eyebrows, but only half-heartedly. Really, my complete lack of body maintenance is becoming an issue, especially as I get older. My middle daughter asked me just yesterday if she could start plucking and while I think she’s a little young for that still, I’m kind of hoping she will take me to the spa and otherwise force me to take better care of myself.

6. I am terrified of dead bodies, spiders, and the dentist. What are you scared of?

Spiders, for sure. I am a shrieking mess whenever one shows up in the house. All bugs in general, actually, can cause me to totally lose my shit.

7. Are you wearing nail polish?

See above re: doing very little for body maintenance. I actually cannot stand the feeling of polish on my hands – it’s so weird, it’s like my nails can’t breathe, I walk around with my hands held stiff in awkward positions and feel like I can’t touch anything or move them normally. I do like a nice pedicure but it’s been years now since I had one – I think the last time was when I was pregnant with the Little Miss.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program of Gatorade sipping and Olympics watching. FLOP.

I’ve caught the bug that the Little Miss suffered with all weekend long – a general need for one’s body to expunge everything you’ve ever eaten, ever, as quickly as possible, as violently as possible, from all available outlets. GOOD TIMES. I really, really hate being sick like this. When I have a cold, life continues as usual really, only with more grumbling from the kitchen area about how other people don’t have to keep working when they have a cold, and instead, other people get to sit on the couch and be fussed over. But illnesses that confine me, groaning, to the couch, are even worse, as all I do is fret about what isn’t getting done (work, housecleaning, feeding of the children) and how much my husband has to do (lunches! He had to make the lunches!) and generally spend the whole time feeling crummy AND guilty.

At least I have Olympic Coverage to keep me warm. Man, I could literally watch Olympics until my eyeballs fall out. Update: two more gold medals for Canada so far this morning! We are officially at the top of the leader board!

We are done with flag-making, although really I could have kept at it until I got through all 198 countries in the world, but sadly, we ran out of space along the bannister. The second image here is our official “leader board” – the flags are hanging by paper clips, and at the end of each day the Captain rearranges them based on medal standings.

That Olympic flag at the far right there almost killed me. It was so intricate to get all the tiny rings to overlap just so, then figure out how to glue them all down successfully. People out there are working towards world peace or doing heart transplants, and here I am all proud of myself for figuring out how to recreate the Olympic rings in paper, but there you go.

The winter Olympics are like, 75% European countries (at least, the top contenders are mostly European, and those are the ones we made), and so making of all those European flags has us noticing that the Europeans are not exactly creative when it comes to flags.

For example, here is Hungary’s flag next to Bulgaria’s (apologizes for the crummy photos, I’m sick so I took them quickly by hanging my head upside down over the railing):

Really. These are their flags. Don’t you think, on the field of battle, this might lead to some confusion?

Here is Austria versus Latvia:

Difference, in case you can’t tell: one has a fat white line, one has a thin white line. When I see flags like this, I wonder if they have a long-standing feud. “I used it first!” “No, you totally copied!” “France! I don’t want to sit near Latvia any more!” Etc.

Here are Belgium and Germany, demonstrating the classic European technique of Turning-It-Sideways-So-Now-It-Is-Totally-Different:

My kids love these two – Iceland and Norway, doing a mirror image thing.

And here’s Russia versus The Netherlands, which in this household are constantly being confused for each other, despite the fact that Russia is the HOST NATION, and I’m thinking The Netherlands should maybe reconsider its flag design, before being bullied by the big guy into making it happen.

That’s not even the worst of these – here is Slovakia versus Slovenia, both of which have used a Russa-With-One-Piece-Of-Flare motif:

We didn’t make the flag for Serbia, but it’s ALSO almost the same – Russia-Upside-Down-With-Bling. SERIOUSLY.

Those last ones in particular could learn a thing or two from Asia – here is the flag of Kazakhstan:

Pale blue, featuring a yellow sun, outline of a yellow bird, and Arabic blingy design down the edge. Now that’s how you announce your presence with authority.

And we thought Canadian school kids had it hard, having to freehand maple leaves on Canada Day. Imagine being a Kazakh kindergarten kid and doing a flag craft. Good luck, kiddos.

So, this is what happens when you combine a post you saw over at Capital Parent on great Olympic themed Pinterest crafts with a personal love of flags, and kids with newfound flag knowledge from Stack The Countries:

I LOVE these little flags. They are made from coloured paper (about 1/4 of a sheet each), with pieces cut up and glued on, and some of the white stars made with a liquid paper pen. The Pinterest idea is to put them on a festive garland to celebrate the Olympics, but I believe the Captain has done them one better – he plans to open a small betting pool, and to use the flags on some sort of giant leader board to track the current medal counts of the various countries, while setting the odds and (possibly) breaking kneecaps. I am so proud.

This kind of detail work is something I adore, and I love flags too, so I could literally do this all day long. Yesterday I was teaching a class, and the girls and I were making flags, and then suddenly I looked up and realized I needed to leave for my class in 20 minutes and had not actually prepared any dinner for anyone. And HELL if I was going to let them eat the flags.

(We had pancakes out of the freezer and some apple slices. But we also had awesome flags, so I call that a win.)

Some of the flags have very complicated shields and symbols on them, and I’m not going to lie, we cheated and printed them out on the computer, like the middle bits of this India flag and Mexico flag. Did you know Mexico has some sort of bird eating a snake on its flag? Don’t mess with Mexico, is what I’m thinking.

So I was encouraging the kids to pick out flags they wanted to make, pointing them at the list of Olympic winter countries (no way am I making every flag in the world…at least not this week), and while I was hoping for nice simple things like Germany and Russia and Finland, the Little Miss insists there’s only one flag, and one flag only, she wants, and that is Macedonia. So we made a flag for Macedonia, and I’m rather proud of myself:

Since they are sending like, three athletes to the Olympics, I’m guessing the Captain will not have much use for the flag of Macedonia on his leader board, but it’s pretty. And in the world of flags, that’s a gold medal right there.

Time for a basement reno update! Things are progressing well, and we are very happy, although spending most of our weekends at the Home Depot picking out things, which has its own challenges. I’m sure the children will look back on this time period as The Years We Spent At Home Depot Not Playing Video Games, and it will long be lamented in song as an era of great sadness. (Hopefully after the bridge there will be a nice wrap-up verse about how the new basement home of the Wii made up for all of the sorrow. THERE HAD BETTER BE.)

Anyway! The drywall is up and mostly mudded, and all the rough work for the electrical is in, so thought I’d share some photos and also chat some about what we’ll be using the space for. Since we’ve been thinking about finishing the basement for quite some time, we gave a lot of thought into what we wanted to do with the basement, and how that was all going to work out. All that pre-thought was DEFINITELY worth it, especially if you are not hiring a big design firm who will swoop in and make all the decisions for you, but rather, a totally cool and reasonable guy who will give you what you want, at your own direction (recommended!).

Here’s a refresher look at our basement map:

Let’s start with a look at the stairs. It’s been the hardest part of this project to manage, one of the biggest expenses, and probably the biggest pain in the butt. Here’s some before shots, above and below:

SO ugly, no? When we moved in, we paid to have the basement floor painted (to control dust and dirt – highly recommended for a newbuild home if you’re not going to be finishing the basement right away), and the builders used the grey basement concrete floor paint to paint the stairs, the sideboards, and the super cheapy railing. All dull, horrifying grey. Plus, the stairs themselves are made out of the cheapest of all chipboard, many of which were split or chipped during the original construction process. It’s not even paint-grade wood. SHUDDER.

We could have had the stairs completely replaced, and it would have been expensive, but worth it to us. We did not want to carpet the stairs because we have hardwood up on the main floor, and we’re doing laminate on the basement floor, so we thought having carpet just on the transitional stairs wouldn’t look good. Our guy has come up with a nice middle of the road solution, however – he is replacing the top parts of the stairs with maple treads, and staining them to match the laminate; then putting white MDF on the riser side. We’re replacing the handrail with stained maple too, and then painting the sideboards white. Hopefully it will be a magical transformation.

Here’s a shot of that weird triangle part of the basement landing:

Lots of people who gave us quotes recommended walling this off completely to be nice and square. But I took some measurements and I THINK that a nice, L-shaped, floor-to-ceiling Billy bookcase from IKEA will fit in this space perfectly. This is our big strategy for dealing with all the books in this house, which currently are stuffed into just about every room. I’m hoping to do one side of the L for adult books, one side for kids’ books. We’ll see how it all turns out.

It was good to decide that in advance because we made sure to have a pot light put right in the triangle, to light the shelves, and also to make sure the bulkhead here (required for our central vac) was framed all around the V to make it look like it was meant to go there with the shelves.

I didn’t take a shot of the storage areas, but wanted to mention here that we plan to put a fridge in the storage room to the left. That was important during the electrical rough-in, because the fridge required its own circuit and they had to set that up for us. So if you’re thinking basement fridge, make sure you plan in advance exactly where you want it.

Here’s a pic of the hallway, under the stairs:

I pinned a lot, a LOT, of pictures of under-stairs-storage on Pinterest. But everything there was gorgeously expensive, and also, we weren’t sure we even needed it. It was our builder guy who suggested he just create this little drywall box under the stairs, that will perfectly fit a couple of Expidit shelving units from IKEA (one 2×8 in the tall part, one 4×4 in the short part). These are fully open shelves so we are planning on using them for decorative purposes – photos or art or maybe small stacks of artfully arranged hardcover books. That type of decorating is not my forte, however, so we’ll see. BRAINWAVE: maybe this is where I will put completed LEGO projects! One box per item, in a little display! THE BRAIN CHURNS.

Anyway, giving the hallway a little thought in advance helped our builder guy plot things out in terms of supply management, and also we added extra lighting to the hallway so these shelves would be visible. Fingers crossed it all comes together.

Now we’re into the big room. Here’s where the TV is going to go – couch on the back wall, TV under the bulkhead that hides our heating ducts:

Here’s the other end of the room, which we plan to use for sewing and crafts, as well as a whole wall of wardrobe-style storage units across the far wall (from, you may have guessed it, IKEA):

Since this is such a huge, open space, knowing our general plans for how we were going to use it was important, especially for deciding on where we wanted the outlets and lighting to be. Right now we have the TV area lights on one circuit, and the craft area lights on another circuit, and we ended up adding a few extra pot lights right over where the craft table and sewing table will be – definitely worth it, I think. Plus, we were able to make sure the bulkheads were tight enough to clear the wardrobes, and that we’d be able to fit three across (a tight fit, as our furnace is on the other side of the wall of the craft area, and needs a 3 foot clearance). I *think* we got everything we need in this space, but time will tell.

One last pic:

This is of the odd nook that is at the bottom of the stairs, a funny little square space. We had the choice of walling this off to be part of the storage room, or part of the finished room. In the end we chose the finished room because we wanted it to feel more open as you entered the family room area – we were afraid the hallway would feel like a tunnel to other side of the earth, and the family room like a little space pod at tip of a rocket. We’re definitely happy to have the more open feeling, but now we have this nook with no fixed plans for it. Our general idea is to put some sort of shelf here that can serve as game and puzzle storage; but we could also use it as a corner for a big piece of art, or a counter for a microwave and chip bowls, or an extra bookshelf. Ideas?

So, stuff we’ve had to pick out and/or know in advance:

• flooring – so the stairs could be stained to match
• doors – for the two storage rooms, had to pick the door style and all door hardware
• casings and baseboards – had to pick a style
• placement of all outlets, including a special one for the fridge
• placement of all pot lights – giving special attention to how areas will be used
• special light fixture for the hallway – had to go pick this out
• size and shape of the shelves for under the stairs and at the end of the craft area, so they could be boxed around

Whew! And now, I have to go change my socks, because man, freshly sanded drywall is DUSTY. More to come!

I just finished reading a great post over at Dani’s blog, about how she’s stopped wearing makeup and is quite happy about it. I’m just so, so terrible at applying makeup, and I used to consider it a major failing of mine. But these days, I’m feeling more and more confident and happy about going around au naturel on a day-to-day basis.

I’m even worse at keeping makeup on than I am at applying it in the first place, and I never remember to touch up throughout the day, and I almost always end up with some sort of gunk in my eye and lips that are dying for a little lip balm. So overall – just wash-and-go is working out…okay.

I even have come to the conclusion that it’s not a terrible thing to be looking my age (I say, and you can feel free to throw this back in my face in three years when I am considering a face lift – just the same way I used to smugly say at age 25 that I was never going to dye my hair, I was going to (lazily) go grey with confidence, and now, oh, what’s that 25-year-old-self, I’m touching up my roots every five weeks, GAH). Anyway, it’s just easier, and I like that there’s not so much chemical stuff on my skin, and I like the fact that I like the way I look.

Guess this is what Frank Kaiser meant when he wrote his sweet piece on why 40+ women are awesome.

I’ll still be pulling out some makeup for special events, parties – for me, it feels like part of the whole dressing-up-fancy thing, and makes me feel like a grown up. And I’ll continue to have admiration of women who can actually apply makeup, and make it look good, and keep it looking that way all day (TELL ME YOUR SECRETS).

But I’m losing the part of me that feels pressure to put my face on before leaving the house. This IS my face. I like it.

My friend Nicole over at Girl in a Boy House invented a new meme yesterday, and for Meme Monday we were to talk about what’s making us happy. Only, I didn’t get around to reading it until after 7 p.m., a time of day known as Beyond The Scope Of All Productivity, also known as You Never See Me On Twitter In The Evenings Because I Am Asleep On The Couch. So it had to wait until today.

What’s making me happy right now:

Dentist Visits. We went this morning, and I have a small cavity, and also a tooth heading down the path of root canal. Please don’t tell Sir Monkeypants, as we have a generally accepted rule in this house that when someone has a cavity, they are to be mocked mercilessly until humiliated into better brushing. In any case, what I’m happy about is excellent dental coverage provided by Sir Monkeypants’ work, that allows cavities to be caught when they are still small enough that I don’t even know they are there, and then to be repaired in 10 minutes flat, while I watch Live! With Kelly and Michael on their TV and don’t feel a thing. All good.

Transitional Hair. Am moving to a once-every-third-day wash cycle and so far it is going well, I don’t feel too greasy (thank you, spray-in dry shampoo) and my hair feels softer, although not necessarily less frizzy. I think I need the ends trimmed. Body maintenance is such a drag. But this is a happy post, so I’m just happy it is not a greaseball horror show over here.

Basement finishing, which is going very well – the framing and basic electrical are all done, drywall is up, mudding begins tomorrow. In somewhat unrelated news, having our basement couch temporarily moved upstairs has led us to suddenly realize we hate our main floor couch, passionately, and cannot stand to sit on it for one second longer. So, we spent all weekend couch shopping and we are thisclose to actually picking something out and no one died or killed each other, the kids (bless them) suffered through hundreds of hot, dry hours under furniture store lights without whining or crying and even attempted to give helpful opinions, and yay, new couch imminent, pictures to follow once we actually order it and it arrives. (No pictures of the old couch will be posted, so as to not sear your eyes.)

Soup. I cannot believe how much I totally, utterly, completely despised soup as a child, and now, I cannot get enough of it. Squash soup! Sweet potato and coconut soup! Lentil soup! Leek and potato soup! Basic old cream of tomato! The only plus to this INSANELY cold winter we are having is that I have more excuses to make soup than ever before. I could seriously eat ALL THE SOUP. Ever. Nom nom.

What’s making you happy?

So we’ve been saying for about, oh, 9 years now that we are going to finish the basement. Probably the last five years or so, we’ve been “really, really” serious.

One problem: okay, two problems, really. One, we have children who, for some reason, continue to need to be fed and clothed and driven to birthday parties and gymnastics classes. Two, we have absolutely no building skills whatsoever.

A lot of our friend have finished their own basements, though, and we thought we MUST be able to do it to, only, no. It was not happening. Every time we went down there – despite a rather clear vision of the project – we’d imagine ourselves cutting wood? Probably? And then attaching it to the concrete floor…somehow? With some sort of tool or device? Perhaps?

And that’s about as far as we got.

So this year, we decided to hire someone to do it for us. Not necessary all of it, but at least to get us started – maybe to do the framing and drywall, and we’d do the finishes, or something like that. Just to get the project kick-started, you understand. Not that we were not PERFECTLY CAPABLE (i.e. not at all capable) of becoming tool masters. ONLY because we were so very very busy. Orphan Black is not going to binge-watch itself, you know.

I will not bore you with the details of our search for a basement finisher, suffice to say that there is a wide, wide range of prices and levels of finishing out there.

Here is our basement, in its raw form:

(Oh, how our little ones loved to ride their trikes in a loop around the staircase…good times, good times.)

This is how we wanted it finished. Closing the area to the left (where the electrical panel is) to be a storage room; closing the area to the right (where the furnace is) to be a work room/tool room; then finishing off the stairs, hallway, and one very big room across the back to be a kids’ lounge/TV/craft/toy area.

Our basement was already framed and insulated along the outside walls, so the project only involved framing the interior walls. There were only two doors to add. There’s no bathroom down there or any fancy features and we only wanted the bare basics of finishes (plus a bunch of pot lights).

We considered this to be a pretty small project – granted, we know nothing about construction but we received quotes on this project ranging from reasonable to WILL YOU BE WALLPAPERING THE CEILING IN GOLD LEAF, JESUS. (Seriously – one quote was for $50 000. Apparently we would really, really notice the QUALITY of the finishes. SERIOUSLY.)

We chose a guy who we really, really like, who has done other basements in the area, and we’re off to the races – he’s been here all week working away on the framing, insulation, and drywall, plus an electrician friend of his has been in to do the wiring and lighting. I am already amazed at how much work everything is. I estimate just the framing – SO MANY little boxes around all kinds of ceiling crap, GAH – probably represents at least eight weekends worth of our life.

Hiring someone else, who actually knows what they’re doing, to do a fantastic job, and get it done while our children are still living at home? WORTH IT.

Surprisingly, there’s still quite a lot of work left for us to do. For starters, we did hire our awesome guy to just do part of the project – so we’re on the hook for finishing the flooring and trim, and painting the place, once it’s done. In the meantime, I’m kind of trapped in the house – I trust the guys to be alone in the house while I pop out to pick up the kids, but I’m still not sure about leaving them for the whole day, and at the least I have to be here to let them in and see them out at the end of the day.

Plus, we’re swamped with decision making – so far we’ve had to decide the location of every outlet (plus meet code), lay out the location of every pot light (working around beams and heat ducts), decide what the heck to do with the stairs (built-in shelving underneath, opening to the hallway), pick out various fixtures and switches and doorknobs and doors, and deal with minor construction issues and awkward corners.

It’s work, but also fun…will post some pictures once we get to the really fun decorating part.

So I wanted to quickly mention this app game – Stack the Countries – because it is cool and awesome and actually educational, but every time I try to write about it, it sounds like a weird sponsored post, like I’m all standing there with an iPhone next to my face, doing a Vanna White smile, tapping it with my perfectly manicured hands, while nodding wisely.

(Speaking of Vanna, I happened to catch the tail end of an episode of Wheel of Fortune the other night, and man, is she ever looking good for what, 56 years old? Damn. Pat Sajak, by the way, looks as dead-eyed and life-hating as ever. That guy should have quit at least 20 years ago and gone to build schools in Guatemala or something.)

Anyway, just to be clear, NOT A SPONSORED POST.

I heard about Stack the Countries from my friends Mary Lynn and Julie on Facebook, who mentioned it in passing, and so I thought we’d try it out. And yes, AWESOME.

Here’s what you do:
* answer a multiple-choice trivia question about geography (which country has this flag, which country is in Africa, which country has French as its official language, etc)
* if you’re right, you get the right-answer country as a little puzzle piece
* rotate and move the country piece until it’s just the way you want it, then drop it onto a tower you’re building
* when the tower is big enough, you’ll be awarded a country on your world map, and you can then go there and read about it (basic facts only – my one complaint is that I wish there was more info, or maybe a link to wikipedia for each country so we could find out more).

So we are all playing this game now (up to 6 different player profiles are allowed, so we can each work towards building our own world map) and it is SO fun, and building the towers is so exciting. Someone around here is always yelling something like,

“No, United Kingdom, no no no no!”
“Hang in there, Belize, YOU CAN DO IT.”
“What the HELL, Uganda, WHAT THE HELL?”
“Hey, has anyone else noticed how much Israel looks like a carrot?”

And so on. Everyone now knows all kinds of stuff about where world countries are, and what they look like, and what borders what, and my favourite part, all about world flags. And it’s amazing just how many countries there are in the world – close to 200 – and so many are tiny little things, and that has led to plenty of googling so we can figure out just how these countries came into existence (like, why does South Africa have a whole other nation, Lesotho, right in the middle of it?) and how they survive (like, how does Nauru, being just one tiny island nation, have any income?) and why there are some blanks on the map (like, why isn’t there any country between Suriname and Brazil, when clearly there is land there?).

And, we are constantly debating as to who has the best/most interesting/weirdest flag, which has led to much mocking of Libya for having a pure green rectangle as their flag, and then we found out on a game show (The Chase, if you must know, another of my new obsessions) that Libya got a new flag about a year ago, and that was GIANT HOUSE NEWS, like, we almost woke up the children to tell them.

So although I never considered us to be geography nerds, or the kind of family who makes their kids play educational games, or even the kind of family who might one day have a lively debate on where in the world you’d most like to explore…we are now.

Stack the Countries – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.