The Luckiest

I got home from my 12 hr shift at midnight last night. Typically after working an evening shift, I sneak upstairs to see if Snugs is still awake, but he's usually sacked out, since he gets up at 6:30 or so for work. But last night he was awake, watching a movie on his laptop to keep him awake long enough to see me. I wasn't ready to fall asleep yet, but wanted to be warm, so I crawled in next to him to claim a few minutes of catching up on our days before he fell asleep. In lying there talking to him, I was reminded of how lucky I am to be with him. I wonder how I got the best that there is. He is the sweetest, most thoughtful, funniest man that I know and I don't think that I marvel at that fact often enough. Here are the two things he said that made me realize that I am the luckiest: 1) When I asked him to throw stuff in the laundry, as I was going to start wash today, he told me he'd already started it. 2) When I left for work yesterday, I had just started to put plastic over our ancient and drafty windows upstairs. He had finished putting up the plastic last night and when I asked if he was all done up there, he said, "no, I saved the blow-drying for you, as I know that's your favorite part". (sniff) He truly is the greatest! He remembers those little details, he sometimes reads my mind and starts things before I do (even when we haven't talked all day due to work!).

Did I mention my birthday? He surprised me with a plane ticket to Florida for Jan, so Little Sis and I can fly down to meet up with our parents for a few days- he said he remembered how much fun she and I had down there 4 years ago with my parents and their friends and he wanted to make sure I had that opportunity again.

I am grateful...today, tomorrow and hopefully every day.

One Tough Bird

Note to self: if you buy a "stewing chicken" it is literally just for that...stewing. It means it's going to be a tough old chicken that makes great stock and that's it. I had bought a stewing chicken and some chicken thighs to cook up for stock and then use the meat in soups. However, I discovered that the meat from the stewing chicken couldn't even be pulled from the bone, whereas with the separate thighs that I bought, the meat just fell right off the bone. So, lesson learned: stew with it, don't try to eat it.

How to...

How to see your normally very mellow husband hit the roof....send your less-than-three-year-old TV to the repair shop (trying to support local businesses and fix the TV rather than just buy a new one like they told us at Best Buy), wait almost 3 (yes, 3!!) months to get it back, then turn it on only to see that the "bowing out" of the screen is now "bowing in" and after 1.5 hrs of watching it, it shut itself off again. So, in essence, NOTHING got fixed!!! $144 and 3 months and that's what we got?!??!! I though Snugs was going to blow a gasket.

A Visit

I was at work today and my all-time favorite little patient came to visit me. Well, not so little anymore, as he'll be 5 next month. He and his twin sister are up to my waist now and are chatty as can be. Cole first showed me all of his scars from the surgeries that were performed on him while he was just a wee tyke and informed me that "sometime it would be fun to live in here", pointing to the unit where I work. He obviously has no concept that he did live there for the first 4 months of his life. Thankfully, babies don't remember the weeks and months that they spend living in ICC, usually separated from their parents. Cole's mom is in awe of how perfect and healthy he is- the only remainders of his time in the hospital are those scars. Well, those and my fond memories of taking care of him from the time he was a jaundiced little 3 day old until he was 4 months old, rocking him to sleep, teaching his mom and grandma how to take care of him with all of his medical "accessories", admiring his crazy blond hair that stuck up straight and those huge blue eyes. Sigh.

Why I Love Fall

The photos say it all...

The lone tree in our little backyard

Apple picking yesterday in Waconia at Deardorff Orchards, a great little family-owned orchard on a quiet dirt road

How 'bout them apples for cooking? Made applesauce today with the Haralson "seconds"- a large bag of barely bruised or barely pecked apples for only $5. Yum.

My parents and I picked raspberries at their friends' place last week. And people wonder why I would love a place that has land and space to grow things like this!

Not Ready to be Done

It's a fine evening to do some projects. I am home alone, it's quiet, comfortable, I have a hundred things I could be working on and I don't want to do a single one. The living room, which was painted last week and is undergoing redecoration, is screaming to be finished. Every time I walk by it, I rearrange the mess on the couch, stare at the the array of curtains we're considering, and walk away without really doing anything. I attempted to put up a curtain rod tonight, but that mostly involved drilling a hole in the wrong place, couldn't drill a deep enough hole to get the anchor in all of the way, and then the part of the rod that you're supposed to screw to the wall is getting in the way of the screwdriver, making it impossible to finish tightening the piece and now it's hanging there all askew. So, we'll leave that for my better half to finish. 40 minutes wasted on something that turned out wrong anyway. I could bake or cook- I have enough veggies sitting around, just waiting to be made into something tasty. But I am so sick of washing dishes that it makes me want to avoid the kitchen completely. I could have worked more out in the yard while it was still light, mulching, moving some more plants around, digging out the little rocks that are out front, planting some fall grass seed. But I didn't feel like it- it's more fun to do that when someone else is around to help me out. I'm sitting in the basement, with a pile of paperwork to go through that is at least 12 inches high, but that's less than appealing right now. Excuses.
I am starting to wonder if I just need a night off, to rejuvenate and get some energy to finish these projects. Or perhaps I am incapable of finishing things, for fear that once they're done, I won't have anything else to do or to think about. Sometimes the mere idea of spending so much time arranging and rearranging the things we own seems so bizarre and almost a waste of time. I wish I didn't care how things looked or that I could look past them and not see the pile of things on the couch that are waiting to be put away.

Makeover

The internet is back on. Praises be.

I was hanging out in the basement this morning and realized that it's Sept 15, which means that a year ago, we started the major remodel on the basement. Prior to the remodel, you wouldn't have caught me "hanging out" in the basement. I have photos of the before, the process of, and the finished product (though the finished photos are somewhat old and don't show that we've actually decorated a little and added doorknobs, etc). The before photos don't really do justice to how icky it was downstairs. The photos make it look light and bright, not gloomy and damp and cold, which is the truth of what it was. 2 dirty lights in the dingy ceiling, 2 tiny windows that were dirty as can be, freezing cold and damp year round, a big room with no definition to it, one awkward closet that had no light and was triangular shaped (making it impossible to put anything large in it, as things got stuck in the tight angles of the shelves), ugly tile floor, loud creaky stairs, ugly things along the staircase, bugs everywhere. All in all, it was screaming for a makeover. My father-in-law is an architect and drew up fantastic plans for the basement, though I did have moments when I wondered how we were going to fit a family room, office, and bathroom all in this one space. Our friend Kevin was our unofficial contractor and did a huge amt of the work, as did our friend Justin.

So, the "before" photos...

You can faintly see in this photo that there are blue tape marks back by the triangle closet...that's where the bathroom and office were laid out. At the time, I couldn't imagine that those were ever going to be large enough to accommodate people.


The stairs. Yikes.

Kevin dug the hole for the egress window a year ago today. That was the official start of the remodel.

Within 2 hrs, GCNP and Kevin had this hole ready to go.

Here are some "during" photos...this process took from Sept to March...mostly because of money and time constraints for us.

Digging out the floor for the plumbing...if we'd had cats, they would have been the happiest felines ever, given that there was a giant sandbox in our basement.

And finally, the nearly finished project as it was in April, when we scrambled to get things done in time for a surprise party for GCNP's 30th birthday...

The family room

Bathroom
Shower

More of the family room...aren't the stairs a HUGE improvement??
GCNP's office, which we call the Hubby Cubby, as it's 7x7.

We'll be paying this all off for a long time, but it was worth it.