Jan. 6: Milestone

So much for trying to post more regularly again. It’s the first week of the year and I’m already off to a terrible start. I went back to work this week, though, for the first time in six weeks or so. At first it was hard to get back in the swing of it, but once I did, I couldn’t stop. I was a programming madwoman!

I love my job. I really, really do. I maintain several databases that I created from scratch, and those are my babies. I love seeing them grow and do great things. I work with others that I manage but didn’t create—those are the challenging ones. Those I inherited are like giant puzzles sometimes, and I have to figure out what the original programmer had in mind and why things were done a certain way. I’m like Sherlock Holmes but I’m a girl. And I use a computer. And I don’t have a sidekick. But am I the biggest nerd ever? I think I just might be.

Anyway, I have a couple of large projects ahead of me at work, and I’m excited to get going on them. But first I’m catching up on the not-working-for-six-weeks thing. Then I can move on to the really fun stuff. Happy happy.

Work is my excuse for not posting more this week, because I’ve been away from home much more than what had become normal. But there’s a milestone I passed the other day that I think deserves a mention.

Tuesday—the day before yesterday—marked three weeks since my last chemotherapy treatment. I was on the three-week chemo schedule, and went in faithfully every third Tuesday for more than a year. Now that I’ve missed a third Tuesday, I feel like I’m really moving beyond cancer treatment. I’m hoping to get rid of most of the nasty, lingering chemo side effects and start feeling like me again—less fatigued, less achy, more energetic and overall just plain happier. Get out of my way!

It’s a cool thing, having kicked cancer’s ass.

I shall enjoy the rest of my life even more now, thankyouverymuch.

Nov. 30: Daybook

Once again, I’m a day late with my Daybook. I have a good excuse. Prolly.

Today…

Outside my window... it’s icky. Cold, rainy, icky. Sherilee is in Kauai right now and although I’m glad she got to go on a very fun and well-deserved vacation, I’m more than a little bit jealous. Kauai may be the rainiest of the islands, but I’d still take it over Portland’s weather, pretty much any day.

This weekend, I… came home from Medford, tried to unpack a little, and came down with a killer headache. Pffft. However, I got our Christmas card photo done and ordered, so that’s kind of a big accomplishment. I still have the letter to write and CD to burn, and that means I’m not going to stop complaining about it for weeks. Ye be warned.

I am thinking... that Victor just might hate me, or at least be super-duper tired of me. Last night I asked him to read through my blog posts of 2010 to find anything that should be included in our Christmas letter. He actually did it. He was helpful and—I know this sounds mean, but it’s true of most husbands, I think—he is NEVER helpful with Christmas doodies.

I am thankful... for a lovely Thanksgiving day. My uncle and “auntie” brought a friend of theirs to my mom’s, and even Grandma joined us. We had a really nice time—traditional dinner, cool family members, all the things that can be good on Thanksgiving were good for us. Grandma was mostly well-behaved, except for calling Mom eight times that morning. She called me four times (I didn’t know this until just now), asking for Mom. Did she have an emergency? No.

I am working on... figuring out why I just now got nine voice mails from the past week. I don’t know why I didn’t get the messages when they were actually left for me. I don’t like missing calls. I don’t like stoopid AT&T. On a more fun and interesting note, I am working on some really fun Christmas gift ideas. You’ll hope you’re on my list, you betcha.

I am going... to come right out and say I don’t care that Angelina Jolie thinks Thanksgiving is murder, or that Jessica Simpson is engaged, or that a bunch of wackjobs have all sorts of ideas as to why Bristol Palin lost on Dancing with the Stars. News agencies may, however, continue to show many pictures of Johnny Depp. That’s just fine.

I am hoping... to get the house decorated for Christmas this week. We’ve got the tree up but there aren’t any ornaments on it, and there are a gajillion boxes in the attic full of décor. That’s lots of work, my friend, and I’m pretty sure I don’t have the energy for it.

I am hearing... the regular USA network Tuesday marathon of Law & Order: SVU. I’m not watching it, but I can hear it. I think I’ve seen every episode now, and that bums me right out. I’m going to have to find something else to do on Tuesdays. Hawaii Laura, do you have any ideas? Or do you have a more exciting life than I do, in which you’re not able to watch the marathon (almost) every week?

Around the house... the puppy is attacking the kitty, always, forever, every time he hears her little bell. He’s a turd, but she has claws, so I’m not even a little bit worried about her being hurt. I do worry that maybe she’s not getting the sleep she needs, though. Seriously—she can’t move without him pouncing on her. That is the definition of “turd.”

One of my favorite things... is Christmas shopping. I love making lists and looking online for good bargains and gift-wrapping and piling presents around the tree. The only part I dislike comes right before Christmas, when I get stressed over what to give Wellington and Victor’s no help at all. None. Wellington is the most difficult person to gift, like, EVER.

Plans for the rest of the week: A few meetings, a little work, some fun PTO stuff on Friday. What else does a girl need?

All I wanted was a cute pic of Oliver for the Christmas card:

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, I want to extend very happy—and very belated—birthday wishes to my delightful and charming friends, Ed and Sheila. I hope you got to eat lots of good cake.

Want to blog your own Daybook? Here’s the info: The Simple Woman’s Daybook.

Jul. 23: IDCEAYWTPFriday

It’s Friday, and that means you get a post called I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday.

• On Wednesday, I finally thought to call and cancel the service on our dead TiVo. The customer service rep told me that that very day, July 21, was my six-year anniversary as a TiVo customer. Hooray! I love TiVo! Surprisingly, no balloons or giant checks were offered, and there was no freaky TiVo mascot thingie at my door—OK, I gotta kinda THANK BUDDHA for that. We were offered a replacement box for super-cheap and free service through November, and that’ll do just fine by me.
• I’m absolutely in love with this blog I ran across: Issa Sarza. Tons of fun, easy craft-y things, printables, and all sorts of homey goodies. I think the monster tissue holder is especially goofy-cute.
• My big re-organizing project is nearing completion, at least for now. These tasks are never really done, are they? I’m quite proud of how many storage boxes I’ve managed to empty, and the very large, clear space on the garage floor. Seeing fewer “go through this stuff” piles around the house is good too. Katie still won’t let me go in her room, but the rest of the house has improved dramatically.
• I doubt I’ll see this movie, but the trailer is pretty funny:
  
  
  Vampires Suck Trailer
  
• Do you like your orange juice pulp-free or with extra pulp? Sometimes I think the pulp-free is too much like Tang; on the other hand, the extra pulp variety can get awfully chewy. There are so many options these days, huh?
  
   
• Did you hear that Plinky is back? It is! I was so disappointed when its developers decided to focus on another project, but thrilled to hear another group recently bought it. However, it’s kinda lame right now. Like, stupid-questions-lame. I’m going to give it a chance, though—its feed is back in my reader. Back in the day, Plinky prompts were frequently awesome.
• Sherilee sent me the link to this fab collection of mojito recipes. Suddenly I’m so, so thirsty.
• I’m totally bummed out after watching Deadliest Catch this week. Y’know, I knew back in February that Captain Phil died, but seeing his friends, family, crew, and the rest of the fleet get the news was just heartbreaking all over again. The season finale is next week and I gotta say, I’m kinda relieved it’ll be over for a few months.
• I absolutely love this quote:

Have a great weekend, folks. Ours will be busy. I’ll try to post again soon.

Jul. 21: Simplifying my simplifying

As I mentioned the other day, I’m going over our entire house trying to get rid of unneeded belongings. My biggest noticeable accomplishment so far has been working through the closet under the stairs; I was able to get rid of three large boxes worth of things, so there’s a lot of extra space in there now. (So much so, in fact, that Jack wants to move into it, à la Harry Potter—I say that’s just fine. I’d love another spare room.) Although going through the garage storage was a bigger accomplishment, there are still too many piles of things to be moved elsewhere to see it as a FINISHED project. But the closet! The closet! Look what I did to the closet!

Another thing I’m proud of is getting rid of about 50 friggin’ bottles of craft paint. You know, the ones that cost about $1 on sale, and multiply, I’m pretty sure, as they sit in storage boxes for years. Those. I tossed all the almost-empties and dried up ones, and sorted the rest for donation or sale. I now own NO craft paints. When I need some, I will buy some. So there.

There have been lots of things like that in this de-cluttering process, and that’s what motivates me to keep going. In fact, that reminds me that I need to contact April about the banker box full (yes, FULL!) of diskettes I found—she works for a technotrash recycling company. I wonder what they’ll recommend for the four dusty laptops in my garage. And the 79 serial cables. And the 326 telephone cords.

One rule of thumb I’ve been applying to this huge task is the I-haven’t-seen-or-thought-about-or-needed-this-item-in-at-least-a-year one. It works—sometimes. But it doesn’t apply to everything, so last night I browsed the ‘net looking for ideas to help us thin down our possessions (especially with Katie, because the screaming doesn’t seem to be working). I found one site that recommended just two rules: the above rule, but with six months instead of a year, and simply getting rid of 10-15 percent of all belongings.

This means that if Katie has 300 stuffed animals, she would chuck 30-45 of them. I LOVE that idea! She does not.

There are tons of sites out there with tips on de-cluttering. But I’d like your help. How do you decide whether or not to keep things? How do you decide when it’s time to get rid of something you’ve had for a long time? Generally speaking, what’s your best advice for de-cluttering?

Winner of the best suggestion gets my undying devotion. You can’t buy that, Pal.

Jul. 19: Worky worky worky

Please read this sentence in your very best impression of Britney Spears or someone with an equally idiotic and uneducated style of speaking:

OK, y’all, I’ve been sooo busy and that’s why I haven’t blogged since Saturday. So stop yellin’ at me, y’all! I’m tired!

Now please return to reading in your normal voice. Or my normal voice. Or whoever’s voice with which you normally use when reading my blog. Do you use someone else’s voice entirely? That’s weird. There could be something wrong with you. Get checked, please.

(Pssst… also, I think you have gonorrhea.)

What have I been so busy with that’s kept me from blogging? I currently have a cleaning bug and am attacking our house with a vengeance. Don’t worry, my bug’s not contagious. Unlike your gonorrhea. (Seriously, you need some penicillin, dude.) Anyway, we got all the way through the garage over the weekend and have tagged MANY boxes for garbage/recycling/donation/sale. Today I worked on the storage closet under the stairs and found tons more to toss. It’s such a good feeling! You know the feeling I’m talking about—the one when you finally decide it is NOT the best idea to set your house afire because it’s so full of trash.

I’m not done yet. I still need to go through our room and Jack’s closet. Jack is very excited to get rid of things because it means he can get more things, or so he thinks. He is not very bright.

As much as I would love to go through Katie’s room, she’s very protective of everything she owns. Yesterday she saw a bag of beads I had put in a box labeled “good-bye!” and she flipped. I told her that I was only getting rid of her plastic, crappy, cheap beads because she has much nicer beads now. She sighed. I told her FINE, if she really wanted, she could pick out the ones she liked best. She brought the bag back to me later with about a third of what I had put in there. Gah. And I’m not exaggerating when I say she has about 3o0 stuffed animals in her room. Is she willing to part with any of them, say, the ones she no longer plays with because SHE IS TEN FRIGGIN’ YEARS OLD??? There’s a Minnie Mouse she says is creepy and she’s willing to get rid of that. Otherwise, no.

If I had hair to pull out, she would totally make me be doing that right now.

I’m not going to get into the whole thing about me being exactly this way when I was little, and how my mom is now laughing her ass off about me having to deal with what she had to deal with blah blah blah. This issue causes so much tension between me and Katie that I have to force myself to sit back and not nag her about it. If I went into her room right now (she’s not home at the moment) and picked 25 stuffed animals off her shelves, I know she’d never notice. But I just can’t do that to her. I want her to know she can trust me. So I’m trying, as much as possible, to encourage her to choose the things she wants to hang on to for now; unfortunately, right now she wants to hang on to everything.

Besides the stress over Katie’s certain future on a multi-episode arc of Hoarders, the simplifying process is going well. I’m excited to be clearing out one Rubbermaid storage box after another, one shelf after another, one closet after another. I don’t know where my energy is coming from, but I’m not going to question it or it’ll get scared and disappear again.

Cleaning. Organizing. Sorting. Recycling. Donating. Throwing away. THAT is what has kept me from posting anything since Saturday. I still need to blog about the American Cancer Society Relay for Life I participated in over the weekend—it was an incredible experience, but I know it’ll take some time to get my thoughts down because I have so many. I am very thought-ful. Not necessarily thoughtful. Thought-ful, like “full of thoughts.” For now, though, I gotta go. I can’t remember if I showered this morning, and even if I did, I am ripe. Glad to know that, aren’tcha?

Jul. 11: Movin’ on up

Busy weekends make me oh-so-tired and oh-so-proud of my productivity at the same time. I got up an hour ago; is it too early for a nap?

Our weekend started early because Victor was home on Friday. We spent most of the day moving furniture up and down the stairs. It was un-fun. The good news is that we have a for-really-and-for-true office again—for the first time in many years—and the kids have the Wii hooked up on the big TV in the family room. Win-win.

We hadn’t planned on starting the move this soon because I wanted to paint the room first. It’s still a dark royal blue from when it was Jack’s pirate bedroom. And while it’s not the color I would choose were I starting this office from scratch, I’ve decided I can live with it because I don’t have the energy for painting right now. I have decided, though, that when I do get around to painting, the office will be a delightful shade of green.

The most difficult part of all our work was moving the armoire from the playroom to the family room. This armoire is solid pine, built by my dad, and in typical Dad fashion, has every kind of support and brace and backup support and backup brace he could possibly have put in. This means that it weighs no less than 127,000 pounds. We took out all the shelves and removed the doors and STILL had a tough time wrangling it down the stairs. As we began to push it, Vic said, “If I say ‘run!’ make sure you RUN.”

Can you imagine? I go through all this cancer crap, but in the end, my obituary says “She died trying to save an armoire.” Because let me tell ya, if that thing fell on someone it would DEFINITELY kill them.

I’m glad to say no people or things were harmed in the moving of the armoire. Whew.

The other challenge was getting my bookcase/desk up the stairs. Thank goodness the desk can be detached from the shelves because they are both huge:

 

See? Huge. Sixteen sections huge. (Mine’s a lighter wood, but I’m pretty sure it’s just as heavy as this one looks.)

At least the bookcase has places to grip (unlike the armoire)—it was actually more awkward than heavy. After a lot of clever maneuvers, it’s in its new place and looks very nice. We added our comfy puff rocker and ottoman to the room, along with a few small pieces of furniture, and voy-ol-ay, new office!

Will it change my life for the better, this new room that’s all mine? I like to think so. But we all know the truth: within a couple weeks my desk will be overflowing with mail, the dogs will have taken over the rocker and ottoman, and the misc furniture will be stacked high with things that belong on my desk but no longer fit. It’s more than a little bit sad that my life is so predictable, hm?

The other big weekend event was that yesterday Jack came home from my mom’s. I was so glad to see my boy! I didn’t think I’d missed him all that much (bad mom alert!), but I guess I had. I kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until he finally wiggled away from me in what I can only describe as revulsion. He looked a lot like this:

The first thing he did was run upstairs to see his new bed, and he was VERY happy with the change. He then ran down to the family room and turned on the Wii so he could play the game Katie bought while he was gone. That’s what he’s been doing ever since.

Katie’s at Mom’s now. It’s so nice when the kids are someplace where I have no worries about their safety or homesickness. They love hangin’ with Grandma Mary and Gilly. (Thanks, Mom!)

It’s cooler today than it’s been most the week, so I’ll probably do a little weed-pulling in the front yard. Otherwise I plan to do a lot of lying very still with my eyes closed in a dark, quiet bedroom. Yes. Good.

Jul. 9: IDCEAYWTPFriday

It’s Friday, and that means you get a post called I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday.

• Summer has definitely arrived in the Northwest. It’s been near 100° here in Portland for several days now. I’m not complaining (because we have air conditioning) but it’s strange after our long Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad spring. I have to get used to getting all sweaty every time I go outdoors. And YES, I had to tell you that.
• Jack has been at my mom’s since Monday. The house is so quiet without all his heavy sighs of “I’m bored!” and the constant bickering between him and Katie and their friends. Jack will come back tomorrow, and then Katie will be gone for a week.
• Katie and I saw Toy Story 3 the other day. We liked it. Did you know that Sid—that bratty neighbor kid in the first movie—is the garbage man in #3? There are all sorts of hidden things like that in the movie. Here’s a nice, long list of them.
• We were hoping to get started on dismantling the playroom and setting up our office this week—it always seems easier with fewer people in the house; why is that?—but Victor was working a late shift and with the heat, neither of us had the energy to do much in the evenings. The only important thing we got done was the one thing we’d promised Jack would happen while he was away: we took down his loft bed and gave him a regular bed again. That ought to make him happier than seeing our new office anyway.
• Katie came home with these shirts after a shopping trip with Grandma yesterday:
  
   
  
  I know, I know… Sunshine and Dina are probably laughing their asses off about the werewolves one. I curse that damn Justice store and all their graphic tees! And I might possibly have to curse my mother-in-law for purchasing these two. Bieber Fever. Gah.
• Last week Sherilee linked to a hilarious site called Catalog Living—“a look into the exciting lives of the people who live in your catalogs.” You gotta read through it a little to get the gist, but everything I’ve seen so far is chuckle-worthy.
• You know what I’m tired of eating? Leftover party food. Thank goodness it’s almost gone.
• I need this print for my kitchen. I do. I have the perfect place for it.
  
  
• Here are the top 50 iPhone apps for moms, according to The iPhone Mom. Less than half of her favorite apps are useful to me, but I’m giving some of her recommendations a try. Of the ones she likes best, I already had iRewardChart, which I love, and Red Laser, which is sometimes handy, plus a few others here and there. I’m so glad Potty Predictor isn’t something I need. So, so glad.
• Here is something I love:
  
   
• And this is something I do not love: I’m going to a funeral tomorrow. I hate funerals, especially the ones for people who were too young to die. A friend’s brother passed away last week after fighting liver cancer two separate times. For those of you who went to WWC/U and remember Aser, Kary was his brother-in-law.
• Yikes. I don’t want to end my IDCEAYWTPFriday post on that bummer of a note. Let’s see… okay, here’s something. I took pictures of the birds who came to drink at our fountain yesterday, and I took pictures of some of our flowers too. Here’s one of our bellflower plants that is LOVING the sun these days:
  
  
  Those are some sea thrift blossoms peeking in behind. I like those too; they bloom for months and months. We have lots of color in the front yard right now, and when the sun shines right on it, it really comes alive. So cheery.

Victor is home (on call) today, so we’re going to enjoy the day together. Buh-bye, and have a great weekend, friends!

May 16: Art, all coffee-like

I was kinda artsy this weekend. Kinda. I finally tackled two projects I’ve been wanting to get to for a long time. It wasn’t that I had a sudden burst of energy, but they were both fun (mostly) and that’s what got my butt in gear.

One project was spiffing up an old, ugly bulletin board to use in our kitchen. I’m not a big fan of the cluttery bulletin board look, but I’ve also gotten tired of looking for important papers the kids insist they put on my desk last week. We’ve been needing a gathering place for those things. I primed and painted the plain wood frame, and then used spray adhesive to cover the cork board with this fabric, which we’ve used in several other places in our kitchen:

I have one small thing left to do before this is finished—I need to glue ribbon or cord to the inside edge to cover up the raw edges of the fabric where they didn’t quite get under the edge of the frame, dammit. Actually, this will make it look a little fancier (if a bulletin board can ever look “fancy”) so it’s not such a bad thing.

Alright, so I probably wouldn’t even bother mentioning this project if not for the other one I worked on, because the bulletin board is kinda lame and not all that impressive. But the other one was a lot more work and it’s kinda like, um, super cute.

I’ve had these coffee art transfer thingies for years and haven’t known the best place to put them. I finally chose a spot and set of colors and got to work.

Step 1: Use a popsicle stick to transfer the outline of the image onto the wall. This is tricky when your walls are heavily textured like ours, and also when the transfers are many, many years old. Victor and I cursed a little over this step, but here’s what it looked like when we finished:

I don’t know why our walls look that taupe-y color in the pictures. They’re actually a nice, creamy coffee color.

Step 2: Paint the center image. I used the colors that are in our kitchen rug: navy, dark red, dark olive, light olive, off-white, and brown. There are nine images total (three of each of the above).

Step 3: Use a popsicle stick to transfer the accent layer to the painted images. Again with the swearing! I ended up doing a lot of touch-up with white and black paint to fill in the spots where the accent transfer wouldn’t transfer. Here’s how three of the images looked when the project was complete:

And this is the whole set:

The place I chose for this art is up high and necessitated the use of a ladder. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows this formula: Jen + high places = certain injury. I only ALMOST fell three times, and have just one blister and three raw knuckles. But no broken bones! No trips to the emergency room! Very few tears! Just lots and lots of cursing!

Apr. 30: IDCEAYWTPFriday

Time again for I Don’t Care Enough About You to Write in Transitioning Paragraphs Friday.

• I kind of resent the Blazer game when it pre-empts my favorite Thursday night TV shows. There, I said it.
• Today’s a cram-packed day. I’ve got Rex Reader stuff to do at school, then a volunteer training session to run, then coffee with a friend, and then setup for Teacher Appreciation Week, the busy-ness of which begins Monday. In between those things I’m printing out a bazillion different types of tickets and labels and banners and signs and announcements for next week. My printer ran out of ink last night, so I also need to squeeze in a trip to Office Depot. At least this is my week o’ energy. If I were try to do any of this on Monday I would probably collapse in tears.
• I had chemo this week. Wrote all about it here.
• One of our TiVos died the other night. The electricity blinked off for a second, and poor TiVo never recovered. It was the first one we ever got, and lasted a good many years, so I shouldn’t complain but I’m gonna. If you have a TiVo (or DVR) then you know how much it changes the way you watch TV. Adjusting to the old fashioned way is no fun, even for a few days. We’re planning to replace the dead TiVo soon.
• You know what gets Sharpie off your fingertips? Hot glue burns! I advise you just take my word for it. Victor and I both got really nasty burns on our hands while working on Katie’s covered wagon project. The good thing is that the project is done and ready to be turned in this morning. She actually ended up doing more of it than it seemed she would in the beginning, so I think she can proudly submit it as her own work, or at least mostly so.
• My cousin suggested I look for a picture of the first Saltmarsh brothers to come to Oregon so Katie could share some of her heritage at school. In the process, I found parts of a journal written by a woman (I think she was my great-great-great grandmother) while on a wagon train from Iowa to Oregon. It was really interesting to read through. Katie went NUTS with pride; it was very cute, like she had no idea anyone in her family ever traveled by covered wagon. Of course, then Vic went on about how HIS family came over on boats, where they had plenty of room and didn’t have to burn buffalo chips for firewood. Those snobby Asians…
• Saturday I’m having my makeup done and getting my pictures taken sans hair. I’m getting oh-so-nervous. I still haven’t decided what to wear, and I have no idea how these photos are going to look, and I’m totally completely freaking out over it. I really do feel like this is something I need to do for myself, though, and if nothing else, someday down the line my baldy pictures will be good for a laugh. Right? Laughing’s good. Wish me luck.
• Speaking of the camera, I’ve been threatening to take pictures of myself like this for a long time, and finally got around to it. Let this to be a lesson to children everywhere: someone who wears their wig sideways and cannot apply lipstick well is someone to avoid. 
  
  
• Something else I learned this week: y’know that long-wearing lipstick that lasts all day and won’t come off no matter what unless that matter is Vaseline? Well, if the only red lipstick one has is long-wearing lipstick, and one wants to wear said lipstick for a very brief time, one should make sure one has Vaseline in one’s possession before one smears said lipstick all over one’s mouth or one will be wearing said lipstick for a much longer time than one originally planned. (‘Twas a scary few moments until I finally located the Vaseline.)
• Today is National Hairball Awareness Day. How are you celebrating? If you can’t think of anything, check out the Wikipedia page on hairballs—you can see pictures of hairballs! Which are not really ball-like at all! And you can read about humans who eat their own hair and then have to have it surgically removed from their intestinal tract! How better to celebrate a holiday such as this one?

Have a delightful weekend, my lovelies!

Apr. 11: Bzzz.

To understand the magnitude of our accomplishments around the house this weekend, you’d have to also understand how little we normally do around the house most weekends. And I’m too embarrassed to admit that, so just use your imagination, alright? But I will show you photo proof of one accomplishment: I took our Christmas cards off the back of our front door.

I hate taking the Christmas cards off the back of our front door. It makes me sad every year, so I always put it off and put it off, and people point and laugh and I don’t care because I LIKE seeing happy, smiley faces on the people I love! I wrote a whole post about this task last year, in fact. In August. Yes, August. And here we are, not even halfway through April and I’ve already taken the cards down. You could say this is me growing, or maturing, or working my way out of my extreme laziness, or maybe I just grew tired of seeing all the happy, smiley faces of y’all. I don’t think any of those things are true. I just done did took dem cards down.

Before:

After:

So boring, I know.

The other day when I did 17 loads of laundry, I was working off the energy the steroids give me the few days after chemo. I guess I still had a little bit of that energy yesterday and today, because I had a hard time sitting still. I did more laundry, ironed an armload of shirts, cleaned bathrooms, organized cupboards and cabinets and closets, sorted piles of mail and magazines, and TOOK YOUR FRIGGIN’ CHRISTMAS CARDS DOWN.

Victor was even busier. He washed the cars yesterday inside and out—my car actually had algae growing on it. He hung shelves in Jack’s room, installed hooks and a couple towel racks in our vanity area, fixed the deck rail boards that had come loose, worked a bit in the yard, assembled an IKEA table, helped me with some cleaning, and did a ton of recycling.

Busy bees, that’s us.

Earlier this evening, the pain I always get when coming off the steroids started to set in. It’s weird how it begins in my jaw area and I can actually feel it slowly move down my body. Right now it’s just below my shoulders. The next two days will suck with grouchiness and hurting. I hate this stage; this week I will most certainly be praising the scientists who invented the wonder that is Vicodin.

And for the next couple weeks, I’m going to look back on this weekend and be glad that I used the energy while I had it to do things that needed to be done around the house. Because if you expect me to accomplish anything worthwhile before I’m back on the prednisone, you haven’t been paying a bit of attention now, have you?

 

P.S. If Fancy Lori™ or Kim F’n start in about the races they ran today—probably before doing an entire weekend’s worth of chores around the house, knowing them—you have my permission to stab them. Sorry, Girls… I love ya, but I’ll never keep up.

Feb. 21: All weekend warrior-like

Do you ever start a project and wonder, after you’ve been at it a while, WHAT WAS I THINKING? Me too!

This morning it was sunny and beautiful outside—warm, even, for February—and I was determined to spend at least part of it outside. The front yard needed some cleanup so I put on my yardwork clothes and got my little speakers set up so Train could accompany me. Train is a very good yardwork accompanist, FYI.

About ten minutes in, I began to curse myself for attempting a project so physically demanding. It wears me out to sit in a meeting these days, and I was doing yardwork??? I’m not very smart, am I? So I ended up taking lots of breaks. Train is a very good break accompanist, FYI. It took me way longer than it should have, but I got the yard cleaned up and it looks a lot better. If you can’t tell the difference, please keep it to yourself. Also, you’re mean.

Even more newsworthy, though, is that Victor and I filled up the back of the minivan with Goodwill donations. This was another task long overdue, but we managed to get rid of tons of the crap that’s been piling up in our garage for months. We also filled up our monster-sized recycle bin, clearing up even more space. It was good. It was hard work, but it was good.

It’s been such a long time since we’ve been outside for more than a few minutes at a time, but the past several days have been beautiful and sunny here. Even though we were working, it was lovely to be out in the fresh air. I noticed a lot of the trees in the neighborhood have begun to bud, and there’s new growth on many of the things we planted last spring. About 20 crocuses have bloomed, the vinca is coming back shiny and colorful, and now that I’ve cleaned up dead leaves and other messiness, there’s little indication that winter was ever here. I love it. We’re not going to think about the plants that didn’t make it through the cold. Nope.

I had forgotten how the cat goes bat-shiat crazy when we’re out in the yard with her. I don’t know if she’s showing off, or happy that we’re out there with her, or maybe she’s like that all the time. It’s hilarious. She’ll spend five minutes stalking a leaf, and then suddenly tear across the yard and “hide” in the vinca, then climb halfway up the tree and tear off across the street. Goofy kitty.

I took a very long nap this afternoon and right now am feeling like a big slug. I waaaay overdid it today, but I still feel good about getting lots accomplished so I don’t mind so much. Tomorrow, when you hear my cursing all the way to Nova Scotia, you have my permission to ask if I still feel good about overdoing it today. You can probably guess what my answer will be.

Jan. 21: Sewing is for the brave

I know I keep going on about my hair, but y’know, it’s my HAIR. Who knew how important it was? I promise, I’ll try to talk about something else soon.

I bought a scarf on Etsy a while ago and really like it—good coverage, nice color, isn’t too tight. Perfect. But I wanted a whole bunch of them, and didn’t really want to spend a ton of $$ on scarves I’ll only be wearing (hopefully) for a few months. Also, most of the other prints available were a little wilder than I like, so I didn’t find much else that would work with my wardrobe. Instead, I got a pattern for a similar scarf and took a bagful of my clothes to the fabric store to match. I bought six different prints with the idea that I would make scarves myself, or better yet, my mom would do it.

I finally got around to setting up my sewing machine last week, only to find that it wouldn’t work. I’m pretty sure it just needs to be serviced, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to taking it in. My mother-in-law suggested I use her sewing machine. But do you know what it’s like to use an unfamiliar sewing machine? It’s a lot like using someone else’s cell phone; HOW DO I DIAL? WHERE’S THE SEND BUTTON? WHICH END DO I TALK INTO?

Fortunately, Darlene included the manual with the sewing machine, so by following six pages of instructions, I was able to figure out how to thread it. The bobbin took longer than it should have, I admit, but the dogs enjoyed the happy dance I did when I figured it out. (My happy dance scared the cat.)

The scarf pattern included too many pieces and assembly steps. I should have known at the beginning that it was a bad idea. It took all morning to sew it, and once it was finished I put it on my head and looked way more like Laura Ingalls Wilder than I ever did when I actually wanted to look like her at age eight. WTF? The scarf was totally bonnet-y! I think it’s still wearable—I can push it down in the bonnet-y part—but I don’t love it. Not a bit.

I had another pattern for a hat/scarf, one more like a do-rag, and decided to give that a try. It’s a reversible hat, and it took me a very long time to decide which two of my fabrics to use. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that. It’s just that, well… it’s a commitment, y’know? What if the prints don’t look right together? True, they don’t have to, but… they should. Oh, just shut up.

The reversible hat was a lot easier to make, but I still hated it when it was done. It’s too huggy to my head.

Can I get a collective curse word here, preferably the really bad one?

Thanks.

Then tonight I had a brilliant idea. I emailed the woman I bought the cool scarf from on Etsy and asked if she could make me more scarves if I sent her the fabric. She said yes. I sure could have saved a lot of time and effort if I’d thought of that first. I’m thrilled she’s willing to make them for me, but I’m still kinda grrr-ing at myself.

For oh-so-many reasons.

Jul. 20: Such sophistication

The kids’ bedroom re-do project has, in a way, moved downstairs. I was really hoping to confine it to the upstairs region of our house, but it turns out that was pure silliness of thought.

Right now there are lots of boxes and small furniture items set in the hallway upstairs, waiting for a closet or wall somewhere for permanent placement, and also making the hallway quite treacherous. Shuffling three bedrooms involves a lot of temporary storage. Much of this storage has been found in the master bedroom, another room I was hoping could remain clutter-free during this project. Ha.

Jack’s loft bed was disassembled without incident, but its reassembly (?) in the new room has taken some time. One side of the bed had a slide, and Jack had begun to think that made it babyish so he asked Vic to take it off. No problem. The other side has a ladder, which is now quite necessary if we want injury-free dismounts from the bed. Vic made the mistake of offering to put the ladder on the slide end, and Jack loved that idea because he likes whatever is more difficult for his parents. I think Loveliest Lori’s boys must have taught him that, as I’ve heard her use that same description for them.

The bed was almost completely together again when Victor realized one entire side had to be changed if the ladder was going at the opposite end, and that meant the whole thing needed to be taken apart again. It was past 10:00 the night he discovered this, so we told Jack he’d sleep on his mattress on the floor that night and Vic would finish the bed the next day. But the next day was busy with other parts of the project, and so was the day after that. Finally, yesterday Vic went in to dis- and re-assemble and couldn’t find the Allen wrenches. We have a nice set—it looks like a Swiss army knife—that’s much easier to use than the single wrenches that come with some-assembly-required furniture, so we rarely hang on to those little ones and use our fancy-schmancy ones instead. Without them, Vic was screwed. Not literally. In fact, literally, the bed was NOT screwed—no Allen wrenches meant no dis- and re-assemble.

The minute we go out and buy another set, the other one will turn up. That’s how it works, isn’t it? But it looks like we gotta. If you need an assortment of Allen wrenches, we’ll gladly loan you one of ours.

With Jack’s bed only partly together, we can’t get the armoire out of his room to move to the playroom, nor can we move his dresser or desk out of the playroom into his room. Katie’s dresser and hanging clothes are still in her old closet (in Jack’s new room) so there is much screaming when she goes in and starts rooting around in his room for her things. I am so so so ready for this whole thing to be over.

On the “done” side, the playroom table/desk is set up in the playroom now, and the kids’ computer is connected and working. The closet in that room has been cleaned out and I have a HUGE amount of stuff from there to take to Goodwill today. Although Katie’s room is far from finished, it’s painted and really quite pretty—she keeps saying, “I love it so much I just want to squeeze someone!” (Please don’t be like Lennie please don’t be like Lennie please don’t be like Lennie…)

So how did any of this end up moving downstairs? Some of the most fragile items were put in the living room to keep them out of the way during the transition. The other day I noticed that they were all mostly musical—Katie’s electronic keyboard, recorder and ukulele, and Jack’s snare drum and bongos have all been placed near the piano. Add my flute and Katie’s microphone to the mix, and we’re the freakin’ Partridge Family!

In the interest of all things sophisticated, we’ve decided to call that corner of the living room the conservatory, or my preferred term, “conservatoire.” I know, I know—we’re way classy. Because as owners of a fancy set of Allen wrenches (that cannot be found) AND a conservatoire, well, we must be the envy of just about everyone. You’re jealous, aren’t you?