Finishing up July…

It’s been just over a week since the house emptied out, though we did have Olivia and Samantha on Thursday.  Mostly we’ve been putting the house back in order and trying to make the best of the garden.  Weather went from hellishly humid to pleasant, but only enough rain to stir the dust up.  You can catch up on the garden at Growing Every Season.

Anyway, I had been hoping to get away to Asheville and meet up with some cousins and see Michael Franti, but babysitting duties called and we were just too tuckered out to load up and travel.  I was there in spirit, though…

 

I was a little grumpy about it, but Casey started right in with a Major Project, one we’ve been talking about for ages.

You see, you have to step out of our kitchen door and walk about 15 feet to our laundry room.  This can be a real pain in the ass.  We built on a screen porch, then built a kind of walkway between the porch and the door, but over the years, it has proved to be less than adequate.   We’ve stared and figured a dozen different ways to make it work, and recently agreed just how it should be done.

 

In the end, it will be like a greenhouse, but right now it looks pretty shabby.  I’m excited to have it done before winter, but it will take at least a month of Casey obsessing…

…which added to my grumpiness, since we’ll have to stay home the whole month.  Not that there isn’t plenty to do just eating tomatoes…and there are no less than a dozen bell peppers that need to be harvested,

 

 

 

So the old wise woke woman sat down and made a list of things to do around Eville, places to visit that I haven’t seen in a while, or upcoming events.  I was rather surprised that there is so much to do!  I also listed the activities I love to pursue in solitude:  playing the piano, practicing yoga, reading, writing, and listening to music and singing along with my favorite songs.   There’s some good cooking and grilling to be done this time of year, as well.

August is going to be a sort of on-the-road-retreat kind of month…  Never a Dull Moment…

 

Peace

 

Going back home…

Our flight is scheduled to leave LaGuardia at 1:59pm…  We’re flying Delta and I’m hoping they’ve overbooked this flight so I can pick up a couple of bucks waiting for the 5pm flight.

But I’m a little homesick.  It’s been a hectic 2 weeks….

I don’t quite know how to express how I’m feeling about the situation here in NYC.  I’m not sure I really understand it myself.  Please consider if you can contribute to Eric’s Medical Fund.  It is very much needed and appreciated.

do know that I’m going to be having a blast with my grand-daughters—all 4 of them–this summer.  Six weeks seems like a long time, but it will fly by, so we’re going to fill up each day with memories to cherish forever.

The theme of Camp Sonnystone this year is “Music”…

mu·sic    ˈmyo͞ozik/
noun
vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.

 

We’ll throw in painting, picnics,  crafts, swimming, and field trips.   Seeing my trashy hometown through the eyes of the girls will help me put a new shine on it, and the farmers markets, the festivals–even the heat and humidity– will be an adventure…

 

 

 

In the picture…

I am reveling in this time with my grand-daughters so much that I’ve not taken many pictures.  Instead, I’m  trying to embed the memories into whatever gray cells are still functioning in my old brain, being right here right now.  Still, there’s this nagging voice saying:  Blog this…   Here’s what I’ve got:

 

July 8

July 9

Cousins Day

 

The Original Cousins
The Original Cousins
Bob & Ruby would be so proud...
Bob & Ruby would be so proud…

 

July 10

Melissa will take off early tomorrow morning to stay a few days in Indianapolis and for Emma to compete in a Feis (Irish Dance Competition) while I head back to the track for more Live Racing.  They’ll return Monday and we’ll have 11 straight days of festivities.  We’ll be in touch so we can see as many of you as we can.  Till then…

Some B&A…

I’m still not completely done with the upstairs preparations, but since the Jose’ fam won’t be here till July I’m not in a big hurry.  Here’s the so-far…(all of the “befores” are first, duh)

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But the biggest change was downstairs, dining room…

 

 

As you can tell, I moved the hutch…

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You can imagine moving all that, dishes and stuff, rugs and even curtains.  I’m sick of it.  I was glad to get away to the BluesFest last week and now I feel “moved in”.

One more B&A, then I’ll let you go.  Remember the trees Vectren killed and said they’d come back and cut?  They came out last Friday and did the work—It looks soo much better:

Rainy Friday…

With dozens of projects to choose from, top priority was given to cleaning and rearranging our upstairs rooms.  As I was moving this and arranging that, I decided to move a chest of drawers to my closet downstairs and suddenly  my closet  moved up from off the list to top. Seems like it took forever to get it cleaned and organized —It’s those things that keep a person from having time to sit and blog.

Today, however, I’m returning to the original priority and the sound of the steady rain on the roof makes it a cozy place to work.  Husband has been working 10-hour days, but is home today to help schlep, so I’ve got to get to work…  Just so you know, here’s the Before…

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It’s a great rainy-day project…

3 more days…

I have soo missed you…  In addition to being overwhelmed by too many unfinished projects here at home, I’ve been struggling to meet the end-of-school deadlines at work.  I still am feeling under the gun, but I figured I could at least write a quick note to explain myself.    Wednesday is the last day of our 2012-2013 school year;  I am ready—taking in treats today for the 8th graders, tomorrow for the 7th graders, and Wednesday the PTSA treats me!!  I always get sentimental on Class Day, but forget about it in, oh, say 5 minutes?  Weather and other intrusions have slowed my gardening, but it’s nearly all planted.  Opening the windows of the house was such joy…until it blew the dust into a storm and necessitated a day of cleaning.

I will be doing live daily blogging again this summer, with several projects planned,  so I hope you’ll get back in the habit of checking in…

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Before & After

I am wide awake at this ungodly 3am hour, trying to catch up…  We’ve had waay too many projects going on, all of them unfinished, and before I had thought through the plans;  to sum it up…I feel completely out of control.  Shall we share?

The Kitchen Project…

It all started with the floor.  While I was in NYC the last week of March, Casey began laying the vinyl.  It was still wintry, if you remember, and he was called out to work several times, delaying the finish.  There was a filthy closet that we painted and re-organized and we were inspired by bright, white paint to panel a damaged wall, then continued to cover the backsplash…  (by the way, Casey took before and after pictures of the flooring with the old digital camera and I cannot seem to find a way to get them off the damn camera;  later, maybe).

Before..
Before
After
After
Before
Before
After
After

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We plan to eventually paint, but suddenly Spring sprang and we ran outside to work in the gardens, saving the rest for a rainy day…

Vectren killed my trees…

I knew the utility crews were going to be trimming soon, so I wasn’t surprised when I came home one afternoon saw them out front;  I was shocked when I saw that they had topped my trees!!!  and if you think mine are bad, you should see what they did to several neighbors.

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I’m accustomed to the unsightly hacking that goes with keeping branches off of the electrical lines, but these people just cut off the tops of trees that were nowhere near being a hazard…and if you’ve ever been to a Master Gardener class with Larry Caplan, you have heard his recurring sermon that topping trees Kills Them—they get their nourishment from their Tops!  I was sick about it and we knew we’d have to just cut them down.   Friday, a fella came by from Vectren, apologizing and assuring us that the crew that had gone on a topping-spree had been fired.  They will send another crew out to remove the dead timber…  That’s okay with us, but I surely feel for the neighbors who lost more…

Debit-card fraud…

I wasted hours at the bank thinking someone had gotten my card number…contesting charges from one of my favorite haunts…changing over to a more protected card…then discovered that Backstage B&G had sent a notice on facebook informing us that their processor had failed to process some gratuities from February and March.  Why didn’t the bank catch that??  Oh, well, I’m much safer now, but I accidentally screwed the bar out of $13.  And wasted my time.

New gas grill…

I don’t have a picture, but we got a new gas grill.  It’s an “infrared” grill, so there will be some adjustment.  Just to add to my confusion, Casey brought the grill inside to set it up, where it cluttered the floor for several days…

Garden project…

I’ll elaborate more about this over at the garden blog:  we’re moving the fence around the veggie garden, adding a new gate, new planting boxes…major, major renovation…

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That’s your final “before”…for now.    So we’re caught up…I’ll do the dishes and get to sleep…

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where I’ve been…

7pm

I’ve been feeling so tired and crappy lately, and that twinge under my shoulderblade is back, racing down my arm to my fingertips unexpectedly without provocation.     I’ve given in to the napping and applied the heating pad…and I’ve been reading a lot of blogs instead of writing them.

When I read some of the stuff over at wordpress freshly pressed, I can only grade myself with a C.  I know that many of them aspire to be real, paid authors, but it’s amazing how good people can write..for free…Just because they really, really like to write.     Of course, there are groups of bloggers who become fast friends, sharing the same hobby or philosophy;  more deserve to become financially successful than actually achieve it.  I’m just in it for the fun of it, and reading others’ work is as fun as writing it…almost.  But I’ve got to bring up my grade…

The kitchen is still a bit torn up, and I’ve felt a little pressure to get it finished and get outside, so I welcomed the rains which eliminated the distraction.  We have a 3-day week-end (thanks to not using our Snow Days) and we’ll hopefully be finished up by Sunday.  I am bad at the before part of before-and-after, but I’ll try to explain how much better it all looks in a future post.

In the meantime, back to the heating pad…

marching on…

YaYaYaaY!!!   TGIF and Spring Break!!  I know, I know…the weather sucks.  But it’s the last week of March and warming temps can’t be too far off.  I hope…

I’m leaving Monday, flying out from Nashville to NYC;  returning Saturday, 6pm or so.  While the weather won’t be ideal, there shouldn’t be any rain…   I’m just so excited to be there, who cares?   While I’m gone, Casey will be installing new kitchen flooring.   We have some Big Plans for some painting and carpet and the kitchen is our Kick-Off project.  I forget to take “before” pictures, but I bet Casey will remember.

In the meantime…  I had seen a really cool French Country sideboard/hutch kinda thing down at the consignment shop.  It’s 76″ long and I pictured it in the dining room, but… I would have to move tons of glassware and do something with the hutch I’ve got and  it was pricey.   The consignment shop lowers prices every 30 days and as I checked in monthly, I noticed it wasn’t selling…until finally it was down to 50% off and and extra 10% for writing a check.  Still…I just couldn’t justify changing all that dining stuff around…when it dawned on me… how about using it as a desk??:

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This still entailed some moving around of desks and wires, setting some dust bunnies free, and I’m still working on the shelves.  I like it…