It costs money because it saves money

For someone who lives in a place that is highly affected by the weather, I tend to be largely oblivious to it before it happens. Every morning I say, "Alexa, what's the weather today?" so I know what I can or should wear to work, but I'm always surprised by the answer.

I mean, not surprised as in "shocked." She doesn't tell me the day's high and low temperatures only to have me go bug-eyed and say, "WHAAAT???" But I don't pay enough attention to the forecast that I'll have a general sense of what she's going to say before she says it. I'm more reactive than proactive.

"Oh, it's snowing in the mountains? Sweet, I'll go ski tomorrow!"

Saturday I was having a lazy day, just kind of dicking around doing laundry and watching sports. I looked out the window at one point in the afternoon only to realize that there were 3 inches of snow on the ground and it was supposed to continue through the night.

"Huh," I though. "I guess I'll go shovel the sidewalk."

That's when I realized how cold it was. A good day to shovel and then go back inside to chill out.

It stayed really cold.  And then this morning when I got up to go to work, I went to brush my teeth and when I turned on the water nothing came out.

"Hmm," I thought.

I checked to make sure I hadn't forgotten to pay my bill. Nope - no problem there.

I went down into the cellar to see if there was flooding or anything overt. Nothing looked unusual.

So I called a plumber.

"Do you think my pipes are frozen?" I asked.

"Could be. Why don't we come out and take a look."

"I need to go to work. Could you do an afternoon appointment? Is it ok to leave? The house isn't going to blow up, is it?"

I have no idea why I asked that. I'm really not a ditz when it comes to home repairs.

"You should be fine. Leave one of the faucets on - maybe they will thaw out if it gets sunny later."

So I left a faucet on, and figured that if I needed to, I could stay in a hotel if I didn't have water for a couple of days.

I was talking to my mom about it as I drove to work.

"Ugh, the house is so old, I figured something like this would happen eventually. It'll probably cost me thousands of dollars."

"Well, I hope it's not that much," she said.

"Remember Moonstruck? Plumbing costs $10,000." 

Everything I know about plumbing I learned from Moonstruck.

"But do you have copper pipes?" she asked.

"In fact, I do. I checked!"

I got to work and went about my day. I spent many hours in meetings where people yelled, sometimes at me. I went to truancy court. I tried not to think about getting home to burst pipes and water everywhere.

Some people at work said that a lot of times when pipes freeze, it's no big deal. You just have to wait for them to thaw. I actually felt very zen about it.

But then I got home and turned on the faucet. And water came out!! And the faucet that I had left on upstairs was running. Huzzah! It was a huge relief.

And I'm convinced it worked out because I had copper pipes, just like Cosmo said I should.

Rhapsody in Blue

I live in a 122 year old house that I adore, but which is undeniably a work in progress.

She needed new floors. New configuration. New bathrooms. A new kitchen. New paint.

Slowly but surely, slowly but surely, I'm making her pretty again.

Bringing color to the house is a huge part of that. Color brightens my mood. Color is life.

From drab and dingy whites and greys - not to mention some truly godawful wallpaper - I have painted every single room in the house. My room is turquoise and citron. The kids' room is wasabi green. My bathroom is sage green. My workout room is coral. My hallway is yellow. My living room is lavender-grey. My kitchen is orange.

But the exterior of the house was depressing. I've been wanting to repaint the exterior for nine years. But painting the exterior of an old Victorian, that's very tall with a very steep pointy roof, and all kinds of detail, is expensive. I couldn't afford it for a long time.

But now I can.

I hired a company on the recommendation of a friend. When the owner showed up at my house for the initial consult, he had stars in his eyes when he knocked on my door.

"Your house is so beautiful!!!" he gushed.

"She can be," I grinned. "That's where you come in."

"I have ideas," he said.

"Tell me," I said.

Turns out we had similar ideas. I wanted something dramatic and elegant. I wanted the door to have a pop of color. I wanted the front porch to not look like it led into a crack den.

They started painting last Monday. We started here:

That house is the color of despair and old bras. And there is no color I despise more than that dark maroon/burgundy on the window trim.

We made progress. The kids came home from school the first day and called me in a panic.

"MOM WHY IS THERE HAZARD TAPE AROUND OUR HOUSE I'M SCARED!!!"

 

It took a little longer than anticipated. We had a few days of rain. And as Ray, the painter, said, "your house is the most dangerous house I've ever painted."

 

But she is beautiful now.

I returned home from work last night and could not stop grinning. I just stood there, smiling. I love everything about it. It makes me so happy. Color makes me so happy.

Now, on to replace some of the baseboards in the dining room....

Get with the gravy, Davy, everybody eats when they come to my house

Since getting home from work yesterday, and with slight detours to make the kids dinner, put them to bed, and then get them up and off to school this morning, I have spent approximately eleventy billion hours organizing and cleaning and putting things away in the new kitchen, and also reassembling the dining room.  And sweeping and vacuuming and dusting and sweeping some more and vacuuming again and wiping away dust and dust and more dust.

Good lord, the dust.  That fine, silky grey construction dust that feels like it regenerates itself the minute you pass a cloth over a surface.

A part of me wouldn't have been at all surprised if Dorothea Lange had shown up with her camera to capture it all for posterity.

But it's mostly put together.  I'm still thinking about where I might move this thing or that category of stuff to make everything more functional, but for the most part, it's done.

And even though living through the construction was kind of a drag, I have absolutely no complaints about my contractor or the guys who did the installation.  Every morning they showed up at 8 and worked all day and every evening I came home from work and progress had been made.  They said it would take three weeks, and it took three weeks. It cost what they quoted me.  They were meticulous about making sure everything was the way I wanted it and they cleaned up their messes and they were polite and friendly.

I love it so much.  The old kitchen was dingy and felt dark and cramped and cluttered and ugly.  The new kitchen is so bright and spacious and functional.

Out with the old and fug:

Northwest corner/north wall

West wall

Southwest corner

South wall

East wall

In with the new and beautiful:

Northwest corner/north wall

West wall

Southwest corner/south wall

Southeast corner/ East wall

North wall, view into the living room

View of the breakfast bar from the living room (I'm getting bar stools this weekend)

Those of you who spent time in my house in Atlanta will recognize the orange on the walls.  The color is called Colorado Dawn - I couldn't resist using it again.

The new space makes me want to read through cookbooks and come up with interesting menus and plan parties. I have visions of bustling around, drinking wine and chatting with friends while I make saffron chicken & rice or a Passover brisket or cherry-apple pie.  Or of making pancakes for the kids' breakfast while dancing around listening to music.

So when's everyone coming to dinner?

Rescue me

After all of the sadness and gloom, let's talk about something happy, shall we?

My house is a shit show.

Two Czech guys named Mirko and Andrej are in my kitchen making lots of banging noises.  Neither of them is wild and crazy; rather, they are polite and workmanlike and efficient.  There's nothing worse about construction than coming home and having everything look the same day after day, without any sign of progress - that's what happened with my Atlanta kitchen.  But every day, I come home and it's different.

The night before. Everything is cleared out.

The cabinets get delivered.  They sit in the front parlor.

Everything that was in the kitchen is now in the dining room. I'm living out of a mini-fridge and cooking via toaster, microwave, and electric skillet.  Which means I eat out a lot, because if I cook at home I'm washing dishes in the tiny sink in the bathroom.

Day 1. Demo.

Day 3.  Running the gas line to the other side of the room.

Day 5. Assembling the cabinets.

Day 7. Prepping the walls to hang the cabinets.

So everything is proceeding apace. There's no reason to assume that it won't be completed on time, in another two weeks.   

But in the meantime, I'm living in what feels like squalor.  The one room downstairs that was relatively habitable was the living room, but once the guys used the front parlor to assemble the cabinets, all the furniture in there was moved to the living room, so it's totally crazy now.  I am not a particularly neat person (I've gotten much better as I've gotten older, but it just doesn't come naturally to me the way it does to some people), but even I have my limits, and I passed them a week ago. T

To keep myself from going completely insane, I have kept as busy as possible.  Want to grab a drink? Dinner? Movie? Sure.  Want to come over and watch basketball? Most definitely. Will you come babysit? Yep. 

 Seriously, I'll fold your laundry or vacuum your car or walk your dog. Anything to be out of the house.

Our house it has a crowd, there's always something happening and it's usually quite loud

I was really worried that the noise was going to prompt the neighbors to call the police.

It was about 3 in the morning and we were outside in the driveway with a circular saw, cutting pipe and ceramic tile and pieces of hardwood flooring.  And it was so, so, gratingly loud.  Crazy loud.  How was it not keeping everyone on the street awake??

I had returned from the Home Depot in Decatur a little while earlier (back when it was open 24 hours) to buy copper piping and a soldering kit so that we could extend the gas line to where the stove was supposed to be - I had been informed that it was already in place, but when one of the guys crawled under the house to check, there was nothing there.  So I handed tools through a hole in the floor to Tim, a 20 year old kid who was lying on his back in the crawl-space dirt under the house in 30 degree weather, while he used fire to connect pipe to more pipe so that I would have gas to cook with .  And then I handed him a spray bottle with soapy water in it, so he could spray the line and see if bubbles were forming, indicating a gas leak that could potentially blow us all up.

Good times.

A bunch of the other guys - who I had begged and pleaded, with all of the feminine wiles I could muster, to come and work through the night in order put enough of the kitchen in place to allow me to cook dinner the following night - were hanging cabinets and doors and tiling the counter-tops and putting down the flooring.  But someone had sneaked in a bottle of bourbon, so most of them were working while they were drunk.  And despite my repeated and increasingly frantic phone calls, the general contractor was totally incommunicado.

Oh, and in about 10 hours, I was due at the airport to pick up members of my family, who were coming to Atlanta to spend Thanksgiving at my house.  My mother was serving in Papua New Guinea, so I thought it would be nice to host the family in her stead.  My maternal grandparents were on their way, my dad, Josh and Lori and Emma (who was 2), Sam - everyone.  And if the kitchen - which was being built from scratch out of my old carport - wasn't done enough for me to cook Thanksgiving dinner in it, I was completely screwed.

I worked with the guys until about 5:30 in the morning, and miraculously, we got it done.  The stove was installed and hooked up to the gas line, the cabinet doors were hung, the plates and cookware and utensils were put away, there was a countertop on which I could chop vegetables and make pie crusts.

There was only one small problem, other than the fact that I had been training to run the Atlanta Half Marathon, and now wouldn't be able to because I was too exhausted.

In installing the stove, the guys had somehow lost the caps to the gas burners - those little flat disc doohickeys that sit on top of the burner and direct the gas around the sides of the disc to create a flame circle.  Without those caps, the gas wasn't directed over the igniter and the burners wouldn't light and no stovetop cooking could be accomplished.

The drive to the airport from my house took about 40 minutes.  And I spent every second of that 40 minutes on the phone with the head of the contracting company I had hired, going absolutely ripshit about how if he didn't find new caps and get them on the burners by the end of the day, I was going to take the check for the remaining $10,000 I owed him and burn it and he could sue me and no jury in the world would rule against me because of what he and his company had put me through, between the AWOL contractor and the drunk workers and me helping them connect gas lines and lay down hardwood flooring at 4 in the fucking morning.

He believed me.  And found new burner caps.  And I cooked Thanksgiving dinner and it all went off without a hitch, except for the part when I made cranberry jello mold but forgot to cook the cranberries first, so it was jello with hard, sour berries mixed in, which made it pretty much inedible. Live and learn, right?

The kitchen ended up being beautiful.  The layout was amazing and I loved cooking in it.  The walls were painted a gorgeous dusty orange, the color of a Colorado sunset.  But the process of building it left me scarred.  I still have PTSD-ish flashbacks thinking about it.

Which makes me nervous about embarking on a kitchen renovation in my 120-year-old Victorian, which has lathe-and-plaster walls (that emit dust if you look at them funny), no square corners and no straight lines.  It's going to be a mess.

But the kitchen is awful - the layout is horrible, the cabinets and counter tops are old and gross, the wallpaper is seriously fug, and it doesn't even have a dishwasher (or room for one, as currently configured).  It needs to be redone.

So I will stock up on bourbon, which will be used to maintain my own sanity, and will not be shared with any workers.  And I will have extra burner caps on hand, just in case.

Color me happy, and why it's good that painting doesn't involve sharp objects

As part of my "dealing with the utter shittiness that has been 2014" campaign, I've been painting the interior of my house (I'll do the exterior next summer).  When we bought it, we painted the hallway and the dining room because we reconfigured the walls, and we painted the bathrooms when we renovated them, but everything else has stayed the way it was when we bought it.  I decided to repaint the walls, one room at a time, on the weekends that I don't have the kids.

The colors upstairs - or lack thereof - were particularly depressing.  My bedroom was the palest, most barely noticeable shade of light light blue-ish grey ever, which meant that the room simply looked like someone painted it white a million years ago and left it to get dingy and dusty.  Plus there were spots where the plaster walls had cracked (or had lost chunks), so I had filled them in with spackling plaster.  It was seriously fugly.

So I started with my room.  I chose a beautiful turqoise-y blue called "Cloudless," because it looked like the color of Emma's room.  I wanted something that reminded me of her, but in a cheerful way.

The difference was astounding, and made me astoundingly happy.

See what I mean about how it wants to be white, but just looks dirty?

Ahhhh... so much better.

I adore the way it looks now.  It gives me feels.  I wake up and look around and am instantly in a good mood.

But of course, it's like getting a tattoo.  Once you start, all you want to do is paint more more more.

My room has an adjoining smaller room/alcove.  I had a chaise longue in there and a painted chest that my mom got me in Romania, but I never used it (the room, not the chest).  So this past weekend, I decided to turn it into an office.

I picked out a beautiful yellowy green color called Citron that I thought would look amazing against the blue.  I moved everything out of the alcove, put some college football on the TV to listen to while I worked, and started painting.  It was freezing and snowy out, so it was the perfect day to stay in and warm up the walls of my house.

Feh.

Love.  The color doesn't actually look that neon-y in the light of day - the overhead light is causing that effect.

The view from my bed in the light of day.

It's so, so beautiful to me.  It feels happy and cheery and home-y.

But wait...

Yes?

What's that spot on the floor near the door?

Oh, you mean the spot on the carpet that is the same color as the walls?

Yeah, that.

Oh, right.  Funny story, that.

When I painted the main part of the bedroom, after I had done the entire room, I waited a couple of hours and then went over the walls looking for spots where the coverage wasn't great, maybe because I had missed a spot with my brush or didn't press down hard enough with the roller or whatever. There were a couple of spots above the entrance to the alcove that needed some touching up, so I put a little bit of paint on the underside of the lid of the paint can and went up the ladder with my brush.

Of course, at this point, I had mostly cleaned up, including putting away the drop cloth.  The paint can was resting near the base of the ladder.

As I came back down, I wobbled a little bit and put my foot back abruptly to catch myself...

and ended up stepping backwards into the can of paint.  While wearing socks.

It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened.  Why did my foot feel gooey?

Then it was a flurry of me pulling my paint-soaked foot out of the can, sloshing paint on the carpet, pulling off the sock and throwing it in a panic into a big cardboard box that I was using for trash, and then sitting on the bed trying to figure out what the fuck to do about the fact that there was bright blue paint all over the floor.

The answer, of course, was "nothing that would make a damned bit of difference."  I scrubbed and scrubbed, but it's unsalvageable.

But the truth is, it's shitty carpet and I've wanted to replace it anyway, so now I have an excuse.

Right after I finish painting the other rooms upstairs.

Milestones

The bathroom is done!

The guys finished the heavy-duty work (laying the tile, moving and reinstalling the toilet, installing the vanity) last week.  That left the weekend for J and me to finish the rest -- painting the underside of the tub, painting the walls and building and installing the tall cupboard -- and then clean up and admire our handiwork.  The results are beautiful.  It looks exactly like I wanted it to.

BEFORE:

Ew.  Dingy and ugly.

Double ew.  I fucking hate that burgundy color.

Who doesn't line the sink up with the mirror?  Morons, that's who.

Oy.  Words fail me.

Disgusting industrial carpet GLUED TO THE FLOOR. 

Who goes to pick out tile and bathroom accoutrement and comes home with this??  Morons with no taste, that's who.

AFTER:

Ahhh.

Pretty and bright.  I adore that tile.

Hey!  Look at that!  I can stand in front of the sink and see myself in the mirror!!

So clean-looking.

Love.

I finished the Ultimate Reset!

I survived 21 days of super-clean eating (it was vegan the last two weeks), plus taking supplements to boost my oxygen levels, get my system to its natural alkaline state, get rid of toxins, and promote the growth of healthy flora in my digestive system.  There were definitely days when it was very difficult to stick with the program, not because I didn't enjoy the food I was eating (it was DELICIOUS), but because occasionally I grew tired of the regimen and I just wanted a bagel.  But I stuck with it, and my results were awesome.  In addition to losing 9 pounds, 2 inches off my hips and 1 inch off my waist in 21 days, I have more energy, my digestion is better (more regular, very little gas, etc.), my sleep is deeper and more restful, and overall I feel healthier and leaner.  And I learned how to prepare simple, incredibly nutritious, flavorful and satisfying meals using ingredients and seasonings I had never cooked with much (who knew jicama was so good? or tempeh? or roasted beets?). 

Going forward, I plan on continuing to use many of the recipes from the meal plan, though I will not eat a fully vegan diet.  I enjoy my eggs and greek yogurt, and I rarely eat meat anyway, so having it occasionally (in combination with lots of fruits, veggies and whole grains) is fine.  I will continue to take the oxygen, alkalinity and metabolism-boosting supplements, because I felt they were highly beneficial.  And I will do a full 3 week reset 2 or 3 times a year.  It was so worth it, y'all.  If you're interested in trying it or have questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

Zeke ditched the training wheels!

When my dad was visiting last month, he bought Zeke his first big-boy bike.  Zeke had been using a balance bike without pedals and had gotten great at it, so he was unquestionably ready for a real bike.

But at the bike store, all of the kids bikes come with training wheels attached, and Zeke went with my dad to pick out the bike.  As soon as he tried riding it around the store, he was hooked.  I was dismayed, because he didn't need the training wheels, and I told him so.

"Honey, you know how to balance without the training wheels!  You did it on your Skuut all the time.  Let's take off the training wheels."

"NOOOOOOOO!"

I didn't want to make the bike a point of contention, and I knew that he would get rid of the training wheels eventually, so J and I didn't push the issue (much).

Then this past weekend, we met up with Zeke's friend Connor at the park.  Zeke took his bike with the training wheels.  Connor came on his bike that doesn't have training wheels.  After a few minutes of riding around and seeing how Connor could really zip around corners, Zeke asked, "Connor, can I try your bike?"

Victory.

So I took Zeke out into the middle of the field, where there is grass that would provide a soft landing, held the back of the seat as he started to pedal, and then let go.  His muscle memory kicked in and he took off, balancing perfectly.  I think his big, wide grin might have been visible from space (as was mine, I'm sure).

As soon as we got home, we took the training wheels off of Zeke's bike.

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky

Last week I was having a lot of achy muscle pain in my upper back, between my shoulder blades, and in my hips.  Achy achy achy.  Even when I would lie down in bed, it hurt.  I tried stretching, I took advil, but nothing seemed to be helping.

A, uh, friend of mine has had a bunch of surgeries, illnesses and injuries over the years for which he was prescribed pain meds, but he often doesn't take them.  So I asked my friend last Thursday night if he had any leftover pain medication that I could take for my back.

"No, but I've got a lollipop you can have."

A medicinal lollipop, if you catch my drift.

"Meh.  Nah, I'll just deal."

As the evening went on, however, I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

"So that lollipop thing.  Will it help me?"

"I don't know.  It'll help you sleep and probably make you forget the pain."

"OK, what the hell."

Now, let us step back to examine the sheer idiocy of this move.

I am barely a drinker (most of the time, if I have a beer or a glass of wine, I don't finish it) and I am definitely not a pot smoker or a user of any other drugs.  So my body is not at all accustomed to stuff that could make me loopy.  I've smoked pot a few times in my life, but I never really enjoyed it - rather than make me mellow, it just made me exhausted and often queasy.  Whatever it is that kills nausea in cancer patients so they can get some food down, it has the opposite effect on me.  Plus, I have no doubt that whatever I had a few puffs of over the years did not approach the strength or purity of what my friend gets at the dispensary, particularly the strength and purity of stuff designed to be ingested rather than smoked.

But there I was, blithely consuming this lollipop, which, as I have now learned from the University of Google, was strong even by the standards of regular THC consumers.  I ate it, then I went to bed.

I really do question my own sanity sometimes.

I went to sleep and felt fine for a while.  Then I half-woke up and just felt kind of buzzy.  Not unpleasant.  Then the buzziness got stronger, and my head and my limbs felt inordinately heavy, like I was lying in molassas, and I started to feel queasy. 

By 5 in the morning, I managed to lurch to the bathroom to puke up whatever I had in my stomach.  I lay on the bathroom floor for a while because it was too much effort to get up.  After 20 minutes, I got up and went downstairs to try to drink some water.  I wasn't able to hold it down, and then went to lie down on the couch because the stairs were too daunting.

J came downstairs to get ready for work at around 5:30.  He was surprised to see me up, and also a bit alarmed by the fact that I was grey in the face and had broken out into a cold sweat. 

"Duuuude,"  I moaned.

"What's going on?"

"That lollipop killed me.  I am so unbelievably fucked up and sick."

"Really?"

"I'm OK if I lie here with my eyes closed, but when I open my eyes, I want to throw up.  Sitting up is unthinkable."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

He continued puttering about getting ready, and then started walking toward the door.

"NOOO!  You can't leave me!"  I wailed.

"What are you talking about?  I have to go to work."

"I cannot take care of the children in this condition.  I can't drive them to school.  If I showed up like this with them at school, the teachers would have me arrested.  Please."

He sort of huffed around for a few minutes, but texted his boss and got the OK to come in late.  He got the kids up and fed and dressed.

Poor Zeke was horrified by my condition.

"Mama!  What's wrong?  Are you sick?  Why are you throwing up?"  His eyes were wide and he kept coming over to rub my face. 

"I'm OK, honey.  I've got a bad tummy-ache, but I'll get better, don't worry.  Daddy's going to take you to school today.  Be a good boy and I'll see you later."

Luckily, that Friday was a flex day for me, so I didn't have to go to work.  I lay back down on the couch when J took the kids to school.

Then the window guy showed up.  He, too, was horrified by my condition, but I waved him off when he suggested that he could come back to install the windows on a day when I was feeling better.  So I dozed all day, with intermittent bouts of vomiting, while our new windows were installed.

It was 2 in the afternoon before I could sit up without puking.  It was Sunday afternoon before all traces of the queasiness left my stomach.  Seriously - I'm that much of a light-weight.

J called me Friday afternoon to check on me.

"Hey, baby.  How ya doing?"

"I'll live.  Not feeling great, but I'm not throwing up any more, so there's that."

"Hey!  Guess what?"

"What?"

"High Times magazine called.  They want to put you on the cover and nominate you for Stoner of the Year."

"Hmph."

No way, man.  I'm scared straight for sure.

On lacrosse, training wheels, mortality and home renovations

It's been a very hectic time, one of those periods when I constantly feel like my head is spinning and I can't keep up with everything that's going on.

MIL left, but then the following weekend, my dad came to visit.  On Friday night, we took the kids to see Virginia play lacrosse, which was fun (especially since they won).  Zeke and Josie had no idea what was going on, but they dug all the clapping and cheering and the fact that we basically let them have popcorn and Skittles for dinner, and they jumped around hooting and hollering "Goooo Virginia!!!"  and had a blast.

The next morning, my dad got Zeke his first big-boy bike.  We knew he was ready for it because he's been riding a balance bike and knows how to stay up.  Except that in the store, the kids' bikes all have training wheels on them, and once Zeke got a little taste of that, he was hooked.  We are trying to work with him to prepare for taking the training wheels off, because he absolutely doesn't need them, plus when he has them, he's not particularly safe to ride with.  He doesn't pay attention because he doesn't have to - there's no risk of falling.  He and I were riding our bikes home from the ice cream store down the street, and he's stopping suddenly to look at dandelions and randomly slowing down and speeding up and remarking "hey!  It's the number 10 bus!  That's the one you ride, right, Mama?"

I almost crashed into him about 5 times.

I know we could just take the training wheels off the bike when he's not around and spring it on him, but he'll seriously lose his shit and I would prefer to have him ready for it.  So we'll see.

In any event, we spent the entire weekend riding bikes, and it was incredibly fun.

In the meantime, the week before, all kinds of other stuff was going on as well.  Last Thursday, I achieved the next rank up in my Beachbody business (I'm a diamond now, sparkly bling!!), which is pretty sweet.  More money, more perqs from the company, more opportunities to grow the business further.

But then Friday, I learned that an old high school friend of mine died (he had been a quadriplegic since junior year, and I think his body just gave out), and that the brother of a close family friend had lost his 3-year bout with brain cancer.  So sad.

And this week, we're gearing up for some big home renovations.  We're getting some new windows put on the house (right now, only 2 windows in our 116-year-old dwelling open), and that's happening this Friday.  About a week or so after that, we're having our upstairs bathroom redone.

Let me tell you about our upstairs bathroom.  It is the poster child for the shitty, cheap renovations that the previous owners did.  I can't even decide what the worst thing about it is.  Perhaps the fact that they painted over the gorgeous trim (and the outside of the clawfoot tub) with paint that resembled dried blood?  There are few colors in the world I despise more than that dark burgundy.

Or perhaps it's that they glued disgusting industrial grade carpet to the floor?  In a bathroom???

Or maybe it's that they took old beadboard wainscotting and covered it up with cheap ugly tiles, which don't line up properly and have huge gaps behind the toilet because whoever installed it was was either drunk or on crack?

No, what really takes the cake is that they put in a cheap vanity, surrounded it with vile gold-colored plastic soap holders and the like, AND COULDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO LINE THE SINK UP WITH THE BUILT-IN MIRROR.  So when you brush your teeth or wash your face or something, you have to lean over to the left to see yourself.  (Plus there's that HEINOUS light fixture - ugh.)

Honestly, any one of these things would be awful on its own, but in combination, I swear this room could win a prize for worst renovation EVER.

We are ripping out the disgusting carpet and replacing it with black and white mosaic tile.  We're getting rid of the crappy-ass wall tile and putting the beadboard wainscoting back, and painting the top of the wall some bright, pretty color (haven't decided yet).  We're moving the toilet over so we can get a nice vanity that lines up with the sink.  We're repainting the trim and door white, and having the clawfoot tub restored and re-enameled in white.  The bathroom will be worthy of the house again.

So that's me in a nutshell.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

My brain is pulled in too many different directions right now.

Moving day is Monday.  We're incredibly excited, but also getting stomachaches thinking about all the work that there is to be done, both in preparation for the move itself, and generally on the house.  We've knocked out the walls at the top and bottom of the stairs and are putting in new flooring.  We're putting in a closet under the stairs and reframing under the stairs to vault the hallway to match the line of the staircase.

The front entrance hall

That carpet and wallpaper are a crime against humanity.  Or at least against good taste.  And what the hell were we supposed to do with that space between the staircase and the wall?  Use it as a dedicated time out spot for Zeke and Josie??  Also, you can't see it in these pictures, but there was a wall and door at the top of the stairs that created the entrance to the upstairs apartment.

That brass fireplace hardware is heinous.  The fireplace doesn't work anyway, and there are so many restrictions against burning wood in Denver that it's not worth getting a mason out to rebrick it or whatever.  So we're going to eventually put in a gas fireplace that's black or grey metal.

Here's the progress so far:

That used to be a wall and a door.  It was visually and physically jarring to suddenly confront a wall at the top of the stairs, plus it completely chopped up the space.

That back ledge under the stairs will be taken out so that the entire hall into the back room vaults along the same diagonal as the front.

I will never understand why people put carpeting over beautiful wood floors.  But the wood is so old and trashed now -- all buckled and bowed and bent -- that we have to cover it up with new flooring anyway. That should be done today or tomorrow.

There are boxes to pack before the movers come, cleaning to do, a bed frame to order (J and Zeke trashed ours jumping up and down on it).

And yesterday I enrolled Zeke in preschool.

And tomorrow is Josie's first birthday.

And I've got a week left of Insanity, and then I go to another high school reunion (for my school in Israel).  I timed that one well, eh?

Everything's changing.  But I guess life is like a shark -- if you're not moving forward or changing, you're not really living, are you?