Not A Lot

I haven't quite figured out how I can feel so busy but not have a lot to show for it.  We've been back from the beach a week as of tonight.  I stepped into the whirlwind of day to day activity but can more readily list what hasn't been done than what has been done.

Mainly, nothing has been done on the bedroom redo.  We are planning to go this weekend to get some sort of underlayment necessary for the tile.  So no flooring progress at all this week.  I've also done nothing on the decor other than walk by the rolls of fabric in the hall and think about how fabulous it is going to look one day.  I'm not sure when that is going to start either.

My mother is having cataract surgery on Monday.  We had promised her that she could stay with us as long as she wanted while she recuperated.  She still can, but someone won't get a bed.  I'll go over to her house and stay a night or two, maybe longer.

Then on Friday, my mother, sister and I leave for Raleigh to visit my other sister for the weekend.  We are going to watch my 6 year old special needs nephew play his final little league game of the year!  I'm incredibly excited about that trip.  

We will be back late Sunday because my local sister is leaving for a medical mission trip to Malawi on Wednesday.  She thinks she needs a little time to get ready.

So far, I've refrained from telling 65MD that since he'll be a bachelor for most of a week, the floor should be finished when I get home.  I don't want him giving me ultimatums on the curtains, or duvet cover, etc.  And I'm really OK with the state of things, other than my mother not being able to stay.

I am glad that we are able to do a lot of the work ourselves and taking time is part of the price paid for DIY.  

I am glad that we have a comfortable place to sleep while the work is being done.  It is almost like a vacation at home.  

I am glad that I can go see my precious nephew play ball and not be encumbered by a deadline.  

I am glad that doctors can remove cataracts and improve vision.

I am glad that my mother is healthy enough to undergo surgery.  

I am glad that I can work from anywhere, even her house.

I'll take 'not a lot' of progress any day.

Back from the Beach

65MD and I have returned from a glorious beach stay.  We went to Ormand beach, which is just north of Daytona beach.  By 'just north' I mean, that at one intersection on the main highway, one side is Ormand and the other side is Daytona!  My family had gone to Daytona when I was a little girl and I was curious as to how many of my childhood memories were accurate.

There is no way to prove how many pink hotels were there when I was a child.  Hotel color was very important to me and my sisters. Judging by the accuracy of my memories of the beach, I think my memory of hotel color is spot on.

I wasn't able to enjoy playing in the surf since it was so strong and I had to be constantly planting my feet hard to keep my balance.  It was painful on my hips.  It was OK since the water was still very cool.  The sand near the surf is quite hard packed so it was easy to stroll up and down the beach.  That was more important to me anyway.  I'll play in the surf once both hips have been replaced and have healed.

Our hotel had a pool and I was most happy in the pool doing my therapy.  That was the place where I was most pain free.  Some of the exercises tweaked my left hip a bit, but other than that, I was pain free.  It was wonderful and enough to make me research getting a membership to a pool this summer.

We had a wonderful time of being lazy and enriching our vitamin D!!!

Hello

Just dropping in for a quick "Hello" so that everyone knows I'm still here.

I had a cousin in town for a long weekend from Thursday until today.  Of course, I had to spend every spare moment with her.  We got pedicures and went to the used book store.  Woohoo!  We enjoyed ourselves so that is what matters most.

Not much progress on the bedroom.  65MD took a day or two to recuperate and now he has some administrative duties at school so things are at pretty much a stand still right now.  That's OK with me.  I'd rather have a healthy, employed husband than a new bedroom.  It will be done eventually and we'll love it.

Bedroom Impossible

Once we got in to the job of the new flooring, 65MD realized that the subfloor was going to have to be replaced.  By subfloor, I mean pressed sawdust.  That stuff is thick and once the outer coating is broken sawdust goes everywhere.  We did not take the precautions we did with the hardwood.  Dusting is going to be a major issue when this job is finished.  I am thinking of having a dusting party once this job is complete.

Here are a few shots:

The mess, that was once the subfloor

The lining for the comforter.

This shot does not do this fabric justice. It is a tone on tone red pattern that IMO is gorgeous.  Of course, I think it is hard to go wrong with red.

Comforter & Pillow Shams

If this looks a little Crimson Tide, it is because that is what I had to do to get 65MD to agree to the whole color scheme.  There are a couple more swatches for curtains, bedskirt & throw pillows.  And my new favorite, a braided rug from all the fabrics.  I'll post them as I get to those parts of the project.

Another Wacky Wednesday!!

Say it isn't so!  I had another series of unfortunate events yesterday.  Wacky Wednesday actually started on Monday, when I woke up with a toothache.  

I was able to see the dentist right away due to a cancellation.  Since my hip replacement, I cannot have any type of dental work without taking antibiotics beforehand.  Obviously, I had not.  However, he was able to do something to alleviate the pain and buy me a little time.  From what he could tell, I had either bruised my tooth or the tooth is going bad.  His gut said the tooth is going bad, knowing the history of that tooth.  If he is right, I'll need a root canal and new crown.  Time will tell.  If the pain returns, I have a dose of antibiotics now and a referral to the endodondist so I won't have a delay.

Then yesterday happened.  As I got dressed, I sat down on the bed and heard a clunk.  It sounded like a slat falling out.  Only we don't have slats under our bed.  I thought maybe it was the bed settling or something since we had just moved the frame over the weekend and thought nothing more of it.

I saw the surgeon after waiting an hour, only to learn that I will definitely need surgery.  This time, though, I will be able to have the surgery a little more on my own time.  In the meantime, we are trying some new pain meds.

When I got home, 65MD was already home and we were discussing the best way to use our afternoon.  Before we could operationalize our plan, he noticed that the structure holding up our mattress had come apart.  (The noise I heard & ignored.)  We have a sleep number bed.  With those, there is a box-like structure underneath the mattress rather than box springs.  It is an ordeal to move the mattress with the air hoses and all that involves.  But we had no option.

65MD called the sleep number folks and they offered to send a new structure.  He didn't want that because it would take several days and we needed a place to sleep tonight.  He's pretty good at engineering things to make them work so he re-engineered the structure so that it will never come apart again.  The only thing was we had to go to the hardware store for a couple of small braces.

We went together, planning to pick up my new pain medicine on the way back.  It was during the worst of the afternoon traffic and the car overheated.  65MD whipped into the nearest parking lot, which is where my medicine was so that was a good thing.  He knew that eventually the radiator was going to have to be replaced.  He was stalling until the bedroom project was finished.

We went in the store and got my medicine along with two gallons of water.  We got home and parked the car.  Now, I am stranded at home unless 65MD drives me.  (which is fine with me, I hate to drive!) I'll probably be stranded until early next week,  Graduation is Saturday and until then 65MD won't have time to make any repairs.

Now that I consider it more, yesterday wasn't so bad after all.

• The dentist had a cancellation and I could go right away
• The dentist could alleviate the pain even without my pre-meds
• There is surgery to replace my hip and I can say when I want it.
• There is medication to help me through until that time.
• The car broke down, right where we needed to be.
• I have a husband that knows how to fix stuff and does.
• I  have a husband that will drive me wherever I want/need to go.

Life is good!

Stress!!!

April is Stress Awareness month.  Who knew?  Not me until recently.  In keeping with the theme of the month, I thought I'd share a bit about my own relationship with stress.

I think I was born anxious.  If not, I developed anxiety early in life.  I know stress and anxiety are not the same thing, but for me anxiety led to stress.  Even as a little girl, I wanted everything to be just so.  I wouldn't quite call it perfectionism, that came later.  But if things were just right in my little world, I became anxious and then stressed.  My coping mechanism at that time was to cry.

As I grew and matured, I learned it wasn't a good idea to go around crying all the time and learned to cry when I was alone.  That is probably when I learned about stress eating.  Being young, and active and having a kid metabolism, it didn't manifest itself until later in life.  Even then, I was able to exercise most of it away.

In college, I chose a high stress major and career - accounting!  Maybe being an accountant isn't as high stress as a brain surgeon, but people can get very stressed when they get bad news about money.  I loved making presentations to the board when times were good.  When they were bad, that was another story indeed, especially when there was a 'kill the messenger' type on the board.  Working for myself from home has alleviated much of that stress.  Still, with my personality type, I found stress in other areas of my life.  

In trying to lose weight and put an end to the emotional eating, I'm looking for other ways to ease stress.  Just a few that work for me are:

• Taking a grown up time out - just walking away from the computer screen if it is work and doing something else for a few minutes.  Since I am at home, I can load/unload the dishwasher or something like that.  When I come back with fresh eyes and a fresh mind, I can sometimes see the solution that I could not before.
• Taking a bath - this one is generally reserved for evenings although I could take a bath in the middle of the day.  I discovered this when my father died and I was an emotional wreck for months!  Sometimes, 65MD would gently suggest that I have a bath when it got so bad.
• Scheduling free time - or more like time away from work to do something else like sew or read.  Right now, it is scheduling time to work on the bedroom project.
• Going outside - this time of year is so refreshing to me. I love the rebirth that spring brings.  I love the more relaxed nature to summer, and I rarely get too hot.  (I don't do this so much in the winter time.)  Feeling the sun on my face for just a few minutes makes those worries melt away.  I just discovered a NY and NJ health insurance company called Oscar that rewards their members for going outside and just taking a walk with their Misfit program. Every members gets a fitness tracker and sets their own step goal. Whenever they meet their steps that day, they earn $1 and receive cash reward each month.  How cool is that?

Has anyone got anything they have discovered that works for them?  Leave a comment.  I'd love to know.

Bedroom Activity

I wonder if that title will get me a lot of hits!!

This weekend we moved back into the front bedroom so that we could dismantle our bedroom.  We decided to bring the new mattress to the front bedroom with us.  It is a queen sized mattress and the bed is a double, so we had to move the frame too.  Let's just say it was an ordeal and leave it there.  It was worth it though.  We sleep much better on the new mattress.

Now the carpeted area in the bedroom is almost empty and ready for action!

65MD thinks it will take about 3 days to get the carpet up and tile in place and grouted.  There has to be a certain amount of curing time, which will work out fine since he's still giving exams and calculating grades.

The great divide

This is where the original hardwood ends and the 'new' construction begins.  We haven't quite settled on what sort of threshold to put in.  It can't be seen in the pictures, but the hardwood is not level all the way across.  Something will have to be done to camouflage that.

The bedroom tile

As often happens in home improvement projects, we decided to upgrade the bathroom as well.  It is right off the bedroom and really needs a redo.  It won't match at all.  We both already know that the hallway will be next.  This could be the summer of the house redecorating!

Bathroom tile

And just for fun here is a shot of the art I was given and proudly took home.  It looks great in the living room.  (Which is a good thing, or else, I'd have 65MD in there painting!)