Plugging Away

Jess is momentarily out of work, so he decided to stay home today and help me in the basement. We managed about 4 hours of work down there, and that did me in. Jess however, being a tough old geezer, went out and tilled his garden and mowed a little grass. He must have ate his Wheaties this morning!

We got two sections of shelving cleared out and rearranged. There are three levels, about 25-inches deep, and each section about 4-feet long. There was a set of bookshelves on top of one section with a bunch of stuff too. AND an unbelievable amount of stuff sitting on the floor in front of the shelves.

We took all of that outside, sorted through it, decided on a more-or-less permanent disposition of the items, then put the stuff back. We had a lot of leftover and never used paint and some gardening stuff in that area. Not to mention extension cords, old tv converter boxes, and what-not.

There's a couple of boxes by the door now for the "give-away" stuff, and a bunch of boxes of foot-square floor tiles I'm going to see if I can sell on Craig's List. I don't see any of us wanting to crawl around putting these tiles down on the basement floor. I actually got them thinking I'd use them in a bathroom or the kitchen, but a nice vinyl flooring was so much easier to put down!

So here's what it looks like now:

I'm glad I took before and after pictures, because when we were done for the day, it was hard to see what we'd accomplished. Jonathan helped me put it into perspective though by telling me from the square surface area, we'd cleaned out an entire room!

However, one thing is painfully (literally!) clear. It's going to take a long time to finish this project considering all the space and how many sets of shelving there are in the basement and that I can only clean in shorter periods of time. No all day cleaning sprees I'm afraid!

I'd hoped to finish it within a month. It's obvious that isn't going to happen. I guess I can live with that as long as we keep it a priority and keep chipping away at it.

I want a clean basement and a nice smelling house!

What's That Smell?

First off, I can't believe it's been 12 days since I last posted. We've been home some time since my last post of April 20th, having motored back the 24th & 25th of April. Last week was "catch up" time, trying to get caught up on all the stuff that was not done the 9 days we were gone.

And of course, one of the bad things I noticed when we got home was the smell. It's one of the banes of my existence. I'm sure it's the first thing anyone notices when they come to our house, and wonder, "What's that smell?"

There's no getting around it, the house stinks.

Of course, when we're here all the time, we get used to it and don't notice it so much. But after being gone a while and coming back... oh yeah, it's still there.

I have tried air filters of all sorts - ionic, HEPA, charcoal. The carpets have been shampooed. There are air fresheners sitting around all over the house, and scented oils.

All those things help, but it's a temporary fix. The smell may seem like it's gone, but it always comes back.

I've about come to the conclusion that one or both things are at the bottom of this smell. One is the carpet. It's been here since we moved in and looked a little worse for wear even then. We had problems with cats spraying some places, and they were put outside and the carpet then cleaned with stuff that was supposed to remove the cat urine.

And maybe it did. The smell doesn't really remind me of cat.

I think it is more likely the basement is the main source of the odors. It flooded several times before we got it fixed. No telling what kind of mold is growing underneath the paneling or inside the blocks.

And it has lots of cardboard boxes. Many of these got damp. They are probably still drawing dampness. More mold/mildew and odor.

I've done a lot of research into getting odors out of a house, but I just recently found something that may actually do the trick. It was used in New Orleans to remove the black mold and other mildew and smells from houses. Of course, they would tent a house and fumigate it. But now you can buy packages that do one room at a time. It's supposed to be non-toxic, but at the same time, it's still supposed to get rid of all the molds, mildews and odors.

So I'm on a mission. I've enlisted the help of the two J's here. The game plan is this:

• Clear the basement of all cardboard - everything in cardboard boxes needs to be put in plastic bins if it's worth keeping, or given away or thrown away.
• Once the basement is cleared out and cleaned up, time to "bomb" it with this stuff to kill all the nasties and odors.

Of course, the upstairs needs "bombed" too. I even read that it's a good idea to do the attic at the same time to get rid of any problems there.

We got started on the project this past weekend, and Jess had quite a bonfire burning up cardboard boxes that were already empty or easily emptied. We bought our first batch of bins to get started on sorting. We got rid of a bunch of plastic grocery sacks that have been accumulating for a long time by taking them to be recycled. We have a place fairly well cleared out for a "staging area" as we sort things into categories of give away, recycle, throw away, or put in a bin to keep.

This is all a lot of work. LOTS. And it's not exactly cheap either to buy a bunch of plastic bins and to buy enough stuff to clear the entire house of any molds, mildews or odors. But I'm tired of being embarrassed for anyone to come to our house.

Somehow, we've got to get this work done. I don't want the first thing someone wonders when they walk in our house to be, "What's that smell?"

The Best Laid Plans

To adapt a line from a Robert Burns poem, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” That certainly seems to be the case around here lately. Yesterday could have been a case study in things gone awry!

Example #1 – I went to a twice deferred appointment with my doctor to FINALLY get my bloodwork and a couple of spots burned off my skin. I’m not sure we got all the right bloodwork ordered because my regular doctor is on bedrest due to pregnancy complications and I saw someone filling in for her. Trouble is, she didn’t leave explicit instructions on my chart, so not sure what all bloodwork was supposed to get done. As for the skin problems, I’ve got to have a biopsy on one, and I have to go to a dermatologist to do it. Obviously, that appointment didn’t turn out as planned!

Example #2 – I got the bright idea to switch the thyroid med I’ve been taking prescribed by the Fibro Clinic and have my regular doctor prescribe an equivalent. I take two different kinds and the one I’ve been getting at the pharmacy here is only $4 so figured it would be cheaper to get the second kind there also. Well, I figured WAY wrong. Turns out even though this is an “old” drug, no one makes a generic and the insurance won’t pay for brand names.

Example #3 – I stopped to buy the pecan trees for Jess yesterday. We looked at them on his birthday but weren’t sure which to buy. When I stopped to get them, the nursery had got a new shipment in, and they cost on the average of $5-$25 more than the old ones. Oh well!

Example #4 – Jonathan and I have been working on my office. Despite the fact I made a graph of the room, then little to-scale blocks for each piece of furniture going in there, when we started putting stuff in there, it didn’t work out quite like it did on paper for various reasons. We had to make several adjustments!

Example #5 – And do you know what happens when you work on a bigger home project? The rest of the house goes to Hades in a hand basket as stuff gets moved out of the room you’re working on, and you’re spending all your time on that one project and no time to do everything else. ARGH!

However, even though many plans had to be adapted, it isn’t all bad. I don’t have to go to the dermatologist for about 3 months, which will give me time to get through Jess having his knee surgery and rehabilitation.

And the office, wow! I’m really started to get excited about it. Anyone who’s ever been to our house is NOT going to recognize it by the time we’re done. I wish I’d thought to take a picture before we started. It was a catch all room, with piles of stuff everywhere. It’s really starting to shape up, and by the time we get finished, it’s going to be a great place to work.

I’m really eager to get back to work, too, but probably won’t make it for another week. Jess has surgery Monday, so that day is obviously full. Not surprisingly, he’s pretty anxious about this surgery to replace both knees, to the point his “nerves” are causing lesions on his hands. It will be good to get through the surgery, and start the rehabilitation part. I know that won’t be easy, but at least he’ll know he should be getting better every day after that.

Hopefully, plans will shape up for a while without so many glitches!

Let There Be Light!

I mentioned in the previous post that Jonathan put up some new solar lights along the sidewalk. I went out to the mailbox while he was working on it, and took this picture on the way back - got to sneak pictures in, because he's worse than I am about having his picture taken!


The soil was so rock hard beside the sidewalk, he had to soak it with water before he could pound the stakes into the ground for the new lights.

We need to check the old lights now, and see which ones are still good, but just need new batteries. Even rechargeable batteries die after a while, and that's all these have in them.

There's always something needing done!

Weekly Updates

It seems like I can’t get around to posting on this blog more than once a week lately, so here’s the updates for the past week:

Aftermath from my fall: I’m still waiting for my finger to heal up. Kind of a nuisance when trying to lift anything or write. Typing isn’t so bad, thankfully.

Blog & Internet Updates: Two steps forward, one back. Learning more, but didn’t get as much done this week as I’d hoped. I put in a lot of hours studying this week, as two sources of information I’m using will be closed after the first of July, so it’s my last chance to glean all I can.

Social: My good friend, RR, came to visit this past week and we exchanged goodies. I had gathered up a bunch of yarn for her, and a few other tidbits. She had made some new curtains for our bedroom out of some fabric I had, and hemmed up a pair for the bathroom. What a great friend!

Weather: Still no rain worth mentioning. It got dark a while ago and did a lot of thundering, spattered a few drops… and moved on.

Household: Jonathan and I had planned on doing some staining today, but we had to wait until Jess was done trying to repair a leak with the fridge. It’s wedged back into a little cubbyhole, and it takes two people to move it out. Even with both of them, they had an awful time getting it moved. There’s not much room to work in or a good way to grab it, so moving it is difficult. Ended up I had to totally empty the fridge and freezer (it’s a BIG side-by-side) before they could manage to move it.

The other problem was the wheels didn't seem to be working, and the vinyl flooring was bunching up underneath it.

Anyway, since I had to take everything out, it didn’t make any sense to put it all back without cleaning the inside and the shelves first, so that’s what I did. With all that activity, our staining project kind of went by the wayside.

The Surprise for this Week: Got a call from The Phantom Son (aka Randy), who is coming to visit next weekend!!

And that pretty much sums it up for this past week!!

A storm door for the front entrance!

Over the holidays, Jess worked on installing storm doors on both the front and back entrances. The one on the front was more expensive and heavier, so he had Jonathan help him lift it into place.


Jonathan held it up while Jess secured it to the frame.
It took Jess two days to get all the right tools and get the door fully installed. He declared it's just as well he doesn't do it for a living! However, he did a great job, and here's what it looks like all set in place -

It's a really nice door. There's a screen that pulls down from the top when you want to allow air to flow into the house. When not in use, the screen rolls up into the top of the frame so you have a clear view the rest of the time.

And hopefully, it will make the entrance more weather proof and help the utility bills!

Going Green for Christmas

Richard called yesterday to wish us all a Merry Christmas, and one of the things we talked about was decorating for Christmas. Or to be more precise, my LACK of decorating for Christmas.

A few years ago I bought an artificial tree on sale at Lowe's after Christmas. It's about 4' tall, with fiberoptic strands that turn different colors, and a string of miniature lights. It costs all of $20 if I remember correctly.

This year, I put a Christmasy tablecloth over a teacart (family heirloom - not something I'd go out and buy!) and had Jonathan carry this little tree up from the basement and plop it down on the cart. Jess found an extension cord for it, and Viola! I was finished decorating for Christmas.

Okay, so the tree isn't exactly 'going green' for Christmas, but I've had it for years, so I used it. But take a look at the packages. You won't see any fancy Christmas wrapping paper there!
No, instead I used the paper bags that you put frozen groceries in to keep them from thawing out while you finishing shopping and an old roll of priority mail tape. Not to mention reusing some plastic bags from stores, and a pillowcase or two.

No fancy paper, no bows, no lights or other decorations all over the house. We didn't use up a lot of throw-away wrapping paper or electricity. Instead we recycled paper bags, and used very few lights. We conserved trees and energy. We 'went green' for Christmas.

It has nothing to do with the fact I just didn't feel like decorating. Or that I was maybe a bit of a Scrooge. Nope, we were doing our bit to 'go green' and help the environment.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Home again in TN!

It was a long drive home. It took longer to get home than it took to drive down to Florida, as there was a lot heavier traffic on the way home, and it was raining off and on all day. There wasn't a ray of sunshine all the way home today, and many times traffic was at a dead stop.

It's good to be back, except I've already started thinking of all the things I need to get done. Some of them, like yesterday!

Groceries head the list. Mother Hubbard's cupboard is bare.

Then there's finishing up a calendar, getting to work on the stuff I need to do for helping the Fibromyalgia, thinking about Christmas, and the list goes on and on.

Break time is over!

Beginning Another Journey

No, I’m not talking about taking another trip/vacation, although we are going to be headed to the Orlando, Florida, area soon for a Thanksgiving visit with Jess’s daughter, her family, and his oldest son. And that’s good, as I haven’t seen them in a long time. Jess has visited a couple of times this year, but with family scattered all over the US and Canada, sometimes we go our separate ways for visits. Simple economics – one plane ticket is half as cheap as two.

Anyway, the journey I’m talking about is more like a new segment in Today’s Trek, my life’s journey. We all have choices in our life every day, but sometimes we come to a bigger crossroads, where we need to make a radical turn in our journey and change things. I feel like that’s where I am right now.

I’ve got all sorts of changes I need to make for my health. My new doctor has prescribed all kinds of supplements to correct several problems, like a deficiency of certain vitamins. Some are only a temporary need, some I may have to take on a long-term basis. My biggest problem with all that is the fact I am the world’s worst at remembering to take ANY pills. The only way this is going to work is if I can manage to establish some kind of routine.

While I’m figuring that out, I also need to make other lifestyle changes, including my diet. I’m not talking about “going on a diet.” That’s a stopgap measure, and so many studies have shown people eventually go off a diet and gain back all the weight they lost and often more. And no wonder! Who could stay on The Grapefruit Diet or any other deprivation diet on a long-term basis?

No, I’m talking about a lifestyle change, going back to eating more healthy foods. When the kids were younger, I was a sort of “health food nut.” We grew away from it, and that’s too bad.

It strikes me that on the whole, people take more care about what they put in their automobile than what they put in their body. We worry more about what we feed our pets sometimes than what we’re feeding ourselves. Yet we’ve only got this ONE body, and to borrow a geek phrase, “GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.” If we feed our body junk food, sooner or later it’s going to be a junky body, prone to health problems.

So, my journey needs to take a new direction, with more emphasis on healthy habits.

While I’m at it, I’ve also been thinking about CHAOS, another facet of my present lifestyle. There are several factors at work. Take two packrats and combine their households, with stuff left behind from kids and from previous marriages, then add yet another household when one of the kids moves back for a while… that’s definitely a recipe for CHAOS.

It doesn’t help my health slows me down, and I don’t suppose a single day goes by that I don’t wish I could have accomplished more. Sometimes I think about all I need to do and it’s positively overwhelming. But you have to start somewhere, and I think my somewhere is going to be using some of the routines I’ve been reading about by the “Flylady” for organizing your home and life.

So for the next few days, while I’m working on Ellie's 2008 calendar, my hyperactive mind is going to be mulling over the possibilities, sifting and sorting, looking for the best way to restructure my life. A tall order, but I think a necessary one. I need to change direction, try to improve things, go for the gusto!

Wish me luck!

The Perfect 30 Recipes

Okay, maybe not perfect, but I’m looking for 30 recipes that fit the following criteria:

a) The food has to taste good.
b) It not only has to taste good, it has to be healthy for you.
c) The recipe must not only make tasty and healthy food, it has to be EASY TO FIX.

Finding a recipe that makes something that appeals to everyone in the household is the first hurdle. By now I pretty well know what everyone likes, so that’s not so hard, though it's by no means a given that every recipe I try will suit everyone.

However, it’s much harder to find something that not only tastes good, but is also healthy to eat. "Healthy" food is pretty subjective, but I’m trying to eliminate as many chemical additives as possible, little or no sugar, and low-sodium.

And the final killer problem is finding a recipe fitting those criteria that is also easy to fix. I need to figure out what I’m making for supper first thing in the morning, because by evening, I may not feel like cooking. Pain and fatigue levels can fluctuate greatly.

That best recipes are ones for the crockpot (aka slow cooker). I can put the ingredients in there in the morning, sometime after my body is fully functioning (as much as it ever does), and hopefully before I’m too tired to cook. Even on days the pain and/or fatigue levels are high, that’s the easiest meal preparation available for healthy food. Otherwise it’s too tempting to fix the quickest thing I can think of, whether it’s healthy or not.

I figure with 30 recipes, I could rotate them so we’d have something different for dinner every day for a month. In other words, we’d only eat the same thing 12 times a year, instead of eating some of our favorites 2 or 3 or 4 times a month. I’ve already found 2 or 3 new keepers, plus I have some old favorites that fit the criteria, but I've got a long way to go.

30 (Almost) Perfect Recipes. It may take a while, but I’m gonna find them!

Could somebody clone me please!???!

Just be sure to tweak the genes a little, or whatever it would take for the clones to be absolutely HEALTHY. Or maybe instead of clones, androids or even just robots that can do housework and other chores. Yeah, that’d do it.

I just finished my snail mail for the week, which is down to 8 letters at the moment, and I’ve been looking at my “To Do” list – all those irons that are either already in the fire or need to be – and wondering how I can possibly get this stuff done. Here’s a sample:

* Get some pictures from Alaska properly sized and uploaded for prints to send my Dad. He’s requested some because he “only took 200 pictures and he figures I took more.” (That probably qualifies as one of the understatements of the year, hee, hee.)

* Get rid of 3 buck goats that are the present bane of my existence. (See story at Rural Ramblings for details.)

* Sort through materials from Fibro Clinic and come up with a workable plan on how to implement all the stuff I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve barely made a dent in it.

* Finish clearing out the spare room to make a space for Ellie to sleep in just a little over a week. (Can’t wait!) I made the mistake of starting to put stuff from the office in there, thinking we’d “upgrade” the office next, but that project is going to have to go on hold a little while.

* Finish my project of making a space for photography equipment on a set of shelves between the living room and dining area.

* Get cracking on the 2008 Ellie calendar. I’ve barely started and need to have it done the first part of November!

* Continue clearing stuff out of house by either giving it away or selling it on eBay.

Well, I could go on and on. I see the turtle’s tank needs topped off with more water. There are always dirty dishes, laundry and trash to deal with. (We must be the trashiest people! We’re always carrying bags of trash out!) The bird’s cage needs cleaned. I need to do some baking. I need to clean house. I need to…

I need to do more things than I can manage, but once again, I’m not sure which ones to cut out. Guess I’ll just keep plugging away!

Sure could use those housecleaning robots though.

A Vacation from Cooking

I’ve done all the cooking I’m going to do for the next 10 days. Is that cool, or what??!!! I’ll fix a bowl of cereal for breakfast tomorrow, maybe a sandwich or something else easy for lunch, and Friday night is “date night”… so that’s it, no more cooking for TEN DAYS!!!

Of course, I made a huge pot of vegetable soup today, which we had for supper, and Jess can work on eating that up while I’m gone. The fridge, freezer and pantry have some easy-to-fix foods in them, and if all else fails, there are lots of restaurants in the area.

But as for me, someone else is going to be fixing my food!!!

Couch Elevators

I have a little tilt-top desk for my laptop computer in the living room. It’s handy when I don’t feel like sitting at the desktop, since I can kind of lounge back a little and lean on my left side, instead of bearing any weight on the right side where it hurts.

The only trouble with this set-up was the height of the couch. It was way too low, with the bottom brushing the floor. Getting up from the couch took a lot of effort. In fact, a crane would have been useful.

To help the situation, some months back I got the bright idea to buy some risers to put under the couch legs. This particular set was adjustable from 3 – 5”. They sat beside the couch for months. Why? Well, there are end tables to each side of the couch, a love seat on one end, and a bird cage on the other. In other words, moving the couch to put those risers under the back legs was a major undertaking.

Yesterday I was a little crazier than usual and decided it was time to elevate the couch. I moved the little stuff off and away from it, and called up reinforcements for the heavy lifting. Jonathan scooted the end tables out of the way and we got the couch moved forward, away from the wall.

Have you ever moved a piece of furniture that has been in the same place for years? And that is too low to the floor to allow any sweeping underneath it? And further, one where a parrot has decided to build a nest between the back of the furniture and the wall?

Baby perched on the back of the couch.

If not, then think a mixture of dust bunnies, shredded paper, fuzzed up carpet and feathers. Add a few old plastic “icicles’ from Christmas’s past, a few stray pens and barrettes, and other odd items making a magical, mysterious… mess.

First I used a broom to sweep up larger pieces. Then we used a vacuum to get the rest. Once the carpet was again visible in all places, we checked out the risers and adjusted them to the highest level. The labels said they could support 300 pounds. Hmmm, is that each one, or altogether? (Hint - the answer is altogether!)

The inner protrusions that held the top half of the riser in place didn’t look very sturdy. Jonathan and I kind of looked at each other and said, “We’d better test this.” I had dire visions of my favorite little bird doing her explorer thing under the couch when it suddenly collapsed and squished said bird. Not a pretty image.

After adjusting each riser to the highest level, we put one under each couch leg. Test time!

We sat.

For a few seconds all was well, then WHUMP! The couch was tilting at a crazy angle and two risers had collapsed so that the couch frame was resting on top of them.

Now what? Can’t leave the couch with legs at two different levels, so only one thing to do – collapse the other two risers.

I instructed Jonathan to bounce up and down the length of the couch, walk on it, whatever it takes, but break down those other two risers!

He complied, proclaiming it was great fun, and “How often does your mom tell you to break the furniture?” It wasn’t long before all the risers were even again, with the couch frame resting solidly on top of them.

No more danger of collapsing couches – just one elevated couch, ready for sitting high and spry.

It’s a typical Monday…

Or, "Can I have some cheese to go with these whines?"

I started the day behind. For instance, usually I get the weeks humor mailings started over the weekend, setting up a template for each day and filling in some of the data. Instead, I had to spend time clearing space on my hard drive as it was full up again. Since I can only sit so long at the desktop computer, I didn’t have enough time to work on the humor mailings. That meant I had to do it today, and it took a big part of the morning to get the 5 templates set up for the week, and finish today’s humor mailing and send it out.

The humor stuff takes up a lot of time, and ever now and then I think of ending it, especially after someone complains it’s not up to their standards. My all time favorite was the message sent via my husband that I “needed to raise the bar.” Hello? This is a FREE mailing, you subscribe when you want to, and you can also UNsubscribe at any time if you don’t like it. But I persist as there are also those kind enough to say they look forward to it, plus I use printed copies in letters to my military penpals, veterans, and Chemo buddies.

Since I spent so much of the morning on the computer, it was late before I got outside to do needed chores. And very, very HOT.

First I needed to clean the egg mess off the sidewalk where some critter broke open some old eggs. That wasn’t so bad, with just picking up the big pieces, and spraying the rest off. Then I had a complaint about the smell on the front porch. Okay, Peepers has been out there a while, and time to move her cage and sweep up all the extra food she scratched out of her bowl, scrape the poop off the concrete, scrub it with soap, and spray the area off.

By then I was already tired, but I needed to make sure the animals had plenty of water to drink in this heat, so I headed out back. First thing I did was open the door to the peafowl’s pen and punched a little hole in my finger with a stray wire. I managed to get all the buckets and pools filled with water, and sprayed out the troughs, and so what if some had several drops of blood in them?

I’d saved watering my rose garden until last figuring it would be easy. Wrong! There was a hose pulled out into the yard, but it fell several feet short of the rose bed. There was no way I could stand there and hold my arm up long enough to water all those plants, so I went searching for another hose to add to the end.

I found one looped around a fence post, but it was quite long, and I got tired of threading it through the space between the woven fence and the barbed wire. I tried to pry the fastener holding the barbed wire loose without success. I finally went for a set of pliers to help get the barbed wire out of the way and get the hose out. The heat was getting to me, and I’d had enough!

Once I got the hose hooked up and the water turned on I discovered I’d done all that work for nothing, because there was a big tear in the hose I hadn’t noticed. Okay, I’ve got to find yet another hose. I remembered we used one some time back in the goats pen, so went looking. That took considerable tugging as the grass had grown up and around it.

FINALLY I got the hoses connected and got the roses watered, the birdbath refilled, and the hummingbird feeder washed out, plus filled the pool in the sheep’s lot. Before I quit, I went in and got fresh hummingbird food and put in the feeder.

By the time I finished all that I was very, very hot, and very, very tired. I figured the best way to cool off was to take a shower, but knew it was going to hurt. When the pain levels are up, my skin also gets hypersensitive on my right side from backbone to breastbone, making it rather “ouchy” when the water beats on it.

The 'Monday mishaps' weren’t done with me yet, as when I flushed the commode the chain came off the workings and I had to take the top off and bend over to dig around in the water and find it and get it connected again.

By that time, I’d had it, I quit, that’s it for today, I can’t take it no more! Good thing I already had supper in the crock pot!

The Good, The Bad, and The Interesting

The Good: I got a phone call early this morning from the lady organizing the trip to Alaska. As promised, she had been in touch with the travel agency, and to my relief, they said it was no problem if I wanted to fly out the day before the ship sailed instead of the same day. She said I could think about it and give her an answer later as they don’t send tickets until about 10 days before the trip.

I don’t have to think about it, not for an instant. For me, that’s the way to go. I would much rather have to find my own way from motel to ship, and have some time to recover from the plane ride, plus not have to worry so much about missed connections. It would be well worth that little extra I have to do on my own.

She went on to say she wishes she could do the same, but since she’s tour guide, she has to go with the group, and the group will probably leave EARLY the same day the ship sails. They have a 2-hour drive to the airport, and of course you have to get there an hour before your flight, so they’ll probably be leaving in the wee hours of the morning.

More Good, then the Bad: Feeling a little better plus knowing Jonathan didn’t have to be to work until late afternoon, I figured today would be a good time to work some more on the basement. We spent some time in the office, clearing off the table, sorting through stuff, sweeping and otherwise straightening up. Jonathan has his computer there, and I wanted the table to set up my light tent for photographing items to sell on eBay.

Of course there’s a price to pay for all that activity, and that’s where I am now. There’s always some give and take; mostly I give, and the pain takes. Which brings me to…

The Interesting: One of the moderators on a chronic pain list I belong to sent a link to a story on living with a chronic condition. The lady who wrote the story has Lupus, but what she had to say would hold true for anyone with a chronic illness, including chronic pain.

It seems one of her friends asked her what it was like to “be sick” all the time. Her reply is positively one of the BEST explanations I have read of what day to day life is like for someone with a chronic condition.

I hope you’ll read it. If you have a chronic condition, live with someone who does, or just know someone who does, it is well worth the time. Even if you don’t know someone right now who has a chronic condition, the odds are high at some point you will. It may even be YOU. This story will broaden your understanding, and hopefully your empathy for people who must live their life by making more choices each and every day than a healthy person even thinks about.

It’s a little longer than the usual quickie essay, but ”The Spoon Theory” is worth every minute of the time it takes to read it. Thought provoking, enlightening… please, just read it.

I really think you or someone you know will be glad you did.

Payback Time!

Yesterday I went on a cleaning frenzy.
Today and probably tomorrow I pay for it.

I started out by giving the parrot’s area a good cleaning. Her space takes up one end of the living room, with a big cage, freestanding recreation center, and another play space on top of a wood heater that’s only used when we have no electricity, and therefore no heat.

The cast iron skillets to the left are there for a reason. They hold down old magazines for Baby to chew on. Everything in the top part of the picture is space for her to roam & play during the day.
Birds are messy, and it takes a while to get everything clean and tidy. Scrubbing bars, getting down on my hands and knees to get the vacuum hose back under the cage… it’s a fairly strenuous undertaking.

I needed a rest after that. But I didn’t rest too long until Jonathan and I got busy cleaning the house. It doesn’t take long to say we swept and mopped floors, vacuumed carpets, dusted, and scrubbed toilets, sinks, counters,mirrors and tubs in the bathrooms, etc. We also ran the dishwasher, and threw the rugs from the bathrooms in the washing machine.

Yes, it took a whole lot longer to actually DO all that than to tell about it.

I definitely was in need of a rest after that. And I did take a break and have lunch and watch a “Murder, She Wrote” rerun. Then I headed outside to throw scraps to the peafowl, top off all the water buckets, and spray out the feed troughs.

Rest again. THEN I had a Piggly Wiggly plastic bag full of green beans our next door neighbor sent over to deal with. I cleaned them and broke them into smaller pieces. Jonathan walked by while I was working on the beans. I mentioned I was glad I didn’t have to string these beans. “Strings!??? How would you string a bean???” Obviously, he's not a gardener. By the time he was old enough to help in a garden, we didn’t live where we could have one any more.

I’d put some honey-mustard chicken in the slow cooker early in the day. With the fresh green beans, creamed corn, flavored rice, breadsticks, and cornbread stuffing I had supper ready. I don’t usually fix quite so much, but it made “planned overs” for Jonathan’s meals at work the next couple of days.

Of course, THEN I had a very messy kitchen to clean up, and I needed to blanch the rest of the green beans and freeze them. By the time the dishwasher was loaded and running for the second time, the counters were cleared off, and the green beans in the freezer, I was one totally tired Tish. And I could already feel the beginnings of payback.

Today will have to be passive physically. My body is rebelling and making it’s displeasure felt big time. Chunking down 3 Aleve at a time barely makes a dent in the pain levels. (I laugh at their commercials that essentially say, “Take ONE Aleve, feel GREAT!” Ha! And again I say, HA!) If I’m lucky, I won’t get to the levels where you feel like banging your head against the wall.

Paybacks are… well, you know!

Kitchen Chaos

It’s been a long time in the making, but I think the kitchen remodeling project is going to be totally finished soon. Never mind it’s been almost two years since we started! We got the estimate for the cabinets in August 2005. At the time, our kitchen looked like this:
(In case you didn't know, you can click on these pictures for a larger view.)

It was dark, the cupboards were dingy, and the linoleum had big holes in it here and there.

It was definitely in the market for a makeover.

The cabinet maker was recommended to us. He makes lovely cabinets. What we didn’t know is that he was soooooooooo sloooooooow. He was way overbooked, and any time one of the developers wanted him to put cupboards in a house, our work waited while he finished theirs.

To be fair, he wasn’t the only hold-up in getting the kitchen finished. I had to tear off several layers of wallpaper, and in the end, some of it had to be scraped off piece by teeny-tiny piece. Then the wallboard had to be repaired, and everything repainted.

It doesn’t take long to write about it, but it took me a very long time to actually DO it. First off, there was just a lot of work. Secondly, chronic pain + fibromyalgia = a couple hours a day of being able to do any physically demanding work, more or less, depending on the day’s pain levels. So projects don't progress very quickly.

At any rate, the cabinetmaker finally finished his work, and got the cabinets made and installed close to my specifications. I got the ceiling painted, the wallpaper off and the walls painted, and our neighbor put down the new flooring for us. Jess got the new blind put up on the new picture window we had installed. The kitchen was looking pretty good but needed a couple of finishing touches.

And so it stayed until yesterday. First, Jess repaired a small hole in the flooring, where a certain bird went walkabout once, and since there were no baseboards holding the flooring down, picked at the edge and made a hole before her activity was discovered. He did a GREAT job fixing it. You have to know where to look and get close to see the repair.

Then Jess cut pieces of baseboard to fit, got them painted, and nailed into place. It looks FANTASTIC!

He also put the corkboard up on the wood panel we put on the wall between the living room and dining area to cover the hole where we took out an unused electric heater. Unfortunately, he ran out of glue before he finished, so he has a few more squares to glue on, but that shouldn’t take too much longer.

So we’re getting close to being finally finished with the makeover. It’s a major improvement, and the cabinets and flooring are beautiful, but I’m not sure if I’d have the heart to do it again if I’d have known what we were getting into.

I’m past ready to be totally done with remodeling and the resulting kitchen chaos!