Back to "Normal"

With our living room project finally done (almost) it's nice to get back into the normal swing of things.  I say "almost" because although we've gotten all the major, hard work done, there are still many details we have yet to finish.   Curtains, rugs, wall hangings.   The curtains and rugs are going to wait a while until we have a bit more money! (the living room renovation of course went over budget).   And the wall hangings are going to take some thought and planning as we certainly don't want to stick a bunch of nail holes in our new, smooth, clean walls!

But the room is quite functional and beautiful enough that I feel comfortable and happy inviting people over.  That was a major downfall in our four-month-long renovation.  We could not have company over, and I do love inviting people in!  Hopefully the pace of our entertaining will pick up now that we have not only the house available, but the backyard as well.

Speaking of the backyard.......we did have our first family cookout this past weekend.  The occasion was my Dad's 75th birthday party.  It was such a pleasure to host my family at a backyard BBQ.  It was a spectacular sunny spring day.  We grilled, we ate, we talked, the kids played.

Now it's time (past time) to turn our attention to the outdoors.  I did plant some seeds indoors this year to try and get a  head start on the garden.   Unfortunately, I was ignorant of what needed to be planted early and what did not.  Right now I have some bean plants that should be in the ground, and some pepper plants that are so tiny you can barely see them.  Next year I will know better.  (Something that I believe we said over and over again last year).

We've decided to move the garden to a different spot this year, as last year it was in a shady area and produced no squash, cucumber or pumpkins.   Moving it will entail quite a bit of time and an outlay of cash, two things we are quite short on right now.  But we'll make it happen, come hell or high water!  Complicating matters will be our vacation, taken early this year in the third week of May.  Normally we go mid-June, but grandbaby #4 will be coming along about that time, and we sure don't want to be away on vacation when that happens!

It gives me great pleasure to write about such mundane matters.  I know I live a blessed life, with a Hubby who is the world to me, family, kids, grandkids, gardens, a  house and yard to care for.   These truly are the best years of my life.

And we begin again

It really broke my heart to lose my Elantra.  Her name was Ellie.   As much as I wanted to keep her, going through the process of keeping a car that had been "totaled" by the insurance company would have been arduous and possibly expensive.

So, once again, we went out shopping for a new car.   If there's anything I hate more than regular shopping, it's car shopping.  Mostly because I hate the thought of getting screwed.

Hubby and I spent Sunday driving up and down Route 28 from Salem to Hooksett, stopping at all the little car dealerships and looking for a "deal".

As always, I'm quite appalled at the prices of cars.  For the $4000 self-imposed limit I set for us, there wasn't a lot to chose from.   I'm partial to four door sedans with automatic transmission.  I was surprised at the number of cars that had a standard transmission.  More than once, I thought we'd found a good deal only to see that it had a stick-shift.   That's not for me.  I like to be able to cruise along without having to think too much.

We had seen a couple of possibilities on the way north, and were planning on going back to revisit a couple of them when we stopped in a place and found our car.   She's a Toyota Corolla, blue, automatic transmission.   She has 100,000 miles on her and of course, we paid more than I wanted to.

But she seems like she'll be a good car and hopefully last a few years.  Hubby and I agreed that our "crashing the car days" are over!

Sometimes it's hard to be thankful....

When bad things happen, it's hard to find the bright side.  In the grand scheme of things, a car accident is not a hugely horrible thing, especially when no one gets hurt.

Traveling down Route 93 yesterday, in the middle of the day in dry conditions, I spun out, fishtailed back and forth across all three lanes and hit the guardrail - facing in the opposite direction.

Terrifying? Yes.   But lucky in so many ways.  Most importantly, no other car was involved in the accident.  The guy in front of me who slammed on his brakes, and for whom I swerved to avoid, continued on his way...probably unaware that he was the reason I was careening across the highway.

Fishtailing across three lanes of traffic, it's unbelievable that no one hit me.  How they all avoided me, I'll never know.

Hitting the guardrail, I managed to smash in both the front and back of the passenger side.  I was wearing a seatbelt, and I was not hurt.  I landed completely out of the lane of traffic, which was another miracle.  I was facing traffic, so anyone unable to stop would have hit me head-on if I'd been a couple feet further onto the highway.

Two cars stopped...both with young people who were anxious to know if I was okay, if I had a cellphone, if I needed any help.   Everyone else just rubbernecked, causing one of those back-ups you hear about on the radio in the morning on your way to work.

When the State Troopers came, I told them I thought the car was drive-able.   They told me if I thought I could drive it away, they'd help me turn it around.  They stopped traffic completely, I turned the car around and was able to drive it home.

It takes some time to get over the shock and the sadness that follows when something like this happens.  I know I need to be thankful for the fact that I wasn't hurt and neither was anyone else.  Right now I'm still sad, and starting to be angry about all the chaos this will create in our life - the insurance, the repairs  - or even worse - looking for a new car.

A relaxing weekend off?

I work for AAA, and sometimes we get a few perks.  This weekend, I had the chance to stay at a hotel that had just been bought by a new company.  They wanted to show us their facility, and what better way than to let us have a free night there.

The hotel has a water park inside.....so they gave us a free night, plus a pass to the water park, plus free breakfast.

Since Hubby and I have been working so hard on our renovation, I thought it would be nice if we made this a "non-working" weekend.  So we made plans to visit the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Cape Ann Art Museum while we were down in that neck of the woods.

We headed out Saturday morning and went to the Peabody first.   It was a nice museum, but have to say not a favorite.  It had a somewhat eclectic mix of displays, mostly Asian art, but some American art, Maritime stuff and a special exhibit that was so bizarre I cannot describe it.

Thankfully, a friend told me not to miss the Chinese House, so we made sure we paid the extra $5 apiece and went in.  It was pretty cool that they took a 200 year old house from China and brought it here to Massachusetts and re-assembled it on the grounds of the Museum.   We took a walk outside down to Pickering Wharf as well.

We checked into the hotel, I did my "mandatory" tour, and we went out to dinner.  After dinner, we figured we'd spend an hour at the water park.   When I went on the tour earlier, the park was absolutely packed with kids and families.  Thankfully, when we went back at 8pm it was quieter, and we got to try out the slides and the lazy river for an hour.  

Sunday morning we had our breakfast and then took off for Gloucester for the Cape Ann Museum.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize that it didn't open until 1pm.   (You'd think our AAA counselor would have picked up on that.)  

So we decided to drive over to the waterfront and walk over to Stage Fort Park.   On the way to the waterfront, we found the Gloucester Main Street, which we'd never even realized was there.   Since we had so much time, why not get out and walk up and down and see which little shops were open?   Unbelievably, Hubby found a used record store!!!  I'm sure he could have spent hours in there, but he browsed for a little while and came up with ten records he had to have!!

The waterfront turned out to be so cold we couldn't stand it, so we stopped at a little diner to use the bathroom and have a cup of coffee - and a little bit to eat since we felt bad going in there just to use their bathroom and drink coffee.

Finally we went to the Cape Ann Museum which was a very nice museum.   Lots of Maritime stuff as well, but a great display of young people's work that I enjoyed.

All in all, not the most relaxing weekend, but so wonderful to spend time with Hubby doing something other than sanding, painting, cleaning, building, etc etc etc!!

And these bodies are slowing the motion

We've been working hard....super hard....on our living room renovations.   And now we've stalled.  I thought our floor would be all done this past weekend.  Unfortunately, the floor sanding didn't go as well as we'd hoped.  Although we spent all day sanding, some of the floor looks like this:

From the comments I received on Facebook, these are probably urine stains from pets.  Now, a little bit of an "antique-y" look is fine.   We got all kinds of comments on our bedroom floor even before we finished it.  

People thought the darker areas gave it character.  And I have to agree.......it did look cool and even better now with the finish on it:

Somehow, pet urine stains do not fall into the "antique-looking" category.   Through research on the internet and advice from friends, we've determined we'll probably try to bleach the stains out.  Which, in my mind, means we'll have to bleach the whole floor because I don't want to trade the urine stains for bleach stains.

In the meantime, I was lucky enough to get a free hotel night from my work.  The place they're sending me (and a guest, so I chose Hubby!) has an indoor water park.  So we get to attend a hotel tour, participate in a reception with food and drink, enjoy time in the water park, and have a free breakfast in the morning.  

I determined a few weeks ago that Hubby and I deserved a much-needed weekend off from living room renovation.  So we are going to enjoy the whole weekend.  Friday night we will attend a show with tickets given to us by my son for Christmas.  Saturday we'll visit the Peabody Essex Museum, which is in the same town as the hotel.   We'll have our hotel night and water park fun, then Sunday we'll spend the day in Gloucester visiting the Cape Ann Art Museum.

And then, supposedly, we'll be all ready and raring to go to finish the living room!  uh huh!!

A Body in Motion Stays in Motion

So, last year, Hubby and I were complete couch potatoes for the whole months of January and February.   We....did....nothing.    No work on the house.  We didn't have any (get that, ANY) snow at all.  We didn't even go out to hear any music or sing at open mics.  

And there was no good reason for it.  We were just slugs! Finally, we began our bedroom renovation around about the beginning of March.

BEFORE

AFTER

 I felt, at the time, as if we were caterpillars coming out of a cocoon.  The warmer weather got our sap going and we finally got off our butts and did something.

This year could not be more different.   This year we (make that, I) decided we would renovate the living room.  I knew it was going to be an immense project, so I declared we would begin right after the holidays.  Sure enough, on the first Saturday after New Year's, the demolition began.

Since then, we've been working our hineys off every weekend.....tearing down plaster, fixing floors, building chimneys:

The funny part is, we've also been very busy in other areas of our lives.  We've had more snow this year than we've had in many years past.  (It's snowing right now....March 8th and it's probably at least 8 inches).   We've been busy dealing with that.  

We've been going out to hear music weekly.  This weekend, we plan to hear local music three nights in a row!

I've been getting up early every morning to go to the gym.   I've only missed two mornings since January 2nd.
(I guess we have to make today three mornings.  Can't get out since the roads weren't plowed yet).

There's been very little couch-potato-ing going on.  (Much to Hubby's chagrin....I am a harsh taskmaster)   It seems that once you get up off that couch and start moving, your body just doesn't want to stop!

There will be at least another month of renovation on the living room.  And that should bring us to just about the right time to start gardening and planting and working outdoors.

No rest for the couch potatoes!

Updates

Wow...March 1 already!!!  Thank GOD February is over!  I'm hoping its going to bring with it a new turn of events.  So far, things are better than they were at the beginning of February.

Dad is doing well.

The living room is coming along.

We got a new car for Hubby.

I'm happy that the things we're doing in the living room now are building UP instead of tearing DOWN.  We do still have to rip up the carpets and sand the floor.   After that it's painting, putting up woodwork, and varnishing the floor.   I'm still hoping we'll be done by the end of March/beginning of April.  Or maybe the end of April...............