The Monstrosity: Day Seven

Was a total bust. I completed nothing. I can't even tell you what I DID all day. I know I was busy working all day, but I can't think of a single thing that actually GOT DONE. I keep thinking one of these days we're going to make it over the hump and actually start SEEING some progress. As of now, it's still looking pretty bleak. And then I look at my blog title. This is only the seventh day we've worked on this giant house! It's unreasonable to actually think that we should be farther along. We just WANT to be farther along. Right now there are lots of door knobs to be removed, dried paint drips to be scraped and sanded, trim to be re-affixed, surfaces to be cleaned and scrubbed--all of the things that make up the pre-paint stage. It's a very unpleasant stage. Painting will be lots of work in a house this size, but at least it's rewarding to look behind you and see progress. I have yet to do that!

I really don't have time to blog but I thought I'd write for a few minutes while I wait for the dryer to finish so I can fold the clothes. I'm sooooo tired and my throat is scratchy and I just want to go to bed, but I need to finish up the laundry and work on my class for this weekend. I'm on my second cup of hot peppermint tea. Can't tell if it's helping my throat, but it tastes delightful. It feels weird to use that word (too sissy-ish for me?!) but it seems the most accurate.

More important than any of the goings on with the house...

We had a WONDERFUL Youth Retreat! :-) I loved it. It was just so, so, so good. I was so blessed by our guest speaker, Brandon Allen. He has an amazing testimony about what God has delivered him from--and it makes his ministry so affective. He knows firsthand the difference between darkness and light and he is so passionate about serving God and so repulsed by worldliness. It's beautiful and God used him mightily to speak to our young people about their music and clothing and entertainments, etc. The Sunday morning service was especially powerful and I know God was really speaking us and working in our hearts. I love to feel conviction and I love that God cares so much about us that He continues to send it so that we can take the next step and grow closer and closer to Him, more and more like Him. It's so exciting to see what God is doing in these young people and I am so thrilled and so blessed to be able to be here to watch them grow in the Lord!

We had lots of fun at Retreat, too. The campground was fantastic. I didn't get to stay with the girls (so sad) but the room James and I were in had a double bed, a twin bed, a couch, a closet, a lamp, and a ceiling fan. Wow! I was SO thankful for the ceiling fan. Brother Grimes stayed in the same building and he had the heat cranked up to 70-something (I know, I know--that's normal for most people; I'm the weird-o here) and I was about to die! I opened our window and turned the fan on high and it got nice and cool in our room. ~Aaaaahhhh~ I was happy, Brother Grimes was happy. :-)

The campground had lots of great stuff to do--a pool table, ping pong, air hockey, Foosball, horseshoes, volleyball, even an 18 hole putt-putt course! It was GREAT. We played mini-golf with the Washburns two or three times and learned that Sister Tammy is fantastic in the dark. She got a hole in one FOUR TIMES when we played after church one night. We're thinking her crooked putter helped her out, too. She didn't do nearly as well with a straight putter in the daylight. Ha! It was great fun.

My sport of choice ended up being ping pong, which surprised me. I thought I liked pool better. I was wrong--I definitely prefer ping pong. Faster is funner. :-) I loved playing with Brother Washburn and Brother Will because they seem to be about as competitive as I am. But I probably loved it most because I beat them both. :-) Poor Brother Washburn. My son de-throned him as the checkers king and now he's lost to a girl (four times ~ahem~) at ping pong. Tsk, tsk. What a shame. Hahahahaha! He was worried about me blogging about my wins and his losses and was all concerned that I would embellish the truth and or something. I told him that if he wants to tell it his way he'll have to get his own blog. Around here, I get to tell the stories. (And the honest truth is that he won two games, I won four. Which means I'm the WINNER and he's the LOSER. Don't you just love TRUTH??? I do. This time. Ha!) Anyway, I loved playing and if we ever finish this crazy house I am definitely going to be searching Craigslist for a ping pong table to put in our basement. :-)

Let's see, what else... We played Apples to Apples on Saturday night with about 15 people. That was a little crazy. By the time you finished reading through all of the red cards you'd forgotten what the green card was! It was fun anyway, though the only thing I can really remember about the game is how many times "dead fish" resurfaced!

We left Retreat and made it home at about 3:00 yesterday afternoon. We brought our suitcases in and unpacked/repacked, then went to Alabaster to dig through the storage units before church. We were in search of--what else--paint swatches. ~sigh~ Still no luck. We keep getting this nagging feeling that they are somewhere at the Powell's house, not in storage. Even James says he thinks he remembers us having them here. I try not to talk about it though because then I get the lecture. "Why didn't you just give them to me? I would have taken them and filed them and we'd HAVE them now that we need them..." And it just cracks me up. Who in the world (other than James, of course) would ever think of FILING paint swatches?! HA! Actually, he's been really good to not nag too much. He just gives me that look. The one that says, "I can't believe you lost the paint swatches, you ninny." That look. And I can live with the look better than if he actually speaks the words aloud, so we're good here. :-)

We had a good service last night in Bessemer, followed by a nice time of fellowship in honor of Sister Hopkin's 26th birthday... or something like that. Afterwards we drove 3 minutes instead of the usual 50 minutes (what a change!) and spent our very first night at the Monstrosity. We still had our pillows and sleeping bags from Retreat and we'd thrown in a memory foam mattress topper as well. I vacuumed the bedroom floor and we made our "bed" and slept... horribly. Ha! James didn't have any complaints, but I discovered that sleeping on the floor (even with a mattress topper) is not nearly as fun as it used to be. I woke up sore and rolled over dozens of times throughout the night. It was a relief to get up this morning! Ha!

Then we got to work but, as I said, I don't know what I did. Can't tell any change after today's labor at all. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

We left at 4:00 this afternoon so we could get home early. Riiiiiight. We went to the Post Office, then Sam's Club, then dinner at Carino's (Monday = half-priced appetizers, half-priced family platters, and half-priced beverages--which means I got three raspberry cream Italian sodas for the price of one and a half! HA!), then it was off to Home Depot, then Hobby Lobby, and finally home at nearly 9:00.

I picked up paint swatches at Home Depot. Dozens and dozens of them. It makes me sick to look at them. Some colors are so nice and I'm just sure that they'll work beautifully. Except that I've been through this before and I know that those little cards are liars. I hate them all.

I don't think I'll have time to blog again this week. We'll be working on the Monstrostity by day and I'll be working on my Ladies' Retreat class by night. I may be able to drop by sometime... but don't count on it. ;-)