Men's Retreat started yesterday. That means that right now there should be a house full or two of wives and children partying away. Nope. Didn't happen. ~sigh~ How sad. NEXT YEAR! Unless God throws us a curve ball, I'll have the perfect house for it. I thought of the Girl Party at Jamey's house in Colorado all weekend when I knew their Men's Retreat was going on a week or two ago. I never heard anything about it, but I know them well enough to know they did it and they had a terrific time. I'm just going to have to teach the girls around here that that's what Men's Retreat is really all about. Ha! ...Next year.
This year is just WAY too crazy. I am feeling a little more sane than I was a day or two ago. I had one day that felt so out-of-control for me. Things weren't out of control, it just felt like it. In the process of moving out of the Powells' house into the Monstrosity while still using Sister Fender's house as the company and laundry house I just started feeling LOST, like I don't know where to find anything anymore! Where are my black dress shoes? Which house did I leave my overnight bag at? Did I remember to bring my Sunday School stuff with me back to this house, or leave it at the last one? Even now, I'm typing on Joe's computer because I forgot my laptop at House #3 when I left to come back to House #1. My little brain is just smokin' and whirlin' and about to blow a fuse trying to keep everything figured out! But like I said, things feel much better today than they did before. Everything is good and I'm sooooo thankful for all of the houses that God has provided for us to use at this point in time as well as the generous people who have made them available to us. Still, for my mental stability, it will be best when we can start living in just ONE house again. Ha!
After leaving Sister Fender's house yesterday the kids and I stopped to try to help a lost dog that almost got hit on the highway (he made it home okay), then stopped at the store to pick up milk, cereal, bread, lunch meat, and Totino's pizza--our complete menu for the weekend in Brierfield! We got here and I got busy right away. I can't remember the sequence of events, but since yesterday I've been able to get everything upstairs FINISHED. All of our belongings have been vacated and everything is sparkly clean. I made the new rules sufficiently clear to the children, I think: Anyone who steps foot on the stairs dies. HA! Sam got the message loud and clear. He posted a sign on the stairs that says: KEEP OUT! MOM'S ORDERS. It also has a picture conveying exactly what will happen if the warning is not heeded. ;-) I wish I could post a picture of it, but Joe's computer doesn't have a slot for my camera card. There are several things I'd like to post, but can't!
Hhmmm. What else... Sam called his buddy Isaac tonight. Made him very, very happy. Katie and Joe were able to talk to the Clarkson kids last week, so Sam figured he should have a chance to talk to his friend, too. Our kids very seldom get to talk on the phone, but it cracks me up listening to their oh-so-important conversations when they do. Sam was telling Isaac how crazy he is that he lives so close to Texas but he's only been there once. He actually lives 10 or 12 hours away from Texas (the part Sam refers to), which folks out here would think is a trip to the moon and back, but to our kids it's "only" 12 hours.
I've been too busy and mentally stretched to be able to do school with the kids the past day or two, though Katie and Joe sometimes pull their computers out and do school without even being told. I'll have to sit down and get things all sorted out and graded and revamped sometime next week, that's for sure!
All of the kids have been enjoying the great outdoors as much as possible. They're really going to miss this place. They've walked down to the lake a time or two, fishing rods in tow and Brady wagging along beside them. Today they all went leaf sledding. Ha! It still makes me laugh... then feel like crying! So sad. The Dudley's gave us a terrific old sled, but with no snow the kids just pick a good slope covered deep in leaves and go at it. They come in all bloody and bruised sometimes (it's tough to do that in the snow, even if you crash), but I guess you've gotta do what you've gotta do.
We've enjoyed pizza parties last night and tonight--the closest thing to "partying" during Men's Retreat that we could pull off this year. Last night we watched some Wanted: Dead or Alive (one of our favorite old black-and-white westerns, starring Steve McQueen) and tonight they picked Wall-E.
After the movie we had devotions and the kids went to bed I worked some more on rummaging through the kitchen trying to find anything of ours that might have gotten mixed in with the Powells' stuff. There are several cabinets that I never did explore in the year we've lived here. I always intended to empty them out and clean the cabinets real good, then organize them nice and neat for Sister Powell. It's one of those jobs you never have time to do, so I was going to do it for her. Hahahahaha! Apparently I don't have time either! Oh well. It was a nice thought, right?! I feel bad knowing that the Powells will have a hard time finding what they're looking for when they get home. I tried to keep everything marked--even had post-it notes on little totes saying "Drawer #1," "Drawer #2," etc., so I'd be able to put things back where they used to be. I found the totes, but the notes are GONE. Oops.
It's nearly 11:00 now and I'm tired. I'm a little worried about oversleeping in the morning. I packed up the last alarm clock today (good thinking, right?) so I tried to set the alarm on my phone, but I've never done that before. I hate trusting things that I haven't tried out! I probably won't sleep well anyway since I'll be sharing Katie's bed with her. The upstairs is off limits, remember?! ;-) She kicks. And flops. And flails. And gets angry if you disturb her, right, Mom? Ha! In any case, I'd better try to get some sleep. Looking forward to Sunday School, and then the beginning of our Revival with the Shulers tomorrow night. Pray for us! :-)
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Just Joshing
Who was I kidding? The Shulers are here. Why in the world would I take time to blog??? I'm only here right now because the guys are gone to the Powells' house with James. They'll be back any time now and we'll eat the taco soup I made for Men's Retreat (bad planning--I'll have to make more tomorrow so there'll be enough to send up there!) and then... who knows. If it's anything like this morning it will be an all-out war with the dart and disc guns. Uncle Colin and Sam sleuthed around the circle (living room / dining room / kitchen / back to living room) at Sister Fender's house this morning chasing one another and blasting away. With Joe and Jacob and Philip in the mix it was pretty chaotic for a while. It fills me with pride to know that we'll be leaving our mark on not only the Powells' house, but Sister Fender's as well. They'll probably still be finding darts and discs a year from now! We've searched high and low to locate them all, but you never find them ALL. At the Powell's house there is a dart in EACH of the way-up-high light fixtures. I have NO IDEA how to get up there (matching the no-desire element) so I think I'll leave them there to remember us by. I did manage to peel the red, sticky alien off of the dining room ceiling last week. And the boys hung precariously through the railing in the loft (I didn't know about it--they told me later) to reach miscellaneous objects that had made their way into the light fixture in that room. Good boys. Good, reckless boys. I'm glad I didn't know about it. I wouldn't have been able to watch.
I can't remember enough to play catch-up right now and have no notes (I did write a few things down in a notebook, right??? Where IS that notebook?), so we'll just pick things up at the beginning of this week and try to fill in the holes later.
On Sunday I had three boys in my Sunday School class: Zack, Devon, and Jackson. Sam graduated to the junior class when he turned 8 last November. He's doing amazingly well in there from what I hear. I was a little worried about it, but he's doing great and seems to have been so much better behaved on the whole since then. Like he's growing up or something horrible like that. I'm enjoying certain aspects of it, but really bothered by the idea in general!
We had some shopping to do so we headed to Hoover after service. We ended up at Johnny Rocket's for lunch, enjoying the food, service, and atmosphere, but shocked and appalled and the prices. That last part happened too late. Then we did our shopping before going to the Monstrosity to load up our laundry and a few things to take back to the Powells' house. It's ironic that the "few things" FILLED the back of the van with stuff to take to the Powells' house so that we could move everything out of the Powells' house.
Ah yes, while we were out shopping Mom called... FROM ISRAEL!!! It's sooooo crazy. It just baffles my mind to think of my parents being in Israel--and on their way to Turkey and India! WILD. It sounds like they were already having a GREAT trip and so overwhelmed at the thought of being so many places that Jesus walked while here in the flesh--as well as Elijah and Solomon and Paul and so many others. SO COOL. I can't wait to see all of the pictures and hear all about it when they get home. That's if they survive the last half of the trip. Ha! They'll be visiting with Brother Jones and his daughter while in Turkey (our only members there), then going on to the National Convention in India, a not-so-friendly place where everybody who visits gets super sick. Say a prayer for them, please. God is more than able to break the have-to-get-sick-there rule. :-)
We went home to Brierfield that night so I could spend Monday and Tuesday beginning the big pack-up-and-move-out project at the Powells' house. I sorted through all of the boys' clothes and came up with plenty that they've outgrown to donate. Sam spent a couple of hours packing up all of their other belongings. He is SUCH an amazing help with stuff like that. He does a terrific job, works long and hard with no breaks, and doesn't ask questions--just sees what needs done and does it. I love that kid. :-) I managed to do 5 loads of laundry that day, clean out the front closet, under the kitchen sink and under the utility sink--and return all of the Powells' things (I hope) that belong in those places.
UPDATE: The guys just got back from Brierfield with three darts. Apparently Jacob CRAWLED OUT ON THE BEAM to retrieve the dart from the light fixture nearest the front door. THEN went to get a ladder (from where? I don't remember seeing one that tall anywhere!) for the second dart. Just like a teenager. One thing is for sure... you have to have a camera ready every moment when those boys are around. Too bad I hadn't sent it with James. I'm not sure where they found the third dart. Right now they're sticking all over Siste Fender's TV screen. The guys have also put on quite a show with all of the fun goblets they found in the kitchen.
Okay, it's now way, way too late and James and I are still sitting here with Jake and Phil. My sides hurt from laughing. I just love these boys. If they ever go off the road, I want them to move in with us. If only. :-) Anyway, I'll finish catching up THIS week...
I packed. I cleaned. James found a bedroom set for Joe on Craigslist. Katie baked up a storm--chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, and a cake. We filled the truck with boxes of stuff and James dropped it off at the Monstrosity on his way up to Sister Pruitt's funeral (she passed away Sunday), then I stuffed the van snake-in-a-can style and unloaded up there the next day. The Shuler men got here at 6:00 last night, about 30 hours after leaving Arizona. They pretty much crashed once they arrived. Today we took them to the Monstrosity and Uncle Colin inspected our plumbing while the kids showed the boys around. Then James took the Shuler three and headed to Brierfield to get what he needed for Men's Retreat (and risk life and limb to remove darts from light fixtures) while the kids and I went back to Sister Fender's house to clean some things up and make the soup. And we've spent the rest of the evening just hanging with the Shulers--something I could do every night. :-) Unfortunately, it's nearly 2:00am now and I don't have time or energy to upload pictures or videos. Maybe some day. :-)
I can't remember enough to play catch-up right now and have no notes (I did write a few things down in a notebook, right??? Where IS that notebook?), so we'll just pick things up at the beginning of this week and try to fill in the holes later.
On Sunday I had three boys in my Sunday School class: Zack, Devon, and Jackson. Sam graduated to the junior class when he turned 8 last November. He's doing amazingly well in there from what I hear. I was a little worried about it, but he's doing great and seems to have been so much better behaved on the whole since then. Like he's growing up or something horrible like that. I'm enjoying certain aspects of it, but really bothered by the idea in general!
We had some shopping to do so we headed to Hoover after service. We ended up at Johnny Rocket's for lunch, enjoying the food, service, and atmosphere, but shocked and appalled and the prices. That last part happened too late. Then we did our shopping before going to the Monstrosity to load up our laundry and a few things to take back to the Powells' house. It's ironic that the "few things" FILLED the back of the van with stuff to take to the Powells' house so that we could move everything out of the Powells' house.
Ah yes, while we were out shopping Mom called... FROM ISRAEL!!! It's sooooo crazy. It just baffles my mind to think of my parents being in Israel--and on their way to Turkey and India! WILD. It sounds like they were already having a GREAT trip and so overwhelmed at the thought of being so many places that Jesus walked while here in the flesh--as well as Elijah and Solomon and Paul and so many others. SO COOL. I can't wait to see all of the pictures and hear all about it when they get home. That's if they survive the last half of the trip. Ha! They'll be visiting with Brother Jones and his daughter while in Turkey (our only members there), then going on to the National Convention in India, a not-so-friendly place where everybody who visits gets super sick. Say a prayer for them, please. God is more than able to break the have-to-get-sick-there rule. :-)
We went home to Brierfield that night so I could spend Monday and Tuesday beginning the big pack-up-and-move-out project at the Powells' house. I sorted through all of the boys' clothes and came up with plenty that they've outgrown to donate. Sam spent a couple of hours packing up all of their other belongings. He is SUCH an amazing help with stuff like that. He does a terrific job, works long and hard with no breaks, and doesn't ask questions--just sees what needs done and does it. I love that kid. :-) I managed to do 5 loads of laundry that day, clean out the front closet, under the kitchen sink and under the utility sink--and return all of the Powells' things (I hope) that belong in those places.
UPDATE: The guys just got back from Brierfield with three darts. Apparently Jacob CRAWLED OUT ON THE BEAM to retrieve the dart from the light fixture nearest the front door. THEN went to get a ladder (from where? I don't remember seeing one that tall anywhere!) for the second dart. Just like a teenager. One thing is for sure... you have to have a camera ready every moment when those boys are around. Too bad I hadn't sent it with James. I'm not sure where they found the third dart. Right now they're sticking all over Siste Fender's TV screen. The guys have also put on quite a show with all of the fun goblets they found in the kitchen.
Okay, it's now way, way too late and James and I are still sitting here with Jake and Phil. My sides hurt from laughing. I just love these boys. If they ever go off the road, I want them to move in with us. If only. :-) Anyway, I'll finish catching up THIS week...
I packed. I cleaned. James found a bedroom set for Joe on Craigslist. Katie baked up a storm--chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, and a cake. We filled the truck with boxes of stuff and James dropped it off at the Monstrosity on his way up to Sister Pruitt's funeral (she passed away Sunday), then I stuffed the van snake-in-a-can style and unloaded up there the next day. The Shuler men got here at 6:00 last night, about 30 hours after leaving Arizona. They pretty much crashed once they arrived. Today we took them to the Monstrosity and Uncle Colin inspected our plumbing while the kids showed the boys around. Then James took the Shuler three and headed to Brierfield to get what he needed for Men's Retreat (and risk life and limb to remove darts from light fixtures) while the kids and I went back to Sister Fender's house to clean some things up and make the soup. And we've spent the rest of the evening just hanging with the Shulers--something I could do every night. :-) Unfortunately, it's nearly 2:00am now and I don't have time or energy to upload pictures or videos. Maybe some day. :-)
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Think I Can Do It???
Think I can get all caught up on my blog tonight???
Nah, me either. And I have no business blogging. I've got way too much to do. I'm supposed to be moving out of the Powell's house right now. I have a total of 4 days to have a-a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff moved out (we've been here for just shy of a year and it's amazing just how much we've moved in!) and endeavor to have the house nice and clean (or at least decent and presentable--ha!) for it's rightful owners. They'll read this and say, "Oh, don't worry about it! Just do what you have time to do and you can always come get the rest of your belongings later--and there's no need to have the house all spick-and-span, it'll be fine..." That's what gracious people like them would say. Deep down we all know they're hoping I can succeed in ridding their house of foriegn clutter and grime before they get home. ;-)
That being said... I'm not packing, I'm not cleaning. I'm blogging. I seem to have hit a bit of a speed bump. I've gotten a decent amount accomplished and--though there's still TONS more to do--I keep wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what to do next. So I'm taking a break, hoping that when I resume my work I will have refocused and discovered some mystery motivation. It's worth a shot, anyway.
Okay, let's play catch-up. Here are some of the things I wrote up about three weeks ago.
The Monstrosity: Day 28
Monday , January 2nd
Work, work, work! I knew Mom was coming that afternoon and we still had sooooo much to do to be ready for her. I was running on pure adrenaline from the moment I woke up! I packed the bedroom away in the closet. Sam and I deflated mattresses and put them and a-a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff away so we’d be able to use the paint sprayer in the bedroom. A shut off valve in the half bath broke while James was removing the old, grimy sink so we had to have plumbers out to fix that. THAT wasn’t on the agenda! It was a quick easy fix at least.
About lunch time some dear ladies had us meet them at the church to enjoy the home cooked meal they had brought with them. Sister Bishop and Sister Fender had brought brisket and buns and beans and fruit salad and all sorts of goodies including some great little cake-like things that Sister Bishop makes and I always forget the name of. We are sooooo thankful to have anything home cooked! We enjoyed the food and the fellowship. And Joe enjoyed showing his new mandolin to Sister Bishop. The two of them jammed for a little while before we left.
When we got back to the Monstrosity Mom was already there waiting on us. We rushed to do the last of the paint prep but I have no idea anymore what that included. But then we start spraying!!! Ah, yes. We unboxed Maurice (that’s what our last paint sprayer was named—he was very dear to me) and I went from room to room with James taking care of who-knows-what while James sprayed primer on EVERYTHING: ceilings, walls, doors and trim. It was a foggy mess in the house and we were caked with overspray. There was nothing anybody could do in the house while all that was going on, so everybody who was around gathered together and hid out in our bedroom with the door closed. I find it very unfair that there was a group of people hanging out in my house fellowshipping… without me! HA! Before too long Sister Bishop and Sister Fender made a mad dash through the fog and back out to their car to leave. Sister Fender offered to let us stay at her house about 7 miles away. With the present condition of our house, we gratefully accepted! WHAT A BLESSING!!! It took 3 or 4 hours, but we got the whole main floor primed that night. How exciting!!! Can you imagine how long it would have taken to go room by room and prime every ceiling, ever wall, every door and all of the trim with just brushes and rollers?! Thank the Lord for Maurice! What a glorious invention!!!
Mom had taken the kids and headed over to Sister Fender’s house and James and I headed over when we finished up with the primer. They had made some homemade soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and peach cobbler for dinner and there were lots of left-overs waiting for us. Of course, we HAD to have a shower before we could think of sitting down to eat. This is what we looked like…
We each showered. And showered and showered and showered! Ha! We finally got all of the primer out of our hair and eyelashes and most of it off of our skin. It’s amazing how wonderful a shower can feel after a day like that!
The Monstrosity: Day 29
Tuesday, January 3rd
Sister Fender made pancakes and sausage for breakfast. We felt so spoiled. Three home cooked meals in a row?! WOW! James and I went to Lowe’s to pick up some necessities—and I gathered more paint swatches. Because of circumstances that would take way too long to relate, we were unable to get the dark red color (Foxtail) that we had tried so hard to hunt down. So I got lots and lots of red paint swatches to look at. When we got back to the Monstrosity I pulled a dining room chair out of the garage and when we threw one of the paint cards on it and it sort of disappeared, we knew we had something close enough to Foxtail to proceed! Or at least hoped so. I was still panicked about it for quite a while (reds are so scary!), but I’m satisfied now. :-)
Anyway, job #1 for the day involved Maurice again. This time we sprayed flat ceiling paint on a-a-a-a-a-a-all of the ceilings on the main floor. Yeah!!! It’s so exciting to get something FINISHED! Now the ceilings are FINISHED! Ha! And they look GREAT. You can’t see any of the places where Brother Hopkins patched holes for us. He did a fantastic job and everything looks so good.
After the ceilings we got out the new red paint that we chose (Chipotle Paste from Lowe’s just for the record) and sprayed the kitchen cabinets and a-a-a-a-a-all of the cabinet doors—they had been removed and lined up in the dining room awaiting a paint job. After FINALLY getting all of the red rinsed out of the sprayer (not an easy job!) we got the creamy/white color (Bleached Linen) and sprayed all of the doors and trim along with a few walls. Meanwhile, Mom was finally able to start putting up wallpaper in kitchen! ~SQUEAL!~ This is the part I’ve been waiting for! The part where pretty things start happening instead of just more and more ugly! Ha!
After our work was finished for the day we went to stay at Sister Fender’s house again, though she and Sister Bishop had left on a trip together. She gave us a key to the house and we ended up staying there every night that week but one, due to paint and water issues! We had leftover soup and cornbread for dinner. We were SO HAPPY and felt SO ACCOMPLISHED having gotten all of the ceilings, doors, and trim painted and all of the other surfaces ready for paint or paper. But we were REALLY concerned with how everything was turning out. I think we learned a very valuable and painful lesson about oil and latex. Apparently you’re not supposed to paint over oil based paint with latex paint—something I’ve never dealt with before. It just doesn’t stick. Apparently what had been in the house before (at least on the doors and trim) was oil paint. We didn’t know that and wouldn’t have known it would matter anyway. The latex paint we were using just sort of slid around on all the doors and trim and it looked like there were masses of paint just sort of oozing down them all over the place! I was sick over it. We spent the longest time going around with paint brushes after we sprayed, just trying to catch all of the oozes and drips and smooth them out. And regretting how critical I’ve been over the people who painted in this house before me who left paint drips all over the place! Maybe it wasn’t really their fault—maybe they didn’t know anything about painting latex over oil either! Maybe I AM one of those people who should be drug out to the street and shot! HA! Anyway, we did our best to fix what we could, but finally just had to call it a night. It was sooooo disappointing to think of the hours upon hours that I had spent scraping and sanding down a bad paint job… only to goop it up the same way in one night! I felt sick over it and prayed all night long asking God to please not let all of our work be in vain and to please somehow help it all to come out okay!
The Monstrosity: Day 30
Wednesday, January 4th
When we got back to the Monstrosity I was sooooo relieved to find that the paint actually looked good! REALLY good in most places! There are some flaws and drips (a few really bad ones!), but most of them were things that were already there that I was unable to fix. PRAISE THE LORD! I spent most of that day thanking God for being merciful and caring about such silly things as paint! He is soooooo good to me. :-)
As for our work that day, we refer to that as the slowpoke day. Ha! We worked and worked and worked, but never seemed to accomplish a whole lot! Mom started in on the red doors. They’d been sprayed red which gave us a wonderful head start, but needed all of the edges painted, then double coats on the front and back. She’s pretty sure the doors kept multiplying as she worked, sort of like the Tribbles on Star Trek. I had a very, very slow go of it trying to wallpaper in the kitchen for some reason. About the time I finally hit my groove we quit to get ready for church. We had a Bible study on the Church and covered just about every aspect possible (ha!), then went to Taco Bell with some of the crowd. We had a great time visiting, then went back to Sister Fender’s house for one last night.
The Monstrosity: Day 31
Thursday, January 5th
I finished upon the kitchen wallpaper (wa-hoo!!!) while Mom “cut in” (brushed all the edges of the room—corners and around ceiling moldings, door trim, and baseboards) in the hallway—there are lots of doors there) and the living room. Then she started wallpapering the laundry room. It is going to be one of the happiest rooms in the whole house.
I LOVE the wallpaper we found for that room. Fun. :-) I started faux painting the hallway. That meant two rooms and a hallway had begun taking on some color and character and I had JUST said, “Man, I wish somebody would come by and look at the house NOW”—when there was a knock at the door! The Ridlespurges had stopped by to check on our progress. Wa-Hoo!!! We had mentioned to the church folks the night before that they were all welcome to come over and I’m so glad some of them did. It’s rewarding to see your own accomplishments, but more fun to have somebody else appreciate them, too. ;-) The oohed and aahed just like they were supposed to, then somehow things took a turn and they were in the office with paint brushes, filling in the grooves in the paneling. That’ll learn ‘em. Bet that’s the last time they stop by to check on things! Ha! After the crowd left we hauled all the stuff out of the closet, aired up the mattresses, and made the beds. We slept at our very own house that night! Wow. :-)
The Monstrosity: Day 32
Friday, January 6th
Mom finished up on the laundry room, then did some priming and brushwork and I can’t remember what all. I was able to the get living room faux painted, as well as James’ office. We had Roto Rooter out in hopes that THAT would fix our water problems. We already had the septic tank pumped. Things were still backing up. Roto Rooter didn’t work either, but the guy who came out was a really nice backslidden holiness preacher boy and James was able to visit with him a little bit. Pray for Kelly. :-) Anyway, once he cleaned out the main pipe and loosened all of the muck in it things were backing up REALLY fast and we knew there would be no flushing of the toilets or anything that night, so we loaded up and went back to Sister Fender’s house for the night! But not before a FANTASTICAL dinner and some great fellowship. The Washburns brought dinner to us! Sister Tammy had made her blue ribbon white chicken chili (did I get all that right?!), some tasty beef enchiladas, some sort of Mexican creamed corn with crumbled bacon on top, and these dainty little gingerbread cookies with a cream cheese/whipped cream/marshmallow cream/brown sugar/chocolate chip dip—wowzers! Everything was sooooooo good. And she says she can’t cook. BALONEY. (Can you cook bologna too, Sister Tammy???) We had a great time with them, then enjoyed a few rounds of Bananagrams. Fun. :-)
It really is amazing how perfectly everything worked out that week, beginning with Sister Bishop and Sister Fender being there on Monday when we started the spraying, thus causing Sister Fender to insist that we come stay at her house! And then that the water situation held out all week long until we had completed our work on Friday evening before worsening to the point where we can’t keep working (because we can’t clean paint brushes, etc.) Perfect!
We spent Friday night back at Sister Fender’s house, then slept in a little bit on Saturday—which felt sooooo good! We drove to Hoover and took Mom to the Olive Garden as a “thank you” before sending her off to Cleveland. –And we took her by the Christmas Tree Shops, too. Found a few good bargains, like we always do.
James had business that afternoon, so the kids and I went to Big Lots to buy a couple of shovels, then Wal-Mart to buy a dress shirt for Joe--so he wouldn’t have to look like an Oompa Loompa again this week wearing one of Sam’s way-too-little shirts. He was so relieved. We went back to the Monstrosity and Sam and I spent quite a while digging down to the septic tank. We got a pretty good head start on the hole before going into the house and getting things cleaned up and organized in there. I pulled a few shelves in from the garage to keep kid clothes on in there, hoping things will stay neater now. Riiiight.
When James got home we drove to Sister Fender’s house to enjoy some left-overs from Sister Washburn’s gourmet meal the night before, get showers, and hit the sack.
And it appears that's all of the notes I have saved on my computer. So more catch-up later. I should have Internet the next few days, so maybe I really and truly can get caught up this week, in the midst of all the chaos. Blogging is therapudic for me and seems to sort out all of the insanity. I should definitely do it more often. ;-)
Nah, me either. And I have no business blogging. I've got way too much to do. I'm supposed to be moving out of the Powell's house right now. I have a total of 4 days to have a-a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff moved out (we've been here for just shy of a year and it's amazing just how much we've moved in!) and endeavor to have the house nice and clean (or at least decent and presentable--ha!) for it's rightful owners. They'll read this and say, "Oh, don't worry about it! Just do what you have time to do and you can always come get the rest of your belongings later--and there's no need to have the house all spick-and-span, it'll be fine..." That's what gracious people like them would say. Deep down we all know they're hoping I can succeed in ridding their house of foriegn clutter and grime before they get home. ;-)
That being said... I'm not packing, I'm not cleaning. I'm blogging. I seem to have hit a bit of a speed bump. I've gotten a decent amount accomplished and--though there's still TONS more to do--I keep wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what to do next. So I'm taking a break, hoping that when I resume my work I will have refocused and discovered some mystery motivation. It's worth a shot, anyway.
Okay, let's play catch-up. Here are some of the things I wrote up about three weeks ago.
The Monstrosity: Day 28
Monday , January 2nd
Work, work, work! I knew Mom was coming that afternoon and we still had sooooo much to do to be ready for her. I was running on pure adrenaline from the moment I woke up! I packed the bedroom away in the closet. Sam and I deflated mattresses and put them and a-a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff away so we’d be able to use the paint sprayer in the bedroom. A shut off valve in the half bath broke while James was removing the old, grimy sink so we had to have plumbers out to fix that. THAT wasn’t on the agenda! It was a quick easy fix at least.
About lunch time some dear ladies had us meet them at the church to enjoy the home cooked meal they had brought with them. Sister Bishop and Sister Fender had brought brisket and buns and beans and fruit salad and all sorts of goodies including some great little cake-like things that Sister Bishop makes and I always forget the name of. We are sooooo thankful to have anything home cooked! We enjoyed the food and the fellowship. And Joe enjoyed showing his new mandolin to Sister Bishop. The two of them jammed for a little while before we left.
When we got back to the Monstrosity Mom was already there waiting on us. We rushed to do the last of the paint prep but I have no idea anymore what that included. But then we start spraying!!! Ah, yes. We unboxed Maurice (that’s what our last paint sprayer was named—he was very dear to me) and I went from room to room with James taking care of who-knows-what while James sprayed primer on EVERYTHING: ceilings, walls, doors and trim. It was a foggy mess in the house and we were caked with overspray. There was nothing anybody could do in the house while all that was going on, so everybody who was around gathered together and hid out in our bedroom with the door closed. I find it very unfair that there was a group of people hanging out in my house fellowshipping… without me! HA! Before too long Sister Bishop and Sister Fender made a mad dash through the fog and back out to their car to leave. Sister Fender offered to let us stay at her house about 7 miles away. With the present condition of our house, we gratefully accepted! WHAT A BLESSING!!! It took 3 or 4 hours, but we got the whole main floor primed that night. How exciting!!! Can you imagine how long it would have taken to go room by room and prime every ceiling, ever wall, every door and all of the trim with just brushes and rollers?! Thank the Lord for Maurice! What a glorious invention!!!
Mom had taken the kids and headed over to Sister Fender’s house and James and I headed over when we finished up with the primer. They had made some homemade soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and peach cobbler for dinner and there were lots of left-overs waiting for us. Of course, we HAD to have a shower before we could think of sitting down to eat. This is what we looked like…
We each showered. And showered and showered and showered! Ha! We finally got all of the primer out of our hair and eyelashes and most of it off of our skin. It’s amazing how wonderful a shower can feel after a day like that!
The Monstrosity: Day 29
Tuesday, January 3rd
Sister Fender made pancakes and sausage for breakfast. We felt so spoiled. Three home cooked meals in a row?! WOW! James and I went to Lowe’s to pick up some necessities—and I gathered more paint swatches. Because of circumstances that would take way too long to relate, we were unable to get the dark red color (Foxtail) that we had tried so hard to hunt down. So I got lots and lots of red paint swatches to look at. When we got back to the Monstrosity I pulled a dining room chair out of the garage and when we threw one of the paint cards on it and it sort of disappeared, we knew we had something close enough to Foxtail to proceed! Or at least hoped so. I was still panicked about it for quite a while (reds are so scary!), but I’m satisfied now. :-)
Anyway, job #1 for the day involved Maurice again. This time we sprayed flat ceiling paint on a-a-a-a-a-a-all of the ceilings on the main floor. Yeah!!! It’s so exciting to get something FINISHED! Now the ceilings are FINISHED! Ha! And they look GREAT. You can’t see any of the places where Brother Hopkins patched holes for us. He did a fantastic job and everything looks so good.
After the ceilings we got out the new red paint that we chose (Chipotle Paste from Lowe’s just for the record) and sprayed the kitchen cabinets and a-a-a-a-a-all of the cabinet doors—they had been removed and lined up in the dining room awaiting a paint job. After FINALLY getting all of the red rinsed out of the sprayer (not an easy job!) we got the creamy/white color (Bleached Linen) and sprayed all of the doors and trim along with a few walls. Meanwhile, Mom was finally able to start putting up wallpaper in kitchen! ~SQUEAL!~ This is the part I’ve been waiting for! The part where pretty things start happening instead of just more and more ugly! Ha!
After our work was finished for the day we went to stay at Sister Fender’s house again, though she and Sister Bishop had left on a trip together. She gave us a key to the house and we ended up staying there every night that week but one, due to paint and water issues! We had leftover soup and cornbread for dinner. We were SO HAPPY and felt SO ACCOMPLISHED having gotten all of the ceilings, doors, and trim painted and all of the other surfaces ready for paint or paper. But we were REALLY concerned with how everything was turning out. I think we learned a very valuable and painful lesson about oil and latex. Apparently you’re not supposed to paint over oil based paint with latex paint—something I’ve never dealt with before. It just doesn’t stick. Apparently what had been in the house before (at least on the doors and trim) was oil paint. We didn’t know that and wouldn’t have known it would matter anyway. The latex paint we were using just sort of slid around on all the doors and trim and it looked like there were masses of paint just sort of oozing down them all over the place! I was sick over it. We spent the longest time going around with paint brushes after we sprayed, just trying to catch all of the oozes and drips and smooth them out. And regretting how critical I’ve been over the people who painted in this house before me who left paint drips all over the place! Maybe it wasn’t really their fault—maybe they didn’t know anything about painting latex over oil either! Maybe I AM one of those people who should be drug out to the street and shot! HA! Anyway, we did our best to fix what we could, but finally just had to call it a night. It was sooooo disappointing to think of the hours upon hours that I had spent scraping and sanding down a bad paint job… only to goop it up the same way in one night! I felt sick over it and prayed all night long asking God to please not let all of our work be in vain and to please somehow help it all to come out okay!
The Monstrosity: Day 30
Wednesday, January 4th
When we got back to the Monstrosity I was sooooo relieved to find that the paint actually looked good! REALLY good in most places! There are some flaws and drips (a few really bad ones!), but most of them were things that were already there that I was unable to fix. PRAISE THE LORD! I spent most of that day thanking God for being merciful and caring about such silly things as paint! He is soooooo good to me. :-)
As for our work that day, we refer to that as the slowpoke day. Ha! We worked and worked and worked, but never seemed to accomplish a whole lot! Mom started in on the red doors. They’d been sprayed red which gave us a wonderful head start, but needed all of the edges painted, then double coats on the front and back. She’s pretty sure the doors kept multiplying as she worked, sort of like the Tribbles on Star Trek. I had a very, very slow go of it trying to wallpaper in the kitchen for some reason. About the time I finally hit my groove we quit to get ready for church. We had a Bible study on the Church and covered just about every aspect possible (ha!), then went to Taco Bell with some of the crowd. We had a great time visiting, then went back to Sister Fender’s house for one last night.
The Monstrosity: Day 31
Thursday, January 5th
I finished upon the kitchen wallpaper (wa-hoo!!!) while Mom “cut in” (brushed all the edges of the room—corners and around ceiling moldings, door trim, and baseboards) in the hallway—there are lots of doors there) and the living room. Then she started wallpapering the laundry room. It is going to be one of the happiest rooms in the whole house.
I LOVE the wallpaper we found for that room. Fun. :-) I started faux painting the hallway. That meant two rooms and a hallway had begun taking on some color and character and I had JUST said, “Man, I wish somebody would come by and look at the house NOW”—when there was a knock at the door! The Ridlespurges had stopped by to check on our progress. Wa-Hoo!!! We had mentioned to the church folks the night before that they were all welcome to come over and I’m so glad some of them did. It’s rewarding to see your own accomplishments, but more fun to have somebody else appreciate them, too. ;-) The oohed and aahed just like they were supposed to, then somehow things took a turn and they were in the office with paint brushes, filling in the grooves in the paneling. That’ll learn ‘em. Bet that’s the last time they stop by to check on things! Ha! After the crowd left we hauled all the stuff out of the closet, aired up the mattresses, and made the beds. We slept at our very own house that night! Wow. :-)
The Monstrosity: Day 32
Friday, January 6th
Mom finished up on the laundry room, then did some priming and brushwork and I can’t remember what all. I was able to the get living room faux painted, as well as James’ office. We had Roto Rooter out in hopes that THAT would fix our water problems. We already had the septic tank pumped. Things were still backing up. Roto Rooter didn’t work either, but the guy who came out was a really nice backslidden holiness preacher boy and James was able to visit with him a little bit. Pray for Kelly. :-) Anyway, once he cleaned out the main pipe and loosened all of the muck in it things were backing up REALLY fast and we knew there would be no flushing of the toilets or anything that night, so we loaded up and went back to Sister Fender’s house for the night! But not before a FANTASTICAL dinner and some great fellowship. The Washburns brought dinner to us! Sister Tammy had made her blue ribbon white chicken chili (did I get all that right?!), some tasty beef enchiladas, some sort of Mexican creamed corn with crumbled bacon on top, and these dainty little gingerbread cookies with a cream cheese/whipped cream/marshmallow cream/brown sugar/chocolate chip dip—wowzers! Everything was sooooooo good. And she says she can’t cook. BALONEY. (Can you cook bologna too, Sister Tammy???) We had a great time with them, then enjoyed a few rounds of Bananagrams. Fun. :-)
It really is amazing how perfectly everything worked out that week, beginning with Sister Bishop and Sister Fender being there on Monday when we started the spraying, thus causing Sister Fender to insist that we come stay at her house! And then that the water situation held out all week long until we had completed our work on Friday evening before worsening to the point where we can’t keep working (because we can’t clean paint brushes, etc.) Perfect!
We spent Friday night back at Sister Fender’s house, then slept in a little bit on Saturday—which felt sooooo good! We drove to Hoover and took Mom to the Olive Garden as a “thank you” before sending her off to Cleveland. –And we took her by the Christmas Tree Shops, too. Found a few good bargains, like we always do.
James had business that afternoon, so the kids and I went to Big Lots to buy a couple of shovels, then Wal-Mart to buy a dress shirt for Joe--so he wouldn’t have to look like an Oompa Loompa again this week wearing one of Sam’s way-too-little shirts. He was so relieved. We went back to the Monstrosity and Sam and I spent quite a while digging down to the septic tank. We got a pretty good head start on the hole before going into the house and getting things cleaned up and organized in there. I pulled a few shelves in from the garage to keep kid clothes on in there, hoping things will stay neater now. Riiiight.
When James got home we drove to Sister Fender’s house to enjoy some left-overs from Sister Washburn’s gourmet meal the night before, get showers, and hit the sack.
And it appears that's all of the notes I have saved on my computer. So more catch-up later. I should have Internet the next few days, so maybe I really and truly can get caught up this week, in the midst of all the chaos. Blogging is therapudic for me and seems to sort out all of the insanity. I should definitely do it more often. ;-)
Friday, January 13, 2012
Finishing December
The Monstrosity: Day 24
Wednesday, December 28th
Hhmmm. I didn’t take notes at the end of the day and now I can’t remember what we did—even though it was just yesterday! [Remember that I’ve been “blogging” all along, just haven’t had time and/or Internet access to edit or post anything!] I do remember that Haley had her baby! Joshua. Looks just like her little Sam. Mom and baby are doing well, so praise the Lord!
I also remember putting a couple of coats of Polyurethane on the bathroom cabinets… OH! And scrubbing the tile floor in the bathroom. I mean really, really scrubbing. James had used a leveler of some kind on it and it dried like grainy cement. It had to be scrubbed off the tiles (leaving only the parts that would “level” the grout lines) and it took a long, long, long time and lots and lots of grunting and groaning. I told James he’s not allowed to work on tile anymore. It always seems to create an exorbitant amount of work for me. ;-)
We had a Bible study at church that night on “A New Beginning” and I thoroughly enjoyed all of the scriptures and thoughts that were shared by everyone. Afterwards we went to MacAlister’s with the Washburns for some good food and fellowship. Sam left Brother Washburn speechless with his quick wit and a stranger came and told us we win the best looking family of the year award (no doubt assuming the Washburns were the parents/grandparents of the rest of us), so I guess it was a successful evening.
When we got back to the house the kids and I went to bed and James started laying the new floor in the bathroom. Oh, happy day!!! Yes, we’re STILL working on that silly little bathroom. Will it ever end?! Ha! Of course, we’ve been working on lots of other things, too, but still...
The Monstrosity: Day 25
Thursday, December 29th.
I began the day by oohing and aahing over the new floor (over half done) in the bathroom. I LOVE IT. I absolutely love it. I love it because it’s so rustic looking… I love it because the old nasty tile floor is gone… I love it because it’s fresh and clean—and now (at the end of the day) I love it because it’s finished! :-)
My day’s work started with putting new hardware on the doors and drawers for the bathroom, with some good assistance from Sam. Then I put all of my energies into paint prep. It was a long day full of a thousand different little tasks, but at the end of the day I have two rooms completely ready to paint and two others well on their way. I didn’t get as far along as I would have liked, but you can only do what you can do, you know?
Hhmmm. Other news today… Nope, can’t think of any. Except that James wanted to take us out for a decent dinner (we’re all sooooo tired of fast food and CAN’T WAIT to have a kitchen here!), so we ended up at Cracker Barrel. I got mashed potatoes, corn, dumplin’s and applesauce—just like I did when we were living in a motel in New Mexico and had been without our own home (and kitchen) for two months! Ha! Living in a motel with a four year old, a five year old, a six year old and a super hyper poodle—for a month. We have good memories from that crazy time in our lives. We’ll have more good memories of THIS crazy time in our lives. :-)
Ah, yes, there is one other bit of news. The air mattress didn’t make it through the night last night—we woke up on the floor this morning. We had noticed that it wasn’t as tight as it originally was and we intended to fill it up today anyway. Unfortunately when we did fill it up it started leaking rapidly. Upon further investigation we discovered a small slit where the side of the mattress had begun to separate from the valve. We had become quite fond of that air mattress and even considered it more comfortable than most regular beds, so we were especially sad to see it go. Not to mention the fact that it didn’t belong to us—it was the Powells’! No worries, though—we saw that it was a Coleman mattress and had replaced it with a new one before the day was out. Otherwise we would have had to sleep on the floor again. My back said no way. :-)
I started proofing the Sunday School literature we were sent, but only made it through the Introduction and Lesson One. Then I wrote out all of my thank you cards for Christmas before hitting the hay.
The Monstrosity: Day 26
Friday, December 30th.
We had hopes of painting today. Silly little hopes. They keep meandering their way into our lives, then shattering all over the dusty floor. All I can say is that I’m doing my very, very best. We got home from Cleveland Monday night, we came to the Monstrosity on Tuesday, and I have been working 12-14 hour days since then, along with schooling the kids. There’s just sooooo much to do! This is one of those days when I find myself thinking, “What kind of idiots buy a house so BIG?!” Our kind, apparently. ;-)
It’s 10:30pm right now. I worked as long as I could make myself work, took a quick shower, got my pj’s on, and crawled into bed with my laptop for a few Internetless minutes. I didn’t get as much done today as I wanted to (do I say that EVERY day???), but I still feel some sense of satisfaction in the simple knowledge of how hard I’ve been trying. I worked on the kitchen cabinets today, then the stairwell and foyer, the utility room, and all of the doors on this floor. Unless I spend another week working on them (I don’t have another week to spend on them even if I wanted to!), the doors are just never going to be as pretty as they should be. The last painter who graced this house ~ahem~ was proficient at the drip and run style of painting and they used all thick, high gloss paint to ensure it would last a lifetime. Perhaps several lifetimes. How thoughtful of them.
Along those lines, Mom reminded me today about Nancy. She was the old lady who taught us how to quilt when I was a teenager. She always told us that if something didn’t turn out just right or had some imperfections, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. “From a galloping horse,” she would say, “nobody will ever see it.” I never had the heart to tell her that most people don’t look at quilts while riding the range; they’re usually standing still or even sitting. Nevertheless, for my sanity’s sake I am going to have to adopt her philosophy. I could scrape and sand for the rest of my life and never smooth out ALL of the flaws in this house. So after getting all OCD and COMPLETELY scraping one side of one of the six remaining doors, I thought of good ole’ Nancy and her galloping horse. I put down my scraper, grabbed my electric sander, laid aside the course paint stripping sand paper and grabbed a sheet of smoother “leveling” paper, and gave all of the doors a quick once-over. There are still paint drips, but they’re more “level” than they were before, or at least I’m choosing to believe so. I’ll just have to tell anyone who travels this hallway that they’re not allowed to slow their horse below a swift canter. ;-)
We decided tonight to rip out another floor. Oh, why not? God has provided lots of good help for us through this project and the floor was gone in short order. The utility room is now rid of the cushy, water damaged linoleum and level with the floor in the hallway, which will make for a much nicer transition.
We were supposed to go home tonight. We were going to spend tomorrow “recuping.” That means I would work at THAT house instead of this one, but it would be normal work—laundry and stuff like that. But I don’t have time to go home—there’s too much to do before Mom comes! Did I mention Mom is coming? She’ll be here Monday and (if we are far enough along and able to get ready for it!) will help me with paint and wallpaper. Anyway, there is still sooooo much to do to get ready. So tonight I sent James and Katie and Sam—and Charlie—home and Joe and I are staying at the Monstrosity. The Brierfield crowd will take care of Brady and the house, then come back tomorrow bearing extra underwear, fresh towels, and a list of other odds and ends to see us through the coming week. Work, work, work! But it’s a good thing. I keep thinking things are going to start getting exciting around here any day now. I think I’ve been thinking that since we bought this house over two months ago. I’m glad I don’t have sense enough to be realistic. It would be too depressing. I prefer the blindly optimistic approach to life. ;-)
The Monstrosity: Day 27
Saturday, December 31st.
~whew~ That’s all I have to say at the end of this day. It’s been a doosy. A good doosy, for the most part. It was full of paint prep. Lots and lots of paint prep. That is, of course, what I’ve been doing ever since we bought this place, but in ultra high gear this week. We still haven’t unboxed the paint sprayer, but we’re getting so close I can smell it. :-)
After all of our hard work throughout the day we discovered water in the basement again. James had sent some “Emergency Care” chemicals down the drain a few days before and we’d let them sit while using as little water as possible, but my shower yesterday proved that it didn’t fix the problem. So here we are on Saturday night… I’ve been working like crazy and I’m all nasty… I caught a whiff of Joe earlier when he walked by (a very bad sign)… we have church in the morning… and no way to shower. ~sigh~
I called the Ridlespurges and asked if we could come shower at their house. I was embarrassed to do it, but assured them that they—and the entire church in Bessemer—would be glad come morning. Ha! We showed up on their porch a little while later singing a few lines from one of our favorite songs:
Our pipes are corroded, the water won’t drain
Our toilet exploded, we’re flushing in vain!!!
We were so thankful for the use of their plumbing! GOD BLESS THEM! :-)
That was New Year’s Eve. We were exhausted and asleep on our air mattresses at the Monstrosity by 10:30! Ha! Pitiful. We did wake up at midnight when the fireworks were going off all around us. Folks are serious about the fireworks here.
On Sunday we went to church, then a different Mexican joint than usual with the crowd—the Washburns, Parkers—I can’t remember who all. Then we went to visit old Brother Parker who hasn’t been well enough to come to church for a few months now. We sure miss having him there. It was nice to visit with him and have a good prayer with him. And I just love being with Sister Parker. She is the neatest lady—and she cracks me up!
Even after all of that I still had time to get a nice Sunday afternoon nap. Have I mentioned that I am going to LOVE living a mile and a half from the church?! :-) After service that night we undecorated (all the Christmas stuff) in ZOOM fashion with Tammy Washburn leading the way. Ha! She doesn’t waste time, let me tell ya’! Then it was off for another kids-eat-free night at McAlister’s.
Wednesday, December 28th
Hhmmm. I didn’t take notes at the end of the day and now I can’t remember what we did—even though it was just yesterday! [Remember that I’ve been “blogging” all along, just haven’t had time and/or Internet access to edit or post anything!] I do remember that Haley had her baby! Joshua. Looks just like her little Sam. Mom and baby are doing well, so praise the Lord!
I also remember putting a couple of coats of Polyurethane on the bathroom cabinets… OH! And scrubbing the tile floor in the bathroom. I mean really, really scrubbing. James had used a leveler of some kind on it and it dried like grainy cement. It had to be scrubbed off the tiles (leaving only the parts that would “level” the grout lines) and it took a long, long, long time and lots and lots of grunting and groaning. I told James he’s not allowed to work on tile anymore. It always seems to create an exorbitant amount of work for me. ;-)
We had a Bible study at church that night on “A New Beginning” and I thoroughly enjoyed all of the scriptures and thoughts that were shared by everyone. Afterwards we went to MacAlister’s with the Washburns for some good food and fellowship. Sam left Brother Washburn speechless with his quick wit and a stranger came and told us we win the best looking family of the year award (no doubt assuming the Washburns were the parents/grandparents of the rest of us), so I guess it was a successful evening.
When we got back to the house the kids and I went to bed and James started laying the new floor in the bathroom. Oh, happy day!!! Yes, we’re STILL working on that silly little bathroom. Will it ever end?! Ha! Of course, we’ve been working on lots of other things, too, but still...
The Monstrosity: Day 25
Thursday, December 29th.
I began the day by oohing and aahing over the new floor (over half done) in the bathroom. I LOVE IT. I absolutely love it. I love it because it’s so rustic looking… I love it because the old nasty tile floor is gone… I love it because it’s fresh and clean—and now (at the end of the day) I love it because it’s finished! :-)
My day’s work started with putting new hardware on the doors and drawers for the bathroom, with some good assistance from Sam. Then I put all of my energies into paint prep. It was a long day full of a thousand different little tasks, but at the end of the day I have two rooms completely ready to paint and two others well on their way. I didn’t get as far along as I would have liked, but you can only do what you can do, you know?
Hhmmm. Other news today… Nope, can’t think of any. Except that James wanted to take us out for a decent dinner (we’re all sooooo tired of fast food and CAN’T WAIT to have a kitchen here!), so we ended up at Cracker Barrel. I got mashed potatoes, corn, dumplin’s and applesauce—just like I did when we were living in a motel in New Mexico and had been without our own home (and kitchen) for two months! Ha! Living in a motel with a four year old, a five year old, a six year old and a super hyper poodle—for a month. We have good memories from that crazy time in our lives. We’ll have more good memories of THIS crazy time in our lives. :-)
Ah, yes, there is one other bit of news. The air mattress didn’t make it through the night last night—we woke up on the floor this morning. We had noticed that it wasn’t as tight as it originally was and we intended to fill it up today anyway. Unfortunately when we did fill it up it started leaking rapidly. Upon further investigation we discovered a small slit where the side of the mattress had begun to separate from the valve. We had become quite fond of that air mattress and even considered it more comfortable than most regular beds, so we were especially sad to see it go. Not to mention the fact that it didn’t belong to us—it was the Powells’! No worries, though—we saw that it was a Coleman mattress and had replaced it with a new one before the day was out. Otherwise we would have had to sleep on the floor again. My back said no way. :-)
I started proofing the Sunday School literature we were sent, but only made it through the Introduction and Lesson One. Then I wrote out all of my thank you cards for Christmas before hitting the hay.
The Monstrosity: Day 26
Friday, December 30th.
We had hopes of painting today. Silly little hopes. They keep meandering their way into our lives, then shattering all over the dusty floor. All I can say is that I’m doing my very, very best. We got home from Cleveland Monday night, we came to the Monstrosity on Tuesday, and I have been working 12-14 hour days since then, along with schooling the kids. There’s just sooooo much to do! This is one of those days when I find myself thinking, “What kind of idiots buy a house so BIG?!” Our kind, apparently. ;-)
It’s 10:30pm right now. I worked as long as I could make myself work, took a quick shower, got my pj’s on, and crawled into bed with my laptop for a few Internetless minutes. I didn’t get as much done today as I wanted to (do I say that EVERY day???), but I still feel some sense of satisfaction in the simple knowledge of how hard I’ve been trying. I worked on the kitchen cabinets today, then the stairwell and foyer, the utility room, and all of the doors on this floor. Unless I spend another week working on them (I don’t have another week to spend on them even if I wanted to!), the doors are just never going to be as pretty as they should be. The last painter who graced this house ~ahem~ was proficient at the drip and run style of painting and they used all thick, high gloss paint to ensure it would last a lifetime. Perhaps several lifetimes. How thoughtful of them.
Along those lines, Mom reminded me today about Nancy. She was the old lady who taught us how to quilt when I was a teenager. She always told us that if something didn’t turn out just right or had some imperfections, DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. “From a galloping horse,” she would say, “nobody will ever see it.” I never had the heart to tell her that most people don’t look at quilts while riding the range; they’re usually standing still or even sitting. Nevertheless, for my sanity’s sake I am going to have to adopt her philosophy. I could scrape and sand for the rest of my life and never smooth out ALL of the flaws in this house. So after getting all OCD and COMPLETELY scraping one side of one of the six remaining doors, I thought of good ole’ Nancy and her galloping horse. I put down my scraper, grabbed my electric sander, laid aside the course paint stripping sand paper and grabbed a sheet of smoother “leveling” paper, and gave all of the doors a quick once-over. There are still paint drips, but they’re more “level” than they were before, or at least I’m choosing to believe so. I’ll just have to tell anyone who travels this hallway that they’re not allowed to slow their horse below a swift canter. ;-)
We decided tonight to rip out another floor. Oh, why not? God has provided lots of good help for us through this project and the floor was gone in short order. The utility room is now rid of the cushy, water damaged linoleum and level with the floor in the hallway, which will make for a much nicer transition.
We were supposed to go home tonight. We were going to spend tomorrow “recuping.” That means I would work at THAT house instead of this one, but it would be normal work—laundry and stuff like that. But I don’t have time to go home—there’s too much to do before Mom comes! Did I mention Mom is coming? She’ll be here Monday and (if we are far enough along and able to get ready for it!) will help me with paint and wallpaper. Anyway, there is still sooooo much to do to get ready. So tonight I sent James and Katie and Sam—and Charlie—home and Joe and I are staying at the Monstrosity. The Brierfield crowd will take care of Brady and the house, then come back tomorrow bearing extra underwear, fresh towels, and a list of other odds and ends to see us through the coming week. Work, work, work! But it’s a good thing. I keep thinking things are going to start getting exciting around here any day now. I think I’ve been thinking that since we bought this house over two months ago. I’m glad I don’t have sense enough to be realistic. It would be too depressing. I prefer the blindly optimistic approach to life. ;-)
The Monstrosity: Day 27
Saturday, December 31st.
~whew~ That’s all I have to say at the end of this day. It’s been a doosy. A good doosy, for the most part. It was full of paint prep. Lots and lots of paint prep. That is, of course, what I’ve been doing ever since we bought this place, but in ultra high gear this week. We still haven’t unboxed the paint sprayer, but we’re getting so close I can smell it. :-)
After all of our hard work throughout the day we discovered water in the basement again. James had sent some “Emergency Care” chemicals down the drain a few days before and we’d let them sit while using as little water as possible, but my shower yesterday proved that it didn’t fix the problem. So here we are on Saturday night… I’ve been working like crazy and I’m all nasty… I caught a whiff of Joe earlier when he walked by (a very bad sign)… we have church in the morning… and no way to shower. ~sigh~
I called the Ridlespurges and asked if we could come shower at their house. I was embarrassed to do it, but assured them that they—and the entire church in Bessemer—would be glad come morning. Ha! We showed up on their porch a little while later singing a few lines from one of our favorite songs:
Our pipes are corroded, the water won’t drain
Our toilet exploded, we’re flushing in vain!!!
We were so thankful for the use of their plumbing! GOD BLESS THEM! :-)
That was New Year’s Eve. We were exhausted and asleep on our air mattresses at the Monstrosity by 10:30! Ha! Pitiful. We did wake up at midnight when the fireworks were going off all around us. Folks are serious about the fireworks here.
On Sunday we went to church, then a different Mexican joint than usual with the crowd—the Washburns, Parkers—I can’t remember who all. Then we went to visit old Brother Parker who hasn’t been well enough to come to church for a few months now. We sure miss having him there. It was nice to visit with him and have a good prayer with him. And I just love being with Sister Parker. She is the neatest lady—and she cracks me up!
Even after all of that I still had time to get a nice Sunday afternoon nap. Have I mentioned that I am going to LOVE living a mile and a half from the church?! :-) After service that night we undecorated (all the Christmas stuff) in ZOOM fashion with Tammy Washburn leading the way. Ha! She doesn’t waste time, let me tell ya’! Then it was off for another kids-eat-free night at McAlister’s.
Perhaps We Should Fall Back & Regroup
That's what we're doing right now. Taking a breather at the Powell's house. ~Aaaaaahhhhh~ It feels nice, though we'll only be here for this evening and tomorrow. It's just nice to come to a house that has furniture and a refrigerator, a washer--things like that--every so often.
So... our water problems:
About three weeks ago the basement toilet started overflowing all over the floor--this seemed to happen in conjunction with finishing the master bathroom--when we began using larger amounts of water (showering) there. Because things were backing up, we thought perhaps the septic tank needed pumped. We paid to have that done. It was a good thing to do anyway, but it didn't cure our problem. James then poured some emergency care stuff down the pipes hoping it would eat away whatever blockage was causing things to back up through the toilet down there. Nope, didn't work. So then we tried Roto Rooter--the main line from the house to the tank must be clogged. Didn't work. In fact, from the moment the Roto Rooter dude ran the snaky metal thing down the pipe things got way, way worse. Now we couldn't flush toilets or wash hands (much less paint brushes) without the basement toilet spilling out and spreading all over the place. That was a week ago. Things still overflowed even when we weren't using water, baffling us to no end. We left Sunday night to go back to Brierfield, turning the main water line to the house OFF at the Monstrosity before we left. When we got back Tuesday evening, IT HAD OVERFLOWED AGAIN!!! What???? How is that possible and where is this water coming from????? We cleaned up all of the mess AGAIN (we are sooooooo tired of mopping that floor!), stayed at Sister Fender's house that night, then went back to the Monstrosity the next day to mop up the perpetual puddle made by the magic toilet--and it wasn't there! For the first time in a week the toiled had NOT overflowed. I wanted to be excited about it, but it still didn't explain WHY it was doing it before, so we knew it wasn't fixed.
Thursday morning we got a plumber out to look at it. He felt certain that the pipe from the house to the tank must be clogged, completely confident that it's the only thing it COULD be. It felt reassuring to have someone who felt confident about something for a change! (Up until this point we just kept getting more and more confused!) It made sense that it would cause the toilet to overflow (it's the lowest spot in the house, of course), but still didn't explain where all of the water was coming from--even when the water to the house was turned off! Mr. Plumber (I should learn his name--I have a feeling we'll be good friends with him for as long as we live in this house; we've seen him twice in the past week) said that there could be as much as 60-80 GALLONS of water still in the pipes throughout the house after the water is shut off! I had noooooo idea there could be that much! That would explain where the water was coming from (and also allows me to know just how much we've been mopping for the past week--especially since it was that much just SINCE we turned the water off) and why it finally stopped overflowing... after two or three days it had finally oozed all 60-80 gallons all over the floor and run dry.
ANYWAY, he tried to do the Roto Rooter thing again (he has the same machine), but to no avail. He told us that the line was full of sludge and when they pull the snaky metal thing back out the sludge would just close up around it, clogging things up again. He said we needed to call Roto Rooter back and have them bring out a "jetter"--a machine that blows 4,000 lbs. of pressure and blasts the sludge out the other end. So that's what we did. Why didn't the plumber warn me how much it costs to do such a thing???? *OUCH* But we didn't feel we had any option--and it was still much cheaper than if we would have had to replace the septic tank and redo the leach field or something like that, so we're definitely counting our blessings.
We went to the new Chinese restaurant for lunch and my fortune cookie said, "You will have no problems in your home." Hahahahahahahaha! Best one I've ever gotten! Feeling encouraged (ha!), we called Roto Rooter again and asked them to send a jetter out.
It is an amazing thing, the jetter. A $60,000 machine that can blow sludge--thick, black, oozy, smelly, slimy sludge--out of a pipe when nothing else can make a dent. Actually if you made a dent in sludge it just fills back in, so dents don't help anyway. At the end of the day:
Meet Mike! He's the answer to our prayers. The man who God sent to finally--at long last!--solve our water-pouring-out-of-the-basement-toilet-ALL-THE-TIME dilemma. Yes. I did ask a total stranger if I could have my picture taken with him. Yes. It is weird. But it's not often that a Roto Rooter man gets to feel like a celebrity or have somebody appreciate his work so much they ask for a picture--I probably made his day. Hahahaha! Yes, I'm holding my "You will have no problems in your home" fortune, too. And yes, I did explain to the man that I don't believe in fortunes, I believe in prayer--I just found it funny and ironic that I should get such a "fortune" on that very day. HA!
So now we are THANKING THE LORD that this particular problem seems to have been solved. I went upstairs and started flushing toilets and running faucets all over the place before Mike left, just to be sure. Noooooooooo water came up in the toilet at all. PRAISE THE LORD!!! It's amazing how much you appreciate things (like being able to use sinks, toilets and tubs in your own house) when you go without them for a week or two. The kids were ECSTATIC at the news. They STILL ask us each time though, "Is this toilet usable???" just to be sure. Ha!
So... our water problems:
About three weeks ago the basement toilet started overflowing all over the floor--this seemed to happen in conjunction with finishing the master bathroom--when we began using larger amounts of water (showering) there. Because things were backing up, we thought perhaps the septic tank needed pumped. We paid to have that done. It was a good thing to do anyway, but it didn't cure our problem. James then poured some emergency care stuff down the pipes hoping it would eat away whatever blockage was causing things to back up through the toilet down there. Nope, didn't work. So then we tried Roto Rooter--the main line from the house to the tank must be clogged. Didn't work. In fact, from the moment the Roto Rooter dude ran the snaky metal thing down the pipe things got way, way worse. Now we couldn't flush toilets or wash hands (much less paint brushes) without the basement toilet spilling out and spreading all over the place. That was a week ago. Things still overflowed even when we weren't using water, baffling us to no end. We left Sunday night to go back to Brierfield, turning the main water line to the house OFF at the Monstrosity before we left. When we got back Tuesday evening, IT HAD OVERFLOWED AGAIN!!! What???? How is that possible and where is this water coming from????? We cleaned up all of the mess AGAIN (we are sooooooo tired of mopping that floor!), stayed at Sister Fender's house that night, then went back to the Monstrosity the next day to mop up the perpetual puddle made by the magic toilet--and it wasn't there! For the first time in a week the toiled had NOT overflowed. I wanted to be excited about it, but it still didn't explain WHY it was doing it before, so we knew it wasn't fixed.
Thursday morning we got a plumber out to look at it. He felt certain that the pipe from the house to the tank must be clogged, completely confident that it's the only thing it COULD be. It felt reassuring to have someone who felt confident about something for a change! (Up until this point we just kept getting more and more confused!) It made sense that it would cause the toilet to overflow (it's the lowest spot in the house, of course), but still didn't explain where all of the water was coming from--even when the water to the house was turned off! Mr. Plumber (I should learn his name--I have a feeling we'll be good friends with him for as long as we live in this house; we've seen him twice in the past week) said that there could be as much as 60-80 GALLONS of water still in the pipes throughout the house after the water is shut off! I had noooooo idea there could be that much! That would explain where the water was coming from (and also allows me to know just how much we've been mopping for the past week--especially since it was that much just SINCE we turned the water off) and why it finally stopped overflowing... after two or three days it had finally oozed all 60-80 gallons all over the floor and run dry.
ANYWAY, he tried to do the Roto Rooter thing again (he has the same machine), but to no avail. He told us that the line was full of sludge and when they pull the snaky metal thing back out the sludge would just close up around it, clogging things up again. He said we needed to call Roto Rooter back and have them bring out a "jetter"--a machine that blows 4,000 lbs. of pressure and blasts the sludge out the other end. So that's what we did. Why didn't the plumber warn me how much it costs to do such a thing???? *OUCH* But we didn't feel we had any option--and it was still much cheaper than if we would have had to replace the septic tank and redo the leach field or something like that, so we're definitely counting our blessings.
We went to the new Chinese restaurant for lunch and my fortune cookie said, "You will have no problems in your home." Hahahahahahahaha! Best one I've ever gotten! Feeling encouraged (ha!), we called Roto Rooter again and asked them to send a jetter out.
It is an amazing thing, the jetter. A $60,000 machine that can blow sludge--thick, black, oozy, smelly, slimy sludge--out of a pipe when nothing else can make a dent. Actually if you made a dent in sludge it just fills back in, so dents don't help anyway. At the end of the day:
Meet Mike! He's the answer to our prayers. The man who God sent to finally--at long last!--solve our water-pouring-out-of-the-basement-toilet-ALL-THE-TIME dilemma. Yes. I did ask a total stranger if I could have my picture taken with him. Yes. It is weird. But it's not often that a Roto Rooter man gets to feel like a celebrity or have somebody appreciate his work so much they ask for a picture--I probably made his day. Hahahaha! Yes, I'm holding my "You will have no problems in your home" fortune, too. And yes, I did explain to the man that I don't believe in fortunes, I believe in prayer--I just found it funny and ironic that I should get such a "fortune" on that very day. HA!
So now we are THANKING THE LORD that this particular problem seems to have been solved. I went upstairs and started flushing toilets and running faucets all over the place before Mike left, just to be sure. Noooooooooo water came up in the toilet at all. PRAISE THE LORD!!! It's amazing how much you appreciate things (like being able to use sinks, toilets and tubs in your own house) when you go without them for a week or two. The kids were ECSTATIC at the news. They STILL ask us each time though, "Is this toilet usable???" just to be sure. Ha!
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The Good News Is...
I'm blogging because I have Internet!
The bad news is...
I have Internet because we're staying at Sister Fender's house again.
The good news is...
Sister Fender is a dear and wonderful lady and has opened her home to us anytime we need it.
The bad news is...
We're having to take her up on it because we can't use the water (showers, toilets, etc.) at the Monstrosity right now.
The good news is...
We've been talking to lots of knowledgeable people to try to come up with a solution.
The bad new is...
At the end of the conversation, they're all left scratching their heads and saying, "I don't have a CLUE what's going on."
The good news is...
The toilet in the basement actually WASN'T overflowing all over the basement floor when we went by to check it this evening.
The bad news is...
We don't know why it WAS overflowing, why it ISN'T now, what caused it to START, what caused it to STOP, WHEN it might happen again, and what we can DO to fix it so it doesn't.
That's our life in a nutshell. Not really. That's only the Monstrosity part of our life. Sometimes other things flood in and make the house stuff seem pretty small. It's just a thing, you know. I thank the Lord for sending those reminders to me on occasion. Still, we'd love to find a way to keep the water in the pipes and off the floors. The only time I've ever spent in our basement has been mopping up water or sucking it up with the Shop Vac. As far as I'm concerned, I don't care if I ever go to the basement again. I've never had a good time down there. It's funny how your perception can change like that. I used to think about how enjoyable it would be to spend time in the basement on occasion, playing ping pong or something like that. Nah. This basement doesn't hold any games. Just water. On the floor. Most of the time for the past two weeks. It's not fun at all down there like it's supposed to be. In fact, I would just as soon never go to the basement again. Ever.
I'm not actually discouraged, though it may sound so. We just feel sort of at a loss as for what in the world can be causing our problem so we can figure out how to fix it. We're trying to talk to plumbers and septic people to work toward a solution. I'm too tired to do much blogging (no catching up tonight), I really just wanted to put a blip on here and request prayer. I'm beginning to think that our pipes are possessed, but James says this is not a spiritual problem (ha!)--but I would still appreciate any prayers for our pipes! :-) THANK YOU.
The bad news is...
I have Internet because we're staying at Sister Fender's house again.
The good news is...
Sister Fender is a dear and wonderful lady and has opened her home to us anytime we need it.
The bad news is...
We're having to take her up on it because we can't use the water (showers, toilets, etc.) at the Monstrosity right now.
The good news is...
We've been talking to lots of knowledgeable people to try to come up with a solution.
The bad new is...
At the end of the conversation, they're all left scratching their heads and saying, "I don't have a CLUE what's going on."
The good news is...
The toilet in the basement actually WASN'T overflowing all over the basement floor when we went by to check it this evening.
The bad news is...
We don't know why it WAS overflowing, why it ISN'T now, what caused it to START, what caused it to STOP, WHEN it might happen again, and what we can DO to fix it so it doesn't.
That's our life in a nutshell. Not really. That's only the Monstrosity part of our life. Sometimes other things flood in and make the house stuff seem pretty small. It's just a thing, you know. I thank the Lord for sending those reminders to me on occasion. Still, we'd love to find a way to keep the water in the pipes and off the floors. The only time I've ever spent in our basement has been mopping up water or sucking it up with the Shop Vac. As far as I'm concerned, I don't care if I ever go to the basement again. I've never had a good time down there. It's funny how your perception can change like that. I used to think about how enjoyable it would be to spend time in the basement on occasion, playing ping pong or something like that. Nah. This basement doesn't hold any games. Just water. On the floor. Most of the time for the past two weeks. It's not fun at all down there like it's supposed to be. In fact, I would just as soon never go to the basement again. Ever.
I'm not actually discouraged, though it may sound so. We just feel sort of at a loss as for what in the world can be causing our problem so we can figure out how to fix it. We're trying to talk to plumbers and septic people to work toward a solution. I'm too tired to do much blogging (no catching up tonight), I really just wanted to put a blip on here and request prayer. I'm beginning to think that our pipes are possessed, but James says this is not a spiritual problem (ha!)--but I would still appreciate any prayers for our pipes! :-) THANK YOU.
Monday, January 9, 2012
More December
Yesterday and today have been good days. Had a good, prayerful church service yesterday morning, then a quick lunch at Bojangles with Richard Barnes who had joined us for service. Then we went back to Sister Fender's house so I could wash up all of the sheets and towels that we'd used last week and make the beds up, then on to the Monstrosity to figure out what needed to stay there and what needed to go home to the Powell's house. Evening service at 6:00, then a great time of fellowship at McAlister's with the Ridle-Hop-Wash-Hornes crowd. :-)
Last night we came home to the Powell's house--first time I'd been here in two weeks! I finally started feeling the big wind-down from all of the work we've been doing. I slept hard--and late! It was nice. :-) We had a lazy morning and let the kids just spend some time playing outside (Joe has a target he'd gotten for Christmas that he's been dying to try out!) before having Frito pie for lunch and getting into school in the afternoon. I managed to get a load and a half of laundry done. Pitiful, hu?! I just can't seem to get it in gear today. Tomorrow evening we head back into town, so I'm really hoping I have more motivation in the morning than I did all day today!
And now for the old news...
The Monstrosity: Day Twenty-One (Monday, December 19th)
I had high expectations for today. Of course, none of them came to fruition.
Today was the day that we were bested by the bathroom. It’s a sad thing. It’s such a small room. And we’ve put sooooooo many hours of work into it and it had begun to look soooooooo good. Today was the day it decided to fight back.
All we wanted to do was re-grout the tile a little bit, just to freshen it up in any discolored places. Is that too much to ask? James used the product just like the instructions said, but it didn’t “wipe off with a soft, dry cloth” at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure whoever wrote those directions was laughing like a madman as he penned the words, thinking of the poor saps like us who would spend hour upon hour scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing that which was supposed to “wipe off with a soft, dry cloth.” Even with a wet, scratchy sponge, Stanley the Scraper, and all the elbow grease we had to offer it was an all-day job getting rid of the excess grout and residue. Seriously, it was after 10:00pm when I got the last of it cleaned up—not including the floor.
We had silly little hopes of finishing the bathroom, or coming very, very close day, but we ended up giving all of our time and energy to the grout project. Actually, I had intended to accomplish other grand and glorious things today, but was all consumed with the grout clean-up job. So frustrating.
James decided we’d feel better if we accomplished something other than just scrubbing grout all day (!), so he set out to remove the old faucet and install the new one. Ha. If only. That’s supposed to be an easy little project, right?! He’s done this several times before and it’s not like it’s something big or difficult. Usually. ~ sigh~ We fought and wrestled and fought and wrestled some more to get everything unhooked under the sink and while we were giving it a mighty heave-ho something finally popped loose… but it wasn’t the pipe we were working on, it was the sink itself! HA! The whole sink just popped out! We were amazed—and did thank God!—that it didn’t break any of the tiles on the countertop. We put the sink upside down on the bedroom floor and were finally able to get all of the pipes loose from that angle, but then one thing led to another and in the end we’re going to have to replace the whole sink, not just the faucet. Oh, brother! So instead of having a finished bathroom at the end of the day, it looks far worse than when we started this morning! There are still no doors or drawers in the vanity, there is a hazy residue on the tiles (even after all of our hours of scrubbing), the countertop that used to hold a decent sink is now just a gaping hole, and there is a nasty old sink sitting on our bedroom floor. Not exactly what we had planned for the day. HA!
You win some, you lose some.
We lost big today.
There’s always tomorrow.
The Monstrosity: Day Twenty-Two (Tuesday, December 20th)
~whew~ It’s been a long one today! It’s been both frustrating and rewarding. James got a new sink put in this morning, but struggled with some leaks due to the cheaply made parts. I think he’s got it under control now. He’s good at stuff like that. :-)
I had primed the vanity doors and drawers and miscellaneous things in the closet, including the door itself, and managed to have all of the kids fully schooled before noon. And that with several trips to help the guy under the sink. “Turn it on… and back off… on again…” You know the routine.
Once the sink was installed it was time to hang the mirror. The mirror!!! We’re going to have a bathroom with a mirror! Downstairs! That’s not covered in sheetrock dust!!! You can’t possibly understand how exciting that is. :-) We had found a mirror that will match just right at Home Depot the other day, so we used a gift card from some dear friends and bought it and the other remaining items needed to complete the bathroom. I’ll have to send them a thank you card informing them that THEY finished our bathroom for us and I love them dearly for it. :-) Anyway, James had picked up some wicked looking hook thingies that would be strong enough to hold a heavy mirror to a wall and we knew we had one shot to get it right so I measured and measured and measured again—the mirror itself, the space on the wall, from the bottom of the mirror up to the hooks, from one hook to the other, from the tooth end of the hanging hook to the hanging end of it, etc. James had a headache and wouldn’t even attempt to help out with the brainwork, he just sat on the edge of the tub and watched… and watched… and watched. Ha! It probably took me 20 minutes or better to feel confident enough to actually set the first hook in the wall. But apparently it was worth it because the mirror is spaced just right and is perfectly level—on the very first shot! I didn’t know that was even possible, except for on TV! It looks GREAT and goes so nicely with the wall sconces and the faucet and all of the stuff James is spraying “oil rubbed bronze.” I love it. :-)
Then it was time to caulk. That’s when things went south. I would love to blame the caulk itself since it’s different than what I’ve used in the past, but I don’t KNOW that it’s the caulk instead of the caulker that caused the problem. I just know that my first attempt was horrific. So bad that I went back to the bathroom about 20 minutes later with a razor blade and some Goo Gone and spent the next 30 minutes scraping and scrubbing to get as much of the caulk off as possible so I could try again! Take 2 wasn’t much better and I wiped it off while it was still wet. I’m not sure Take 3 was much of an improvement either, but if you’ve given it your best three times in a row you’ve just got to be able to walk away—you’re obviously not going to be able to do any better the next time! Things went okay around the tub, just not the sink. You know, the really obvious location.
James left this afternoon to do some shopping, then go back to Brierfield to take care of Brady and bring back some extra clothes for the rest of us since we’ll be staying again. He’ll spend the night there, then come back in the morning. The accomplishments since he left don’t sound impressive, but they sure took a lot of time! I got the bathroom all cleaned up and ready for the next step, whatever that is. I also painted the ceiling in the closet as well as the shelves and trim. Then I painted all of the doors and drawers for the bathroom that I had primed this morning. Before calling it quits at 11:00pm I also put some wallpaper in the bottom of the bathroom drawers and cabinets. It just feels so much cleaner that way—and when you can buy wallpaper for $1 per roll you just can’t lose!
I let the kids veg out a little bit tonight. James was gone, so we ate left-over Little Caesar’s pizza and watched Christmas shows on the laptop. Well, they watched and I listened while I painted in the closet. Tomorrow is our last day to work until after Christmas. I’m excited to see what we can get done… and then I’m excited to think of taking a break from all of it for a few days!
The Monstrosity: Day Twenty-Three (Wednesday, December 21st)
Today was a day of great triumph! After being beaten by the bathroom yesterday, I made the strategic move to transfer my energies to a different room and just pretend like the bathroom doesn’t exist. And I got it FINISHED! Did you hear that??? I FINISHED OUR VERY FIRST ROOM TODAY!!!
It was the master closet. ;-)
But it still feels like a glorious thing to have completed SOMETHING at that crazy house! Ha! After having completed all of the painting last night I was ready to wallpaper bright and early this morning. I had it papered by about 3:00 this afternoon. WA-HOO!!! I know it’s crazy to take time to wallpaper a closet of all things (!), but it really does feel so nice and fresh and clean in there. Wallpaper in closets may be weird, but it’s just so, so, so nice. Especially when your closet doubles as your devotion location. It’s great to have some place fresh and clean and even cute to go to be alone! :-)
I realize that even the "after" picture isn't all the impressive here, but for the record...
Last night we came home to the Powell's house--first time I'd been here in two weeks! I finally started feeling the big wind-down from all of the work we've been doing. I slept hard--and late! It was nice. :-) We had a lazy morning and let the kids just spend some time playing outside (Joe has a target he'd gotten for Christmas that he's been dying to try out!) before having Frito pie for lunch and getting into school in the afternoon. I managed to get a load and a half of laundry done. Pitiful, hu?! I just can't seem to get it in gear today. Tomorrow evening we head back into town, so I'm really hoping I have more motivation in the morning than I did all day today!
And now for the old news...
The Monstrosity: Day Twenty-One (Monday, December 19th)
I had high expectations for today. Of course, none of them came to fruition.
Today was the day that we were bested by the bathroom. It’s a sad thing. It’s such a small room. And we’ve put sooooooo many hours of work into it and it had begun to look soooooooo good. Today was the day it decided to fight back.
All we wanted to do was re-grout the tile a little bit, just to freshen it up in any discolored places. Is that too much to ask? James used the product just like the instructions said, but it didn’t “wipe off with a soft, dry cloth” at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure whoever wrote those directions was laughing like a madman as he penned the words, thinking of the poor saps like us who would spend hour upon hour scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing that which was supposed to “wipe off with a soft, dry cloth.” Even with a wet, scratchy sponge, Stanley the Scraper, and all the elbow grease we had to offer it was an all-day job getting rid of the excess grout and residue. Seriously, it was after 10:00pm when I got the last of it cleaned up—not including the floor.
We had silly little hopes of finishing the bathroom, or coming very, very close day, but we ended up giving all of our time and energy to the grout project. Actually, I had intended to accomplish other grand and glorious things today, but was all consumed with the grout clean-up job. So frustrating.
James decided we’d feel better if we accomplished something other than just scrubbing grout all day (!), so he set out to remove the old faucet and install the new one. Ha. If only. That’s supposed to be an easy little project, right?! He’s done this several times before and it’s not like it’s something big or difficult. Usually. ~ sigh~ We fought and wrestled and fought and wrestled some more to get everything unhooked under the sink and while we were giving it a mighty heave-ho something finally popped loose… but it wasn’t the pipe we were working on, it was the sink itself! HA! The whole sink just popped out! We were amazed—and did thank God!—that it didn’t break any of the tiles on the countertop. We put the sink upside down on the bedroom floor and were finally able to get all of the pipes loose from that angle, but then one thing led to another and in the end we’re going to have to replace the whole sink, not just the faucet. Oh, brother! So instead of having a finished bathroom at the end of the day, it looks far worse than when we started this morning! There are still no doors or drawers in the vanity, there is a hazy residue on the tiles (even after all of our hours of scrubbing), the countertop that used to hold a decent sink is now just a gaping hole, and there is a nasty old sink sitting on our bedroom floor. Not exactly what we had planned for the day. HA!
You win some, you lose some.
We lost big today.
There’s always tomorrow.
The Monstrosity: Day Twenty-Two (Tuesday, December 20th)
~whew~ It’s been a long one today! It’s been both frustrating and rewarding. James got a new sink put in this morning, but struggled with some leaks due to the cheaply made parts. I think he’s got it under control now. He’s good at stuff like that. :-)
I had primed the vanity doors and drawers and miscellaneous things in the closet, including the door itself, and managed to have all of the kids fully schooled before noon. And that with several trips to help the guy under the sink. “Turn it on… and back off… on again…” You know the routine.
Once the sink was installed it was time to hang the mirror. The mirror!!! We’re going to have a bathroom with a mirror! Downstairs! That’s not covered in sheetrock dust!!! You can’t possibly understand how exciting that is. :-) We had found a mirror that will match just right at Home Depot the other day, so we used a gift card from some dear friends and bought it and the other remaining items needed to complete the bathroom. I’ll have to send them a thank you card informing them that THEY finished our bathroom for us and I love them dearly for it. :-) Anyway, James had picked up some wicked looking hook thingies that would be strong enough to hold a heavy mirror to a wall and we knew we had one shot to get it right so I measured and measured and measured again—the mirror itself, the space on the wall, from the bottom of the mirror up to the hooks, from one hook to the other, from the tooth end of the hanging hook to the hanging end of it, etc. James had a headache and wouldn’t even attempt to help out with the brainwork, he just sat on the edge of the tub and watched… and watched… and watched. Ha! It probably took me 20 minutes or better to feel confident enough to actually set the first hook in the wall. But apparently it was worth it because the mirror is spaced just right and is perfectly level—on the very first shot! I didn’t know that was even possible, except for on TV! It looks GREAT and goes so nicely with the wall sconces and the faucet and all of the stuff James is spraying “oil rubbed bronze.” I love it. :-)
Then it was time to caulk. That’s when things went south. I would love to blame the caulk itself since it’s different than what I’ve used in the past, but I don’t KNOW that it’s the caulk instead of the caulker that caused the problem. I just know that my first attempt was horrific. So bad that I went back to the bathroom about 20 minutes later with a razor blade and some Goo Gone and spent the next 30 minutes scraping and scrubbing to get as much of the caulk off as possible so I could try again! Take 2 wasn’t much better and I wiped it off while it was still wet. I’m not sure Take 3 was much of an improvement either, but if you’ve given it your best three times in a row you’ve just got to be able to walk away—you’re obviously not going to be able to do any better the next time! Things went okay around the tub, just not the sink. You know, the really obvious location.
James left this afternoon to do some shopping, then go back to Brierfield to take care of Brady and bring back some extra clothes for the rest of us since we’ll be staying again. He’ll spend the night there, then come back in the morning. The accomplishments since he left don’t sound impressive, but they sure took a lot of time! I got the bathroom all cleaned up and ready for the next step, whatever that is. I also painted the ceiling in the closet as well as the shelves and trim. Then I painted all of the doors and drawers for the bathroom that I had primed this morning. Before calling it quits at 11:00pm I also put some wallpaper in the bottom of the bathroom drawers and cabinets. It just feels so much cleaner that way—and when you can buy wallpaper for $1 per roll you just can’t lose!
I let the kids veg out a little bit tonight. James was gone, so we ate left-over Little Caesar’s pizza and watched Christmas shows on the laptop. Well, they watched and I listened while I painted in the closet. Tomorrow is our last day to work until after Christmas. I’m excited to see what we can get done… and then I’m excited to think of taking a break from all of it for a few days!
The Monstrosity: Day Twenty-Three (Wednesday, December 21st)
Today was a day of great triumph! After being beaten by the bathroom yesterday, I made the strategic move to transfer my energies to a different room and just pretend like the bathroom doesn’t exist. And I got it FINISHED! Did you hear that??? I FINISHED OUR VERY FIRST ROOM TODAY!!!
It was the master closet. ;-)
But it still feels like a glorious thing to have completed SOMETHING at that crazy house! Ha! After having completed all of the painting last night I was ready to wallpaper bright and early this morning. I had it papered by about 3:00 this afternoon. WA-HOO!!! I know it’s crazy to take time to wallpaper a closet of all things (!), but it really does feel so nice and fresh and clean in there. Wallpaper in closets may be weird, but it’s just so, so, so nice. Especially when your closet doubles as your devotion location. It’s great to have some place fresh and clean and even cute to go to be alone! :-)
I realize that even the "after" picture isn't all the impressive here, but for the record...
I know you can't tell from the picture, but the wallpaper is a little splotchy (creams and browns) with a little cabin and a whispy little tree standing next to it. It cost a total of $6 or $7 to complete this room, paint, paper and all. I wish that would be the case with all of the rooms! Hahahahaha! If only...
Those are the freshly painted doors and drawers for the bathroom resting on the floor in the closet to dry, just so you know.
Having COMPLETED MY VERY FIRST ROOM (did I mention that already?), I started cleaning and sorting and trying to get all of our things gathered up or put away. The kids and I had spent the previous 5 nights at the house so we had plenty of stuff to sort through and repack. We brought home a MASSIVE bag of dirty clothes to be tended to along with three suitcases, two overnight bags, a duffle bag, a bag full of Christmas DVD’s, four laptops, some hanging clothes, a bag full of Christmas presents to be wrapped, a guitar, a giant fruit basket, a popcorn tin, a bag full of other food items, dog food, dishes and leash, and who knows what else. Aside from the fruit basket, popcorn and presents, that’s the regular list of what we haul back and forth from one house to the other every few days. Crazy, hu?!
We did have a water issue today. James discovered that the basement was flooded this evening. Not totally flooded, but there was water on the floor in a whole lot of places. The Ridlespurges came and helped us mop it all up because that's just the kind of people they are. :-) We're not sure what caused the problem, but we know it has to be in connection with the fact that we're showering at the house now. We've used minimal water up to this point (sinks and toilets) but now we've got a bathroom in shape and took four showers in a row before heading to church... Things are backing up through the toilet in the basement. It sort of put a damper on an otherwise very exciting and productive day (having FINISHED the closet and all!), but that's okay. I'm sure we'll get it all worked out.
Thursday, December 22nd
Was spent at home in Brierfield, doing laundry and packing for our Christmas weekend. James took the kids away for a little while so I could wrap presents that were still hidden in bags around the house. I always enjoyed it, but it was hard to feel very Christmassy and festive when it's RAINING outside! Alabama doesn't know how to do Christmas--that's for sure! Ha! James bought the Muppet Christmas Carol while they were out and I sat down with the kids and watched it that afternoon. I think it's one of the very best versions of A Christmas Carol ever and I love the amazing human/puppet choreography and filming. Amazing.
Joe decided that he was going to start publishing a family newspaper. Here's the first edition...
Friday, December 23rd
Let Christmas begin! Though it never really felt like Christmas to me this year. Just too distracted with our crazy lives, I guess. Christmassy or not, it DID feel like a wonderful little vacation away from it all and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
We got to Mom & Dad’s house at about 3:00, I think. Shortly after we unloaded, Mom and I hopped in the car to go do some shopping. I had had NO opportunity to shop for James at all. I’m with him everywhere I go, especially these days (!), and I spend most of my time at the Monstrosity now (where there is no Internet) so shopping online is out. Anyway, we ended up with a few great buys for James after all. HA! Not really, but at least one of them was really fun to give him. :-) The only thing I KNEW I wanted to get for him were some new Rook cards—it’s what you use to play I Buy with. Ours have been in bad shape for a long time and are too sticky to shuffle or deal without great effort. They were out of Rook cards at Wal-Mart. So we tried Target. They were out, too. Kohl’s didn’t carry Rook cards, and Walgreens was sold out like the other stores. Crazy! Who knew they were such a hot item? It was frustrating to have the ONE item I knew I wanted to buy unavailable.
I can’t remember what else we did that night. I remember that James was very gracious when Dad and the kids watched The Rifleman instead of a Christmas show. Ha! In our crazy world there has been a remarkable lack of Christmas shows viewed this season. James usually watches them ALL—at least once—and he just hasn’t had a chance this year.
Saturday was Christmas Eve. Mom and I spent the day cooking and baking for the evening’s festivities and for our Christmas dinner the next day.
That night we had a Christmas Eve service there at the house. I think there were 20 present and it was just so nice. I LOVE Christmas Eve services. If we’re at our own house for Christmas next year we’ll be sure to have one of our own! I loved singing the Christmas carols and the fun little Christmas trivia games and the Christmas mini-sermon—oh, just everything. Then there’s the food and fellowship. :-) There was sooooo much food there! Everything was so pretty and festive and tasty.
When the crowd left we watched It’s a Wonderful Life, our Christmas Eve tradition. It’s also traditional to have clam chowder that day—we did that at lunch time and it was delicious. Though there was probably enough chili we wouldn’t have had to make the soup, right Mom??? HA! When we arrived there the day before Mom was in the kitchen making the hugest pot (gigantic roasting pan, plus overfill in a separate big pot) of chili I’ve ever seen in my life. The recipe was to feed 20, but I think they left off a zero! There were probably 25 quarts of chili by the time she was done!!! Hahahahahaha! It was quite tasty, but who can eat that much chili?! She was really hoping Dad had come through with the pressure canner she had asked for so she could “put up” several quarts of it for a later date. (He did. It was the beautifully "wrapped" gift in the big blue bag.)
Katie was actually the early riser on Christmas morning this year, something more remarkable than most people could imagine. (She is NOT a morning person!) She was going from room to room waking up the rest of the household (except Dad, of course—who knows how long he’d been up!) at 6:30. We piled into the living room for the action to begin. We are so blessed. Christmas always seems overwhelming to me. We already have so much more than we need— so, so, so abundantly blessed—and then on Christmas we receive even more! I don’t want to be materialistic and have to have more and more STUFF, but I don’t want to take for granted how marvelously God has blessed our family. I want to always be grateful. And I must say that the kids showed lots of gratitude over every single gift they received this year—lots of, “WOW!!! THANKS, DAD!” happening. :-)
Here's a picture of the Charles sleeping with the gifts before all the action began.
The boys were sooooo excited about the stick-on mustaches they found in their stockings. I love those things. :-)
Sam got Legos and more Legos for Christmas this year. And batteries. And a battery charger. He was ecstatic.
Katie Rue... She got lots of nice goodies--an art set, a polka dot bedspread for her new room at the Monstrosity (whenever we finish it!), a nightgown and cap made by her Grandma, and I can't remember what all.
Joe's most exciting gift was a mandolin. He's been a-pickin' and a-grinnin' ever since. ;-) It amazes me how quickly he catches on to all things stringed. He's loving the new instrument and is still trying to think up a proper name for "her."
Here's Dad with a framed picture of Joe and the catfish he caught in Dad's pond a few months back.
And James with his oh-so-thoughtful gift from me: PLUNGERS! Don't laugh--he's already used them several times at the Monstrosity while our water problems continue! (Still no end in sight...)
I don't have any pictures of myself, of course, but my wonderful husband got me a new laptop for Christmas! My old one had been hobbling along for a long, long time and we were worried about a crash any day now, so I was sooooo excited about that gift. And I LOVE it. It's so much nicer than the last one. :-) He also got me some fantastic silky pajamas (red with black polka dots--I LOVE THEM!) and new slippers. Mom got us some nice bath towels for our nearly completed bathroom and some Moody Science videos.
After opening all of the gifts we cleaned up the living room, then Mom and I headed to the kitchen again. She made a couple of pies and started the rolls while I made corn pudding and something else I can’t remember. Here's Mama, working away...
And Sam fast asleep by 9:00! Ha!
Then it was time to get everybody ready to go to church at Southside. They had a service from 11:00 to 12:00 and it was wonderful! We always enjoy being with Brother Ammons and he had lots of good things to share. Again, I enjoyed the Christmas songs and there was just such a sweet and worshipful spirit there. I LOVED having church on Christmas Day! It was a little more difficult to plan out the day (only because you’re used to staying home all day), but what a wonderful blessing to take time to go to the house of God and spend some time focusing on what we REALLY have to be thankful for rather than just the festivities at home. I would love to have church on EVERY Christmas, whether it’s on a Sunday or not!
By the time we got home we were a little behind schedule for our 2:00 Christmas dinner. Brother Oscar and his family came to join us and in the end we had a wonderful meal (everything turned out so good!) and great fellowship. I almost fell asleep at the table there at the end (our “vacation” had been filled with late nights, early mornings, and plenty of cooking and baking and shopping in between!), but got my second wind before long. Most of the crowd enjoyed the very non-Christmassy weather outside for an hour or two. I love the bounding Charlie-blur in this picture.
Sam's turn on the pogo stick. He's starting to catch on but for now Joe is still the expert. Last time we were in Cleveland he wanted to show us how well he could do. He jumped 99 times, then lost control before hitting 100! Ha!
The Pimentel girls are scared of dogs, but trying to work through it. In the end, they got used to the big dogs, but were still afraid of Charlie. HA! Dad loves the neighbors' dog Ralphie--the one being petting. He and his mom Maxie come to visit all the time. If Dad can't have a dog of his own I'm happy that he can enjoy the neighbors' dogs on a regular basis! He likes dogs and they are so therapudic.
We watched The Nativity Story that night and it was very good and very thought provoking. Of course there were some fictional things added in to “fill the gaps,” but it helps you to view everyone as real PEOPLE rather than characters in a story. I really enjoyed it.
We then went to church in Aurora with my brother. :-) Via live webfeed, that is. They had a nice little Christmas service and we enjoyed joining them, then seeing lots of the folks wave at the camera for us afterward. I especially enjoyed seeing a very pregnant Haley! Due any time now. How exciting. :-) UPDATE--Joshua was born on December 28th, happy and healthy! :-)
I played a couple of rounds of Bananagrams with Mom and Katie while James transferred all of my programs and files from my old laptop onto my new one (wa-hoo!), then we put the kids to bed and Mom and James and I played a game of I Buy with MY new Rook cards that James had bought for ME! Ha! Then I started on my new puzzle—a Noah’s Ark puzzle this year.
James had wanted to leave first thing in the morning on Monday, but after seeing how the weekend really wasn’t all that relaxing for us ladies who were working through most of it (that’s the story of all holidays, isn’t it?!) he was gracious enough to let us hang around throughout the day so I could just RELAX. I packed everything up in the morning, then Mom and I worked on the puzzle while watching The Star of Christmas. I love that show. :-) Then we put on The Lemon Drop Kid and worked the puzzle through that one, too. It was GREAT.
I think it was nearly 5:00 by the time we left. With the time change we were able to make it home to Brierfield by 8:00. We got all unloaded… just in time for the power to go out! I had taken a nap on the drive home and wasn’t nearly tired enough to go to bed, so I sat at the kitchen table and built Sam’s new lego kit by lantern light. It was so fun! I’m not creative enough to take Legos and make anything grand, but I LOVE having the instruction sheets and putting cool stuff together piece by piece. :-)
Tuesday morning we unpacked and had devotions and did school, then repacked. It’s Monstrosity time again, you know! We left after noon sometime and stopped at the Olive Garden in Alabaster to use up a gift card or two. It was sooooo good! Then James went to Great Clips for a haircut and I went to Christopher & Banks. The good news is that I got 3 shirts and a skirt for $20. The bad news is that I got them for that price because the store is going out of business—along with over 100 others! I hate that!!!
Then it was on to Hoover. First stop: Barnes & Noble to pick up a 2012 calendar at 50% off. Found a cute one, so I’m happy. Then it was to Sears to shop for appliances. We’re needing EVERYTHING and thought the post-Christmas sales might help us out a little bit, even though we’re still far from being ready to actually put anything in our new kitchen. Then it was on to HH Gregg, a store I’d never heard of before. They sell appliances, mattresses, and electronics and it is a GREAT store with tons of friendly and helpful employees and very competitive prices. I talked to a salesman and asked what kind of super-duper discount they give if people come in and buy every appliance in the book. :-) We need a washer, dryer, stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, and microwave. ~whew~ It almost makes me nauseous to think of having to buy all of that stuff at once! Anyway, we went around and picked out one of each of the six items I just listed. They have better prices to begin with on most things, but they look up each item individually and if there is another store in town that sells it for less they will drop their own price lower than the other guy. Nice. The price he quoted us is still a pretty chunk of dough (!), but less than what we’d been bracing ourselves for. We want to check out a few other appliance stores, but I don’t know that we could beat what we found tonight. We'll see. The kids hate this kind of shopping. This is what the boys looked like LONG before the end of the night. Ha!
We then went to Payless to get some new play shoes for Joe. He had three toes hanging out of the other shoes before we even knew they were getting worn out. Why doesn’t he just TELL us when they start to fall apart?! Then it was to 2nd & Charles for Katie to blow the $15 gift card she had received for Christmas. She was kind enough to buy a book for each of the boys along with what she got for herself. What a gal. :-) Then we went to Lifeway and found a few good bargains, then to the Payless in Bessemer. James had found some boots for Katie at the first Payless, but since they didn’t have them in her size they gave a $4 off coupon and told us they had the boots in Bessemer—and then when you tack on the AAA discount he paid all of $7 for them! Happy Katie, happy Dad. Then it was finally time to go to the Monstrosity. I moved us in to the closet and made up the beds with fresh sheets. ~Aaahhh~
That's probably enough for tonight, but here's one last picture before I go. This is Sam, modeling Charlie's new Santa hat and jingle bell collar in an effort to convince him that they're really not that bad and he really ought to keep them on. HA! (Charlie wasn't impressed.)
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Remember Me???
I knew it had been a long, long time since I'd blogged, but I didn't realize it had been nearly a month since I'd blogged any more than a blip! WHOA. I'll give you the general excuse now, then make up for it later. ;-) I spend lots more time at the Monstosity now than at the Powell's house (where there is Internet) and when I am at the Powell's house I'm so busy playing catch up that I haven't had time to blog! We went to Mom & Dad's house for three nights over the Christmas weekend, came home on Monday, went to the Monstrosity the next day... and I've not been home since then! That's means I've been at the Powell's house (with Internet) one night out of the past fifteen. James goes down every few days to take care of Brady and check on things, but I've been working sooooo hard at the Monstrosity preparing for Mom to come and then working with Mom this past week, I just didn't have time to go! Anyway, I've been blogging most nights, just without Internet (ha!), so I'll start going through what I've written and adding pictures as I have time. Not sure how long it will take me to get all caught up, but I'll start tonight. We've got to back up quite a bit to start with, but here we go!
December 13-18th:
Tuesday was a profitable day, but not exactly a work day at the Monstrosity, so we won’t count it. James had found a really pretty white bedroom set on Craigslist that we thought might work nicely for Katie’s room, so we drove to Inverness today to take a look at it. I knew before we ever got to the house that we’d be buying it, simply because of the neighborhood. It was NICE. The kind where people spend a lot of money on good quality furniture. The set is really heavy and solid and will be PERFECT for Katie’s room. It’s a sleigh bed (I’ve always loved those, but never had one!), a large dresser, and a highboy.
The other news of the day is that we went to the Foundry in search of pants for Sam, who has apparently had a huge growth spurt since ALL of his pants are humorously too short and just scream DORK. James never finds those things humorous though. ;-) We only found one pair of slacks, but it’s better than nothing.
The kids had play practice that night, then we headed home.
On Wednesday I managed to get the kids schooled, get caught up on ALL of the laundry and ironing (there was a BUNCH), make some Holiday Cream Cheese Bars (“they look so much cuter in the picture!”), a double batch of mint chocolate chunk cookies, and some nacho dip (that I later scorched while reheating). It was time for our church Christmas party!
The kids put on a nice little play—a living nativity sort of thing. All of the girls were dressed up as angels (which isn’t exactly biblical, but they can’t very well be wise men—ha!) and did Silent Night in sign language. Katie sang What Child is This while Joe played the guitar. Sam was Joseph. He behaved. ~whew~ :-)
After the service we went to the back and filled up on TONS of great little finger foods and desserts. Then we played Dirty Santa or Hallelujah Hand Over, depending on who you ask. Ha! When it’s your turn you can either take a gift from the pile, or steal something that somebody else already opened. But once an item has been stolen three times it’s “dead” and can’t be taken anymore. It was fun. Until Kody stole my knife. Ha! I was thrilled to have gotten something so practical, especially during this phase of our lives! But he took it, the little creep. ;-) So I got to choose a new gift and, lo and behold, it was another knife! HA! Kody stole that one, too. Jerk. HA! (Somebody had stolen the first one from him, so he took my second one.) It all ended well though because Joe’s turn came and he stole the knife from Kody. :-) Some other creep stole my flashlights after that. I finally ended up with a pack of Bendaroos—which gave me inspiration for my Band Meeting two days later.
Thursday I cleaned house, schooled kids, worked on ABM service stuff, and actually made a home cooked dinner (so rare!) of Chicken Parmesan. Then James came home and cut down a scraggly tree from the side of the hill, made a tree stand for it, and set it up in the living room. Katie strung a whole foot and a half of popcorn before giving out (ha!) and Sam made a great paper chain for it—though toward the end he got tired of linking the pieces of construction paper and just started taping the strips end to end. Add some lights, candy canes, candy CORN and who knows what else (whatever they could find!) and it made for the most hilarious Christmas tree ever! I thought it was sooooooo cute, but James was all weird about it and said I’m not allowed to post pictures of it. What a scrooge. Ha!
Friday was a busy, busy day, ending in our very first Youth Band Meeting. The whole crowd showed up: Laura, Kody, Katie, Michael, Dalton… and then SIX—count ‘em—SIX Dudley boys. ~whew~ Talk about a handful! Ha! I was soooooo excited that they all came. It is difficult to maintain order all the time with all those boys and though I try pretend like I’m in control of things (ha!) on the inside I couldn’t help but think about when I was their age. Jon & Johnny and all of their shenanigans and goofing off and constant talking and making a joke out of everything would finally push our teacher or youth leader—always a woman—to the limit and I recall more than one occasion when they (at least two different ladies come to mind) would burst into tears of frustration or throw their notes into the air and let them scatter across the room in surrender. HA! I loved being a teenager and now I love being old enough to have a chance to work with teenagers. It’s just so much fun. :-) Anyway, I feel like our band meeting went very, very well, all things considered. I started by having everybody use Benderoos to fashion the likeness of some special Christmas gift they received sometime in their life. Then we went around the circle and shared what we had made and why.
Joshua didn't even know what his creation represented, so don't ask. Ha!
Then we talked about the greatest gift we could ever receive, the obvious “for God so loved… HE GAVE.” We read from 1 Corinthians about all of the people who will NOT inherit the kingdom of God (adulterers, fornicators, liars, thieves, idolaters, etc.), then Paul said, “and such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified…” Those evil, horrible people are the ones that God saved and transformed into pure, holy, sanctified Church of God members. “For when we were yet sinners… Christ died for us.” Then I passed out little gifts addressed to each of them with little cards inserted that said, “For the wages of sin is death, but THE GIFT OF GOD…” I really felt the Lord there during the devotion and I’m pretty sure I felt some conviction at work. I’m so thankful.
When we were finished with our devotional we broke out the chips, pop, and cookies. We just hung out for a little while, then I split them into two teams and we played some Christmas trivia for a little while. After that we played a game I remember playing when I was a teenager. We all sat in a circle around the table and took turns rolling a die, then quickly passing it to the next person. If someone rolled a six they had to jump up and run to the end of the table, put on a hat, scarf, and gloves, open a Hershey bar (a difficult task while wearing gloves), cut it with a plastic knife and take a bite of it with the fork. While they are endeavoring to do all of that, the die is continuously being passed around the table and if somebody else rolls a six, the first guy sits down and the new guy that rolled six has to start putting on all the stuff and working toward a bite of the chocolate bar. It was great to watch.
And we have a winner!
We had lots of fun. Well, I did. I hope the kids did, too! :-) I’m so excited about having our very first band meeting and I’m already looking forward to the next one. I will love it extra once our house is finished and we can start having our band meetings there. Oh, happy day. :-)
While we were having band meeting, James had our three kids and Madison at the house. Brother Will and Sister Kristal were out doing some shopping and Katie was soooooooooooo excited about being able to have Madison over to hang out for a while. When band meeting was over I took Dalton back with me to hang out at our house until their parents were ready to come pick them up. I’d told Sister Kristal to take their time and stay out as late as they wanted—our kids have had very few opportunities to just hang out and have fun together. I’m so glad it worked out the way it did! When Dalton and I got home everybody else—including James—was playing “Monstrosity Hide & Seek.” HA! Even without any furniture to hide behind or under, the house is so big that it’s a terrific place to play Hide & Seek. We joined in and played for a while, then the kids played football until Dalton and Madison had to go home. It was so much fun.
Saturday was a grand and glorious day. We had picked up a rental truck and met at the storage unit with Brother Ridlespurge, Kody and Michael (who had come with another trailer) and the four Dudley boys (one of the Dudley cousins is living with the rest of them right now) and loaded up a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff to move up to the Monstrosity! :-) Wa-Hoo!!! It took two or three hours (including James & Brother Ridlespurge taking one full load on the trailer and unloading at the house, then coming back) to get everything all loaded up. The second trailer load, along with the moving truck, the back of Brother Powell’s truck, and the back of the van were all packed to the brim by about noon. The Dudley boys had to get back to work, so the rest of us drove the four vehicles up to the Monstrosity and spent the rest of the afternoon unloading everything into the two car garage. It’s amazing how EXCITING it was to move all of our stuff… into the garage! HA! It just feels so good to get it out of storage (and stop paying to keep it there!) and have it in our very own home, even if it is just in the garage. It just felt so, so, so good and even relieving somehow. It’s one more step closer to getting moved in to our very own place again. We’ve been trying to get moved to Alabama for almost a year and a half now and I’m so tired of “still moving.” It feels so good to actually OWN a home and actually have our STUFF there, even if we’re still a long, long way from being ready to move in. We’re closer now than we’ve ever been before and that is sooooo exciting! It just almost makes me feel all giddy.
It was a great day for me because we got all of my stuff moved to my house. It was a great day for Sam because he got to play with the Dudley boys all morning. It was one form of roughhousing to another. Sam was in the box and the boys would knock it one way, then lift it back up and throw it the other way--Sam loving every bit of it.
Let's see, looks like Thomas has got Sam's wrists and ankles bound with packing tape in this one...
The best part of the day was when we had everything all loaded up and were about to haul everything to the Monstrosity. We started counting heads and came up one short. Sam. Where's Sam? Sa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-am!!! We looked for a minute or two and finally a box on the trailer started jiggling. The Dudley boys had packed Sam up in it, loaded it onto the trailer (with Brother Ridlespurge's help, though he was oblivious to the contents!) and packed several things in behind it. And Sam was just as still and quiet as could be the whole time! HA! Here he is being unpacked and lifted to freedom once more.
After getting everything all unloaded we showed the Ridlespurges our half-way remodeled master bathroom and they were courteous enough to act impressed. Ha! I’m so anxious to get a mirror up in there and finish up on the cabinet doors and drawers and the few other odds and ends in there. It’s going to be GREAT to have a nice, neat, fresh, clean COMPLETED room—especially a bathroom.
That night we watched old Christmas shows on the laptop—Andy Griffith, I Love Lucy, and Honeymooners Christmas episodes. Our kids love those and it was a nice way to unwind after a long day of heavy lifting. I’m so, so, so thankful for the help of good church folks on days like today. We had been putting this off for a long time because things have been so busy and we finally just made it happen. I’m so glad we did.
Sunday morning we went to service in Bessemer, then lunch, then shopping for Dirty Santa, Round 2. ;-) They play the same game in Canaan and we were scheduled to visit that church and join them for their Christmas banquet. We had a nice little abbreviated service and James preached a mini-Christmas message. There was a good spirit there. Afterward we all headed downstairs and enjoyed some good, southern cookin’. There was ham and chicken and all manner of fixin’s, along with plenty of dessert. James tried something that had coconut on top and later learned that it was a buttermilk pie. We’d never heard of such a thing (must be a southern thing!) and he never would have tried it had he known what it was, but he loved it. We had to sit at a table up at the front, away from everybody else. That was weird. James says it’s because they are of the old fashioned mindset to show lots of honor and respect to leadership in the Church. It just makes me feel like a freak. HA! As soon as we were done eating we migrated to the tables where everybody else was sitting.
The Hallelujah Hand Over turned out well for us. I didn’t get a knife, but Joe did—again! He’s just rackin’ up on ‘em! Makes a mother proud. :-) James got some little candle thing (ha!), I made out with a nice, soft plaid (I love plaid) throw blanket, Katie got a black photo frame that will actually look nice in her Coca-Cola room, and Sam walked away with a wallet—that received a $10 donation by the end of the night! Brother Flippo (the elder) said it was sad to have a wallet with no money, so he filled it up. Then he said it was unfair for Katie and Joe, so they each got $10 as well! I tried to talk him out of it, but there’s no talking to old people who are bent on spoiling kids. Ha! We had a good time and were thankful to be able to join them. James had been to Canaan before, but it was a first for the kids and me. They gave us a beautiful fruit basket and lots of candy and popcorn and other goodies. They were so, so generous. What a blessing!!
More next time. :-)
December 13-18th:
Tuesday was a profitable day, but not exactly a work day at the Monstrosity, so we won’t count it. James had found a really pretty white bedroom set on Craigslist that we thought might work nicely for Katie’s room, so we drove to Inverness today to take a look at it. I knew before we ever got to the house that we’d be buying it, simply because of the neighborhood. It was NICE. The kind where people spend a lot of money on good quality furniture. The set is really heavy and solid and will be PERFECT for Katie’s room. It’s a sleigh bed (I’ve always loved those, but never had one!), a large dresser, and a highboy.
The other news of the day is that we went to the Foundry in search of pants for Sam, who has apparently had a huge growth spurt since ALL of his pants are humorously too short and just scream DORK. James never finds those things humorous though. ;-) We only found one pair of slacks, but it’s better than nothing.
The kids had play practice that night, then we headed home.
On Wednesday I managed to get the kids schooled, get caught up on ALL of the laundry and ironing (there was a BUNCH), make some Holiday Cream Cheese Bars (“they look so much cuter in the picture!”), a double batch of mint chocolate chunk cookies, and some nacho dip (that I later scorched while reheating). It was time for our church Christmas party!
The kids put on a nice little play—a living nativity sort of thing. All of the girls were dressed up as angels (which isn’t exactly biblical, but they can’t very well be wise men—ha!) and did Silent Night in sign language. Katie sang What Child is This while Joe played the guitar. Sam was Joseph. He behaved. ~whew~ :-)
After the service we went to the back and filled up on TONS of great little finger foods and desserts. Then we played Dirty Santa or Hallelujah Hand Over, depending on who you ask. Ha! When it’s your turn you can either take a gift from the pile, or steal something that somebody else already opened. But once an item has been stolen three times it’s “dead” and can’t be taken anymore. It was fun. Until Kody stole my knife. Ha! I was thrilled to have gotten something so practical, especially during this phase of our lives! But he took it, the little creep. ;-) So I got to choose a new gift and, lo and behold, it was another knife! HA! Kody stole that one, too. Jerk. HA! (Somebody had stolen the first one from him, so he took my second one.) It all ended well though because Joe’s turn came and he stole the knife from Kody. :-) Some other creep stole my flashlights after that. I finally ended up with a pack of Bendaroos—which gave me inspiration for my Band Meeting two days later.
Thursday I cleaned house, schooled kids, worked on ABM service stuff, and actually made a home cooked dinner (so rare!) of Chicken Parmesan. Then James came home and cut down a scraggly tree from the side of the hill, made a tree stand for it, and set it up in the living room. Katie strung a whole foot and a half of popcorn before giving out (ha!) and Sam made a great paper chain for it—though toward the end he got tired of linking the pieces of construction paper and just started taping the strips end to end. Add some lights, candy canes, candy CORN and who knows what else (whatever they could find!) and it made for the most hilarious Christmas tree ever! I thought it was sooooooo cute, but James was all weird about it and said I’m not allowed to post pictures of it. What a scrooge. Ha!
Friday was a busy, busy day, ending in our very first Youth Band Meeting. The whole crowd showed up: Laura, Kody, Katie, Michael, Dalton… and then SIX—count ‘em—SIX Dudley boys. ~whew~ Talk about a handful! Ha! I was soooooo excited that they all came. It is difficult to maintain order all the time with all those boys and though I try pretend like I’m in control of things (ha!) on the inside I couldn’t help but think about when I was their age. Jon & Johnny and all of their shenanigans and goofing off and constant talking and making a joke out of everything would finally push our teacher or youth leader—always a woman—to the limit and I recall more than one occasion when they (at least two different ladies come to mind) would burst into tears of frustration or throw their notes into the air and let them scatter across the room in surrender. HA! I loved being a teenager and now I love being old enough to have a chance to work with teenagers. It’s just so much fun. :-) Anyway, I feel like our band meeting went very, very well, all things considered. I started by having everybody use Benderoos to fashion the likeness of some special Christmas gift they received sometime in their life. Then we went around the circle and shared what we had made and why.
Joshua didn't even know what his creation represented, so don't ask. Ha!
Then we talked about the greatest gift we could ever receive, the obvious “for God so loved… HE GAVE.” We read from 1 Corinthians about all of the people who will NOT inherit the kingdom of God (adulterers, fornicators, liars, thieves, idolaters, etc.), then Paul said, “and such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified…” Those evil, horrible people are the ones that God saved and transformed into pure, holy, sanctified Church of God members. “For when we were yet sinners… Christ died for us.” Then I passed out little gifts addressed to each of them with little cards inserted that said, “For the wages of sin is death, but THE GIFT OF GOD…” I really felt the Lord there during the devotion and I’m pretty sure I felt some conviction at work. I’m so thankful.
When we were finished with our devotional we broke out the chips, pop, and cookies. We just hung out for a little while, then I split them into two teams and we played some Christmas trivia for a little while. After that we played a game I remember playing when I was a teenager. We all sat in a circle around the table and took turns rolling a die, then quickly passing it to the next person. If someone rolled a six they had to jump up and run to the end of the table, put on a hat, scarf, and gloves, open a Hershey bar (a difficult task while wearing gloves), cut it with a plastic knife and take a bite of it with the fork. While they are endeavoring to do all of that, the die is continuously being passed around the table and if somebody else rolls a six, the first guy sits down and the new guy that rolled six has to start putting on all the stuff and working toward a bite of the chocolate bar. It was great to watch.
And we have a winner!
We had lots of fun. Well, I did. I hope the kids did, too! :-) I’m so excited about having our very first band meeting and I’m already looking forward to the next one. I will love it extra once our house is finished and we can start having our band meetings there. Oh, happy day. :-)
While we were having band meeting, James had our three kids and Madison at the house. Brother Will and Sister Kristal were out doing some shopping and Katie was soooooooooooo excited about being able to have Madison over to hang out for a while. When band meeting was over I took Dalton back with me to hang out at our house until their parents were ready to come pick them up. I’d told Sister Kristal to take their time and stay out as late as they wanted—our kids have had very few opportunities to just hang out and have fun together. I’m so glad it worked out the way it did! When Dalton and I got home everybody else—including James—was playing “Monstrosity Hide & Seek.” HA! Even without any furniture to hide behind or under, the house is so big that it’s a terrific place to play Hide & Seek. We joined in and played for a while, then the kids played football until Dalton and Madison had to go home. It was so much fun.
Saturday was a grand and glorious day. We had picked up a rental truck and met at the storage unit with Brother Ridlespurge, Kody and Michael (who had come with another trailer) and the four Dudley boys (one of the Dudley cousins is living with the rest of them right now) and loaded up a-a-a-a-a-all of our stuff to move up to the Monstrosity! :-) Wa-Hoo!!! It took two or three hours (including James & Brother Ridlespurge taking one full load on the trailer and unloading at the house, then coming back) to get everything all loaded up. The second trailer load, along with the moving truck, the back of Brother Powell’s truck, and the back of the van were all packed to the brim by about noon. The Dudley boys had to get back to work, so the rest of us drove the four vehicles up to the Monstrosity and spent the rest of the afternoon unloading everything into the two car garage. It’s amazing how EXCITING it was to move all of our stuff… into the garage! HA! It just feels so good to get it out of storage (and stop paying to keep it there!) and have it in our very own home, even if it is just in the garage. It just felt so, so, so good and even relieving somehow. It’s one more step closer to getting moved in to our very own place again. We’ve been trying to get moved to Alabama for almost a year and a half now and I’m so tired of “still moving.” It feels so good to actually OWN a home and actually have our STUFF there, even if we’re still a long, long way from being ready to move in. We’re closer now than we’ve ever been before and that is sooooo exciting! It just almost makes me feel all giddy.
It was a great day for me because we got all of my stuff moved to my house. It was a great day for Sam because he got to play with the Dudley boys all morning. It was one form of roughhousing to another. Sam was in the box and the boys would knock it one way, then lift it back up and throw it the other way--Sam loving every bit of it.
Let's see, looks like Thomas has got Sam's wrists and ankles bound with packing tape in this one...
The best part of the day was when we had everything all loaded up and were about to haul everything to the Monstrosity. We started counting heads and came up one short. Sam. Where's Sam? Sa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-am!!! We looked for a minute or two and finally a box on the trailer started jiggling. The Dudley boys had packed Sam up in it, loaded it onto the trailer (with Brother Ridlespurge's help, though he was oblivious to the contents!) and packed several things in behind it. And Sam was just as still and quiet as could be the whole time! HA! Here he is being unpacked and lifted to freedom once more.
After getting everything all unloaded we showed the Ridlespurges our half-way remodeled master bathroom and they were courteous enough to act impressed. Ha! I’m so anxious to get a mirror up in there and finish up on the cabinet doors and drawers and the few other odds and ends in there. It’s going to be GREAT to have a nice, neat, fresh, clean COMPLETED room—especially a bathroom.
That night we watched old Christmas shows on the laptop—Andy Griffith, I Love Lucy, and Honeymooners Christmas episodes. Our kids love those and it was a nice way to unwind after a long day of heavy lifting. I’m so, so, so thankful for the help of good church folks on days like today. We had been putting this off for a long time because things have been so busy and we finally just made it happen. I’m so glad we did.
Sunday morning we went to service in Bessemer, then lunch, then shopping for Dirty Santa, Round 2. ;-) They play the same game in Canaan and we were scheduled to visit that church and join them for their Christmas banquet. We had a nice little abbreviated service and James preached a mini-Christmas message. There was a good spirit there. Afterward we all headed downstairs and enjoyed some good, southern cookin’. There was ham and chicken and all manner of fixin’s, along with plenty of dessert. James tried something that had coconut on top and later learned that it was a buttermilk pie. We’d never heard of such a thing (must be a southern thing!) and he never would have tried it had he known what it was, but he loved it. We had to sit at a table up at the front, away from everybody else. That was weird. James says it’s because they are of the old fashioned mindset to show lots of honor and respect to leadership in the Church. It just makes me feel like a freak. HA! As soon as we were done eating we migrated to the tables where everybody else was sitting.
The Hallelujah Hand Over turned out well for us. I didn’t get a knife, but Joe did—again! He’s just rackin’ up on ‘em! Makes a mother proud. :-) James got some little candle thing (ha!), I made out with a nice, soft plaid (I love plaid) throw blanket, Katie got a black photo frame that will actually look nice in her Coca-Cola room, and Sam walked away with a wallet—that received a $10 donation by the end of the night! Brother Flippo (the elder) said it was sad to have a wallet with no money, so he filled it up. Then he said it was unfair for Katie and Joe, so they each got $10 as well! I tried to talk him out of it, but there’s no talking to old people who are bent on spoiling kids. Ha! We had a good time and were thankful to be able to join them. James had been to Canaan before, but it was a first for the kids and me. They gave us a beautiful fruit basket and lots of candy and popcorn and other goodies. They were so, so generous. What a blessing!!
More next time. :-)
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