All because of the peanut butter

so... i got a concussion last weekend! lovely, eh? i was moving the shelves in the pantry and two full tubs of peanut butter fell and landed squarely on top of my cabeza. yes, we eventually made a trip to the ER after three medical professionals (two nurses and a doctor: sister-in-law, doctor's office after-hours line and friend, respectively) insisted on Sunday that I go after symptoms increased. now, who doesn't love an emergency room visit? at least we didn't have to wait.

anyway, who gets a concussion from falling peanut butter?? seriously.

two days later from the bump and i have an awful headache, am still dizzy & nauseous and keep forgetting words and what i'm trying to say.... which is extremely irritating - as you might imagine. in general i just feel a bit spacey.

while it should just be a few more days until back to normal -- Nurse Marines had a very smart analogy: consider the lack of focus like a runny nose... it's a symptom that will go away, it's not you, it's just the bruise -- but it could be a few weeks until back to normal. the thought of which would likely really piss me off right about now; but my head hurts too much to be too angry.

silver lining: if bad things happen in 3's, we are DONE for a while.

Inspection Intervention

We were looking at a possible 2-3 weeks delay due to inspections...

The inspector stopped by this morning and (thankfully) I was still at home. We went ahead and called for the framing inspection, even though we passed it when we were working on the house the last time. BUT, we figured, if we didn't they would get all in a tizzy and go berserk and make us rip out the sheet rock or something silly (and expensive) so that they could inspect it again.

After about 5 minutes or so, I went upstairs and he was busy making notes, ready to fail us undoubtedly. I thought I would just let him know we'd passed before and that we had a confusing permit situation, etc etc. After about 10 minutes of me explaining and re-explaining and him responding that all he had on record was one final inspection that we failed.... he decided that we could just look it up online. Perfect!

So after a bit more confusion and a few more explanations, random details and Q&A: he says, "okay. I actually believe you now."

talkie-talkie-talkie- about another 5 minutes, he told me something about insulation installation and calling for that inspection and he was gone. Well, from the house because he stayed in his car out front for another 15 minutes or so, making notes or something.

This afternoon, Mr. Price calls me (from his fancy new itoy, I might add), and --a bit bewildered-- tells me that online it shows we have passed: Framing rough-in, Plumbing rough-in, Mechanical rough-in and every other inspection until insulation.

now THAT'S progress. WOOHOOOOOOOOOOO

Checklist

While we are now going on two weeks of the framers saying something to the effect of 'just a few more days' to come wrap up their 1/2 day of work [assume mild amount of frustration here]... we HAVE crossed some things off our list.

We now have -upstairs, mind you- 2 sinks, 2 medicine cabinets and 1 potty. Oh, yes; and that's not all! The most exciting news to report: Mr. Price hired some help last weekend and the 4 of them got our cast iron tub upstairs and in the bathroom area. Yippers!

check. check. check. check.

progress.

Who's your Daddy?

Did I mention that the TriPrices refer to Mr Price in the third person as my "daddy"? As in, he belongs to me and he is an old man so clearly he is in the category of "daddy."

Mr. Price finds this endlessly hilarious.

Sure, they still call him 'uncle' but when inquiring where he is or what he's doing they'll ask me: "Where's your Daddy?" A little confusing to me (and wanting to gently set it straight) since they could be referencing my real Daddy... but no, they consider him my Grand Daddy or just get really confused as to why I'm asking for clarification because "what's wrong with me that I don't know who they mean by 'Daddy'?? I mean, don't you know who your Daddy is?" ...at least that's the look that's the look I get in response...

so it remains.

The Best of Intentions

Story I have to post because I still giggle at it:

Hanging out with the triplets a couple weeks ago and A & F got in a squabble so Claire & I went to the play room while her sisters got sorted out. Sweet Claire asked if I was going to spend the night and I told her if I did, Uncle Joe would be sad. She looked up at me with those beautiful big brown eyes and the sweetest, concerned face; then in a delicate little voice replied: "But I want him to be sad..."

Still not feeling lotz better...

Nothin' like a few bad tomatoes in your medium original from Schlotzsky's in Hillsboro to taint an otherwise lovely day. Felt overly full about an hour after eating it, nausea set in about 3 hours later, and two hours later, by 7pm I was seeing it again. Dis-gust-ing.

No one else in the car had the misfortune of diced tomatoes or olives on their sandwich. I was the lone lucky one.

I keep seeing in my head that stupid road sign that gave us the brilliant idea "Lotz Better" and it makes me want to... oh, wait... I already did that.

So, here on day 4 post-poisoning, still with a sore back from yakking so much and my stomach still loud and irritated, I have managed to branch out from the jello and occasional chicken broth diet to potato soup. Little victories. On the mend.

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

Tornadoes & 4 inch hail

Best warning all night ... "now is not the time to go to the store"

Thanks, Mr. Weatherman!! I'll try to remember that =)

Sketchy

These are some of the original sketches I made for our house remodel (back in 2006!).

While the kitchen layout didn't change much from the final product, the upstairs bathroom has had more time to morph.

Mental Juggling, Medicine Cabinets and Dominoes

The classic riddle of the remodeling-sphinx: How can something seemingly as simple as a medicine cabinet possibly consumer so much of one's time?


Of the 250 decisions (that might be generous on the low side... let's call these 'product decisions') that must be made for the bathroom alone, I am currently spinning my wheels on the medicine cabinet. Should be fun and quick, right? Well, it was.... the first time. Maybe even the second time. I had the the size was just right, the price well shopped and down to the SKU - ready to purchase when it was closer to install time (no need to have additional stuff laying around up there...)

So there we go last weekend to pick up the medicine cabinet (we need it now not to install, but so extra blocking can be done prior to the sheet rock being installed). Just before heading out the door - thinking I'm being cautious... i decide to pop upstairs and measure in between the studs... just in case. Whew, I think: one was 14.5 and the other 14.25. The difference of a quarter inch could have really thrown me off here. but the dimensions of the in-the-wall part is 14'' in width so all clear. WOOHOO! ---wait for it--- Hmmm.... that PVC pipe is running straight up the middle of the studs where the cabinet is to be. yep. Murphy strikes again.


After all my pondering of size, shape and style - then shopping pricing and picking out the PERFECT medicine cabinet... it's no good. it would have looked lovely over one sink and protruded from the wall over the other. Back to square one. But actually, the domino effect kicks in, because we needed to finalize what type of lighting would go over the sinks before the electrician could finish the rough in... so we bought the lights already. Well, those were selected on the premise that of the inset medicine cabinet would be fairly flush to the wall.


Given this new discovery that I need to pick out a new medicine cabinet that will be wall-mounted, not recessed, it will not protrude further from the wall than originally thought. Meaning the lights won't be ideal any more, they either need to come out further from the wall or be side mounted... but we've already passed electrical inspection, so i don't want to redo any electrical wiring and have that set-back.... so stuck with finding a new light fixture with the parameters we already set for the last lights, not to mention staying within the metal finish selected when we got the clawfoot tub feet & hardware (faucet, etc) and minding the available selections for the time period of the original construction of the house.


By and by, I have since realized that I need to consider/select the sink size and placement to determine where the exactly the blocking* will need to be, once the cabinet (and corresponding dimensions) have been determined.


While this might seem an easy task... it turns out not to be. And I'm still on the medicine cabinet part. And now it's not time for casually thinking it over and refining my selections over time.... chop chop, sister! this will now hold up progress and the guy is coming to finish up minor framing changes early next week.


So, need to go ahead and get the sinks. Thankfully, my sink selection will still work, but I will need to go to two different places to get them because everyone, it seems, is running low on stock of that item.


But picking up the sink won't really help all that much, other than crossing it off the list because I will have to just visualize the combo since we are.......... still in studs.


*in case you aren't familiar, blocking is securing a 2x4 between to vertical studs to carry weight of a heavy item on a wall: e.g. medicine cabinet, TV or recessed shelf. done correctly, it should be connected at the center of the new 2x4.


also: did I mention that we failed our mechanical inspection? well, we failed our mechanical inspection. not because of something with the new system... and not because of something functionally wrong with existing system... but because the vent pipe is too long in one direction and they want it to go straight up. Yep. A minor ~$600 'fix' for something not even involved in our current renovation. and the best part: the vent pipe will pop through the roof on the front part of the house.

Memorial Weekend Mishaps to Happiness

So I'm a few weeks behind on this... but I finally downloaded pictures from my camera (along with some precious shots of the Herd Twins!) and have story-in-pictures to share. Meghan - there will be more house updates on the way, as promised.

So for now:

The pool, post paris (lovely, no? welcome home! you now have a pond) see, i told you it was bad...

and subsequent draining. It was shiney and blue by the next evening. dirty rat-b@astard pool. arggh

this is a sneaky picture from the dining room. so... we were having a couple boards replaced on our porch and - much to my delight (oh, wait...) the whole damn thing needed replacing. nice... so this is the workers finishing up the new floor joists.

and now, something pretty from the backyard to counteract the other backyard blunders:

and while lightening the mood here... this was fantastic. dinner with the Shanleys and for a bit of comic relief - look through the window over Erin's sholder. Um, that'd be Jim & Joe under the roof of the casita because it started raining while they were grilling. tee hee...

and as the grande finale on this crescendo.... pardon my elephant neck but, seriously - can a face express pure joy any better than little bit's here?? we weren't even spinning yet, it was just the countdown ...

i made cookies

so, in spite of my horrific attitude lately - springing mostly from the jobby-job - today was quite a good day. and it was a monday to boot!!

in fact, i even got a wild hair and made some cookies. peanut butter chocolate oatmeal praline cookies, thanks for askin'.

The general disposition was most certainly helped by the fact that I worked from home today. Still productive, but didn't get my daily dose of 'life-sucked-out-of-me.'

and for that, i'm grateful. ;)

cookie, anyone??

Reading

Have I mentioned that I have been reading? ...sorry, didn't mean to shock you. I should know better than that as just last weekend I thought I'd take the 'rip the bandaid off' approach to sharing some news and was reminded that that isn't always best.

I digress. So yes: not only have I been reading something beyond a magazine, I picked up Jane Austen's "'Pride and Prejudice" (not exactly light reading) and plowed through it! Well, as much as my schedule allows for, at least.

Somewhere between Asia and France, I got a hankering to read the aforementioned and lo and behold: I was able to download it to my phone and read it on the plane, In the metro and while at the park. This past week, I've even taken to eating lunch in my car so that I can read uninterrupted for a pathetic 20 minute repreve.

And have loved it.

Noticing myself (1) using SAT words (2) having remarkably long run on sentences (3) generally fighting the urge to talk as if it is the turn of the century (19th century, that is...)

Can't decide of I'll reread it next or if I'll fall down the rabbit hole with "Alice in Wonderland". Hmmmmmmm ......

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