Right now I'm on the brink of a full blown headache, it's waxing and waning at the moment. I might have to search out a coke for relief. I hate having a headache.

 

Ever since I bought the yarn in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, I've been on the fence as to where my creativity is taking me. I hadn't planned on going back to knitting, and I have plenty of quilting projects that need my attention. Daughter still wants her quilt finished, all I have to do is quilt the border and bind it off, and I have a John Flynn laser cut Storm At Sea kit I've been working on since March. The blocks are in a sewing-order stack ready to go. Sheesh. Then there's the next bee meeting. It'll be at my house, we're dyeing fabrics. I love that, it's so much fun to play with color. And I really like sharing fabric dyeing with others.

But the knitting. I've made at least 4 attempts at starting a sock, different pattern, different needles, with the new yarn. It's be knitted, ripped and rewound so many times, it's splitting very easily when I work with it. And I want to keep going on this project, I'm not to the exasperation point yet.

So on one side of the fence, I have a cool new quilting bee with cool new bee friends and on the other side I have cool new yarn and a cool new sock pattern book and I just ordered two new sets of birch double point sock needles because I can't find my others.



Maybe I just need to get off the fence and mow the grass.
 

Thanks to me all the local fire trucks and some from the next town over were parked in front of the grocery store last night.


You're thinking, I know she's klutzy, but the fire department?

Daughter and I rounded the corner down the milk aisle and we saw a blue-white light flickering on the lighting power cord for one of the shelves. So I went down to check-out and told them they had a fire back there. A friend from church was also shopping so we chatted about our respective kitchen renovations, picked our selections, speculated whether the boys would walk over from the fire station which is across the street from the grocery, or arrive with lights and sirens.

By the time we were finished shopping and all paid up there were at least 4 trucks outside, lights flashing. But nobody inside was really in a panic, the calm in the store didn't balance out with glaring scene outside. It was kind of aerie.

Measuring Spoons, Thermometers and Paintbrushes

I've been slowly getting the yardsale in my living room (contents of the old kitchen) back into the new cabinets. This morning I started on the utility drawer next to the stove. I haven't dug back in the depths of that pit since Clinton was in office. Beyond the spatulas and basters and the ice cream scoops I collected all the measuring spoons, thermometers and paintbrushes (what?) for a picture.



Click to enlarge and study this picture for 30 seconds then go to the comments and play along.

Meet My Brother

My little brother, sorry, younger brother is the taller of the two, about 6' 7" and today is his birthday. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of him when we got together earlier this month to show him off properly. He is heavily involved in a church-based youth soccer league and loves it, he really likes working with the kids and seeing their skills improve.

Many years ago he married a woman who shares my first name so her married name is the same as my maiden name. I like my sister-in-law so it's OK, but you can imagine the confusion it causes. Like the time my dad never called me to tell me my Grandma was ill. Mom: Did you call Anne? Dad: Yes. Actually she had gotten sick in October and at Thanksgiving I was told "...we won't be going to the beach at Christmas if Grandmother doesn't get better..." Huh? What are you talking about? Boy, was I mad.

Anyway, this is not supposed to be about my parents, it's to wish Happy Birthday, Little Brother! I love you, have a good day.

I'm mourning the loss of Target for a source of clothing for my 14 year old son. He keeps growing and is now about 5'8" (taller'n me!) so he'd wear a size 18 or 30" inseam pants. Except he's the approximate diameter Nicole Richie, so his waist would be about a double slim or 26 inches. The boys' section in Target goes to size 16 and the men's department starts at 28x30.

JC Penny's has sizes 18 and 20 in boys with slim and adjustable waists so I just have to adjust my thinking and put Penny's on my radar. But they are not convenient to get to. Argh. What do you do when a source for something dries up?

Kitchen Renovation Week 5

It's getting there. The painters will come in next week. You can see the seams on the back splash tile and they are wider than I'd like in places. And I selected off-white grout, so, of course, the mismatched seams stand out. Argh. I'm going to try to live with it for a while and go with my back-up plan if I can't stand it. That would be to grout over the existing "Silk" with "Cinnamon," a color that is closer to the tile color. Then the seams should nearly vanish. Why I didn't think of that after I saw the seams is killing me.



For the most part my husband has left all the decisions to me, which is usually fine. The other day Husband and I were at Target and I picked out and bought two stools for the counter while he was off window shopping with the kids. The stools match pretty well with the cabinets. Modest, nothing crazy (lower right in photo). Yesterday, he and I were in the Target close to the office at lunch to buy pants for our ever-growing son—another story entirely. He sees these (in a dark red): and wonders why we couldn't have had these instead. Sheesh. I say the ones I bought still have the tags on them, we can exchange them. No, that's alright. Criminey, I like these, but didn't pick them because I thought the others went better and were less expensive, but if you like them, then why not? You just can't win.

First Day of School

I'm back to an almost normal schedule now. I can leave for work as soon as my son is on the bus. He's been sleeping later and later all summer, and sometimes staying up until 4:45. Yes, in the morning.

This morning he came down at about 10 till 8 and made himself chocolate milk while I scrambled up one and a half eggs. (I take one of the yolks out.) Yesterday I bought two new bar stools for the new kitchen counter, at which he sat and ate his breakfast. Then he went out and set up the folding chair and waited for the bus, scheduled to come at 8:15, but came at 8:25. Not bad for the first day.

Daughter got picked up at 7:45 for school. She's carpooling with two neighborhood boys for an early class before school officially starts at 9:30. There was a change in scheduling this year, which necessitated the odd time for her and the rest of the kids taking band or chorus and Spanish I. If you're confused, just think about how us moms are, only some of us got called by guidance, others of us called them ourselves. Oh, didn't I call you with the start time information?

I fell asleep last night stressing about how much homework the girl will be getting. Last year there were two sections of honors kids. One got a lot of homework, the other got off easy. Fern's class was on the easy side. Her gaggle of friends got split up into the two classes this year, so I'm hoping she'll win the homework lottery again and get off easy. I hate homework, it stresses our family out too much when there's a lot to be done. And there's not that much time in the evenings since she doesn't get home until close to 5:00 and I'd love for her to have time for fun things and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

sheesh.

Another shot from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; it reminded me of my husband's blog photo.

I'm back from my business trip to Minneapolis. I'd never been there, except for going through to other destinations. The bridge disaster is still very much on the minds there, every time I heard the news, it was mentioned. We stayed at the Holiday Inn which overlooks the void of the 35W bridge. This is the view to the north from the pool deck on 14th floor.


Monday after our meetings my collegue and I checked out the Lake area west of town and walked around Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles.

Tuesday, we had time between meetings to walk around the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.


Metrodome at sunset.


I was looking for 15th. Oops, maybe I went a little too far.


I found a cool yarn shop a few blocks from the hotel called Depth of Field. I bought two balls of yarn made of corn fiber! It's called 'Maizy' and is very soft and cotton-y. I haven't knitted in a while, but I bought them anyway. I also found a quilt shop and had to get some fabric. On the flight back I got my checkbook caught up, verifying statements from back to January. I just need to get all the recent items since the last statement accounted for. I'm so bad at balancing my checkbook. I mean, I can do the math, it's just that I'll go through spurts of keeping it ultra balanced and then periods of six to eight months of not. It's the check card purchases that do me in, I never remember to log them.

I came back home to progress in the kitchen. We now have a working dishwasher, sink and faucet (Yay!), and the backsplash tile has been put up. for the most part it looks OK, but some of the seams between sheets are too wide and it looks like an amateur put it up. It's going to bug me, but I don't know what to do about it. Oh, and the dishwasher won't open fully, or if it does, the drawer beside it doesn't. Sheesh.

Oops!

I mistyped in my previous post, I didn't get granite counter tops, I got quartz. Grantite is so easy to say, and it's so popular now.

Quartz, not so easy to say or type. Drives me nuts to hear people leave out the 'u' in quartz and quarts, and quarters, as in "This week korts of Valvoline are on sale for $1.29," or "in the forth korter the Redskins failed to score." I'm not a football fan so the last one doesn't bother me that much. We don't live in Qatar, folks, it's not that hard.

I never got the extension piece for the hot water dispenser, drat, and I'm on an early flight in the morning for Minneapolis. I'm not taking my lap top so this will be my last post until I get back.

I've just spent the afternoon inhaling epoxy fumes while my countertops were installed. It's starting to look a lot like a kitchen!

My instant hot water dispenser needs an extension piece, drat, it wasn't built for a thick slab of granite. I mounted the faucet and soap dispenser this afternoon, just need to get the plumbing attached.

Hopefully, Monday I'll have the dishwasher installed and we'll be good to go. After that it's just the backsplash and finishing work. I think.

Breaking Point

I reached the breaking point.
It's all got to end.
I can't take it anymore.
I can't do anything with it.
I can't stand the way it looks.
It's all got to go.
I was going along just fine, no problems, everything is under control, then, BAM! Outta control, like it happened over night. And it happened at a most inconvenient time. I've been tolerating it as it is but I am going on a business trip next week to Minneapolis for a couple days. (It's the first trip I've been on in, oh jeez, has it been two years now?) So I'll just have to live with this mess until I get back. Then I'll have to make some calls and work out a schedule, obtain the necessary funds to correct the situation. But still I fear this won't get it resolved until, oh maybe October. However will I live with this current state until then? It's time I got a hair cut.

This is my 204th post. I went and missed my 200th. I posted it all right, I just didn't know it at the time. Oh well.

I updated my sidebar today. I had bookmarked a lot of blogs as I found them and today just decided to list them all on my page instead or continuing to bookmark them, and sort them into groups while I was at it.

As some of the categories fell into place, I realized I need to do more of my interests, not just read about them. I have several quilting projects hanging around and while I love to go to my bee meetings, it's not inspiration enough to get anything done or worked on.

Well, there is the kitchen thing. It's hard to feel motivated to get anything done when the heart of the household is on hold. The counter top is due for installation on Friday, but I'm not sure I'll have a working sink and dishwasher by the weekend. Living in limbo zaps all enthusiasm right out of me. I hope I'll be rejuvenated creatively when I have my kitchen back. Besides, of course, getting everything back in there. I plan to purge extraneous cookware, but I may be so tired of all this when the time comes, who knows what'll happen.

And now I leave you with the picture of the day: A kid in Curaçao

Family Time

My husband comes from a large family, he has five brothers and two sisters. This weekend all eight siblings got together in Richmond for a reunion. I like his family, they are so different from mine. They are loud and because there are so many of them, there are lots opinions about lots of different subjects, mostly education and sports: baseball, hockey, and playing golf (where I join in).

I have two brothers with whom I hardly ever speak, not because we're not on speaking terms, but because we forget. Well, that's my excuse, I don't know about them. I really ought to try harder to talk to them more often. We do our communicating through Mom and Dad. Yesterday was Dad's birthday so I called to wish him a happy one. Oh and please tell the short brother (6'5") the tee time next weekend is 1:32, no, better make that 1:00. He's invariably late. We're playing golf next weekend at my family's get-together. I hope my tall brother (6'7") can play, his back's been bothering him. (Dad's 6'7" too, if you were wondering, and I'm only 5'7".)

I haven't pulled out my camera at all (yet) so I have no record of this reunion, maybe later today I'll get a chance before everyone goes separate ways.

Friday

Today I took off work and played golf with my husband at a course that's new to us. I didn't do too well over all but did have some good shots. I just need to string together some of those good shot into a full good-shot game. I have completely lost the ability of using a driver, or any wood for that matter, so most of my tee shots were with a 3-iron.

The thermometer in the car showed 101° when we finished playing. Whew. toasty!

Today is day twelve with no sink or dishwasher. I got a call from the Counter top contractor, they received our slab of (forest green Caesarstone) quartz and are starting to cut it now. Installation will be on Friday, next week. So, another full week of no sink or dishwasher.

sheesh.

My eyelashes are sticky with dried tears.

I've finished Harry Potter.

Kitchen Renovation Week 2

Last week the cabinets came out and the floor was finished. Now the new cabinets are in and the new lighting has been installed. The guys removed the old bulkhead and replaced it with a shorter one so the cabinets are about 2 inches higher. They removed part of the wall next to the fridge so it will fit. They will finish that later in the week.

The backsplash tile has been ordered and the cabinet door knobs have been purchased. I have to remember to call the painter and get on his schedule. The countertops were templated yesterday and I should have a working kitchen next week when the new tops are installed. These will be the longest three weeks in my life. I hate washing dishes in the bathtub.

More news from the kitchen in progress

The new 'fridge was scheduled to be delivered Saturday morning, between 10 and 2. Don'cha love delivery windows like that?

The fun started when I pulled the old fridge away from the wall to make room for the new one. I was greeted by a lovely spray of water in my face. The copper water supply line to the icemaker had gotten kinked and finally gave out when I moved the 'fridge. I turned off the water supply and took off the old tubing. Luckily I had another coil of 1/4" OD tubing in my tool box in the garage for this very moment. But I didn't have any more compression nuts, and I couldn't go anywhere until the delivery guys came.

When my new fridge did arrive, it didn't fit. It's supposed to, it's 35 5/8" wide going into a space 36" wide. The shoe moulding was in the way and I don't have a thin enough pry bar to get it off the wall. And the base cabinet next to the fridge wasn't over against the far wall, so I had to take out the cabinet B put in on Friday.

Well, I really couldn't do anything else about it then, I did get compression nuts and hooked up the icemaker to get it going, we've been too long without the ability to make iced tea. I also moved over the food. I won't bore you with what I found, but it is safely in the garbage can waiting for collection on Tuesday.

Until a few hours ago I had two refrigerators in my kitchen, neither in the cubby where they'd fit, both plugged in. Try walking around in there like that! I advertised the old one on freecycle to get rid of it, got a taker, and a very nice couple who just moved to our town came and took it away. I didn't even clean it out.

My copy of Harry Potter from Amazon.UK come on Wednesday, sooner than expected. I finished reading HP6 Thursday morning and have been slowly reading thru the new book. I found a phrase in the UK version I not familiar with: like baize over a budgerigar. I looked it up in our American copy and found it translates to blanket over a birdcage. Would you have known that?

Another bunch of pictures

This past weekend was my husband's high school reunion. The family part was a picnic at the New River, second oldest river in the world. The park is split into two parts, the top, where you park and enter the river if you're tubing or canoing, and the bottom, where you get out and take the bus back up to the top to do it over again. The picnic area was set up at the bottom.

My husband and son rented tubes and tubed down the river. I went the dryer and seemingly safer route: canoe. The river looked pretty flat so my plan was to go down solo to the picnic area and get my daughter so she could canoe too. On the way down I start to panic with visions of the times I got thrown out of a raft on the Lower Youghiogheny. But then I got the canoe unstuck from the rocks without tipping over and I was fine the rest of the way.

My next time down the river was uneventful, except Fern was in the back steering. And we almost went over some rapids backwards. Rapids being kind of flat given the low river level.



A view over the bow.

 

Kitchen renovations started Monday. I'm doing OK with some decisions, but I have two kinda big ones left: chrome or satin stainless faucets and the color of backsplash tile. I wanted to go with chrome, but the instant hot water dispenser only comes in the satin finish. Which means either it won't match the other chrome pieces, or I change everything. Again.

This the the "before" picture.



This is what we came home to after day one.



A very large box was waiting for me when I got home yesterday. My husband greeted me (before I saw it) and said he thought it was my new Harry Potter book. It was the kitchen sink.

 

The last picture today is of my son in the pool at the hotel at twilight.

I heard an ad on the radio this morning for a new service from OnStar: step-by-step directions. With the gaining popularity of GPS devices and now this new service, I wonder what happened to maps.

My dad tells a story of me reading a USGS 24K quad sheet (topography map) at age 3. I love maps, my college degree was in geography. I'm a visual-spatial person, I need to see where I am on a map and how it relates to everywhere else.

A couple springs ago we took a cruise out of Florida. The traffic getting down there was horrible, standstill traffic the whole length of Georgia. Checked the map and hopped over to the state route that parallels the Interstate. The state route was empty. What? don't people know this road is here? Not that I minded it being empty, but still, our van could not have been the only vehicle taking the alternate route.

It baffles me why the sudden need for a service to help you get somewhere, how did you get there before? Maps. Every utility/repair van had a map book of the metro area on the front dash. (Yay maps!)

I just can't get that lady's voice on the OnStar step-by-step directions commercial out of my head, "I use it all the time." Are there that many carto-illiterate people out there who need this service? Are people that lazy?

Do you use a GPS for directions everywhere you go? How do you feel about being dumber than a computer?

On the way back from my husband's high school reunion, —I'll post pictures later—my daughter announces she has finished reading HP7. It was 2:13 pm. Less than 30 seconds later my husband starts reading the book. (I was driving.)

I'm waiting for my preordered (February!) my copy from Amazon.uk, but it has yet to arrive.

Now it's almost 10:30 and 400 some pages later my husband says to me, "I'm not giving away anything from the story, but the the witches could benefit from the Internet."

If you can't stand the heat...

Stuff is finally starting to happen on the kitchen front. The deadlines are forcing me to make the decisions I've been having trouble making. (Maybe I should go back to therapy for this indecisiveness, I really don't know why it's so hard for me. Maybe because I've been burned by bad color choices before, maybe I'm afraid I have a longevity—will it look dated in ten years—fear, maybe I want to make sure everyone else likes what I pick, maybe I don't have a clear vision of what I want my kitchen to look like or feel like or the mood it should exude so I can't pick things to go with this absent vision.) I finally picked a sink and ordered it. I finally picked a faucet and ordered it. I'm very close to picking a counter top color. I going with glass tile as a backsplash, I just don't know what color yet.

B, my builder is coming on Monday to take the base cabinets out. Then the floor guy comes on Tuesday to repair the floor and put down new tile where the old cabinets were. There's no turning back now.

My living room is starting to look like a yard sale. I've started emptying out the base cabinets into boxes. I know I'm going to get overwhelmed and I hate that. Too much in there, and too much stuff we never use, I know I'll have to be make more decisions, this time about what to purge. And, I'm not looking forward to not having a kitchen for a couple weeks.

On top of all this, I haven't lost the 10 pounds to get down to trophy wife status for my husband's thirty year high school reunion this weekend. (So I won't be at home emptying out cabinets! Argh!) I'm kidding (really!) about being a trophy wife, I'm a little too old, and I think I look pretty good as it is. But I gotta figure out what outfit to pack. Sheesh, another decision....

Ever have one of those weeks?

You just don't feel in top shape,
you're still feeling sluggish from having eaten too much party food from the weekend and the scale still reads several pounds up,
you're able to sneak in a rare nap, and you still feel tired and try to go to bed early,
you think about making an appointment at your doctors office,
you hardly laugh during a comedy on TV,
you make it through a day of work but you're not sure how,
then you go to the bathroom and when you turn to flush you notice the liquid in the bowl is not the usual color, but is now twinged brightly with pink, and you're really panicking now, should I go straight to the emergency room, make arrangements myself with the funeral home,
then you remember you had beets for dinner last night?

Interesting thing happened today when I gave my son a pair of swim goggles. He put them on.

For most of his life he's had issues with anything on his face, the most prevalent thing: water. Shampooing was a big problem for a long time. Within the last two years he's gotten over having water on his face and has started going under the water voluntarily. His swimming has gotten better, evident by his medal at the Special Olympics this past winter.

This afternoon the three of us were playing in the pool, my daughter and I are trying to teach my son how to do a handstand in the water. He puts his hands on the bottom, but can't get his feet straight up, keeping his knees bent. After a while he lost interest so I got out to get my daughter's goggles for her. I grabbed a second pair and handed them to my son just to see what he would do. Much to my surprise, he put them on and headed straight for the lap lane, (thank goodness there wasn't anyone already using it,) and he swam several laps, obviously very proud of the goggles on his face and of himself.

I'm still recovering from Fern's Birthday party. Friday she had a gaggle of friends over for a pool party at our club, then to the theater for the late showing of Harry Potter 5, followed by a sleepover.

Kevin doesn't like to go to bed until every one else is in bed, then will come and check on us. thus, at 3 in the morning I was greeted with"Hi," and he won't go away until you say "Hi" back, thus waking you up.

Saturday night I went with AM to the adult party at our pool club, featuring the local rock (cover) band, the Crayfish. One of the members lives in our neighborhood, so there were a lot of neighbors at the party.

My husband took Fern to the Orioles game for her birthday, complete with her name on the scoreboard.

I got to sleep in a little late, but still the bad eating all weekend from party food is making me feel sluggish. Argh.

Now it's back on the straight and narrow...

But, darn it, I can't walk in the morning, I've been called for Jury Duty and I have to be there at 7:30. yikes.

Fave Five

I'm just curious, how many times do you visit a blog before you blogroll them, if they are just a few clicks away?

Kate commented on my blog the other day. I sometimes wander over to her blog from Greeny's. The other day I wandered over and clicked on one of her 'rolled blogs, 25 Year Plan. He had been visited by Michele who does a blog of the day. A couple clicks later I found some new and interesting reads. Blogs I'd go back to, blogs worth going back to.

So, do I follow the chain of links every time I want to visit or just blogroll them myself? If you bring a new blog into your life, how long do you date this new read until you invite it to stay, as it were.

I don't want to list any old blog I've read once or twice. I guess I want to be careful about the fiends I pick. I kinda think your list of regularly read blogs reflects on you, or does it?

If a blog you like is just one click away, if it is listed on a tried-and-true friend's blog, do you need to list it yourself? What if that friend "breaks up" with that blog, no longer reads it and removes it from their list?

I've recently added VariantE to my list and 1000 Days at Sea is listed there, which I read sometimes. How many times do I visit before I list them, too?

Do you wait for them to add you before you'll add them?

Or, is having a long list of blog friends like a badge of honor? But wouldn't it be the other way round, having a lot of friends who list you, be the honor?

Who's in your fave five?

Curried Chicken Salad

This is what I took to AM's pool party last week, I got a request for the recipe, so here goes.

I'm not into measuring, I just eyeball it.

• drain two 12 oz. cans of cooked chicken, (mine came from Costco) reserving some liquid (of course you can cook your own chicken, but I didn't for this party)


• Put the chicken in a mixing bowl and use your fingers to mush the chicken hunks into smaller pieces, you can chop it up with a knife if you really want to, but it takes longer.


• add
  
  
  • a large handful or two of golden raisins and/or grapes cut in half, champagne grapes are good, too, for this if they are in season
  
  
  • a very large handful coarsely chopped pecans
  
  
  • a chopped crunchy apple or two
  
  (other fruit could include chopped dates and pineapple, add to your taste, I think I used dried cranberries last week, too)
  


• put about 1/4 cup of the reserved chicken stock in a pan and stir in 2 or 3 teaspoons curry powder, I used sweet curry.


• bring to a boil and simmer, stirring, until you have a thick paste remove from the heat and let it cool for a bit.


• when you can stick your finger in there without burning yourself, add about a cup of mayo and stir until smooth


• add the mayo to the chicken & fruit mix and stir thoroughly


• refrigerate for about an hour to let the flavor intensify before serving

let me know how it turns out!

More Photos

These were waiting for me at the restaurant last night at dinner...

Fern's cousin, Rose, came to visit last week. One evening we went to the pool. Not only did Rose work up the courage to dive face first off the high-dive during the time, she'd gotten pretty good at flips.

This is the Rt. 17 bridge going into Charleston, SC shot through the car windshield.

The entrance Camp David

Seventeen years ago, today, I married Dan.

I love you, Hon! Thanks for all these wonderful years.

I'm a bit overwhelmed about the kitchen right now, and I need to vent. I hate being overwhelmed. The cabinets are sitting on the back porch, in huge massive boxes. Waiting to be installed. Haunting me, mocking me.

B, my builder has been on vacation this week, so I've been unable to contact him to discuss the procedures. I'd opted to save $12k by going with him, rather than a independant contracting company, but that meant I'm doing my own general contracting, coordinating all the pieces to this puzzle. All those project management classes I took last year should be coming in handy.

The tile on the kitchen floor was put down two years ago and sometime later it developed a crack that runs the width of the cooking area, right over a joint of subflooring. So, I'd like that fixed. And the best time to have it fixed is when the base cabinets are removed. However, I need to coordinate the tile company's availability with B so they can work together, and B is on vacation. Furthermore, I'm having quartz counters put in. Can the floor structure handle the extra weight if it cracks under normal walking? B will have to put supports in the ceiling downstairs, but he doesn't know that, because he's on vacation this week.

I picked the backsplash tile. It's a beautiful blue mottled pattern. I look at other choices and keep coming back to this blue. So, if I'm so stuck on this blue, I need to pick my countertop color accordingly, but I don't have all the samples form all my available choices, just pictures on the web. I want to be happy with the countertop for a long time. I've made color choices in the past on other things (permanent things, like bathroom tile and floor tile) that I regret, and I don't want to do that again. I want to make sure the countertop goes with the backsplash, and the cabinet color, and the color doesn't overwhelm the room, make it too dated, trendy, or institutional looking.

I need to pick out, order and buy a sink, a faucet, instant hot water dispenser, and under cabinet lighting, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a thing or two, oh, like the knobs (how many and I going to need?). I'd really like a new fridge and a new over-the-stove microwave, too.

And during all of this, the construction time, the time when we have no sink, or cabinets, or counter space, for who knows how long, I'll need to live in my house. With my family. And eat decent meals. Sheesh.

Overwhelmed, just a bit. Thanks for letting me vent.

I'm home right now, in the middle of the day, bread in the toaster for a sandwich, waiting for the delivery guys with my cabinets. They should be here soon, my window was noon to 6, now it's 11:30 to 12:30.

I need to clean up the kitchen a bit, empty the dishwasher, etc., and get some before pictures taken before my builder starts the work next week (I think that's when he's coming, he's on vacation this week). I'm not looking forward to a week or two without a kitchen. I wish he could have done with work while we were out of town, but the timing didn't work out that way.

Mmm, good sandwich, peanut butter on wheat toast. need some chocolate milk with this. Ah, that's better.

I was thinking about making more chicken salad for lunch today, but decided it was too much work. I made some for Miss Kingsfield's Independence Day Pool Party yesterday. I make it curried with raisins, apples, and pecans. It disappeared in a heartbeat and I got complements on it, so that made me feel good.

The party was fun, and my kids seemed to have a good time, for the most part. Thanks CG!

I fell prey to an infomercial. I bought stuff that is supposed to get rid of fine lines better than anything else because of the super antioxidants it contains. OK. Why not?

The box came in the mail the other day. Here's the before picture of my eye (self portrait). Remind me to post a 30-days later picture. Or not.

I'm back to work after a two-week vacation and I have a boatload of email to catch up on. I had checked it a couple of times while I was away, just in case there were any disasters. Most was boring stuff, except this. One email was from a collegue who had photos of what happened in our office garage.

Apparently someone forgot the difference between "Drive" and "Reverse."

I got a birdie! I got a birdie!

I got a 2 on #11 at Tupelo Bay with a beautiful newsreel chip from off the green.

Yay me!

Ah, the quiet. Once again I've got hard-to-come-by quiet computer time, The kids are still asleep and Dan's off at the first day of a two-day golf school I gave him for his birthday. I copied the Christmas present he had given me. It was a great gift, so I had to copy. I hope he gets a lot out of the lessons.

Yesterday we loaded the kids into the car for a drive down to Charleston. I tried to take artsy pictures that didn't turn out as well as I hoped. I'll post them in a separate blog entry so I don't have to fiddle with editing the code now.

When we got back, Dan went off to play 9 holes of golf and I took the kids to the beach. We're renting a house in a "village" where the beach is about a half mile away, but there is a private parking lot at the beach, which is handy. This is also a golf cart village, where a lot of tenants/residents have carts. What do you think when you're following a golf cart that pulls way over to the right? It's ok to pass, right? That's what I thought until I almost hit the guy when he started to turn left!
Aye yai yai! Use hand signals for goodness sake. sheesh. The guy glared at me like I did something wrong.

Well, I better get these kids up and fed so I can get a parking spot at the beach.

Polly and Molly just left for the pool, Wally had already taken Ollie so I finally have some computer time to myself. I'm sitting in our rented beach cottage in the south Myrtle Beach area. We got here yesterday, Dan and the girls got here about an hour ahead of me, I had to go to Camp David to pick up Kevin from camp.

It's really Camp Greentop which is about a half mile down the road from Camp David up in the Maryland Mountains. Camp Greentop is a camp run by The League for People with Disabilities. Kevin has been going for about 6 years now and loves it. When you first drive into the parking area you are met by a staff member whom you tell what camper you have. Then you drive around to the next "station" where a large group of staff wave and cheer at the arrival of your child. My eyes always well up when I see them standing there, then manage to steady my voice before I have to speak to the next person, it takes about 10 seconds for this drive. It gets me every year. The staff all seem to love having the campers there, very enthusiastic and caring.

Kevin had a great time, so the staff told me when I picked him up yesterday, ate well, particiapated in activities, and had fun. Then we hit the road for the drive to South Carolina. I tried to get him to tell me his needs on the drive, but he never says anything about his needs on his own, just answers "Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?" questions.

We left Curaçao Thursday and picked Fern up from her camp on Friday. Wow, we've done a lot of driving. Now we get to relax in one place for a while. Except for the drives to mini golf, the batting cage, the movies, Charelston, golf, and where ever else the kids want to go.

Another boring day in paradise. We went to Playa PortoMari again, but this time I rented a snorkel set and got to see a lot of cool fish. PortoMari is also a dive site. The water is about 3 meters deep at the end of the swimming area, then just drops off into oblivion. I was paddling around in the "shallow" part looking around and saw some divers and freaked out a bit thinking I'd gone too far from shore, but I hadn't.

This little guy was haning out on the rock wall behind the sun bathing area.

Then we went back to Jaanchi's for Dinner, but this time I had the shrimp and the grouper. And this time I got pictures. This is Jaanchi.

And this is my dinner.

There are a lot of churches here, all brightly painted, even the cemetaries were painted.

Tonight for dinner we at at Jaanchi's Restaurant in Westpunt. There are no menus, Jaanchi (I'm guessing) has a seat at your table and tells you what's available. I chose the shrimp with garlic and my husband chose the grouper. My shrimp was in a creamy sauce and was served with beans and rice, fries and some mixed viggies. It was good. I didn't bring my camera in to dinner so you'll just have to imagine it.

Before dinner we played golf at Blue Bay. Yowza. Windy. Hard, fast greens. Forced carries on several holes. Bad swings. Bad putts. We were almost ready to quilt after nine, but we stuck it out and things looked better. I didn't keep score the whole game, it got too bad, but I was better than my husband by several strokes for 4 holes, then there was hole number five. I'm standing in the tee box, and that's the green over there, on the other side of those rocks. Yes, that's the ocean down there.



The course finished up with a par 4 along the ocean:

Before golf, we went to Playa Knip. Nice, quiet, just a few other people there, even though a tour bus stopped there for 10 minutes while the tourists got out and took pictures like this:


Be sure to check out my husband's blog, he's posting his own version of our vacation.

Our rental car is a low-end 5-speed Toyota Yaris with hand crank windows and manual door locks. And air conditioning. The temperature control goes from light blue to dark blue. I guess no heat. Never seen that before. The steering wheel is configured in such that every time my husband made a hard turn, like into a parking space, he honked the horn.


We probably drove over 100 KM today. Our first stop was the beach at Porto Mari. We managed to leave the hotel without beach towels, so we had to dry off in the sun. It was hard for me to get oriented at the beach. We're below the Tropic of Capricorn, and it's almost summer solstice, which means the sun could be to the north at noon, something not seen in the states.

Our next stop was at a grocery store. We have the cutest little kitchen in our room. It's the size of a wardrobe. It has a sink, stove, microwave, toaster, coffee maker and a fridge. Breakfast was very expensive so we stocked up on bread, butter, water, coffee and other things; we just moved right in.



Now, for beach towels, found some in the tourist district of Willemstad, had lunch and headed off to another beach, this time Seaquarium Beach. Much more crowded than the morning spot. These beaches both had changing rooms with showers and snack bars.

Back to the room for a break and change of clothes and now off to dinner.

I'm sitting in the business center of the Kura Hulanda Lodge checking my blog replies and email. We've got Internet in the room but we need an ethernet cable. This browser has blogger set to Dutch so I have to remember where all the usual clicks are to do a posting, since I can't read it. Well, I can figure out "Bericht Publiceren" because it's surrounded by a large orange button.

We arrived late last night because we sat inches away from the jetway in Miami for over an hour. Lightning had closed the ramp, the area outside the airport where the workers drive the baggage carts, and we couldn't get off the plane until the storm cleared. Since all flights were delayed, we made our connection and here we are.

Now for some breakfast...

Meet The VanDegas

Fern has a friend from school and when they get together they become Molly and Polly VanDega. The last day of school was yesterday, so Polly came over today to hang with Molly. I have been informed I am now part of this charade: I am Holly, my husband is Wally, my son is Ollie, and we now have a collie named Dolly.

About 7:05 pm last night my lights went out for a second, then came back on and I heard a bang from across the neighborhood. Then they went out again. There were thunder storms in the area but nothing really close, so it was a surprise, really, we lost power.

Kevin was cool about the lights. Fern's iPod had power so he hung out in her room with the music and the battery speakers. Good thing she wasn't home.

There is something pleasant, comforting, about the quiet house, no droning TV, no humming AC compressor, and the porch door open with the breeze blowing the trees outside, no washing machine agitating, no dryer tumbling, no laundry getting done mere days before the kids go off to camp. Sheesh.

Photo Recap of recents events

Kevin got an award for perfect attendance at the 8th grade ceremony. He wouldn't sit with the rest of the students, but sat with me in the audience. He knew what to do when his name was called. I'm so proud of him!

Fern's band concert was last week. She played in the 6th grade band as well as the Saxophone Ensemble. She's the only 6th grader in it, the rest are boys from the 8th grade. I'm very proud of her too!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about being worried my girls wouldn't get their bridging requirements done. "My girls" being the sixth graders in my daughter's Junior Girl Scout troop who were moving on to Teen Scouts (formerly known as Cadettes). They made it! And their ceremony went well, I'm proud of all of them.

Fern gets her last Junior badges with the secret handshake from the leader to follow.

The bridging Juniors before...

... a little musical interlude...

... and finis!

This past weekend we made our way to the promised land. The place we have been promising to take Kevin for months. The land of killer steps and huge smiles, the promised land of Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg. Check-in time is 4:00 pm and that's exactly when we got there. On this visit we got a "Wolf Den Suite" which has a "cabin" in the room with bunk beds and a separate TV. Our room wasn't ready yet, but we got our waterpark passes and changed into our suits in the locker rooms.

For two hours we played and had fun and around 6 pm I went back up to the lobby to get our room keys. Room wasn't ready yet. When will it be ready? I'll be right back. When the woman finally came back she told me 45 minutes, around 7:00 pm. She was very sorry, and they would take 15% off our rate. Uh, thanks. By now the girls are hungry (we took Fern's cousin, Rose, with us), so we dry off and pile the kids in the car and head off for some supper.

When we got back, our room was finally ready. Whew. At check-out the following morning, I looked at the bill. We were credited $122 for the three-hour delay. That was way more than 15%! I'm glad they made an effort to make us happy campers.

Abstract shot looking up the Howlin' Tornado ride

Kevin in his beloved tube

Fern and Rose in the lazy river

I finally converted my blog template to the new version. I picked this template design, mostly because I haven't seen a lot of other blogs using it. I've gotten blogs mixed up before, reading one, thinking I was on another because of the same template colors. I don't want anyone to credit my brilliance to anyone else. Looking at my new page is like looking in the mirror after a drastic haircut, yeah, it's me, but I'm different. do I like what I see?

I spent some time going back to old posts and adding labels so they show up in the label list. Wow, I ramble a lot. It's interesting to look back at old posts, to remember what was going on back then, and how we're moving on all the time.

Let me know what you think of the new design!

Why must my son use my deodorant when his runs out? I think the "Tropical Breeze" scent is lost on him. He's been taking baths in the shower again, instead of in the bathtub. A couple of years ago he too such a big bath in the shower it was raining in the dining room. I don't want another new dining room ceiling, so I'm trying to get him to bathe in the tub or just shower in the stall, no playing. It's hard to get him to understand stuff like that, that it's not good block the shower drain and make the water flow out the door. I curbed him a bit last night by securing a drain cover over the drain so he couldn't stick a cup in there to block the hole. He still tried to block the drain, but there was no water on the floor. At 14, he's too old to monitor his bathing, so I've got to figure out a way to get him to understand he can't flood the house.

deja vu?

The leaking in the basement from the AC was not from a misconnection from the furnace installation in February but the failure of the condenser coil pan, it rusted out. So: new air conditioner to be installed on Friday, 14 seer, up from the 20 year-old 8 seer unit that's out there now. That should save us some killowatthours this summer. Our electricity rate is going up 50% next month. sheesh.

When it rains, it pours

Saturday was a gorgeous day. Hot. It hadn't rained in a while so I set the sprinkler out for several hours. Sunday it rained, over an inch. Now the lawn really needs to be mowed. I coulda mowed on Saturday.

Memorial Day weekend I turned on the AC for the season. Later I heard some crackling noise from the basement, went to inspect and found water dripping on the electronic air cleaner. Hmm. I called the company who put in the furnace last winter. Service call, please. How's Tuesday? Over the weekend I went downstairs for something and the basement is flooded. I'm guessing they didn't hook the AC drain back up properly when installing the new furnace. And I won't pay for the service call if they try to charge me.

Sunday morning, getting ready for church, I find a puddle around the fridge. I pull the fridge out from the wall to take a look. There is a drain line from the icemaker that is not connected. I reconnect it, and, while the fridge is pulled out, I mop back there, yuck. Later in the afternoon, I hear the icemaker fill with some additional dripping, more like pouring, sound. hmm. I pull the fridge out again. Hey! the floor is clean back there, woohoo! Oh, and the drain line is disconnected again. So I'm thinking the icemaker is clogged, frozen shut, or something, it's on the blink. (I want a new fridge. The current one is twenty years old....) So I've been trying to figure out how to get hot water up in there to thaw the innards of the icemaker to see if I can fix it, or if it really is dead.

Last week I promised to work on Fern's quilt, so I have been. And hand quilting it, too. I decided I'd finish the pattern I'd already started by hand, then use the machine to quilt the border and maybe augment the current pattern. It was then, during the initial excitement phase of working on a new project again, I remembered I owed some birthday blocks to women in my quilt guild. And top of that, I've been hired to make four 91" drapery pannels out of moss green velvet. I'm trying hard not to crush the velvet in the process. I'm also trying to figure out how much to charge my client. Too bad I can't charge her the amount of a new fridge.

It's like the Nationwide commercial: Life comes at you fast.