Springing Ahead

Spring is officially here (arrived on my oldest son's 21st birthday - that makes me really old!!) but Mother Nature didn't get the memo. We're still getting snow flurries and freezing temperatures overnight. We are slowly moving toward warmer days, and occasionally the sun peeks out, and we're trying to get out and enjoy it when it does.

Straps for lifting legs

I have done a little sewing, and snapped a photo of the latest project, which was actually a mending job. I had to take out old stitching and sew some new lines of stitching in these webbing straps to correct the size of the loops. These straps have velcro on them and are made for lifting legs. I have a good friend whose husband suffered a spinal embolism a couple of years ago and is now paralyzed from the chest down. I can only imagine what they have gone through since it happened, and they have been very strong and positive and worked hard to give him a normal life, but this is one very small thing I can do to help. It kind of puts all those little inconveniences I complain about into perspective.

Our construction is almost done. We had the final inspection yesterday, and the town building inspector gave us our certificate of occupancy. There are still a number of small pieces to finish up, and the propane is still not in, but it's in progress and the end is in sight. The sun room is looking really beautiful. I'll get some pictures up in the next blog post.

I'm going to make this a short one as I'm about to leave the country for a week and a half and need to take care of a few last minute arrangements. I'm going to Germany with the high school German Teacher and the students who are able to go, along with a few other parents and teachers. We'll be in Bavaria for 10 days, with a group of about 25 of us. My youngest son has been taking German for the past 3 years and has really been looking forward to this trip. He has just started track season, so we're going to try to run a few times while we're there so that neither of us gets too much out of shape, and so I don't get too fat eating all that German food!

Auf Wiedersehen!

Shelley in CT

More Snow!

Well, granite counters didn't happen on Friday. We got another nor'easter Thursday night and all day Friday, which dumped more heavy wet snow on us. Kids got a snow day, DH got a snow day, and the granite guy was snowed in! So we built a nice cosy fire in the fireplace and enjoyed our snow day. I even got to go to knitting group, after I had shoveled the driveway so I could get out to the road. It continued to snow all day long, but roads were pretty clear by late afternoon. Even though I was really disappointed that my kitchen counters were delayed, it was kind of nice to have a slow day and be able to enjoy knitting group (even got a little bit of knitting done there!) and not feel the need to rush around.

Saturday was warm and sunny and melted away a lot of the snow. Youngest son had SAT test scheduled for Saturday morning, so DH got a good hot fire blazing so I could use the fireplace wood stove insert as a cooking stove (still no propane hookup for the new gas stove) to make him an omelette to fill him up so he wouldn't get hungry halfway through the test.

With the sun and the higher temperatures, up into the low 50s Saturday, it feels like we're finally leaving winter behind. I shouldn't get too complacent, as we've had April snowstorms in the past, but I'm just ready to move on to spring. We took a walk and enjoyed the sunshine, and got to see all the trees and branches throughout the neighborhood that had come down in the February blizzard. We still have some downed limbs in our back yard too. Guess we'll have some yard cleanup to keep us busy in the next month or so.

The new date for kitchen counters is Monday. No snow on the horizon.

Shelley in CT

Discombobulated

Yup, that about sums it up.  We have been without a kitchen for almost 4 weeks and it's really starting to get to me. I started off with the best of intentions, with several frozen casseroles that only required thawing and heating in the microwave, along with no-cook options like sandwiches or crackers, cheese, and raw veggies. By the end of the first week we had only had to resort to take-out food once. We didn't do as well the second week. Whenever we used real dishes we had to cart them upstairs to hand wash them in the bathroom sink, then cart them all back downstairs. We've been using (gasp!) paper plates and napkins to make life a little easier through the construction. I keep reminding myself that it's only temporary, and that it will all be worth it in the end.

The other discombobulating part of this whole experience is that it's not just the kitchen that has been out of commission. Our laundry room is being moved, and will take a bite out of the existing office, which necessitated moving all of my office stuff to another room, where there really isn't room for it all. My desk and cabinet are still in the office, covered with plastic and gathering dust. Anytime I need to access something in the filing cabinet, I have to troop through the (very cold) garage and into the office from the other direction because there is a temporary plastic sheeting wall separating the construction space from the part of the house we're still living in to keep the dust down. Any one of these inconveniences by itself isn't all that bad, but the combination, for 3 weeks and counting, and on the heels of the snowstorm and subsequent power outage has just worn me down.

On the upside, we're finally really close to finished.

The granite counter tops will be installed tomorrow and I just can't wait. We're still waiting on propane for the gas stove, but by Saturday morning I should have a kitchen sink that I can use. Yay!

The laundry room is all but finished as well, and the wood has already been delivered for the paneling in the sun room. Whew! This has been a really long haul!

Throughout it all I have had a harder time concentrating on daily tasks, and it's a struggle to get in to work these days. I'm sure when I can move my desk back to the office and be able to access what I need, and FIND what I need, I will feel more in control. And perhaps more ready to start new projects.

Today I have a massage scheduled. It's not one of those feel-good relaxing massages, this is with my favorite massage therapist (who's also a mother of teenagers and a very nice person) and she manages to find every knot and tight muscle and wrestle them into submission. This is often painful, but the end result is always worth it.

Perhaps after the massage, and getting the kitchen finished up, and a good run on Saturday morning, I'll feel like life is getting back to normal.We have a big nor'easter blowing and snowing up the coast today, but it doesn't look like it will dump much snow, if any, on our little piece of the coastline. Now that we're into March and almost into spring, we should be past any more big snowstorms this year. Phew! We're still cleaning up from the last one (one of our big pines fell into our neighbor's yard and now that the snow has melted, we've been cutting it up and hauling it away). And then, after we settle back in after all the construction, I'm off to Germany with my youngest son and the high school German teacher and various other students and parents for 10 days in Bavaria. Guess I can say that life isn't dull around here.

Shelley in CT