Sisters, Sisters

Today is my sister's birthday. My bestest sister in the whole wide world.

I've always been close to my sister despite our age difference and geographic difference. Aside from my mom, my sister had the single greatest influence on me growing up. The little fashion sense that I have came from my sister.

When I was younger, my mom would let me visit my sister during the summer, and my mom would give my sister money so my sister and I could do some back-to-school clothes shopping. I remember my sister helping me choose clothes that were really cool. Well, cool for the time, I mean it was the 80's.

Anyway, I remember going shopping for a prom dress for my senior prom. My sister was in Buffalo, and we went to the mall. There used to be a store called Merry-Go-Round, and they had the edgiest, coolest, most avant-garde clothes. Again, it was the 80's, so...

I found this amazing dress. It was red, and not at all fluffy like my junior prom gown. Though it had puffy sleeves at the shoulders. It was a full-length gown, straight skirt, modest slit, faux-wrap with a peplum. Not a Dynasty-style peplum, a small peplum. And it was RED. I loved that dress. My sister loved that dress. I felt great wearing the dress, and I felt like I looked great. We bought that dress. My mom was less than thrilled. To this day, I still don't really understand why she didn't like it. But I did; I loved it. And my sister loved it. I had a bag and shoes dyed to match exactly (that's what we did back then). All these years later, I still remember how I felt wearing that dress.

My mom had some great clothes through the years. We'd look at a picture, and my mom would tell a story about the dress or suit in the photo; she was quite the fashion plate. My mom seldom wore the same dress to an event where she would see people who saw her in that dress. A wedding invitation? Time to look for a new dress. My parents used to go to a lot of dinner dances because my dad belonged to various veteran's organizations. My mom would go dress shopping for many of those functions unless she had a new dress from a family wedding or something that no one had seen. She was always dressed to the nines.

But my sister, oh my sister has the greatest clothes. And shoes. Shoes...

My sister and her family used to come to Buffalo for Easter every year. Easter was a big holiday in my family, especially to my dad. One year, my sister and I went shoe shopping. With my sister's help, I found these great shoes to go with my Easter outfit. Well, wandering through the mall, we sort of completely lost track of time. Hmm...now that I think about it, I don't think it was Easter. Anyhow, my sister and I were late getting home for dinner. We ended up having to take the highway to save precious minutes. My mom was furious with us. You didn't come home late for dinner. Ever. My sister and I still snicker about that.

Lest I leave you with the impression that my sister is just about clothes and shoes, I need to tell you a little about her. She has amazing accessories, too! Sincerely, though, my sister is one of the strongest, most generous, smartest, talented in so many ways, sarcastic, funny, irreverent, most strikingly beautiful people I know. Yeah, it's cliché, but I'm so proud to be her sister and friend.

Please join me in wishing her the happiest of birthdays.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes (Turn and Face the Strange)

I don't know if you're the same way, but once I start redecorating in one or two rooms, I want to redo my whole house. It's not that I don't like my house, I do, but some rooms are ready for a change. The rooms are just getting tired looking. I'm ready to paint in my living room and dining room. I've been ready to paint for a while because we haven't painted in there since we bought the house. It's time for a change. If I wasn't such I terrible painter, I'd buy paint and start painting one day. Well, because I'm a terrible painter and the fact that it would take me forever to paint even a small room because I'd have to keep stopping and resting.

If you think about it, paint is almost magical. It can transform the look and feel of a room for about $25 a gallon. It can make you feel like you have a whole new space. Take our room switch, for example. My daughter's room used to be our room. I've been looking for photos of the “before”, but I don't think I ever took one in our room upstairs. Picture, if you will, a room with toast colored walls, and black trim. I found a couple, actually. 

This is what it looks like now that it's my daughter's room:

It feels like a totally different room. Light, airy, beautiful.

Our current room (my daughter's old room) used to be purple. I was laying down watching television last night, and my daughter came in the room. Of course, she's seen the room a billion times since we switched, but last night she said, “It looks really nice in here, Mom. It's like a movie theater”.

I only have photos of when she still had the loft bed in her room, but you can get an idea of the before:

This is what it looks like now:

Even without painting my son's room, just changing out beds and putting a different comforter on the bed renewed the feel of his room. It's funny; the smallest person in the house (for the time being anyway), has the largest bed.

There's something about new. Even when it's not brand-new, only new to you, it makes you feel good. I think that's another trait I inherited from my mother, and possibly my grandmother. I remember my grandmother would have certain things sitting on her buffet/sideboard. Every so often, she and my mom would swap the pieces, and we'd put them in our house, and whatever we had out would go to my grandma's house for a while.

My mom would get tired of certain things very quickly. When my sister and I were unsure of what to buy her, we knew we could always buy her dishes. My mom got tired of dishes so fast, it sort of boggles my mind.

Years ago, I belonged to a block club, and we had a neighborhood-wide rummage sale. Every person who sold stuff got to keep a portion of the money. It was based on your price tags. Anyway, my mom decided to sell some things, including a couple of sets of dishes. Of course, they sold. Fast forward to when my mom first came to stay with us. My husband and I would go to my mom's house for a few hours a week to start cleaning out her house. We found two more sets of dishes. That's not including her current set of dishes still in the cupboard, china that once belonged to my grandma in the china cabinet, her china that my dad had bought her, the china that belongs to my sister that my sister lent to my mom because it matched my mom's china or my mom's Christmas china. Boy did she like her dishes.

As I said, there's something about new. Different. Change. Every so often, I need it to reinvigorate me.

Sunrises and Swing Sets

I never used to be a morning person. Oh, I still struggle to get out of bed every day, but I've come to appreciate (if not actually like) mornings. I especially like mornings that have colorful sunrises, like today. If I'd been sleeping, I'd have missed it.

A spectacular sunrise makes anything seem possible to me. I feel energized; alive. Even the cold wind on my face doesn't seem so brutal when I have such a vibrant backdrop. I mentally create lists of what I want to accomplish, and looking at all those colors at the beginning of a new day, I actually believe for a few brief moments that I will get through the list.

Of course, I never do. The colors wane, the vibrancy fades, and so does my determination. While there is a correlation between the colors fading and my resoluteness waning, it's because everything I do requires energy. Same with you, everything you do requires energy, too. Your supply is finite as well as mine, but there is a glaring difference along with the similarities.

I was thinking back to when my kids were little and we got them a swing set. It was used, and older, but the pieces, the structure was fine. It was a big one, too. It had 2 swings, a teeter-totter, a glider, a slide and monkey bars. I think it was about 15 feet wide, maybe more. It was quite faded from years making kids happy in the sun, though.

I decided I was going to paint the swing set, so I bought spray paint. Many cans of spray paint. Of course, painting the swing set involved moving all the steel poles, arranging them on the tarp, and sorting them by what colors I wanted to paint them. It took me a few days, but I got it done so my husband could assemble the swing set over the weekend. Back then, I was able to do more without resting as often.

Nowadays, I have to rest much more often, and for longer periods of time. Yes, of course, I'm older, but it's not because of that. I think back to what my mom could do at my age (and beyond), and there's no way I can do what she did. She walked all over the place (with ease), cut the grass, shoveled the driveway and sidewalk, painted rooms by herself, hung laundry outside to dry, cooked meals every day, and generally was just a dynamo. What? No, of course, she didn't do that all in the same day. She'd walk to my grandmother's house (a little bit more than a half mile away) and cut her grass, which was no small feat. My grandmother's yard was huge. Triple the width, and double the length of a regular city lot. That's roughly 100 feet across and 250 feet deep, and my grandmother didn't have a riding mower. Then, my mom would walk home again in time to cook dinner! Or she'd go to my grandmother's to take apart and clean the crystal chandelier with 17 million pieces. Or wash the woodwork.

Today, I sorted the laundry, put a load of towels in the washer, and had to sit down. I still need to do the breakfast dishes, finish putting away my clothes, figure out what I'm going to do with my shoes, and reassemble the craft room. That won't all get done today. The dishes will definitely get done, and I'll put away more of my clothes. Beyond that, I make no guarantees. All of it probably won't even get done this week. And that's one of the things I hate about this disease. So often there's an enormous gap between what I want to do, and what I can do. I want another cup of coffee, but that would involve walking to the kitchen. Eventually, I'll get another cup, but right now, I'm just sitting, recovering.

Each day I press on, sometimes pretending for a few moments that I'm still the me that I was, every time I make those lists.

Tecfidera Update

I've been so engrossed with moving rooms around, I haven't talked about my Tecfidera experience in a long, LONG time. Perhaps that alone says a lot?

I haven't had any of the really bad side effects that I was warned about. No stomach upset, no flushing or burning in my face, nothing!!

I suppose when I get my MRI in June or so, we'll see if it's making a difference with my lesions. If it's helping with my lesions, I guess we can assume it's working. I don't feel a difference one way or another, but that's not what MS medicines do. They don't treat existing symptoms, mostly because the symptoms are caused by nerve damage, and we all know nerves are irreparable. Still, I don't mind taking it because it's not making me sick, and I don't have to jab myself with a needle every day.

On Monday, I hope to have a post with lots of pictures of our rooms. Don't say I didn't warn ya :)

Have a great weekend. I'll be doing nothing.

Almost There!!

Have you ever seen a television show called “Renovation Realities”? Here is the summary from IMDB. Home renovation looks so easy on TV. We see a project move quickly and smoothly from start to finish - and the results are always beautiful. But somewhere between "before" and "after" there are always at least a few speed bumps - and one great story. Budgets skyrocket, tempers flare, relationships suffer. This is real life, and DIY Network's Renovation Realities proves that even in home improvement, truth is often stranger than fiction.

Last weekend, DIY network was on our television, and they were running back-to-back-to-back episodes of that show. We've been known to watch it on occasion; the kids will even watch it with us sometimes because it can be quite entertaining at times. I must also admit that sometimes we'll armchair quarterback what they're doing, or how they're doing it.

At the beginning of each show, a couple will talk about their planned renovation, why they want to do the renovation, their vision of the finished renovation, expected time frame, and budget. The common theme is a very tight (almost always unrealistic) time frame, and a tight budget. It seemed every episode we caught last weekend had a projected time frame of five days. Five days for a full bathroom remodel, or five days to put an addition on their house. The show has been on for about 8 or 9 years, I think, and in all that time, I don't think we've ever seen a couple finish in the projected time frame. On budget, yes. On time? Not so much.

The reason I mentioned this is because today is day number five for us. Granted, we aren't doing actual renovations, we're just sprucing up and changing things around, but it's still day number five. And just like in a renovation, we've hit some speed bumps, too. Ours have been extremely minor, more like annoyances or inconveniences, but we've had them. Here are our glitches and fixes (so far) in no particular order:

The bedroom set I originally wanted had to be ordered. It would have taken a minimum of 2 weeks to arrive, so we had to choose another set. Luckily, we did find a set we liked that was in stock for delivery this week. It's scheduled to be delivered today, in fact. I'm just waiting for the phone call.

The comforter set for my son's room won't be here until Monday, but when I ordered it, the expected delivery date was today. On the bright side, he can use one of our old comforters for a couple of days.

We couldn't find an affordable (remember, I'm frugal) rug for my daughter's room that she liked. On a whim, we stopped at a carpet store on our way to the furniture store, and the carpet store had a really large remnant with bound edges in the color she wanted for a fraction of the original price.

When we first put the paint on the walls in our room, it looked turquoise. A really bright turquoise. It dried to the color I was expecting,

It's really not this bright of a blue; the flash makes it look like it is, though.

but for a while, I was really unhappy. I kept telling myself that it was better than purple.

I'm not sure how I'm going to store my shoes. Though I purged several pairs of shoes when I cleaned out my closet upstairs, I still have a fair amount. Once we get the dressers, I'll survey the situation and figure something out I'm sure.

Once the bedrooms are together and clothing switched, we will need to reassemble the craft room upstairs. Before we can do that, we'll need to gather all the clothing donations and actually get them donated. Between all of our purging, plus my mom's things, I bet my Durango will be really full.

If we can finish this little project with only those issues, I will be one happy girl!

Room to Move? Part Four

Today brings us so much closer to being finished! Yesterday, my husband and kids got the upstairs room completely painted.

Here's a teaser of my daughter's room

My daughter's bed, bookcase, and some little things got moved into her new room. She was beyond excited and thrilled! She was literally jumping and dancing with joyfulness! My husband and kids also got our king-size bed moved into my son's room. What's that? Where did my husband and I sleep? Oh, we have a sleeper sofa. My husband and I talked about it yesterday, and rather than try to move everything on Friday when our set comes, we figured we could sleep on the sofa bed for a couple of nights. It has a Serta mattress, so it's not terribly uncomfortable. I was so tired that I slept like a rock until 5:30 am.

Yesterday was my day to run errands. It seemed like it took forever. In fact, while I was gone, they painted the whole room upstairs; ceiling and walls.

Here's another teaser of my daughter's room

I ordered pillows that needed to be picked up, I ordered sheets and a curtain rod that had to be picked up, and we needed milk and stuff, too. Of course, none of the items were from the same store, so that meant three different stops. I survived, but I was exhausted when I got home.

I think today's main item on the agenda has us painting my daughter's old room. When I say us, of course, I mean my husband and kids. There are odds and ends to move out of my daughter's room, but that should be a quick clean out. The new curtain rod I bought is for my daughter's room, so that has to go up; it's the little things now.

It's funny how you live with things that you know need to be replaced, or want to change. Like the black trim in our bedroom. Of course, we had curtains at the window in our room, but the curtain rod is one of those older, thick wooden dowel-type rods that just screws together in the center. There's a support bracket in the center, and the ends have leaf-like finials. Well, we've had this curtain rod since before we moved into our house. The rod stays together, as long as you don't try to open the curtains; the hole is too large for the screw after all these years and when you touch the rod, it comes apart and crashes down. I bought a new curtain rod for that window a while ago, but my son needed a new curtain rod, so the new one got commandeered for his room. We lived with not touching the curtains, or being very careful about it. So now my daughter moves into the room, and needs a new curtain rod. I lived with not touching the curtains, but I don't want my daughter to have to live with not touching the curtains. Funny.

Speaking of curtains, I bought new curtains for my room yesterday. I'm on the fence about them because they have a gray background. I know they will look great with the blue walls, I'm just not sure how they will look with the blue and brown comforter. They were only $10 for the pair, and I had a 15% off coupon, so for $8.50 for the pair, I figured I'd give them a try. Heck, I don't think you could make them for that price. If they don't work, I found a pair of rich brown curtains (that I think belong to my sister) that should do nicely.

I have to go pick out a mattress set today and I really detest buying a new mattress set. It's so awkward. You're supposed to lay on a bed in public, after God only knows how many people previously laid on that same bed, decide whether you'll get a good night's sleep on it, all the while the salesperson is watching you and asking you questions. Some of the mattresses are not exactly clean looking, either. This does not fit in my “Fun Stuff to Do” category; however, it's a necessity, so I'll be off to do that soon.

Room To Move? Part Three

Yesterday was my day not to do much of anything. My husband and daughter had yet another busy day, though; they finished painting all the white trim upstairs. The room is now ready to get painted with her colors.

I had to pick up my son from a sleepover. We had a fairly significant snowstorm yesterday, so that was an adventure, driving to the other side of the city to get him. The plows were out in full force, but they just couldn't keep up. Plus, it didn't help that plowing contractors for businesses left giant snow piles in the streets. Later in the day, I made it to the store to get paint, though. We got the primer, the paint for my daughter's room, and the paint and primer for our room.

Looking at how nice the trim looks painted white, I'm kind of kicking myself for leaving it black for so long. I suppose I just always assumed that we'd have to strip the black to do anything with it, and that was a project I didn't want to tackle. If my daughter wasn't moving into that room, I expect the trim would stay black until, well, forever because I wouldn't have researched painting it.

I probably never checked into painting it because my husband doesn't like to paint wood. Probably 90% of the wood in my house is original and natural. My kitchen cabinets are original to the house, and when we moved in, they were a form of white. Well, I'm sure at one time at one time they were white, but by the time we got here, they were more like an ivory/gray/dingy color.

My husband spent the better part of a summer stripping the white paint, and we stained them a pecan color.

The original (I'm assuming) wainscoting in my kitchen is a darker, mahogany color. I'm sure it would brighten my kitchen immensely if we painted it white, or even stained it lighter, but that's not a project we've ever considered.

Today is the first day of painting. My husband, daughter, and son are going to tackle painting upstairs. I have errands to run. I ordered some things from stores that offer buy online, pick up in-store, and I have to go get those things, lest the orders get canceled. I try to do the buy online, pick up in store whenever possible. It saves me energy from walking around the store, and it saves me money because nothing catches my eye while I'm heading to buy whatever it was that brought me to the store in first place. I especially like the stores that have the order pick up in the front of the store. Plus, I get Ebates for shopping online. Win, win, win!

My husband's friend once told me that I have a black belt in shopping. I guess it's true, because as I said yesterday, I'm frugal. I will pay what I need to pay, but I really dislike paying more than I have to. A couple of weeks ago, I took my daughter and her friend to the mall. We only went to a few stores, but one of the stores had clearance racks. Now, I've needed jeans for a while, but I really hate shopping for jeans. On this clearance rack were jeans marked .97¢. I asked a sales associate to check the price, and the price was correct. There were 3 pairs of the same size. I tried on all 3 pairs, and they fit. I got 3 pairs of jeans for $3.05 including tax. When I got home, I went online to get more, but they were on clearance for $20 online.

Anyway, time for me to get ready to run errands.

Room To Move? Part Two

Partly because I loved my dressers, and partly because I also didn't want to spend money buying something I didn't want, I really didn't want to buy new dressers for us. I looked on Craigslist and various store websites. I finally found a set that I liked, and realized that I'd seen it before. I went back to Craigslist and found the same set sold at a local furniture store for a lot less money. So our bedroom set will match, even though all the pieces won't be in same room.

So you might be thinking, “Why don't you take the wall down between the two rooms and make one larger room”? My husband had a friend who was a talented contractor. When we first moved in, he came over to give us an estimate to do that. He told us that because of the construction of our house, every wall is a load-bearing wall. We'd have to get an engineer; it wasn't something he felt comfortable doing. So that's why we live with the tiny rooms.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my mom's clothes are still here. The room that was hers when she was living with us has a closet. That closet was loaded with more of my mom's things. Emptying that closet was a necessity because my husband and I were going to have to use it for our things. In that closet are things I just can't touch; up on the shelf of the closet are all of my mom's journals. She started keeping a journal sometime after my dad passed away in 1996. I left all of them there, untouched.

Changing rooms also requires painting. I'm a terrible painter, I've always been a terrible painter. I'm okay painting small things, but walls, ceilings, houses? Terrible. I never know if I'm using too much paint or not enough paint. We have to paint two rooms. The room my daughter is in now is a really pretty purple color. It's great for her, not so great for us. The room we have now is a toast color. Great for us, not so great for her. Also, one of the previous owners of the house decided to paint all of the baseboards, window trim, and part of the floor a glossy black. The floor was painted black from the perimeter of the room to about 3 feet in, and the floor was left natural in the shape of a large area rug. Glossy black.

Rather than try to strip all of it, after talking to paint guys at the store, they said that using a good stain-blocking primer will allow us the paint the trim white without the black leaching through. I'll let you know if it works.

Black floor and trim update: My husband and daughter got all the trim and part of the floor primed yesterday. As of last night, it looked like it covered pretty well. 

We had to empty the craft room because that will be our “dresser room”. We took all the stuff from there to what we call “The Crazy Room”. “The Crazy Room” is a space we have upstairs between my son's room and our room (soon to be my daughter's room). It's really not a room at all, just an open space. That's where the craft room will be. On the bright side, the craft room (the current craft room, not the future craft room) doesn't have to be painted.

Oh, and speaking of painting, here's your PSA for the day: don't try to choose paint colors online. You probably already knew that, just like I did, but I thought maybe with the newer computer, the colors would show truer. I had a really nice blue (like a gunmetal blue, or a slate blue; a blue with gray undertones) picked out from a paint website. Now, I saw it on my computer, and I saw it on my phone. On one device, it sort of looked like it was more green than blue. When we got to the store, my daughter grabbed the paint chip from the rack, and indeed, it was a lovely green color with no real blue. It was a great color, I just wasn't interested in it for our room.

So where is my son in all of this? Well, since my husband and I are downsizing our bed, and my daughter didn't want to upgrade to a king-sized bed, my son decided that he wants our king-sized bed. Luckily his room was painted recently and he still likes the color. I found a really inexpensive ($40 for 10 pieces in king size!) bedding set for him. That should be one of the easier moves.

Speaking of bedding, I spent a lot of time looking at comforters. I had to find a set for my son, a set for us, and I told my daughter that I'd get a set for her since she was going from a purple room to an aqua-ish colored room. I looked at bedding until they all started to look the same. I found sets for my kids, and I decided that I'm going to keep the comforter set we have. It's a king, and our new bed is a queen, but it's made so that I think it will still look fine; it will just hang down lower.

It took me a long time to find that set. I'm picky and frugal so it's hard to find a set that is my taste and also not too expensive (by my standards).

Room to Move? Part One

I've been neglectful of my blog, but we've been busy here in my house. My husband and I had a conversation a few months ago about how it's getting more difficult for me to go to bed. Don't worry; I'm not going down that road, I just mean that it's difficult for me to climb the stairs every night. Some nights, I end up sleeping on the couch. Okay, more than some nights; many nights is more accurate.

You see, our bedroom is upstairs. For me to go to bed, I've got to climb the stairs, and walk all the way down the hallway. The living room is in the front of the house, the stairs are in the back of the house, and our bedroom is in the front of the house. As I've said before, our house isn't big, but sometimes at night, particularly after a busy day (busy for me), walking the length of the house, climbing the stairs and then walking the length of the house again seems impossible.

I don't sleep well on the couch. I don't sleep well anywhere, but I sleep less well on the couch. Sleeping on the couch creates a vicious cycle of being more tired than I need to be. So, my husband had an idea. We'd move our daughter's room to our room, and we'd take our daughter's room. Her room is on the first floor, close to the bathroom, so it sounds perfect, right? Right, except...

When we first moved in our house, my daughter's room was our room, and my daughter's room was on the other side of a wall of that room. We have a king-size bed, and my daughter's room (formerly our room, soon to be our room again) was too small for our bed. I mean, the bed fit, but that was all. I think there was about a foot to eighteen inches of space left. Barely enough to get into bed. No room for dressers, no room for a nightstand for an alarm clock, there was just no room.

Sadly, we don't even have this much space in the room we're going back to

At some point, we moved our bedroom upstairs; I think it was shortly after our son was born. Anyway, we moved upstairs, and there used to be 2 other bedrooms upstairs. Our kids had those rooms for a little while, and the other room down here was their playroom. The bedroom downstairs became known as “Aunt Pat's Room” because when my aunt and uncle visited from out of town, they stayed in that room.

My house continually looked like Toys R Us threw up in it because the room that we used as their playroom just wasn't large enough to contain toys for 2 kids. My kids were pretty good at cleaning up after themselves, but there was just no place to put their stuff. I tried every organization tip that I read about. Eventually, my husband took down the wall between the 2 bedrooms upstairs, made that room into a playroom, and we moved their bedrooms back to the first floor. Our house was that way for a long time.

When my mom came to stay with us, we gave my son's room to my mom on the first floor, and my son moved into the room that had been the playroom upstairs. Are you still with me? Good.

When my mom moved into an assisted living facility, we turned the room that she slept in into a craft room; something I'd wanted for a while.

Which brings us back to the present (rather awkwardly, but I'll tie it all together sooner or later).

The room that we're moving (back) into barely fit our bed. There's no room for dressers. So, for us the make the move, realistically, we had to downsize our bed. My husband is tall, so a regular full-size bed isn't long enough. We decided to go with a queen. Even downsizing our bed won't give us enough room for dressers. We'd have to commandeer the craft room to house our dressers.

A few years ago, local furniture manufacturer went out of business. We stopped at their liquidation sale and found an amazing king-sized headboard, dresser, and chest for pennies on the dollar. When the set was delivered, it took three movers to bring them upstairs piece by piece. One of the movers told my husband something to the effect of, “I hope you're not moving anytime soon. These things are heavy emmer-effers” (only he didn't say emmer-effers)!

When the movers brought the dressers upstairs, they didn't take the drawers out. My husband and I figured that once we got the drawers out, the dressers would be somewhat manageable. Well, we know why the movers didn't take the drawers out; the drawers don't come out. These things are really solid; the thickness of the sides of the drawers is about ¾”. The dressers had to stay upstairs. Which meant we had to get new dressers. 

Sigh. 

Duct Tape Fixes Everything?

We have one of those handheld showerheads in our bathroom. You know the kind, they are attached to a hose, and you can bring the showehead down, or leave it in the bracket. They are supposed to look like this:

Anyway, we've had one for years, and we really like it. It's got different settings so you can have a massaging feature, or a gentle light rain-like feature (which doesn't even begin to get my hair wet; it's like a giant is making raspberries on your head).

I woke my daughter this morning, and she decided that she's going to take a shower before school. My daughter got up to take her shower, and moments later, she came into the computer room with this horrified look on her face. “Mom, can you come in the bathroom”?

I got up to check out the bathroom, expecting to see some sort of gigantic bug or spider lurking. I was wondering why she called me in the bathroom for that because she's usually tough enough to kill bugs herself. I was bracing for a gazillionpede (those super icky bugs that sometimes crawl up through the drain- they are too gross to post a picture). When I got into the bathroom, I started to look for the bug, then my daughter says, “I'm so sorry! I turned on the shower, and water just came squirting out!! Where the shower attaches to the wall is broken, but I didn't know it!”

That's when I noticed that there was water everywhere.

"Okay, let's get the water mopped up, and we'll see what we've got”. I was sort of relieved that I didn't have to banish a gazillionpede.

After cleaning up the water, I looked at the hose that attaches the shower to the pipe, and there was a good sized crack in the hose. That's exactly where the water came gushing from.

So now, it's 6:20, my daughter needs a shower, but I don't want the bathroom drenched; I prefer to keep the water in the tub so it can go down the drain. Hmm, what to do, what to do.

Well, I decided an experiment was in order. Does duct tape indeed fix everything? We were going to find out, at least so my daughter could get her shower in.

"Mom? I'm probably not going to catch my bus”. Her bus comes at 7:04.

I know. We'll try, but I'll take you to school if I have to.

I find a roll of duct tape, cut off a length, and wrap it around the crack in the hose. Timidly, I turn on the shower, expecting to get an accidental shower, but it seems to be okay. 

My daughter took her shower, and I finished my coffee. After her shower, she comes out with the same horrified look on her face. This time, I know it's not because of a bug.

"Mom? Can you come in the bathroom”?

"Uh-oh, what now” I'm thinking.

I went into the bathroom, and there is water down the walls outside of the shower, on the wall above the tub surround, on the ceiling, and on the floor again. There's water more everywhere than the first time there was water everywhere.

"I'm so sorry!! I didn't realize that was happening”!

No biggie. You go get dressed, I'll sop up the water. Do you want breakfast?

"Will I have time”?

Yes, I already said that I'd take you to school if you missed your bus. Do you know what my mom used to make me sometimes?

"No, what”?

An egg sandwich on toast. My mom would scramble a couple of eggs, and then make a sandwich with them. Would you like to try one?

"Yes please”!

While my daughter was eating her breakfast, I ordered a new shower head. While I was watching my son leave to catch his bus, (he walks to a friend's house, then they walk to the bus stop together), I got a text telling me that my order was ready to pick up. The store wasn't even open yet! I was impressed.

So, I'm going to the store in a little while. I hope you all have a great day! I've had my adventure for today, so I'll settle for mundane and quiet for the rest of the day.

Pushing Through

I was outside the other day, and I walked down the sidewalk in my yard next to my house for no good reason other than it was sunny and I wanted to feel the sun's warmth on my face. Even though it was a chilly thirty-something degrees, it felt good to be out there, in the sun.

Today, it's a little snowy, but I live in Buffalo, and that's to be expected in February. And sometimes April.

It's grand how things, people survive in all kinds of conditions. Things, people, adapt. We don't realize what we're doing at the time, it's just what we do.

When we lived in Chicago, traffic driving into the city was sometimes torturous. Some days, it would take me over 2 hours to get to work, yet some days I could be there in 30 minutes. You never really knew what kind of commute it would be until you were in it. Sure, you could listen to traffic reports ("traffic and weather together on the 8's" is still ingrained in my mind, thanks, WBBM), but if something happened after you were already on the highway, you were just stuck. Especially if you were in the express lanes. But that's another story for another day. I never learned how to take surface roads from where we lived to get into the city, so if I didn't take the highway, I was lost. There was no GPS back then, and if I was driving, I couldn't/wouldn't read a map.

Many days, I'd drive to the L (the L is the CTA train) park-n-ride, and take the L to work. That was great because I got off the train at Daley Plaza, about 2 short blocks from my building. There was a tunnel that went under Marshall Field's department store (now it's a Macy's, harrumph). So on rainy days, I would take the tunnel and come outside right across the street from the building where I worked. Chicago had some cool stuff like that.

One winter, Chicago had a pretty good snowstorm. I just looked it up, and I must be thinking of 1999. Although the article I read said that CTA trains and buses ran normally, the train I took (the blue line) stopped at a station, and couldn't continue on to the loop (downtown Chicago, where I worked) because of bent tracks. We'd lived in Chicago for almost 7 years by then, but because Chicago was so big (234 square miles), there were many parts (basically any part of Chicago that wasn't downtown, near Wrigley, or near Comiskey) that I just didn't know how to navigate. I ended up getting off the train, taking a train back to the park and ride (and my car), then driving to work. I was really late that day. Sure, I could have taken a bus downtown, if I knew which bus to take. I never really learned bus routes, either; I didn't bother because the train was usually so much more efficient.

Yes, sometimes going to work was quite the adventure, and sometimes it was uneventful. The uneventful trips far outweighed the adventurous ones, thank goodness.

When we were back in Buffalo buying our house, our mortgage company was about 10 miles from where we lived. It seemed as our closing date approached, at least once a week there would be a new form or statement they needed. Some stuff I could fax to them, but sometimes they needed the actual paper. I'd bundle my daughter in the car, and we'd make the trip to the mortgage company to deliver whatever paper they wanted that day. One day, as I was on the highway, I realized it was rush hour, and panic set in. Oh my GOSH, I'll never make it to the place before it closes!! Heh. Rush hour in Buffalo is a far cry from rush hour virtually anywhere else. It may have taken me an extra few minutes to get through downtown if that.

I remember that specific trip because it was then that I realized what I had gone through for 10 years. While I was getting to work in Chicago, I never gave it a thought; I just did what I had to do. I didn't sit there lamenting that other cities didn't have that kind of traffic, I just did it. I adapted.

I think we all adapt. I think we have to. I adapt to how I feel on a particular day, as I'm sure you do, too, though for different reasons. Parents of a newborn learn to live being sleep-deprived. People who live in desert climates learn how to live with the heat. People who live where it snows learn to shovel and live with the snow. We all have to adapt to live, otherwise, we're just existing.

I took this picture of my daffodils sprouting on the day it was sunny. That was February 2, Groundhog Day.

I took this picture of the same daffodils today. They are just pushing through, doing what they do.

Aren't we all?

Moving and Valentines

I was thinking back to 13 years ago when we found out I was pregnant with my daughter. We had been married for 8 years by then, and we'd pretty well given up on the idea of having children. I was getting to be “advanced maternal age”, and we hadn't had any success thus far.

We lived in Chicago when we got married, and we loved living there; we were there for 10 years. Well, 2 months shy of 10 years. Then 9/11 happened. We realized that while we loved it there, we didn't have family there. In my mind, my beautiful Chicago skyline was now splattered with bulls eyes. We made it our mission to get back to Buffalo, or as close as we could to Buffalo. 

So in March of 2002, my husband got a job here in Buffalo. He had to start working, so he came to Buffalo and stayed with my mom while I stayed in Chicago to finish packing up our stuff. He and my mom went apartment hunting while I kept on packing. And packing.  

Geez, it was astounding to me how much we accumulated in 10 years!

We only had dial-up internet at our place in Chicago, so I'd be on my cell phone looking at the pictures he would email me and then talking about the pros and cons of the different places. There was one he was really excited about, and it wasn't bad. We took that place.

Sometime in April of 2002 was moving day. My husband took a bus back to Chicago so he could drive the truck eastbound while I drove my car. Our friends (Chicago division) came over to help load the truck. One friend looked at the truck, looked at our stuff, then looked at the truck again and said, “You'll never fit all of this in that truck”. I said that yes, we'll have enough room. Our friend wasn't convinced.

Once the truck was loaded (and filled to capacity), our friend said, “You were right. I should have known. You probably figured out the cubic feet of all of your stuff before you reserved the truck”. All of our stuff fit, save 2 old kitchen chairs and our Bird of Paradise plant which was quite large. We gave that plant to a friend of our who always admired it.

We arrived at our new apartment, where a crew of friends (Buffalo division) helped us unload the truck. My mom had made her world-famous barbecued hamburgers and potato salad so we'd have something to feed all of our “crew”. The burgers were infinitely better than the usual pizza and wings.

We settled in, I got a job at a local jewelry company, and things were nice.

Then, we went to a bar one night, and I had 2 drinks. I stood up from the bar stool, and fell into a puddle on the floor. I got up, promptly ran to the bathroom where I got very sick. After 2 drinks in almost 2 hours. Hmm, something was wrong, I must be coming down with something.

I was okay the next day, but over the next few weeks, I started to notice things. I won't go into detail, I'll simply leave it as I was “noticing things”. I decided to buy a pregnancy test on my way home from work one day. In fact, if memory serves, I bought different brands for a total of 3 tests. I took all of the tests. I suppose I passed because they were all positive.

Once we saw the doctor, we were ready to tell people. Bursting to tell people, in fact! My husband and I decided that we would tell my mom first. Valentine's Day was coming up, so we went to the store and bought a Valentine for “Grandma”.  On a Sunday afternoon, we went to visit my mom, and we brought this card. We had signed it with our names, and “Baby L”. Of course, I was truly excited to tell my mom!

We gave her this card that said “Grandma”, she opened the card, and just kinda stared at it for about a millisecond. Then she saw the “Baby L” that I had signed. Grandma, Baby L...then the gushing of happiness came! Tears, hugs, laughter, excitement, disbelief. 

What a great day that was.