No Time

I saw some interesting things on my way to work this morning. I saw a cute little brick house with a white picket fence and tulips coming up all along the fence line. I drive by this house all the time, but this morning there were the tulips to capture my attention. Red, yellow and pink blooms with their dark green leaves against the white fence ...unfortunately I didn't have time to stop & take a picture. I'm fairly certain a drive-by photo wouldn't have gone over well had I run into something.

A little further down the road I saw two elderly people bent over and staring at something on the ground. I tried to see what it was they were looking at, but whatever it was must have been really small. Of course we have the same problem as before: no time to stop and running into parked vehicles is bad.

The next thing I saw, or rather noticed, and not for the first time, was how much traffic there was at 3 minutes before 8:00 in the morning. My theory is that because it only takes 3 minutes to get anywhere in town, every one who has to be to work by 8 a.m. doesn't leave their houses until 7:57. The streets are semi-dead at about 8:02 until 8:57 when the peeps who have to be at work by 9:00 are scrambling to get to work. Me? I leave my house anywhere between 7:45 and 8:05...don't want to be a slave to convention. :)

Moving On

I could go into all of the details as to why I have been absent and why I have treated this blog so shamefully, but instead I have opted to rise above, to start fresh. Anybody can start fresh in January - all of those well-intentioned resolutions to lose weight or quit smoking, etc. I'm choosing to break away from the pack and begin anew in March!  So, moving on... :)

Last spring we renovated our bathroom. This year we are remodeling our kitchen and living room from floor to ceiling - floors being last.  We had an old, huge floor-to-ceiling window in our living room and we were losing a lot of heating and cooling through it. Actually I think it was more a case of the outside coming in. We also had this goofy angled ceiling that was really high at one end (12 feet at least!) and about 8 feet at the other end, and a wall separating the kitchen from the living room that was not squared up. Most walls are at a 90 degree angle to each other, but this was something else. Basically it made my kitchen a wedge kind of shape and gave my living room a weird deep corner that I had to try to camouflage so it wasn't so noticeable. We took down that wall and are putting up a new straight wall that is quite a bit shorter so that the dining room, living room and a large part of the kitchen are open together. So we dropped the ceilings to a level 8 feet high, put in insulation, new can lighting, a new window, and we will be putting in soon a new stove that is now part of the 21st century, new cabinets, and a new door between the kitchen and laundry room. Whew! And when we're all done with that,we'll tear up the old carpet and stain the pristine hardwood floors underneath ;)

Right now we are finishing up the drywall and getting ready to stain all of the cabinets. I came home yesterday to find a thick white coating over all visible surfaces. My husband had been busy sanding the the places where he had put up the tape and mud. It looked a lot like a case of baby powder had exploded. So thankful for vacuum cleaners!