February 12, 2009

Stop doing that, skeet!

I’ve had several small injuries lately - stubbed toes, minor cuts and bruises. This morning was a bit more serious. I tripped over something and fell down the front lanai steps onto the blacktop carport surface. My arm was full of grit and gravel, so I took the shower from hell to flush it out. I’ve got the wound coated with ointment and covered now. I don’t think the skin broke on my back, but I can’t really see it well. I think it’s just scraped and bruised from contact with the stair rail as I was going down. Happy thought of the day: the lanai is only three steps above the carport. It could have been worse. The fall winded me so I just lay there for a minute or so chanting “No broken bones, please. Please, please, please no broken bones.” I’m pretty sure my request was granted, but my back and arm still hurt like the devil. If they make greeting cards for this, maybe some of y’all could send me a little good will because I could sure use all of that that I can get these days! I found a whole folder full of greeting cards in my rolltop desk when I was cleaning it out. Most of them are from when I was in the hospital after my gut rupture. I spent a pleasant hour going through them and remembering all of the wonderful people who were so supportive at that time. I had just moved here from California when I got sick, so most of the cards were from church family in San Francisco, folks I was very involved with at that time but now haven’t seen in almost fifteen years. That’s the nice thing about greeting cards - the email ones get buried or deleted after a while, but the snail mail cards can be saved forever and revisited whenever you want to reminisce.

I think the accident happened because I’m very tired and it’s made me careless. I’m also a bit stressed. My realtor will be coming by Tuesday to take some showcase pictures of the house and things are still a mess, with boxes and plastic sheeting, tools and paint underfoot. I need to make the sheers for the living and dining room windows, but am afraid to get the delicate fabric out while there’s sanding and painting and such going on. The movers are getting in a bidding war over my contract (good for me!) and I should have the final “This is as low as I can go” offer later this morning. As soon as that’s in I’ll be booking the move and my flight, probably about ten to twelve days from now. If everything if not finished by then I’ll just have to let things go and live with the outcome. I think everything will be done by then … maybe.

[tags]falls, greeting cards, injuries, home remodel, selling a home, stupidity[/tags]

February 8, 2009

Small delays, little frustrations

The work on the house is going well. No, really - things are moving along nicely. Todd has done a tremendous job of cleaning up all of my amaturish repairs. I’ve shown you some of his stellar work and will be taking photos of everything when the work is done and it’s time to go. Little things seem to go wrong every day, though. Like the plastic sheeting drooping off of the walls while Todd was doing popcorn ceiling, causing me to have to spend an entire day cleaning when I could have been doing something more productive. Like Paul’s compressor needing new fittings and some tuning up (above,) causing a several-hours delay before Todd could start the popcorn ceiling and drywall texture work.

And like the sorm that wasn’t. The clouds started moving down from the mountaintops while the guys were working on the compressor. We got an impressive lightning show. We got a few sprinkles. We ran around like chickens with our heads cut off, putting away tools and moldings and lumber, carrying freshly-painted closet doors inside, dragging the boxes of garage sale leftovers under the carport so they wouldn’t get soaked before the charity truck shows up. And then - nothing happened. Well, it happened, but not to us. The next community down the coast got heavy rain, flash flood warnings and hail, but we never got anything more than a light spray of rain and a little wind.

Tomorrow will go smoothly, right? We’ll have a productive day to make up for all of the delays, don’t you think? You do? Oh, I hope you’re right!

[tags]home remodel, life[/tags]

Self Portrait Sunday for February 8, 2009

I’ve spent ten hours today cleaning up messes. Cousin Todd put “popcorn” on the ceilings of the guest room, my room and the master bath this morning. We had taped of margins and put plastic sheeting all over the place before he started, but the stuff gets everywhere. He’s also been doing some texturing in my room and bathroom, so sheetrock mud was also splattered around. I got everything as clean as I could and then started on the floor in the guest bath, which had spatters of paint, adhesives, wax, wood stain & a few mystery stains as well (since it’s a bathroom I don’t really want to think too much about those.) Todd is going fishing tomorrow, so I’m hoping to get my room & bathroom painted while he’s out, then work on some other clean-up work related to closing down my business. I’m so looking forward to all of this being done so I can get on with my life. I hope to be telling you about a new business in the near future, but since nothing is solid yet it would be premature to tell you much about it right now. I can tell you that it’s not a Subway franchise, though that’s an attractive idea and a business I wouldn’t mind being involved in.

Ten p.m. I’m hoping to get in another hour or so of cleaning & stuff before I go to bed. I might squeeze in a visit with the other Self Portrait Sunday participants, too, but there’s much to do so that might have to wait until tomorrow. Right now I think I’ll go see if I can get popcorn and mud off of the electrical outlets without shutting off the power or frying myself.

[tags]home remodel, meme, painting, photos[/tags]

Posted by skeet @ 10:18 pm • Photos, Meme • 2 comments  

February 5, 2009

Hidden Expedition: Titanic contest winner

Congratulations to Owen, who has won a full verson download of Hidden Expedition: Titanic ™ from Big Fish Games. Owen entered my contest in January and his name was selected by a random number generator as our winner. Owen, I’ll be in touch to provide you with the info you’ll need so you can claim your game.

Mahalo to all of you who entered the contest. Big Fish has supplied me with another game to give away, but it’s gotten lost amongst all of the packing, painting and repair work going on. As soon as I find it I’ll dream up a way to let you win it!

[tags]Big Fish Games, contest, contest winner, games, Hidden Expedtion: Titanic, hidden object games[/tags]

Some kind thoughts for Lancie, please

Lance is very sick. His liver is failing. The doc believes that he has a liver tumor. He’s recommended an ultra-sound and biopsy to confirm the problem, but there’s not much point in doing either because Lance can’t have surgery. His heart murmur prohibits him from having anesthesia. It’s possible that the liver failure is due to some type of infection instead of a tumor. We’ve started him on an antibiotic plus vitamins (he’s severly anemic) and a liver-sparing medication. That’s pretty much all that can be done. If the liver failure is the result of an infection, we’ll see some results within two weeks. The doc doesn’t believe that’s a case because there’s no real evidence of an infection.

Lance had some dental problems in November. It was understandable that he wasn’t eating much while he had mouth pain. His appetite picked up after his dental work, but he’s never gone back to his robust eating habits. He’s lost about a third of his body weight in the last two months. Some days he’s not interested in food at all. The damage to his heart has also increased: he now has a Level 6 heart murmur, the worst level of damage. He still romps and plays a little, but mostly he just sleeps. He’s so skinny that it’s painful to look at him. I’m to get back in touch with the doc next week, but we both think it most likely that Lance won’t be with us much longer.

[tags]beagle, dog, dog health, canine health, canine heart murmur, canine liver failure, Lance[/tags]

Living with a mess

Mahalo to all of you who missed me! It’s good to know that your friendship is there for me even when I have to go into hiding. I’ve had a lot going on for the last week or so. I ordered my utilities to be cut off at the end of February and my cable provider jumped the gun, so I lost contact for a while there & things have been to crazy for me to do any catching up, but here I am! My living room is piled high with boxes while work goes on in almost every other room.

Cousin Todd started working on my room this morning. He’s mudding and texturing so we can paint in there and be done with it. I had done some sheetrock patching in there years ago and, quite frankly, it looked horrible. Todd is skilled in pretty much all of the building trades and has been doing a wonderful job of hiding all of the scars I’ve inflicted on the house over the years. How good is he?

I had some ugly masonite paneling on the lower half of the hall bath walls. I figured I was stuck with it because removing it would damage the sheetrock and/or leave gloppy dried glue that wouldn’t come off. Since I can’t do drywall installation I had decided to leave the ugly stuff right where it was. Fortunately, Todd’s specialty is drywall and he’s not afraid of a challenge. He installed some beautiful woven bamboo on the lower walls and re-textured the upper walls, installed a chair rail and new baseboards and trim. The bathroom is now AWESOME! He mentioned last night that he’d like to go to a tech school so he can look at jobs in programming or computer repair, but I’m really hoping he’ll keep doing what he’s doing until my new home in Texas is as pretty as he’s making my Hawaiian hale.

There’s some detail work still needed - switch plate covers to be reinstalled and the new shower curtain to be hung. I messed up the timing on the floor installation and some of the tiles moved because they got walked on before the glue was dry. There’s no sink in my master bath right now and we need to have one fully-functioning bathroom, so I’ll finish the hall bath floor as soon as the other bath is avaialble. I’ll take some more pictures then and let you gaze upon the lovliness.

I’m waiting for one last moving estimate before picking a mover and a date, but it’s looking like we’ll be out of here between the 15th and the 20th - right around the corner! Texas here I come!

[tags]moving, remodel[/tags]