Jan 30, 2017

Masseter Monday

masseter ~ muscle used to move the lower jaw

I’m back. Did you miss me? Did you even notice I was gone? LOL

A funny thing happened on the way to getting my post written last week...

Usually I write this post on Sunday night. For whatever reason - I guess I was busy last weekend and too tired on Sunday night - I put off the post until Monday. But like happens all too often, I didn’t get it done before I had to leave for babysitting, and by the time I got home again it was too late.

Normally I’m the last person to complain about the cold or being cold, but last Monday I was so cold at my daughter’s house I thought her furnace had broken. It hadn’t. That was my first warning sign. The second was that I had absolutely no desire to eat the wonderful lunch I’d made myself - baked salmon, sweet potato, and brussel sprouts.

When I got home again I changed into my jammies, slippers, and bathrobe and curled up in the recliner under a blanket. And promptly fell asleep. Which is the best I can say about last week. The excessive sleeping.

When I wasn’t sleeping I was in utter misery from the worst case of viral gastroenteritis (stomach flu) I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. Thank God the hubby got the toilet installed in the downstairs bathroom that weekend. I could not imagine going through this with only one working bathroom, and an upstairs one at that.

Tuesday and Wednesday I pretty much lived on water and apple juice, alternating sips of both. Poor hubby had to fend for himself as far as suppers went - good thing we had a supply of Campbell's Chunky Soup in a variety of flavours (although even the smell of them didn't help matters). I was so sick I even bailed on babysitting.

Thursday I felt marginally better, but rushed the whole eating thing (as opposed to sipping juice and water) and Thursday night I paid heavily for my folly. Friday I started to follow the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) and actually felt well enough to babysit. I’m really amazed at how much the bananas in particular helped.

Anyway, by Saturday I was over the worst of it, and slowly began to introduce solid food back into my diet. If Thursday night taught me anything, it was to not rush getting back to normal. The virus has run its course and it’ll take a while for my body to recover. Fine by me.

Now I just have to find the time to watch all the TV shows I slept through.

;-)

Jan 16, 2017

Multiloquent Monday

multiloquent ~ talkative; garrulous

You may notice the lack of a big reveal for the bathroom. My still-not-finished-being-renovated bathroom is cursed. I’m no longer looking forward to a nice, long, soaky bath in my nice deep tub - I don’t care how pretty it looks if/when it’s done. The bathroom is cursed - I’ll probably get electrocuted by the spa jets or something.

First of all, the wash stand for the sink that the hubby did such an amazing job on is just a wee bit too big for the space it needs to go in. The stand is so pretty with its many coats of paint and shiny varathane finish making it as smooth as silk. The hubby had to cut into that perfect surface to take about an inch off of the perimeter.

Next was the blind. When I replaced the ugly venetian blind in the upstairs bathroom and the even uglier curtains in the upstairs hallway with bamboo blinds, I bought one for the downstairs bathroom as well. The window in the bathroom is narrow, but it sits about three feet above the tile and half a foot below. The frame is painted the colour I was going to use for sponging, which would make a nice contrast with the dark bamboo. Except ... the blind was wide enough that it would hide the frame, not fit inside it like the others, and it did not look good against the dark paint.

So despite not wanting to leave the house this weekend, off to Walmart I went for a smaller blind. Only they didn’t have one. Since I didn’t have a receipt, I was given a gift card, which I promptly forgot about when I bought some other stuff I needed (just so it wasn’t a wasted trip).

We live in a small town and ever since Target screwed us over closed down Zellers, Walmart’s pretty much the only game in town as far as department stores. So I sat in the parking lot for a minute, trying to figure out who else might have blinds, and finally noticed the Home Despot Depot a couple of fields over. So off I went.

They didn’t have any blinds the right size either, even if I was willing to pay almost twice Walmart’s prices. But what they did have was this film stuff you can put on your window so it looks like stained glass. It’s going to look awesome.

However, before that happens we still have to deal with problem number three. The toilet.

I had requested a grown-up toilet for the bathroom, meaning one that was a little higher than a regular one. The one we found is a little higher, a little narrower, and a little longer. It was going to be perfect.

Now. The standard distance from the wall to the hole the toilet sits on is twelve inches. However, the drywall and tile weren’t up when the plumber put the hole in our bathroom floor and as a result there’s not quite enough room between the toilet and the wall for the tank. And that means we have to get a plumber in this week to move the hole forward by about an inch. *sigh*

And in the continuing saga of misfortune, I removed the blankets from my reading nook and de-haired the cushion (no mean feat in itself) but when it came time to cover the cushion back up to protect it from future cat hair, I couldn’t find the blanket I’d bought specifically for that purpose. It was more of a throw than a proper blanket, made out of arctic fleece, but there’s no trace of it anywhere. So when I was out dealing with the blind thing I got a new one. The old one is sure to show up any time now.

And remember all those pillows I washed and dried last weekend? Turns out they’re too big to use in the sweater cat beds. Also, the sides of the cat beds take more stuffing than I counted on so I’ll have to buy more. You know, when I buy some smaller pillows (which are cheaper than pillow forms from a craft store). I have no idea what I’m going to do with all those extra pillows. Hmm. Maybe I’ll embroider decorative covers for them and give them away for Christmas presents next year. ;-)

So ... while Friday the 13th wasn’t particularly unlucky, the same can’t be said for the 14th and the 15th.

Jan 9, 2017

Moirologist Monday

moirologist ~ mourner for hire

As you may have noticed by the lateness of this post, I’m still not quite up to speed with the new year yet. :-D

Last week was a little ... frustrating for me. I did finish getting things put back together in my office, which required a little shuffling of things and a bit of reorganization. I ended up buying a couple more hanging file holders for the top of my filing cabinet and some of those stackable paper trays, which are not as sturdy as they first appeared.

I did not get the reading nook de-haired, but I did get the pillows washed that I’m going to repurpose into cat beds. I even washed the sweaters I’m going to use. However, drying the pillows took FOREVER. The washing machine was willing to wash them, but the spin cycle didn’t work so great. And honestly? I think a couple of them could use a little more drying time, but I really don’t care. Hopefully they’ll air dry.

With my nice cleaned off and newly organized desk you’d think I’d get lots of work done in the office last week, but sadly that was not the case. The tile guy arrived shortly after 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning, as he did for the rest of the week. And with the bathroom practically across the hall from me, I didn’t feel quite comfortable enough to work at my desk. Although I did get my enormous amount of shredding done.

But the good news is, the tiling in the bathroom is done. The guy did a great job - here’s what it looks like:



Well done Henry! Especially since our walls are a little lop-sided, a fact that wasn’t discovered until he only had the window wall left to do, but which meant he had to painstakingly remove almost an entire wall of tile and redo it.

Here’s another picture showing the tile with the flooring. It’s not the greatest quality picture, but it gives you an idea. The floor looks like tile as well, but it’s wood laminate. And we couldn’t have picked a better match for the tile if we’d been trying to.



Now all that’s left is hooking up the toilet and sink, and cosmetic stuff, like putting up the mirror and sconces, and a thorough cleaning.

It’s getting close ...

Jan 2, 2017

Mirabilia Monday

mirabilia ~ marvels; miracles

Everybody have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year? Happy to see the end of 2016 and welcome 2017 with open arms? Just so you know, we’re not out of the woods yet. 2016 was the Year of the Monkey in the Chinese calendar, and monkeys love to play tricks, which accounts for the difficulties of the year. The Year of the Monkey doesn’t end until January 27 - let’s hope the Year of the Rooster is kinder.

I’m just happy all the holiday stuff is behind us now. More and more I’m finding the holidays are too people-y, and I can only handle people in small doses. And sadly, it’s not quite over for me yet. We missed one of the family get togethers due to weather issues, and we’ve yet to come up with an alternate plan.

I’ve had ten days off from babysitting, and I’m happy to report that other than the one day I lost to a stomach flu, I’ve been putting my time to good use. There was the holiday madness of baking and cooking and sewing and crafting, and since then there’s been the finishing of An Elemental Earth and the cleaning of the office.

Which is one of the reasons this post is so late. I was up until 11p.m. last night working in the office, and then I really needed a break so I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness. Which means it was something like 3 a.m. before I got to bed. This morning I woke up at my usual time, got up to feed the cats, then took an Advil for my headache and went back to bed for a while. ;-)

Anyway, there are no pictures of the office yet. Everything in there is clean - excerpt for the cushion in the reading nook - but I still need to put stuff back where it belongs. I’d move stuff to a clean surface as I cleaned and I just didn’t have the energy to put everything back again. I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion: I have a lot of books. And knick knacks.

While I was doing that, the hubby was slaving away in the bathroom. After doing a couple of test strips and lining things up to have a look, I decided against sponge painting the walls. One, I really didn’t like the look of the test board, and two, I decided that having a patterned floor, patterned tiles, and patterned paint was too much pattern.

Maybe if I was more familiar with the sponging technique, or maybe if I was using several different colours of paint I’d feel differently, but I kind of like the clean look of the dark paint. Hubby’s not too sure, but he’s also pretty sure he won’t want to re-paint the walls again because they look tacky.

It was too hard to try and get a picture of both the floor and the walls together (because there’s all that space to be tiled in between, so I’m just going to show a picture of the floor, because it’s really spectacular. You can see a bit of the paint at the top of the picture:



The guy who was supposed to help hubby with the tiling hasn’t been available, so in the interest of time (and because he’s never tiled before) hubby has hired someone to come in to do it for us. Which means, my friends, the end is near for the bathroom reno!

This is the point where I usually talk about my goals for the upcoming year, and recap how I did on last year’s goals. However, because I’ve been such a blogging slacker the last few weeks, this post has ran rather long. And since a lot of my goals are kind of writing related anyway, I decided to post them on My Writing Journal. So just click on the link if you’re curious. :-D

Welcome to 2017!