Exceedingly Mundane

Let’s see, time for another catch-up post! I suppose it’s a triumph for me to try to blog every week or so, that’s a lot better than trying to blog every month or four. Ten years ago (GOOD GRACIOUS, it’s been 10 years!) when I started this blog, I blogged every day. But those days, sadly (or perhaps happily!) are gone.

Last week, Gail was here Thursday night through Saturday. Elizabeth came over to eat with us Thursday night (we made fajitas and had a smorgasbord of leftovers). Gail and I went shopping on Friday (I bought some fabric crosses for the front doors for Easter, a new black & white scarf, some food, including ditalini and pappardelle at Big Lots of all places). We came back and picked up Tim, who had to work a bit late, then headed to the airport to pick up Don, who had been to a Valley conference in Nebraska all week. We stopped to eat at Logan’s out on Lakeland on the way home. The guys had steaks and Gail and I got shrimp dishes and I think it’s safe to say that we all ate too much free bread 🙂

Saturday morning, Don and Gail got up early to go out to Katelyn’s first soccer game of the season, then we all met for brunch afterwards for an early celebration of Gail’s birthday. We tried to go to Another Broken Egg, but as expected (a: it’s a weekend b: it was Valentines Day), they had an hour and a half wait. So we met Gail, Don, Kathryn, Jeremy, their kids and Elizabeth at Corner Bakery for brunch. Kathryn took a photo of me with her kids, whom I love and adore, can you tell?! 🙂

We visited for a while there, then all walked over to Menchie’s for frozen yogurt. After that, we tailed Don and Gail over to Miskelly’s to look at furniture. After looking at lots of things there, we went to Lowe’s and bought new porch rockers and also to Kirklands to get a few art things for the walls (one clock, since I LOVE clocks, can’t have enough).

New rockers for front porch:

A few new things for the walls at the new house, this is going to be a SLOW process, I’m *SO* not good at any form of decorating 😀

Sunday was church and Sunday School. We had the last sermon in the series “First Things First” in church about prayer, and tackled the tough subject of homosexuality in Sunday School. We came home afterwards and had leftovers and hung out all afternoon watching tv (Tim is still working on binge-watching The Walking Dead and I cleaned up some cooking shows and watched an episode or two of Downton Abbey).

This week was fairly quiet. I’ve happily entered my yearly “hibernation” mode where it’s cold and dreary outside, I don’t have anything pressing to do most days, so I’m totally content to stay home, cook, clean, watch tv, read books and sit by one of my two beautiful fireplaces in the new house. I only got out on Wednesday, to get my hair cut and colored, to swap out Walking Dead season DVD’s at the library for Tim and do a big run of weekly grocery shopping at Kroger. Every other day, I was happily ensconced at home.

I did do a fair amount of cooking. I made a homemade pizza using my new wooden peel I got for Christmas, makes it a lot easier to get the from-scratch pizza onto my hot cooking stone 🙂 I did some tilapia, roasted sweet potatoes and greens, a new Pinterest pin for crockpot pork chops, a new Pinterest pin for an orange chicken (supposed to be Chinesey but not a good success, I won’t make that one again). We have a fair amount of leftovers, so I haven’t had to cook for the last day or so. Always nice 🙂

I read a couple of really good books this week: Dirty Deeds (#4 in the Squeaky Clean Mystery series by Christy Barritt) and Deceived, #3 in the Private Justice series by Irene Hannon, that I got on Kindle loan from the library.

Nothing else exciting going on around here! Today (Saturday) has been quiet as well. Tim went to practice at Lake Caroline for a couple of hours before the rain starts, and I made a loaf of banana bread to take to Sunday School. This past week has been really cold – the Northeast is getting dumped with snow again and we’re having colder than normal temps, in the 40’s for highs most of the week. We’ll have a slight reprieve for a day or so, temps in the 50’s and 60’s, before we go back to another 4-5 days of highs in the 40’s. I’m burrowing in and enjoying every bit of it. I know a long hot summer is coming, where it will be unbearably hot and humid, so I plan to enjoy my fires, blankets, slippers, sweats, hot tea and coffee as long as humanly possible. That’s me, a hibernating happy bear 😀

That’s basically the update for this past week: Tim and our neighbor Rick have been rebuilding fences. 🙂

Let’s see, this past week Tim did not play golf once. He played last Sunday, but has not played again. He and Rick worked on our fence and then Rick’s. They have all the 2×4’s up, all the fence boards up now and are working on gates (2 each).

Wednesday at lunch, we drove out to check on the house. Still working inside on cabinets and trim, putting up crown moulding and they had started on the inside brick. Friday afternoon, we got some rain showers around 4 PM, so Tim and Rick decided to take a break. We went back to check on the house, then went out to eat (Chinese buffet!) and to Harbor Freight. At the house, they had finished the inside brick, both the keeping room fireplace and the arch going from the great room into the kitchen/keeping room. They had the outside shutters built, but not installed. I’m hoping for garage doors, driveway and things like that soon. I am hoping they can do some outside stuff while the carpenters are still busy inside. Oh, and Friday evening, they had started on my screened-in back porch! Yippee!

Friday, I ran errands most of the day. I went to Kroger, to Harbor Freight (for a gift card) and the post office and also to Sam’s. Suzanne met me at Sam’s and got a whole cart full of stuff! I hope she has room to store it all 🙂 She also filled up her Toyota with gas.

Saturday was a work day around here. Tim and Rick started around 7:30 AM and finished up about 7:45 PM. I worked some in the attic in the morning (the only time it’s bearable up there), and threw down some stuff to take to the storage unit, as well as some stuff I dragged to the curb for the garbage to pick up. I found my old footlocker and got even more nostalgic and misty-eyed. 🙂 I’ve had that blue footlocker since I was a pre-teen or teen, and it contains papers from my childhood all the way through college.

Sunday was church (guest speaker from a church plant in New Orleans, but still on the same series, Characters who teach Character). The speaker used Jehosheba from 2 Kings 11, who saved the baby Joash from the queen mother Athaliah, who killed all of her grandsons after her son Ahaziah had died. Jehosheba saved the royal line of David, thereby keeping God’s promise, and showed tremendous courage. So this week’s character trait was courage, good sermon 🙂

After church, we stopped by Corner Bakery, but the line was out the door (we were late, had stopped to visit and chat after church), so we went to Walmart instead. I had to get some color safe bleach, mouthwash and I got 2 totes to store stuff from my footlocker in the attic. Since Tim had been working so hard on the fence all week and not playing golf, I told him to pick where he wanted to eat, so of course, he picked Dickey’s BBQ! I have a new plan of action for there, to stay away from some of the meat. I tried a baker (potato) this time and plan to try the Smokehouse Salad next time. I’m still eating pretty bad, but maybe not as much red meat and cholesterol for me. I got the pork tangler potato. Huge baked potato with pulled pork and fried onion strips on top, it was extremely tasty! After our free ice cream, I got Tim to walk next door to Home Goods. I had wanted to look for an Oxo container to store my flax in (I got a HUGE bag at Sam’s, and need something to parcel it out into). I couldn’t find the size I wanted, so I got a glass jar with green lid instead, cute for my new pantry! 🙂

Sunday, we got a rain shower around 1:45, so that sealed it for Tim, he was really too tired to play golf he said. I thought he might cave and go, but after the rain, it was a bit soggier and a lot more humid, so he decided to stay home and rest. After a couple of good naps for him, we rented “NonStop” with Liam Neeson from Amazon video. Good movie! Then we watched an old movie I had recorded on the DVR, the last Twilight one. Then we cleaned up a few tv shows. Oh, and we tried Extant this week on the DVR, the summer sci-fi show with Halle Berry. Tim is on the fence with it, but I sorta liked it. We’ll see how it goes and if we keep up with that one or not.

Now, it’s another Monday and I need to be cleaning house, but I’m very unmotivated. It is hard with boxes and junk everywhere. But we need to get things cleaned up, Tim wants to list the house soon and I dread having to have it ready to show at a moment’s notice. I also hate that he will have to figure out where to go to work if the realtor wants to show it during the day, but that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it 🙂 First, he has to finish the gates and call the fence “done” 😀

Oh, and for food, I made pork fajitas last week, chili dogs, and then we ate out Chinese buffet Friday night. Saturday night I made veggie quesadillas. Sunday we had Dickie’s for lunch, then popcorn with the movie, then Tim made us homemade salsa for supper (I was going to do breakfast food, but he said he was fine with just salsa and chips). Tonight I’m making meatless stuffed peppers and a salad, and I will probably do fried rice and potstickers later this week.

Well… I certainly do ramble about nothing! Not much to report, but there’s another week in the books. One week closer to them finishing the house and us being able to move! I’m so antsy and ready for them to just be done already 😀

Or at least, today is hopefully going to be a lazy Sunday!

Had another busy week, just to hit the highlights:

Monday, we met with the carpenter, his boss and our builder at the new house for a couple of hours. They asked more questions than I knew how to answer about the size, dimensions, placement etc of cabinets in the kitchen and master closet. I’m basically getting Tim to help with that! I liked the layout of cabinets in the other house we are basing our house on, so I was going by that. I really liked how the laundry room was laid out. When we got up there Monday afternoon, they had already started the laundry room and it was different. So, different is fine! Just make it efficient and give me as much space as you can! I did talk to the builder about adding me a small linen closet in the space outside the master suite. It will only be 14 inches deep, but hey, I’ll take it. Ok, I just now went and measured my cedar chest, the one my parents gave me on my Sweet Sixteenth birthday. It’s 13 1/2″ deep, so now I’m even happier. Will give me more space for extra pillows, blankets and the quilts from my grandmother and the one Tim’s Mamaw made for him that we sleep under every winter 🙂

Tim laid out the master closet, with two built in dressers and one shoe rack (that’s what the builder calls it, we called it shelving, LOL!). He went by the house a couple of days later and didn’t like the second built-in, so he had them take it out and go back to rod space. We’ll have to share that one built-in dresser and the shoe rack, but oh well. We’re used to sharing, as we are in such a small space right now. I will just be really happy for a place to put my purses and all of his golf hats! LOL!

Wednesday, I got my haircut and ran errands. I still miss my dad every time I go for a haircut, as I always, always, without fail, went to see him on those days, when he was living here in the assisted living place. I’ve been thinking about him and my mom so much these days, since they helped me buy this house, and raised me in one house all my life. Bittersweet, that’s our key word.

Thursday, I spent most of the day in the kitchen, and Friday we went to Mount Olive to Tim’s Aunt Becky’s house for the annual Fourth of July get-together. Had a great time, as always. This year, I finally got my camera back out and took a lot of photos. That nostalgia stuff with missing my parents and moving out of this house that I’ve lived in for 21 years is till going strong, so I want to take a lot of photos of family at all times of the year, especially holidays. I posted a lot of them on Facebook, so I won’t post any here.

Biggest news that day – Brittany and David got engaged the night before! We’re so excited for them 🙂

After we got back on Friday, Tim went to Lowe’s and bought a new refrigerator for the new house. I had picked out a Whirlpool Gold french door style to match all the new appliances. We were originally going to get it at the builders supply place where everything else is coming from. But Lowe’s was having a sale through the holiday weekend, and it was 800 off regular price, and 400 less than what they quoted us at the contractor place. So Tim talked to them and they are going to order it, and store it until we move in September. How awesome is that?! I had no idea Lowe’s would do that. Tim went ahead and got an extended warranty on it, just in case. He also went for his main purpose -to buy a load of lumber to rebuild the fence.

We started on that Saturday morning. He tore down the old fence at our current house, and had bought posts and concrete to redo those, but decided to go with the ones already in place, as they look fine. He hung all the 2×4’s and then started on the dog ear boards. He got the front done, but we have all the back and Rick and Sharon’s side left to do. He is playing golf today (Sunday), since he doesn’t work on Sundays, but says he won’t play golf again until the fence is done! So, WOW, I will see a lot of him for the next few days, hahaha!

We were both exhausted last night by the time we stopped at dark and picked up all his tools. I was already sore and hurting, and today is no better. I’m just no good with manual labor! I’m so glad we’re having everything contracted out at the new house and there are no DIY home improvement projects on my horizon. Tim loves them, but me, eh, I do not. Anyway, we went to church, then for a late breakfast/brunch at Waffle House, then stopped by Kroger for milk and produce. Now, Tim is playing golf and I’m trying to be lazy! (Note for reference, the Lake Caroline clubhouse burned yesterday, July 5th, big loss). Been shredding old papers, stuff from the 90’s and 2000’s. I’ve shredded two full garbage bags so far, so I think I’m done for a bit! Need to still go through more magazines, I’ve got a huge pile left. And most of the house left to pack, but today, I think today I’m going to take it easy. 😀

Update: Tim called about 6:30 and happily reported that he shot his lowest score ever, a 70 at Lake Caroline! He was so happy and said all he wanted to celebrate was a burger at 5 Guys! LOL! I didn’t want to eat that bad, but he was so giddy, that I couldn’t turn him down. So we had a nice dinner at 5 Guys to celebrate!