Concerns over 'the perfect gift for Paul' are forever erased

Apparently, wombats are popular in more than one New Orleans household. Thanks to a local wombat-fan's post, we found this wonderful website.

With a wombat giftstore. Paul will never be short of silly t-shirts again.

Latch on to the affirmative

Challenges abound here in Cold Spaghetti headquarters, but we're trying to focus on the positive.

Take for example, the other day, when the tire tread on Paul's truck separated while he was on the Causeway. Now it could have happened when he was in the middle of the longest bridge in the world, but instead it happened close enough that he could see land. Paul and Truck could have very easily been thrown into Lake Ponchatrain, or smacked into the lake by another driver, but instead, he managed to get the car under control at 25 mph and drive it jerking and bouncing off the bridge and to the Goodyear a quarter mile inland.

We are so happy about his living through the situation above that the $600 repair bill isn't a bother at all.

Updates

-- We're moving (the website, not us) although it may take a little bit of time to get set up and functional. I figure since I'm working out a whole new way of operating in terms of photography, word processing (no more MS Word!), spreadsheets (no more Excel!), and all the other random things that connected me to my past work, photography and otherwise (stuff like the bibliography of my prospectus/first part of my dissertation, which was done in Endnote)... I may as well just go for it and do the jump. The website has been there for a year, hosted and ready, so hey... one more thing to use to procrastinate.

-- The Dean's Office Communications Department looked over the photos from the trip and are selecting which they will use. So soon I will be free to get everything else viewable. Of course they want some of the best work and I am not really sure what kind of rights I'll retain for future use (still working this out). I'm waiting to talk about the trip when I have photos to tell the story... and also in the hopes that my travel notebook will show up. I'm trying not to think about it's current 'lost' status, as it is just one more thing to contribute to that nausea that won't go away.

-- The guy who laid the tile, the one we trusted so implicitly in ways we have never, ever trusted anyone before, never called us back. Despite our several messages and despite his own sister calling him on our behalf. What else can we assume, except that he ripped us off? Going down this road is worrisome, considering we gave him our key and unfettered access to our empty home. Being trusting was a very expensive mistake.

-- We have some ideas for how we might salvage part of the poor tile... but need some professional input to really feel good about it. We're just not sure. We were so hopeful that this guy would come around and want to make it right that we have tried to let it go a little in our minds just to recover enough to keep working.

-- In the meantime, we ordered some wooden closet pieces. They arrived, we installed. Last night, we HUNG CLOTHES IN A CLOSET. We haven't done this since before Thanksgiving! Granted, the closet has no doors and only has room for a small amount of shoes (we'll do seasonal rotation like we do with clothes), but! still! A closet!

-- Countertops for the laundry area/utility sink and master bath vanity will be installed either tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday morning. Paul finished the plumbing prep yesterday and just painted the primer around the install area. This means that we may have a BATHROOM SINK and a UTILITY SINK by as early as tomorrow night!

-- Will is miserable at his new school. He misses his friends (several of whom, surprisingly, won't be moving on to other schools this fall) and I think is struggling with a strict activity schedule. It doesn't help that we pick up Kate after Will. When Will walks into Abeona each afternoon to get his sister, it is like Norm walking into Cheers. The kids line up to greet and embrace him, some of the hugs lasting several minutes and including kisses and whispers. I'm not sure that he's totally miserable all day in school (he's told us that he talks silly with 'the boy in the soccer shirt') and certainly his teacher seems to think he's fine... but when he is out of school, he is clear that he is not interesting in going back.

-- Paul went to infectious disease last week for the 3-weeks of (ahem) that we've been dealing with since he swam in the Amazon. Not that I am drawing any conclusions by pointing that out; in all likelihood I had as much exposure to the very same river water in the shower as he did swimming and showering. Still, the garlic treatment held it aside while we were on the road and the 2 cycles of z-packs didn't make a dent in curing it so he went in for tougher stuff. Ironically, the vote was giardia... the same stuff we were concerned that Will had... and they started him on treatment. It started working quickly, so maybe it's a match? No confirmation yet on the exact bacteria he had/has, but I'm really happy he is finally feeling better.

-- Between insurance phone calls, house stuff, reduced school hours, and getting everything set up from the Peru work, I have not been able to follow-up with anything for my dissertation. I'm feeling defeated, dumb, and un-engaged. I feel like writing some stupid survey, going door-to-door, and analyzing it with statistics that I can make say whatever I want. Isn't that what public health is, anyway? (Okay, so maybe I'm feeling sort of grumpy, too.)

-- Paul's job... and all our health, life, and whatever other insurance one carries for wellness and security... ends on FRIDAY. Currently, we have no plan for any of the above.

-- Will is out of school for three weeks in August. Kate has the first week of school off for Abeona, which is NOT one of the three weeks in August that Will has off. There is a distinct possibility that we may have kids at home for an entire month. We have no idea what we are going to do.

-- Paul is sporting a painful crick in his neck, I have stress ezema popping out on my left hand and have bit off all of my nails. Not that the stress is getting to us or anything.


UPDATE: The International Health Newsletter for the Summer just came out, with a really nice blurb about me being recognized as a Schweitzer Fellow (this project is actually going better than planned at the moment) and has bouyed my spirits a bit... thanks INHL! (sniff, sniff)

Learning Curve

The computer is great, working, and all is fine here. Photo workflow is still working out kinks. Particularly regarding blogger, which may be a past-tense experience shortly.

Most of the focus has been on the Peru work, which was (mostly) reviewed yesterday by the editor, which is why I haven't been able to focus much on new photographs of the kids or anything else with learning the new system.

I need to figure out a good photograph workflow. Here are the needs: something where I can quickly scan and weed out photographs (finder seems fine here); something that will let me create an archive file to have around short term for blog-entries and then upload to our archive -- AND -- will see photos after I've done edits from Photoshop (iphoto is breaking down for me on that last part). Also, I made a mistake by not shooting everything RAW and am not sure how to incorporate current shots and future RAW conversion in this workflow...

And I can't figure out a smooth way to get photos from iphoto to blogger, which is why I haven't blogged in a few days. This may be the straw that breaks my back and forces me to move out from blogger to one of the URLs I've been holding for a year. Time to download wordpress...?

Introducing!

The newest member of our family.  The Imac.  It's a big exciting day!  Almost making me forget about the interviews I'm suppose to be doing had my three months of work not suddenly evaporated.  (Really, I'll get over it and back on the bandwagon by Monday.  I just need a little bit of time.)  

Here is Paul, with our newborn, fresh out of it's shipped-from-Shanghai box.  Paul is looking for the power button:

The monitor is massive, the keyboard and mouse are all trendy and slick, and I keep using words like "sexy" to describe the whole experience.  Then Paul noticed boingboing had a post on objectum-sexuals and now I'm officially not using that word anymore in reference to my computer.  As long as it doesn't cry out in the middle of the night, stick it's toes up my nose during cuddle time, or whine about wanting hamburgers for dinner, this big hulk of a thing could quickly become the household favorite.  (Sorry, kids.)

We did it.

I had to call in the order to get the discounted Creative Suite ($299, normally priced at $599 with academic discount) and the free Ipod Touch that came with the order (toy for Paul, hooray!) Since those two discounts were only available with the purchase of a new computer, we went new instead of refurb. It's rare for us to buy anything new, so it felt very odd. And stressful.

But it's done. We're about to be proud Apple parents. Phew.

Conspiracy.

I am beginning to feel that the Universe is conspiring to keep me away from my photographs. This weekend, we took the kids on a spur-of-the-moment getaway to the beach at Gulf Shores... using my parents' house as a base. On their computer, I was able to see some of the photos from the end of the trip that hadn't been deleted from one of the memory cards. It was a shock to see how different they looked on a decent monitor (as opposed to my laptop) and I vowed not to touch them until I could view them decently.

Paul was going to let me view and organize this afternoon on his computer, but for some reason the thing is off the home network and I can't get to the archive. He's only gone for an hour or so in a meeting, so it was my one window of opportunity. There are still many pictures I haven't seen yet, myself. I'll petition him to let me borrow one of his four (yes, four, apparently, developers need an entire wall of monitors to work -- genius requires desktop space, I guess) monitors and hook it up to my laptop tonight.

The exciting news is that we're resigned to (FINALLY) get an Apple (no, it probably won't be a new-hotness, nor will it be a laptop -- my 6 year old $500 workhorse is doing fine). This desktop would be mine to primarily use for photo and video stuff and I'm thrilled. It's a heck of a big move for us to consider this within the scope of us loosing $5000-$6000 on the shitty tile job and with the expenses hitting us in the next few months, but we're reaching critical mass and something is going to give if we don't move forward a bit. I'm excited about the upgrade but dreading moving to another machine, since I've used this one for years with no need of re-boot or cleaning. (What can I say? When Paul fixes up a machine, it WORKS.)

Moving on to other conspiracies... Michael Stipe no longer puts our children to sleep on car rides. Granted, they WERE calm and quiet and on the way to sleep when Paul reached back and put his hand on Will's leg, so there is a chance that this disturbance interfered with the typical results. Last night, 2 of the 2.5 hours drive from Mobile to NOLA was spent with cranky kids driving us crazy.

That last step is a doozy

In the past, re-entering the United States after weeks abroad has not went well for us. When we returned from the first Honduras trip, Paul was hospitalized with some malaria-ish condition (they couldn't get blood at the right time to confirm diagnosis), I was stung by a yellow jacket and had an allergic reaction which made me cough so hard I popped out a few ribs and was bed ridden for two weeks, and Paul was laid off from his job. When we returned from Peru two years ago, we found that we had been victims of identity theft (an HR employee at Paul's company -- he is now in federal prison) and our car was dead.

Not withstanding the fact that Spirit Airlines SUCKS, we managed to get back in one piece yesterday -- with ALL our luggage and ALL our delicate ceramics unbroken. We enjoyed a wonderful homecoming with the kids, who we picked up from school on the way back from the airport. Then we got home. And the shoe dropped.

The tile was laid in our bathroom while we were gone... we decided to hire someone on great recommendation rather than have Paul and I try to do this when we got back. We were sure his workman ship would live up to our expectations.

It didn't. We are very disappointed.

The bottom line is that substantial portions will need to be redone.

We're working on figuring out the next steps there. We're also working on 800 other things, including getting settled back into our still-disaster-construction-zone house, planning how to spend the weekend re-connecting with our kids, processing the 4000+ photographs taken on the trip, and trying to adjust back to our actual jobs. Thankfully, I planned to NOT start interviews for my study until week after next... it will take that long to get organized.

Details on the trip and pictures posted soon.

Addition... bathroom details

Some bathroom inspiration. The bottom tile is our floor tile for the bathroom and laundry. We're using the tortoise clear glass as accent. It just may be all coming together... eventually.

House Color?

This is Yarmouth Blue, on our "test strip" of Hardie.
This is the color on the peak. Or, this is the color in this particular light from the vantage of the roof (you really can't see it from the backyard unless you're really straining to see it).
We like it -- it actually dries with more gray and the photographs seem more minty than it looks in true light. If we go this way (and it looks like we are) when we get around to re-siding the house and painting the new siding, the siding will be this color and the shutters will be dark dark blue (we're thinking McHale Navy... or something that sounds like that). Or, if we get that discount from a contractor we know, we may be matching it to a Sherman Williams paint. Here's for hoping that the whole house is one color within a year from this post...

Drowning.

We're having a bad day.

The stress of everything is wearing us down... we're making mistakes and starting to crack around the edges. We're hoping that things will calm down after the end of this week, but it's likely that we have another 2-3 weeks of this.

We're working hard to keep up the house momentum. It's so close to drywall... just a few more big pushes and we're there. We got a tub (it's sitting in the middle of the front room) which comes along with a wonderful story. The day we got the tub (Friday) was a wonderful, bright, sunny, and life-affirming day... and it must've used up all our karma, 'cause we're in a rough spot now.

I took the kids out of town all weekend (through Monday night) so that Paul was free to turn off the household water supply and work on the plumbing. He estimates that he spent at least 20 hours under the house over those days... in a space too high to lay on your back to work and too low to be on your knees. Working with a blowtorch. And sewer lines. And electricity. Still, he figures that he made off better. Watching the kids at my parents' house is a challenge and then coming home to a house with no food or provisions is awful.

The weekend is when I work my third (or is it fourth? or maybe fifth?) job: that of housewife. It's a role I pretty much hate; it's under-appreciated, I have to work nights and weekends almost exclusively, and it's much more of a challenge in a house with no washer and dryer (have I mentioned we have had no laundry for almost 2 months?) On the weekends, I try to stock up the fridge for lunches and make ahead meals for the week to minimize how much housewife stuff interferes with my professional work. I care about doing the best for my family, but I'm not a robot... I have to think and plan meals ahead, on the weekends, when I can think about it. Experience has shown us that when this does not happen, we eat crap all week. Which is exactly what is playing out for us now. And probably why we are all cranky. The tofu dish I tried to make last week bombed majorly and I can't get back into a cooking grove. Moreover, I can't think enough to decide what to make, what to buy to make, or how to be creative with what we have (that last category can be described as "milk, 1/2 celery stalk, and a few cans of beans"). Paul usually helps me balance these home-maintenance tasks, but is pretty much either working on the house or working his jobs. (If you think he sleeps or eats between these working hours, he doesn't.)

I'm not exactly sure where we are going to break here, but we will break.

New Fave

While petunias have been a favorite for years, this year brings a new obsession... this shade of pink.

Scale

Now that our "bathroom" and "laundry" are located all over the house while we renovate, the kids are finding all sorts of new play toys.

Will likes bottles of shampoo and cleaning supplies.

Kate likes toothbrushes. Actually, she LOVES toothbrushes.

But it's the scale that has really captured their imaginations. They could play with it for hours. It's a complicated model in that you have to put slight weight on it and quickly remove the weight for the scale to take a few seconds to calibrate... THEN you can put your full-self on to get your weight. The two-step system takes a bit of time to get used to, but finally Will has figured out that he doesn't weigh "E" and that he has to wait until he sees "0.0" before stepping on and getting an accurate read. Kate, on the other hand, is thrilled with whatever the scale displays. Mostly because she is standing on it just to copy whatever Will just did. The squeals of delight, gleeful dancing, and general happiness produced by this on-the-scale, off-the-scale game are mind boggling.

The side benefit is that we have good weights on the kids.

Will is 38.4 pounds. "Thirty-eight FOUR?!?" he says, as if those last four tenths of a pound amount to the weight of twelve kids. I've decided to try his strategy and must say that I like focusing on the tenths column much more than the rest. Score one for Little Man!

Kate, who officially turned 22 months on the 9th, is solidly 22 pounds. With a sweater, turtleneck, jeans, and shoes we can eek that weight up to 22.7 pounds, which is pretty respectable for a child who Goes To Eleven. It is nice when we can get the scale to read 22.7 for Kate, because Will reads it as "TWO TWO SEVEN!?!?" -- with my brain finishing "is the place to be, with Marla Gibbs and her fam-i-ly" as if on perfect cue. I had such a soft spot for Florence.

The Plague Continues

The threat of not having indoor plumbing during Paul's renovation work this weekend drove me to Mobile to stay with the parents Saturday night. It was a desperate situation; my Dad was on death's door (literally, he didn't go to work Thursday or Friday -- we called in a priest to perform last rites) but I felt that we had no choice. Plus, I had to retrieve the kids' old summer clothes from the attic if I were going to sell them back to the CCEX this week.

Right before we left, Will complained of being cold. Then sneezed. Uh-ho.

Then we got to Mobile, where my Mom was getting sick, too. I spent the weekend caring for my parents and Will... with a perfectly healthy Kate driving us all crazy. Sunday night, we sped home... I was terrified that the kids would bring the end to my dear parents, who were both sick and exhausted or that both Kate and I would succumb.

Monday morning, Will seemed better. We had assumed he would be home from school, but Will insisted he was okay and was running around with enough energy that we decided to try it out.

It was a mistake. He did fine all day, but when we had him home that night, my Mommy instinct kicked in. No real reason in particular, but Ana's strep, combined with the fact that he seemed to have stalled in the getting better department made me think he needed to be seen. He stayed home today (despite being incredibly annoying before school this morning -- he clogged the front toilet, which started overflowing and didn't tell anyone until Paul noticed two inches of pee water pouring out of the bathroom door -- annoying and bad behavior was another clue that he was probably less healthy than he was appearing). We traded childcare all day between meetings until his doctor's appointment late this afternoon.

He's got strep. Now Paul is saying his throat hurts. Kate came home with goopy eyes and has sneezed a few times. The jury is out on those two, but Will is definitely home one more day.

It took a ginger ale tonic and 30 minute of intense work, but we managed to get Will to get the classic pink stuff down. 19 more doses over the next 10 days to go. I'm dreading each and every one.

My Dad's company does a lot of business in New Orleans and rents an apartment here for business use -- thankfully, it's not being used for the next few days, so the kids and I are using it. It's letting us do laundry (still no washer and dryer) which is a great thing considering we had three huge bags of wet stinky towels from the morning's exploding toilet. Tonight and tomorrow night are going to be in the 30s, so the kids and I staying here will hopefully help keep them warm and healthy -- when the wind blows, the back rooms are freezing. Paul is home, using every minute of in-house-with-no-kids to put in extra hours at work and on the house. He's closed off the back rooms and is sleeping in a sleeping bag in the front of the house.

Paul is hoping to work nonstop on the house this weekend, so we need a healthy house. Germs, be gone!

Collecting

I'm doing the Domestic Goddess thing and preparing make-ahead meals to freeze until needed. I need to do my work more hours in the day and have found that this is possible only when dinner is already made. Paul is 'round the clock with work and house, so I'm picking up a lot more on the second shift (first shift = career; second shift = housewife) -- in other words, the grind of all professional Moms.

I did this Brunswick Stew before the holidays and it worked well. Highly recommended for ease, freezes great, and even my Dad (who keeps a very limited meat-and-salad diet and never misses an opportunity to poke fun of something I've made or done) liked it.

Any suggestions of other good make-aheads that are easy and kid-approved?

Or, any suggestions of interesting things to do with leftover white rice (that aren't fried rice?)

The Roof: It begins.

I was too chicken to climb on the roof, wondering why they weren't using the extension ladder and feeling incredible impressed that Paul and David were climbing to the top of the A-frame and hoisting themselves up on this end of the roof. So I took these of underneath.


Then I realized that they had a hole in the main section for climbing in and out. Silly me. It's there on the lower left. The holes at the top section (over the existing bathroom) are for the skylights. Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles: the distance between the ceiling joists in the existing section was 22 1/2" -- exactly what it needs to be for the skylights. So it dictated the placement of the skylights to some degree, but darn, what luck!


The boards out from the roof peak are where the A/C compressors will go (once platform is built.) The hole on the right is the skylight for the laundry area.
See the drywall ceiling below? That was it on the old roof -- just the drywall, and the corrugated metal above it. No insulation whatsoever. (When the drywall goes up, Paul will slide insulation in. The silver panels you can see in the photos above -- in the ones taken from below -- is a radiant heat barrier. One of our "green" considerations in this renovation/addition.)
Thanks, David!
The old roof. Yikes!
Shots that make the roof look REALLY big. The grade came out well, nice and smooth. (Seriously good job!) In the pics below, the skylights are framed out.

Christmas in NOLA... some highlights

This was the first time we've had a tree since we lived in Ann Arbor. We bought this tree on clearance after Christmas last year and put it up for the first time this year. Will and I made the garland out of Mardi Gras beads, hung ornaments that hadn't seen light in over 4 years, and made assorted decorations. (Will is quite the crafty guy.)
This one was Kate's (she put the nose on all by herself). Will and I helped guide her with the rest.
Will and I put together this ice skater. The best part is that Will wrote his name on the ice behind the figure.
This doggie is 100% Will. Note that the dog's mouth is a "W."
Another Will original -- with glitter and Popsicle sticks!
My favorite ornament... of Paul's 2-year old hand.
Kate and the Christmas tree, Christmas Eve day. We hung everything out of reach of Kate -- she loved messing up the garland and we didn't want to give her much opportunity to get involved with anything else.
After Santa's visit, in the wee hours Christmas morning. The doggie rocker was for Kate and the Black-n-Decker workbench for Will. Both were huge hits. Other treats: Will gave Kate an animal hospital set, Kate got a Baby Stella doll, Will got a talking and racing Lightening McQueen (even Kate can program it; she is alarmingly brilliant) and we all got pajamas. Santa brought both kids Ugly Dolls and they are great (Will LOVES his "Big Toe" and has been taking it everywhere.) Paul and I had some big exciting items, too... a camera lens (for me) and a tile saw (for Paul).
Below, sometime Christmas morning. We opened presents slowly and in waves, finishing some the following day. Here, Paul is asleep on the floor while PapPap and Kate play with the animal hospital (a gift picked out for Kate by Will, "because Kate likes gatos").
Will working on his workbench.
Will colored the ornament below last year.
Granna and Kate open up the Baby Stella doll.
It was so nice to be home for Christmas, even if the day was crazy. It will be very hard to take down the tree!

Bah, Humbug.

Somehow, I need to just relax. Or something.

The season came too fast... what with holidays, birthdays, teaching, trips to Emergency Departments, plans for the back addition, The Defense, and everything in between. I haven't finished the whole Christmas thing yet (my brother and sister-in-law arrive in Mobile later this weekend) and am still hard at work at the Christmas project I started over a month ago. Santa came, the kids were thrilled, and we went through the motions... but I'm just still not there. I just feel like the whole holiday has been completely missed.

Part of it is that Paul has been working nonstop on the back of the house, which has meant that any celebrating we have done as a family has been incredibly short, pressed for time even within its allocated cut-offs, and unfocused. The holiday has been, for us, a time to use time off from work to do all the other work we do. We both have been like machines. I think the time outside and the physical demands of the building have been both tiring and exhilarating for Paul. He looks great and although complains of understandable soreness, seems energized by the challenges. I feel trapped and overwhelmed by the demands of the holiday, the needs of the kids, and my desire to do it all. I'm jealous because I want to be doing something that recharges me... reading, painting, yoga... anything. But this is impossible unless someone else watches the kids, which isn't happening. We are trying, as always, to incorporate these things into our play, but it doesn't serve to energize me.

Maybe part, too, is the way we entered this holiday. Trying to play catch-up.

The morning of the Friday before Christmas, I rushed to get gifts for the teachers together. Paul had the delivery of lumber coming that morning and didn't want the hassle of finding help he could trust to move the thousands of pounds of valuable wood to the back... so he spent all morning carrying heavy beams and missed the holiday party that morning at Abeona House. I was planning on going and was so excited to be going -- Will was part of a play the preschoolers were presenting. He had been talking about it, working on costumes at school and practicing. That morning, he asked if I was coming to his performance. "Yes," I told him, "I wouldn't miss it for anything in the world."

Do you see where this story is going?

Problems with getting everything together, my mistaken memory of the events at the school, and just stuff that happens when you are in a hurry... all collided and I arrived at the school at around 10am -- rushing in because I thought the show was just starting. But it was already over (it had started a half hour before). Will saw me from his seat at the head of the snack table, "Mommy," he said, "you weren't there."

I have never, in my life, felt so strongly towards simply Not Being. I just wanted to disappear, evaporate, melt away. This couldn't have happened. It couldn't have. Just then, Emmy came in and so sweetly commented on Will's finale: "Where he gave the sweetest bow." I went to the back of the kitchen so that no one else would notice my crying, my fighting to hold it together. Maybe, at least, I can take pictures? The one thing creative thing that I have, that I can do? I opened up the camera bag to find that all the memory cards were at home -- victim to my rushing and holiday madness. I couldn't take a picture of anything. I contemplated just leaving the party right then and going back to bed. Maybe I could forget the morning ever happened?

A few moments of talking with another parent helped me push back into reality. The party went on and no one noticed that I was without my camera. I began to feel my identity without a lens come into being and picked up with life. Later that night, Will recited the performance to me. Here's the jist: Out of an egg comes a creepy, crawly bug who is determined to go to Mexico ("I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go to Mexico") despite being told by many that it's an impossible prospect. Eventually, the bug turns into a butterfly and joins the millions like him in Mexico, where he lays eggs to continue the cycle. It wasn't the same as being there, but it made me feel a bit better.

I realized something else then. That I am human and because of this, I cannot promise my kids that I will always be there. Because I am human and real and flawed. I make mistakes, I forget things, I am sometimes late. Things happen. But I always try my best -- that is a promise I can make. Unfortunately, my best sometimes totally screws things up.

Like, when despite my best intents, I completely blow the surprise I've been working on for Paul for over 4 months.

On Saturday, I picked up the commissioned painting of the kids I had been planning with an artist friend for months. He used a photograph I took of the kids and interpreted it in his own style; the result is unique and sweet. It's just our kids: imperfect, playing, real, fluid, and completely themselves. I had been swiping small amounts of money away for almost a year (surprising Paul with anything is next to impossible due to the way we use Quicken) so I save little amounts of petty cash. Paul knew something was up, but was completely in the dark until I began to tell him, over Saturday dinner, about my visit with that particular family (the painter is Will's friend Aya's father). Coupled with my disastrous recovery, Paul put it together. I felt so defeated that I just gave him the painting (I figured it saved me the hassle of figuring out how to wrap it without endangering the unframed piece.)

So broken hearts and ruined surprises brought us into Christmas-time 2007. Haven't I mentioned how 2007 sucks? I cannot wait for 2008. I'm tempted to crawl into a hole and hibernate until 2008; I don't feel anything will be safe until we are finally out of this terrible year.

Meanwhile out in back...

These are from over a week ago, but are interesting enough to catch up on. My apologizes if I hose up exact details; Paul will fill in the details and post more when he can move his arms off of the floor again.


So, all by himself, while I was off with the kids, Paul took off the back of the house. He then discovered that the termite damage that was found when we had the house inspected (and got $7000 back at closing to fix) was a bit more extensive. The picture above -- see the door to the right (the doors to the backyard are interior doors, and no we didn't install them, hence why they look that way) -- anyway, that corner of the house had heavy termite damage. It was fixed before closing. But it wasn't until the wall was off that one could see how high it went. With the changes going to the back and the importance of the load on that back wall, Paul wanted to get it right. He ended up jacking the house up on that side, splicing out the termite-eaten areas (actually, he said part was completely gone, so it was just evening out the eaten edge) and putting in new pieces. You can see if from inside -- stay tuned and I'll see if we can move some stuff around and get a few pictures. It's pretty interesting.

Thank goodness our friend Robert answered his cell and had a jack that Paul could use -- Robert was a real lifesaver at that moment. I still can't believe all that Paul did completely by himself. (With me calling every few hours to make sure he was still alive.)


Other interesting pieces... see that foundation pier? Yikes. You can see some of the termite damage in the supporting beam sitting on the pier. See that spigot? Paul installed that after we moved in. This past Saturday morning, he drained the house again and took it off... the last step before starting to frame out the floor!
More dtail to the back. See the hole? Those wood slats are our floors. One has a decent hole in the space between the siding and wallboard. See all the years of debris and bug carcasses? Yikes! We are working very hard not to think about what is in the rest of our 100+ year old walls. (Being perfectionists, this makes us want to re-side the whole house... which would give the bonus step of adding insulation... but the $10,000 or so price tag is a bit unreasonable. Granted, we'll know better what the real cost is once we've bought the hardi for the back of the house. As we begin to buy more materials, we have learned that labor and overhead is SERIOUSLY high.)

Above -- evidence of a pipe that once ran out of the back of the house.
And an outlet.
Above: bug shell carcasses. Eewww.
More detail around the right side door (facing house from back yard). Wild!
Above: the nails above were what held the siding on -- pounded directly onto the house. (It was aluminum siding.)

Some rough costs and details so far (that I can remember):
-- Foundation with piers and flashing: $4000 (This we subbed out -- want to have a level foundation! cement had to be wheelbarrowed into the backyard from the street since the space between houses is so narrow.)
-- Floorboard lumber: just over $1100. (We used black edge versus pressure treated. At first, Paul was interested in pressure treated (tongue and groove) because of the short distance from the ground. But it came into the yard damaged. The excellent gentleman helping us (Wayne at Kellett Lumber) suggested the black edge. It saved us about a $100 and I was thrilled (no out gassing to worry about).
-- Lumber for walls, headers, and ceiling (basically, all the remaining lumber): roughly $2012. All the lumber was delivered Friday morning. Paul missed the school party that morning to carry it all in the backyard (worried it would get lifted off the street). While at the party, friend and fellow parent David heard about Paul's difficult morning chore, left the party and showed up at our house to help carry wood. Which he happily did all morning, making the job much easier on Paul and bringing on the important elements of fun and friendship to the task. Thanks, Dave!
-- Windows, Simonton (4 windows). We looked at Pella (stay away, particularly if in a high-humidity area); cheap aluminum (only because we went to the wrong place); and even Home Depot (don't bother); to end up with Simonton. I'll let Paul sing the praises of why we went with them, but if you are in the NOLA area (or another high-humidity, high-wind possible, area... we highly recommend them based on what we've learned). More on this once they are actually here and installed. I think they were about $1200 total? Maybe not... I can't quite remember.
-- But the double french exterior door, that was $1400. It wasn't Simonton, I don't think. (Sorry, we ordered them two or so weeks ago and I am forgetting some details.)
-- Skylights (2): Velux. Can't remember the price, but like everything else, it was cheaper than we had estimated. Skylights were tricky since the pitch on the roof is going to be slight. Paul and Dad are still hashing out some details on how they are going to frame it out.

That whole Curmudgeon thing is really a cover.

At risk of sounding uncharacteristically sappy, I want it documented that my husband is the real hero behind all of this degree stuff. The reasons are too numerous to count, but include things like... coming to my practice defense on Tuesday; letting me sleep in this morning while he got the kids fed; going out to buy the goodies for my committee (presenters tends to bring snacks and beverages to defenses); driving me to my defense because it was pouring rain (and I was in my fancy clothes, with a ton of stuff to carry -- all of which would have been destroyed in the walk from parking to building); cleaning the house and doing a load of laundry while I defended; thinking about dinner... then agreeing to a last minute babysitter to take me out to a Very Nice dinner instead (and yes, JoAnn came by and said congratulations).

This is all while working so hard to plan for our renovations, which Paul has been single-handedly completing with the kind of skill and detail that most professionals would envy. Did I mention that last weekend, while I took the kids to Mobile for Will to attend the Holiday concert with my parents, Paul *JACKED UP THE HOUSE,* repaired several old termite-eaten feet, and took off (and replaced) the entire back of our house? And he did all of it alone? Not to mention all of the reading, asking questions, and legwork for lumber. So far, we are incredibly under-budget. Some of that is a group effort on finding windows and doors (more on that... I keep thinking Paul is going to write about it) but really, the bottom line is because of Paul. He is really working so hard on making this renovation spectacular, pouring every bit of love and detail into it as he gives to us... which (trust me) is boundless. Thank you, Pancho!