A few days with hubby

Monday after work:  The part behind the plastic was a slanted ceiling. See the line of sheetrock? That's where the ceiling sloped down to. Monday evening it no longer did.

Who doesn't keep their ironing board set up all the time?

This room is so incredibly dark. The window in it faces the carport. That carport is now completely closed it. It may not always be, but for now it is. I'm afraid I've named this room the Dungeon. If I open the blinds (to the right of this picture), the skylight lets in light. That would be it folks. Not very conducive to joyful anything.

A little later Monday: Off to Home Depot. Ought to just rename the store "Home Away from Home".

Back home from our shopping expedition and guess who's still going strong? Well, strong might be a little lie. Somewhere in this evening, he has work to do that doesn't cost money but hopefully earns some. And ... he's dining.

Tuesday: The window is framed and in place. Some kind of mud found in a bag and mixed in a bucket looks so mighty fine hey?

Is there such a thing as wire confetti? He has found a few things. Hot (HOT!) wires sitting inside walls. Not attached to anything but power. Just sort of hanging out and waiting to light something on fire.

This is where we start reading wire. Did you know you can read wire? Seriously. It says things. Not anywhere close to a fantastic Charles Martin novel, but readable. 

Thursday: Several coats of mud and paint have dried. I think in not too many minutes, I am going to stop taking a second glance when I walk by. Eventually this window will get the same darker popout around it as the door has. Eventually. We will have several popouts to redo ... may as well do them all at once. So .... put that one way down the list somewhere.

This week we both worked at our regular jobs. We had other things we also needed to do ... and then there is the frantic rush to get this done. We have new ducting for our HVAC system going into place in only a few days. There is much to be done before that starts.

Friday evening we stayed home and he worked.  The framing of the ceiling was completed, after which we sat around a bonfire with a friend and drank coffee.

See all those wires very neatly tucked up there? They make sense. They go where they are suppose to go, they are safe and this piece of wiring business is done.

Saturday: I worked in the morning at the paying job and Jari worked at home on the house. He moved things around in the living room as that needed to be done before Wednesday as well. I don't know what he did in there all morning, but I do know that not a spec of moss ever grows on his feet. By the end of Saturday, there is sheetrock standing there ready to start hanging.

In the meantime, I wander through Pinterest here and there. Grab an idea or two for what I am going to do with that space when it is done.

Not much makes me nearly giddy, but that sunshine streaming in that window back yonder?
Yup.
Giddy.

We have 19 days from today to have a whole lot of stuff put together.
It's kind of a race around here.

not. one. single. thing.

These things were mighty tempting. 

I hauled 4 out of the pile. 

I dropped them back after 3 minutes. 

And for the 

first time ever 

I walked out of Hobby Lobby with NOTHING extra in my hands. 

I can’t even begin to understand what that means. 

A boy and his balloon(s)

I worked last Saturday morning. Alyx & Tarron’s family was going to be over for the afternoon and it happened to be their 6th wedding anniversary. Their wedding cake had come from Frys so I stopped and picked up another one. And .. were it not for the two of them .. these boys would not inhabit our world. So .. balloons to celebrate the little ones. 

You would think sliced bread wasn’t invented yet. These 3 balloons took over his life. He claimed them all. If they went above his head height, he was certain they were going to fly away. It was quite the ordeal. A balloon at ceiling height? Serious meltdown. 

He finally made it this far. 

Outside under the cover of patio roof. 

All 3 balloons in his hands. 

Nope. Not sharing. 

He slept with them as well. 

I’m doing this more often!

Meet Herman

Have you met Herman?

I really don't know if I've introduced him to you formally.

I really don't know what his name is/was, and figured he needed one so I just named him Herman.

Herman was Bill's cat and we sort of inherited him with the house. There is a long story about him but, to make a long story short, he didn't really like people when we moved in here. He might come around for food and disappear for weeks. Then he'd show up again.

Today, this would be Herman.

He still isn't the friendliest cat you ever did meet. He will never come in the house. My rule, not his. 

He usually comes for food twice a day and eats rather well. Sometimes he thinks he needs to be fed twice in the evening, especially if he missed a meal the day before. He sits and waits for food in the morning and evening. When Jari goes in the kitchen to get his food, and leaves the door open, Herman will move so he can watch to see if he's coming back. He talks to us, occasionally he hisses at me like he's trying real hard to still be a mean thing, and we have full blown unintelligible conversations.

He eats too well now and has no need to chase a mouse or a bird. He lets the rats run around like they own the place. (another story for another day ...)

Sometimes he seriously cracks me up. Duke did this all the time. He would go in and out of the house with me. If I sat outside, he would always lay with his back to me making sure nothing dangerous was going to get me. Herman does the same thing.

I think he is finally getting use to us. Two weeks ago he got close enough to sniff my shoe ... and it was on my foot!

Maybe by July he will get close enough to touch ....

Missing Duke

I have a favorite eating spot that is a treat once in a while.
Usually on the way to visit with a certain special family.
We roll in, I get my mushroom swiss burger with truffle sauce on the side.
We head back out to the parking lot and head to share cups of coffee.

Friday evening we came out to the car and this boy was looking at us from the car parked next to ours. The back seat window was open and he was watching us. Not in a threatening manner, just watching. And ... he is a spittin' image of our special Duke who has been gone for a while now.  I didn't dare get close enough to climb in my side of car. Jari was about to back out of the space when the owner arrived, profusely apologizing. We got to meet Xander ... a spittin' image for sure and as friendly as could be. I was going to give the owner a business card just in case he needed to find the rescued dog a new home. He wasn't one bit interested.

Shucks.

we are still at it!

The attic has been emptied of insulation.

That was a huge accomplishment! 

We had a moment's intake of breath last week when the temps in Phoenix dipped to the freezing zones. All of a sudden we had a frightening thought that now none of our water lines were covered in insulation. The lines survived.

Do you just love the lighting up here? The lights are moving out to the front patio when they're done up here. Love the multi-purpose thinking he has.

I got home from work one day last week to this. Water line was going in. The lines across the attic are in. We aren't running new lines down the walls until we redo bathrooms. They will sit up there ready to hook up when we are ready.  

Facetime is can be a serious time saver. He tells me what he needs me to do down below and I can show him exactly what it is I'm looking at. Works perfect and saves him a million and two trips up and down from the attic.

Almost done with that. The rest of the line is stretched out in the yard trying to get it unwound before he carts it up there and sets it in place to be hooked up later!

I use to think (when the kids were small or when I'm trolling Pinterest) that an attic room would be so fun! Not anymore!

On to the next thing!
Can you believe this room?! It usually doesn't look like this, but I started cleaning out the closet on Saturday and trying to organize my creative space. Why is cleaning out things such a mess??!! Donation piles, trash piles ... all that good stuff.

In between cleaning that space, I was running to help him out. Electrical was next up on the list. The wires in the attic look like my Christmas lights usually do. A mess. One breaker runs different parts of multiple rooms. A nightmare if you're trying to figure things out. It will all make sense when he's done with it! We haven't redone the front patio ceiling, so handy little holes for running line are lifesavers.

Rolls and rolls of this good stuff.

I know how fortunate we are.
First, he has the ability to do all this stuff and we aren't paying someone else to do the work.
Second, we enjoy doing it together and seeing the progress.
Third, we appreciate the final result so much more!

Electrical in the guest room and garage are redone and labeled.

That room I was working on cleaning? You should see it today. Oh my goodness.

We can almost fly

Getting ready for the October deadline of different license required to fly.

We have passports, but don't really feel like carting that thing around all the time.

I went to a 3rd party ... or is it 2nd party ... who does DMV business here to get this done. One of the perks of city living. Of course, I had electric bills in Jari's name and not mine. I always need to change things up a bit. Don't do that. Make sure the mail is in your name with your address. Apparently it doesn't matter if it is junk mail, a medical bill or anything with your name on it.

While I was emailing them medical bills (handy that I could do that and not go home to pick up junk mail), this gentleman was at the counter attempting the same thing. He was really proud of his social security card. Got it the year they started the whole social security business. Guess he has a right to be proud of that. 

I listed brown for my hair color. Wonder how many years I can get away with that?

Fun times. We should be good!!

What's on your agenda for the weekend? I have a feeling I'm going to be helping run electrical wire or something like that.

Laundry poll or line or whatever

I ran a poll on Facebook and Instagram the other day.

If your laundry is not put away yet, but is all washed, can you still cross it off your list?

Here are the results:

Instagram 50% YES and 50% NO
Facebook 60% YES and 40% NO

I think I might need to go back to the list making of old to comply.

• Wash laundry
• Fold laundry
• Put laundry away

Serious.

For real tho' ... as long as it has run through the dryer (and all of my clothes are folded straight out of the dryer) I count it done!

Now I really need to get the the dinner dishes cleaned up, the trashes emptied and the dumpster run to the street. I planned to do a workout when I got home but .... it ain't happening today.

nap time is over .. sort of

This blanket.

This blanket has been sitting in a trunk for a year waiting to give as a gift. Do you accumulate those kinds of things? I finally just gave in and took it out of the trunk. Took off that fancy ribbon and crawled in underneath.. Seriously delicious napping blanket.

The month of January for some reason I took an inordinate number of naps. Not 20 minute naps either. Rather long ones.

I’m one of those old fashioned people that has a VHS/CD player in my house. I purchased one when I went to transfer all of our home videos to DVD. I finally decided it needed to be hooked back up again and I needed to start getting some exercise. Napping is fabulous but when it becomes a lifestyle ...  it becomes a problem.

Like I could hide under this blanket for two hours straight no problem! For many days. That’s a lot of time getting nothing done. Not exactly my goal in this life.

So the equipment got hooked back up and on days when it works for me, I started working out to some kind of a program or another. I have to say that I sort of moaned and groaned going to bed last night. I found muscles I didn't remember existing from A&P class! A slow start for me because I'm still a bit nervous about this new hip thing, but it is time to get some blood moving and strengthening going on.

I still love the blanket. Don’t get me wrong. 20 minutes of shuteye I'm good with ... especially when my eyelids open really early for work. But really .. enough is enough.

On this week’s plan is another trip to this little mountain to see how far I can make it. It is a bunch of baby steps but at least they are steps. I have a goal in mind and I’m hoping to take some steps toward that before the middle of February. 

What is on your goal list?

Whew! I posted in time for at least one this week!