Arched Doorway

I'm so excited! Yesterday when I got home from work I saw that they had made our arched doorway going from the dining room into the sunroom. It is so awesome! I just love it. I'm getting really excited about the sunroom now. The walls are being mudded and smoothed to get ready for the paint. Today Eddie and I looked at the paint sample cards and we have decided on a paint color for the room. It will be a medium sage green, but it's called Ripple Green. I hope and pray it looks on the wall like it does on the sample card. I keep thinking about those people on Weekend Warriors and other redecorating shows that open their paint cans and say, "This doesn't look like what we ordered." I have a fear that we will open our can and it won't look like the card. Even worse, that it will look nothing on the wall like we thought it would. Well, the good thing is, we can paint over it. We would just have to buy more paint, which I guess is not the end of the world. Eddie just gets reluctant when we have to spend more money. I'm hoping he won't say we have to live with it whether we like it or not. We'll see how that goes.

Today we are cooking a ham and I made potato salad to take to my mom's to eat Thanksgiving dinner. She does not like to have turkey and dressing on Thanksgiving, prefering instead to have it at Christmas. After that we will go to Eddie's mom's for awhile this afternoon.

We are going to put white mini blinds on the windows in the sunroom, and I have decided that I'm going to make some valances for each window for extra color and warmth. Once the paint is on the wall and we decide whether we like it or not, I will take the paint and a wallpaper sample from the dining room with me to pick out fabric for the valances. Our dining room has flower patterned wallpaper and we want to have an even flow from the dining room into the sunroom. We don't want any clashing colors, so I think I'm going to look for either a striped or maybe a plaid type fabric for the valances that uses the same colors as our wallpaper. It might be overkill to have two different floral prints. I'll wait on that, though, until we have the paint on the walls and the trim painted and the blinds are up. It's moving right along.

Knee Problems

I've been having some problems lately with my right knee. I have been having trouble stooping, bending down, and going up and down stairs. I just thought I was getting older and not being as flexible as I used to be, although it did hurt quite a bit when I did those things. Eddie saw me having trouble getting up and down one day and heard me yell "Ow!" several times, and he said I needed to go to the doctor. Insisted, in fact. Well, I really didn't want to go. I mainly went to appease him, so I wouldn't have to hear about it anymore. Anyway, the orthopedic doctor took x-rays and examined my knee. It turns out that I may have a torn ligament. Darn. I think that's what he said. He said he wanted me to have an MRI on my knee. There that word is again. MRI. But, this time my head will be outside the machine since they are doing it on my knee. I will be ok with that. He said that if the MRI did indeed show a tear that it wouldn't ever heal, so he would have to go in and take out the bad part. I thought to myself, "Wait a minute. Go in?" So I asked him if that meant surgery and he said yes, but it would just be a day surgery. He said as long as I didn't stoop, bend and do those other things right after the surgery I should be back to normal in a short length of time. But he said we were getting way ahead of ourselves because that's the worst case scenario. I guess he wanted to prepare me just in case. Well. That was not what I expected. I expected to hear that I could get some therapy, maybe a prescription. But, I've been mistaken before. I keep remembering the neck fiasco. Anyway, even though I am not enthused about any of this, I will get the MRI because I want to know if I have a torn ligament or exactly what is wrong. I think I heard him say the word degenerative again, just like with my neck. After I told Eddie what the doctor said, he said that if I have to have the surgery, I should go ahead and get it while I'm off from work on Christmas vacation. Oh boy. I can't wait. Just the way I wanted to spend my Christmas vacation. It all depends on when they can schedule it anyway. They may not have any openings until after the first of the year. But, if I have to have it done, I guess it's best to go ahead and get it over with instead of having to worry about it over Christmas vacation. My only fear about it is that the one and only time I had surgery (30 years ago), the anesthetic made me sick to my stomach. I threw up quite a bit until the nurse finally gave me a nausea shot. I expressed my fear to one of the nurses today, and she told me that they give you some kind of antacid now that helps with that. She said they have made great advances from what they knew years ago. I hope she's right. Anyway, I'm going to hope and pray that I don't need the surgery. Maybe God will be watching over me.

After work today I ran some errands before I went home. I needed to get some things. I stopped first at Books-A-Million just to browse. I looked at the fiction books, looked for some knitting magazines, and then I looked in the needlework section for knitting books. After that I wandered up toward the front of the store and browsed through the 2005 calendars. I found what looks like a really neat desk calendar. It's a tear off day at a time and it's called "Knitting Pattern-a-Day" 2005 Calendar. I debated on whether to buy it or not, but I justified it by saying that I needed cheering up after what I learned today about my knee. So I bought it. Then I went to Kmart and bought some socks for a Christmas gift for a family that my department at work has adopted. Each year we adopt a needy family and they fill out a sheet telling us their wants and needs. So, last night at Target I bought some underwear for the mother, and tonight at Kmart I bought some socks for her. While I was browsing in Kmart I saw that the jeans that I wear were on sale, so I bought a pair of those. Then I wandered around and came to the Christmas cards. I know I don't need anymore, but these were on sale, so I bought a box to give to my coworkers and another box to give to our out of town family and friends. Last night at Target I found some cute Christmas socks. The socks have wide stripes in red and white, and on the leg part there is a cute gingerbread man with buttons for his chest. Really cute.

Today when I got home I found out that the builders had cut the door that will lead from our dining room into the sunroom. It's really strange because it sounds like we are in a warehouse when we talk. Right now it echoes and, because of all the windows, we can hear the traffic from outside. We have always heard traffic somewhat, but we have gotten used to it. We just have to get used to the sunroom. I think that once we get the floor down and the mini-blinds and the valances up, and our furniture in there, it will muffle the echo sound and the noise from outside. It's coming along nicely. The builder projected being finished by next Friday. But, Eddie has his doubts and I have to admit that I have mine too, unless they are planning to work constantly.

I am off for four days this weekend, and I hope to put our Christmas tree up and get the house more in order for Christmas. Thinking about all of the work to be done and this possible surgery is really exhausting and stressful.

Whirlwind

My memory is getting so bad lately that I can hardly remember from one day to the next what is going on. It seems that everything is like a whirlwind. We get up and go to work in a rush, then go home and by the time we've had dinner, it's almost time for bed. Then we get back up and do it all over again. Somehow, in the scheme of things, I feel like important things are getting lost in the shuffle. Eddie and I have both been so busy that by the time we do settle down long enough to talk, my eyelids are so heavy I can hardly focus on what we are talking about. I think part of it is this new time. Eddie takes his nephew, Rick, home from work every day and sometimes he does not get home until around 6 p.m. By then, it's completely dark and just feels like it's almost midnight, even though it's not. I find myself staying up later than I should because I feel that I spend most of my waking hours at work. Then when I get home I like to spend as much time at home awake as I can because I don't want to spend valuable time at home sleeping. But, then as a result, I end up tired most of the week because I didn't get enough sleep. Oh, another thing, isn't it really hard to get out of that warm, toasty bed when the alarm goes off? I have great difficulty some mornings. I really have to force myself to get up, and with just a little encouragement, I would just stay in the bed.

Eddie called Home Depot yesterday and they said our window was scheduled to be delivered to the store last night. They told him that he could pick it up this morning. I talked with the construction man last night and told him that our window would be here today. He said that he would get a crew to our house either today or tomorrow. From talking with him, I don't expect them until tomorrow. Eddie is a little irritated with him because he feels that, even though we did not have the window, they could have been doing other things in the room, such as putting insulation in the ceiling and in the walls. I told him that we both know how fast they work when they are there, and that they probably did not want to piddle and do one thing and leave it half finished and come back later. I told Eddie to just be patient for just a little while longer. We are both ready for this room to be finished. This broken window really was a big snag and really set us back. I truly believe that if it had not been for that, the room would be at least 80 to 90 percent finished by now.

Broken Window Blues

We are dead in the water right now with the sunroom. The week before last, the builders were putting the windows in and discovered that one of the windows was broken. When the delivery person for Home Depot came, he had the windows on a pallet. Apparently, when he lowered the pallet to the ground, the window on the bottom broke. Eddie took the window back to Home Depot and it was not a pleasant experience. They told Eddie that it was his reponsibility to make sure the materials were ok before he signed the delivery receipt. He told them that he was disabled and was not able to lift every single window to see if they were all ok. They finally took the window back and have ordered another one for us. They said it would be three weeks before it came. Last week they said it would be there on Wednesday. Wednesday they said it would be there on Friday. Friday they said it would be there tomorrow, Tuesday. Sheesh!! This is getting ridiculous. I guess we should be more patient, but the builders have not worked in almost two weeks. They are waiting for the window to come before they do any more work. My hopes of having our sunroom finished by Thanksgiving are dashed. Now, I'm worried it won't even be finished by Christmas. I want to put my Christmas tree up during the long weekend after Thanksgiving because I'm off for four days. Is my house going to be a dusty mess because of the cutting of the door? I know it's going to be wonderful when it's finished, but this has been going on for so long. I mean, its only one room. How in the heck long would it take to build a whole house? I don't think either one of us would survive it. I know what the problem is. It's the window. If not for that, they would probably already be finished by now and we would be enjoying our room. I wanted to cook for Thanksgiving because I always enjoy eating home then and at Christmas. I hate going out to a restaurant during Thanksgiving. It's so crowded, and not enjoyable at all, but it looks like that's where we'll be going this year. I take that back. My mom has invited us to her apartment to eat Thanksgiving dinner, so we will probably do that.

Animal Lover

I'm sitting here holding my cat, Heckle, and thinking about what wonderful boy he is and how lucky he is to have such a good home. I don't mean that in a self-righteous way. It's just that Eddie and I are both animal lovers and we want the best for all of them, including our own. We don't have children, so our cat and cats that we have had in the past have been our children and, I'm sure are treated better than some human children. But, I won't even go there ....

I guess what brought this on is seeing a mother cat pregnant, yet once again. My husband's nephew lives with his girlfriend. Well, she's not exactly his girlfriend. he just lives there because he has no place else to go. Anyway, the woman has several cats, both inside and outside. One cat she has is a very small, loving female. This cat has been pregnant every time I see her. I just hate to see her be in misery all the time being pregnant, giving birth, getting pregnant again and again. Eddie and I want this cat. We want to take her and have her spayed and keep her for our own. We want her to have a good, loving home and be put out of her misery. Bless her heart, she probably doesn't even realize that she's in misery, she's just doing what comes naturally to her. Yesterday we took his nephew home (where the woman lives), and saw the mother cat and also two kittens that were inside the house. They were both sweethearts, but one espeically caught my eye. I think it's a female (poor thing), but I'm not sure. Anyway, I picked her up and held her and she was so small and sweet. I carried her for a long time while we were visiting. She seemed content to be in my arms, but I did not feel or hear her purr.

Eddie and I very much want to take the mother cat. We have not asked the woman if we can have them, but from what Eddie's nephew said, it seems unlikely that she would let us have them. I'm going to encourage Eddie to see if she will let us have the mother, even though she is pregnant right now. At least maybe we can stop her recyling of having more and more kittens. A cat has to be worn out after awhile having so many kittens, can't they?

I guess I just seemed depressed today over this. I just don't understand people who let their animals keep producing and producing and don't take responsibility for them by getting them spayed or neurtered so that there won't be unwanted cats and dogs with no homes and no one to care for them. I guess this has always been one of my peeves. I just hope we can help this mother cat before it's too late.

My Cat, Heckle

Last night as I was getting ready to go to bed, I was petting Heckle. He was in Eddie's lap, which he prefers to my lap. I love it when Heckle goes to bed when we do. I just love to feel his warm little body next to mine. It's so comforting, somehow. Sometimes he will go to bed when I do and lie next to me and purr while I pet him. It's so calming and comforting and helps me get to sleep on nights when I can't get to sleep easily. Heckle has different places that he will sleep at night. Sometimes he will pick the floor and sleep there for at least a week or more, and then pick another place and sleep there for a week or two. Sometimes, it's the bed and he will sleep with us for awhile. Anyway, last night while I was petting him, I mentioned to Eddie that I wished Heckle would go to sleep with me in the bed, but I said if I take him back to the bedroom, he will probably jump down and either go back to Eddie or to his new sleeping place, which by the way, happens to be our chest of drawers. He jumps on the bed and then jumps from the bed to the chest of drawers. I had a cute little thought that went through my head as I was thinking about taking him to bed with me. It goes like this:

Oh, Kitty, can I lure you to my bed with promises of milk and cheese?

I'm not a poet at all, or even a writer, but that thought went through my head and I decided I would have to write it down somewhere. It sounds like that would be a good first line for a poem of some kind, but my mind sort of went blank after that, so I guess that's all I have right now.