The Home Stretch

I never liked running much - the pounding in my poor knee joints and that stitch in my ribs just didn't do much for me. But the part I hated most was that I always had to run in circles around a track. I mean seriously, what was the point? If I have to go through a lot of pain, I'd at least like to arrive at a destination or see some concrete results.

Since my last post, I've been running against the calendar to get this house done. All day, every day, I run from one thing to the next towards that end goal, and then fall into bed completely exhausted. The upside is that I've been running towards something and I have concrete results to show for it; and I mean that quite literally.

We now have a concrete pad for our garage, back patio, and front porch. Yay. We also have the stone fireplace done, all the doors in (complete with doorknobs), the kitchen island finished, all the plumbing and electrical trimmed out, a balcony railing which makes the upstairs hall SO much safer for the kids and all the baseboards installed. Jeff will start painting the exterior tomorrow while the carpet installer puts carpet in the one room that still needs flooring. After that, I have to put the last coat of polyurethane on the hardwood stairs and then we have to install the railing. Then we clean everything while the garage doors are being installed on Wednesday and put one more coat of polyurethane on the hardwood floors on Thursday. Once the exterior trim is painted, steps are built from the garage to the house, and shelving is installed in the front and master closets, we're done. Hallelujah.

We're hoping to get everything done this week so the appraiser can come a week from Monday and we can close on Friday. Here's hoping it works out that way. We just have to make it through this home stretch.

We took a few minutes to memorialize our family on the edge of the front porch. Everyone pressed their hands into the wet cement by age. Jared gave me the weirdest look, like, 'you WANT me to get messy?' Then he freaked out as we pushed his hands into the cement. I guess we should've gone oldest to youngest so he'd know what to expect before his turn came.

Then yesterday, I found another nail in the gravel driveway. Or rather, the tire did. After working ten hours on the house, I got a flat. Frustratingly enough, the jack was too short to actually lift the tire off the ground since it kept sinking into the gravel road. Of course, I forgot my cell phone too, so I had to walk back to the house to get Jeff and the truck. I think I passed that patience test, though. I didn't yell, scream, cry, curse, or kick the car. I only sighed. But as I walked back to the house, I noticed the wheat waving in the breeze, the swallows chirruping as they swooped above the field, and the clear, bright blue sky and was reminded how lucky I was to be able to live here. It is absolutely beautiful. Maybe the flat was worth it after all.

Seeing the Light

Light at the end of the tunnel, light upon a hill, light in the darkness, light up my life - so many metaphors ran through my head as I stood in the chilly drizzle and watched the crew put in the power line to my house. A wide swath of smooth mud showed where the excavator tracks slid down the hill and nearly dumped the whole machine into the trench. It was tense. But as the crew drove away and I squelched my mud-caked boots into the garage, I could hardly wait to 'light it up.' Or not. I flipped the switch and...nothing. Did you know that there's a breaker before the breaker box? I didn't. But now I do. I also learned that even really good electricians sometimes mess up. So we have power everywhere except the upstairs because there's a little problem the electricians have to fix this week. After using a generator for power all winter long, it's amazing what a luxury it is to simply plug into an outlet. The same goes for water. After months of lugging water every day, we now have an operating well pump. And even though the plumber won't do the trim-out until June 8th, we can use the faucet in the yard to pull it, however reluctantly, out of the bedrock. I'm looking forward to having an operating toilet. Port-a-potty's stink.

The tile is completely done too - floors, tub surround, shower surround and master bathroom countertop. Hallelujah. If I don't cut another tile for a decade, it will be too soon. The master bathroom does look amazing, though.

We've set the cabinets and put on the concrete substrate for the stone face of the chimney. Jeff installed the shower doors and storm doors while I cleaned. Home construction offers a whole new definition of mess. We've hauled all the chimney stone to the front porch and most of the hardwood flooring is stacked and awaiting installation which begins tomorrow. Oh yeah, the pasture is now seeded in hay too. I'm going to bed. It's 2 a.m.

Holding Back the Spring

Okay, you know how I complained all winter about the snow and yearned for a bit of spring? Well all that snow has given me a lot a spring right now - about a ten gallon-a-minute spring to be exact. Yep, we hit a freshwater spring on Saturday when Jeff was excavating the utility trench. The real kicker is that the gusher wasn't thirty feet from the spot where we tried to drill a well last fall and never hit water. I'm smiling....still smiling...if I stop smiling, I might cry. We need power at the house and the electric company won't put in the line if there is any standing water so we have a real problem. The trench is a three foot deep pond right now. Jeff always wanted a pond, I just never thought he'd get one. Surprise!

Anyhow, I took a picture, but can't find my camera's transfer cable. Hmmm...maybe I'll organize my office. That is, if I can find the time. I have to get the tile laid in the kitchen and bathrooms this week so I can take delivery of the cabinets. I also have to finish packing the hardwood flooring into the house so the boards will dry out in time to install them. I'm just hoping that I'll still have skin on my fingertips by next weekend.

Birthday Boy and SuperBunny

I'm going to stop apologizing for not keeping up with everything and just realize that it's not going to happen in the near future. Oh well. I'm trying. The last month has been crazy - as always. My mom and a family friend, Dave, flew in on the same day at the end of March. Dave left a few days later, but my mom stayed to help me tile our bathrooms (they look beautiful) and then most of us got sick. Stomach flu, how fun. So Jeff spent his birthday hugging a trashcan and Jared puked nonstop and couldn't enjoy his birthday cake. They recovered, but then it was my turn, and let me tell you, I felt every aching joint in my body. I hope that wasn't a glimpse of what old age feels like, 'cause it wasn't much fun. Seriously, even though I know I'm not getting any younger, I HOPE that I'm spry until the very end. I want to be a globetrekking grandma. Yes, I still dream of traveling, but I need to get the house done first.

Jeff finished painting the interior of the house yesterday. It looks wonderful. So now on to flooring and setting the stone front of the fireplace. We're getting there, albeit a little slowly. Illnesses and bad weather haven't helped, but we're moving past both of those now.

This week Jeff's parents arrive for a visit and for Evan's baptism, I'll hand over the keys of our van to the couple who is buying it, and I'm hoping to finish up a grant that Jeff is trying to submit to NIH (I'm crossing my fingers on that one). The NIH grant process is a bureaucratic mess hidden in an unnavigable maze of forms and 100+ page procedure manuals. If I'm lucky, I'll get it all done and start on the floor tile, but we'll see.

Today, however, was fun. Nathan turned five and between Easter candy and birthday cake, Jared was flying high. Literally. He decided to be SuperBunny, who apparently, flies and plays the harmonica. Unfortunately, the harmonica happened to be one of Nathan's birthday gifts. No one got hurt (thank goodness) and when we finally convinced Jared to give back the harmonica and sit still, we enjoyed watching Tales of Desperaux as a family.

Working Spring Break

The house is taped and Trevor, Jeff and I spent the first day of Spring Break masking the windows and taping the electrical boxes. Trevor wasn't too happy. He got this bored 'yeah, figures' look when I asked him to work at the house, and he used the word 'whatever' a lot, but he worked mostly without complaint.

The big upside is that we've gotten this far despite the six inches of snow that fell last week. But it's snowing again as I type this, so I can only hope that I can make it up the driveway tomorrow. I was driving the truck, but unfortunately, the transmission died. So now we get to tow the truck to a transmission shop and fork over as much as the truck is worth just so we can keep driving it. Ugh.

Jeff primed the lid with the vapor barrier paint that we have to use for our rafter-type roof and then started to paint the walls. The paint sprayer jammed. He cleaned it and it jammed again. So, now we're a bit behind, but oh well, there isn't much we can do about it. Someone from the place we rented it from is coming to take a look at it tomorrow, so hopefully, we'll get the primer applied without too much delay. If not, I might be the one painting because Jeff is taking the Boy Scouts on a campout later this week. I'm just hoping for a week of dry weather sometime soon. It has rained or snowed nearly every day since December. I am SO ready for spring. The beautiful weather on my birthday was a big tease. It's been miserably cold and wet ever since. Having had a taste of what's to come, waiting is ever so much harder now.

Happy Birthday to Me - and Will

I really wasn't looking forward to this birthday. Maybe its because Trevor is driving now and I'm not really sure how the last decade flew by, maybe it's just a byproduct of stress, or maybe it's all those wrinkles that just appeared out of nowhere, but thirty-seven suddenly seemed very old. Evan informed me that we didn't have enough candles for my cake so I needed to buy a couple more boxes and with the miserably wet, cold weather, I wanted to curl up in bed and hide until Thursday.

But then I woke up to a glorious sunshiny day complete with breakfast in bed and decided that it was going to be a good day after all. I mean, how often does a mom get Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream served to her without getting out of bed, and on a Wednesday too? Not very. Yep, Jeff's a keeper. He also gave me the most amazing printer. I love it. It's so much easier to use than my recently broken-beyond-repair printer that's been slowing dying for a year. It also has some cool features like photo printing right from the memory card and wireless printing from my laptop - no more plugs to jockey. Yay!

Then I spent the rest of the day catching up with friends, reading My Fair Godmother (a really cute book), eating my favorite foods, and ordering cabinets for my house.

And then I got the call telling me that I had a new nephew. So Will and I share a birthday now - Happy Birthday to us!

So thanks everybody. Your friendship and love made my day, and week, and month. Well, my whole life actually. It would be a lonely life indeed without such wonderful people to share it with.

Excuses, excuses...

Will I ever catch up with everything so I can stop making excuses when I let something slip? I hope so. So I won't say how busy it's been or how I've chosen sleep over blogging. I won't mention that my family has been extra needy lately or that simplifying has meant cutting out a lot of things I usually take in stride. I won't make excuses for being lame and not keeping in touch. I'll just apologize. Sorry.


But here's what I have been doing:
1. The insulation is done.
2. The siding is done.
3. I personally fixed the leaky back doors.
4. I ordered and scheduled delivery of the drywall and hired contractors to put it up because Jeff doesn't have time.
5. I filed our federal and state taxes (so I can pay the drywall contractors).
6. I selected and ordered cabinets.
7. I wrote and mailed a writing grant for myself.
8. I caught up on laundry, but of course, I'm un-caught up again.
9. I shoveled an entire truck load of gravel by myself to keep our driveway passable until we get around to fixing it properly (I am so sore).
10. I registered for the Praxis.
11. I detailed our van to try and sell it.
12. I paid bills.
13. I packed and helped Jeff, Tyler, and Evan get on the road to attend Grandma Seegmiller's funeral.
14. I helped Trevor get ready for his band trip to Canada.
15. I helped Lindsey complete her make up homework and her GPA has nearly doubled.
16. I survived being driven home by Trevor who shouldn't drive the truck again until he gets a lot more experience; it was terrifying.
17. I let Lindsey help me highlight my hair. It's now orange. I laughed, I cried, and I'm dying it brown later today.
18. I fed everybody, said prayers with them, and gave them lots of hugs and kisses.
19. I finally remembered to re-charge my camera batteries.
20. I noticed the earthy smell in the air and felt a surge of hope. Spring is almost here.