7/75

My goal is to read 75 books before December 31, 2011.  Here's the list of books I've read so far:

1. Firefly Lane -- Kristin Hannah (January)

2. The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy -- Sara Angelini (January)

3. Sundays at Tiffany's -- James Patterson (January)

4. The O'Hurley's Return* -- Nora Roberts (January)

5. Serena & Caine* -- Nora Roberts (January)

6.  This is Where I Leave You -- Jonathan Tropper (January)

7.  Marley & Me -- John Grogan (January)

I'm nearly 1/10th of the way to my goal and the first month of the year hasn't even ended yet!  I'm on a roll.  I just finished reading Marley & Me a few short minutes ago.  I'd seen the movie and knew how it ended, but nothing could have prepared me for how emotional I would get reading the last few chapters of this book.  Being a dog owner and lover myself, I know that one day I will have to overcome the same difficult hurdles the author did.  It is an inevitable part of pet ownership.  All I can do is love my little pooches and let them know how blessed I am to have them in my life.

Be. Less. Fat.

I might have mentioned a time or twelve that I will soon be hitting that quarter-century mark.  I keep joking that I'm getting old, though 25 makes me a fetus compared to the 102 year old woman I take care of each day.

The point is, this birthday is making me take a closer look at my life and the direction it is going.

I'm heading into 25 at my heaviest weight ever, a fact I am not proud of.  It is amazing just how quickly those pounds can pack on.  I probably weigh 55 pounds more than I did when I began dating my husband back in December 2003.  Our courtship took place largely during our college years, which involved pizza and South Park on Wednesday nights, as well as many late-night fast food runs after studying.  I managed to give up soda my freshman year, but still I gained weight.  

This photo was taken in January 2004, around the time Michael and I realized we'd been dating for a month and made it official.  It's one month before my 18th birthday.  Look at that skinny girl!  I thought I was heavy then.

The Roadrunners shirt?  Guess how old that is?  It's my softball shirt from the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade.  Clearly I was a fat child.  It was a little short on me at 17, but still fit.  I'd probably rip it if I tried it on now.

Here I am on Christmas of 2010.  I felt like a cow that day.  I'm obviously trying to look a bit less tubby here, but it's not working.  It may not be obvious from this picture, but there is a whole lot more of me these days than there was back in 2004.

So as I sit here sipping what is hopefully going to be my last Mt. Dew, I am printing out the hours for the gym and posting them on the fridge.  Stay tuned for what I am sure will be a fair amount of whining in the weeks to come.

6/75

My goal is to read 75 books before December 31, 2011.  Here's the list of books I've read so far:

1. Firefly Lane -- Kristin Hannah (January)

2. The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy -- Sara Angelini (January)

3. Sundays at Tiffany's -- James Patterson (January)

4. The O'Hurley's Return* -- Nora Roberts (January)

5. Serena & Caine* -- Nora Roberts (January)

6.  This is Where I Leave You -- Jonathan Tropper (January)

Bathroom Update Part 2

After yesterday's post, the hubster decided to work on the bathroom (Victory!) for a little while.  They aren't huge changes from what I've already posted, but they are things that we can check off of the list.

What did he do?  

He reinstalled the toilet.  I think there was a leak or something, I'm not certain.  It's not exciting, though, so we'll move on.

He installed the second towel bar, the towel ring, and the second black shelf.  It already looks better than it did this afternoon.  We're that much closer to being finished.

Here's a before-and-after of the shelves:

One shelf, no towel ring.

Two shelves, one towel ring.

Here's a view looking toward the hallway.  You can see the new trim that Mr. C had previously installed.  He hung the towel bar on the left yesterday.

Here's the list!  It's hanging above the mirror as a sort of motivation to keep working.  I'm pretty excited to have marked off three things this weekend, but you'll notice we also wrote in three other things that I forgot to include in the first draft.  Several of the tasks involve purchases that we have yet to make, so we'll be checking those off one at a time as we can afford them.

Bathroom Update

Last October (2009) I showed you our bathroom.

In March (2010) I showed you the destruction involved at the beginning of our remodel project.

And then I never mentioned it again.

Oops.

Well I am here today to remedy that.

Sort of.

You see... the bathroom?  It's not finished.  Still.

So all I can show you today are pictures from the reconstruction and how it stands today.  Bear with me, there are going to be a lot of pictures.

Here's the floor after we ripped up the carpet and the fake subfloor a previous owner had put down.  The parallel boards running from left to right are stacks of laminate flooring.  The "subfloor" was laid on top of that and then covered in navy blue outdoor carpet.  Not only is that all kinds of wrong, but the floor creaked when our tiny dogs walked across it.

My in-laws came up to visit a couple of weeks later and my father-in-law helped the hubster lay a new subfloor.  In this picture you can see the new plywood and backerboard going down.  It already looks ten times better than it did when it had the blue carpet on the floor.

 

A couple of weeks later, our friends Ty and Jami came down for a visit and the boys put down our new tile floor.  As I recall, Jami and I did a lot of shopping that day and I started the Sweet Heart Quilt.

The boys did a fantastic job on the tile.  After approximately 75 trips to the hardware store, the hubs picked out this tile.  I love it.  Plus, once it was grouted, I was allowed to use the shower again.  I don't even want to talk about the basement shower.

This is where we are today.  It's looking pretty good, but still needs some work.  It is a huge improvement over the way it was when we moved in.

We found this large vanity and granite top at Lowe's.  

The mirror sitting up there is not staying.  It's the Noresund mirror from Ikea.  We had hoped to do the remodel without removing the large mirror that was previously there, but it had to come down... which it did... in pieces.

I'm hoping when we buy a mirror we can also purchase a new, non-brass light fixture to go above it.  There's also a second black shelf (which you can see in the March 2010 post) that needs to be hung, as well as a hand towel ring.  It's still at the store.

We even remodeled our toilet!  How fancy are we?

There was nothing wrong with our toilet, aside from the old, ugly seat, so we just replaced it.  We also put a fancy flush handle on it.  I want to say we spent maybe $30 on both, but my husband will probably tell me later that the fancy flusher was $40 or something (I think it was $16) like that.

So that's it.  We still need to finish putting up the rest of the trim, paint, hang the towel rack (hint, hint, Mr. C!), and paint.  We still need to purchase a light, mirror, and hopefully a new exhaust fan/light.  We have one, but only the light portion works.

Anyway... Hopefully soon I'll be able to come back and post before-and-after photos.  Wouldn't that be great?  Leave me lots of comments and I'll pass them on to my husband.  Perhaps they'll light a fire under him!  :0)

5/75

My goal is to read 75 books before December 31, 2011.  Here's the list of books I've read so far:

1. Firefly Lane -- Kristin Hannah (January)

2. The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy -- Sara Angelini (January)

3. Sundays at Tiffany's -- James Patterson (January)

4. The O'Hurley's Return* -- Nora Roberts (January)

5. Serena & Caine* -- Nora Roberts (January)

*Both of these are republished books.  Each book has two stories, which were published at different times.  I'm posting the name on the front of the current publication, not of each individual story.

Check It Out

After two months of silence, I've finally posted something over on my craft blog.  I'm working on a project now, so I'm hoping to post much more often.

Check out the beginnings of the Star Quilt here.

4/75

My goal is to read 75 books before December 31, 2011.  Here's the list of books I've read so far:

1. Firefly Lane -- Kristin Hannah (January)

2. The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy -- Sara Angelini (January)

3. Sundays at Tiffany's -- James Patterson (January)

4. The O'Hurley's Return -- Nora Roberts (January)

Working 9-5...

Banker's hours sound awful.  Who wants to work that late into the evening?

Before you tell yourself I've gone off the deep end, you must know that I clock in at 7am and am out of there at 3pm.  While I don't necessarily enjoy getting up before the sun, I love getting home so early in the afternoon.  There's still an hour and a half of daylight left by the time I get home, which is awesome.

When I first went to days, I would wake up really early.  I'd roll out of bed by 5:30 each morning and have a bunch of extra time that I spent doing very little.  I finally got over the wake-up-super-early thing and now get out of bed at 6:03am.  That gives me enough time to get dressed, put on makeup, eat breakfast, and make my lunch before walking out the door at 6:40. 

I'm fine once I get out of bed and get moving, but the eternal teenager in me would like nothing better than to sleep until 9am (which I did when I worked 2nd shift).

Since I am on 1st shift, there are a lot of opportunities to work overtime.  I occasionally stayed over until 3am when I worked 2nd shift, but it was rough.  It's much easier to stay until 7pm since I'm still awake at that time regardless.

Since my birthday is coming up, I decided to sign up for some extra hours so that I can buy myself something nice for the big 2-5.  I was talking to the CNA scheduler and looked through the dailies to see where there are openings (yes, I am picky about which hall I will stay over on).  

I noticed on one day coming up that my favorite hall only had four CNAs schedule (4 aides for 43 residents is rough).  I asked if I could stay over until 5:30 to do vitals and go to the dining room.  Being the wise gal she is, the scheduler said, 'Yeah, that's fine.... do you want to just go ahead and stay until 6?'  I agreed.  She's sneaky like that.  I sign up for hours thinking I'm in control and she still talks me into more!

I didn't look too far into the dailies, but I've basically added an entire shift's worth of hours to my next paycheck so far (which I will get the day before my birthday!).

75 in 2011

My goal is to read 75 books before December 31, 2011.  Here's the list of books I've read so far:

1. Firefly Lane -- Kristin Hannah

2. The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy -- Sara Angelini

3. Sundays at Tiffany's -- James Patterson

Shopping FAIL!

While browsing about the Internet this evening I decided I needed to shop for clothes.  I don't dress particularly well and five days out of the week I'm wearing khaki scrub pants with a red scrub top.  When it's cool outside my outfits contain a zip up Columbia jacket 95% of the time.  I don't put a lot of thought into what I wear most days.

The problem?  I'm going on a weekend trip next month and literally have NOTHING. TO. WEAR.

So I clicked through a few websites to see what is currently available.  One website even categorizes clothing based on whether the occasion is casual or you are going out.

For the fun of it I clicked on the 'going out' category.  Apparently the world is going out in Agrabah because the first thing that popped up were these awful Aladdin pants!

 

"Satin cropped pants with ties" is what the description says.  I say ICK!  If this is what people are wearing out on the town these days, I am glad to stay at home!

Big Kids Say the Darnedest Things!

If I have learned one thing from working with the elderly over the last year, it's that they will say what they think about things.  Sometimes they're just being evil, but other times they can be downright funny, as evidenced by the following conversations...

Conversation #1 -- backstory: A family with eight children had just come in to visit their great-grandmother.

Me: "Wow, look at all of those kids!"

Resident: "That's a lot of kids."

Me: "Where do you think they found them?"

Resident: "Probably in the bedroom."

Conversation #2

Resident: "Do you want to come and work for me?  I will pay you $100 a day. You can work from 7 until 2."

Me: "Is it taxed?"

Resident: "Oh no, taxes take everything."

Me: "I'll think about it."

Conversation #3

Resident: "Did you see the pictures of my kids?"

Me: "Wow, what a good-looking bunch of kids you have.  How many children did you have?"

Resident: "I have six children."

Me: "It sounds like you were a busy lady!"

Resident: "I just laid there..."

I Miss CoMO

If you've been with me for a while, you know that I am an alum of the University of Missouri (Go, Tigers!).  Even if you never saw me type the words out, you've seen pictures of the iconic columns at one point.

It's no secret that Michael and I loved living in Columbia.  We were there for four years and loved everything about the city.  We were less than two hours from our families, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Lake of the Ozarks.  

I've been thinking about Columbia a lot lately.  I've been thinking about all of the places we used to go and all of our favorite restaurants.  Tonight I came across the website for Shakespeare's Pizza, which has been in Columbia for decades.  Their pizza is delicious and the atmosphere inside the pizzeria is fun and lively.  

While clicking around their website, I ran across this article from the Columbia Missourian, a local newspaper.  It's one of those "You know you're from Columbia if..." kind of things.  It brought back a flood of memories about the place where Michael and I started our life together in a horrible little apartment north of East Campus.  I wouldn't mind living there again.

Babe, if you're reading this, know that I'd be fine moving back to Boone county.

It's That Time of Year

Flu season.

Something has been going around at work lately.  I was hoping to avoid it, but I wasn't so lucky this time.

Fortunately, I was unlucky on my day off.  

I woke up with a low fever -- just under 100F at 6AM.  By 9AM it was nearly 102F.  I was miserable.  I was achy, dizzy, and had chills.

I spent the entire day resting.  Literally.  I was in bed until noon and then parked my germ-infested body on the sofa for the remainder of the afternoon.

I was happy to wake up feeling much better this morning.  I wasn't back to 100%, but I was able to work.  Of course, by the end of the day I was ready to pass out, but I made it.

Hopefully I continue to feel better as the week goes on.

I'm an Aunt!

All right, I have been an aunt for a while to two adorable little boys.

Today, though, I became the aunt to another bundle of joy.

Baby Levi was born early this morning.  I've seen photos and he is quite handsome.

I love being an aunt!  I get to spoil my little nephews whenever I see them and I don't deal with temper tantrums!

2011

a new year.

a fresh start.

a chance to get rid of unwanted habits. a chance to create new ones.

happy new year.