Puppy love...

It's been a while since I posted about the furry kids. They are doing great! Glacier has settled in wonderfully although we are still working on her anxiety when people come to the house. She goes to day care a few times per week now which has helped considerably. She no longer chews inappropriate things or pees in the house but her "You need to love me now!" howl is still prevalent and hilarious! Brody is still an angel and actually seems to prefer to stay home rather than go to day care - funny dog!

In case there was any question about if they love each other... Here are a few shots that say a lot about their relationship.

We are pretty sure that Glacier is part pig as she LOVES to be in a pig pile!

Wheeeeeere have I been?

Maine. Twice.

- A trip to see my dear friends' new home, enjoy their delightful daughters, and lend a hand with some wall decor. Pure joy with lovely "family by choice".

- A "Girls' Weekend" with my college gal pals/sorority sisters. Much silliness and laughter with women that have only become more treasured in my life over the years.

Connecticut. Twice.

- Family business.

- Family party. Visit from Midwest extended family. Attending a fundraiser for an old friend in a deep and bitter battle with metastatic liver cancer...

Florida. Nine blissful days.

(Activities not listed in order or by day or importance... And actually not even inclusive of ALL activities!)

- My husband and me bonding with two of my four siblings for nine days in a gorgeous house on the shores of Sugarloaf Key.

- Riding ~12 miles on a one-speed granny bike into the jungle following my sister to some unknown yet highly recommended destination while constantly scanning the ground and trees that were whacking us in the head for snakes since we had just seen a verrrrrrrry long racer snake in our yard. And marveling at being miles into the jungle when we met one man from our hometown in CT and another woman that had previously lived in our village on Cape Cod.

- Snorkeling in fabulous locations like Sandy Key and Looe Key.

- Parasailing with my love 300+ feet over the blue/green waters of Key West.

- Enjoying the sunset snorkeling "Rum & Reggae" trip with the rugby team from Portsmouth, NH also now known as "The Drunkby Team" as they had been "drunk since Wednesday" before boarding our catamaran.

- Jet skiing on choppy water.

- Walking Duval Street multiple times and soaking in the rich visual textures of tropical paint colors, vivid store front displays, and incredibly colorful people watching... While avoiding the vast amounts of "Spring Break" kids wandering drunk, stupid and loud from one bar to the next often dragging someone so drunk he was, as my husband says, "leg-less". All while being grateful that NONE of my spring breaks were spent this way!

- Drinking superb coffee from "Babies of Key West" (which is actually in Sugarloaf Key).

- Tapping our toes to the sound of "The Doerfels" - an entertaining and VERY talented family of 10 kids ~1-25 years old (including the adorably teeny kids of the oldest Doerfel) that play an incredible range of musical styles and instruments (including their infamous hockey stick guitars). They played the Marathon Seafood Festival and were absolutely the highlight of the festival for me!

- Perusing local art (and buying some to bring home).

- Embarking on a series of sunglass searches/purchases/returns etc - one sister broke hers in the airport on the way down and the other lost hers on the first day out in town.

- Eating delicious food including the famous "Key Lime Pie", Cuban steak, mahi mahi tacos, and plenty of local seafood - I'm not proud but hey, it was vacation!

- Visiting Bahia Honda State Park and walking on part of "Flagler's Folly" old railroad bridge that washed out in a hurricane in 1935.

- Spending some time with some very cool fellow Capies I'd heard about for years but had never met.

- Sprawling on the dock of our house in the sun reading while the plumber and septic truck driver (a Boston boy) tried to fix the issue of water (and gunk) backing up into our shower. (Roots growing into the pipes... Short-term fix achieved - PHEW!)

- Peeling as a result of poorly timed sunscreen application in relation to 12 mile unplanned bike ride, sweat, and mid-day sun.

- Enjoying Jimmy the bartender's famous Mojito (we had been told NOT to miss it by friends from home) and his own invention of "The Green Thing" as featured on the Today Show. (He's behind the Westin in an old Ford truck gutted to make a bar. Use caution when consuming his drinks... He's NOT stingy with the booze!)

- Participating in the time-honored "Sunset Celebration" at Mallory Square which includes ~2,000 people crowding onto the west-facing pier to bid farewell to the sun while being entertained by street performers and perusing even more local art (and engaging in deep bouts of rather enlightening people watching).

Organization... A Month-long Event

Apparently I was on an organizational kick last month and it has been wonderful! My house feels so much better!

In addition to organizing the things in my last post, I tackled a few other key areas that have been nagging at me.

I did find the perfect slide out drawers at Bed, Bath & Beyond for our knee-wall cabinet in the upstairs bathroom and organized everything in there. Luckily because I had organized things into baskets last year, there wasn't that much "extra" or expired stuff.

The hall closet was a breeze because after Hurricane Sandy, we pulled out all of our extra coats, shoes, and boots and donated them to the relief efforts. So that was just a matter of installing a shelf to hold the remaining boots and shoes and adding drawers to the top shelf to hold all of the mitten, hats and gloves. Easy as pie!

We are also in the process of returning my home office to partial use as a small guest bedroom. In doing so we moved the huge bookshelf from there down to the guest room which provided the perfect opportunity to cull, organize, and review our entire book collection. My husband chipped in (about one third of the collection is his) and after hours of sorting, cleaning, and re-jigging the shelves, we have we realized that we need some additional shelves to hold the remaining items... As it turns out... there are three more big boxes of books in the basement.

So we embarked on one of our favorite pastimes yesterday... We went to New Bedford and visited the architectural salvage looking for either shelves or the materials to build shelves. Unfortunately they didn't have anything to fit the bill (and the one item we found was ridiculously over-priced) so we left empty-handed and went "junk-tiquing". There are several "antique" stores in NB and we enjoy making the rounds looking for items of interest. Sometimes it's a hit and sometimes it's a miss.

After several hours of wandering through four shops (and my danged work phone ringing a dozen times at least), we came home empty-handed. Well... Not entirely. We did stop at the fish market where I bought a pound each of scallops and shrimp pretty much right off the boat for $13 total (that would have cost me about $30 on the Cape).

So we came home without a bookshelf but with greater enthusiasm to build one from scrap lumber. I was planning to go out and harvest some wood from the pallets I saved from the patio project but I woke up to snow... So I'm going back to bed! There will be plenty of time for projects later today and tomorrow as my husband is working double doubles.

Happy (Getting More Organized) 2013!

It's 2013. I can't actually wrap my head around that especially when I reflect back to grade school graduation - 1983, or high school graduation - 1987, or when my first nephew was born - 1982... Time flies and it just seems like it goes faster every year!

This year has already had a few bumps - starting the year by bringing home a flu-venir from Connecticut was a drag. It took me about 12 days until I am finally feeling like I want to do anything. Of course I had to share and A went down hard a week after I did. I'd never seen him that sick - he didn't even leave the upstairs for about 36 hours! So... hopefully the ick is behind us now.

When I was sitting around the house waiting to feel better, I made a few mental notes of things that I wanted to accomplish in the very near future. Yes, we still need to finish the guest room but that is very close to being done and I need my husband to be home for the last details as they require some muscle. But there are some nagging little projects that have been bugging me.

So today (the first day off that I really had much energy) I emptied the downstairs bathroom closet. I mean I EMPTIED it from top to bottom, wiped down the shelves, removed a shelf that the previous owner installed in a half-arsed way (upside down L brackets and screws that didn't fit so it was dangling half off), installed an upright shelf in the back corner on the floor (it's an odd sized closet with an out-of-order "laundry shoot" (aka "The draft hole") in the middle of the floor that makes it even more awkward to put anything on the floor) for the cleaning products, and removed the "insta-shelves" - you know... those shelves that are sold at 3am on an info-mercial that you push into the corner and then razors slide out and lock it into place... but it won't actually hold anything that weighs more than 6 down feathers.

I took the boxes, bins, and baskets of stuff into the living room, turned on the TV show "Hoarders: Buried Alive" (truly the best motivation!) and sorted everything. By the time I was done tossing and recycling items that had expired at about the same time they were put in the closet five years ago and organizing the rest, I trimmed the lot down from six medium baskets, four small baskets, one large box, one medium bin, and two small bins down to three small baskets, one medium bin, and two small bins - I'd say that I reduced the volume by ~75%.

Because I relocated the cleaning products to the bathroom, it also accomplished a second task that I had in mind - now I've got room for the new vacuum (which is a different shape from the old one and therefore didn't fit in the small closet that the old one fit in) in the cleaning closet in the kitchen. This makes me happy as it's been taking up floor space in my office for the past six weeks or so.


I would post before and after pictures but... I didn't take a before picture - I need to stop and remind myself to do that because I always forget. Just imagine that the shelves were full, there was no room for towels on the shelves, and the floor was covered in boxes and bins.

Now that it is manageable, when I get around to painting the bathroom (I haven't yet been moved to select a color for it as the bathtub is blue with matching blue tiles and I'm not sure how to work with it...) I can remove everything and paint the inside of the closet at the same time. Yay!

Now on the agenda is the knee-wall cabinet in our upstairs bathroom. You have to stand on your head to get anything out of it and it's really deep so it's become a bit of a black hole. I spent hours organizing baskets in it last year but you have to pull out three baskets to get to the one in the back and it didn't take long for that system to fail. Now I'm thinking that I need a drawer system or something that will slide out so we can see/reach the contents in the way back.

Oh - the other bump in the road for 2013 was that our Maytag washer and dryer that were only FIVE years old both crapped out! The sensor on the dryer stopped working last summer so we've been using the timer function. Unfortunately the timer also quit working properly... at the same time that A came up and asked how long the puddle of water has been on the floor behind the washer. Apparently the transmission went on the washer. It was more expensive to repair them than they were worth and they couldn't say that it wouldn't happen again. So we broke down and bought new frontloading machines.

The UPside to getting new machines is that we are too frugal to spend the $500 that they are ridiculously asking for two stands (which essentially is just a riser with drawers) so A decided to build a shelf. I had found an "inspiration piece" on Pinterest and I showed it to A. We now have a sturdy shelf for the machines that our laundry baskets fit neatly under so that we no longer have to step over them or have them take up valuable floor space in the basement. Yay! He's so clever AND he only spent about $60 on materials therefore saving us ~$440!

I love being organized. It irritates me that I've tolerated some of the cluttered zones of our house for so long... but I have to remember that the last five years have been pretty chaotic so I can't really beat myself up. I can just keep picking away at each zone.

One part of me is doing this because it makes living in the house so much more tolerable... but part of me is doing it because we hope to sell our house in the next five years so we can get a place with: A) A garage. B) Neighbors at a greater distance preferably without constantly barking beagles! Either way, getting organized feels great!

26 Acts of Kindness...

In the wake of the tragic deaths of 20 children ages 6-7 and 6 teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14th, 2012, there has been a huge swell of "acts of kindness". I think it's wonderful... and hope that it doesn't only last for the next week or two - this world needs more kindness. We can argue about gun control, mental health, and nature vs. nurture but nobody can argue the point that this world needs more kindness.

I was telling my mother that I can't shake the grief and she suggested helping others. I already do that twice a week during this season by volunteering at the Salvation Army but it wasn't enough. To combat the gloom in my heart, I have joined the "acts of kindness" bandwagon. I just carried out my first act and I'm so happy that I did it. I sent a Christmas basket to an old fella that I talk to 2-3 times per day for work because he's so very lonely. Sometimes he cries. I want to go meet him but I'm not allowed to do that. Earlier today I spent about 20 minutes at my computer trying to decide if I should do it... I could lose my job if someone found out. I walked away without placing the order and went back to my painting project.

As I was brightening the guest room with a coat of "Coastal Mist" blue, I was thinking about him. I'm not working at that job this week... I'm not actually working that job again for a few weeks. I will miss talking to him but I think he will miss talking to me more. There are others that talk to him but he seems to like me because I'm interested in him, his cat, his day etc.

While elbow deep in the paint bucket I realized two things: 1) Who could, with a clear conscience, punish me for an act of kindness toward an old man completely alone in this world? 2) Except for these few personal connections, I don't like that job anyway and if I get fired over this, it will be totally worthwhile.

I washed my hands and came back to the computer, placed the order, wrote a note about 26 anonymous acts of kindness, and that I hope this brings him some holiday joy. Before I could change my mind, I finalized the purchase. It will arrive on Christmas Eve day. I'm happy I did it... even if it comes with consequences.

Several months ago I had another "old guy" that I used to let talk when he was lonely. I would be driving somewhere and I'd let him just prattle on about his wife, his children, his career - I actually found him fascinating when most everyone else considered him to be a grouch. He wanted me to come to his home and meet him in person. I asked permission and was told no. He died a few weeks later and every time I think of him, I heavy-heartedly regret not breaking that rule and meeting him. What true harm could it have done? The man invited me as a guest to his home (and I have a background check on file to boot!)!

Back to the acts of kindness - I don't feel like ALL acts of kindness need to be anonymous. I actually think it's good to look someone in the eye and do something nice for them. Perhaps then they will be more compelled to pay it forward.

My husband and I carry out acts of kindness throughout the year - each year for Christmas we select a boy and a girl from the "Giving Tree" and donate all of their gifts, we buy boxes of food for the food pantry and drop it in the box before we even leave the grocery store, we always tack a few bucks on at PetSmart for "rescued pets", we donate clothing and items to local charities instead of tossing them or selling them... but when I mention these things in passing (my four readers already know we do these things so no recognition-seeking here), I get comments like "You are amazing!" but I'm not. We were taught how to be kind. We were taught when to be kind. We were taught that kindness matters. The world needs to re-learn how to be kind even when the darkness of events like September 11th, 2001, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, or massacres of innocent people isn't in the immediate rear view.

As for 26 acts vs. 27 acts... not to mention 28 acts of kindness with regard to the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, I am a bit torn. 26 is a no-brainer. I will ABSOLUTELY honor the memory of the children, teachers, and staff.

#27 - the shooter's mother (I refuse to use his name) - is harder. Although she CERTAINLY did not deserve to die in such a brutal, cold way at the hands of her own child, as a fellow gun owner, I hold her responsible to a degree for allowing access to her guns... much less access to a son that she had told friends more than once was "getting out of control" or that she would "need help soon" with him. As gun owners, our guns are not and NEVER will be accessible to anyone that a) Isn't licensed b) Isn't responsible c) Isn't appropriate to handle them.

And as for #28 - the shooter. The obvious objection is acknowledging him at all. However, part of me thinks that an act of kindness in memory of him would add more light to the world to counteract a wink of the darkness that he cast. I haven't decided yet. But I will.