The new medicine cabinet
Isn't it pretty?
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September 30, 2006
old medicine cabinet
This is the old medicine cabinet. As of yesterday it is banished from our home altogether.
Note the brown wood trim that matches nothing else in the house. Note the peeled finish on said trim.
It was ugly. It was old. It has needed replacing.
But we didn't know how to replace it. It might be
HARD
to replace. We didn't know.
But we finally decided that we would try it anyway. We measured it, and thought we would see how much it cost to replace a medicine cabinet of that size.
We found a medicine cabinet of that size. Well, very close to that size, It was not that expensive, so we bought it to see if it would fit.
I took a box cutter and cut the paint along the edge of the old medicine cabinet. If you do that, sometimes you can prevent strips of the old paint from peeling away when you remove something.
The gaping hole that was left was full of mouse poopies. Yikes! I'm glad we don't have mice anymore. These were offal of mice long dead.
And I was about to put in the new cabinet when Chris had second thoughts.
Perhaps the new medicine cabinet was not good enough. Wasn't it a little crooked here and there? Weren't there gaps in the corners where the edges met?
Didn't we deserve BETTER?
I glared at him. This medicine cabinet was perfect, considering the price. I mean, come ON.
But he wasn't satisfied. He thought we should research further medicine cabinet options.
I did not have time for this. There was a gaping hole in the bathroom where a mirror should be.
But Chris wanted nice things for our home. Maybe if we put the old one back while he looked...
But no! That was retrograde progress. We needed to move forward, he said. He would find the right medicine cabnet for us.
I disbelieved him.
He promised.
Fine.
In point of fact, both mirror fronted medicine cabinets lived in our hallway, propped against the wall for that week. The cat spent a lot of time looking at himself in them.
But Chris was diligent. He looked everywhere, and found that I was right. I WAS RIGHT.
However, he was right too. That particular individual medicine cabinet was a tad crooked. He found another one with greater evennesss and we installed THAT one.
Also note, in the above photo, that there is a new shower head in the bathtub. It's a fancy shower head that replaced the old sputtery one.
That shower head was the original purpose for the visit to Lowe's to begin with.
September 29, 2006
Doldrums
There are times when I have a ton of things to do, things that are compelling and important and must be done right then. At those times I feel very busy and pressed.
AND YET!
Those same things are super boring. Dull and unintersted and make the time (that big chunk of time that is required) drag like gregorian chants on walkman whose batteries are dying.
it's been that kind of week at work. LONG LONG days of a ton to do and all of it boring and the time running at quarter speed.
I actually spend an hour putting on makeup this morning just to have something to do.
The sad irony of this is that it's the BUSY time.
ack.
maybe i'm a stress junky. Make more things go wrong so I have to concentrate hard on fixing them.
but no, I don't really want that. I just want the day to be over.
tick
tock
tick
tock
.....
September 27, 2006
Miriam's first book club
They said they enjoyed the book. They made me sign them all.
Yes, I am the author
Book Club for The Parable of Miriam the Camel Driver
Tonight was the first time I got to be the visiting author for a book club that read my book.
It was thrilling!
They asked me to have study questions for the book, which I created. We all discussed it. It's so different to talk about my writing after it's done! I'm so used to giving it out for critique. But this is in stone now, no editing etc.
Which means, I got to actually talk about the story and explain this and that. You're NEVER supposed to do that during critique.
and at the end, I asked the ladies, "did you like it?"
And they all sincrely said, "yeah, it was good."
and they all said, "We want to know what happens next! Are you writing a sequel?"
It was amazing.
September 19, 2006
Repetition
Chris has been bugging me for years to go to Yellowstone. In his Chris-fashion, of course. He has a way of subtley talking about it in glowing terms and reminscing about how he enjoyed his trip there when he was a child.
He finds bits of trivia to bring into the conversation. "Did you know that inside Yellowstone is the cone of a volcano? that's why it has geysers."
"Did you know that it's the first national park ever? Ullyses Grant signed it into being a park even before Yosemite."
And finally, "Would you want to go there this fall? We could take a week and go there after school starts and the kids will not be crowding it."
The fact is that, while I enjoy nature, I prefer trips to places of deep history. Like...Paris! Old buildings and interesting shopping is my idea of highly enjoyable.
Also, I like to see new things. I don't want to read the same books again or vacation in the same place twice. The world is so full, and life is so short, I don't want to retrace my steps.
But I hadn't been to Yellowstone. And it did sound pretty good. Yes, Chris, I would go.
And we bought the books. And we gathered the maps. Chris handled the hotels, I handled the airfare. We were set.
Yellowstone was unendingly amazing. We saw so many animals and we saw the kind of landscape you can see nowhere else.
Old faithful was great, but the other geysers surpassed it.
The buffalo were majestic. The moose were focussed on their meals. The bears were funny, and the elk were....Well...it's was mating season for the elk.
We saw antelopes, but they were not playing with any deer. Maybe that's early in the season.
The coyotes looked so much like dogs, we wished we could give them treats.
Chris wanted to know if I would be willing to come back. I think so. It would not feel like retracing my steps.
Sometimes the wildlife was kind of hidden.
This was a very cute baby moose. His mother was around the corner.
Sometimes it wasn't.
Bufalloes go where they please, when they please.
We were inside a volcano, after all
It was very steamy.
September 17, 2006
Yellowstone is over
I'm back.
I got back yesterday from a glorious visit to the first national park america made.
it was amazing and incredible and I spent the last three days sad that I had to leave.
I spent the first five days pretty sick with a cold. That adds up to 8 days, which is how long I stayed there.
Fortunately, I have the world's most considerate boyfriend and he was able to drive me around and I saw a tremendous amount of the park and it's wildlife.
Wow.
Wow.
I will post some photos (you'll be sick of all the photos I post!) when I download them.
It's just a quiet day at home now, getting used to being home.
September 07, 2006
Tractor-go-round
For Farmer's sons who want to grow up to be "just like Daddy"
Tom's Farm Wine and cheese
Tom's Farm in Corona
On the way back home from San Diego, I stopped here at this cute roadside attraction.
It was a fruit stand that had grown out of proportion. There were lots of kiddie rides, a pond to feed the ducks, a big candy store and a vintage carousel.
Corona is hot. And Corona is still agricultural, so it smells of cow.
But it was merely hot yesterday. I enjoyed the few minutes that I wandered around. The furniture store was surprising--both to find one there and that they had nice stuff. And I recommend the candy shop.
Yum!
September 05, 2006
red bud tree
My dear friends and readers! I have expanded my knowledge to include blogging with photographs!
I am so excited. I will be able to share many of my MANY photographs with you now. I am learning to be a photographer.
The tree is a red bud tree, and it's native to california. I think this was taken in King's Canyon national park, right south of Yosemite.
September 04, 2006
3 more days
I am very excited to go on my vacation. I can hardly wait.
Chris has been talking it up for forever, and now we are finally going to Yellowstone.
He and I have been on a lot of nature trips. Heck, we've been on a lot of trips. Most of them have been nature oriented.
This will be a doozy. No one in my family has been to Yellowstone. I have not been.
I am looking forward to it. And since it's a matter of thumb-twiddling for the most part, I took the opportunity to organize my photos of other nature trips.
I'm on flickr, and I'm now working to get it synced with this blog. I"d love to share my photos with you all.
Just wait.
September 01, 2006
Happy Sepember everyone!
This is the last third of the year.
It's been a good year.
I've felt particularly lazy this week. My co-worker said he's felt the same way. Could it be because that the weather has stayed in the high 90s?
I've felt like doing nothing but watch TV, read, and sleep.
So, this would be the perfect way to spend my holiday weekend. Somehow, though, I have planned all sorts of things. I'm helping my church move this saturday, going to meet friends on sunday, and having dinner on monday.
I'm reading a really good book right now. Desirable Daughters by Mukherjee. It is kind of a mystery, but not so much that it hits you over the head with it. It's a mystery that sneaks up on you. Which is good, because I don't like mysteries.
However, I think I will finish it tonight. I only have about 8 pages left.
Back to the library!
But I've got another on on tape, called Bang!
It's an african-american lit book...There are a lot of african american books out there...whole sections of book store are now being given to african american books. Interesting...Anyway. This one is about a family, well, the son in the family, whose younger brother was shot at the age of seven.
Poor little kid just got in the way of a bullet meant for someone else. The family gets destroyed with grief though. The mom can't let go, and the dad decides that he let his sons be too soft, and if the 7 year old had been tougher, he would have made it.
So the older boy and his best friend (whose father is dead) are taken on this camping trip. THe dad drives way out there, and after two days of camping, just drives off. He leaves them there to fend for themselves and find their way home.
It gets worse and worse from there. It's pretty sad.
I only have one more tape of that to listen to. I'll probably finish it this weekend too.