Catching up

Heading to the birthday dinner

Here’s a picture from my birthday—we’re dressed to go to dinner and I’m wearing one of the dresses I made.

My cake

And here’s a picture of my birthday cake. Kent told them the name to put on the cake and he said there was a pause and they asked if I used the whole name. I think maybe the decorator started to spell my name incorrectly because you can see a bit of a bobble in the script. I’m sure it was very hard to get all nine letters on that cake!






Smithfield got a dusting of snow late Saturday afternoon and this is a picture of Alison getting ready to run, run, run in it. The next picture is Eliot at the door watching her. Pretty cute, huh.

Alison has gotten old enough that she understands when someone is leaving. Yesterday after lunch, she walked toward me and I could see she was tearing up and wanted me to hold her. I picked her up and she told me in a tiny sad voice that she didn’t want me to leave. Awww that broke my heart.


All in all, I had a really fantastic visit. I love seeing Ben and Jen and the kids and even more, I love it that they invited Kent and me to see the ultrasound. I feel very fortunate to have family like this.

What I did on vacation

Do you remember having to write those silly essays the first day back to school when you were in grade school? Here’s what I did and didn’t do while I was gone:

• Didn’t get sunburned. It helps a lot that I married a redhead who only burns. We are diligent with the sunblock and shade.
• Sat on our balcony a lot. That’s because it was extremely windy at Ocho Rios. In fact, none of the normal water activities occurred last week—no sailing, wind surfing, no catamaran cruise or glass bottom boat trips or even scuba or snorkeling. The seas were pretty rough and the wind was relentless. We felt sorry for the people who chose that resort so they could go out to the little island where nude sunbathing is allowed. The island was only open for half a day on Thursday and again on Friday. Plus it rained a lot. Rain in Jamaica is still better than winter rain in Boston.
• Got sick. Yep, I got a stomach virus that required staying in for a good day and a half. Rotten timing.
• Sat on the beach when it wasn’t raining and I wasn’t hanging out in the bathroom. I love watching the ocean.
• Read eight books. I’m so thankful I have a Kindle because I wouldn’t have carried eight books with me.
• Ran into the same two awesome couples we had dinner with two years ago on my birthday. We made sure we had dinner again with them this year and just generally enjoyed the heck out of seeing them. Kent and I have decided we want to be like June and Charlie as we grow old. Now we just need to find a Peggy and Joe to hang out with us.
• Had dinner our last night there at the restaurant that’s built out over the water. That was both the best food we had there and the coolest view.

Getting home was a chore, I won’t lie. The weather was bad enough that our tiny plane from the Ian Fleming Int’l Airport (their spelling) to Montego Bay ran 40 minutes late which cut things closer than I would like getting cleared through Customs and security. I told Kent he can expect as I get older that I’ll want to get to the airport earlier and earlier and probably when I’m in my 80s, we’ll need to get there the week before. Plus it was pretty bumpy—not the worse turbulence I’ve ever felt but it’s somehow scarier in a tiny plane.

As I was boarding the plane to head back to the US, the retractable handle on my suitcase decided now was a good time to quit working. It’s still broken and will go off to the repair shop shortly (so glad for a real life time guarantee). Then the pilots for our flight from Montego Bay to JFK couldn’t get into the cockpit (security code didn’t work). That problem was resolved the old fashioned way, with brute force.

Anyway, I could go on but I won't. We’re back and it was a decent vacation. The best part about it was spending all that uninterrupted time with Kent. He tells me he wishes I could relax as much at home as I do when we go someplace else. I do too, but I think that’s not likely to happen. So I will take the vacation with him whenever I can get it and turn into a jellyfish then.

Necessity and all that

We finally have no more industrial fans and dehumidifiers in our apartment, but it’s not because the walls are dry. They are not.

To solve the problem of the remaining wet drywall, Bostonian cut another large hole in the wall and physically removed some of the wettest bits. This picture shows you how we’ve covered the hole (to keep curious cats named Wally from getting between the wall and bricks) yet still allowed air to flow. We got that box from Ikea and you can see we just used duct tape to hold the lid in place. But it still smells wet where that hole is so this morning I stuck our little fan in the box, pointed it at the hole and turned it on high. No mold for me, thanks, I’m trying to cut back.

We are still dealing with a lot of dust in here. We’ve swept several times but I think that’s a losing battle until the floors are put back in. The concrete is old and isn’t sealed so dust is just a way of life right now.

Also, I probably should have worn my noise canceling ear buds all week long. My ears are still messed up from all the racket we had in here for a week. Hopefully the ringing subsides quickly.

I was deleting files from an SD card and ran across this video of Wally and Eddie which was taken last May when our second set of floors had just been installed. I find it comforting—this too, shall pass, and in the meantime Kent and I are doing well, the kitties are doing better than they were, and at some point we’ll have floors that stick around longer than eight months.

The Boston version of a casserole

Most of our neighbors contributed to this gift bag which one of them brought by tonight:

It's got three bottles of wine, a bottle of Tums, a bottle of Advil and a box of chocolates. That was super sweet and made our night. We didn't open the wine yet but we will, although maybe we should save it for during reconstruction.

Guess who didn't contribute? Yes, readers, if you said the Nasties and the Ferals, you'd be right!

Stress fractures

Stress fractures can be caused by unusual or repeated stress. I’d say repeated water damage counts, wouldn’t you?

• All horizontal surfaces in our home are covered with a fine layer of gritty dust. That won’t be going away any time soon. In fact, when the repairs get going, I know it will just get worse.
• The cats are not doing all that well. Chloe escapes by sleeping in the bedroom (we have that door shut both for noise mitigation and to keep as much dusty crap out of there as we can). Wally and Eddie have been crying loudly at us and it’s truly amazing how loud they can be. All three cats are on our laps for extended periods of time, far more than they normally do. Plus Chloe is picking fights with the boys. I’m sure it’s because she’s so tense.
• Wally has been doing something he loved to do in the basement of our home in Kansas City. He'd go down there and just roll around and around on the concrete. I think he's a little happy he can do that here because he's been doing it a lot. The downside is that his fur has gotten very dusty. I need to wipe him down with a damp washcloth because I can hardly bear to pet him, he's so dusty. 
• I feel short in the kitchen. I’m surprised at how removing the inch of flooring makes such a difference in where the counters are to me.
• Our apartment is crazy dry right now—the humidity is 32%. Our sinuses ache and our eyes are dried out and gritty.
• I thought of two things to be thankful about this go round. First, we discovered the issue Thursday. That meant we could get the leak capped on Friday and we have this week to start sorting out repairs and so on. Second, I’ve been planning on doing a lot of touch up painting around the place, but hadn’t done it yet. Good thing, huh.
• We are both so distracted that we both clean forgot about the red slow cooker sitting on the counter last night, full of a new batch of chili. I woke up at 5 AM and knew it had been sitting there all night long. I need to make another batch of soup (that’s what we eat for lunch in the winters) but we have no more white onions in the house. So I need to go get one.
• Apparently I tweaked my knee the other day so now I’m feeling ancient and decrepit.
• I’m looking forward to sitting on a beach in just over a week. I just hope nothing bad happens here while we are gone.

Loud and noisy

Unless you've been through a fire or water damage situation, it's hard to picture how dirty and messy things get. When the restoration guys tore down part of the ceiling yesterday, all sorts of wet, soggy moldy debris fell down too. Now everything is coated in dust, there's grit and bits of concrete everywhere and of course it smells weird here. Not water weird, we got things out fast enough, but just weird and not at all like home.

This video is probably quite loud but since I'm in the apartment with the fans and dehumidifier and air purifier going (great big industrial beasts they all are too), I can't hear it. You'll have to tell me if the noise comes through in the video.

Just shoot me now

The skirt is all but done and is enormous. I'll be unpicking a lot of seams if I'm to use that pink eyelet material.

::groan::

One down

Well OK, I still need to hem it. But it needs to hang overnight before I do that. Otherwise this top is finished.