House and Other Stuff

D-day for listing our house is getting closer!

Scott, our realtor came and told us some things to do to our house to get it ready to sell.  He's coming back on July 3rd with papers to sign and then the house will go on the market 4 days after that.

I took last week off of work so I could spend the week getting things ready.

We took a couple old TV's, fluorescent light bulbs, paint and other chemicals to a Hazardous Waste collection day they were having for all of Wayne County. Wayne County is huge and we waited 2 hours to drop off our stuff.

This is where we were in the line after about 1-1/2 hours. Worth the wait though. We got rid of a lot of stuff!

So I had a busy week off while we took care of a lot of little and not so little things.

Touched up the paint on the front door and added this little decoration.

Replaced the screens on the front screen door, the door wall and a few of the windows.

Replaced the stopper for the bathtub upstairs which hasn't worked in years. I bought this nifty little thing off of Amazon and it was exactly what we needed.

It works perfectly. We glued it down with the adhesive that came with it and after 24 hours it was stuck fast! Just push down and it stops the water and pull up to drain. It even has a hair catcher underneath!

Rich put a linoleum floor over the existing falling apart tile floor of the bathroom in the basement.

Before:

After:

I have cleaned out every cabinet, drawer and closet in the place and packed,  donated or thrown away a ton of stuff.

We still have a few more things to do before the house goes up for sale but I have to say that I am enjoying the nice clean cupboards and closets and all the little repairs that we have done.

Of course we spent a day with Maxwell too! Took him to the local park so we could see the ducks!

And run around on a gazebo!

That's it for now!

Until the next time.

Windows

Last week we had these two windows in our master bedroom replaced.

Our house faces South and the master bedroom is in the back of the house so the windows face North. They never get direct sunlight. Over time they lost their seal and would get moisture on them.

Because they are wood windows and you know what happens to wood when it is damp all of the time. Pretty soon we were seeing mold along the bottom.

The other window wasn't quite as bad but still the mold was starting.

We tried re-sealing them but that didn't work. We had Pell@ and another window repair company come out to see if it they could be repaired but they said no so we threw some duct tape over the mold and pretended it wasn't there! 

However, now that decided to sell this house we knew there was no way that we could leave these windows like they were. 

I got 4 prices and Hom@ Dep0t was the cheapest so we went  ahead and ordered them and last Thursday they came and installed them.

Oh my goodness they are so nice! They're vinyl windows so they shouldn't ever mold and they open either way. Plus they don't have the little blinds in the middle so they let in a lot more light.

Too bad we are not staying and replacing all of the windows!

Here they are from the outside.

In other news, my friend Karen's daughter is getting married and her shower was last Sunday. I love wrapping presents and had fun with this one.

Black lace and pink ribbon, a pretty silk flower and gold leaves. Those are her colors.

She barely looked at it before she opened it and I think everything got thrown in the garbage!

Oh well, I enjoyed it!

And of course no post is complete without a picture of my peanut!

He's starting to talk a little!

Until the next time....

Getting Rid of Stuff

We're still working on the house. It's going slow but steady. We're hoping to be done and have the house on the market at the end of June.

We've been spending the last few weekends cleaning the basement and closets and getting rid of a lot of stuff  that I have been holding on to for some reason.

Like this dress that Shauna wore when she was 6 and a flower girl in a friends wedding.

It was such a cute dress but it's yellowed and Shauna doesn't want it. Plus, the people who got married were divorced a long time ago!  So, into the garbage it went!

And this coat that belonged to my mom.

She loved it and I have held on to it for all this time! But I will never wear it so into the donation bag it went!

We've donated bags and bags of books, CD's and DVD's to the local library.

So slowly but surely we are making a dent in all of the stuff we accumulated over the years.

Thursday we are having the two windows replaced in the master bedroom. They are wood windows and the wood in the bottom panes is rotted beyond repair. We got 4 quotes and went with H@me Dep@t because they were the least expensive.

Work is going OK. It hasn't been crazy busy lately so it's nice to be able to keep up. The whole Pathology Department is moving off site in a few months. We are relocating about four miles closer to my house which is nice. The best part is that I won't have to take a bus into work from  my parking spot anymore!

Here's a picture of our little Maxwell

He's going to be a big brother! Shauna and Brad are expecting another baby boy in October!

Until the next time....

Working On The House

We have spent the last few weeks working on this house of ours with plans of selling in a few months.

Disclaimer: I say we but Rich is doing 90% of the work right now. He is retired and has the time; I work and am gone from home 10 hours a day. 

The first thing we decided to tackle was taking the old, worn out carpeting out of the bedrooms upstairs.

I had suspected that there might be hardwood floors underneath and I was right. What was surprising was what good shape they were in!

This is the first and smallest bedroom we worked on. I didn't get any before pictures but this is after we painted and put new shoe molding on. All we did to the floor is clean it and shine it up some. It's far from perfect but I think it's good enough!

Then next room was the second largest room. It had a pink carpet which Rich pulled up one day.

Then we took old wallpaper down and Rich had to fix a few areas of the walls that were bad.

We took two days to paint and then we cleaned the floor and shined it up. This is my favorite room!

The rugs are just two pieces of carpet remnant that we had sitting in the basement from when we had carpeting done in the family room about 12 years ago!  They are good enough!

We are currently in the process of working on the master bedroom. The carpet is up and the floor is a little rough in spots.

I'll do a post when we are done with the room!

Here's our little Maxwell. He caught a cold and doesn't feel good today :( His little cheeks get so rosy!

Until the next time....

Lately

It's been more than a month since I last posted on this blog. My intentions are always good. I wish I could post from my iPhone (won't support Blogger) or my tablet (can't import photos) because it seems like I always have my face stuck in one or the other of those!

This winter so far has been pretty rough. Actually, it's been a typical Michigan winter. We just got a little spoiled with the mild winters we've had before. 

My least favorite part is when I am working all day and it's snowing the whole time which happened last week. I get to my car and it looks like this:

Notice I have the windshield wipers popped up? I just started doing that this year any time I know it's going to snow. It's so much easier to clean the windshield and the wipers are not covered with ice!

However, it was still snowing so I had to drive with the heat blasting on defrost the whole way to keep the windshield from freezing up! I was roasting by the time I got home!  

Rich has been doing a lot of this lately. I think this was the third time he cleaned off the driveway that day!

Good thing he has me out there helping him!

The snow blower he's using used to be my dads. He gave it to Rich when he moved out of his house and no longer needed it. We had one already but this one is bigger and better!

Rich retired a few weeks ago. He actually plans on working one or two days a week but has taken a few weeks off to see how he feels. 40+ years of being a mechanic has taken it's toll on his body. 

He feels pretty good right now though and has been getting things done around the house We plan on selling in the Spring or Summer and there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done to get this house ready for the market. Not looking forward to the stress but I am looking forward to living in something much smaller someday. 

Our Maxwell turned one year old on January 8th! 

Shauna made him a cupcake cake!

He got lots of presents! Look at those cute little feet!

He loved his birthday cake!

Especially when he got to beat it with his hammer!

But still managed to keep eating it between hammer blows!

He has brought so much joy and laughter to our family this past year!

Last week I took a day off of work so I could spend the day with him. He took this selfie!

Until the next time....

The One Where Christmas Was A Bust

Well, this Christmas will go down as the crappiest Christmas I think I've ever had!

First, my son, who spends the majority of his time in New Hampshire for his job,  was supposed to be back here in Michigan the Thursday before Christmas. I planned a nice dinner for us all and looked forward to having our little family together enjoying and sharing Maxwell's first Christmas ever!

On Wednesday he started to be in a lot of pain and went to the ER where they diagnosed him with kidney stones. I won't go into a lot of details but he had a pretty rough time passing them and did not make it home until this past Thursday!

On Saturday the 23rd we decided to do our Christmas with just Shauna, Brad and Maxwell. I cooked my famous ravioli lasagna and we had a nice dinner. Maxwell loves my cooking by the way!

Very shortly after dinner I started to get a pain in my upper right abdomen. I didn't say anything to anyone and we continued on with exchanging gifts and watching Maxwell open his. Well, he mostly just grabbed them and shook them and occasionally ripped  a piece of paper He doesn't quite get the whole opening presents thing yet!

We got him this little car that he can sit in and be pushed around. He wasn't real impressed but I think he's going to love it in the Spring!

The whole time we were opening presents and stuff my abdomen was killing me. I didn't say anything because I was enjoying watching Maxwell play with all his new toys. After a while Shauna and Brad left and I told Rich how much pain I was in. I tried laying different ways, laying on the floor (seriously), heating pad, antacids but nothing helped. I was pretty sure it was a gallbladder attack and I was trying to wait and see if it would go away on it's own but after a few hours it was apparent that I needed help. Rich drove me to Providence Park hospital Emergency Department.

They took me in right away and the ER doctor agreed with my suspicion that it was my gallbladder. They did a abdominal ultrasound and told me I had gallstones. They also said that because it was the day before Christmas Eve and almost everyone was off of work they would send me home with pain meds and to contact a  surgeon to arrange to have my gallbladder removed,

After the radiologist looked at my ultrasound he said that the walls were enlarged and it looked infected so they put me on IV antibiotics and decided to keep me overnight. All this whole time I was still in severe pain though because they only gave me ibuprofen and it was taking forever to work!

The next day was Christmas Eve. In the morning a surgical resident came into my room and said that the surgeon was in the house and was willing to do the surgery that day if I wanted! I said yes without hesitation! I was there, I had already been IV'd and I saw no reason to wait. The surgeon came in and talked to me for a few minutes and they scheduled my surgery for 12:00. I'll tell you what. If you have to have surgery then Christmas Eve is the day to do it! They came and got me at 10:00 and by 12:00 I was already in recovery!

They kept me one more night and I came home on Christmas Day. I missed my family's Christmas Eve celebration and all the good food! But it was worth it because I think I have been having gallbladder problems for a while so now it's gone and can never hurt me again!!

I stayed home from work on Tuesday and Wednesday but went back for the rest of the week. I felt pretty good and the surgeon said it would be alright as long as I didn't lift more than 10 lbs.

Chris was home and we finally had our little family celebration last night! Brad got new camera equipment and we took this family photo! So happy to all be together at last!

I was asleep by 10:00 last night and only woke briefly at midnight when the fireworks were going off all over!

Happy New Year to all and I hope 2018 brings you everything you hope for!

Until the next time....

Health Scare

A few weeks ago on a Friday we went out to dinner with my brother and his wife, as we frequently do.

That night I was tired after working all day so I went to bed about 9:30 or so. At about 10:30 I woke up with a pain in the middle of my chest, right below my rib cage. I got up, went into the bathroom and took a couple of Tums, thinking it was indigestion. By the time I got back to bed 10 seconds later, the pain had increased 10 fold and was radiating up into my neck!

I sat on the bed and waited for a  few minutes and the pain only got worse. I thought it was probably indigestion or a gallbladder attack, but the pain going into my neck scared me enough to wake Rich up.  We waited for a few more minutes but the pain was not getting any better. I though if I was having a heart attack then I was wasting precious minutes by sitting there so Rich called 911 and the Canton Rescue came in about 2 minutes. It felt like it took them forever to get there, though!

By that time  my blood pressure was high and I was breathing heavy. I was, in a word,  freaking out! They hooked me up to EKG machine and told me my heart rhythm was good and did not look like my heart was in any distress, but they recommended they take me to the local hospital anyway so they could check me further.

 In the ambulance they gave me 4 baby aspirin to chew, hooked up a IV, then gave me nitroglycerin to put under my tongue. I was still in a lot of pain but my blood pressure was lower and I was calming down knowing I probably was not having a heart attack.

At the hospital they did blood work and took a chest x-ray.  Finally after about two hours the pain went away. The did more blood work, kept the monitor on me for  a few more hours and at about 4:30 in the morning they said I was fine and we finally went home!

I felt kind of foolish for going to the hospital for what probably was indigestion but it's better to be safe than sorry! Plus, being diabetic puts me at higher risk for heart disease so I did not want to mess around.

I followed up with my doctor the following Monday and she already had the report from the hospital. She said it looked like there was nothing to be concerned about but she ordered a stress test just to be sure.

I had that done last Wednesday.

While I was walking on the treadmill the tech asked me if I felt anything and she was pointing at something on the EKG, which looked like Greek to me anyway. She said it was showing "some early beats."

The  next day I got a message from my doctor. She said my heart looked good, had good blood flow and nothing to indicate any trouble. The stress test did show that I had what is called premature ventricular contractions in the lower chambers of my heart, which are early beats or skipped beats.  Those are usually brought on  by too much caffeine,  or stress, or even exercise!   I guess it's pretty common and not dangerous unless it happens all the time.

So that's it. My heart is healthy, which is a relief and one less thing I have to worry about for now!

This was outside of the health center where I went for my stress test. It just strikes me as funny that there is a gurney sitting out there by the dumpster! It even had a sheet on the mattress!

And lastly: Guess who's 11 months old now and starting to take a couple steps??

Until the next time...