Here I am in Florida. I thought it would be hard to come back to this house, but it really wasn't. What was hard was flying into Ft. Myers at nighttime; seeing the lights of the houses below; and remembering old times. Like the time when we flew in at around 10:00 p.m. and my father was so happy that we were all together he blasted his then-favorite song "Run Around". I just thought of him the whole time we were landing and how happy he'd be when we'd come down to visit. That was the hard part.

The flight was OK. I read a very nice little book called The Alchemist on the way. It's one of those spiritual - inspirational - follow-your-bliss kind of books. Perfect for the flight down.

Oh and the Red Sox signed Curt Schilling for another year. I guess I'm OK with that, all politics aside.

I'm off to Florida. I'll update later.

This counts as a blog entry, btw.

The extra hour we got today was used well by me in sleep mode. It was delicious to sleep in today. I think we slept until 8:30 (9:30 on the body-clock). Now I have a bazillion things to do today before going to Florida tomorrow. I know it will be difficult to face going into that house but it's something we all have to get over.

My father would have been happy that I'm going down to Florida to help my mom. I remember two years ago when I went down after she had knee surgery. He was happy that I was there to cook for him and keep him company. I remember making him some chili - which he loved. I was going to make him some the week I came down to take care of them in February, but he ended up being in the hospital so I couldn't.

I know things are going to be OK around here while I'm gone. They won't fall apart just because I'm in Florida and not here. My brain knows that, but still....

It is a most disgusting day. High winds and heavy rains and almost freezing temperatures make me want to hunker down. Did I? Nooooo..... We went to Costco because we needed 15 lbs of pasta and a half-gallon of olive oil. LOL. It was crowded and noisy and not much fun. The one great thing about Costco is that we get Barney's medicine for $63.00 and at the pharmacy in town here it's $80.00. It's a huge savings.

After Costco we went to Chili's for a late lunch - early dinner thing and now we're home. Our house is pretty cozy. I'm going to go wrap myself in a blankie and sit in front of the TV with Java on my lap and just chill.

I'm going to update here early today because Sarah's coming over this evening. She's a little fussy and demanding so I need to have the place cleaned up and ready for her. Otherwise she's likely to tell me that my house needs "a good scrubbing". She's done that before. She marries neat-nick men who do all the cleaning at her house, but I remember her bedroom from when she was a kid. Ick.

The other day Keith put up the kitchen pendant lamps. They are really pretty and go with the knobs really well. Here's a picture:

And our new mantel was installed last week. It's a completely different color than our kitchen cabinets. The cabinet wood is the sample on top. It's like the mantel is natural cherry with no stain at all. I'm not sure what's going to happen with this, but hopefully it'll get fixed to match.

The outside of the house is almost all finished. They are working on the back and soon will only have one little area to work on, besides the places they intentionally left off to accommodate the air conditioning.

So that's about it for today. I have to go ready the guest bedroom for our arriving dignitary. :D

November is National Blog Posting Month and the challenge is to post to your blog every day for thirty days. I'm going to try it. I'm not sure if I'll do it.

I saw a red-tailed hawk near my driveway this afternoon. I scared it away when I went to shut the gate so I could let Barney outside. Wow. In the past month we've seen a sharp-shinned hawk make a kill, heard a barred owl in the back yard and now a red-tail. It is pretty cool to live in the woods. I love to just stare out the window at the birds on my feeders, and I especially love it when there's a new bird to identify.

I made another knob today. Now that I'm in the home stretch of doing all the knobs over I don't want to make knob after knob. I'm sick of knobs. I'm on a wine-stopper kick right now. I want to make one for each of my contractors as a small token of my appreciation (in addition to the many many green paper tokens of my appreciation). They aren't bead wearers I'm sure, so a wine stopper is about as neutral as I can make.

I'd better save something to write about tomorrow.

Oh and how selfish and cheesy was A-Rod's announcement - during game 4 of the World Series - of his decision to waive the rest of his contract? Like he needed to announce it then. He couldn't wait until the Series was over. What a grandstanding little prima donna he is. And I'm giving a big shout-out to the Red Sox fans who were chanting "Don't sign A-Rod" last night behind Theo Epstein as he was being interviewed.

I'm waking up tired but very very happy today. The Red Sox are World Series Champions! I'm sad the season is over, but glad it ended this way. Oh and if you're looking for a cool present for me for Christmas, get me a creepy Papelbon puppet.

My mother and father gave me a bird feeder for Christmas last year, and we just got to putting it up this afternoon. We couldn't resist making it match our big house, just for laughs. Robert is so funny. This was totally his idea.



Here's what the front of it looks like. LOL.



We'll keep it on there until the house is finished.

I have a stove!

I made spaghetti!

Wahoo!

And I made these awesome knobs with my new knob shaper from Amy. I'm so in love with this shape. I just wish she had come out with it a teensy bit earlier.

There is not much action around here these days. We attempted to have our stove hooked up to the new huge propane bomb next to my garage, but the stove lacked a regulator. Our awesome plumber Artie noticed this like 10 days ago but we were assured by the evil Fletcher's woman that it was there, just hidden under some metal thing. So when the propane man (really a minion of the evil Fletcher's woman) came to hook it up, no gas would come out. So we're still stoveless, sadly.

Arthur the electrician came to hook up some stuff in the new bathroom, so now our tub has bubbles. I haven't seen it in action yet, but I could hear it all the way downstairs. That thing is supersonic.

I am focusing on making focal beads for the show on the 13th. I'm having fun with them and I'm not missing making sets these days. Amy brought over some very cool new shapes and I've been fooling around with them. It's always best to have new and exciting things to inspire you.

Oh and go Red Sox!

I've always wanted to name my house. It's kind of a pretentious thing to do, but I think it's cool. Up the street from us is "Impromptu Farm" and over in Dunstable there is "Sunnyfield," for example. Sadly, I've never been able to come up with a name I liked. Of course, Robert couldn't care less about naming our house until we started re-siding it. He's now calling it "Tyvekistan." We will have this look for a couple more weeks while we wait for the new windows to come in. We are also going to put in air conditioning. New windows and air conditioning were on my "wish list" but it makes sense to do them now while the siding is off. I was planning to do them next year or so but I can see that it will save time and labor to do it all at once.

The yard is still highly wooded, but you can see how the trees that surrounded the house are gone and how much of a difference it makes in terms of sun and light on the house. And it makes such a difference when it rains! The other night it rained and everything was dry by the next afternoon. Before it would take two to three days for things to dry out.

It's starting to look like fall around here. This is my crabapple tree which now has full sun for many hours a day. The berries are red and very ripe.

The work inside is winding down...way down. Wednesday the maids came and cleaned the dust up and then for the rest of the day I was blissfully alone. As much as I like chatting with the workers, it was so nice to be by myself for the afternoon. I have a head cold and wasn't feeling too well, so I took a leisurely bath, and then laid down on my own bed for the first time in 2 1/2 months! It was heavenly. The rest of the day I spent in my pj's and relaxed. Ahhhhhh....

Last night we went to see "wait wait don't tell me" in Manchester. We originally wanted to go while we were in Chicago, but it was the night we went out to dinner with my Boston Terrier friends and they also had a guest-host, so we opted not to go, figuring they'd come to NH sometime in the next few years. Who knew it would be so quickly? Anyway, it was a thousand laughs and neat to see it in person. I can't wait to listen to it on Saturday.

I got a new bench today from Kevin the tree man. I felt bad about it but what are you going to do. He's coming back to do a little more work, so that will help go to pay his granite bill.

I bought this awesome bench less than a year ago. It was installed the weekend I went to Snow Farm back in October. Ironically enough, it has come to an end as I am about to leave for Snow Farm this year. :(

Time for more pictures! The kitchen is pretty much done; there are just a few small things to do to wrap it up.

This is the view from the cellar stairs.


This is the view from the window in the opposite corner:

My new washer and dryer. Yay! :D

The vanity in the downstairs bathroom.

This is the cabinet across from the washer & dryer:
This is the view from the dining room into the kitchen:
This is the view of the whole kitchen from the living room door:
These are the knobs I'm making for the kitchen:
The knobs are based on these pendant lights:

In a few days I'll take and put up pictures of the bathroom upstairs. It's spectacular.

The people who did the work ( Phillips-Martin Group ) were awesome. I have only good things to say about them and their work. And the subs they used were terrific, too. They did the work for the project in this article. Not really to my tastes, but fabulous work.

They are chopping down all my trees today and I'm so sad.

Yesterday was the 17th, or the 7-month anniversary of my Father's death. On every other 17th since February, I was well aware of the date and its significance. Yesterday was the first 17th that I didn't think of the fact that it was an anniversary, until my mother brought it up after dinner. It's not that I didn't think of my father, because I do every day. I just hadn't thought of the anniversary. Which I think is a good thing. Maybe next month I'll go through the whole day without thinking about it.

Day 63 and counting. The hardwood floor in the kitchen is being installed today, and the painters are painting the dining room. We fixed our first breakfast in the kitchen today - bagels and cream cheese and coffee. It was nice not to have to go out. Having water in the kitchen is also a big plus. I've started to put a few things away, and it's challenging to put it away in a semi-organized way. I have to think about it. Hopefully I've put things where they would logically go but if not, I can always re-arrange. My appliances are being delivered on Friday, and as luck would have it I'm going away for the weekend. I so want to be here instead.

No pictures today, but there have been some improvements to blog about - we have water in the kitchen and in the upstairs bathtub. Now, it's not hot yet, but at least it's wet! The tile is in the upstairs bathroom and the entryway. It looks very pretty.

But there are some concerns as well. When the contractors were replacing the windows, they noticed that the house was not wrapped. The clapboards are up against the plywood, with no moisture barrier inbetween. That, combined with the gazillion trees we have, has led to the house being extremely moist and even rotting in some places. So now we're having the house wrapped ($$$) and resided ($$$). Oh and today they found termites! Ah, the joy of home-ownership. Luckily it seems to be confined to one area and it was cleaned up nicely. The exterminator is coming on Friday.