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Protected: Advice.. please.

admin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:11:36 +0000

Protected: Over the edge…

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:13:33 +0000

A small update

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:54:00 +0000

My aunt is making some progress. She’s still not fully recovered, and at this point she’s been told she should look into finally filing for disability (she has had major back trouble for years prior to her recent illness). That’s a big blow for her. She honestly enjoys her work as ER Director. I’m sure it’s hard to accept, especially since she’s already lost so much of her independence, but we all (with the exception of a couple of people) think this could be the best thing for her. I do and I don’t, and I say I don’t simply because I know she doesn’t enjoy not being able to do much – being holed up all day.

I’m still playing catch up on my work. I’ve made a huge dent, thankfully.

There’s been a lot of progress on the renovation of my new house. I can’t remember if I ever gave any details about the house. It’s a brick house with 4 bedrooms (one will be the office, one master, one guest room and a bedroom for my nephews when they visit) and 2 baths. It has a separate dining room off of the small kitchen (and when I say small, I mean itsy bitsy). It also has a beautiful living room with a wood burning fire place. With the exception of the kitchen, bathrooms and east side hallway, the floors are the original hardwood. They recently put down laminate wood floors in the kitchen and down the east side hallway. I would love to eventually do this through the entire house, with the exception of the bathrooms which I’d love to re-tile.

The only room that is currently lacking is the pink bathroom, which I’ve now dubbed the pepto powder room. I really love the character of older homes, and things like the older style tiles but the pink is nauseating. So many different shades on the wall and the floor. Without gutting the entire thing, I have no ideas to tone that room down. Aside from using a white shower curtain. Any suggestions? You can see it if you scroll down through the photos below – you can’t miss it! They’re still working on it, and since the photo was taken they’ve put in a new toilet. There is still painting to do (I asked for them to paint the walls above the tile white). The only thing I can think of is checking to see if I can paint over the tile.

They’re also working on the exterior this week. They’ve power washed it, put up the new shutters and primed the front door. All that’s left is to put new screens on the windows, touch up the trim work, finish painting the front door and touch up the iron rail around the front porch. I’m going to do my own landscaping. I already have some ideas and Tam’s nephew Nathan is going to help – suppose to help I should say.

I’m planning on painting the kitchen some shade of blue or green, or blue-green/teal/aqua. The office will be teal, and the master bedroom will be a light blue since it will be all shabby-chicish. These changes will be made before I move in so I’ll share updated photos when I have them.

So, here are a few photos I took about a week ago. Excuse any and all messes you’ll see in some of the photos. I took this while they were still doing a lot of the renovations. Also want to say that I love the chandelier my mom bought for me!

The pepto makes me sad.

PS.. I’m not checking for typos. Too tired and still have work to do tonight. Sorry!

Protected: …

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:46:14 +0000

Feeling overwhelmed

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:58:32 +0000

My aunt had a relapse. Nearly two weeks ago I was phoned by my youngest sister, who sounded like she’d been crying. It must have been around 11:30pm. I knew something had to be going on for her to phone so late. She said they rushed my aunt back to the ER after an apparent seizure which caused a major change in her mental status. I won’t go into details about what happened because it’s a personal, private matter but I will say that we are now all on alert and having to visually check in on my aunt throughout the day. She spent time in the Neuro ICU at ST Joe’s in Savannah. They have now diagnosed her with a Partial Complex Seizure Disorder. Her seizures are not at all like the convulsing ones. Her seizures, so we’re told, do not last long but the state she’s in after (where many would be groggy or sleepy after having a convulsing type seizure) lasts several hours. We could see she was having multiple seizures while we were in her room in the ICU visiting with her.. she was hooked up to an EEG. Anyway. They have increased her medication by 250mgs to see how she does. The medication is causing some jitters for her and I notice that she fidgets/moves a lot more than previously. This, unfortunately, will be something she will deal with for the rest of her life. With any luck though, they’ll be able to get it under control – hopefully.

I feel like I’ve been run ragged. Dramatic I know, but with all of the back and forth checking up on my aunt, helping the family and driving hours at the time.. I am so exhausted. I’m trying desperately to finish up design work and while my request form is still up, I’m not going to take on any new work for about a week so that I can make a big dent in current projects.

I’m also doing this while dealing with my dad, who is going to be having knee replacement surgery soon… AND moving into a new place. Thankfully the new place won’t be ready for a couple of weeks, so that gives me time, hopefully, to do everything I need to do before taking THAT on.

I know I’ve been bad with this updating thing and catching up, I hope you understand why..

Be back shortly..

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:15:28 +0000

I will be back to blogging shortly.

Life just got a bit crazy for a couple of weeks. My aunt was rushed to the ER recently, then to ST Joseph’s in Savannah. Long story made short; they thought she had a stroke but after many tests (blood work, CT, MRI, EEG & lumbar puncture) they determined she was suffering from viral encephalitis. It made it’s way to her brain and caused stroke-like symptoms. She lost 3 days of memory that she will likely never regain. She can’t remember how to do certain things.. like driving. She’s been home and on antibiotics but our family is keeping a very close eye on her. One of the things that happened during this time (we’re not sure if that’s what caused the illness or if it’s a symptom at this point) was that she had a seizure. We spent several days in Savannah with her.

I’ve been trying to play catchup, and while I’m definitely making dents, I’d rather be drilling gigantic holes.

I’ve still got quite a bit to catch up on. But I’m hoping to have everything tackled and under control by mid-week. That includes fixing the big “boo boo” I made on the blog of one of my wonderful clients. ..sigh. So wish I was familiar with Network Solutions Wordpress hosting. I made a small mistake (or so I thought) of adding in a piece of code I shouldn’t have (and still not sure why I did that exactly). That mistake resulted in a syntax error, but it’s preventing us from accessing Wordpress so I can’t log in to correct it, and without FTP access (or any access to those files otherwise), I’m afraid the only thing to do is reinstall Wordpress entirely. I made the backups, now I’m just waiting for the go-ahead. I wish you knew how horrible I feel about this.. and embarrassed too. :/

Protected: The “S” word – Stressed

admin — Thu, 06 May 2010 03:19:08 +0000

As I wait

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:38:04 +0000

As I wait for the baked chicken I made for dinner to finish cooking, I decided to upload a few of the photos from the festival this weekend. While it was exhausting, it was also a lot of fun. The only things I attended myself were the street dance, fireworks and the airshow. It rained off and on all weekend so I didn’t really want to frolic around the arts and crafts show or the carnival — it was pretty soggy out there from what I heard.

Here’s a warning though.. lots of pictures to follow the first few (Blue Angels, parachute fellow, and some of my nephews) , click to view the rest of the entry to view them all. These aren’t the best photos of the Blue Angels by any means, but heck.. they’re hard to keep up with at their speed, ha ha!

And last but not least, Tyler (oldest – dictator), Trent (youngest – manipulator) & Landon (middle – negotiator). At least I got 2 out of 3 when I asked for “smiles.” I guess that isn’t too bad, huh?

Tyler

Trent, with his dimples.. aka “sugar drops”

Landon

Not going to bother with proofreading. Sorry!

Oops, I did it again

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:23:51 +0000

Guilty as charged. Behind again, on this blog and catching up.. which I haven’t gotten a chance to do yet. There’s just been a lot going on and I’ve been working a lot.. A LOT.. which is good, and I love it.

This weekend is going to be packed full too, so I’m trying my hardest to complete all of my design work by late tonight. This weekend is the Onion Festival. Friday night we’re taking the boys to the fire works show. We’ve decided against the street dance though — too many people, and it would be hard to keep up with the boys since they tend to run off from all of us at times. My absolute favorite part of this festival is the air show. We’re going to that Saturday. I can’t wait to see the Blue Angels. They’ve been practicing some this week, so it’s getting me super excited about Saturday. I’m not sure what events they have for the air show other than that. Usually they have the stealth flyover but yeah, not sure that’s on this year’s schedule. I’ll have a look at the website later today.

I bought some furniture from an antique store a couple of months ago, so my dad went with me yesterday to pick it up. I can’t believe they didn’t have someone there to help us with that, especially that chest. It’s solid wood. Even the smaller two top drawers are heavy. I noticed some pain in my lower back shortly after we did it, which makes me think I did something to it when we moved it. My back is still sore today, but not nearly as bad thankfully.

With all of this beautiful sunshine we’ve had lately, I decided to change out my bedding. The previous bedding wasn’t really that dark, in fact it was really bright colors — pink, aqua, lime green, yellow & purple (plaid quilt set). I just wanted something that wasn’t really so bold. My mom bought a really lovely set by Simply Shabby Chic for me, so I changed it out to that. I’ll post a picture below, but it’s a little dark so I’m not so sure it’s going to do this bedding justice!

I need to get back to work. I have a lot on the agenda today. Hopefully after this weekend I’ll have time to finally catch up with everyone!

An update soon

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:53:10 +0000

Sorry. I’ve been busy. Very busy.

Finally fought off both bronchitis and acute sinusitis (the sinusitis resulted in acute left and right middle otitis) after a visit to the ER and 7 days of antibiotics. Relapsed for a couple of days, fighting off a bad sore throat, weakness and coughing. I do feel better now, but I’m noticing that I’m still having a lot of wheezing and coughing — could be the pollen, I guess?

This week has been spent with Tyler, Landon and Trent — Spring break. Fun times.. well, not so much at times.

Busy with designs.. whipping them out as fast as I can. Trying to keep up.. so far, so good.. I think.

A little sad. The family is selling my grandma and grandpa B’s house. So strange walking through there now. Different wall color.. different floors.. no furniture… nothing that connects that house to our family anymore.. the memories are still there of course. Going back there doesn’t feel “right” somehow. Life goes on though. You have to move on.

I’m going to take this entire weekend to get fully caught up. That’s my plan anyway. Whether or not I actually meet that goal.. guess we’ll see!

Weather has been rough today. Tornado watches, severe thunderstorm warnings… Ahh! My favorite time of year.

I must go. I’ll update better soon. And catch up with all of you. Promise!