(I have to add this in before I post this entry...this is a bathroom update that merged into a giant pity party...feel free to join me, or stop reading about halfway through!) :P
Okay, it's not much to see in photos...but in real life they are looking great! The top photo is our master bath, and the bottom photo is Carter's bathroom. Both bathrooms have all the tubs and backsplash in, the electrical and plumbing is all working and the walls are up. We stopped in to check it out around 6pm tonight and found Glen still hard at work getting ready to prep the walls for painting tomorrow! Woot!
Once the paint is on, then the lights go in and the new fan for the ceiling (the old ones were too loud), then comes the new floor and finally the new vanity, toilet, and mirror/medicine cabinet.
Slowly but surely...
The painters are coming next Monday and the whole house is getting painted. The kitchen too. Once the paint cures a day or two then the new appliances we got today are being delivered, and we can start the long process of actually moving our stuff in!
I am super excited for our new appliances! We got hooked up with this family owned place in Hayward (hence the Sonic stop...see below!). We were planning on getting all new appliances for the kitchen - fridge, stove, over the range microwave, and dishwasher. We figured our budget was good to cover a nice set, but we were planning on plain white appliances - one for costs, and two for fingerprint issues. We got a pretty decent deal on a 4 piece Frigidaire set in stainless steel though. Cool thing is, Frigidaire puts a non-scratch coating on their stainless...so a) it doesn't scratch, and b) no fingerprints! COOL! I'm sure it'll be a bit more upkeep on the fronts than plain white, but I much prefer the look. Excited!! :)
In other house news this weekend...I got sick. Sick from the new house! :(
I now have documented medical proof that cleaning is bad for me! haha!
I knew I felt off...my mouth felt weird on Friday morning, but I just put it off thinking it was nothing. By dinnertime I could tell under my tongue was swollen, but still didn't think much of it. It was worse by bedtime, and I was definitely trying not to panic, but I decided to sleep on it and see how it was in the morning. I could still breathe fine, but my whole mouth and tongue was swollen. Saturday morning I woke up and it was a hundred times worse! Scary! I could still breathe, so it wasn't emergency room worthy, but I decided to head over to the after hours clinic. (sidenote, I took Carter with me...more on this later)
I've been on a few meds lately, so I wondered it it was an allergic reaction. The doctor thought no, not to the meds. She started to grill me on what I'd eaten and done lately, and the *ding ding* went off as I said I was cleaning at our new house. "Were you around mold, or bleach??" Um...yes...bleach, and a lot of it! I'd been using it with a mask and with the windows open, but in an undiluted form. Apparently it's a pretty common allergy. Sigh...no more bleach for me!
So, we started off treatment with a puff of a steroid inhaler. Nothing. Continued on with a steroid shot. Nothing. Continued that with a shot of prednisone. Nothing. Followed that up with the classic EPI pen. Nope. I was getting stuck several times over...and I hate needles! Of course, my little Carter was was in the room, just playing with my cellphone and pretty oblivious to the whole thing. However, HE got rewarded with a sticker for being good each time they stuck me. Umm...how fair is that??! LOL. Anyways, I think they were pretty close to sending me across the street to the hospital for IV meds when finally I started to show some improvement. It was Sunday morning however before the real puffiness subsided. At any rate, I am supposed to go straight to emergency if this ever happens again...and sadly if it does, I might end up with an EPI pen of my very own one day...all thanks to cleaning.
Sigh! 2010 is not turning out as I'd hope. Here's my little pity party right at the bottom of this post. I'll vent it out into cyber space...
Last year this time (this very week actually) I was feeling terrible. Severe back pain, severe stomach pain and overall I was SICK. Now you see, there is something that you should know about me. If I am very sick, I can suck it up like no one can! I am a champion!! Heck, I was in premature labor, while on vacation for a week with Carter before I ended up in the emergency room. Know what? I was at a wedding a mere 24hrs later (Steve was the best man). When I need to be at the top of my game...I can do it! The flip side is, I freak out about little things. Like getting blood drawn, or a flu shot. I obsess over that stuff like crazy. Big stuff...no problem!
So, back to last year this time. I was in severe pain, but I kept sucking it up. Finally one night Steve took me to the emergency room. You know it's bad when they cart you straight in to your own private ER room and get a CT scan within a hour. I was sick! Truth is, I'd been sick for 6 months. I knew it...I tried to get help in Montreal and was told "it was all in my head". Well, what did I have? A ton of gianarmous gallstones that were traced back to my pregnancy. A problem that could have very simply been solved a year or so in advance with the quick and easy removal of the stones and/or the gallbladder. My gallbladder was so infected however, it caused my pancreas to hop in on the party and I had a severe case of pancreatis. That was so diseased that my entire intestinal system was a wreck...causing me to have an early onset attack of what is called diverticulitis. The dr told me the next morning that I was so badly damaged if I hadn't come in that night I might have died from the toxins in 48hrs. Yikes!
So...I spent two weeks in the hospital fighting the infection before I could actually get the gallbladder removed. To top that off, I was completely IV fed, and couldn't even drink water. You'd think - wow, the upside...weight loss! Nope, I gained 15lbs in water weight. Awesome!
Once I was out of the hospital, I spent more time retraining my digestive system to control the diverticulitis. I am very lucky in that I don't have an official diagnosis of this - it's just the start of what's to come. Therefore, my diet now consists of TONS of water, healthy fiber, and probiotics. If you have this disease, come to me...I know all about it.
To top it all off, my immune system didn't bounce back (as predicted) and I've had every last cold you can imagine since then. I also had a little dose of what my dr thinks was the H1N1 (but I can't complain, because mine really wasn't that bad). 2010 started off with my hadn developing severe tendonitis. Wonderful. Now it remains to be seen, but was pointed out to be likely that the massive doses of Levaquin I've had over the last year caused this..or at least contributed to this. Awesome. I just got over this, and tada...a lovely UTI infection (sorry if that's TMI). Now the bleach allergy. Oh yeah, and I stopped taking the UTI meds in case of allergies to that, so the UTI is back. Double awesome. Of yeah, and the meds for the tendonitis and the meds for the UTI didn't mix, so I had to go off those.
Yeah...I'm going crazy. (and with all these meds, I can't even have a drink! LOL)
The living room and up to the 2nd floor (and the doors...they look SOOO much better...they were several colors to begin with. LOL)
At the top of the stairs. Looking down to the bedrooms and bathrooms. The cupboards on the right are storage - they look much better clean and painted too!
Looking down on the living room and dining room.
Our room looking out over into the spare room.
This one is blurry, but I thought it showed a good look of the living room. Those walls were dark red and dark green before.
Standing in the kitchen looking into the family room. Cupboards used to be dark brown and family room was a light brownish before.
Overall, it's a big change, and definitely a clean look - what a great start! :)
Family Room off the kitchen
Steve enjoying his lime real fruit slush...
Steve making fun of Nancy - who came and ordered a peach iced tea one time. Come ON...over everything else on the menu. For shame! :P
They also had lots of great food and yes...even a roasted pig. This photo is a good example of why I'm 90% vegetarian...and why I don't ever eat Ham! YUCK! LOL
So, onto my IMHO (in my humble opinion) rant. Kids and parents who don't watch them. You know, you'd think in a room full of glassware, fire, and a recently roasted pig - who was still smoking away, people would watch their kids. There were kids running everywhere - mostly of the 8-10year old variety. My goodness, I was worried for them...with a side of great annoyance at their parents for just ditching them. You can see a gaggle of girls in the second photo. They were all pushing and shoving behind the poor glassblower all asking over and over again who was going to get the elephant. Personally, I hope none of them got it (we didn't stay to see!).
