The Joy Is in the Living

As Christmas approaches, I feel the urge to write...especially because a friend told me the other day that she misses reading these updates. I apologize, dear reader, for not posting here more often in the past few months. I have been responding to the siren's call of Facebook and using it to update so many people about our day-to-day lives, even though not everyone is on Facebook very often.

So, here's a brief (let's not kid ourselves--it's as brief as I can make anything) summary of our year:

Mike began a contract in November 2010 at Ball Corporation, and in May of 2011, they hired him full time. He, the new man on the team, was going to be relegated to working a lot of overtime while everyone went on vacation in the summer. That never let up. Since about July or August, he has been working 60- to 84-hour work "weeks." Understandably, much of the responsibility for the gardening and care of the house fell to me.

In the spring, a lovely neighborhood dog showed up at our house and seemed to adopt us. We loved her greatly and renamed her Princess from Snowball, because she really was a princess. She kept us company and brought us much joy throughout the summer. Around the beginning or middle of August, she showed up a little injured one day. Then she disappeared.

In July, we learned I was pregnant again. We were cautiously optimistic, but we didn't want to tell anyone until we made it out of the first trimester. In August, we lost that baby, as well. I was about 6 weeks pregnant. The good news was that the miscarriage went much more swiftly and effectively than the first. I still had to go to the ER because I lost so much blood, but it was over very quickly and I suffered no more than the "normal" ill effects of a miscarriage--almost all emotional, and only a few cramps physically. Overall, we were sad but hopeful. It took us less than two years to get pregnant this time, whereas it had taken us three or more years the first time, and this pregnancy progressed further, and we had a lot of emotional and physical support this time, in the form of very good friends, Becca Sparks Lowry, Christina James Chase, Dana Fischer Welborn, and Jill Bastian Truax chief among them.

In the late summer/early fall, Sir George, our older kitty, began to decline healthwise. I made an appointment to have him put to sleep, but either I waited too late or he decided he preferred to pass on at home. Becca was with me via text, and Tina was with me through the day. Both provided tremendous emotional support. George passed away at the ripe old age of 18. It wasn't as peaceful a death as I would have hoped for, but he died at home, with me right by his side. I was incredibly honored to be with him in his last few hours. I know, he was only a cat, but to share a natural death with another being you love is truly touching. George is "planted"--for whatever reason, that day, when I talked about trying to bury him, all I could say was "plant," go figure--in our front yard, under the maple tree and next to the boxwoods lining our driveway.

A very short time later, because Maury seemed to be very much missing George's company, we adopted Cali, a real sweetheart of a kitty. We were told she was a little more than a year old, but she is still very much a kitten, though she had already had a litter of kittens before we adopted her. She was not very keen on Maury at first, doing a lot of hissing and spitting and growling, but with patience and calm, he soon won her over. Within two weeks, they were almost as good of friends as Maury and George.

Our garden gave some good harvests this year, despite its neglect. Through the summer, we were on a night shift, so we didn't have long each day to really tend it. Even now, only three days from Christmas, we haven't removed the stakes or fencing from our garden, because we have so little time. In addition, this was the busiest summer *I* have ever had for my freelance work, and even though I had a full crew of people helping me, we were still swamped at maximum capacity with slow turnaround times for most of the summer...the summer I had wanted to use to go slowly so I could care for the house and garden while my husband worked insane amounts of overtime.

So, you ask, why aren't I mentioning my husband more? Well, because I barely see him. The only things I really know about him since August are that he is perpetually exhausted, he's trying to fix his Montero single-handedly, and he has a blood elf paladin that has partnered with my blood elf priest for the past two weekends in the world of Kalimdor while he has been too exhausted to do anything but sit in front of a computer and I've been too tired to care, as I'm in the first trimester of my third pregnancy.

We've shared the news of the pregnancy this time. Not telling most people last time turned out to be a little too emotionally stressful for me, especially trying to work out getting to doctor appointments and the like with Mike's very limited free time. Plus, I believe strongly in the power of prayer and positive thoughts and know that when two people get together to pool their "spiritual resources," they create benefits greater than two working individually. So, I'm telling anyone and everyone and unabashedly asking for prayers, energies, positive thoughts, whatever, to keep this pregnancy going in the right direction. So far, it seems to be working well. I've had some spotting in this pregnancy, as I did in both the others. The thing is, we don't know if the spotting in those other pregnancies were precursors to my miscarriage or if it's just normal for me to spot. With all the prayers and positive thoughts for us, however, the spotting has been minimal this time and has tapered away. Now, if it appears, it's once, maybe twice, a day, right before bedtime and right when I get up in the morning. I'm amazingly calm this time around. Even though I have yet to find an OB. Even though I have a history of miscarriage. Even though hormones are doing their damnedest to make me anxious. It's partly because I know that if I'm going to miscarry in the first trimester, there's not much I can do about it, so I take the best care of myself that I can, getting plenty of sleep, not overexerting myself, but still staying active, and eating the best I can with random nausea spikes and food aversions. With every new "pregnancy woe," as one of my friends called them, I cheer. I smile. And I share. And my friends on Facebook cheer with me. And smile with me. And offer words of encouragement. And so that's another reason I'm amazingly calm--because I know that, no matter what happens, I have amazing friends and family supporting me, cheering with me, crying with me. And that makes a HUGE difference.

I just keep hoping and praying for the best and telling the baby that he or she is very, very loved and will be fortunate to be born into such a loving circle. In addition, the baby will have a grandpa (we haven't yet worked out if he wants to be Pappaw, Grandpa, Gramps, Geezer, etc.) with a new lease on life. My dad had bariatric surgery not long after our miscarriage in August. My mother tells me I won't recognize him, as he's lost more than 100 pounds. I'm looking forward to seeing him tomorrow to see him at the lightest I've ever seen him. Hell, he might even be lighter than me now...I have no idea!


We miss Mike's friends and family in Oregon, but our friends have really stepped up to help lighten the sadness a bit this year. Though we didn't get to travel to share Thanksgiving with my parents or his, and though none of our family members could share that holiday with us, we did get to host Becca and her husband, Shaun, and we had a great day.

And so, as Chanukkah has begun, people all over the world are celebrating Yule, and Christmas approaches, we are happy and hopeful. Mike is researching options for starting his own business. He's also trying to study so he can take a test for another certification. And he's enduring the incredibly long hours at work, getting whatever experience he can as he sorts out when he will leave if he wants to leave, and what he will do when he leaves. He's got two (nonconsecutive) weeks of vacation coming to him in May if he's still at Ball then--the first vacation he will have ever received. That's right, EVER. Since leaving grad school, he's been unemployed or employed in seasonal jobs or working as a contractor and in jobs that don't award vacations or that give vacations only after a full year of employment. So, May is when we have our sights set on him taking more than two days off. He may be taking a week-long certification class, but who knows?

2011 has been a challenge for us, but it has also been rewarding. We've had sorrow, and we've had joy. And I'm sure we have more of both to come, but we look to 2012 [even the coming return of Nibiru/release of Becca 2.0/end of the Mayan calendar/shift of the magnetic poles/return of Cthulu/galactic alignment/return of Jesus/Armageddon/cosmic shift in consciousness/zombie apocalypse (well, *I* can never look forward to a zombie apocalypse. We all know my fear.)] with hope. It's the only thing that keeps us going--aside from each other...and all of you.

So, to all of you, I wish you the happiest of whatever holidays you are celebrating, and the rosiest of new years. Thank you for being there for us, and for loving us. We appreciate all you do for us.

* Stringham high: Life is beautiful.
* Stringham low: Separation from loved ones for far too long.
* Stringham super-high: Our blessings, including loved ones, are too numerous to count!

(Remember that if you view the post on my blog, the title links to a video specially chosen for the day.)

State's Unemployed Worker Total Increases by 1

M called me as I was leaving work yesterday to tell me that, yet again, he will be unemployed. At the end of next week (February 27), he will be (for the 3rd time since July) "let go" by his company. Once again, his boss is considering going directly to the president of the company to plead for M. After all, he's really the only one working on a couple of extremely important projects, and definitely the only one who knows what's going on in every top-secret and high-importance project they have.

Yes, of course, he's bummed, but we have a plan. So long as the state's unemployment funds hold out, with our current budget, we still should be able to pay all the bills. But we're still going to scale back in a couple of places. We have been preparing for this since last fall, buying dried beans and nuts and canned goods and rice, etc. So we may not be able to eat as healthily as I would like/need to lose weight, but surviving is far more important, and I'll just switch diet tactics.

Not that it's all about me. Oh, no. M is handling it far better than I expected, though part of it is that he hides more from me now, I'm sure. And, hey, this is the third time in 8 months, as I mentioned earlier. By now, this is getting to be old hat for him. :) At least this time, he has warning...

We're getting our taxes done this weekend, and then we plan to order our seeds and plants so we can further cut our grocery bill (one of the very expenditures we have any control over) this spring, summer, and fall. And then we'll be setting up an appointment for our geothermal heat pump to be installed for the end of next month. (Click the title of this post for more information.) Yes, a big expenditure, but oh! how much money it will save us! (Our propane was filled yesterday for the 4th time since October...$300-600+ per fill. Sheesh.)

And a few years ago, we discovered the joy of the crockpot. We mentioned to M's mom that we liked using it, and she got us a FABULOUS crockpot cookbook. We have now nearly exhausted the recipes in it. So I ordered 4 more on Half.com (possibly the best book-lover's website out there). We have three of them. I'm excited!

Is it sad that I get so excited about a garden and crockpot recipes? I don't think so. It's better than getting all worked up about, say, the results of a football game that doesn't impact my life at all....

And I got a book today about eating properly to increase chances of fertility. It may be an utter crock, but from what I saw when skimming it today, it seems well-balanced, a load of practical information and tips, and far more credible than things like Atkins or South Beach. So what the hell, I'll give it a try. (And it's meant for men OR women, so M can maybe now get rid of his "baby belly" and transfer it to me....)

That's our life in a nutshell at the mo'. Stay tuned for more.

* Stringham high: Geothermal heat pump. Woo!
* Stringham low: Unemployment. Bummer.
* Stringham super-high: The freelance work for Steph just keeps pouring in. And she just keeps sending it out to others because she's got so much. Oh, and the contractor came and fixed our roof last Friday afternoon...Damage on Wednesday, complain on Thursday, fixed on Friday. Damn, I like it here!

Windy Days and Bunnies Always Get Me Down

No, folks, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Since our trials at the beginning of the month with snow, it's been nice--warm weather, or cold but without show or ice. So I've been busy...catching up on hours at work mostly, and doing some urgent freelance work.

This morning is finally relatively quiet. M and Maurey are still asleep in the bedroom while I sit here on the sofa and George is in the picture window, watching the traffic and talking to the few song birds that have come out of hiding. (Either that, or he's complaining to the sun that he can see it, so a direct ray of light should be falling on him, damn it!)

"So why is she writing?" you ask. Because of the wind.

"The wind?"

Yes, the wind.

We had some lovely warm weather late last week and early this week, up in the high 40s and low 50s. It was fantastic. And on Wednesday, that warm front met up with a cold front, and boy, howdy! We had straightline winds measuring at 60-70 mph. Luckily, the trees withstood this time (probably because there were no leaves to act as sails and pull the trees surfing through the soil). But our roof didn't. Yep, right there, every place our roof had been injured in June, shingles were blown off or up, sticking up like the feathers of a bird that has been handled very roughly and then hit back and forth a couple of times by kids with badminton rackets.

M was pissed. He had taken pictures. So I sent the pictures to the contractor who had repaired our roof (still waiting for good-enough weather so he can fix our soffit, gutter, and siding over there) and explained that we wanted him to repair the damage and we didn't feel that we should pay, despite the abnormally high winds, because those shingles have been on for less than 4 months. He responded the next day by saying that the shingles we had were simply not rated for such high winds and that we would probably want to consider, when we have our roof replaced in a few years, using a higher-rated shingle.

But he is an upstanding member of the community, and he fixed them for us. Later that evening, when I got home, it was to find him climbing his ladder onto our roof. Turns out, he told M, that the problem wasn't that the shingles weren't rated highly enough but that they had been put on so late in the year that there hadn't been enough heat to activate the adhesive on them to make them stick to the roof. (Okay, I'll admit, I thought There's ADHESIVE on shingles? Who knew?)

* Stringham high: We had a good Valentine's Day. We slept in, partook of some nookie, went to the roller derby [at halftime, they were auctioning away busts--no, not heads, plaster casts of the players' BUSTS--so we saw some art (boobs)], had some junk food (mmm, fat-, crack-, and sodium-based fries and burgers!) on the way home from roller derby, and shared a bottle of wine while playing Rayman's Raving Rabbids (BWAAAAAAAAAA!) until 2 AM.

* Stringham low: We had a real winner of a genius sitting behind us. Real smart in very stupid way. And he had to anounce every thought that stumbled through his head (and directly to his mouth) VERY loudly--and one of his daughters (the one sitting just at my left ear) was turning out to be exactly like him...my hearing will never be the same again. (But he was a great dad to the three young daughters he had with him.)

* Stringham super-high: M feels he had found his place in this world last night. We got to the derby and picked our seats in the stands, and within a few minutes, he had a redhead sitting directly behind him, one just on his right, and another (me) on his left. He even got some brushes on his arm from the sizeable bust of the redhead on his right (when they're that large and the stands are as crowded as they were, it was unavoidable). He was one happy man. I think a redhead in front of him (plenty walked by, but none sat down and stayed) would have simply made him...explode...from happiness.

Oh, Woe Is Snow!

I diligently went out on Thursday evening and dug out the area in front of my garage door, and some of the driveway, too. At the end, I was still suspicious that the snow between the treads that M's SUVhad left was too high for my car to traverse, but I thought it was good enough that I would at least be able to give it a go for work on Friday morning.

Friday morning came, and I got up as usual. I checked outside and saw something from a nightmare--the snow was back! Everything that I had so diligently cleared the evening before had been filled back in by the wind overnight! There it was, mocking me--I saw a very slight indentation that indicated the areas I had shoveled and shoveled and shoveled to clear, but that was the only hint that I had ever been outside the night before. Even my footprints had been filled in. The snow I had piled up from shoveling was still piled up, though, so this drifted snow must have come from the roof and the yard and the fields. So yet again, no driving to work for me. I drove M to work in his SUV and then went to get groceries and a second snow shovel (I have never seen Walmart's parking lot so empty) before slogging home again to freelance. (Hey, we have to pay the bills somehow, and if I couldn't drive to work, I was still going to make the best of it.)

Yesterday, the sun was out, the temperature was in the high 20s, and the wind was mild, so M and I again went outside to clear. This time, I spent 3 hours outside (M was with me for about 2 of it) and cleared the area in front of my garage door alone and about half the driveway with M's help. Finally, we were sweaty and exhausted and couldn't stand without falling over, so M treated the remaining snow and slush with salt. We had cleared enough snow away that by the time we were finished, the sun had finished melting whatever we hadn't been able to clean up, so we were satisfied that we would be able to finish the rest today.

This morning, the thermometer read 36 degrees outside, so I thought shoveling would be a breeze, especially with the fantastic second snow shovel I had bought Friday, which had proved to be far more effective at clearing packed snow than our other shovel. Well, I was wrong. Things had melted just enough that I couldn't get much of a handle on things. Whereas yesterday, the snow had been packed tightly enough that one or two good shoves of the shovel would break up iceberg-sized pieces, this morning, every shove or scoop attempt I made seemed to simply pack the slush together more tightly. This was not going to do.

Finally, I told M that we should test it. No use exhausting ourselves if my car could get out, after all, because that was the point of this little exercise. So I pulled my car out of the garage and drove down the driveway. I slid a little in the slush, but no problem there. Ah, but when it came time to pull out of the driveway, it took a very long time to get enough traction to pull out. That isn't a problem, of course, at an intersection, say, at a stoplight, where everyone can see you sliding a bit, or on a nice long flat stretch of road. But our driveway, of course, is at the top of a hump that most people can't see the top of in time to slow down because they drive far too fast and don't expect the driveway. So pulling out of our driveway in the best conditions is always a little risky, even when you can go from 0 to 60 in only a couple of seconds.

Anyway, I drove down the road, turned around, and put my car into low before turning in to the drive. I made it halfway up the initial incline and then spun my tires feebly. I was going nowhere. But maybe, I reasoned, I could use the same process that had gotten me back into the garage on Thursday afternoon. So I backed up a little and then pulled forward again. *grumble* Just more useless tire spinning. I tried the process again. This time, I fishtailed a little, but nothing productive. M signaled for me to stop after I reversed once again, and he started shoveling the tracks out. Turns out that I was losing traction right where he had stopped spreading salt the night before.

So he started digging out that area, up to the top of the drive's incline, and I started digging out the area next to the road, in all the crap that had been piled up by the state snowplows and had since been very slowly thinned by M's efforts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday but that had still managed to suck my car tires firmly down, like a suckling infant on a mother's breast.

Finally, M believed he had the top of the incline cleared and told me to try it again.

Woohoo!

I parked my car back in the garage, and we finished clearing out the tracks on the incline (we're letting the stuff in the middle melt on its own now that my car's undercarriage can clear it) and the rest of the crap at the bottom of the drive onto the road.

Now I am no longer prisoner on my own property. Not that that's a bad thing, of course, if I had vacation days and didn't HAVE to make it to work to make a living (I ran out of freelance work on Friday afternoon)...

Lucky me, I get to go back to work tomorrow. It will be a bittersweet return, however, with three days' worth of work piled up for me and a fellow employee, whom I was beginning to count as a close friend, let go on Friday (not because she was a bad worker--quite the contrary, she kicks some major ass!--but because her security clearance wasn't quite up to par for this particular branch of Federal service).

Stringham high: Woo! I can go back to work!

Stringham low: This storm required the use of an entire 5-gallon bucket of ice melt to get our driveway clear enough (but nowhere near completely clear) for my car to get out and back in.

Stringham super-high: Warm weather is making an appearance this week--in the 50s by next weekend!

18 October 2008

We're in the middle of winterizing and trying to get rid of the field mice.

Think we're fighting a losing battle. 2 cats, and they love playing with the mice but don't understand killing...

But we have those sonic repellers out in every room, so mostly, we just hear the scurrying in the attic and hear some scuffling in the garage/kitchen wall area.

We have traps out, but they don't seem to be as popular with this new bunch of mice as they were with the troop that was here when we moved in.

As to where they're getting in...

The aluminum siding is attached over the wood siding, but it's loose, so crawling vines get under there periodically.

There are burrows in the crawl space under our bedroom that we think may allow for it.

The basement is cinder block, and the openings from the basement into the crawl spaces are open cinder blocks

And the garage doors don't close all that tightly.

And we know that the previous group of mice liked to come through the garage and into the kitchen stove.

So, it's more a question of where they AREN'T getting in.

But we're getting things cleaned up and slowly getting them into shape, so we probably won't have as bad a problem next year.

But we're surrounded by corn fields, and the mice like to run into the houses when it's harvest season and they get chased out of the fields.

We had one drop from the ceiling a couple of weeks ago.

It did a swan dive from the top of my 6' curio cabinet into a vent.

We heard if for a couple of hours afterward in the ductwork, trying to find its way out.

So we're looking into getting some wire mesh that's made for ductwork.

And we're going to be insulating our ducts, so that'll help keep the little buggers out of there.

And during the winter, we're going to go room by room to find the holes in the walls and ceilings and such where they might be coming in, so we can plaster and caulk and such.

But right now, we're winterizing--covering the single-pane windows with plastic to keep our heat loss down, insulating the pipes and ductwork, tilling the garden under, washing the siding and cleaning the garage so we can park our cars in it again...

Work:
Work's pretty good. Busy as hell, but that's good. And my boss is trying to get me on as a full-time employee instead of just a contractor.

Hubby just finished putting the insulation on some windows, he's still working, too. And stressing about money.

So, you know, business as usual.

New windows:

We're going to get them eventually, but with the break in and storm damage, our money had to go other places.

We're hoping to replace the windows next year if we are both employed.

But first... We have to have some more roof work done, and we got locks put on the garage doors.

Fallen tree bits:
Plus, we had a guy come out and cut down one of the rotten trees.

The one that we thought was most likely to fall on the house.

We have 2 more of those to get down before the spring storms get here.