Moving Day

Al had me laughing last night. Back when the youngest (Ryan) moved out and had half his stuff gone and was coming back the next day for the rest, I was in there measuring and deciding where I wanted my computer etc. I even moved the rest of his stuff out into the hallway and was moving my stuff in. Ryan luckily didn't take it poorly and laughed when he saw how broken up I was over him moving out. :) He was moving in with the oldest son, Dave, so I knew he'd be safe and sound.

Well yesterday Al and I did pretty much the same thing. We were wandering about with a tape measure and paint chips and Josh was going Hey! Hey! I'm not gone yet!! He has stuff spread all over the house in piles of this and that. Really Tuesday can't come soon enough as far as the mess goes.

When Ryan did move out the first time he was only gone for a few months before David met Allison and they decided to get a place of their own. Ryan then moved home with us again. That's when Al built the third bedroom in the garage. Just when he was starting to say he was moving out to share an apartment with a guy from work, Josh decided to move home. They actually overlapped by a month with Josh sleeping in the trailer in the back yard. So here we are after 28 (almost) years of marriage and three sons, 33, 31 and 26 and we've really only lived alone the two of us for at most about 6 months. We are SO ready to have the house just to ourselves and to set our own routine without a care to whoever else is doing whatever.

This last week was fairly quiet at work and this coming week I only work 3 days as Monday is my normal day off and I get Friday as the stat and then I've asked for Saturday and then Sunday and Monday are my regular days off. We went and bought some of the paint from the livingroom. Here is what we have decided on. For the livingroom with the blonde or oak laminate we are going to do a wall in a dark burgandy called Deep Garnet. We plan on using the same trim for both the livingroom and kitchen called Canyon Cloud which is a bit of a creamy looking white. The other walls in the livingroom are going to be a pale pink called Brook Trout. In the kitchen again with the laminate same colour as the livingroom (although we are doing it at a later date) we are going to continue the dark wall but change to a colour called Painted Turtle which is a nice deep green, the rest of the walls in pale green called Pensive Sky and then same trim as livingroom. We have colours picked for the bathroom and computer room and ideas for the bedroom that we will get to when we can afford to continue on.

I think Al will start painting as soon as Josh gets his stuff moved out as it would be nice to have the painting done before we start on the floor. Then when Thursday night rolls around we can get the carpet up and ready for the next day and the floor. I have no idea how long it will take to do but it will sure be a relief to have it done.

I was very tired this week and was glad when the week was over. I have made a good stab at drinking more water. I take bottles of water to work and we have a water machine there. Jude and I have both been trying to drink more water so we have been marking our bottles each time we fill them. The machine keeps the water very cold so I find that in the warm weather I will drink it if it's cold. On Wednesday I managed to drink 4 bottles which are 2 cups each so that means I got 8 cups into me. That is seriously a new record for me! If I can get into the habit of doing that it will be very helpful in January. Lots of little pains and aches, hot flashes have been bad, night sweats are a major drag and many nights I get up and go stand on the back porch to cool down and then I stagger back to bed and back to sleep til the next go round. Yesterday we went to Home Depot and Walmart for a few things and then were going to head to get a few groceries and I just ran out of steam at Walmart and we came home. Al went out later alone and got the few things we needed at Safeway. Heartburn is my other problem this week. I know water gives me heartburn which sounds stupid but Dr. Erb did confirm that water gives you wicked heartburn.

A couple of years ago I stumbled onto a webpage about a little girl with cancer. She had just passed away but they were talking about her Caringbridge website and gave the link. I clicked on the link and found a huge big world of Caringbridge pages and stories. Some days with Hep C or any other chronic disease we sometimes have a tendency to feel sorry for ourselves. Boy you go and read some of these webpages and the stories behind them and you realize how lucky you are that the disease you have is considered chronic and not terminal. Most of the pages that I found are children's pages that have various forms of cancer. Caringbridge provides free webpages for people with life threatening illnesses so they can stay in touch with family and friends throughout treatment.

What happens is that the parents get to know other parents with children in treatment and they mention them on their webpage and give a link to a new child fighting cancer and so you find yourself going to that page as well. Before you know it you have a list a mile long of children you check on and sign the guestbooks for. One of the links that I found on a Caringbridge page was for an organization called 'Share the Love' What they would like you to do is adopt a child on the list. You then take on the responsibility of going to that child's website and signing the guestbook at least once a week to give that child and family some emotional support. I have adopted a little girl and go and sign her book. I really find this helps me as well as her in that it reminds me daily that life could be so much worse and that I'm so lucky to be as healthy as I am.

On one of the Caringbridge sites I go to I saw a link for a site called ChemoAngels. It is a site dedicated to providing angels to send cards and little gifts to people on chemo. I decided to become a card angel for a Canadian person on chemo as for me it works better. It is much easier to not have to go and figure out the postage for the States or the UK etc. A card angel is assigned a person on chemo and for the duration of their treatment I have taken on the responsibiltiy of sending a card and a note a couple of times a week to brighten their day and give them something to look forward to. I filled out my application last week and specified that I would like my patient to be a Canadian. It takes about 6 weeks to get it all in the works as they need to check out that you are who you say you are. They then take the time to make a good match with someone that may have the same interests as me. It gives me time to get a roll of stamps and get a good supply of cards made and/or bought so I'll be ready when I get my assignment. I'm really looking forward to getting started on this.

No music today. Josh is home and packing and I am going to lay out the bookkeeping from work all over the dining room table and make sure we are correct and up to date. Then a bit of housework. It is raining today and watering all the plants for me. The sun is supposed to be back tomorrow. I bought a Grace Smokebush (the picture at the top of the page is of a Smokebush that I found out on the net) at work on Saturday along with some little ornamental cedars to put out front. When we were at Walmart I got 4 pots of flowers to put between the cedars so it looks quite nice out there. We spend no time out the front so have a tendency to ignore that area except to cut the grass.