love....

Another Valentine's Day come and gone...but love is still in the air.  Cheesy, I know.  It was a good day, but a nice evening for Tom and I together - our first since Sunday.

Tom's new job will soon rival my own, I think, for inconsistent scheduling.  He'll be attending meetings around the county, which aren't all scheduled during the day.  Now when I get home and put on my walking shoes and start walking towards him, I often turn around and walk myself home instead of walking until he passes by and offers me a ride home.  I could end up in Springer if I'm too patient!  Gratefully Tom was just late enough yesterday for me to get a nice roaring fire built for him, get in a half hour walk, and transfer all the house trim into the house. 

Yesterday morning our delivery arrived - building materials for the interior walls, some extra trim for the house, and the lap siding for the exterior of the house.  No small Valentine's gift to each other, as the price tag far exceeded a fancy dinner or three, but it means we've got what we need to keep going for a long while.  Tom, his tio, and Pop have also been conspiring about the electrical, planning out zones and making lists of needs.  Much to do still on the horizon!  As overwhelming as it can be, I still get so excited as it comes together.

We enjoyed a nice dinner - miso soup, crab rolls, and seared tuna on rice with a glass of white wine.  Tom picked a movie - a chic flick for me from our stash of VHS that we are slowly winding our way through.  For Mardi Gras I had dulce de leche ice cream over apple crisp for dinner and watched Up, Close, and Personal (another of the VHS).  Tom was inspired to choose Out of Africa - another Robert Redford film.  The movie started off okay, but somewhere into the first hour a fuzzy static got louder and louder, such that it was louder than the dialogue.  It was hard to listen with the static, but on we watched.  It was probably in the last forty minutes that I had the idea to turn on the closed captioning and turn down the volume.  What a difference it made in knowing what was being said - wished we'd done that sooner.  It seemed quite comical to realize only at the end of 161 minute movie that the one guy's name was Bror - to piece together foreign names that previously were too muffled to figure out. 

And what a sweetie my sweetie is - he gave me dark chocolate, which we shared on graham crackers (we gave up ice cream for Lent, and wouldn't have had any dessert otherwise).  And he gave me a couple of 1000 piece puzzles.  I don't think he realized how much I enjoy puzzles until I put a 500 piece puzzle together in one sitting last month.  Now I'll have to choose between reading or puzzling.

And so the circle of love continues...

Getting Discovered!

Evidently, this humble little blog chronicling the not-so-exciting lives of Tom and I have been discovered and is attracting a new readership.

This has always been intended to be an easy way to know what's going on in my world for family and friends who don't live nearby - which is nearly all of them, save for the lucky 10 who we wave to around town, walking the highway, or working outside. 

But a month ago I got my first comment from a stranger who stumbled upon our lives.

This stranger was the first of many.

These strangers are likely robotic hacks.  The comments have all been on a single post about "raising the roof" and range from trite comments about how easy it is to install propanel to warnings to be careful because it's heavy work.  Clearly these faux readers aren't really interested in our lives or the blood, sweat, and tears we are putting into building our own home because when clicking upon their names, which interestingly enough were all feminine, a new screen is opened to a roofing company from another state.  There was one from New Hampshire or somewhere up in the New England area.  One was from Florida, and another from Iowa.  I kind of stopped looking after that - just permanently deleted them and regretted the new fame.

Ah well....maybe when we start putting up the Hardie Panel that gets delivered next week, we'll attract a whole other audience.

January Progress...into February

January was a cold month for us in Miami.  On the eve of the new year, we found our last window for a bargain at a Habitat Restore in Denver, and with its installation in Janurary, we have a wonderful workspace with great light. 

January's inventory of housework may look a little light, but with our battles of the bugs (head cold, not infestation), windy weather, and other work to do, the list really isn't so bad.  Aside from installing our new window, Tom and Pop got the trim for the windows cut, and I gave them a quick coat of green paint to match our roof.  Pop and Andres came over on a Sunday afternoon to continue berming up dirt along the house where it has settled from snow melt off the roof.  We finished sheeting the walls of our cellar, and even affixed a handle on the door to pull it open from the inside.  The kitchen window - the little bay/garden window - now has a roof to keep the moisture out.  And we pulled up half the tarp over the floor and chalked in our first floor walls, not to mention all the sweeping and tidying to be able to pull the tarp and chalk the lines.

So it's already February, and to kick it all off, Tom and Pop hung window trim Saturday morning on six of our 25 windows.  Then, with great fanfare and whoop-whooping, we erected our first wall upstairs!!! 

This is the south wall of the master bathroom.

(The newest window is the one on the far right - it faces west.)

It was pretty awesome getting this wall up - one of few that doesn't have a door on it, so it was the easiest for me to start.  We have a lumber order in for delivery in the next week, plus the siding.  That means we will be able to work inside or outside, depending on the weather.  In the evenings we've been doing lots of strategizing about kitchens and closets and doodling different layouts of the bathrooms.  This part might make Tom crazy, though I am trying to tone it down.  We just keep chipping away at the to-do list, and I'll do my best to keep posting pictures of our progress.

Tom's other job, the ones that pays the bills - not the one that's putting a new roof over our head, has come to an end.  The last weeks were terribly stressful, as his colleagues fully realized all that they would have to do on their own.  It was mostly a seamless transition into a new job, still working for the county but up two flights of stairs from his old office.  He is now the Emergency Management Coordinator.  His fourth day on the job, he is busy and working longer hours as he gets settled.  There is a lot to sift through, and it has its own stresses, though he is a lot happier about what he is doing. 

Happy Birthday to Grandmas!

I hadn't given it much though before, I don't think, but my grandmas' birthdays are very close together.  My dad's mom's birthday and Tom's dad's mom's birthday are just a few days apart at the end of January.  And my mom's mom's birthday is today.  I never got to meet Tom's mom's mom. 

I have offered prayers up for them all in the last couple weeks.  Birthdays are usually such a great celebration of life, but of those who have gone before us, a birthday is another reminder of the hole they left in our lives when they passed on.

So cheers to our grandmas!  May we remember them well to each other and to the world by our loving!