Earlier this week I got together with some friends from where I used to work to celebrate and honor another friend who was diagnosed with bone cancer earlier this year. She says this is not curable, only manageable for now and has already had a half-dozen chemo treatments. Sylvia is a wonderful person and I miss working with her. She has such a positive outlook given what she is faced with but thanks to the generosity of her friends and family, she will be taking that trip of a lifetime to Hawaii in January.

I hadn’t seen these people in three years (my fault) and that is a shame because I worked with a few of them for more than ten years. Some of the women I got to see were like sisters to me – with some I saw their children grow up, with some I was around when they married or when they were taking naps under their desk because they were SO pregnant with twins and SO tired (Jodi), and one who I had a falling out with (my fault) I didn’t even know was there so I didn’t apologize to her.

When I got in the car to leave and turned on the radio, I heard this:

we gotta start looking at the hands of time we’ve been given
If this is all we’ve got then we gotta start thinkin
If every second counts on a clock that’s ticking
Gotta live like we’re dying
We only got 86,400 seconds in a day to turn it all around or throw it all away…

How appropriate…

So during this season when we are supposed to give thanks, remember those friends you haven’t seen in a while – give them a call. Apologize to those you have wronged. Forgive those who have wronged you.

Live, Laugh, Love because you never know how much time you have

Thanks Sylvia for reminding me

The countertops will not get installed until after Thanksgiving so DH had to fabricate a countertop (plywood, very stylish)  and reinstall the old sink and the dishwasher this weekend. 

It is quite surprising how much I have come to rely on running water.  I tried pretending that I was camping for the last two weeks - even did some dishes in a dishpan leaning over the bathtub but I AIN’T gonna do it for three more weeks.

I’m so lame.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband…to distraction but we’ve recently started a kitchen remodel and it is straining things.  We both work so the remodeling is being done after work and 24/7 on the weekend.  This is how it started

First there’s the discussion: Him:”Maybe we should finally get rid of the 1950’s metal cabinets in the kitchen, wood cabinets would be more saleable when we sell the house..”

Me: I think so too, should we start looking at cabinet prices?

Then more discussion: Cabinets agreed on

Him: “No way am I going to pay over $1000 to have someone else install the cabinets, it’s not rocket science”.

ME: OK, where do we start?

The prep work: pull out the kitchen cabinets and install them in the garage; when we removed the sink base we discovered that there had been a leak at some time prior to our purchase of the house and the wallboard was disintigrating; moving the electrical outlet (for the disposal & DW) which was under the sink (not code); repair the walls after removing the tile backsplash; continue the tile floor all the way to the wall now that the cabinets are out; move the stove; plug the stove back in to make coffee; move the stove again; where can I plug in the microwave to make oatmeal; I’m really tiredof fast food – will I have a sink by the weekend cuz we are now eating off paper plates.

Discussion: Him: what do you want to do about the countertop? I’m thinking granite and an undermount sink.

Me: I like granite but it is probably pretty expensive…. (we’re getting granite).

Note: Discussion, in this instance, mostly means the hubby making statements and me agreeing. My job has mostly been driving to the local hardware store several times a day on the weekend to get things we need that we discovered we don’t have and priming the new walls…oh and staying out of the way because he HATES it when I watch him work…

Mom: I sent you an email with the coolest link to it, it’s a machine created at some college that makes the most amazing music, it took them something like 13000 hours to create it (here is the video)

Me: Yes, I’ve seen it, it’s really cool but it is a computer animation

Mom: no, that must be something else because I received it from someone in an email…

Me: I checked it out last year when you sent me the link, it is really cool, but it is digitized, you can look at the video and see it is computer animation (Snopes debunks it here)

Mom: but it was on the internet, why would they lie?

Me: hmmm

If you can survive a DIY kitchen remodel and all of the associated stress then you can survive anything!