Little Sicky

Henri is one of my best buddies. He gave everyone quite a scare recently when he quit eating. First we thought he was in kidney failure. Then we thought might have pancreatic cancer. This week we got his test results back, and he has neither. Hooray! We've all been so worried (even Ryan) but my mom especially.

When I had my wisdom teeth out, I came home in tears. My teeth hurt something awful, but I also felt sick to my stomach. I do NOT like to vomit. My mom made me a sick bed on the couch and Henri came over to check on me. He put his nose close to mine and just stood next to me until I quit crying. He was a very good nurse.

More recently . . . my mom has a gas oven that managed to catch fire due to some rogue, dripping monkey bread. Henri was so upset! We were trying to put the fire out without ruining the bread (my mom was hosting brunch and the guests were due to arrive any minute!), and Henri kept herding us away. It was like he was guarding the fire, trying to keep us from it. Obviously that wasn't a true emergency. The fire was small and basically contained. But Henri didn't know that, and he acted very bravely!

Anyway, we know Henri is getting older and won't live forever. We're just glad to have him around for as long as we can keep him.

Speaking of Being Nosy

Did I ever tell you about the guy from church that worries Ryan? If so I hope somebody will tell me. Well, Ryan often trims his beard on Sundays. I don't really pay much attention to it because, well, it's still a beard. We're talking millimeters of difference, people. One Sunday Ryan's special friend came up to say hi to me (Ryan was elsewhere at the moment). He said hello and then, "I noticed Ryan trimmed his beard." I said he had. We looked at each other awkwardly and he walked off. This was probably a year ago, and it still makes me giggle. Why did he notice that? And why did he feel the need to comment on it?

On a totally unrelated note, I finally found my bathroom remodel post. Apparently I posted it to March of 2010. Nice.

Our Nosy Neighbor Netta

Her name isn't Netta. But since I don't have her permission, I feel the need to protect her privacy. Not that she ever shows us the same courtesy. I have a feeling I will have more stories to share about Netta. For now, here is the conversation today:

Me: Hi, Netta! Isn't this weather beautiful?
Netta: It's a little chilly. I saw you and your husband walking to the greenbelt.
Me: Oh?
Netta: Yes, I saw you were going to go play ball.

I should probably explain that Netta lives two doors down, so the only way she would see us going the opposite direction is if she had her face glued to the window watching the neighborhood. I guess I'll share another Netta moment from when we first moved here.

Netta: I noticed you don't have a hedge trimmer.
[What?! Who notices that you don't have a hedge trimmer?? Was she inspecting our freshly mowed lawn and noticed the ends weren't very tidy?]
Ryan: Well, no, we don't. This is our first house and we barely bought the lawn mower.
Netta: I still have the one my husband left me when he died.
Ryan: Okay?
Netta: I'll sell it to you for $40.

As well as being nosy, she is also quite the saleswoman.

My Teenage Skin

My fellow blogger Nathan mentioned an encounter with adult acne. Well, technically, he mentioned one major zit, but I do love hyperbole. After all of the tinkering with my hormones, I got hit hard with adult acne of my own. My skin is always prone to stress break outs, but this was ridiculous. The good news is that it's under control. For now.

I made a remark to a friend (who may or may not be a few generations my senior) about how I still have "teenage skin." She sighed dramatically and responded with, "Oh, you are so lucky!" What? Lucky? I admit, I'm not quite in the wrinkle stage of skin, so maybe I just don't appreciate what I have. However, who would want teenage skin? I still buy Clean-and-Clear acne-fighting face wash and dab benzyl-peroxide on my blackheads at night. I can't even put lotion on my t-zone without a violent break-out. Don't we really want children skin? Skin with no wrinkles or pimples? Now that sounds pretty good to me.

Other People's Kids

Because, well, because I think the fates are conspiring against me, I've been substituting the little ones at church. Like, the 3-5 range. It is both the cutest and most difficult age. Last week everyone was especially wound up (spring break rubbing off from the older kids, maybe?). I came home from church utterly exhausted, but had one sweet little moment.

We were trying to form a line in the hallway while waiting for the class to finish their business on the potty. The High Priests (=oldest men at church) happened to pass by. One especially precocious little guy got really excited. His eyes lit up and he quickly tugged on my arm. "Teacher!" he said. "I just saw a prophet!" Since we were just studying prophets, I am going to assume it means he was listening.

On a serious note, our stake patriarch is in our ward and was part of the group that passed us. He is the epitome of a kind, gentle, Christian man; he does have a kind of reverence about him. Even though I laughed, literally, out loud when the kid said it, maybe it wasn't a completely ridiculous comment. I think his sweet spirit did pick up on something special.

More Improvement Projects

Okay, I need to say upfront that I'm posting this for googlers, not my usual readers. See, we had home improvement trouble (of the we're-cheap-and-love-Ikea -and-end-up-with-cheap-products-with-lousy-instructions kind) and google became my second best friend in trying to figure things out. I hope this can be a good reference from anyone out there googling the same problems. Regular readers, well, you'll probably want to skip this post.

Ryan wanted to revamp his "office" before starting grad school. We went to Ikea and bought a new desk and bookshelf and a few accessories. The bookshelf was so super simple. The Jonas desk posed a few problems. Oh, assembling it was no problem. Even though he picked out one with a snazzy pull out work table (he's very excited about that part).

The first problem was that it didn't have a grommet to pull the computer cords through. In case you're like me and don't know what a grommet is, it's the hole in most desks toward the back. You can feed your computer monitor cord, keyboard cord, etc. up from underneath where the outlets are. Anyway, we found a grommet drill attachment also at Ikea. The directions were very vague, but I found these links helpful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKFP2Fu-vtE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th2QgSLSO-k

Thank you Expert Village and ehow.com. I should add, the desk is not solid wood. It has thick particle board framework and then honeycombing throughout the rest. Once I got through the outside layer of particle board, I had to pull out some of the honeycombing by hand. Oh, and definitely use painters tape on the top side; it helped tremendously in preventing the "wood" from splitting around the edges. Overall it was a great little drill attachment and the final product was what we hoped it would be.

The real problem came with the summera pull-out keyboard shelf. It did NOT do well with the particle board/honeycomb combination. I meticulously measured and remeasured where to drill the holes to attach the shelf. I inserted the wall anchors included in the set. After assembling the desk, I attached the keyboard. By the end of the night, the back anchors had failed. Apparently the honeycombing isn't ideal. After some panicky googling, we found we weren't alone.

We figured the front two anchors were in the particle board and thus safe. So the next morning I made a trip to Home Depot and picked up some molly bolts. I dismantled the halfway-hanging out anchors in back, and replaced them with the molly bolts. Within hours I found Ryan working on his desk top with the keyboard hanging in front where the front anchors failed. I could've thrown something.

I'll skip the embarrassing details, but I had one more failure when I found out I'd installed all of the molly bolts upside-down. Rendering them useless. Especially stupid since I know better and was just rushing to finish. Don't be like me. It cost me another trip to Home Depot and another set of molly bolts because one remained lodged inside the desk.

Finally, it has been up for almost 48 hours now without incident. Hooray! I hope some of the above links can help other people with their Ikea woes. I REALLY recommend anybody with a summera keyboard to go straight for the molly bolts. And put them on the right direction. :) It will save you loads of time and a few tears (if you're a hormonal woman who almost bashed open a jar of salsa on the counter in anger when you couldn't get the lid to open). Good luck!

Happy Green Day!

Did you do anything special today? For some reason I got really into our St. Paddy's day meal. We had roast (sorry! no corned beef at my table! I heard it's not traditional anyway), glorified cabbage, colcannon, and grasshopper pie! In all of the excitement of the food, I forgot to wear green. Oops. Luckily nobody at the doctor's office or Home Depot was bold enough to pinch me. Even Ryan wore green!

Some Changes Around the House

I finally got around to posting pictures of our newly (somewhat) remodeled bathroom, and now the post is gone. I don't know what happened to it, so I guess I'll just start over. I'm too tired to rewrite the whole post. Instead you just get the before and after shots:

We think it's much improved. It's easier to clean and of course it now has a bathtub. The toilet is much smaller, which is good if you've got short legs like me. And I do have short legs like me.

After taking down the Christmas decorations this year, the house look even emptier than usual. I've been adding little odds and ends to brighten it up. Anyway, I LOVE this sign my sister-in-law gave me:

It says "this kitchen is seasoned with love." It's perfect. I knew just where to put it.

I also decided to build some shelves near the kitchen. I needed more room for my books but also thought the space needed a little something. I'm still scared we may come home one day to a horrible mess of collapsed shelves, but they've been up for two months now without incident.

Ignoring the poor photography skills (like leaving the fan lights on), I think it adds a lot to that wall. I may put a plant or vase on the ground below, but I still like it better than before.

Something More Positive

Hopefully none of you were overly worried about my little rant yesterday. Things did look brighter in the morning and my day has been infinitely better (probably because I'm not acting like a whiny crank). I did get another attorney bill about my dad's estate and just sent off a nasty email explaining why I refuse to throw more money into that pit. Now I'm feeling prickly again and thought I'd share something nice to help me adjust the attitude. We're discussing The Screwtape Letters at book club tonight and was really moved by a passage. In case you haven't read the book, it's written from the point of view of Screwtape, one of Satan's minions, so the Enemy is actually God.

"Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

I love the last part about feeling utterly alone and without God's light but still doing the right thing. That's the kind of faith I would like to have 100% of the time. I think I'm at about 3.6% now--long way to go.

Those Days

You know those days? Where . . .

• You find out your hard drive is dying and cannot be cured.
• You're in charge of book club tomorrow, and your friend hasn't returned your book.
• When you got your battery replaced your clock and radio were reset to factory defaults.
• You're watching BYU's basketball team die an even more painful death than your hard drive.
• There are rumors the football team is facing suspensions too.
• You can't figure out why people can't keep their pants on.
• The husband is working crazy hours and you can't imagine what it's going to be like once grad school starts.
• You're starting to get that pre-I'm-going-out-town anxiety.
• You realize that while a grand ol' pity party may seem like a great idea, it really isn't.

Honestly, everything I'm whining about is soooo trivial. It just won't matter in a week or two. This is going to sound awfully juvenile, but I have really been excited about basketball this year. Life is filled with so much garbage it's so nice to see that something's going right. Maybe somebody is trying to remind me that there are more important things to focus on than my hard drive, book club, and sports. As my mom always says, "Things will look brighter in the morning!" They usually do