we spent the whole weekend unpacking boxes that we haven’t touched since we moved a year ago. we figured that since we started unpacking the weekend after thanksgiving last year, we should try to finish up this thanksgiving weekend. we got pretty darn close, too! it is all out of boxes, (or sorted and repacked for safe long-term storage) but not everything has a home yet.
but the biggest accomplishment was getting our breezeway completely empty! if you have ever seen our entryway, you know how huge this is. if you haven’t, well, just know that it was bad. everything we didn’t want to deal with, or had to come in the house, or had to leave the house was in that room. it was so bad that i don’t even have a before picture. that would have meant admitting to what a nightmare it was.
so, since this is a picture-less post, check out these double-dutch puppies:
(abby and i are going to have to start working on this skill asap)
i love that the dog near the end is so excited to get in there that they have to hold her back!
thanks, laurie, for the link.
here i go again! it is national blog posting month 2007, and it seems i have signed up for the challenge again. one post every day for the whole month of november.
although it may be technically a bit easier this year to post (we didn’t have internet for much of november 2006), topics might be a bit harder to come up with. i had much more going on this time last year. moving twice in two months, both in and out of state, made for lots to say.
i may have to steal an idea like the one this blogger came up with to inspire each day’s post.
her categories are:
* Monday - Weekend Wrap-Up
* Tuesday - Listening, Reading, Surfing, Watching
* Wednesday - WIP of the Week
* Thursday - Favorite Things
* Friday - Free Day
* Saturday - Recipe of the Week
* Sunday - Photo of the Week
i’ll have to think about some categories over the weekend. do you have any category nominations? post them in the comments!
it’s ours! it’s all ours!
N10 was the exact garden plot that we were hoping to get at the community garden new-gardener sign ups on saturday. we weren’t too sure that we could snag the one we wanted once we saw that we were approximately 30th in line for the sign-ups - despite having arrived 15 minutes before they opened. who knew gardening on the grounds of the old psych hospital could be so popular?
here it is in all its glory:
(we have the left most half of the dirt rectangle containing the brussel sprouts.)
it was a good weekend filled with meeting new people, getting some fresh air and unpacking long-ignored moving boxes.
it has been a rough few months, and in some moments i really think it is only january. that there is no way that almost 3 months have passed since my last post.
my mom went into the hospital on december 24th, and with the exception of a rough 48 hours when she went home and then returned, she stayed at the fox chase cancer center until she was transferred to hospice where she passed away on march 5th. she had been battling cancer for 5 years.
i am not completely sure, but i would guess that since moving to MA in november i and/or we have driven back to new jersey almost every week (perhaps every 10 days?). at first we were traveling to tie up loose ends regarding our move, and after christmas it was to make sure that my mom had an advocate in the hospital in philly. i am lucky to have had the flexibility to be able to be there for test results and support and to build relationships with the hospital staff (who are amazing, by the way). all that driving has helped to make the 4 hour car ride seem less daunting and long than it had when we first moved, though it is still not fun. i will have to make the trip several times again soon, mostly to deal with my mom’s estate, but at least once to happily welcome the new addition.
it seems weird to post about this at all, but it felt weirder to think about just picking up and posting about random little life stuff again without acknowledging what happened.
i have a few pictures that i was thinking of posting but, of course, i seem to have left them in new jersey. after the next trip i will put them up, perhaps.
i feel like i should end with something moving, or in tribute, or insightful. i don’t think i have processed this all enough yet to do that. i still think, often, “hey, i should call mom and tell her that i saw…….oh, wait…… yeah. i can’t.”
p.s. at some point in the last few months the server that hosts all of our sites broke and ate all of my past blog posts, and then i managed to break the computer that had them backed up (don’t drop your laptop on a hospital floor). tom was able to tape and glue most of this site back together (thanks a bajillion!) but there are several pictures still missing. i am going to try to fix those, so if you get this by rss feed, i apologize in advance if the old posts show up as new when i add the pics back in.
sure, we have had a stove since we moved in, but we haven’t been able to use it because the previous owners had an electric stove (yuck). we thought it would be “no big deal” to get the system converted over to propane. ha! wrong. so wrong.
but we were patient and made due (and found many local tasty delivery and take-out options). we baked, and considered setting up some sort of system for cooking in the fireplace. we broke down and purchased an electric burner which helped us to survive for a month without fire, and also reaffirmed our strong dislike of electric heat cooking.
