Party hats out, now put them away

Get out your party hat, a small celebration is due: I finished rewiring the outlets in the downstairs hallway! I've been doing electrical work in the basement off-and-on for a few months now; the eventual outcome is that we'll have new wiring to the outlets in the main hallway and also the wiring and lights on the west side of the basement. In the course of the project, I've been sidetracked by the chicken coop, getting sick, the holidays, and more. It has been very slow, and it's not all done.

BUT the outlets in the main hallway are done! I re-wired and replaced three existing outlets, removed one outlet, and added three new outlets. <<Score!>> It was an incredibly tricky operation because I had to run wiring alongside a lot of current wiring, and work around the air ducts in the ceiling, and even go through a pair of studs on a blind corner. Nate was very helpful and drilled a half dozen holes for me.

Now I've moved on to the lighting, which is significantly trickier because of the switches. I am putting three new "can" (sometimes also called "bucket") lights in the utility room, a track light in one part of the hallway, and a pair of wall scones (lights) in the other part of the hallway. Independently, I think I could figure out how to wire each of these lights, but I'm not sure how to wire them all onto the same circuit, each to its own dedicated switch or pair of switches. It's going to be a learning experience! I expect to have one set of lights done next week, and if I keep up my current pace all of the lights should be done in a couple of weeks. Yay!


Now that we've celebrated the electrical accomplishments, put away your party hat. There's bad news, too: I didn't get a promotion.

Remember all that time I spent preparing and interviewing and agonizing? It's all over, and was all for naught. At least, that's how it feels right now. They offered the position to someone else. I'm disappointed, of course, but I'm also a little bit relieved. The new job would have been a mixed bag, with some blessings and some challenges. One of the advantages of my current position is that it is very low-key and flexible, so I can pretty much drop what I'm doing at any time if an emergency comes up.

When I shared the unfortunate news with Nate, he expressed some frustrations with his work situation, too. We both feel it's time to start doing something else with our lives. I don't really know exactly what that means or what it will look like, but we both feel a little bit stuck, like we're in a rut. For me, part of the change is going to be doing more creative writing and publishing some of my work. Nate supports my dream and will help me work towards it.


In fact, to that end, you could actually get out your party hat again! This morning, after showers and breakfast, Nate and the toddler went out to visit my PILs and I got to spend a couple of hours doing some creative writing. At first it was slow; I spent some time just laying on the floor and trying to get my brain in the right place. (The creative parts of the brain become more active when you lay down. I'm not kidding, that's totally a real thing and you can look it up!) When the mental juices were finally flowing, I sat down at my computer and started typing. And typing and typing.

By the time my family came home, I had seven pages and whopping 2,500 words written on the outline of a new story. It was every scene I'd developed during the last month, when I've been silently plotting and scheming during my showers, bike rides, and other rare moments alone. In fact, I hadn't even finished all of my thoughts when the family got back. I had to ask for five more minutes so I could put down the final two paragraphs.

Oh man, I can't even begin to describe how good it felt to do all of that writing. It gave me a high for most of the day. All I've wanted to do is just sit down and write more. More, more, more. Add details to the scenes, add the little snippets of dialog floating in my head, add background details. I haven't been this excited about a writing project in a long time. Let's hope I can continue to find time for it and keep up my momentum!


While your party hat is still on, let's celebrate a couple of Nate's accomplishments from the last couple of weeks. Last weekend, he finished building a little folding table a chair for our daughter to use in the kitchen. The table folds down from one of the cabinets; we came up with the table design ourselves, customizing it to fit the space. I got the chair "bluepring" plans from an awesome DIY furniture maker, Ana White.

I'm going to tangent for a moment and gush about Ana: If you haven't heard of her, you should check out her website. She has hundreds of free furniture plans on her site for chairs, bed frames, dressers, shelves, garden boxes, stools, benches, desks, tables, doll houses... anything and everything. It's amazing. And her plans are all very simple, very clear, with lots of step-by-step pictures. From what I've seen, they are really do-able even with very minimal tools. (Amy, if you're reading this post, I'm thinking specifically about you -- you'd love her site!) I want to make so, so many of the things on Ana's site. Hopefully someday, after some of these other major house projects are done, I will have a little more time for some fun furniture building.

Anyway, back to Nate... We made one augmentation to the chair design, which is that we shortened the legs by three inches. The chair is a "kid" chair and our daughter is just barely a toddler, so it would have been too tall for her. The amazing and totally unplanned thing about the chair and the table is that the fold up snugly together. Do you see the picture, how neatly the chair fits between the table legs when the table is folded? WE DID NOT PLAN THAT! We didn't even measure, didn't think about how the chair would be stored when the table was folded; we did not plan it, and yet the chair is exactly, I mean exactly, the same width as the gap between the table legs. Truly amazing.

Obviously the chair isn't "finished" yet. I'm actually not sure how to finish it. At first I thought I would just paint it. But then Nate bought some decent wood to make the chair, so I could actually stain it. Either way I think I will sew a little pad for the seat, just to do something cute and colorful and soft for my kids' tushy. Do you have any thoughts on the chair -- paint or stain? What color? I'm terrible at figuring out these kinds of things.


Nate's other big accomplishment from this week is that he took the GRE on Friday. That's the Graduate Requirements Exam, the test you have to take if you want to go to graduate school. Nate has been saying for probably six years now that he'd like to go back to school and get a Master's degree. I don't know if it's actually ever going to happen, but I'm very proud of him for the months of intense studying and having the courage to take the test. It was very hard for him, but he did it. Yay Nate!


I feel like there's something I'm forgetting to blog about, but since I can't think of what it might be, I'm just going to share some cute pictures of the kiddo...

A very color-coordinated breakfast:

One of many accidentally captured, totally random and hilarious facial expressions:

Jaunty little hat:

 On New Year's Day, on a swing for the first time:

Her true feelings about this experience (it was icy cold and dad was pushing waaaaay too fast):

Diaper head, teehee (I swear she did this on her own):

Random breakfast shot (she loves honey yogurt):

She folds her arms and has been for a little while now; you have to say "Please fold your arms" or "We're going to say a prayer now" and she will do it; she's especially good about it at mealtimes:

Possibly she was saying "uh-oh" or just "Ohhhhhoooooo" but either way, cute (and also, I LOVE these boots):