Checking In

See, construction ends and the posts come to a dead stop. Sorry about that. Life has been VERY busy.

The new kitchen is great. There are minor quirks that we’re figuring out – but for the most part we are unpacked and back to normal. Today we ordered the barstools for the raised bar, as well as the protective runners for the stove and sink area to keep from getting grease or water spilled on the bamboo floors. The last thing to get in place are the shutters for the back windows – hopefully we can get those ordered and in place by Thanksgiving.

As for the quirks, they are small things. For instance, Denis realized this morning that he can’t just crack an egg in a frypan and throw the egg shell in the sink – the sink isn’t as close as it once was. So he’ll have to re-train his brain to put the eggs in a bowl and put the shells in the bowl until he’s done, and then take the bowl to the sink. Another quirk is that I keep forgetting that we have trash cans in the small island. I keep using the two we’ve had forever. So I’m trying to be more diligent about using those two new bins so that we can slowly phase out the other two over time.

Other than that, the kitchen is great. We love the big pantry, and were even able to reconfigure the laundry room because we didn’t need the storage cabinet in there anymore (it housed things like the blender). The pantry holds those things now, and so we opened up our front foyer by putting the shoe cubbies in the laundry room. It made more sense having them in there since that’s typically how we exit the house anyway – we rarely use the front door. My grandfather’s antique radio is now in our foyer.

In other news, my grandmother has fully settled into her new place and is starting to perk up. I try to go over every day after work – even if it’s just for 10-15 minutes. Sometimes I’ll stay longer, and other times I’ll just pick her up to bring her to our house to hang out for a while. Last week she had some major dental work done including getting a full upper plate denture. Before that she wasn’t quite herself because she was having teeth trouble and her partial upper plate just wouldn’t stay in place, making it difficult to talk and eat. Now that she has the new plate, I’ve told her that I’m requiring her to get out and socialize at her new development. She has met a few people and even made it to the church service held in the development’s gathering room this morning. She said she liked it although the speaker was “a bit wordy.” But they sang old hymns and she said the women she met were nice, and she plans to go again next week.

The past month or so Cootieboy has been selling popcorn for his annual Cub Scout popcorn drive, and we think he will make it into the Top 10 for the third year in a row. We’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t. He didn’t do as much door-to-door selling as he did last year, but I got a lot of sales at my office that I didn’t get last year which made up for that. In any event, we believe he earned more this year than he has previously which is why we’re reasonably confident he’ll make it into the Top 10 again this year.

This weekend we went camping with the Cub Scout pack and it was a good time. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. The only things that marred the weekend were the prevalence of daddy long legs EVERYWHERE and Denis got stung by a bee. Other than those two things, it was a pretty good time! Even The Girl had fun once she found her friend Kevin, who is in another pack but also participating in the camping weekend. She swears she only likes him as a friend, but considering her girly reaction when she finally found him (after looking for him ALL AFTERNOON), I’d say she’s in the midst of her first real boy crush. And given his reaction to her (and his friend’s determination to be an annoying instigator between the two (“Hey CG, Kevin wants to tell you something!” “Hey, CG – Kevin has something PERSONAL he wants to tell you!”), I’d say the feeling is mutual.