Beyond 30

I'm tired. I spend too much time doing things for other people, who don't show appreciation. I'm tired of having the same conversations over and over.

I want some pink cake. I bought 3 pink vases at a resale shop today.

I hate when technology screws up your bills and when you're family thinks you're rich simply because you have a higher income.  Who is looking out for me?

I love my peanut butter cookies from John. I am not sharing them.

I was having a good dream last night when I was awakend with yet more fire co situations to resolve. I think I'm creating action plans and am lacking the people to execute. I must be coming across as an enabler, because my 'executers' are still far too few.

Who reads this anymore anyway....Going to bed.

kathleensnyder at 11:39:07 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 1 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

Well, from the last entry to this - I've finished the cooking class and have tried several new recipes at home. I now have about 10 things I know how to cook faily well. I still don't get too excited about the idea of cooking - have to work on that one.

Updates:

Mom: Still progressing, but at a slow pace. She is alive and well, but spends much of her day in pain and napping. Docs can't seem to locate the source or cause of her back and leg pain. Only time will tell if this is how it will be from now on.

Dad: Had hip surgery before my wedding and that is still good. Recently had hernia surgery that did not. So both my parents are not working and bored at home (living separately as they are divorced).

Bless their spouses for being patient with them as caregivers in addition to chauffers and chefs.

Work: I never mentioned that I changed jobs in May. Still work for the same company just in a different dept. I'm salary now and have to work Mon-Fri; while Brian is still on the weekend schedule :(

Fire Dept: Brian and I had also been on dif duty crews from Feb 05 to the end of the year. We are now on the same crew for the year 2006. Maybe we'll catch some fire together.

That's all I can handle for now.....I should make a New Year's resolution to keep up the jounral....lol

kathleensnyder at 12:53:41 PM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

  Yay!  I made my first homemade strawberry jam in cooking class this past week. It was pretty easy. There is a lot of sugar in it!  Our teacher told us that the pectin is optional, so we all opted out of using it. However, even after several days of refrigeration - it is more like strawberry syrup. Oh well, that has been the exciting part of this class - I have learned well from the mistakes.   Mom - I'm bringing some with me when I come home. Betty - Do you like strawberry jam?  I'll bring some to AZ the next time we're out there or I will make some more with the pectin and bring it or we can make some together if you like! 

kathleensnyder at 7:14:10 PM EDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

When I was younger (living at home as a child), my mother always had a ton of plants in the house and I helped her care for them. She often planted outside as well and I didn't help with that so much due to my fear of bugs. I also was somewhat of a prissy child, in that, I did not like to get my hands dirty, especially by digging in the dirt for weeds. So, my recent urges to buy plants, rip out the bushes in front of our house and plant a plethora of flowering vegetation is a bit out of the ordinary for me.

Here is the company I ordered my plants from. My mom religiously buys these bulbs and swears by their quality.

http://brecks.com/default.asp?bhcd2=1112463988

 

kathleensnyder at 9:42:20 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

For those who actually read my journal, it sure doesn't take you long to see that I don't write often. Here is the quick synopsis of life since the last update.

Taking a cooking class from Jan 29-April. I will post some other entries with pics.

Finally scheduled a consult with my optometrist to get my eyes fixed, not with Lasik, but with Ortho-K - Gently Moulding. I'll post more on this.

Also finally rescheduled the dentist appointment that I have been missing due to actually catching some fire calls on my days off.

I have been going to my weekday duty crews. I  have caught a few calls - more on this.

Been to a real house fire. Ordered some flowers to plant in my yard (not really a gardener). Begun to workout on a somewhat regular basis. Found out I have super high cholesterol, only had beef 1-2 times in the last two months. Haven't seen my mom since January. Interviewed for 2 jobs, had a job offer on one. Getting a plan in place to get my Black Hat. Brian's sister had her baby - I'm an aunt for the 9th time. I have taken a few professional communications courses.

Okay - now I will put some more details to these exciting events.

kathleensnyder at 9:38:47 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

So Monday comes and it's looking pretty good in the room. You can't see the individual roller strokes like on the coat before. I'm thinking this is it.

Now, I had not painted the closet, mostly because Brian had not taken everything out of it. There was no more room in our other rooms. I worked on some careful rearranging of what was already in the other rooms, took some stuff to the garage, etc.

Then I started on the closet. Why did I do this? No idea. Do you know how hard it is to get yourself on a footstool in the closet and do all of the corners over your head? I can't tell you how many times I have hit my head on something getting in and out of there. So, I decided to skip the primer. I patched a few quick holes that could see and only sanded those spots. I did not clean the walls either.

I'm about two coats in and it still looks terrible, but I'm pooped. Brian has been anxious to get the desk started since it's been in the car for a week. So,  up the stairs it came, not so easily, and we started.

The directions are terrible. Things are not labeled and there are no words at all.  There is no "Place screw A into hole B on piece of wood 2." Just pictures of screws and a piece of wood that look like they are in a mid flight collision with each other. After some discussion and speculation as to which are the actual pieces in the first two pictures, we just get started and that we'll figure it out on the way. We did. Actually Brian did. Since I did all of the painting, I did not stay for much of the desk building. I must say I am quite impresses with how far along it has come and without any  serious injuries or fits of anger at the directions.

But here we are Jan 29th and the room is still apart and a mess. I am confident that we will be almost done this week.  I need to put at least one more coat of paint in the closet (even if only on the places you can see real well).  Once the desk is done we can work on trying it out in several positions to see where it and one just like it will fit best in the room. I'm pretty sure I have the shelving figured out for the closet as well. The one standard shelf and rod just doesn't cut it for office storage space. 

That's it for now on the remodeling project. I'll provide some family updates in a little while.

kathleensnyder at 10:40:49 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 2 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

So, two weeks of crap everywhere, the office ripped apart, and my computer not functional. We only have Brian's setup in the kitchen. I'm going nuts becuase I can't file anything (there in the bathtub) and I'm tired of tripping over stuff. 

We've made two trips to Ikea and finally decided on a desk. I think it will be too big to fit two of them in the office when completed. Brian disagrees. We only bought one so we could try it out. But, I still need to paint.

So we chose this Cranberry color. It's somewhat like this. So I talk to the Home Depot guys and find out if using a dark color of paint you need to use a tinted primer (which, white is not). So, I buy some - they give me a can of gray paint. Whatever, but I go with it. So, 2 coats of primer down.

***Reader Tip - Choose your color before you prime, so you don't have to prime more than once.

Now, I get going with the color. Now I know the first coat is going to be scary because the paint looks like this in the can. So, I quickly get that coat up so I can start drying and then do a second coat the next morning. It looks much better than the first but you can see all of my painting strokes (yes with a roller) and where they all ended and overlapped one another. I'm a little panicky, as I'm now 4 coats of primer/paint into this mess and starting to tire of it. 

So, back to Home Depot I go and ask just how many coats I'm going to need with my Cranberry color. The guy tells me possiblde 4 to 6!  I'm not putting on 2 to 4 more coats of paint. Then  he also tells me that it takes a full 40 days for paint to cure and that I could put on a third coat and then wait two weeks before deciding if I need anymore.

Of course, I'm not waiting 40 days and 2 weeks seems ridiculous, as I'm ready to have this done and put my office back together. So, on with the 3rd coat (a week ago Thursday). 

Now, some of you may know that Brian and I work weekends only and they are long days. So for Friday, Sat and Sun, we will  be leaving for work and arriving home from work while it is still dark outside.  I really can't check the color until Monday, so that's 3 days to 'cure'.

kathleensnyder at 10:28:10 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

So, the wall paper removal project. It's not that I''m not happy Brian decided to take this on, it's that I had decided, apparently in my own head, that we would hire someone to take off the wallpaper and we would do the painting.

But, nonetheless its off. After the removal it was clear that the people who put it up didn't care what they were covering up, as the paint job and walls underneath were not in the smoothest of shapes. There was still some prep work to do even before we could put the primer on. So, the hole patching and sanding began. Then we washed the walls with some seriously toxic chemicals to prepare the surface. Taping, taping, taping. Is this not the worst part of painting ever? What if the tape is NOT straight? It will all be revealed at some point.

Then I put one coat of regular (white) primer on the walls.

Meanwhile our crap is all over the guest room, in the doorway, down the hall, etc. Oh, by the way, the spare bathtub is a great storage place, especially for files!

At this point in time we have spent a total of two weeks (not everday) on the room.

kathleensnyder at 10:16:36 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

To say that 'not much' has been going on since I wrote last, would be not so true.

There was December, the mother, of holiday months.  My Uncle returned midway through the month from the Republic of Kiribati where he has been teaching for 8 years since (and including) the time he was there as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He is only  3 years my senior so as children, we and my older 2 cousins would play together. So a small reunion plan was in the making.

Brian and I traveled to Columbus, Ohio on Christmas evening to visit with my Dad and his wife. We had planned to fly, but apparently Delta had other plans. Yes, we were part of those 1500 filghts that went nowhere on Christmas Day. Fortunately, Columbus is only a 6ish hour drive from Leesburg, VA.  So we drove and it worked out better anyway. I have some relatives on my Dad's side in Ohio, so we had planned a small post wedding brunch celebration on the 26th that we had to be there for. It went well, I was able to visit with cousins I hadn't been able to see much since Brian and I lived in Arizona for 7 years prior to moving to VA in 2002. And, I brought the last known piece of 'stuff' that I had stored at my Dad's place during college and travelling years.

After 4 days in Columbus we came home and then I headed back to my Mom's the very next week. Her husband hadn't worked in awhile, so I spent the week there on 'mom duty' so he could have a break and get some work in. While there I was able to spend time with my favorite uncle and my other cousins. All in all, it was a great visit.

While I was there, Brian started a home renovation project without me. Those of you who read Brian's journal will know what I'm talking about. For the rest, the room that we use as a home office has had children's sports wallpaper in it. We have no children and no use for this wallpaper, so Brian started the removal process.  I will move on to a new entry to elaborate further on that.

kathleensnyder at 10:10:15 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

Here are more sites with coupon codes.  All I did was google search "discount codes"

http://www.fragrancenet.com/f/net/index.html?mv_pc=

www.currentcodes.com/

www.flamingoworld.com/

http://www.couponmountain.com/index.html

http://www.onlinemarts.com/

www.KeyCode.com  

kathleensnyder at 10:08:43 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 5 comments: Show Recent | Add your own