A Wall is Born

The view from the family room up to the kitchen taken before I moved in, surprisingly lacked flow and more important, there wasn't a good resting place for my antique hutch.

Now the next step. Wall filled in, side pocket where card table and chairs will be stored.

Margin of time to gnash teeth when we find that the original owners didn't prep the wall before applying paper. Not good. We paint over paper. Apparently so have a lot of other people.

Now it's done. Wall finished, hutch in its rightful place. The wall is just wide enough with a couple of inches to spare.

The hutch is happy.

The good, The Bad and The Other

The good news is that while I'm in the midst of a kitchen reno/mayhem, my carpenter son is good company.
More good company is provided by my daughter who is painting two walls in the nearby theatre part of the family room.

The bad news is that this is a small house with nowhere left to retreat to, aside from the basement and it lacks any semblance of comfort or charm let alone a chair of any kind.

This is the current state of the dining room.
Let's see you find a place to sit while munching your granola.
You get a glimpse of the adjoining living room, looking relatively unscathed. Getting to it safely is the problem.


This is a fuzzy view of the family room. You'll thank me for fuzzy.

I love the company and everything is shaping up exactly as I planned.

So the good does out-weigh the bad by far.

But I am looking forward to a place to sit.

How I Cope With Winter

I never met a room I didn't want to alter in some way and in order to accomplish this desire I produced a carpenter or two in my child pool and one of them lives in my town.

How's that for careful planning?



My kitchen is an example of added-by-the-builder-as-an-afterthought and needs all the help it can get. Consider this--it has only one wall and a whole bunch of traffic areas merging in this one space.

This area looks down onto the family room and it doesn't work. It's just plain cluttered and inefficient.

I agree this isn't the time for a woman living on a strict budget to go crazy but I see this a mental health project. What better way to coast through a miserable long winter?
Sure, some people ski and skate and toboggan, but my bones are possibly brittle although I have no intention of finding out by trying those above-mentioned sports.

Stevie, my main man/son in the carpentry department stepped in (did he have a choice?) and here is where we are at present.


Of course I had a plan--what else is there to do when one is munching breakfast cereal and staring at very little?

This is the beginning of a sleek, efficient space.See the bump-out? they are such a great addition and keeps the counters clear.


The juices and sawdust are flowing and winter is so much less annoying.

Stand by for the finished result.

Not A rule book In sight.

Here I am with my brood, taken by Hal on what would be one of the last family picnics before puberty struck.

You can probably figure out the dynamics of this photo--the Beattle-inspired thirteen-year old on the left, his next- in- line brother copying him until we get to Batman on the right. I had to negotiate the cape and mask off him when he started kindergarten--until then, from his diaper days he wore a mask and cape.

We had a lot of responsibility and no rule books to guide us. Dr. Spock was our only source and there wasn't the Internet to browse through to find our answers.
We used (and washed incessantly) cloth diapers and all meals were made from scratch.

My peer group was also the first to cope with the start of the drug revolution. Lucky us.

The good news is that back then I was too busy to realize that every incorrect move I made, every I-wish-I-hadn't- word I spoke, would be stored away in the juvenile memory bank and trotted out at a moment convenient to the complainer.

The even better news is that I can sit by happily watching my grandkids filing away their parent fodder for another time.

That's my version of the circle of life.

Tales Of A Silver Fox

When I was young I worried my way through a large portion of my waking moments.
What if Hal dies and I'm left with all those little kids. How will I support them. I have no skills. (I ran a large household on a little bit of money but apparently I didn't consider that a skill).

Anyway, they were all grown and on their own when Hal died.
I didn't have much money but I was aware of some of my skills and the biggest one was that of survivor.

I spent a year almost to the day grieving his loss and then, poof-- the clouds lifted and I made this enormous discovery--I wasn't afraid anymore.

I took stock of me and I decided to go it alone without a man and now, eighteen years later, still resolutely man-less, I've carved myself a life with lots of laughter.

My life is simpler. I look after myself and two cats and am available to my kids in an emergency.

During this time I've bought and sold houses at a dizzying rate and I live in them and fix them up and get the itch and start again. I only made a profit once but this is what I love to do so I do it.

The only thing that remains unchanged is the feeling that I am still thirty and as long as I avoid mirrors and stay healthy I can hang on to this thought.

Despite all that worrying I loved my old life with a house full of kids and a good friend for a husband and now I'm content with my new life.

Life has lots to offer a foxy lady.