I could use another weekend.....

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. Mom had a knee replacement 12 days ago and is now home. My brother went into the hospital this week and is now home. I spent the last two weeks working and visiting hospital rooms. I'm glad that they can now recouperate at home.

It's amazing how well my Mom is getting around. She really went through the operation well and is zipping around with her walker. My sister is in from Georgia for the next month to stay with her.

Yesterday we got replacement windows put in upstairs. It took most the day. The house was/is a total wreck becasue we had to move things away from the windows to give them room to work. While they worked upstairs, I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom so at least one room was clean. Once the crew went outside I cleaned up the main bedroom. Today Lou and I worked on our individual rooms. So it's coming along.

I have a confession to make. I hadn't cleaned the upstairs windows in years...like maybe 20 years :) Being old (the windows, not me) they didn't tilt in to clean and I (being scared) wasn't about to get up on a ladder and climb along the roof to clean them. So the only way to have clean windows was to replace them. It just took a long time to do it.

Houses suck the money out of you. When we first moved in 20+ years ago, we had to remove 3 very old, very large trees in the front yard because they were dying. Then a few years later we had to take out an even bigger tree in the back yard because it was hollow half-way up. Last year we had to take out another giant in the backyard because it kept dropping large branches and damaging our house and the neighbors. It got to the point the neighbors asked us if we were going to take it out...hint, hint. Because of their size and precarious locations, it cost $2-3K per tree....so we haven't done much with the house until recently...when the rest of it started falling apart.

In the last 3 years we've had to put on a new roof, had to install a new furnace (and I insisted on finally having a house with air conditioning), sided it and put in replacement windows. This next year I want to finally put some time and energy into the inside. My kitchen has to be 30-40 years old. It has formica countertops...I'm not kidding... and they are staring to come loose. So a kitchen re-do is in our future.

So I could really do with another weekend. It's going to take another couple days to pull the house together, finish the laundry, finish my taxes. I take off for Santa Fe on Thursday for a long weekend at Bead Fest. I'm taking a few fun classes...no new techniques, just fun. It will be nice to just work with metal for a couple days and visit with friends.

Needless to say I don't have any new work to talk about...and probably won't for a week or so. I will have pics from Santa Fe....and I have an advanced copy of a new book that you will all love. I'll blog about that next.

Au Revoir, Bye-Bye