Catch Up

My camera broke about a year ago. More accurately, Thor broke my camera about a year ago. And my BlackBerry took terrible pictures. My iPhone is better, but not by much. That's why I haven't kept up with the blog this past year--no pictures to go with my stories.  But I'm trying to get caught up now that I know people actually read my blog :)

Thor did not understand the whole concept of Halloween. It was probably the last time that he would let me pick his costume, so it had to beat out last year's Chipendale's outfit. As most of you know, Dexter is my favorite TV show of all time. I am obsessed. So I don't know why it took me so long to think of this:

Cutest Dexter ever!! Complete with leather butcher apron, Dexter Morgan police ID with Thor's picture on it, fake syringe, and plastic knife.

Thor did not like carving pumpkins, but he liked playing with their "hats."

I hosted Thanksgiving:

And then it was time for Christmas!

 

I Should Be the Favorite Child

All my mom asked for last year for Christmas was a family picture of each of her kids' families.  We had 3 grandchildren born last year and 3born the year and a half before that, and a wedding, so we all needed to update our family pictures anyway. We had a year-- ONE YEAR--to get my mom what she wanted for Christmas.

Fast forward to December 5, 2013. I still had not taken our family pictures. I hadn't even made an appointment with a photographer. If you hadn't guessed, it's hard to get an appointment with a photographer in December. Now, I do have an actual reason for not taking them earlier. I wanted to lose weight this year. Did I? Eh...I lost some, but not all that I wanted to. But in the last family picture we had done, Sabre was 9 years old. Yep, that's what we had hanging in our house in December 2013. So family pictures were a necessity, fat or not.

I managed to get an appointment for December 14, eleven days before Christmas.  The photographer took over 100 pictures. Guess how many of the whole family turned out? One. Uno. Yep. One. Thor was in a bad mood that afternoon. No amount of candy, promises, funny faces, threats, or stuffed animals was going to improve the situation. Take a look at some of the outtakes. 

Gary trying to hold him from running off:

Thor resisting all our attempts to get him to hold still and look at the camera:

Gary trying to talk to Thor and keep him from getting up:

Thor refusing to smile or open his eyes:

Thor refusing to engage with any of us at all:

All of us trying to talk to Thor at once while he tries to jump from Gary's shoulders:

We finally let him go see the horses across the street:

Thor is fearless. He wasn't afraid to pet them and was ready to leap over the fence and walk amongst them. We had to stop him from  crawling under this fence.

Then all Thor could do is stare across the street at the horses (while Gary tried to tell him to smile):

Check out Thor's "cartoon" feet running in the air:

Seriously?! I just need one cute picture for my mother!! Instead I got this:

At least Sabre looks beautiful!

And she loves her momma!

At this point, all we could do is laugh...and give up.

BUT....we got ONE! One picture where we are all looking at the camera, not talking to Thor, and smiling:

Success!!! I managed to order a print and have it delivered straight to my mom. It didn't make it until December 27,  but it made it in time for the Christmas season!

I thought surely I was the last child to get my family picture to my mom. But no, I was the FIRST. Yes, you heard that right. Out of nine siblings I was the first one to deliver my family picture. I was the only child to get my mom what she wanted for Christmas even after she gave us a year to do it. No wonder I'm the favorite. No wonder this blog is "1st of 9." Gauntlet is thrown down siblings. Get mom your family pictures. (Preferably before next Christmas.)

2013 Word of the Year

There are a lot of posts on various blogs this time of year that focus on the "word" for the coming year in the poster's life. The idea is to pick a word to inspire you or create intention in your life. The word that keeps coming to my mind is "LOSS." It seems a strange pick, doesn't it? "Loss" has such a negative connotation, but losing something doesn't really have to be a negative. 

There are two big reasons I picked this word. (1) It's my goal to really, actually lose all the weight this year that I've gained over the past few years (or more) and (2) Sabre is leaving home.

As for the weight goal: that's going to be a hard journey, but self-explanatory from the word of the year perspective.

Sabre leaving really is a loss for me, although one that is bittersweet. I left home when I was pregnant with her, so my entire adult life out on my own has revolved around caring for her and putting her needs first. I am hardly the type of mother that relies on her child for fulfillment, but the fact that I will no longer have to consider things like her school schedule when I plan vacations, her visits to her dad's house, her medications and medical check-ups, or something as simple as buying food for her to take for lunch will be hard to get used to for a while. And she will be an equal with me in the eyes of the law--that may be the most upsetting thought for me. On the one hand, it's a relief that I will not be legally responsible for paying for any mistakes she may make, but on the other, it is unsetlling that I can't shield her and pay for the mistakes she makes. And of course I will miss her chats. And her willingness to help around the house without complaint if not cheerfully. But I have been preparing her for this year for many years before this one. It's time to throw the bird into the sky and see if it's wings hold and that's exciting!

Something nagging at the back of my head says those two reasons aren't the only ones that will make this the year of loss. I feel like I will lose something big this year--something I will never get back--something unexpected--something that will change my life as I know it forever. So for that moment I want to tell myself to remember the word loss. To lose something, by necessity, means that you had it. Whatever attendant lessons, joy, and memories that came with that possession still live inside you. Be grateful.  Loss means you had opportunity. Loss hurts, but the world hates vaccuums--something else will get sucked into that empty space. Don't fear loss and definitely don't let the fear of loss govern your choices. Live now in such away as to take away the sting of the loss when you remember today.

**UPDATE**
Talk about premonition! I do not usually talk about work on here ever, but this is too fitting to pass up commenting on.  So the day after I wrote this, the judge in the week long trial I first-chaired in June handed down her order (which wasn't expected for quite some time yet). And I L-O-S-T. Seriously lost. Like she beat us with rule book, then burned it on top of us, and then peed on us to put out the flames. That bad. And it was certainly unexpected. 

And strangely, although all the litigation partners all stopped by my office to offer their condolences and support--such as "we are like oncologists--sometimes you can save a patient and sometimes you can't and it has nothing to do with your skill" or "you're a good litigator, she just did not like the client" and don't take it personally, you are only the messenger"--what helped me the most was reading this post again--reading the words I had written to myself before I had any idea what type of losses were in store for me this year.

Now, I don't think I'm off the hook for the year, or even that that loss was the big one I anticipate. But it makes me feel better that when it does happen, I know how to comfort myself. And that thought alone is comforting. And I am grateful.

Building a Pantry

When you walked into our house the day we moved in, you would see a coat closet in the entryway. Now, I have never understood the logic of a coat closet in Arizona. Never. I own one coat . . .that I wear one week a year when I go visit you all in Utah. This was the closet. (Pretend like Max is walking out the front door in this picture and you get an idea of what the entryway looked like before my ideas caught up with it.)

It was the one closet that didn't look used in the house.

Now on the other side of the coat closet (or more specifically, directly behind the back wall of the coat closet) was a set of very shallow cupboards, not even a foot deep. Those shelves were in the laundry room right next to the kitchen. (Oh, look! There's a shot of the old french doors to the left!)

 So I thought, "Self, would you rather have a coat closet or a pantry?" And then I laughed because that was a stupid question. Gary thought I was crazy for wanting him to do this, though. He has since been converted (to my insanity). We ripped out the shelves, and bashed out the back of the coat closet, like so:

 In the picture below you see where Gary ripped out the drywall on the wall to the right (see the studs?) and removed a pocket door that was right next to the closet. The closet doesn't exist anymore and you can see straight through past the 2x4 boards that used to be the back of the closet to the laundry room light switch (and utility sink on the left):

 This is what my entryway looked like:

Gary cut the wall back on the left side of the entryway opening into the kitchen to be even with the former closet wall. Then he framed out the new opening like so:

 And then he added drywall over where the coat closet had been like this:

 (In the picture above you can see the new drywall on the left). Then texture and paint and whala! No more closet in the entryway (it had been on the wall to the right in the picture below):

Then Gary had to build the pantry. He covered all the studs with drywall again, but with the opening on the other side of the hole:

 And there was just cement floor still (we have since added dark grey tile in the laundry room and pantry)

 We had workers texture and paint the hole. Then Gary built me DEEP shelves and painted them. We were originally going to make it a walk-in pantry, but it wasn't really large enough to do that and had more storage space if we did it this way:

 Then we ordered a door and painted it to match the other new doors in our house. I actually only wanted a frosted glass door, but the one with "pantry" and a picture of food came instead when I wasn't home and Gary didn't catch it when they delivered it.  Once I started painting the doors and caught the mistake I was too tired to argue with Lowes to get plain frosted glass.

 See? Tons of storage space right off the kitchen. Waaaay better than a coat closet. Thanks, Gary!

Library Update

Gary finally installed my new french doors!! I have to stop right here and give props to a very talented husband. Barely half my hair-brained adventures could become reality if he weren't crazy enough to go along with them (or he couldn't stand listening to my pestering anymore). And he really is one of the smartest people I've ever known. He knows so much about building and fixing all sorts of stuff--and if he doesn't know, he wings it beautifully! Really, after this post you will see why I am so impressed everyday by the man I married.

I couldn't find a picture of the old french door, head-on.  This is the best I could find:

 (It's on the very left side of the picture here.)

(and here is one half of it)

It was very dark wood that had been scratched through from the outside by the last owner's dog. It kept heat and cold out like a sieve. So Gary took it out. He took the entire frame out (I didn't get a picture of that) and then the two of us lifted the entire new frame and two doors into place. Then he got the brilliant idea to take the doors off the frame and level and secure the frame before putting back on the doors, like so:

Doing that first would have saved my back. The house is not level and has no right angles, despite its looks. So it took Gary a long time to get the frame straight and get the doors to hang right. But he did it!

Ta da! He even filled around the door with gap filler/insulation. Now for the rest of the room.

I started decorating the library. I saw a really cool bookshelf on pinterest and followed the link to etsy. There are actually a lot of them on sale online. And I thought, I can do that (with Gary's help) and it would be a lot cheaper! So I started taking measurements, went to Lowe's and had a hlpful saleslady walk me around the whole store after showing her the picture on iPad, and bought everything I needed to custom make one to fit my library.

I went home and started tightening pipes and elbows together. It was harder than it looks to get all the angles right (no pun intended). I had to thread through the cord for the light as I was putting it altogether, which made it harder.

I was going to paint it black like all of those online. But once we got it up in the office I thought I really needed more color in there. So I painted it red, of course. I put it in this really weird corner in the library where the wall sticks out 2 feet to accommodate Sabre's closet.

 The ones online had a light. I could have left it without a light, but it would not have been as cool. Enter Gary! Do you know that Lowe's sells light cord by the foot? They do. And they sell lamp sockets and various plug ins. So I bought all the pieces and Gary wired me a lamp from SCRATCH! And I don't electrocute myself on it. I added the cool Edison bulb as the final touch.

 The bookshelf is mounted to studs on the top and bottom of the wall.

 You can barely see the cord coming out at the bottom and plugging into the wall at the bottom of this picture. And there was light! so now all my favorite books have a special spot in the library.

So then Gary hung a very cool light (with 10 Edison bulbs!) I ordered online (with minimal cursing under his breath) and then hung curtains. I added the yellow lamp, my yellow end table, a red rug and a gold frame I found., along with my pretty red drawers. And this is what the library looks like now (the french doors are to the right in the picture):

I still have to add pictures and maybe some shelves, but it's coming along. Thanks, Gary!