Finally! The Attic Is Done.

Well, I finished the attic today. It took me half the day, including the hour I sat up there laughing and looking at stuff in boxes from high school and early college years. I found stuff I can use for my graduation party and Roger's MRI's from when he was 13 in California. He and his neurosurgeon have been wanting to see those. I don't know how they can be in good condition from being up there all these years without being covered or in anything. I looked through them and didn't see any thing in the area where his tumor was, but I'm not an expert. I don't know what I'm looking at. I got to a point when I realized how close I was to being done and I decided to just keep going until it was finished. I nailed down the plywood I previously put down Saturday then moved everything from under the eaves over to that area. It filled up the entire space plus I finally put the Christmas tubs up there. Talk about a pain in the you know what. I really shouldn't have put those tubs up there by myself, but if I wait for help, nothing will ever get done. I did think once or twice, "You're going to hurt yourself Holly," but that didn't stop me. You get to a point when you just can't take it anymore and you have to do something about it. That actually happens to me a lot. That's how I find motivation to clean my house. Ha! Sad, but true.

Back to the attic. Moving all that stuff revealed a couple of pieces of plywood up there already so I used those and cut some leftover pieces from this project to cover almost all of the area under the eaves. Then I proceeded to move all our stuff around in a more organized manner. Only short term organized manner. When Roger gets home for good, he's going to help me go through every single thing in that attic. We have boxes of stuff from our lives before we got together and we seriously need to get rid of more than half of it. I think there were about twenty empty boxes from every electronic, appliance or set of pots or dishes we own. I understand the reason to keep them for ease of packing for our next move, but keeping all those boxes goes against every grain of sense in my body. I really don't like clutter and all that stuff up there kills me. But I have some patience to wait to toss or recycle or freecycle it all.

Oh it feels good to be done. Of course I'll feel even better once we go through everything up there and the other boxes left in the garage. I could move them to the attic, but they can wait for Roger's return. I can finally give my dad his pneumatic nail gun & long hose back. I'm sure he can use it. You think by owning a home there's always something to do. Most of the stuff there is to do on modern homes is stuff we create for ourselves to make our lives easier or more pleasant. On a farm, there really is always something to do, to fix, to repair, to make, to make bigger, etc. You get my drift. And my dad's fresh egg business is growing so much he added onto the chicken barn recently only to realize he's going to have to do it again. Demand for your product is not a bad thing. But with my dad's health issues, it would be easier to need to expand if he could work every day. He actually went to the doctor today. He was going to come to Austin with me yesterday and stay until I went back to A&M on Thursday for class, but he wasn't feeling good. I'm glad he didn't come after all. I think I would have had to take him back to Bryan after all. His knees were swollen this morning so my mom called and made an appointment for him this morning and they gave him a bunch of medicine. I don't know if it has to do with the usual fluid movement issues he has because of his hardened blood vessels, if he has gout again or if it's something new. And when he's going through all this junk, he doesn't feel good so he's not the most pleasant person either. Sometimes he can really fit the bill of an old, ornery, stubborn cowboy. If you've seen Lonesome Dove, think Woodrow.

Anyway, so I'm done for the day. I'm starving. What else is new? I'm going to eat a snack before I jump in the tub because I can't stand myself. I had to take my clothes off in the garage before I came into the house because I was filthy. It's easier to scoot around on your butt & knees up in the attic so I was covered in dirt and dust. I'm going to work a little bit after my shower then get ready for class tomorrow and yoga before I go to bed. My back in sore and I'm stiff. I seriously have been doing yoga every day just to stay flexible and not get stiff from all this work and all the swimming. I am really enjoying swimming. I could tell yesterday that my endurance is increasing. So I'm looking forward to being able to do my workout plan completely. Right now I'm doing a modified version of it. I'm still swimming an hour, but not exactly the same as the workout. It's all building endurance. I will eventually have to swim longer. And once the semester ends and I no longer have to go to A&M anymore, I'm going to start looking for a gym here with a great indoor pool for Roger and myself to swim. I'd like to swim at least three days a week.

Roger had a photo shoot early this morning for the newspaper then he went to the National Cathedral on one of those field trips they set up for the soldiers. But of course, he takes his camera so the newspaper can use the photos if they need to fill space or decided to do a story about it. I really hope he blogs about it because it was a tour and tea. I can't wait for him to talk about the finger foods they had at the tea. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. No, actually I wish I was there. He said everything was delicious and the tea was stronger than he expected. He went to a Washington Wizards game last night. These field trips make it possible to get away from Walter Reed and forget the crazy stupidity that goes on there for a while. Okay, enough for today, I'm off to grab a bite. Oh, check out the pictures of the finished product in the Flickr set House Work. Later!

More Work On The Attic

After sleeping in late, cleaning the bathrooms, eating breakfast, checking my email and starting some laundry, I worked on the attic some more. I finished the other side except for nailing the boards down. Since I started late in the afternoon, I decided to call it quits when I realized it was 8:00 p.m. I notched four joists for electrical wiring, cut the piece of plywood that was already up there, cut another piece from the left over plywood I used on the other side and used a left over piece of MDF (that's medium density fiberboard) from a project three years ago to make a patchwork floor. I don't really care how it looks as long as it's sturdy enough to hold junk. When I finish my homework assignment, I will nail the boards down and move more boxes and stuff from under the eaves to the newest area with flooring to get ready to put more plywood down under the eaves for more storage. I'm about to eat some dinner, I'm starving! And then I'm going to start working on my homework assignment before I catch the new Trading Spaces on TLC with the return of Paige Davis as the host. I might have already missed it, but it will show again in an hour. I posted more pictures from today in the House Work set in Flickr. Enjoy!

I had to run an errand before I actually starting notching the plywood. It gave me a chance to go through the car wash. It was such a beautiful day today. High of 71 and sunny. I was able to open all the windows and air out the house. It was way too nice to be stuck inside. Lots of people were outside today in my neighborhood. Of course, there are those people who always stay inside their house no matter how pretty it is outside. I just have to give up on those people after a while. I spoke with my doctor's nurse yesterday afternoon. The x-rays of my jaw were negative for fracture or anything like that. But since I am still having pain, she is referring me to an oral surgeon just to be safe. Hey, I don't mind. Ever since Roger was diagnosed with brain cancer, every worst nightmare runs through my head when I have strange pain or symptoms. I think things like, "I wonder if I have bone cancer or a tumor growing near the joint." I don't mess around anymore. And when people tell me of some strange thing going on with them, even the littlest things, I'm like, "You better get to a doctor ASAP!" Don't wait too long with pain or strange symptoms. The sooner you get it checked out, the better for treatment and ease of mind. Okay, enough rambling. I'm hungry!

Half Way Done

Wow, I'm bushed. I just finished putting flooring in half the attic. After I worked a little bit this morning, I cut my pieces of plywood. What was great was I didn't have to cut them down anymore to get them to fit through the attic stair hole. That was a relief. And using my dad's pneumatic nail gun made securing the plywood to the joists so easy. I moved all the tubs, boxes, luggage, leftover tile and bags of grout over to the side with flooring to get ready to work on that side of the attic. I wasn't sure what I was going to find under the piece of plywood that was already there, but it turned out to not be so bad. I only found a small Christmas decoration of fake holly, some kind of decorative wicker racket thing and a bottle of light beer. Although I'll never know for sure, I bet it was left behind by the construction workers when they built the house. I've been around construction my whole life and I know they drink a little beer. There was something else under that plywood I knew was going to be there, electrical wiring. Although I'm calling it quits for today, my next step is to cut some notches on the top side of the joists for the electrical wires to fit into so the plywood lays flat across the joists and doesn't kink the wire. Don't want to create a fire hazard. When I'm finished with that and putting more wood down, I will again move more boxes and stuff from under the eaves into that area. Then I can assess if I need to put more flooring down there just for storage.

It was really cold outside (34 degrees) when I was doing all this. So I pulled my car out of the garage and shut the doors. I pulled a fan we have to the doorway so it would pull warm air from the house into the garage. Since I knew the circular saw and nail gun would be loud, I wore my drummer's ear plugs while I was cutting and nailing. I did eventually warm up a bit with all the moving and carrying heavy items around. I even broke a sweat. I'll need to do some yoga tonight though for my back and from swimming an hour yesterday. All in the name of good health.

Now I am going to grab some lunch because I'm starving. Then I will start some anthropology homework and reading. We were given an assignment in class yesterday that's due next Monday. It's only worth five points, but anything will help in the end towards getting an A in my class. Actually I added up all the points each test is worth plus this assignment and you can technically make 105 in the class. So there's no excuse for not making an A. Okay, I'm off to eat lunch. Oh, I almost forgot, I posted pictures from today in a set in Flickr that has more house work pictures. Enjoy!

Let The Jokes Begin

Well, today was an interesting end to a good start. I started school on Tuesday. I’m so stoked, my last semester of school. The semester just started and I’m already excited about graduating. I even have a cap and gown already. My mom’s friend Tribbie is letting me borrow her cap and gown from her master’s graduation at A&M this past December. All I have to do is buy a tassel. I tried it on Tuesday night and it’s perfect. That will save me some money. Thanks Trib. We know the graduation will be either May 9th or May 10th. Once the university goes through all the graduation applications they receive by the end of this month, they will know how many students are graduating from each department of each college and will create a schedule to make it all fit into four ceremonies, two on each day.

As for school, my class, Introduction to Biblical Archaeology, so far has been interesting. I’m not as impressed with the professor as I hoped to be. He doesn’t use any of the available resources or technology the university has created to make his life or the students’ life easier, except for electronic course reserves at the library. Those are old hat if you ask me. The class is packed and you have to be in the room at least 15 minutes before to get a decent seat. You know I like to sit in the front and so far I’ve had to sit about half way up. It’s hard to hear him even with a lapel microphone. I’m going to have to start getting there earlier. Even though we got the “this isn’t a Bible study” lecture the first day of class, he mentions specific scripture and stories from the Bible often. He’s even mentioned Jesus a few times. So for me, it is a Bible study because I’m learning things about the Bible I didn’t know previously. For the next four weeks, we are covering the introduction to Biblical archaeology before we get to specific times periods. We will cover 10,000-8,500 BC to the first century AD. So far we’ve been given a 45 page reading assignment. But of course, the textbook for the class isn’t in the bookstore yet, so the prof (actually his teaching assistant) had to scan the pages in for us and post them on the library electronic course reserves. I don’t think it will be in when the bookstore says, (not surprised) so I ordered mine from Amazon.com (saved $7) and it is already on its way to me. I bet I get my book before the bookstore gets them in.

As for swimming, Thursday was my first day to actually swim. It was great. Everything came back to me, breathing, head placement, arm and leg movement, torso twisting, a few strokes. But I’ve decided to take a stroke clinic or two depending on the cost so I can get further instruction and correction. I was tempted to attempt a flip turn on Thursday, but decided to wait a few weeks. I did a workout I found online. It’s part of an eight week program, but I plan to spread it out since it’s been two and a half years since I’ve swam regularly. The pool was set up for 25 meter lanes. I swam for a total of 45 minutes to one hour with a short 15 minute break in between for a fire drill that required the entire rec center to be evacuated. Turns out workers in one area of the rec center smelled gas so the staff decided to be better safe than sorry. I can appreciate that since I was in an area closer to the boilers and natural gas and heat don’t mix well. It was disturbing to my workout and the cold outside didn’t help. We weren’t allowed to go into the locker rooms to grab more clothes or anything, just evacuate.

So there we were soaking wet only in bathing suits and they are telling us we have to go outside where it is 41 degrees. Yeah, we were happy about that. I had one towel already and they gave us as many towels as we needed plus these huge insulated parkas the swim team uses. I was happy to see those. They helped a lot but it was still cold. We finally went back in and I resumed my workout with a short warm-up. I wish I had some kind of abacus or counting frame to keep up with my laps. I swam about 200 meters before we had to evacuate. That was a 9 minute warm-up and the start of a 9 minute skill refresher. Then I did a 22 minute main set plus a 5 minute cool down. I think in total I swam 700 meters which is about 0.44 of a mile, almost half a mile. Not bad for my first swim in two and a half years. I was starving after that and my legs were slow. My right hip hurt a little also, but I have been doing some yoga hip openers to help with that. I’ll be doing yoga everyday to combat the pain I’ll feel from all this swimming. The time of day I swim isn’t busy at all. I plan to continue swimming at that time. It also gets me in a locker room shower before a swimming conditioning kinesiology class gets out filling up the locker room.

As for the title of this post, two weeks ago I started having pain in my left lower jaw. It has progressively gotten worse, but slowly. I have no idea what I did to my jaw. (Here’s where the jokes begin.) There has not been any popping, grinding, ear pain or headache, just pain near the joint when I chew (more jokes), but not any when I talk (even more jokes). Around Tuesday of this week it actually started getting a little stiff and was tough for me to open. So on Wednesday night I decided I better go to the doctor before it gets worse and I can’t open my mouth at all. (Insert more jokes here.) How would I eat? I’d starve! I did some research online about jaw pain because I wasn’t sure if I should go to the dentist or my PCM. The census online was to go to a TMJ specialist, but I am not comfortable with my dentist at all and on Thursday morning I made an appointment with my PCM. By Thursday evening, thank goodness after dinner, the pain started moving up the side of my face and giving me a headache. I did not feel well. I had previously tried Tylenol and Advil but neither helped. At my appointment, my doctor examined the area externally and internally (which wasn't pleasant) and decided to send me for x-rays. She also gave me prescriptions for a muscle relaxer and Tylenol 3 with codeine. I went straight to the lab for the x-rays hoping they’d be able to get the results to her the same day. After a 30 minute wait in the lobby and ten x-rays in different positions, I was informed the results wouldn’t get to her until Monday. So I have to wait to see what’s going on.

I turned in my prescriptions and ran all the rest of my errands before picking them up to go home and take them. I was planning to work when I got home, but that was before I found out I was going to be prescribed those meds. I wanted to get them in my system as soon as possible. I ate a small meal as to not have an empty stomach then took a half pill of the muscle relaxer and one Tylenol 3 with codeine as the pharmacist recommended. I waited a while and felt nothing. So I took the other half of the muscle relaxer and that helped. I was actually able to chew with no pain. I started to feel a little woozy when I stood up from the Tylenol 3 with codeine and decided I better stay down for a while and that I didn't need the second one yet. I think it has worn off a little, hence being able to blog, but I can’t take anymore for a bit. Darn.

My plan for tomorrow was to go for a long walk in the late morning as it warmed up to 52 degrees and cut plywood for the attic in the early afternoon. I’m not sure how I will feel tomorrow when I wake up, but I can’t drive or operate machinery on either medication. So I have two options, go with the pain until after I do those two things or take the meds and not do anything at all. I probably shouldn’t go for too long of a walk on muscle relaxers and Tylenol 3 with codeine. I wonder if I could walk at all. I was really hoping to be done with one side of the attic this weekend. Oh well, they say when you own a home you never run out of things to do. So putting that off a little longer won’t make a big difference. It will also give me time to hit my family up for help. :)