thoughts from the deep recesses

This is what I woke up to this morning... and this is why I LOVE LIVING IN SPOKANE!!!

Yesterday afternoon I went down to the Home Depot. I had to pick up the counters that we special ordered. They called about a week ago to tell me it was in... So in I go, to the special order counter. They look up my paperwork, have me sign something and tell me to go to the contractor check-out to pick it up. There I am in my pink wool sweater, with my fabulous little denim jacket and my pink flower brooche, and every other person in the place has either very dirty pants or an orange apron on. I knew they weren't going to pay attention to me. Sure enough, I walk to the loading area, and every man there pretends I don't exist. Now, I'm not shy about asking for customer service, so I walk up to a tall guy with glasses and show him my little white piece of paper. "If I give you this, can you get my counters and load them up for me?" He says nothing. Just wipes his nose on his sleeve and walks away with my piece of paper. I holler after him, "I'll go bring m

It snowed a couple of inches last night. And more is on it's way - all week we're supposed to be adding to this preliminary layer of white. I'm SO excited. It's so pretty. Gracie LOVES the snow. She's so pickin' cute out there, bouncing around, getting snow all over her lips when she eats it. I've gotta get downstairs and dig the boots and snowpants out. I felt like a terrible Mom this morning sending the kids off in their tennis shoes to walk to school. Terrible. I put Christmas music on this morning, and got a few boxes of decorations out. It's extremely difficult to get to my Christmas decorations right now, as the doorway into my basement under-stair storage is completely blocked. I have to go around by the pantry and squeeze between the extra fridge and a wall to get in there. It's worth it though. I especially love finding things I bought last year at the post-holiday sales that I'd completely forgotten about... Cabinets come tomorrow. Pain

Here are some pictures of the slow, but steady advances in the kitchen. Paint goes up tonight. I think that will make a TREMENDOUS difference in my ability to envision the end result... Here you go... The sink wall: And the stove wall: The floor: The day I came home and cried: And one more for good measure. Gracie. She was posing SO adorably for me, but with the darn delay on my camera, this is the shot I got. See her leg there in the bottom left corner? Oh yea, that's some good photography.

S. is on the couch watching "The Price is Right." Isn't it amazing that Bob Barker is still on every day? I used to watch him when I was a kid, home sick on the couch. He really has hardly changed. The models are different, but he never changes. (Except for the white hair.) Let me tell you, I'll be spaying my dog. Bob brainwashed me years ago regarding the importance of spaying and neutering. Puppy Preschool starts tonight. Gracie has already mastered "sit," "come," and "stay." I'm sure she'll be the star of the class, if I can keep her from peeing all over everything. She wets whenever she gets really excited. (Sounds familiar...) Nothing excites her more than other people and other dogs. Hopefully she'll be able to contain herself. Why is it, that with tv shows you didn't watch regularly, if you happen to see it, it's always the same episode? I never watched "Everybody Loves Raymond" but if I did happen upo

I have to start right off with an apology about my mood swings and my whining. I know nobody wants to read about that. You come here to read about maxi pad slippers and mystery underwear. So, while I don't have any hilarious stories to regale you with today, I am now making a solemn pledge not to grumble, grouse, moan or complain any longer. Scout's honor. (And while I was never officially a boy scout, I attended every meeting my mother the den-mother had at our house and I can make a mean compass out of an aerosol can lid, some water and a needle, so I think that counts.) Church didn't happen for us this morning. S. is sick - a fever for the past two days and some cookie-tossing today. Poor thing. Her face is grey. She's so pathetic when she's sick. She's my dry-heave-y girl... it's not pretty. Asia can never seem to get motivated to go to church if I'm not going... after years of worrying about his soul, I've come to the conclusion that God probabl

I am really tired of living in a construction zone. My cabinet installer broke several ribs this week. He still promises to be able to do our install next week. I'm not holding my breath. All my appliances are on my back deck. I just want to be able to cook. And clean (and have it stay clean for more than ten minutes.) And find things. And have somewhere to set my purse when I walk in the door. And I really want to put up my Christmas decorations. But I'm afraid I'll be so tired of putting things away and cleaning and organizing when the kitchen is finally done that I won't have any energy left to decorate. I'm not sure how it happened this way, but remodeling now was a bad idea. I came home from work tonight, walked through the kitchen, went into my bedroom and sat down on the bed and cried. I hate that I'm being such a baby about it, but I really hate living this way. It's just hard. And I'm tired. Just a couple more weeks. Just a couple more weeks. Ju

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am about our Thanksgiving dinner buffet today. I LOVE buffets. Not old people buffets with four-hundred pound people who stay all day - but really good, fancy restaurant buffets with a thousand different desserts and all the trimmings and fancy meat carving men with tall white hats and black and white chef pants. Gracie and I took a L--O--N--G walk this morning. I may just take another one later - just to make room for food. After all, it's Thanksgiving. We're leaving in about an hour to walk over to our neighbor/friends' house for Thanksgiving breakfast. The Copleys are some of our best friends. They have four children, all similar ages to ours and they live just around the corner. Last year, on Christmas eve, we came home from church to find a pan full of "Copley Christmas Crap" - the traditional christmas morning dish they've enjoyed year after year. We warmed it up on Christmas morning and hopefully, started a new t

E. and I were driving home from running errands this afternoon. I came around the corner in a residential area to the strangest sight. Six wild turkeys were crossing the road. S---l---o---w---l---y. I've lived here for seven years and have never seen a wild turkey. The day before Thanksgiving, I see six of them crossing the road. I'm sure there's some significance to that. But I have no idea what it might be.

I've always thought it good to have a few really rich friends... you know, the ones who have lake cabins and boats and who invite you to spend the weekend with them at said cabin and ski with them on said boat... Because really, I don't want the hassle of owning either. I just want to play with them once or twice a year. Along the same vein, it's good to have a few friends who are really deep and thought provoking. I am naturally not, so don't expect to hear any diatribes on world peace or politics or theology here. It's not that I don't care about those things. (Well, sometimes it is...) It's just that I can barely manage to get the laundry done. Who has time to ponder the deepest meanings of life? These deep thinkers tend to show up in my life though - without bidding, mind you. People who really question and research and ponder and pontificate... and I've learned lots from them over time. I'm a kind of face value type of gal. I take things as I se

Gracie had her first sighting of the mailman today. She perked up immediately and started making a low growling noise I've never heard out of her. She would not relax until he was out of her line of vision - which took quite awhile, since he always parks right outside our house to walk to all the houses on our street. What is it with dogs and mailmen, anyway? It made me happy to see she has natural protective instincts about our yard. The kids have early release at school this week. That means E. is only at school for an hour and a half. What the heck? Why bother? That's barely enough time to get dressed and get the breakfast dished put away before I have to go pick him up. I spent another wad of money at Home Depot yesterday. This time it was for a new sink, new microwave and a toilet for the back bathroom, which is getting some minor remodeling at the same time as the kitchen. The new floor will extend into that bathroom, so we decided to replace the awful toilet in there at

Drywall goes up today. That will feel SO much cleaner. The kids and I are putting a time capsule in the walls before they seal them up. It's so exciting to think of things we can stick in there for someone to find someday. (Of course, that also means they will be tearing out my beautiful new kitchen, but I'm trying not to think about that.) My brother Ken "brought" me a meal via an Applebee's gift card. I wonder where he got the idea that I might need help feeding my family? Well, however he came up with the idea, it was sweet. Thanks, Ken (and LaChel!) I actually found time to dust this morning, so the living room is relatively clean... I will be dusting and vacuuming every day for awhile, I think. As long as I can keep my cozy living room clean, I'm happy. Asia got home last night. He was even able to get an earlier flight than expected. As fun as it is to stretch out and have the whole bed to myself, it's nothing like having his big warm body to snuggle

Last night the kids and I went out for dinner. I had some leftover lasagna, but haven't found a place to plug in the microwave... going out is more fun anyway. (For now at least. I'm sure in a couple of weeks we'll be really sick out it.) After a lovely dinner, (I had a grilled turkey sandwich with cream cheese, cranberry sauce and the most delicious chutney... it was TO DIE FOR) we decided to wander the downtown mall for awhile. I wanted to check out the dishes at Pottery Barn, since of course I have to get new dishes for my new kitchen. I also wanted to look at Restoration Hardware and see if they had any light fixtures that were less than $300 and would be perfect for my kitchen. Nope. Well, they had one that would be perfect. But it was a long way from being less than $300. I think I knew that would be the case, but I was hoping for a sale or something . Oh well, the search continues. While there, we discovered that they had their stocking stuffers out. If you've ne

More pictures of the ransacking of my kitchen... it just gets uglier and uglier. I am not a good "big picture" kind of gal. I get overwhelmed by the present and cannot see beyond the destruction to the end result, so this ripping apart of my favorite room is terribly difficult for me. I know in my head that it will all get better, but all I can see now are huge holes where there used to be walls and dust and grime and chaos. I am looking forward to going this weekend to look at tile for my backsplash and a pendant light fixture for above the table... that part is fun for me. I brought home paint chips today to ponder over the next couple of days. Th ey are all similar colors, just differing shades and hues of the general color scheme I'm planning. I have to apologize for not being the most interesting writer lately - I've been totally overwhelmed by life, and have not felt the least bit creative or interesting. I'm in maintenance mode - and I don't do my best

It's absolutely glorious to be sitting here in my pj's this morning. I've been running around like the proverbial headless chicken the last few days, so having a morning when I can actually wait for my favorite jeans to finish (take a meal over to Cathy) their tumble in the dryer (instead of having to wear something else like I did yesterday...) is sheer delight. The kids are off to school and Gracie is settled in for her morning nap - it's lovely and quiet and although I'm actually being quite delusional about my day, it's okay for a bit. I'll take off full speed after I've had my little one sided chat here. I promise. ...I had another huge class yesterday. Lots of money. And guess what I did? I called Steven, the Edward Jones guy who rang my doorbell last week... I'll bet he LOVES that his little door-to-door foray actually resulted in someone calling to make an appointment. But that is not my point. My point is, I make a bit of money with my litt

It's late and I should really just turn out the light and go to sleep - but I'm disappointed that I had no time today to peruse my favorite blogs, let alone add an entry to my own... so here I am. Please - don't hold me responsible for whatever ends up coming out of my flying fingers this late at night. Oh never mind. I'll be back in the morning. (It's been one of those days.)

Here are the before and after pictures of my kitchen, as promised: Now, just as a disclaimer, I didn't spend any time cleaning or trying to make the before pictures look cute - these were my "Oh my gosh, when we come back the whole kitchen will be torn up - I'd better take pictures before we leave" shots... And here is what we came home to: All wall cabinets torn out. Popcorn ceiling scraped off. Floor torn up. Half of base cabinets gone. Soffitt halfway removed. Molding taken off. Backsplash removed. Dust everywhere. Floor covered with sticky glue residue. Generally, a huge mess... and this is how I get to live for the next several weeks...

We're home, although I hardly recognize the place. Our contractor was BUSY this weekend. The kitchen is a shell of what it used to be. Literally. It's a good thing, because there's no more questioning in my mind whether we should remodel. It's underway - big time. There's no turning back now. I'll post pictures later today of what it looked like before we left and what it looked like when we opened the door. Our weekend was blissful. S.'s birthday was lovely. She got to ride in the back with the dog (a lifelong dream come true for her - and no, I'm not kidding) the whole way to Leavenworth. Gracie LOVES car rides - and this extended version was no exception. When we got to the cabin, we unpacked and then started the satisfying process of unwinding and relaxing. S. and I baked a birthday cake, which she decorated. She opened her presents (lots of clothes from Grandma, with matching socks, of course, her new bedroom ensemble and an outfit from me, complete

It's been a good week... other than the fact that right now I should be emptying cupboards instead of blogging, things have been plugging along well in my little corner of the world. Yesterday I got a frequent flyer reward in the mail - a free flight anywhere Southwest flies. Cool. Not only is it really cool to have free flight, it's really cool to sit around thinking about all the different ways I might use it. We went to a fundraiser at the kids' school last night. At the silent auction, I won a "Bootcamp Birthday Party" put on by the world's most popular male 6th grade teacher. It includes games, activities, camoflauge face paint and has no limit to the number of kids we can invite. We're going to use it for K.'s party. I only had to pay $30 for it - it is worth millions to me to not have to plan a party. I taught two classes with a total of 38 students this week. I get paid per student, so I'm sitting pretty on a nice big fat checkbook right no

Took this tonight while standing outside waiting for the dog to do her business. Reason #1 I'm glad we got the dog: If I didn't have a dog I would never have seen this morning's sunrise or this moon tonight.

Yipes I've got lots to do today. Sorry about the boredom factor. I shouldn't even be here, but decided if I'm going to post, it needs to be my to-do list. Maybe it will motivate me knowing ya'll know what I should be up to. Pack up everything on kitchen bookshelves. Take all packed boxes downstairs. Fold laundry. Take Gracie for a walk. Pack the family for our weekend road trip. Mop. Vacuum. Make cookies to take on road trip. Wrap S.'s birthday presents. Send two business related e-mails. (Specific ones I've been putting off...) Make one specific business related phone call. At least start last class sample for Dec. 1st class. Make dinner... a tough one since I haven't had time to grocery shop this week. There you go. I'm printing this off and marking it off with a big fat red pen when I accomplish something. Oh - and lookie at the sunrise I got to see this morning... Good day, everyone.

S. has a birthday on Friday and will be turning 9 - so I suppose I should be posting about her - but I'm not. Instead I'll be writing about my baby, who only has a little less than a month of being 5 left... I don't know why that transition from 5 to 6 is so big to me... it's when my little ones become kids in my mind I think. There's no fooling anyone that I have preschoolers anymore - they're all KIDS - with permanent teeth coming in all big and scary lookin' in their little mouths... with amazing vocabularies and no more cute little mispronounced words... Having my youngest leave all that behind leaves me a little shell shocked and bewildered. Last night as I was tucking him in this was his prayer: "Dear Jesus - thank you for this day. Thank you that we're all home safe. Thank you that I had a good day at school and Daddy had a good day at work. Help me to be responsible since I'm the leader of the boy club at school. Help me have good drea

It's been a day of contemplation for me... I wasn't ready to write about it last night (and didn't want to mar the beauty of the slipper post with irrelevant distractions,) but church last night was pretty amazing - and epiphanic. The sermon was about prayer. Intercessory, earnest, obedient prayer. Which, in and of itself would be a pretty convicting sermon. But what it did for me was reveal a pattern of sin in my life that has completely brought me to my knees and has had me in tears all day. I wrote the following email to my pastor this morning. It pretty much sums up my heart right now, and it's much easier to cut and paste this baby than try to get back all the words. (To clarify the beginning of the second paragraph, Asia was teasing him after the service about always making me cry...) "Rob - Thank you for an excellent message last night. Asia's comment about my crying... let's just say God has me in a pretty raw place right now, and the atmosphere at

What a full and interesting day I've had... We didn't go to the morning service at church - our church repeats the morning service in the evening, so tonight we decided to try it out. I slept in until 9:30 this morning instead. A glorious and lovely way to spend a Sunday morning, if you ask me. I had loads of errands I wanted to run this afternoon. One included stopping by a "Craft Fair" where a friend of mine was selling scrapbook products. Now, several years ago I used to attend these "fairs" regularly, enjoying the wide array of handcrafted goods. Well, either my taste has changed, or the wares have - but either way - I cannot believe how much crap I saw for sale today. The popular items this year (meaning I saw them for sale at every other booth) were little crocheted dish scrubbies, beaded bracelets and necklaces, hand knitted scarves, and soy candles. Some of these were pretty - but certainly nothing I could not take the time to make on my own. Then th

I woke up this morning with pink eye. Yuck. Not sure where it came from, but when I got up, only one eye would open. The affected eye was glued shut with a huge boogeriffic glob of goo. It took a washcloth, lots of hot water and the sacrifice of numerous eyelashes to get it all cleaned off. Then I was treated to the reddest eyeball I've ever seen... it ain't pretty, folks. Add that to my sore throat and my drippy nose and I'm a total mess. My boss didn't want me to work (imagine that!), so in spite of my blechy feeling, I've devoted the day to being in my studio... Asia was disappointed that I wasn't working - seems my presence was going to throw off his Friday groove with the kids - so I told him to pretend I'm not here and I've been creating all day - it's been fabulous! If I wasn't so ugly to look at, I'd say this was the best day I've had all week. Wait - I'm all alone here, and nobody's looking at my ugly eye - this is the be

I feel lousy today - especially because I had thought that my cold/flu bug was gone - and now it's returned in full force. I spent most of the night with tissue stuffed up my nose just so I could sleep without that annoying drip flying out my nose every ten minutes. Lovely. On that note, I'll resort to a list of random and disorganized thoughts... The cabinets have been ordered... I was able to get everything I wanted, including pull-out shelves on all my lower cabinets, a plate rack, crown molding, and a built in desk with ribbed glass paneled doors. It was more expensive than anticipated, but Asia gave the thumbs up when I called and gave him the total. I nearly fainted when I wrote the check... there was barely room to write out that horrifically L---O---N---G dollar amount. I spent this morning in the waiting room at the car dealership. I finally got around to getting the back window fixed. What an interesting parade of people go in and out of that place... from the parchme

I'm not feeling very talkative this morning... I'm sort of dreading my day, and am still in my pj's to prove it... I get to go order our kitchen cabinets today. You'd think I'd be all jiggy with excitement, but instead I'm almost sick to my stomach. I LOVE the idea of a newly remodeled kitchen. But I hate that we're spending so much money on ourselves. It seems over-indulgent and selfish. When there are so many other things we could be doing with our money, do I really need a new kitchen? There are so many worthy causes - so many generous things we could do... Of course, I can't exactly call Asia and tell him I've changed my mind, can I? No - I know this is a good thing... it's good for resale - it's good from a maintenance standpoint - it's good for my sanity. But it's really unnecessary, in the grand scheme of things. So I'm having some guilt, I guess. I'm sure there's no chance of finding the perfect kitchen cabinets at

I was asked to post my Gratitude Journal... unfortunately, I'm having trouble uploading images to Blogger today, so I'll have to link you to my 2peas post, and you can go look at it there. I was inspired by Donna Downey's book, Creative Albums , in which she shows step by step directions for oodles of innovative and unusual projects. I LOVED the texture of her cardboard album and knew I had to create one for myself. The idea behind this album is for each member of my family to take time on Thanksgiving Day to fill out one of the little slips in each envelope - one for each of the categories: Family, Friends and Blessings. This way, we create a lasting memento of the things we are grateful for in the year 2005. I'll tuck it away with my fall decorations after the holiday and pull it our year after year to have on display. So, here you have it - The Goins Gratitude Journal, 2005

Okay, I'll admit it. I had a little bit of fun last night. The kids were so excited - and the weather was unseasonably warm, so we stayed out longer than usual when trick-or-treating, and they got more candy than ever. Usually it's near freezing here on Halloween. We've now officially set a record for the longest time without a freezing temperature - so we didn't even have to wear hats and gloves last night to stay warm. What a treat! I felt like I was in California or something. K. and his friends were allowed to do a bit of trick-or-treating by themselves. None of them were particularly interested in staying with the Moms and Dads and the dreaded "little kids," so we let them go off on their own, making them promise to stay on blocks where at least one of our houses was located so someone could keep an eye on their antics. They did fine and he hit the mother lode - his bag was overflowing. Apparently three fifth graders can hit a lot more houses by themselv