Transformation, One room at a time

I am in a manic mode right now. Not necessarily to the extent of bipolar mania, but I'm very driven right now. I just want to do everything. Painting, sewing, gardening, de-cluttering... Every room, every closet, every drawer, every flower bed  is drawing me in. Begging me to unleash some energy. 

While I do have a few balls in the air right now, I'm determined to stay focused and purposeful so each project started will be completed. Hopefully as the mania wanes, as it always does, I'll be able to appreciate the effort because I'll see completion instead of partially done which equals chaos to my agitated mind. 

This week while on vacation, I tackled the dining room. I wanted something lighter in color, a little more contemporary, AND I FINALLY WANTED TO GET THE QUARTER ROUND DOWN. That is all caps (mania) because the baseboards have gone unfinished for over a decade!

I learned a new skill. I am now able to miter corners and drill tiny holes to attach the q. r. to the baseboards. I love the final  product. I hope to find a new art piece to place above the buffet. This is a before picture with green walls and redslip covers and curtains. The actual chair covers were blue. 

Here the blue chairs show up a little. So much color. 

Re-upholstered the chairs with some awesome $5/yd. fabric from the remnant table. 

Much better! Also cleaned and waxed the floors. I may be going crazy. 

Finally, a front door color to love!

We have lived in our house16+ years. About 14 years ago we had the exterior painted. It was mostly windows, trim and the siding on the upper back half of the house-all painted white. The two sets of shutters were green and the front doors we painted red in a color complementary to our brick. 

Fast forward fourteen years. The shutters were rotting and had to come down. The lack of contrast caused the house to look monochromatic. And I was just tired of the red.  Bleh. I was not ready to hang new shutters until we address the gutter issue. But, I felt like contrasting front doors right now would be the answer to making me happy with the curb appeal. 

What a search it was! I had pinned lots of blue front doors in search of the right color to go with my red brick house. I love blue and I knew it was the answer. Until it wasn't. The house went from bleh to Woah!--Not sure where to focus my eyes!  The blue I had was lovely, but I realized the variant hues of the brick coupled with the teakwood colored roof was just too much! The oak in the front yard was about to get a big shape-up which would make it all more visible. Nope. Blue was not the color. 

Green like my old shutters could have been the color. But, I wanted something different. 

Before heading to Ace Hardware and buying too many sample colors to add to my dilemma, I got smart and took a real closeup look at the dark tones in the brick AND the roof color. I looked at them with paint chips in hand at different times of the day, in sunlight and shadows. And I kept being drawn back to a color I loved that terrified me at the same time--purple. Not Barney-purple, or Mardi Gras-purple. More of a purplish-charcoal-brownish color. It's Benjamin Moore Deep Caviar. 

I lightly buffed the old brass hardware with a superfine grit sandpaper to bring out some shine. 

The door colors are similar to the darkest bricks and the roof color in the shadows

Here, you can see the darker brick though the storm doors make it harder to see the color. 

A better view. 

I am very happy at how they provide some contrast, but are not distracting. 

Fear vs. Love

I read on a website a very insightful message. In summary: everything we do in life is motivated by one of two things. We either do something because of fear or because of love. We should do everything because of love.

NBC Learn K-12 preemie doctor

NBC Learn K-12 preemie doctor

this is a video about Dr. Korones from 2008. He passed away in July 2013. I learned alot from this man. He was brilliant, dedicated and a fierce defender of the preemie. He also could make you crazy! Some days I miss his style. That method of practicing medicine and doing research will never exist again.

Ready, Set, Grow!

Tonight I started seeds for the garden. I labeled them better than last year, so here's hoping they don't get mixed up. 

Using the Jiffy Pot starters I planted:

6 Romas

4 Early Girls

4 Mortgage Lifters

4 Big Red

2 Red Cherry

2 Sun Gold

4 California Wonder Bell Pepper

4 Brussels Sprouts

2 Artichokes

1 Parsley

1 Tarragon

Fingers Crossed!

Sorrowful mysteries a little less mysterious

I am making a good effort to pray a rosary everyday. I've been praying one on my way downtown on work days for probably 6 or 7 years. But, quite recently the Urge which I have regularly suppressed has been quietly insistent. "You need this. Everyday. Come lay your burdens down. Tell them to your Mother." 

Repetition has it's value I have discovered. In a sense, it opens the mind for deeper thoughts to develop. I rarely have profound discovery. Tonight it felt like finding that puzzle piece I had been searching for a long, long time. It by no means finished the picture. Just a small part falling into place. 

Jesus gets my fear because he truly knew the same in The Agony in the Garden. 

Jesus understands my physical pain. He felt it too at the Scouraging at the Pillar. 

Jesus knows my humiliation because of taunts and disrespect he received with the Crowning With Thorns. 

Jesus relates well to my burdens-my work and family and time and health struggles because he bore the greatest of burdens in the Carrying of the Cross. 

And that singular, universal fate--facing our own mortality...Jesus, true man and true God, has traveled the path and will walk it again with us so we will need not fear. 

Uncle Luke

(Original post from Jan. 2015. I hate that the date changed because I edited one word. )

Uncle Luke Borger died Saturday and was buried today. He was 102 and "almost a half."

Uncle Joe came down for the visitation and funeral. While we waited for the family to return from Memorial Park, uncle Joe told us that Grandpa Romer, Uncle Ham  and Uncle Luke opened a furniture factory in Piqua. Grandpa and Uncle Ham financed it and Uncle Luke ran it. They were only in business for two years even though they always ran in the black. The bigger manufacturers got wind of their success and threatened to pull their business if the suppliers didn't stop selling to this smaller factory. Without springs and wood, they couldn't stay open. It would be interesting to find out more details in that history. 

Murry Crimas, Baby.

Working different holidays over the past 29 years, well, it's never what you want to do. It is part of the requirement in a 24/7 profession. You hope for the Christmas miracle of a low census and the chance to be canceled. Rarely happens. So, you set your alarm even earlier than 4:45 a.m. to whip together a casserole. Then, you get a little rebel, put on an out-of-uniform Christmasy top and head out entirely too early to spend the day with your other family. Your work people. 

If you are lucky, there will be little drama and mountains of good food. The day will pass quickly enough and you'll leave on time. 

I always understood the sacrifice. Everyone has to do their time. Some end up with more holidays than others, but over the days and decades the tally ends up about even. What I haven't spent a lot of time considering is the sacrifices our love ones make to accommodate our schedules. So this year I worked Christmas Eve which allowed for neither the late afternoon or early evening mass nor for a dinner out as we have done in the past. Steve, the boys and I tried Midnight (10:30pm) mass at Holy Spirit. It was very nice and certainly was in line with the late night sleep schedules they have. Instead of a Christmas Eve dinner followed by gifts, this year we had Christmas Day brunch. All was good. But, will it be our new tradition? Who knows? It's not always easy being the one everyone else has to plan around. 

But maybe THAT is our tradition. Knowing that every year will be different and just accepting that. Regardless of the day or the order of our celebrations, ours is a tradition of making it all work. 

Love my family and grateful that they shoulder the inconveniences my job creates around family holiday time. 

Scientific Methods

It is amazing in this modern day that there is a segment of this civilized country that chooses to ignore best practices in medicine. It is almost mind numbing to me that a woman would choose to deny her newborn a potentially life saving yet harmless vitamin because it is given by injection and her "research" shows it's not always necessary. I'm sorry, but if I was told that 2% of the babies who don't receive this injection develop hemmorhages that include intestinal and brain bleeding, I'd be knocking people over to get that shot for my child. I have no problem with being natural and holistic to a point. And a woman should have a say in how she wants to progress during labor and delivery. No epidural? No problem! Sure, childbirth is natural, but in some instances it can be very dangerous for the mother and the baby. And often that danger doesn't present until the actual delivery. That's why I am so opposed to home births. Minutes matter when the placenta abrupts or oops, we didn't realize this baby was so big and now is stuck. I love my job and I appreciate the families that I get to take care of. But show me a detailed birth plan and I'll show you a baby in the NICU. 

Milwaukee in Three Days

Monday August 18 started early. 4:00am to be exact. Our flight was due to depart at 0550. We were all packed the night before, had taken Bailey to the Carricos and gotten to bed at a decent hour. Sleep eluded me, but that's nothing new. The flight left on time. This was Connor's first time to fly and Garrett's second. One of the reasons we wanted to take this mini vacation was to give them the experience of flying. It's was a speedy flight and we got into Midway about 40 minutes early. By 0750 we were leaving in our rental. Of course we met rush hour traffic immediately, making the drive to Milwaukee longer than our flight! We stopped at a Perkins on Kenosha around 10:00 for breakfast then headed to the Lakefront Brewery, arriving at 11:45 just in time for the 12:00 tour. Mike, our guide, expanded the home brew process that led the two owners to eventually establish their craft brewery downtown. For $7 we got to tour, sample 4 beers then received a pint glass at the end. Their beers were delicious and I learned that a dark beer San actually be smooth and tasty we ended with some Bavarian pretzels and souvenir shopping. We checked into the airport BW at 2:30. By 2:35 Connor, Garrett and Steve were asleep! I even took a nap, something usually so hard for me to do. 

That evening we drove back downtown because I wanted authentic German food   The Old German Beer Hall did not disappoint. We sat outside and had cheese curds, which taste like fried mozzarella sticks, and beef jerky which looked and tarted like Summer sausage. Then we all ordered some variation on sausages. They're all made at a factory, Usingers, across the street. It was the best bratwurst I have ever tasted. More beer, just one, then back to the hotel because we were pooped!

   (Downtown)

Tuesday August 20

Let the boys sleep in until we finally had to wake Connor up at 11:20.  We went to the Harley-Davidson museum, first getting the boys some lunch then doing the tour. It was more interesting than I thought it would be. By the end, I was wanting to go on a motorcycle ride! After that we drove down to the waterfront to look at Lake Michigan. There is a very large park there where lots of festivals are held. There's also a marina. I was looking for a beach so I could stick my toes in the water, but evidently it's at another park. Oh well. We walked around a bit then drove a few blocks into downtown so I could get a picture of the Bronze Fonz down on the River walk.  Accomplished that task, so now the things I wanted to do were done. We drove back to the hotel to rest before heading to the baseball game. That was the big reason for this trip: a chance for Connor to see the Toronto Blue Jays play. Tonight they did not prevail. The Brewers showed why the are the #1 NL team right now. It was a very quiet ride back to the hotel. 

(My fantasy bike--I would learn to ride this!)

       Bronze Fonz

       Riverwalk

       Racing sausages

Wednesday August 20

You know, three days in one spot is just long enough. Because the ball game was at 1:10, we didn't try to squeeze in much more sightseeing. The boys needed to sleep in. Once they were up and packed, the hotel breakfast had ended. So, we checked out and scooted a block away to Denneys for an all-American breakfast for them  and lunch for me and Steve. When the opportunity presents itself...

There was still plenty of time before the game so I did navigate us to the Basilica of St Josephat. It was built by Polish immigrants in the 1800's. Massive and beautiful. We were there only briefly, but it was noon so the Angelus rang from the bell tower. I felt like I was in front if St. Henry Church at Grandma's or that I could have even been transported to Europe. Sometimes I get déjà vu moments that make me feel like I belong in that setting. As if it were a part of me. Sometimes my reality of being a Catholic minority in the South doesn't jive with who I feel like I'm supposed to be. Weird.

( The restaurant near our hotel withe prop plane on the roof and the giant cow out front. Americana. )

   (St. Josephat Basilica)

    (The Bob Ueker statue)

    (Winner winner chicken dinner!)

So from there we wound our way to the stadium through older neighborhoods. They were only slightly rundown, most homes and town homes being very well kept. You can tell that the ethnicity has changed over time: from Polish and German to Hispanic, Asian and Black. Overall, I thought Milwaukee is a beautiful old city. Full of history. 

The ball game was a much better outcome. The Blue Jays won 9-5. Connor was much happier. We left from Miller Park and headed straight to Chicago. I had hoped we might drive through downtown so the boys could see how massive the city really is. But, we were all tired and hungry and just ready to settle at the hotel before dark. I found Rosati's Italian Restaurant and Red Hots on Urbanspoon and thought, why not? We stopped there in Gurnee to have some good authentic Chicago pizza. From there it was straight to Bedford Park right next to Midway and the Sleep Hotel. Tiny room, but great location which made flying out Thursday morning much easier. A one hour flight delay due to thunderstorms gave us time for breakfast at Harry Caray's bar at the airport. 

We were home by noon with Caroline and Noah there to greet us. I was very glad we had those days to spend with the boys. They enjoyed being together and it filled my heart to hear them laugh and kid with each other.