RazNoggle

Ugh…..

That, in a grunt, is how I feel about mornings. EVERY morning. I’m not a morning person. So many people say that, but I say it and MEAN it!! I wish I was a morning person. I wish I could rise early, enjoy some quiet moments before the day and the family start to stir, wish I reveled in the sight of watching the sunrise. I’ve always said that there’s no big deal in a sunrise, it’s just a sunset in reverse. I LIKE sunsets. I’m awake at sunset time. Sunrises only serve to remind me that I’m awake WAY too early! LOL!

Can you change the “morning person” “not-so-morning” person part of yourself? Do you think? I don’t know. There have been stretches of my life where I did indeed have to get up at a wretched pre-dawn hour for various reasons. Believe me it wasn’t because I wanted to. I went one semester at college, or maybe it was the whole year, getting up at 5:30 each morning. It was awful! Then my work hours changed and I was working 12am to 3am or 3am to 6am shifts and that was bad too! I’d rather work the 3-6 shift because then I was awake already for first hour. The other one left me very very cranky because I still had to wake up by whatever time 7:30? to have my bed made for room check. Silliness….

But that’s neither here nor there. I still despise mornings. I often resolve to change my grumpy-got-out-of-wrong-side-of-the-bed self, but the resolutions usually only carry me through till bed time and by morning I’ve lost them in my sleep.

I haven’t been sleeping well recently. I’m usually ready to go to sleep at around 7pm, seriously I get so tired right after dinner! Just about the time I’m wrastlin’ with the kids through their bed time ordeal. Well, not Ella, she LOVES to go to bed, and I so enjoy that stage!! But the boys put up a monstrous fuss every evening. So by the time they are down-ish, I’m more than ready for some quiet evening time. But then I get my “second wind” and I’m wide awake. I’ve tried recently going to bed earlier like 9 something, but then I lie in bed and toss and turn till I think I’ll loose my mind! Trying to find sleep, when sleep isn’t trying to find you is the most useless waste of time! Bah!

However, the past couple of mornings, I’ve been staying away from the computer more and spending a bit more time interacting with the lads. Really all I want to do in the morning is nurse my coffee and stay curled up in a fetal position in the overstuffed chair, or escape into cyber land! I can’t do that though. It, much like the witching hour, is a time of day when the boys really REALLY need me. Even if all I’m doing is helping them put away toys that were left out, and pretending to “hide” behind my hands till they get close enough to grab and tickle, it makes a HUGE difference on their daily outlook. Mine too, if I’m honest. How can you not be happy when you’re causing your children to shriek with laughter because you’re tickling their tummies!?!

I’ve been convicted about my lazy, irresponsible reaction to mornings. Yes, they are a challenge, I’ve grappled with that fact my whole life. BUT they aren’t going to go away, and I can’t just pull the covers over my head and ignore them. As much as I’d love to!! I have an e-book on my computer called “Maximizing Your Mornings.” I’ve had it on there for awhile, but haven’t got around to reading it. I don’t like reading stuff like that on my computer, so I’m going to attempt to put it on the Kindle. I’m sure there are some brilliant ideas in that book, but what it boils down to is me choosing to NOT be selfish, and think of my kids instead of myself.

The difference is astounding. The last couple of mornings, the boys have played together better than they have in weeks! Seriously! And I think it is in part because they’ve had a bit more real mommy time in the mornings. Sometimes that makes all the difference.

Here’s the long awaited post. Before’s and After’s, but please don’t judge the photography. There are a lot of pics so I’m going to keep words, to a minimum. I’m sure you can appreciate that!

This was the original kitchen. This house began it’s career as a double wide trailer, which my inlaws gradually added to, changed and basically rearranged while they were living here. The kitchen, however, had kept it’s old original self complete with 70′s style wall board, and plywood cabinets. This is how it looked.

Shortly before Myles was born, I had this fit of “I can’t take it any longer” so my bro, James came over and hugely helped me paint it. Except we didn’t bother with INSIDE the cabinets so you could still see the old wall board. It was a sloppy job, but the colors were vastly improved. And I knew that my Dad-in-law was planning to redo it all someday, so it was a temporary fix.

Here’s us painting.

And here’s what it looked like painted.

Now let the reno begin! I have to say again and again just how grateful we are to Curtis and Tiffany for ALL the hard work they did on this kitchen. Curtis is a working machine, and you’d better stay out of his way, or you might end up tiled. BUT I was simply amazed with what they did in the time they did it!! WOW! So you wanna see, huh? huh?

This is what Curtis had to start out with.

He got it sheet rocked, moved/built a couple of walls, taped and uh.. mudded? Oh yeah, he makes it look easy. I know one thing, construction will never be my gift.

New plywood on the floors, some carpet removed, sorting out where the cabinets go.

New light fixtures, sink, AND (ta-tum) garbage disposal!!! Oh, and Curtis did the rewiring, plumbing and all of that too!

Tile work begun. They built a bar from scratch, and tiled the WHOLE countertop and the floor!

Tiffany did all the painting, bless her! She also worked out those strong muscles and helped Curtis hang the upper cabinets! Lookin’ good!

THE BIG REVEAL

It’s beautiful!! I absolutely LOVE it!! It’s so fun to be in there and cook in the “new kitchen.” Even Ella loves to squirm across the tile and sit and watch while I work in it! Ha! It’s an amazing space! We’re still slowly sifting everything into it’s new home, but these cabinets are amazing!! Couldn’t ask for a better kitchen!

Thanks so much Dad Noggle!!! You’ve got great ideas! Perhaps your next career could be an architect! And thanks SOOO much Curtis and Tiff for your work! You guys amaze me! I get tired just watching you, ha ha ha!!

I’m so incredibly behind! I have a million things to do today and the list just keeps getting longer. I already have that “stressy-panic-y” feel, but instead of relieving some of that by just getting it done, I’m blogging. Yes, I’m a completely messed up person, but you love me anyway. Actually blogging, for me, is therapy of sorts, and I’ll be much better capable of dealing with the rest of today if I spend a few moments here. Besides, I blog fast. Thoughts just leak out through my fingers and I can hardly type fast enough to keep up. Glad for spell check, now if only they could put a “think twice” check on here too, THAT would be something!

Anyway, here is what happened to me yesterday. I think I’m still spinning from it all and that’s why today’s loops have thrown me a bit more. But no big deal, I’m going to roll with the punches, and leave some laundry in the dryer till a more convenient time, and I’m NOT going to make my bed, so there! Ha!

I was telling Stuart recently that I’m interested in taking a Zumba class that I saw a flier for in “town.” I don’t know much about Zumba, but I do have some FB friends who rave about it, so I’m interested. Besides it’ll be a good way for me to get out of the house and away from the kiddos once a week. I tacked on the added perk of getting our shopping out of the way so that it won’t have to be done on our busy-enough Sundays. Stuart likes the idea, so last night I was going to go check out the Zumba class. Just keep in the back of your mind, the fact that “town” is nearly an hour away…. K? That figures in just a touch.

First I needed to drop something off at the UPS Store. Having done this, I realized that I needed a bathroom break, but I was also starving. Conveniently I located a Subway (my favorite fast food, because it’s not sopping in grease, not that it’s probably much better for ya, mind you, but it makes me FEEL better, ha) and made a bee line for the restroom. Wouldn’t you know it with 3 employees doing not much of anything apparently, there was NO tp in there. GRRRRRRRR!!! So now I was starving, had to go, and peeved. I was nice to the guy making my sandwich though, didn’t want him sneaking anything in there that didn’t belong. But I did tell him once he was ringing me up. Ha! Then I grabbed my sandwich and marched out. I scarfed it down while I was driving back toward Wally World, but I took the back road so I could find the place where Zumba was to be. While I was glancing at the buildings on that street I noticed that there were a lot of lawn chairs set up on both sides, and people were starting to gather. Uh-oh. Apparently there was a parade going to happen later for…. something.

Oh well. I made it to Wal-Mart and was crossing the parking lot, dreaming about the bathroom stocked with tp, and talking to Stu on the phone about which card I needed to put our purchases on. Now, here’s where things get really funny. We have recently switch from a “real” bank to an online bank, and all of this happened while I was in Albuquerque, so when my cards for the new accounts came in, they got put in my “in box.” In case you don’t understand that word, it’s a HORRIBLE contraption of torment and torture for those of us non-GTD-zelots. *sigh* Stu is working on me to become more of a compartmental organized person, but I think it’s uphill work for him for sure. Anyway, I ignore my inbox to the best of my ability till it’s overflowing and obnoxious and then I generally purge it by dumping most of the contents into the trash and stashing the rest in various “other” places till my procrastinating soul can manage to deal with them. (don’t tell Stu!) BUT right now it’s been quite some time since my last purge, and I never found, or activated my new cards. Since we had still been using the old accounts some too, this wasn’t THAT big of a deal until yesterday. I failed to realize that the old accounts had actually been completely transferred and canceled. Uh-oh! So when Stuart asked me which cards I had and I told him, we realized I’d have to come right back home.

Unfortunately the vehicle was on E! I did have a little bit of cash in my purse, which doesn’t go very far on fuel these days, so I figured I could get enough to make it home. I headed out toward our normal gas stop, and it wasn’t till I got on the road that I realized I’d never made it IN to WM to use their bathroom! Yep… one of those days, ha ha ha!

When I got to the gas station I did a thorough search of the vehicle to see if there was any loose money floating around. Hey, ya never know? And I happened to find my honey’s wallet since he had been driving that car to work! Yay!!!! He did have the new cards, BTW because he goes through HIS inbox very regularly. So I called and told him the good news, filled up the tank and planned to head back to WM to get our groceries! Yay!

However, when I left the station I was thinking about something. I can’t remember NOW what I was thinking about but I do remember thinking, because I was kinda driving on “auto pilot.” Safely, of course. But suddenly I “came too” and realized that I was traveling WEST on the interstate instead of back East to get to WM!!! Arg!! See, we stop at that station every time we have a “town trip” as the last thing we do before heading home, so it was just natural for me to get on the road home. And while the HUGE skies and open spaces out here are awesome when you’re jaunting down the road going somewhere, they also have drawbacks in that there aren’t very many exits, and they are FAR between. And while I may be a bit reckless in some ways, I’m not gutsy enough to use those “Official Use Only” crossovers. *sigh* So I had to drive miles… yes lots of them, down the road before I came to an exit I could take. LOL! Oh, but I had used the well stocked bathroom at the gas station, so this was quite a bit more bearable than it could have been.

After that things went more “normally” if shopping in that Wal-Mart can. Still it’s more fun to do by myself than with the monkeys, so I did enjoy the time. However by the time I got out it was already well past when the Zumba class would have been over, even considering they had one. I had heard several mentions of the “parade” while I was shopping, and wasn’t that willing to try to find parking and then walk all over down town to check on the class anyway. Oh well, there’s always next week.

Now I have the cards I need… though my inbox is still a hot mess, and I’m more prepared to face life… and grocery shopping.

The End