Tag Archives: indy

Feb3

TODAY is the best day of my life!

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TODAY is the best day of my life!

Well, maybe you’ve heard that the Superbowl is coming to Indy on Sunday?

It’s just a little football game.

But you know what the BIG news was?  THE TODAY SHOW WAS BROADCASTING FROM DOWNTOWN!

Guys.  I love the Today show.  It’s, like, my favorite.

One of the things on my Bucket List was being in “the crowd” on the Today show.  For serious.  (And now that I’ve written it down I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it.)

So last week when they announced they were broadcasting from Indy this week on Friday – Monday, we were SO in.  In fact, this is how in we were: Joey took the morning off to make this happen for me.  He is a rockstar.

THANKS, JOEY!!!

A couple days ago, Angel’s husband Chang also became a rockstar because HE took the day off so she could come with us!

And that’s how it became a party at my house at 6:00 a.m. this morning.

Should I mention that I was so excited last night that I couldn’t sleep until after 1 am?  So when the alarm went off at 5:30, it felt super lame.  But we got up, we got ready, and we got in the car.

We drove down and parked in one of the garages near the convention center.  I am not going to disclose how much we paid for parking because it was a shameful amount of money, but I know from a Very Reliable Source that the cost for that same garage has increased by $20.00 in the last 4 hours.  I think that makes me feel less bad?

Angel brought her carrier and we loaded Analie up.

Analie was fully dressed in an undershirt, leggings and socks underneath her PJs, was also wearing a hoodie and covered in several blankets.  Oh, and a hat.

Poor girl was so tired and confused.

But she was a champ!  She didn’t fuss at all the entire morning; she just looked around sleepily at everything.  YAY ANA!

We ran upstairs and walked the two or three blocks to the broadcast site, and I think half of Indianapolis had beaten us there!  It was packed with screaming people waving their signs.  We didn’t get very close, but that’s OK.  Just being part of the crowd was so fun.

See that big gray post in the right third of the shot?  And that cute little lady in the white jacket?  That’s ANN CURRY, guys.

We heard buzz in the crowds behind us that Al was going to zipline at 7:30, so since our spot wasn’t very good for watching the broadcast, we moved to see if we could see Al go flying above our heads.

Sure enough, we did!  (That’s him in the top right of the photo.)  He totally looked right at me.

We lined up on the street by the end of the zipline and waited with a small crowd for a few minutes while Al did the weather from up in the tower.

Ana did all the beautiful coloring on that sign herself.  (And she got it all over her foot in the process.)

AND THEN AL ROKER WALKED PAST US.  (Also some IMPD officers.)

After that we decided to walk through Superbowl Village and over to Monument Circle and see the big Superbowl letters.

That’s when we realized how cold it was outside.

And by this point, our Miss decided she’d really rather not be in the carrier for awhile.  She wanted to be able to actually see what was going on.  (She’s too short to see much over the carrier.  Poor thing’s going to be a midget.)

Superbowl Village was OK, I guess.  It probably would have been ten times cooler if things were open.  But it was 7:45 am, and most visitors were probably still having their coffee in their hotel bathrobes at that time of day.

IF they were awake at all.

Analie was getting to the point where she was wondering why SHE was awake.  (We did not pose her like this.  It was hilarious.)

We made it to the Superbowl letters just as the sun was coming up!

And you’re wondering what Angel’s sign says?  Uh…”Chang is the Baby Ninja”.  I was really tired last night when I made it and it was the best thing I could come up with at the time.

After Monument Circle we all realized we were starving.  So we hit up a Panera and got bagels and tried to warm up some.

Have you ever seen a more sleepy pair of eyes in the entire world?  (I even put her to bed at 5:30 last night knowing we’d be getting her up an hour early!)  We’re going to have another early night tonight, I think.

I am so glad we were crazy and got up early to do this.  Sure, you’d need a magnifying glass to find us on TV (we found ourselves!), but just being a part of the spirit of everything was so worth it.  It made me feel like I was part of something in my adopted hometown.

Now I need to feed an early lunch to my exhausted baby girl so I can put her down for an early nap.  Then Angus needs a bath.  You don’t want to know why.

And we’re back to  business as usual.

Jul26

A Culinary Tour Inside My Mouth

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A Culinary Tour Inside My Mouth

Today, I ate jellyfish.  It had a surprisingly cool flavor, which I liked, but I have to say that jellyfish is extremely hard to chew.

I also ate sliced up pigs ear in red chile oil.  The spice was nice (RHYME!) but again with the problem of it being difficult to chew.  Very difficult to chew.

Then, since I was kind of on a roll, I ate some bitter melon.  It made my face squish up and my tongue feel weird.  I tried four pieces.

Right now, I am experiencing technical difficulties in my intestinal tract.  I think that is all you want to know.

Nov9

38 weeks HUGE

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38 weeks HUGE

I got my hairs cut this afternoon.  I could not handle my hair touching my shoulders, so I walked into Mia & Maxx and said CHOP IT ALL OFF.

Two inches and a whole bunch of layers later, it was back to the way I liked it when we lived in Texas.  (I have been having communication problems when I’ve been trying out new stylists here.  It’s probably my own fault.)

To make matters even more tricksy, I didn’t tell Joey what I was doing and I wasn’t quite home yet when arrived from work.  He came out front to meet me and said, “WOAH, you got your hair cut.  It looks nice.”  And in the very next breath, “Aren’t you happy that I noticed right away?”

After dinner, which was a totally delicious meal of panko baked Tilapia with a (not what you would call fat-free) herbed cream sauce we both love, we decided we ought to take another picture of my recent expansion.  Because who knows when I’ll have this child and then maybe I can tie my own shoes again!  That would be ridiculous.  I might even wear socks if it meant I could tie my own shoes.  (I don’t like socks.  They make me feel claustrophobic and stressed out.)

So.  Here we are.

I look at that picture and I wonder why I’m not uncomfortable except at night.  Who knows.

And I know you’re probably coveting the sweet drapes we have hanging from the window in the left of the picture (I mean, I would be) but NO you can’t have them.  They were discontinued so now they’re like gold plated drapes instead of just regular old drapes.

Joey also decided to take a picture of me facing the camera, which I normally don’t like to do since I am nearing Orca Whale size.  However, this one is kind of awesome.

I just feel like this picture sums up my entire day.

And no, you still can’t have the drapes.

Nov6

Nursery = done!!

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Nursery = done!!

Sometime this week, I’m not even sure what day, we Finished The Nursery.   Yes, that phrase requires capital letters because it was a major event and is worthy of capitalization.

Perhaps you are interested in seeing some pictures?  Again, I must apologize for the quality of these pictures.  Joey has ordered the piece to fix the screen on my camera, and until then…I still can’t tell what I’m doing or, like, turn the flash on/off and basic stuff like that.  But I can look through the little viewfinder (which is kind of fuzzy, unfortunately) and push the magic button, so that’s what I did here.

And now: a panoramic tour.

This bookshelf was never intended to go in The Baby’s room, but we wound up not using it as part of our computer desk and stashed it in this room for awhile.  Then we got to thinking and decided we liked it and weren’t going to move it.  So there.

The bamboo decal was originally two smaller pieces of bamboo, but Joey had an idea to cut them out and pieced them together to make it look like one longer stalk.  Impressive?  I THINK YES.

The changing table was a gift from Joey’s parents, and Joey put it together in just about no time at all, considering how many pieces it had.  The thing also weighs literally 100 lbs.  It’s crazy.

I know you’re thinking, WHAT IS WITH THAT RIDICULOUSLY CUTE PANDA?!?  And we do too, just about every time we see her.  I had fun putting the flower on her head.

And we’re ready to roll with a cute changing table cover, cloth diapers, covers and wipes and Bordeaux Butt Paste.  Down below which you can’t see and probably don’t care about is the wet diaper pail.  Not to worry.  They will be washed often and more than likely the room will smell less diapery with these cloth dealies than with disposables.

I KNOW.  Shocking.  (It just seems so much grosser, but really it’s not.  It’s less grosser.)

The crib came from my Grandparents Laird’s house.  We, um, sanded it down and painted it white to match the decor.

But let’s not get all distracted by the fact that we sanded down something that was wood and then painted it. Let’s all…look at the pandas!  And the cherry blossoms!

Now wasn’t that more fun?

Ugh, sorry for the out of focusness in this picture, but I just had to show you my Little Brown Chair.  This was my rocking chair when I was a little girl.  I rocked all my dollies to sleep in it, and I used to polish it every weekend.  It clearly could use some polishing because it has been downstairs at my parents’ house for awhile.  In fact, I think I may polish it after I’m done with this.

Here’s MY rocking chair!  This was a gift from my parents, and it’s way comfortable.  Sometimes I come in here and sit in it because it’s easier to breathe sitting in this right now than it is on our couch.

And here again we have the bamboo that Joey cut all up to re-assemble to look like this.  I think he did a fantastical job.

The silk embroidered pandas we brought back with us from China. And then broke the frames because one fell off the wall in Texas, so we had to come up with a creative way to re-frame them since they were odd sizes.  Joey found some black-stained bamboo frames at Michaels, so we did a floating mount, which I think turned out kind of cool looking.  He wins again.

The rug was the one we basically stole from Pottery Barn because it was a floor model and they didn’t love it anymore.  Good thing we did.

Oh, and those curtains?  I thought they’d darken the room a little more than they do, but we still love them.  They are raw silk panels (not lined, unfortunately) from Pottery Barn that a.) we found on uber clearance and b.) we got to use Pottery Barn rewards to purchase.  So…they were basically free.  WIN.

Then one of us, I’m not sure which…probably me, had the “brilliant” idea to use bamboo poles as curtain rods.  Observe:

That’s all well and good and everything, bamboo poles are cheap.  Like $3.00 per pole.  It’s the anchoring them to the wall and suspending the curtains from them that is the part that will kick you in the hiney.  So, any of you who are thinking of doing that?  Yeah…factor in the cost of mounting them to the wall before you get all excited and run out and buy some and then remove them from the packaging so they are then non-returnable.

I’m just saying.

We’re 38 weeks on Wednesday, and I think we’ll meet our goal of being 100% ready by then!  I know we’ve been on berserk mode getting things ready, but we have been in ONE BIG LONG TRANSITION since we found out we were pregnant and then moved here.  We just wanted to actually BE ready so we didn’t get caught off guard.  I’m looking forward to having a few weeks to relax with Joey and not have to think about tying up loose ends.

You know what’s funny?  Now that we’re ready she’ll probably be born on Monday instead of waiting for Thanksgiving.  She can’t be born tomorrow because I have to sing with Krista.

But after church I guess she could decide to come.

Oct29

Freeze Warning!

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Freeze Warning!

All day yesterday, I heard on the radio that we were going to have a freeze warning overnight.  Every time they’d say it, I’d get all stressed and wonder if I needed to drip the faucets and open the cabinets, and WHY hadn’t I seen any FREEZE WARNING signs out in yards while I was driving around?

And then I remembered that, duh, I grew up in the Iowa and we never dripped our faucets, opened all our cabinet doors, and we certainly never put out warning signs when it froze in the winter.

Let’s be honest, that happened, like, every single night all winter, too.

It’s creepy how fast your brain forgets things, especially things that used to be familiar and normal and you never had to think about them.  (Hmm, maybe that’s why I forgot.)

The closest thing I can figure is that up here in the Midwest is that maybe they put something nice and warm around the pipes so they don’t freeze?  And…maybe they insulate the walls in the houses better so we don’t have to open our cabinets?  I DON’T KNOW.

All I know is that when I woke up and heard on the radio that it had indeed frozen last night, I totally freaked out again that we didn’t drip our faucets.

Sep25

The Dump Run

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The Dump Run

If there’s one thing my Pops is really skilled at it, it’s loading up the truck and taking a bunch of garbage to the dump.  Just about every weekend when I would come home from college, Pops would come wake me up at, like 7:30 and say, “I’m making a dump run and you’re coming too, get up.”

So I’d get up and brush my teeth and get in the truck and off we’d go.

Dump runs were way more exciting back in the day when we had the actual dump truck.  It was this old-timey truck (ok, maybe from the 80′s) that had been used for railroad maintenance (ever seen those driving on railroad tracks?  so cool) and some guy from Kirkwood had turned it back into a real truck in shop class.  Anyway, Pops got it on the cheap and we used it for our “farm truck”.

Basically that meant we went to get rock from the quarry in it, and used it for dump runs.

The dump truck was coolest because we never had to unload anything when we got to the dump, Pops would just get it all lined up to the trash pile and then stand out there and holler to me, in the cab, “PUSH THE HANDLE”.  And when I pushed the handle in, up would go the dump bed.  It was hydraulic, as if you care.  All the trash would go falling out into the pile ‘o dump garbage, and then off we’d go.

Pure excitement.  Especially when we stopped at the gas station on the way home for breakfast.  (Read: Pepsi and a Snickers.)

Fast forward, like, ten years to when Joey and I bought our first house.  The day after we closed, we started ripping out trim and carpet.  We threw it out back in the yard.  After three weeks of this, the pile kept getting bigger and bigger.  Eventually, a destroyed refrigerator and mangled up dishwasher were added to the yard.  Oh, and let’s not forget the massive pile of broken down boxes and styrofoam filler that were overflowing off our front porch.

If ever the term “white trash” applied to Joey and I, it has been over the last week.  Because we are white, and our yard was full of trash.

In fact, I have seen one of our neighbors walking the fence row between our yards, inspecting the growing piles of trashes in our backyard looking stressed about the low quality kids who moved in next door.

This morning though?  Pops showed up with a U-Haul trailer.  He drove that trailer back into the yard and we filled that entire thing up with all the trash in our yard, including the dishwasher and refrigerator.  Then we took it to the dump.  They made us pay $100.00 to get rid of that junk, but it is gone and done and smashed by the big yellow smashing machine that has a name, and I can’t think of it.  It’s not even exclusively used at dumps, they use it to dig holes in the ground. (HELP.  Does anyone know what those are called?)

I tried to pay for the dump run, but Pops said, “why don’t you just buy us doughnuts later.”

So then we met up with everyone at Dunkin Donuts and everyone else tried to pay for the doughnuts.  But I prevailed, I tell you.  I slapped down my Amex and told the lady behind the register (who looked like she could not wait to see us leave her restaurant we had caused so much trouble) that she would be taking MY card and no one else’s.

It worked.  But it was only $16.00, so I think somehow I still came out ahead on this somehow.

Now it’s lunchtime.  Everyone else is eating and they’re like, “Where’s Jenna anyway, she was the one who was hungry…” and the reality is I am here, sitting in the comfy chair blogging this post before all the words fall out of my ears and I forget what I was going to say.  Blogging for me is like expensive chocolate. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

I think it’s all out of my head now.  And I look at this and I think it really wasn’t worth holding off on eating lunch for either.  Absolutely 0% of it is profound in any way.

Par for the course.

Sep21

We’re in!

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We’re in!

906 miles, 2.5 months, 1 temporary residence and we are finally moved in to our house!  It is weird.

We’re unpacking boxes that were packed, in some cases, three months ago.  I’m pulling things out that I put in while packing with friends; I am remembering where we were, what we were talking about, and I keep getting all sentimental and teary-eyed.  Sometime I just miss Dallas because even though Joey and I both grew up in Iowa, Dallas is what feels like home.  We had to do more growing up there, in some ways, than we did in Iowa.

I didn’t really get “homesick” much until we started getting so much closer to actually moving in and getting reunited with our things and our memories.  And ya know, it’s not bad.  I’m glad to be here in Indy, I really am.  I just wondered when I’d get homesick and I guess it took this long.

Sunday evening, we were in an unpacking frenzy.  We set up enough furniture to sleep in beds and be able to eat breakfast in the morning, and then we all crashed.

And it was then that we discovered that the blinds for our bedroom window were AWOL. There had never been any on the baby’s room windows in the first place, which was where poor Mom was staying.  So there we stood, Joey and I, hiding in our bedroom hallway and trying to figure out how to get into our bed whilst wearing pajamas (which, incidentally, I had not been able to locate so I was wearing Joey’s Mountain Dew t-shirt, which really doesn’t fit so well at all anymore) without crossing in front of the big window that faces the street.

We decided it was impossible.

Joey slid across the wood floors to his side of the bed and dove under the covers while cars zoomed by outside.  I could see their headlights tracking patterns across our walls and I figured they were moving so quickly they wouldn’t have time to notice we had nothing whatsoever covering our window.

I followed his example, only much more awkwardly since I am rapidly losing my ability to slide and dive.

We decided to let Henry sleep with us since it was a special occasion and all, and we three lay there watching the car headlight patterns on the walls.  Joey was about asleep, but I coudln’t shut my brain off.  The last time we had seen this bed, these sheets, the down comforter, we were in Texas.  Granted, the mattress was on the floor in the dining room, but we were in Texas.

“It feels weird to not be in Texas now that we are reunited with our stuff,” I whispered.

“I know,” Joey whispered back.  ”But we’ll get used to it.”

He’s right, we will.  I already like my Indy kitchen 100% better than my Texas kitchen, and the bedroom is growing on me daily.  It’ll feel more cozy once we can put area rugs down, but we can’t until Friday since we had the wood floors redone.  (Henry keeps diving off the bed and wiping out when he hits the floor, and I feel super bad for him.)

Alrighty then.  Mom and I need to go to the store to buy toilet scrubbers because I threw mine out in Texas.  I just felt like the level of disgusting would exponentially increase if I packed them and then stored them for several months, and I was pretty sure toilet scrubbers would be sold in Indiana.  So…yeah, my toilets are gnasty but I can’t clean them because I’m not putting my hand in the toilet water.

No sir.

I’m not doing it.

Sep17

A Lucky Break

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A Lucky Break

About 3:00 this afternoon, I headed over to the house to start working on painting cabinets.  I had a bunch of stuff in the car that has been banging around in the back since, like Monday, so I started unloading as soon as I got there.  Unfortunately, there was this gargantuan bee resting on the top of the doorframe to the house, so I kept freaking out that he was going to fly down and sting me whenever I went in with a load.

I forgot the new bathroom mirror, toilet paper holder, and sack of light bulbs outside the car.  Whoopsie.

I worked and worked until about 10:30, when I decided neither I nor my tailbone could handle scooting around on the floor any longer to paint the outside of the cabinets.  I had already painted the kitchen (Joey did the ceiling) and Angel had been helping me with the cabinets so tons of progress had been made.  Enough so that I felt good about leaving and then coming back tomorrow to finish.  Or, at least get closer to the end of the project.  I am finding that the word “finish” is a totally relative word when it comes to home improvement projects.

So at 10:30, I dragged myself out to the car and carefully backed up so as not to hit the large tree that both Joey and I have nearly backed into at least once each.  I crept forward so I could turn around easier, and it was then that I felt like the wheels on my car were crunching things.

Weird.  The more I went forward, the more crunching I felt.

I decided I should get out of the car and make sure I wasn’t smashing a kitten or something like that.  Horrors.

No, no, it wasn’t a kitten.

It was the mirror, the toilet paper holder, and the sack of lightbulbs.

My first thought was OH CRAP, I AM SO DEAD WHEN JOEY FINDS OUT, and my second thought was, Wow…for having just been run over, they don’t look so bad.

I gingerly picked them up and carried them to the front porch where I laid them out and examined them.  Oddly enough, nothing seemed broken.  I shook the mirror (the most expensive thing we’ve bought for the bathroom) and didn’t hear any broken glass.  The toilet paper holder wasn’t too smashed, and the light bulbs were intact.

I love styrofoam.

And then, out came Joey.

“Um, all that stuff there? I just ran over it on accident.”

Joey rolled his eyes and tried not to laugh, and he and Chang started pulling things out of boxes and bags.  Chang discovered one broken light bulb, but the mirror (THANKFULLY) is fine, and so is the toilet paper holder.

“We needed that light bulb,” Joey said.

I know.  I know we did.  Next time I will try not to run over anything we buy.  Really, the goal is never to run over anything again.  It could have been way, way worse though.

Sep17

Energy…I have it.

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Energy…I have it.

Having the week off from being able to do anything to advance our goal of moving into the house on Sunday has been a mixed blessing.  First of all, I’m going bonkers because I haven’t painted anything since, like, last Saturday.  That feels wrong.  Realistically, the only room left to be painted is my kitchen, and we were waiting until some repairs were done to it before we slapped the paint on.  But it’s still driving me nuts.

The wood floor guys finished up on Tuesday afternoon, so Wednesday (the 24 hour mark listed in all the material), Joey and I drove over to have a look at it.

Guys.

The polyurethane still smelled SO BAD that I couldn’t even step foot in the house.  My eyes burned the second Joey opened the front door, so we both decided I would stay outside, hold my breath and just look in the windows, all of which were closed up and locked tight.  The lovely aromas were percolating around in the house with no where to escape.  We needed to open some windows now that the floors were dry and wouldn’t get dust particles stuck in polish.

Joey grimly decided he would take one for the team and run (RUN!) through the house and open as many windows as he could before his eyes caught on fire and exploded from his head like tiny supernovas.  He held a sock up to his face, took a deeeep breath, and DOVE through the front door, slipping and sliding around on our freshly refinished (and quite nice looking, as far as I could tell from looking in the window) floors.

A minute later, he burst out the front door, coughing and sputtering, and then did this nasty spitting thing all over the ground cover right outside the front door.

“Ewwwww,” I said, grimacing and looking at him with chagrin.

And then he looked at me with a look of, I don’t see YOU in there opening any windows while your eyes burn out of their sockets.

It’s true, he didn’t. And he woudln’t.

He took another deep breath, and whizzed back inside.  He managed to get two more windows open before calling it Good Enough For Who It’s For and coming back outside to repeat the gasping and spitting thing.

I said, “ewwwwww” again, just for good measure.

Also I patted his back and told him that I was proud of him for taking one for the team.

Joey informed me that yes, the floors look very much better than probably they ever have in their entire floor lives.  These floors are older than we are.  Heck, they’re older than our parents are.  There are still some stains on them, but they’re old floors so this gives them “character”.  And, when you think about it, most old people have stains on them too.  (Not saying our parents are old.  These floors are OLDER than our parents, so our parents are clearly YOUNG.)

Yesterday, Joey went back and opened up every other window in the house to continue airing it out so that our daughter won’t be born with three eyes and fourteen toes because we’ll have to keep smelling it once we move in.  I know, I know, most of that kind of development is already done, but if you had smelled that polyurethane stuff…it smelled powerful enough to grow extra digits and eyeballs on a fully formed anything.

He informed me that having a few windows open the night previous had made a huge difference, so I’m quite eager to get over there this afternoon and start my priming of the cupboard doors and maybe paint the kitchen.  It should be smelling fresh and clean and mostly just less toxic in there by now; I can’t wait to check out the floors and unload all the loot that I have been dragging around in the RAV-4.

(Concerned Relatives:  DO NOT WORRY.  If it smells bad still I will not go inside.  I know better than that.)

But all week long, I have been dragging around like a snail who upgraded to a larger, heavier shell a few months too early.  It takes me twice as long to go up stairs, to walk around, to make dinner, basically to do anything.  I’m still waiting for that stupid iron pill to kick in, plus the whole lack of sleeping thing is a bad combination.

HOWEVER.

Last night, Joey was like, “Seriously, you are a mess.  Go to bed at 8:00.”

And I was like, “8:00 is for geriatrics and small children.  Let’s say 9:30.”

So 9:30 it was.

I stopped drinking water about 7:00 (torture!!!) and was in bed by 9:30, just like Joey said even though he wasn’t home to monitor my behavior.  I fell asleep immediately and slept until 7:00 when his alarm went off.  And it was then that I realized I had only gotten up ONCE in the night.

ONCE!

That’s, like, NINE HOURS OF BASICALLY UNINTERRUPTED SLEEP!!!

I felt great.  I feel great.  And I’ll feel even better once I eat my breakfast.

Hopefully this level of awesome feeling energy continues throughout the day.  I want to knock out some serious work this afternoon and evening to get a jump on tomorrow.  I need to clean out all the window sills before we move in.  Can you believe the people before us appear to have NEVER cleaned out their windows?  It’s quite gross. They are covered in dust and dirt and full of dead things and cobwebs.  (I feel like I could write a reverse Raindrops On Roses song just about some of the things we have found in this house.)

But, first things first.  This morning, I am going to an orchard to pick apples and hopefully peaches.  And then I will eat about three peaches for energy.

Sep13

Impressive

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Impressive

I just have to brag on my husband here a little bit, guys.

In the last two weeks, since we closed on the house, Joey has embarked on about eleventy-billion DIY projects to get the house up to snuff.  I mean, it was livable before, it just hadn’t been cared for quite as…fastidiously as we would have liked.  And Joey felt like the kitchen was a dark hole and he wanted to have it be a more uplifting space, since I spend so much time there baking cupcakes and making dinner.

The projects we started tackling will make your brain spin.  (Makes mine spin anyway.)  We painted all the ceilings, all the walls, and ripped off all the trim work along the floors and doors.  Some of it was really banged up, and some of it wasn’t even properly adhering to the wall.  Turns out, the walls are all this old-timey plaster stuff, and there were big holes behind the trim.  So…Joey patched those himself.

There was old carpet in the bedroom we had considered replacing, but one of our friends discovered that there was hardwood underneath of it.  So…Joey ripped it up himself.

Without having never put any trim on any walls or any doors before in his life, Joey did research and figured out what he needed. We bought it at Lowe’s, painted it ourselves, and with some assistance from Gramps and another friend of ours, Joey installed all that trim…himself.

The kitchen?  Well, we did hire someone to tear out the soffit above the cabinets, because the ceiling needed to be re-textured and the wall behind it needed some attention too, not to mention the finish work on the cabinets so you couldn’t tell we ripped it out.  Joey could probably have done that himself too, but it seemed to make more sense to have a professional deal with ripping out parts of the cabinetry.

Today, though, Joey is sanding down the rest of the cabinets so he can prime them and paint them white.  DO NOT WORRY, we are not painting over gorgeous wood.  On the contrary, the wood is definitely solid…but it’s not pretty wood.  It’s just kind of brown.  So when they are white, the kitchen is going to be so fresh and bright and inviting.  YAY.

Incidentally, there is this product called Liquid Sand or something, and when I was doing a bit of sanding on the cabinets a couple weeks ago, I mentioned it to Joey.   It really speeds up the cabinet sanding time.  Joey said, “no way, let’s make sure we do this right the first time.  No Liquid Sand.”

Well.

This morning, the kitchen contractor mentioned the same product to Joey…AND HE WENT OUT AND BOUGHT IT.  He called me all excited to tell me about it, and I was like, Dude.  I told you about that two weeks ago and you shut me down.  What gives?!

(Honestly, I don’t even care.  Whatever will get the job done quickest at this point.)

I am just super impressed that Joey can figure all this stuff out.  He’s never had the opportunity to do any handyman type stuff since we got married, since we’ve always lived in apartments.  We called in maintenance to fix whatever problems we had, even though Joey always said he could probably fix it.  (We figured since we paid for maintenance, we were going to use maintenance.)

And after we move in on Sunday?  I like that whenever I look at just about anything in our house, it will remind me that Joey is 100% awesome at DIY projects, and he can fix up just about anything we need fixed up.

He’s a handy guy to have around, I tell you.