Max was the last to arrive home on this snowy day, and now we’re all in for the evening. We’re taking bets on whether there will be school tomorrow (after school stuff was canceled today) but either way I have a doctor appt tomorrow at 10:00 and I’m going to make it.
And we miss Butkis so much. Gigi misses him terribly – Atticus keeps looking for him. Gerry’s mom said that he was an “institution”
Gerry’s back continues to be a concern. Apparently he has very brittle bones, and Monday they want him to go for a bone density test. He’s been told by several folks now that they never (seldom?) see this in someone so young, and a man to boot. He says it’s because he’s become a house-husband. Who knows…?
At any rate, I can tell he’s concerned – I am, too – but more than anything else is the wrenching pain that envelopes him. He didn’t ask the doctor for any pain stuff, which I admire – but which I also sort of regret. I don’t want him running around doped up, and both of us have substance abuse in our families (so we’re on the wary side) but he’s really hurting.
What this means in realistic terms for the time being is that I’m doing a lot, and there’s a LOT to be done!
I finished two crocheted pieces for a book and took notes on them before I sent them off to the publisher. They’re a day late (and the guy at the post office told Gerry that if the airport is snowed in they may be 2 days late…) and I feel bad about that. The stitch pattern is very nice on the surplice top, and when it was finished it had a very 1918 feel about it (fitting in our new 1918 home!) and I tacked the yoke of the dress up a bit in the back in case the model they use is smaller than I anticipated (it will be easy to un-tack if she’s a tall model)
Then I shoveled the walkway in front of the house, dug out our car – it’s parked in front of the garage, the PT is IN the garage – and got it warmed up for Gerry so he could take the package to the PO (I felt bad asking him, but he said it was one thing that he could do!)
Then I finally tackled Max’s bedroom.
Yesterday I took an early trip to IKEA to order wardrobe and storage for our room and Max’s room, and we were stunned with the really NICE guys arrived in the driving snow with all of our Bjrgd and Kgrhhhb’s and carried them upstairs for us. Max’s bed wasn’t terrible to fit together, but the new storage unit I got was a b*tch to put together. Oy. It probably had a lot to do with the size of the room (small)
Tomorrow I’ll attack our own storage unit – I got one of those piece by piece PAX units – the woman who helped me was SO great – we’re getting white doors and drawers to match the trim in our room. This should give us some nice, extra storage and wardrobe space.
I’ve loved IKEA since it opened in NJ in 1992 – I was there the first day – and I still have the bed and armchair to prove it! 
Max has a flair for assembling IKEA items, and last night he put together one of the new bedside tables that I bought. Gerry put the other together today – it took him about twice as long as Max, but he was working entirely on his knees and resting his back a LOT.
I also have a hanging shelf to put up in the bathroom, and I REALLY want to replace the medicine chest with a better one with more shelves on either side. The bathroom is cute, but a pedestal sink with no counter space is NOT the most useful for a family of four!
In the midst of all of this work I don’t know WHAT I’d do without Hannah. She’s such an incredibly helpful girl, she so much wants to get our house as homey as possible, and I find myself depending on her quite a bit. In some ways she’s a young 10, but in others she’s beyond her years.
One of these days we’ll have to tackle the office – then the kids will have a place to go watch their own TV shows, do their homework and play on the computer. And now, with cable, I’m seeing that we’ll have to start thinking about how to block certain show. Oy.
As I’m doing all of this stuff I KNOW that I need to get some submissions out to magazines, get some of my book ideas fleshed out so I can send them to a publisher and get going on something NEW, and spend some quality time with my bookkeeping. I also have to do some marketing strategies for the flip books and get my other books reprinted.
So much to do – I hadn’t figured on doing it alone (not really alone, but just sort of solo-for-a-bit) and it probably is time for me to get that assistant I keep talking about…