I just had the greatest weekend.

Nothing super spectacular happened, beside the fact that I didn't have one bad day. Not one. Nothing terrible happened, no one got sick, and I actually stopped worrying for a bit.

It was wonderful.

I got to stay in a hotel, watch crap TV, have room service nachos, go shopping and find a set of 1960s olive green nesting Pyrex mixing bowls, go to the movies, and just generally do all my favorite things with my favorite person in the world.

And, I got to wake up this morning to a condescending email from an ex-student's mom, basically asking me to make copies for her. I don't do that. And I was able to write a very nice email in response, telling her how to do what she wanted her very own self, and I didn't even worry about it.

Yep. Good weekend continuing into what will be a good week.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Wow, it's been a rough week.

My mom ended up in the hospital again with a mystery fever, and it's just been a little crazy up in my house. I mean, head. House, too, but mostly my head.

At any rate, I would love it if I could just breathe for a minute and not have any new and terrible things with which I have to deal. Wouldn't everybody like that? And the whole "Trump is in Albuquerque" thing is ridiculous, and that's basically what my feed on every social media website in the world is full of, so that's also as annoying as is humanly possible.

There is not enough coffee to fix this, but I'm sure going to try to find me some positives for my day. Here goes:

I feel like my screwed up jaw joint is starting to feel a little better, what with my new normal night guard and my physical therapy stretches and whatnot. That's a good thing.

Also, my new kitchen is the business. So that's good, too.

Mom is home, and Trump is far, far away, so that's another two super ultra mega positives. (Sorry to get political, but white supremacists scare the crap out of me) 

I have successfully meditated three times, for more than five minutes per time. That's a total of over fifteen minutes of empty brain time. I realize that keeping track and charting it probably isn't the right thing to do, but I'm not used to meditation and I don't know the rules. Bear with me.

See? I can be positive, too. Just like all the positive people who I don't really know, but I always want to emulate.

Because we can't be friends. Too perky.

Anyway, have a glorious day out there. Eat you some cake. It's okay, I give you permission.

We are in the home stretch, as 90% of stuff is done on the house, so now it's definitely time to hit the diet pretty hard.

I gained way less weight over the holidays/cancer time/emotional roller coaster/renovation goodness than I would've expected; however, those in my family can attest to our bodies' ability to gain 50 pounds at the slightest provocation with only a minimum of food.

Seriously. I have gained double digits in days when I didn't think I was doing too badly. We have to be so careful, it's ridiculous.

At any rate, we're clearing out the garage, and the treadmill is almost visible, so that's a good thing. We also need to eat more vegetables; however, our grocery store just recalled all of the frozen vegetables we have, so I guess it's time to get some new ones. Or maybe fresh ones. I don't know. Ugh, vegetable shopping. Not a good thing. Everyone says they love vegetables, but come on. Green beans, or cake? Or wine? Or wine and cake? Or a beer and a whole pile of cheese and bread?

There is no question. The delicious things are never as good for you.

Unless there's sauce.

So I'm hitting it really hard this week, since I have a thing I need to wear a dress for later on this week, and I really don't want to have to rein all this in with a girdle. It's too warm for girdles, and the effort required to pull that thing up is something that I'm just not prepared for.

Therefore, I will protein shake and salad it up this week. Maybe eggs, too, but we're also almost out of those. We are also out of cake. And beer. So that's how this week is going to go.

It's so Monday right now. So, so very Monday. 

My family got some really good news on the medical front yesterday. It seems that the treatments have worked remarkably well, so my mom is on the road to recovery. That's awesome.

In other news, though, I still have to get up and work and stuff today, so that's kind of lame.

I think when we get some kind of humongous news that is either good or bad, we should get at least a week off. You know, to digest the news. Maybe said week should be on a beach somewhere, but not somewhere too hot. Somewhere just right.

Maybe also somewhere where they have daiquiris which aren't too sweet, have zero carbs so they actually cause a person to lose weight, and they serve them with toast by the beach.

Yep. This is my dream, and I want daiquiris and toast. Deal with it.

While all this is happening, everyone's hair should remain perfect at all times, and every bit of clothing fits perfectly, avoiding even the slightest hint of stomach bulge. No one ever drops butter on these shirts and ruins them, and every person is smiling and being nice while not doing anything that I might find annoying.

Ah.

Nope, instead I think I'll have a day full of kids who are at the end of the school year, so they no longer give a crap, and adults who have some strange idea that I'm a magician and can make them sing perfectly no matter how little they practice. That sounds awesome.

Yep. I'll take option two. Meh.

It's done!

We were working yesterday afternoon, and we reached a point where we realized our kitchen was done. All the way. No more little things to fix.

Holy crap.

Here's what it looked like before. It actually didn't look horrible at all, I don't think. I mean, it was completely okay but storage was an issue, there was a total of about five feet of counter space but all broken up, and there were some weird problems with the cupboards, which happens when you have a fifty-year-old kitchen which has only been cosmetically touched up. It was just time.

Yes, there it was, in all its glory. The best part about it was the dishwasher, so we kept that. Everything else? Gone. But almost every bit of it went to another house where it's being used, so that's nice. Besides being warped and just a little too small to hold modern dishes, they were pretty burly little cabinets.

This is it ripped out, in case you haven't seen. Keep in mind we also did the whole rest of the house, too, so there was a time with no floors, anywhere. But I didn't die, so that's good.

If it looks bigger, that's because it is. We ripped out the washing machine closet area and moved those out to the garage because counter space was the number one priority. I need room to bake, man.

We also moved the door on the left hand wall which leads to the garage. It gave us another three feet or so, which enabled us to get a pantry. I have a pantry. They are pretty much the most amazing invention ever and way better than the laundry area/garage storage combo. I highly recommend them.

We also had to move the plumbing so we could have a refrigerator with water, and move the gas so our stove could go on the back wall. This way there's enough room for at least two butts in the kitchen. My husband did all of that himself, and learned a lot, and it went amazingly well. Very smoothly. I lucked out big time, because we only paid a tiny amount of labor costs, since he can do almost all of those kinds of work himself.

In case you didn't notice, I'm a little proud.

So, yesterday, we finished, and it didn't seem real, because we've been living with this almost finished kitchen for such a long time. And we're over a month, but that's not so bad. Now we can finish the other little things around the house and we're done.

So I made a cake!

Here it is, though, with all its shiny newness. I never want to work with a contractor again, because getting him to commit to times and such is just such a hassle. However, these cabinets and countertops are beautiful, and the cabinets are real wood and both are made here in the U.S. (which is really important to me, and you'd think would make them prohibitively expensive, but they weren't any more than the others of this quality level) and I'd hire him again in a minute just for that. Except not right now, because the annoyance is just too fresh in my mind...

Yes, my iPad is getting old and the camera is kind of crappy. And we also need to hang the new back door. But that is not within the kitchen area, therefore we are done.

I'm so glad. Because ugh. And if we had not already put down deposits and stuff when family calamity time hit in January, we might not have pushed through. But we did, so at least we got to double up on some of that stress. Blergh.  

Now on to everything else in the world. But at least I can bake again! 

I still can't believe this is my house.

I had a thirteen-year-old try to explain to me yesterday that I was incorrect about music notes being circular (meaning the order a-b-c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c, etc....to do a scale you stop where you started....oversimplifying, but if you draw it as a circle, it helps some people). She stood there and argued for about two minutes, and then I said, "Well, I went to college and studied this, so I'm pretty sure I'm right about it. I even graduated." Of course, I say it all jokey and smiling and whatnot, and then she comes out with, "Then that explains it. You're old, so you don't know about any new discoveries. You probably don't even know about Pluto." All serious and whatnot.

Wow.

For a second, I was confused, because I've been teaching this kid for a long time and she's never really been super mouthy, then I realized that she must actually think adults don't learn anything new at all, they just keep using the skill set they built up during their years in school. Also, Pluto is a planet. You're not convincing me otherwise. I will learn new country names and slang terms, but you can't take Pluto away. It's my favorite. At any rate...

If only that were true, kid. Life has taught me more since I was 30 than I ever learned in school. Most of it awful, but also some stuff I can use to beat my dad at Jeopardy! (I know it'll never happen, but let me have my dream.)

So I told her that was ridiculous, and that I will keep learning things until the day I die, because it's fun and there's so many things to learn about, just for the fun of it, that I'll never really run out.

She agreed and we moved on.

Did think that at her age? Did I think that all adults were really stupid because they weren't in school anymore? Yikes. I hope not. Now I feel really embarrassed for teenage me. Even more embarrassed than usual, because I was pretty horrible.

Wow. Kids are completely insane. 

I mean, I'm completely insane, too, but at least I know that there are a billion people who know more about everything than I do. Thank goodness for that. It would stink to be up on a pedestal and then have life knock you down when the inevitable better person shows up.

Also, pedestals are small and they look wobbly and I'm pretty sure I'd fall, anyway.

Also, also, it is Friday. We all made it. Hooray.

Yeah, I took a week off from blogging. What of it?

At any rate, we are still in project mode, although we are approaching the end, so we actually had some time to just sit and watch tv yesterday, so that was pretty awesome.

A lot of really big things got finished up at the end of last week. We got the cabinets adjusted, finally, so I can use all of them now, and the trim piece was hung so it's not just sitting on the floor of my living room. We also got the tile put up and the ceiling around the perimeter of the room got scraped, repaired, and painted.

So, so close. But still not there.

At this juncture, we took the big piece of art that we had framed and stuff especially to hang in our new kitchen, and just propped it up.

It doesn't work.

You guys. It doesn't work. We planned and planned and planned, and it's all wrong. Mostly because of the wall tile, but still. So we had to figure out an alternative, which I think is actually going to work out very nicely, but still.

Yuck.

Also, my arms are still sore. They've been sore for like a month. And I still haven't stained all the new closet doors. I may be in trouble.

Yes, all my blogs will be about this project until further notice. We're so close, and I haven't gone completely crazy yet, so yay me.