Nerves and Ways to Deal with Them

You can always tell when I'm nervous. My house is usually clean. And decorated.

It's kind of backward, I know. I should be too anxious to clean, but I've come to realize it's my way of trying to exert some control over a situation that I might feel out of control.

Last year I had a bad pap smear, only it wasn't a the usual kind. The bad cells were endometrial which made me more than a little freaked out. My nurse practitioner was fantastic and got me into a gynecologist in her office within days to have a coloposcopy. The doctor removed a large polyp during the procedure that appeared to be attached to my endometrium. He said he was sure it was the cause of the bad pap smear and that the growth was most likely benign, but the pathology report would tell us. I'd have the results in a few days.

{Side note: If you didn't know this, don't feel slighted. I think I only told two people.}

Over the next few days I painted and decorated Ryan's room, cleaned out and organized his and both girls' bedroom closets. Busy girl. I had a paint roller in my hand when the phone rang, the nurse calling me to tell me everything was really okay.

{Side note #2: The doctor wanted to have me take a pregnancy test before he did the procedure. My insurance sucks so I told him it wasn't necessary. He said sometimes women thought they might not be pregnant so I should do it to be sure. To which I replied: "Trust me Dr. XXX, you're the first man to be down there in years." He turned a lovely shade of crimson and let it drop. Imagine my horror when several months later I discovered he was the husband of Julia's vocal teacher.}

My nervousness now is minor in comparison. While it's over a possibly life changing situation, no matter which way the decision goes, my life will continue just fine. Still, it's something out of my control.

So, my house is getting really clean. And pretty. I woke Ross up yesterday morning and asked him if he wanted to help me paint the kitchen and hearth room. He's my usual partner in home repair so he said yes. We spent the rest of the day painting and later last night, as Ross and I were finishing up, Jenna asks, "Does this mean we have to spend all our time outside?"

I looked at her in confusion. "What?"

"Since you're making our house so fancy, does this mean we have to spend all our time outside and only come in to go to bed so we don't mess it up?"

My daughter is a genius. Why did I never think of this?

Never underestimate the luxury of running water!

You never realize how wonderful something is until you lose it. Like your kitchen sink.

We're in the middle of a minor (yeah right!) kitchen remodel. When I built this house I didn't upgrade anything in the kitchen with the plan to put in the kitchen of my dreams after moving in and now we're moving so scratch Plan A. Move to Plan B.

Plan B has, like any remodeling process, changed as we have gone along. But here is what it is today: Add molding to the cabinet doors and drawers. Paint and glaze cabinets. Put in new counter top. Put in an island. Put bead board at the end of cabinets to dress them up. Put in a new vent hood. Tile backsplash. We're over halfway done now. All we have left is to finish the upper cabinets and tile the backsplash.

This is our kitchen before. We had oak cabinets and laminate counter tops. The house came with white appliances but I had my professional stove and my ultraquiet dishwasher installed the day I moved in, well the day the boys moved in. There is no island.

And this is what our kitchen looks like at the moment. We've put moulding on the cabinets, painted and glazed. Added the island and had granite counters installed on Tuesday. Our sink was reconnected yesterday. Yeah!!! The kitchen already seems so much brighter and I haven't even tiled the backsplash yet. We're hoping to get to that this weekend. We're still trying to decide how to finish the upper cabinets which is why they aren't glazed yet.

Do you have any idea what it's like with a house full of kids, not to mention a baby with baby bottles, and have no kitchen sink for a week and a half???? Not a pretty picture. Speaking of not so pretty pictures:

This is a picture proving that I am a do-it-yourselfer kind of girl. The granite people were going to charge us extra to remove the counter tops so Ross and I did it ourselves the day before they came to template. In this photo I am unscrewing the screws that held the sink on the counter. Girl power!!! (Janne' you owe me a Starbucks coffee!)

I love doing this kind of stuff. I love taking a room/kitchen/anything that looks like nothing and turning it into something. The transformation. The joke has always been that as soon as I redecorated every room in the house it was time to move and start again. In fact, that's how I majored in interior design. Darrell hoped to curb my experimentation on our own house and hoped I would spend other people's money on their homes instead. It only kind of worked.

Here's what else I love: that my girls see me do this, they see me with a drill and a nail gun and they don't think its unusual. I love that they don't think a girl can't do this kind of thing, that ANYONE can. You just have to want to do it.

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I wanted to point out that one the left side of the screen you can sign up to be notified when my blog has a new post. Then you won't have to keep checking. HOWEVER, that being said, I have signed up with Blogrithm for other blogs I read and they don't ALWAYS update. When you sign up you will start receiving emails that tell you I have updated my blog and there will be a link to clink on that will take you directly to the page I posted. So if its been several days and you think maybe I should have posted something, feel free to check anyway.