Routine

My husband always jokes that I am like an infant. I am eat, poop and sleep. Infants thrive on routine. Something that is predictable, where all their needs are being met.

I am just now beginning to understand the importance of routines. When I was in school, it was easy to have a routine and I never gave it much thought. Now that I've been working for more than 2 years, I find myself longing for a routine. I have to consciously think about it. My schedule at work is not consistent. As a nurse, I could be scheduled for any day of the week. The only constant, is that I need to work every 3rd weekend. When Nathan's grandma lost her driver's license, I requested to have every Tuesday off so that I can plan to do things with her. When she needs to make plans or appointments, she knows that I will be available to help her on Tuesdays. This is what sparked my curiosity in routines.

I've discovered that even the most basic of routines can be very calming and refreshing. Since I am pretty much worthless around the house the days I work, I have developed a routine for my days off. I get up and walk for an hour in the morning, come back and wake up Nathan for work, shower, eat breakfast, empty the dishwasher, throw in a load of laundry, tidy-up around the house and by 9:00, I am free to complete whatever I have on my agenda for the day. Those few little things that I do in the morning, get me started and allow me to calmly accomplish everything else that day. There is something "destressing" about accomplishing those very basic and overlooked tasks before I can really relax and enjoy my day off.

Perfectionism

I am realizing how my need for perfection can easily get in the way of me accomplishing anything at all. Ironically, causing me to be far from perfect. It is the fear of not being (or doing something) perfect that paralyzes me from starting or finishing anything. For example, last weekend we went to Oak Glen and bought some apples, apple cider, pumpkins, etc. I made one apple pie, making the crust from scratch and everything. Mmmm, it was delicious! Then, I had a ton of apples left over and I wanted more apple pie and I wanted to give them to a few people as thank yous. I was not excited to make the crusts again, so the apples just sat there for a few more days.

As the apples are sitting there, I kept telling myself "you need to make the crusts so you can make apple pies" But I didn't want to make the crusts. So I kept putting it off. Finally, yesterday, I told myself it was o.k. to buy frozen crusts and just make the apple pies. What is better? Letting the apples sit and rot and not making the pies at all? Or...making the pies with frozen crusts and having a 75% delicious pie? After all, I was planning to make French Apple Pies. Everyone knows that the best part about a french apple pie is the streusel on top. Not the crust on the bottom! So...to make this story short, I decided to use the Marie Calendar brand crust (she makes good pies in the store, how can the frozen be any different? ) And you know what? I made 4 pies. One is in the freezer. We ate one and the other two are being given away. They are delicious! The streusel is everything I had hoped for and the apples are a perfect texture.

So here's my question: Since the pie is 75% delicious, does that make me 75% perfect?

Ellen

I love Ellen! I may not agree with her lifestyle, but I still feel that she is a great person that genuinely cares about everyone. There is something about having her show on while I'm on my day off waiting for Nathan to come home. I find myself laughing out loud at the things she does. Silly things that I think lighten a person's mood. She always starts her show out with a mini monologue that always makes me chuckle. Then, she breaks into dancing and has her entire audience up on their feet. One of the things that makes me laugh the most is how she is always bringing things that are HUGE onto her stage. For example, in today's show, she went through the audience and picked up someone's purse, took it up on stage and starts to look through it making jokes. Then, she says, "how about if I trade you for what's in your purse for what's in my purse?" In comes one of her assistants with a HUGE purse, she opens it up and pulls out a flat screen tv. One of my favorites is during Hurricane Katrina, she was collecting money for the relief. Companies would come by and give the huge checks, you know what I'm talking about. She would pull out a HUGE pen and endorse the HUGE check. Then, she would put it into a HUGE envelope and take it over to a HUGE ATM, she would push the buttons and deposit the check all the way down to receiving a HUGE receipt. It made me laugh... the other thing that makes her so enjoyable is that she is always giving gifts to her audience and to her guests. She even had HIllary Clinton on the show today. I think famous people enjoy coming to her show knowing that they are going to be able to laugh. They can relax and be casual. I love it.

Bathrooms

Nathan and I are very open about our bodily functions and bowel movements, etc. So, it shouldn't be any surprise that I would include a picture of an "eastern toilet." The one here was one of the worst. I myself went in one WAY worse, but didn't have the camera with me. But...when nature calls, it calls. You take what you can get. The idea with the toilet is to squat over the opening. The other thing about the bathrooms in China was that you needed to always carry your own tissue to wipe. Even in some of the nicest places there wasn't any toilet paper in the stalls. I learned that the hard way;)

Terra-Cotta Soldiers

These are the Terra-Cotta Soldiers that were discovered in the 70's.

Pictures from China

This picture is of the Great Wall of China with our friend, Miriam. She met us in Beijing for a few days before we went to visit her city.

Things continue to progress

This is just an update of a couple more pictures to show the progress. The first one is a picture of the "ceiling" on our "pavilion" I can't think of a better word to call it. It reminds me of a pavilion. The cedar turned out gorgeous and we are very happy with it. The guys are finishing the tile roof on top of the pavilion today and then all we need is a fan and some kind of lighting and it will be set.

The other picture is of the front of the house as of today. All it needs now is paint, stone added to the columns and the wall, a sidewalk poured and lighting. Not to mention landscape, but I will just be excited to have a sidewalk again.

Also, as I type, there are are guys in the kitchen putting in our new countertops. When that is all finished, I will be sure to post a picture of that as well.

Slow Progress

I haven't updated this blog in a while because I didn't know what to post about. So, I just thought I would post a couple updated pictures of the house from the outside. The patios in the back are almost finished. The one on the left just needs to be painted, the other one needs to be painted, add the roof, and ceiling fan and other minor details. The stucco around the new windows will be done some time this week and then the trim and patios will be painted this weekend. Hopefully the roof will be finished in a couple weeks. Our tile for the roof is on backorder.

Work on the kitchen continues. The doors and drawers are almost done. We just need to find the right hinge so we don't need to drill new holes in all the doors. When that's all done, I'll be sure to post a picture of it.

30 Days

Nathan and I have enjoyed watching a show the past few weeks on FX called 30 days. The show is done by Morgan Spurlock. (the guy that did the movie "Supersize Me") Each episode has a person living 30 days in a situation that is unfamiliar to them. Outside their comfort zone you might say. One episode Morgan and his fiance' lived in Columbus, OH and had to live on minimum wage. They only went with $200 each. They had to find an apartment, jobs, didn't have a car, etc. Great experiment how they were only doing it for 30 days and they were pretty far in debt due to the fact that they both had to visit the ER because they didn't have health insurance.

Now, being that we have been watching this the last few weeks, guess what happened to Nathan? You're never going to guess...he met Morgan Spurlock. Just out of the blue! He was driving a golf cart on UCR's campus with a friend, did a doubletake, whipped the golf cart around and had a "celebrity moment" with Morgan Spurlock. He was there filming the final episode of 30 days where a mom binge drinks for 30 days to prove to her daughter how bad it is for her.

Anyway, this makes it sound like Morgan Spurlock is our hero, but really, we just like his show and the way he thinks about society. We highly recommend it. It is on Wednesday nights (10:00pm in our time zone) on FX. It's real reality TV.

How are sinks and lights similar?

In addition to remodeling the kitchen, we have also been working on the front and back of the house. We are looking into putting quartz in as countertops in the kitchen. We wanted to put in an undermount sink so it wouldn't have any edges. So, we went to a couple places to price them and were surprised at how expensive they are. We know the price of steel has gone up dramatically, but it was still pretty spendy. So...we went to good 'ol Home Depot and looked at their kitchen sinks. They had drop in ones that we liked for $109. Not bad at all, but they were drop in, so we asked about special ordering an under mount. Get this...the exact same sink for the undermount (using less steel, of course) is 3 times as much. Doesn't make sense.

Then today...we needed to find lights for some pillars that we are having built in the front yard along the stairs. We need about 6 lights in all, so we went to Lamps Plus because our contractor has a discount there. Carriage lights for the side of the garage doors were not bad, $70-$90 for the ones we liked. Then we looked at the lights for on top of the pillars. Same style light, just for a post instead of mounting on the side of the wall costs again, 3 times as much. I'm tempted to hang the lights on the side of the columns rather than post mounting them on top. :)

I have come to this conclusion: (I may not like it, but it is a conclusion, none the less) Undermount sinks (the more expensive kind) are usually used with granite, corian, or quartz countertops. The more expensive countertops. You've already paid a lot for your countertops, why not spend a little more on your sink? Same goes with the outdoor lighting. Everyone has lights on the sides of their garage doors, but not everyone pays to have stone walls put in with columns, etc. You already paid for the stone wall, why not dish out a ton more for the lights to go on top of the columns?

Craziness or maybe it's just reality.

Half way through the staining

My favorite part

We are in the middle of restaining our kitchen cabinets. I was not excited to start this project knowing the kind of mess and nuisance it would create. The cabinets are completed and all we have left is to restain the doors themselves. Nathan and a friend of his from work have been diligently sanding and restaining for the last few weeks. Spending evenings and weekends sanding and staining until sunset. The sanding process requires sanding with 3 different grits of sandpaper. I dread sanding with the first grit or even the second grit, but I am soooo excited when we finally get to my favorite sanding grit: 240 grit.

240 grit is the last one to use to sand the wood giving it that final super smooth feel the wood should have before the stain is applied. I realized something this afternoon, in the garage, while sanding with 240 grit; I enjoy the process of completing rather than starting. I'm not enthused to start a project, but I will do anything to complete it once it is started. I think this new epiphany will help me be more productive. Knowing that if I just start something, soon I will be to my favorite part: The End.

curly or straight

Why is it that it seems as if we are always looking for something that we don't have, even though, we are fortunate to have what we already have. For example, I now have curlers in my hair hoping that I can have the luscious curls many women with natural curls spend hours straightening. I have perfectly straight hair. I doubt the curls I'm putting into my hair will even last the day. However, I don't care. I want curls. I have been complimented on my beautiful straight as a board hair, yet...thats not enough. I want curls. When will I be satisfied with what I have? I'm not sure there is ever true satisfaction with what one has until they become thankful to the One that has given them everything. God has given me my super straight hair and until I am thankful for that...satisfaction may be a foreign word in my vocabulary.

Changing of the guards

This is Angi's blog now.