In My Own Words

So…Our six week project has taken a little longer than anyone expected. The kitchen/dining space finally looks like a real space. We’re only missing the counter tops, sink, and the lights which are all up for this week. All of that should happen this week. Last week the new bay windows went in, and the hood range went up. Rich added all of the pulls and knobs so that our crew would have fewer small projects to deal with as we near the finish line. After the end of the inside project, our outside project is predicted to take 2 weeks. I’m so anxious to get it all put together. 🙂

Tonight I’m hanging out in my favorite pair of grey sweats watching Top Chef with Rich. It’s just a typical Friday night after a long work week. But the one thing that stands out for me about this Friday night is that this is the last Friday night of my 30’s. As of tomorrow my age will officially start with a 4. I’m still not sure how I feel about it.
Yesterday, a friend asked what advice I would give 30 year old me. I think he asked because he’s soon turning 30. The first thing that came time mind was that I’d tell myself to finish my book a lot faster. ‘What if you don’t writer books, then what would you tell yourself? What would you do different?’ he asked. And I really had to think about it. Would I do anything different than what 30 year old me did? I honestly don’t know that I would.
During that conversation yesterday I said that I try very hard not to live with regret, and I mean that. When I think back on the last 10 years I can’t deny I’ve had my share of ups and downs. There were times when I was tested and times when I celebrated, but I don’t think I would take any of it back. I was trying to figure a lot of things out in my 20’s – I was figuring out adulthood and parenthood all at the same time – but by the time I hit 30 I felt like I had some of it finally under control.
I decided awhile ago that we all have things we look back on and think ‘What the hell did I do that for?’ Instead of dwelling on those moments, letting them eat me up as regret, I decided to look at those moments as lessons. Rather than saying ‘What the hell did I just do?’ I can feel much better with a simple ‘Well, we’ve learned we should never do that one again’. By changing that one little statement I can look back on my 30’s and say I did pretty well and I learned a few lesson. So, bring it on 40. Let’s see how many lessons you can teach.
Cheers.

As I leave for work today this is what my house looks like. We even have some of the grey paint on the walls. I can’t wait to see the progress we make this week. 

Tomorrow is the first day of week 5 of our remodel. This last week we saw more work going in the remodel mode instead of demo mode. We have new drywall in some spots, and patchy stuff over the exterior cinder block wall that had been exposed and then hidden by a refrigerator by the previous owner. The pantry we moved out of the hall and into the kitchen, and the bigger closet we made in the hall have both been sheet rocked, our new hall has been created and our new interior doors have arrived. We also have light switches! Light switches were not popular with the last owners so it’s all new. They’re hopeful they’ll be able to start paint at the end of this week!

This weekend I had coffee with my friend, Joyce. I’m pretty sure we hadn’t seen each other since around 2013 when she was celebrating her degree. That night was one of the small handful of times I’d seen her two youngest girls. I think it was only the second time she’d met Rich. In between that night and this weekend there had been a few texts here and there but the pause in contact is nothing new for Joyce and I. Over the last 25 years or so there have been many lengthy pauses in our contact, but they’ve never equaled a pause in our friendship.
I can’t tell you when Joyce and I first met, or when we decided we were friends. There was no decision. We have been friends pretty much our entire lives. We met as toddlers and grew up as neighbors from that point through to our early teen years. Even after we took turns moving away from our old neighborhood we stayed in touch. In the age before cell phones and constant contact through text messaging, we made real calls, sent each other letters. We even got together for dinner a few times once we could both drive.
Our friendship has weathered through a lot. There were the good times like a summer of backyard dance performances that younger siblings were happy to watch – we were sure of it. We took babysitting courses together to become “certified” to watch other people’s kids. There was the time we sneaked a measuring cup of straight sugar out to the backyard because she hadn’t been able to have sweets and we ate the whole thing. Of course there were a few rocky points. The infamous sprinkler attack when she clocked me in the side of the head with a garden sprinkler, and the day I completely accidentally clocked her little sister unconscious  with a metal baseball bat.
The friendship survived. And it survives today. And we survived our own rocky starts, both taking what some would call the hard way to  adulthood. When we sat down with our coffee on Saturday our conversation picked up like we’d seen each other a few days ago. We grinned like preteens while we shared our current successes, and that is always how it goes for us. If we don’t see each other again for the next several months, or even the rest of this year, those pauses in contact will never weaken what was started by toddlers in two yellow houses all those years ago.  It’s one of those friendships I know I’ll be able to hold onto for the rest of my days.

So, today was the end of week three of our remodel project. I have to admit I’m not doing as peachy of a job as I thought I would at dealing with the chaos. At the same time I’ve only thrown one princess fit and one small fit so I don’t think I’ve been too bad.
Tonight I came home to some progress! I know a lot of work has been done in the last few weeks but I don’t really notice the new beams in the attic or the plumbing and gas lines that have been moved around. Not in the same way I can see my new pantry or my new linen closet that I wasn’t even getting last week. There’s even a mock up of our island. It’s going to be good to start seeing things coming back together. ☺