Caught Her Breath

I am deeply sorry that I haven’t been blogging. Work and life have become a whirlwind. My park and job reopened and I started a new part time job simultaneously. My part time job has full time hours right now because of training.

Shortly, Kit and I will go intermittent from the park. In the upcoming lean months we will be forced to get more creative with cooking and eating in more. I love that about winter. We go out to eat less and eat food that is wholly more delicious because it is seasoned exactly as we want it.

My newest work-family has been very welcoming. There is even a birthday potluck that I am looking forward to participating in.

In addition to working and starting a new job, I have joined the community choir. We had our second practice this past Tuesday. We have a fun selection of songs and have practiced six of the ten we will perform in early December.
Not much else to report. The days and nights are getting colder which makes me want to brew hot tea and curl up with a book. I just hope I have some time soon to do that reading and snuggling.

~Kat~

Fixing the House: Our Progress

Recently, Kit and I have been working on fixing up the spare bedroom. A friend that will be living with us through the winter semester and I can’t wait!
Some of my friends from work came over to help on several occasions and they were so efficient I didn’t have time for pictures.
As my professor would say, if you have time to take photosof people working then you’re not working with everyone else.

We started out by fixing some nails holes and one random huge hole in the wall. We put on one coat of killz, to keep any evils from seeping through. And put two coats of midnight purple on the walls.

I’ll go ahead and tell ya, it is a lot of purple. The room looks gorgeous though. If I ever get to decorating it properly, I want to add accents of silver and light gray.

After the paints were laid, HT and I pulled the carpet and foam underlayment. We removed the carpet tack strips and out to the trash they went. We only found out that kicking the pry bar underneath the strips was crazy. Yes, we had a hammer, but you see, we also had wine-given strength.

The other day, I reorganized, read: pulled everything out of the closet. Once I had some room, I pulled the carpet in the closet. Tell me, who chooses to put down carpet in a closet so darn awkward!?

I made the decision not to pull the strips in the closet because I do not plan on putting flooring in there. I will likely change my mind later, but I will wait for the inspiration of a drunken evening to pull up the rest of it.

Please note the cat taking advantage of the free bed.
My next steps are to paint a second coat of ultra white paint on the brown trim and coat the floor with killz before we put down the laminate.

We are also replacing some of the particleboard near the doorway, but we haven’t gotten that finished yet. I will be painting around it until we get it all the way pulled up and replaced.

I am so pleased that this 1970s room is getting a face lift. I hope that we can continue reorganizing and replacing bits of our house as we go. It is exciting to find that fixing one’s house is possible.
We are certainly not Weekend Warriors. Perhaps Weeklong Warriors would be more appropriate.

Parking Guard

We had a temporary parking guard watching out for our employee only lot. Can you see it? Fantastic little praying mantis.

Here is another shot of the little dude.

Winding Up Summer

We’ve made it through most of the big holiday weekends and the company picnic with laughs and food. The staff is rapidly waning as we lose a big chunk of people to school schedules.
All these things let me know hat the summer is almost over.

One of my coworkers brought in doughnuts specifically for the kids leaving to school.

It makes me wish I was leaving for school too, so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to all my friends. It’s gonna be a long winter.

V is for Volunteer

From a young age my mom has volunteered me for tons of stuff.
I have helped out at a live theater ushering for shows, painting sets and mailings.

At local libraries I have helped out with checking books in, shelving, shelf reading, planning and implementing programs and purging sections.

As a teen and adult I have continued volunteering although not as frequently because of work and school.

I helped with several sinkhole cleanups, picking up trash or in some of the nastier sinks, digging up trash.

There are tons more examples I could give. I really think volunteering is fun because of the new things you can learn and completing projects that without willing hands may never be done.

Also, some of the great organizations I volunteered for offered yummy lunches to boot!