House and Yard Renovations

I got my two once-a-month-peanut-butter-textured hormone shots in my bum cheeks yesterday.  It's always a painful experience, I never look forward to it.  The spots are so painful today, feels like I got shot with a giant paint ball gun.  Twice.  😕

My boss at J and J Nursery is amazing.  He checks up on me regularly to make sure I'm OK.  I don't have a set schedule.  I have complete flexibility about when I show up and when I leave.  I've been working as much as I can.  I did that voluntarily because our mortgage payment on our new house will be higher than we've ever paid for a mortgage.  I just want to help our budget more.  Mat does so much for us!  I feel bad because he works so many hours each week, way more than 40.  Yet meeting our month to month expenses can be difficult.  We've never NOT been able to pay everything we needed to - we've seen many miracles in our married life.  Things that seemed impossible to cover have always been covered.  For that, I'm very grateful.  I predict things will continue to work out for us.

I hit a breaking point when I realized my fever and chills tonight might be tied to heat exhaustion.  It's nearly impossible to stay hydrated in this heat, running around helping customers find what they want, or helping them figure out what they want.  I push myself too hard, don't take the breaks I need, and leave there physically drained and dehydrated.

I don't have an appetite for food, in general.  Even going out to eat is a trial!  I can't think of anything that sounds good.  Thai food always sounds good, but we don't have anything close (that tastes good to me).  I'm so exhausted when I get home that I have little energy to think about preparing anything.  I use shortcuts like buying Costco's big package of already removed from bones rotisserie chicken.  I can't stand to do that on my own.  All that chicken skin, tendons, fat, etc. is so disgusting to me.

Looks bigger with those awful cabinets gone!

Yesterday at 4:00 I got the key to the house.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that the first thing I did was pull our Honda Pilot onto the lawn, wrapped a big chain around the shrubs in the front yard, and yanked them out.  There are about 14 more that need to go - Monday's project will require removing chain link fencing to get the Pilot into the back yard.  😜  I already have most of the plants for the front of the house, and two great trees for the front (more to come!).  I was running on pure adrenaline!  It felt so good to do my normal thing.  I worked until I couldn't see anymore and was so pleased with what we accomplished!  My friends Sharla and Kevin came to help us for a while.  I couldn't have accomplished so much without them!  Meanwhile, Mat and Jared K. tore out the kitchen down to the sheetrock.


Sharla and Kevin came again today.  They removed so much wallpaper with a steamer, they worked for hours on it!  The duck border is disappearing.  I felt grateful for their help and friendship.  Sharla took a cute picture of McKinley carrying an armful of wallpaper to the trailer.  The kids have been a great help in all of this!  Jeff, a GREAT neighbor of ours, drove by and saw all the activity.  He stopped to see what he could do to help.  By the end of the day today, he and Mat had removed all of the sheetrock from the back wall.  So the studs are exposed and ready to be moved!  We're pushing the back of the kitchen out three feet into the living room, because knocking out an exterior wall and/or moving the stairway to the basement aren't options.  We have so many great people on our team.  I'm very grateful!