I just wanted to wish all mothers reading this website, and even those who don’t read it, a very happy and belated Mother’s day. Here’s hoping that everyone had a lovely day and was able to spend at least a short while with family and close friends.
I also wanted to say a few words after a very long and busy month.
These past few weeks seemed to fly by faster than usual. Winnie and I are still working on the house with cleaning, decorating, and customizing to our standards. One big project involves upgrading our kitchen.
When we moved in the downstairs finished room, which is now our den, had been converted to a studio apartment complete with stove and refrigerator. The stove in our kitchen wasn’t working (it looked like mice had gotten into it and chewed some wires) and the refrigerator was dirty and worn. The dishwasher didn’t seem to work either.
The stove was also old and worn, so we just scrapped it and moved the nearly new stove from downstairs up. We also took the nearly new refrigerator (matching the stove) up into our kitchen and moved the old fridge out to the garage.
This past month, we bought and installed a new dishwasher. As I was already an expert in this, having done installed all new appliances down in Mississippi, I did the work myself. It wasn’t a bad job, other than taking up most of a weekend.
Next project was replacing the old worn vent hood with a microwave vent hood combo. Again, I had done this down in Mississippi and didn’t worry about tackling this project again. However, this turned out to be a bit more challenging. I ended up spending two full weekends working this, plus some weeknights before I was to the point of making a bag of popcorn – which is about the best reason yet for even having a microwave… Next is some work on cabinets, cleaning them up and adding a top rail shelf.
Winnie is also improving the garage. A previous owner must have kept a dog in the garage, as there were numerous holes of various sizes chewed through the drywall. We bought three sheets of drywall and Winnie went to work. She replaced one entire sheet and patched the remaining holes by cutting out sections of the wall and replacing. Between the two of us, we plastered and sanded the seams. Next step is to paint – Winnie wants us to have fully painted out garage.
All this has been keeping us busy.
We’ve also become reintroduced to the suburban task of mowing lawns. I went out a few weeks ago and bought a lawn mower – a small push mower, nothing nearly as fancy as the 42 inch ride-on I had back in Mississippi. It actually feels good just having a small patch of grass to keep trimmed. While I’m tending the lawn, Winnie has started a small vegetable garden. As in Mississippi, everything she plants actually grows.
The weather is finally getting nice and I’m really getting restless to put my boat back in the water and explore. I did finish getting Sea Dreams registered here in Virginia, and yesterday put the new registration numbers on.
Next weekend, I plan on being out on the water! It will have been a long time coming.
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