Outside my house

Iris garden 

Lest you think I’m obsessed about this house thing, I thought it would be good to talk about other things going on in my life…

It’s really been a beautiful spring, and every time I step outside my house I am surrounded by amazing color.  Purples and yellows abound in my back yard

Clockwise: Blue Belle, Wendy and Gilbert

And our cats continue to entertain us.  They seemed to enjoy painter’s paper covering the living room floor and a few ladders.

Mike and I joined a Cinco de Mayo beer club at a local establishment.  Let’s see…drink 8 Mexican beers by May 5^th for a free t-shirt.  We can do that!  Nothing like a great meal, a beer and a game of Scrabble on our iPads.  Yesterday I had my highest scoring word ever: 69 points for “zein”.  It’s those little victories, you know.

We are thrilled to welcome a great niece into the world.  My niece, Diane, and her husband Andrew have a beautiful baby girl named Alice.  She is now 3 weeks old, and though we haven’t met her yet, we anxiously await Diane’s next blog entry telling us about Alice and their experiences as new parents. 

Diane is an amazingly creative writer, and her blog about pregnancy and now parenthood makes me laugh and sometimes cry.  And Andrew’s occasional blog entry, usually introducing Alice to super heroes, is guaranteed to make me laugh.
Here is a link to their blog:  http://dianeandandrewembry.blogspot.com/

Several years ago I wrote a couple of children’s books before my nephew Adam was born.  I recently updated and bound these books for Alice.

The first book,  “A Baby’s Quilt” was an easy story to write when you come from a family of quilters.  The second story is about making a soup called “burgoo”(pronounced bur-go).  A Southern Indiana tradition, our family has gathered several times over the years to make a 30-gallon batch of burgoo outdoors over an open fire.

Anyway, resurrecting these books got me jazzed about writing again...

Ok, I can’t help myself.  I have to talk about the house…

We had a schedule problem with the granite counter installation.  The company told us the installation would begin on April 30^th, but in a conversation with them this week we learned we “disappeared” from their installation calendar.  After a visit to their shop, where I tried to stay calm (and held Mike at bay), we are now scheduled for mid-May installation.   Something about writing their appointments on a paper calendar in pencil concerned me, and yet they denied my request to be written in ink!  I don’t know much about procuring, cutting or installing granite, but boy would I love to organize and automate their record and calendar system!

We are making progress on the realtor front.  Yesterday we met with a prospective realtor for a couple of hours.  We really liked her excitement, enthusiasm and great track record of selling houses.  Plus her mom lives nearby, and so she knows about the area and our vintage of houses (late 1970’s).  We plan to meet with her again early next week.  

So far I’ve I packed about 50 boxes, and I am keeping the local U-Haul store in business with my purchases of boxes.  I created a spreadsheet identifying the contents of each numbered box.  I carry it with me on my iPad just in case I need to quickly locate that Egyptian Cat statue that I purchased years ago at the Natural History Museum in Chicago. 

Enough about the house.  It’s time to head outside into this beautiful weather.  This is one the perks of retirement that continues to amaze and delight me: walking outside whenever I want to soak up the sun and feel the wind in my hair.  Life is good!

Diane