Almost Easter

I went to a wonderful church service this evening at the First Christian Church here in town. I never thought that I would like going to a DOC church because I honestly didn't like the one in Eureka that we had to go and sing at frequently. But, a friend invited me to go to the Saturday Night Alive service and I figured why not. So after a full day I went to the service. It was great and full of contemporary music and honest to goodness truth about God.

Otherwise we had a full day as well. My older brother came down last night and stayed here so he could go to lunch for my little brother's birthday. So I got up this morning and had to go to the bank and close out the savings account that has been open since I was like three years old. Unfortunately it's at a bank in IL and I rarely go over there on weekdays so it was dormant and they said to put money in or close it out. So I went over today and just closed it out. Then we went to lunch for Thomas' birthday at Pizza Hut. I can't believe how much my nephew has grown in the week since I last saw him.

When we got home, we cleaned out the goldfish pond out back. It was really gross with rotting leaves and nastiness. Steve helped me a lot since I can't pick up heavy stuff and we got it all scrubbed down and cleaned out and then filled up again. So it will be all ready for fish once it warms up a bit more. Then I went to the church service and then we went out to eat. It makes for a full day that has left me feeling quite accomplished.

Now I just need to buy some rocks to circle the tree out front, purchase some mulch to put around the trees, flower beds, and my rose bush. After I get my planters out and get those planted with flowers, and get my other plants in the ground, then my outside stuff will be pretty much done.

I still have quite a bit to do inside the house, and it's hard to not want to do it all at the same time. I have another room that I want to paint upstairs that will be a guest bedroom/my craft room. Then I have to do something with the stairway area. After the upstairs is done, I want to paint the living room/dining room. Sometime after that I want to pull up the carpet in that same room and redo the hardwoods under it. I also want to change the hardware (handles and hinges) in the kitchen and possibly repaint in there as well.

So that's my project list for this year basically. I love having projects to do and it really gives me something to look forward to. I have noticed that I get a bit bored/down when I don't have something to work towards. So I try not to move too fast so that I always have something to do and look forward to.

Tomorrow is Easter, a celebration and remembrance of the sacrifice that Christ gave for us on the cross. We have breakfast at the church at 7am and then church at 8am. While it is early, I look forward to seeing my family. My mom has Trevor tonight too so I will be able to see him again. Then we have the rest of the day to ourselves.

I hadn't planned on making this quite this long, but oh well. It's what's on my mind right now I suppose!

The MRI

I got my MRI results back today. I have a small tear and a strained muscle in my right shoulder from the car accident. The doc says that as long as I am careful, it should heal itself without any problem. So I have to be careful not to lift anything heavy or strain it and I should be okay. I wonder what it would have looked like right after the accident when it was really sore. I think it has already healed up quite a bit in the past two weeks. So I got that taken care. Now I just need to see my chiropracter and get my neck and back straightened out and I will be good to go. Then I can be done with this whole mess. They are giving me a settlement for "pain and suffering" along with lost wages for the days of work that I have missed. It will help with some stuff that I wanted to get done but couldn't when we used the money for down payments on new vehicles. It was beautiful out today and I am looking forward to working a little outside tomorrow if my arm permits.

Okay, now, seriously....

Okay, I went to buy a pair of dress pants for work this weekend and it would appear that I am "between sizes". My regular size that I have been wearing are too big now, but the size smaller are a bit snug. So I am mildly uncomfortable and it's annoying. My solution to this is a good one however. I am going to get back on the dang wagon and lose some more weight so that the smaller sizes fit me right! I changed my weigh-in day back to Mondays because I feel like I was cheating by having them on Friday when I knew that I would be the lightest throughout the week. It isn't an accurate weight for how I would be on a daily basis. Plus it will motivate me to be more careful on the weekend instead of using the week to work off what I gained over the weekend. And I will be able to start over fresh today, which I need. I have been trying to figure out a good time to exercise that I would actually follow through with. I can't right after work, though that would probably be the most likely time for me to follow through. However, Steve is still sleeping most days when I get home and the treadmill is in the bedroom so that will not work. My next thought was to get up early in the morning and work out. That would give me some alone time to be awake and reflect and prepare for my day. The more I think of this, the better it sounds but the follow through will be difficult. It won't work on Mondays because Steve will be home and sleeping but I think it will work the rest of the week. So, perhaps on Tues - Saturday I will get my butt up and spend at least 10-20 mins on the treadmill to start out with and go from there. So tomorrow will be my first day to try to get up and do this. I also want to start doing crunches again cause my tummy felt so good when I was doing those in November!

It feels like there is so much going on right now in my life. I have been working on getting caught up at work and staying caught up. I am doing well with the staying caught up, not so well with the getting caught up part. I have several months worth of notes from last year that I do not have done. So, one step at a time, I am doing well staying caught up, now I am going to work on getting caught up, slowly but surely. My truck is having issues yet again. There is a crack in the bottom of the radiator so while they temporarily fixed it right now, I will have to put in a new radiator eventually. I haven't even been driving it lately and I am used to driving Steve's car by now. I am going to try to increase the money that we are saving in a monthly basis so I can afford a new car in the next year or so. I also want to be able to afford the changes that I want to make in the house.

Speaking of house stuff, we bought some new handles from Lowe's for the kitchen cabinets yesterday to try out. I got four different kinds that I liked to try on and see which one works the best. Ironically enough, the one I wasn't sure if I liked ended up being the one that looked the best on the cabinets and I really like it now. And because the black one looked the best, I can just take the hinges off the cabinet and spray paint them to match. That will save use quite a bit of money (about $60)since we won't have to replace them with new ones. So with some of our tax money, we are going to get the new handles and a big waterproof/firesafe in which to put our house abstract and other odds and ends that we would not want to lose in the event of a fire or flood. I also priced refrigerators (ours is used so who knows how long it will last) and wrote down measurements. We also looked at tankless water heaters (so much more economically sound!) which are expensive but worth it - you never run out of hot water! As we are making renovations on the house, I am trying to be economically minded and get appliances and such that are energy effecient. Not only would that help with our bills, and be kind to the environment, but also increase the resale value of the house. The first major thing we will have to replace will likely be the furnace though. It's over twenty years old and is probably not very energy efficient in the least. Steve did install a new thermostat yesterday so hopefully that will help. The old one almost didn't work anymore and it was cheap. Our air conditioner is an Energy Star and is relatively new so it should be good to go for several more years. Of course there are basic things that I want to do, including painting the front room and pulling up the carpet and refinishing the hard wood floors. Those I can do by myself so, no biggie.

So, this has been a long post but an overdue one. I am back on the proverbial wagon and looking forward to staying there.