Beach Baby

Peaceful evening here at 2021. Harpster is sleeping (keep your fingers crossed), the puppies are sacked out in their respective favorite places (Pix at my feet, Yogi at Eric's) and there's nothing to be heard except the hum of ceiling fans and the AC. Because it's fracking HOT outside.

We had a delightful time up north visiting my parents, as always.

Grammy spent a good deal of time during our visit singing with Harper. They make beautiful music together.

Pap continued his tradition of looking through American Heritage with Harper.

Harper continues to refine her "Blue Steel."

Higgins Lake, Michigan, is one of my favorite places on earth, and is where I spent most of my childhood summers. We had a wonderful day with Harper on the lake. She was pretty enthralled by the water and didn't complain a bit when we sat her down on the shore to let the waves hit her little buns.

I just think this is the cutest picture ever taken.

I start my new job tomorrow. I am a fun combination of excited and anxious, which does not bode well for getting a good night's sleep. The good news is that I have learned to function on no sleep. I will just have to hope that no one asks me to think critically or make important decisions.

As we gear up yet again to start work on the house, we're going to try to be very thoughtful about the whole thing. We haven't wasted any money on anything yet, but we're getting to a point where the remaining projects are pretty big ones and we need to do them in the right order. Here's how I'm seeing things emerge, depending on cash flow:

1) Replace/expand electrical panel

2) New furnace and vent upgrade (this will mean we will actually have a vent in the master bedroom and not just a hole in the floor with a vent cover on it...)

3) New carpet for master and guest bedrooms - since we're going to have to pull up the carpet in the master to do the vent, we might as well move with this.

4) Replace drywall around downstairs fireplace. Due to bad venting of the current furnace, we have some condensation issues that have wrecked the drywall on the chimney. We're just going to tear it down and start again.

5) Replace trim in living room. If we're tearing down the drywall, we'll just retrim everything. I was briefly considering painting all of the woodwork off-white, but I've been talked out of it.

6) Tile fireplace surround. We found some amazing tile up north--Pewabic. Loves.

7) Master bathroom. We already have the tile, which should help defray cost here. I've decided we're going to do a river rock floor in the shower. Eric will also have to knock out the back wall in the master closet and extend it into the bathroom so we have a decent size closet, and the bathroom isn't so weird shaped.

8) Refinish the floors.

9) Figure out where we're going to put the kitchen. We've been considering moving it to the current dining room. However, due to the window locations in there, it really doesn't give us any more wall space for cabinets than the current location does, though it would enable an eat-in kitchen... We'll see. Wherever we decide to put the kitchen, we'll finish up the other room to be a dining room. The good thing about keeping the kitchen where it is is that we'll be able to have a dining room/family room downstairs. I think that would be nice.

10) Finish the kitchen. It's my plan to start accumulating things for the kitchen--cabinets, fixtures, etc. so we're not slammed with everything at once. I have a picture in my head, but I can't describe it very well. I do know that I saw a picture of soapstone countertops the other day, and I can't stop thinking about them.

Ambitious, huh? I figure we'll maybe finish by the time Harper goes to college.

Apparently screaming bloody murder for 20 minutes really wears one out, because that's what the Harpster just did before finally falling asleep. Ack. I hate this. She has been sleeping like crap for the last four nights or so, and I am getting to a stage where I'm pretty much falling apart--having trouble stringing words into sentences, tripping a lot more, feeling puffy... Not cool. Eric is being such a trooper and taking one of the night shifts, too. What we both need is just a solid 5 or 6 hours and we'll be good to go.

Everything else is good. I start a new job on June 21st, which I'm very excited about. I'll be working at the Lumina Foundation, which is a great place that does some absolutely fantastic work in my field. Can't wait, though very very sad to leave my friends at the Commission.

Eric spent the afternoon out on our wonderful neighbor's boat, and thankfully did not sunburn himself like he has every other time he's been on a boat. I'm pleased he had a good time. However, they apparently stopped for Steak and Shake on their way home, and Eric didn't get me a shake. He did call me several times, which I missed because Harp and I were upstairs reading Charlie and the CHocolate Factory, but still... When have I EVER not wanted a shake??? Feh.

Nothing happening with the house other than we finally broke down and bought some new porch furniture. It's red and lovely and matches our front door. I'm very happy with it. We got a big outdoor rug to go under it and with a couple plants and some candles, we'll have a great little seating area.

We head up north to visit the fam starting this Saturday. I am VERY excited to have a week off. We're going to introduce Harper to the lake. I have packed several swimsuits for her, including a little bikini that will probably not make it to the water, but we'll definitely try it on because it will be the cutest thing in the world.