In July I finally painted my living room the deep pink of cherry buds before they open in spring. It melds beautifully with the turquoise color of my music room and the fresh spring green of my kitchen and dining room. All my art pops so beautifully against those bold colors.
Sunday I picked up a HALF TON of pre-finished butterscotch oak hardwood flooring and brought it home to stack in my front hallway in anticipation of NEXT WEEK, when a very nice man named JP is going to pull out all of the DISGUSTING wall-to-wall beige carpet that fills my living room and music room and install PROPER WOOD FLOORS. I also ordered a Tuscan green velvet couch from a company in Cali that harvests and kiln-dries their wood sustainably, provides green-certified, pet-safe upholstery (thank you, Jesus!), and makes their cushion filling out of RECYCLED PLASTIC BOTTLES.
Sorry for the shouting but I'm just SO EXCITED. I'm not always great at navigating physical beauty. It's very emotionally complicated. But beauty in my house is a total, unbridled JOY.
My years-long effort to get my sweet husband and our tenants/neighbors/second family/gardeners to back the fuck off of the mowing and leaf-litter “clean up” have finally begun to bear fruit. This has been partly due to a few happy coincidences. One, sweet husband is turning 88 next week and just doesn’t have it in him to go weed, clip, strip, and otherwise depredate the landscape; two, one of our two tenants has begun his descent into 24-hour online gaming hell and has ceased doing his share of mowing-in-lieu-of-rent-increases since April. So now I sit in my air chair and watch an explosion of wild grasses, wild and strategically placed pollinating plants and flowers, and random other stuff. This has led to many types of beneficial insects, birds, more little rodents (chipmunks, squirrels, bunnies), drop-ins by hawks, and a resurgence of crickets, fireflies in huge numbers, hoppy toads, green grass snakes... The 9-yr-old budding wildlife field biologist who just spent 2 weeks at Nana Camp said, delightedly swinging in his air chair with me one warm evening, “I like how your house has nature all around it!” Me too. I hope Nat never comes up for air.
As for the, ahem, personal touches: My post-COVID looooooong crap is finally beginning to abate noticeably, about fucking time, 3 yrs, most gratifyingly the POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, where standing or moving about made me tremendously short of breath and nearly black out with a heart rate to the 150s), brain fog, and crippling fatigue (sleeping a more normal 8 hrs/night, down from 18. Not a typo.). The second knee replacement still sucks, but I’m sort of making my peace with it. I have some new shampoo and conditioner and finally had the self-awareness to realize my dry skin needed some help, so I poached some really good stuff from sweet husband and now have arms and legs that feel like a baby’s. And I got a new tattoo. So yay me!
April 4, 2023: Put my Locust Valley home on the market. Sold in less than a week, all cash, leave when I want.
June 30, 2023: Retire after an amazing 25-year run as a NYS public school teacher on the Isle of Long. I loved my position, until I didn't and that was that.
July 1, 2023, started packing and tossing. Hauled my 69- year-old ass onto the LIRR and into NYC to start the search for a perch.
August 4, 2023: Signed the lease on an amazing NYC apartment in Peter Cooper Village, aka Nirvana in NYC.
August 16, 2024: FlatRate Movers pack the truck and we all head into the NYC shite show.
August 24, 2023: Will close on my LI home, bank the cash, and figure the rest out.
August IDK, 2023: IT'S 10:30AM AND I'M STILL IN BED.
We are getting solar panels on our roof this week! And next month, a new deck. Then, I promise, we will be done with redoing the home we bought last year. However, I do have a consultation scheduled for a breast reduction, something I have wanted for decades. Does that count?
Bravo to all who are doing "face lifts" on homes, yards, lives, etc. Doesn't the process and final result just revitalize you?
As for me, I am concentrating on my health. Chemo infusion #3 of 4 done yesterday. Almost done!!!! And then radiation. My renovation will be completed by Christmas. 😊
Oh, and about the rocks: spread them wherever you planned to, and let the rains wash them. The dirt that comes off them will help them settle in place and look more natural, you won’t have runnels of muddy water, and you’ll be done with it by fall. See how easy laissez-faire can be?
I actually did invest in some fancy skin stuff. But that is not what ai am renovating. I am packing up my house and getting ready to go get a rehab 1800 miles away. The renovation will start after I close the garage escrow. Yeah, I’m excited!
Hoping to rehab me. As you know my wife of 40 yrs died in 2017. 27 months later I got together with a friend whose husband had died 6 months before. Soon we were in love ,I lived with her a yr. at her house then she moved to mine for the duration but got sick and died after two yrs. Together there. We had a wonderful three years together. That was 10 months ago and I’ve been pretty unhappy since. I’ve been in more touch recently with an old friend I haven’t seen in 53 years, who I was half in love with the whole time I knew her in Connecticut, and whose husband died 7 months ago. I’m flying to spend a few days with her tomorrow, hoping at least to renew our friendship and at most to fall madly in love. Fingers crossed. I’m trying not to be too excited. These words from the Eagles song “Peaceful easy feeling” speak to me:
Ohhhh I can't wait to see the finished garden path. Why do you have to wash the rocks?
As for myself, I have suddenly been infected by the gardening bug. I have only a small porch outside my apartment but I've been growing herbs, succulents, and some green pepper plants I rescued after someone abandoned them. It's very satisfying. No other upgrades in the works.
I'm Getting a Face Lift
I like your face the way it is, E Jean. Saying.
In July I finally painted my living room the deep pink of cherry buds before they open in spring. It melds beautifully with the turquoise color of my music room and the fresh spring green of my kitchen and dining room. All my art pops so beautifully against those bold colors.
Sunday I picked up a HALF TON of pre-finished butterscotch oak hardwood flooring and brought it home to stack in my front hallway in anticipation of NEXT WEEK, when a very nice man named JP is going to pull out all of the DISGUSTING wall-to-wall beige carpet that fills my living room and music room and install PROPER WOOD FLOORS. I also ordered a Tuscan green velvet couch from a company in Cali that harvests and kiln-dries their wood sustainably, provides green-certified, pet-safe upholstery (thank you, Jesus!), and makes their cushion filling out of RECYCLED PLASTIC BOTTLES.
Sorry for the shouting but I'm just SO EXCITED. I'm not always great at navigating physical beauty. It's very emotionally complicated. But beauty in my house is a total, unbridled JOY.
My years-long effort to get my sweet husband and our tenants/neighbors/second family/gardeners to back the fuck off of the mowing and leaf-litter “clean up” have finally begun to bear fruit. This has been partly due to a few happy coincidences. One, sweet husband is turning 88 next week and just doesn’t have it in him to go weed, clip, strip, and otherwise depredate the landscape; two, one of our two tenants has begun his descent into 24-hour online gaming hell and has ceased doing his share of mowing-in-lieu-of-rent-increases since April. So now I sit in my air chair and watch an explosion of wild grasses, wild and strategically placed pollinating plants and flowers, and random other stuff. This has led to many types of beneficial insects, birds, more little rodents (chipmunks, squirrels, bunnies), drop-ins by hawks, and a resurgence of crickets, fireflies in huge numbers, hoppy toads, green grass snakes... The 9-yr-old budding wildlife field biologist who just spent 2 weeks at Nana Camp said, delightedly swinging in his air chair with me one warm evening, “I like how your house has nature all around it!” Me too. I hope Nat never comes up for air.
As for the, ahem, personal touches: My post-COVID looooooong crap is finally beginning to abate noticeably, about fucking time, 3 yrs, most gratifyingly the POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, where standing or moving about made me tremendously short of breath and nearly black out with a heart rate to the 150s), brain fog, and crippling fatigue (sleeping a more normal 8 hrs/night, down from 18. Not a typo.). The second knee replacement still sucks, but I’m sort of making my peace with it. I have some new shampoo and conditioner and finally had the self-awareness to realize my dry skin needed some help, so I poached some really good stuff from sweet husband and now have arms and legs that feel like a baby’s. And I got a new tattoo. So yay me!
April 4, 2023: Put my Locust Valley home on the market. Sold in less than a week, all cash, leave when I want.
June 30, 2023: Retire after an amazing 25-year run as a NYS public school teacher on the Isle of Long. I loved my position, until I didn't and that was that.
July 1, 2023, started packing and tossing. Hauled my 69- year-old ass onto the LIRR and into NYC to start the search for a perch.
August 4, 2023: Signed the lease on an amazing NYC apartment in Peter Cooper Village, aka Nirvana in NYC.
August 16, 2024: FlatRate Movers pack the truck and we all head into the NYC shite show.
August 24, 2023: Will close on my LI home, bank the cash, and figure the rest out.
August IDK, 2023: IT'S 10:30AM AND I'M STILL IN BED.
We are getting solar panels on our roof this week! And next month, a new deck. Then, I promise, we will be done with redoing the home we bought last year. However, I do have a consultation scheduled for a breast reduction, something I have wanted for decades. Does that count?
First of all, who is more adorable than our E Jean? No one! That photo of you with your rocks in the forest is too cute.
Relieved to hear youre not ready yet for voluntary and unnecessary surgery! U B perfect as is!
Bravo to all who are doing "face lifts" on homes, yards, lives, etc. Doesn't the process and final result just revitalize you?
As for me, I am concentrating on my health. Chemo infusion #3 of 4 done yesterday. Almost done!!!! And then radiation. My renovation will be completed by Christmas. 😊
Oh, and about the rocks: spread them wherever you planned to, and let the rains wash them. The dirt that comes off them will help them settle in place and look more natural, you won’t have runnels of muddy water, and you’ll be done with it by fall. See how easy laissez-faire can be?
I'm filing my divorce papers tomorrow so my scowl will renovate itself into a smile.🙃🙂
(And tomorrow night I'm going to have yummy delicious sex with a guy who ranks amongst the world's best and most thoughtful kissers....😊)
Life is reasonably good these days!
Oh, geezus, you just scared the sh*t out of me. xo
I actually did invest in some fancy skin stuff. But that is not what ai am renovating. I am packing up my house and getting ready to go get a rehab 1800 miles away. The renovation will start after I close the garage escrow. Yeah, I’m excited!
Gosh, you are beautiful As you are! So glad it’s your walkway you are doing!
You look great as you are, doll.
Hoping to rehab me. As you know my wife of 40 yrs died in 2017. 27 months later I got together with a friend whose husband had died 6 months before. Soon we were in love ,I lived with her a yr. at her house then she moved to mine for the duration but got sick and died after two yrs. Together there. We had a wonderful three years together. That was 10 months ago and I’ve been pretty unhappy since. I’ve been in more touch recently with an old friend I haven’t seen in 53 years, who I was half in love with the whole time I knew her in Connecticut, and whose husband died 7 months ago. I’m flying to spend a few days with her tomorrow, hoping at least to renew our friendship and at most to fall madly in love. Fingers crossed. I’m trying not to be too excited. These words from the Eagles song “Peaceful easy feeling” speak to me:
I get this feelin' I may know you
As a lover and a friend
This voice keeps whisperin' in my other ear
Tells me I may never see you again
'Cause I get a peaceful easy feelin'
And I know you won't let me down
'Cause I'm already standin'
I'm already standin'
Yes, I'm already standin'
On the ground
Ohhhh I can't wait to see the finished garden path. Why do you have to wash the rocks?
As for myself, I have suddenly been infected by the gardening bug. I have only a small porch outside my apartment but I've been growing herbs, succulents, and some green pepper plants I rescued after someone abandoned them. It's very satisfying. No other upgrades in the works.
My entire freakin' life. Again.
oh, E. Jean we think you are a beauty just as you are...I like to see how we sage naturally (see how I changed age to sage, :-)
"My wrinkles show I laughed, my grey hair showed I cared, my scars showed I lived, and my belly shows I like good food."