The Power of Healing

I now am a member of the carpal tunnel club after a month of intense work on my house.  I had to take a week break from all work because my fingers were numb on both hands.  I decided that I needed to do something about this because I need to get back to work.  So, I headed of to the chiropractor/naturalist because I was already doing what my primary care physician would tell me to do...except for having surgery.
Now, I have been to the chiropractor before. I have even had acupuncture, rolfing, cupping, and several other forms of alternative treatments, but this was one of the oddest experiences I have ever had.  I will openly admit that my beliefs are fairly conservative, although I am open to all kinds of people and new things.  The chiropractor had me get a 40 minute massage on my arms.  No big deal.  It was a shiatsu massage, which I had had before.  Basically a massage with you clothes on involving different stretches and so forth.  Well, this one came in conjunction with chanting.  It started out with a big singing bowl on my back.  I have a little singing bowl myself, but had never considered adding it to my massages.  The chanting was surprisingly calming.  He told me that I could pray out loud or silently if I wanted to.  From my culture praying out loud in an atmosphere such as this would have been very awkward.  The whole experience for me was interesting.
I was then given some soap to take a bath in twice a day.  I can do that.  I was told that the soap was like Epsom salts and would remove toxins and help reduce the lactic acid that had built up in my arms from all of the manual labor I had been doing.  The muscles in my arms were very tight and when you touched them different fingers would tingle or become numb.  In the morning I got my soap out to take a bath and read the ingredients, as seen above.  My conservative faith made me a little leery to take a bath in a soap that had a claim of ingredients of anointment by God.  Don't get me wrong.  I fully believe that in the power of my Father in Heaven, but I believe in a specific authority to act in the name of God.  After thinking about it and also thinking that prayer was an ingredient and someone had put a lot of thoughtful and spiritual ideals into the making of this soap that it was okay with me.  So, I am now immersing myself in my claw-foot tub twice a day with the certainty that my Father in Heaven is okay with me soaking in a bath that someone has dedicated to him.

Anyone who is interested, I am seeing improvements in my carpal tunnel.  I do have to wear braces on both hands for over half of the day and all night, but my finger have seen a lot of improvement.  Many thanks to my Savior and Heavenly Father for all of the treatments out there to heal my many ailments (even if they do involve singing bowls and chanting).

New Job

Well, life has led me to a new job.  These past few months have been very difficult with my personal struggles emotionally and in the career realm.  I am happy to say that after putting in notice at my previous job I was unusually calm.  There have been so many things that have fallen apart over the the last year and a half that I was surprised.  I could tell that all of the difficult therapy and self evaluation had made a big difference.  I also felt like leaving my job was the right thing to do.  It had to be since any new homeowners nightmare would be to no longer have a job within weeks of purchasing their house.  My house and I were feeling exceptionally good under the circumstances.
I will continue to get paid from my previous job until June 19th, without having to put in any hours.  I would like to say that is nice of them, but in reality I was not treated very fairly throughout the entire process of returning to work.  I was very angry intermittently, but have come to terms with the fact that sadly many people have not learned how to deal with others in difficult situations.  That was the main function of my previous job, so I did it all the time.
Good news is that I have a new job.  It comes with a tiny pay cut, but living without the drama of my precious job will be a relief.  I got as full-time faculty at Rasmussen College.  They have multiple campuses in the area and I will be teaching Maternal-Child Nursing.  I know I will ace the child part....the maternal part will be a different story.  I tried to forget all of that information after my clinical rotations in nursing school.  I new that was not the area for me, but now I get to teach breastfeeding, labor, fundus checks, etc.  This is a whole new world for me.  I will be breaking out the books to study for several weeks.  My first day of teaching my own class will be on July 5th (so unfortunately for all the family members out there I will not be making it to the reunion).  I am hoping that eventually I will get the opportunity to teach other classes as well.

Dandelion Fields Forever

Check out the number of dandelions in my lawn. Right now my lawn is like a forest.  In order to mow it today I had to clean up all of the leaves and sticks.

Here are my 10 very large bags of leaves and sticks.  There are still more out there, but I ran out of bags.

The green on the walls was not like I had planned.  It was a little darker than I expected.

The color makes the room look like lettuce.

Some Visable Progress

I have been frantically working trying to get the bathroom and the bedroom completed.  I need to move all of my belongings into my house on Saturday.  I was originally going to pay movers to move all of my heavy furniture down the three flights of stairs and to my new home.  Those plans have changed since I am no longer gainfully employed. I have talked the male members of the church to move my eight items for me.  I am going to have to take many of them apart for them to fit through the awkward doors that lead to outside.

The following are picture of the progress last night:

Sanding, sanding, sanding.  I created a lot of dust.

Although, I was able to finish the drywall around the vent, plus paint the ceiling (primer and paint).

Fixed up the wall.

Sanded the old sink cabinet.  If you look really close you can see the nastiness that needs to be cleaned, that is the plan once I remove the sink/counter.  Hold your breath for the winning tile choice.

Primed and painted the cabinet with a coat of paint.

This past weekend mom and I moved the stove.  You can see an light outline where the nasty linoleum was was chewed away by a little rodent.  Mom and I found was looked like hay throughout the kitchen.  Under the fridge when we removed the linoleum we round round little "poops" and hay.  We masked right up.  We looked awesome.  I was worried about mice.

Down in the basement last might I found a bag of the hay.  The previous owners left me way too many little gifts.  Guinea pig hay.

Today I will be plowing forward.  Hopefully with more updates to show.

Can't Wait to be Doris Day

Today I resigned from my job after over 1 month of agony.  I have joined the ranks of 9.8% of America.  I think it was the best thing to do, but when my additional month of pay runs out and I don't have another job lined up I think I will be really worried.  My only consolation is that Doris Day was unemployed in "That Touch of Mink" and then she met Cary Grant.  Maybe I will meet a Carey Grant too.  Someone to splash me with their car, fly me via personal jet, wine and dine me, get me a temporary job, and then take me to the Bahamas where I will live out the rest of my life.  Who knows, it might be possible, RIGHT?

Bubble Party

At church I have the job of teaching and entertaining in the nursery.  Today we discovered the Turbo Bubble Machine and it was a big hit.  It blew bubbles for 20 minutes straight.  It was an aggressive bubble blower.  The kids had wet hair filled with soap by the time we were done.  We had a lot of fun though.

No wonder they all looked like they had a bath.  I was missing about three kids today.

Look at the mischievous face.  His poor pants were falling off him the entire day. 

This is my name's sake (Claire).

After taking picture of the kids I attempted to take a self portrait...whoops the zoom was a little close.  I really like the picture though.

"Shout Out" to the Groupies

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I was informed by text that I must update what has been happening at my house.  I can tell you that it is a lot of hard work without any real signs, but I will attempt to show you the most recent.  These photos are in no particular order, but here is a picture of many of the item that my mother and I hauled down three long flights of stairs.  My mother is amazing!  I think we had too much fun though.

My mom painted my windows.  She hated every moment of it too.  She made sure to remind me about every 15 minutes that she must really love me because she hated windows.  Don't you worry I didn't let her complaining move me into sympathy and give her another job.  I made her learn the importance of doing a good job even when you don't like the task.

Remember the homemade waterfall in my house?  Well, the repair and placement of a new shower has been a lengthy project.  I spent house trying to figure out how to make the floor level.  I made a little cement mound to level it out.  Then I put a new piece of plywood on top.

Here you can see that there is now a shower base with a drain in that spot.  I have had to let the wall dry-out for days.  Then I worked on the floor.  Once I was finally able to get the floor in I began to put the walls back together.  I am not the perfect mud and tape girl.  I am lucky because whoever built there wall must have seen me coming.  They were warped before I even got there.  All of the rain that we have had here has made the joint compound take days and days to dry.  I am hoping tomorrow I will be able to sand and reapply.

After tearing out all of the wire closet items I needed to build a new closet.  Here are the beginning signs of change: new paint, new wood strips for support and a new clothing rail.

Here you can't really tell, but there is a shelf above the clothes.  The shoe holder will be disappearing with my additional closet organization additions, but we were just happy to have somewhere to hang them. Yes, the majority of clothes are in a house that I am currently not living in.

I know that you have all been anxiously awaiting replacement of the triangle toilet, but I am going to keep you in suspense.  I did quite a bit of cleaning about the area.  These walls were primed after this picture was taken.  I plan to finish all of the sanding and painting in the bathroom before I put in my throne.  I have had it delivered and it is a beauty though. Suspense, suspense.

In my spare time about a week ago I began to rack my leaves into piles.  There are so many sticks and leaves in my yard.  I didn't get it finished.  You can see three piles in the picture alone.  Embarrassing thing is that they are still there.  I have been furiously trying to get the bedroom and bathroom completed so that I can move in.

Here are the world's best knee pads. Flexible and comfortable.  Plus, they make my ankles look slender.  No one wants cankles.  I want to thank my mom for coming and doing a ton of work for an "old lady" and tell her that my home is waiting for here anytime, but she has to sing the Star-Spangled banner upon arrival...my home is patriotic. (Inside joke that I will let you in on.  Multiple times at the same spot on the road I would begin humming the Star-Spangled Banner as we were approaching my house. Odd.)

 

Some Things Just Make Me Smile.

I am pretty much certain that I might have to eat here because the food is good and peaceful.

Random Photos of "Home Work"

Baseboards reattached.

Ugly off white light switches and plugs with new white covers....tacky,

Hung up some new drywall around the bathroom vent.  This was my first drywall experience.  It let this dry for 24 hours....don't you worry this is not the finished product.

Put some joint compound and all of the terrible bathroom drywall tears from the shelving.

My new faucet.

Hhhhmmm. The poor shower flooring drying out.

Great Birthday Present

Yay for friends and birthdays!  Remember this lovely room.  This is what it looked like before I bought the house.  The wallpaper is beautiful.  For my birthday I had three great friends come and remove wallpaper and help me remove carpet.

There is the wallpaper free wall.  Unfortunately, some of the paint underneath the wallpaper came off.  I am sure that it is lead paint.  I began working upstairs prior to the paint chips coming off.  I really hope that Carrie and Natalie were able to refrain from eating the lead paint....constipation, neuropathy, and other neurological symptoms can be terrible.

Underneath the carpet was this beautiful wood floor.

Natalie took off all of the hardware to the windows for easier refinishing of the wood.

The worst part of the entire room were the terrible staples in the carpet.  These things caused more than one bleeding incidence.  Happy Birthday to me!

It's Raining, It's Pooring....Oh What That's the Shower!!

As part of wanting to get into my home soon, you can all tell that I have been working on the bedroom and the bathroom.  I have a habit of looking at projects and thinking, "I can do that."  The first project was replacing the bathroom vent.  I got all of the pieces, but it just would not come out of the ceiling.

The next option was climbing up into the attic.

You can't really tell from here, but I could not get to the vent from the attic.  In the middle of the picture is a white pipe.  There were several pipes in the way.  Plus the vent was right where the roof meets the attic.  It was impossible to get to...at least by me.

Although I finally succeeded.  It took a while, but it was possible.

The next project was to tear out the shower.  I took a look at it and thought it should be easy.

Yuck!

I took out all of the door panels and then started working on the vinyl wall.  While I was taking of the walls, I turned a knob on the faucet.  Next think I knew there was water hitting me full force.  I had taken off a lot of caulk which had collected in the drainage pan.  I tried to push the faucet back on and turn the knob, but it didn't work.  The water was collecting and started overflowing, so my only option was to run down to the basement and turn off the water main.   By the time I got to the basement to turn it off the water main.  Unfortunately, by then the water was raining through to the living room.  I didn't have many items to catch water, but I was creative.  It took 2 hours for the leakage to stop enough for me to leave.   This is a photo of the cement wall and the nasty drainage pan.

Bad news is that even though I turned off the water and nothing was draining from the shower when I left.  When I came back the next day it had been dripping a little.  The water main valves are probably old and need to be replaced.  I put my work light in there to warm it up and help it dry.

Back to the vent issue.  The new bathroom vent box was a different size than the previous vent.   Plus it was build to be hung on a different side.

I cut myself some 2 x 4's.

Used some brackets.

Then I hung up the board.  Unfortunately after a little more work, I didn't have to use this piece of wood to secure the vent.  It is there in the ceiling and I know it....a good idea that wasn't needed.  I was trying to put the vent up on my own, but I was unable to do it.

So, I turned around and started to remove the caulk and glue off of the cement board, so that the vinyl will lie flat on the wall.

My friend Derek then came to rescue.  He was very kind, plus I paid him less than I would a plumber to fix my shower faucet so that I could have water in my house again.  We started with putting the vent into the ceiling.  My arms were getting so tired of holding the vent up while he was connecting the electrical wires.  I found that my head was much easier.  Plus I was exceptionally good at balancing it.  Who needs books for that anyway? Not me.

After a lot of attempts we were able to get the wires hooked up correctly.  There wires were not colored correctly.  Whoever did the wiring in the first place was very creative.

Then Derek got out the fire.  You can barely see the flame there, but don't you worry it was present.  He cut out the old faucet and soldered in the new faucet I purchased.  No more leaking and the house now has water.  It makes it much easier to clean, use the restroom, and wash your hands.  Yay!

Next up: Dry wall.