Rainy Day's Books, Video Games and Other Writings

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you with the arrival of my grandmother coming down, things have been quite busy at home. She came to visit us a couple weeks ago to see progress being made on restoring our house back to normal. While she was here, things were initially moving slowly because they had just started getting to work. So she stayed a couple days longer so Mom wouldn’t have to take time off work.

While she was here, my grandmother Meme and I spent the first couple days around the house in case they had any questions for us. I helped Meme wash her car, and we went on walks while the guys were working on what needed to be done in order to get our house back to normal. I spent a lot of time with Meme the first couple days before I had to go back to work. But even when I was at work, I’d spend time with her when I’d get off until she left to head back home. It was a lot of fun having her for a week even if it was because of the stuff going on at our house.

But it wasn’t until she was back home in Pennsylvania that the progress picked up significantly. The popcorn ceiling where the water leaked through was replaced with more popcorn ceiling, the new bathroom flooring was put down, and plywood was placed on the living room floor until the flooring Mom wanted was eventually put down too. But with all the progress that’s been made came dirt. Lots and lots of dirt that needed to be picked up. Because of the amount of walking back and forth the guys who were fixing everything did and from tearing stuff up to put new down, dirt was getting in our house.

So we had to do some major cleaning of the house before they continued work last weekend and this weekend too. Things like wiping the kitchen cabinets and table down, wiping the walls clean, and getting rid of all the dirt on the stairs from their use. Doing this stuff on the weekend helped keep the house clean and left us with little less dirt for the next cleaning.  I also did some cleaning while Mom wasn’t at home so she could work on what she wanted to get done.

While I know we’ll be doing some more cleaning again soon, I know there’s very little left to do before they are finished. This makes me happy because we have nice new flooring that looks really nice and our house will finally be back to normal, which means I’ll get my bathroom back soon.

Our new living room floor. It’s cherry flooring and looks really nice in our space.

I also won’t have to deal with the way Mom is stressing out anymore. Ever since we discovered this leak, Mom has been so stressed out about all of it. So stressed that I sometimes feel like I can’t handle it. I’ve become so used to our current living situation that it’s not bothering me anymore. But for Mom, her house isn’t in order, which is something that stresses her out quite a bit. Sometimes I can handle it because it’s not too bad and because she’s okay after a little while. But I feel like with this, she’s stressed out about things that are out of her control. Things like the progress they are making on getting things restored to normal, and the way they are working on it. I want to tell her things are going to be okay, that these things take time and that our house will be back to normal before she knows it.

But she’s also stressed because she’s not always happy with their work. She makes a decision on something, then ends up not being happy with the way its implemented or they haven’t completely finished working on something and start working on something else, etc. She’s fine with their work, then isn’t. She’s not happy though because her house isn’t in order right now. So even if they are doing a good job, she’s going to find something wrong with their work or complain about how long it’s taking. She says what they’ve done is nice, but isn’t yet ready to appreciate it because her house isn’t back to normal. This is her whenever she’s stressed out about things. Especially when her house isn’t in order, which it hasn’t been for the past couple weeks.

But they are close to being done now. And we are doing things now until they’ve completed their job. Things like painting the bathroom, refreshing the bathroom doors, and painting the living room so as to make it look fresh as well as continuing the upkeep of our house. This stuff allows Mom to stay busy and not worry as much about when things will be completed. And so far, it’s been going really well. Everything looks really nice and I can’t wait for everything to be done.

Our bathroom renovations. We’ve repainted the walls to freshen them up and replaced our toilet and counter top space, but have kept our vanity cabinets. Lighting is also new because the old lights just didn’t work well with our new bathroom style. All I need is the mirror and the look will be complete.

Besides cleaning up house, I haven’t really been up to too much else. Doing these renovations have kept me so busy that I haven’t really been able to do anything else when I’m not at work. Speaking of work, things there are pretty much the same. It continues to be a stressful and tiring work environment to me. Every day there’s always some new drama that attempts to darken my mood. But I’m doing the best I can to work around it because that’s all I can do until I can get a job elsewhere.

If we were having coffee, I’d also tell you I’m still continuing to do a good job on laying off the caffeine. Now, I won’t lie and say I haven’t been drinking any soda at all. But if I do have any soda on any given day, I usually manage to do a good job of sticking to my intake of one soda a day, except every once in a while where I’ll indulge in drinking one more soda at the most. I think this is good for me because I remember how much soda I used to indulge in and am happy to see I can cut it off cold turkey.

In other news, this week has been a very interesting one. The election came up and I was able to go out and vote. But despite my vote, Donald Trump has been picked to be the President of the United States. While I was upset because he’s not the man I’d like in power of our country, I’ve come to terms that I can’t change what’s happened. He might not be the President I want, but we are stuck with him now for the next four years. Hopefully he won’t be as bad as I think he’s going to be, but we won’t know for sure until he’s inaugurated into the White House next year.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I haven’t done too much writing lately. With the way things have been at work and home, I just haven’t felt as up to it as I’d like. Meaning, I haven’t been working on my novel as much either like I was planning on doing. Hopefully, that’ll change this week but we’ll just have to wait and see.

I’d also like to say before I’m done I’ve started reading a different book. The last book I was reading wasn’t catching my interest anymore so I decided to reread a book I enjoyed while I was in college. So far, I’m enjoying The Diviners as much as I did when I first read it for a Young Adult Literature class I took at Columbia College.

For now, that’s really all I have to say. I’ve had so much going on in my life, both at home and work that’s been keeping me so busy that I’m sorry I haven’t gotten the chance to post as much here on my blog. I hope with this week I’ll be able to change that, or at least get some sort of writing done. But regardless, I hope you’ve all been having a wonderful weekend and I’ll catch up with you on coffee again soon!