Scattered Thoughts . . .

The pain from my spinal injuries is pretty damn close to the worst it has ever been in the past 20 years.  Back a few months ago, I was shopping around for wheelchairs because I had a feeling I'd need one for our upcoming extended weekend in Springfield as well as any other event that requires a lot of standing and walking. I quickly came to the conclusion that I might be jumping the gun on this purchase. After all, at this point, the train show was months away and I've always managed until now by taking a lot of breaks... why would I think I would be having more or worsening spinal problems in the coming months?  I was wrong... Getting around is difficult, slow and extremely painful..  sleeping is damn near impossible... my hips feel as though I have a nail driven into each hip... my torso, front and back, feels like it is on fire, inside and out... my spine is red hot inflamed... and the nerves throughout my entire back are tingling... I also get shooting pains down thr

My spine was feeling "fair" this morning... which, honestly, is about as good as it gets... so I decided I should attempt to finish up this bathroom toilet project.   I took a day or two off from this project because I needed some galvanized deck screws for me to screw down the subflooring as well as for screwing down the flange. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any among all my tools. Also, my spinal injuries were screaming at me for a break. When I placed the new toilet over the flange to see how it fits (between the wall and the flange) I realized that I forgot to pick up a new longer braided stainless steel supply hose. This new toilet is an ADA toilet so it sits a bit higher than the old toilet...  that means a slightly longer run to the tank from our toilet supply shutoff... so I needed to purchase a 16" or 20" supply hose. On Monday night, we first went to a local hardware store to pick up these rather standard building materials... that was a complete

I awoke feeling much less energetic than on an average day. Shortly after getting out of bed I realized that I probably would not get much done on the toilet project today since I was already feeling rather lousy and I wasn't thinking clearly. My spine was still hurting enough to make sleeping difficult which also made it difficult getting up out of bed. These weren't good signs for having a productive day with a home repair project. When I made my way out of the bedroom, I had looked out the window to see how this forecasted "storm" is progressing because I knew that if it was as bad as the forecast insisted, then I would need to spend my time and energy outside clearing off the roof of heavy snow. When I looked out the window I saw only two or three inches... for us, this is pretty much an every-morning dusting. I shook my head at this lame "storm" and continued on my way.  While I was taking my morning slew of medications, I decided it would be wiser

I took a much needed break from our plumbing project today for two reasons... actually, we defaulted to a short break involuntarily... 1. I needed some additional parts so the project was on hold until I could get out to pick up what is needed (which we did tonight)... and...  2. My spinal injuries needed a much needed break. My spinal pain from the little bit of work I've already done has made sleeping and getting around difficult and painful to say the least.  As you can probably imagine, it was a good time for a short break from these frustrating (and stinky) plumbing issues so, as our train show extended weekend fast approaches, I turned my attention to a set of passenger cars I found under our Christmas tree last month. This classic passenger set is a set of four New York Central 20th Century Limited passenger cars... a baggage car, a coach car, a vista dome car, and an observation car.  These are all in O scale (Lionel size) and I have to say I am quite impre

Rotten wood cut out and framing in place... I had a productive day today. Our toilet issue in our master bathroom is just about fixed. I have a few more parts and supplies to buy before I can get anything else accomplished but today was a productive day. Boy, oh boy... this is messy, stinky work that I do not enjoy in the least! That being said, it will be nice to know that this toilet is secure and not leaking when I'm done. A couple of days ago, I removed the old toilet... I removed all the wet, nasty finished flooring (it had been ruined by the leaking toilet so it needs to be replaced)... and cut out all the rotten wood. Yesterday, for the most part, I let my spinal injuries recover a bit before tackling some more work today.  Our new ADA dual flush toilet waiting to be installed... Today, I framed the big hole in our bathroom floor with additional supports and nailers for the new subflooring. Not only did I need nailers for the new solid wood subflooring but I a