Scattered Thoughts . . .

I managed to finish building that doorway trellis at our backdoor that I started designing and building a few days ago. This little last minute project was built using mostly scrap lumber that was taking up space in our shed but I have to say that all this scrap lumber looks better at our backdoor cut and assembled this way! Of course, this trellis could use some plant growth but that won't happen this time of year. Regardless, it is a nice addition to our home. Little by little, over the past few months, I've been adding a few architectural details around the house. These little details make a tremendous difference in the appearance of the house and I'm liking the way things are coming together. It is almost time to start decorating the outside of the house for Christmas. I was hoping to get a jump on that before the arrival of snow but it looks as though we'll be awaking to snow tomorrow morning. I'm sure we'll still get a few more days of unseasonably

Today, Sheila moved into her last phase of radiation treatment.  Well... Sheila thought this same thing 11 years ago (her  last phase) but here we are again.  Sheila is now in her Boost Phase of radiation treatment and she is pretty happy about that! This last phase is a "boost" of radiation to only the area of the tumor. Up until today, she had been getting radiation to the entire right side of her chest... from the lymph nodes under her armpit to the center of her chest. Now, she is getting one focused beam of radiation to just the area of her tumor for seven treatments. The good thing about this Boost Phase is that most of the tissue and skin that has been burned and irritated over the past 26 treatments will now be able to heal without additional radiation making this large area worse. Sheila is definitely happy about this news. The itching, burning and peeling was getting pretty rough for a bit. Now, these last seven radiation treatments will be focused to a r

Since I haven't been able to tackle any larger home renovation projects due to our daily visits to the hospital, I have decided to attempt to tackle a few smaller projects around the house. My theory is... as long as my health is stable enough to allow me to get some work accomplished, it doesn't matter what I do as long as I simply keep busy and do something. One such relatively small project was to design and build a timber trellis-type structure at our back door to the house.  I sketched out a few ideas a few days ago and Sheila liked the idea. We stopped at Lowes after leaving the hospital yesterday to pick up some lumber and galvanized lag bolts. This little project didn't require a whole lot of supplies since most of it is being built using scrap lumber from previous home renovations. The first thing I started with today was transposing my sketches to full-size cut lines on the lumber. Once I was happy with this transposed design, I got busy with my new jig