Scattered Thoughts . . .

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

I was feeling halfway decent this morning so I spent the morning working on the master bathroom. (Having only one toilet in the house this past week is getting old already! I'm definitely looking forward to having a nice new second toilet in the house!) I had previously removed the old finish flooring to reveal a lot of rotten wood subflooring and about three layers of old, nasty vinyl flooring. Today I needed to figure out how much of the floor was rotten and remove it all. I started pulling up the subflooring with my hands... it would just crumble as I grabbed it so it pulled apart quite easily but made a huge mess. It wasn't long before I decided to just cut back enough to make a 24"x24" hole. First I marked off a 24" square... then out came the circular saw... and I started cutting... first, at only a 1/2" deep... I pulled up more subflooring...  then I cut a bit deeper... pulled out more subflooring... I changed the depth of the cut four times

The few months after Christmas are always rough months for my health so I always expect health issues after the ramp-up to Christmas. This year is no different except that my energy levels seem to be at an all-time low too. Leading up to Christmas and through Christmas, I pound extra medications... adrenaline is flowing... and, I'm careful about my diet and managing energy. Once Christmas Day has passed, I'm exhausted... I mean completely spent... I mean overwhelmingly fatigued... I mean that just taking a shower oftentimes will use up whatever energy I had to use for that particular day. All this fatigue is accompanied by bone and joint pain. The joint pain is easy to describe... it feels like an ice pick being stabbed into the joint... my ankles hurt, my knees hurt, my hips hurt, my spine hurts, my shoulders hurt, my elbows hurt, my wrists hurt, my fingers hurt. If I attempt to hold anything... ie, a plate while attempting to wash a few dishes... the pain in my fingers, w

This past weekend, Sheila and I finally managed to get to one of Lukey's hockey sessions. We had a really nice time! This was my first attempt at shooting photos of ice hockey and I'd been looking forward to this opportunity in shooting photos of Lukey for a long time. (I also look forward to shooting photos of Kenzie at gymnastics... hopefully soon!) As far as photography goes, fortunately for me, the young 'House Mites' aren't really lightning fast so keeping up with them was fairly easy... they don't move fast enough to introduce motion blurring issues... and I recently picked up a Sony camera which is geared toward fast action. This all worked in my favor so I managed to capture some nice photos. Naturally, with a new camera there was a bit of a learning curve. I spent the past month working on setting up the camera to ideal settings for sports... then would get frustrated because I had no fast moving objects available to practice shooting... so I woul

Oh boy was yesterday a lousy day!  Earlier in the morning, I was feeling quite well. I was looking forward to some exercise and my daily physical therapy. I never got that far though... First, around lunchtime, I began to feel something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on the problem but I knew some lousy health to some degree was approaching. I ate lunch and then it started... As I was trying to walk my dishes to the sink, my legs would not cooperate. At first, I wondered if they had just started to fall asleep... and hoped it wasn't a mastocytosis issue... or, was this a result of my spinal injuries? My legs not cooperating to such a debilitating level was a bad sign though... my legs really were not cooperating at all...  I could barely move them. I made my way back to the couch. My bones and joints had been hurting since around Christmastime so that was nothing new and they were still hurting but the hurt was pushed to the background as some new symptoms e

A couple of weeks before Christmas, Sheila was offered a new job which also provided her with a nice promotion. She excitedly started this new job right after Christmas. Actually, we were both very excited about this opportunity for upward mobility as well as for personal and professional growth. Then, sometime either later that first week or in the following week, Sheila learned that there would be no time in this new position for annual leave during our time at the lake house! We had been waiting almost two weeks for an official determination on whether or not Sheila would be allowed take annual leave so we can head to the lake house. This decision sort of got waylaid by new training requirements and then a virus going around the office landing some of the decision-makers home on sick leave. Unfortunately, on our end, this wait was delaying our planning schedule, causing missed deadlines and, generally speaking, putting quite a damper on the new year thus far.  While we waited