Day 61 - "We" Do Not Have Colds

I have a cold. Andy was having sympathy pains. Now I feel like the bad spouse--I didn't experience any sympathy pains when he fell down the stairs on Friday. Sympathy, yes. Sympathy pains, nope. I did have the compassion to not challenge him to a limbo contest over the weekend, so that's something. And for both our sakes, I took a full dose of Nyquil last night and just put up with the "fuzzy-heads" this morning. I think one more 10-hour night of sleep ought to do it!

And, amazingly, the only thing I thought of buying today were cough drops, which are totally allowed!!! And if it weren't for the case of "fuzzy-heads," I would have actually remembered to stop and get some. Oops!

Day 60 - We Have Colds

It's bad enough to get a cold in the winter, but it's positively humiliating in the summer. It's been hovering in the 90-100 degree range for weeks. How is it possible to get a cold?

I woke up with this monstrosity yesterday, and after a miserable day at work, came home and went to bed. I don't like the fuzzy-headed after effects of Nyquil, so I decided to take half a dose, which converts it from a knock-out aid to a hallucinogen. I had such a miserable night that Andy finally had to move into the other room so at least one of us could get some sleep. That was apparently the cats' cue, as Callisto showed up at 1:00 AM with a live moth for me (she's our little bug-hunter), and Theo tried to curl up on my face--perhaps to stop my coughing.

This evening Andy has come down with the cold as well, so we'll be toasting each other with little cups of Nyquil tonight before going to bed at 8:00.

Not a very exciting way to spend the last few days, but it did keep our minds completely off spending money, so I guess not even a cold is all bad....

Day 58 - WE HAVE A TOMATO!!!!

Last night we picked our first tomato!It's tiny and filthy, and we were so excited we even considered having it bronzed, but that does make it awfully difficult to eat. In the 5 years I've been attempting to have gardens, I have repeatedly been humbled by vegetables. Tomato plants pop up wherever they darn well choose or tease you with dozens of green tomatoes that never turn red, herbs either limp along without the will to live or attempt hostile take-overs of the remaining garden plot. The plants that are supposed to come back don't, and those that weren't supposed to come back return and bring friends. It's a 3-month labor of sheer optimism, and finally we have a tomato and
a yellow bell pepper, which looks only slightly yellow, to be honest--more of a light green pepper. We're hoping we didn't pick it too early, but it's been on the plant for about a month and hasn't changed color much, so we're going to stuff it and roast it tonight. If there is no blog post tomorrow, you'll know there are side effects to eating not-quite-yellow bell peppers....

Day 57 - Home Stretch

OK, it would be a really LONG home stretch, but at least we're on the downward side of the 90 day spending ban. That's a bit easier to live with.

Friends have been asking, what happens after the 90 days are up? (Keep in mind that I have 8 days after Andy because of that dang yarn & Ms. Sowerby's lack of test knitters) We're thinking that we will each get $100 to spend in any way we see fit. The odd thing is, there isn't anything I really need to buy right now. (Thus tempting the appliances gods and probably providing some really good blog fodder for the next 40 days...) I had thought of rewarding myself with a new knitting book, but I already have a huge library & I neither need one nor do I have a place to store it right now. I enjoy buying movies, but there's a charming institution called a library that is willing to loan me almost anything I can think of, provided I bring it back when I'm done. We have found work-arounds for the tomato cages and tape issues, and the washing machine is continuing to show proper respect after a few well-aimed smacks. So, maybe we'll just set it aside in a savings account so we can finally replace some of the "college student chic" furnishings around the house.

Good God--we've reached "perspective."

Day 56 - Can't Keep a Good Man Down

Our 4th of July began with Andy taking a rather spectacular tumble on the stairs. He's sore , but doesn't seem to have any serious injuries. With the assistance of an ice pack, heating pad, and several soaks in the hot tub, he managed to finish the taping and got the first coat of paint up.

We're using a really nice paint from Sherwin Williams (which wasn't that much more expensive than the stuff I've gotten from Fred Meyer), and one of the many perks we've found to using nice paint is that you can tell how it's turning out from the very first coat. It may get a little darker than this, but not by much. The bedspread is a red & gold satin, so I think this will work really well. And it is something besides Antique White.

This weekend marks our two year anniversary in our home. We are extremely lucky that we got engaged in January of 2006, which coincided nicely with the housing boom. We each owned a house, but moving into one or the other would have left one person feeling like it wasn't really his/her home and the other feeling like his/her home had been invaded, in a frantic 9-month dash, we sold two houses at well above what they were worth, bought this one, and got married. We still have some things to unpack (especially wedding gifts), we still need a lot of furniture, the landscaping is still pretty awful, and we still have a long way to go toward eradicating the endless sea of antique white (with antique white trim, no less), but we're having a marvelous time doing it together.

I need to pick out the next room & color--once the spending ban is over, Andy will probably agree to ANYTHING that can involve a trip to Home Depot.

Day 54 - Aha!!!

Last night Andy found:
More masking tape! Painting can commence in earnest this weekend. Taping has already begun, which totally exhausted Theo.
At this rate, I'm not sure how he'll handle the actual paint fumes--or maybe we won't be able to notice the difference....

Day 53 - A Side Perk

As some of you may remember, my glasses were one of the casualties in the Month of Not Buying Anything New, and that getting them fixed was one of my first priorities on our first day of spending. This is what they looked like after they were "fixed:"

Normally I wear contact lenses, so with all the issues of Andy's employment and the economy slowing down enough to severely curtail my income, I thought I could live with these for the hour or two a day that I actually wear glasses. I did last for several months, but with the 90 day experiment looming, I decided enough was enough and decided that it was time to get glasses that would actually stay on my face. Sometimes I can use a little "shove" to do things I really don't want to be bothered with--so I thought, this was actually a good thing that a looming spending ban was going to force me to finally replace them. I just couldn't face another 90 days of these glasses.

When I bought the last pair of glasses, the process was pretty much the same as it was when I was a kid--trying on frames, giving them the prescription, then going back for a brief fitting. That was about 7 years ago. Now, like everything else in America, we've made it really complicated. now the glasses not only need to fit my face, they have to measure the exact spot my pupils will actually be looking through when I wear them. Then they asked if I wanted to see "well" or "really, REALLY well." Having pretty dreadful vision on my own, seeing really, REALLY well sounded fabulous. Thrilled at the prospect of great vision--without, of course, having any sense of having had poor vision with glasses, but evidently being a sucker of the highest order--I opted for the special coating that would potentially give me x-ray vision.

A week later, I went back and picked up these:

Did the special coating help me see better? Depends. As I wear gas permeable contacts, my eyes adjust a little going between glasses and contacts which has always been noticeable enough that I won't drive while wearing glasses, but it really was a pretty minimal change. Now when I take out my contacts and put the new glasses on, I spend about 30 minutes in the world of Salvadore Dali. Every evening there's a little span of time when we have curved walls, the floor is 7 feet below me, and Andy looks as wide as he is tall. Then everything is fine, but I can't decide if my vision is actually better at that point or if I am just so relieved to leave Funhouse Mirror Land that it feels like my vision is suddenly fabulous.

What the special coating does do, however, is attract dirt, smudges, fingerprints, and smears--none of which can be effectively removed except with the aid of the little bottle of cleaner that they gave me. Initially I was hoping that the smears would at least mitigate the Surrealism effect, but it doesn't do that either--I still have curved walls, invisible stilts, and a perfectly round husband BUT there's now a space-ship zooming around in the picture.

At this rate, I'll not only be ready when I'm old enough to need bifocals, they might be a relief!