Going, Going, Gone

 The Deck

Gone

Yesterday was a big day for us.  After a year and a half of planning,  Bruce and I are finally starting the remodeling project we've been working on for a new and improved Seattle home.  When we moved here in 2015, we decided we would live in our house two years and then decide what works and what needs improvement.  Well, this is going on our fourth year in Seattle and yes, it has taken us that long to figure it all out. I'm not going to lie, I've gotten impatient, but it is a process.  If you remember my post about the The Wall,  we knew early on we needed to do something about our dinning room.  For the rest of our ideas, it was a matter of prioritizing and tweaking, determining our budget, deciding who would do it, and then all the little endless details.  It's exhausting.  As you can guess, the main focus will be the deck. 

Because of our view, the deck gets used a lot and people gravitate out there but it's simply too small.  

Basically, we are going to extend it so both doors will go out onto one big deck.

   We are changing out the doors to be French double doors for a nice wide exit out to the deck from both the dinning room and the bar area.   Hopefully, it will eliminate the bottleneck that always occurs when we have people over.  The bottleneck around the door has been my biggest pet peeve.

 Bottleneck 

Also, Bruce won't be barbecuing down in "the hole" anymore.  

Occasionally, somebody will join him down there but most the time, not. 

Hello down there!

We are excited to get going on this project after all the time spent planning it.

We are also updating the kitchen but I'll put that in another post.  There will be plenty of time since the whole project will be around 4 months.  I'm viewing this year as my "re-construction year", both for our house and for my poor body since I just had a total hip replacement in February.  I also need both my knees replaced so this is not going to be a fun year.  Just like remodeling is not fun to go through, neither is joint replacement.  But I will say, my hip feels sooooooo much better!  Once you get through the ordeal of it all, it's GREAT afterwards.  The recovery went really fast, I'd say for me it was around 4 weeks.  I was walking very well by then and getting along but the hardest part was that I was so tired all the time.  I felt like I needed to take a rest everyday which was sort of hard because we've had a lot of stuff going on including guests coming from out-of-town and I definitely did not have the energy as I usually do.  After 3 weeks post op, we had our Mariner baseball ticket party and Bruce had to pretty much do everything to get ready for that.  

We've done this party so many years, it's not hard to get ready for it but there is a lot of physical stuff to do like move furniture around and get food ready, etc.  I just didn't have the energy to help much. I did do my part in running the party and keeping everything organized and I also had a great time socializing, of course.   Bruce did a great job doing all the set-up himself but it was a lot of work and pretty soon he felt like me.

I went to two Mariner baseball games around week 4 and 5 post-op and all the walking really tired me out, too.  I didn't want to miss Opening Day so I'm glad I went but I really had to pace myself.  

My brother and his wife came to visit week 5 post-op and I was still taking rests everyday so I could keep up and do the fun things we had planned during their visit like baseball games and eating out at favorite spots. 

I know why people don't return to work until week 8 post-op simply because you have to build up your endurance again.  My hip felt great but my body was weak.  I am actually week 8 right now and I'm starting to finally feel more normal and not taking rests everyday.  After my brother left, then my sister and her husband came to town and again, another agenda of fun, fun, fun and lots of sister-time.

Basically, our lives make it hard to find a time on the calendar were you can just do nothing and recover from a surgery for 8 weeks.  It ain't going to happen!  When I think about a date to have my knee surgery, there really is not a good time...there is always something going on.  And a total knee replacement is an even longer recovery than hip.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  I still am not cooking much at all, thus no blog posts.  I did cook a few meals during our guests visits but it was pretty minimal.  My tastes have changed, too, and I don't feel like eating that much and I'm still in the comfort food mode.  It' just weird.  Surgery really messes you up for awhile.  I am currently pet-sitting for Lauren while she is on a trip and having fun living in her neighborhood for a few days. (It is my old neighborhood, too, from my days of being single - many decades ago but I still feel at home here.)  Isn't this just a lovable little face?

I shopped at Lauren's neighborhood Whole Foods and bought her cats a little treat, some cat grass.

Yesterday,  my meals consisted of egg and toast for breakfast, an apple fritter and latte at Top Pot Doughnuts for lunch and macaroni and cheese with some broccoli from Whole Foods for dinner - comfort foods. (I only added the broccoli because I knew I hadn't eaten any fiber or fruits or veggies all day!)  I'm still having such weird food desires.  I blame it on my total hip replacement but how long will this last?  Soon our kitchen will start getting torn apart and there goes any cooking I might be motivated to do.  It might be awhile before I start posting anymore recipes and start cooking again.  But at least I can keep you updated on our remodeling project.  I'll have an even nicer kitchen to cook in, just in time for my next surgery and then I'll be all screwed up again.  Like I said, this is a" re-construction year" for me and I may end up not cooking much in 2019.  I will need to find other things to blog about but don't worry,  I'm still around and just need to get through this re-construction phase.  Then things will be better than ever - my body and my house.