Grandma returns

Well, she's home and not too pleased with the new floor, even though she helped pick out the color and everything. Even though she says this one is "okay", she says the old floor wasn't bad. You couldn't get it clean! TAFH enthused over the floor, but even that didn't help. I know it's part of the disease. She hates anything we change of hers. She thinks we get rid of all of her stuff and seems to think we want to get rid of her or something.

When we talked about it last night she actually said the old floor wasn't that old. It was put in before I was born and I'm 31! The floor in the pantry has holes in it. We're not going to use the same laminate we did on the kitchen, though. We found a better, more waterproof one for the bathroom and pantry with the same colors as the kitchen laminate.

She's just not that happy right now. Of course, part of it is the fact that she's no longer with TAFH. I actually told my aunt once that if Grandma could replace Mom and I with her, she'd be on top of the world. My aunt only looked at me.

Mom and Grandma are watching the parade right now. Hillary's not there yet. Please, please, please let the drunks keep it low-key. All we need is for Scranton to be remembered forever as the Drunken City.

I'm going back to my stitching program now.

The Vacation is ending

Grandma comes home tomorrow. The floor in the kitchen is done, but for the trim. It looks pretty good - so much better than the old linoleum.

It's actually been a pretty good week even though I really thought I'd catch up on missed sleep and that didn't happen. I found corroborating evidence on a relative's death date today and on Tuesday I identified the last printer's mark in my twelve-year research project on the marks carved into the Albright Library. Monday, Mom and I went to Hillary's speech. I was impressed. I have a few questions and still want to hear Obama speak, but at the moment, I lean toward her.

So, add the stuff from the other days to the feeling of accomplishment in getting the floor done and having it look so pretty, it's been a nice little vacation.

Did I mention that I'm going to the Chippendales with friends tomorrow night? Too bad you can't tuck the money in the g-strings anymore. And I've been invited to a party next Saturday. It never rains but it pours. I go from no social life to a crapload of things happening at once. Weird.

Family tree fun-time

TAFH is here, so I was able to go to the library yesterday for research. It was a good day. I found the one thing I needed to connect a family to mine, so I now have a new great-great-great aunt, as well as a new cousin in the form of a girl I played with all of the time when we were kids! I also spoke to my godmother and she's going to find out if any of the relatives know anything about a baseball team a great great uncle of mine played on.

I do have one gripe about genealogical research. It's that damned 1890 Census! If it hadn't burned to a crisp there are so many answers it could have provided me. Why, oh why, did Pennsylvania have to be one of the areas that burned? The southern states do me no good! *sigh*

I'm a little excited about next week. The plan is that on Friday Mom will drop Grandma off to stay with TAFH until the following Friday. So, if the plan goes right Mom and I will have a week off. Mom has taken the time off as vacation time and will be working on the kitchen floor. I will, of course, be unskilled, unpaid labor in between going to work at four every morning. Mom says I'll have time to do research. I'm not too sure about this, of course. However, Saturday morning I'm planning to be out of here before Mom can get me. Oh, and I'll try to tag one of the weekdays for research after work. How successful I'll be at my attempts to escape laying down flooring every day, I'm not sure. We'll see.

the house needs fixed... ;p

Mom is making plans again. Supposedly Grandma is going to be going to TAFH's house for a week in March. Mom has taken it off as a vacation week (she gets two, the *itch!) and is going to be working on the floor in the kitchen. Personally, I would wait until we were sure the skunk had moved out of the crawlspace under there, but that's just me and my wish to never be sprayed by one of the little stinkers. She says I can have some time to go to the library for research, but we'll see if that actually materializes. I have a feeling I'll be doing a ton of repair work instead.

To be fair, the floor needs to be replaced. It's old and looks it. The idea is to replace the kitchen flooring and at some point this summer, raise the floor in the bathroom, fixing the shitty remodel my uncle did years ago and give it a new floor as well. Thanks to the skunk we also have to dig up the foundation of the house, add 15 inches of galvanized steel around it (and out, like an L) so the little buggers don't crawl under next winter. Oh, and did I mention Mom's plan to use chicken wire instead of galvanized steel for the front half of the house that the skunk has never approached before? It'll be less expensive, so hopefully we can do that for a good bit. That $600 rebate is all spoken for.

If I listed all of the items that need to be repaired in this house, any reader would blanch. A partial list reads thusly:
1. replace floor in kitchen, bath, pantry
2. raise floor in bathroom and repair the bathtub/shower area so it stops leaking down the wall
3. finish the ceiling in bathroom
4. reinforce the porch which is being held up by crumbling bricks
5. replace porch steps
6. fix upstairs windows to block off the holes my uncle left that you can see through right to the outside

Should we just demolish the house and start all over?