June 26, 2023 Monday--1:15pm

Good morning!

I started moving things on Monday to be ready for the sauna to leave and finished up on Tuesday.  I moved the red end table into the studio and used my cart to move the stack of boxes in the bedroom to make another U-Haul end table.

Got the bedroom as cleared away as I could.

I even moved the rolly carts into the pantry.

Tuesday Leah and the boys came right after they dropped her friend's boys at their classes and the guy was already here waiting for her at 9:30am.  She moved the empty bookcase out of the hallway and they got busy taking the sauna apart (after he tested it) while the boys and I watched a cartoon show with a grizzly bear.  Then they started to haul it out to his SUV.

No wife or friend to help so Leah had to.  It was really hot and sticky (86F)

Leah had to be back to pick up her friend's boys at 10:30am so they rushed away as soon as the guy was done and just made it in time!

The sauna is gone!

I had been worried about the sauna selling and it will probably be the bedroom furniture I should have worried about--lol!  Not a nibble.  Annie was baffled by the missing sauna.

She exhausted herself crying in the bedroom and pacing around the apartment.  It reminded me of when she first got here.  Cried and cried...paced and paced.

Her life has been torn apart before so I think she was afraid she was going to be abandoned again.  She'd conk out on her new favorite end table...but then resume again.  

By the next day she had calmed down a lot.  Imagine how she's going to feel when the bedroom furniture disappears.

This is one reason why I want things done on my end ASAP...even if we might not move till next year.  Both Allie and I need some down time to relax...and so she'll feel safe again...and so I can recover for a good long time before the actual last packing and move.  :)

Thursday I made it over to McFamily's for the first visit in ages!  Early birthday present for Ian.  So funny--he started to rip it open and I said--stop!stop!  I want to take a picture.  So they patted the paper back--LOL!

I actually took a short video of the opening.

He was sooo excited!  

While he started putting it together, Dagan and Leah and I went downstairs so I could see the progress myself!  

The floor looks better in person.  The living room/kitchen look bigger and the studio looks smaller--lol!

They got the walls up around where the washer and dryer will be going under the stairs.  They bought plumbing pipes and laid them out.

Now you can see where some pipe will go down and across the cat tunnel.

They laid out all the plumbing pipes that will get attached to the wall...like the existing pipes in the maintenance room.

I got a tour downstairs with descriptions of the apartment and how the lights and such will go, etc.  My kitchenette will look like a smaller version of theirs.  The same cabinetmaker is still around and I have always loved theirs.  My ceilings are lower so mine will go to the ceiling and won't be staggered, of course.  On the left hand side of the sink I will have a skinny microwave like theirs.

Over the sink I will have a bigger, lower cabinet like they have with a light underneath...

Not way up high like mine is here--so I'll have more storage.

(Oops!  That pic was a little more crooked than I thought--lol!)

Leah has this little flip down thingie in front of her sink where you can hold scrubbers and such.  I said okay to that, too!

I will have a similar frig to theirs with an ice maker and water you can access from the front!  Never had that before.  

And drawers instead of shelves--how fancy!  And much easier to get to everything.  Big drawers will be new to me, too.

I can hardly imagine it all.  Sweet!!

 Then we went up to the second floor so I could see the cabinet in the hallway bathroom.  Mine will look similar to this but shorter and I haven't decided on a sink yet.

I will get a tall skinny cupboard like this one in their master bathroom but in mine it will go to the ceiling.  And I'll have just a mirror, also, with some kind of lights over it. 

The cupboard will be my medicine cabinet and more!

When Leah asked me if I would like one of these--I didn't hesitate.

Still a lot of decisions to make.  But less all the time.  :)

Me--I worked for two days--most all of Friday and Saturday--on trying to figure out the floor plan for the studio now that there won't be a closet and I have more wall space for the IKEA Billy bookcases.  It was quite a project.  I had to find the measurements online to the Havsta bookcases, take the measurements of everything that is coming with me, and search out the way to configure as many Billy bookcases as I could fit in the room.  (And there's an endless way to configure Billy bookcases!)  The Havsta bookcases are deeper.  Leah suggested not to put them on the wall adjacent to the living room--so I could have as much room as possible to get around the table in the center of the room.  Smart!  So I needed the narrower Billy bookcases down that wall...but I also needed a spot for the two skinny drawer units (I have one now by the door in the studio and have ordered another one)...and it was difficult to figure out how to utilize that corner piece of the Billy bookcases...you can add bigger or smaller bookcases on either side if you want to...so many options.

But I finally figured it out about 4:30pm on Saturday!  TaDa!!

I know the sketch is not proportioned correctly at all, but the measurements are good.  Leah re-measured once the walls were framed (I whited out the old measurements on the sheet Leah gave me long ago)...just needed to make an adjustment for the sheet rock.  Took many attempts, a lot of scribbling out, and crumbling paper--lol!  But I ended up with three smaller bookcases in the corner and three larger ones down that side wall.  The two drawer units will fit between the die cutting table and my art table on the other side.  I will even have some room in the far left top corner for the big awkward stuff I have in the closet now (table easel, large cutting mats, etc) and even two choices for where to park the two rolly carts!  

Anyways, I am so relieved to have that done.  Now we know what is left to order.  I needed to know how high the ceiling is going to be, too, as far as which bookcases will fit...but Leah says the tallest ones will fit.  Nice!  

Anyways, Ian was so focused on getting his Lego Minecraft land together that he was up till 10:30pm!  They sent me this picture!  He is really into Minecraft!  Loved his gift this year.  :)

Several of you remarked at how much stuff I have in the studio.  Those who have followed me for years know how in my last one-bedroom apartment I lived in the midst of all of that right in my living room--lol!  It was definitely like I lived in a craft store.  When I recently purged those rubber stamps I donated, most of my oldest stamps I had left from when I was a teenager are finally gone.  I have been collecting writing, craft, and art stuff since the 60s.  It's the one area I have always had a terrible time letting go of anything.  In the very beginning of the 90s I took adult classes at night in watercolors, pastels, and card making.  That was when the gathering of supplies got a bit more varied.  (Previously I had made ceramic plant pots and macramé holders--built my own planter boxes with a macramé trellis--built stacking wooden toybox shelves for Dagan when he was a toddler, things like that.)  

After I moved from Minneapolis to Fargo in 1999...took art classes in college (pastels, drawing, acrylics, book binding), went regularly to local cardmaking classes, joined a watercolor painting group, took adult watercolor classes at the Plains Art Museum, and went to local beading classes...oh, and also decided to try paper making, mixed media, art journaling, oil painting (Bob Ross), and polymer clay when I discovered YouTube.  My problem--I loved it all!! 

My health has not been good for some time, as you know, so I haven't been able to play as much as I was there in the early 2000s.  My energy/spoons have been limited for over two decades due to fibro.  By the time I had to quit school I could no longer stay up all night long making cards or painting or doodling or being lost in creative writing.  I couldn't spend an entire weekend making 100 Christmas cards or handmade paper for bookcards or making art journals.  For the first time in my life I had to learn to do everything piecemeal...baby steps.  But, with my time juggling, I still managed to get some things done.  

The past three years (or is it closer to four?)...well, however long it has been since my left leg swelled up for no apparent reason that time...hadn't been feeling well.  I think it was about a year later or so that I started having bloody urine and they thought it was UTI issues...a couple of times over several months.  Till I was told out of the blue (didn't know my doctor had even ordered that in the urine test "just to be on the safe side") that it was cancer and then...well, you know the rest.

I am slow to recover from all of that...but I am recovering.  I do plan to get back to my creative side again--before I move--once I am done with the P&P on my end.  I know I will have some spoons.  Obviously--because I have been having spoons off and on to be able to do all this P&P work.  I wouldn't have been able to do all of this even a few months ago.  :)  

Going through all the studio stuff is going to be the hardest (and there's more in the hall closet and out in the garage--lol!).  I have only done some very minor sorting and purging--ever!  I have managed to do it in every other area of my life--even books and nostalgia stuff--lol!  But this time...this move...I am not just basically moving all the art/craft stuff as is.  Not again.  I managed to get rid of all those rubber stamps already...a box full.  Like I said--some were from when I was in high school.  Some from the 80s and 90s.  It will get easier as I go along, I think.  But this will be the very first time I have ever truly purged my art and craft stuff.  A lifetime's worth.  Especially have accumulated the majority in the past 35-40 years.  

I know I'm thinking of it because it...is...coming.  The donation pickup is supposed to be this Thursday.  So then we can tackle the kitchen and pantry (which will be pretty easy and Leah will be helping).  After that...then...next...is the studio.  It is coming.  Will be huge for me...and probably the slowest purge ever--ROFL!  I wonder how many paints will be dried up?  How many sprays will be clogged beyond repair?  But the rest should be good.  Just have to decide what to keep and what to donate and what to toss.  

"just"...lol!

Let's change the subject.

Got pics and short videos from Leah.  Since Daddy had to work on the previous weekend he had a day off and went with to the morning classes.  Here he and Liam were being silly while Ian was playing tennis.

Ian at tennis lessons.  Looks like he is getting the hang of it.

Liam at his tennis lessons.

Later in the day Liam has the Junior All Stars where they do something different every time, I think.  Here's Liam and a little girl practicing catch.

Liam and a little boy practicing bowling.  Liam got distracted but they were doing a great job learning about sharing, having patience, and taking turns.  lol! 

Ian went to this same group when he was younger.  Here he's waiting for Liam's class to be done.

Liam has now graduated from his Junior All-Stars classes.

He and Ian racing to play on that jungle gym.

Ian had his birthday party on Saturday.  Nine years old!!  Mama made a Minecraft birthday cake.  This is apparently a Creeper from that game.  She told me that he sneaks up behind you and explodes.

I'm sure I will learn more about these things they are so interested in when I am living there--lol!

So that was this last week.  We had a few days with rain.  One day a lot of rain and wind--light and heavy off and on most of the day--even battered my geraniums pretty good.  (Luckily not raining when the guy came for the sauna, though.)  Cooled off a little when the rains came--ahhh!  But now we're supposed to remain back in the 80s again for a good while.  

Keanna comes tomorrow.  I have a dentist appointment on Wednesday if I make it.  (I still have mucositis/mouth pain, feel crummy, and deal with sudden diarrhea--but I haven't been to the dentist since before cancer so I need to try to make it to at least find out if I have actual cavities or just the same random mouth pain I've had ever since chemo.)  Thursday is the donation pickup.  Going to be a busy one, I think. 

Have a really great week!  Till next time...stay positive and know you always have somebody on your side.  Me.  :) :)