Curtin Call

It wins every time, doesn’t it?

I am in week four of trying to behave when it comes to eating habits but damn it – temptation wins out every time. Did I really need the Caramello bar that I just inhaled??? Did I even want it??? NO, but hey – its to help out the youth basketball league so who can say “No”???

And then there’s that cute little Girl Scout who rang the doorbell that I ordered three boxes of cookies from. Could I have ordered one or two? Of course but they, too, were for a good cause so why not.

And could I help it when an hour later, two more Girl Scouts showed up on my doorstep selling cookies, that I had to buy even more? “You’re the second ones to ring my bell today,” I said, “so I’m only going to buy one more box.” “Okay,” they said, “thank you.” Then I proceeded to order two more boxes because, hey, they were out their on this bitter cold winter day just trying to raise money for a good cause.

Fortunately, I have not yet reached this point:

Poor Winston! (no, that’s not my cat but at the rate Shadow’s going, he best learn to beat temptation, too!)

Well, it sounds as though the job is safe. For now. We think. Typically, they didn’t say “much” and the words “lay off” weren’t actually used but they did say that they are “restructuring” the maintenance department. The hubby’s boss’s boss will be gone the end of June and the boss himself thinks its only a matter of time for him. As far as hubby, from what we’re hearing, the restructuring will result in fewer techs in each area. Fortunately, hubby has seniority (though we’re told that’s not really going to matter) but he also is in good standing with his boss and is told that he’ll be “rating” each of the techs to assist in determining who stays and who goes. If his recommendations actually mean anything, we should be okey-dokey. It will mean servicing more stores but its a job – one that he’s put a lot of time and effort into – so we are nothing but thankful for that at this point.

Niagara Falls has stopped, at least for now. Of course, that’s probably because it was 8 degrees when I got out of bed this morning but, hey – at least it wasn’t below 0, like it was in some areas!

On Saturday, my week from h3ll just continued but I won’t bore you with the details on that. Yesterday was a wonderful day, though, so I’m hoping things are on the upswing! Hubby informed me that he won’t be doing anymore sanding for the next couple of weeks so I reclaimed my house and dusted everything in sight! Its so good to have my house back!

We also got a weekend without any snow. Ahhh! What a treat that was. Though we’re not getting to excited. They’re now saying its going to snow Wednesday. All day. 6″ – 10″ with some areas getting as much as a foot. Can anyone guess what we’ll get???? Ahhh, the joys of living in New England!

This has been the week from h3ll for me.

–The weekend brought another foot plus of snow. That’s over 40″ already and we’re not even half way through snow season. Grrrrr….

–Niagara Falls has relocated inside my house. Clearly a new roof is in our not-so-distant future. Ugh.

–We were under the impression that hubby’s job was secure through 2009. Now the person in charge of maintenance has scheduled a conference call with the maintenance department at 3:00 this afternoon. Hubby is being optimistic and thinks this is going to be when he finds out “if” he’ll be out of work. I’m trying to be optimistic, too, but deep down, I think its going to be “when” he’ll be out of work. Never in my life have I wanted to be so wrong!

Which raises the question that has been going through my mind since he told me this last night – WHY do companies insist on doing this type of thing on a FRIDAY AFTERNOON??? Could they not ruin our work days instead of our weekend???

I will stop whining now. I will continue to remind myself that we have our health, a warm (albeit wet at the moment) home, each other and lots of love coming at us from many angles so life could absolutely be a lot worse. I’m just stressed out right now. And tired.

So, we continue to work on removing the two+ layers of painted wallpaper that were applied directly to the wallboard in our hallway/living/dining rooms. Oh, the joys!

Here is a photo of the living room prior to our moving in:

Here is the wall in the process of being stripped:

Though we had planned to do the dining room as a separate project, we decided to just continue on and end this nightmare all at once. This is before we moved in:

Here’s during:

This last photo is actually a little old now (don’t you just love that chandelier?). We hadn’t actually started stripping those walls yet but if you look just above the doorway, you can see the difference from where we’d stripped and primed up to that point.

This photo is the dining room after it had been stripped/primed. It was taken at night so its not the best photo but I got a kick out of the “glow-in-the-dark” kitty – can you find him?

This project has been a nightmare. Of course, we’re doing the work ourselves (okay, hubby’s done most of it!) and finding the time between working and taking care of the rest of the day to day chores, its taking a bit longer than we might have hoped but it will all be worth it in the end!