Can I just tell you that I am glad last week is over? I can breathe again. Not that I didn’t have a nice holiday. I did. My whole family got together at my sisters for Thanksgiving and we had a great time. See?

(You can see the rest of the pictures over here.) But the whole holiday ended up with a black cloud hanging over it. My dad called me last Wednesday to let me know he couldn’t make it over that night, like we had planned. He sounded kinda weird so I asked him if he was ok, to which he replied he didn’t know yet. So I asked him where he was and he said in the hospital. Hello?! In the HOSPITAL?! Apparently his arm had been going numb (yes, the left one) and his chest had kinda hurt him a little. He didn’t think anything of it, but passed it off as indigestion and sleeping on his arm wrong. In a normal situation, this would be understandable. Except this situation is far from normal. Several years ago my dad had a major heart attack which ended in a quadruple bypass. Now ya see why I was worried?

So everyday Simeon and I went over and spent a few hours in the hospital sitting with my dad. And when we weren’t at the hospital we were calling to make sure he was ok. He didn’t need a bypass this time, but they did go in via his leg for a little “look around” in his heart. He ended up having an angioplasty and they placed a stent in his heart. For my dad, this was an old hat. This was his fourth stent. But it all worked out for the best. He was released from the hospital on Sunday and we took him home to rest. He was forced to take the week off from work and I loaned him a lot of DVDs to keep him busy.

Whew. On top of all that, Simeon and I had decided to paint our kitchen/dining room/entry area. Remember back in July when we did the new flooring? Yeah, well we have yet to put molding back up because we wanted to paint first. So this weekend was suppose to be that time. It was the first weekend, not to mention four day weekend, where we didn’t really have anything planned. Boy, did that not work out! I guess that old adage, “when man makes plans, God just laughs” really fits here, eh? So in between frantic calls to/from my siblings, trips to the hospital, and unexpected visits from our friends, we managed to paint.

But as bad things tend to happen in groups, we ended up not liking the paint color. We picked “Covered Wagon” as the color because it was a warm neutral color that wasn’t gonna show dirt or puppy evidence, plus it matched our existing stuff. But once we got it up, it looked like a totally different color on every wall we painted. Seriously. It was brown in the dining room, pink in the kitchen, and orange in the hallway. Not. Cool. So I called in my big sis for some decorating advice and she helped me pick a couple new colors that would tie it all in together. Here’s to hoping it works. Since the color we painted was so dark, we needed to primer the walls before painting the new colors. And the tinted primer was, or course, a lovely shade of pink. But I think Sim said it best, “At least it’s not orange anymore!” So I get to live in chaos for a few more days while the painting wraps up. I’ll post more pictures when we finish. In the mean time, enjoy the transitions from white to pinkish-brownish-orange to purpley-pink over here!


Oy vey. So the stress of the last week finally caught up to me yesterday and landed me in bed with a migraine. I guess some things just can’t be avoided. Oh well, I have to say I really enjoyed the 16 hours of sleep yesterday. Now I hope things settle down for awhile. Knock on wood for me, ok?