Giving Thanks & Feathers & Renovation Progress.

Giving Thanks

First, thanks to all of you who left me caring, supportive messages here on my last entry.  Also, thanks for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers.  It’s been a really difficult couple of weeks.  I alternate between crying jags, feeling scared and then to "WTF am I going to do?"  I go Friday to see the blood specialist.  I’m nervous, but after this morning I am, for the first time in 2-weeks, a little optimistic.  Why?

Feathers

It’s no secret I love wildlife.  I spend a small fortune now on bird feed and critter feed.  Weekend mornings, weather permitting, you will find me out on my small deck, drinking coffee and watching the birds and chipmunks feed in my yard.  I have a family of blue jays, 4 different types of woodpeckers, some titmice (love these little guys), 2 different types of sparrows, chickadees, blackbirds and my 2 mated pairs of cardinals.  I might have mentioned before I had never seen a cardinal in the wild before buying my home.  Here’s where I got hope.

About 2 months ago my neighbor Diane (who is native american) came over one morning and she noticed a blue jay feather on my steps right outside my back door.  She said to me, "Tamara, do you know in our culture that a feather on your door is a sign you have someone watching over you?" I thought that was interesting but didn’t really put much stock in it.  Hell, I feed birds, so they’re in my yard all the time and they’re sure to lose a feather or two, right?  She also said that the type of feather brings different meaning.  I’ve found the blue jay feather (meaning is you’re on the right path – looking back when I found it I was seriously questioning whether I did the right thing in buying this house and draining my bank account in the process), a bright yellow feather (which mean cheerfulness, mental alertness, prosperity, and blessings from the Sun).

Flash forward to yesterday.  I was outside poop scooping the yard…I really didn’t even notice it at first.  When I went to go back inside, there it was, one single feather from one of the female cardinals, right there on the back stoop.  I picked it up, really not giving it much thought at the time other than, "Awesome, I just saw an idea online about taking things from nature and putting them in a shadow box…I will add this." 

This morning I was thinking of it and decided to go online to see what a cardinal feather might mean.  I was stunned speechless and started crying while reading that "Cardinal feathers give vitality to blood conditions…" 

I’d like to think that nature is giving back to me in its own way, by bringing me hope seemingly right when I need it.  I’d also like to think this is a positive sign and that if there is a spirit watching over me it’s my mother’s.  What I do know is I am taking comfort in this and hopefully for the first time in a couple of weeks I will have peaceful sleep.

Renovation Progress

So the bathroom is almost finished…all that needs to be done is to stain the new door and to put casing around it and paint that on the inside.  Here’s proof.

A reminder of before:  

After:

 
New light fixtures, new medicine cabinet, new vanity, towel racks and switchplate covers to match.  Yes I know there’s a hole near the light switch…trying to figure out how to fix that.  Hrm… not sure if it shows well but the bathroom is a light gray.  Called dolphin.  Not sure I really like it.  I do want gray, but I wanted a deeper tone.  Was scared to go too deep initially because the bathroom is TINY.  Which you will see in the next picture.
 
 

New terlit too, but who cares about that?

As for the rest?  Well demolition of the green monster continues.  Every time I’d go in there I’d get so damned discouraged because it just seemed like the task was insurmountable.  But?  It wasn’t as bad as I thought.  2 days of repeated DIF application and stripping layers of painted over wallpaper, come to find out that only 2 of the 4 walls were really bad.  The other 2 are merely painted.  Why they didn’t strip ALL the walls first is beyond me.  I did, however, have to spackle TWICE, forty-fucking-seven holes in the walls from 6" screws everywhere.  That is a task in and of itself.  Spackle, allow to dry because it shrinks when dry.  Go over again, allow to dry…then once more.  Then you get to sand it all down and what a freaking MESS that makes.  So this weekend is washing the walls down, letting that dry and hopefully I get to get the first coat of primer on there.