Kitchen Remodel....Part 2

It's funny but this thing happened over and over. I knew exactly what I wanted for sink fixtures and I knew I wanted a brown composite sink, not stainless, not porcelain. I wanted a unique design, some curves that were different, not just 2 square sinks, maybe even only 1 sink. My husband couldn't see it and I couldn't convince him to just go with it, so we compromised on a curvy 2 sink model. It's okay, not my first choice, but a good compromise. And there is actually a curve around the faucet fixture! I just needed 1 curve, OK?



My brown composite sink & oil rubbed bronze 1 piece  fixture...love them both!


I looked long and hard for what I wanted and I had the hardest time finding it. Now those composite sinks are everywhere! The same thing happened with all my fixtures. I wanted brown, the oil rubbed bronze looking fixtures with only 1 piece, not a knob for hot or cold, just a 1 piece fixture. I looked at Home Depot, Lowes, Standard Plumbing, Overstock.com, they all had such a limited selection of them in the darker color, there was not many to choose from at each store. I finally found one I liked but it was expensive compared to the nickel or stainless finishes! And now I see them all over the place.

And don't even get me started on the appliances, the fridge we got was counter depth (so NOT as much cubic feet as a regular fridge is) but it cost thousands more than a much larger capacity fridge with non-counter depth. Now how is that fair? Now Lowe's has those brown composite sinks all up in a display! I saw one last summer at Costco even. And counter depth fridges are everywhere, not special order anymore, and much cheaper now too! Hmph!


Counter depth fridge...wish it was bigger...but I LOVE the
pantry cabinets we installed all around and above it! SPACE!!!


Anyway. We got some great deals on granite. We used the Stone Depot in downtown Salt Lake for our granite and I would recommend them to anybody. Link HERE It is a little mom and pop operation; a little Asian couple who were both very nice. The lady was pregnant and about to deliver her 2nd baby, but she would traipse around the granite yard with us, helping us search through all the selections from around the world, giving us advice. I went back 3 or 4 times before I made up my mind. We also bought granite, vessel sinks from them for our 2 bathroom remodels. They have quite a selection of granite.  I liked them a lot, they were very cute.The little Chinese lady laughed at just about everything my husband said. John can be a funny guy.


Johnny did the decorative backsplash himself...isn't he qute the handyman?



finished kitchen....yipee!

 


 
I loved the lighting fixtures we picked out. The little pendant lights (from Lowe's) add so much over an island. I loved the dark wrought iron design with the leaves curling around the smoky glass pendants. We tried to match an existing ceiling fixture we had bought from my daughter's new house when she wanted to choose a more modern fixture for her kitchen. I happened to love hers and after she put it up for sale on KSL I told her take it down because I was buying it! Then we found matching pendants and ceiling flush lights for the adjoining den and wall sconces leading down to the basement. We lucked out here and found pretty good deals on all. And boy we had some UGLY lights before!



The pendants match all teh fixtures in the kitchen, den and hallways now...

 



I think we got the pendants at Lowe's...my favorite place to get lighting



Fixture over the kitchen table....my daughter sold it on KSL....to me!
It has the similar leafy pattern and  the oil rubbed bronze look 


I found these little silver wall tiles to put around the stove area from a magazine and sent away for them. I think they were about $20 bucks. They are just peel and stick tin tiles, very easy to do yourself. They look cool and they are good to catch all the splashes.





I probably need to get up in there and paint in between....Uh...maybe not today tho...

 I need a little more lighting in the kitchen still but just have to wait on Mr. Moss to have another chunk of time to put in the canned lights in the ceiling. He kept telling me it would be easier to do it at the end of the job. I never believed him but it was, you know, another compromise. People always say, " don't remodel your house or you might end up getting divorced". I know what they are talking about now. You have to get good at agreeing to disagree in a major remodel. Not every decision is reached with mutual love and respect. Sometimes you just go to your boxing corners and pout for awhile. Hmmm... Then you get over it and move on. More on our lovely demolition derby tomorrow...




Granite countertop Island and pendant lights

 

Kitchen Remodel Part 1 (or Kitchen Nightmares?)

I wish, wish, wish I had taken a before picture of the kitchen of our 1970s Tri level, all the way gutted with bare walls somewhat ripped up from demolition, and no ceiling, just attic and trusses up there with dust, and insulation constantly raining down from the attic. After they ripped the sink out it was so gross in there it scared me to walk through it alone. It was like a burned out building or a scary bomb shelter! They discovered some water damage in the wall behind the sink so it was black and soggy and scary, and I kept thinking about living things from the attic or from under the sink crawling out to get me. The bowels of your kitchen are really ugly and yuck. I never, ever will remodel a kitchen again. It is a KITCHEN NIGHTMARE!! (as Chef Ramsey would say...)

 My husband would be working with the plumber and the drywall contractor and he'd see me coming in the area and he'd just say, "You better get outa here....you better not look at this!" I get all heebie jeebies when there is anything gross, spiders, slime...I can't handle much of that. 

Finished range and hood and backsplash

These tin tiles are simple peel and stick...so easy!

At one point in the kitchen demolition we had knocked out the lowered ceilings, and really wanted to bump it up to the interior rafters. It turned out we couldn't knock out the trusses in the rafters because our house might just fall down. So we had to compromise and have just a raised ceiling. And that ugly light box everybody used to have with flourescent long, tube lights inside? So ugly! Who invented those anyway? That must have been the cool look in the 70s cuz everybody had them! So glad to see that thing take a hike. You can kinda see where it used to be. I haven't painted over the plastering Robert (our drywall guy) did over the ceiling yet. I can't paint again till Spring....or maybe summer.... (I'm lying again...I'll be painting this weekend in my craft room...)

We raised the ceiling about 2 feet

I remember the day we tried to redo the drywall ceiling up there. My husband built some 2 x 4s into a giant T shape and said I'd have to " help him put up the sheets of ceiling drywall." SAY WHAT? Little did I know what I was in for.

We'd both carry in a sheet of drywall  from the pile in the truck he'd just purchased from Home Depot. That was bad enough. Those things are HEAVY bad boys! Then he'd hoist it up with his manly brute strength (I actually kinda liked watching that part, butt cracks and all) and then he'd tell me to grab the giant 8 foot tall T and to push up the drywall sheet for him to drill the screws. HUH? Are you Kiddin ME? Now, when I look back on that, I am very proud of myself. I pushed that giant,  hulking, sucker up there and he drilled the screws in with his favorite cordless power tool. You know men and their power tools. Pretty studly.





The finished island

We got sick of doing THAT after about 2 sheets and called in the cavalry. I think poor Robert, our contractor had to fix a lot of "do it yourself-er" stuff we thought 2 college grads should be able to do ourselves. We aren't as smart as we think we are, as it turns out. I told Robert not to tell me what stuff he actually had to redo. I still want to think I helped with the HE-MAN work, if you know what I mean.



Our beadboard island...I painted it a sage green.


My favorite thing we did  together was our bead board island and the 2 wooden legs decorating the 2 end corners. John did the beadboard around the 2 sets of drawer units. We asked the company we bought direct from, (AWA Cabinets in Salt Lake Link HERE) to just not add decorative backing on these two. Then I went looking for a way to do "custom legs" on the 2 back corners without paying somebody to do it custom. I found some clearance table legs at Lowes way in the back on the wall. They were packaged as half legs. I bought 3 of them, had John cut 1 apart down the middle with the table saw, and glued one side on to each half leg, so it was a 3/4ths leg and then puttied in the seam with wood putty. John didn't catch my vision at first but he just went with it...and figured out the math of fitting in these 3/4ths of a leg onto the 2 corners of the island. It was really fun as it came together! I think we rocked it. What do you think?

My favorite Do It Yourselfer Project....The island table legs!

It was looking like it would work to just hook the legs onto each 90 degree angle of the island back corners, but both legs were too short to reach the granite top. So we went back to Lowes and looked for some kind of decortive block to add to the top. John then cut a 1/4 slot out of each of the block sides (tricky to do) and glued them to the tops of the legs.  He added on the legs to the 2 corners, gluing them to the beadboard edges with Liquid Nails. That's the stuff that comes in a long tube with a glue bottle point on one end and you shoot it from a gun. That stuff is miracle goop!  Then I picked out Glidden (my favorite paint) in eggshell finish and painted everything a light sage green. You can kinda see the seam from the glue together in this close up pic, but nobody else notices things like that. The legs ended up costing us less than $20 bucks! How's that for custom?



You can see where we added the wood block to the top of the leg  :D

  

I was adamant that I wanted a wooden hood over my new stainless stove. I'd looked at so many online.   I knew pretty much what I wanted from looking through many, many kitchen magazines, but I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on one. I loved the pounded copper hoods but they were so pricey I didn't love them THAT much. Custom hoods were out of our budget. So I looked around in the back rooms of cabinet manufacturing places. They always have things that have been returned. I think the place was called Excel Cabinets in downtown Salt Lake City, West of the freeway.



My $40.00 range hood.....it turned out nice!


We found one that we thought might work and bartered with the guy to pay $40.00 bucks for it. We took it home, sawed it in half to cut a piece out of the middle, and glued it back together at just the right width to fit in between the new cabinetry. We then covered the whole piece in beadboard. I remember the edges being hard for John to get just right, but we used some wood putty to fill in anything that wasn't really flush. Lastly I found a swirly decoration for the front from Home Depot for a few bucks. It kind of goes over the seam from sawing the thing in half.



I found this piece of trim at Home Depot for $5.00


Then I painted it sage green to match the beadboard island. Both of them turned out really pretty. We put up the tin tiles above the backsplash that go all the way up the wall under the hood. Pretty!  I still have to get some lights under that vent. It's not bright enough when I'm cooking in the kitchen. Lights are still a to-do item.  3 cheers for do it yourselfers!!! The last 3 projects coming up...

Remodeling Nightmares

This is our current project, my craft room, after ripping up carpet,
stripping off some UGLY old-lady floral wallpaper and painting.

One of my favorite things to do is decorate. I am avoiding working on my current project, as I type this post: a craft room which is taking me over 3 months to do! (Possibly because I'm really SO GOOD at being a procrastinator?) Or maybe my pace slowed down when I went back to work in August. I want to just take my time on this room since it's my baby. It is going to be hot pink and lime green. I know, teenager right? Well I want it to be bright and cheery. I have used a Pottery Barn rug as my inspiration.  I will be finished with it in the next few weeks (if my daughter will come and help me....she's a master of organization...I know...how did she get into my family, right?!) when I'm all done with it  I'll post all about it.

We layed this laminate plank snap down wood flooring from Costco. It is so easy and
looks really great when it's done. 

But in the meantime, I just close the door and go fix up some other area of the house. We have slowly been remodeling the entire house, starting more than a year ago on the kitchen redo. I cannot tell you what a mess it is to do demolition on a 40 year old house. I had no idea that dust and crud would be literally in every nook and cranny of our home, in our clothes, and our orifices. My nose had snotty dust in it for weeks! It was hard to sleep because psychologically you think you are breathing in insulation or something cancer causing! It is the worst part of remodeling hands down! But  I don't  have lots of photographic evidence. I would not want to go back there again. It was before my blogging days so I didn't document the before pics very well. Just a few times I thought something was funny. Just imagine a huge dusty mess....everywhere..and piles of furniture in the center of each room.  It was just so completely awful. My advice?  Move to a new house if you have the choice.

Cute Mr. Moss tiling the floors. He always has a smile on his face...
He worked half a day at his business and then worked for me the
other half most of the summer...I'm a real slave driver it seems....hmmmm...

I think the 2nd worst part of remodeling is having people "drop in" to see your progress. Here I am in the ugliest fat lady shorts and painty t-shirt you can even imagine being caught dead in, all sweaty with clods of snotty soot and drywall bits hanging from my nose, hair and neck. I'm covered in swabs of black paint from my face to my ankles, and I've got an electric sander in one hand and my painter's hat covering my dirty, unwashed hair, and the place looks literally like a bomb has gone off. The stuff that used to live in the kitchen is all piled high in all the surrounding rooms. And my husband invites somebody at the door to come see what we are doing!!! Argh! Are you KIDDING ME? Is it too late to run and hide somewhere?Why don't you just ask me to pull my pants down for all to see? That's about how humiliating it is.



Yucky Yucky floors when we ripped up stuff
you don't wanna go there!


I still wonder what people thought. My poor future daughter-in-law saw the progress as Devin would come home to pick up this or that in preparation for his August wedding in St. Louis. And I would just die of embarrassment that she saw such a mess. We'd be standing there all gritty with a cold piece of pizza in one hand and an icy Coke in the other hand. Or else we were sweaty dogs standing on ladders in the middle of it, ceiling fans and cd player all rockin on high,   paintbrush or hammer in hand. It was like...well....kinda redneck city....real hillbillies.



  We sold an old wood burning stove  on KSL.com for a few hundred bucks. It took 4 heavy
 cowboy dudes from Woodruff, Utah to get it out the door! Fireplace is next...


The 3rd worst thing about remodeling is making all the decisions. As you can see I was deciding between brown and yellow paint on this wall above. The yellow won out. You actually get so sick of choices you need to make that you may start just asking each other to just choose anything. I have heard that from lots of friends of mine who remodeled. The more decisions you can make ahead of time where you are not pressured, and have time to compare prices and styles, the better. Once you are into demolition mode, the decisions almost have to be made already, or you start to get stressed out. Make all the plans first, know what you want, then decide and order.

 I didn't know you could LOVE appliances like this! LOVE LG frontloaders with STEAM!

Don’t wait and rush out to stores and think it will all be easy. That’s what we did with fixtures and appliances, thinking it would be a breeze. It wasn’t. But we did get lucky buying appliances at Best Buy. We shopped Sears, Home Depot and Lowe's. Lowe's was second best in my opinion. They had real good deals too, but Best Buy had better customer service hands down. We kept going back to the same guy for microwave, fridge, stove at Best Buy and our dishwasher at Lowe's. When it was time to get the washer and dryer we chose Best Buy again and got top of the line LG front loaders in red for half off. They had one little dent on the side that wouldn’t show anyway. Gotta love a bargain.



Here is our ceiling we raised. Yay for us! It was super hard work. John put the pendant lights up
our boys helped us put all the cabinets up  in a day. EZ to do. I painted....and painted...and painted...



When most of the project finally got finished, like lots of do-it-yourselfers, we quit just short of getting completely done. You just somehow lose your will to go on. Your best is kind of good enough. We still haven't put on the top crown moldings on the cabinets and we have only painted half of the ceiling white. And we have not put the knobs on all the new cabinets and drawers, although they are chosen and paid for.

 But for all intents and purposes, the kitchen is done. Just don't look up. :) More on our remodeling to come....

Adding on a Walk-in Pantry

This pantry used to be a solid wall in our laundry room just behind the kitchen. Off of the laundry room (just to the left) there is an office and to the right is a small half bathroom. In the office was a shallow cabinet for office supplies. But we just never used it. It had a bunch of junk stored in it and paper. In the bathroom there was also a cabinet.We stored linens in there. But it wasn’t used to it’s capacity. We always thought a better design for this house would have been to nix the 2 shallow closets in the 2 rooms and instead have a walk in pantry off of the kitchen. So one day John decided to do it himself.



This is the door,  that used
to be the wall,  that was knocked out by a saws-all,
 to make the cool Pantry that John built.



Here's the office wall redo...it used to be a closet!

The first thing he did was take the doors off the 2 closets in the 2 rooms. Then he took all the shelving down from the closets and knocked out the walls in between the closets. So there was a see through huge hole between the bathroom and the office. Kind of funny to go to the bathroom in there while somebody was working on the computers. Luckily this project only took a couple of weeks in John's spare time. :-D

He got out his saws-all reciprocating saw, and started by cutting a hole into the laundry room wall to see how much space he’d now have to work with. He went and bought 2 by 4s to make a frame for the doorway, and bought a new small width door and moldings for around the door. Then he put in a light fixture. He used the laundry room switch so both lights go on with one flip of a switch. He used green low voltage lighting so it never gets all hot in there.



And this used to be a wall, no door, no moldings
and now it's a nice and messy pantry! Some
day I'll clean it up and reorganize it...






Then he drywalled the huge holes in the walls from removing the doors and closets. Then he mudded them and sanded them smooth and on one side, the bathroom side he put a chair rail and beadboard in white. I finished it off with a vinyl scratch on saying. It turned out cute. We added a piece of granite to the top of the old cabinet I had painted dark brown. We got the granite from Tile Outlet in Draper. The lady there sold us a 2nd that we could use for both of our smaller bathrooms for about $250 bucks. And each bathroom only cost about $100 bucks to install.  So cheap!  Then we bought a new marble vessel sink from Stone Depot in Salt Lake. They also have good deals there on granite. They did our kitchen granite. John added green sea glass backsplash tiles to it. It took us a while to decide on green glass. There were so many pretty options! This project only took us a few weeks too. On the other side, the office side, he added a piece of chair rail and I still haven’t painted it, being the procrastinators that I am.

Brucie, hanging tough during the office remodel...he's got a rough life...

We added a ceiling fan to the office...

Repainted the crown moldings and walls...

pulled up the carpet and put in laminate wood flooring... here's
John, working on the computer...The office is always so neat...

I still have a lot to do in the office.  It's all drywalled in but not painted on the chair rail or below.  What did I tell you about running out of steam? I’ll finish all these loose ends this summer. But the bathroom turned out nice.

I always liked this song...from Aerosmith...



We got a real deal on this marble sink, only $60 bucks!
Then I put up a purchased brown metal beaded mirror



I painted the little box on the toilet I found at a garage sale and made a plant arrangement
(fake plants of course) and the green matted nature pictures (so pretty!)



I got this glass candle fixture for $5.00 at Down Home East
What a deal!  Fake plant below, I kill anything real!


Then John had to look inside this gaping hole and start to design a pantry out of it. First he tiled the floor and continued it onto the laundry room and the small half bath. He had never done a tile floor before but he said it turned out pretty easy. It’s kind of like a puzzle.

We used large 16 inch tiles so it went pretty fast with the purchase of a tile cutter. It was noisy but I think he enjoyed tiling. These 3 projects were the first we completed in the remodel. We started these in the spring of 2009. It was messy and noisy, but they went pretty fast. We were done in about a month, I think.


John tiled the pantry, laundry room and 1/2 bath with this porcelain tile.

 The Laundry room we just repainted and tiled the floor. Then we ordered a new washer and dryer in red. The ½ bath behind the kitchen we painted green and had new tile, new fixtures, lighting and the marble vessel sink and the granite countertop. We also added white beadboard and chair rail. It is so pretty. All the fixtures are those brown oil rubbed bronze finish. I love those so I chose them most often in the remodel.



The beadboard added a lot...and to think that this
used to be a closet! Amazing!




We got the vessel sink in green marble from Stone Depot in SLC, the oil rubbed bronze sink fixture from
Overstock.com for about $120.00. John did the green glass backsplash.... 


While I painted walls and cabinets and ceilings and laundry room and den, basically painted the entire summer long, John was busy doing the he-man work. He drywalled the insides of the pantry and used the old shelving from the 2 demolished closets. We decided on just a U shape of shelves as you walk in with 5 levels. He joined boards together with bisquits. He would come and get me to ask my preference on things, depth of shelving, how many shelves, how low to the ground to start the first shelf, etc. It was fun to see it coming together.



This used to be just a gaping hole between the small closets


The sad part is that it was so nicely organized when we first got it all done. All my fine china was up top, then there were canned goods, then linens, then baskets on the bottom full of oddball things. Then we decided to start the kitchen remodel. So I had to take everything that was in the kitchen cabinets, and squish them into the new pantry while the remodel went on. So it has not completely recovered. I need a day of just redoing the organization cuz it's kind of a mess in there. But it is wonderful to now have so much more space. Tomorrow I’ll post how we did the laundry room and office. Yay Johnny. You are becoming quite the cool carpenter dude. :O

Sick Day

Boy getting sick and feeling dreadful for a few days sure makes you appreciate the everyday healthy feeling you have. I rarely get sick since I'm a first grade teacher and you just build up antibodies to all kinds of things that get coughed and sneezed and snotted on you. :D  I think I actually got this illness from my grown daughter. We went out to lunch 2 weeks ago and she was on antibiotics for a sore throat. I should have skipped the lunch. hmmm. It was fun anyway. We both love Rumbi Caribbean Grill. LINK HERE

So since I had a 3 day weekend, John and I went off to our cabin to read and watch movies and relax and boy was it snowy, rainy and windy. We didn't even get to take out the 4 wheelers. I made enchiladas and orange rolls and we just holed up by the fireplace with our dog and electric blanket. It was fun for us to just hang together and talk. That's half the fun for me. John figured out a way to use our cell phones and laptops to get Internet service without costing a dime so we could check email, shop, do face book. But I started feeling crummy on Saturday. I usually only get sick once every other year and it is always strep. I just know the telltale body aches and headache signs as well as sore throat and puffy glands. I debated whether to go back home or stick it out hoping for the best.

Brucie, the spoiled Boston Terrier...Brucifer when he is bad...

I should have gone right back home. I waited until Monday and I could not even swallow. Yucky! So I made an appointment and my doctor of course had quit 2 months ago. What is it about female doctors in Utah. They only last 2 years. My last 2 doctors who were female quit and moved out of state. My OB doctor is a female and last time I called they said she isn't even taking more patients till after December. That was in September. She is very popular. I guess most women prefer women docs.

So I had to see the on call guy. He is an old man.  I got there 15 minutes early and had to wait a half hour in the waiting room, watching while 2 other people were ushered in walking very slowly like older people do. I wondered what ailed them. I brought my own magazine because I'm afraid of all the germs on the ones in the doctor's office. Then one interesting article about Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the D.C. Schools caught my eye in Time magazine and I had to go over and get it anyway. I probably got another disease from that. Oh well.

  I couldn't believe what I was reading!!! Since Mayor Fenty did not get reelected (because of all the needed changes he and Michelle made to the school system there) she decided to step down so the new mayor could hire his own chancellor. She said she would have been a lightning rod for anybody wanting to play the blame game anyway, and she had done her best to make changes against all the forces and lobbies against her.  Link HERE

I admire her.  And I'm going to join her Students First organization. Link HERE  In fact I did as soon as I got home. She is now working on Governor elect of Florida's transition team. Hmmmm.... I wonder if he will run for president someday and she will be in a president's cabinet someday. She does have a masters in public policy from Harvard for heck sake! Anyway, I wish her luck in her endeavors. She is one to watch in education for all you teachers out there.


I like the broom analogy....sweeping out the bad teachers...


 She said in the article the hardest thing was listening to people say that she didn't wait for a consensus vote or buy in and things like that. She said on important things there may never be a consensus. Even when you show people all the facts, they still won't see it sometimes, like in closing so many schools that had under enrollment and firing teachers who had missed 78 days, had hit students or worse.  I remember when our district wanted to close several schools and they had these community meetings. My husband and I went to one and we gave our opinion and listened to many others. Most people only look at things by how it effects them personally. And so I believe what she is saying. When you move quickly even when you can show why you do what you do, you still get a mess of backlash. Tough job.

Well, as I sat waiting in Dr. P's office I could hear him shooting the bull on the telephone. It did not sound like a professional call. Those walls are thin. That is so annoying. And to have to undress down to my jeans is just ridiculous. I seriously considered ignoring the nurse, I was feeling so rotten. Then to have to sit up there on that high table, my back started to hurt, so I just gave up after 15 minutes and went and sat in a comfy chair. Then when he got off the phone he went to the old couple's room before mine. Just great,  20 more minutes. I looked out the window. It was starting to get dark! I got here at 4:30!  Why oh why couldn't they just call it in. I know what I have.

Oh! These are to die for....I let them rise an extra 45 minutes...that's the fluffy secret!

 Anyway he knew what I had too.  He says "Whoa! That's bad" when he peeks down my throat, so I thought that my prescription was an easy next step. Oh no, this is the slow talker, thorough doctor, I've had on call before. I guess I would appreciate it if I had a strange disease..I begged him, "Please doc, I know what I have, it's strep throat, I only get this and I get it once a year". Nope. No way.  The old man has no mercy. He makes me go down the hall to the lab (just like last year when I got strep) and get attacked with the long q-tip by a mean old lab worker.  I swear I almost barfed on her, but I did feel like biting off her hand. Why do they have to be so rough? Jeez, what if I had been a kid? I'm thinking...if this is your best bedside manner, I wonder what your worst feels like!   By this time I wanted to cry.

Why are they so afraid to give out antibiotics? I'm not abusing them! I'm not a druggie or a pusher.  When you are feeling at your absolute worst they want you to stand up, run in place and do push ups it seems like! Where is the comfort, care, and compassion when you need it? Why put on a gown just to listen to your heart when you barely can lift your achy arms up?  And why lay on the table, Puleeeeeeaaaase!  Give me a break old man.  So of course it came back positive. I was just glaring at him by this time.  Oh and I had to go sit in his office this time and wait again, because he was on to patient number 3 by now. Give me strength Lord.

I could hear his nurse out there calling in prescriptions for all the old people. That's nice of her. He did have a nice nurse who made a funny comment on my weight. I didn't take off my coat but I slid off my shoes and she thought that was funny. I told her I just didn't care.  She laughed at that.  She is heavier than me.
So after he gave me the gosh darned prescription he said, "If your husband is feeling a sore throat coming on tomorrow just call us and we will call him in a prescription." What the heck! Why, oh why when you are feeling your utter worst, like you want to die, like pins are sticking into the back of your throat when you have to swallow, do they make you jump through all these hoops and then just give the freakin prescription out to your non-sick husband? Is that fair? I think it should be the opposite. Sick people get a break. Non-sicks should go through all the hassle. Maybe I'll call it in just so I'll have a selection of drugs on hand for next year's bout of strep.  It's times like these I think women who are married to any kind of doctor are very lucky.  Or hunky Dr. McDreamy from Greys Anatomy would have been a VAST improvement over old, grumpy Dr. P. At least while I'm miserable I could enjoy looking at him.

Dr. McDreamy from Greys Anatomy...he woulda made my day....kinda better....

So as I walked out I asked the nurse if she would call in MY prescription so I could have it ready at Smiths when I went to pick it up. She said sure, which Smiths? The one down the street, just the next shopping center over, same street. She looked blankly at me.  (What, you want an address or something? You've gotta be kiddin me! It's a block away!)  Oh, I get it.  It's almost 6:00 and you want to go home. " Never mind" I say.  I had also had it. So as I realize I still have a few more hoops to jump through and I feel that sense of defeated, complete and utter frustration boiling up in me. It reminded me of how you feel when you are having a baby. Nobody really helps you. You are all on your own, begging for people to make it easier for you, but nobody really does, they just explain why you can't have this or that, when you know it would help you and why you need to do what you are told. Can you tell I don't really like medical people? I'm not very subtle am I?

On the way out I see a pharmacy sign and nobody is in line. Can I finally catch a break? I don't care if it costs me extra (they always say it doesn't but I never believe them) I pay the 10 bucks for my Amoxicillin and I go home to feel miserable for another 24 hours.  Here it is Tuesday afternoon and 5 pills and a 1 substitute plan written out for my class, and 6 Tylenol later and I still feel sore and achy but a little bit better. And I realize all the days I feel great and never really appreciate the wonderful gift of food, eating and drinking, being able to be productive, move around and get things done. I'm sorry, God, for being a flake in the thanks and gratitude department. I get it now.



Not my normal happy self ...messy desk, yucky throat...bad hair day....


 I'm so lucky 364 days a year to be a healthy person and to be so able to enjoy my life.  I get it that others suffer serious pain and torment, those who were all parked around the hospital near my doctor's office.  I appreciate my mean doctor and how he needs thoroughness so he can help me exactly. I guess I wouldn't want it any other way. Thanks to technology and science too. I was thinking that I'm glad I'm not a little house on the prairie mom because I would seriously have lost it by now, without very nice drugs, to make me feel better.  Thanks to docs and nurses too.  You guys rock, when you're not makin me wait on a cold table in my underwear.