PDride Speaks Out

It's been a tough week in this country, with a monster tornado threatening so many people's lives and homes, and the outrageous election we are entering into just gets more bizarre by the day. It seems the candidates have some crazy skeleton surface every few days and everything turns to discussing that, then some disaster befalls the nation, week after week, it goes. The future, our future, is so uncertain. Tell those that matter, that they matter to you. Every day. It matters.  It's important to find joy in the little things that can take us away from the news and horror going on around us. It's important to find the good things in our world to hold onto with a ferocity that brings them to the forefront. I think of my joys, another daughter and baby are soon to join our family and widen the circle of love, I love my partner and am loved back, my family, including our four-legged babies are all healthy and happy. They all know I love them. Because I tell them every s...

Love it or Change it…One more weekend without a kitchen, maybe? Friday morning dawned a rainy day, so we slept in a little longer instead of going for our full walk and luxuriated in the thought of using the new master shower. The night before I had moved all of our bathroom supplies back into the master bath from the guest bath, towels, hair stuff, and soaps, we were ready…flick on the faucets…wait for the hot water to flow out of the shiny, new chrome…maybe because it hasn’t been run for a while…wait a little more…it’s getting warm, isn’t it?...well, we can’t wait all day…OMG…it’s f@#&ing FREEZING…WTF?...it got less than lukewarm at best. Make the best of it, hold your breath, dive in, dive out, splash splash, clean what we have to and GET OUT! T was much braver than I, but not very happy. My first text that morning was to the GC to see if it was something with the install that needed to be adjusted. We decided we would actually stay home for the weekend, in case the kitc...

Love it or Change it…Starting to love it, or is it too soon? The next morning the four of us headed out on our morning walk with an extra bounce in our steps after sleeping in our own beds and traipsing up our familiar street to find our familiar bunnies and to poop (the dogs, not us) in the usual places with just the right smells and foliage. It was a happy morning, still a little strained getting the kids fed and then sorted into their back rooms for the day with water, beds, litter boxes, and food, but we managed happily and arrived at work after our usual, known commute. Master bath, out of commission. That evening the doubt seeped back in as to our decision to move back into the house, when we came home to a garage once again filled with tools and building materials with no room for the car, further work on the master shower and toilet, so that there was only one toilet in the house available to us, and the master bath pretty much completely unusable. Shower, final p...

Love it or Change it…One more week, really?? Close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting on a leather wrapped seat, wobbling a bit as the legs search for solid ground on the cobblestone pavers beneath it, do you hear it? That Mexican melody playing in the background, not sure if it’s salsa, or ranchera, or bolero, but you know those distinct notes. Our house has been wrapped in that sound as surely as it’s been wrapped in plastic for four weeks. The intent last weekend was to take Monday off to eliminate one night stay in the hotel, returning that evening from the desert to stay back at the Marriott, the house would be cleaned as per our usual scheduled cleaning, at least as much as could be cleaned, and perhaps by Tuesday or Wednesday we would be able to move back in from the hotel. As the miles passed beneath the tires and we got closer to the house T kept trying to convince herself and me that maybe we would be able to just move back in now and not have to go to the hotel ...

Returning home after our respite in the desert we knew we couldn’t stay at the house for the time being, so decided to book into a Marriott Residence Inn. But first we had to go home and get our clothes for the week ahead, me for work, T for a trip to her biggest conference of the year, where her clothing matters more than on most of her business trips. I was confident I knew which boxes held which clothes and shoes she needed, and had left them in the bedroom in locations I would recognize. I was only mildly concerned that the painters had been into our room and what they may have covered up — as I had already experienced how they wrapped everything up in the other bedrooms and my office — but tried to not be too worried because I knew of course where all her clothes were…right? Everything gets pushed to the center of the room . Wrong! Our bedroom was wrapped up tighter than a burrito in plastic and taped down to the floor. The boxes had all been moved into the bathroom shower a...

Friday afternoon, hoped to get away early, collect the fur kids from Ranch Road and head to the clean, non-mildew-smelling desert home for a brief respite from the madness that comes with renovating a kitchen and bathroom, as well as painting the whole of the inside of the house—I mean EVERYWHERE—closets, ceilings, walls, new baseboards. We left work around 4pm, not early, drove in rush hour traffic to pick up the kids, then more rush hour traffic to the desert. Walked into the PD house, hey! it smelled clean and fresh, there is an island in the kitchen! Cupboards line the walls, the pantry is full of staples and real food. There’s a sink, and oh wait, a microwave, oven, and cooktop, and best of all, the fridge is IN the kitchen! It’s amazing how after less than a week these simple niceties were such a joy to have again. We had a nice home-cooked dinner of chicken and veggies, shared a bottle of wine, soaked in the hot tub, sat by the fire under the stars, came in for an early nigh...

Love it or change it – out with the old… The dark with the light top for the island,  the white with a darker top for the rest. Having decided on our contractor on Monday, next steps involved choosing materials with which to replace the old. I met with the GC down at his storefront in San Diego on Friday. He had laid the cabinets we’d earlier discussed out on his table with some suggested countertop colors.  New tile for the floors - "hot, new" just released color. He’d also chosen some tiles for our floors for me to view. I came away from that meeting with the cupboards decided and some options for the floor and countertops to share for our final decision. I got a text on Sunday from the GC asking if he could come by the house with some paint samples. He also brought the tile sample that we had thought might work. He showed up shortly after with a box full of small pots of paint samples and laid the tile on the floor to see how it might l...

The house is almost 14 years old. The kitchen cupboards of pressed board and laminate overlay are starting to show signs of wear. When the built-in fridge began leaking last August it caused irreparable damage to the cupboards surrounding it. The backsplash has always been someone else’s idea of style, but to us a bad joke. Note hideous backsplash.  The tile ends at the cupboard base, it was put in after the particle board cupboards that are falling apart. This wardrobe has outlived its usefulness as a pantry. There is no built-in pantry, so we have had a wardrobe doing pantry duty for 10 years, the doors only close now with a fist bump while one’s head is tilted at a certain angle. The master shower is all white, square tiles, the rest of the bathroom is lovely granite. The shower is slippery when wet, and oh so white in an otherwise earth-tone bathroom. It has leaked out the door where the water barrier fell off and ...