Ummm...

Remember when I said that a good night of sleep would be a wonderful thing?
Yeah?
Well it's not going to happen tonight.
I think my body is just so used to getting 5-6 hours of sleep recently that now when I go to bed at nine, I wake up at three.
Rip roarin' and ready to go.
Doesn't mean I'm not tired - only that I'm done sleeping.
I just keep remembering that I am forbidden to worry.
About anything.
Make that everything.

Caroline's first day of school went well. She was exhausted when she got off the bus this afternoon (it was a half day) and fell asleep in the car on the way home. She enjoyed herself, though.
She got on the bus and didn't even look back.
And yes, I did follow the bus.
I am that mother.
If there was a kid that was born for school, it's her. Let's hope today goes as smoothly.



And can't forget this one...

Here we are going to the bus stop:



And here is videographic proof that Nate is walking. It's still a bit Frankenstein-ish. But it's still cute. Very cute. Now if he would only stop trying to scale the stairs...

What a Week.

Wow. It's only Thursday? This week has seemed to drag on forever.
Let's see...we had our home staging, put the house on the market, one of our kitties passed away, there was an earthquake, Caroline had her first day of school and we're expecting a hurricane. You think that's enough to deal with at one time? Because when I put with that we lost the bid on the house we liked in Maryland, my Grandfather remains in very fragile health, I worked two days in Leominster and we had an article in the paper about what we found in our house as we were renovating and have had people knocking on our door about it...frankly, I'm overwhelmed. And so tired I'm about to cry. Oh - I forgot I'm a guest blogger this week on another blog and have to write my post tonight.
Too much.
I know it could be so much worse. And I think I've done a pretty good job at keeping things in perspective. A good night of sleep would be a wonderful thing.

The worst part of the week was Junior being put down. He had developed some behaviors that had worsened as he got older that made him un-adoptable. We wracked our brains and our hearts trying to figure out what we needed to do. Ultimately, it wasn't okay for him to be around with the kids. While we know we did the right thing, it didn't make it any easier. In fact, I think that trip to the vet might of been the hardest thing I've ever done. We were with him when he died, which haunts me. I'm glad we were there, though.
As much as the Stinker made me crazy, I miss him. A lot.
I can't tell you how strange it is to not have him brush up against my legs looking for a handout as I'm cooking dinner. Or to sit on the couch and not have him put a paw on my shoulder. Or to lay down in bed and not have him try to knead my armpit and stick his wet nose in the crook of my neck while he was purring like a motorboat. Heck, I can even sit down on the toilet without a cat sitting on my lap. It's weird. I cry when I'm sweeping because I see clumps of Junior hair on the floor (I think there will be Junior hair in this house years from now). I cry when I pet Smokey because it's obvious she's lonely.
Explaining what happened to the kids was tough. They rolled with it. I think they were more concerned because I was so sad. Caroline had a lot of questions about the actual death process and if Junior rose to heaven after he died. She inquired today if he was already buried.
We'll get used to not having him around, I know.
I hope he's rolling in the catnip and eating all the cat treats he can possibly stomach in the great kitty Beyond.
Rest in Peace, Junior. I love you.


I'll get the pictures of Caroline's first day of school up later on.
Oh - and I forgot that Nate is walking.
Everywhere.
And climbing.
Everything.
That adds yet another dimension to the craziness.
But in a good way.

This article in today's Telegram was the object of much discussion. Like I said before, I even had people in the neighborhood knock on the door and ask to see the house because they hung out at the house as kids. =-)
A few weeks ago, while jackhammering our front steps, we (our contractor) found a time capsule put there by the neighborhood kids in 1977 when the original steps to the house were being re-done. The article in the paper explains a lot of what was found. The best part has been how this has brought us closer to people in the neighborhood that we didn't know before. It makes me even more sad to leave. This is a wonderful place to raise a family. I am hoping the article in the paper will make people aware of our home and help us get a good family in the house. =-)

From today's Telegram Towns section:

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Time in a bottle

Memories of 1977 unearthed at house

By Melissa McKeon CORRESPONDENT

From left, landscapers Eric Stolberg, Bob Murphy and Barbara Mitchell, and homeowners Karen and Jim Watson. The home, where the time capsule was found under the front steps, was owned by the McKeon family. (T&G Staff Photos/CHRISTINE PETERSON)

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Baseball cards found inside the time capsule include a card for Butch Hobson. Enlarge photo

A coupon for Whalom Park was included among the items buried in the time capsule. Enlarge photo

WORCESTER — David Markowitz doesn’t remember April 18, 1977, a spring day he spent with a gang of neighborhood children in the Paradox Drive area where they all grew up.

“It was pre-Xbox,” Markowitz recalls with amusement. “Kids found things to do.”

In good weather, that amusement was outdoors, riding bicycles or playing at neighbors’ homes. Mr. Markowitz does remember cracking his skull in a childhood accident and needing stitches and spending a lot of time in the McKeon family’s driveway at 63 Paradox Drive, which had a basketball hoop.

The memory of those spring days when a gang of children could roam the neighborhood in what was arguably a safer time may be a blur. But a recent find at the former McKeon family home is bringing some of it back into focus, as new owners Jim and Karen Watson renovated their steps and uncovered a piece of memorabilia from that time, put there by Mr. Markowitz and his friends.

The Watsons most likely viewed the renovation of their front steps as routine as they prepared the home they’ve owned for six years for sale. The concrete required a jackhammer and sledgehammer to remove, and in the process, the contractor uncovered a glass milk jug (remember those?) full of bits and pieces that the Paradox Drive children believed represented their world.

Ellen McKeon, whose name appears in the time capsule along with Dohertys, Elkinds and Edenbergs, says Shay Taylor, who was rebuilding the steps, came up with the idea. The time capsule’s contents reflect the influence of the sports-minded: several Sports Illustrated and Sports Digest covers, and baseball and football cards bearing the names that will bring back memories for many: Johnny Bench, Butch Hobson, Freddy Patek, Luis Gomez, Pat Toomay, Joe Morgan, Bobby Clark and Rick Barry.

The capsule also contained a lottery scratch ticket (bingo, not a winner); several sheets of homework; a bottle of Excedrin; Markowitz’s junior membership card to Trout Unlimited; a parking ticket from Harvard Street (not a surprise to those who have tried to park there); coupons to Whalom Park; a postcard, with postage (6 cents); and a magazine story about hand-held portable televisions.

The names of all the children and young people present that day were recorded on a piece of paper with their names and ages.

Two young men signed a letter found along with the cache, Markowitz and neighbor John Knowlton, were young teens when the time capsule was buried.

Their letter is short and to the point:

To whom it may concern,

Why did you break the steps?

This time capsule was buried April 18, 1977.

Make sure you notify the authorities and the newspaper.

David Markowitz (Power)

John Knowlton (Bean)

P.S. Shaw Taylor constructed the McKeon steps which you just broke.

Hope you like future.

The children included a cutting from the Telegram & Gazette with the editorial office numbers, and Karen Watson was happy to oblige. She called the T&G and also some neighbors, whose names were familiar from the names of the children in the time capsule.

That set phones ringing all over the neighborhood and conjured memories. Many of the parents of those children still live in the homes where they raised them, and remember a little about it.

“I remember when John came home and told me that the McKeons were replacing the steps and they’d buried a time capsule there,” Eileen Knowlton said.

While Mr. Markowitz doesn’t remember the time capsule incident, he admits it’s characteristic.

“It sounds like something I would do,” he said. “I love history, so I probably thought it would be kind of cool.”

The capsule’s finders, the Watsons, did indeed find it cool, for many reasons: Karen Watson was born the year the time capsule was created and finds this snapshot of that time fascinating.

The Watsons have loved the neighborhood, she says, and find this evidence of past residents a link to the history of a place where they’ve been happy. It’s also provided a link to folks still in the neighborhood they didn’t know very well before.

John Knowlton lives nearby but isn’t interested in talking about the find. David Markowitz lives in Manhattan, where he admits he’s passing on his love of the Red Sox to his own children.

The Watsons are interested, though, in making sure their time capsule has a life beyond 34 years. They scanned the items found in the bottle to preserve them, and can email or make a disk of the items for anyone who wants to see them.

They also reburied the items (this time in a plastic bottle) in the new steps that have replaced the 1977 version.

In the bottle is also their own snapshot of the world that their children, Nathanael, Caroline and Samuel, are growing up in: a cutting from the newspaper about the stock market plunge; one about a Red Sox-Twins game; a Sports Illustrated cover about Derek Jeter’s 3,000th home run; a lottery ticket (unscratched); a copy of a Best Buy ad for hand-held computers; a drawing by their 5-year-old; a photograph of their family; and instructions to look them up in the future at the new home they’ll have in Frederick, Md., this fall.

Perhaps someday, their phone may ring with someone asking, “Did you bury a time capsule in 2011?”

Week Before School Starts Party!

Ria is having a "Going to Kindergarten" party today.
The kids wanted to pre-game by wearing their school uniforms.
wow - they look so big.
Sniff, sniff.

More Rest.

It's 9:52pm.
I'm fried. It has been a long day. I didn't get everything done on my To Do list that I wanted to, but I got some things done that weren't even on the list - so I'm calling it an all-in-all successful day.
So I'm winding down by watching some Star Trek and by doing some blogging. It's not that I haven't wanted to blog - it's just been the sitting in one place long enough to be able to type something up without falling asleep thing that has been the issue. There has been plenty of blog-worthy stuff happening, it's just staying up late enough to get it on the blog that has been the problem.

But, first of all...HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NATE!!!
It has only been a year?
Seems like he has been around forever. =-) He has started walking in the past few days. Doing that ridiculously cute Frankenstein-ish, locked-knee walk with his hands out in front of him. Soon there is going to be no stopping him.
Every day I thank God for my favorite little chunky monkey!


Our plan is to put the house on the market next week. We have been working day and night to do the majority of the recommendations that our home stager put out there. So far (with the much appreciated help of Grammy and Grampy) we have painted four rooms, replaced light fixtures, done a ba-zillion trips to the Salvation Army and storage site and organized our basement. Our house is well on the way to looking amazing. Hopefully we got our pricing right and this house moves lickety-split. Because this hurry up and wait thing is (already) annoying.
Even if it hasn't really started yet.
I know this could be a really, really long roller coaster. And I know I really, really don't like roller coasters.
This could get interesting.

Jim and I found a house we would like to buy down in Maryland. We're hoping things go well with our house so we can buy the house we found. After spending months looking for our house in Worcester, we were expecting the worst when house hunting this time. We saw some real winners, believe me. Like the...
-...house with the bunks all in a row in the basement that looked a lot like the bunks from Auschwitz we saw at the Holocaust Museum a few weeks ago. Creepy. Definitely creepy.
-...or the house with the gorgeous view of the Appalachian Mountains, driveway built at a 45 degree incline, lawn you would need a thousand dollar lawn mower to keep up with, the first floor that smelled horribly musty and the pile of dead stink bugs in the living room.
-or the beautiful house with a great yard. Too bad it backed up to a major highway.
-or the house with the re-mediated water problem in the basement. They tried to cover up the soggy smell with air freshener. The scent was so thick you could taste it. Ewwww.
-or the house with the ceilings so low that the ceiling fans threatened to decapitate Jim. But it had a full kegilator in the basement - so that made up for it (at least a little). It didn't make up for the deck that was so poorly constructed that it sagged and shook under my weight. Oh - it had a red bathroom, too. Ceiling and all.
-but best was the house that looked like it had real promise from the outside. When you entered, you were hit with the stench of Airwick and dog poo. The kitchen was something out of 1963 with the same exact Frigidaire oven that we pulled out of our house prior to our oven debauchle. Then there were the clowns. If you've been around me long enough, you will know I hate clowns. There were clowns everywhere in this house. It was so unsettling I felt like I couldn't look in closets or peek around a door because I would see a dead body. Or another one of those awful clowns looking at me. I actually had nightmares about them. Took me a while to shake that one off.
But we did find two houses that are definite possibilities. In two different school districts, but they were the districts we had listed numbers one and two on our lists. And if one of them works out, I'll be okay with it. And if they don't work out, I'll be okay with that, too. I'm trying to enter this with as open of a mind (and with as few expectations) as I possibly can.
We'll see how that works out.

One of the cool things that has happened was that the people re-doing our front steps found a time capsule from 1977 in a glass milk bottle as they were sledge-hammering the steps away. The bottle shattered with the blow from the hammer, but we were able to salvage the contents of the capsule. We found baseball cards (Johnny Bench and Butch Hobson), an old parking ticket, some Sports Illustrated covers, some articles from the old Worcester Gazette, some of the kid's homework, signatures and addresses of the kids that put together the capsule and a letter from two of the kids asking us why we broke the steps and to alert the Telegram that we found the capsule.
So we did.
Much to our surprise, the Telegram sent someone out to take some pictures as we re-buried the capsule (we made an additional capsule of our own stuff as well) and were interviewed by a reporter. We were also able to contact some of the families of the kids that signed the letter from 1977 that still live in the area.
This has been a wonderful way to meet more of our neighbors and to learn about (and contribute to) the history of our neighborhood.
The story will be either in tomorrow's paper or next Thursday's paper. We'll be sure to link to it. As my friend Sue pointed out, what a great way for God to provide some free advertising for the house!
And here are some pictures of our recent craziness...

A Day of Rest...

...Even God got one, right?
So I should get one, too. And since an episode of the Backyardigans just got put in, I have exactly 22 minutes of rest. I know resting is important and is MOST important to do just when I feel I don't have TIME to rest. Still working on trying to find a balance there. =-)
Wow - what a week. We've made some progress, but still have a long way to go to get this house market-ready.
I worked my last day as a part-timer. Now I'm just a per diem PT. Which I'm sad about. I really, really love my job. But right now the things I'm doing here are more important (just not as fun). Blogging has been lax because I am writing our home stager a nightly report of the progress we've made that day towards getting the house ready and outlining my priorities for the next day. It adds a few minutes at the end of the day, but her input has been invaluable to us. By the time all that is done, I'm a bit fried.
Grammy and Grandpa have been down the past two weekends to help us with our work and watching the kids so we can get more work done. This has been invaluable, as well. THANK YOU! Yesterday, with their help with painting and corralling the Three Amigos we were able to get two layers of paint up in the dining room and the (former) brown room. Hopefully trim work and doors done today (after the kids go to bed).
Progress has been slow and steady. We hope (read HAVE) to get much more done this week.
The kids have been remarkably chill with all the changes around the house. I don't know that they really get what's going on, but when you ask them what we're doing, the reply is "Getting ready to move to Maryland."
In an attempt to put up some pictures from this week, I just looked at my camera. I took one picture of the kids. Everything else is the before/after progress to e-mail the home stager every night. And since I know you're not interested in seeing the pictures of almost every closet in the house, the dining room, the former brown room and Caroline's room, I'll spare you the torture.
Here is the one picture from the week...