Category: Daily Life

I have no objective basis for saying this, but I think today is going to be a good day. I slept well, my cold has almost completely subsided, and I'm going to pretend that the sky doesn't look like it's moments away from launching yet another snowstorm.

I'm telling myself that it's almost spring and everything is about to start fresh. I like that thought.

I looked at my calendar and discovered that I have nothing whatsoever planned for today. I do, however, have a cold. So my plan is to stay home, eat warm, comforting food, drink warm, soothing drinks, and take as many naps as I can.

A review of the winter months represented in my blog archives would quickly reveal that I generally get sick as soon as the temperature drops and stay that way until spring. This year has been different, which I credit to the asthma/allergy medication my doctor has me taking. In lieu of my usual allergy-triggered cough leading to bronchitis or pneumonia, this year I stayed healthy until a real live virus came my way.

It seems a little strange that I came down with this cold after nearly three days of working alone at home, but I blame the throngs of people at the grocery store before the last storm hit. They had to have been teeming with germs, don't you think?

What I'm trying to say is that I'm taking this whole cold thing pretty well. With all of the remedies I mentioned above in addition to judicious use of my neti pot and my bottle of ibuprofen, I think I'll kick this and be back to normal in no time.

Until then, I'm sure the cats will appreciate my relative motionlessness.

If I were keeping up with my blog, by now you'd have read about the get-together where my friends and I played Zombie Dice, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer game and Shrek Operation.

I might have told you about A Librarian's fun birthday dinner at Blanc Burgers+Bottles and her adorable foster kitten who looks just like Skippyjon Jones.

Skippito! (A Librarian is totally going to adopt this cat, no matter what she might tell you.)

I would have told you about going to a Missouri Mavericks hockey game for my brother-in-law's birthday, which was really fun even though I didn't understand most of what was going on.

Then I probably would have written an entire post about my sister's wonderful new yoga studio, Core Balance Yoga, which opened last weekend and is doing extraordinarily well. I helped her do a faux finish on the walls of the massage room the previous weekend and I attended the lovely grand opening.

Of course, I might have written about how I'm still doing various volunteer projects, attempting to keep the house clean, discovering new features of our Roku and trying to get a morning walk in now and then.

I would probably have lightly touched on how wrung out I'm getting from all the job interviews I've been doing. I'd mention that I've expanded my search to other cities – Nashville, Tennessee and Austin, Texas – because either of those places would also have great opportunities for my husband.

So now that that's all out of the way, maybe I'll start blogging about the next batch of things I do. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll have some wonderful things to talk about.

My husband and I bought our house in 1995 and at the same time purchased a set of bedroom furniture and accompanying mattress. Up until about a week ago, we were still sleeping on that mattress.

It was absolutely shot: lumpy, unsupportive and visibly broken down. Even with a fancy memory foam pad on top and frequent turning, it was the architect of endless uncomfortable nights' sleep.

I got a small windfall a few weeks ago and even though it might have been slightly more responsible to use the money to pay down a bill or two, I told my husband that I thought we should take advantage of the opportunity to buy a new mattress.

We went to the store in our neighborhood where we'd bought the previous mattess because, really, who wants to shop around for a mattress? We self-consciously moved around the store lying on different mattresses suggested by the shopkeeper until we found one that suited us and was on sale. We paid cash for that very mattress (it was a floor model) and paid a little extra to have the old one hauled away.

The last four nights with the old mattress were awful. I think I spent them all lying flat on my back because lying on my side made me wake up limping from a sore hip. Finally, delivery day arrived.

My husband reported that when the delivery guys saw our old mattress they said, "Wow, that IS old!"

Apparently they don't make mattresses with blue floral covers anymore; the new ones were all white. We also learned during the shopping process that flipping your mattress is no longer a thing. Now all you have to do is turn it front to back from time to time. Who knew?

The first thing I realized when I got home and saw our wonderful new mattress installed on the bed frame was that we weren't going to be able to use the memory foam pad on top until I got some new sheets. Another thing that has changed about mattresses since the 1990s is that they're considerably thicker now.

Without the pad, the new mattress was a tad more firm than I found ideal, but it was still such an improvement over the old one that I could hardly stop marveling about it. On the rare occasions when my husband and I ended up sleeping at the same time, the old mattress used to crowd us together toward the middle because its structural integrity was so lacking. The new mattress, on the other hand, seems HUGE in comparison because it allows us to stay put on our own sides of the bed.

Today was the day I finally got the whole bed put back together. I'd shopped online until I found the best possible deal on extra-deep fitted sheet sets and the new ones arrived this afternoon. After a quick wash, I put the memory foam pad in place, made the bed with the new sheets, and somehow ended up lying down and reading for a couple of hours, just to test things out. It was delightful.

I haven't had a moment's regret about buying the mattress. We really owed it to ourselves and our health to get a mattress that didn't try to cripple us on a nightly basis.

Now I think I'm going to have to go lie down and read some more, just to make sure I've thoroughly tested it out.

Today I woke up to this:

It seemed silly and unnecessary to put myself through all the shoveling and sliding it would have taken to get to work considering that my entire job right now is Internet-based. Thus, I canceled my two morning meetings and set up the laptop in the living room.

As you can see, we still have not obtained any real dining chairs.

Dr. Jones spent all day either scampering loudly around the house or hanging out where he could snag my chair whenever I happened to get up. I finally put a pillow on another chair to give him another option, but he still preferred to snipe my spot.

Trillian alternated between staring gravely out the window and being Jones' fellow scamperer.

I could have had a cat-free day in my home office, but it's chillier up there than it is in the living room. However, I spent the whole day wearing pajamas, slippers and a fluffy robe, so I might have been warm enough.

The snow isn't supposed to stop until tomorrow morning, so I don't feel there's any hurry in getting the driveway shoveled. We have food, heat, Internet access and cuddly cats. That's all we need for now.

I'd been threatening to do this for a while, but early this week I finally called up and cancelled our cable television service. The cost had crept up to $92 a month (not including taxes), which was absolutely not worth it for the amount of time we spend watching TV.

We were already streaming Netflix through our Wii, but we decided to go ahead and buy a Roku so we could also stream HuluPlus and various other sites. Then we bought a digital antenna for watching broadcast television. It turns out that a lot of the network shows we like can't be streamed to the TV, so we're currently handling that with a combination of:

• Watching TV shows when they're actually broadcast, just like a savage!
• Streaming them to the computer after they're broadcast, and
• Investigating work-arounds.

Some observations so far:

• Who knew there were so many public television stations broadcast in our area? We can watch "Antiques Roadshow" pretty much any time of the day or night.
• The picture quality of most of the HD broadcast channels is phenomenal. The stuff on Netflix and Hulu looks pretty darned good as well.
• We have had no problems whatsoever when it comes to streaming speed and quality. I went ahead and squandered $20 of our bill savings by bumping up our internet speed, but I'm not completely convinced that was necessary.
• Making an "appointment" to watch our favorite shows is actually kind of nice. It gives me an excuse to stay home, cook dinner and hang out with the hubby.

There are definitely a few inconveniences associated with getting our shows this way, but I think we'll make up for it by watching more movies and enriching our brains with public TV fare when nothing else is on. Frankly, I don't think that the firehose of cable TV programming to which we used to have access was all that desirable.

And then there's that big stack of books I have waiting…

Photo credit: Alyson Hurt

I really appreciated all the supportive comments I received on my last post, including on Facebook. Heck, people even offered to hook me up with free massages, which was above and beyond, I think.

I've finally relaxed on my own, helped along by a nice Planter's Punch at dinner on Sunday night. And no, I'm not drowning my sorrows–that's the only drink I've had this whole time.

Fancy umbrellas make everything better.

I'm now back at work and trying to juggle obituary writing and memorial fund planning, all while taking calls from my dad and attempting to convince him that there's no hurry in getting his house on the market. However, he's not one for sitting still so I suppose it won't hurt for him to start cleaning things out.

I've been very pleased by the way my dad's friends have stepped forward. One couple drove 80 miles each way on Sunday to bring him a casserole and other homemade goodies. He's been getting lots of phone calls and I imagine the cards will start to arrive soon if they haven't already.

My husband has been great as well. Just yesterday he proposed that he would take over our housecleaning chores for the time being. I'll have to show him the ropes, but that's a small price to pay to get out of scrubbing toilets and mopping floors.

So thanks again, everyone. You're good people.

I spent most of New Year's Day 2011 at the bedside of my dying stepmother, trying to comfort my dad as best I could. My husband came to the hospital around 3:00 p.m. and we left to get food and run some errands. She died about a half hour later.

So you might say there's nowhere to go but up at this point.

Early in the week I was still trying to shake off the lingering effects of the intestinal bug from the previous week and nurse my husband through the same illness when it got him.

Once I'd mostly recovered, I started helping my dad clear out the small commercial building he and my stepmother had just sold. In the process, I discovered that my dad was going to need a lot of help with day-to-day things like learning to make coffee and run the dishwasher.

He asked me to go through their mail and figure out what bills needed to be paid, which turned out to be a two-day process that eventually involved writing more than 25 checks and dropping off property tax payments at the County Courthouse on their due date of December 31st.

My dad handled things with the funeral home, but today I'm going to go over and help him notify friends and write an obituary. There won't be a funeral, per my stepmother's wishes.

There's going to be so much to do. I know my dad wants to sell their house and move into an apartment. He still runs a small business and he'll need a lot of help with that. It's not an exaggeration to say that my stepmother was his right hand.

Today I'm just exhausted. I got a reasonable amount of sleep, but I have a tension headache that won't go away. I wish I could afford a massage because I really need one.

From here on out, I'm just going to have to keep my schedule pretty open and hope for the best. And try to get in a nap whenever I can.