that'll do pig, that'll do

where to begin... hmm... last weekend we made some progress on the interior of the house. ian finished skip-troweling + painting the main level + top level staircase, along with the main floor landing. he has to cut in the paint sometime this week, but that won't take long. i primed a tiny crawl-space storage area we have. its an interesting feature of the house... on the top floor, there is a pull down "drawbridge" type ladder that accesses a storage space. we don't use our tiny attic, so this is very handy. i need to finish painting it sometime this week as well. we're going to be installing a cedar ceiling in there too. once all of that is finished, i need to move all of my crap back into that space so we can install the flooring in the hallway/spareroom. no photos yet... painted walls aren't very exciting :) i'll wait until the floor is down and the new doors are in.

on saturday we visited a few nurseries to plan the landscaping of the back yard. looking out on the deck, we have a chain link fence to the right that offers no privacy, so we need to figure out a solution for that. we've got a few ideas, and will make a trip back out there [possibly tomorrow night?] to load up the truck with some new plants/trees/shrubs. i love working in the yard, so i'm looking forward to that on saturday.

black cat got another steroid shot last week... thursday i think. she was doing well... but still not eating alot. she had 2 seizures a few days before getting the shot. the vet thinks the cancer had spread and that she had a tumor in her brain, which was causing neurological problems. he kept stressing that she wasn't in pain, but the steroid shot would help. which it did, for a little while. on monday she was up and about... she made her way down the stairs to find me in my office and curled up on my lap for a bit. she went over to sniff sydney while she was sleeping which was really cute. she slept most of the day.



that evening after dinner, i came downstairs to find her sitting on a rug next to the washing machine. something seemed "off"... and i realize she didn't have the energy to make it upstairs. i brought her upstairs and tried to get her to eat... and thats when we knew. it wasn't going to be much longer. i won't go into details, but it was a sad thing to watch her getting weaker. the other odd thing was tan cat's reaction. they get along wonderfully, but he started coming over to hiss at black cat. and tan cat is not a hisser. i guess that was another sign. we kept black cat on the couch with us for a few hours to watch over her. then, we brought her upstairs and made a little blanket bed for her on the floor. she made a few little meows thru the night, but around 3:30 woke us up, and we were there to take care of her. it was horribly sad and heartbreaking. i don't know what was worse... being there watching our cat die, or burying her in the yard the next day. i am just so tired of death and losing people (things/animals/whatever) close to me.

i've thrown myself into another knitting project to occupy my mind. i'm sure going to the gym would be more productive, but one step at a time. i've started on a cropped cabled wrap sweater... i can't find any photos of it online, since the pattern is from vogue knitting 2005, but its so cute. here's the ravelry link. its a great pattern thats keeping my interest, and its coming along so quickly. i'm using valley yarn's longmeadow yarn which is perfect for cabling work. its so squishy :)



its an easy cable pattern to memorize, which makes it great tv knitting. last night we threw in a movie instead. i haven't seen babe in years, and i forgot how much i loved that movie. its so sweet, and a little sad, but it was a good movie to watch after losing black cat. everyone should go and rent it this weekend. it can do wonders.

plan b

or, why we had to build a deck instead of a patio. frustration. so, back in may we started our backyard patio. after a long weekend of mixing and pouring the concrete pavers, we waited for another sunny weekend. and waited, and waited. during that time, as the rain washed away some of the leveled yard, we noticed little holes appearing, that became a little bigger. we started to dig a little, then a little more, and realized we either had some mole holes or gophers or something like that. whatever it was, we realized that building a patio on top of that may not be the smartest idea. so we threw some smoke bomb type things down the holes and started planning "plan b".



plan b is now a low slung deck. last weekend, we started framing the deck and preparing the site. ian started digging postholes while i slowly transported the existing patio. it seemed like such a waste of time and money to just put the deck over it, so we decided to move it to the side of the house. our house is built into a hill, and we have stairs on the side of the house, going from the front of the house, down to the back yard. at the base, there is poured concrete that we would need to replace anyways. now, it has a nice cobblestone paved landing, which houses our garbage cans nicely.



we had wonderful weather this weekend, so we were back to work saturday morning [after our sad vet trip :( .] by the end of the day saturday, we had all of the decking laid. ian would measure and cut the pieces, while i nail-gunned them into place. i only had one mishap and shot a nail across the deck and hit the firepit. thank god ian and sydney were not in the firing path! i need to work on my angle-shooting skills :) this is what we had by the end of the day:



on sunday, ian finished the trim, and trimmed off the ends of the deck sticking past the firepit side. we really need to figure out our landscaping beside the deck tho. it looks a little barren. we'd like some sort of privacy along the chain link side too. i'll need to get some finished deck photos sometime this week. we have moved the grill out back and have definite plans for outdoor dining this week. is it wrong that i want to buy a little leash for black cat and bring her outside to enjoy the sun?

for the knitterly readers, ugh... another plan b. a few months ago, i started knitting a picovoli/tivoli by grumperina. i finished it a week or so ago, and went to try it on. the damn fabric is biasing. which i guess on a normal top might not be so noticeable, but with the highlight of this top being the increase/decrease seams, its way too obvious. at least to me.



from the comments i've received, its because of this type of yarn, being knit in the round in stockinette. its a wonderful finished fabric, but i think this is going to need a plan b of its own. probably another summer type tank, NOT knit in the round. maybe the tuxedo tank from interweave knits? this one makes the pattern actually look cool, plus her hair is totally rockin'.

time for me to go check on black cat and see if i can coax her to eat some food. its gonna be a long sad week.

enough

i don't even know where to start. last weekend we had some "issues" with the patio. the easiest thing to do was scrap the patio and start over. we've made major progress since then [a completed deck!], but i'll save that post for later this week. i need to charge the camera and all that stuff. plus, i'm just not in the mood, i've got other things occupying my mind.

a few months ago, we noticed that something was wrong with black cat. she wasn't jumping up on things as much as she used to and was being a little more affectionate than normal. she's not much of a lap cat, but she started wanted to cuddle on the couch with us, or sleep right next to me when going to bed. we thought maybe it was her aging, as she would be turning 9 in september. then we realized she was slowly losing weight, and was getting a little bony, even tho she was eating. i got her into the vet on wednesday and they ran the standard blood tests. no feline leukemia, no feline hiv, no diabetes or kidney problems, but a little anemic. based on her weight loss [she went from 8,8 to 6,3! she's so tiny!], the vet decided to run some more blood tests, and sent us home with some antibiotics.

on friday i got the results. after finding that she had something abnormal with her white cells, the blood was sent to a pathologist. black cat has leukemia. [the cancer, not the cat virus]. and there's nothing we can do. we took her into the vet on saturday to get a steroid shot, which *might* improve her quality of life. he's hoping it will stimulate her appetite so she will get some energy back. the vet is giving her anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks.

i've had enough bad news :(

this side down.

its been a busy week, as usual, but i figured i was taking a break to post photos to flickr, i may as well write about them. first of all... july?? how is it july already? my birthday was just last week, wasn't it? sigh.

in spite of everything thats been going on in our personal lives, we've been wanting to keep busy. busy-ness is a good distraction. ian has been a real trouper and is getting a lot done on the stairwell. we have a 3 floor house [plus basement] so we have a 2 level stairwell [main floor to top; main floor to bottom] and each has a landing in the middle. right now we're focusing on the top stairwell so we can finish putting the floor down in the spare room and landing. confused yet? last year when we remodeled the master bedroom, we stopped the flooring at the doorway and have been patiently waiting since then to finish it. its going to be a continuous floor over the 2 bedrooms and hallway. the floor was really gross before moving in:





the stairwell wasn't in much better shape:




those lumpy patches on the wall? we found out those were cereal box patches. no wonder the wall was all wobbly and squishy feeling.

over the past few days, ian has given up going to the gym after work to patch the stairwell and skim coat it. talk about dedication!





we need to re-drywall the ceiling on the top floor hallway before we can do anymore drywall finishing. if all goes well, we can get this done over the next few days [especially if the forecast calls for rain], and have it skip-trowelled and painted soon. i'm just anxious to get the extra flooring out of walk-in closet and installed in the hallway/spare room.

and while we'd like to finish up the hallway, we're praying for no rain this weekend so we can finally get back to work on the patio, but the forecast isn't looking good so far. its getting frustrating waiting for a full day of sunshine to finish it. more than likely we'll have to put in a 12 hour day on the next sunny day just "in case". yay!

and on a completely unrelated and totally embarrassing [for me] note... haim and "feldog" share the news that they were both molested/raped by a friend of feldmans??? hmm... any thoughts on this one? sadly, probably no, because i highly doubt anyone else watches this show. its like watching a train wreck, but highly entertaining. ok, not really entertaining....