May. 07, 2008

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Fancy New Blog!! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:41 am

Are you still here? You know I have a fancy new site, but it appears that your browser still has the old one in cache. Just click here and you’ll be redirected to the improved version of my blog.

Or if you’re using a bookmark, you need to add a new one that looks more like this: graceuncensored.com/WordPress. That is all.



May. 06, 2008

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tonight, late at night, here on the couch.. [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:01 pm

ok i guess it’s not that late; it’s 10:44 p.m. but it feels like about one a.m. because of all the exertion today.

i was looking forward to going to mom and dad’s house to help pack instead of staying here and painting, but now i long to paint instead.

i guess what i really long for is the end of this whole moving thing.

i have a photo of the newly-installed windows but i don’t have the strength to go into the office and get the jump drive and plug it into this computer and select the photos and reduce their size on photoshop and upload them. at the moment.

mollie is sprawled out on the floor and that looks mighty good to me.

yesterday the MRI was an interesting experience. i had to lie down on this slab and i guess there wasn’t much padding on it because it took about a half hour and when i got up the back pain was a little bit excruciating. during the MRI the guy, vincent, put a cloth over my eyes so i wouldn’t get FREAKED OUT inside the MRI machine. he slid me into the machine, but i wasn’t totally encased; my feet were outside of it. he gave me headphones and asked me what kind of music i wanted to listen to and i said something relaxing. he went into the other room and turned on the music and it was VERY LOUD. he talked to me through the headphones, or maybe through a speaker in the MRI, i couldn’t tell, and he turned the music down a little. and then he said the MRI was going to start and it’d be loud and he would take several pictures.

YES IT WAS VERY VERY LOUD. i guess the closest thing i can think of is a really loud ambulance going by, only it’s going on in your ears. he did five images, and each took from three minutes to 3:45. except for the RIDICULOUSLY LOUD NOISE, it was kind of relaxing because at least i wasn’t painting anything.

in between the imaging the soothing music came on, which seemed a little bit pointless to me.

i didn’t get claustrophobic luckily, except at first i was afraid that i was breathing too deeply and then i felt i shouldn’t breathe so much which of course made me felt like i COULDN’T CATCH MY BREATH. but after a couple of images it was fine.

before it started victor had me fill out a form asking if i was claustrophobic (what if i had been?), and all kinds of questions about things that i might potentially have in my body, like ear implants or wires in my blood vessels or old bullets lodged in my body somewhere. i wish i could remember more of them, because i tried to imagine somebody having them all, and how their body would probably clang when they walked, like the tin man.

when it was over, victor gave me a copy of the MRI results and it was this HUGE folder, i’d guess it was 11x14 at least. he said that kevin had gotten his results on a disc, but that mine were on these ridiculously huge negatives because we have different doctors.

hmm.

i keep staying up tonight waiting for the results of the indiana primary to dribble in, but i just can’t bear it anymore.

lots and lots of people appeared to have watched my obama video today, maybe because of the primaries?

ok ok ok goodnight goodnight goodnight.

grace hughes

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ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:25 pm

see how crazy things are around here, i totally forgot to post that exciting announcement!

no, the alumnus of the year isn’t me. it’s KEVIN. the very first college he went to called him last week to say that he was “head and shoulders” above all the other alums they were considering for the distinction.

kevin claims he was picked because he’s one of the few who aren’t in prison. i wonder if he’s arrested any of them over the years?

we’re going up to northern illinois on friday so he can get his plaque or trophy which hopefully comes with a large box of chocolates so we’ll be there for the college commencement. i don’t believe i’ve ever been to a college commencement. i graduated in december instead of in the spring and didn’t feel like going back to the U of I in champaign to go to the graduation ceremony. i don’t know why i didn’t attend amy’s graduation; i was probably living in austin, but that’s not a very good reason.

so we’ll be spending the night with kevin’s parents on friday which will be lovely because we haven’t seen them in a very long time.

of course we have plenty of free time for galavanting all around the state.

but all the work will get done. we had lots of help on sunday, and soon i will show you some of that hard work.

that’s all for this moment,

busy grace.


May. 03, 2008

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today, saturday... [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:32 pm
giving the room a second coat of edging was fine. it took about an hour. no problem. but then i spent 15 minutes using the roller, which went really fast, but then i was in severe pain for a few hours afterwards. randy and i went to target right after i stopped rolling and all i wanted to do was lie down on the floor and writhe in agony.

christine said “you’re going to have to have surgery.”

i’d rather not.

for one thing, besides the fact that i talk to so many people whose backs are now completely messed up because of having surgery...if i had it, i’d have to sleep on my stomach while recovering. i can’t sleep on my stomach.

oh, and also - WE’RE MOVING. no time for any of this whole back stuff. no time.

at one point today we were finishing putting in the new piece of flooring and heard a little “meow.” poor winnie had decided to jump down into the hole when no one was looking, and when the flooring was screwed in there was just a little crack that the kitty could peer through.

kevin had to climb into the crawl space under the pantry and rescue the cat. i took some photos of it, because it seemed funny to me. i was also glad i didn’t have to crawl down into that crawl space because i’d probably have gotten trapped and there we’d be, me and winnie.

i really have to go to bed now.

ok then,

saturday night grace.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 9:34 am

today is dad’s birthday; we were going to join him and mom for lunch at a restaurant in the little town of salisbury, but we had too much to do. hopefully they’ll have a lovely time; the Official Birthday Celebration will be tomorrow night.

dad wanted to come over to our house for cake after going out to dinner, but because of the lack of seating plus the giant hole in the wall, we’re going to have to relocate to amy and jim’s house, where their dining room table has room for TWENTY PEOPLE around it.

instead of sitting around on the floor here.

i really REALLY have to paint now.

grace.

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"it’s just a little hole in the wall" [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:59 am
you think of a hole in the wall as a divey little restaurant that serves unexpectedly great food, or an intimate bar that not a lot of people know about.

around here, it is an actual HOLE IN THE WALL.

not a little hole, a BIG hole.

on wednesday afternoon kevin decided that since the weather was nice and because it needs to be done, it was time to replace two of our three living room windows. the two windows were right next to each other.



this is what it looked like after the windows were ripped out.



and here’s the view from the outside.



and this is after we’d tidied it up a bit.





because these windows that had been installed when the house was built were cheap and crappy, they leaked, causing the floor underneath to rot.



and because our huge white couch was right next to the window, we had to move it. part of it is now in the garage, and another section of it is piled on yet another section in the living.

what did this mean for mollie? TREATS, of course! kevin took a picture of mollie gobbling up the many dog treats, nuts, and random stuff that had collected under the couch.



here’s a closeup of the carpeting all peeled back.



when i got home from working on wednesday, this is what it looked like, and still does.



and this is the disarray that is now one portion of the living room.



here’s the other part of the living room, where at least we have places to sit, even though it is stark and full of patched nail holes.



and to conclude today’s photo essay, here’s honey, queen of the move, happily stretched out on the big pile of couches.



on monday we’re both going in for MRIs. you’d think they’d give us a group family discount. (i finally went to the doctor on thursday and he took an xray of my back and there is almost no space between two of my lumbar vertabra. i take this as a very bad sign of what may be to come regarding my back).

mom came over to help me paint yesterday, dressed fashionably as usual. she wore one of dad’s old shirts over her nice clothes, though, and she even took off her long dangly red earrings.

my hope for the weekend is that nobody ends up in the ER.

ok, i must paint.

saturday grace.



May. 01, 2008

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many more things [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:06 pm

finally FINALLY here are some photos of the roof work on saturday.



jim was sawing and sawing the jagged edge of roof. because he was crouched like this for quite a few hours, i think he was pretty stiff and sore when he finished. and of course he finished, because he’s jim.



for a while randy was having a great time up there on the roof.





but then, as i wrote earlier in the week, randy unfortunately SMASHED his thumb with the hammer and now the roof is covered with his blood. ouch.

meanwhile, in the garden, honey and mollie were having a stand off.



the animals love it when people are outside; they love to cavort all around whoever is out there.

that night, though, mollie was just as happy. kevin emptied the bowl of nuts from the coffee table in order to pack the bowl that they were in. he lined up a bunch of walnuts along the edge of the table, and it took almost all day for mollie to pay attention to the fact that they were there.

but when she found out, she went to work. i watched her as she selected a nut, cracked it open, and at the contents. she kept going back to the table to get another nut, and i wished i’d had the energy to find the video camera and tape it, because it was quite entertaining.

here she is, trying to dig out every last nut crumb.


after the nuts were all gone and the shells were littered all over the carpet, she had to keep sniffing the table, hoping that just one more nut would magically appear.



many many more things happened today, moving and other-wise, but i think i need to take a break right now.

these things include both me and kevin making appointments to get MRIs next week. you’d think they’d give us a group family discount.

ok then,

grace

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