Wordless Wednesdays

Eight years

It's been eight years since I lost my dad.

As I've posted before, I like to leave a little bit of him everywhere I go. Fortunately, my Aunt Nancy gave me a little of him to take with me while we were traveling in Australia and New Zealand.

This week I'm planning to take him to two places that he loved: Martinak and Adkins Arboretum.

Here are a few of the places where I left dad on vacation:

Mount Maunganui, New Zealand

Daintree Rainforest, QLD, Australia

Hobbiton, Matamata, New Zealand

Woodlyn Park, Waitomo, New Zealand

Bay View, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand

Coolangatta, QLD, Australia

Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday Islands, QLD, Australia

I've left dad in six countries so far: USA, Canada, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Australia, and New Zealand. He has visited many more countries. He traveled extensively through France with Nancy and I, then went to a number of other countries while Nancy was on her way back to Australia.

It's my goal to leave a little bit of dad on each continent. Two down, five to go.

Week in photos

Free range afternoon

Mouse always has his eye on me

Jay has taken up juicing. Apparently all the guys in his firehouse are doing it? The first few rounds did not go well. I'm thinking that recipes are there for a reason.

Our septic tank runneth over and started backing up into the downstairs shower. Talk about gross. So we had to get our tank pumped and the line flushed. Farewell $460, I will miss you!

Gorgeous church  outside of Chestertown. My friend Christina is thinking of getting married there next year. I had to go to our Chester River Hospital last week to train my vacation back up. Afterwards, Christina took me on a tour of Kent County. We also visited her parents' gorgeous home in Rock Hall, where we had a few glasses of wine on the porch. Her mom also made some heavenly guacamole. It was a nice visit!

This beautiful tree on the church grounds is 400 years old

Marker from the tree

Jay hard at work on chicken coop #2. It will comfortably house our entire flock!

Mouse was about to attack Jay, so he gave him a good chase around the yard

Mom visited for a Scentsy party over the weekend

She loves her grandpeeps

And she brought me some flowers for my birthday

After mom left on Sunday, I went to Martinak for a long walk and some photos. I was taking pictures of this cherry tree sapling when this tiger swallowtail came out of NOWHERE and landed on the branch. It's not nearly warm enough for butterflies to be making an appearance. It reminded me of my dad. Maybe this was his way of saying hi. 

Watts Creek... kayakers enjoying the spring day

More cherry blooms

An osprey left its nest after I got too close. :(

Early spring at Martinak

Before and After

We are nearly done. I am beyond exhausted and hurt all over.

There was a mad rush to get everything done this weekend - getting the porch painted to improve curb appeal, straightening the yard, painting trim in the house, straightening, dusting, sweeping, mopping, shining, staging. You would not believe how filthy the house was - and I feel like we just cleaned it! Constant construction = constant dirt and dust. Jay had to work yesterday, so I busted my ass from the time I got up to the time I crawled into bed. We had hoped to finish the stairs, but at 10 pm last night, I gave up. The steps still needed to be sanded before we stain and poly them and there was no way I had another 2 hours in me. Overall, we spent 51 man hours from Friday through Sunday working on our project. Jay spent 21 hours between Friday and Saturday, I spent 27 hours between Friday and Sunday, and my girlfriend Angela came over and helped us paint for about 3 hours on Saturday.

Why the mad rush? Our house is being appraised today for refinancing. When my dad died, I inherited a substantial sum of money. However, since he wasn't planning on dying anytime soon, the majority of the money was in an IRA. I don't think he knew much about how IRA's work, because the money that he had inherited from my grandparents was all in cash, which he converted to the IRA. Since I wasn't a surviving spouse, nor of retirement age, I took a HUGE hit on taxes, which left me with less than half of the original amount. I won't lie - I spent about half of the remainder on a ring to wear in my dad's memory, furnishing my Odenton apartment, paying the disparity in rent between what I was putting in to make up for my ex not making much money, Ann Taylor clothes for work (and good makeup & skincare products) and took some nice vacations with the ex (which was also mostly on my dime). The rest of the money went to dumpster rental and some emergency repairs with the house, mainly the roof and porch to the tune of $30,000. By the time I met Jay, most of the money was gone - so I had to take out a home equity line of credit for the actual rehab project. And of course aforementioned rehab project ended up taking more time and costing way more than what I took out from the HELOC. So that is the long story short of why we are refinancing. Once the new conventional mortgage is in place, we will be saving almost $500 a month - or more, if the appraiser gives us a better LTV (loan to value).

Add all of this work to the Atkins diet that I started last Wednesday? My body is screaming for more nourishment. I probably should have eaten more this weekend, but we were so busy. The thing that I've noticed about Atkins is that I'm not as hungry, and things with the least number of carbs suddenly tastes ultra sweet. We had green beans on Saturday and they tasted sugary to me. Weird! So that's going pretty well, but I need to force myself to eat more often. Today is day six and I feel pretty shaky this morning. I'm sure it's because I didn't eat enough this weekend and I put my body through hell.

Unfortunately I don't have photos of every room for the before comparison.

So, without further ado... I give you the final comparison (and some in-between) photos:

Not too shabby, eh? :)