Happy Anniversary...a little late.

Well Dean and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary on Saturday. It's crazy to think that we have been married eleven years. We celebrated by painting the powder room, painting the foyer and stairwell, watching Tennessee football on the new red couches, buying a king size mattress set (couldn't decide on a bedroom suit), and eating yummy leftovers. I know to most people that's not really flashy or exciting, but to see the house coming together, and all our hard work paying off, it is exciting. And we did get to spend the whole weekend together.

I love you Dean! Thanks for giving me my red couches that I have coveted for such a long time!!

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

We have so many pictures to post and rooms to show -- the house is really starting to come together -- but I wanted to get this picture up so you can see what we've been working on in the dining room. Jeni saw in Martha Stweart Living how to paint a harlequin pattern on the wall. Jeni decided to do the same color for the different diamonds, just one in a very flat eggshell paint and the other in a high gloss paint for contrast. Well, after a lot of measuring, drawing, taping, careful painting, self doubt, and second quessing, the tape came off and the walls look great. The effect can be very bold or very subtle depending on how the light hits it. It was worth all the energy it took. Just one more downstairs room to go!

Painting continues

The painting downstairs continues. It is quickly becomes the Adventures of Jeni and O.C.Dean. Jeni wanted to paint a harlequin diamond pattern in the dining room, but that required me to draw the diamond pattern on our freshly (and beautifully) painted walls. While the walls are really starting to come together and look so amazing, this is really feeding into my obsessive compulsiveness. Once the walls are done (hopefully tonight, if I ever finish taping off), we'll post pictures step-by-step.

Rambling

I don't know why I started writing posts about work ... maybe because that's where I feel like I'm spending all my time. We've been making some changes in the office and we've been busy, which is good because patients=paycheck, but other stuff just keeps piling up. You end up feeling like you're walking on a fast treadmill -- time is passing but you're not covering any ground.

At home, we painted our living room. I'll try to get a good picture up soon. The color was so hard to pick (out first choice ended up looking like baby poop on the wall...) but it looks so good in there now. I'm definitely ready for the weekend so we can get some things done. We have the entire season of all three Law & Orders taped and unwatched, plus about four episodes of Nip/Tuck, Home Makeover, Gray's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives just waiting for me on the DV-R ... a blessing and a curse.

The thing is, there are some things, like TV and McDonald's and Coke, that you know you should have a lot less of, but you want (and sometimes crave) a lot more of. I really wanted to take Monday off this week and just sit around watching TV, but then there's this work thing, and people who expect money ... so I sit at my desk between patients and ramble on this blog, because I just don't want to do the reports that are staring at me right now.

But the whole point of this was -- watch for pictures of the newly painted living room.

Walking on water

Check out this video. It's very cool of these people running across "water" ... ok, it's a mix of cornstarch and water (and in Spanish, which there's something about Mexican TV that is inherently funny). It's very cool and worth the three minutes to watch.

Pain scale

Patients can be very funny in their responses. When I first check a patient, I will feel motion in their spine and check for tenderness or pain. If there is tenderness/pain, I will have them rate it from 0 (no pain) to 10 (worst pain imaginable). Some patients will give me the "it's not so bad ... maybe an 8" while others give me "oh, that's tender, that's the spot" but when I ask for a number, they say "no pain." I used to ask myself if maybe I needed to say it differently, but I've realized there is no other way to say it and just chuckle to myself now.

A touch of irony

Watch what you say, because you never know who's sitting beside you. I had two patients in the office, one in a massage chair getting some muscle work done, another was finished and just talking to some of the staff. The guy who was finished was talking (just to talk) about this and that, and the subject rolled to bootlegging and moonshine (don't ask me why ... I've stopped trying to get them to keep conversations more office appropriate...) and the guy says "my grandfather was one of the biggest bootleggers in Kershaw County." The whole time this conversation is going on, I'm waiting for the other patient to look up or chuckle -- he's an ATF officer. He never said anything, but it made me think of an episode of Weeds.

Leaf Peeping

Dean and I were fortunate enough to go the Smoky Mountains with Dean's parents this past weekend. We had a wonderful time. I know we missed peak leaf peeping time by a couple of weeks, but the fall colors were breathtaking. It sort of made me miss the mountains, but that only lasted a few minutes. When my teeth started chattering during taking this pictures, marked the end of my nostalgia.

The nieces and nephews

On Sunday, we were able to meet up the Doug's for brunch at the Italian Market and Grill. Here is a picture of our nieces and nephews. (L-R Tommy, Noah, Evan, Sarah, and Amy) Aren't they all just too stinkin' cute????

Sisterly Love

Personally I think this is one of the most beautiful pictures I've ever seen. Sarah's eyes just draw me into the pictures. And just the little bit of blue from Amy's eyes is so sweet.

Atomictumor

I've been catching up on the horrible ordeal going on over at Atomictumor and have gotten so absorbed in GAC's fight for her life that I'm getting behind on my work. (Go back to the archives and start from Nov. 1 to understand what's going on.) I so hope she pulls through ... it's heartbreaking to read, but I can't look away now.

Bathroom humor

A funny thing happened to me on the way back from Gatlinburg this weekend. We had just crossed into South Carolina and we stopped for gas and bathroom breaks. As I'm pumping gas, I realize just how bad I have to pee (why is it the closer you get to a bathroom, the worse you have to go?). So after I finish pumping the gas, I hurry to the bathroom and find an open urinal. Then suddenly I hear a woman's voice from the stall, "Oh ... Oh! I didn't hear you come in ... I'm cleaning! I'll just shut myself in here and you let me know when you're done." At that point, I had to go so bad, I wouldn't have cared if she was cleaning the urinal beside me.