Saying goodbye.

Just thinking about what I'm going to say is causing me to tear up and see things all blurry. Ugh. My dad passed away on October 14, 2008. It was much more sudden than any of us expected. We all knew he had been sick for about six months, but the final decline only took a day or two.

Vasculitis is a chronic condition, and he was going to battle flare-ups for the rest of his life. On his third flare-up battle, he got a massive infection and it basically shut everything down. He was in bad shape at the very end and we made it to his bedside just in time to shut off the life support machines. It was awful to see him in that condition—the ventilator artificially pumping his lungs full of air—it was just his body at that point, not my dad.

I think I get most upset when I think of all the things that he won't get to do with Ava. He was never comfortable around her as a baby—during their visit in July we had to force him to sit down and hold her. Make no mistake, he thought she was an angel, I think he was just nervous about hurting her or not keeping her content. As I look back on my relationship with my dad, it was the years between toddler and kindergarten that I remember most fondly. We would roughhouse and sing songs and laugh a lot. I was beyond the fragile baby stage and too young for school, maybe things were just so much more innocent at that stage. After that though, Dad worked a lot. It seemed like he was only there for us financially; family vacations consisted of Mom, me and Bob, and usually included a soccer tournament. Anyway, I'm not upset about my own relationship with him... it's that Ava is turning into a little person, and my dad is missing it.

Just a quickie

Ava's second tooth popped through on Saturday.
Her 6 month birthday was yesterday and we celebrated by driving 1.75 hours each way to our nearest Home Depot to price stuff for our house.
My dad is doing worse, so we might be headed down to the Bay Area later this week.

Happy Monday!

The ramblings of an insomniac.

Ava is cutting her second tooth. It made the hours at home pretty interesting yesterday. She always seems to behave better when we're out; I think it's because she gets distracted by all the new things happening around her. At home, she just gets bored with me and her toys. Two days ago, my back pain started again, the same back pain that put me out of commission and started early labor a month before Ava was born. It's a bit better now, but it is still difficult to lug around a 17-pound teething 6-month old. (Yes! She'll be 6 months old on Sunday!!!)

My dad is back in the hospital again. This is the third time since Ava was born. They say he's got vasculitis, but he's not responding to the typical vasculitis treatment: chemo. (Vasculitis is not a cancer, but chemo is the recommended treatment.) Apparently it's a chronic condition and he'll have to deal with flare-ups until it eventually gets him. It has now caused a pulmonary embolism--a blood clot in the lung--which could move and cause stroke, heart attack, etc. They have put him on blood thinners and expect to do some kind of surgery in a few days. I don't watch the show "House," but I feel like my dad's case may be perfect for an episode plot.

We got the appraisal for our project back earlier this week... it came back $35,000 to $100,000 less than we thought it might appraise for. It just figures that our construction project would be appraised on the worst financial week since the Great Depression. Anyway, we found a way of scraping $30,000 of stuff from our construction costs, and that may make things a bit better. Still, our monthly payments may be too high and the bank may decide to not give us anything. If we wait until Spring to start this, could things be worse? If they do get better, could they be significantly better or will we have wasted another 6 months? It's such a game and I'm really tired of playing it.

I'm really tired in general, but I can't sleep. My back hurts, my allergies are giving me problems, I can't stop thinking about my dad, SIDS, illegal street races, the dumb song playing over and over in my head, PG&E bills, our house, the cardigan I'm crocheting for Ava and 37 other craft projects in the works... I could go on...

First tooth!

At 5 months and 6 days old, Ava has cut her first tooth. It's the bottom front left one, and it came in without too much of a problem. We dealt with daily fussiness and discomfort with her gas, and this tooth hasn't been much worse than that.

Well, we're on our way out the door... Headed down to the Bay Area again for another wedding. I'll have more to post when we get back, I'm sure.
:)

a fresh new look

This is my new haircut. Andy says it reminds him of my hair when we first started dating.

You may notice the blog has a new look, too. I felt that the old look was hard to read and it was difficult to tell when one post ended and the next began. I hope it doesn't throw you off too much. :)

We applied for our loan yesterday. (sob sob)

If we had been able to build this house 2 years ago, it probably would have cost $100,000 less. Since we started the whole process, materials costs have gone way up and property values have dropped; not a good combination when building a house.

As the bank lady was looking through all of our numbers, she didn't have a really positive look on her face. I knew that the number that we gave her for the estimated cost of building the house was higher than we expected (much higher, in fact) but she said she'd have the people upstairs look at it and see if they'd recommend it for approval. Thank goodness we have "premium" credit scores and hardly any debt... if we had any debt besides the home loan, we'd be over the 55% debt to income ratio, and they wouldn't approve the loan. Then we'd really be back at square one.

As it is, we're looking at areas to cut back our estimated construction costs. We can't really cut back the major costs, such as all the work for the foundation, septic and water systems and I'm not willing to sacrifice the radiant heating system. It looks like we'll have to tighten our belts in places like cabinetry, tile, trim and appliances.

We'll figure it out even if we have to live in an unpainted (but warm and dry) shell of a house for awhile.

On turning 30...

About 2 years ago, it seemed to me that just about every milestone birthday had some traditional event that went with it:
16= sweet sixteen party
18= buy yourself a lottery ticket
21= go out drinking
25= rent a car without paying extra fees
...but 30 was totally lacking. I figure that's mostly due to the fact that by the time most people turn 30 they are married with kids and partying is kind of out of the question. Last week I thought about how different my 30th birthday celebration was going to be from some of my other friends. They had adult dinners at fancy restaurants and I had friends over for a casual kid-friendly barbecue. Not that either party is better than the other, they're just different. (Ha. If our regular gang of friends were to go out for an adult dinner at a nice restaurant, we'd employ just about every babysitter in Humboldt County.)

I needed some sort of rite of passage activity, so I decided to chop my hair off and donate it. I've done it before, and I'm not particularly attached to my hair, so I think I'll do it every 10 years on my birthday. I don't have any pics of the new 'do yet, but I'll post one soon.

30's not so bad. I've decided to start wearing makeup. (We'll see how long that lasts!)