Extreme Home Makeover

Lots has happened since my last post in September, i.e. we became home-owners! We have a wonderful home on the Austin eastside near MLK and Airport blvd. We love it! It kind of reminds me of the Kenwood neighborhood that I lived in near USC; lots of socioeconomic and racial diversity. Hopefully, I will be better about chronicling our adventures and attempts to love our neighbors in our east-side community in order to share it with you all through this blog (especially those of you who don't hear from us on a regular basis).

We were SUPER blessed to find such a great home, in just the right neighborhood, with such a huge space (mainly the huge living room to host lots of people and three bedrooms is nice for a family we hope to have soon). It fits us so well and we still think it is odd that it is ours, but it is. And for this, we are thankful.

We didn't start out crazy with the house projects, but we've been busy. We started small by painting our living room (blue-gray) and our kitchen (green tea). Austin and his step-dad built us a dining table (it just needs a final wax coat). And Austin put up a pot and pan rack, cookbook rack, and magnetic knife strip up for me for Christmas. These were the projects we started out with.

With the new year, we're finding ourselves deep in the middle of other, much larger DIY home projects:
1. We're putting in hardwood floors! We, mainly Austin and a mix and match group of friends depending on who was available any given day, pulled up the laminate, measured out and cut the boards, and nailed them in one by one. I'm sure there was a step or two that I skipped in that description. Right now we are hoping to have the living room and entryway nailed in, sanded, and sealed by Monday...wish us luck :)

    

2. We've started a compost pile! Right now its literally a pile. Austin will fence it in with some posts and chicken wire by the weekend (somewhere while he's working on our floors :). It's been interesting setting aside compostable things and taking it out to the pile. We just bought our first shovel and we've only been at it for a week, but this is going to be awesome!

3. We are going to garden! Really the hope is to invite our neighbors and friends to garden with us in our backyard as a sort of community garden...we'll see how that pans out. Our backyard is overgrown, but we have high hopes for the soil underneath the weeds, looks better than clay and looks dark and earthy (super technical gardening terms, I know).

I've started little egg cartons for seedlings and will transplant as they grow. I'm slowly working on clearing out the weeds and tilling the ground, so that come March it'll be ready for me to put our seedlings into the ground.

These are the happenings at the casa de Evers...all works in progress.

We'll keep you posted :)

Nightly Readings Aloud

My sweet husband is so helpful and without even knowing it. There are only a few months left until the end of the year and I am running out of time to accomplish my New Year Resolution. He didn't exactly plan to help me with it, he simply made a suggestion: "Let's read, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, together." And so we did. We spent the week ending our days with a few chapters here and there from the book. As we lay in bed, it was so fun to hear each other's voices and imagine the scenes of a story we both had read and seen many times before. Of course we read with voices as full of animation as possible, so that added to the entertainment.

I love having a husband who chose to enjoy nightly readings of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We haven't picked up the next book of the series yet, but we may. Even if we don't, it was a super fun week and I'm two steps closer to my goal.

Other readings: Same Kind of Different as Me is still on the list; it's just been tabled for the moment. Also I'm supposed to be reading Follow Me to Freedom by John Perkins and Shane Claiborne, but that's been off to a slow start.

I'll keep you posted.

Victory and Defeat all in One

Last night, I finished reading, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Victory! I found a rhythm where I was enjoying the story and flowed through the last 100 or so pages over two nights. Unfortunately the end was not as enjoyable as reading the story and watching the characters develop. It was one of those endings where the characters and the dialogue literally explains everything for you. For example, near the end the conversations include statements like, "Now I know why my voice never changed," or "Remember watanhouet?" Those details were well described and carried on throughout the story that I knew and remembered them as it all came together in the end. All that to say, one book down...three to go (see previous post).

My defeat came in the fact Austin, began and finished his 1000+ page book (and another short 120ish page Ayn Rand book) in less time than it took for me to finish the remaining 300+ pages of my book. For Austin, reading is a healthy part of his life and without it, he feels imbalanced. And he especially loves to read before bed. I, on the other hand, have not incorporated a habit of leisure reading into my daily routine and before bed, i'm getting ready to go to bed...not trying to read a book. So from my perspective reading before bed, has been "unhealthy" because I should be sleeping, if not trying to sleep. That was a funny conversation. I'm glad that my husband realizes that we are different and it is absolutely ok that our outlooks on reading are different. The simple remedy has been to start reading earlier, haha.

On to the next book: Same Kind of Different as Me. I'm pretty excited about this one because quite a few people I know have read it and loved it and I'm looking forward to agreeing with them :).

I'll keep you posted.

New Year Resolution Update

I have always admired people, like my husband, who can read and read and read. Austin has been able to get into a rhythm of reading where he has read and aims to read up to 20 books in a year. Since we've been married, he's already read at least 6 books. That rhythm has been much harder for me to find.

Earlier at the start of this year, I made a resolution to aim to read a meager, 4 books. I made it official by proclaiming it during our Friday morning group with my co-workers and patients at the skilled nursing facility I work at. It is written and posted on the speech therapy door along with other resolutions from patients and staff alike. Now that we are half way through the year, I must admit that I am about three-quarters of the way through one book. (Entering into the year, I was half way through a book, but it had taken me so long to get through that book, that I had lost interest and I can't even remember if I got all the way through it...needless to say, I am not counting it as one of my four).

Currently, I am reading, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I started reading this book upon recommendation of a friend around the time of our wedding; I even brought it on our honeymoon. I've laughed out loud many times and have found the whimsical stories of mischief and boyhood very entertaining, but it has taken me about 3 months to get this far. Lately, I have had a much better rhythm of reading that involves a nightly 10-20 pages before falling asleep.

Austin also is reading right now, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas; a much larger and difficult read as compared to my novel which I'm told has similarities to the movie Simon Birch. We are currently "racing" to see who will finish first - Austin has 700ish pages remaining and I, 240ish. Obviously we both are hoping and assuming that I will win this race. Telling others and now telling you, has been a motivating factor for me to at least attempt to "keep up" if not move ahead.

More updates to come...apparently at this rate, once every 2 months

To blog or not to blog

After a lot of inner-monologue about my writing ability, my lack of time to write in and update a blog, my OCD-ness about making sure people know exactly what I mean if I’m going to take the time to write out my thoughts…I’ve decided to blog. Already, I’ve read that beginning sentence 5 times (and to be 100% transparent this post has taken almost 2 weeks to be completed). Hopefully, that part of the blogging experience doesn’t happen each time.

The next question is…what should I blog about? A few obvious categories stick out to me: updates about the evers, an occupational therapy corner, the happenings and our involvement at austin new church…these are the biggest areas of my life. I don’t know how intentional people are about the categories and types of blog posts they write or how heavily other people reading a person’s blog draw conclusions about that person as a whole…because in a lot of ways it is just a blog.

The evolution of this blog and my writing abilities intrigues me because the blogging world is not one that I follow but is one that I admire from afar. In the end, it may just be a series of random thoughts over trivial matters and may not be as meaningful or inspiring as I’d like it to be (what do other people hope about their blogs? maybe it really is just a blog).

A lot of people have great stories to tell and tell their stories greatly. I’m currently working on both ends of that statement…So we’ll see.

(insert tag line here) i’ll work on that