How I'm feeling and some silliness

I'll have to say I have felt depressed all week after hearing about Savannah's death. There are some other things going on too which are hard to bear, but I realized I can't bring Savannah back and while I can be a listening ear and a giver of advice, I can't take away the other hurts some family members are going through right now. For the sake of my husband and children I decided I have to shake the melancholy.

I thought I'd tell some of the silly things about our new house. The former owners made lots of upgrades, but they were all as cheap as they could go! I think they watched way too much "Designed to Sell." The master bedroom has two walls made out of this local concrete block called slump block. What a yucky name. I guess they didn't like it any better than I do, so they stuccoed over it. They didn't do a very smooth job of it and when they came to the electrical outlets and light switch covers, they didn't bring them out flush with the new wall, they curved the stucco in like it was adobe or something. Oh, and they trapped the covers in the stucco so they can never be removed or changed!

The master bath looks pretty good. The former owners replaced the counter and the sinks and they sit on sleek black cabinets . . . which are the old cabinets with a coat of black paint. The black towel rod . . . is the old oak one painted black. Even the door has been painted a dark color on the inside while the outside is still white.

The kitchen has newish cabinets, about 10 years old, I'd say. I can say with 98% surety they are the kind you buy at Home Depot flat in a box and assemble yourself. They aren't too bad, but still, nothing like the custom cabinets we left in our house in Gallup.

The last two tie for my "favorite" cheap upgrade. The floors look like 14" ceramic tiles, until you look a little closer and see that they are vinyl peel-n-stick squares . . . applied over Pergo.

The other "favorite" is the pool. It's an older pool and the water is a beautiful blue. Cloudy blue. We had the pool guy come out and test the water to see what he could do to clear up the cloudiness. It's so cloudy you can't see the third step where you enter the water, or your feet when you are standing in the pool. Turns out the color is so pretty because below the edge tiles, it is painted a beautiful ocean blue. You don't paint pools, you plaster pools. Because if you paint, the paint comes off in the water and makes it cloudy. For as long as the paint is on the pool walls. I guess it was cheaper than replastering though.