The Last will be First and the First will be Last

The ones hired in the morning agreed to work for one denarius. The ones hired in the afternoon who worked fewer hours were still paid one denarius. There's nothing unfair about this because each individual agreed to what was arranged. Although still just as important, my title is inferring something just a bit different to Jesus's parable in Matthew.

We bought our house with three full bathrooms ranging in size from small to medium to large. The only one considered updated at the time was the small bathroom. Seven months after closing, we embarked on our first full-on DIY bathroom renovation and worked on the medium bathroom. It took us about three weeks working late nights and weekends along with our day jobs. After completing this project, this bathroom now became the nicest one in the house.

Obviously, we were still using our master bathroom. The original toilet seven years older than us and a super skinny shower door were nothing compared to the convenience of having an attached en suite.

Three and a half months ago, we made the decision to do our last and largest renovation project on the inside of our house - not completely DIY. We said goodbye to our 80's bathroom which is now remembered solely by these pictures alone:

Vanity Before

Take 2: Goodbye nasty cabinets that previous
homeowners did not take care of keeping clean

Shower: Goodbye 18 inch shower door that's
almost too skinny for a 24-inch-waisted person
to walk through straight-on

Bathtub: A very inefficiently small oval tub in a large space

And then came the fun but physically stressful part: Demolition. Last we left off, everything was boxed up and placed at the curb outside in a limited exhibition. Here's what the inside looked like.

Look at that him go with that 20 pound tool. That was no joke. 

Even just blogging about this and seeing the in-progress pictures is already making me tired again. We were thankful to have been able to move to a spare bedroom in our house and use the other bathrooms to completely clear the space so it didn't really feel like we were living through a renovation. We also had the luxury of a door to the back patio from our bedroom which the contractors used, so they stayed out of the main living area of the rest of our house so I could teach and live somewhat normally. However, I won't downplay the amount of cleaning we had to do in our bedroom and bathroom after the contractors finally finished walking in and out of our room and bathroom. There was a lot of vacuuming and a lot of mopping.

In the end, our bathroom, which ended up last to be renovated and took the most patience (in waiting for contractors to come and finish their parts) and money, is now the nicest space to bathe in our house.

New vanity with double the storage as before and a much more refreshing color scheme.

New tub - takes up just as much space as the last one, but double the bathing space
with a much more spa-like appearance and style.

We borrowed about half of the space which used to be that giant cabinet
and enlarged the shower. Frameless glass makes the shower open to the
rest of the bathroom and gives it a clean, sleek design. The door is
the proper width and built to today's code.

We haven't finished the shelves to the left of the shower yet (as you can see from the empty space in the last picture), but we're not in a rush. And having tapped out of the project halfway through due to other priorities....I'm definitely giving my husband a break on that one.

We also don't have mirrors yet because we haven't found ones that are the right size which we like. If you have any ideas, please let us know where to shop! We've scrounged Homegoods, Ross, At Home, and Kirklands.

I've also mentioned to Jonathan several times that I will not be attempting anymore large-scale DIY renovation projects around the house after this one. Not sure if it's the pregnancy stealing my energy and motivation away, or if my first-house-energy is truly drained. Either way, we will definitely be taking it easy for a LONG time in terms of house projects. However, we will not be taking it easy in terms of life for the next 18 years.....

Bye Bye AIM

Recently, AIM announced that in December of this year, they will be completely shutting down. For most of us who hit our teens around the turn of the century back in 2000, AIM was the way to communicate. Since most of us didn't have cell phones yet, we'd get home from school, log onto the computer, and sign onto AIM for hours at a time. It was a huge distractor from getting homework done, and definitely the coolest way to communicate at the time. Our buddy lists were organized in a certain fashion and the VIPS were listed somewhere up at the top. We could even set alerts for when specific "special" people signed on. And invisible mode to avoid those we didn't wish to talk to.

Most of us remember using AIM to talk for hours with our BFFs, BFs, GFs, or just to have a social life. We remember starting and ending relationships over AIM. We remember asking each other for help with homework or doing group project meetings in a chat room. We remember creating multiple screen names so we could sign on secretively and simply talk to those we wanted to and avoid the rest. But one of my most fond memories of AIM (because I have plenty of memories I'm not fond of) was using it to complete a project in the 10th grade.

In Humanities, we had a project....somewhere in our Greek/Roman unit. It was near the end of the school year and we had to showcase our knowledge of five important people from the time period (I think.) For my project, I created a yearbook and had my five important people attempt to work together to complete a year-end project in their creative arts class. I made them each a screen name on AIM and signed into all five at once and created a chatroom conversation between the five of them. Thinking back, it was a lot of fun to create, but a lot of work to play five different characters all at once. I had to make sure I was typing in the right AIM window at the right time so the right person would be saying the right dialogue. The entire conversation ended up being eight pages long.

A1exand3rth3Gr8t
Mich31ange1o
Arist0tle says
Stuck 1nLimb0
Egyptian Qu33n17

I went back to my dad's house to retrieve this gem of a project, which is now over 10 years old, and revisit their chatroom conversation. I read the entire thing aloud to Jonathan, and through it, I was quite surprised at how witty I was for a 16 year old doing a high school project. (I also found a few typos and missed words, but hey, that happened in real life AIM conversations, too, right?) Amidst the mandatory "this is a school project and I need to cram in the necessary information to score points on my rubric," there were a number of moments scattered about which made me think, "Man, this was a well-executed project."

In addition to being a school project, I was able to add some hints of entertainment throughout and use real life anecdotes to keep it interesting.



I rode the bus to and from home that year, and someone really did throw a can out the window one afternoon on our way home. Our bus driver wasn't the friendliest guy either. He literally stopped the bus in the right lane of a rather busy main street, walked all the way down to lecture this kid and closed every single window on the bus. We were all about 45 minutes late arriving at our stops that afternoon.

One of the two Humanities teachers was also the person who inspired the title of my first book I self-published years ago. Ever since he mentioned it in class that day, the phrase stuck with me and I still haven't forgotten it. Depending on who actually graded my project - since we had two teachers and they usually split the work - if it was indeed him who read through this conversation, I hope he had a good grin at the reference.




I don't know how many students ever incorporated the use of AIM for a school project, but after December, nobody will ever be able to. I'm glad I thought of this 10 years ago and that it turned out well. Unfortunately, this class was definitely my lowest grade...probably in all of high school, but I got an A on the project. :)

Capable and Efficient

*I've had so many thoughts over the last few months, but things have just been so chaotic and I haven't had a chance to really process. So here's the first of catching up on months worth of blog posts.*

Jonathan and I joke around that my middle name was efficient. That's just the way I like to do things: very orderly, in an organized fashion, efficiently, and well. If I didn't know how to do it efficiently, I would figure it out. I would even joke with him that he married me because I was capable and efficient. We all know that's not true.

Well, after I got pregnant, I learned very suddenly and very quickly that I was going to be neither capable nor efficient for a while. I was not one of the lucky women who breezes through first trimester without feeling sick. I didn't wash the dishes. I didn't cook. I couldn't look at a computer screen for long periods of time. Any hint of smells sent me running. I didn't want to eat anything. We couldn't eat meals together or even in the same room. My stomach felt like it was churning constantly. I could barely get myself to shower. I went from being the wife who could work an eight-hour day, leave the office, run to two grocery stores, come home, and have a home-cooked meal ready by 6:30 pm, to this slob of a person who only changed when she had piano lessons to teach, and spent the other waking hours of the day in bed sleeping or hugging the toilet.

There was one lesson when one of my younger students even commented, "Is that your kitchen? It looks messy." I just politely smiled back and said, "Yes, that is my kitchen, and yes, it's a little messy. I haven't had time to clean it lately." Of course, in my head, I was secretly muttering, you have no idea what my life is like right now, kid. 

Despite my inefficiencies and lack of capability to do much of anything for myself, my wonderful, sweet husband stepped it up about 500% and took over at home after working a full day's work. We were blessed with friends who shared food for us him so he didn't have to live a bachelor lifestyle of PBJ and cold cut sandwiches for weeks on end. He washed the dishes, or I got used to living with dirty dishes piling in the sink for a while until he had time to load the dishwasher - this is where two people having 12 sets of plates and bowls and silverware for eight is NOT excessive. He fetched things for me when I felt too sick or too afraid to move for fear to get sick. He went out a countless number of times to buy things for me to eat or drink because I just had to have that specific item right then and there, and because hardly anything was staying down, we tried everything to find something that would.

Not only did he take over the daily household chores at home, but he singlehandedly finished the remaining DIY parts of our bathroom after the contractors did their part. He painted the cabinets, patched and painted the walls where we had removed old shelving, installed two vanity lights, two faucets, two P-traps, two towel rings, one toilet paper holder, and one towel bar, swept the floor, mopped the floor, and re-caulked the baseboards and crown molding. This doesn't even include the night he exterminated an ant infestation in our kitchen at 10pm at night.

And he did it all without complaining or getting irritated at me for not being able to do more.

I'm very grateful to be finally feeling better after what feels like a very long two months. It's refreshing to be able to get up and do things around the house without feeling like a complete potato (which we joked I wasn't even comparable to a potato because at my lowest, I probably had less nutrition in me than a potato). I'm slowly feeling more and more like myself, although some moments of queasy still sneak up on me here and there.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever go back to being my old, normal self, but I don't think our normal will ever be the same again. And honestly, it's okay. What needs to get done will get done whether efficiently or messily. And everything else finds a way.