Day: February 15, 2010

Life

Love is Always in the Air At Our House *cough*

Karen

Actually, the only thing in our air right now is tile dust, but I digress.

I Love You This Much

So, how was your Valentine’s Day? We? Did absolutely nothing.

And I’m absolutely okay with that. Not to sound cliché or sickeningly sweet, but every day is Valentine’s Day in my marriage. And that’s mainly because we MAKE it that way. It’s a conscious decision and most times, it’s hard work, but it has paid off in spades over the years.

We’re still together (nearly 20 years) and going strong, so we must be doing something right. Which is sort of funny considering neither one of us has a clue what we’re doing. 😀

Kevin and I woke up yesterday, kissed, said “I love you,” and went about our day. That was the extent of our Valentine’s Day to each other. Actually, we do that every day and that’s my point – we show each other we love each other every day. We not only say it, we SHOW it.

Did you know that love is not just a feeling? It’s “an unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another.” And when you love someone, it’s important to SHOW them how much you love them.

Personally, I think the whole concept of love has been diluted over the years. The concept of love has been thrown around so much that people have become immune to what it really means.

“I LOVE her hair.”

Well actually, you don’t. You LIKE her hair, a lot.

“I LOVE chocolate.”

Really? Don’t you mean you LIKE chocolate more than many other kinds of sweets?

“I LOVE winter.”

How can you love a season? Don’t you mean you LIKE winter perhaps more than the other seasons?

“I LOVE my car.”

Does your car LOVE you back? (If you answered yes, then you might seek professional help). Don’t you really mean, you LIKE the car you’re driving more than the other cars you’ve driven in the past?

Love is in relationships, not things. When people say they love someTHING, it actually demeans the meaning of pure LOVE. I know it’s just a saying, but the more we hear how people LOVE things, the more we become desensitized to what love really IS.

Here’s a video that says what I’m trying to say:

Vodpod videos no longer available.


(RSS readers – I had to input this using VodPod and it doesn’t show up in readers. Please visit my blog to view video. Sorry for the inconvenience).

I was lurking on Twitter yesterday, just idly watching people update their statuses, and it truly bothered me the number of women who were all, “What did you GET for Valentine’s Day?” And then they went about comparing the material value of such-and-such gift.

Or worse, the women who bemoaned the fact that they didn’t GET anything, or what they GOT was ONLY such-and-such.

Have we really reduced love to material things? Do we really equate the dollar value of a gift to how much someone loves us?

I find that incredibly sad.

Now granted, some complained because their husbands (wives?) didn’t even acknowledge Valentine’s Day and yes, that’s sad and aggravating. But I’d like to pose a question to those that complained – did THEY themselves acknowledge the day with their spouse? You have to give love to receive love.

What’s that famous quote by Tolstoy?

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

If you want to be treated a certain way, then you must treat the people around you the same way. And that goes doubly for your spouse.

This lesson has taken me YEARS to learn. I used to get so irritated with Kevin when he didn’t make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day. Like I expected him to stuff that one day with every possible feeling of love he’s ever had for me in the past year to the point where his feelings would nearly explode from the pressure. Somehow THAT would prove to me that he loved me.

When in fact, he had been showing me the other 364 days of the year that he loved me, I was just too stupid and clueless to see it. He showed me by mowing the grass, by cooking dinner, by loading the dishwasher, by taking me to lunch, by listening to me, by giving me the last bite of cake, by …

You get the picture. Love is about SO MUCH MORE than feelings, it’s about DOING.

I think my marital expectations changed whenever I learned that valuable little nugget.

Oh sure, it’s great to have that ONE day to show your loved one how much you love them, but I think we all need to adjust our expectations and only view it as a reminder, a gentle nudge not to take each other for granted, an excuse to go out to dinner and enjoy each others company as opposed to the be-all-end-all definition of how one feels for each other.

And it’s certainly about so much more than flowers and/or fancy gifts and then bragging about the monetary value.

I think, and this is just my opinion of course, that some people are so bitter about Valentine’s Day because they truly don’t understand what love really is.

Love is a VERB.

Think about it.

Make it a goal to turn every day into Valentine’s Day in your relationship. You’ll LOVE the results, trust me.

Kitchen Saga

Kitchen Saga: Enduring a Dust Storm

Karen

I’m hobbling around like an old woman – THAT’S how much fun I had over the weekend.

*wink-wink-nudge-nudge*

Okay, let me banish the naughty thoughts I’m sure you all are having right about now.

We, and by WE I mean ALL OF US, worked all day Saturday demolishing our kitchen tile. (If you follow me on Twitter, this is old news. My apologizes). We probably didn’t have to do it ourselves, we could have hired someone (and I wish we did now), but we figured we’d save a few bucks by doing it ourselves and we had toyed with the idea of putting in the new tile ourselves but you know? No. I talked Kevin into hiring some professionals to do it.

In the meantime, we needed to get our old tile out of here so Kevin rented a tool from Home Depot, some sort of jack hammer looking thingie, and he broke up the tile into sections and while he took a break, me and the boys shoveled it out. (Well, Jazz had to leave after the first 1/3 to go to a birthday party).

Once we got the crap, er, chewed-up tile out, then Kevin came back in and started working on the next section, thereby giving me and the boys (i.e. me and Dude) a break.

IMG_1907

We did run into a snag though – we didn’t think far enough ahead and once we got to the shovel stage and all of our buckets were full within minutes we thought …… now what?? We should have rented one of those big dumpsters from the trash company, but since we didn’t and we needed some way to dispose of our tile as soon as possible, we ended up making a run up to Kevin’s work and dumping it into his industrial-sized dumpster. (Hey, he’s the boss. It’s all on the up-and-up).

We did grab four huge trash bins from his office and were able to use those for the rest of the floor, so Kevin only had to make one more trip back to the dumpster.

Still, it would have been a much smoother process if we had thought to rent a dumpster in the first place. Oops.

Anyhoo, everything went like clockwork. I have lifted more these past several days than I think I have in the past several years and I was worried about my back going out, but as of today, I’m sore, but still mobile so it’s all good.

The worst part? Was by far … the dust. OH. MY. GOSH. We had (and still have) dust everywhere.

Kitchen Floor is Coming OUT

Luckily, the weather was pretty mild on Saturday, so we were able to open the doors and allow most of the dust out that way. And even though we hung dust cloths over the entrances, everything still ended up with a thick coat of dust. I’m going to be dusting for several days. (I’ve already dusted twice so far! And still, I find more dust!)

But, we were able to pull up all of the tile in our kitchen and return the jack hammer thingie back to Home Depot by the allotted time – Kevin was pretty impressed. He was pretty sure we were going to end up having to rent the machine for two days but nope, we all pitched in and we got through it pretty fast.

Here’s a shot of our kitchen before we took the tile up:

Kitchen - 2-13-10

And a shot of the kitchen after we removed the tile:

Kitchen - 2-14-10

See how the stove is sticking out? Kevin and Dude pulled the stove out to get to the tile under neath and couldn’t get it back into place. But no worries, that sucker is going to be hauled off in about a week anyway.

We can’t walk into our kitchen without shoes on. I’m too afraid there might be shards of sharp tile lying about and I don’t want anyone to cut their feet, so we’re taking our shoes off right outside the dining room entrance to the kitchen in the meantime. MAJOR pain in the butt, but remodeling anything is a major pain in the butt so we’ll deal with it.

My in-laws came over yesterday and we talked over a few points with them and they thought that having our entire kitchen tiled was a better option than having tile put in around our cabinets (Kevin was worried that we might want to change the tile at some point in the future but honestly? I’m done with tiling. We’re sticking to whatever we decide). So now, that’s the plan. Only, we don’t have anyone lined up to do our tile yet, so that’s where Kevin and I are heading today – to hunt for tile and to find someone to come in and tile our kitchen after the old cabinets have been taken out.

We plan on checking out quite a few stores and doing a lot of comparing because we want to pick out something we can both live with, well, for the rest of our lives. (At least, I hope it works out that way). I’ll let you know how it goes.

We’ve also decided to put in some heating elements under our tile too, especially around the kitchen table and one strip down the main part of the kitchen. Our kitchen is always the coldest room in the house so we’re really looking forward to having a toasty floor to step on.

(I wonder what happens if the heating element goes out. How could they replace it without ripping up the tile?! Hhmm … yet another question to ask. Do any of you know?)

So, that’s where we are on our remodeling project. This next week will be pretty busy. Our cabinets are scheduled to be delivered late tomorrow afternoon and the demolition will start a few days after that, I’m sure.

This is going to be tricky, moving old appliances out, getting our new tile put in, the cabinets installed and then the new appliances put in. I think I’m the most stressed about swapping out refrigerators; I’m just hoping I can coordinate it so that I’m not stuck with a garage full of food and no place to put it.