Roy and I both work for oil & gas companies, where safety is always front and center. Every meeting either of us go to is opened with a safety moment either from an attendee volunteer or by the presenter. We both tend to back into (or pull through) parking spaces everywhere, as trained by our companies (in an emergency situation, being able to get in a vehicle and see where you are going and see any oncoming vehicles is a big win, versus having to back out with blind spots). This is an ingrained behavior at this point.
Many of you know that I also began harping on ladder and tree-cutting safety issues after Roy's accident in 1994. And we always are ultra-cautious messing with electricity for any reason.
So, you would think that we'd just be increasing our "days since lost-time accident" counters.
But sometimes, even when an unsafe condition is recognized, it is just such a hassle to get it fixed, and when you aren't around the area, you tend to forget about it. Such was the case of a poorly-anchored "walking board" in the new house's attic. Every time we were up there, and I crossed on that board, I made a verbal comment that we needed to fix that. Someone had screwed it down funny, such that it wasn't really secure on one end. To fix it would mean going down and bringing a cordless drill back up into the attic, unscrewing it, and then repositioning it. But we were always in the middle of something else and couldn't spare the 10 minutes it might have taken to fix it.
On Saturday, 12/10, I stepped on that board and it flipped me backwards, like stepping on a see-saw. My arms flew up in their natural reaction, and the right arm near the wrist came into contact with one of the few braces between two rafters. That stopped my fall and allowed me opportunity to throw my weight forward and steady myself on that fickle board. However, the arm took a pretty heavy hit, and by that night, I couldn't use my hand. Having sat in an ER all day before, I had no desire to do so again. I finally had it x-rayed at the chiropractor's office 4 days later, and no break was seen, though they had suspected a stress fracture.
Day by day, it has gotten slowly better. I was finally able to tolerate bracing it 6 days after the incident and braced it for for a week during the day. I lightly bumped it on Tue the 20th and it let me know that it was still really bruised and did not appreciate the contact whatsoever. On Wednesday, my physical therapist did Feldenkrais work on my arm. It finally started moving better (though after painting on Thursday, it is back to being a wee bit unhappy with me).
So the moral to this story is, do not pass up an opportunity to correct an unsafe condition. Had that brace beam not been there, I could have gone through the ceiling, backwards, or at the very least landed badly on joists in the attic, in an uncontrolled backwards fall. Things could have been so much worse than a banged-up arm/wrist, and I remind myself of that every time I am annoyed at my arm being messed up.
To bring everyone up-to-date on the sheetrock work, we moved back into the new house on the 16th, having cleaned up (most of) the sheetrock dust everywhere, and started decorating for Christmas on Tuesday night - we put up one of my small, 4-1/2 ft tall trees and some lights outside. We primed the Music Hall on the 22nd with one of our summer workers. We hope to get its ceiling painted this week, but we aren't sure of our worker's availability yet.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
A Tale of Two Moves
It was the best of blogs, it was the worst of blogs.
It has been pointed out to me by many folks that I have not made an update since before we moved to the new house (always politely phrased in the "I'm subscribed to your remodel blog, but haven't gotten anything in months!"). Yes, we successfully moved on 8/11. We have continued to move things as we needed them (like, cold weather clothes). We are not fully moved out of the old house — our computers and laundry room remain at the old house, because the new house is not yet set up for them. (That's also why no new blog posts — computer isn't where we live.) We also haven't moved any of our gardening or sewing stuff, or 17 years accumulation of other "stuff".
But — much, much has transpired since my last post.
Like, us moving back to the old house yesterday morning! Only now, we have two cats to move, not just one. Meet Rugen, a polydactyl black kitten rescued from our local community garden back in October (is it really December already?!?!).
Why did we move back to the old house, to sleep on borrowed air beds for more than a week, you ask? (and thanks again, Randy & Janette!)
We are finally getting all* of the drywall work completed in the new house. That means, working in both bathrooms, the hallway ceiling and several walls, two walls in the SE bedroom, one wall in the SW bedroom (my office aka Rugen's room), the den ceiling, two walls in the entryway (the only two walls), all of the living/dining room (aka the Music Hall) walls and ceiling, and the breakfast room walls.
Notice what that leaves out? Only the master bedroom, kitchen, and utility room*.
We evaluated living in wet sheetrock mud, lots of sheetrock dust on days they sand, with two cats and we decided that we are simply not that crazy. So we packed everybody up and moved back up the street instead. Of course, we had to move the cats' tower to the old house, so Roy rolled it down the street on the furniture dolly at 7am. Our neighbors are used to our crazy behavior. Or they certainly should be by now!
Once this current round of work is finished, we'll be able to finish painting the office and hall bathroom (one wall each), paint the hallway (color is selected), breakfast room (color is selected), and master bathroom (colors might be selected - we'll see what we think when that dark red/brown is gone and not affecting impressions), then prime the entryway, Music Hall, and SE room (colors are not yet selected). We currently plan to do a lot of painting the week between Christmas and New Years.
*The utility room is still gutted. Our carpenter's schedule and our schedule have failed to mesh for more than a month, so the joists are still not repaired, so there is still no insulation or sheetrock in there. And yes, it is wickedly cold in that room, so we keep the door closed (not that it helps a lot) when the weather is like this (cold and colder, for those of you not in Houston). We are hoping to get him in there Very Soon Now, like maybe this weekend.
It has been pointed out to me by many folks that I have not made an update since before we moved to the new house (always politely phrased in the "I'm subscribed to your remodel blog, but haven't gotten anything in months!"). Yes, we successfully moved on 8/11. We have continued to move things as we needed them (like, cold weather clothes). We are not fully moved out of the old house — our computers and laundry room remain at the old house, because the new house is not yet set up for them. (That's also why no new blog posts — computer isn't where we live.) We also haven't moved any of our gardening or sewing stuff, or 17 years accumulation of other "stuff".
But — much, much has transpired since my last post.
Like, us moving back to the old house yesterday morning! Only now, we have two cats to move, not just one. Meet Rugen, a polydactyl black kitten rescued from our local community garden back in October (is it really December already?!?!).
Why did we move back to the old house, to sleep on borrowed air beds for more than a week, you ask? (and thanks again, Randy & Janette!)
We are finally getting all* of the drywall work completed in the new house. That means, working in both bathrooms, the hallway ceiling and several walls, two walls in the SE bedroom, one wall in the SW bedroom (my office aka Rugen's room), the den ceiling, two walls in the entryway (the only two walls), all of the living/dining room (aka the Music Hall) walls and ceiling, and the breakfast room walls.
Notice what that leaves out? Only the master bedroom, kitchen, and utility room*.
We evaluated living in wet sheetrock mud, lots of sheetrock dust on days they sand, with two cats and we decided that we are simply not that crazy. So we packed everybody up and moved back up the street instead. Of course, we had to move the cats' tower to the old house, so Roy rolled it down the street on the furniture dolly at 7am. Our neighbors are used to our crazy behavior. Or they certainly should be by now!
Once this current round of work is finished, we'll be able to finish painting the office and hall bathroom (one wall each), paint the hallway (color is selected), breakfast room (color is selected), and master bathroom (colors might be selected - we'll see what we think when that dark red/brown is gone and not affecting impressions), then prime the entryway, Music Hall, and SE room (colors are not yet selected). We currently plan to do a lot of painting the week between Christmas and New Years.
*The utility room is still gutted. Our carpenter's schedule and our schedule have failed to mesh for more than a month, so the joists are still not repaired, so there is still no insulation or sheetrock in there. And yes, it is wickedly cold in that room, so we keep the door closed (not that it helps a lot) when the weather is like this (cold and colder, for those of you not in Houston). We are hoping to get him in there Very Soon Now, like maybe this weekend.
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