Monday, September 13, 2021

Monday, September 13, 2021

Tonight's picture was taken in February of 2006. Mattie was almost four years old. I can see myself sitting in the background and Peter was playing with Mattie. The funny part is Peter will tell you that Mattie posed for a photo taken by me differently from when he took a photo. Peter claims that Mattie would always look deeply into my eyes whenever I was in front of him! MAYBE, but Peter's joke still gets me laughing as he would call Mattie a "mama lover!"

Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.

• Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 41,148,921
• Number of people who died from the virus: 661,195

Our day started with a crashing sound coming from the kitchen at 5:45am. A Mattie Miracle clock we hung on the wall fell! Not sure if that is a sign! Any case, I had to get up at 6am anyway, but it was an unsettling wake up call in the dark. 

We had a visit from a contractor about fixing the tile floor in our laundry room. I fixed a photo would help you understand the problem better than my description! The laundry room is a nightmare. It has multiple colors, holes in the way from electrical work, and once we moved the cabinets away from the space (so electricians could do the work), we discovered the tile was uneven. Not just uneven, but there are two different type tiles on the floor. 

At first I thought of throwing a rug over the old tiles and forgetting about it. But since we have worked hard to get this house up and operational and with the 21st century, we decided to address this issue now! Any case we have to address this, the holes in the wall, a beam (revealed from the hole in the wall) has to be evaluated on Wednesday by a structural engineer to determine if it is load bearing (I am crossing my fingers that it isn't!!!), the gutters need to be replaced, we have to create window wells for the basement windows because the previous owner has dirt at grade level with the windows (perfect!) and the list goes on! It is never over, there is no peace and I told Peter that it is hard to concentrate and do any work here. At our townhouse in DC, I could sit for hours and work undisturbed! 

In the midst of all of this, I did sit down today (while jumping up multiple times because of issues and phone calls) to write a speech which I am delivering at my friend Margy's celebration of life event this Saturday. I would say at first it was hard to get started because it is hard to put into words a friendship. But once I got started it just naturally flowed and I feel I captured the essence of Margy the childhood cancer advocate (which is what I was asked to speak about).