As I put on my blog the other day. We are going to have a White Family edition of "This Old House" for the next while. The picture above is of the home taken somewhere around 1885. My Great Grand Parents along with the first 2 boys of 12 children are standing in front of it. The oldest boy died 85 years ago and Grand Mother was the youngest of the 12 and she lived in this home all 94 years of her life. With Amy and I and living there, we are the 4th generation of family to live in the home. So Hunter is the 5th generation. I do not know many family's that can say that and I am very proud to now be living in and restoring the home for more generations to come.
Stay tuned in to this blog site for updates on the project and some pictures along the way.
I have not blogged very much since I started using Facebook everyday. But now that I am taking on the project of redoing what we are calling "the Turkey Cottage", I thought I would pick back up the blog so i can share with you my experiences of doing it and show you the progress made. It will be a long adventure with a lot of ups and downs, but I am looking forward to every minute of it.
For those that do not know, when grandmother passed away, we decided that we wanted to take on the preservation and restoration of the Thurman family house. With us and Hunter now living in the home, 5 generations have lived in the family home. We estimate it to be about 130+ years in age.
We started moving in several weeks ago, but have taken it slow as mom and us have been working through Grandmothers things and then us putting our stuff in place. Of course we moved our beds first along with some clothing and the most important thing - the TV.
The first room we have decided to work on is the den / media room. This is the main room the family relaxes in to watch TV and hang out. We moved in the TV, computer and stereo, but used the furniture in it till we could do some work on the floors. I finished pulling up the carpet and getting the wood floors clean and ready for furniture yesterday and hunter and I moved our couch and chairs up last night. Here is a link to some initial pictures of this project. As we continue to work on walls and decor, I will give you some more.
Well, for today, I leave you. I hope to get the weather center done this week as well as maybe a couple small project. I'll just have to see what happens.
Today has been a good day with some rest and some work that I enjoyed getting done.
I got to sleep about 11 last night after forcing myself to get off the computer. Amy introduced me to "Stumble" and I am addicted to seeing what I will stumble onto next. For those that do not know what it is, like I did not. Stumble is a web browsing bar that you add to your web bar. It has buttons on it to do different things, but the main button is the "Stumble" button. Every time you click it, it takes you to a new site on the web from a list of subjects you set up. It is neat to see what site you will get to. I have found several that I have marked as return to.
I woke up this morning to run Hunter to school due to Amy being sick. She has had a bad weekend with a bad UTI and now a cough with Fever. Anyway, I ran him to school and came back and went back to sleep. I slept till 1:30 p when I woke on my own. I had an alarm set for 2 anyway, but was up and ready by then. Hunter had a eye doctor appointment ASAP after school, so I picked him up and we headed straight there. He is getting contacts this time but they just did the exam today and will fit the contacts next week. We did some errands and got dinner and headed home. I was supposed to work this evening at 7:30p. Hunter had been driving us up till they dilated his eyes. He had already asked me if we needed to get gas and I told him I would on the way to work. Well, you guessed it. I got in a hurry and was just a driving to work when the car shut off. Yup I ran the SMART out of gas. So here I stood on the side of 280 thinking of who I knew locally to get some help from. A Police officer drove by and I guess he saw that I was amazed that he just drove by cause he quickly turned around and came back. But then he got out of his vehicle to say "you mean to tell me that as good as that thing gets on gas, you ran out". But he agreed to take me to get some gas up the road and brought me back. But while I was doing this, I called TCC to tell them that I would be late. That is when I found out that a mistake had been made and I did not work tonight. I was glad to turn around and head home. I will burn some PT for the missed shift. When i got home, I went and checked on Amy and went to the shed to check on Hunter and his drumming. He had set up the stereo I had gotten from a friend for him to use and was messing around. For those that do not know. His drum set is set up in my shop right where I would set up saws and work benches to work with. I has drove me crazy not having my area. So I asked Hunter if he would help me move some boxes out of the other end of the shed to make him a space for his set out of my way. So we moved the boxes out into a storage trailer and I will move them to a storage area from there. But he now has some more room and I have my area back. I think that I will try and continue to work tomorrow on the shed and maybe get the old shed cleaned out and tore down. Now that would make me happy. We will have to see how the day goes. Just having a full day off will be something awesome.
Well, Now I am doing this blog while waiting on my alive to kick in and get to were I can go to sleep. I will let you know how it goes tomorrow another day.
It has been a long time since I did a blog post, but I feel like I might could use my blog better to talk on a more personal level to those that want to listen. I like Facebook and have been enjoying finding friends . But I was using my blog as my way of talking things out and letting everyone know what was going on in my life. It was a place of freedom that had gotten taken over by a since of intrusion that I imposed on myself due to worrying about saying something that would be interpreted wrong or was personal and would be held against me. Well, I have decided that if you are reading this, you want to listen. So I will go back to writing for me and not others here and let it link back to Facebook so that all can read if they want or not if they don't.
I will not even try to catch up since my last post.
This week has been a week form hell that I imposed on myself. If I try to do a schedule like this again, you guys have my permission to beat my ass. I have not even tried to figure out the ratio of awake time to sleep time. It would be scary, I know that. Maybe later tonight when bored i will work on that formula. I have worked or had obligations more than sleep, I do know that. I am sitting at ATCC tonight, Friday the 24th, after a long day with about 2.5 hours sleep. A friend and fellow Paramedic was buried today with a great service. Then had dinner with Amy and actually had some talk time. But then it was to here for the night shift. Tomorrow brings a 24 hour shift on the ambulance. With it being race week here in Alabama and me working near the track, I figure that we will have busy shift. Who know, maybe it will be a freak day with little to no action.
I look forward to Sunday being a sleep and rest day before another full, but not crammed week.
As far as what going on with me this week, it has been one of those weeks that has stressed me to my end. Work has been hard. Then some problems with Hunter that resulted in advancement of punishment. I know he does not believe me, but I do not enjoy having to strip him of his identity and personal choices. But if that is what the set punishments that were agreed to were and he went past the point of no return, then the punishment stands. For those that do not know Hunter, he is a great kid that prefers the goth / hard rock look. Long hair, black clothing, black finger nails. Well, those things are gone for now till he can earn the freedom to have those things again.
We have had a bad week of experiences at the school with about every aspect that we are involved with. I am truly worried about the school and what is going on there. I do not like the path it is on and do not feel that Hunter is getting the education or experience that he needs. So what to do is the big question for us. I don't know the answer, but will pray and think on it seriously and have to make a decision that i can live with long term. Amy and I will have to work as a team to decide what is best for our family and make sure Hunter is taken care of.
If you are a new visitor to my blog, I want to thank you for following the path that brought you here and ask that you look around at the links that I have included down the right hand side of the post to things that i enjoy. I hope you learn something about me that you did not know and return often to see what is going on with me.
JEFF
OK, I went back and calculated my hours for this week. I did it from Monday morning at midnight to Sunday night midnight. A full week, which is 168 hours in length.
My week is like this:
At work = 96 hours
Sleeping = 56 hours (13.5 of that was Monday morning till I got up to go to the school before work and then I project 8 hours sleep Sunday)
Doing other activities = 29 hours (mostly at the school or talking to hunter / 6 was for funeral)
Driving = 9.5 hours
I calculate a "normal" work week as follows
At work = 40 hours Sleeping = 56 hours Other stuff = 72 Driving will depend on person
"Everyone Knows Jeff" comes from my family stating that we can not go anywhere that I don't know someone or someone knowing me. But most of you do not know the true me and thats what I want to share with you.
