We are making progress on our renovations and have purchased our new showerhead for the shower downstairs. We had to buy new ones because the ones we had were chrome and it does not fit into the idea that Mel has in her head for what we should get. That was an absolute must, but she is willing to compromise on other things. The carpet we had downstairs was wool berber, which is apparently 10x the cost of the synthetic stuff. Our insurance is covering the less expensive stuff as it will have an impact on our budget. I told Mel to not worry about it and get what she likes as opposed to compromising and not being happy with it. We did not necessarily compromise with our kitchen and she is glad about most of the decisions we had made. I think her only regret is not having the built in induction wok burner, but it would have been an extra $5000. I am pretty sure that we could have made that difference up quickly with our pop up kitchen during the summer selling the kids specialty fried rice. You see kids on the street selling lemonade all of the time, I am sure that we could have made a killing on fried rice. She will deny this if you ask her, but I think that she secretly regrets it. For things that we will use repeatedly I do not think we should compromise. Kind of like if you see something that you like at Costco, you should buy it. There was a couch that Mel and the kids loved at Costco and. she was waiting to buy it and now it is all sold out. An optiont that I wanted was buy a ton of pillows and fill the room with it and you can just make your own area to sit in, but Mel thinks it looks too cluttered and it would give me ample hiding spaces to buy extra stuff and hide it in that area. Mel also called for our steam shower to get confirmation from the company down south as the contractor here seems hesitant to install the one that we can get here, and it is more costly. Mel is handling that now so it should get far more traction.
Tomorrow I get to go in for treatment, but I only get 1 drug, so I think that I will be in and out quicker. I should also consider taking some sort of sleeping pill at night to counter the effects of the steroids. I know that the benadryl works well and with all of the allergies that Mel and Olivier have I should take some of those pills. I also wonder if some of this is all in my head as well. I might have conditioned myself to stay up because of the steroids, making it more difficult for me to sleep throughout the night. Recently i have been getting up in the middle of the night but I just decide that I am going to sleep and it has not been much of an issue. I need to get back to that mindset and not let something as trivial as modification of my sleep architecture impact me. I just need to believe that my body is creating melatoninand supress the excitation of my nervous system. I do it on a regular basis when I go to sleep now, so there is no reason to believe that I can not do it moving forward. Hours before I go to bed I will concentrate on generating more melatonin and then relax. I am pretty sure that the fact that I sleep 8 hours in the day time plays no impact on my inability to sleep at night. My weight has dropped back down to 140.6 lbs, which I kind of expected. I have eaten less the last couple of days, and each day of poor eating results in a drop of 1-2 lbs. Mel and I still have a competition to see who can gain weight or drop weight the fastest. I have quite the advantage to her since in theory it should be easier for me to gain weight.
Mel wanted to drive out to Chelmsford this evening to pick up some rocks from some random person’s yard. She had a haircut from 5:30 to 6:30 which would have disrupted dinner plans, so we decided to meet up downtown, grab some sushi, get the rocks and then have some gelato. Our favorite sushi place downtown has some new sushi which was fun as they now have pressed and torched sushi. I ended up eating 5 pieces of sushi and a miso soup. I could have had a couple more pieces, but I knew rhat we would be going for gelato in an hour and had to pace ourselves. At the gelato place, the sister of one of Xavier’s previous team mates were working and her mom came in and we had a nice chat. Driving home we started to discuss travel and how my sister traveled with us and why we wanted her to come along. Olivier replied that he thought that teachers did not make much money. My sister has no kids and is frugal and we explained to Olivier how kids are an endless money pit and how my sister selectively decides what she spends money on. She will scoff on spending money on some things and then spluge a couple hundred dollars on a jacket. We mentioned that it was all about living within your means. Xavier pointed out that I like to spend, but it is within our means. Right now Mel and I have disposable income that we can use to splurge on some things and then we save on others. All of our vacations revolve around hockey, so we tend to not splurge on anything else. I also go to Fabricland and purchase cords and sew myself clothing. My aunts were seamstresses in Vietnam, so naturally I have the genes for it and even sew on the brand labels. You would swear that my clothing was purchased I am that good. I find it amusing watching how many parents adapted their spending, where when we were young they were very conservative and made sure to save up enough for retirement. Now if the kids want lobster for dinner or some other expensive seafood they will not hesitate to purchase it. Growing up we ate spam and what was available, and now we only allow Olivier to eat spam once i awhile as a treat.
QHM