Adjustments are always needed when the environment changes

Like any thing I do, I go all out or I don't go at all.  I find that when I am in need of relaxation, I clean.  When I need to vent my frustration, I demolish.  I will tear into a house and remodel an entire room, house, yard, you nameit, I'm not afraid to rip in to it. I would say years ago, I was a perfectionist. Now, I just want it to look nice and be done.

Kitchen Before

We started making the house our own.  Chappy and I did a lot of yard work that first year and landscaped several areas of the yard.  Inside, I started stripping the kitchen cupboards. I painted all the  interior doors white, which required a lot of work since they were stained dark. One of the first things I did was wallpaper the main bath. But the kitchen took forever.  

Kitchen After

The cupboards were stained, but the stain was yellowed and chipped.  I could have painted over the cupboard, but the finish would not have looked nice, so I stripped and sanded every one of them by hand. Now, I was working full time as well, so I had to work on it after work and on weekends.  It wasn't easy as the inserts to the doors had  bead board which required a lot of work getting the old stain out of the grooves.

Back corner before

Min and John Boy came down often to help with projects.  I designed a shed and deck for the back yard and Chappy and John Boy built it.  Chappy and I designed a small deck and garden off the patio and they built that. John Boy built cupboards inside the laundry closet for storage.  Indiana doesn't have standard basements.  If you have one, it is a premium option on houses.  They are either built on a slab or crawl space.

Back corner after

But as I worked on these cupboards, Min grew inpatient with my  progress. I didn't always feel like working on them when I got home.  I took a walk every night, three miles, had unpacking still going on and just day to day activity. Chappy was not helping me with this project at all. I got down to the last four doors and she had had it with me. She took them home to Michigan to finish and let me know she had them done in a day.  Well, she is retired, so if I had all day to work on it, I could have done it as well.

Ceiling before

I spent hours painting and sanding and putting the finishing touch on it. I swore I'd never do it again.  I refinish furniture, but not a whole kitchen.

After a year, I wanted the large family room updated.  It had a Bavarian feel to it and I hated it.  John Boy told me you couldn't take the ceiling beams out.  The ceiling was vaulted, I didn't believe him.  Killer always told me you couldn't do some thing because he didn't want to do it. I found out, he lied a lot.

Ceiling after

Chappy came home and saw I had ripped it all down.  But if I wanted some thing done, asking was not accomplishing any thing. I had to do it or at least start it, and if it was major and I couldn't do it alone, some one else would finish it.

Family Room before

My first marriage I lived in a house that I was not allowed to make my own.  I bought a house that I was able to make my own and then Chappy decided we were moving. I wasn't going to sit in a house and not feel like it wasn't my home. He wasn't there all the time, I was 

It took four years to get it just how I liked it. Some of it was forced as we were putting it up for sale and I freshen things up a bit, but every room was done.  The yard was done. It really looked nice when we sold it.

Family Room After

My job at Indiana Lumbermen's was not easy.  I had been hired to replace the supervisor who had been doing the job for over ten years.  She and the Vice President whom she reported to never got along.  She was a bit of a hot head, but she also had come out of the closet and he had an issue with lesbians.

She was on a stress leave when he hired me.  I had five women who reported to me, she was one of them.  Each had worked for the company for years.  The women in the unit despised Molly Ann. She was mean and demanding,but when I came on as her replacement, the loyalties were with her. They feared her.  Every time I made a change, they would let me know Molly Ann would not approve. I had to inform them, Mollie Ann, when she returned, would report to me and this is how I wanted things done.  Mollie Ann was on sick leave more than she worked during my employment.  Perhaps I should be thankful as it would have been very difficult to have her there while I was making this transition.

Entrance Way before

The youngest woman was in her early thirties.  She had worked there since she graduated from high school.  She had been diagnosed with MS about eight years earlier, but she had also dated my immediate boss who still had a thing for her, even though she was married.  This became a problem when I had to discipline her for work performance.

Entrance after

One woman was in her late forties, she sold  QVC out of her desk drawer, she didn't do much else and she was the first person that discovered I am the nicest person on the planet, but don't screw with me, she quit.

I replaced her with my buddy from Maryland Casualty, who was much more qualified and didn't sell anything out of his desk drawer.

One woman was in her early fifties, she was extremely overweight, diabetic and a Bible thumper.  She was the sweetest woman I had met, but a couple years after I started working there she developed cancer and had to retire early.

One woman, was older, she was a senior adjuster and was just grateful she had a job because she was overweight and felt no one wanted to hire her because of it, so she thought the Vice President was just peachy. I could write an entire book, just on her.

Phyl was one of a kind. Heart of gold, but a piece of God's finer work had  taken place when she was placed on this Earth.  Picture Mimi on Drew Carey's sitcom, you had Phyl. Blue eye shadow and all!

She wasn't very tall. She was a beautiful seamstress, its just she didn't use those skills to hem her pants.  The hem of her pants were 3-4 inches too long, so she walked on them all the time.  Her shoes, always open toed, even in the winter, were worn.  The vinyl had disappeared  to where you could see the cardboard on the sole. 

When I first started working there, she wore her hair in a beehive.  She had her hair done on Tuesday nights.  Wednesday morning her hair looked beautiful, but Monday morning, her hive was severely tilted to the right in need of a complete lift of the beehive. 

She wore silk pajama bottoms under her pants. She would never tell us what the blue silk liner hanging out from under her pant leg was, but one day she let the cat out of the bag and said it saved her time when she got home, she just took off her work clothes and she was in her pajamas.

The first time I met all these women, someone kept farting, loud, and no one said anything. No one did anything, no one excused themselves.  It was as though they had grown immune to this call of the wild. I had to ask some one out of my area, if they knew Phyl was a farter and belcher.  Everyone knew, no one paid attention to her.  She never said, "excuse me," "oops, that one got away," "oh sorry, called a duck again," nothing, it was just accepted.  

Had I fallen into a different universe? Was Indiana that different than Michigan that people didn't know to say excuse me after they farted, loudly, in your space? I had so much to learn about these people I called my staff.