The Word

Your Word is "Peace"

You see life as precious, and you wish everyone was safe, happy, and taken care of. Social justice, human rights, and peace for all nations are all important to you. While you can't stop war, you try to be as calm and compassionate as possible in your everyday life. You promote harmony and cooperation. You're always willing to meet someone a little more than halfway.

What's Your Word?

According to the online version of a Magic-8 ball (aka blogthings) I have apparently chosen the wrong word for 2009. Not that I don't enjoy peace any way I can get it, but I think I'm going to stick with "focus" this year. Not to get too deep into a silly internet quiz, but I think trying to stay focused is what will bring me peace.

The kitchen saga continues. I'm viewing every inevitable delay and drama as the silver lining to the maddening wait to bring Max home. It's hard to know he's living with someone else and nothing but red tape stands between us. Well, red tape and a huge ocean and maybe a continent or two. I digress...

The kitchen. It's still a big, ugly hole. The very first "uh oh" moment came when we discovered the wall that was meant to be removed, thereby giving us enough space to entertain more than one guest at a time, was home to the HVAC ducts that go to our room and the nursery. Lots and lots of discussion and math (and you can imagine how well I did with that one) and we ended up routing one duct through the floor and are leaving one where it is. As it turns out, there was an error on the CAD drawing of the kitchen, and we never could have taken the wall back as far as we thought we could. At least not without having a giant black refrigerator sticking out, making it the first thing you'd see when you entered our house. Not exactly the aesthetic we were going for.

So... imagine this. Now we wait some more. What a novel concept for the Becker family.

There is still work being done, but the cabinets that were ordered in early October and should have arrived by Thanksgiving are now not coming until January 23rd. Nice, huh? Luckily, the nice guys working in our house are continuing to do everything that can be done and have simply decided to finish everything else, and hang the cabinets as the final touches. I guess the real finishing touch will be the backsplash, which clearly can't be done until the cabinets are in.

On a more somber, personal note, I've spent a great deal of time lately reflecting on how fragile life is. While we are feeling over the moon at the impending arrival of our son, I feel like I am almost constantly hearing of bad news from people I know. It's sobering to feel almost giddy with excitement one minute, only to recall the numerous others that we know (not to mention so many we obviously don't) who need miracles right now.