Snow Days and Birthdays...

I am really slacking off with this blog, and I can't even say that I have a good excuse. This past week I only went to work on Tuesday. Thanks to my two day a week teaching schedule, and a snow day on Thursday, I will have had almost a whole week off by the time I go back on Tuesday. I can't believe we got so much more snow this week - we are getting way more than our fair share this year, it seems. I was really hoping that a snow day wouldn't come on one of my teaching days, since I have so much material smushed into a shorter time frame, just in case Mr. Bean comes early. But then I was also kind of relieved when classes were canceled for Thursday. And fortunately it wasn't a super-hard day in either of my classes (I teach 2 sections of the same class in the morning, and then a different class in the afternoon, so it is really just 2 preparations - I've got it pretty easy this semester!). So I know we will get caught up pretty easily on Tuesday. I just hope we don't get another snow day!

So I was at home pretty much most of the week. It was so cold on Monday and snowy on Wednesday, so I didn't go out to yoga until Friday. I'm glad I finally went though - it is a really good class. I plan to go again tomorrow morning.

But mostly I've been dealing with the small construction project in what will be Mr. Bean's room. I think I mentioned it before, but we are having a small wall built in there which will effectively create a "walk-though" closet before you enter the room proper. It will give us lots of shelving in the entry-way closet for household stuff, but more importantly it allows us to keep the cat boxes in this closet (or really, one existing closet on the left and a new shelving area on the right - we have one cat box at the bottom of each space, since we have 3 cats and need 2 boxes...). With the new interior door into the bedroom, we can leave the exterior door open for the cats to come and go, and close the interior door for quiet and privacy in Mr. Bean's room. I know it sounds very confusing, but it actually is quite clever and I'm very proud of myself for thinking it up. And then, on the inside of the room we are going to put up some shelving and hanging bars, as a sort of open closet space for the little guy's clothes and other stuff. Because we can't really fit a wardrobe in the room. The room is only a little more than 9 feet by a little more than 7 feet, so pretty darn small. But believe it or not, a better space than the other room that J. uses for his "man cave" - that room is about the same length, but even narrower. Such is real estate in NYC. We consider ourselves lucky to have this much space even. Anyway, the new wall is up, but due to the snow storm, they weren't able to come out to paint and put up all the shelving on Thursday or Friday, so now the project stretches out into this coming week, and all the contents of the room (at this point, mostly our extra household junk that needs to be contained in the new closet, plus a desk and chair that need to go on Craig.slist, as well as the dresser we will use for Mr. Bean which is already stuffed with all his loot...) are in the middle of our living room. Nice. I can't wait to get it all organized, so we can start decorating and furnishing the room. It is very fun.

In other news, as the title of this post suggests, it was my birthday this weekend. We didn't do a lot to celebrate since we had gone out last weekend. But I did get some nice presents and a yummy cupcake, plus a scrumptious box of chocolates. Overall it was a much better birthday than last year, when I turned the big 4-0 and was very depressed about being childless and not pregnant. Last year my sister had wanted to fly out and help J. throw a big party for my birthday, but fortunately she ran it by me first and I nixed that idea. I told her I would love for her to fly out for a visit, but I had no interest in a party at all. It was a very subdued birthday. This year I feel much better about everything and very excited and hopeful for everything that the year has to bring.