Older Daughter's new digs

Older Daughter has been living in her new digs – a studio apartment in an older building – for over a month now.

A month is enough time to figure out whether you really like a place or not. And I must say, Older Daughter stinkin' loves this studio.

Except for the stairs.

(We actually gifted her with a three-wheeled grocery stair-climbing cart popular in places like New York City to make the trek up those stairs easier when carrying loads.)

But aside from that, she's happy as a clam. There is a lot to see from her massive ten-foot-wide window, and a lot of things to do in the immediate area.

As with any relocation, the first couple weeks were rough. Where to put everything? What to keep, what to donate? How does such-and-such fit into this new space? Arrgghh!

But then, gradually, order came from chaos. And then comfort came from order. Next thing you know, she has a cozy home.

Also, Frumpkin ("The cat who fell upstairs") is also settling in, and has claimed one of Older Daughter's thrifted chairs as his new throne.

I mean ... lord of his domain, am I right?

She says the kitchen is one of the nicest aspects of the studio. It's spacious and has loads of storage. Older Daughter has become something of a gourmet cook, so having adequate space to prepare nice meals is a bonus.

Here she made a lemon-blueberry loaf.

She has a desk for her computer. This will become especially needed when her coursework starts.

And that window simply dominates the space. It's stunning.

Here's what it looks like from the outside.

So yes, her new digs are wonderful. She's so pleased that she actually baked some cookies and brought them to the property management's office to express her satisfaction. If all goes well, she'll be living here for the duration of her schooling ... and maybe even beyond, if she ends up getting a local job after graduation.

So for now, she's settled in.

An eventful week

We've had one of those weeks where things have happened, both big and small.

With Older Daughter now living in her new apartment, I decided it was time to deep-clean the refrigerator. She's the gourmet cook in the family, so when she left, she took all her sauces and specialty spices with her. As a result, the fridge is now comically empty.

In cleaning out the refrigerator's freezer, I came across a bunch of random cuts of beef taking up space. I ended up throwing them all in the slow cooker and turning it into "zesty orange beef." With just the two of us, we've been eating off this for days now.

By the way, Older Daughter stinkin' loves her new apartment. After a few days, Frumpkin (her cat) also settled in and has adopted one particular chair as his very own.

Older Daughter is so pleased with this apartment, in fact, that she hopes to stay there for the next four years, the duration of her schooling to become a nurse.

Last Saturday, our church had its annual deep-clean work party. Don's job was to build a child-proof gate and barrier across a dangerous four-foot drop to a tiny basement area where the church's heater is located. This drop-off is right off the fellowship hall, which is in constant use. Our church building is about 125 years old, so it has its quirks. Our pastor's son is now a bit over two years old, plus we have some other young kids, so this was an overdue safety concern.

(By the way, you might remember our pastor's love story – see here and here and here and here – and I'm pleased to announce they're expecting their second child in late October, another boy! Mr. and Mrs. Pastor have proven themselves to be excellent parents, and their first child has become something of a church mascot, much beloved by everyone.)

We spent the week arranging for a new (used) vehicle for Older Daughter. Her other car has a major transmission issue, which makes fixing it more expensive than it's worth, so she'll sell it either for parts or to someone who wants to repair and flip-sell it. Meanwhile, we asked our mechanic if he had any knowledge of an inexpensive-but-reliable vehicle available, and by golly he did. Having a mechanic you can trust is such a blessing! 

I've also been spending a lot of time in the garden, weeding out beds, layering them with compost, and planting seeds. We've had some crazy temperature swings (hey, spring) so I'm refraining from planting some of the more sensitive veggies until things stabilize.

We had a neighbor come up with his small track hoe to dig a trench behind the barn so we could lay in a drain to divert water from the barn door. Don lined the trench with weed cloth and laid down a perforated pipe, then covered it with gravel. This was a task we'd hoped to accomplish last fall, but the weather caught up with us before we had a chance to accomplish this step.

Older Daughter came in late last week to pick up her new (used) car and return ours, which she had been borrowing. We had a busy day helping her pack more of her things and fit them into her car, which has the advantage of having more room than her previous car.

This left one of her previous rooms empty. It needs some patching and trim, but above all it needs a paint job. (As a brief history, we had to move Older Daughter in rather hastily four years ago when her apartment lease ran out about the same time Don had some minor surgery, so cosmetic changes weren't high on our list.) The family from whom we purchased our house were absolutely lovely people, but their choice in paint colors was ... unique. I kid you not, the color is that bright.

Don started the prep work necessary to paint, which we hope to do this upcoming week. We'd like to get it finished in time to convert it into a guest bedroom, since Younger Daughter will be visiting in late June before moving west to start her new civilian job.

Meanwhile, through all of this, I finished up several magazine articles and sent them off, and began blasting through my next Love Inspired proposal which I hope to submit within a week or so.

And to top it off, we're having a new roof installed! This is something for which we've been saving for at least two years. We would have had it done last year, but we couldn't manage it financially after I was laid off from my online job in February 2025. It took us an extra year to save up for it.

Our current roof is asphalt shingles, and it was getting quite ragged. We were delighted to learn installing a metal roof was actually more economical than installing a new shingle roof. (We became huge fans of metal roofs after experiencing the benefits in our last home.) We chose a nice solid brown as a roof color.

The contractor is a young and highly respected Mennonite roofer whose work has high ratings. At the moment one-third of the roof is newly covered, but then work had to pause for some rainstorms. The rest of the roof should be completed next week.

We chose the roof color to complement the house color we chose for an upcoming paint job. Our current house color is a rather drab "greige."

This summer, Don and I will paint it a nice green. (The color chips shown below have a distinctly blue tinge to them, but I assure you they're green.)

We're also sorting through a lot of shelves, cupboards, and closets for items to sell at a yard sale we plan to hold this summer.

So yeah, that's been our week. Lots of stuff going on!

Moving out

Goodness, what a busy few days this has been! Older Daughter has officially moved out. She started her new job today. Nursing school doesn't start until late August, so she has several months of full-time work before classwork begins.

She called us last Friday night, having picked up the keys and seen her studio apartment for the first time. She was thrilled with it. "It's much bigger than I thought it would be," she said. "The window is huge, and it has a very wide windowsill for sitting. The kitchen is large for a studio apartment."

She drove home Friday evening. All weekend, she was engaged in packing, sorting, and discarding. On Sunday, we loaded up our car and hers with some basic furniture, clothes, kitchen things, and other assorted necessities, and went to see her apartment.

She's right: It's a charming studio overlooking a charming street scene. The only disadvantage is the thirty – thirty! – steps to ascend to the second floor.

This apartment is not handicap accessible, so it has no elevator or other means of transporting worldly goods upstairs except sheer grunt-work. (The building is well over a hundred years old, so no surprise.)

But that's okay. Most of the heavy lifting is already done, and we'll all be gradually moving whatever didn't fit into the first load into subsequent trips. Her cat Frumpkin is with us for a few days until she gets things more established.

Things are a lot quieter here at home, but a lot more exciting for Older Daughter.

A new career for Older Daughter

I've been making a few oblique references to some exciting developments with Older Daughter, so here is what's happening.

You might remember her accident on New Year's Eve in which she touched the router with the tip of her index finger, which mangled her fingertip. This resulted in a painful and lengthy recovery (you don't appreciate how often you use your index finger until you can't). The incident effectively put an end to her woodworking career, especially since the business was no longer as profitable as it once was.

Now let's go back to a year before that, during a couple of months bracketing late 2024 and early 2025. At that time she was attending the necessary coursework to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). She aced the coursework, the practicum, and the final exam, but didn't start work as a CNA at a local facility until March, after she had finished up a few wholesale orders with the woodcraft business.

Her new job was part-time, since she was still running the woodcraft business, but she got enough experience to know she's both good at, and thoroughly enjoys, the profession. She has a gift she inherited from Don; namely, the ability to emote with patients to know what kind of approach to take. Sometimes she has to be tough, sometimes funny, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes firm.

A true story from when she was working the week-long practicum at a rehab facility in another city: A woman had just entered the facility who (to put it mildly) didn't want to be there. The other CNAs were treating her very kindly and patiently, trying to settle her into the routine.

The first time Older Daughter went in to assist the lady out of bed, the other woman snarled, "I hate it here! I don't want to be here!"

Older Daughter started with the trite surface-level empathy. "I understand..."

But this lady was having none of it. "No, you don't understand."

Older Daughter realized this lady was right, so she said (pardon the language), "You're right. I don't understand. It sucks that you have to be here, doesn't it?"

Startled, the other woman replied, "Yeah! It does suck! You're right!"

And from then on, she and this other woman were friends, and the lady was able to start establishing herself in the facility. What the woman needed was affirmation and sympathy, but not the syrupy-sweet kind she was getting from the other staff members. She needed something hard-hitting and truthful.

That's what I mean when I say Older Daughter has the talent for knowing what kind of approach to take with individual patients. Whether it's belting out the lyrics to "Rawhide" with an old cowboy as she pushes his wheelchair down a hallway, or gently untangling knotted hair for a woman who takes pride in her appearance, the patients absolutely adore her.

After seeing the way the CNAs work in my mom's nursing home (they run the place!), I told Older Daughter, "You're doing a good thing." Sometimes she would come home discouraged or even in tears about something that happened, but I tell her, "Think about what you're doing. You're giving these people dignity at a time in their lives when their dignity is at a very low ebb."

Anyway, bottom line, working as a CNA has awakened an interest in going further and getting her nursing degree. For the last year or so, she's been thinking about this possibility (becoming a CNA was the first step), but she was stymied because she wasn't ready to give up the woodcraft business yet, and moving closer to nursing school while trying to drag an entire shop of power tools in her wake was turning into a logistical nightmare.

That's why injuring her finger may have been a blessing in disguise. She was able to graciously exit the woodcraft business and turn fully to health care as a career.

This was reinforced by an extremely interesting and almost amusing thing that happened while she was getting patched up in the emergency room on New Year's Eve.

Understand that she came in directly from the shop when she injured her finger. She was covered in blood and sawdust, and as she and Don walked into the emergency room, she was trailing sawdust like the character Pigpen in the old Peanuts cartoons.

The nurse said, "I need to take your vitals. I forgot to grab them earlier because we usually have an ER tech, but she's not here tonight."

Older Daughter mentioned that her blood pressure tends to spike when it's being measured (she inherited Don's "white-coat syndrome"), and when she practiced blood-pressure readings in her clinicals, everyone got wildly different results.

The nurse was a little startled and asked "In what context?" That's when Older Daughter explained that she's a CNA.

The nurse said, "A real CNA? As in, licensed?" Older Daughter said yes.

The nurse said, half-jokingly, "If you need any more work around here, let me know."  Older Daughter said, "I might. I'm not getting many hours in my current job."

Then, I kid you not, the nurse disappeared and returned with the staffing manager, who came over with a big smile to introduce herself. Now remember, Older Daughter is covered in blood and sawdust, and in a considerable amount of pain. She apologized for her appearance, and the head nurse said, "Oh no, that's fine! So you're a certified CNA right now?" Older Daughter affirmed this, and the head nurse said, "They're currently looking for CNAs in the emergency room. We could train you to be an ER tech and teach you to do IVs." She handed Older Daughter her business card and urged her to stay in touch.

We got a chuckle over this impromptu interview, but Older Daughter couldn't follow up on the offer until her finger had healed sufficiently. Later she applied for the position, but learned that it paid less than she was getting at her original CNA job, so she declined it.

However the incident sparked a series of events which culminated this past week with some exciting developments:

• She applied to an extremely respected nursing school and was accepted. The acceptance happened about a month ago, and last week she met with an academic adviser to map out the appropriate coursework.

• She applied for a job as a CNA at an upscale facility in the same city and was offered a full-time job, with the understanding that her hours will need to be worked around her class schedule. (Apparently the facility deals with nursing students all the time, so this was nothing unusual.)

• She took the math placement exam and was deemed qualified for college math (this one had her worried).

• She found a beautiful studio apartment in a safe and enviable part of town, with beautiful trees outside her huge window. The apartment comes with a dishwasher, refrigerator, and washer/dryer. The price isn't bad, either, and it's only about half a mile from campus.

In short, it's been a tremendously exciting time for her. She's starting to pack and sort through her things, deciding what to keep and what to sell at our future yard sale. She'll be moving to her new apartment after May 1, when the current tenants vacate the premises. She'll work full-time over the summer until school starts in late August.

She's so excited about this new chapter of her life!

Writing deadlines up the whazoo

If I've been unusually quiet on the blog lately, it's because I've had writing deadlines up the whazoo. I'm finishing up a manuscript (due Monday) and have been either outlining or writing a number of articles.

Additionally, Older Daughter has had some exceptionally exciting developments in the past week. I'll be posting an update on those developments shortly.

In the meantime, sorry for the silence!

The final shipment

Dear readers, thank you for your forbearance as Don and I coped with finishing up a massive production run of tankards after Older Daughter's shop accident on New Year's Eve.

Here's some of the things we've been doing over the last three weeks. The production run was split into two parts: A huge first part of about 270 pieces, and a smaller second part of about 75.

We had tankards everywhere in the house, on virtually every flat surface.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this was one of the biggest production runs we've done over the span of the last 33 years.

Here we're testing tankards, where we fill them with water to see if any leak. We had to do this in stages, since there were so many.

The house was in absolute flippin' chaos during this time. Tankards in various stages of completion, boxes for packing, bubble wrap, newspapers, guarantee cards ... what a mess.

In the photo below, for example, Older Daughter and I are working at the kitchen table getting tankards ready to pack, while Don is in the background gluing up the next batch on a card table. Chaos chaos chaos.

Here's the newspaper station. I'm spreading out full sheets of newspaper from the pile on the right, while discarding half-sheets on the floor to the left (we'll use them for fire starters). We need full-size sheets of newspapers for wrapping tankards for packing.

Here we're prepping boxes. BIG boxes.

Packing boxes. Three boxes are stacked to the left, two to the right, and the one we just finished filling is in the center. We roll each tankard in newspaper before packing.

Six huge boxes ready to ship. I'm fairly certain this is the largest number of boxes we've ever shipped at one time. Even the UPS guy said it could have made its own stand-alone pickup.

With the bulk of the production run out the door, we were able to concentrate on the smaller 75-piece portion. Here's we're coating the insides of the tankards.

And here are the final two boxes, packed and ready to tape shut and address.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the final shipment.

No, really, I mean it. This is the final shipment of tankards. After 33 years in business, 29 by Don and myself and the last four years by Older Daughter, we're closing down. Older Daughter has already notified her wholesale customers.

It's bittersweet, of course, but the painful reality is it's no longer cost-effective for making a living. Sure it was insane hours, erratic income, and  the occasional injury, but over the three decades Don and I ran it, we were able to support a family, pay a mortgage, raise our children, and always be home with them.

But things have changed. Prices for all the components (wood, glue, varnish, sanding belts, saw blades, spray guns, bubble wrap, boxes, shipping) have skyrocketed, but the tankard prices couldn't be raised enough to compensate and provide a livable wage. In other words, it was becoming less and less profitable. While Older Daughter's injury was the deciding factor, there's no doubt the increasing cost of doing business convinced her it was better to let it go.

However Older Daughter has some exciting new plans for her future. I'm not at liberty to discuss what they are at the moment, but she has some wonderful opportunities opening up.

While this final shipment is officially the end of an era, Don and I know better than to claim we'll never make another tankard. As the saying goes, never say never. Economic reality might necessitate a change of plans. We're thoroughly enjoying our new careers as full-time freelance writers, but it's good to know we have a backup source of income should we need it.

But for now ... this is the final shipment.

Drowning in tankards

Sorry for the silence, dear readers. Don and I have been drowning in tankards for the last few days.

To update our disastrous New Year's Eve and New Year's Day incidents: My mother continues to remain stable after rallying from what we all thought were her final moments. She's back at the nursing home, though she's in isolation (doubtless because of the pneumonia) and my dad is required to suit up in PPE before visiting her. The consensus is if her bouts of abrupt pneumonia continue, the family will turn to hospice.

Older Daughter's finger is on the mend, but she's severely limited in what she can do ... and that includes completing a massive 350+ piece order of tankards that must reach their destination within two weeks. Therefore Don and I have taken over the production run.

Don has been spending hours in the shop on the power tools. At various stages in the assembly process, he brings batches to the house, where I take over assembly. Right now the house is overrun with mugs.

Nearly every surface is covered in various style tankards in various stages of completion.

As an example, yesterday evening Older Daughter and I sat at the kitchen table to work on the smallest-size tankards in the repertoire, the coffee-sized mugs. These have solid, rather than multi-colored, sides. Older Daughter assembled the side pieces into groups of six, which I then taped and stacked for gluing.

These are the groups of six sides which will get taped.

Stacks of taped tankards. Altogether there were about 90 tankards to glue in this particular batch.

While I glued, Older Daughter sat opposite and entertained me by reading out loud various dramas posted on Reddit.

By the time of evening chores, I had worked my way through a bit over half of the three stacks.

The freshly glued tankards were left to dry for several hours (overnight, in this case).

Today Don will be working on another batch of the production run in the shop, which he'll then bring into the house for me to glue up.

Older Daughter is antsy and bored and apologetic for the need for us to finish the production run, but such is life. We're just very grateful her injury wasn't worse.

Anyway, that accounts for my blog silence over the last few days. Our deepest thanks for all of your prayers during our difficulties.

A really, really rough New Year's Eve

We are now two days into the New Year, and now I feel I can write about what our New Year's Eve was like. In a nutshell, it was very, very rough.

My mother (who, as you remember, is now in a nursing home) was hospitalized on Dec. 30 with pneumonia and a blood infection. It didn't sound good. Then on Dec. 31, the doctor (not her regular doctor, but the one on call over the holiday weekend) said she wasn't responding to treatments. He summoned the immediate family (my dad and all my brothers; I'm too far away) for a meeting on New Year's Day.

Doctors don't summon immediate family for no reason. We were braced for the worst. When I talked to my youngest brother (who lives geographically closest to my parents and has been a rock for them), he said he fully expected Mom to go into hospice. He's a big strong man, my brother, but he was crying as he told me this.

Since I couldn't physically be present at the meeting, my brother asked me to stay by the phone on New Year's Day in case my input was needed for whatever decisions were being made about my mother's care.

Needless to say we were a gloomy household on New Year's Eve. Younger Daughter (stationed in Europe) was traveling, and my brother urged me not to ruin her trip because she couldn't do anything anyway. Older Daughter was very upset about the news and buried herself in work, since she has a large wholesale order going out shortly.

On the evening of New Year's Eve, Don and I decided to call our pastor and explain the situation, and ask for prayers. This good man was – literally – in the middle of a prayer on the phone when Older Daughter came crashing into house from the shop, holding up a bloody and mangled finger. While working on the router, a piece of wood snapped and her finger connected with the router blade. She was in terrible pain, covered in blood and sawdust.

We yelled to our pastor that we had to go, and immediately embarked on a hasty first-aid for Older Daughter. We bundled her into the car and Don drove her to the emergency room, a half-hour drive away.

After they left, I called our pastor back and explained what happened, noting grimly that this was a helluva way to end the year. He finished the prayer he had started earlier, and then – without asking – went to meet Don and Older Daughter at the emergency room. (Apparently he does this a lot with congregants. They know him there in the emergency room.)

Don and Older Daughter were back within a couple of hours. OD's finger is swathed in gauze, of course, but it will mend. The router had chewed off the tip, but the injury didn't reach the bone and she should recover full use after it heals. Heavens above, it could have been way worse.

So New Year's Day dawned, and Don went out to the shop to take over the production run of tankards for Older Daughter's wholesale order. I, meanwhile, stayed inside by the phone, waiting for word on my mom. I took down the Christmas tree and cleaned the house as a sort of occupational therapy. Older Daughter slept much of the day, exhausted.

It wasn't until evening that my brother called with surprising news: My mother had rallied!

This took, literally, all of us by surprise. The entire family was braced for the worst. My brother said Mom looked terrible, was mostly comatose, and hadn't eaten in days (she had a feeding tube). My dad had tried to wake her up several times to no avail.

My dad tried to wake her up one last time. She actually woke up, but was terribly groggy. But then, miraculously, she kind of blinked herself awake over the span of about five minutes and became much more alert. She was responsive and cognizant and talking (as best she could; her speech was badly impacted by the stroke). Her vitals stabilized. The doctor was just as surprised as the rest of us by her rapid improvement, and decided to belay any recommendations for hospice.

My brother said Dad went from the darkest gloom to incandescent happiness in the span of an hour.

Mom is still hospitalized and she is by no means out of danger, but the likelihood of her imminent departure seems to have passed.

Phew. It's been a roller-coaster of emotions over the last couple of days, let me tell you. 

On a more positive note, something interesting and even amusing happened to Older Daughter while being treated in the emergency room, which I'll explain later in another blog post.

In the meantime, prayers for my parents would be deeply appreciated.

Happy birthday, Older Daughter!

Today is Older Daughter's birthday!

We had nothing special planned for the day – we're not big on going overboard for birthdays – but we got her a French silk pie and a gift card to her favorite café, and that was about the extent of it.

But we're all together and all healthy, so that's what matters.

And here's the obligatory newborn photo, just to embarrass her (smile).