I hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day. Mine was very nice, even though Henry eventually repossessed the card he'd given to me in the morning. (It's "Cars"-themed and plays "Life Is A Highway" when you open it, so it was hard to argue with him when he said I'd actually given it to him and not the other way around. I mean, that does make a lot more sense.) We also made chicken and rice, as is our tradition, and I even surprised Robbie by actually starting to cook it, using the handy recipe he posted to the Sedgewiki, instead of waiting for him to get home.

And now that the week of productivity has ended, things have started to get much more productive around here. The painters started yesterday, and we picked a paint color for the hallway with very little trouble, where by "very little trouble" I mean that the painter opened his book of Sherwin-Williams colors, said "This one here is very popular," and we were like "Yeah, OK." I wish I could report that they're having a similarly easy time working on the house, but that has never happened to any workmen who've come here ever, and I keep hearing them talking in hushed tones about the various ways our house falls apart when you touch it. Yesterday they started to scrape off some loose paint on one wall in preparation for painting and ended up having to completely re-cover the wall, so I'm not sure when the prep will be done and actual painting will begin, but I have to say I'm pretty eager.

And today the guy is coming to measure for this year's installment of new doors and windows, which will be great. I was sitting on the floor by the kitchen door this weekend and musing on how nice it will be when I can't actually feel a breeze strong enough to ruffle my hair while the door is closed. We may also be getting our front door repaired, which is pretty exciting in that we've been trying to schedule it for a year, but I'm still not sure it's going to happen. That should be a big deal, though, because he's going to take the door away and replace it with plywood for the duration of the repairs, which I think will look nice and classy. And then I think we're actually done for the year, home-improvement-wise, which is lucky because we'll also be totally out of money.