Jere Van Patten

Since my last post a lot has been happening in the Van Patten home.  Most exciting news is that my mom is FINALLY home from the hospital slash rehabilitation center after two and a half months!  Yippee!  We decided that after such a horrific event it would be great to do something great for my mom's return.  She's close to retirement, fell the day after her 67th birthday and does so much for so many all the time.  The time seemed perfect for a little Peg-tiddly-Peg-Peg lovin'.  So, we rounded up the troops, took up a collection and got busy transforming my mom's house.  Heading this project was my amazing wife Allyson who has the eye for design and a great team to back her up as well as my sister Julie. 

She bought her track home back in 1993 and the walls were stark white.  We lovingly refer to her house as "the bowling alley" becuase it's thin and very long.  Her main living area consists of a family room which runs into a dining room which runs into the kitchen which runs into a sunroom.  That's all the "left" half of her house - the "right" side has her master bedroom and the other two bedrooms and bathroom.  We didn't have the time or budget to redo her entire house so we just focused on the "left" side - the living spaces.

My mom has been saying for a long while that she'd really love her living room to be yellow, but she has rediculously high ceilings and always thought it would be impossible to do unless she hired a guy to do it for her.  I have to admit that it was pretty challenging to make it happen, but we got the job done.  We needed lots of tall ladders to stand on, brave people to climb them and folks willing to get some paint on their clothes.  We got peeps to come in and scrub corners, put up beadboard, chair rails, safety bars in the bathtub and shower, put bookshelves together, install cabinet shelves, do yardwork, drapery, windows, vaccume, et. al.  Lucky for us, we found 'em!  People poured on the love for the one and only Peggers!  We brought her home today at 3:30pm to a house FULL of friends, family and neighbors welcoming her back to her *new* house.  It was perfect!  She was completely surprised.  From the moment she opened the front door the water works started and she shed many happy and grateful tears at the transformation. 

To those who contributed in ANY way, shape, or form - THANK YOU!!  This could not have happened without your help.  My mom is so happy and absolutely LOVES it - and that's the best "thank you" anyone can receive!  I'll be posting the before and after pictures as soon as I get them uploaded so you all can see the differences. 

With the start of not only a new year, but a new decade I thought it was time to start blogging.  Seems to me that everyone else in the free world has a blog so why shouldn't I right?  I'm going to give this a try and see how it goes - if itsucks, or I just don't have the time for it, then no harm no foul.  If it's successful then hooray beer!  So, here goes. . .

We just got new bikes and it's been my goal to ride it every day.  That being said, I'm in quite a bit of pain in my naughty-bits area as I've not been on a bike since I was around 14 or so, which by the way was 19 years ago!  So, I've got to "break in" my grundle and embrace the pain and just keep going.  I took a day off to give myself a break, but that wasn't such a good idea because it seemed to hurt a thousand times more the next day.  UGH!  Here's for hoping that the insanity stops sooner as opposed to later.

As you read in our New Year letter on the home page I've lost 150 pounds - thank you gastric bypass.  I had my surgery nine months ago and I've seemed to hit that ever famous wall where my weight loss has stoped and now it's up to me to do the rest.  This is the part that they try to prepare you for prior to your surgery.  This is that point where, "this isn't a quick fix, it's a stepping stone" and now the responsibility is all mine.  I feel a bit scared and a bit excited at these new crossroads.  For the past month or so I've been bouncing back and forth between 257 and 263 so I know that I've hit that preverbial wall and now the hard part comes - hence, the bike.  My sister-in-law Dixie is a personal trainer and runs her own site (visit by clicking here) and sent me an article she found about a 500+ pound guy who lost a bucket of weight all through riding his bike.  Well, of course there was diet change as well as a lot of other outside factors put into things, but his exercise came in the form of bike riding.  I've wanted a bike since I started ASU this past August, so I'm excited about my possibilitites.  I'll keep you posted on things.

School starts up again for me one week from today.  I just found out I've been dropped from one of my classes due to a "D" which will hold me back from moving forward with things as planned.  It's completely personal and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it at this point but suffer through the course again with the same woman who's been making my life hell.  BUT, the silver lining is that once I'm out of the course I won't have to see her again as that is the only course she teaches.  So, now I'm off to find some creative scheduling for the spring in hopes that I won't be adding another whole semester to my time at ASU.  There are two courses I'm very excited to be a part of and those are Elements of Design and Playwrighting.  Hopefully I'll find that I'm met to be a writer and make millions sitting at home on the couch.  =)  HA!