Skimming over my friends list, it looks like many of you had a lovely Thanksgiving. Some of you also had a not-so-lovely Thanksgiving. :( *snugs*

My life has pretty much been a blur since last Wednesday night, when Ty and I spent our "date night" watching The Mist (Don't waste your money. Ty does say the movie "Gigli" was worse, but....) and going out for drinks and live music. Then we ended up *censored* until 2:30 am, which made us less than thrilled to wake up on Thanksgiving to make the three hour trek to his mom's house. We did have a wonderful Thanksgiving with his mom and step-dad, despite the tiredness.

She made plenty of vegetarian food, and sent us home with a HUGE box of leftovers, which we are still trying to eat. Her "blessing" before the meal started with "Thank you, God, for my son, and for Joella, the best thing in his life". (Awwww!)

We watched the Packer's kick ass. (I can't believe I'm finally starting to understand football. I had totally given up hope of that ever happening, but Ty is patient. He doesn't try to explain it all at once, like everyone has in the past, but just lets me watch and ask questions when I think to, and then gets excited that I'm asking about it rather than making me feel stupid for not knowing.)

We got home at a decent hour on Thanksgiving. I took a bath and had a glass of wine, and then we curled up on the couch to snuggle and drink tea to the light of the TV. ( And that's when all hell broke loose... )

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet or not, but Ty is, for all intents and purposes, moved in with me. He is still on the lease at his old apartment, but is sub-letting his room to a friend. Amazingly, even my mom didn't have any nay-saying about how seemingly quickly he moved into my home. It has been a fairly seamless transition. I love having him around, and he's a huge help around the house and with the pets.

We've both been lost in domestic bliss, and have enjoyed re-arranging, re-decorating, and re-organizing together, as well as integrating his belongings with mine. We're both on the path to certainty that this relationship is what we've both been waiting for.

I had thought everything was going peachy keen, but the other day, my love admitted that he did have one complaint about living me with me.

He said:

"Can you try to leave some of that hummus? I don't get my fair share of dip in this house."




:x

Argh. Trying to do this pro se divorce thing gets a little more frustrating and confusing with each step. I was under the impression that the pile of paperwork to be completed needed to be brought to the final hearing. Upon attempting to schedule said hearing, I was informed that it needs to be completed and filed prior to scheduling the hearing. Hopefully by this time next week, I'll have a final hearing scheduled, and the end of all this will be within reach.

In other divorce news, the paperwork regarding the transfer of our property from us to me has now been filed with the register of deeds, which means I am officially, legally, the sole owner of my property. What a wonderful feeling! I've spent the last week cleaning, organizing (read: throwing a bunch of shit out), and re-arranging my house, to support the feeling of the house being my own. The energy in the house has completely changed for the better, and I can't wait until the re-organization/re-arranging is complete.

( Read more... )

Any of you ever replace a hot water heater?

Price range?

(For a 40-50 gallon, electric hot water heater.)

This is the part of home ownership that sucketh greatly.

So, in all of my frenzied picture posting last night, I left out a few details from the weekend.

Saturday afternoon, I got to hang out with Ed (touretticmonkey) for a couple hours. We haven't had a chance to hang for a couple weeks, so it was awesome to see him. He made some delicious chili, (I'm always well-fed when Ed's around!) and then we took Hayley for a walk to a park to enjoy the gorgeous day. Getting to the park near his house requires walking past the sewage treatment facility, and there is a building on the property with a sign that says "Hog Pen" and has a picture of a pig on it.

( Read more... )

In other news, Ryan and I had received a few Best Buy gift cards over the holidays, and we used them to purchase a.....device, I guess? that is a DVD/CD player, VCR, and receiver all in one, and came with surround-sound speakers. We got that all hooked up, and then Ryan figured out how to hook the computer up to it, too. I used to hate using the computer to listen to music, because our computer speakers were so crappy, but now listening to music on the computer=surround sound!! Awesome!! I am in love with i-tunes.

I do have a question, though. (Actually it's Ryan's question, but I told him I'd ask y'all). In i-tunes, what does "Consolidate Library" mean? Ryan was going to just try it and see what it does, but got nervous when it said that once done, it couldn't be undone. Help?

Last night, we de-Christmas-a-fied the house. One of the benefits of not going all-out on the holiday decorating is that it doesn't take nearly as much time or effort to tear it all down and pack it all away again. :)

Happy Tuesday, everybody!! :D

I'm going to spam you with posts for the next couple of days to make up for my absence later this week. You've been warned. :p

I will apply liberal use of LJ Cuts.

This was a pretty fantastic weekend.

( Read more... )

Happy Monday, y'all, I hope your weekends were all as fantabulous as mine! :)

Wow, for a five day weekend, that went by fast!!

I was sure I was going to make some headway on the list of entries to write, but alas, it was not to be. I was so busy with family, friends, and food (WAY too much food) that I didn't have much time for interneting.

Let's see...Wednesday morning began a 5 morning-streak of sleeping WAY too late. I slept until at least 10:00 am each day, which is completely unlike me, but it was much needed and appreciated sleep! Wednesday evening, I went with touretticmonkey (Ed) to a Vegan Thanksgiving dinner at his Grandparents' house. I was a little nervous to meet his Grandparents and his mom, (especially since they knew of me as "the married chick that Ed met online and dated briefly before deciding to be 'just' friends") but there was really nothing to be nervous about. His Grandma and Grandpa are absolutely delightful, and while I think it took his mom a little bit to warm up to me, I think we hit it off just fine. And the food was incredible. After dinner and tea we all sat around in the living room just talking and sharing stories and such. It was very nice!

( Read more... )

Prepare for photo spammage on your friends page!

(Don't worry, I have an LJ-Cut, and I know how to use it!)

Under the cut are pictures of the new coffee table, end table, and pedestal table, which were part of my birthday gift.

( Clickies for Piccies )

Having picked out my own table set, I am finally starting to feel like this is my own home. I moved out of my parents house over 9 years ago, and have always had hand-me-down coffee tables. One of the things I've wanted to splurge on for my home forever has been my very own, brand new, coffee table set that *I* picked out.

When we first bought this house, my mom gave us the very gracious gift of all the furniture in her basement, which was previously her living room set when I was growing up. While I very much appreciated having furniture that matched and was in good shape, it felt like moving backwards, to have the living room from my childhood in my own adult home.

Since then, my mom gave me her new-old furniture (a sage green sectional couch/love seat thing, you can kind of see it in the coffee table picture), but I still had that old (ugly!) coffee and end table.

I feel like a big girl now!

I had a good weekend. It was busy and exhausting, but I managed to squeeze some fun in there too. Saturday started with dragging a crabby Ryan out of bed to move the couch and huge chair from the living room to the garage, where it will be picked up by friends of my mom's later this week. Then out to her house to load her "new old" furniture (as opposed to her "old old" furniture which was what was moved out to the garage) into two trucks and take it to our house and unload it. I'm a damn maniac when it comes to moving furniture, btw, bless Ryan for tolerating me. (Cuz damn, I can be bossy!)

Then, returned my step-dad's truck and drove to my mom's friend's because she had "a few plants to divide, if I wanted some", and returned home with both my trunk and back seat full of FREE plants. w00t!! I got a few of those in the ground, then headed to a birthday bash for a long time friend, her sister, and her dad. Always lots of fun. Here's me, holding her baby girl, who was terrified of me at first, but warmed up eventually:



Yesterday, I single-handedly rearranged the porch, to make room for some of the new-old furniture that didn't fit in the living room. Did a bunch of cleaning, and then spent the gorgeous afternoon putting pretty babies (plants) into their new homes. Most of the plants she gave me were shade plants, so I made A LOT of progress on my shady areas. :)

Those were the highlights. I have the afternoon off today, and I've been ordered to relax. I think that, after I finish catching up on LJ stuff, I'll curl up on the porch with a book and some tea. :)

Sorry these took so long...

( Clickie! )

A moment after posting my last entry, it occured to me that it is rather shallow, and some what rediculous, that something as meaningless in the grand scheme of things as a pretty bathroom can make me so happy.

I got to thinking a little more about it, and I decided that I'm alright with that. Yeah, it's just a place to shit and shower, and it doesn't *need* to be pretty. There are very few instances in which vanity is important to me. I don't spend money on fancy clothes, or make up, or curling irons or hair spray. I don't drive a flashy car or buy lots of high priced electronics. So what if I like my surroundings to be attractive and relaxing? I've worked hard to be financially able to make improvements to my home. I don't buy new things for my home at the expense of food for myself, my husband or my pets, or at the expense of the health and well being of the aformentioned.

So, yeah, maybe it's a silly thing to get so happy or excited about, but I made it happen, and I'm happy with the result, and I'm proud of the whole damn thing.

I guess I'm not perfect. It's a good thing I don't need to be.

The bathroom is done. Totally done. It cost twice at much as we'd hoped it would. Thank goodness for a decent income tax refund this year, or we'd not have $0 credit card balances right now. Really, for a nearly complete renovation of a bathroom, we got off easy, money-wise.

And the outcome is.............I LOVE it. I just keep walking in to the bathroom, looking around, and smiling. I'll take pictures and post them for y'all this week sometime.

( Read more... )

(Oh, I'm still working on answers to the rest of your questions. I should get them posted this week, I think.)

Don't believe anyone who tells you it's possible to remodel your bathroom for about $500. It's not.

No matter what, it will cost more, take longer, and require more work than you ever thought possible.

Hopefully, after this is done, I'll be able to say it was all worth it. :)

The Good:

When I leave for my weekend away next Friday, my bathroom will be a disaster area. When I return on Sunday, my bathroom will be all sparkly and new-like. (Uh, granted that everything goes according to plan.)

The Bad:

It's going to cost more than we'd hoped. My mom is paying for a generous portion as a Christmas/Anniversary, etc. gift. Her gift is $500. It's probably going to cost closer to $800 to complete, due to some un-forseen problems with the walls and floor. (Well, and the fact that we weren't originally planning on DOING the floor right away, but it makes the best sense to do it all at the same time.)

The nice thing, though, is that my mom is going to pay for everything up front, and let us pay her back in installments for however much over $500 it goes. One of the nice things about having a mom who was poor while I was growing up, and who worked her ass of so that she is NOT poor now that I'm an adult, is that the spoiling I receive as an adult is WAY better than any spoiling I would have received as a child. I mean, a new bathroom is a bit more long lasting and important than the name-brand jeans I never got to have as a child.

( The Ugly: )

Since it's been a couple-few months since I made my first of the year goals, I thought it was time to update on some of them. Prepare to be spammed with my successes and...not yet successes.

First goal was keeping this week/this month/this year to-do lists. We've been doing well with that. We've been keeping this list and at least starting them when they're on the list.

I'm going to go ahead and cut here. There are a fair amount of images under the cut, to warn you.

( Read more... )

Not only does no one in the tri-state area have school today, but I got sent home from work!

They called a "Code Grey" at the clinic, which means all staff who are non-essential for patient care (That would be me!!) have to hit the road. You'll hear no complaints from me on that.

So, a few minutes ago, there was a knock on my door. I opened it up to four rosey cheeked little boys asking "Can we help you with your snow?". My first thought was that even if they shovel now, with the amount of snow coming down, I won't even be even to TELL that they shoveled an hour from now, but I just smiled and said "Sure! What's your price?" They asked if 2 Quarters each would be too much. I said "Why don't you go ahead and get started, and I'll see if I can do better than that."

I came back out with a dollar and a quarter for each of them, and they looked like they'd won the lottery.

Now, the length of sidewalk in front of my house is...oh...maybe 30 feet long? (I'm guessing) With four of them shoveling, it took all of about three minutes, so I'd say they got paid pretty well for their time. Maybe they'll come back when the snow's done falling and finish up, lol.

If you would have told me this morning that it would take me roughly (and it sure was rough) 3 hours to take down all of the blinds and remove all of the old hardware from the blinds in my house, so that I could start putting up the awesome new bamboo roman shades I bought today, I would not have believed you.

That would have been terribly ignorant of me.

This leaves me at 9:30 on Saturday night with my "to do" list looking like this:

Laundry (Almost done!! Just need to fold and put away.)
Buy Window Shades
Take down old blinds and hardware
Install new shades (Living Room Done)
Clean up Porch (This was done, until I had to tear it apart again to get to the windows. Argh.)
Make Hummus
Make Carrot Cupcakes (Just need to frost them)
Make Tabouleh (Half done, will finish tomorrow)
Organize (and Frame as appropriate) Photos from the past year
Clean Bathroom
Wash Dishes
Sweep
Vaccum
Dust

Do you think I'll get that all done tonight? I don't. So much for finishing it all today so I could relax tomorrow. It would be really nice if one of these weekends actually felt like a bit of a break, for a change.

Bookcase = Purchased, assembled, and filled with books, framed photos, and assorted trinkets and knick-knacks.

All books under our roof now have a home together.

I was also able to re-organize some other shelves and things, and now all DVDs live together, all VHS tapes live together, and several areas have been un-clutter-fied.

Husband = Very Pleased with organization and un-clutter-fied-ness. (Although doesn't like my preferred method of placing smaller framed photos/trinkets in front of books on shelves. He'll live.)

Phone Call From Lance = None of the talk he mentioned wanting to have, as he was upset over a situation that occured with some other friends over the weekend. I listened to him vent it all, after which he informed me that all humans are totally fucked up, except for me.
(Yeah. Right.) Who knows when/if that talk will ever even happen or whether it was any big deal anyway. This patience thing is hard.

Joellacritter = A little frustrated with some boy situations, but trying very hard to be patient and not pushy. I think she = ready for a bubble bath with hot cocoa and a book too.

With all said and done, this has been a mostly quite wonderful long weekend for me. (And it’s not over yet! I took an extra day off, so I don’t go back to work until tomorrow!)

We went to Ryan’s dad’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, and it was by far the most calm, least obnoxious holiday we have spent over there. For the first time, everyone was able to come, and as Ryan put it, it was “really nice that everyone ‘has someone’ this year”.

Friday, I got to spend the evening with an old friend/flame, Paul (baumsquad the guy I was talking about HERE.) He was back in town for the weekend and made some space for me in his schedule on Friday night. He got to meet Ryan (and they hit it off quite well, Ryan wishes he lived closer so we could all hang out some more!) and then we headed to an Italian restaurant for dinner where we discussed the numerous talents that I don’t possess. (Like, I can’t spit, cross my eyes, or make my tongue into a taco.) After dinner, back to my house where he picked up the acoustic guitar and serenaded me with Tenacious D songs. Nothing makes a girl swoon quite like “Fuck Her Gently” lol!

He joined me for Ryan’s gig and stayed there with me the whole night, which was totally unexpected, but incredibly cool of him. He was there through some dysfunctional moments when my husband’s former step-brother in law came over and practically molested both me and Ryan’s little sister. Eew. Mostly, we just hung out and enjoyed the music. It’s nice when I’m able to reconnect with people from my past and it feels like no time has gone by. He’s just as sweet, funny, and adorable as I remember him. I hope we get to hang out again when he’s here over the holidays.

( More on my weekend, cut for length )