Sisters of the Wild Frontier!
I love this fabric, and have now completed my beautiful Amy Butler Swing Bag. I have had this fabric for quite a long time – since Christmas 2004, I think. I got several of the coordinating bandana prints with it, but I didn’t know what project to use it in that would showcase the beauty of the lovely “Sisters.”
Finally I found the Swing bag pattern, and despite one minor screwup on my part (stupidly and inadvertently slashing it in a prime location with my rotary cutter) I have completed my bag and have enough material to make one more – which I am intending as a gift for my “baby” sister – who will be 18 this August,(!) and who also expressed deep love for the print. I beaded the girls’ outfits and the tee pees, and anything else that looked like it needed it. I’m very happy with the way it turned out, and even happier to have finally completed a project again after so long.
I still have several half yards of the bandana prints: red, sage, copper brown, coffee brown & slate blue, and am not quite sure what do to with them beyond making my self a case for my iPod case. Why, one might ask, do you need a case for the case? Well, Trip bought me my fabulous Kate Spade case which is Shiny Gold and beautiful, but it doesn’t hold the ear buds, or the video cable, and I’m afraid it will get beat up getting tossed in my tote bag and I don’t like those accessories floating around loose. So I saved my scraps and will have a matching, super cute iPod case case – Soon, very soon! It took so long to get to this project, because housework always looms. But I NEEDED to have this bag to carry around this summer! Now the summer days are here – school is out and I’m gearing up for more sewing.
I don’t know what else I have been up to. There was a mad scramble at the end of the year to make teacher gifts – hand made cards for Alex’s 3 teachers and one diorama for Elliot’s teacher. Also cookies for Elliot’s class – rainbow frosted sugar cookies cut with the Alphabet cookies cutters. Very nice but took forever!
We’ve had a major shake up at home. Trip’s good friend B___ has been struggling with marriage troubles for a while, and after attempting to live back with his parents, has come to stay with us. We had talked about the possibility of this happening, and I fully supported and offered up our guest room. He told me officially yesterday afternoon, and went out to get him, also witnessing the bad scene with his parents as he left. Poor guy. I can’t say how it will go – but for now it seems like it will be fine. He brought an elliptical machine, which I used this morning and burned up 250 calories. I still have been jogging 3 miles several times a week. Not getting on the scale – but looking more toned and feeling better.
Today is Father’s Day and we are driving down to Bricktown to eat at Chevy’s – a Mexican chain restaurant – with Trip’s parents and my darling sister and brother in law. I won’t even go into why this will be a special form of torture, not to mention summer weekend traffic at the shore. God forbid we should patronize a local Mexican restaurant – there are only about 50 in a 10 mile radius of my home! I am steeling myself for some upcoming announcement of their expected baby’s gender – and all I have to say is it better be a boy. I am also preparing my self for some fake smiling and asking how fat ass is feeling – just because it’s expected. What I really want to say is, “You are so fucking fat, no one would even know you are pregnant, you annoying bitch!” Just let it all out! Let’s just say it now – I’m buying them a baby gift if it’s a girl, because I’ll throw out my Bernina before I make her any baby girl stuff! (and that will NEVER happen!) Venonmous! Evil! Glad I got that off my chest!
Progress
A quick little update before I get myself to bed. I’m not going to bed early enough to take advantage of the early morning in order to get my exercising in first thing. And I’ve learned that if it doesn’t happen 1st thing it might not happen at all. Saturday morning I thought I was being so good. Soccer wasn’t till 10:00 and for a change I actually was aware of that, instead of arriving an hour early just to sit around because I didn’t check my calendar. So I was doing my warm up, sit ups, outer & inner thighs, hoping to take a quick jog then a nice shower before the game. But then the phone rang. Coach Mike to say the schedule has been changed and we now need to get everyone there at 9:00. So the mad dash was on. Blew $8.00 at Dunkin Donuts for bagels and coffee on the run. But we actually made it on time. Only to find that the other coach screwed up and two teams were on our field. So now we have an hour to sit around. I decide to make the best of it and do some paperwork while I sat in the car. But the boys wanted to go to the playground and then my mom called – they were there early, too. So we sat around and I got to hear about my poor Uncle Paul who is really suffering with his alcoholism. Then Alex had his last game and I was a little annoyed to see the very tall and athletic boy (who I have a hard time believing is 5), playing for the other team. This kid always runs faster, scores goal after goal, and generally appears to be out of his league. But whatever. He survived. Then Elliot had his game, and came soooo close to scoring a goal, but either way, it was great to watch him in action. And Trip actually came to a game, albeit their last one.
Back home, no big excitement. But I was a bundle of nerves because I was booked to do 2 Mystery Shops. I always get this sick feeling before I do one. I honestly can’t say that all the prep and time and stress is worth it. I was actually quite pissed because after I got back, Trip had to go out to the Home Depot and buy some PVC pipe and a butane torch so he could make a new hiding place for the World’s Most Spoiled Golden Gecko. Here I am nauseous over the effort to earn $11, and he’s blowing $13.00 on yet another accessory for that thing. I did get them over with and even after I got home, while I was filling out the annoying online submission forms, I still felt sick to my stomach, and realized I made one stupid mistake. (Forgot to pretend I needed to buy ink for my printer at the office supply store.) I hope they don’t screw me just for that.
At night we watched the Aristocrats and had a decent laugh, although for the 1st 3rd of the movie I just didn’t get what all the fuss was about.
Today we had M— and the girls over to join us for my pancake breakfast. I even made home fries and she brought real bacon and organic strawberries to supplement my fake sausage. The only thing missing was some champagne so we could have had mimosas, which is up there with my favorite things to have in a fancy brunch. Trip was a little peeved that I made these arrangements, even though he had suggested they could come over Saturday night (shocking!) and also had suggested that maybe his cousin John might stop by for pancakes. Honestly I HATE his little peevish sighs or grumbles about stupid shit all the time. But he wanted to go take the kids to see Cars today – and I had kind of forgotten that. But I figured out we could do it. If we bought our tickets online to avoid being sold out, if M—- left at 11:30 and we did, too, and we got to the 12:00 show, immediately after the movie I had to drop him at home and take the boys to a birthday party at 2:30. They had fun, although Nathan wouldn’t join in with the other kids for some reason. Then mostly quiet at home where I completely cleared a HUGE pile of papers at my desk. Then I made dinner, washed/dried/folded and put away 2 loads of laundry, cleaned up from dinner. Now time for me – I finally got some more work done on my fabulous purse!
I don’t know if I ever carried on about this here – but I got the most gorgeous fabric (designed by Alexander Henry) called Sisters of the Wild Frontier. It’s got Indian Maidens and Cowgirls on a medium aqua blue background and came with several coordinating bandana prints. I’ve held onto it for over a year not sure what to do with it – then I got my lovely Amy Butler Swing Bag pattern – perfect for featuring the girls – and even got some nice beads to accent the designs. I truly believe they will be the cutest bags ever made – and I have enough to make 2 – one for me and one for my little sister Eden, who loved this fabric as much as I did when I showed her. The only bummer is that by some amazing stroke of stupidity, I managed to slash part of the fabric right on one of the purse panels. (I had to take great care in laying it out in order to feature as many girls as possible without chopping off too many of them.) I fixed it with iron on interfacing and stuck a matching piece of fabric behind it so you can’t really see it, but I was so pissed I did that – especially because I have been planning the use of this fabric for so long. All the pieces are cut out – I believe I can start beading tomorrow. I’m giving Eden hers for her birthday this year. I may have to put them aside though, because Elliot is begging me to make cookies for his Last Day of School Party. Not plain old easy chocolate chip, but shaped and iced sugar cookies. A good several hours of work. Ah, women’s work is never done. But at least I’m moving along nicely!
School’s Out! & Run-in with The Law
It’s not quite there, but it feels like it. I always loved those last few days. Alex had his 1st promotion out of Pre-K yesterday and despite carrying on about not wanting to sing on stage, he did wonderfully. I worked hard putting the house back together – there was a lot of stuff displaced and laying around since our new furniture arrived. It’s so nice to see our living room looking gorgeous. One thing I have to let fly about. I had to make a quick run to the store yesterday after school – and Nathan fell asleep in the car on the way there. I had all the boys with me, and decided to just let them sit in the car while I ran in. As I pulled in the parking lot, there was an idiot blocking the lot because someone bumped bumpers – I couldn’t even see any damage to either car, but they didn’t want to let anyone drive past. Fine – I parked and was aware that an officer was on the way to investigate. I did my grocery shopping (about 3 minutes) and came out to see the kids were fine – then in to get some beer – about 2 minutes – only to come out to see an Officer of the Law standing at my car and obviously conversing with Alex through the window. Oh Crap – here we go.
He gave me a lecture about leaving the kids unattended. “It only takes 30 seconds for someone to smash in your window and steal your kids!” I’m lucky I didn’t get a ticket, and quite honestly I was terrified – but only thinking of the expense of this ticket and possible administrative bullshit that might go along with. I didn’t tell him that I KNEW police were on the way to the “scene of the accident” just a few yards from my car. I also pretended I had no idea that the law applied even to the ridiculous 2 minute run into the store that I did. I’m sure he would rather I had carried a sleeping 3 year old through both stores – that would have made it into a 30 minute trip. It pissed me off so bad. He took my license, wrote down my name and address, but did not issue me a ticket. Needless to say, I was fuming when I got in the car – but I couldn’t haul off and yell at the kids too bad, because technically I’m not supposed to leave them in the car. HOWEVER I have always told my kids not to draw attention to themselves if they are in the car. They know better. Alex was the guilty party. When I told Trip, he said it was a tough call, because we have always told the kids that police officers are safe people to talk to. He actually called the guy over to the car from where he was investigating the accident – otherwise the windows are tinted and no one would ever notice them there. It took me a while to recover from my stress – and he took a nap after his “talking to”. It’s one of those things that annoys me no end. Of course, I realize that once he saw my kids, he could never just walk away from them – I’m just glad I was there so fast – clearly he hadn’t had time to even get in much of a conversation with them before I returned to the car. If modern life is going to prevent me from being able to run in the store and leave my kids in a locked car for 5 minutes then I think every store should offer shop by phone and drive through pick-up service.
Now I’m going to work on my little desk pile. I feel like I’ve been making good progress lately, but still haven’t worked on my super cute new purse – which is the sewing project I’ve been anticipating for so long. I just never feel like it’s a good time when so many other items still need attention. In other news, I’ve stepped up my Mystery Shopping efforts and have at least one new job to do this weekend with hopefully more to come. We’ll pay off our credit cards yet!
Maxed Out! *&%$#$
What a day! I was busy in good ways – the usual laundry, dusting, cleaning, mowing the lawn. But I was anxious to make an important call to Amex because we were so very close to going over our spending limit. Of course, I knew that we shouldn’t be that close, and that we shouldn’t try to raise the limit, but if you go over, then the APR shoots up into the stratosphere. So my first sick feeling came as the Rep on the phone told me that we couldn’t raise our limit – we are already as high as we can go. Lovely. The next horrible feeling came seconds later when she told me we had already gone over our spending limit. Panic! I wound up making a payment immediately (which is going to overdraw our checking account – truly robbing Peter to pay Paul) and then ran out to Target to return some things I bought last week. (My cute cheap shoes!) The only good thing about this is that it now forces the issue. We have to pay that card down and Trip knows how high it is. Also, I can’t use it to bail myself out monthly or buy stupid crap – which is how we got into this awful situation in the first place. Granted – my new Mission Audio Bureau is going to look lovely in the living room – and I honestly (though I know I must sound so stupid) believe we can pay it down now that Trip’s raise is coming this month and we will be done paying off the new water heater, and we are now being forced to “pay the piper” so to speak. Last night I planned our menu for the week to avoid over shopping, or last minute expensive eating or running to the store. I get paid on Wednesday and will be running to put the money in the bank, and now it’s time to hunker down.
In spite of all this financial worry, I’m feeling pretty good about life and specifically life with Trip. First, I have to say I think he’s making a big effort to be more amorous. Second, in spite of the fact that our new purchase may be fundamentally stupid for people in huge debt, I think it will be a huge improvement in my daily scene. And I think it will spur me on to continue improving the house (without spending more money, though). We moved around some furniture (as I started doing last month.) We worked together. (Honestly I was pissed because throughout the furniture switching I had to continually discuss the merits f the move. I’m like, “Just do it – if you don’t like it we’ll move it back! Why the endless hemming and hawing!” The kitchen looks nicer, the living room, the guest room. All getting better. We had a huge talk last night also about lots of things. I felt better just being able to have a nice talk without getting overly emotional. Trip actually said “I’d like to have another child” !!! “but…” No – it wasn’t quite like that – I feel much more hopeful that I have in a long time. But I have a lot of work to do if we are going to ever make this happen. I think he is just scared – of moving and the responsibliity of a new little one. And he thinks I don’t know what I want. I don’t think that’s ever been a problem, honestly. I clearly know what I want and I do everything in my power to make it happen. It’s a little easier to be understanding of his fear than having to be understanding of him just being an immovable turd who wants to thwart my every move. I just pray I may see a few more of my dreams come true in this lifetime.
Restoration Hardware Warehouse sale score!
I’m enjoying some Chianti my boss Frank made, sitting here with a project I have put off a long time sitting behind me. I have all the boys art work which I can’t part with before I scan or otherwise digitally save. It was piled in my desk and taking up valuable real estate, so I’m hoping I can at least get rid of some of it soon. But more fun than that is a project on my sewing room table to make my super cute new Swing Bag. Instead of doing those things I did major cleaning in the house today, getting ready for a furniture upgrade and switching around. Which brings me to my title subject.
On Friday I (perhaps stupidly) planned to go to the Warehouse Sale for Restoration Hardware. I say stupidly because we are very nearly mixed out on my credit card, and we weren’t exactly planning to make any big purchases right now. In fact we should be doing anything we can to pay our card down, but I’ll say in my defense of stupid behavior that A) Trip’s $5000 raise is supposed to go into effect with his next pay check, and B) We have had our eye on one particular piece of furniture for several years now, and if by chance they happened to have one at a major reduced rate I’d feel bad if we missed out on a fabulous bargain. So I was ready Friday – went ot my parent’s meeting at school, packed up the car, dropped off the recycling, picked up Alex at 11:00 and jumped right on the parkway to get there at noon on when they opened. I’m SO glad I did. I got a decent spot and joined the line to get in – we were there before it opened. All I wanted was the gorgeous Mission Media armoire (list price $2695) – a cabinet made to hide the television, and store the stereo equipment behind a glass door, as well as extra drawer space for storage and even a super functional and nice Remote Control Storage area. It’s been in my folder of “Things to By someday when we can afford it. Right now we keep those things (tv and stereo) in an ugly pressboard and vinyl laminate open cabinet that has seen too many years and too many moves. So I got in there and stood up on my tiptoes to see the lay of the land and I spotted the “land of armoirs”. I grabbed Nathan & Alex and beelined straight for the cabinets – as I briskly walked, I could see everywhere around me where people had found items and were basically sitting on them to keep other people from claiming them. I found my dream cabinet – the only one in the warehouse – slightly damaged – it was missing two glass panels on the stereo cabinet door and had a small ding repaired. The list price was $1606! Over $1000 off! I called Trip and told him the deal – we worried about shipping – I said I’d find out and get back. I claimed it as mine – and stood on line to ask about shipping- $170 shipping – that’s also $100 off regular price. So I called back and we decided to do it. Waited on another line to pay – no big whoop and then again to pay for shipping. By that time the line to pay was over an hour long – and I knew that I had just made it. I felt so lucky first that I found the piece and secondly that I had come when I had and moved quickly, because Alex & Nathan would have made that shop hellish if we had to be on that long line. It’s coming Wednesday. I am so excited for the improvement it will bring to the living room. And it has me on a new kick to spiff up the house. I took the kids huge play tent out of the guest room – it’s nice to have my cute room back. And I’m booting some of their toy crap out of the living room now. My other plan is to switch my kitchen around to make it more open and roomy looking. I’m getting a little resistance from Trip (what else is new?). But I emptied my ugly microwave cart in the hopes of getting rid of it to make my re-arrangements. We’ll see how it goes.
Today I went over the the Ocean Grove Flea Market. As it has many other years, it dumped rain last night and threatened to do so all day. Fortunately there were several hours when we could peruse the crap at the fair. The only thing I bought was a huge bag of kettle corn, although I almost bought myself a really cute little bracelet, but I couldn’t do it. I think we can’t spend any money anymore now. That’s all for now. I will try to at least scan or photograph 20 of the boys’ pictures and then maybe cut out my bag pattern.
The Hellish Joyous News
I have had a rough past two days. It should have been nice. I guess I made a post right before we went to the Cape May Zoo on Friday. That day turned out very nice. Trip took off of work, and we went down with a picnic lunch – took the kids out of school for the day, and spent a nice two hours touring the zoo. It was free except for a donation. We gave them $10 and I donated three bottles of essential oils which they had on their wish list. The kids were mostly good, our lunch was cheap and healthy, no traffic, and a pleasant evening when we got back. I even got my new slip cover for our ugly ripped chair. Then everything turned sucky.
I took some downward spiral to despair. I can’t put my finger on exactly what set me off, but one little family at the zoo with their little girl (and 3 big brothers) got me thinking, and I am running out of time – I know that. An aquaintance of ours just had to have an ovary removed and it made me scared to think that my already short timeline could possible be much shorter than I imagine. My hope in moving to Asheville and being in a position to afford another baby is going nowhere. Whatever it was, I cried for a good part of the night – unable to talk about it. Just sucky and sad.
Then Saturday I got up and took the kids to soccer, Mommy came to meet us there. Then she came for a quick visit. They were both good, but Elliot was fantastic on the field. It was great to see. But after that in the afternoon I was just down and had a bad headache. I don’t remember what we did except hanging around the house. Trip took the kids to mom & Dad’s tent in the evening and I didn’t go.
Sunday, I got The Curse. I had been taking some hormone to alleviate a problem I have with extremely heavy flow – but this month I didn’t – mostly because I just kept forgetting and then didn’t see the point. I see the point now. But I just took lots of Advil and didn’t do much.
Monday was shit. We walked to Ocean Grove to watch the Memorial Day parade, but Trip had promised Mom and Dad we would watch it with them at their tent which was at the bitter end of the parade route, instead of sitting in front of cousin John’s house like we usually do. At the tent were: my brother and sister in law with their son, their very pregnant friend and her husband, and the husband’s cousin. No Mom & Dad. And no Parade. About 5 cars rode by and a few people, but the parade effectively ended long before it came to us. Then my sister in law came to announce to me that she is going to have a baby, due in January. Somehow I put on a smile for her, and said something, but I could feel tears coming fast. I felt so trapped in that little tent, and I just wanted to go cry. I am happy for her because I know how much she wanted a sibling for her son, and that is nice. But I had so many bad feelings. I’m not even allowed to want another kid, apparently. I still am angry about the way my mother in law responded to our announcement that we were expecting our third child. She never said anything and barely spoke to me for a few weeks. It turned out she said she was worried for us and thought we couldn’t afford it. Thanks. I guess it’s a small blessing that she wasn’t there to carry on about how fabulous it is that a new grandchild is coming. Now I’m just praying she gets another boy, because if I have to watch her with a girl I might barf.
I pretty much moped around all day. I know that sucks. It’s not fair to Trip and it’s not serving any purpose. But I’m sick of pretending everything is fine when I’m hurting inside. And I have to do it all the time. But last night when we finally went to bed, I knew the tears were coming. I told Trip I had to go in the guestroom, and he asked why and I told him I had to cry for a while. He said I should just stay, which was kind of nice, except I didn’t really want to bother him. But after a while, he just said I really need to go “talk to someone”. I am not crazy, I’m sad and for very specific reasons. I really don’t see the point in doing it. Not to go into excruciating detail, but he told me my problem is everyone else’s problem. It’s making Trip sad and angry and he doesn’t think anything else matters to me but getting a baby girl. He thinks it’s shortchanging the boys with my lingering sadness. For me I think the bigger part of the problem is wanting a baby girl, but knowing that Trip doesn’t and that no matter how important it is to me, he doesn’t want it. I think the boys are mostly oblivious, and that none of them can possibly understand what it feels like to me to not have someone to share my “girlness” with. So he’s miserable, and I am too. And I think we are a big mistake together. I asked him if he though I should leave or something like that but he says no. I don’t even know where I would go, but I just want to escape.
And we have our other major problem centering around sex. I think it’s time for me to put all of this down in a letter for him. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I feel sick to my stomach from all the stress.
Still Good
I was all excitedly going to title this entry Back on Track! because I have been so good – drinking water, exercising, doing cool projects (genealogy), major cleaning and taking care of the family. But then I got nervous that this was just a flash in the pan and couldn’t commit to saying I was truly Back on Track. However, just making myself sit down to take a minute to share in my blog is good. It makes me smile – imagining that I am not alone in the world (I mean truly I’m surrounded by family and several good friends) but that I can record my actions, and let out some feelings and fears or whatever it is and someone might be inspired, or amused or at least commiserate. Yesterday was one of those Non-Stop days. Kids to school, cleaned, folded & ironed one load of laundry, washed & folded (AND put away!) a second load, visited my inlaws, babysat my pumpkin head nephew (instantly add 2 hours of aggravation to the mix!), cleaned several areas of the house behind this kid, took the kids to the book fair, hosted a playdate for Elliot, took Alex to soccer, jogged the track while he practiced, went grocery shopping(!) made dinner & cleaned up, then went to help my buddy M____ for two hours 10-Midnight, who has her inlaws coming today and needed some help getting the house together. I’ve been helping her out a lot, and in exchange I have asked if she will come here and help me scrub, sand, prime and touch up my kitchen cabinets and table & chairs. It’s been on my list a long time and I know that it really gives the whole kitchen a face lift. It will go nicely with her though – we really work well together. One troubling thing lately – I’ve been having coughing fits related to my asthma. It’s really scary – I can’t catch my breath and I’m scrambling to get my inhaler – last night I managed to forget my inhaler when I went to M____’s house, and it happened twice. I had to try to force myself to breath slowly and kind of shallow to stop that scratchy tickly feeling. It’s kind of starting to happen right now, so I gotta go take care of myself. One update on that family tree for Aunt Leon – those stupid printers couldn’t print it (that’s not the big problem) but couldn’t bring themselves to ever call me about it, despite my enclosing my phone number with each request and specifically asking them to call with any questions or problems. So I wound up printing it myself, meticulously cutting the edges and taping all 36 pages together! But it looked really nice and it was mailed out on time. So that was cool.
Back in the Groove
It’s 6:16 am – and I have only had 5 hours of sleep. The good news is that before I went to bed I took care of loads of annoying stuff I needed to do – and even did my nails very nicely and got all the things I need for my presentation ready in a pile. I even had a nice bath, (had a good shave) and touched up my gray hair. Why I am up this early I don’t quite know, but it does mean that I can get to my exercising – and that’s what I’m doing as soon as I get up from here. I had a good day yesterday for the most part, although the kids were kind of hard for a while. I have to get them outside when they get crazy running around and yelling. I wrote several letters and sent them along with pictures to family and friends. I even remembered to get my Great Great Aunt Leon’s 100th birthday family tree scroll done and sent to the printer. It’s going to be 25 feet long! I decided to print it in black and white and it’s only going to cost about $10, which is fabulous!
Today I am making my Family History presentation for the 2nd grade classes, and I’m so excited about it. I’ve worked for the better part of 2 weeks making displays – a long family tree scroll, a US & Europe map showing our countries of origin, made up a genealogy terms crossword puzzle, printed out charts for the kids to fill in. The presentation to Alex’s class was very nice and it went pretty much as planned. I wound up making the Traditional Family Recipe: Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies in the morning before school. (We have no recipes passed down from “The Motherlands,” but I did tell them that this is something I began doing as a child with my Grammie and still enjoy today.) I even made up a quick story board of pictures of our Black Swallowtail butterfly who hatched on Sunday and brought it along – and it turned out they were beginning a week learning about the life cycle of a caterpillar! Nice slam dunk!
When I get home, it’s lawn mowing time – and after that I ‘m not sure. I’ve been working towards these presentations so intensively I’ve let a lot of other things sit – plus I still have 2 baby gifts to make and some other sewing to do ASAP. Maybe it’s time to get back to the machine (recently repaired to the tune of $179!!! after a piece of a broken needle got down into the works and almost ruined it for good). Thank God I brought it in when I did. Oh well, I’m off to exercise. Later!
Caught Up in the Family Tree
I feel like I’ve been immersed in family history research for days on end. I just finished cutting out 9 family trees, loads of green squares for the kids to glue in place, and just finished making directions. I would hate to have some kid cry and say, “But I don’t have a daddy!” or something like that just because my tree might have one, so I intentionally left it rather blank, with directions to customize it at home. Still, they look very cute.
Today our Black Swallowtail butterfly hatched out of her cocoon! I was peeved that I missed watching it emerge – because I had been checking it every few minutes – it really looked like something was happening soon. Sure enough, the little thing was out of it’s cocoon, and Nathan called to me, sounding rather surprised that a butterfly had gotten in our jar. I sat holding it on my arm while it dried out its wings, and then placed it on a parsley plant and came out a little while later to see it flutter away. It was so cool. And I took pictures, but still can’t do my photo posting quite as easily as I would like.
In other news, my boozy neighbor managed to fall asleep with her speakers blaring out the window – playing Van Morrison, “I’m in Heaven, I’m in Heaven, I’m in Heaven, when you smile” (aka the most repetitive song ever written) HOWEVER, there was something wrong with the CD and it would get almost done and then repeat the song. This went on for about 45 minutes before I thought I was going to have to go over there and kill her. Whisper-Yelling out the window didn’t work. Banging on her door and yelling in her window didn’t work. I finally assumed she wasn’t home, and when her landlords appeared I ran down to beg them for a key or something so I could shut it off. I even heard other neighbors yelling for her to shut that fucking music off! I kind of wish I had just called the cops on her just to throw her into a tizzy. As it was, I got the key, and went in to stop it. And she was home in bed with the lights on and completely passed out. (When I say asleep, I mean probably drunk as a skunk and “on Meds” as she says.) I don’t know her medical issues, and frankly I don’t want to. What I really want to do is move the hell out of this dump and go to Asheville, where people care about their neighbors!
Last night I actually was at a party at her house, sitting on the porch with her friends, and drinking Sangria (and plenty of it!) It was my first time over there (not going to be a habit) and actually this evening is the first time I’ve ever stepped foot in her house. (It was a wreck). And honestly, if she had woken up to find me unlocking her door, and carried on or yelled at me, I might have had to sit her down and tell her about herself. Why the hell are her speakers always pointing out the window, anyway! In any event, I had a nice time last night, and I saw that I’m not the only one who knows Cindy cannot hold her liquor (or whatever the hell she’s on) at all!
So much to tell – Thursday I spent hours on end researching history for the school secretary (pro bono, I might add) but it was a lot of fun for me. She knew only her grandparent’s names, but I was able to find back several generations using Census records, and in contrast to research on my own family, it was pretty easy to find her people in every census – they even lined up (and had uncommon enough names) that I could find the person as a child with his/her parents and then move back a generation almost every time till I ran out of Census records to check. Today, I got an email from Ancestry saying they just added the 1841 UK Census, so I had to blow about 2+ hours looking for my England people, and while I did find some new things, my folks are far more elusive than I would prefer.
I am all set to make my presentation to Alex’s class tomorrow – I only need to whip up a batch of cookies (stupid last minute!). Tomorrow morning should be lots of fun! Elliot’s class presentation is Tuesday, and should be great – I’m feeling prepared for it – and at least I’ll have the cookies ready a little more in advance for his group!
Tonight we went to Trip’s cousin’s 21st birthday party. Made me feel quite old, as we were up with the “grownups” and all the kids were downstairs playing “Beer Pong” (while my kids watched – they were quite comfortable in the room with the big kids.) My sister in law continued her streak of being a freak. She lives to shock and disgust everyone, but I particularly find it loathsome. Tonight she: Text messaged my husband Trip a photo of someone’s balls with the message “You’ve been teabagged” (Lovely). Regaled a somewhat large mixed group about her dog’s medical problem which warranted the creation of rather female looking genitalia which she described in some detail (foul). Described in detail the female medical problems of Trip’s cousin’s wife, who just had surgery. (Maybe she didn’t want everyone to know her business. Oh well, too late now!) And another favorite, (and she does this crap all the time) – she prompted her son as he was saying his goodbyes (he’s 3) to yell to the birthday boy “I hope you get lucky!” Aww, how cute! There were other things – she makes me so sick – yet another reason I’d love to live far away from her.
I am very close to finishing my heritage scrapbook, but I don’t know if I’m close enough to continue working on it tonight, or just give up, bring it as is to Alex’s class and try to finish it up before Elliot’s class presentation. come to think of it, there really isn’t any reason to show a bunch of 5 year olds – they really won’t appreciate it. There, that was easy! I’ll just put out the butter to soften up and hit the hay.
Overdoing it on Girls Night !
I am actually hung over from maybe a bit too much wine last night. Maybe not just a bit too much. But it was so fun. A little wine, weed, chocolate fondue with fruit, brie and bleu cheese. I brought my ipod and made a photo slideshow of all of our playgroup pictures and all my friends’ photos, and I made a nice mixed CD for my buddies. (and it really was easy to just plug it into their tv). I even rode by bike there, with the fondue pot in my basket on the back, (so I could drink and not drive). Last time we were together at my house I played the Jack Black song F*ck Her Gently and they were all rolling laughing, so I made it a point to include it for them on my CD (last song). The girls were all there and my friend’s young daughters had joined us, watching the photos which included some of them as babies. Sure enough, here comes the song, and I bolted up off the couch trying to figure out how to get the sound down on her stereo, and loudly singing LA La La la (to the tune of “You don’t always have to fuck her hard, in fact some times that’s not right”, trying to block the sound. Maybe you just had to be there. I told them all about Asheville, and how I can’t wait to move.
My realtor (Yeah, that’s right, I’m calling her “My Realtor” her name is Joan Sunris and she is awesome!) was here last week on Thursday, and then this week came with her report. As much as I bitch about things in our house, I am still proud of all the work I’ve done here. After the shit we looked at when we were searching for a house, I would think this house was a dream – even for a realtor. She thinks we could get $450K for this place, and I am all for it! I have a spreadsheet in Excel – actually two worksheets – the first is the house sale breakdown – how much debt we have all together, and how it would line up if we were to sell this house and buy my new Asheville house. We could wipe out the debt, pay off the house, buy a new car (for $10K – we would need a second car out there) and just have a $50K mortgage for 15 years! The 2nd worksheet breaks down the monthly expenses here versus there. Of course, a lot of this is educated guesswork, but i figured we’d triple our auto expenses, but could eliminate so many of our debt payments and Trip’s crazy expensive train commuting costs. Even with a much lower rate of pay (which remains the biggest unknown variable), we could start saving money (what a novel concept!). And we could be living in such a beautiful place, in a brand new house, with Trip so much closer to home. I feel so hopeful about the future now – and I will just do all I can to make this happen.
Right now I’ve got to start my morning off – I’m going to make my smoothie and do the right things today. I’ve been working hard on a family history presentation I’m making to Elliot’s class, and now I want to do something more involved with Alex’s Pre-K class, even though it’s a little tougher with them. Oh – I almost forgot! We are going to my cousin Duane’s house for Mother’s Day! – NOT to the Ocean China Buffet with my Mitchell in-laws (love them, but yuck!). Last year I had to miss it, and I was particularly steamed about it. I guess I’d better make some Mother’s Day cards – Last Minute Lucy!
Gossamer Threads 