Continued Progress

Before we get into the fantastic progress I’ve made on the house, I am going to scream for a moment.

AAAAGGGRRRHHHHH!!!!!!

I have no idea what stupid things I was doing to my camera while taking these pictures, but ALL of them are grainy and bizarre. And it’s not just these pictures. All of the other pictures that I’ve taken of us over the past several weeks have a similar sickly appearance. It’s infuriating. I need help. Or at least a hug.

AAAAGGGRRRHHHHH!!!!!!

OK, moment’s over.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have made major progress on the house. Like last time (the last time), I have proof, as grainy as it may be.

Voila, le master bath. This is not what we intended our bathroom to look like. However, the walls are a beige-cream color and the trim is a darker uglier version of that, so our mostly white and a little bit of beachy blue bathroom stuff we picked out did not match when we got it home from the store. After coming to the realization that this house would not have a beachy spa like bathroom, we decided to go with red. Only, there was no such thing as red bathroom stuff, everything we found was brown-burgundy. The shower curtain came from a box of stuff we brought with us from Virginia. It’s actually two window pannels. It had a real red in it, and it was free. I took a pannel with me to several different stores searching for towels and rugs to match. The little shelf there is one of my favorite things we’ve found so far for our house here in Atlanta.

I’m actually standing in the bathtub taking this picture. I don’t have much to say about this view of our bathroom. If the picture were better quality you would notice that the metal fixtures on the toilet and toilet paper holder are silver, the faucet is brushed nickel and the light is bright gold. It’s hard to take a relaxing shower knowing that the metals in my bathroom don’t match. Something else to note about this picture, you see those hand towels hanging there? I mounted the hooks on the wall all by myself; used a drill and everything. There wasn’t a single towel hook in the entire bathroom.

A close up of the sink. Do you see that glass of green liquid? Know what that is? That’s mouth wash. I had no idea that people made fancy mouthwash containers, but I am in love. I can not tell you how many times I’ve thought, this bottle of mouthwash on my bathroom counter is incredibly tacky. Where do fancy people hide their mouthwash so it doesn’t ruin their bathroom decor? Love it!

This is where the picture quality starts to turn for the worse. Anywho, here is our master bedroom. It’s fantastically under decorated, but art isn’t in the budget at the moment. I have dreams of a big comfy reading chair going right there between those two windows.

I also have dreams of getting a king sized bed; this full sized or “matrimonial” bed as I’ve heard it called, may be the biggest threat to my marriage. Steve is a very heavy sleeper. He hogs the bed, he snuggles me, he takes my pillows and blankets, he thrashes about, he breathes. Do you know when he does this? As soon as  I am finally drifting off to sleep. I am a light sleeper, and a terrible sleeper. Every single time I drift to sleep, Steve does one of  the above and I am wide awake. After a few times, I get really bitter and start kicking him and pushing him out of my way. He gets mad at me for being mean, and I get even more upset. Then, he falls right back to sleep and I am left there wide awake and bitter. The next morning he remembers nothing and wakes up refreshed.

Also, that lamp in the corner will be getting returned.

The only reason I’m including a close up of the top of Steve’s dresser is to tell you a story. It’s related to me not sleeping well at the expense of Steve’s existence. See all of those little votives on top of the glass shell thing? Anytime someone walks into our room, house actually, those six votives rattle. Last week, after not sleeping well for several nights in a row (I’m still waiting on a decent night’s rest), the last strand of sanity that was holding me together snapped in two. I was drifting off to sleep just as Steve was climbing the stairs to go to his office. The votives startes shaking and I shot awake madder than hades. I jumped out of bed and stomped to the office to kill him. Not really, I was in search of something. Something to make the rattling stop. I was looking for doubled sided tape. Instead, I found yardsale dots. I took those dots by the collar and threatened to let Moanna stick them all over the house if they did not make the rattling stop. I returned to the bedroom and proceeded to fold 24 dots (4 for each votive) into forths and stuck them to the bottom of the votives. I then jumped up and down hysterically in front of the dresser  and dared the votives to make a peep. It was silent. I threw the rest of the dots back into the office, gave Steve the evil eye and went back to bed.

Since you suffered trough a close up of Steve’s dress, it’s only fair that I show you mine. My grandpa gave us the little chest on the right (one of his talents is refinished old trunks). The tray with the reed defuser and candles on it was a going away gift from my coworkers. It was part of my “Mommy Time-Out.” I told them before I left that I was afraid of being home all the time, so they gave me things to keep me sane. Chocolates, jammies, things that smell nice. The chocolates are long gone, but everytime I walk into my room I smell linen and remember to take a “Mommy Time-Out.”

I have no idea why the time stamp decided to show up on this picture. It’s the only one in the bunch that has it. Steve wouldn’t allow me to have a purple master bath or a purple bedroom, so I made the half bath purple. Turns out, I spend more time in this bathroom than the master bath because it also happens to be the laundry room. So I guess it all works out.

And here we have the living room.  You can get a gimps of the play room area behind the couch. I’ll show you that in more detail later when I’ve decided how I want it organized. It drives me bonkers that the fireplace isn’t centered in the room.

Another view of the living room.

Jesus. Fire place mantles are made for Jesus to stand on. We don’t use our fireplace, nor did we use the fireplace in our old house, but it was on our list of wants when we were house hunting so that we knew where Jesus would live. I thought really hard about where to put that painting. It took me over a month to finally commit to where it’s hanging. I fully believe that heaven looks like this so it only made to sense to hang it with Jesus so he could be looking down at us from heaven. At least, my version of heaven.

There you have it folks. My hard work displayed in really crappy pictures. I’m sure you’re thinking that I should have just gone back and retaken the pictures, but by the time I realized the pictures were crap-o-la, my house was no longer clean. I would rather you see crappy quality pictures than my house looking like a war zone.

Next up the office. Please pray for me.

A Moment of Silence

The Move – Part 3: Leases and Boxes and Hormones! Oh My!

It’s not vital to your existence, but to fully understand where this post came from and where it is going you may want to read Part 1 and Part 2 if you’ve not done so already.

My anxiety attack at the top of the world had come and gone, and life carried on at a normal clip for a few months. We were crazy busy at work, Steve was traveling around the country and Moanna was living her merry-little-life as always. Other than a few comments of, “Well, when we move to Altanta we’ll do this/that/the other,” moving wasn’t on our minds much. We still had to survive our life in Virginia for awhile.

After Moanna’s birthday in June, Virginia life slowed down a bit and it was time to refocus on “The Move.” Almost every night we stayed up late staring at houses on the internet that our realtor sent us. We looked at the pictures, the specs, the maps, the satellite view, the birds-eye view, how far it was from the grocery store, and so on. This is not an exaggeration folks, we looked at easily a thousand plus houses. Our eyes were bloodshot every night when we finally gave up after midnight.

By the end of June we had narrowed our search down to about a hundred houses that we wanted to see in person and sent them to our Realtor Lady.  This was not our original Realtor. This was a Realtor that “specialized in rental properties” and we were passed onto her because on his last trip to Atlanta our Fabulous Realtor was out of town. Realtor Lady told Steve that we needed to go to each of these houses first and look at them from the outside and checkout the neighborhood before she would show us the houses. I don’t have time to go look at houses and then have you take me to see them again. I’m only in town for a week.

Steve emailed Realtor Lady, and told her that we really didn’t have time for all that. She emailed back saying that she could only get us in to see like a fraction of what we wanted to see. That’s when I flipped. My post PMS hormones kicked into hight gear; in an instant I went into slightly-psychotic mode. I looked at Steve and said growled, “You better get Fabulous Realtor on the phone RIGHT NOW, and tell her that we are coming TOMORROW because if we go down there and this “Realtor” only gets us in to see two crappy houses, she may go missing. I will freak out on her; I’ll do it. I don’t have time to do her job for her. Call Fabulous Realtor NOW.”

Steve called Fabuslous Realtor, sent her our “short list” and we were schedule to see her the next day at 11:00AM. When we arrived at her office the next day, she had the day mapped out with all of the houses on our list plus one that wasn’t on the market yet. This is why she is Fabulous.

The first house we walked into was the house that wasn’t on the list. It was smaller than we wanted, older than we wanted, stranger than we wanted. It had all of the rooms we needed, a great yard, great location, great price. It was under our budget. We were comfortable there. It could easily be our home. Sound the singing angels because this house was perfect. Even though that house was perfect, we continued to see the other twelves houses that we were schedule to see just to be sure that this house was the house we really wanted. We were out looking at houses for six hours I think, but the first house remained our top pick. On the way back to the real estate office, we told Fabulous Realtor that was our house; let’s wrap this puppy up and be done with it. We met with the owner of the house, worked out some details and settled on a leasing contract. Done.

To celebrate, Steve and I spent the following day at the Georgia Aquarium. We saw everything there was to see the aquarium. We saw somethings twice.  I stared a penguin n the eye and touched anemones. After that, we ate, a lot. I can’t even remember what we ate, but I know it was good. It was a great day, until we got home (Steve’s boss’s home where we were staying).

Not five minutes after we got home and into our comfy clothes from our grand day of celebrating, Steve gets a text message. “Steve, I think we rushed into this. You need to pick another house.” WHAT!?!?!? Evidentially the home owner was nervous about the house he was trying to buy, and didn’t want his family to be homeless. Steve called up the dude and was like, “We have a signed contract. My family can’t be homeless either. We’ll talk after you hear back from the bank about your new house on Monday.” We tried to stay calm and rational, maybe he needs a day or so for his feet to warm up. No big deal. Sunday night Steve gets another text message, “Steve, as we agreed the contract is void. I’m returning your deposit.” FIRST OF ALL, no body agreed on anything buddy boy. SECOND OF ALL, we have a signed contract and you can’t just be like “No, I don’t feel like honoring this legal document anymore.” I’m not sure where you learned about business law and conduct, but you are way out of line. Forget the line, you are off the grid. FUMING! Smoke coming out of our ears, gaskets popping, whistles blowing, FUMING.  If  the guy knew he was going to wuss out, then he shouldn’t have signed the papers in the first place. He has wasted our entire week here. We are currently homeless, and have one (ONE) day to find a house.

We calmed down a bit, talked it out and made a decision. We didn’t have time to play games or get into legalities, so were going to let him walk from the contract and find another house. If this was a preview of what kind of landlord he was going to be, we wanted no part in it. We discussed our decision with Fabulous Realtor, gave her another list of houses that we wanted to see, and went to bed early to prepare for another long day of house hunting.

I’m sure that I will feel totally different about things when it’s time for us to buy a house, but at this point, I really think it will be much easier to pick out a house to buy than it has been to pick out a house to rent. Here’s my reasoning. When you look for a house to rent, it has to be in perfect move in condition. Everything has to work. It has to smell right. The rooms need to fit. The yard needs to be in good condition. Etc. Etc. However, when you look for a house to buy, you know that you can change all of the things that don’t work for you. Maybe not everything right away, but over time you can fix the things that in a rental house would be a deal breaker. In addition to this, when you buy a house you don’t have to take into account how demanding or lax the landlord is going to be.

After the morning traffic died down Monday morning, we met up with Fabulous Realtor and went trekking around the city again in search of a house. This time we were not so thorough and diligent in our house hunting. We were tired, and fed up. We didn’t take good notes, and we didn’t take pictures like we had the first day we went out looking at houses. After another day in the hot Atlanta sun, yet again, we picked the first house we saw that morning. We told Fabulous Realtor that we were sorry we wasted her whole day, but we liked the first one the best and wanted to work out a contract the next morning before we left town.

Guess what folks!? The listing agent for the house was on vacation… in Asia… for the next three weeks. We would have to go through the contracting process via e-fax which wouldn’t be too terrible, but when we are awake Asia is asleep, so the process would be much slower than we would have hoped. I know this may have been a pipe dream, but my goal was to leave Atlanta knowing for sure, 100%, where we were living. I needed to know what type of furniture we should keep versus get rid of. I needed to know where my bonsai plant would live. I needed to know how big my kitchen would be. I needed to know how far away the store would be from my house. I needed answers so I could move onto the next phase of moving. Without a home, it was nearly impossible to plan much of anything else.

For the next few weeks we bantered back and forth with the leasing contract. We would submit something, and then a few days later get a counter. Then we submitted something back, and an entirely different contract came back. So different, that it had by the power of magic become a two year lease. UH-HUH, that needs to come right back down one year and after that we will go through this 400 page dissertation of a lease with a comb. The contract returned to a one year lease, and then we had to battle out other stipulations of the contract. Among the list of crazy stipulations was, “If a vehicle was found on the property that was not properly tagged, the owner could take the car and sell it.”  I am not joking right now. I am dead serious. If this is common leasing practice, that’s crazy, and I’m not having it.

It was coming down to the wire, and we were still e-faxing it up. Every few days, we would make progress. Things were starting to go into boxes – not a lot of things, but a few things. We had no idea where these boxes were going at this point, but they were going somewhere. We had to be out of our old house by the first week of August. Home or no home, we had to go. Moanna and  I would pack a box, and then I would get a text from Steve telling me this or that about the contract. I would tell him to push it forward, and pack another box. I scheduled the moving truck. When the moving coordinator asked me for the destination address all I could tell her was, “some where in the Atlanta-ish area.” Boxes continued to be packed. E-faxes kept coming. Houses that are on the market for purchase move faster than this.

This negotiation had been going on long enough that my period had returned, and so had the hormones. I have not had hormones like this since my adolescence and the whacked out OBGYN put me on Ortho Tri-Cycline, which made my PMS and insanity much worse instead of better. Certain things would set me off. My heart would race, I would feel dehydrated, I was ready to kill, I would have to leave the room/car/office/county/country to be by myself until I could regain control over myself. If I could have left myself to be by myself, I would have left me behind too. It was that bad. One of the things during this particular month that pulled the hormone trigger was this flipping lease. The boxes that were taking over my house were not helping matters. When you come home, you should feel safe and be able to relax. When I walked in the front door, it was like a big slap across the face reminding me that I had no home and that I was not packing fast enough. I was ready for a fight. It was a good thing Steve was in charge of the correspondence that way he could tone down my, “MAKE THEM SIGN THE LEASE. I DON’T CARE IF THEY WANT MY TOE NAILS TO SELL ON EBAY. GET THE PAPERS SIGNED.” I’m not really sure if he toned down my crazy when he relayed the message, or if he was like, “Look, my wife is INSANE. You might want to go ahead and sign this lease. It will save us all a lot of trouble.”

It was my last week of work. I almost think it was my last day of work. I was packing up my stuff and sniffling when Steve called to tell me that THEY SIGNED THE LEASE. Not only did they sign the lease, but they honored almost all of our requests.

FINALLY!

Can we move on now?

I have to decide where to put my bonsai.

Happy Labor Day

Labor Day used to be a depressing day for me. It marks the unofficial end to summer, and that makes me very blue. I don’t do winter gracefully. Today, however, I’ve come to appreciate Labor Day in a new way.

This morning I’ve spent some time thinking about what Labor Day really is, and what it means to me. I know that originally it was a holiday for the labor union, but it has evolved to honor and recognize the labors of each and everyone of us. My yoga class this morning added to the conversation I was having with myself about the beauty of Labor Day. The instructor said the theme of our class this week was “R&R from our labors of the world.” She talked about how Labor Day is not for one specific religion or group of people, but it’s for each and everyone of us. It’s a day to show gratitude to those around us who work really hard and to appreciate our own labors.

Celebrate this day however you wish. A nap, a cookout, going out to lunch on your lunch hour, reading a book, hiking, playing football, whatever your heart desires and deserves.

What’s for Dinner?

Is that not one of the most common questions you hear as a Mom or Dad? The most common question of course is “Why?” Children and spouses are hunger driven, and they want to know who, what, when and where there dinner is. I get this question from Steve before he even leaves the house for the day. Moanna, not so much. She is more of the mind set of, “I want BLANK for dinner.” Sorry child, that’s not happening. Once I deny her order off the menu, she is then interested in what’s for dinner because starvation is not an option.

When we lived in Buena Vista, this question stressed me out to no end. If I happened to be at home, and HAD to make dinner I would open the fridge and blink at the lack of food. Then I would open the freezer and do the same. After there was little to be found in the fridge or freezer, I would shuffle over to the pantry and sit in the floor and thumb through the mismatched ingredients. After realizing I was sca-rewed, I would attempt to throw something together with the few things that were on hand. Bun free burgers with rice, frozen corn and old Halloween candy anyone? Gross, right?

Since our move to Atlanta, it has been my responsibility to feed the family. Three meals a day. Seven days a week. This brought up a lot of emotions.

Emotion 1 – I finally get to spend time doing something that I love. Food is my life.

Emotion 2 – What if it turns out that I am a really bad cook and can only make a few meals?

Emotion 3 – I just left the commercial food business to enter the private sector. What does this mean?

Emotion 4 – Maybe I will finally have time to use some of those fancy techniques and recipes I learned in my culinary classes in college.

Emotion 5 – What on earth am I going to cook for dinner every night?

Emotion 6 – Really universe, I’ve never held a job that wasn’t somehow related to food – ever. What are  you trying to tell me?

Emotion 7 – What if I fall into a cooking rut?

Emotion 8 – This means I’m going to spend a lot of my time in the grocery store. Oh joy – NOT.

Emotion 9 – What if I run out of food? There are only so many things I can do with rice and hamburger, and it all tastes the same.

I’ve come to  terms with the fact that I have issues. In no particular order, they are: OCD, talking to the voices in my head, anxiety attacks over what’s for dinner, stress management, not being able to sleep at night because the voices in my head never shut-up and an unhealthy obsession over the pine-needles that continue to find their way into my house despite my best efforts. One day I’m going to lose it and go all Paul Bunyan all eleven pine-trees in our yard; it’s like we live with David the Nome. Raise your hand if you remember David the Nome. Remind me to buy a chainsaw.

Back to the point.

After waiting a week for the gas to be turned on and then another week for the fridge to break and be fixed, it was time to face my fear and excitement of life in the domestic kitchen. I decided that perhaps I should try menu planning. Yes, I’ve become one of those people. Judge me if you will, but it has helped alleviate a lot of stress, and now the voices in my head and I have other things to talk about. Things like the pine-needles. Once a week, I sit down with a notebook, my computer, grocery store ads and plan. I plan based on what’s on sale, what I’m in the mood to cook, what our family is doing that week and what we ate last week. After I plan, I shop and I only shop once a week. If we run out of something, too bad. It takes a good three or for hours out of my week; hopefully I’ll get more efficient over time. But, those four hours I swear to you have saved me hours, money and what little sanity I can still claim. I no longer have Hollywood breakdowns in front of the fridge because the grocery store closed not five minutes ago and there is nothing in our house to eat.

Now that I think of it, I don’t know why I didn’t try menu planning sooner. Considering the fact that I just left a job where I planned menus for people’s events all the time, it would have made since for me to do the same with my family. This should have been a natural part of my life all along. I worry about myself sometimes.

How about you? What’s for dinner? What should I cook for dinner? Do you menu plan? How do you menu plan? If you don’t menu plan how do you decide what’s for dinner? What do you discuss with the voices inside your head?

Haïti Aide – Angel Wings International: Virtual Fundraiser

As you all know, Haiti suffered a massive earthquake on January 12, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of people were, and are continuing to be, affected by this tragedy.

We are closely involved with a nonprofit organization called Angel Wings International. AWI was organized in 2007 when Myrlande Affriany led a group of medical volunteers to Jacmel, Haiti (about 25 miles south of Port Au Prince). Since that maiden voyage in 2007, AWI has returned to Haiti on a regular basis to provide medical care and humanitarian aid to the people of Haiti. After the earthquake in Haiti, AWI increased its activity, bringing dozens of medical professionals and volunteers to Haiti on multiple occasions.

With the one year anniversary quickly approaching, Angel Wings International is vigorously working on building a clinic in Jacmel which has been greatly neglected by relief aid following the earthquake. The clinic will provide a permanent medical facility in the city of Jacmel supporting an array of medical services, humanitarian aid and health education. AWI plans to hold the grand opening of the clinic on January 12, 2011, the anniversary of the earthquake.

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To support the dream of AWI, Me Myself and Mommy is holding a virtual fundraiser (at least that’s what we’ll call it). At the end of October we will be making a donation to AWI. How large of a donation? Well that depends on you. The more followers, likes and subscribers Me, Myself and Mommy gains by October 15, 2010 the larger the donation will be.

Here are the logistics

For every new “Like” Me, Myself and Mommy gains on Facebook we will donate $0.25

For every new “Follow” Me, Myself and Mommy gains on Twitter we will donate $0.25

For every new “Subscriber” Me, Myself and Mommy gains through Feedburner we will donate $0.50.

Currently we have

325 Like

5,926 Followers on Twitter

68 Subscribers through Feedburner

At the end of the October 15, 2010, we will do a big ol’ math equation to come up with the total donation. For example, it will do something like this:

Facebook

550 – 325 = 225 new Likes * $0.25 = $56.25 raised from Facebook

Please keep in mind these donations are for NEW Likes, Followers and Subscribers. If you already do one of the above or all three, have no fear, we still need your help! We are depending on you to spread the word to your Friends, Followers, Readers, Church Folk, Hairdressers, Neighbors and ExLovers. This virtual fundraiser will not succeed without your support.

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*If you would like to make a contribution of your own you may do so through PayPal.

**If you would like to learn more about Angel Wings International and other ways you can help support this charity please visit their site at http://angelwingsinternational.org/