Hello World

Hello again, blogland.

I feel like a hibernating bear that's decided to leave my cave from my winter siesta and re-join the world with the hiatus I just took from blogging..

I'm sure some of you understand though--1 day missed becomes 3 days missed, becomes a week, becomes 3 weeks, and then you just aren't sure how to break back into the groove again, so (if you're like me) you put it off searching for the perfect "thing" to jump start and motivate your blogging activity again.

Unfortunately, I never found that "thing".  Friends, my life is clearly just too dull.

Apparently my life is so dull, I couldn't even keep up with a 30 day blogging challenge that GAVE me a topic to write about each day.  Personally, I like to think my life is too busy to stay on top of my writing on a regular basis, but saying that is really just making excuses for myself and being too lazy to stay on top of my writing.  I'm just being honest people.

So maybe hopefully over the course of this year I'll get those 30 questions about myself answered so you can fully understand me, I'm just going to have to re-name the 30 days of blogging into something more appropriate, like 30 questions you probably never wanted to know about Rachel but will get to learn in hopefully 12 months, but likely 24 months.  I'll phrase it better than that though; something a little more concise will be the best option (or the word cloud to your right will be too full).  This blog--much like me--is a work in progress.

To update on a few things--

1) DT is going through her last round of chemo, and will follow up with her doctors in the early summer to see if any additional treatment will be required.  While she tells us on a very regular basis that she is completely exhausted, she is still working every day so that she can stay active, and looks fabulous for someone who is undergoing rigorous cancer treatment. 

2) The cat (Whiskers aka Whisker-kitty aka Whiskerina) still despises the dog.  She also has a trampy boyfriend who's come back around the farm to visit her on a regular basis (mainly from 2-5am).  When she is not allowed to go outside and visit said boyfriend, she will do some combination of sleeping on your face, knocking items off of bedroom furniture, and peeing on dirty clothes loudly until you give in and let her go outside.  Also, she only does these torturous activities to me, so I am suffering from a severe lack of sleep most days, while my husband wakes up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed most mornings.

3) Bulleit (aka Bubby) the dog is yet to be house broken at 8 months of age.  Unless he's removed from open indoor spaces every 30-45 minutes (he can stay in his crate for 8 hours--someone explain this to me??), he will find a spot out of sight and "do his business" on rugs, carpets, and recently refinished hardwood floors.  Professional dog trainers have told us they don't know how to solve this problem.  Lovely.

4) I have accomplished only 1 project on this house in 2 months, and it really wasn't even my project, it was Whitney's.  In the near future (so, maybe 6 months from now?) I'll share some pictures of the awesome bookshelf he built for our living room, inspired by Pottery Barn of course.  Everything else around our house still looks half-done, because we keep finding new things to start, and can't manage to completely finish the existing projects we have.  Someone has already told me that's just part of having a house though.

5) Finally, the biggest news...drumroll...(no, I am definitely NOT preggo) Whitney found out a few weeks ago that he will be deployed the end of July.  He's going to have a 400 day deployment to Kuwait (I've been told it's like the Las Vegas of the Middle East--that's not totally reassuring) with an Army Reserve unit that is based out of Seattle, Washington.  This week he'll leave until the end of May for part of his training, then come back home for about 2 months.  At the end of July he'll go to Ft. Bliss, Texas for a few additional months of training, and then on to Kuwait.  While I am certainly not excited about this endeavor, I knew it was coming at some point, and I'll honestly be glad to get it behind us.  I couldn't have prayed for a safer place for him to be deployed right now, or a safer mission for him to be working on over there, and know that with him being stationed on a base I'll get the opportunity to talk to him more than most wives of deployed soldiers get to do.  We both know this will certainly not be easy, but I suppose because I've always known it was a possibility, it simply became a fact of life I knew I'd have to accept being married to Whitney.

He has already promised to send "party in the USA" dancing pictures in the desert.  I'm excited.

SO that's a little catch-up on things lately...promise this bear is out of hibernation and back on the blog-wagon!

Day 7-Your Favorite Movies

Well I appologize for my 30 day of blogging hiatus.  I guess I'm trying to turn this into 60 days of blogging, at the rate I'm going.  I have a valid explanation however, last week was absolutely insane at our house, I had evening meetings or an appointment every day last week, and was wiped out by the time I even set foot in the house.  On top of that, we headed to good old T-town this weekend for my niece Addison's first birthday.  Now, I'm home along with Whit suffering from some mysterious throat ailment that makes it feel like we've swallowed razor blades.  Fun times in Sylvania.

So, I'm going to try and stay on top of my 30 day commitment.  Onto my favorite movies.

I have several movies that I could watch over and over and over, and never get tired of:  

Yes, this is The Little Mermaid.  But it was one of my favorite movies growing up, and still remains one of my favorites to this day.  Whitney watched it with me once and swore he'd never do it again since I quoted the entire movie, and he doesn't quite see the point of watching it if you can quote it.

Alfie is another one of my favorites, even if it's less known.  The storyline is very different, but I never tire of watching it and learning something new from the characters in it, and their development throughout the movie.  It helps that it also stars Jude Law.

I also adore Love Actually, even if it's classified as a Christmas movie, I find it a perfect anytime movie.  Whitney, not so much, but it's one that I make him "endure" on a regular basis.

Finally, what list is complete without Gone With the Wind?  While the movie doesn't hold a candle to the book, and it's a true rainy day commitment, I still love watching the story of the fall and rise of the South during and after the Civil War.  Fortunately, Whitney will watch this one with me (but only because it covers the Civil War of course).

I have many, many more movies that I love to watch, but this is just covering my favorites.  I'll try my best to get another post in later to try and catch up to where I should be.

Day 6 - A Picture of Something That Makes You Happy

I love this picture.  LOVE it.  You can't tell from the picture, but off to the left there's a massive thunderstorm brewing here.  I managed to snap this one afternoon last summer when we were watching the storm roll in from our backyard (because that's the kind of thing we like to do).

There's so much in this picture that makes me happy though.  I love the guy in the picture, I love the setting, and I love knowing that the guy in the picture loves those things just as much as I do.  I love that he is just as content as I am to stand there in perfect silence and watch a summer thunderstorm roll across the landscape.  I'm able to see all those things in this one picture, and that is enough to make me really, really happy.

Day 4 & 5-Your Parents and Siblings

Well I got slack busy yesterday and missed day 4, so we'll combine days 4 and 5 together.  Luckily they go together pretty well.

So first things first...Pat and Denise--where oh where do I begin?

My parents met when my mom was 16 and my dad was 22 and they were going with a group of friends to a bar.  You had to be 18 to get in, and my mom looked not a day over 14 at the time so she couldn't get in, so my dad sat outside with her all night while their friends clearly kept having a good time.  Because of the scandalous age difference my parents didn't start dating until my mom was 18 and my dad was (according to my grandparents) still 22.  After they dated about 6 months, my dad broke up with my mom because he still liked an ex-girlfriend.  After a year, my dad apparently came back wanting to date my mom at the homecoming dance and she gave him another chance.  They got married when she was 21 and they had admitted that he was actually 27.   This April, my parents will celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary.

My parents went on to have 2 daughters and 200 cows.  I say that half jokingly, but my parents are such a great example of teamwork and while they certainly wouldn't have me or my sister without each other, they definitely wouldn't have the cows without each other either.  Yes, they have their ups and downs, but neither would be where they are without the other one.  My mother worked at a very stressful job that she loved the first 12 years they were married in order for my father to get his farm up and financially stable.  Now, my mom stays at home helping my dad with the office operations of the farm, and allowing my dad to live his dream to his fullest, even if that means he works 16 hours a day.  If nothing else, they have both taught me how important it is both for yourself and when you commit to a marriage, for your spouse, to follow your dreams and desires to their fullest potential.  They are both full of flaws, but they are the perfect balance of each other and prove that opposites attract.
 

This picture was taken my last year of college over 3 years ago, and it's one of my favorites of us.

Now, onto my sister.

This is obviously not her now, but it's how I remember her growing up.  This is her now:

She's a pretty cool person, if I do say so myself.  When my mom was pregnant with her, and she didn't know if she was going to have a boy or girl, I remember praying that I would end up with a baby sister, because I needed someone to play with!  We have so many wonderful memories together, mainly of creating our own fun with made-up games.  We would (and still do) fight like cats and dogs, but we are also over a fight faster than you can blink.  Most people say we look very much alike, but we both think we look completely different.  I have my dad's personality, she has my mom's.  The best part is, the older we get, the closer we get, and the more and more she becomes my best friend by choice, not just by blood.

Day 3-First Love

Not to sound like a broken record of other 30-day bloggers, but I think at 17 it can be difficult to define love, especially in the sense that I know and understand it now.  Was I in love when I was 17?  Probably.  Did I fully understand the concept of love at that point in my life though?  Definitely not.  I do believe people come into your life for a reason, and I'm so grateful to have dated such a wonderful person for my "first love".  He really was everything that a 17-20 year old boyfriend should be, and what every parent should hope that their daughter is one day able to date.  I have many happy, wonderful memories from the years we dated each other.

But our lives changed, and one day I suddenly realized we were going down different paths and wanting different things from our lives.  Like what happens in so many relationships from high school, I had gone away to college and he had stayed at home.  After a year of dating through college, I realized that I wanted a completely different college experience than he did.  I also knew that if that was how we felt about college, our lives would only continue to get more difficult if we tried staying together.  So I broke up with him, and literally we did not talk to each other anymore.  For awhile I missed that chunk of my life that had been there for so long, and I certainly wish we could have remained friends, but I don't know that it would have worked.  Our break-up honestly taught me more than our relationship ever did--I learned to be independent and that my self-worth didn't depend on my relationship status. 

While my husband doesn't remember this, I actually met him the summer I broke up with my first love.  I think that's much more than a coincidence.  And while he was not my first love and I was not his, our story is enough for another entirely different post...

Day 2-Blog Meaning

If you go way back about a year ago, there was a method behind the madness of this blog:

"I approach it all like this--a home, like your life, is only as strong as the foundation, and since those two seem so co-mingled in my life right now as my husband and I start many new ventures, I find it only fitting for the blog to reflect this...we'll see where the construction takes us." 

 

I wrote that on my very first blog post.  I wanted this to be a reflection of being newlyweds who were half-crazy for moving, renovating a house and starting new jobs all within the first month or so of marriage.  But we've survived all this stress so far, and our marriage is all the stronger now because of it.  

I also have to admit that I thought about an old hymn when I came up with the name for this:

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said,
You, who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

In every condition, in sickness, in health;
In poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth;
At home and abroad, on the land, on the sea,
As thy days may demand, shall thy strength ever be.

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

I'm sure there's a more up-to-date version of this hymn, but I cannot find this online currently.  But even in this version, there was so much of this hymn that was so applicable to my life a year ago, and so much that still applies today.  The message from this has helped me so much when I think for how I really need to deal with the stress in my life, and there really is only one way to do that effectively--to lean on God through prayer and the study of the Bible.  I'm getting there...

30 Day Blog Challenge-Day 1

My friend Abby over at Throw Some Seeds of Your Own is doing a 30 day blog challenge, and encouraged her followers to do the same.  In an effort to meet Resolution #11, I thought this was the perfect way to help me reach at least one of my self-imposed goals for the year, and maybe stay on top this blog a little better than the past.  So here's the format:

Day 1-Introduce, recent picture, 15 interesting facts

Day 2-Meaning behind your blog name

Day 3-Your first love

Day 4-Your parents

Day 5-Your siblings

Day 6-A picture of something that makes you happy

Day 7-Favorite movies

Day 8-A place you've traveled to

Day 9-A picture of your friends

Day 10-Something you're afraid of

Day 11-Favorite tv shows

Day 12-What you believe

Day 13-Goals

Day 14-A picture you love

Day 15-Bible verse

Day 16-Dream house

Day 17-Something you're looking forward to

Day 18-Something you regret

Day 19-Something you miss

Day 20-Nicknames

Day 21-Picture of yourself

Day 22-Favorite city

Day 23-Favorite vacation

Day 24-Something you've learned

Day 25-Put your iPod on shuffle, first 10 songs

Day 26-Picture of your family

Day 27-Pets

Day 28-Something that stresses you out

Day 29-3 Wishes

Day 30-a picture

 So let's begin.  Here's my recent picture, it was taken on New Years Eve:

Even though it may not look like it, I promise that we love each other.

Moving on, 15 Interesting Facts about yours truly:

(1)  My husband is the best second chance I've ever given someone.  I firmly believe that everyone deserves a second chance because of him.

(2) I grew up on a farm.  Cows, cotton, tractors, the whole nine yards.  I love that my husband is enjoying learning about farming while he works with my dad and that it makes him happier than any job he's ever had.

(3)  I took piano lessons for 7 years growing up and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I'm still trying to find a place in the house where a piano could fit so I can start playing again.

(4)  I knocked out my front tooth at Disney World when I was 5.  As in, I fell out of a chair at the Contemporary Resort, hit a railing, and had to be taken to an Orlando, FL emergency room.  My family received crazy perks from Disney the rest of the trip.

(5)  I love renovating our house.  Yes, it has been a crazy time, but it's definitely been worth it to see the fruits of our own labor, even if it meant living in just two room the first four months we were married.

(6)  My mother was a twin.  Therefore, my husband thinks this means we will have a set of twins for children one day.

(7)  I love sewing but want to be a better sewer.  I would love to be able to do more than just pillows and curtains.  But boy can I re-upholster!

(8)  In 2004 I worked for one of the most contested races for Congress at the time, and got to meet then Vice President Dick Cheney at a fundraiser.  It was incredible.

(9)  I love to cook.  One day I hope to cook as well as my mother because she's an awesome, doesn't-have-to-follow-a-recipe style cook.

(10)  I've traveled to two different continents, and hope to visit every populated continent one day.

(11)  I have a black thumb.  This is most disturbing considering that my father farms and my mother is an incredible gardener.  Instead of inheriting their skills, I've accomplished the rare feat of killing a cactus.

(12)  Our house could best be described as a zoo currently, and my husband often calls himself the zookeeper, given our current pet situation.  I will elaborate about this on pet day.

(13)  If possible, I could live off of coffee, water, wine, bread, and cheese.  Obviously I do not.

(14)  My job is very stressful, but very rewarding.  While I have days that I'm ready to pull out my hair in frustration, I have customers whose thanks for what I'm able to do for them reminds me that everything is not all bad in banking.

(15)  Our current house does not have a dishwasher, so we have to hand wash EVERYTHING.  It's getting old.



So there's a little about me.  I think this is off to a great start!

Thank you CBS

Has anyone else seen this on tv lately?

Disturbing.  If anyone was wondering, my husband told me not to worry, he'd save on my Valentine's Day present (and alas, also my birthday present) and get himself tested.

Thank you CBS.

Send To Phone

Recent Obsessions

Recently we've been slightly very obsessed with The Tudors.  Like, if we turn on the TV, it's the only thing we watch these days.  Plus, it's not like the show is even running new episodes now, we're just watching the available seasons on Netflix every night--not BBC America.  It's pathetic how little either of us know about this period in history either, because we have to keep a Wikipedia (the reliable source that is...) page up on Henry VIII to know what's following a timeline and what is not.  FYI, most is not.

Our conclusion of two seasons so far--Henry is an asshole.  Why did all these woman want to marry him, aside from him being the King?  He was a man-whore who thought he was the all that a bag of chips (although, I guess if you're the King of England you have that right?).  So we are not fans of Henry, or Ann Boleyn for that matter, Whit stayed up later than usual to watch her beheading episode last night he disliked her so much.  Basically, we only like Katherine of Aragon.  And now she's dead, so I'm not sure who we're going to be routing for on the show.  Yet we keep watching because it's just good.  Since we've only got 2 seasons left in the series, we've started looking for other shows to pick up once we finish this one.

Our top choices are:
(1) Rome
(2) Spartacus
(3) Dexter
(4) Weeds
(5) The Sopranos

Clearly it all comes down to the fact that we're really just too cheap to pay for premium TV.  Luckily we're waiting on season three to arrive, so it's giving me some time to work on things around the house.  I'll post tomorrow to show what projects I've been working on lately.

A few other recent obsessions of ours are: pig ears for the dog, burgers stuffed with cheese, onions, and bacon, doing laundry on a daily basis (hello Resolution #5!), and making plans for a driftwood coffee table I've now inherited.

If nothing else, my life is random.

Over the River and Through the Woods

I love this picture of Whitney and his grandmother, I managed to snap it at his cousin's wedding this past summer.  This weekend we traveled to Douglasville because Whitney's grandmother passed away.  I did not have the privilege of knowing her longer than the few years we've been dating, and she has not been in good health since we've been dating.  However, from what I hear and the few conversations I've been able to have with her, she was one spunky woman.  She was independent, adventurous, generous, and caring all wrapped in one package.  Her family, friends, and church clearly meant the world to her, as evidenced of the outpouring of love at her funeral.

I know that Whitney loved his Grannie, and over the course of the weekend we shared many special memories with his family about her life and it gave me even more insight into his family and the people that she made them.  I told Whitney on the way home last night how lucky he was to have had his grandmother in his life as long as he did, and how blessed he is that his father's parents are both still alive.  Of course, this turned into a tale of my own crazy grandmother.

Resolution Time

Happy New Year, eh, 11 days late.  The story of my life.  I thought in an effort to make myself more accountable (to myself I suppose), I'm going to post my resolutions for the year up for the whole world (or you 6 followers) to see.  Some are pretty standard resolutions, some are pretty specific to my crazy life, but perhaps if I put them up here I'll make myself actually follow through with them.

Before I start, I shared with dear old Whit on Near Year's Day that my family used to have a system for resolutions (his comment, "what doesn't your family seem to have a 'system' for?"  He's so RUDE...but I digress).  My family had a wooden resolution box--I think it was actually an old cigar humidor--that we stored in my grandparent's attic throughout the year.  On New Year's Day after the big meal, we would pull down the box, sit around the kitchen table reading our resolutions out loud in turn, and heckle every person for what they had and had not accomplished.  Then we'd throw away the old resolutions and pull out paper and pens to write a list of new ones for the year.  We would cerimoniously place them in the humidor, close the lid, and put the box back in the attic for another year.  This was simply the family tradition until my grandfather passed away (this of course means that I was doing resolution lists well before I was 14, I'll be kind and just say that I was mature for my age).  The new years after his death we simply left the box in the attic because more than anything, no one wanted to see what his resolutions were.  I've learned that sometimes when you lose someone very close to you, it's often easier for the grief process to change a tradition than to try and keep it going simply for the sake of tradition.  At least that's what my family does, and for us, it works.  The idea of making resolutions has stuck with our family though--my grandmother, mother, and aunts still make yearly, monthly, and weekly "to-do" lists that they hold each other accountable to.  I find that many lists slightly overkill.

So, in light of the number of the year, I'm making this one list of my top 11 things to accomplish in 2011; Resolutions, if you will:
1) Eat healthier.  Mr. Meat and Potatoes aka my husband also agreed to this one. 
2) Exercise at least 3x per week.  This could get interesting since I'm currently exercising 0x per week...
3) Minimize eating out to only 2x per week
     sidenote: obviously, part of the focus with these so far is to lose weight.  I'll just say that's my underlying resolution.
4) Pay off all revolving debt.  This one's nasty, and I absolutely hate admitting it, but it's there and something has to be done about it!  Thanks Dave Ramsey....
5) Do laundry on a consistent basis.  Like, more than once a month would be a good starting place.
6) Finish the fireplace. I think all of you have seen the previous post on that one.
7) Complete our entryway/bathroom project.  Details to come later.  There's currently a hole in the floor where the toilet is supposed to be.  No, seriously.
8) Make curtains for the guest bedroom and laundry room.  The fabric is already even purchased for this one...
9) Renovate our front porch.  Um, if you think there's something worse than a hole in your floor, it would be this extension of our house.
10) Plant a garden!  We've already got a spot chosen for this one, plus I think it will help with resolutions #1 and #3.
11)  Double the amount of blog postings for the year!  I think this is quite do-able, considering I had 17 last year, I'm only shooting for 34 this year.  It's an average of 2.8 per month. I. Can. Do. It.

So there's my resolution list.  Into the attic of blog-postings it goes, but I'm pulling it out again on January 1, 2012 to let you all know how well I did (or didn't) do.

Merry, Merry.

Puppies, a lack of a husband, and the general Christmas season have interrupted my blogging.  I apologize.  I must say, I'm enjoying Christmas much more than I did last year (interpret--I am grateful for stability!) and my house is all decked out.  This weekend I plan to snap a few pictures to share with everyone, once I *hopefully* get my outside decorations up, and of course, my husband gets back with his snazzier camera.  While he's been gone I've been making things merrier.  Present purchasing is almost complete, I'm working on Christmas cards and wrapping, and I'm trying to get some baking done before he gets home on Saturday.  I've also gotten a little adventurous while Mr. Whit's been away and tried some new recipes, mostly ones that I know he'll never eat.  My husband is a meat, potatoes, and bread man--seriously, that's ALL he eats--so when I make meals that are mainly veggies and cheese, he normally eats McDonalds for supper.  In order to help him keep his physique semi-normal, I try to limit his McD's intake as much as possible.

Today I want to share my new favorite recipe.  It's not very Christmasy, but I think it's absolutely delicious and I've made it twice since Whit's been gone (because when I give you the ingredients, you'll see that he wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole).  It's asparagus soup.  Cold weather get me more excited to eat soup anyway, so I figured there was no better time than the present to try it.  Now, I cannot say that I'm so awesome I made this up on my own, I did actually get the recipe from a combination of Food Network stars, but I have tweaked it and made it my own.

1 bunch of fresh asparagus, cut into 1 inch pieces
1/4 onion, diced
1 green onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tbsp butter
3 c. chicken stock
basil & parsley to taste
salt & pepper to taste
Generous dollop of sour cream

Garnish:
mix together equal parts of goat cheese and sour cream (I recommend using an herbed goat cheese)

Melt the butter in a saucepan, saute onion and green onion ~5 minutes, until translucent.  Add garlic and saute an additional minute.  Add asparagus and cook for 5 more minutes, then season with herbs, salt & pepper.  Add chicken stock, bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat and let simmer for 10-15 minutes until the asparagus is very tender.  Remove from heat and let cool about 5 minutes, THEN bring out your fun immersion blender (or pour this into your regular blender) and puree until smooth.  Mix in sour cream.  Serve with a dollop of the goat cheese/sour cream mixture in the middle to enjoy with your yummy soup!

The most fun part is getting to use my fancy immersion blender when I make this.

Try it, if you like asparagus I promise you'll like it, and let me know what you think.  If it's absolutely rotten for you, it's all the more for me!

Puppy Talk

Hi friends, in case you've missed the picture, we got a puppy!  Slightly spur of the moment for us, but we've talked about getting one for at least a year now and had really been waiting until we felt more settled to dive into puppydom.  It helped that our 1 year anniversary is coming up next weekend, so I've been told this is my happy anniversary present.  I'd also like to especially thank those of you out there who recently got puppies (or already had dogs), this is what I think really pushed Whitney over the edge...so thanks!

A little blurry, but it's from the camera on my phone people.  It's Bulleit--appropriately named after a brand of bourbon by my husband.

Let me say, house training is nasty.  DT told me that house breaking a puppy was harder than having Whitney as a baby--and he didn't sleep through the night until he was 12.  I'm very nervous.  However, all you dog people keep telling me it's worth the pain of puppy training to have an obedient dog.  So I'll take the bad now for the good later.

Oh, there's one other slight problem with the whole situation, kitty isn't the happiest right now.  Well, she's not unhappy, she's just making sure the pup knows who is still queen of the house.

The Fireplace

Yesterday I pulled out all of my Christmas decorations because I couldn't resist the temptation any longer.  Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year, and I normally pull all of my decorations out early then count down until it's "acceptable" to have them out.  I might make an exception to this self-inflicted rule this year because I'm so ready for Christmas.  I blame this Christmas craziness on two things:

(1) My grandmother could be Santa himself if she weren't a woman.  I know of not one person in the world who loves the holidays as much as she does, and
(2) Given my little wedding/new job/moving escapade at the end of 2009, I didn't get much time to enjoy the holidays to their full potential a year ago, so now I feel the need to make up for lost time.

There is one slight (ok, major) problem with my Christmas plans this year.  It revolves around this thing (hint, it's on the left side):

Here's a closer view of it once the walls were painted:

Yes, the fireplace--or what's supposed to be a fireplace.  Is it heinous, or is it heinous?

Kind of hard to decorate for Christmas with that thing looming in the corner.  Kind of hard to decorate at ALL with that always starting directly at you.  We have great plans for it--put in gas logs, build the mantle and surround, put a tile surround on the front of it--we are just scared to tackle this thing.  We haven't been scared of much in this house, but this thing scares us.  Today I decided to pull back the board that's over the actual opening to the fireplace to have a peek at the inside again.  I'd looked at this when we took all the paneling down in this room and quickly covered it up because it was so scary.

Like I said, super scary.  And yes, that would be dirt on the floor in it.

This is after I pulled out the shop vac and cleaned out the previously mentioned dirt.  There's still some bricks missing in the back, so there's a sandy substance just chilling at the back of this fireplace.

We are at a total loss for how to tackle this thing.  We aren't even sure what type of professional to call about looking into fixing the fireplace to make sure we CAN put gas logs in there.  I've scoured the internet looking for options on how to fix this, but nothing gives me a straight answer.

So now I have no cover over this gaping hole in the middle of our living room and stockings that need to be hung by the chimney with care in the next 6 weeks.  I am open for ideas from anyone...because if not, I might try to tackle this scary project by myself.  Help!

Happy Election Day

Today is seriously one of my favorite days.  I know it seems crazy, but I love election day, and I always have.  I get all dressed up in my red, white, and blue and now that I actually live near my polling station, I get to go and put my card in the slot, cast my ballot, and wear a peach sticker claiming that I voted--except today, where I went first thing and the polls actually weren't working (little Sylvania made the news!)--so I didn't have my sticker on all day.  Some may blame a certain class I took in college called "campaigns and elections" on my insanity around election season, and yes this experience did add fuel to my fire and make me well aware of my political views.  But I truly have done this my entire life, so really I have my family to blame.

You see, one of my earliest memories was the Presidential election of 1988.  Yes, I was 3, and yes, I do actually remember it.  My grandparents had an election party for George Bush (Sr.) and I remember sitting around the large console TV with a room full of adults, cheering for election updates and waiting until they declared George the winner and the champagne was poured (I had ginger ale) and we ate cake.   I also remember having a conversation with my grandfather that night about why Ronald Reagan couldn't be President any more, and why we even had to have an election to get a new President, because as I told him "I just want Ronald Reagan to be President forever". 

It's a little scary how exposed I've been to politics.

But I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I love how informed I am.  I love how engrossed I get in the political process, learning about the candidates and their issues and what new referendums are going to be passed.  I wouldn't trade it for the world (although my husband might).

Happy Election night!

The Farmer's Daughter

For those who don't know, my husband has been on the job hunt for 10+ months.  Since he has a college degree, and has applied for at least 100 jobs, there's obviously a lot of people interested in jobs right now.  So the last few days he's taken up farming, with none other than my dear dad.

Dear gussie.

Right now is peak farming time.  Cotton needs to be picked, peanuts have to be dug then picked, and at some point soybeans will have to be harvested too.  Picking cotton is the first priority right now, and it isn't an easy process.  There's no less than 3 pieces of equipment used to just get those square things called modules you see on the side of the road made.


Someone has to operate each piece of equipment, and the more people participating, the easier (and faster) it goes.  That would be how hubby got recruited.  While my husband grew up in the Mecca of all things agricultural--Tifton, GA--he would be considered, at most, a novice for operating equipment.  However, after day one, dear dad has claimed he's learned faster anyone he's taught.  Considering that one guy who works for dear dad has attended school a total of two weeks in his life, and the other guy has worked in a dairy milking cows since he was 14, the odds were in hubby's favor. 

Of course, there's also a certain song that was popular this summer that the two of us can't quit singing right now either.

I'll get some pictures of him operating all that large equipment as soon as I can find him in a field.

The Big C update

After an 11 day hiatus from the working world, I'm trying to psych myself up for tomorrow.  Yes, I realize I will be spoiled with a 3 day work week, but being out of the office that long also means mounds of paperwork and who knows how many phone calls and emails to reply to...not to mention the pile of work I still had to leave and hope to accomplish when I returned to the office this week.  Besides the obvious rest from the real world, this week of rest has made me realize something--I must be accountable to myself.  I may be the world's worst procrastinator.  Seriously (just ask my old roommates, they can attest).  Procrastination does not equal less stress in the working world, it typically equals more.  So, starting tomorrow at work I'm going to be accountable to the deadlines I set for myself and be accountable, most importantly, to the clients I work with on a daily basis.  That would be why I'm writing tonight.  It's my first effort in being accountable, because I said yesterday that I was going to update about dear DT, and I'm trying to follow through on that promise (because I know you all were checking all day to see if I had an update, right?).

Dear DT is still in Atlanta in the hospital, sadly.  She's actually doing quite well, but her doctors are waiting to see the results of some CT scans before they officially send her home.  Her surgery went very well, but 12 inches of her large intestines and rectum had to be removed.  They also removed 20 lymph nodes, and 7 of them tested positive for cancer, which puts her diagnosis in stage 3.  DT was pretty discouraged when she got the pathology results, because she was truly hoping the surgery would be the only thing she'd have to do.  Instead, she has a very long recovery and treatment process ahead of her.  She's met with a few oncologists, but is still trying to determine exactly where she wants to undergo her treatments, since she'll have 6 months of chemotherapy, with probably a full month of radiation wrapped in with her chemo.  With such an aggressive therapy ahead of her, DT's pretty nervous and is trying to stay upbeat.  The hope is that they'll send her home from the hospital tomorrow to let her fully recover for the next month before they start her treatments.  Hubby will be heading down to good old T-town over the weekend so he can help his parents out once they get home...

..so that's as brief of an update as possible on DT.  Prayers are certainly welcome right now!!

Happier Things

For future reference, let me say that I refer to my mother-in-law as DT. I don't call her this in person, it's just a nickname I use to reference her, and it's just her initials, but I think it's amusing because it's also the nickname for my vehicle. Tomorrow I will give a full update on DT's progress. Today I'm going to talk about something fun.

Things that are fun to me are not necessarily fun to my poor husband. I don't think he realized this when he married me. In fact, I know he didn't realize it. I told him once when we were engaged "I really like to do stuff...you know, crafts, flower arrangements, home improvements, and just Suzy-homemaker-style stuff". He has told me since that time that he didn't realize what that really meant. Or that when I get a notion in my head about what I want to do, that's all my mind gets set on. I see it as stress relief mainly. Poor hubby sees most of this as work, because most of my notions involve him doing something to make me happy and not something he particularly enjoys.

So this weekend, in light of our un-fun week, I decided to tackle our next project--the utility room--because I thought it would be fun. Let me first say, we have an awesome utility room, and I call it a utility room because it holds more than just our washer and dryer. For a house the age and size of ours, the utility room is amazing. I'm fairly certain it's larger than our guest bedroom. However, it's also become the black hole of our house. With all of the other rooms receiving some TLC, the utility room became the place where everything that didn't have a place went. Luckily, when I made the suggestion to hubby Saturday about starting the great utility room painting project, he agreed, but that's only because he's been wanting to tackle the black hole for at least 2 months. We made the agreement that as long as he organized all the stuff I would do the painting, because he hates to paint, and I'd rather live in clutter than tackle a pile of junk. Here's a few before pictures, clutter included:


This is the view from the door:


If you look closely on the left side of this, you'll see hubby's handiwork where he removed a door (and you can see me painting down in the bottom). Yeah, he's gotten pretty handy. I think I'll keep him:


My husband was also in charge of picture taking and somehow managed to forget taking a picture of the main point of this room, the washer and dryer...oh well, those will just be saved for after pictures. Now, the room is nowhere close to being done, but it looks SO much better:


Ok, not so much. It looks more like a teenage girl with bad highlights, but it's coming along. This is the one room we decided to keep the paneling in. In order to paint the paneling, you of course have to prime it first. I choose Kilz 2 (always...this stuff works miracles people).


In order to cover up these dark stripes, you have to use primer on them separately before you prime the whole room. It's what they say to do, so I do it. (They primarily consists of my mother and grandmother).

That's the stage we're currently in. Trust me, when you're the only one doing the painting it can take awhile. I'll update as soon as I make more progress.

The Big C

When I started this blog, one of the primary reasons I wanted to do it was to try and condense my thoughts and all the happenings in my crazy newlywed life. I will say that in our first year of marriage, my husband and I have dealt with a great deal--a new job for me, a lack of a job for him, relocating, and extensively renovating our house have been difficult to deal with, especially when they are combined together. However, nothing was as difficult as what I know we'll soon be facing (because we need to learn how to handle one more thing, right?). My mother-in-law was diagnosed with Colorectal cancer last week, and will have surgery Monday, followed by some type of treatment after the doctors determine what stage her cancer is in. For my husband and most of his family, starting this whole experience is very intimidating and scary. For me, it largely feels like old hat, not because I've had to battle my own personal "Big C" experience of course, but because my family has had it's fair share of Big C's; from my grandfather to many uncles, I've learned the ins and outs of dealing with it.

I know that out of this will come many blessings for my husband's family, as difficult as that is to think about right now. I also know that this will be a journey of faith for all of us. Today we were talking about how many blessings we've already seen as a result of our faith--his mother found a doctor and scheduled an appointment within 3 days of her initial test results, I made plans to be on vacation from work the week of her surgery well before we knew about any of this, or the fact that while hubby doesn't have a job, it will probably allow him to spend as much time with his mom as necessary. Ultimately though, we know it will be a true journey of our family's faith, and just another test of our young marriage.

kitty tales

So we have this cat. This is what she looks like:


Funny story about this cat...we kind of stole her. My husband found her around my old apartment complex right after we got engaged. She looked thin, had what seemed like an abundance of fleas, and seemed so eager for attention that after a few days of giving her milk, my soon-to-be husband felt so sorry for her that I agreed with him that she needed to be adopted. Well, big mistake. After a few days we learned that she was fixed, de-clawed, and her natural reaction to new people was to be eager for attention. Whoops. We named her Whiskers, because that's just the natural name for a cat.

Fast forward a year and half later. We still have said kitty, and sometimes she's sweet:


But most of the time, she's a bitch. I mean really, this lady thinks she rules the roost. She eats when she wants to (or annoys us so badly that we give in and feed her), sleeps where ever she wants to--including about half of our bed each night, plays with whatever she wants to play with, and gives this slightly demonic expression every now and then:


Just scary. What's even scarier is her wintertime habit of mouse catching. Since we live on a farm, there's a natural tendency for more mice to be around our house, it just seems that this gets worse in the winter. They enter in a certain spot, where you will find Whiskers 90% of the time:


There's only one problem with her mouse catching adventures. She does a great job catching the mice (which is pretty gross) just has a lot of trouble killing them. It's disturbing. She just brings them to us. I have proof:


That was in our bedroom, and yes, that's a real mouse; it's possibly the only one she's ever killed. Normally she brings them alive to us, any time of the day or night I suppose to get a reward for her good work. I normally scream and make my husband kill it. But let's just say that with the cooler weather right around the corner and the inevitable mouse invasion looming, I'm hoping that our kitty's mouse-catching behavior is a little more mature than it was last winter.