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.