|| *BLINKS* ||
Whoa, where have I been? I have been MOVING and things have finally settled down enough that I can emerge from under my pile of cardboard boxes and check in with all you lovely peeps! And I'm so out of the loop that I totally understand anyone skipping over this post, so no comment expectations -- but I have missed you so much and have kept you all in my thoughts over the last three crazy months. What started out as "let's see what my mom's realtor friend has to say about our old urban Victorian" ended up with us now ensconced in the 'burbs while we finish up the final renovations necessary to put our house on the market this week. Come to find out our next door neighbors (the nice ones, not the douchey ones with the constantly barking, neglected dogs) are also selling as of July 8th and moving to Boise, ID. And the road hog across the street has put up his scaffolding as well. The house down the street is for sale too.
(Okay, I wrote this like two weeks ago; I have subsequently been to the house, which was poignant) I haven't been back to our house since we formally moved on June 7th because it just makes me feel too sad right now. I have lots of ongoing appointments in the general area though, so I get to drive around "my" part of the city 3-4x per week ... but it doesn't exactly feel like "mine" anymore. And this new neighborhood doesn't feel like "mine" either, even though I'm smack dab in the middle of shopping and necessities paradise: multiple large grocery stores, Target, Petsmart, Ulta, Walgreens, Office Max, my kids' high school (OMFG both my kids are in high school o_0 ), Conoco, restaurants, the dry cleaners, and the Cherry Creek Mall ... I could list a hundred more places that are conveniently located by our new house. In that regard, I absolutely cannot complain -- after having lived in a food desert for almost 10 years (i.e. no local grocery stores; the closest one was 7ish miles away? Something like that ... not convenient anyway) having a King Soopers/Kroger two blocks north and a Safeway two blocks south of us is a pretty nice reprieve.
The house we're living in now was built in 1963 and it still has a lot of its original fixtures and decor. That is not a compliment. But I really appreciate the layout of this place. This is probably super nutty, but I did not come and see this house before we moved into it. I sent DH and the boy to look it over and trusted DH's judgment on location, suitability, and safety. He made a good judgment call :) He took about fifty pics for me to look over and I felt also that the house would meet our immediate need for tons of room and storage -- comparatively anyway. So what I'm able to do here is look at my stuff and sort. I was completely unable to do this at our Victorian due to a profound lack of space. I am now able to go through boxes that I haven't touched since 1999, when my kids were one and two respectively. For years I have hauled this stuff around and now I don't even know what the stuff is anymore. Frankly, a lot of old, unopened boxes are going straight to the ARC/Goodwill. If I don't even know what I have, I highly doubt I'm going to miss it down the road. This is very liberating; my life could easily be described as "overpacked" in general. I'm craving a much more minimalist existence, for both my physical and mental well being. I've been treading water a lot for the past year, and I feel I have failed in meeting my personal goals. So I'm trying to take small, but consistent, steps in the right direction and make decisions that do not inherently stymie or sabotage my efforts. I've had to make some hard decisions too that I feel stuck between a rock and hard place over, and I have made decisions that involve choosing the lesser of two evils. I suppose life sometimes just unfolds like that. A bit of a tangent there, but I haven't had the opportunity to have a couple of quiet hours to just write down my thoughts in quite a long time.
Anywhoo, this house appeared to me to be a tri-level 4 BD 3 BA with two living rooms, a kitchen, and a formal dining area. So I was really surprised when I initially walked through the place that it actually has four levels because there is a finished basement that DH didn't quite relay to me when he described the layout. So finally -- FINALLY -- there is room for DH to have his sprawling, messy octopus of plugs and cords and networked computers and there is a working, functional door for me to close upon it :D I still have a lot of unpacking to do, but it's a relief to know that as I unpack we will be able to have space for organization and decor; I completely lacked this at our Victorian and it was just a disaster that resulted in a lot of deferred maintenance that we have been pouring money into over the past three months (I'm very optimistic we'll recoup our costs *fingers crossed*). We have a driveway now, after 8+ years of street parking. We have a two car garage, a covered porch, two manicured lawns (front and back), a storage shed in the backyard, more than one plug per room, central A/C, normal plumbing (I'm still WTFing that at some point in the Victorian's history, someone installed a radiator hose as a shower drain ON PURPOSE o_0 ), functional chimneys, and intact, modern glass in all the windows :)) Even if we only stay here for a year or two, it's still a huge opportunity for me to purge my mountain of unnecessary items and figure out what my essentials really are. Sure, I'll keep some of my things for decoration or sentimentality, but I simply have more than I need. No, you're not going to find me on Hoarders and, yes, I'm keeping my nail polish collection and makeup :D
As referenced above, I did actually go by the old house finally. I wasn't able to get in because the doors have been rekeyed (we have the new keys, I just didn't have them with me -- it was sort of a spur of the moment decision to visit) so I looked through the front window and was able to see the new paint (gorgeous) and, well, just the basic floorplan, and I seriously thought to myself, How on earth did I fit all my stuff in there?. Tomorrow I have an appointment over in the area and I'm going to take my camera and take a bunch of pictures. There's nothing wrong with wanting to remember the past, or a house that meant a lot to you like the Victorian meant to me. I'm moving on, but I have a lot of happy memories from the Victorian and it definitely reflected my eclecticism well. But here's some pics of the new house.
---
Thank you to those who sent messages following my niece's tragic death -- I appreciated all of them and if you took a moment to think of Jessie and the pain she must have been in, I am so grateful for that as well. My brother and SIL are devestated -- they raised Jessie for many tumultuous years, for Jessie's home life was unstable for a variety of reasons. I'm glad that Jessie had Scott and Karla for as long as she did; I'm glad that she had that light in her life. And I'm sorry that her life was cut short by mental illness and suicide. I feel like I want to make some sort of gesture in her name, but exactly what that might be is unclear. So I'm just going to sit on it and talk to my brother and SIL and see what their ideas are. But, yes, thank you for your kind thoughts.
---
So I was geeking it out over at the OneRing.net last night and I came across this quote from Orlando Bloom:
"Viggo (Mortenson) will go on about Elves and how they're always doing their nails and brushing their long blonde hair, and being all prissy. And I just say: Well, at least I'm going to live forever! Got that? LIVE FOREVER!"
OPI did The Great and Powerful Oz -- they should do The Hobbit/LOTR!
I was telling longtimegone last night that I went to the 4th of July sale at Sally Beauty (not my favorite store for polish, but they have the good stuff when it comes to acetone, nail polish remover, nail files, etc.) and there was a woman of about 60 who was with her mother who was probably in her 80s, and the mother proceeded to open up brand new bottles of nail polish, paint one stripe down her nail, recap the bottle, and then put it back. I thought that was appalling -- you're not supposed to create your own tester bottles from the merchandise! On the nail board at Makeup Alley, people agreed with my position, and one person, a Sally employee, said that they aren't allowed to sell bottles of polish where people have done that due to possible contamination (nail fungii, etc). It's akin to destruction of property, essentually. And this lady tried on like 20 different polishes ... GROSS! I did manage to find $24 worth of stuff, but it made me think twice about the actual bottles of polishes themselves. Best nail polish purchase recently: Heartshaped Box Full of S*#t by CrowsToes, an awesome autumn glitter that will look good layered. Current polish: Valerie by Zoya.
Last cosmetics topic. I had read in a book how using your favorite perfume in a lotion makes the scent last quite a lot longer than just spritzing. Thing is, my favorite perfume -- Cb's I Hate Perfume Winter 1972 -- doesn't come in a lotion and it's not inexpensive. Nevertheless, I took about 2 TBSPs full of Cetaphil lotion (completely scentless) and used an eye dropper to drop about four drops of scent into the lotion. I rubbed it all together and applied it, and OMG it totally works. I got hints of the scent for four+ hours afterward. Often when I apply a scent straight to my skin I can't smell it after about an hour. I think I may have figured out a way to best utilize the $13.00 tester samples and get the best bang for my buck.
---
What is up with you, o best beloveds? In particular, I've been thinking of aome -- how is your shoulder, m'dear? (Yes, yes, I am also behind in reading my f-list; I'm catching up, though. I'm catching up.)
(Okay, I wrote this like two weeks ago; I have subsequently been to the house, which was poignant) I haven't been back to our house since we formally moved on June 7th because it just makes me feel too sad right now. I have lots of ongoing appointments in the general area though, so I get to drive around "my" part of the city 3-4x per week ... but it doesn't exactly feel like "mine" anymore. And this new neighborhood doesn't feel like "mine" either, even though I'm smack dab in the middle of shopping and necessities paradise: multiple large grocery stores, Target, Petsmart, Ulta, Walgreens, Office Max, my kids' high school (OMFG both my kids are in high school o_0 ), Conoco, restaurants, the dry cleaners, and the Cherry Creek Mall ... I could list a hundred more places that are conveniently located by our new house. In that regard, I absolutely cannot complain -- after having lived in a food desert for almost 10 years (i.e. no local grocery stores; the closest one was 7ish miles away? Something like that ... not convenient anyway) having a King Soopers/Kroger two blocks north and a Safeway two blocks south of us is a pretty nice reprieve.
The house we're living in now was built in 1963 and it still has a lot of its original fixtures and decor. That is not a compliment. But I really appreciate the layout of this place. This is probably super nutty, but I did not come and see this house before we moved into it. I sent DH and the boy to look it over and trusted DH's judgment on location, suitability, and safety. He made a good judgment call :) He took about fifty pics for me to look over and I felt also that the house would meet our immediate need for tons of room and storage -- comparatively anyway. So what I'm able to do here is look at my stuff and sort. I was completely unable to do this at our Victorian due to a profound lack of space. I am now able to go through boxes that I haven't touched since 1999, when my kids were one and two respectively. For years I have hauled this stuff around and now I don't even know what the stuff is anymore. Frankly, a lot of old, unopened boxes are going straight to the ARC/Goodwill. If I don't even know what I have, I highly doubt I'm going to miss it down the road. This is very liberating; my life could easily be described as "overpacked" in general. I'm craving a much more minimalist existence, for both my physical and mental well being. I've been treading water a lot for the past year, and I feel I have failed in meeting my personal goals. So I'm trying to take small, but consistent, steps in the right direction and make decisions that do not inherently stymie or sabotage my efforts. I've had to make some hard decisions too that I feel stuck between a rock and hard place over, and I have made decisions that involve choosing the lesser of two evils. I suppose life sometimes just unfolds like that. A bit of a tangent there, but I haven't had the opportunity to have a couple of quiet hours to just write down my thoughts in quite a long time.
Anywhoo, this house appeared to me to be a tri-level 4 BD 3 BA with two living rooms, a kitchen, and a formal dining area. So I was really surprised when I initially walked through the place that it actually has four levels because there is a finished basement that DH didn't quite relay to me when he described the layout. So finally -- FINALLY -- there is room for DH to have his sprawling, messy octopus of plugs and cords and networked computers and there is a working, functional door for me to close upon it :D I still have a lot of unpacking to do, but it's a relief to know that as I unpack we will be able to have space for organization and decor; I completely lacked this at our Victorian and it was just a disaster that resulted in a lot of deferred maintenance that we have been pouring money into over the past three months (I'm very optimistic we'll recoup our costs *fingers crossed*). We have a driveway now, after 8+ years of street parking. We have a two car garage, a covered porch, two manicured lawns (front and back), a storage shed in the backyard, more than one plug per room, central A/C, normal plumbing (I'm still WTFing that at some point in the Victorian's history, someone installed a radiator hose as a shower drain ON PURPOSE o_0 ), functional chimneys, and intact, modern glass in all the windows :)) Even if we only stay here for a year or two, it's still a huge opportunity for me to purge my mountain of unnecessary items and figure out what my essentials really are. Sure, I'll keep some of my things for decoration or sentimentality, but I simply have more than I need. No, you're not going to find me on Hoarders and, yes, I'm keeping my nail polish collection and makeup :D
As referenced above, I did actually go by the old house finally. I wasn't able to get in because the doors have been rekeyed (we have the new keys, I just didn't have them with me -- it was sort of a spur of the moment decision to visit) so I looked through the front window and was able to see the new paint (gorgeous) and, well, just the basic floorplan, and I seriously thought to myself, How on earth did I fit all my stuff in there?. Tomorrow I have an appointment over in the area and I'm going to take my camera and take a bunch of pictures. There's nothing wrong with wanting to remember the past, or a house that meant a lot to you like the Victorian meant to me. I'm moving on, but I have a lot of happy memories from the Victorian and it definitely reflected my eclecticism well. But here's some pics of the new house.
---
Thank you to those who sent messages following my niece's tragic death -- I appreciated all of them and if you took a moment to think of Jessie and the pain she must have been in, I am so grateful for that as well. My brother and SIL are devestated -- they raised Jessie for many tumultuous years, for Jessie's home life was unstable for a variety of reasons. I'm glad that Jessie had Scott and Karla for as long as she did; I'm glad that she had that light in her life. And I'm sorry that her life was cut short by mental illness and suicide. I feel like I want to make some sort of gesture in her name, but exactly what that might be is unclear. So I'm just going to sit on it and talk to my brother and SIL and see what their ideas are. But, yes, thank you for your kind thoughts.
---
So I was geeking it out over at the OneRing.net last night and I came across this quote from Orlando Bloom:
"Viggo (Mortenson) will go on about Elves and how they're always doing their nails and brushing their long blonde hair, and being all prissy. And I just say: Well, at least I'm going to live forever! Got that? LIVE FOREVER!"
OPI did The Great and Powerful Oz -- they should do The Hobbit/LOTR!
I was telling longtimegone last night that I went to the 4th of July sale at Sally Beauty (not my favorite store for polish, but they have the good stuff when it comes to acetone, nail polish remover, nail files, etc.) and there was a woman of about 60 who was with her mother who was probably in her 80s, and the mother proceeded to open up brand new bottles of nail polish, paint one stripe down her nail, recap the bottle, and then put it back. I thought that was appalling -- you're not supposed to create your own tester bottles from the merchandise! On the nail board at Makeup Alley, people agreed with my position, and one person, a Sally employee, said that they aren't allowed to sell bottles of polish where people have done that due to possible contamination (nail fungii, etc). It's akin to destruction of property, essentually. And this lady tried on like 20 different polishes ... GROSS! I did manage to find $24 worth of stuff, but it made me think twice about the actual bottles of polishes themselves. Best nail polish purchase recently: Heartshaped Box Full of S*#t by CrowsToes, an awesome autumn glitter that will look good layered. Current polish: Valerie by Zoya.
Last cosmetics topic. I had read in a book how using your favorite perfume in a lotion makes the scent last quite a lot longer than just spritzing. Thing is, my favorite perfume -- Cb's I Hate Perfume Winter 1972 -- doesn't come in a lotion and it's not inexpensive. Nevertheless, I took about 2 TBSPs full of Cetaphil lotion (completely scentless) and used an eye dropper to drop about four drops of scent into the lotion. I rubbed it all together and applied it, and OMG it totally works. I got hints of the scent for four+ hours afterward. Often when I apply a scent straight to my skin I can't smell it after about an hour. I think I may have figured out a way to best utilize the $13.00 tester samples and get the best bang for my buck.
---
What is up with you, o best beloveds? In particular, I've been thinking of aome -- how is your shoulder, m'dear? (Yes, yes, I am also behind in reading my f-list; I'm catching up, though. I'm catching up.)