summer

 

dang! i don't know how the time goes by so fast. doesn't it seem like spring break just happened and now here we are starting the summer break from school.

as you may remember, i don't enjoy summer anymore now that i have to be nanny to the kids while also working a full-time job from home. i have to change my work schedule to be at home (and not in the office) more days because the kids are still too immature to be left by themselves.

summer break has just started and already they are fighting, using voices with each other that are better suited to demons from hell. 

and it's only the first week...pray for me.

since spring break i've been busy visiting my sister, having my car break down (it's still out of commission because i can't afford to fix it,) having my mother break down (broke her hip, had surgery at almost 102, back in the nursing home but refusing to do physical therapy and being generally hateful to everybody) and getting the kids through the last weeks of school. c made straight a's for 3 out of 4 quarters and was asked to join the national honor society, j was on honor roll every quarter and started doing 4th grade math halfway through the last quarter when he was only in 3rd grade.

and then there's the kitten population explosion going on. one of the feral cats who lives in our yard (and has warmed up to us a bit but still doesn't want to live inside) decided that we would make great adoptive parents to her kittens so she snuck them inside one day while the door was open and deposited them on our bed and then left.

while we appreciate her trust in us, we didn't really want to be cat parents but here we are, killing it. she comes back each day to nurse them a little but then leaves before we get any bright ideas of giving them back to her.

so far in may we've gone to daytona for our grandson's birthday (held on a weekend we didn't have our kids), taken the kids to busch gardens (on such a hot day i thought i would pass out) and visited weeki wachee state park with the kids where they have real live mermaids who perform a show twice a day AND they have a fun waterpark with 2 great slides, a lazy river right out in the springs (with the snakes, no thank you) and a protected swimming hole that is 72 degrees year round. it was, by far, my favorite waterpark ever and i can't wait to go again.

we searched and searched for an affordable above ground pool and finally found one which was delivered yesterday. chris asked the kids to help him move some dirt to provide a level surface for it and they offered very little help but when i tried to speak (calmly) to them about that, i was the bad guy. i keep my mouth (mostly) shut when they don't do the very few chores we've asked of them, i smile (ok, it's more like gritting my teeth) when i pick up all the crap they leave in the living and dining rooms and kitchen, not to mention the hallway to their bedrooms that i try to avoid at all costs. i don't yell (ever) and i don't cry when they don't like what i'm fixing for dinner even though i spent a lot of time planning, shopping and cooking for it but i'm the bad guy because i feel like they should help their dad when they're asked especially when it's a project that's going to benefit them and not try to get out of it.

i'm going to enjoy the hell out of the pool both when they're in it and when they're far, far away but i think i'm taking a break for the rest of the summer and not planning any more fun activities for the weekends we have the kids. they won't care once they have the pool anyway and it'll cost us a hell of a lot less money.

yay summer, only 11 more weeks to go until school starts up again!

mountains

 

chris and i finally got our long awaited "honeymoon" trip together last month and it was perfect and amazing.

we spent 5 days in the smoky mountains of tennessee and it was so beautiful and restful and wonderful.

we'd actually been planning this trip for awhile - ever since last july. it started out as an observation from me that we never get a whole week together because of the kids' custody arrangement which has them splitting half the week with their mother and half with us. even our` actual honeymoon was only 2 days. so chris said he'd work things out with their mother to keep the kids for their entire spring break in march.

we started planning a cruise but that proved to be too expensive so i found a timeshare deal that gave us 3 nights at a great resort in gatlinburg for only $100. i added 2 extra nights at a much cheaper place and suddenly we had a trip.

we decided to leave after 5 nights and drive to chris's brother's place in south carolina since we hadn't seen them in a couple of years (because they didn't come to our wedding but i'm not still a little bitter about that - nope, not at all) and family is really important to chris (even though none of his family managed to come to the wedding...oops, sorry, my bitter slipped out a little) and i wanted him to get to spend time with them (even though we've been up to their place 3 times and they've never, ever even talked about coming to see us) because that's just the kind of awesome wife i am. 

i'm pretty funny too. ;-)

so we left on a friday morning, stopped for the night just north of atlanta and met up with my brother and his wife for dinner then got up the next morning and drove through the smoky mountains national park to gatlinburg.

it was a spectacular drive even if the weather wasn't stellar. we stopped to stare at a bunch of elk along the way and it felt like we had stepped into a whole different world.

throughout the next 5 days we visited the aquarium, the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the us, saw a pirate show, visited the titanic museum and enjoyed a lot of good food.

oh yeah, we also did a moonshine tasting which was so much fun!

the timeshare resort was absolutely beautiful and we had the most amazing condo type suite for the 3 nights. of course we had to endure a presentation and the hard sell but we resisted and it was totally worth it to lose 3 hours of our vacation for the great, inexpensive lodging.

we did a lot of fun things but i think my favorite adventure was booking a time for chris to forge his own knife. we used to watch a competition show about forging knives and it's something he's always wanted to do and i was happy to figure out a way to make that dream come true.

while i had a lot of fun watching him make his knives (he actually made 2, 1 was a birthday gift for his best friend and business partner) i had no desire to try it myself. all the pounding looked like way too much work for me but he loved it and can't wait to do it again one day.

all too soon it was time to pack up our car and leave the mountains. this was really very hard for me, i fell in love with it up there, but i did have a lunch with a former co-worker to look forward to.

my friend tracy moved away a couple of years ago to asheville, north carolina, which was going to be on our way to chris's brother so we stopped there at noontime and met her for lunch. it was great to see her again, such a treat.

we spent the next 2 days with chris's family and then headed home to pick up charlie and the kids in time for easter weekend.

and just like that, our lovely time together was over but i have amazing memories.

time with family

 

happy monday once again! see, i'm getting better at keeping y'all informed about my amazing life, right?

my weekend actually started on friday because i decided to take the day off from work (which had been incredibly frustrating all week) and go check out a couple of beaches i'd been reading about.

as you know, i keep trying to find the perfect beach/town that is within easy driving distance so that i can run there whenever i need a beach fix but also that would be fun to take the kids on the weekends.

unfortunately, the first beach i got to - sunset beach - wasn't at all what i was looking for. you can probably tell by the fact that i wasn't really smiling in this picture that i wasn't feeling it.

it's on the gulf side which automatically means it isn't really going to have waves but it was also just a little round circle of sand so it wouldn't even be fun to walk and by 11 in the morning on a friday it was crowded so i didn't even feel comfortable sitting on a bench to chill because i could barely see the water through all the beach chairs. too bad because it was an easy drive.

i went to visit the next beach about 4 miles away and it was more of the same, just bigger, and there you even had to pay for parking. i didn't even stop to take a picture, i just drove on.

i was going to check out a third beach about 40 minutes away but i changed my mind and just headed back home feeling rather discouraged because this little outing did nothing to take away my beach cravings.

on the way back, however, i decided to stop at a hawaiian bbq place i've wanted to try forever and that didn't disappoint at all.

taz and i loved hawaii and ate at a few hawaiian bbq/plate lunch spots when we were in the islands and also had a favorite one in california but i haven't been able to eat that way in florida until friday so it was a little taste of "home" for me.

then friday night we decided to take the whole family out and that was fun and, because i didn't order much because i was still stuffed from lunch, it wasn't even all that expensive; normally i cry a little when we see how much it costs to feed the 4 of us.

we went back to the place with the koala ducks and i got 2 more so now i have one in my studio, one in the car and one in the bedroom. i had a whole thing for koalas when i was a kid and this koala duck has reignited that obsession so i see a trip the zoo in my future because we're lucky enough to live near a zoo that actually has the little furry guys.

saturday morning we were up bright and early for a daytrip to visit my sister and now i get to finally share the most exciting news ever - she and her husband bought a house in florida!

They currently live in alabama and this florida house is going to be their retirement place BUT they aren't really at retirement age yet so they're going to go back and forth. my sister works from home so she can work anywhere and will spend more time at the retirement place than her husband will for now. 

the reason this all is really great news for me is that it isn't too far from where i live so we'll be able to see each other way more often. like saturday, we went to see the house then had lunch then came back and ran around in their (new) golf cart and then we drove home, all in one day.

i haven't lived in the same state as family since my parents and i moved to virginia when i was in elementary school so having my sister so close (we can call up on a weekend and decide to get together for a cookout or shopping or a movie) is a game changer for me.

plus the house is amazing! it's big and beautiful, has land and the wrap-around front porch of my dreams. the kids love it too, j stared at it when we drove in and declared he never wanted to leave and that was even before he got driven around in the golf cart.

i have these stools that i bought for my old house and there really isn't a place to use them in my current house but my sister has an overhanging kitchen peninsula where they would be perfect so i'm going to bring them to her the next time she's down there. it's something she can really use (forever or until she buys ones she loves but barstools are way down on her priority list) and i'll get the pleasure of seeing them so it's a win-win.

we're going to get together soon and go thrift shopping for furniture and decoration for this new house and that will be super fun. i think we have similar styles and i have all sorts of ideas about this place.

i really want to decorate the bedroom i've chosen for myself and chris and make it a sanctuary for when i'm up there. i know i'll have to let her granddaughter use it when she visits this summer but the rest of the year - it's mine!

speaking of things that are mine - i got to spend some time in my studio yesterday, making a few pair of earrings for an upcoming trip and it was lovely. we bought c a sewing table of her own that will fit perfectly in her room and then she can either decide to start using the sewing machine or not - it's up to her.

but i am making great use of my studio and i was definitely inspired yesterday. in fact, the earrings i'm wearing in the picture at the top of this post are my own design combining 2 stones i really love - turquoise and pearl.

i sought refuge in my studio yesterday after a full weekend of peopling (this includes my own family) which was so much fun but i was drained and my battery needed recharging. and i wasn't the only one - charlie was quite happy to jump up on the trunk and take a nice long solitary nap away from children.

all in all, it was a fun 3 days and i look forward to more fun outings with my sister and her family for years to come.

but for now, i have several days with just christopher to look forward to as we're going to spend a whole week together on a road trip that we're calling our honeymoon since we only had a couple of days right after the wedding. it's not the beach but it's just as fun in my book.

can't wait to share pictures and tell you all about it!

studio

 

yesterday i promised i'd show a picture of my new and improved studio so here it is

that thing to the right of my table is the bunk bed frame turned up on its end and chris added a couple of boards to the front to stabilize it.

i want shelves along the back but on the sides i want pieces of plywood where i can put hooks to hang strands of beads on one side and leather, hemp, string and wire on the other side. chris wants to put doors on it so that you're not looking directly into the shelves. apparently he isn't convinced of my ability to keep the shelves tidy. i seriously can't imagine why. LOL

even today, just walking into that room makes me happy, it feels light and bright in there and full of possibilities. and i do have things in mind like starting an etsy shop and making up business cards so that if someone sees me wearing a unique pair of earrings and comments on them i can whip out a business card which directs them to my shop. it may never happen but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

i've been reading some of my old blog posts and sometimes it feels like i'm reading about someone else's life. i miss so much about my old life, especially my house in california and all the work i put into giving it a style. i have so many memories and i sometimes feel like i've already lived so many lives and now i'm the only keeper of those memories.

before i sink into melancholy, i need to finish washing the dishes, folding the laundry and fixing dinner (along with my full-time job) because school is almost out and everybody will soon be home. we're having a baked tortellini casserole with meat sauce for dinner tonight, what are you having?

clearing a space

 

happy monday to everybody!

i'm at work right now, literally, it's one of the 2 days a week that i drive 2+ hours into the city to work from my office. today has been interesting with employee drama and an unexpected visit from a former co-worker who we all thought had already left the state. usually it's just me and the boss at the office but today we had quite the cast of characters. it's been a fun day and right now i'm in the office by myself. now that the time has changed and we have more daylight in the evenings, i like to stay late until the traffic on the highway has cleared and my drive is so much nicer...plus, by staying that late chris has to feed the kids and i get home just in time to say prayers and send them off to bed.

i really wish i had some fun pictures to share with you of my exciting weekends lately but, quite frankly, the last several weekends have kind of sucked.

first there were a couple of rainy weekends where we didn't go anywhere and then a couple of weekends where i had things i wanted us to do but other plans and/or obligations kept getting in the way...or i thought they were going to get in the way and then they got canceled and it turned out we stayed home for nothing and that was even worse.

i guess i got into a real rhythm in my past life - taz always used to call me the director of fun and it was my job to find cool festivals or events or new places to explore and i took my job very seriously so we spent every weekend doing something fun even if it was just something little.

life doesn't work that way anymore. i still try to find fun things but sometimes chris has already scheduled something else, sometimes he works on the weekends when it's just the 2 of us, sometimes we go to do *my* fun thing and the kids complain so much that it isn't fun for me anymore and, of course, sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate.

it's kinda been a hard lesson for me to learn and i still haven't figured out how to have a better balance. i do know that i get super cranky when i feel like the weekend has been a waste and that's just not fun for anybody.

however, it doesn't really take much to make me happy - this past weekend it was just the 2 of us and i really wanted to go to the beach (still, haven't been in months even though i keep trying to plan for it) but chris, unexpectedly had to work in the morning so i took myself to a clothing shop and got something cute - definitely retail therapy at its finest - and sunday was supposed to be our beach day but chris had things around the house he wanted to do but a trip to outback steakhouse and an adult beverage that came with a cute koala rubber duckie made everything better. all in all it was the best weekend i've had in a long time.

here's an old picture of my studio. have you noticed that i carefully crop all pictures of the studio to only show my side? remember how i told you that chris had started making a sewing table for c out of an old bunk bed frame? i wish i had taken a picture of it because it was massive and was crowding out all of my space but that's the exact reason why i couldn't take the picture, it felt overwhelming to have it in my studio and i didn't want to document it. it seriously made me want to cry every time i walked in and saw it.

since c still hasn't even looked at the sewing machine since we gave it to her at christmas, shown absolutely no interest in it even though she asked for it, i saw no need for it to continue to take up space in the room. i also saw no need for 2 drawers full of j's toys and his lego table to be left in the room as well. chris agreed that c's sewing machine should really be set up in her room and we'll get her a nice little table for it and he also agreed that j's things really belonged in his own room.

but, he didn't bother doing anything about all of that so yesterday i decided that one thing that would really make it a great weekend would be to take those matters into my own hands so i moved toys, tables, sewing machine and sewing paraphernalia into their respective rooms and then i lifted the massive bed frame on its end and shoved it into the wall where it will be transformed into a storage cabinet for me.

it was a heavy beast but when i get an idea into my head, nothing can stop me. and now the room (which i wish i had a picture of but i don't so i'll post one next time) is so much better.

i feel like i can breathe in that room again. i hadn't even wanted to to go in there and create because it felt oppressive. i felt like something that had been created for me was being taken over and i was being minimized. i have a feeling it's kind of an analogy for my life so maybe that's why taking back the space has filled me with such joy.

so this past weekend was a good one and i plan on having many more good ones, i just have to clear the space for it.

there are exciting things happening in the coming weeks to look forward to, it's a new season and i'm going to make the most of it.

also, i'm just going to take a day off work and drive myself to the beach because i'm tired of waiting.

peaceful evening

 

surprised to hear from me twice in one week? i'm really going to try to be better about documenting my crazy life.

so you may have noticed that i spend a LOT of time complaining about the kids...i've definitely noticed that. i confess that i'm having trouble settling into my role as a stepmom with almost full responsibility for taking care of them when they are with us and a house and food and laundry while also doing a full-time job. i think if i were younger i wouldn't feel so overwhelmed most of the time, at least that's the story i tell myself.

however, i don't want to complain today, i just want to talk about last night and how peaceful and wonderful it was to be just the 2 of us at home. the difference between last night and the night before (when disrespect was hitting an all time high) is like night and day. i need more of these days in my life.

that was the scene for dinner last night, doesn't it look delightful? chris came home at a decent hour (something that doesn't usually happen these days) and grilled a couple of steaks while also fixing rice and some hot dogs for his lunch today and it was so nice to have him make the effort and not leave everything for me to figure out.

the weather was perfect (i love this time of year) so we sat outside on our porch and just talked and laughed and it was nothing special but it was special, ya know?

these are the moments i live for.

hair and other fun stuff

 

want to know what i did all weekend? my hair.

i'm kind of obsessed with my hair, you might have guessed this with all the many (many, many, many) pictures i take of myself - i'm mostly documenting my hair.

i wasn't always this way, i have had freakishly short hair for most of my life. i blame my mother for the start of this because she didn't like having to remind me to brush my hair or spend hours brushing out tangles because i wasn't all that good at taking care of my hair so she chopped it all off in the 3rd grade and i stayed short-haired on into adulthood.

now that i have a girl of my own who isn't good at all about brushing her hair and winds up with these huge tangled mats of hair, i cut my mother a little slack because i can totally see why she got so frustrated.

but somewhere in the last several years, i started growing out my hair - mostly because haircuts cost too much money but also because i like the way i look with long hair and now my hair is like a living breathing extra person in my life. i'm always wondering if i should leave it loose or put it up or getting it caught on things or having it get in the way in intimate moments but no matter how annoying any of that is, i never, ever, ever think about cutting it.

i obsess over the color as well, mostly blond but sometimes branching out into red or pink.

pink was on my mind this weekend and i had this vision of going to the beach on sunday with the most delightful pink mermaid hair streaming out behind me so i bought pink hair dye on saturday and colored my hair that evening.

when i got out of the shower and toweled off i thought it looked a little darker than the cotton candy pink on the haircolor box but hoped it would lighten as it dried so imagine my shock and disappointment when i woke up sunday morning to find it had dried to a decidedly unpink, mousy brown color.

yuck.

i was born with brown hair and never really liked it so as soon as i was living on my own, i went blonde. i wasn't about to go back to brown now so (after canceling the beach trip, partly because of the hair and partly because of other reasons) i was off to the drugstore to pick up another box of hair color and get back to blonde. no, i don't go to the salon (although i would love to) because - yes, you guess it, it costs too much.

i normally don't like to color my hair twice in a 24 hour period because it's not good for it but i was left with no choice. unfortunately, as you can see from the picture above, i am still not a blonde. i'm not sure what this color is - i think it's kind of reddish - but it's not the wonderful "light golden blonde" that the box promised however i'm going to have to live with it for a little while because my hair needs a break. actually, i'm kind of digging this color for right now.

in other news, i was invited to come up to the main virginia office for an employee appreciation event to celebrate being with the agency for 5 years (which actually happened last year but they didn't have an event) and they were going to pay to fly me up there but only pay for 1 night of hotel. unfortunately none of the flights worked with that schedule and all the options they presented me with would have cost ME hundreds of dollars and they couldn't see their way to compromise and the whole episode left me feeling the exact opposite of appreciated so i chose not to go which is fine, not the end of the world except that i grew up in that area of virginia and haven't been back in several years so i was really looking forward to it. they invited 3 of us from the florida office to go there but 2 of us are among the lowest paid employees in the company and neither one of us could afford to go so the only one that actually went is the 2nd highest paid employee in our office and that kind of sucks.

so i have started putting my resume out there to see what else is there but i'm at an age where i really don't want to start all over again plus i need flexibility because of the kids' schedules and that isn't usually found, especially in  new job so it would work out best for me to stay in my current job but i feel i'm being undervalued and i'm so damned tired of never having any extra money. taz and i lived like that for so many years and it's not like i need a lot but i guess the sacrificing is getting to me right now.

there are so many things i'd like to do, the main one being able to travel, even just a little. i'm going to try to be creative and come up with some sort of way to have a little road trip just for chris and me. 

 the kids had a holiday from school last monday and i had a holiday from work so we hung out at a local playground and had lunch at a local fast food place we rarely go to because it's on the expensive side...so expensive, in fact, that when i saw that just 2 kid meals were going to be almost $20, i chose not to eat which made me a little cranky, to be honest.

and here's my confession - i get a little disappointed when i realize a work & school holiday falls on a monday when it's our turn to have the kids which means i have  them by myself for the whole day. i realize that's really selfish of me but it's not really a holiday for me when i have to plan activities and referee their fights...which are constant as they've gotten older. when we first started dating we only had the kids every other weekend so this never was a problem but that situation changed at some point and i've rarely had a holiday to myself since then. it wouldn't be as bad if chris had holidays too and then we could just plan something special as a family but you don't get a lot of holidays in medical transport, unfortunately.

ok, that's enough of my bitching because all the complaining in the world isn't going to change anything so i just need to adjust my attitude and carry on...me and my reddish hair. LOL