Tuesday April 29, 2008

Staying at home is kind of lonely…..I now speak to my dog. I actually have conversations with her! I’ve taken up drinking coffee….which I never had before. (I’m on cup #2 right now!) I incessantly check my gmail to see if anyone from the outside work had communicated with me (please email me right away!) and I am always caught up on our laundry – which, is pretty awesome. It’s just LONELY! I miss the interaction! I have a painter coming this morning to give me an estimate on painting the exterior of our house and I am actually looking forward to it. I mean, who actually looks forward to a conversation that ends with “ok, ma’am, that’ll be 3 trillion dollars to paint the outside of your house, it will take 10 months, we don’t warranty our work, and we’ll probably ruin all of your landscaping in the process” (or something similar to that)

No new pictures to post. I am hoping to get some great before and afters of the house up soon. And we head to Austin next week for a wedding (!!!! yay !!!!) so I am sure there will be lots of fun pictures from that too.

Oh, and my buddy, the painter, is late! Not the best way to start our friendship…I mean professional realtionship!

Stay at Home Dog Mom April 15, 2008

Yesterday was my first day as a stay at home dog mom. It hasn’t really sunk in yet – sort of like I just took a day off work. Oh my goodness -the productiveness! I went to the dentist, the eye doctor, and I am in the middle of a MASSIVE spring cleaning project. Oh – and the plumber FINALLY came back! We now, once again have a working second shower. Phew!

we’ve been doing lots of projects on the house. Our plan is to get list it by the end of May. Lots of stuff to be done though. This weekend, we landscaped what used to be the vegetable garden. Apparently, we’ve been watching too many of those shows on HGTV, because we are really tying to stage our home for the potential buyer – which means, no vegetable garden (because what if a buyer doesn’t want the responsibility of one) cleaning out all of our built ins of my obnoxious amounts of treasured family photos (the buyer needs to be able to picture them self in the house) packing away tons of stuff out of the closets (because it needs to look like there is a ton of storage – oh the lies!) If you’ve ever seen HGTV, you get the point….. So I will probably have less time to blog now than I did even when I was working!

The BIG SIX OH!

Two weekends ago we threw my mom a surprise birthday party in Manhattan Beach, CA. It was AWESOME! She really was surprised. And oh how we all worked to pull the wool over her eyes – and keep it there! Not an easy task!

So it all started when my sister Melissa suggested we do something special for my moms birthday, and I was like OF COURSE! So we decided to throw a surprise party in CA, but we told her that we had booked tickets to TX, because we thought she would know something was up if we didn’t do something for her birthday. Then, we decided to say that there was a Volvo conference in Manhattan Beach that weekend. I created a fake itinerary which I sent to my sister who PDF-ed the file and emailed it to my dad. Tricky tricky!! However, we had originally said the conference was going to be held at one hotel (the hotel where they were going to stay) but when we finally decided where the actual party was going to be, that hotel was pretty far away. Thing is, my dad had already mentioned to my mom that the conference was going to be held at this one hotel. oops! So we had to come up with an excuse of why the conference was going to change locations. My sister came up with the brilliant idea that we could say there had been a fire at the first hotel, resulting in a change of location. Brilliant. We worked up a Volvo memo to let them know about a change of location, and my Aunt Kathy, who lives in Manhattan Beach, great actress that she is, mentioned something about the fire to my mom on the phone – said she had heard that there had been a fire at their conference hotel! brilliant again! while on the phone, they arrange to meet for Dinner that Friday night that my parents are in town. Perfect!

So, Rell and I drive out to Ca and get there Thursday night. My sister, her husband, Robert, his wife and Lilly get there on Thursday too. The party was Friday night at a great place in Manhattan Beach called Towne by the Sea. Everyone gets there before 6:00pm – it’s the kids, their spouses, friends from Phoenix – Tom & Mary, Of course Edna & Ray were there, The Hanscomes, the Ammouries from Waco – and the Tyrer family who were bringing them to Towne under the guise of taking them to dinner for the night. In total there were 21 people.

They get to the restaurant and we all yell surprise. I have NEVER seen my mom so shocked in her life. It was awesome! At one point, as she was greeting everyone she said “i can’t believe y’all planned this around a Volvo meeting” when we told her there was no Volvo meeting she got even MORE excited! No work this weekend! Woohoo!

Friday night dinner was great -and tons of fun. And on Saturday, my Aunt and Uncle were nice enough to have everyone over to their house for an evening get together (even though they had to leave for the airport the next morning at 5:45 am!)

*** And for some reason, I can’t get any of my great pictures to upload normally!! Ugh! **

Lady of Leisure??? April 1, 2008

It’s official!  I’ve given my two weeks notice to Wells Fargo!  April 11th is officially my last day of working for “the man”!  Things just weren’t right there, and I will leave it at that.  No need to go on a drama tirade!

Oh—but speaking of drama – the guest room faucet!! We had an appointment with the plumber for Monday the 31st to come replace the faucet (with the previously mentioned plumber supplied faucet)  Well, the Thursday before that we get a call at like 7 am ( which, since Wells Fargo is only about 5 minutes from my house, I typically do not get up before 7:30am) asking if he can come that morning instead.  So we agree – I hurry and shower knowing that any moment Mr. Plumber Pants will show up and turn off my water.  Good thing they called at 7:00 am since he didn’t show up until 9:00am that morning! 

 Anyways – I clear out the closet that has access to the back panel of the tub so he can cut into the wall to replace some of the pipes.  He proudly un-boxes his company supplied faucet – and not to be disappointed – it was hideous!  Oh well.  Then he takes off my so cute antique fixtures and it is at that point that he realizes that the dimensions and length of our faucets are not normal.  Normal faucets have an 8 inch spread between handles…..ours has an ELEVEN inch spread.  Wouldn’t you think that this would be noticeable to the naked eye?  Or that, as I was telling him that our house is over 50 years old he would have thought to measure????  Nope!!  So, standard (ugly) faucet in no way fits.  He calls around to some local shops to see if they have a faucet that has an 11 inch spread – apparently, that is unheard of —- at least in Prescott, Arizona.  So, we were finally able to special order one – we’re waiting for it to come in so that Mr. Plumber Pants can once again visit us and our leaky faucet.  (and people, we all know that “special order” is just code for SUPER STINKIN’ EXPENSIVE!  Hopefully it’s cuter than the standard plumber provided faucet)

And as mentioned above, after April 11th, I will be a “Lady of Leisure” – unemployed for a while – although I doubt it will actually be very leisurely.  Rell already has big plans for me.  I think he has already arranged to have several tons of rock dumped in our driveway that first day I am home, for me to transport to the backyard, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow.  He also has visions of me installing the (faux) tin ceiling by myself in our kitchen.  I tell him that I think htese are two person projects…..he disagrees!

Come June 1st, we will be self employed business owners.  Rell and I are buying Bud (his dad) out of his share of the Steel Company.  Oh, the glamorous industries I choose to work in—Trucker chick in Waco and now Steel & Rebar in Prescott…..don’t be jealous of my exotic life! We’re really looking forward to this venture.  With it comes a tremendous amount of uncertainty and risk, but we’ve both agreed, if there was ever a time in our life for something like this, it is now.

So, wish us luck….hopefully we wont need it! 

This weekend is our trip to LA and the surprise 60th birthday we’re throwing for my mom.  We’re all super stoked to pull one over on her!