Hope For The Hopeless

I spent hours (okay it was days) drawing up some nerdy plans for our inside spaces and was determined to hang our pictures and shelves all by my handy self.  Four botched paint jobs, one largish hole in the wall, and a few cursings later, I finally managed to hang two shelves and a pair of curtains.  FIVE hours to do only that??  Seriously.  I felt so failured.  If it wasn't for Kyle I also never would've found the shelving mounts, screwdriver (twice), hammer, screws, spray paint... you name it.  Pretty much I would be lost with Kyle.  Literally. 

This weekend I plan to sand and paint up the $10 coffee table I snagged at DI a few weeks ago.  I have no idea if it will turn out pleasant in the end, but one can hope, can't one?  Kyle thinks it's too low to the ground.  Kyle is probably right.

I will also put together my sewing room.  Aka, the "Blue Room."  You see, the previous owners painted every bedroom a different color.  We have the Blue Room, the Purple Room, and the Pink Room.  I claimed the Blue Room as my sewing room because for now it's the most tolerable color of the three and it may be awhile before I get around to painting them.

Also I'm going to finally put all those dozens of frames I've been collecting to good use.  Over the last year or so I have accumulated approximately three dozen picture frames.  You can imagine the puzzlement Kyle has experienced over this.  Especially when they've just been sitting pictureless in boxes all this time.

If I'm feeling extra adventurous I may also attempt to deconstruct the ancient orange chair that I've carted around through at least four different moves now.  It once belonged to a grandmother of mine and I love it to pieces.  Only it's wood finish has become sticky and it's orange velvety fabric has long since seen better days.

Oh, what's that?  It took me five hours to hang three things and you're wondering how I'm going to do all this in one weekend?   Well, there will be a lot of cursing, is what there'll be.  And in the end I might actually finish one of these projects. 

But one can only hope.

Bus-going Idiots Unite!

It all started yesterday when God commanded the wind to blow like unto a hurricane.  I drove sleepily to the bus stop at 6:40 AM.  As I approached the other bus-goers, a sweet Asian man shouted in broken English, "You inside! More people, more warm!" 

So there was a dozen of us crammed in all spaces of the bus stop booth thing sheltering ourselves from the gale-force winds.  A few minutes later the bus arrived and the Asian man shouted, "Everyone on bus!"  So we all got on the bus.  I mean, wouldn't you?

I fell asleep. 

Forty-five minutes later I woke up to find myself not at all in the place I should be.  I was on the wrong bus.  The hurricane winds soon mixed with rain and snow and once I figured out where we were, I hopped off the bus and ran to the train station where I braved the evil weather in my brown leather flats and itchy nylons. 

I arrived at work one hour late with wet, wind-blown hair and runny mascara.

Today I met a man at the bus stop who confessed he'd also gotten on the wrong bus yesterday morning.  I expressed my sincere condolences and chuckled relief to myself.  So I guess I'm not the only idiot after all.

Things I've Learned The Hard Way

1.  Look at the bus number before you get on so you don't discover an hour later you're on the wrong bus.

2.  When you drive over a tree in someone's yard, it is best not to drive away and pretend it never happened.

3.  No matter how good lemonade and milk taste on their own, they will never taste good when mixed together.

4.  Your car can be impounded if the registration is more than 90 days expired.

5.  Do not take two Benadryl if you expect to be awake in the next 24 hours.

6.  If you do not scrape the ice off your car windows before you attempt to drive down the street you may end up in your neighbor's yard.

7.  Vanilla extract smells irresistibly delicious, but do not drink it from the bottle.

8.  If you are an amateur rollerblader, it is not ever a good idea to go barreling down a steep hill.  The parked cars sometimes get in your way.

9.  Throwing your cell phone at the closet door does not improve reception.

10.  You probably do not want to place a gallon of milk on a hot stove.

11.  Riding your bike with your eyes closed may put you face-first into a mailbox.

12.  When making instant pudding, you will have better results if you remember to add the pudding mix.

13.  If you're going to turn on the wrong burner, you should not leave a dozen eggs or a glass pan on the stove.

14.  Never put a metal pot full of potatoes in the microwave.

15.  Your seventeen-year-old friends are not professional hair-colorists and will only laugh in your face when they turn your hair white and it begins to fall out in clumps.

16.  When replying to an email, beware of the "Reply To All" button.

17.  "Tanning Lotion" is not at all the same thing as "Sunscreen."

18.  Leeches are the most horrifying creatures ever to inhabit the Snake River.

19.  If you get a flat tire on the freeway in the middle of winter, do not lock your keys in the car when you look in the trunk for a spare.

20.  Do not, under any circumstances wear a flowy skirt on a windy day.

Sugar Demons Be Gone!

(we've come a long way in nutritional information and mascara application)

The last week or two the sugar-craving demons have been mind-controlling.  As in they constantly instruct my brain to call out to my hands shouting, "Red-alert!  Grab any and all sugary foods and insert into mouth immediately!  All systems go!" 

And then I find myself mindlessly consuming so-so Easter candy at my desk and giving in to the Grape Fanta from the break room.  I go home at night and fix dinner, but really my mind is all wrapped around the desserts I will have!  Peach cobbler?  Check!  Dairy Queen?  Check!  Triple Chocolate Ghiradelli Brownies?  Check! Check! Check!

But you know what?  I think the brownies took me over the edge last night.  Don't get me wrong, they were divine.  Heavenly.  Mind-blowingly delicious.  But today?  Today I do not want sugar.  I want to stay far, far away from sugar.  I think I've finally been exorcized of the sugar-craving demons.  Even my PBJ sounds much too sweet for today's lunch. 

And let me tell you something, you may not even believe it, but I actually have candy at my desk and I haven't touched it all day.  It's true!  I don't even want it.  I glared at it earlier and I'm not giving in.  Ick.

And no, I am not pregnant.  These are craving demons that I have lived with my whole life-long.  I can't even begin imagine what kind of craving demons will control my mind when I am someday expecting a baby Post!

Such is Life

We have been doing a lot of this lately:

And by we, I mean Kyle because in this house the wife does not do the mowing and weed-whacking.  You see, Kyle is in love with our patchy, uneven, lawn.  If I were to mow or weed it, what would he do when he came home from work?  What would he daydream about?  How else would he get that wonderful gasoline/grass/sweat smell in the evenings?  And how else would he sunburn the back of his neck?  Really though, I hate mowing the lawn.  Kyle couldn't be more perfect for me because if it were up to me, I'd just throw bags of wildflower seeds all over the grass and bask in the springtime pollen.

Speaking of lawn-lovin', this little beauty came home with the Kyle our first day in the house.  He loves it and I'm so glad he loves it because I really do hate mowing the lawn.  Have I mentioned I don't like to mow?  I tried three times to get this picture to turn the right way and it was just not happening.  It is very stubborn.

We were so fortunate to have both our parents stay a few days to help us move and get everything set up.  If it wasn't for my dad, we'd probably still have splintery wood toilet seats.  (thanks dad!) (oh and sorry about the splinters Abby...)

Proof that Kyle is now officially a handy man.

And THIS is just a small sampling of all the colors we went through before finally settling on "mushroom bisque" for the majority of our wall colors, which is really ironic because Kyle hates mushrooms and I don't even know how to define bisque except that it's some kind of soup.  Oh but Kyle does love soup!  I will share pictures of our mushroom bisque walls when I feel satisfied with the arrangement of our inside spaces.  Also, I'm a bit too lazy at the moment to get up and photograph.

(our kitchen before we moved in. the fake ivy was first to go)

If I get my way, someday in the near future our kitchen will receive blue walls, white cabinets, some open shelving, and butcher block or white tile countertops.  Unless I change my mind before that can happen.  I am rather prone to rapid-mind-changing.  It is a disease I have suffered from for the entirity of my life.

In case you were wondering, as of tonight I am very much less a blonde--thanks Suzi!  It was time for a change.

And guess what?  The cutie neighbor girls walked across the street to introduce themselves to me while I was spray-attacking the masses of tiny insects outside our windows.  I love the cutie neighbor girls!  They are especially adorable riding their bikes at night in their princess nightgowns.  I felt so sad to not have my own cute little girls for them to ride bikes in princess nightgowns with.

I love our new little neighborhood.  It's very small-town but still close to my favorite eateries and shopping places.  AND with the express bus coming every ten minutes, I get a nice 30 minute nap on my way to work. 

Okay okay one more thing: I stumbled upon the greatest little flea market/antique shop just down the road.  I easily spent an hour digging through shelves and shelves of fantastic vintage stuffs.  (Be still my heart)  Miraculously, I did not buy one thing there but only because I couldn't decide what things to buy--I wanted it all!  Also I had just picked up some vintage canning jars and a galvanized metal bucket at the DI and you know I just couldn't overwhelm the husband with extreme excesses of glass and fanceries.  You see, if I bring home a few pieces at a time, he will not even notice what is happening.  So far my plan is working.  Best that he not catch on.

It's 7:10 AM, Do You Know Where Your Husband Is?

An actual account of what happened to Kyle at approximately 7:10am on April 23, 2010 (in his actual Kyle words):

I just got done shaving and was getting ready for work. All I had on was my underwear (oh sexy!) I notice my work clothes are a little wrinkled and I wanted to get the wrinkles out quickly so I went downstairs and put my clothes in the dryer.  I do this every morning because I just like to put on warm clothes. While I was downstairs, I decided I was going to go into the garage and write down the make and model of our sprinkler system because it had not been working and I wanted to do some research on it online when I got to work. I wrote down the make and model and quickly went back to the garage door to get into the house.

Except there was a problem.

Being a new house and only living there for 6 days, I did not know that the lock on the door in the garage to go into the house AUTOMATICALLY LOCKS when you close it. What idiot designed that?

So I was locked outside my house, inside the garage wearing nothing but my underwear. I had no keys to the house, no keys to my car, no cell phone and my wife had already gone to work. I was stuck. It was freezing butt cold outside. And of course my underwear had to be a mesh type fabric so it is see-through.

So my brain starts thinking about all those scouting trips and all the wilderness survival lessons we had because I didn’t know just yet what I was going to do.

Then I thought, I have five options:

1. I can take the chance of seeing if there is a window unlocked somewhere even though I remember locking every window. But to do this I will have to open up the garage door, be exposed to all of my neighbors and have rain dump on me while I am in my white mesh underwear and basically freeze my butt off and possibly take the chance that I will find no windows unlocked and return in shame only wearing (now wet) underwear.

2. Knock on my neighbor’s door (whom I have not yet met) in my underwear and ask to use their phone to call my wife.

3. Wrap up in a doormat inside the garage, climb in a garbage can and wait for my wife to come home in 8 hours.

4. Streak the neighborhood, get arrested and have the police take me to a warm jail.

5. Vandalize my own house by breaking a window or door to get back inside.

Those were my choices.

I chose to first start with option #1. 20 minutes later and going 0 for 4 in unlocked windows at the back of the house, I went to my last window in the front yard. It was unlocked!! Hooray! I took the screen off, opened the window and climbed into my house. Of course all the neighbors in my cul-de-sac had to be outside loading their kids up in their cars to take them to school. I never made eye contact. Hopefully they just thought I was “the underwear burglar” or something. If that window wasn’t unlocked it would have been a disaster to an already crappy situation. It was quite the morning!

Note to self: don’t do that again!

I literally laughed myself to tears when Kyle called me at work to tell me what happened.  Is it awful that a part of me wishes he didn't get in through the front window so he'd have to introduce himself to our neighbors wearing only his wet underwear?  Bahaha!

Call Me Old-Fashioned

Kyle and I are officially older than Dairy Queen.  Now that's really saying something, don't you think? 

After yet another trip to the Home Depot and another hour and a half deliberating over a million various shades of brown paint, we decided to take advantage of the Dairy Queen's buy-one-Blizzard-get-one-for-twenty-five-cents thing.  Would you happen to know that our nearest Dairy Queen is 13 miles away?  13 miles!  It's like we live in the middle of nowhere or something.  And after all that driving, and the snotty teenage cashier girl, and the $3 refund, they handed Kyle a Blizzard, the flavor of which he did not order.  Very disappointing for him.

Speaking of Dairy Queen, does anyone even call it the Dairy Queen anymore?  It appears to now be regularly referred to as DQ.  I think that is sad.  My children will grow up wondering, "What the heck is a DQ anyway?"  Call me old-fashioned, but I just happen to prefer a world with fewer acronyms.

Fourth-night

Okay so basically all of our goings-on these past six months have been centered around "the house thing," or so I've come to refer to the life-consuming stress that is saving for/looking for/signing contracts for our first home.  Well the good news is we have finally moved in and the better news is we have the best family and friends who helped us tremendous amounts over the weekend to get everything moved in. 

(Thanks y'all!)  (Kyle will totally make fun of me for saying y'all)  (You will probably make fun of me too)  (Go ahead, it's okay, I can take it)

So tonight marks night four in the new house.  Over the past several days we have scrubbed, scraped, washed, swept, mopped, and scrubbed some more to get this place feeling "like new."  In fact, I scrubbed so much my finger muscles are sore.  But did you know your fingers have so very many muscles?  And how about all these bruises I've accumulated?  What is that about?

When you really work for something, you just come to love it that much more.

I do not, however, love so much the sound of the train honking its honky horn three to four times every night.  Perhaps I shall get used to the sound, even though it is not nearly as soothing as the cows across the street and the horse down the road.

Now let me tell you something that's really something: out of every window you see mountains and/or cows!  Blessed day!  I do love the cows.  Really, I do.  It's almost as if we live in our very own farmhouse, only we don't have to do any actual farming.  I love it.

(Did I mention that the neighborhood market is selling chicks?!?!?  Chicks, I tell you!  I cannot say how I very much want a little chick for myself.  But only if it forever stayed a little chick...)

I also love love love that it's springtime and warm and sunny and when I open every single window in the house there is this magical breeze that breezes through every house-space. 

Here I must tell you that I have found great courage in what is bug-killer spray.  I rarely leave the house without it in my hand, prepared to fend off every spider that dashes my way.  I kid you not, when I opened the back door this morning there were spiders flying in my face!  Flying!  In my face!  Do you believe that?  Well believe it, because it happened and I was terrified and that is when I walked around the house twofold spraying every spider in sight (and there were several).  Only the wasps pretty much rule the yard and I will not ever get near the wasps.  Don't you think that wasps the most angry of insects? 

But I cannot say that I hate them more than spiders.

Almond Joy Has Nuts, Mounds Don't!

I'm pretty sure my husband thinks I'm nuts.  We are different people, you see, and that is why we got married.  Somewhere along the line someone made famous the saying, opposites attract.  And by opposites here, I mean creative planning.  And by creative planning I mean that when I eagerly snatch up old glass bottles and frames by the handfuls and make plans to paint various interiors of our house Goose Grey, Kyle looks at me with glazed-over eyes wondering what the heck his crazy wife is thinking. 

I have recently learned that Kyle (bless his manly heart) needs to see things in action in order to have any clue what I'm talking about.  I'll show him pictures, so excited about what I've found, and all he can say is, "Well, I'll have to see what it looks like."  What does he mean?  I'm showing him right here!  A picture!  Of what it looks like!  My method of planning is completely lost on the man.  This is why he does not understand why I must have more glass jars, more frames, and more paint.  Don't even get me started on the paint...

The last time my excitement for planning new-house-decor fell on deaf husband ears, I left in a huff and returned with two new pairs of shoes and a pint of frozen yogurt.

Sometimes when I ramble on about all my decorating plans I get the feeling that Kyle is thinking, "This woman is going to take over my life, one vintage doily at a time.  And where will all my Boise State decor fit into this?"  When in fact, I really am conscious of his style and interests (Boise State included) and I very much desire to create a beautiful home that will reflect both of our personalities.  I promise. 

Will someone please tell my husband that I am not, in fact, nuts?  It's my four year degree in a field of design that drives me to decorating insanity.  I promise.

(But is it nutty to dream about flea markets and drool over milk glass?  If so, then I might be a little nuts.  But only a little.)

By the way, we closed on our house today and Kyle's birthday is tomorrow.  Happy birthday husband!  You will love the cute vintage jars I bought for you!  (I kid! I kid!) 
(Those were actually for me)

Post to Post on Toast

Yes, yes, I know that I have a thing for toast and you've heard it a dozen times.  I've learned to come to terms with it.  It's out there now and there's no going back! 

But have I mentioned that Victoria Beckham (aka Posh Spice) also eats toast every morning?  It's true.  I read it in a magazine.  She probably enjoys her's with lemon curd or marmalade, because that would be ever-so-much-more posh than my seedless blackberry jam. 

While on the subject of toast...here is an excerpt from today's Post to Post electronic communications:

From: Kourtney
To: Kyle
Hey good choice on the bread, I had the yummiest toast this morning!


From: Kyle
To: Kourtney
Thanks. I had a cheaper kind in my hand, then put it back because I remembered I have a wife who is passionate about toast.



From: Kourtney
To: Kyle
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 12:10 PM
Oh how I love you!!!

Yes, I am easy to please.

Yea Verily On Monday We Had Cornbread

Oh to be a dog and to properly enjoy the hanging of one's face out the window of a moving car.  Does anything look so fun as that?

I cannot, for the life of me, stay awake in a long car ride.  Kyle found it an amusing event to photographically document.  A fun weekend in Pocatello with my parents left me so exhausted I slept most of the way home.

Before leaving for church on Sunday, I made sure to tuck Maggie in with her Sunday comics, "bone" and blanket.  I am practicing for future babies.  Except I will probably take our babies to church with us instead of tucking them in on the couch.  Oh believe me, I was really tempted to take Maggie to church with us.

THIS is how our living room looks right now.  We begin our move in four days and I'm afraid the piles of boxes are only going to get worse.  The good news is, we finally sold the lease on our apartment and we are all ready to close on our house Thursday morning! 

(Jenny if you still want these boxes, they can be yours in a week!) : )

Unfortunately for Kyle, packing also means saying goodbye to some "old friends."  Goodbye Jim.  It was a good run.

But I Must!

I have experienced the most wonderful frozen yogurt ever.  How I have lived near the Yogurt Stop for six months and never tried it until recently is a terribly tragedy that will end with me soon moving much too far away from the heavenlyness.  Quite honestly I feel like all frozen yogurts are about the same, but it was the BERRIES!  The berries, I tell you!!  Those gosh danged berries are what made it so divine!  Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and mango! (Okay I know mango isn't a berry, but still).  My mouth waters at the thought.  I need more.  Right now.  I must have it! 

But I must!

extra points if you know the SNL sketch the title came from

Of Gym-Goers and Moving Boxes

 I've been much too distracted these past many weeks to go to the gym.  But on account of there being jiggly parts that ought not to be so jiggly, I ventured over gym-ways for some much needed calorie burning.  Also, Kyle had already gone to the gym when I got home from work and I suffer from inner guilt of laziness if he goes and I do not.  Furthermore, I gave in to the peanut butter m&ms, the irony of which is that thirty minutes on the treadmill does little to compensate for said sugar indulgence. 

During my speedwalk/Simpson's episode, an unknown fellow gym-goer hopped on the treadmill next to me while talking on her cell phone.  She continued to talk (quite loudly) for the duration of The Simpsons.  My reading of the subtitles was severely impeded and caused me to wonder, but aren't there rules of etiquette about talking on the phone so loudly in the gym while others are exercising/reading subtitles?  I should like to post some rules regarding this problem.  To add insult to injury, she was not at all very jiggly and should therefore not have been running alongside me and my jigglyness.

So we begin our move in EIGHT days.  I have spent the last six months primping and organizing our tiny apartment to have some semblance of our personal style only to spend the next eight days (plus the previous five) packing it all away.  All those months of decorating now seem a little futile. 

 Kyle has been collecting boxes from work and spending many evenings packing away all our stuffs.  I was so proud when I came home with a single paper box to add to our collection.  My pride was dashed when I walked in the door to find that Kyle had brought home a few dozen boxes of varying sizes that were lined up along the wall, waiting to be filled.  "So much for my box contribution," I say!

I have, in fact, helped to pack several boxes.  But I feel that my moving-into-a-new-house contribution lies heavily in the preparing-to-decorate-the-heck-out-of-this-new-place category.  You see, I am a project-oriented person.  I really am.  When there is something new to look forward to, I obsess over it.  I google everything I can about it.  I draw pictures and diagrams.  I make color-coded charts.  (You think I'm joking?) 

This obsessive planning phase has been applied to several recent events including, but not limited to: wedding planning (a project-lover's guilty pleasure), selecting the tiny apartment, the searching for the perfect house, and now the decorating of the new house.  I spend most all of my free time scanning interior design blogs, pictures, magazines... whatever I can get my hands on.  And yes, I made a nerdy PowerPoint presentation to illustrate each room and my specific plans therein. 

I believe I was made to be a secretary. 

Easter Eve

In an effort to retain some Easter family tradition, I began baking approximately 4.25 hours ago.  5 1/2 cups of flour and 3 phone calls to my mom later I have 2 dozen "bunny buns" rising their third rise on my slightly warmish stove.  Now I know why I love Rhode's Rolls so much: baking breads takes forever!  And then all that kneading!  And did you know that if you eat uncooked bread dough you will burp yeasty burps for several hours after?  I just thought I should let you know. 

For the record, I am really quite pleased with the way these buns are shaping up (that's what she...).  I have only had 2 previous encounters with yeasty breads and exactly 1/2 of those encounters ended tragically.  I realize this may be a too many statistics for you to handle late on Easter Eve, but I do have a thing for numbers and I have 38 minutes to kill while my buns double in size (that's what she...). 

Kyle is especially anxious for Easter because then we can pack away all the bunnies I have scattered around the house.  He reminds me often that Easter is about celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ and not at all about bunnies and I remind him that we have pictures of Jesus around the house all year and the bunnies only come out for a couple weeks.  I mean let's try to savor some tradition here!  I promise I do not worship the bunnies.  I'm not even sure how bunnies came around for Easter anyway. 

So this afternoon I contemplated fixin' a right good Easter basket for Kyle but when I found that the WalMart was out of Cadbury MiniEggs I figured what's the point?  The Easter holiday really does produce the finest of holiday candies if I do say so myself.