For My Bub

I'm not real sure what brought this about, well, maybe I kind of know, but well, then that's another time for another post. For whatever reason there are just certain times when spent with my fiance that just make me feel, blessed, I'm not a very religious person but that's the only word that I can think of. It's like someone/something, somewhere, saw me and made him just for me.

Today was one of them. Our day was jam packed. We had to head in one direction to deposit a check and get some money, then head in the total opposite direction to get our hair cut then we had to kill time until we could meet with our wedding coordinator. Now generally, when there are appointments to get to, or really whenever there is a time constraint put in front of me I get pretty antsy and can be hard to deal with. I'm not quite sure what was different today but I just knew everything would work out, and I'd like to put that partially on the fact that I was with my Bub the whole time, though I could be wrong.

I have been working on being more aware of my thoughts and feelings and not letting them overtake my life when they should not. I've also been trying to work out more often to help my mood, and perhaps that is helping.

But, this isn't about me, this post is about my Bub. I can't believe I met him. I can't believe that he stuck around long enough for me to smarten up. I can't believe I get to marry him in two months time. So, yes, I have been blessed hugely. I love the fact that he and I are so often on the same page. Friends aren't always perfect and thank god that he and I seem to agree on the same annoying habits of the friends we have. He understands me better than almost everyone in my life. I hope I continue to have feelings and thoughts like this towards my Bub for years and years to come.

So, Bub, Thank you for everything that you are and everything that you've helped me become. I love you.

The Breakfast of Champions

I've been meaning to blog more. I read so many blogs and always wonder why I don't blog as much as others. I think part of it is feeling that there is a lack of interest in my life which isn't true, but still. However, another part of it is trying to find things to blog about. Yesterday though I knew right away when I woke up I would be blogging.

Would you like to know why? The answer is simple really. This is what I woke up to.

Not only did my wonderful fiance make me chocolate chip pancakes, my fav, with strawberries, and chocolate syrup, but he made me all the awesome normal breakfast stuff too. Let me say, those pancakes were some of the best I've ever had. And to prove my fiance knows me oh so well, he only made me two pancakes because usually when we make them we get the bisquick shake and pour and we make about 4 or 5 of them and I'm overstuffed, and he being the sweet awesome guy he is wanted me happily full, but not overly so. Hmm, thought there'd be more to say but really that picture is worth more than anything I could say.

One last thought though. Before my fiance and I got together we were good friends we'd started hanging out more often, people were asking us what was going on, and he had informed me of his intentions(mainly that he wanted to stop being my boy friend and start being my boyfriend). I hemmed and hawed and couldn't seem to make up my mind. Then I went away for a bachelorette party for a good friend. We spent Friday night in Boston and went back to her place to crash before heading out to the cape in the morning. Well, what did we wake up to but the question of "What would you like in your pancakes?" followed by a list ten miles long of the options. And do you want to know who was doing the asking? My friend's wonderful fiance. The fact that he would plan ahead like that and do something so sweet got me to thinking about my own situation. I could see my boy friend doing just the very same thing and so on Sunday, after getting back from the Cape, I told my boy friend that I wanted to be his girlfriend. And that ladies and gentlemen is the beginning of the end. And I'm so glad I did it.

Bedroom Revamp

I've been working from home for the past month and a half and I was thrilled to have that opportunity. I thought I would finally have the time to get this place clean, organized, and looking like we hadn't just moved in. Sadly, I didn't realize, or more realistically, I didn't take into account the fact that I am a huge procrastinator. I don't remember when this started really, perhaps it's always been in my blood? I do always remember that my bedroom was a mess. I remember once falling out of bed right onto one of my toys, ouch. Perhaps it's inherited? I always remember the morning of a big holiday we'd be cleaning the living room and den, I'm sure this just added more stress to my mothers day, couldn't we have cleaned earlier in the week? Perhaps she didn't trust us to keep it clean, I wouldn't blame her. But that's not what this post is supposed to be about.

This post is supposed to be about me finally making/taking the time to make this house a place we love being, and not just because the other person is there. After almost five months of the bedroom being the same old way I decided it was time for a change. However, when I do things like that I generally do them half-assed, you should see my living room. So as soon as the bed was moved where I wanted it and the other furniture was moved out of the way so we could manuver around I let things be. Clothes were strewn everywhere, books were thrown about carelessley, basically the room was a mess. Basically, the room looked like this ...

And This...

And just in case you didn't get the picture...

There's a lot of stuff that could go. Like those two chairs in the bottom picture. The weird upholstored one was from our last apartment. I'd found it on the side of the road and it's worked out well, the only problem is that it's huge and takes up quite a bit of space. The other one, well that's an Ikea chair that scares the bejeesus out of everyone that sits in it. We've been meaning to get rid of it for a while but well, I think you can see we haven't. It would be great to have a chair in the bedroom. We are both avid readers and any extra reading space is well loved. Why just last night I was dealing with a bout of insomnia so I got up out of bed and read in the chair. It was so nice to not have to leave the bedroom to read.

We have clothes upon clothes upon clothes and I'm sure we don't need every last bit. We have three good sized laundry baskets and easily filled all three for our last trip to the laundrymat. I would love to pair down my clothes but yet when I look at them I just can't bare to get rid of anything. Part of me thinks keeping all these clothes might be beneficial. We don't have our own laundry facilities so we are chained to the quarter. The more clothes we have the less quarters we have to dish out, or am I just making that all up? Hmmm, a quandry for sure. We each have our own closet, I have the large ugly green dresser, he has the tiny grey dresser, and we share the yellow one in my closet. I'm sure we could pare down to not needing one of them, couldn't we?

Another thing I'd love to do is finally give this room a cohesive feel. We painted the walls purple and grey and pretty much left it at that. I figured black accents would look nice so we got some black curtains and a few black frames, printed out some cool b&w pics and put them up on one of the walls. Maybe I would work on that some more? I've got a collection of purple glass that I'm sure would help make the grey walls pop a bit more. I've also been meaning to paint that green dresser, well, pretty much since I painted it green. The yellow lingerie chest in the closet was my gram's and I hate to paint it which is why I've hidden it away in the closet.

In moving the bed to the smallest wall in the room we lost our bedside table space. My fiance is fine with that for now. But not me, for some reason I just like the feel of things next to me in bed. Perhaps it's because I wear glasses and it's nice to know where they are when you wake up. Today I got a tiny black shelf to hang on the wall next to my side of the bed. The placement is a bit tricky because on that side of the wall I have to vye for space with the light switch and the thermostat. I've put the wall up but I'm not sure I like the placement yet, we'll see how it goes tonight in bed.

There is really only one wall that I enjoy looking at right now and that is this one.

Aside from the ugly closet doors on the left it actually looks like I tried. And I like that. These next two days I'm gonna try and make the rest of the room look just like this wall. I'll let you know how it comes out.

Clearing the Clutter

I can't quite believe we've been living in our "new place" almost five months now. I had a friend recently come over that had never seen the new place and she asked if we had moved in recently. That should give you all an idea of how messy and over lived in the place seems. Every time I try to get the house under control it seems I can only handle a room or two and then it all goes to hell in a hand basket.

So, I was thinking I would post my accomplishments and ideas here to the web to hopefully kick my butt into gear. After all if you all out there in cyber land are expecting a nice clean house to see pic's of then how can I disappoint? For now I'll just imagine that there are hundreds of you readers out there, though I'm sure that number is much closer to one or two.

I've asked my fiance to have a cleaning day this weekend. I'm thinking perhaps if he and I work at it together I can't procrastinate as bad as usual, though I'm worrying that he'll only help me procrastinate even more :P. I think part of my problem is that I don't really understand what clean is to me.

There are so many different levels of clean. There's the white glove clean, then there's the toys under the bed clean. Which one am I okay with? I think that's what everyone needs to figure out before they really tackle a big cleaning like a whole house, even if that house is only five rooms big. Part of what I've figured out is that I need some empty space. To much clutter makes my head cluttered and I just can't stand it.

I recently went through our game shelves and purged. I took out ones that I didn't want(though those were rare), and more likely those that we just didn't use. We really don't have friends over that often so keeping a ton of games where I can see them on a daily basis just seemed like it was creating a wall. First, it was creating extra clutter for me to look at and second it was taunting me reminding me how I didn't play the games I had. I've now gotten it down to one shelf of games and an empty shelf and let me just tell you when I sat down after cleaning and saw that empty shelf it was like my brain woke up and pushed it's way through a brick wall. I breathed and inner sigh of relief.

Now, looking around the rest of my living room I'm noticing all the movies I don't watch, all the books I haven't looked at in ages and I wonder, how great would it feel to purge those too?

Office Organziation

So, for the past two plus months, pretty much since we've moved in, the office has become the dumping ground for anything and everything. We've done a massive clean maybe twice when we were expecting large groups or friends over but the only rooms that ever actually got clean were the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. The bedroom got a minor sight clean, basically all the dirty clothes got thrown in the closet, the bed got the comforter thrown on it to appear made, and that's it. Everything that didn't go somewhere wound up in the office. It also didn't help that we saved all of our moving boxes so that we could recylce them and only just recently got around to getting a recycling sticker for our town, so sad to say the moving boxes are still being housed in the office.

Now, often times you can have one room that is just kind of a junk room, one that no one ever goes in, that you can throw anything and everything in. Sadly, with only five rooms, counting the bathroom, that's not really an option for us. For the past few weekends we've been rather lasy. just sitting around, not doing much of anything. Well, this weekend I wanted to change all that. I noticed Target had a sale on it's itso storage stuff and I'd been eyeing them a few weeks ago. So, I finally popped on a few things in hopes that it would help me organize the office. I meant to take a before picture but of course I forgot. So, instead here is a during picture, which could perhaps look worse than a before one would look.

I've always held the belief since childhood that when cleaning a room it must get messier before it can get cleaner. I haven't always had many backers in that thinking but I hold it still. The wicker baskets on the table on the left were a smart purchase helped by a good friend. the large one holds most of my magazines, eventually I plan to start collaging again. the smaller one's I think are empty, but empty is always nice. The itso containers are the purple/pink and black things in the middle of the pic. The large one now holds photography stuff. A year or so ago I got a real camera, one that you can change settings and stuff and have been wanting to start using it but haven't as of yet. The other two are full of things as well and they are now labeled as well. I am beginning to think that is uber important, labeling makes life so much easier.

Well, this weekend, I plan on finally tackling each and every nook and cranny of this house and finally making it a little more livable. The hardest part will of course be the office. Especially seeing as how I started to strip the white desk and have yet to finish it. Wish me luck.

Uncluttering all the clutter

I'm not sure if it's the fact that I'm sitting here waiting for new furniture or perhaps just a winter itch but I'm really trying to pare things down both in my mind and my life.

I recently decided I was more or less done with facebook. I had over three hundered friends, I think, and every day I felt like I had to read my "wall", I got to thinking "Is it really important to know what a friend of a friend that I met once is up to?", no not really. But I realized it was more about giving up people than giving up facebook. I purged my facebook friends, gone are the friends of friends, the friends I haven't spoken to in years, the "friends" that have not kept in touch and have left me feeling burned, and remind me of such each time I see them on my "wall". Now, all that is left are my real friends, those that I still keep in touch with and most that I see on a monthly basis, though really I'd like to up that to a bi-weekly basis. As well as family, though family for me is extended because my immediate family is so small.

My family has always been more about my extended family than anything. My parents each only have one brother and I have one cousin, that's it. But, my parent's each have many aunts and uncles and to many cousins to count, who of course have kids, who are starting to have kids. Growing up we spent one holiday a year with my dad's dad's side, and even less with his mom's side. I'd like to change that. It seems we only see each other at funerals and it would be nice to actually get to know these people that are linked to my past. We shall see.

As for stuff, my fiance has moved a chunk of his stuff from his parents house into our house. He hasn't seen or dealt with some of this stuff in close to ten years I'd bet, and it would be nice to have him purge a bit. He and I are both huge book fans and seeing my mothers house, also a book lover, I'm trying to keep my house differently. Books can be found in every one of my parents rooms, it's starting to be that way in my own home as well. I think it might be nice just to have one room devoted to books, sadly with three rooms currently housing us that's not an option. I've thrown around the idea of making a wall of bookcases in our bedroom, and as I type, I'm starting to think that perhaps our living room is where it's at. Seeing as how we really don't read in the bedroom aside from before bed. Hmmm, an idea to throw around. We also have a ton of cd's and dvd's and I don't remember the last time we watched any of them or even listened to the cd's. I would like to spend more time with the things we have, or what is the point of having them right?

We sit in front of the television every night watching something or other, it's mindless really I don't mind in the moment but whenever I think about it, about how much television we watch, about how little we get done around the house because of our lack of doing anything but tv watching, it upsets me. We only just moved into our condo and I have so many projects I would love to tackle. But when you get home and plop in front of the couch it's impossible to get them done. I'd love to get my fiance on board but I'm not sure that's possible. I know he wants me to think he's not lazy but in reality, well, I'm not so sure. Last week I caught him coming home, turning on the tv in the living room and immediately going into the kitchen. Now, if he just went into the kitchen to put things on the kitchen table, or get a snack that would be fine, but often times I'm noticing the television on with no one in front of it. That's not how I want to live my life and that's definitely not how I want to raise my children. My parents spend their nights in front of the television, as do his parents, and I want something more for us. Projects don't need to be relegated to the weekends. Weekends should be for fun, not just chores. I could live with enjoying one show a night the problem is by the time we get home, make dinner, and sit in front of the tv to eat while we watch said show, when the show's over it's time for bed. I'm not much better I have more time at home during the week than he does and could very well work on all kinds of projects while I'm home. I feel like, and perhaps this is simply an excuse, I wouldn't be surprised, but I feel like I need his okay on things. I don't much want to surprise him with a brown wall when he comes home. Is this silly? Perhaps, I should probably bring this up with him. Another issue I have is our furniture. We have these two unweildy, ugly ass pieces of crap wooden boxes that I now wish I had never picked off the side of the road. They have become our go to furniture and my heart aches for real furniture.

I am in awe of the fact that in only a few hours time I will have real live furniture, furniture no one else has owned before but me. Furniture that doesn't need to be slipcovered. Sure, I didn't find it on the side of the road, but you know what I don't care.

Back to my wooden boxes. One holds our tv on top and our games, both board and video underneath. Our board games have begun to overflow and I would love to get rid of some. I have a few in mind however, they are games that my Nana bought and were given to me shortly after she passed and though I haven't played them, never knew of them before I got them, I am still finding it hard to part with them. I think that's true of everything. If it has any sort of sentimentality to it I can't seem to part with it. I hate that.

Amazing Happy Day

Ever have one of those days where you can't stop smiling and you are giddy for no good reason? Well I just had one, god I don't remember the last time I had one. It almost feels wrong really. Considering that just a few short days ago I said my last goodbyes to my beloved gram. She was one of the three most important women in my life and saying goodbye was extra hard on me. The day after she passed I went in to work and changed my desktop to a picture of her. There were some days when it was hard to see her but I always felt the need to have her close by. Today I kept smiling whenever I came across her picture on my computer. Hmmm, I wonder, I'm not much for religon and I'm not quite sure what I feel happens after we leave this life but I'd like to think my gram had something to do with my happy day today. My fiance kept trying to get me to focus on the fact that she was with my grandfather again, she hadn't seen him in almost 23 years since he passed. I'm thinking perhaps she stuck around here for a bit after she passed, just to say goodbye to my sister and my sister's son, her one and only great-grandson, they live in Michigan and weren't able to make it out before she passed. Maybe she finally got through the long line leading up to the pearly gates and was telling me today that she made it and she's with my grandpa and their friends. It's odd though work went great. I felt like a million bucks and now that I'm home I'm not quite sure how to feel. Perhaps it's due to the fact that about half way through work I realized I was coming down with a cold. My throat hurts, and I can tell that in a day or two my sinuses will be all stuffed up, just in time right? But oh well. I just wish I knew how to replicate this feeling. And another thing, it's been so long since I knew how I wanted to waste time. Finally today I started remembering. Usually I just play computer games or read other people's blogs. It sure doesn't feed the soul. But I've been more and more aware of what I'm doing and the mere fact that I want to get away from that. I picked up a few books this weekend that I think, I hope, will help me find the true me. I want to find a new job but I don't know what I want to do. It's slowly coming to me, bits and pieces. Not neccessarily a job description more like things I want in my job. I am a pretty goofy happy person and I need a job that lets that shine through. I also am finding that I thrive on music, I'd love a job where I can listen to music all day every day. Perhaps that is why I especially enjoyed doing truck at BABW. I got to work by myself with my music on and got to sing along a bit under my breath and just laugh at myself. i know that is so important but when you work under people that don't laugh at you it's hard to laugh at yourself. Another thing I realized is a better way to explain away some work issues I've had in the past. I normally get along great with my co-workers and enjoy the jobs I have. However, I have had two jobs where I have left because of tensions between co-workers and I. Today I realized it really just boils down to what Aretha Franklin always says R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The three people I dealt with at my last two jobs really held no respect for me and in turn it was hard to respect them and so we just couldn't get along. I feel much more comfortable now going into a job interview being able to bring up the issue of respect. The guys I work with now hold me in the highest of respect and I them as well, hmmm, all except my boss perhaps. We both know that we would jump in front of a "bus" for the other. At my past jobs I often times felt like I was being thrown under the bus, not a fun feeling let me tell you. I need to remember to ask about the work environment, how respectful the employees are of each other. I don't mind if you aren't willing to jump in front of a bus for me, as long as you don't throw me in front of it in your place.