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i'm back...

Here we are, back online. It's a little ghetto right now with a lot of broken picture links and stuff. But online with problems I guess is better than not online at all!

I have never felt so white in my whole life

Now for those who don't understand, we moved to South Phoenix. South Phoenix is a mainly Hispanic area of town. Now, I am used to mixed neighborhoods and different cultures, but I am still a (REALLY) white girl no matter where I live. Ghetto or barrio. And after last night, there is no denying that. I went to the Kmart across the street from our house and I literally was the only white person in the store. I am not exaggerating. Believe me, if I saw another white person, I would mention it. I just felt like a freak. I was getting all sorts of strange looks. I wasn't acting differently or anything, but I felt very uncomfortable. It's strange to be on the flip side of that. I am sure that is how minorities (for lack of a better word that would sum it up) feel on a regular basis. I feel very comfortable in our neighborhood, despite the strange looks we get, but last night was the first time I've ever experienced something like that.

augh

We moved.
We slept in our house for the first time on Saturday night. I was not a restful sleep. Dogs barking. It just felt weird too. Last night was much better.
I am sick of looking at boxes. I just want it to all be unpacked. I hate feeling like I am living out of a suitcase, or camping - as Chris called it. I sorta set up the bathroom and the bedroom so that we can function, but other than that, we are roughing it. Plus, the cable and internet did not get turned on Saturday like it was supposed to. There is some filter on the line, blah blah blah. They told me that no one needed to be at the house, but apparently the cable guy came to the house on Saturday and no one was home. Well, duh! Whatever. They are coming back on Friday to set it all up and now we have to pay for installation, depending on what they have to do. Bastards. I hate Cox Cable.
I have bruises all over. I bruise so easily. I hardly carried anything, compared to Chris, but I am still hurting. My back was spasming last night and that was neat.
I am so out of it. I just want all this to be over.

good song

I may have been consumed with the move and the house lately, but don't think that I've forgetten about my other favorite blogging subject.
Go here and check out the new Rob Thomas album and listen to the track called Steetcorner Symphony. Think to yourself, "Gee, that guitar playing is really great. I wonder who is playing on that track?" I have your answer. But you can probably already guess, since I am bringing it up in the first place. Yup, Johnny boy. John Mayer. And my favorite part, no mention of featuring John Mayer or anything like that. He just lends his talent and doesn't care about the credit. That's awesome. Here's what Rob Thomas said about the song: "It was written by myself and Matt Serletic, my producer and friend. John Mayer played guitar on it. I think John is one of the most talented guitar players in popular music today. He's such a great singer and songwriter and when you see his live show he tears it up. We both happen to live in the city and we were at a dinner and I said, "Hey you want to come play on my record?" He was like "Yeah, sounds great." It's nice when there aren't managers and labels and people trying to cram artists together so it can be marketed like "featuring this and this guy and this guy."

it's so close now I can feel it

I can feel it in my head. My headache.
We are moving all the big stuff in a UHAUL on Saturday. Thank God Chris has people helping him, because I've already told him that I am not carrying anything down the stairs. I told him I think we should've hired movers. We said that after we moved in over two years ago. But he thinks he can handle it. I almost don't even want to be there while they are moving the stuff, because I don't think I can handle watching someone walk backwards down the stairs carrying the coach or whatever. Plus, the boxes are heavy. They are gonna kill themselves carrying that junk. It's stressing me out. But I am trying to not let it. I will just not watch. But apparently my parents are gonna help too. We wanted to borrow my dad's truck to do some extra moving after we are done with the UHAUL and when I asked my dad, he said that he wanted to help move. Cool. And then my mom is gonna meet us at the house to help get some stuff set up there. That's cool too. The more help the better.
I am going over to the house today to clean the floors before we bring over the big stuff.
We still have to hang most of the blinds. The HUGE blinds for the front window came the other day. We had to special order them and FedEX attempted to deliver them, but we were obviously not there. So we had to go over to the FedEX place and pick them up. Mind you, these blinds are almost 8 feet long, but with the box it's about 10 feet. We somehow managed to get them into our Kia. Again we got to say, "You'd be surprised how much you can fit in a Kia." So after we move in we gotta get all those blinds hung. Right now there is nothing on the windows, but we don't have anything there really. Once our junk is there, we need to cover those windows.
This house is running my life!

I'm pooped.

I like finding things on other people's blogs and then using them on mine. Like the new mood indicator. I like that.
So, I am at work today and it does seem like a relief to be here. We worked so hard on the house all weekend and it's nice to have a break. I am only here until noon today (I am working a half day.), but it is a nice little break. I am really worn out, but I feel sort of refreshed right now. I hope that I can keep up this mood and get out of the sleepiness. I am planning on getting caught up on life today. I have dishwasher and a sink full of dishes that have been there for I cannot remember how long. That's not a good thing when you can't remember when the last time you did dishes. We have been eating fast food all week. It's not that we don't have food in the frig, it's just that fast food is well, fast. Plus, when we are at the house, we have no food there. Anyway, lets get caught up day! Gotta do laundry - haven't done that in two weeks. Gotta do the checkbook and make sure I am not late on any bills. And I gotta pack. We are officially moving next Saturday. I don't have to have everything packed, because we don't have to be out of the apartment until May 1. But I would like to have as much stuff packed as possible so that it can be taken over in the truck. I am trying not to feel pressured with the packing, but that's not really working. Chris went and got more boxes so at least now we can really pack. I have a lot done already, but not enough. AUGH! This is ruining my mood.
I will talk about happier things! Chris (almost) finished the painting. We still have to paint the computer room, but we think we can do that after we move in. All the painting that we wanted to have done before we moved in is done. Hooray. I did finish cleaning all the kitchen cabinets and at least the are better than they were. They did not get really clean, but something is better than nothing. We also bought some of our appliances on Thursday. We got our refrigerator and our dishwasher from Sears. We got smokin deals. The frig was on sale and we got the dishwasher, which was already on sale, price matched from Home Depot. Home Depot had the regular price lower than the Sears sale price. Sweet! We got really nice appliances. I am really glad that we were given the money to be able to do that. Otherwise, we would have had to keep the crappy ones that are there or gotten really cheap ones. So, that's really cool. They are going to be delivered on the 22nd. That means we have to live with the frig we have now for about a week. That'll be ok. The dishwasher that's there does not work - or it works, but I would not want to put anything in it. It's so old and gross. I will be so happy when we have new appliances! YEAH!
Also, my mom and pa came over to the house and helped us tremendously yesterday. They came (and brought me flowers for the yard!) and helped carry out a huge pile of trash that had been growing since we got the house. Old curtains, carpet, blinds. A bunch of crap that we had just been throwing into the middle of the room to not deal with. They helped haul it all to the trash. Then my mom used her carpet shampooer and cleaned the two rooms that have carpet. That helped me, I can't even tell you how much. It would have taken me just as long as it took her to clean, to figure out how to work it and do it right. But since it was hers to begin with, she just swooped in and did it. It saves me almost half a day. I was gonna do that next Thursday and now I don't have to. They also hauled away some other trash in their truck and bought me some more cleaning supplies that I was running out of. All of this was so nice of them and we appreciate it so much.
And on a completely different note - yes, maybe we all should think before we post and/or comment on things that we know that people are sensitive about. That might be a good practice.

I blame everyone else, not my own partaking
My passive aggressive-ness can be devastating
I'm terrified and mistrusting and you've never met anyone
Who is as closed down as I am sometimes

- Everything by Alanis Morissette

So, I am passive aggressive, huh? Interesting. I know that is true, but really isn't being passive aggressive better than being aggressive? Whatever. I was upset and chose to deal with it in that way. (here I go again...) We all can't be perfect. I'll stop now because this is definately not the forum for this.

this is what I'm talking about!

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Family having fun without me!
I've covered the face to protect the innocent. hehe.

and as if that wasn't enough...

As I was leaving work today, I got a message from the apartment complex manager. It said something like this: Your water heater was leaking and flooded the apartment below yours. We had to go into your apartment and shut off the electricity so that we could go into your laundry room and replace your water heater. Some of the things in your laundry room had to be moved so they could get to the water heater and they didn't put everything back, so those things are just stacked around. Call us. Ah, WHAT!?!?!?! Yup. That's really what happened. All the things they moved were piled on top of the washer and dryer. Now, other than having to move the crap to do laundry, this was a blessing in disguise. We had stuff piled all around the water heater for storage and I looked at it all the other day and was dreading having to get down there and clean that all out. Now, I don't have to at least do that. But still, it was the last thing I needed today...

a life less ordinary

Watching the Cameron Diaz's show, Trippin, the other night reminded me of the movie, A Life Less Ordinary. I love that movie. Although the movie has nothing to do with what is happening in my life right now, I think the phrase itself certainly applies. Life seems to be so chaotic, but I am getting used it. I am not a fan of the craziness, but I am slowly trying to catch up with my own life. I am way outside of my "norm" but when I look around, I am really not lacking what I normally have. This might not make sense. I don't think I'm explaining it right, but whatever. Anyway. Blah Blah Blah.
I am bummed that we have so much to do at the house this weekend, because the Phoenix Film Festival is this weekend I would really like to go. This year looks interesting. They are doing a tribute to Kevin Bacon. Who wouldn't want to see that? Plus, they are showing a movie called, Happy Endings with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Lisa Kudrow, that looks decent. I would just want to go mainly because I've never been. And also because it is close to our apartment. Next year it will seem really far from home and out of the way to go. Whatever.
house junk...
Chris spent all weekend prepping the house for paint and painting our bedroom. I had picked this Ralph Lauren paint in a suede texture that looked neat. He bought the paint and when he read the directions and realized he needed twice as much paint that you would normally need. It takes one coat primer and one coat of the paint rolled on and then a second coat of paint brushed on by hand in an X pattern. That gives it the suede look. It took him a long time. He's quite a trooper. He finished the bedroom last night around 9pm and it looks AWESOME! He did such a good job on it. I feel bad that I picked it out without realizing how difficult it would be. But being the former pro-painter that he is, he managed. We (who am I kidding, he's the one painting!) have the rest of the house to still paint, but he is glad that it's just "regular" painting. We are going to do a Mondrian design wall on one of the walls in the computer room. At first we were going to do the whole room that way, but then decided it would be too much. So, we are going to do the wall with the window that you first see when you walk in the room. It will look neat. We went back and forth with ideas of what to do in that room. We wanted to do something different and cool and that's what we finally agreed upon. We (again, lying!) are painting all the other rooms too. (so no, we are not just focusing on the computer room! *wink*wink*) While Chris was painting, I started working on the kitchen cabinets. Those things are so nasty. I can't believe that someone would wash dishes and put them into those drawers and cabinets. I guess you just get used to the filth and don't notice it. I just can't imagine that, though. There was contact paper in the drawers and cabinets with orange and yellow mushrooms on it that probably hasn't even been produced in the last 30 years. It was so old and nasty. I still feel gross after pulling it all off. Plus, some of it was so attached that it pulled off pieces of the wood. The cabinets look like a home made job. The dude that owned our house was a real "do it yourselfer" and installed all sorts of junk by himself. And these cabinets look like that. They are not really even finished. I started to wipe them down and remove 40 years worth of junk and they are basically raw wood. Lovely. We are planning on painting them and it looks like that needs to happen sooner rather than later. I am going to put down some self adhesive tile on the shelves and drawers just so that we can use them. It will be better than contact paper. Contact paper, as far as I'm concerned is useless. I hate it. As much as I love this house, the more I am in it, I wonder why we didn't just get a new house. I think it needs so much cleaning that I don't know what to do. Maybe I am nuts about cleanliness, by I am (hoping, praying) planning on bringing a child into this house and I would like for it to be as safe and sanitary as possible. There is no way that I would bring a child in the way that it is now. I know that once I am finished giving it the cleaning that I want (and plan) to, it will be ok. But until then, I am grossed out by my own home. Actually, I am grossed out by both places I live. My apartment is driving me nuts because it is in a strange place of packed and not packed. Too many packed boxes to function and not enough packed to make me feel ready to move. I have issues. I am also really not wanting to be at work. I just feel like I have so much to do and work gets in the way. I have to keep telling myself that work makes me able to do these things. But that doesn't seem to help. And then talking to half of my family while they are in Disneyland and I am up to my elbows in nasty contact paper doesn't help. Yes, I am glad they had fun. But damn. I am working my ass off and they are at the happiest place on earth. So yes, I am jealous dammit. Can you blame me? Then I get told things like, "If I wasn't going on this trip, I would help you..." And what am I supposed to do with that information? I know it's supposed to be the thought that counts, but when I am so overwhelmed by all this, I do need the help. I'll stop now. I will try not the hold a grudge, but if you know me at all, you will not believe me when I say that. But I love you still...