the time everything broke but that's okay

It's April! Which means my family's spring birthday marathon is underway. Perry's birthday was up first. Perry hates cake (weird, I know), but because cakes and birthdays are so interconnected in my mind (and I love cake), I've made him a cake every year. This year I figured since he wasn't going to eat the cake, he should at least get some enjoyment out of looking at it, so I made him a BMO cake.

It was shoddily but lovingly iced.

Perry decided to not renew his teaching contract at his current school, so he's started applying and interviewing around the district. I know we can live off of one income (I did it for five years before we met), but the whole dual income thing sure is nice (I can actually save money!), so here's hoping he gets a new, better job easily.

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I feel like the past few months there hasn't been a lot going on in my life and then about three weeks ago it seemed like a whole lot of things started happening. This week off work, I've had to wake up at 8 a.m. everyday just to get everything on my list done and I still feel a bit overwhelmed. Keep in mind that most of my days off, I wake up at 10, so 8 is a big deal for me. Oh, and it seems like everything has been breaking.

The dryer vent under my house became disconnected. I haven't been underneath my house in four years. It's a dark, scary place. To fix it, I had to belly crawl through spider webs and snake skeletons (okay, only one snake skeleton but come on) for an hour. If you want a good work out, try belly crawling for an hour. Arms, legs, and abs. I am very sore right now. Can you believe Perry refused to do it? Something about a promise he made to his younger self when he had to crawl under his parent's house every summer to re-level their house. I can understand why, but I still insist the next time something underneath the house breaks, it's his turn.

My washing machine broke. I wasn't particularly sad or surprised when it happened. It was 10 years old and super duper small, since I got it when I was living in an apartment and it had to fit in a very narrow closet. I've kind of been looking forward to it kicking the bucket so I could buy a full sized washer and dry set, and I had some money set aside just for that purpose. We had it delivered and the old ones hauled away. Here's a tip when installing a new dryer: it doesn't come with an electrical cord. I had to make two trips to Lowe's in a 30 minute span. Once for the electrical cord, and again when we found out our old water hoses weren't compatible with the new washer.

It was about three days later that I noticed the steering wheel on my car was shaking whenever I braked at high speeds. I though it was my rotors, turns out my outer tie rod was loose. They replaced it for $160 and then I had to get an alignment for about $90.

About a week after that I noticed a squeaking sound coming from underneath my hood whenever my car was cold and a clicking noise coming from underneath my dash whenever the AC kicked on. The squeaking sound: I don't know what it is, but it comes and goes. However, I know that AC clicking sound well: my temperature blend door actuator is starting to fail. It did it about four years ago. Here's the thing: I only plan on having this car another 6 months. I really don't want to have to start making a bunch of repairs on it. I may try just waiting and seeing if I can get by.

Reggie broke too. Kind of. Reggie has never destroyed anything in the house. We always just assumed he naps all day when we're not home, because that's what he does when we are home. However, I came home last week and he had chewed up the bottom four slats on our blinds and ripped the curtains. I thought he had been temporarily possessed and cleaned up the mess. Then, he did the same thing the next day. So now we've started opening the blinds and curtains for him whenever we leave, so he can see whatever is out the window that turns him into a maniac. Oh, and just so you know, Reggie is now back on all the couches full time. Because I'm weak willed.

March

Awwww. Reggie is so sad. So forlorn. He has to sleep on a dog bed instead of a couch. When I look at this picture I can hear that Sarah McLachlan song playing in my head. "In the arms of an angel...."

But seriously, guys. Reggie is a small dog and in order to get on the couch, he has to make a running jump most of the time. Well, last week he went to jump on the couch and hurt his back. It scared me a lot. I knew he was really uncomfortable because he slept in our bedroom that night instead of his favorite spot in the living room. The only other time he's done that is when he was sick with a bad stomach bug several months ago.

I banned him from the couches until he recovered, and after three days he was back to his normal cheerful self. However, by that point I had done some searching on the internets and it turns out Shih Tzus are prone to back problems. I read more than one horror story about a dog becoming paralyzed and having to be euthanized after jumping down from a high couch or bed the wrong way. I know that's a worst case scenario and the internet is full of worst case scenarios, but if I can prevent Reggie from hurting himself and being in pain, why wouldn't I? I bought a dog bed and doggy gate to block off the living room (the only room with a couch and without a door). As far as I was concerned Reggie was banned from the couches for all eternity.

Perry has a different opinion, which is essentially: Reggie likes the couch and he's feeling better, so what's the problem? As far as he's concerned I'm being overly paranoid and overly protective.

How do people raise children? How? How do two people create a person and then bring him/her safely into adulthood without destroying one another?

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Speaking of injuries and children, my niece was hospitalized for a few days last week with a knee infection. Septic arthritis to be specific and diagnosis-y. I was kind of surprised that she was hospitalized because as someone working in a laboratory, I always thought they just drained the fluid, gave them some antibiotics and sent them on their way home. I don't know if they were being extra cautious because she's a toddler. My sister said her doctor was worried that the bacteria may get into her blood stream and spread, so they wanted to make sure the infection was resolved before they released her.

I visited her twice at the children's hospital in Dallas and she seemed okay but very very ready to go home.

I realized just now that I talked about my hurt dog before I thought to bring up my hurt niece. Eh.

The only  picture I took while I was there was of the miniature train set-up they had on one of the floors. Here's the TMNT zip lining across the Dallas skyline.

See? Much less depressing than seeing a young child with a bandaged knee and an IV in her hand.

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My family doesn't make the trip into downtown Dallas very often, so after we visited my niece and sister at the hospital, my brother and father took the opportunity to visit a restaurant they'd been wanting to go to for a while: Gas Monkey Bar and Grill. I got to go too since my brother was my ride. 

The people who own the restaurant have a reality TV show. Not about restaurants or cooking, but about fixing cars. My dad and brother are big fans of it and were excited when the main guy on the show showed up and shook hands and posed for pictures. I don't know what his name is, but he kind of looks like Wolfman Jack. We did not get a picture of Wolfman. This grainy cell phone picture of the stage area is the best I could do.

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I'm getting new neighbors guys! For five years I've lived next to an empty lot, and they've started making preparations for the foundation a few days ago.

This is the view from my dining room window.

I'm hoping that if I keep acting excited that I won't mind the sound of bulldozers and hammering of nails at eight in the morning on my days off work.

valentine's day and other things

So Valentine's Day happened since the last time I posted. To celebrate Valentine's Perry and I try to find the worst card at the supermarket and exchange them. I really wasn't feeling it this year. All the cards I found were just bad bad, not funny bad. So I made a card. Perry called it cheating, but I call it improvising.

The outside of the card:

The inside:

Yes, it's an Adventure Time reference but also a real life reference. Before I leave for work I give Perry a kiss on the cheek goodbye even though it's 3:30 a.m. and he's still passed out in bed. Sometimes he just looks so damn comfy and adorable when he's sleeping, I'll admire him for a bit before I kiss him. Not weird, right? All justifications aside, the point is he's woken up a few times with me leaning over him in the dark just staring at him. I imagine it is a slightly jarring way to wake up.

And Perry followed the rules and got me a store bought card. He did really well.

I didn't take a picture of the inside, but I believe there was a three little pigs reference. It was perfectly awful.
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We had a few 70 degree days last week and I was able to open the windows and let some fresh air in the house. It was glorious. I danced up and down the hallway between chores and felt pretty certain winter was on its way out. It's 40 degrees again today, but it was a nice sneak peak into spring.

Since winter will be gone soon, the other day I tried to think of things that I'm going to miss about this season. I couldn't really come up with anything other than I'll miss wearing sweaters. I have "fashionable" sweaters in my closet, but 90% of the time I go out in public this is what I'm wearing.

Well, just add some grey sneakers to my feet. This is my winter uniform. I may as well throw all my other winter clothes in the trash. It's easy, it's comfortable. I feel invisible in it. There's a convenient front pocket for my car keys, an attached hood if it rains. 

In the spring and summer there's too many clothing choices to make. Jeans or skirt or shorts? Then I have to pick out a matching top based on my "bottom" choice and shoes that go with that. Boo.

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I mentioned in my other post that I've been cooking a lot more than usual. Well, the trend continues.

This is the only thing I took a (bad) picture of. It's an Italian lemon cream cake. It was supposed to taste like the one they make at The Olive Garden. It didn't but it was good in its own right.

Not pictured: barbecued ribs, deviled eggs, a loaf of egg bread, broccoli and cheese rice casserole, baked ziti, lemon blueberry bread, and Tuscan soup.

I attribute all this cooking to winter boredom. Next year I'll try learning how to crochet instead.
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I've had the series Mr. Selfridge in my Amazon Prime video queue for a while and started watching it last week. Perry was playing New Vegas on the couch next to me and got sucked into watching it with me. It's pretty addictive and drama heavy and I actually like it better than Downton Abbey. Truth. The thing is, I can't tell if I like Jeremy Piven as the main character or not. 10 episodes and I still don't know. See that expression on his face.

That's his expression for almost 75% of the series. The rest of the time he's crying or in a coma. Still, I enjoyed it.
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And courtesy of imgur last week I found a subreddit called "let's not meet" that contains supposedly real life creepy stories of the non-paranormal nature. Real or not, they make for a good read.

is winter over yet?

What have I been doing the past few weeks? Feeling generally unmotivated and blah and ready for winter to be over. I'm tired of everything outside being dead and cold and muddy. But until such a time when the awesome restorative power of life lifts me up and makes me thrilled once again to be alive, here's how I've been killing time:

1.) Baking a lot more than usual. 

Particularly bread. I've never made bread from scratch before. Fresh bread is freakin delicious and beautiful, but I don't think I'll continue to do it except on rare occasions. Why? Well, homemade bread doesn't keep too well. Like maybe only three days tops. And I've found it really difficult to eat an entire loaf of bread in three days. Not that I didn't put in my best effort.

2.) I finished my Lego Tower Bridge.

Perry had been helping me until the third level of the tower and then it sat on the dining room table untouched for about a month. So I finally decided to finish it this week that I was off of work and...I did. The End. It was my first Lego building experience of any kind and the end product was cool, but I don't know if I'd want to do it again. I felt kind of like a trained monkey at a certain point. Just following directions. Very very long directions. I got the same kind of satisfaction as I would assembling a piece of furniture, but there's a reason I don't assemble furniture for fun. I think if you're designing Legos into something original (as in not following direction) it could be a cool hobby, but not that way I was doing it.

3.) I've continued to exploit my Amazon Prime subscription to the best of my ability. When I'm doing fairly stationary chores like cooking or washing dishes or ironing I like to have something playing on the laptop in the background (I don't have TV, remember?). Normally it's the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live or Modern Family or Paranormal Witness. Guilty pleasures are great for making lame chores less lame. Anyway, thanks to Amazon, Veronica Mars is now my newest guilty pleasure. And all the seasons are free.

4.) Watching The Last of Us.

Notice how I said watching and not playing? Perry did the playing. He got a PS3 for Christmas and this was the first game he decided to play on it. It's very suspenseful, and story driven so it makes it great to just watch.

I did not like the ending. This game has been out for, I don't even know, a while? so I feel like I could write very specifically about it without spoiling anything, but I won't. I feel like the reason they made an ending like that was to make people say "Wow, how different, how revo-freaking-lutionary! What a plot twist. Never saw it coming." However, the last 20 minutes just made me feel completely alienated from the main protagonist whom I was supposed to be sympathizing with/caring about for the past few hours and made me feel like the entire game was just a waste of time. 

I did tell Perry how if it had been a book and not a video game I probably would have really liked the ending. There's complicated layers to it. But there's no narration in this video game like a book would have. The main character just turns psychopathic. Oh, sorry. Spoilers!

5.) Listening to a lot of 80's pop.

May I recommend Aretha Franklin's 1986 album Who's Zoomin Who? It's currently my best winter pick-me-up.

On a completely different note, I feel like there's about to be a major shakeup in my family life sometime soon. I don't want to say anything definite because nothing is definite at this point, but with all of the possibilities of big change, I feel like at least one of them is going to happen. I just hope it's a good one.

January

January! I hardly knew ye. The month kicked off with my nephew's birthday. Since I rarely get to see him on his birthday, I just mail him his gift and my sister sends me a forced-smile thank you picture in return.

I've been saving the picture I get from her every year. I don't know why. Maybe when I accumulate enough I'll create an embarrassing collage to give him. And I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but I got him a Legos castle set. I'm on a Legos roll lately.
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My mother also has a January birthday, and since I won't be seeing her on her actual birthday either, I baked her a cake this weekend to celebrate a bit early.

I'm a boxed-cake maker kind of girl, but I made this one from scratch using a recipe I found online. It's hard to taste test a cake since you can't steal a slice without it being rather noticeable, so I was hoping I would get to snag a piece when I visited my parents. However, I didn't stay for dinner so I'll have to take their word for it that it turned out well.
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And the 31st will mark Reggie's one year anniversary of living with us. He is so sweet, well behaved, loveable, and lazy. It really is hard to remember exactly what it was like without him.

A few weeks ago it seemed like his fluffiness was about to consume him, so we gave him a shave and he looked so different that it took a while to get used to the de-fluffed version of him.

Pre haircut:

Post haircut:

Oh, dear. So. Cute.

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I now realize that I forgot to brag about all of the books I received for Christmas this year. So let me take care of that now. Check it out!

I've started reading The Luminaries first. I'm only about a hundred pages through it, and I'm a little worried since it seems to be a murder mystery/whodunit kind of book and I dont' typically get into those very much. But it's very well written, so I know I'll finish it.

My work lunch break book, is Dance of Dragons, which I know is going to take a while for me to finish since I'm only reading it in 30 minute intervals, but there's no rush since the next book in the series has yet to be written.

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So, I had been thinking about going to yoga classes again. It's been 3 years since I last went, but I did enjoy it. After a while I just couldn't justify the expense. I tried buying some yoga videos and doing them at home, but I learned that I get bored very easily with a set routine, so I stopped. However, I realized earlier this month that my Amazon Prime subscription gives me access to a lot of free workout videos, so I've been trying it out and I'm enjoying it so far. I haven't had to re-watch the same video twice. I've never watched The Biggest Loser, but I still know who this chick is

For whatever reason, I was inclined not to like her, but I still tried out one of her videos and I'm glad I did. She kind of scares me, but the routines are really good and easy to follow.

I dont' have much else to say. For the second time in six months I woke up with an annoying pain in my neck that's lasted at least five days. I don't know if I should buy a fancier/better pillow (but I love my pillow!) or just not sleep for more than eleven hours in a row. 

Oh, and it looks like some one's about to build a house on the lot next to mine that's been vacant for the past six years. It will be nice for it to not be an empty neglected area, but still...construction isn't fun. Two summers ago it was them building a house two lots over and blocking the alley way for months. Then last summer it was the city completely tearing up the alley and replacing the water pipes underneath. After it was done, the alley was a lot nicer (they put gravel down!), but still. I'll be happy when it's over. 

And to wrap it up, my mom bought me an orchid last week. Here's some pictures. Because it's huge and beautiful.

december happenings

Since I last wrote, my mom had her annual cookie and ornament exchange Christmas party. I wasn't going to go this year because it fell on a day I had to work, but she had to reschedule it due to some bad weather we had, so in the end, I was able to go. Cool story, huh?

I made Italian lemon cookies this year. In retrospect I should have taken pictures of everyone's cookies, or at least my cookies, but that didn't happen. I did remember to take a picture of my ornament though. I was having a hard time finding an ornament that met my high standards of ridiculousness, until I tagged along with my brother into Tractor and Supply and found this beauty.

The bad weather I was talking about was an ice storm. We'll generally get snow/ice twice a year in North Texas. Once around Christmas and again around Valentine's day. This year it seemes to have hit a bit early.

When you looked out the window, it didn't really look that bad,  just a few inches of snow on the ground. Except it wasn't snow, it was solid ice. Most of my smaller plants, including my poor little Yaupon Holly tree went horizontal due to the extra weight.

School was closed for about four days, so Perry didn't have to go to work, but since I work in a hospital I wasn't so lucky. The first day it iced, I drove to work very slowly and it went just fine. However, when I tried to drive back home, I discovered the bottom inch of my tires were covered in ice, and my car was literally frozen to the ground. It took Perry an hour to de-ice his car and then he came to pick me up. We tried to get my car out of it's parking space for about 30 minutes before we gave up. He ended up driving me to work for the next three days, until the temperature got above freezing and I was able to get some traction.

I would like to officially state that I am not complaining. A few of my co-workers lost their electricity. At least I got to go home to a nice toasty house after a 10 hour shift.
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So, Christmas happened. Hadn't you heard? With the exception of my father's gifts, I did all my Christmas shopping online. In one day. I really dislike crowds. I get all anxious and unhappy. And I worked retail for 5 years. So, no busy malls and congested parking lots for me if I can avoid it. The thing about Christmas shopping online is that you have to do it early, like 3-4 weeks before Christmas kind of early, and then you'll be just fine.

For a while now, I've known that in addition to the regular Christmas gifts, I wanted to make something for Perry. I thought I had figured out what I wanted to do a few months ago. The problem is that it involved me learning how to crochet. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal since a few years ago I learned to cross stitch for one of his gifts. Well, crochet isn't cross stitching. I tried, I failed, I moved on.

So, have you ever seen Bee and Puppycat? There's only one episode out so far, but Perry's a fan of it. So I decided to draw him as Bee and Reggie as Puppycat.

For reference, here's Bee and Puppycat:

As you can tell, she's not a big fan of her suit. Maybe it's the pink puffy sleeves.

And just because, I decided to paint it on a ceramic mug.

I gave myself a little pep talk before I started and told myself not to give up until I finished. Because I could already see it not looking like I envisioned in my head and getting discouraged and scrapping the whole idea.

Like here, before I realized I needed to mix the paint to get the colors I wanted. (Seems obvious doesn't it.)

Or here, when Reggie puppycat looked like Blobby poopyturd.

You should persevere, because once you start outlining with a black paint pen, everything will start to look better!

Tah-freaking-dah!

I did forget to respect the power of the black paint pen at one point, because I shook, shook, shook it too hard and several big fat drops landed right on my half finished Perry Bee. I was able to just paint over the ones that landed in a painted area, but two of them hit in the white background, so I just covered it with some white paint, which you can see by the left arm.
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So what did sweet Perry give me in return? An I.O.U. He ordered my gift online, but didn't follow the 3-4 week rule, because he don't follow no rules. Surprisingly, it only arrived one day late.

For backstory, I should mention that at work we had a Christmas "Angel Tree" where you can buy gifts for a child. The child I picked wanted a Lego set. I never had Legos as a kid and when I went online I was really impressed with all the cool sets I found. I mentioned to Perry how I was actually jealous of a toy I was getting for a 12 year old.

The set he picked is beautiful and just happens to be perfect for us to work on together. It's symmetrical, so while Perry works on one tower, I'm working on the identical one. We've gotten to the second story and haven't had a fight yet. I'll keep you posted.

thanksgiving week

This Thanksgiving was the first one that I've had off of work in seven years. It was nice to do a normal Thanksgiving dinner and not the tupperware leftovers that I've grown accustomed to. Perry and I did lunch at his parent's house and dinner at my parent's. We weren't as overly full as you'd think since we just ate a little bit of everything. His family does a potluck, every one brings a dish type thing and my parents...don't. In fact, I made two pumpkin and one key lime pie to bring to Perry's parents and Perry suggested that we bring one over to my parent's house. I laughed. As far as my mother is concerned, bringing food unless specifically asked is a breach of etiquette. Most people would welcome an extra pie at dinner, but to my mom it's a thinly veiled critique of her cooking and/or party planning skills.

Anyway, it was a happy Thanksgiving all around and the following day I got to participate in another family tradition that I've missed out on for quite a while due to work: visiting the tree farm down the road and cutting down a Christmas tree. Everyone went except my youngest sister who was in College Station.

I've never put up a Christmas tree before, but I made an impulsive tree purchase while we were there.  My brother dropped it off at my house and was kind of enough to immediately take me to Lowe's so I could go lights and tree stand shopping since I had neither.

Perry is an atheist (like myself) and he thinks Christmas decorations are a waste of money and space. I mostly agree - which is why I have no holiday decorations and have never put up a tree before. But I really am enjoying having a tree this year. I did most of my Christmas shopping online a few days ago, so I'll have lots of packages to put underneath it soon.

I had to give myself an early Christmas gift last week. My desktop computer died. It was six years old which I feel like was a respectably long life. Actually, the internet says about 3-5 years is average and looking back on it, I was really in denial about my need for a new computer for the past two years. In those two years I had to restore it to factory setting five times and it was soooo slow. For the past two months it was taking an unusually long time to start up and simply open an internet browser. I thought it just needed another factory restore. Wrong. It needed a bullet to the head. So I got a new tower.

I realize now that this old vs. new computer picture has a deceptive perspective which makes the old computer look even larger, but I think you get the point. My new CPU is super smaller. And I can open chrome in under ten minutes now.

Oh, and the day after the Christmas tree farm my mother, middle sister, and I went to the Dallas Arboretum for our annual Holiday Tea visit.  We've had a few freezes in the past month, so everything wasn't still (creepily) blooming in December like last year when we went. It was still a beautiful day though.

I am hereby putting a new camera on my Christmas wish list since I took about 15 pictures while were were at tea and this is the only one that turned out unhorribly.

And it's just a shot of the decorations in the room. I guess my six year old camera is as obsolete as my six year old desktop.

And just because (I've turned into a crazy dog owner), I tried to take a picture of Reggie with a Santa hat and beard. Yes, I've become one of "those people." And I want to say that I have no idea how people manage to pull this off, because even my mild mannered, lazy dog simply was not having it. Actually, it was easy to get it on his head, but how do people get their pets to sit still long enough for a posed picture?