Breaking The Dress Code

Lying and Cheating Again

So here I am again - sneaking out of the house with my new lover. This time to Panera and their cozy free wi-fi and yummy broccoli cheese soup. Why is it that soup in a bread bowl makes me go all ooey gooey inside?

So here I am typing away and trying new things and being all experimental. Lloyd (that's what I've decided to call him) is full of things unknown what with all his shiny Vista goodness.

So when I downloaded my MSN Messenger I also got this handy tool called Windows Live Writer which is like Word for blogs. I'm giving it a spin now. I have Office 2007 on my regular fellow back home so I'm used to the Word blogging features in it (which I LOVE LOVE LOVE by the way - basically you can make your entry do what ever you want with Word) This little piece of genius appears to have the same but in a lighter sort of way.

So I've been trying to decide if I like the Live Picture Gallery thing. I usually use Adobe Photoshop Elements to organize my photos cause there drag and drop tags are just the bomb. While I was happy to see that Picture Gallery had kept my tags I was sad to see that you could not drag and drop the tags but had to TYPE them in each time. Ughh that alone is enough to make me stick with Adobe right there. Cause Mama takes a lot of pictures and she tags each one with who's in them. Wonder if Adobe will make me pay for another license since my old one is 2 version back now.

So anyway that is my rambling from my cheater's lunch. Just me, Lloyd, and some comfort soup of the day.

Room #10: The Master Bedroom AKA the Sanctuary

Okay so finally it was time to give myself a little love. Surprise the Master Suite is pink too!!

After the success in the bathroom we found a nice sort of pale green that from Kilz Color Casuals that covered the walls perfectly! OMG what I would have done to find out about this paint 18 months earlier! All those coats of primer and paint… I still have nightmares. But no joke people this room was painted in ONE FREAKING COAT!! Not Four…ONE!! It covered the pink and held its own color beautifully.

Before: Looking like a set from the Young and the Restless circa 1982 (only they would never have a brass ceiling fan)

After: We took a spare no expense attitude with the Master suite and purchased our first ever king sized bed. Are you married? You need one of these! Do not kid yourself, you need one of these! Oh my gawd at how much better we've slept since we got this huge bed. I am converted.

And I listened to my good friend Oprah and bought some kick ass high thread count linens and real pillows… not some foam jobs from Walmart but real pillows that cost too much but oh are they worth it!!! We sleep so much better now! The comforter and valences are Waverly from Target though so you see I'm not a total snob. But did I mention how much heaven this bed is???

Oh and notice the fluffy new carpet too! It's a oatmeal kind of color of that low pile shag that is so popular now. So soft and fluffy on your feet. I heart it.

Children are NOT ALLOWED in this room!!!!

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

So last night my Beer Girl and I went shopping and I "bought the Dr a laptop for Christmas."  Yeah right... it's for him... Shut up.

Okay so this morning I felt so damn guilty about buying him what I really wanted for Christmas that I went and bought him what he really wanted online and came up with a plan to put this pretty pretty machine under the tree from Santa "for all of us."

Meanwhile I snuck it out of the house to play with at gymnastics... Yum!

More Proof that I’m Off Kilter

As if there needed to be anymore evidence to show that I'm feeling off balance these days but HELLO I never posted anything about Saturday's Iron Bowl!!!!!

And I've got to give props to MY GIRLS! Knowing that I was home alone while the Dr tended to The FIL the ladies rallied and we had an All Girl Iron Bowl Watching Party – pitchers of Margs instead of cases of beer. And just to show how off the mark I am these days I totally forgot to take pictures! Kudos to the husbands for staying home to watch the kids so the girls could be there for me. I did miss my Gator boy though because it's the one day a year he turns into a Auburn boy just for me.. he's sweet like that.

So I say to you WAR DAMN EAGLE baby!

Belated Thanksgiving

"Books are the last bastion of analog" - As quoted from Jeff Bezos in Newsweek's cover article on The Future of Reading

Yes they are Jeff! And for that I Give Thanks!!

Room #9: The Guest Bathroom

Okay back to the house. So now we are up to the spring of 2007. We hadn't done anything inside since Puddin's bedroom in October and I was anxious to get this house finished up. So I decided I would make a quick project of the guest bathroom.

Before – Just plain and boring… but with some interesting green tile on the floor. Where she came up with that idea I have no idea. Also contained the tiniest toilet ever made. It was so small that guests who came to visit us actually complained.

After: Lots of tone on tone blue to work with the green floor and of course a new big person toilet. I wish I could find a mirror to replace the one that is in there but I can't find anything that I like that is the right dimension. It has to be really skinny. Oh well something to keep me looking.

This by the way was the first room we did with Kilz Casual Colors. Even though we were only covering white, someone had told me about this product and I had high hopes it would help cover the pink with less labor when we got the master suite. So I tried it out just to see if I liked the paint and I loved it.

What I didn't like was having to go to Walmart for it. Let's just say they do not go to extra lengths to train their paint personnel… it's usually just one old senior citizen type fellow who can barely read the paint chip much less understand what he's supposed to do with the mixing computer.

Most Ridiculous Question

Standing at the Target snack counter:

Me: I'll have the hotdog and coke meal.

Her: Would you like the hotdog on a white or wheat bun?

Me: You've got to be kidding?

Yeah 'cause I'm sitting there thinking the salt-ridden processed meat and sugar laden soda are questionable for my health but if I get the wheat bun then I'm in back in the clear…

An Unexpected Thanksgiving

If my posts the last week seemed non-festive given the holiday it's because well they were mechanical. I had planned that series but not for days in a row the way it happened. But we had some unexpected events this last week and it was the best I could do.

The Friday night before Thanksgiving my father in law experienced some chest pain and right sided numbness while taking out the garbage at 1:00 AM. He called 911, the ambulance arrived promptly administered drugs and transported him to the local hospital which was just minutes away. He was seen promptly by emergency physicians that stabilized his A-Fib and went about their business. He called family members about 7:00 AM to let them know where he was. He's like that. My brother-in-laws promptly headed over and there they sat with him for hours and hours until a cardiologist finally came by sometime in the afternoon.

The Dr had been calling the regularly for updates on his dad because hints from the nurses indicated they weren't going to do a cardiac cath and the Dr felt one was called for. He eventually spoke to the doctors down there, asked them to do one and sure enough 3 blockages over 90% were found. A bypass was scheduled. Whooshh.. out the window went my perfect low key Thanksgiving at home with friends.

We headed down the road to Ft Lauderdale and spent the next 7 days in the CVICU waiting room. By me I mean Me, Puddin', and FuzzyHead. We three. We sat in that waiting room for endless hours waiting while other family members took turns going in and out of FIL's "room." When you look at it through the big picture they were great. Where there moments when I wanted to strangle them? Of course. But overall considering the circumstances they were great.

The whole holiday just kind of totally sucked but there we were surrounded by people who were also spending Thanksgiving in the same circumstance, many of them with much worse situations. Their loved one had not had a minor warning shot over the bow of good health. Had not caught the problems in time. Their husbands and fathers and sisters and wives had mostly had terrible heart attacks and were just hoping for some kind of meaningful recovery. So I held my girls tight, tried not to yell, tried not to feel impatient that we were just stuck there waiting out a surgery and recovery that had gone just fine.

I drove the girls back Friday, the Dr. flew home yesterday. The FIL was released home yesterday and is now in the care of The Great Aunt. I'm feeling disconnected and disorganized. I don't flex as well as I used to. I'm hoping to get back on track soon.

The Backyard

Once again winter has rolled around and with the tax return came a big job. The backyard. Our outdoor room.

About a quarter of our back yard had been left wild. I grew up with woods and I loved that we had this wild area but it was overgrown and really was just a haven for snakes and raccoons and as the kids get older we really wanted to be able to yell "Go in the backyard and play!" So we had a landscaping service come and take down the dead trees and clear the brush. Once it was cleared we found old barbed wire fencing in it all that must have been left over from when this was all a cow pasture. The Dr did the new fence himself. Actually it was the Dr and the neighbor men.. they fence in packs.. I just kept the beer flowing.

Before: Wild Kingdom

Love this picture of the dude cutting down the dead tree with a chain saw half way up cutting towards himself… can you say workman's comp risk?

After: Swing set and civilization except for the damn weeds I can't keep out of my mulch.

Room 8: Puddin’ Room finally gets a makeover

Puddin's room was the only plain white room we had so it got put off for quite some time. For her 5^th birthday in October of 2006 she got a re-do. She graduated from a toddler bed to bunk beds thanks to Rooms to Go Kids. With our Lowe's store brand Apple Green we were down to 2 coats of paint – Heaven.

Before: The worst part was talking her out of the red blinds and sports themed ceiling fan which you can't see in this picture.

After: Because We went with green and lavender to contrast her sister's Citrus colors. Thanks to Target's Preppy Girl collection we have lots of matching accessories.

She is particular proud of the quote I put on her wall (at the end of the bed over thesince she's not that into the princess thing. It comes from Mostly True: Collected Stories & Drawings by Brian Andreas. I love this book and Fuzzy Head's room has a quote from it too. If you haven't lost yourself in his Story People website – do yourself a favor and go waste an afternoon just reading.