Taking out the Trash

Nope...that's not one of the old pictures of that future "breakfast room". That's one I took TODAY. Did you notice it looks EXACTLY the same? That's because it is!! That's not why I took the picture though. Those are the "breakfast room" windows that need new curtains. Jeff and I went looking for fabric Tuesday for our bedroom. Needless to say, we didn't find anything for the bedroom, but these two jumped out at us for the this room.

I like this pattern the best (above). The orange throws me just a little but it won't after the tile in the kitchen gets in.

These colors are right on the money EXCEPT for the black. And I don't like the pattern as well for the design I have in mind. Give me some feedback? Whatcha thinkin? Do you want to see it nailed up by the window? I think that may be what I need. Most of you cats NEVER comment and I am asking for help on this. If you hate it tell me you hate. I would. And I respect that. I might make them even if you hate them, but I still want your opinion.

So, this picture is a great description of my day! Why, yes, those ARE my FAVORITE black peep toe pumps hanging out of the garbage can. I came home to that tonight.

NICE!

Wanna see what else is in that trash can.....

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I can't take it anymore!! I've totally developed a new phobia. As if I didn't have enough to begin with. We were home just long enough tonight to clean up the trap mess and my most awesome pair of pumps...did I mention that I only recently have been able to even wear heels again and this was the ONLY pair I could make it ALL the way through the day in. (THAT SUCKS!) Ethel ate them! She's in hiding tonight. I strongly suggest she stay there. ANYWAY, we went to buy mouse poison. In my mind, I know that we currently have 11 traps set and have for two days. In that time, we have caught that one little mouse. I know all of that in my mind, but my body has a mind of it's own. Catching one little mouse should NOT be having such a horrible effect on me. Jeff and I were at Dollar General buying poison and he reached up to grab some on the top shelf. A box fell over and I jumped into the air fresheners across the aisle and screamed like someone had just stabbed me. Air Wick and Febreze went flying everywhere, my throat was stinging from the sound emission, and Jeff just looked at me like I was "Special". Maybe I need an exorcism. Something has GOT to give. I'm drinking a cold Bud Light with Lime (probably frying my liver, I took my MTX shot tonight) and praying for a good night's sleep.
I'm ready for this to be a thing of the past!

I also wish I had a cat that worked. Tony is in the middle of a MAJOR identity crisis. He definitely does not think he is a cat. Sometimes, we think he thinks he's a dog, but if he is he is the dog Supreme. He's definitely better than they are (in his eyes of course.) Sometimes, I just think he thinks he's human.

This is what was going on at the foot of my bed last night.

Dad, I need some loving!

Ok, then, I'll just stand on this thing you keep thumping on.

Then he got on the other side and FORCED Jeff to pet him by sticking his head into and under his hand. Crazy Cat...Go catch some mice. Then Izzy got jealous and I just had to get out of the bed.
I have a 300lb husband, an 80lb lab, a 15lb cat and a laptop and cell phone are glued to Jeff's hands at all times. LET ME OUT!! Somehow, they just follow when you leave the room. Strange.

Jeff is not thrilled by new blogging persistence. He has developed an online auction fetish. He's addicted and it is killing him that I'm on the computer and he can't have it! HeHeHe. He has bought some really stupid stuff that we had no need for, BUT, "it was a great deal". Dear God, Help me in my time of NEED.

Peace,

Kacy

Turkeys and Armadillos

No new pics today gang. I got an old woman haircut that I'm not thrilled about and absolutely NOTHING changed around the homestead. We caught that dadgum mouse last night and when Jeff went outside to put it in the trash cans an armadillo was standing there staring at him. It even freaked him out a little. He said it was a good thing I wasn't out there. I would have gone into full blown cardiac arrest. I'm just not lovin the country life right now. I've had enough horses running freely down my street. If one more deer jumps in front of my Suburban, I think I'm just gonna hit it. Oh and the turkeys....yeah, the ones I thought were over sized crows in the back yard. What the hell? I like turkeys on Thanksgiving and that's about it. The rest of the these varmints need to go somewhere else. I'm a little overwhelmed lately. Armadillos in my driveway? Are you kidding me? Ashton Kutcher are you punking me? This is NOT cool and I honestly don't think I'll ever look back at this time and laugh. HAHAHAHA Remember that time you didn't have a kitchen sink????..........See what I'm sayin? It's just not funny.

Jeff is outside right now with a flash light trying to scare me. I hope one of those armadillo familys comes up and does what ever armadillos do to people. GROSS. Aren't they members of the sloth family? If this is country livin, I'm not so sure country livin is for me. I like people and kids and domesticated animals. I'm not real big on wildlife.

Peace,
Kacy

CATS?

This is Tony the Tiger! Let's get something straight. HE'S USELESS! I took this picture of him this morning after my nervous breakdown. We are talking a serious hyperventilating schitzoembolism!! It was almost as bad as the time the gnomes in the cave at Rock City started chasing me during a horrible episode with claustrophobia. I don't think I blogged back then, it was several years ago, but Jeff was very busy snapping pictures of me laying on the ground outside of the cave crying and unable to breathe. Yep, that was a great moment for me in a public place. Note to self, Kacy, claustrophobics CAN'T explore caves. ANYWAY, today I discovered I'm deathly afraid of mice. I've never liked them and I've always known that, but something was different about it today. My whole body hurts tonight from this morning's episode.

It started innocently enough. I was laying in bed with Savannah in her room and realized that I hadn't made her curtain for her closet door. With the kids rooms being so small, SavyG and I decided to place her bed in a manner that interfered with her closet door so we just took it down. I was supposed to have made a "curtain" to go on her closet that matches her duvet. It would take me all of 30 minutes to make. The hard part would be cleaning off my "sewing table" in order to make it. Do you remember the pics from yesterday of my soon to be breakfast room? Yeah, that was my "sewing table" with all of the food on it. That means putting all of Jeff's tools on the card table, all of the food on the smaller folding table and freeing up my big folding table. No big deal, right? Well, sort of, but it needed to be done anyway and then I could spend this rainy day at home with the kids actually getting a few more things accomplished.

So, Jeff and I head into the "breakfast room" and start looking around. I head for one corner to start and he heads across the room. All of a sudden, there is a rodent running around the corner I was in. He looked at me with his beady little eyes and started running back and forth. I screamed bloody murder and took off running just in time for Jeff to catch a glimpse of him. After spending about 5 minutes regaining my composure and Jeff searching for Mr. Mouse.....

he sets a trap and convinces me we WON'T see him again until he is dead. He told me mice don't want to be around people and was pretty sure that my shrill scared him far into hiding. Still determined to accomplish my tasks for the day, I entered the room again. I was a little leery, but I decided I could do this. I was standing in the door looking around and Jeff lifts up Savannah's white board and that furry little son of a gun ran out and ran into my foot (thank you Lord for telling me to put my tennis shoes on this morning) and then took back off toward Jeff. I lost it!! I ran out outside screaming and just broke down into full on sobs. It took Savannah several minutes and a lot of coaxing in the rain to even get me back in the house. I don't know what happened, but I snapped.

Izzy never moved....

Jeff set more traps...

and I haven't stepped foot back in that room. After several hours, no mouse. We decided that maybe if we left, he would fall for the ole trap, so guess where we went....TO BUY MORE TRAPS! We were gone for about three hours and when we got home, NOTHING. Where is he? All I know is that he isn't dead! SO, I'm in the bed! Obviously, none of my animals are interested in finding that little critter so I'm gonna have to rely on the trap! Until then, SavyG and I are camping out in my bed.

I tried my hand at a little nail art tonight for her...

Black & Blue. I think she is channeling her inner Goth. I have a little myself. I LOVE dark nails.

That's all I've got for today. My "episode" has left me exhausted tonight and Savannah wants me to teach her to French Braid. How do you teach someone on their own head? Nobody else in this house has hair long enough to braid, much less French Braid. What's sad is that I could probably braid the hair on my legs before I could on my head. There used to be a day in my life I couldn't handle going more than one day without shaving my legs. Humm, I wonder what happened to those days?

Peace,
Kacy

P.S. Does anyone see a trend in my husbands attire? Jeff, besides the fact that you have a 10 year old daughter running around who thinks nothing of telling you to put your nuts away, you also have a wife who snaps pictures of you and puts them on the Internet. I bought you some "sleep" shorts...please put them on.

P.S.S. I got some yummy fabric samples today for some curtains for that breakfast room. Survey tomorrow....I like both of them. I need a consensus.

In My Own Skin

Insane, Overwhelmed, Tired, Scared, Excited, Confused, Conflicted, Hopeful, Lazy, Energized.....There are a few words off the top of my head that explain me and my nutty life lately. I have been "trying" to blog for the last month or more. Well, I say I have. Obviously, we do the things we "want" to do. I love my blog and I love what it gives me in the way of a journal and I love the connections I feel with other people in my "blog community". It's crazy, but I talk about you folks with my family and "real" friends. (Don't act like you are offended by that, you know what I mean.)

Sometimes, (HA) I put too much pressure on myself. I think if I don't have pictures to document my story, my story isn't worth posting. Then I think I can't take pictures because my house is dirty. Then I realize the dirt doesn't matter because I don't even have a "complete" house right now. Then, WOW, the flood of so many things I've been trying to mentally avoid. Well, self, I'm ready to start blogging again so it's time to "come out".

I have been avoiding some family anger. In a nutshell, for those of you that don't live inside my head that I don't refer to as "self", Jeff and I entered into a verbal and written contract and trust agreement with Jeff's great Aunt J several years ago. Per the terms of that agreement, Jeff and I sold our home and Aunt J sold her home and we all moved into the "Big Ass House". Part of the agreement was to care for Aunt J as she aged and ensure that she would not be "put away in a home" as she had no other living relatives. LONG story short, she was diagnosed with dementia and one of her alter egos decided she would rather live in hell than with us. After $$thousands$$ of dollars fighting her and realizing that the laws to protect the elderly were not to be messed with (even if you weren't wrong) we had no choice but to stop fighting. The contracts and agreements and trusts and POA's we spent so much money on before merging our lives were worth nothing! I think Jeff wrote a letter to Dateline about this situation. If you've ever had a family member with dementia, you probably understand. If you haven't, just be careful in trying to do the right thing and help family members. Just Sayin.....

Fast forward to where we are today. We "sold" our ownership in the Big Ass House back to the trust and started over.....FOR REAL STARTED OVER. The life in the BAH represented so many things that we no longer wanted to be a part of. I guess, in a way, we are lucky to have this chance with a little hind sight to totally re-route our lives. MOST days I feel that way. Other days, I give in to the feeling that has been a HUGE pain in my Fat Ass and I hate ALL of it. I'm praying hard for the strength to stay positive, but come on folks.....I'm human. There are many more Pros to the whole situation than Cons, but I will say it has been a MAJOR disruption to the flow of our lives and worst of all....it uprooted my children. We are all adjusting very well. I DO NOT MISS THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD OR HOUSE FOR THAT MATTER, and I don't think Jeff does either. BUT, the kids do. They are getting used to it around here, but we went from being Grand Central Station to hearing nothing but frogs and crickets. That's a big change for a couple of city kids.

So, while I LOVE my house and enjoy ripping rooms out and putting new ones in their place, I constantly have my kiddos mental state on my mind and then just the general tiredness that comes from living ON the job site. I let that get to me the last couple of weeks, and went into shutdown mode. UMMM, I don't have time for that.....so here is a little photo run down of where we are NOW..

I took the day off of work on Friday to concentrate on my sanity and try to make some sense of the mess we call our house these days. Here is what I started with.....

I did some serious workage and the day ended on a little better note with alot more room and many more pictures and paintings hung on the walls.

And look, I did all of this with the help of these two. NOT. I wonder why we need three laptops in this house AND the desktop I put on its own table the other day. Jeff is your local computer debugger. Only one of those is actually ours. The other two belong to some friends of ours who got a virus for hijacking Internet: )

Our bedroom is still in dire need of attention. We went to buy bedding Friday night, but came home empty handed. I just can't find any I LOVE. I think I'm going to have to make something. I've found some really yummy fabrics lately. Oh, and Jeff is not fond of the older family portraits that have taken up new homes on the walls of our bedrooms. I admit, I wasn't sure about it myself at first, but I honestly have no where else to put them. I called my local decorator friend and was told that next to the hallway, this is the next appropriate place to put them. Since the hallway is FULL and I get to see them more often this way, I rolled with it. If you side with Jeff on this one, let me know. He rarely takes a stand when it comes to decorating so I try to take his feelings into account, but I'm a little lost on this one.

So remembering my yummy fabrics yesterday, lead me to this.....

I found me a little space and claimed it. I had missed sewing and at the end of the day, I was pretty proud of my work.

And all of that brings me to today's goings ons. The kids are on Fall Break today and Tuesday. The plan was to get anything unnecessary cabinet and Sheetrock wise OUT. Our new cabinets have been ordered and are being built as we speak. They will be here next week. In the meantime, my BFF Jenifer called and needed a ride to her shoulder surgery this morning. Her DH was in bed with the flu. What good is a BFF if you can't come to the rescue? So when I left this morning at the total crack of dawn, here is what we had......
When I got home from the hospital....this is what I had.....
At several points along the way in this "project" I was very explicit with my instructions NOT to remove my kitchen sink until the LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT. For just a moment, try to imagine your life withOUT your kitchen sink, CUZ do you see mine? Look close.....

Oh look, there is my sink, IN THE FREAKING DITCH. Hello, Jeff, where have you been? Yes I realize it ALL needed to come out, but couldn't we have waited until the last minute on the sink?

HAHAHAHAHAHA That's all I can do.

Wanna come over for dinner?

Is it safe to cook on top of the Guinea Pig? HUMMM?

Thanks for letting me vent. Thanks for loving my projects.

Peace,

Kacy

Oh, and by the way, totally into the Rachel Zoe Project, Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance!!