Category: Life

Life-condensed

Weekend Recap

Karen

(I realize these types of posts are pretty boring. But I like to record the boring things … it gives me a sense of what our lives were like at the time).

Friday

Kevin came home about 1:00. He had gone to lunch with his soon-to-be ex-boss. In fact, he did this last Friday and will probably be doing that this Friday and next Friday, too. I find myself feeling a bit annoyed that he comes home early, which is stupid because I love having him home with me. I think it’s the break in my routine that annoys me.

I need to get used to this, though. The lease on his office runs out March 31st, which means, beginning April 1st, he’ll be home with me full time.

I’m still getting used to the idea.

He went with me to pick the boys up from school. They were happy, but not surprised to see him. Our lives are changing and though we’re okay with these changes, we’re still coping with these changes. I think the boys will really be watching Kevin closely throughout his job transition. He has talked so much to the boys about how they need to grow up and get good jobs so they can support their families that I think this makes them specially sensitive to the change.

Kevin went grocery shopping with me. Actually, he goes with me most times. We do even the most mundane tasks together. (In fact, my brother-in-law needed his help in loading up a heavy garden tool he had rented over the weekend and Kevin tried to talk me into riding along. Even though I knew it would only take him 10 minutes to help and then they would be done [they were] – I refused. I think he was a little hurt by that because as he said, “But we do everything together.” And he’s right).

We always spend more money whenever Kevin goes with me. Not so much on groceries, but other household items that I either put off buying or didn’t even know we needed.

We make a good team.

We watched Zodiac together that night. It’s a movie based on a real serial killer based in California in the early 70’s. He remembers hearing about the case – he spent the first seven years of his life in San Diego. In fact, his family arrived in Missouri the day of the second killings. Creepy.

Saturday

Kevin made arrangements for the Boys / Girls Club Thrift Store to come pick up our old refrigerator and microwave. We had thought we might want to keep our old fridge, but it was taking up too much space and we have really never bought food in large quantities so we didn’t see a reason to keep it. Kevin cleaned them up for the guy. The fridge wasn’t that bad, I had just cleaned it, but the freezer was a mess. Which is really weird, it’s a freezer, food is frozen. We’re thinking it must have been crumbs from the Eggo packages.

Kevin said there was an embarrassing moment when the fridge was being loaded (the guy put the fridge on it’s side in order to put it in his trailer [I thought you weren’t supposed to do that??], there was a HUGE ball of dust stuck to the bottom of the fridge. But then again, who cleans the underside of their fridge?)

We bought some grout sealant. It comes in a spray bottle and it’s as easy as spraying it on the grout. We hesitated in doing this – the last time we put sealant on our grout, it left a sticky, plastic-like residue and made portions of the tile look shiny. We didn’t like it. But our tile guy actually recommended this one to us and we’ve been happy with the results so far. It’s more like scotch guard. We’ll likely put another coat on it next weekend and THEN I can finally mop the floor.

Sunday

I taught Dude how to do laundry. And he did laundry all day. Even though he was uber annoyed at having to stop what he was doing to put another load in, it was good for him. Every time we treat him like an adult, he acts like an adult.

Go figure.

The problem is ME. Treating him like an adult. I baby these kids WAY too much and it’s starting to come back and bite me in the butt. I’m on a mission to teach both boys boring, mundane household chores AND we’re all going to take turns doing these chores every weekend.

Cleaning bathrooms should be fun. And I’m betting after they learn, they aren’t as sloppy when they go pee.

Kevin cleaned his office out. He has to make room for three more file cabinets from work that he will store for three years. That’s the time frame that they are legally liable for any residual paperwork. He spent a lot of time this entire weekend reorganizing the garage and his office and both look really nice now. I’m so blessed to be married to a man who likes to organize. There’s no telling what sort of shape my house would be in otherwise.

A light bulb burned out over our bar – it’s one of those fancy-smancy Halogen lights – so we headed up to Home Depot to buy one. While there, we finally found a ceiling fan for our kitchen. It was one that we could both agree on and it wasn’t too big for our space. Our kitchen is more long than wide.

I was so excited to see it mounted that I talked Kevin into putting it in.

Only, he ran into problems, naturally. The box wasn’t big enough and this fan? Is HEAVY. Like there is no way we have enough support heavy. So, he had to crawl into the attic to add a brace to the joint (look at me, acting like I know what the hell I’m talking about) and in doing so, a portion of our ceiling crumbled away. Apparently, our roof leaked at one time and rotted that portion of the ceiling out. Now he’ll have to put some mesh up there and replace the sheet rock.

Naturally. Nothing is ever simple, is it.

We made a trip up to Home Depot, but we were too late, they were closed. We went to Wal-Mart and even though they had more of the popcorn paint (because our light fixture was bigger than our ceiling fan we have a section that we have to fix up, OF COURSE), they didn’t have any light boxes.

Kevin tried to monkey-rig it (he’s so good at that) and though what he was going to do would have worked, he didn’t feel comfortable doing it that way, so we’ll have to buy a box for it today.

Hopefully, he can get that in tonight. Every time we mention putting a ceiling fan in our kitchen, we get raised eyebrows. I don’t know, is that weird?

We were too tired to cook last night, so we bought Taco Bell. All I had were the plain nachos (chips and cheese). I’m back on my eat-a-light-dinner kick.

The weather is warming up. It’s time to shed my fat rolls..

Relationships

Supporting My Husband’s Habit

Karen

I’d like to think I’m a good wife. I mean, I cook, I clean, I laugh, I joke, I … erhm, do other stuff.

And I support my husband.

Even when he goes and does something crazy like buy a set of big-honkin’ lights like these puppies:

Stage Lights

I can’t tell you how many times Kevin has apologized for buying these lights.

And I wish he wouldn’t.

Yes. They were expensive. Yes. He sold his dirt bike in order to pay for them. Yes. Our bills are caught up. Yes. We have food to eat.

We’re okay.

Besides, it was his money, his bike and this kind of thing? Makes him happy.

And if he’s happy, believe me, I’m happy.

I know what you’re thinking.

“But Karen. You’re a team. You’re partners. It’s not really his money, it’s your money, together.”

And yes, you would be correct. And Kevin certainly ran this purchase by me before he actually went ahead and went through with it. (Not like the time I came home from work only to find a HUGE canoe hanging from the garage ceiling. Oh yes, yes he did. I’ll never let you live THAT one down, honey. In fact …

Canoe

Oh look! We still have it).

But here’s the thing. Kevin works really, really hard for his money. And he takes excellent care of us. He always puts our needs first, period. So when the man really wants something, and we can afford it, I’m not going to stand in his way.

He deserves to pamper himself.

At times. Let’s not get carried away here. 😀

But seriously. He never says a word when I get a package from Amazon and add yet more books to my 300 plus pile (which are now for sale in my Amazon book store, by the way).

He never says a word whenever I go out and spend $70 bucks to get my hair colored and cut. (Yes. Seventy. And that’s cheap! At least, according to some of you!)

He never says a word whenever I buy … well, come to think of it, I don’t buy a whole lot, actually. But you get my drift.

These lights? Make him happy. And he’s excited to use them the next time he plays with his band – Midnite Thunder. Music makes him happy. It relaxes him. It energizes him. It charges up his batteries because let’s face it, accounting is BORING. (Well, I’m assuming. It sounds boring. It looks boring. Actually, it looks like a foreign language to me, but we all know I’m an idiot so …)

I have supported him through numerous guitars. And various guitar accessories. I have physically supported him by being there when he plays and by being one of his groupies.

(Did I tell you guys about the time I coaxed him out on the dance floor with me, while he was playing?? His guitar was hooked up wirelessly and I couldn’t believe he actually got out on the dance floor and boogied down with me while playing. That was so fun).

I have even supported him through this crazy, expensive light fetish thing that he has going on right now. (Seriously. Did you COUNT how many lights there were? Eight. And they’re huge. As in blinding huge. And this is in addition to the two sets of lights he recently bought.

Fancy Stage Lights

The man clearly has a fetish).

All this to say, I honestly don’t mind and though I love to tease him, the man deserves to buy his lights if he wants to.

Of course now, he owes me, but I won’t bring that up now. *grin*

Hi.

My name is Karen.

And I’m married to a musician.

Who likes lights.

And I’m okay with that.

Because I love him.

And I support him.

(As long as it doesn’t get too crazy. Like wanting a Corvette or … wait. What? You want a Corvette when you get another job?

Welllllll, I suppose that’s better than wanting trade me in for a younger woman. Don’t say it. Don’t even say it).

Life

Stream of Consciousness

Karen

via flickr

(This picture doesn’t have to do with anything, I just thought it was cool. I put in “double exposure” in Flickr and this is one of the pics that came up. I like this because I consider these stream of consciousness posts like a blurring of real-life activities – none of them really deserve a whole post, but they’re worth mentioning, at least to me. 🙂 )

~*~*~*~*~

Kevin and I went to lunch yesterday (Whole Hog Cafe – YUM!!) and on the way back to his office (which he will no longer be going to soon – their lease is up at the end of March), we stopped by Starbucks so he could get a Mocha and I could get a Frappuccino (this was the first time we had been to Starbucks in months, by the way).

We were listening to Rush Limbaugh while we waited. I take Rush with a grain of salt, he’s part entertaining and part informative, which is really what any public personality is all about, if you think about it (*cough Jon Stewart cough*): move past the theatrics and get to the kernel of the message.

I pulled up to the window and gave the gal my card to pay for our order. She was very pleasant. High, sweet voice, welcoming smile.

Her attitude abruptly changed when she handed my card back. Hard, firm voice, no smile.

I can only assume she heard we were listening to Rush and she didn’t approve.

We must have appeared like your stereotypical yuppie, coffee drinker, independent thinking, liberty-loving, conservatives to her – how terrible.

Kevin and I laughed as we pulled away from the window.

(Of course I’m only assuming her abrupt change in attitude was caused by us listening to a conservative talk-show host, but maybe not. Maybe she was cranky because she had an eyelash stuck in her eye, or her bra strap kept slipping down, or she just realized how thirsty she was when she saw my delicious frappuccino – I mean, there are dozens of explanations. But I choose to believe this one, because it amuses me.

And I’m mean).

~*~*~*~*~

Dude is doing well. His grades are really good this semester and he’s been working hard – without me hounding him. Yay! Maybe, just maybe, he’s finally starting to grow up.

We are going to sit down after school today and register for the ACT test. The next test date is April 10th and the deadline to register for that test is tomorrow. His counselor suggests (to all the kids, not just him), to take the test for the first time when he’s a junior and then take it again when he’s a senior to try and get a better score. I personally think this is an excellent suggestion – I wish I had done something similar when I was in high school. I didn’t take the ACT test until I was well into my 20’s and by then … well, let’s just say I didn’t do very well (and there is no way in hell I’m telling you guys my score – it’s downright embarrassing!)

I bought Dude an ACT book that focuses on science and math (his two weak subjects, though I’ll be honest, the kid is better at math than I am). And though I will encourage him to look at it, I’m not going to hound him. He needs to learn to take his own initiative. I figure if he blows it off, he’ll pay for his laziness the day of the test, not to mention his test score.

Though it’s ultimately Dude’s decision to go to college, and we’ll “push” him to give it a shot, at least the first year, I think it’s part of our responsibility, as his parents, to make sure he has the tools necessary to take that option, if he so chooses at a later date. That includes making sure he takes the ACT before he graduates.

~*~*~*~*~

Jazz leaves for Pittsburgh Kansas tomorrow. His jazz band is performing at the festival there. He’s super excited about it. He went last year and really enjoyed himself. Not only do the kids perform, they get critiqued and then get to watch a big-time jazz band perform afterward.

Jazz’s band performed last weekend at Missouri State University and I only now found out that they won third place! Not bad! When I asked him what he liked more – marching band or jazz band, he said jazz band immediately.

He just digs the stuff.

He’ll miss school, which means he’ll have homework this weekend, but that’s the “price” you pay when you’re involved in extracurricular activities. He won’t get home until 11:30 tomorrow night, which means I’ll be rolling out of bed to go get him.

But I don’t mind. Running around town in the dead of night in just sweats and no makeup is all part of the “mom” job. 🙂

We haven’t had time to convert the video of Jazz’s performance from last weekend yet, but we’ll try and get that done this weekend so you guys can see it.

~*~*~*~*~

The lease on Kevin’s office is up this month. This means beginning April 1st, Kevin will be at home, with me, full time. Lord help me. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to having him home, I enjoy his company, but I can tell you right now, he’s going to exhaust me.

He’s like the Energizer Bunny during the day and I can’t keep up with him, quite frankly. His pace is GOGOGOGOGOGO … my pace is GO. Stop. Check email. Check Twitter. GO. Stop. Clean house. GO. Check snail mail. Run errands. GO. Take nap …

See my point?

I’m over the “OMG WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO” stage of this whole job liquidation delimma. We are in pretty good shape, financially, and I thank God for that. If we’re frugal (and really, when are we not), we can make our dollars stretch for quite a while. And Kevin can always apply for unemployment, if needed (we’re trying to avoid that route, if at all possible). But for now, he plans on taking about four months off before seriously looking for another job.

Unless something comes along in the interim.

We’ve both decided that unless something comes along, we’re not going to actively seek jobs until after our vacation in July. It’s one of Kevin’s biggest pet peeves to hire someone only for them to say, “OH! I need to take a week off next month for so-and-so reason.” He doesn’t want us to do that to our potential employer.

But again, we’re keeping our options open – we’ll see how it pans out.

In the meantime, I’ve acquired two more clients and will actively begin the process of obtaining more and my Amazon book store is doing surprisingly well (THANKS TO YOU GUYS!) and I will be actively building my book inventory for that, as well.

So, we’ll be okay. It’ll just be weird having him home. But if anyone deserves this break, he does. I’ve never known anyone work as hard as he does.

He’s exhausting to watch and be around, but the man gets stuff done.

~*~*~*~*~

I bought a new faucet for our new sink yesterday. It’s one of those faucets where you pull down on it for the sprayer.

The counter top guys FINALLY called and made an appointment to come out and measure for our template – they will be here Monday morning. Kevin will be here so we can both go over what we want. We will need to make sure let the counter top guys know that one end of will be off about one inch due to our crooked room.

After they measure, it’s supposed to take one to two weeks for it to come in.

I can’t wait to get this thing in. It’s a pain in the butt to hike half a mile to the bathroom for every little sink need. Not to mention, it’s a bit gross washing dishes in the bathroom.

~*~*~*~*~

Jazz’s birthday is coming up. He’ll be 15 on the 25th of this month.

My baby – 15.

Wow.

His birthday falls on spring break and we were thinking about going camping, but I don’t think any of us are up to the challenge, especially since we’ve felt like we’ve been camping in our own house for the past three weeks and the thought of MORE camping and MORE inconvenience just doesn’t sound like fun right now.

Jazz will probably have some buddies come over and we’ll call it a day.

~*~*~*~*~

Dude still doesn’t have his driver’s license. His permit expires on Jazz’s birthday.

I don’t know. I’m not in a hurry for him to get his license. That’s one more thing I’ll have to stress about – Dude, out on the roads with these wacko drivers.

Dude could care less about driving because as he puts it, “Where am I going to go?”

But Kevin is getting antsy for him to do the deed. I think he’s worried it’s a bit “weird” that he’s not driving yet. And though I tend to agree with him, I’m not SO worried about it that I’m pushing it. We still go out and drive now and again, just so he doesn’t get rusty, but honestly? We haven’t had a lot of time to GO and get it done. Dude has been really busy with school work and with this remodeling project and the fact that he doesn’t get out of school until 3:00 and I think they stop taking drivers at 4:00, we just haven’t had time.

But we’re making it a goal to get it done before his permit expires so … we’ll see what happens. If it doesn’t happen, then he’ll just renew (or retake the test – however that works out) and we’ll move on.

The kid is only 17. It’s not like he’s 30, right?

~*~*~*~*~

I am pretty sure I screwed myself on a project. I said yes to something that is going to end up being A LOT more work than the money I’m charging is worth. I’m hoping, by doing this, it will result in a full-fledged paying gig, but there’s no guarantee.

Kevin is annoyed with me. He doesn’t understand my willingness to volunteer, or do something for cheap.

He’s an accountant. It’s all about the bottom line with him.

Volunteering, or working for cheap, doesn’t have anything to do with the bottom line.

Believe it or not, I have a hard time saying no to people. (Unless it’s my sons, and then I have a hard time saying “yes.” Go figure).

Life

I Need a Place to Spice Things Up

Karen

I have a question for you, readers …

What in the WORLD do you do with your spices? How do you organize them?!

We just threw them haphazardly into our old cabinets before but now that we’re starting over, we’re starting with a clean slate, (or cabinets, if you want to split hairs), and I really want to try and find a place for everything; I want organization.

Only, I am NOT the most organized person, trust me. Kevin organizes me and though he’s currently working on the problem, this is the best we could come up with for our spice problem.

We went to Target last night and bought this spice rack. Which is great, and it’s nice, and it looks organized, but it only holds 16 spices.

Now please turn your attention to the plastic containers indicated in the photo – we have spices coming out our ying-yang!!

This seriously drives me nuts.

I’m trying to get away from just throwing our extras into the cabinet (which sort of negates the whole pretty spice rack thing, doesn’t it), but I don’t really see a way around it. The spices in the cabinet are the ones we use all the time. The spices in the containers are either extra spices or spices we don’t use as often.

I would never, in a million years lose sleep over this problem, but this really bugs me.

And then … AND THEN …

We have the medicine problem. We don’t have a medicine cabinet, we’ve always just stuck our medicine up in our kitchen cabinets. And we have room for them now, but again, how do I organize these suckers?? I have a whole duffel bag full of drugs (I’d take a picture but honestly, you get the idea). How in the world am I going to put them back into the cabinet in an organized fashion?

I’m having a serious brain fart here.

Kevin came home last night to find that I had NOT put the kitchen back together again like I said I was going to (he was very annoyed with me). And if you want the God’s honest truth – I was so stumped on what to do with the spices and the drugs, I simply couldn’t put anything else into the cabinets until I had figured it out.

I’m so pathetic!!

Anyway, nearly everything else is in place, I still need to store my “good” dishes, but other than that, we’ve moved back in. I have a whole box full of old/warped dishes that I was going to try and give to the Salvation Army (we’ve had some of these dishes since the 70’s!! Well, not “we”, but they were Kevin’s) and we’re on a mission to buy new pots and pans but WOW, those suckers are expensive. AND, to top it off, our stove top? Super sensitive to scratches.

Aargh!

So, we went to Target, Wal-Mart, JCPenney Home Store and Bed, Bath and Beyond looking for a skillet and a saucepan that had a smooth bottom so they wouldn’t scratch our new stove top. We found it in hard-anodized nonstick cookware. At least, we hope it won’t scratch – I’ll be cooking with it for the first time tonight.

We’ll just have to concentrate on lifting the pans straight up as opposed to scraping them along the burner when taking them off.

Oh yes. We’re being quite anal but you know, this is nice stuff, stuff that needs to last us, well, a lifetime, so we’re hell-bent on making sure it STAYS nice, you know?

In the meantime, I still have this stupid spice and medicine problem.

This domestic stuff is not as easy as it looks. lol

Life-condensed

Jazz it Up

Karen

(Update from last post: The Internet came back on when I got home from the library – naturally. And it was indeed our service provider. But I can’t complain, because they rarely have problems and it was only down for a few hours so …. life goes on).

I had to get up at 6:00 this morning.

On a Saturday.

While all of my guys got to sleep in.

But I wasn’t bitter because it was for a good cause. Jazz had his first jazz performance of the year today.

Kevin couldn’t go with me, he had to stay at the house to let the cabinet guy in, so it was just me and Jazz. (Dude didn’t go because HELLO, it’s Saturday – nothing short of an earthquake could get that boy out of bed before 10:00 on the weekend).

Jazz Festival - MSU - 2-27-10

It went well. I was a bit annoyed that their conductor had the kids begin before they were even settled, but when you’re on a timetable, you have to make do.

They played three songs. The first one sounded a bit sluggish (probably due to the fact that they were rushed), the second song sounded better and the third song made up for the first. I thought they sounded great and as usual, I was bursting with pride.

I asked Jazz how he thought he did after the performance and he had to be extra hard on himself, of course. He always is after a performance. He was pretty happy with nearly everything, except for the last song when the trumpets came in late (like I would know, but this is what he said). He was also upset because his belt buckle put a few more scratches in his saxophone bell, but you know, we didn’t buy him that black Cannonball so he could look at it, we bought it for him to enjoy and that’s what I told him. This is a magical time period for him and I want him to enjoy every minute of it.

I took a video, of course. I’ll post that whenever I get it online.

He’s got a big festival in Pittsburgh Kansas next weekend. We won’t be going to that but he’s really looking forward to it. He went with his 8th grade class last year and said it was a blast. He really loves jazz and in fact told me today that out of all the band activities that he’s involved with, jazz is his absolute favorite.

It really warms my heart that he has a passion for music and I thoroughly enjoy listening to him play. I hope he continues to pursue music after high school.

Life

It’s Been One of Those Mornings

Karen

And when it rains, it pours.

Good grief, this morning has been hectic.

I sign on, go through my morning routine, and then the hounds of hell are released. I can’t get back on the Internet.

Swell. I have clients waiting on me.

So, in between making lunches for the boys, I’m troubleshooting our connection.

Nothing.

I unplug everything, finish making lunches, plug everything back in … nothing.

I plea with Kevin to please FIX IT (because he’s a super whiz and is the best problem solver, EVER), and then leave to take the kids to school.

As I’m walking out of the door, I yell over my shoulder, “If you can’t fix it, don’t stress. I’ll just go to my backup plan!”

My backup plan being the library Internet connection.

I get back from dropping the kids off, still no Internet.

I so don’t have time for this because I’ve got guys coming over to fix my kitchen and I still haven’t taken a shower.

So, I whip through my shower (in record time, I might add) and start making backups of files so I can transfer them to my laptop; I will need to use the Internet connection at the library to upload some client files.

*insert sound of needle ripping across a record here*

But wait. I don’t have Dreamweaver (my website software) loaded onto my laptop.

So, in between putting my war paint on (i.e. makeup), I load Dreamweaver on my laptop.

With each stroke of the mascara wand, I’m clicking buttons and installing files because I NEED to get these files uploaded before my clients get cranky.

I’m expecting the cabinet guy to show up and our new appliances are supposed to be delivered between 8:00 a.m. and noon. I figured, I have time to run up to the library (about two miles from my house), upload my files and race back home before the guys call.

I have a plan, everything is cool.

*takes a deep breath*

I have just finished blow drying my hair when the phone rings, only it’s not who I think it is and glancing at the clock, it’s 8:45 a.m. There is no way I’m going to make it to the library and back before the cabinet guy is scheduled to come (and he’s always on time). So, I’ll just run up to the library after he gets here.

The phone rings again.

It’s the appliance guys, they’re on their way.

The phone rings two minutes later, it’s the cabinet guy, he’s also on his way.

Swell.

I pack up my laptop and am zipping up the backpack when the appliance guys pull up. They’re unloading our goodies when the cabinet guy pulls up.

I’m checking to make sure everything is delivered (four pieces) and signing my life away when they ask me what sort of cord we’ll need for our range.

*crickets*

As usual, I’m clueless and after the guys ask me how old our house is (40 years old), they give me a cord the approximate thickness of a Boa Constrictor and after “have a nice day!” they take off.

(They were actually very nice).

Okay. They’re gone and I only have the cabinet guy to deal with.

(Who’s also very nice).

He grins at me. I grin back and then without a word, we go our separate ways.

I make sure our valuables are hidden (what valuables – I’m totally exaggerating here), tell the cabinet guy I have an errand to run, and here I am, at the library, furiously typing out this entry because I have no idea when our home Internet connection will return.

(Kevin called and said his boss, who also uses the same service that we do, was also having problems, so now I’m thinking it’s not us, but our service. So, I thought I would call our service to see what the heck is going on but since I didn’t have the number, Kevin gave it to me. Only, it was the wrong number, it was the number of our insurance company – that doesn’t help me! So I still need to call them when I get back home).

*takes another deep breath*

I get to the library and am unpacking my laptop when I realize, I forgot to pack the stupid power cord. So, I hurriedly uploaded the files I needed to upload (no grumpy emails – YAY!) and now, I’m 100% focused on writing this out and publishing before my pitiful battery, which was never that great to begin with, conks out on me and you’re left reading half a sente