Just Expressive

Willy downloaded an app that allows you to make a floor plan of your house using your iPad. It’s not perfect and I messed with it more yesterday which got the sq footage closer (it’s still not perfect) but somehow messed the guest bathroom up more. When Willy originally measured that he somehow added a small wall that isn’t there so when I calibrated it to actual measurements, I couldn’t remove it so it’s weird now. It’s also not a fan of all the angled openings and half walls we have so those aren’t right either.

If our desktop wasn’t only functioning in safe mode at the moment I could fix all this in photoshop but for now, here’s a general idea of our house.

Starting at the living room, that indent at the front left is the porch. It actually runs the front of the house and is mostly skinny but is larger where it dips in as you can see there.

There is a brick patio straight out the back of the living room and another between the office and kitchen.

The unmarked room that looks CRAZY beyond our master bedroom? That’s our bathroom. That front area is where our sinks are and the other space houses the tub and toilet. The opening connected to our bedroom is on an angle and doesn’t have a door. The separation between the closet area and tub/toilet area is a floor to ceiling wall but it only comes halfway into the space. What shows as a bay window on the plan is a window seat.

Our laundry space is that sliver looking area on the bottom right of the kitchen.

We have crazy high vaulted ceilings in the living room and dining room and slightly lower but still vaulted ceiling in our bedroom, regular flat ceilings everywhere else.

The linen closet is in the guest bath. The area that looks all effed up there in the guest bath is the bump out for the a/c return and filter.

Sprog’s room has another angled wall that won’t show up. It’s right when you walk in the door and it’s the back side of the closet in the office.

We have 15 windows, a sliding glass door and a set of French doors. That’s a crap ton of shitty insulated glass in a hot summer climate and a lot of light for someone who is so light sensitive the majority of the time.

Life has been hard lately.

Willy’s job has been very stressful on him and everyday it’s a blast of non-stop stress for at least 9 hours a day, most days without a lunch break, of break fixes and stop gap measures and sometimes really stupid choices that are being forced because of the hand that has been dealt. He’s a zombie most days, by the time we get him, or in a really bad mood on the other days.

We are still going through hard times with Sprog and his grades and his want of a car, but not my car-HEAVENS NO, and his want of a job but not any job and lamenting about how he doesn’t yet even have his license because I’m a mean horrible beastie that expects him to get his shit straight with school FIRST and I don’t really give two shits if he gets his license when he’s bringing home a FOURTY SIX on his report card. Even still, even when I don’t give two shits if he gets his license? I do get tired of the fighting and the whining and the flat guilt tripping manipulation attempts. I know my goal is right and I know what I am trying to accomplish is the best thing for him but damned if being the hard ass isn’t tiring as hell. Plus half the time when I’m trying to be the hard ass concerned parent the school would dream of a parent being? I have NO BACK-UP AT ALL because the teachers aren’t even putting in grades. I have no basis to check on him when I go to the grade viewer and NOTHING IS IN THERE. *sigh* or worse teachers that slap one grade in so they don’t get in trouble with their administration, I think everything is fine with my kid because the number at progress report time is good and then BAM report card time comes and he’s failed with no warning or notice. It’s bullshit and I’m tired.

I’m doctoring a dog daily that has allergies to GRASS. TO FUCKING GRASS. Her feet are a wreck. Her eyes are constantly running. She still has whatever sores on her body even though she’s getting twice weekly baths with special shampoo as prescribed by the vet and daily doses of benedryl to help her allergies. I am doctor quinn medicine woman all the time. I am waking up every night to stop her from chewing or rubbing or scratching at something.

And of course it’s high allergy season so my own head, nose, sinus situation is a wreck and now Sprog is all snotted up too…and even Willy is starting to have problems. It’s like I have given everyone around me my allergy problems through osmosis. Allegra FOR EVERYONE.

The other dog is acting like a puppy again and EATING ALL THE THINGS. The other day she threw up a scarf and a hair tie. Essentially she swallowed them WHOLE apparently and I have no idea how that didn’t kill her or how long they had even been in her stomach since she didn’t leave the evidence of her doing it. All the trash cans have to have lids again and I can’t even trust her with ponytail holders? She got busted rifling through my suitcase looking for another one last night. WHAT IS THAT?

On top of all this assorted loveliness is the fact that a friend of mine passed away Monday. I found out Sunday that she was in the hospital with end-stage liver failure and then less than 24 hours later she was just gone. We were the same age. She had recently gotten married. She was a bright, vibrant, talented, beautiful woman who is a light to anyone that was lucky enough to know her and now she’s gone…just like that. This is the fourth time I’ve lost someone my own age, three of my friends died in High School…THREE…one of the stages of my grief is always wondering if they knew how I felt about them. If I showed them enough love. If I told them enough. If I thanked them enough for whatever way/however they touched my heart.

I’ve already mentioned many traits about Keite but one of the ways she touched me the most was spending the day with us when we were on vacation and coming to Alcatraz so she could experience it with Sprog. The fact that she was so excited to meet and hang out with my boy? Straight to my heart. The fact that she added to our excursion with one of her favorite places Musee Mechanique which she thought Sprog might like (and she was right, he absolutely adored it) just went above and beyond. I will always be thankful to her for that (among other things) because loving my boy is one of the best things anyone could ever do for me.

RIP Keite, Love You.

So, our computer exploded last week. Not literally but close enough to it…because as I was in the midst of editing photos it began to crash in such a spectacular and rapid fashion that I had a little emotional break down. It happened multiple times (13 times in fact) so i finally gave up and left it for dead until my husband could deal with it himself. He’s made some changes and *knock on wood* I seem to be back this week.

Over the weekend we were in kid birthday party hell (one jumper place, one party playland place) and I’ll talk about and share photos from that later, but for now, I’d like to talk about cupcakes because what is better than cupcakes? Cupcakes for dogs.

That’s right. Saturday night we tried the recently opened Sprinkles Cupcakes in town (You should know that I remain loyal to Crave at this point, but the dog cupcakes are a slight point in their favor)

and after placing our order I spotted two remaining Doggie Cupcakes and had to bring them home for our girls

because as confirmed by the packaging, doggies love cupcakes too.

And as soon as we got home, before they had even had their dinner, we set about giving them their cupcake, with me photographing it, of course. Now the me photographing it part made the process take QUITE a long time and by the end the girls were RATHER PEEVED about the whole thing because, to be fair, they were WAY too excited in the beginning and it was all one big damn blur but once we got them calmed down

magic happened!

Of course, their magic would be once the cupcake actually made it into their faceholes.

The dogs do indeed love cupcakes too.

What they don’t love? Are the baths they received yesterday.

Not even a little bit.

Saturday was a really windy day and things have been very stressful around here so I had what I thought was a genius idea for some family time and we ran up to Costco to grab some kites, a family pack of fancy popcorn and a gift for my nephew’s b-day party this weekend (but that’s not really relevant to this post) and set off.

Sprog was less than thrilled to be included in this prospect and with no desire of his own to fly a kite, he was tasked with babysitting the dogs.

Can you FEEL the excitement? Maddie (the black dog) was actually in heaven as she loves being outside with every fiber of her being. Mayday (the white dog) HATES the outdoors with a flaming passion because THE BUGS. THE BUGS!! Plus, PEOPLE. So she wanted back in the air conditioning within about a minute.

The intrepid kite fliers didn’t fare much better I’m afraid

even though I was able to get mine up in the air several times without it divebombing to the ground (Willy’s owl kite has a death wish) the wind even though strong was more gusty than sustained and it was just too difficult to keep them in the air so after about an hour and a half of various attempts we gave up (the dogs and Sprog had been released before then) we gave up and went inside to scarf our popcorn.

I still had fun and would do it again and hope to soon since we have our own fancy kites.

I took a lot of pictures during our somewhat half-assed Easter (it was a day early, there was no formal dinner, Sprog took off to the mall with his friends and only participated in hiding the eggs this year-no bunny ears or anything) but there are always plenty of the little ones

How I got them to agree to pause before bolting out the door, I’ll never know. Also, it KILLS me that my sister buys my nephew crocs. KILLS ME.

As I said, bolting

Sprog made the hunt a bit harder for Connor than Luke

and so there were missed eggs that Luke delivered to him

as well as moments where he thought that Luke got something he didn’t

and LOTS of looking at the ground

there was also a baby present

but she didn’t hunt of course

more pics in my flickr as always.

I’m tired of talking about all the various badness that is going wrong around here. TIRED. It’s still going wrong…I’m just OVER IT.

So let’s talk about something else that is consuming me at the moment, okay?

Namely photography. I kinda mentioned it here and I have freaked out about it to various people recently as well as dumped 1001 questions on some other folks that have been kind enough to help me (Natalie, Emily and Maryann to name a few) but back in March I was actually hired by my childhood BFF for a photography job. Initially it was going to be a family portrait shoot but due to weather and scheduling it turned into me following their son/family photo-journalistic style and covering his 2nd birthday for them.

I flew home for the weekend and became fast friends with their little guy and he did an excellent job of tolerating a camera in his face nearly every time he turned around.

My friend, having known me for as long as she has, had sent me some local photographer websites complete with pricing before I went there to go ahead and cut me off before I could balk at being paid AND to stop me from charging some ridiculously low number (AS I WOULD HAVE, I HAVE KNOWN HER FOR 28 YEARS, SHE SHOULD BE FREE!) but it went above and beyond even that when they sat me down to have a very serious talk with me about what they feel about my talent and how I should be doing something with it.

You should know, I don’t do well with these sorts of discussions and this was no exception. In fact I would say that I totally shut down and may have freaked out quite a lot. Even though they are completely amazing and having that level of support and belief in you is beyond, just BEYOND, it was overwhelming (is overwhelming).

I also am not the best with money discussions so when they demanded that they pay me FAR AND ABOVE what had previously been mentioned…well, yeah with the freaking out. Of course, they had expectations with the fee and I have been steadily working on producing a photo book for them. They loved my initial draft so much that they wanted it expanded and as of last week all the edits are agreed on and everything is done and in production. I will also be providing them with a DVD of their images and am having the photobook shipped to me so I can ship it all to them as one cohesive package. (I can also verify the book looks as expected before they see it since I am working with a company I haven’t used before)

Doesn’t that all sound very business-like? Almost as if I am intending on DOING something with this idea?

And, I think we’ve decided that I am.

Willy and I have been talking about how best to set up my website and I have been researching getting my DBA vs LLC.

I have been asked for a while, by various people, if I do family shoots and kid shoots and I have already been at a couple of births and do all of the photos for our nephews/birthdays/christmas/maternity shoot for the SIL/band gigs etc.

So…I’m REALLY NERVOUS and excited and even typing this out to make the initial stages public is making me stressy but you never know where something is going to go unless you try, right?

I’m totally losing the battle with myself to remain somewhat positive and not be a total lead balloon because today I went to look for something in my car, for my husband (his Target RedCard incidentally because that’s MISSING), and was instantly attacked by FLEAS. FLEAS IN MY CAR BITING ME. And I did what any sane woman would do, I freaked out to my husband…I then walked into the garage and grabbed the flea powder, I covered the entirety of the interior of my car and then I walked inside and put that shit on twitter. Yes, yes, I did. I announced to the world that my car has been infested by fleas. Because isn’t that what you do when you are THOROUGHLY DISGUSTED by something in your life? You announce it to social media at large and see how many people are disgusted with you, disgusted by you, instantly stop following you or which spam accounts START following you?

I don’t even know where they came from! I drove my car yesterday. NO FLEAS.

Our dogs? NO FLEAS.

Our house? NO FLEAS.

Our yard? NO FLEAS.

The only thing I can possibly tie it to is that Sprog was hanging out in a park yesterday waiting for me to pick him up after school…maybe they got on him and he brought them into the car? They seem to be concentrated on the driver side and he drove home from the park. How fast do those blood sucking bastards even breed? Wait. Never mind…don’t tell me. I already can’t stop scratching and it was only a few moments and a few bites.

Welcome to my flea circus.

I wonder what trick I should teach them first?

First a brief thank you for the support I received yesterday, here and on twitter, life goes on and all that but it’s nice to have all the same.

As an antidote to the morose of yesterday, here are some snaps from how we spent our weekend.

Friday we went to the restaurant were we had our first date and not only had a tasty dinner but also some giant slices of cake.

Saturday after the shit news we went to Chuy’s and had some medically necessary margaritas

And I don’t know about y’all but when I’m stressed, I shop so I threw #wys right out the window and went summer clothes shopping while day drunk

obviously Elizabeth’s uniform was fresh on my mind as I bought a navy blue shirt and orange shorts.

I also bought some new summer skirts, shortish ones (it’s already not getting below 75 at night, this summer is going to SUCK BALLS) and I wore one to breakfast that I forced the sleepy hubs to take me to the next day

For dinner that night I made homemade garlic croutons from some homemade bread to go on some spinach salad and lo, it was good

I also played around with the camera in the backyard again while the husband worked on the fence.

I think the majority of people my age have grown up with the idea of owning our own homes as part of the “American Dream” it’s something to strive for, it’s something that is a good investment, it’s somewhat of a status symbol. It’s important, plain and simple and it’s a sign that you’ve grown up, become an adult, arrived.

I’ve never been that person. I have always been a renter. I have always wanted the option of getting the hell out of dodge, if I wanted, probably because I am so very miserable here in Houston (WHEN WILL THE ALLERGIES END) but also because I wanted the headaches to be someone else’s. I wanted the $1249 water main break to be someone else’s problem. The replacing of a toilet wax seal because the toilet leaked all over our floor. The replacing of very pricey appliances. The $3500 Pergo floors. The very expensive A/C repair. The future roof replacing. The very near future siding replacing. The ENTIRE FENCE REPLACING. The very expensive tree trimming. The reno of the guest bathroom. The reno of the kitchen. The leaking of the shower into the wall and under our floors. The destruction of baseboards and carpets. The reno of the master bathroom. I want all these things to be coming out of someone else’s pocket and weighing on someone else’s mind.

But for the past 5 or maybe 6? I don’t know now…these problems have been our problems and this house has been our house and we have very diligently paid our dues. We have made smart upgrade choices, trying not to over-upgrade our smallish starter home. We have replaced things that needed replacing. We have fixed things that needed fixing. We have lamented things that our inspection should’ve caught but didn’t. We have maintained our termite warranty. The roses have flourished in my care. The carolina jessamine is already beyond the second set of trellis I added to help support it.

And then this weekend my husband opened a piece of mail that essentially made all that work worthless. One piece of mail that cut $21,000 out from under us. ONE PIECE OF MAIL=$21,000. Just like that we were told that about 30% of the houses in Houston were considered “over market value” and lucky for us, we/our area made that cut…we are now paying on a mortgage for a house that is completely not worth what we pay for it every month. We already were paying more for it than it was worth…so this is just MORE OUT OF THAT BUCKET. And yes, people will say but the market could change. And yes, people will say a house is a long term investment…your money could come back to you. Here is the problem. I WANT OUT OF THIS PLACE. I need to move somewhere that I can BREATHE. I haven’t been able to breathe out of my nose IN YEARS. YEARS.

I have had one sinus surgery already. I take multiple medications daily. I have a headache almost every day of my damn life even with the meds. My son is about to graduate high school in ONE YEAR. I HAD A LIGHT AT THE END OF MY TUNNEL and of course it’s a damn train. Because OF COURSE IT IS.

And beyond that, I can already see this neighborhood is not what it was 10 years ago (I have lived in this subdivision for 15 years almost) there are more apartments, there are more dollar stores, there are more thrift centers and Fallas Parades and all the “high dollar” places and restaurants have moved further down and further away. My son’s school applied for and won Title 1 status from the state (which means a certain percentage of its students are living at or below poverty) I can only see my property values going further down from here. FURTHER DOWN.

This is not my beautiful house.