March 9 - National Panic Day?

Hi again.  It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  I hope you haven’t all moved on to someone funnier, smarter and who posts much more than I have been lately. But if you have, I totally understand. :) 

Until lately, I’d been completely uninspired to do any art work.  Back in November we learned that due to our short sale in 2010 we wouldn’t qualify to buy a new home for at least another year.  It didn’t matter that we had enough saved to pay 20% down.  It was depressing.

I hated renting….especially renting from someone who was more than a little anal about his lawn…of all things. We lived in that house for over a year and never fully moved in, if you know what I mean.  We never wanted to make the rental a home and get complacent about living there. So it was depressing to find out that we would have to stay for yet another year.  

But My Guy and I decided to get creative.  Instead of going for a conventional mortgage we decided to look for a home whose seller was willing to finance the purchase. I’d done it before so I had no qualms about it.  But we had a lot of “Wants” and “Must haves” so we were sure it was going to take a while.  We got lucky, after few short weeks of looking we found one and  WE MOVED!!   Packing, moving, cleaning, unpacking, rearranging etc… it all takes a while. 

Among the wants and must haves was a studio/office for me. This place has a detached  studio space that is 18’ X 15’ ---how cool is that? Here are some pictures of the  space just before I moved in. 

This is my art side:  Love those shelves!  I plan a painting area, a paper crafting/collage area and a sewing area. I have lots of fabric that’s still in storage that I want to pull out and play with. I also have glass and plates to mosaic with and I want to paint furniture..see there is no end to those “wants.”

This is my office side….there is room for a desk, file cabinets and printer on this side.

And it has two huge windows on the north and west side.

I’m excited about the possibilities.  To date I have moved in, the shelves are filled, but it’s not exactly right yet. It’s a work in progress. 

Speaking of work, my first journal page in weeks:

Thanks for stopping by, Come back again soon. I hope not to make a stranger of myself for too much longer.

I’ve been in a pissy mood

 

Yeah, I’ve been in a very pissy mood lately. Family issues started it and my job isn’t making it any better.  My day job, as you may know from prior posts, is in tech support and for the last two weeks I have been dealing with a, much more than usual, number of people who just don’t read for comprehension. Or don’t listen.  Why, why do you call someone for help and then refuse to listen to what they say?  You are wasting my time and yours. So stop it!! 

It really doesn’t bother me when someone doesn’t know how to use the computer, in my industry, I kind of expect it.  What makes me pissy is when I have to repeat myself 3 times to get them to hear me (and no they are not physically deaf)  or if they think they know what they are doing so they jump ahead and we have to start all over again.  I don’t know how many times I have said “Do this and when this happens, let me know but don’t click on anything”…..and they click anyway. I wish I could say ‘if you knew what you were doing you wouldn’t have to call me.  So stop it!! ‘

Last week I emailed a co-worker and told her “if Jonesy (name made up to protect the not so innocent) calls back, tell her I died and went to (insert program name here) hell.” Sure enough the “Jonesy” emailed me saying she didn’t understand the instructions. Yeah, what a surprise!  These are the same instructions I’ve been sending out for over a 2 years to other people who did understand them just fine.  “I’ll send you pictures next week” I said, if I haven’t blown my head off by then.

This is a result of my pissiness:

 

A thing of beauty, a source of frustration

We've had an interesting weekend.  Ever since we moved into the new house we've wanted to change our kitchen faucets.  The old ones were ok enough but because of the extreme hard water, there was a lot of residue on them that was hard to remove.  So we chose this weekend to change them out.

We didn't just change the faucet, we also bought a new garbage disposal, new shut-off valves, all new drain pipes...everything under the sink was to be brand new including new tile for the cabinet floor.  We reasoned that we shouldn't do things half-assed, we should make it all brand new and pretty.  It was probably a good idea considering the hard water deposits on the faucets but My Guy is not a plumber and he hates plumbing but he also knows it shouldn't be all that hard (if you know what you are doing...ha ha)

So Saturday noon, off we went to the local Home Depot list in hand to buy the faucets and the plumbing supplies we needed.  Some $400+ later (who knew it could be so expensive) we were outta there and on our way home to get to work.  My Guy, turns the water off at the main valve, and started taking things apart only to discover that the shut-off valves we bought were the wrong ones, so back to Home Depot we go.  And while we are there, we might as well get... well, you know how it goes...$$$ cha...ching.

We get back home to find a puddle of water under the sink. What the heck???  We had turned the water off at main valve, there shouldn't be water under the sink but there it is, a big puddle of water.  We mop up and discover that the ugly cabinet flooring/tile can't be scraped up because it's wet and it takes heat to dislodge it.  Now we have to wait until morning for it to dry so it will come up without destroying the cabinet bottom.   My guy does what he can under the sink and before you know it, it's 7 PM and too dark to see under the sink.... where did the time go? 

Sunday morning we have our coffee, read the paper, do our usual Sunday morning stuff before getting started. My Guy is finally able to scrape the old tile off the cabinet floor so I can do the tiling while he finishes the plumbing. Geeze, it only 7  12" X 12" flooring tile pieces, they already have the adhesive on them and all I have to do is cut 4 tiles to fit.  Who knew 7 floor tiles would be so frustrating? To be fair, the cabinet bottom was not square and it was my first time laying this type of tile.  Once they were down, that was it.  There should have been only 5 cuts, but nooooo, I had to cut them at least twice that many times....and my guy is looking at me like, 'how long is this going to take?'  No, he didn't say it and was actually quite supportive but I felt like an idiot. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the tile and I know that every time I look at it I'm going to wince. 

Finally, the faucets are going in and they look beautiful and everything is going smoothly...too smoothly. Of course, it was the tubing that leads from the water to the fridge that started to leak. Turn the nut, leak. Turn again, leak slower but still leaking and so on.  My guy says "I can't turn it much more" and I hear the frustration in his voice. I rush over to research on the net. Thank goodness for the net. The writer says, 'use a plastic compression valve with plastic tubing'....a ha! That's it. 

So now it's all going together and it looks beautiful.  The pipes look great, the faucets look great, the disposal looks good, and even the new sink rings took great.... It couldn't be that simple could it? No, of course it couldn't. We started the dishwasher and all was going well until it started to drain and now there was more water everywhere and it was coming out the overflow vent. What the hell?   Now what??  Back to the net I go. What I learn this time is that the knock out plug had to be knocked out if you're going to drain a dishwasher through the garbage disposal and it hadn't been thus causing the overflow. More mop up to be done and then disconnect the dishwasher drain, knock out the plug and reconnect. Then try again with our fingers crossed. Whew, this time it all works.  Well, we hope..... 

 

Aren't they beautiful? I think so. I'd show you under sink but well I think My Guy and I are the only ones who'd find that interesting.  Thanks for reading.

All I Can Think of is My Eyes

 

Here is my latest journal entry, created tonight to take my mind off the Lasik surgery I'm having tomorrow afternoon. Unfortunately, it only helped a little bit. I'm not sure what possessed me to have the surgery because I am scared sh#tless to do it. However, there is no turning back now.  Actually, this was My Guys idea, he wanted me to have it for our 21st anniversary (March 28th.)  I said I would only if he had the surgery as well. Frankly, I'm used to wearing glasses, I don't love them but I don't hate them either. Heck, I've had some sort of site correction apparatus, either glasses, hard contacts or soft contacts, for over 30 years. My Guy's only been wearing glasses for less than 8 years and he absolutely hates them. It seemed only right that we did it together. 

Well, my Guy had his surgery earlier today.  I was sneaky and made him go first. I wanted to see how it all turned out, so if there were any problems I could back out. Is that bad????  He was willing to be our test subject and I let him, well, because, and I fully admit it, I am a huge chicken.

I think I was more nervous for him this morning than he was. I believe he was nervous too but he has yet to admit it because he doesn't want me to freak out. I know him, he worries about me too.  We left for the surgery center at 9:15 am and got there at 10:00. He had the actual surgery about noon, so there was a lot of waiting in between.  We came home and he slept for about 5 hours and felt much better when he woke up.  Right now, he's downstairs watching the Kings game without his glasses and he's very happy about it.

I guess I shouldn't be but I am still worried. Everybody's experience is different and just because his went well doesn't mean mine will.  I will probably be a wreak tomorrow until my appointment at 3:30 pm. Greg said they help you out with the nerves and give you a couple of Valium to take the edge off. Yay for Valium. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck.  See you later. :)

Portrait Painting practice

Here is a painting I worked on recently.  It's a fairly large painting for me.  I believe it's about 12 X 15 or so.  It's in a sketch journal where the page was gesso'd and then covered with small bits of paper and painted over with more gesso to give it some texture.  It was interesting but I'm not sure I like painting over such a rough surface.   I do like how the paper shows through her skin though.

I told My Girl I would post this yesterday but we went to the Home and Garden show in Sacramento to get some contractor names to start our bathroom remodel. There are so many to choose from that it all gets a bit overwhelming.  Plus it's hard to think of spending so much money on a remodel when the real estate market is is losing so much ground.  I feel if we ever need to sell quickly, we won't be able to recoup our purchase price much less the cost we have into it for the new roof and a new bathroom.  If we had known 2 years ago that Sacramento would have such a horrible time with foreclosures we would have looked in a different community for a new home. We're not in Sacramento but we're close enough that their problems affect our housing prices.  two years ago the cheapest housing prices were $400,000, now you can find housing for under $250,000. That's a huge drop. It's scary.

And if that is not stressful enough, My Guy wants me to have Lasik eye surgery (he's is going to do it too). Tuesday, we both went in to have the initial eye exams and to see if we could have the surgery.  We were both given the OK for the surgery but since then, my left eye has been stressed and feels terrible.  The day of the exam, I was given eye drops to dilate my eye and drops to check for glaucoma and I think the eye drops irritated my eye... but only one of them. arrrgh.  Greg thinks it's psychosomatic because I'm scared. That's entirely possible.

I do have something to look forward to. I'm going to Albuquerque to see My Girl and my mother next weekend. Yay!  I can't wait to see them.

But now, I'm feeling out of sorts. My eye hurts, the wind is howling outside, it smells like dust inside and all I want to do is curl up on the couch and read or work on Zentangles in my moleskin.  Where is my pen?

Stressful daze

I have been in a daze today because I tool some Tylonal PM to help me sleep last night. I got a large check yesterday for my mom from my fathers life insurance. Normally that would be cause for joy or relief but it isn't. It just means more stress. Mom's on medicaid and when they hear about the check, they are going to drop her like a hot potato....which means even more stress to get her back on when it's gone, which will be fairly quickly considering my father left some debt when he passed. sheesh it's all such a pain.

And if that's not enough, we have to go to NM to clean out their house to put it up for sale. And the only good thing about getting the check now is that Medicade also threatened to drop her if we put the house on the market. Not sold but on the market. So at least both will be happening at the same time. Selling that house is not going to be easy and if you'd seen the house you'd know why. We'll be there for the weekend and then drive the truck back....1100 miles....stress.


Enough....S_T_R_E_S_S..............

Now the good part of the day. I went to lunch with my daughter today. I was supposed to pick her up at work but she stayed home with a migraine. So I picked up some food and went to her apartment and we ate, talked and watched a movie. The Lake House. Not a great movie but not really bad either.

Happy Valentines day.....tomorrow.

Stressed Out

It's been a while since I've written. It's been a stressful couple of weeks. The parents are getting up in their years and the live in a different state and they have been ill. One still lives at home and the other in a nursing home. Dad who is still at home complains that he's lonely but I can't bring one without the other and I don't have room for both, nor can I care for both. Mom's too heavy and requires too much care for me to be able to handle her and she would be offended if I brought Dad here without her. Not to mention that 1> he smokes and I can't stand smoking, and 2> he and I don't get along all that well and never have. So I feel stuck and guilty.
I know you are supposed to care for your family and I do love them but they have never taken care of themselves even when I begged them to do so. So now I feel like why should I pay for their lifetime of self abuse and drinking. Neither one would be in the position they are in had they ever cared about their heath. Mom with the diabetis eats sweets and snacks even when her doctor scolds her about it. And dad enables her by bringing it to her. Oh I know he thinks he's being nice to her but he's not but you can't tell them otherwise. It's not like they don't know, they just don't care. So why should I?
Dad has to go in for a biopsy to check for prostate cancer on Thursday. So we'll see what's up there. We talked earlier today about his insurance benefits and apparently he's got cancer insurance so I feel better about that as the financial situation had been weighing heavily on my mind. My Guy and I are just getting to the point where we can save for our retirement and we can't dip into that savings for anything not to mention that The Girl still needs college money. yikes...see why I'm stressed?
OK the good news and my sanity is the INXS concert is only 8 days away. I can hardly wait.
Current Mood:
stressed
Current Music:
John Mayer Trio "Who did you think I was?"