In the gray area

One of the blogs I read religiously chronicled, among many enlightening and hilarious parenting adventures, her struggle to adopt a child, after birthing three. She was convinced there was another baby out there for her to love, and she was denied by every agency and every country at every turn. But then her sister got pregnant with her first child, and she realized that her nephew was the baby she felt a calling to have and love. Plus, it was not as expensive for her.

 

This week, I'm leaning toward renting when this mothereffing house sells. In a big complex, which makes me uneasy about sending the boys outside to play when I just cannot take the noise anymore they need fresh air. We do not have high school plans for Jake yet, and the LAST thing I want to do is buy now and need to get out in less than two years. So renting seems safest, and if I rent on the SJS bus route and save myself $250 a month from after care, fiscally prudent.

Sweet dreams are made of this

Y'all. I think I have a project. It's not my house, because I'm still on the market. And it's not my future house, because I have no idea where I am going. But there is a house that belongs to someone who likes and trusts me and my visions and is in the process of buying a fixer-upper.

 

And I have more vision that I have space in which to utilize it. So here are some sneak peaks and what inspires me for the future of each space. Not all of these have been floated by the potential homeowners yet, but there are limitless possibilities for every bit of this house. 

 

I am trying to make a convincing argument for why the front door should stay. Even without those atrocities of window treatments, the house would lose very little privacy. The front door opens into a foyer that looks straight into the backyard, and the house is far enough from the road that no passersby or neighbors would be able to see your naughty bits if you were going to get clothes out of the dryer, unless you stood in the door and shook 'em.

Pictures of You

Tradition dictates that my kids have to take a picture in front of my blue door on the first day of school every year. So, happy 2013-14!

Seventh grade means you need a hairSTYLE and not a hairCUT. Fifth grade means you make a deal to download an app on your Nabi if you let your hairgirl pick your haircut.

The Story

Here it is. In the deepest, darkest, most fearsome places of my imagination, I could not imagine I would be here, standing upright, on this day. Three-hundred-sixty-five days ago, my husband packed a bag and left our home, never to return as a husband. The observance of that this weekend was compounded by the big fight that usually erupts between two people who have a lot to fight about because the stars aligned and marked the calendar for that day to be a bad day until the end of time. As in, yesterday morning at 9 AM I was standing in front of my fridge reading the label on my bottle of rosè, comparing it to the contents on a bottle of Juicy Juice, trying to decide if rosè is acceptable as juice and therefore an appropriate drink for that particular hour. Don't worry. It isn't.

What's Your Fantasy?

The one year anniversary of The Day My Life Fell Apart is in a few days, and I have a lot to say to you about that next week.

 

So I have this house I'm (still) trying to sell, and I moved a whole bunch of stuff to storage, which made the house more open. I sit in the house and I see so much potential now that there is so much liberty in the space. The kitchen could do with darker cabinets on the bottom, subway tile on the backsplash, open shelving above the buffet. I have two pieces in my living room I want to refinish and my sideboard in the dining room has been in need of paint for five years. The master bedroom curtains are heavy and oppressive for a space that already has no natural lighting. The master closet is shameful. The backyard fence needs work. The patio needs pavers.

 

Potential. We're just full of potential over here.

Wild World

When I started this blog, it was about being a newlywed and a newly-stepmommed. Then there was deployment, and it became many musings and tribulations on that. A home was bought, and I figured out by trial and error all the home-related stuff I was passionate and moderately talented at. Now I am getting unmarried, and I write a lot about unmarriage, single parenthood, grief and surviving this sh*tstorm with heart and a laugh. Eventually, I'll be selling my house and moving somewhere, so I'll be back on the discussion of dwellings, where my heart sings, one day. Someday I'll date. But let's keep going with unmarriage for now. Because, really, this blog is life evolution.

We are the children

I’m one of those mothers who walks around fairly confident that my kids are smarter than yours. Not that my kids make better grades than yours, or read faster than yours, or perform better than yours on standardized tests. I’m not competitive about this. I do not need to wave report cards and test papers around bragging about the academic brilliance of my kids. Because I’m also realistic about the fact that one of them is lazy, like moi. Sure, he could make straight A’s if he wanted to, but he could also watch more TV if he just settled for above average B grades, so he’ll just go with that option. But thanks so much for your input, because he really loves input. The other one has a brain that is difficult to control, and it does not always mind when someone says he needs to learn, retain, or complete information. There’s only so much you can do, with what you have, where you are.