More Pictures

These are pictures of our family room. The printed loveseat and chair were given to us by my mother-in-law. The brown couch is slipcovered--obviously. It doesn't fit exactly as I'd hoped, but there's not much I can do about it now. We'll deal for now and fix it in the future. I just love the flooring. If you look behind the loveseat, you can see the eating are and the bar of the kitchen.

There...happy now, Kim?

Settling In

These are the little front living room. The second picture is from the stair landing so you can see the piano.

These are Chris's room. The left picture is what will become a shelving unit. He liked the idea of cement blocks--and we thought it went well with the gray walls. We'll paint the shelves black--one of these days. The right picture is his loft bed painted black. The lines on it is where we're going to cut it out with a jigsaw to make it easier for Chris to get under there.

More pics in the next post.

New Commitment

I made a commitment today. I signed up at the local gym. I signed up for the cheapest plan which means I can go three days a week. I think that's exactly what I need right now--especially once school starts. I signed up for Tue/Thu/Sat--which are the same days that James has karate. And since the gym is in the same strip with karate--that's perfect.

Not only did I make the commitment today, I actually worked out. I had a consultation with a personal trainer. He showed me the bikes and some ab workouts, then I did a full hour on the treadmill. I'm gonna be so sore tomorrow. I hope I didn't overdo it and make myself give up because it hurts. But James's karate on Saturday is an hour and a half, so I'm thinking (on day 1) that Saturday will be my hard workout and Tue/Thu will be basically a treadmill workout. We'll just see. The trainer was really good--at least to me. He didn't make me feel like a fat, old lady--and for me that's half the battle.

I'm pretty excited to have started. It feels good to workout again. If I lose weight, great. If not, at least I'll be in better overall health and shape. Maybe work toward strength training to help the old bones.

So, I'm putting this here so that I will have some accountability with my blog friends. Keep me going, gals! Once school gets going, I'll need all the encouragement I can get!

Ah, Life.

Ever have one of those days? One of those days when you just feel blah. Yesterday was one of those days for me. I just didn't want to do anything. Everyone was annoying me. I felt fat and lonely and :-P. By last night, I just decided to go to bed and end the day. I gave up.

In the end, it was the right thing to do. I woke up this morning with a renewed sense of energy. I got up and showered, did some laundry, grocery shopping--all mundane stuff, but it felt good.

My sister and her husband stopped by to see our house and visit for a couple of hours. They're driving from Texas City back to Missouri. It was a really nice visit. I realized after they left that this was the first time my sister has ever been to my home. We've always met up at my dad's. It was exciting to have her over and I hope they'll do it more often.

Now I need to think about dinner and more mundane house stuff. I have no idea why yesterday was such a depressing day. I'm just glad it only lasted a day. And I hope it doesn't come back any time soon.

It's Official and Other Final Day Musings

We're officially out of the rented house. Nothing left there--well, except for a broken plastic table and some broken plastic chairs that are by the back fence waiting for garbage pickup. I'll probably have to bring them down here since the garbage only picks up "bulky items" on the 2nd and 4th Mondays. Missed it by two days. Ugh.

Still...it's locked up and the keys and garage door openers are turned in. I had to drive all the way to Duncanville to turn them in. The company has an office in Carrollton, but no. They're not always in that office. I had to go to Duncanville. About 30 minutes down, 2 minutes (maybe 3) in the office, and 30 minutes back home. Do I get gas credit on my deposit? Yeah, I thought not.

On the way home, a little red sports car came flying up the road followed by a big Chevy truck. Looked like the truck was following the car. I hung back. No point in getting involved in that, I thought to myself. About a mile up, the sports car decided it needed to take an exit it was about to pass. So he jerked across three lanes of traffic, missed the exit and plowed through the little median area onto the exit ramp. Apparently going through the grass messed him up a little bit because he started to fishtail down the ramp. He overcorrected and barrelled straight across the side road. There was a car coming up, but luckily (blessedly?) they were able to stop in time as idiot-sports-car zoomed across the road, over the curb and into the grass in front of a bank building.

I was still on the freeway, so I didn't stop. They didn't hit anything but the curb, although it looked like he smacked it pretty good. I'd bet with that low sports car, he did quite a bit of damage to his front end, undercarriage and certainly his alignment. Idiot. Can you imagine being the car on the frontage road? Thank goodness he (I'm assuming here) looked at the exit ramp as he was coming up on it. The idiot car passed what seemed like inches in front of the minding-his-own-business car.

I'll likely never know what came of the whole deal. But it took me quite a while to calm down. I could feel goose bumps all over and just this sense of--not really panic, but maybe such relief. It felt like my whole body melted. Thought I would have to pull over for a moment, but it passed. I said, out loud, "Thank you, God!" Many of us were being watched over this afternoon, that's for sure. Tried to call Richard, but he wasn't available.

I"ll say this...if I'd gotten in a wreck all because I had to drive to Duncanville to turn in a set of keys--I'd have been royally ticked. That management company has no idea. But now we're done with them. If we get any deposit money back, it'll be a bonus. I'm not counting on it. I've learned that most renter-owners don't like to give back deposits. So...we're done. For real. I'll wait a few days, then I'm taking the manager's number off my cell phone. That's when you really know it's over. :-)

So Done!

I'm done. Done cleaning. Done climbing up and down a stepladder. Done wiping down baseboards. Just done. It's probably not perfect. I don't care. I've been cleaning that blasted house for over a week now. I'm done. A sister came over for an hour or so this morning and did the living room window (including blinds--yuck) and baseboards, another window and the front door. I got the rest of the windows done, light bulbs changed out (not leaving my expensive energy-saving bulbs there--that's for sure!), carpet vacuumed and floors mopped. House and garage are empty! Only thing left is for dh to go over and put a new filter in the a/c. DONE! Now--after today--I can concentrate on my new house. I have about three weeks left before I go back to school.

I need to figure out what to do with some of my knick-knack stuff--like water globes. I had a huge wrap-around mantle in my old house. Don't have a big place like that here. Need to get some bookshelves for the office area and get that junk off the floor. And we need to organize the game room better. Dh is putting John's bed together right now, so maybe on Friday he can paint Chris's room. We also need to install the microwave. Got it home and realized that the tile backsplash behind the stove goes all the way up to the hood. So, dh will have to take some of that tile out. Things are never as easy as you think they're going to be, are they?

It's just been so hot. 105 yesterday. Could be a few degrees cooler today, but the humidity is higher. Yuck. Makes you not want to do anything after about noon. Oh well...this house will get put together slowly...and that's okay. It's liveable and presentable, so beyond that...we'll get there. Yay!

Final Week

We're down to the final week of the old house. Most everything's out of there and it's time for the deep cleaning. Ugh. I hate this part. I want to set up my new house, not clean my old one. We've gotten a good start, but it's just so blechy. There are still baseboards and ceiling fans to clean. Oh, and that little window over the tub. How the heck am I going to reach that? I just have to think room-to-room-to-room and not go wandering through the house from thing to thing. We also have to do the outside windows and front porch. How does that front porch (more of a walkway really) always get packed with dead leaves? Even in the spring?

And it's going to be the hottest temperatures of the season this week. Over 100 every day. Ugh. Anyone wanna come help? I'll be begging for help at church tomorrow. I know that I can get it done by myself, but it's so much easier and even almost enjoyable when you have someone to work with. And I'll try to remember that the next time someone I know is moving. Because I'm not moving again. Nope. Not again. This is it. So...now I'm off to clean house. Yippee.