I cannot decide…

if it is worse when you let yourself down, or when someone else does.

When you AND someone else drop the ball at the same time it is enough to ruin your day.

Says me.

No turning back…

My carpet is done for.  We are at the point of no return.   Belongings and furniture are shuffled, closets cleared.

We are making room for hardwood flooring, but mostly we are making me sick.

I always find these projects to be overwhelming and stressful.

S.

Hey neat!

I hit 100 hits for the month!

That’s fun.  There were a few months there I was thinking I must have gotten REALLY boring.

Ok… so it’s true, I’m kind of boring… but people are still clicking!

Thanks for pretending to read what I have to say!

Sarah
The one who Says Stuff

A new beginning…

There is tile in my front entry and in the upstairs bathroom now.

I keep thinking that the rooms look bigger, but I’m sure it’s the lack of doors and that there is nothing on the floor anywhere for once.

Of course, it’s not done yet… I still need to grout, put the baseboards back on, etc… but still….

I am so hopeful that this the start of a new happy relationship with flooring.

Says me.

Carpet of Doom.

When I bought my current house it had salmon colored carpet throughout the upstairs.  It had wear marks to show the traffic patterns that were whiter than white and they included the footprints of the prior owner’s feet from getting out of bed each morning.

Talk about something I did not need to picture.

I received a carpet allowance as part of the house deal and I went out in search of Berber.  Light-ish colored, semi-tight looped… dog withstanding carpet.

I bought nearly 1700 square feet of it.

It looked horrible when they installed it as there were strands sticking up all along the walls.  The seams showed way more than any seam should show.  There was a random square cut into the family room in a corner that had to be seamed in… I was hugely disappointed.

I made some phone calls… nothing good ever came of it.  (Home Valu, you don’t stand behind your work and are never getting my business again.)

Then the dog became an issue, then the vacuum.  That carpet snagged if you looked at it crossly and it didn’t just snag, it snagged and RAN.

So, lets say a dog collar with a loop with his tags on it happened to catch… and the dog panicked…

you might just get a whole spool of yarn to wind and a line down the middle of your hallway to show where it came from.

It made me sick to think of how much money it cost to get it and then to see it ruined, and I mean ruined, within a year or so… then reminded of it each time I was in my home.  I’ve lived on my dream carpet turned crap for about 6 years now.

Last night I hacked into that carpet with a knife.  It was kind of a relief to finally be able to give up on trying to save it all.  The downstairs carpet can hopefully be salvaged, but the upstairs is going to be hardwood and tile for all of the high traffic areas and only carpet in the bedroom.

Today when I walked out of the house over where the carpet had been pulled out, I felt like I had finally finished paying for my poor carpet buying skills.

I felt relief.

I felt hope.

I also bought a boot tray and every single one of you are going to take your shoes off on my new flooring and the dog is no longer going to live there.

So there.

S.

Moments of greatness…

I have to admit that I’m a sucker for other people’s moments of greatness.

When I was young I watched from the side of the ice rink in the Target Center during the US Championships as Tanya Harding became the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition.  She’d been amazing during warm-ups, but that was not a guarantee that it would be a solid landing during her performance… but right there on the ice in front of me, she took off and landed in near perfect form.  Sadly, the legacy she left behind has not much to do with her skating, but still… that was a moment of greatness.  I might have cried.

There are so many times and so many ways that we see people really becomes something so much larger than they thought they could be.   I love to see it, hear about it, cheer for it.  I think that we are all capable of it in our own way.

Just in my small hometown two couples have gone through the devastation of ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.  One fighting for life, and the other finding a graceful way to say goodbye.   I think anyone who can endure and thrive under that kind of heart ache is somehow pushed to greatness just to get through it.   We’ve seen people wage war with cancer, injustice, ‘the sytem’.  People doing their part and more for the children of this community, the animals in this community, the disadvantaged…  I’ve seen volunteerism that would make your jaw drop and generosity that leaves you speechless.

I love the idea of normal people reaching great heights.

Check out Susan Boyle and her moment that I suspect will change her life.

It’s just really amazing how the tone was at the onset, and what it came to be.  I think we’re all a little cynical these days and can’t tell you how sad that really is for me and even more sad to recognize it in myself…

So thank you Susan Boyle and Simon what’s your name, for reminding me to look for greatness, rather than for failure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Says me.

S.

It’s Easter.

The house is quiet with occasional shuffles and shifting of newspaper.  Dogs are not barking.  There is no music, no gaiety, no party.

We were 4 and now we are 3 and we still haven’t quite gotten the hang of this.

While we are not depressed, or morose or even melancholy, we are without her and that is enough to leave the bunny ears in storage today.

I think that it’s time to liven things up a bit, so I’m going to go make some orange juice and see if I can find some champagne.

Mimosa’s for mom seems just about the right answer for today.

Says me.

S.

Pleasant surprises…

Today I found out what a pure release of unexpected joy feels like.

Taxes have been an ongoing issue since being self employed, so for nearly 10 years.  Every year I struggled with estimated taxes, claiming a home office, what does a deduction really look like… why am I still paying points on my mortgage, what is ’self employment tax’ anyway, etc.

This year I was HIRED, yes HIRED, so I had to file self employed for 5 months of the year and the rest as an employee with a home office… big mess.  I hired an accountant.

For months I have been dreading what I viewed as the inevitable and freaking out about where I would find the money to not only pay the accountant, but the taxes she would be telling me I owed.  I’ve been dreaming taxes, breathing taxes, crying taxes.  It’s bad.

Today I dragged my feet and soul into the office to pick up my returns and to pay my dues.

The office assistant pulled out my file and went over my cover letter with me.

To my amazement, I am getting refunds.

Yes, plural.  From both state and feds.

I actually exclaimed, “HOLY CRAP” in the office and made an elderly man jump a little.  I could hear his dentures make that sucking noise.  It was downright shocking news.

Today I felt the joy of unexpected stress release and it was enough to send me running and jumping from their office.

I am joyous.

I know glee.

I am ….

not nearly as broke as I thought I was.

Oh rapture.

ahhhhhh….

Gifts that make us squeal…

What does it say about me that the last gift that made me squeal is a tongs for lifting jars out of a water bath?

… as in a canning implement.

I’m not sure I’m ready to hear the answer to that question.

S.

Jack Sprat…

I’m sure that many of you have heard the following…

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.

His wife could eat no lean.

And so between them both, you see,

They licked the platter clean!

We have two dogs that are under our responsibility.  Old geriatric dog of mine and dad’s little middle aged new favorite daughter.  Mine is battling the war with old age and Brixi is making her prognosis of dead with cancer by December 2008 look like a joke.

I’ve been excited lately as Baxter is months since his last episode of explosive poohs and has actually been putting on a few pounds since he’s keeping his food inside of him a little bit better.  (Not great, he still leaves pooh in inappropriate places if you’re not paying attention, but at least they’re not splatter paint-like in effect.)  He was so bony for a while there it was like looking at skeleton dog, so I’m glad to see less of his ribs and more of his butt.

Brixi on the other hand is growing with leaps and bounds… around her middle.  She is a rolly polly jolly old gal and we’ve taken to calling her Fatty Patty.

I can’t help laugh at our odd couple.  Both on special diets.  One has his movement a bit restricted for the benefit of his hips and the other is now on an exercise regimen with the hopes she’ll trim down enough to fit in the RV for dad’s trip to Alaska in a few months.

He’s decided that as is she would be like having an extra person in the vehicle and that is just TOO many.

I’m too fat to ride a mule in the Grand Canyon and Brixi is too fat to ride in the RV.  We’ll both be amping up our workouts this spring.

It’s a good thing this is all funny or it would all be sad.

Says me.