TGIN!!

Thank God It’s November!! October was totally douchey to me (who am I kidding - 2011 is kicking my ass). Because of that, I’ve been MIA from… well, life basically. But now that it’s November and the holiday season is upon us, I think some positive affirmations are in order. So for all you girlies who have had a rough year and can’t wait to see some sparkle for once – don’t forget that you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.

- Kate

Busy Bee

On a day-to-day basis I find my type B personality trying to live a type A lifestyle. Lately I’m finding that I just can’t juggle everything because like the movie “I don’t know how she does it” (warning: wait for this one to come out on DVD) I’ve got too long of a list for one person. For those of us with husbands, roommates, kids… it’s okay to make a list for them and share the responsibility every once in a while. Also known as asking for help.

These asks get lost a lot in my household because the hubby and I get so freak’n busy. This weekend I went searching online to find a great little printed list to pencil in things for my honey to do - won’t he be so excited by this?! Here are some fun finds I came across on Etsy and Paper Source.

- Kate

Home Wasn't Build In A Day: Office, Part I

So I come to you, hanging my head in shame, with this admission and photos of the disaster that my life has become. Those of you who follow us on facebook may have noticed a trend of bitching from me about the unsettled state of my home décor. Well… it’s not even just the décor. If I’m gonna be completely honest I’ve been living like a slob. My husband has been putting up with this from me (lately) and I of him and now it’s time to do one of my favorite things – create some rules on how to get back on track (Bethany, please stop laughing at me!).

Exhibit A. Red = slobtasticness

We’ve been in our 945 sqft house for 6-years and we bought it as a real fixer upper (I’ll share pics with you in future posts to illustrate the understatement that this is). Like most first-time home buyers we were eager to fix things up to create a place that felt like ours. While we definitely jumped in head-first, over the past year my interest and our time to redo just hasn’t been there. But as I look through all our favorite blogs (see list to the right) I’m feeling inspired and shamed into finishing what we started.

So where to begin? Our home office. This space serves double duty as my hubby’s office, where he thought he’d be running the admin side of his music career (this is actually done from the living room couch); this is also my office, where I manage the household stuff, surf the web and blog. There’s a lot of other hodgepodge in here because, after all, it’s a small house and every room does a bit of multitasking. After a few months of life being turned up-side-down by a family tragedy and packing for a 4th of July trip that turned the man-of-the-house into the incredible hulk (he straight up trashed this room trying to get a suitcase out of the closet to the point of requiring paint touch ups)… oh and the universe's my tendency towards chaos – I give you exhibit B and C

Exhibit B. Hell

Exhibit C. Hell from another view

And now I’m officially kicking off my "Home Wasn't Built In A Day" series so I can share with you the dumbness that I’ve created and hopefully the amazeballs house we (the man and I, not you and me) talked about for years. This inaugural mission has an August 1st deadline… for those of you still reading this that means just over two weeks. I’ve got everything from paint touchups to replacing a door on my task list so this may be aggressive.

Let the obsessing begin.
- Kate

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KEEPING IT REAL [7/25]
I am sooooo behind. I've got this room all cleaned up but have yet to make any noticable updates beyond that. Hmmm... need to get this done.

Egg Rolls and Peeves

So my hubby called me this morning, excited to relay that the Bulldog had placed first in the Non-Sporting Group at Westminster. I was totally pumped. Come to find out, when checking the Westminster babble online, it was really the French Bulldog that took the blue. Never the worry - because I have the most perfect Bulldog right here at my fingertips. Wilma Applesauce Brower, her god-given name of course. Each night, we spend some QT with our pup, cleaning her up, wiping her down and doing a good ole vitals check. On this particular evening, Wilma presented a potential red-flag. Her feet smelled abnormally... normal. Like you'd expect a dog's foot to smell like; earthy, muddy, wool carpet scented.

In the past, we've noted a plenitude of smells. Sometimes Wilma's feet smell like Beef and Cheese, other nights - Cheetos. Last night, they actually smelled like egg rolls. You may think I'm certifiable, but I have a rather discerning sniffer - and she certainly keeps me on my toes. Speaking of weird Wilmaisms, I've also noticed recently that she licks the air for prolonged periods of time. From my years as a vet-tech, I am sure it's due to a recent throat surgery, or some extra drainage from her glands, ears, sinuses, etc. However, this particular activity is a pet peeve of mine - pun intended!

I often refer to myself as quirky, shying away from derogatory labels like weird, picky, mental... But with my quirks come some interesting Peeves. Here's the short list, in order of importance:

1 - dogs licking
2 - lip smacking/open-mouth chewing
3 - words with double 'o's
4 - mispronounciation of names and words, repeat offenders

Let's start with number one. This only applies to dogs, no other animal on the planet. My horses could lick their buckets, their salt blocks, even each other and I pay no mind. But as soon as my dog (or ANY dog) starts licking, mainly when licking "themselves" - I start to short-circuit. Maybe it's the audible dislike, maybe I over-think it, maybe I was scarred from a previous Golden who licked any and everything possible. Whatever the case, I hate it. So when Wilma started this incessant air licking, my biased opinion of my dog's near-perfectness came screeching to a half-halt. That said, let's not analyze this one much further.

Point two - bad etiquette. It drives me up the wall when people smack their gum or chew like a cow. I'll admit, I was NOT the daintiest eater tonight over sushi and seaweed salad, but there was actually a situational excuse - it's called sushi and seaweed salad. I want to crawl and a hole and hide when I hear someone carelessly chomping on their food (oh, and also the time I saw a guy at Mike's Diner scratch his back with his dinner knife - but that's a story for a whole separate post). Save it for your own home - in public, let's learn some manners. We were all taught, chew with your mouth closed. Spit out your gum if you can't chew it with some decency. I'm sensing an over-arching theme here... mouth sounds tend to set me off... I actually don't care to know the Freudian explanation.

Third Peeve is one I am actually starting to tackle. Double "O" words. I can even list them for you, which is huge progress from where I was a year ago... I wouldn't even let myself think them. Poop, Pooch, Poot, Kooter, Hooter, Hooch, Hoo-hoo, whoop, I could go on too long here. First offender and similar words thereafter tend to be deeply rooted in a hatred for trying to make ugly words "cute." Let's call a spade a spade, here, rather than supplement a "cutesy" double "O" word for it. But to my earlier point, I am getting over this one. I have had to time and time again explain why I am cleaning up after my puppy, and inevitably, the word Poop just came out. I now refer to her woman-parts as her hoo-hoo, and I may even entertain eating the world famous wings at Hooters one day.

The last Peeve needs little explaining. I have some wonderful people in my life that happen to be repeat butcherers of words, and each time I bite my tongue to not correct them. I figure, if I have corrected a word's pronunciation more than 3 times, that person just simply chooses to say it how they wish to say it, and ain't no English teacher on the planet that is gonna change their mind. But it still grates on my nerves just a little bit, each time I hear my in-laws and a few neighbors (god bless all of them) mispronounce Wegmans, Febreeze, Giant grocery store, Ikea, Cumin and some other words here and there. I'll let these slide though, because for them, I can handle a few glitches.

By now, I am sure you all are thinking that there is a 12-step program specially crafted for someone of my caliber, but I may have already taken the first step tonight. Admitting I have a problem, through sharing with you (however tangential it may have been) my connection to egg rolls and pet-peeves.

Bethany