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Day 1083: Housewarming
Aug. 12th, 2013 08:46 pmSo, our second full week as homeowners. It involved a lot of sleepless nights taking little miss Ivy out for potty breaks in the middle of the night. I worked days. Cody worked around the house doing repairs. His dad came down on Tuesday to help with rehanging one of the door and also prepping plumbing and drywall for Wednesday, when my brother-in-law the electrician came to help make us a real laundry room. My sister and niece came to visit as well. We taught my niece how to say Ivy's name (she is now I-bee puppy), and my niece got Ivy pretty wound up with her squeals and excitement. I think it was the first time I've ever heard Ivy bark. Everyone who looks at her assumes she's a border collie because of her coloring, but her mother was a purebred husky. Cody's best friend from high school Steven assures us that since she's half husky, she is both an escape artist and not much of a barker, which is just fine for me. I worked most days, with Ivy in the office with me or in Cody's office with him while he studies in preparation for starting school in a couple of weeks.
My sister has just barely joined Tumblr, and since she's a Supernatural fan, I showed her around my favorite Supernatural-related tags on Tumblr, namely Jenny Thunder and Pudgy Midway. There was laughter, giggles, incredulity, and this truly horrifying moment when my sister stumbled across some explicit slash fanart. I covered my niece's eyes. She's barely two, but since I was pretty sure I was scarred for life I was saving her the trouble. My sister didn't understand why such an image belonged with the tag it had and insisted on studying it, which just got even more awkward. There was a lot of shrieking and embarrassed laughter. Good times. SPN fandom is the one thing my sister and I can get along about, so I'm glad we have it. I think I'm a little oversaturated with it, really, but oh well.
Saturday was a super busy day, running around town donating some of our stuff, buying more stuff, and also getting ready for our housewarming party. It was good times. We took our old mattress, a bunch of pictures of Justin Bieber (I cannot remember the last time I bought a Tiger Beat or a Bop but I was super embarrassed at the check-out stand), and went out to Hobble Creek. We stapled the pictures to the mattress and then went to town - handguns, rifles, shotguns. We even shot a few clays. My girl BenTen had never used a firearm before (she is a proud California Democrat) and her fiancé had not used one in years, so it was an interesting experience, but she learned basic firearm safety and felt kind of empowered. Afterwards we came back to our place and ate a load of junk food and had good times. We talked and laughed and traded stories. Cody is happy because he made friends with the husbands, who appreciate things like firearms and making knives.
On Sunday we went to church, and afterward we were invited to lunch with Justin and Shannon, which was good times. We had quasi-Mexican food and just talked and got to know each other. I like Shannon - she's funny and smart, reasonable and capable, but also really compassionate. I think I could learn a lot from her. She's a social worker and apparently works at a prison. Also, she and Justin are going to have a baby boy, so I ought to start crocheting boy-appropriate baby wear. Maybe a little baby sweater, now that I've found all my crocheting books.
Cody and I spent time watching some Season 6 Burn Notice, which is new up on Netflix, and then I was forced to sort out all the boxes in my office, as well as the cedar chest my dad made me. It was full of wonderful memories, like the all the baby blankets I ever had (that my mother made me), the little sock dolls she made me, all the fancy project books I made in elementary school, the program from my baptism when I was eight, my high school graduation honor cords. It also had every notebook/journal I'd written in from when I first started writing fiction up through 9th grade (this is not including all the floppy disks of stuff I had, or the loose-leaf stuff I also had). I had 36 notebooks, all of them at least half full. I stared at them all and wondered how I ever imagined being anything but a writer. It was bizarre. I also found all my old college notes and papers, and I reread some of them. I was kind of impressed with what I read (and my grades) and it sort of makes me sad that I don't look at fictional texts like that anymore, that it isn't instinct in me like it used to be. (Law school trained that out of me. Now it's about opposition and outcomes, solutions and negotiations and getting what my client wants.) I also found some of my old high school papers and journals, and also some memories, like the little composition notebook Rose and I passed notes in between classes.
It was a fun night.
Today we had Steven over for dinner. My mama would be proud of me - I made salad and had salad dishes and even put out separate salad forks, and I also made little individual chicken stuffing casseroles. For all that we only had two-person seating at the bar (we can't use the table my sister gave us till we are rid of the fridge) it was a pretty fancy meal coming from my kitchen. These days what comes out of my kitchen is improvised and based on our food storage, but it does mean we're saving money on food and I'm kind of learning how to improvise my cooking, which makes me happy. Although in lieu of proper meals (fruit smoothie for breakfast, sandwich for lunch) I've been eating leftover food from the party. I cannibalized the veggie tray to turn it into a salad, but hey, waste not, want not, right?
And even though I think I have writer's block, I've decided to just buckle down and write anyway. I am pretty attached to the one story I want to write (which is bizarre, given how unattached I was to the previous story) and so I am excited to try and write this one. BenTen and I have both agreed we want to write our novels longhand first, which is new for her but less new for me (although I cannot remember the last time I wrote a decent novel longhand).
I still need to go through the mail - a lot of paper-shredding will be involved - and I need to write letters to my pen-pals, but right now I'm sitting on the step outside the kitchen with my laptop on my knees, Red Hot Chili Peppers playing on the iHome, listening to traffic to by and playing with little Miss Ivy. It is kind of like having a kid, the way she needs constant supervision. I reckon it's training for when we actually do have kids, and I love her lots. She's terrified of bigger dogs but is generally really good about letting strangers - especially children - pet her.
So I'm going to write back to my sister - we are playing fiction writer tennis over email - and then toss a bone for the dog.
My sister has just barely joined Tumblr, and since she's a Supernatural fan, I showed her around my favorite Supernatural-related tags on Tumblr, namely Jenny Thunder and Pudgy Midway. There was laughter, giggles, incredulity, and this truly horrifying moment when my sister stumbled across some explicit slash fanart. I covered my niece's eyes. She's barely two, but since I was pretty sure I was scarred for life I was saving her the trouble. My sister didn't understand why such an image belonged with the tag it had and insisted on studying it, which just got even more awkward. There was a lot of shrieking and embarrassed laughter. Good times. SPN fandom is the one thing my sister and I can get along about, so I'm glad we have it. I think I'm a little oversaturated with it, really, but oh well.
Saturday was a super busy day, running around town donating some of our stuff, buying more stuff, and also getting ready for our housewarming party. It was good times. We took our old mattress, a bunch of pictures of Justin Bieber (I cannot remember the last time I bought a Tiger Beat or a Bop but I was super embarrassed at the check-out stand), and went out to Hobble Creek. We stapled the pictures to the mattress and then went to town - handguns, rifles, shotguns. We even shot a few clays. My girl BenTen had never used a firearm before (she is a proud California Democrat) and her fiancé had not used one in years, so it was an interesting experience, but she learned basic firearm safety and felt kind of empowered. Afterwards we came back to our place and ate a load of junk food and had good times. We talked and laughed and traded stories. Cody is happy because he made friends with the husbands, who appreciate things like firearms and making knives.
On Sunday we went to church, and afterward we were invited to lunch with Justin and Shannon, which was good times. We had quasi-Mexican food and just talked and got to know each other. I like Shannon - she's funny and smart, reasonable and capable, but also really compassionate. I think I could learn a lot from her. She's a social worker and apparently works at a prison. Also, she and Justin are going to have a baby boy, so I ought to start crocheting boy-appropriate baby wear. Maybe a little baby sweater, now that I've found all my crocheting books.
Cody and I spent time watching some Season 6 Burn Notice, which is new up on Netflix, and then I was forced to sort out all the boxes in my office, as well as the cedar chest my dad made me. It was full of wonderful memories, like the all the baby blankets I ever had (that my mother made me), the little sock dolls she made me, all the fancy project books I made in elementary school, the program from my baptism when I was eight, my high school graduation honor cords. It also had every notebook/journal I'd written in from when I first started writing fiction up through 9th grade (this is not including all the floppy disks of stuff I had, or the loose-leaf stuff I also had). I had 36 notebooks, all of them at least half full. I stared at them all and wondered how I ever imagined being anything but a writer. It was bizarre. I also found all my old college notes and papers, and I reread some of them. I was kind of impressed with what I read (and my grades) and it sort of makes me sad that I don't look at fictional texts like that anymore, that it isn't instinct in me like it used to be. (Law school trained that out of me. Now it's about opposition and outcomes, solutions and negotiations and getting what my client wants.) I also found some of my old high school papers and journals, and also some memories, like the little composition notebook Rose and I passed notes in between classes.
It was a fun night.
Today we had Steven over for dinner. My mama would be proud of me - I made salad and had salad dishes and even put out separate salad forks, and I also made little individual chicken stuffing casseroles. For all that we only had two-person seating at the bar (we can't use the table my sister gave us till we are rid of the fridge) it was a pretty fancy meal coming from my kitchen. These days what comes out of my kitchen is improvised and based on our food storage, but it does mean we're saving money on food and I'm kind of learning how to improvise my cooking, which makes me happy. Although in lieu of proper meals (fruit smoothie for breakfast, sandwich for lunch) I've been eating leftover food from the party. I cannibalized the veggie tray to turn it into a salad, but hey, waste not, want not, right?
And even though I think I have writer's block, I've decided to just buckle down and write anyway. I am pretty attached to the one story I want to write (which is bizarre, given how unattached I was to the previous story) and so I am excited to try and write this one. BenTen and I have both agreed we want to write our novels longhand first, which is new for her but less new for me (although I cannot remember the last time I wrote a decent novel longhand).
I still need to go through the mail - a lot of paper-shredding will be involved - and I need to write letters to my pen-pals, but right now I'm sitting on the step outside the kitchen with my laptop on my knees, Red Hot Chili Peppers playing on the iHome, listening to traffic to by and playing with little Miss Ivy. It is kind of like having a kid, the way she needs constant supervision. I reckon it's training for when we actually do have kids, and I love her lots. She's terrified of bigger dogs but is generally really good about letting strangers - especially children - pet her.
So I'm going to write back to my sister - we are playing fiction writer tennis over email - and then toss a bone for the dog.
