Tag: love

  • a good day

    Atlanta fine art photographer


    No pretty pictures from the day. This is a photo from 2013, 3 houses ago.

    But one night sleeping without coverings on the double doors, and new window treatments are on the way.

    I spent the day ironing. Lots and lots of ironing.

    But, all the windows have their new treatments. I am happy.

    And, all of a sudden, I am re-invested in my house.

    And maybe hyped up a little bit that I actually have an interest in (and have completed) a project.

    I am so very, relieved to love my house again. It’s been quite a long time.

    Today, I feel like I’ve been a good wife and mother.

    I worked my tail off today, no joke. I didn’t sit down much.

    And, while I was ironing window treatments, I also finished laundry day.

    Laundry day doesn’t have to be one day, as Dana from A Slob Comes Clean says. And she’s right.

    In our case, laundry day actually wasn’t that bad. It started half-heartedly on Monday since I didn’t think of it until halfway through the morning and only worked on it a little bit (I always like to have laundry day be Monday) and it will end about 10:30 PM tonight, when the last load finishes in the dryer and I am able to get everything put away.

    And now I don’t have to think about clothes laundry for the rest of the week.

    Sheets will be another thing: I should get all the sheets in the house cleaned sooner than later.

    I think tomorrow will be another good run through the floors and putting the clutter in the primary bedroom away.

    At some point in the next couple of weeks I have to get to Porter’s room finally.

    I was listening to one of the many podcasts I listen to today and somebody said (I cannot remember which podcast) that the state of your home mirrors the state of your mind.

    In my case, that’s probably 100% true. There’s lots of dust, and clutter, and dirty laundry and dirty floors in my head, too.

    It was a good day. Oliver was inducted into the National Junior Beta Club, and we got to see the live broadcast of the CHS Trojan Band on the Gradick Sports Facebook page when we got home. They did such a great job, like they always do.

    It’s harder for me to be charitable about Central, my alma mater. The inside jokes are tired and they are inside jokes from well after my time. It’s hard to feel like an outside as an alum from my own band. But it’s been the case for a decade or more.

    I got to meet Oliver’s new girlfriend and family. They seem nice.

    Yes, my 6th grader has a girlfriend. *sigh* We managed to skip these things with the big boys, and are still so far even. It’s not even Oliver’s first girlfriend.

    I have tried, however, to encourage all of my children to not get into serious relationships until well after high school. I speak from experience on how that can go really, really, really awfully bad. Most of you probably know that story and if you don’t I think I made another post about it here somewhere.

    At any rate, I will go to bed tired tonight. And I desperately hope I wake up in such a state that I can do it all over again tomorrow.

    You can read more about my angsty self here.

  • not a soul-sucking day

    Just outside Newberg, Iowa last February

    Picture of vastness nothing Iowa cornfields that I took last February because it’s pretty akin to a desert, and I am kind of in that sort of mindset right now. It was a cold day.

    I’m not exactly depressed but not exactly vibrant and bubbly like I prefer to be.

    Nancy is better, and she seems to be eternally grateful to be alive. For once, she is very loving and interactive, which we are taking to mean that she understands that we did quite save her life (or at least her tongue) by getting her to the vet the other night. No more black drool or black crusty stuff around her mouth, and she’s eating and drinking as she should.

    We are not holding our collective breath that Nancy’s change in disposition is at all permanent.

    We put Nancy in Porter’s room, and moved Bess in there too, along with all their litter boxes, and have been feeding them canned food since that is what Nancy needs for at least the next few days. They both seem to appreciate the treat, and probably the respite from chaos of the dogs.

    And, I have gotten beyond my frozen action on cleaning the house: Today I cleaned the entirety of our guest bathroom in our laundry room. I cleaned the floors, baseboards, toilet, corners of the room, and sink and toilet. And dusted off the top of the intercom even though we never use it, and cleaned the top of the trash can even.

    The whole endeavor took me about half an hour.

    If I can spend this kind of dedicated time on even a section of a room in the house each day, then the house will be relatively clean in a few weeks.

    That is encouraging.

    I have also started budgeting more in earnest. Or rather: I am making a concerted effort to not spend money we don’t have right now.

    While Jared and I went on a date to Gallery Row tonight, we are not likely to do that on a regular basis.

    I did try a little photography today. This is a cameo ring I made for myself; I have several of these cameo rings I made. I had planned to post them on Etsy but honestly, I am not feeling it a great deal as far as Etsy stores go right now. I missed focus on the girl in the cameo and had to clean it up with Topaz Photo AI. This was with the GFX camera and the 37.5mm Super Cinelux lens– it’s. a great macro lens.

    I do not know how old this bird is; Sarah Belle gave it to me when I was in third grade but she said then that she had had it since she was a little girl, and she was born in 1920.

    And tonight, I am going to bed with hope for the future. I am almost ready to seek out more regular volunteer opportunities. I am ready to reinvest myself in our home, which I did quite fall in love with in 2021 when we found it.

    And today…..today was a good day.

  • for real: anybody want two cats?

    Abby and Trixie did not feel like having their picture taken this morning.

    I joked in the post about Nancy yesterday about whether anybody wants a cat, but it really wasn’t a joke– we really are looking to re-home Nancy and Bess. They’re a package deal though; a bonded pair.

    Bess
    Nancy

    On a wild hair one Saturday afternoon probably 3 years or so ago now, I wanted to go visit the cat cafe. And I wanted a cat even though I was noncommittal to Jared and the boys. And we came away with Nancy and Bess– a bonded pair.

    They’re good cats. Nancy may have a slight death wish given her recent shenanigans, but they’re good cats. And to all appearances Nancy and Bess are not a bonded pair, but things do go wonky with Bess’s litter habits when Nancy is not around, in all transparency. She is fine when she has adequate litter and Nancy. And to be completely honest, Bess is the lap cat– Nancy is definitely not.

    I just cannot keep up with the care of 5 pets. And MowMow is for sure Oliver’s baby, having spent much of the last 3 years in Oliver’s room since she doesn’t get along with Nancy. And Abby and Trixie….well…. They’re here for the long haul. They’re our children as much as our people children. And Trixie is Porter’s baby, and Abby is my therapy dog as much as I am her therapy human.

    Note that in the photo above Trixie was ambivalent about the camera, but Abby….Abby looked away because big cameras terrify her. I do not know why but the longer the lens, the more afraid she is.

    Plus, being 100% real here: the financial cost of caring for 5 pets is astronomical. We couldn’t afford them when we took them on and we can’t afford them now.

    Nothing will change if we can’t find homes for them. They have a home here as long as need be. We do love them and want what’s best for them.

    And all the boys know, and they all understand. They don’t like litter duty any more than we do, and they know our financial situation as much as is appropriate given their ages. Liam wasn’t in favor of more cats when we adopted Nancy and Bess.

    Liam is the most level-headed person in the house.

    I am trying to be more responsible, and being more responsible is doing what is best for everyone in the house. Including the cats, including the boys, including Jared, including myself.

    But if anybody local wants two cats….. well, it’s a serious thing.

  • nancy is an asshole

    Several weeks ago now, I crocheted myself a jute purse. It is cute, and I am in love with it. It went with me to Kansas City and fits perfectly under an airplane seat, and it went with me through all three Universal Parks a week and a half ago.

    I love it.

    I don’t love that it sheds pretty badly. I’ve tried sealing it with mod podge, I’ve tried heat blocking. Nothing helps. It is going to shed. It’s not a problem with the outside, but it does get all over anything you put in it, and it’s the perfect size for both my camera and laptop so that was a big problem.

    So, I decided to finally line the whole thing. Here it is before lining:

    Yes! It has a pocket! A really great one.

    So, we went and got felt for the lining because I knew that would be easy on my camera.

    Jared was kind enough to sew the actual lining part into one piece, on the condition that I do the hand-stitching into the bag:

    All went well, until Jared was sewing away and here comes asshole Nancy, above, literally to bat the THREAD OFF THE SEWING MACHINE WHILE IT WAS SPINNING….

    Nancy took off with the thread in her mouth… got all the way to the other side of the house before Jared caught her and pulled the thread away.

    Or, so we thought.

    The finished bag is fabulous. Solved the shedding problem; here is the lined bit before I lined the pocket:

    I did decide to line the pocket, and it is all the better for it.

    This was all last Saturday. Today is Thursday.

    Nancy was low-key missing most of the week. I didn’t go looking for her, I saw her sitting in a chair yesterday morning, but I didn’t worry about her. She is not a social cat in general and will vaguely tolerate Jared’s picking her up to harass her, for very brief periods.

    Jared likes to cuddle cats. Nancy only just tolerates it occasionally.

    But yesterday, Nancy pooped outside her litter box for the first time in a couple of months. It was a problem previous to us getting two more litter boxes. But it hadn’t happened since. And I noticed, too, that she had black drool coming out of her mouth.

    So we thought maybe she had been eating her own poop or Bess, our other cat’s poop? That was all we could think of.

    But, she was also clingy. She came up and sat by me, but her fur was raised like something was wrong, too.

    It is not normal for Nancy to be clingy, so finally we decided about 8:30 last night to get her to the vet.

    We managed to get to our vet here in Carrollton at 8:30 before they closed at 9 last night, saving us a trip (and lots more in fees) to the emergency vet in Atlanta, thank goodness.

    They took Nancy straight back, and took us to a room. We were just starting to tell the vet tech the sewing story, that she did get into something last weekend, when the doctor came in and said, “I found this? I don’t think she’ll lose her tongue.” And set the surgical utensil with attached string on the table:

    *sigh*

    Apparently when Jared yanked the string to get it away from Nancy last Saturday, the string had only just broken, with a good portion of it lodged around her tongue. The string was deeply embedded in her tongue, and the black stuff was infection.

    So, Nancy got an antibiotic shot, and has to eat canned food for at least a week which means she has to be isolated from the other pets for that time, and we are out $230 which makes my homemade purse I love a lot more expensive than the $35 it had set us back to that point.

    Dumbass cat.

    Anybody want a cat?

  • fallout

    I’ve been procrastinating writing all day.

    First, I slept until nearly 10 AM today.

    Then I got up and ate breakfast, did my gratitude list, did our CHRISTMAS SHOPPING for heaven’s sake…..

    Then I swept the floors in the main area of the house.

    Then I doom scrolled for the better part of an hour.

    *sigh*

    I am on a mission to clean up my house. The house isn’t the problem. Living in my standards of squalor is the problem.

    Sweeping the floors is the first step in combatting this issue.

    My generous Mama offered to have someone come in and help do a deep clean, but honestly, I’d rather just get in the habit of doing it myself. And it’s very embarrassing to have someone come in here and see exactly how bad it really is/was.

    Sweeping the floors went a long way. If I can get to the boys’ bathroom floors yet today the house will nearly be presentable.

    We have 3 cats and 2 dogs. 2 elderly dogs. It makes keeping the house clean an ongoing, losing battle.

    The dogs have reached the puppy-pad stage of life. One of our dogs can no longer hold its bladder all night long and none of us can get up in the night to take her out.

    And truth be told, the grime and the gunk and the clutter– most of which, admittedly, is mine– is a major source of my depression.

    Laundry for 4 people will always be a challenge.

    It’s weird to say laundry for 4 people– I am not doing Porter’s laundry anymore since he has his own apartment on the other side of the state.

    Somehow, laundry for 4 people is not that much better than laundry for 5 people, actually.

    I’m on a mission to be a more regular blogger, too, and to write about the messiness of life on top of the actual messiness of the house.

    And the messiness of life means that writing about stuff that I really don’t want to write about.

    If I put it in writing, then I have to deal with it.

    And dealing with it is uncomfortable.

    It’s easier to be moody and go back to bed.

    But, I probably have the world’s best husband.

    And family, actually.

    And kids.

    And…..

    I am grateful.

    Even if I screw up sometimes.

    The truth is, I brought last December’s trauma on myself.

    I should have known better than to meet up with the person I did.

    But, I did so because I wanted to see for myself if I could face him.

    And, I could. I am stronger than I think I am.

    But the events of those two days plummeted me into a nearly 6-month long psychiatric issue that I am really only just coming to terms with.

    Friendships suffered. Relationships with family suffered.

    I did cut contact off with him, but I caved and messaged him in June.

    And it’s not like the things that bother me don’t bother me. It’s just that usually I can keep my mental crap together enough to watch my own verbal and emotional filters.

    And yeah, that man exposed me to his HPV. And I might have to deal with throat or some sort of other oral cancer someday because of it.

    And it’s even possible that the fallout discovered from the hysterectomy– the extensive fibrosis and scar tissue around my right ovary….all that might have been due to ancient pelvic inflammatory disease I never knew about, due to some unknown STD from being involved with that person a million years ago.

    I wanted to the hysterectomy because I wanted to prevent future cancer risks. I hadn’t known that it was sort of necessary now anyway.

    And I’m still dealing with all the emotional fallout from all that, too.

    And this is stuff I don’t talk about with anybody besides Jared.

    But not writing about it is not doing my mental health any good.

    So, here I am blogging in old 2010-2012 style.

    And hoping that I can keep my crap together long enough to at least get Oliver’s laundry and Liam’s sheets all washed and dried before bedtime.