Spoke Too Soon Too Much Too Fast...Or How We Came To Realize That We Had No Idea What We Were Doing With A House......

Something about our little part of California that most people don't realize is that its got green yards and evergreens PLANTED INTO MAN MADE YARDS AND GARDENS.... it's a fuckin desert...

  Its like Peter Pan Syndrome for our region... Southern California is a man that doesn't want to realize or accept the fact that its getting old so it buys a Ferrari by way of planting and over watering grass in a desert climate that needs succulents and desert indigenous landscaping. 

If that even makes any sense.

Our house was previously owned by geniuses...rocket scientists disguised as homeowners...  And of course, the bank we bought our house from couldn't wait to get this thing off their hands either...then comes us...apartment dwelling for so long we forgot what it was like to be in a house...  one reared by a father ringing the bell of Work Smart Not Hard all day long and the other with no Mr Fix It in their life at all...We had no idea that the backyard was graded too high...that the dog run was put in wrong...that everything about it would kick us in the ass one day...

And it did...HARD...

 

Three weeks before Christmas, in a tiny Who House, we are forced to take 400 sq feet of belongings and shove them into the remaining 800 sq feet of house that did not receive rain damage.  I can see how a renovation can tear and strain relationships...  ours is doing just fine because my husband is amazing...  our family has been wonderful as far as my mother offering sanity via venting and ranting and my mother in law still having rooms set up for us to stay the night.  Thing 2 has been wonderful as well due entirely to her ability to sleep comfortably in the pack n play as long as her trusty boppy lay beneath her and her build a bear Hello Kitty is by her side... 

Still...  there is an amount of guilt...there is the thought that I could have single handedly prevented this in so many (albeit unforeseen) ways... because someone always knows more or knows better or can do better than me... than us...  and that's fine... but still.  I'm not going to ridiculously pretend like its not actually passing through my mind every other minute.  Coworkers and friends are to our rescue as well and I feel like the chunk out of our savings is not as big as it SHOULD be due to us not being covered for this particular instance under our homeowners insurance...lame.

Living room camping on our pull out couch is what we have been doing... Monday(today) our dry wall gets put back on and hopefully our vanities will get put back on and we can take showers here again...  I am a lot calmer than I was,yet still not completely calm... fantastically we are still a family and still together and still breathing so that's nice....  

My hubby stepped up amazingly fantastically superbly and dug a huge nasty "French drain" in the side of the house and started leveling it out.  Then CoWorker Husband #1 came over and checked out our house and the temporary drainage ditch. Yes we need a permanent one, but the temp one will hold just fine until then.

No we're "There"... over there, by all those people investing into their houses...that's us.  That's our spot in life right now... at the same time as trying to be US we have to be "homeowners" too...  it's a tough juggle when you buy what you can afford.  It was either this or stay apartment dwellers for quite a while longer, and LORD KNOWS where we'd be if we did.  I actually don't want to think about it..  Because as clean and easy and glorious as that sounds, that's not us...Not anymore...it's universes, galaxies away from us. You never go forward by going backward, I truly believe that... so I'm going to apply that same logic to this right here...

Meanwhile:

EVERYTHING ELSE IS FUCKIN AWESOME!!!!

I mean that... work...wow, we just got a great update at work about how well we're doing... We were sailing in yachts, then we had to downgrade to dingys, then we were drowning... in scuba gear with oxygen at 1% and boom, we were back in dingys,  And there we've stayed because of the recession... Fine...  But now, now we're profiting again in ways that make us have numbers in line for our 1st quarter already and I can't tell you how exciting that is, especially when we have a nay sayer walking around like a god and everything out of their mouth is "Peril!" "Plight!" and I can't take it anymore...so the op's manager sent out a little email from his corner of the universe and it made my day...  Little things keep happening that make things great and I'm so happy... but isn't true...when one facet of your life is picking up steam another falls fantastically to pieces...  Amazing how true that really is.  Anyhoo, that's all from this end...  hopefully.  I just want to go home tonight and have walls.  I never realized how accustomed to our little lifestyle I was until I woke up one day and it was gone... 

Moles and Trolls...

Work work work...

Oh what it is to be with a man with a strong work ethic.

Something my Ex Step Monster never appreciated.

My Ex Monster in Law (Bitchie Valens) decided that he would call in sick when it suited him or when he was too hung over to go in, or if in rarer occasion was STILL drunk from the previous night's escapades...  always a good time finding out which one.  Yet, HE never got the SHIT from the ESM that Choni did for working on days that we had family functions... I mean, really?  Which is the lesser of  the two evils?  I didn't mind lending him out to the retail world because I knew I got him every other day of the year...  everyday is family day, the holidays just make it more special in our house.  But really, EVERYDAY should be family...but anyways, that's neither here nor there.

That being said:  He still has a strong work ethic.  Our house is very kept and our lives are well oiled machines because of our co-working.  He works hard on our kids and to make sure everyone is taken care of...so do I... we are just as much an in-love couple as coworkers in the company of the household.  Fantastic... it took Choni a while to realize that he had a passion and had a dream and he wanted to make sure he knew what that was before saddling himself with another job.  We were somewhere and someone asked him what he did.  Without pause he said he was a videographer.  Just so matter of factly that I think it dawned on him then that he IS a videographer.  That is his profession, his passion, obsession...  Since then, everything he looks for in an off season job requires him to be behind a camera.  He did a wedding and it was beautiful.  He KILLED it... they all cried when they saw the video he put together and he even got a bonus at the end... yay him.  THEN he gets on line and trolls for more jobs and finds one filming a 3 day national sporting event...ON Thanksgiving, but that's what Pyrex is for.  Leftovers.  No, he will not physically be with us, but he is doing this for us as much as himself... maybe a few percent less actually.  It's very important for my hubby to LOVE what he does.  He's a very emotional person.  I accept that as one of the things I love about him as much as something we work around.  But that's love...that's marriage.  I want to work around it.  I am fantastic at it, nobody can work that emotional thread like I can, because I am his wife.  I know him better than anyone including his own mother.. including himself at times.  And that's why when I saw we could afford for him not work, I chose to discuss with him staying home with the bebes, than run him out of the house for some soul sucking fakakta job.

I honestly can't wait for him to come home and tell me all about it!  Actually, that's not what's going to happen.  The even starts tomorrow (Thanksgiving) and goes on til Saturday.  On top of that, it starts at 5am the first day, 6am the second day and 7am the third day (an hour drive to get there, so he's gotta get up at 430 on the first day and an hour later each proceeding day) and lasts about 12 hours or so.  He'll have intermittent breaks and they pay for food.  I won't really be hearing about it until Sunday morning more like... but that's ok.  The wedding went swimmingly, this will also go great and hopefully his boss has some more off season jobs to include him in to keep him AND the sports relevant in the off season!  It's a very exciting time for us to be in our particular job positions right now.  They are bringing commuter trains to our area, when that is finished, it will open his job opportunities even more!  Very exciting time...  Hopefully he'll be able to shoot a few extras to bring home and show us his work.  If this event does well, maybe he'll get some kind of automatic flag put on his name for call backs, kind of like it is at the stadium for him now. Seeing someone you love doing something they love for a living is priceless....

How The Universe Can Piss You Off And Then Show You How Lucky You Are In One Fell Swoop...

I got to work today and it was going to be a great day... I didn't wear my watch today and I wore it yesterday and yesterday was a great day.  I thought to myself, stupidly, "Today's gonna suck cause I didn't wear my watch..."...

...I get a call from a co worker that just so happened to be later than usual this morning, the LAST person to get in the parking lot until people started lunch hours around 11am...

CW: Hey you probably know this already but your RR Tire is FLAT...

ME: What?!?  What do you mean FLAT?!?!

CW: OH! Sorry, I mean, F-L-A-T...  Hanging off the rim, no bueno flat.  You might want to come down here.

ME: (looking at the piles and piles of work on my desk and NOW worrying about my car resting on the rim and the fact that I just bought new tires 6 months ago and the CFO is leaving and I'm doing checks today instead of tomorrow and he's leaving in 30 minutes...29 minutes...28 minutes and oh my god OH MY GOD!!)  Uhm, yeah, I can't... I'll be down soon...

I powered through two days worth of work in 2 hours this morning so the CFO could leave early and be out tomorrow, which is generally the day I run the vendor checks.  I got it DONE... BOOM!!!

I ask my co-worker if she could watch the phones for a sec while I mosey on down to my car...

It was totally fucked off, and I wanted to cry, and vomit, and hug my Purple People Eater all at once...  I go into the warehouse, I have a friend out there.  It's DEAD out there today (actually NOT a good thing but good for ME at the time)... Ask mi amigo if he can help me out a second... "Of course!" Take him to my car and show him the tire, we get the jack and the tire iron out of the car, I was initially going to take the tire off the car, leave it jacked, go with SOMEONE and get the tire fixed and bring the tire back to put on the car...  I didn't have a donut on my car.  My car didn't come with one...and My father in law got me one that was used and it went bad real fast and it never got replaced. 

Mi Amigo finds a donut spare in my trunk...??????

...The last time something happened to my tires and I didn't handle it 100% myself, we were staying with my in-laws...  I was working, Choni was working and there was only Thing 1...  I took Choni's car, he took his dad's car, and Felipe kept MY car...he had Fridays off and wasn't working anyways... He put that there.  He put that donut spare there for me, cause he knew I wouldn't do it and he knew his son wouldn't do it and he knew I would need it...he knew WE would need it... He put that there for me.. a present to be had a later date, lest we knew he wouldn't be able to linger and help with these little chores any longer...

....

...

..
.

I couldn't even handle that.  I completely broke down at work...

I got my shit together, I took and "early" lunch to get my car business handled cause Amigo checked my spare, it was low.  He took it over to the RV place behind us and had it blown up some so I could go 2 miles to the tire chain in town where I got my tires... same chain, different store.  A patch job later, and I'm good to go.  AFTER the dude at the counter told me that hey would be replacing the tire cause there were razor blades wedged into it and it would cost me 10 bucks because I already had a warranty on the tires... this would replace the warranty with a new warranty on the new tire and there is a disposal fee...so I say, 10. 

I decided to venture and I went to JBox for breakfast... like I used to when me n Choni was in college n stuffs...

It was kinda nice... ish...  spent most of the time doing a play by play on my morning with Choni, JJ, and eating my sausage croissant combo...  NOT really how I wanted to spend my lunch hour but I got in a walk so I guess it sort of washes out...riiiight?!?  Right!  Okay... I get back to the place, just as I was about to make a dent in my book that I am neglecting because I'm all grown up 'n shit I get called up to take care of my business...  No charge, just a patch.. Jesus-pleasus...  I got my final paperwork and got the HELL outta there...

Came back to work to find out some stupid shit popped off while I was gone, but no biggie, it's all fine.  Also, found out a guy isn't here, that is detrimental to be getting a certain spreadsheet done in 45 minutes instead of 4-5hours...  and no one knew he'd be gone starting YESTERDAY and will be back Monday...  Uhm.. okay...

The Piles on my desk that I got rid of this morning were replaced with new piles.. but I couldn't get mad... cause how lucky I am really.

I am lucky, cause I work for a place that let me up and leave and take care of personal business in the middle of the damn morning...

I work for a place with cool people that help out a chick who is SWAMPED and doesn't have TIME to change the tire (let alone the will)... 

I didn't have to pay for a new tire, or a deductible on a new tire...

That shit went sideways AFTER I parked at work and NOT while I had my family in the car...

...And I had a Father In Law who, even now, is STILL watching over us...

And it's because of all that, I just ate my spaghetti lunch for "dinner" cause I am also going to get our taxed done after work and I won't be home in time to sit down to dinner with my hunnies... but I get to have some later, so there's that...

...And speaking of cake, anybody else come home to a freshly baked cake yesterday? Hands? Anyone?  No?? Just me?... Ok then...

I Waited For The Other Shoe To Drop and It Hit The Wrong Person...

I have work to do , but it's oh so not going to happen right this second...way too much on my damn mind...

Ever since my first single parent summer night started, the kids have been good.  I have tried to make a miniscule mark in the history of the housework.  I made one here, one there...  I try.  I have made a dinner that was delicious and nutritious.  I have gone out for food once.  I think that's pretty good... all the dinner's in between are probably suspect... fine.  Harley's homework gets done, kids get cleaned and rooms get cleaned... sometimes...  but no real drama... but I was waiting.

I put forth a very ambitious night for myself last night.  Usually, Choni gets the groceries with his stadium money and he keeps that money so it feeds us through the winter and by the time he starts at the stadium he is in need of more.  And that's what works for us... Yay!  Well, because of the whole increase in cost of living and he's been on the same wages since he started 6 seasons ago...our food budget gets a little tighter each year and now we have another mouth to feed... and I MEAN IT!!!  The human garbage disposal is a medal I didn't think Choni would be sharing with a child...but he does and it's his child so I guess it's sense making... Moving on... 

Well... 

When your kid mentions how empty your fridge and freezer and cupboards are...it's time to think about things...so I thought about why that is and that we are due for a shopping trip on Saturday and then Daddy will probably be stocking up on things but then I thought about why we were shopping Saturday... cause Daddy didn't have his first paycheck and he didn't want to put gas in the van to go to gma's...  so we would stay put and go grocery shopping... Hmmm... well I thought EFF IT!!  I'm getting food!  So I gave myself a budget, thought about the stuff that I could be making while Daddy is working...and I shopped.  Poor Marysu though...  She was stuck in her car seat all day...

See... in order for Daddy to get to work on time and not infringe on my day as he HATES to do and for us to not have to pay a sitter...  he drives to my work (45 minutes) and THEN goes to work after dropping the kids off with me (15-20 minutes)... so, kids are in the car 45 minutes.  Then they have a return trip with me for another 45 minutes...  That's hard on kidlettes with NO concept of time. 

I mulled over the Surprise Food Trip in my head all the way home.  By the time we got home, I figured it was a go.  Inside it was nice and warm, unlike the outside weather which was gray and storm-like ickiness...  We warmed up inside, kids played a minute or two and then we were off.  I cheated HUGE and the first and hopefully one of FEW times we ate out on Daddy's work schedule was McDonald's in the Wal-Mart.  Talk about one-stop shopping.  We ate, we shopped, we filled the cart.  There were two diaper changes and trips to the bathroom, a spill of apple slices and two cups of juice before we left the store.  By the time we got home it was time to get teeth brushed and pj's on and only a few minutes later it was bed time. 

This is one of the times of my day I absolutely love.  The kids don't always go to sleep right away...but listening to them sit there and chatter...  It's priceless... Harley was so completely utterly meant to be a big sister...she has her moments because she's seven folks... but she is such a great helper and she LOVES her little sister so much...and Marysu just adores the big kid she shares her room with as I'm sure she pictures in her head must be her name...  I folded laundry and put away dishes to chitter chatter that turned into slight whines and then gentle snores...  took my shower, went to bed...the soda I had right before bed didn't agree with me, which was awesome cause it'll keep me from doing that EVER again (Welcome, Thirties!)...

Last night was awesome sauce...  So why "The Other Shoe..."??

I have been sitting and waiting... apart of my brain has been 100% on alert to deal with "kid business" of ANY sort... spilled drinks, spilled ANYTHING, dirty ANYTHING, crazy cranky ANYTHING... and nothing... I'm fine, kids are fine, Choni is fine...

My coworker is NOT fine..her hubby is NOT fine.  I feel like I'm on the other side of the desk from my MIL this time last year...or maybe even further back than that cause they're not there yet... but I feel like they're going there...and I don't want to go there again with ANYBODY right now.  I want them to be fine...  I have been waiting and anticipating the other shoe to drop on me...but it seems to have aimed poorly and hit my rad awesome coworker.  I would be DEVASTATED if something happened to Antonio...  no matter what no matter when... 

My horribly cynical self was trying to save me from this...this right here... I felt the "What if I lost MY husband??" for two years...and Now I'm feeling it again...and all it does is prove that few things are scarier in life than losing the things that you LOVE so much that there really isn't a word worth the description of the feeling you have... LOVE is not enough... it's just not..but it's the closest I can get... there are people that you lose in your life and you go on...and life goes on..and that's fine...but there are some people, I know that if I lost them... My world would fall apart even for a moment...  it would happen...  I might comeback and bounce back and what comes out will be a version of me, but not he same me, because the same me would require that person to be around...and they're not...  I can't imagine if I tried what she must be going through.  I feel for her kids... I can do that... but I can't help her or be there for her FULLY because I don't know.  I'll do what I can, I'll do her work.  I can do THAT...at least...  but just when we thought things were going to be great... they're not... and now my day has been funkified all day because I can't get them out of my head...  These are damn good RADASS people...  and I literally am sick for them... My heart literally hurts for them... Like, I-could-be-dying-of-heart-disease kind of hurts...  Or I-probably-just-need-a-tums-because-I-had-coffee-this-morning hurts...but it started the second I heard...and some things you just can't un-hear... dammit...

Type, Type... Erase... Type... Erase...

Trying not to be the Billionth person to talk about it...

That's my response to Boston so far...

To sit at my desk and see madness down a street I have walked... down a corner I have turned...  driven down... albeit in the back seat but still...  And be utterly helpless...  To sit here and try to find the words... the collective, coherent thought to take that in and not go completely mad...  We are not an old country, but for our immediate purposes, Boston is our version of an ancient city...

Excuse me while I go in the Way Back Machine to that fateful Tuesday Morning in 2001 when I saw something else happen in a spot I have walked in, sat down on a bench and looked up at those immense buildings and have a feeling I was in the presence of greatness and world power... apparently I wasn't the only person that knew that...

I feel the same way about Boston...I felt the same way yesterday...  Of course there is the "Why? What the FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!"  Ok, someone is making a point...  but really?  That's how you make your point?  Fuckin pussies...  sorry.. but they are...  I can't stomach acts of violence.  I REALLY CAN"T STOMACH FACELESS ACTS OF VIOLENCE!!!  MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN YOU COWARDS!!  So we can catch you and bring you the justice you deserve.  Actually, we don't Constitutionally ALLOW the kind of justice these people would truly deserve, but anyways... I believe in Capitol Punishment, so sue me.  I'll never commit a crime that would deem me deserved as such, so I don't care if they euthanize people.  I REALLY REALLY don't.

A question I brought to myself: do I tell Thing 1?  We don't watch the news per se.  We don't sit and watch it together as a family... I watch it...  I choose to.  It's MY choice.  I know my children should grow up to be learned adults...but I'm choosing not to start it now.  If Harley comes home from school and asks me about something her teacher brought up we will talk about it...but I'm not going to sit her down and tell her about everything that happens and then attempt to possibly counter that with something good so that she doesn't give up hope in humans so early.  I would literally spend ALL day talking to her if that were the case. 

Meh... super miffed.. super sad... and super effing miffed...

I had nothing fresh or knew to think I was so stunned...appalled.  So I dug down into my 'serves.

September 11th, I didn't know what to do.  I didn't know if the country would feel a sense of comraderie that would bring us all to not go to school, to not work.  I just dared to go on my day and see what everyone else thought.  I didn't feel like, as a Californian, I should feel a sense of entitlement that allowed that horror to affect me directly, not sure yet if would in anyway, just that sight of those awesome buildings falling...  I got my other sock on, put on my shoes and drove to school...  I wasn't the only College student unsure.  Doors had signs on them of class cancellations... I made it INTO my class and my professor was explaining how she was going home and she bade us do the same...so I walked out with everyone else.  And I remembering seeing a Marine Reservist shaking his head...he just got done with his requirements and he pretty much knew then...he'd be going over somewhere...
I saw my husband by my car... He was writing me a note (no cell phones) and he grabbed the paper off my windshield and ran up and hugged me and we talked a minute... all of our classes were cancelled... did I still go to work?  did I still dare to pretend nothing happened??  Even the radio was rife with discussion...  I went home... waited for work to begin.  He came with me to my house for a bit and went on to work himself.  He said it was DEAD at his video store.  Mine wasn't DEAD.  But my manager, Stina, was on board with keeping a low profile that night and we turned all the TV's at my store and sat on the counter and watched...  The patrons didn't mind.  There were 5...all night. And one I will never forget.  Not ever.

A homely woman comes in after there is already a man with his son in the Sci-Fi section mulling over which Alien movie to rent... there are so many choices!

Woman is unhappy...  She grunts upon her entry and exasperates at the wall O' Tv's...  Uhm... Okaaaay....

I look at Stina, she is sitting on the counter watching... I follow my manager's lead and only get up when someone approaches attempting some miniscule amount of professionalism, but they don't care about that... they are all glued to the news.

I am helping man and son with their rental and woman comes up, Stina jumps off the counter and helps her.  She leans over towards Stina...  reading her Manager status on her glorious Employee Badge... 

"Oh, so I guess putting this on was your idea?"  Woman says.

Stina:  "Uh yea...  your total is..."

Woman: "Ugh, hopefully these are good enough to replace what's on... I can't believe SURVIVOR ISN'T ON TONIGHT BECAUSE OF THIS!!" (waving her hands at the TV's)

Stina:  "Your movies are due back ____....And I suggest that you go home and hug your kids because obvoiously there are WORSE THINGS GOING ON THAN MISSING SURVIVOR!!  Have a nice day." 

Stina... my hero that night... I will never forget that...  Not ever...

My immediate response to yesterday; I gave my kids a giant hug and we stayed in and hung out until bedtime... then I did my laundry and I relished in the things I was able to do because you just never know when you won't be able to do them again... 

I swear, I'm not a follower...no...REALLY!

So, I have always wanted to start a blog...It's just that I have a hard time reminding myself that there is no perfect time for anything...My theory always is, though, that there is a "better" time maybe, but a perfect time? No.  Never.  I didn't want to start this when I wanted to a few years ago because I didn't want to be come uber super obsessed about something new and unknowingly allow things to fall to the wayside.  Even though I like to pride myself on my ability to consciously NOT do that, I still have the fear that I will allow it.
I didn't want to do it when my Dad died because I didn't want it to be all about what a wonderful man he was, wonderfully flawed...but wonderful...
I didn't want to do it when my mom was married to my ex-step monster because I plan to right a book on that one day and no one will be stealing my ideas thank you very much. 
I didn't want to do it when I got married, wedding blogs can bore ME...imagine what mine would have been like...
Didn't want to when I got pregnant with my first daughter, the baby blogs can bore me too... 
imagine how they can bore others? 
When my mom got divorced, when I bought my house, when I was expecting my second and so on...now that I feel like I am at a new starting point I feel that this is the time. 

Fantastic! 

Though why today?  Today is not the perfect day either, but it's a good day.  It's a good day because I found this morning that my coworkers son was killed on his skateboard last night... wait...what?!?!  That makes it a good day??  Yes. It makes it the perfect day...and I will tell you why.  And know this, I do not write in correct essay format.  I am not writing a book.  Were I writing a book, (which I do on my sparest of time) it would look much fancy-shmansier.  But I write for myself the way that I talk... In a rant...with pauses...so deal with it. 
Moving on, I realized again for the millionth time that I am thankful for the few losses I have suffered in my life...that they have been expected losses... grandparents, aunts, uncles, distant cousins twice removed, parents (albeit too soon), but no siblings...certainly no children.  Jesus... (and I take the Lord's name, I'll apologize later, leave me alone).  Currently I know no one who's lost a child...  I know OF people...but I've never had anyone close to me, that I see 8 hours a day...who brings their kids in to work to show them off...This is fresh new territory...  Again...fresh new starts.  Today is the first day of the rest of the life of this man.  I can relate to that part.  I can SO relate to that part. 

In other news, I am a new mom (again) and it's excellent.  It feels like it didn't even happen.  It's great!  I am slowly but surely remembering the less sleep...the constant care at this stage.  I am constantly reminding myself "it doesn't last forever".  Because it doesn't.  I am married to a stay at home dad.  He's rad.  That's all you need to know at this point.  It just made sense for us in our situation.  That's all.  He actually loves it.  There are moments...MOMENTS...when he doesn't love it.  Fine...there are moments when I don't love it.  They don't last long and before you even realizing you are wishing someone would come in with fairy dust and make your kids dissappear for a minute, the moment has passed and you are back to taking too many pictures and making googly eyes at your precious sack of flour that can't move because they are too small to do anything but eat, poop, cry and sleep... and not always in that order. 
I hope not to use this as a sounding board or soap box...I don't usually DO that anyway...so I doubt that I will...but just a happy little pip of a few funny -isms here and there that might make people laugh.
I might get a little deep, but for the most part I'll be keeping things in the kiddie pool until I get more familiar with this here blogging contraption...  Meanwhile, welcome to what will hopefully turn out to be the mediocre misgivings of a Pepper, a Choni, and their two mickspanic chillrens... (well aware of how I spelled that). 

Scooter Pie Face