life, love and home improvement.

Again, i’ve fallen off the blogging wagon. its so completely unintentional, but days turn into weeks… and you know the rest.

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So, since it’s been nearly three months, some updates are probably in order…

Work
Work has settled at a normal pace for Justin. I knock on wood as I type this, because in the last couple of weeks he’s actually gotten home before 6 most days. So nice to see him in the evenings. Work is going really well for me. I was promoted this month to “Web Development Manager” and I’m now managing the development team. I’m very excited to be stepping in to the management realm. I’m sure there will be days where its all much less appealing, but overall its what I want to be doing and where I hope I can be most successful.

Friends
While I’ve been completely awful at keeping in touch with all of my long-distance friends, I’ve been very lucky to find some great friends in and through my neighbors. We have one couple next to us and another behind us — all high school sweethearts, all chatty and all very appreciative of a good happy hour get together. I walk in the evenings with the ladies and have been adopted into “girls night”, a weekly dinner with eight women that rotates through all of our houses.

Life
Life is good. I can’t believe next week is already our first anniversary. The past year has been both trying and wonderful, and overall we’ve come a long way in 12 months. Homeowners, both in great jobs, etc. The important stuff. We’ve slowed on the house projects because its just too hot. Even inside projects require outside time, and we’re very willing to put things on hold for another month to avoid the sweltering heat.

Football season starts Saturday which is something we’ve been anxiously awaiting. What could really be better than lazy Saturdays with junk food, friends and Gator Football? Yeah, nothing, that’s the point.

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For now I’m off to enjoy the remaining hours of Sunday before diving back in to work. Here’s hoping I write again before 3 more months pass me by.

xoxo.

I have a love/hate relationship with Sundays. I love that Justin and I usually lounge around, waking ourselves up with a cup of coffee in bed while we look out the window. I love the opportunity to get things done. Laundry piles shrink, new sheets go on the bed, and our Saturday projects tend to get finished. I hate that we spend the whole day knowing that tomorrow is Monday. The work week starts, the wake-ups come early, and the countdown for Friday begins.

We started the day with coffee — as usual — and then dug in to finish a project we started two weekends ago. Our work ethic has been less than stellar the past couple of weekends. We work on things, but never for more than a few hours, which means that nothing ever gets done.

It doesn’t help that we have far fewer weekend nights that go without plans these days. We have great neighbors who are always down for drinks, food and chatting. Doesn’t matter how many of us are available or where we land, but we always seem to have a good time. The best part of all being that when we’ve stayed up and out way past our bed time, we can just stumble home and into bed.

So our three-weekend project involved taking some old bricks and turning them into a patio off our back door. Its more of a utility door, but we wanted to pretty it up so it doesn’t look horrendous when compared to the deck. So we (by we I mean Justin, with me watching) cut wood to frame it out and poured concrete to act as a footing under the wood. Today, we spread out the leveling gravel and laid out the bricks. It took four hours to get it all done, and by the time we’d wrapped it up we had both sweat through our clothes. Pleasant thought, I know. In the end, it turned out even better than I had pictured it. I promise to post a picture soon, so long as everyone can look past the fact that it is surrounded by dirt and sand rather than grass.

For now though, I will continue lounging my tired body in front of HGTV. The ideas are so much easier to come by than the finished product. Phew.

xoxo.

I have been horrible. I don’t even have a good excuse. Nothing major happened, life is no more stressful than usual, I suppose I was just uninspired. So I figured, that the least I could do as I sit here watching “Jon and Kate plus 8″, is to let you know I am alive and well, even though my life over the last 10 days has been very much undocumented.

Work is about the same as usual, just a bit slower which makes me crazy. Work for Justin is definitely not slower. He had to work Saturday this past weekend which is never ideal in my world. BUT, I got to go to the mall with some friends, so its not like I was suffering at home alone all day…

This evening I have developed a pounding headache. I will use that as my excuse for this Jenna-Blog reunion post to come to an early end. More soon. I promise.

xoxo.

PS: I have just realized how awful my blog looks when you read a single post. Eck, one of these days I will fix it.

I am trying to figure out what hormone in my system triggers spontaneous paint decisions. When I think things through, I choose well. Justin and I team up to debate and select, and have been mostly happy with the results. Twice now, in my life, I have become intently set on a non-neutral color in a specific location — both with bad results.

When I was about 19 I decided that my bathroom at my parents’ house needed to be red. It had to be red-red. To be accompanied by navy and white accessories. I wasn’t feeling patriotic so much, but I had a vision.

My parents still hold that bathroom against me. They do not appreciate that I have moved on and they have been left with my handiwork. I always blamed that incident on the fact that it was “that time of the month.”

Today however, I do not have such an excuse.

We had — as in up until a few hours ago — a red wall in our kitchen. It was nice and I liked it. I even defended it when Justin suggested we should paint it early on. But today I wanted to paint it green. Bright, leafy, fun green. And nobody stopped me.

The color is good. I really like the color. I just don’t like it in my kitchen. It doesn’t match anything within 500 feet of it, and its jarring. The rest of the house is neutrals and browns. I hate it and now it’s too late for me to go back to Home Depot to get new paint.

I don’t like unfinished business. I will wake up in the morning feeling annoyed that I have to repaint a just-painted wall. But I did it to myself. Again.

So tomorrow, I will go get some new variation of red. I’ll employ Justin’s help to do the edges (another weak point of mine), and we’ll have it done before our neighbors come over for dinner. I will take a picture of the green and keep the color in mind for future (likely bedroom) projects.

I will also remain cautiously optimistic that this is the kind of insane thing I do only every five or six years. I’ll tell Justin to mark our 2015 calendar so that he can keep an eye on me as the memory of this incident fades.

xoxo.

Justin and I are crispy critters. We are lamenting our inability to use sunscreen properly and walking around avoiding most contact with one another. We are advil-popping, loose-clothes-wearing, terribly uncomfortable people.

We should know better.

We spent a great day at the beach with some friends and their adorable almost-9-month-old son. The weather was beautiful, the water was warm enough for swimming, and we chatted the afternoon away.

Justin and I had put sunscreen on before leaving the house, but failed to ever consider reapplying the sunscreen after swimming. Also, there is a pretty decent possibility that if I had better aim with the aerosol can, I could have minimized some of that damage, but sunscreen application is not now and has never been my forte.

I haven’t had a run in with the sun like this in quite some time. The inside of one of my legs is so burnt that I can barely bend my leg. I think the best comparison is feeling like someone punched me. Nice and swollen and uncomfortable. I have spent the last two days lamenting the position of seams in pants.

I am vowing to do better. I do not want to look like leather at 30. I will conquer the challenge that is sunscreen application. I will take Tylenol PM again tonight and hope for a better day tomorrow.

xoxo.

I like rainy days. I like them better when I’m at home to take advantage of the nap-inducing relaxation, but even if I’m at work, its sometimes nice to have a break from the constant sunshine, a change of pace.

Tuesday afternoon, the clouds rolled in and everything got dark. The power went out at my office (not until 5:15 — curse that luck) and I had the “excitement” of making a left at a crazy busy intersection with no functioning traffic lights. But, the rain came and went quickly, turned my weeds green, and watered my thirsty plants.

Yesterday, the clouds roll in again, just as I’m leaving work. Nothing like being tired and damp for the ride home. This time around though, the storm made itself at home. In fact, it invaded my home. Drip, drip…

A couple of months ago our roof leaked. We had someone come out to look at it, they promised an estimate that we never received, and we promptly forgot about the whole thing. Justin had patched it up a bit and it rains almost never in the winter, so we procrastinated on it believing that the “real” rainy season wouldn’t start until June. We were wrong.

So last night, as the rain is dumping down, winds are blowing, thunder and lightening have me contemplating unplugging all important electronics… I start to hear the drips. So, I grabbed one of my many mixing bowls to catch the slow drip and put a washcloth in the bowl so I wouldn’t have to listen to it. Not because it was loud or annoying, but because its depressing when something is wrong with your house that can’t be immediately fixed. I didn’t need the every-10-second reminder.

Another side-effect of rain is that Cohen is afraid of it. Not afraid of it when he’s inside, but afraid of stepping on it or getting it on himself. So the poor guy hadn’t been outside since 7am and refused with all his fuzzy might to go out in the rain. At one point the rain subsided, and I opened the door for him. As he stepped out there was a clap of thunder, and he backed himself right back inside. It took until 9pm and Justin going out to stand in the rain with him before he would go out.

Fortunately it seems that we’re getting off easy rain-wise today. It rained for a bit but not even hard enough to work its way through my roof and ceiling. Woo hoo, if that’s not a good day, I don’t know what is.

xoxo.

A Saturday post delayed because I forgot to mark as published.

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Thanks to the wonders of Tylenol PM, Justin was able to sleep in today. He couldn’t sleep through Cohen’s morning needs — no one could — but he was able to fall back to sleep after feeding and letting out the antsy fuzz head.

I was also able to get an unmedicated good night’s sleep. I woke up and decided to make a healthy breakfast. I shouldn’t be given too much credit for my healthy breakfast initiative. It came only after eating 3 slices of pizza and breadsticks drenched in garlic butter the night before.

Anyway, I was taking the domestic-wife bit for a spin, getting out what I needed for breakfast and starting some coffee. Full disclosure: my first attempt at coffee was an utter failure as I forgot to add the grounds. So after making a pot of hot water, I started the much-needed pot of coffee.

As my culinary skills were starting to shine, Justin’s phone rings. That new, work phone that I seem to be developing a love/hate relationship with. Love that it’s free, hate that it interrupts evenings, weekends, etc. with must-answer phone calls.

A few calls later (after eating my tasty though salty scrambled egg concoction), we were climbing in the truck to take care of business. We’ve been all over, and it may not be my most favorite way to spend a Saturday, but we’re together, so I cannot complain.

After the work was done, we drove a few miles out to Anna Maria Island. We’d heard that it was beautiful, and as you can see by the picture, all we had heard was true.

Xoxo.

I am so very happy for Justin and his new job. He loves it and has finally has a role of responsibility and importance. He knows that people depend on him and works as hard as he can to be sure that he exceeds their expectations. I know that even though his mornings are early and his days are long, he wakes up excited to go to work and feels a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.

The downside in all of this is his schedule. He gets up around 4:45am and is out the door by 6am. He gets home between 6 and 7pm. Tonight was an especially late one as he got home at 7:30, and now, its 8:45 and he’s been in bed for 20 minutes. So I had a lovely hour with my husband. I hugged him, fed him, made him do the dishes (I mean, come on, I work too and was doing the laundry while he was doing that), and then hugged him again before sending him off to bed. All of that, and I know we may do it all over again tomorrow. I hate and love it all at the same time.

For now, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ll look forward to the shorter days and the weekends. I’ll take advantage of every minute we have together, tell him about my day and ask him a million questions about his. I’ll kiss him before he goes to bed and then watch the TV shows he hates. If there was ever a time in our lives to work long days, this is it. His happiness is well worth the time I spend alone, and really, I think I am probably far more efficient this way. When he’s home, I want to hang out and lounge with him. So when he’s not here, I have a teeny bit more motivation to get things done. Maybe at the end of this week my laundry will be caught up, the house will be clean, and the mother’s day cards will have hit the mail on time. Big dreams for a scatterbrained woman such as myself.

All of these to-dos have just reminded me that our cable bill, the only one we have due this time of month, was probably due today. I have never paid that bill on time. Ever. Good thing they don’t hold the 24-48 hour delay against me. Ugh.

xoxo.

I got home from work yesterday and my parents were in the driveway waiting. They’d made better time than they’d expected, and I can’t lie, it was a great reason to slide out of the office at 4:30. So they came inside, made the rounds to see the results of our various projects, and we settled in the living room for golf on tv (boys) and chatting (girls).

Then there was a knock at the door. Justin was already up getting a beer (because really, what is golf-watching without beer…) and was about 20 feet from the door. But instead of going to open the door he just stood there and looked at me. I looked back at him, wondering at which point he had started delaying his door responses. Knock on the door, closest one to it opens it. How could that ever be confusing?

So he just stares at me awkwardly. I figured it was our neighbors and that he wasn’t sure what to do since my parents were here. That really wouldn’t make sense, since there’s plenty of room for everyone, but you know… He finally goes over to the door and opens it and a weird silence ensues…

I got up to see what on earth was going on, and standing in the doorway was my sister! yay!

Work has been crazy for Kari, so our time together has been very scarce in the last couple of months. Its still strange when that happens because we lived together for so long — growing up together of course, and then for a few years in college. We’re very different people but still frighteningly similar. We say the same things at the same time, finish each others sentences and there is no shortage of laughter — usually at the most ridiculous things.

Today (if we ever all get through the shower) we’ll head to the mall with my mom for a girl’s afternoon while the boys golf. That’s right. Golf in the morning followed by golf on tv all afternoon. So exciting. How crazy we must be to miss out by shopping instead.

Hope everyone has a fun/relaxing weekend planned. I’m most definitely looking forward to mine!

xoxo.

This week i’ve been a horrible blogger. Maybe its more accurate to say i just haven’t been a blogger.

Last weekend was work-filled with our fireplace project, and Justin’s dad was here until Wednesday.

So the past couple of nights we’ve been catching up on our DVR shows and cleaning the house for my parent’s arrival today. I haven’t been feeling the creative/clever writing side of me itching to get out, but I’ll lure it out this weekend and hopefully have some pictures ready too.

xoxo.