Legally Brunette

My husband - let’s call him “Mr. Brunette” - is also a student.  He’s working on finishing up his bachelor’s degree in business, and is able to do it through a distance learning program that our state college system offers.  (No, this isn’t that University of Phoenix nonsense!)  One of the classes he’s taking is business law - and bless his heart, he’s really enjoying it.

Which is great!  I appreciate that he’s enjoying it, and I love talking law geek stuff with him.  But not at 11pm at night.  You see, my daily schedule is as follows:

• 7:30am - get up, shower, get ready for work
• 8:30am - stumble into work.  Read blogs.  Check bank balance.  Read CNN and try to be a nominally informed citizen.
• 9am - give up on trying to wake up naturally. Walk two blocks to get coffee and scone.
• 9:30am - 5:30pm - actually get work done.  I’m a paralegal, and my boss is annoying very kind, and pushes me to do more lawyer-y stuff.  Heavy thinking.  Try to look like I know what the *bleep* I’m talking about.
• 5:30pm - 6:15pm - drive to school.  Listen to NPR.  Try to be a nominally informed citizen, but secrety hope that they’ll just play a short story by David Sedaris.
• 6:30pm - 9:30pm - school.  Try to absorb torts, civ pro and legal reasoning.   Mostly absorb torts, kinda absorb civ pro, fight strong urge to throw sharp pointy objects that the legal reasoning professor.
• 9:30pm - 10:30pm - drive home.  Talk to friend who is going through a messy divorce on the phone.  Thank God, Allah, Buddah, and the Great Unknown that my personal life is relatively drama-free.
• 10:30pm - get home.  Finally.  Thank Mr. Brunette profusely for being drama-free.  Eat… something.
• 11pm - Sit in my large comfy chair.  Watch ‘The Simpsons’, ‘The Office’, ‘Doctor Who’ or ‘Torchwood’.   Turn the brain off and morph into vegetable matter.

Basically, my brain in “on” law from 9am - 9:30pm.  Which means that at 11pm, all I want to do is watch mindless TV before I go to sleep and do it all again the next day.  Which means, unfortunately, I really do NOT want to debate the case that Mr. Brunette’s class is discussing that day.  I try my best to be a good wife and a supportive partner, and engage in conversation… but really, I’m *tired*.  About all I can handle at that point are the finer aspects of Homer and Marge’s marriage.

I love him, but I might just have to hide his business law book.

I’ll admit, for a utility company, PSNC is pretty on the ball. They will auto-draft my payment every month (so I don’t have to worry about getting the bills paid - hooray for laziness!) and their website is *very* comprehensive in breaking down the natural gas usage, cost, etc. on a month by month basis.

It will also tell you how many days in the billing cycle it was below 30 degrees - for example, here in Raleigh, it was below 30 degrees 10 days out of the December billing cycle in 2004. This year, however, it was below 30 degrees 15 days out of the December billing cycle.

The cost of natural gas is up by 35%, as well. It jumped from $1.26/therm in Dec 2004 to $1.70/therm in Dec 2005. That’s almost a 50 cent jump per therm - which dosen’t sound like a LOT, but it tacked on $63 to my gas bill this month.

And it’s not like we keep the house set at unreasonable tempatures - I keep it at 60 degrees during the day, and a balmy 65 from 7pm-11pm in the evenings when we’re home.

At this rate, I’m going to start letting the cats sleep on my head. Even if their purring keeps me awake, at least I’ll be warm.

Here’s hoping for a mild winter.

In other weird randomness….

I *love* my house.

It kinda reminds me of the line from ‘Lilo and Stitch’ - “This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.”

This is my house. I found it, all on my own. It’s little (well, not that little!) and broken (well, it has issues…) but still good. Yeah, still good.

I love that I have a washer and dryer.

I love MY room - the room across the hallway from the bathroom, that is all mine. It’s painted light blue, and has shelves of knick knacks from when I was a little girl. It has a big comfy blue couch, a white rocking chair, a cedar chest, and THE LAMP that Himself hates. I like to make a cup of tea and go in there and read, when I need to be comforted. It’s my safe space.

I love my backyard, and that we still see deer back there.

I love the hardwood floors - even if they need to be refinished.

I love that it’s really, truly mine. It’s not the largest house I’ve ever lived in, nor the most beautiful, nor the most expensive. But it’s the place that is truly *home*. Himself really wants to move back to California… I could see myself staying here for a very, very long time, though. I’m happy here.

I’m home.

As you may or may not know, I bought a house about this time last year. It was built in 1963, and is structurally sound but has some cosmetic issues.

Now that my slower season with work is upon us (huh-FREAKNG-zah!), I'm finally going to get the chance to work on the house a bit. The first major project that I want to work on is the kitchen.

It's a decent sized kitchen, but seems a lot smaller than it actually is thanks to obscenely dark wood paneling and cabinents. The first thing that needs to be done is the paneling. I had originally thought about tearing down the paneling, putting up drywall, and starting from scratch. My dad suggested that instead of doing all that work, that we instead look into paintable wallpaper. So we're looking at doing this project in the kitchen. You can, of course, get something in a flat surface - but I'm thinking of doing a split wall (I'm totally blanking on the technique - you have one wallpaper/color on the top half of the wall, a border/trim, and then something else on the bottom) and putting flat paper on the top, and something neat and textured like this on the bottom.

The cabinets need to be sanded down and re-painted as well - they're good, solid wood cabinets - just ugly as sin in their current incarnation. The biggest problem I'm having is finding a design element for the kitchen. The other rooms in the house are pretty easy - we have specific plans for those. I'm totally blanking on the kitchen, though. I know I want something *bright* and open. I really need to take an afternoon and go look through the wallpaper books at Lowe's for some ideas.

	View looking in from the dining area Here you can see the back door, on the left of the photo. On the right (hidden by the fridge!) is the sink. The table is on the left.
	The counter/sink
	Table nook

I have to take a moment here to give a huge, big, public thank you to Himself - who is truly living up to the title "man of the house" as we speak.

Backstory: on Tuesday, we had the very nice folks from Spring Green come out and aerate/re-seed the front lawn. You see, the house we're in was part of a development built in the early 60's. The man who funded the development kept a percentage of the homes in the subdivision to use as rental properties - and this is one of 'em. Last fall due to declining health (the guy is now in his 80's), he decided to downsize his investments and sell off a bunch of his houses. I got a killer deal on a great little house - 4 bed/1.5 bath brick ranch with a full basement. The kicker, however, is that it has a metric butt-ton of cosmetic issues - because, let's face it, when a house has been rented for 35 years, it's going to be fugly. I can't even begin to tell you how many layers of craptastic paint are on my walls. There is faux wood paneling in the kitchen. On a non-cosmetic level, there are still the original windows - single pane suckers with really bad seals.

One of the many cosmetic issues that needed to be dealt with was the front lawn - or lack thereof. I really should have taken a "before" photo to show the awful state of this poor lawn.

So - the nice Spring Green guys came over on Tuesday and punched billions of little holes in the ground and spread seed all about. It's terribly exciting, let me tell you. But now that there's all this lovely little grass seed all over the lawn, we need to keep it moist. So each day, we have set the sprinkler out to make sure every square inch of the lawn gets damp. So I'm out there today, and move the sprinkler around to the three specified spots, and it's done. Great! I go to turn the water off…

…and it won't turn off. The faucet keeps turning. And turning. And nothing happens. The pressure slows a bit, yes, but it's still running.

So I wait for Himself to come home from work. He's been working with aquariums for over a year - I figure he had to have picked up some basic plumbing skills. We spend a bit trying to find the water shutoff valve (which ended up being the valve I thought it was - ha!), and then go try to perform faucet surgery. With a few twists of the nut-bolt-washer thingy, this contraption comes out of the wall.

Huh. That must be the broken bit! We pile into the truck and head over to Home Depot, where a simply charming gentleman from Greenwich, England attempts to help us with our problem. It seems that they don't sell the exact part we have in our hands - but if we can find the washer that goes on the end of it, we can just replace *that*, and it should be fine.

So we trek *back* to the house, and turn the water valve on full blast - and the washer pops out of the pipe. Himself gets back in the truck with the washer and the faucety-bit and heads back up to Home Depot. No questions asked, with a smile on his face. It amazes me that this man can be so cheerful about home repair - when I get so frustrated myself.

I normally don't delegate this sort of thing out to him - but I needed his help on it. He chipped in cheerfuly and is going above and beyond the call of duty, and I'm very, very grateful to have his help - and have him in my life. There was no grouching, no grumbling, no stalling, no… nothing. Just doing what needed to be done.

So I'm making sure that dinner will be ready when he gets home. It's not a lot, but it's what I can do to make *him* feel appreciated and loved.

Make sure that those in your life who you love *know* that they're appreciated and loved. It's the simple things that show it, really.

love, moi.

Things that are Good:

• Hearing that most everyone I know had a fabulous weekend. For some reason, people’s lives have had lots of issues lately (nothing big, but some annoying crap), and it’s nice to see that all the people I love had a nice break from it this weekend.
• Kittens. The kitties were super-cuddly last night, laying on my legs and keeping me warm while I caught up on email. I really love doing personal email and the like in My Room, on a comfy couch, with the kitties. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m doing *right now*. They’re curled up, side by side, right next to me. I’m really glad we got two from the same litter - they’re really too adorable and affectionate towards one another.
• School - I did MUCH better on my tests this week than I did the past few weeks. I was in a total funk the past few weeks, and it really affected my schoolwork. I’ve discovered that, for me, it really helps to do the tests when I’m not at home and not distracted by all the stuff I should be doing. Last night I made very good use of Panera’s free wifi, and it was lovely. Unfortunately, this means that I’m missing out on some of the D&D lovliness, and that sucks.

Things that Are Bad:

• Kitties - they were super-annoying last night. And, somehow, when I tried to kick them out of the bedroom, they kept sneaking back in. It was like I had kittens coming out of the woodwork.
• Phone Calls - we had a mystery call sometime in the middle of the night, and then three more this morning. Some Indian (like, from India) guy seems to think that there is someone he knows living here. Between the phone calls and the cats, I am a bit sleep-deprived at the moment. And I have a test at school tonight, so there’s no way I can skip.

We moved into the house we're in back in April 2004, but at the time we were renting it, so were pretty limited to the amount of refurbishing we could do. The company we rented from decided to downsize their properties in fall 2004, and gave me a *stellar* deal on the house ($10K under the tax value!), so I scrounged up the down payment and bought the house.

This house was built in 1963, and has been a rental property since then (the guy we rented from was the original developer of the neighborhood that is so quaintly named *cough, sputter* "Rebel Acres". Yes, I live in the South.), so it has some issues. Thankfully, most of the issues are mostly cosmetic - ugly wood paneling in the kitchen, 40 years of really *bad* paint jobs, etc. The windows are, unfortunately, circa 1963 and are single-pane glass. The seals on the screens are laughable, and we're backed up against Nature (20-odd acres of undeveloped land), so unless we want all of Nature inside the house, we don't open the windows much.

Due to time constraints, the only room that has been finished is "my room" - it's a 4 bedroom, 1.5 bath house for just me and my partner. We have our room, a guest room, and we each have a personal room for our stuff.

My room is painted light blue with white trim. There are a few bookshelves in there that are a light maple wood color. The windows have a beige sheer curtain and then dark navy panel curtains held back by silver metal "tiebacks" with light blue glass globes on the end. The curtain rod is also silver with the light blue globes.

There's a great big comfy blue plaid couch in there - and an antique white rocking chair that is *me sized* - I fit in it perfectly. Little white shelves hold all my knick-knacks, and there's a neat celestial windchime hanging in the window. On a table by the couch there's a HUGE 60's era onion lamp in blue/green glaze, with a 3' tall conical lampshade. I love my lamp.

This is my sanctuary - it's where I can go close the door and make everything go away. I can go enjoy a cup of tea, read a book, play with the kitties, take a nap, etc. There's no TV (well, we're pretty much a TV free house anyway!) and no computer. It's peaceful. My teddy bear is in there (classic pooh!).

The best thing about my room is that the objects in it have history - the couch was a hand-me-down from friends. I bought the rocking chair in a flea market excursion with friends. The knick-knacks on the shelves were collected over the years - there's a ceramic music box that my dad gave my mom when they were dating, and a ceramic music box my parents gave me for my first communion. (They're big on ceramic music boxes in my family!) A "bambi" figurine from my frist trip to Disney World.

I was married, then single, and now living with my partner of 2.5 years… and whenever I lived with someone in the past, I always wanted a space to call my own. Private, personal space is important to me. Now that I have it, I don't know how I ever lived without it.

Cheers!

It may be just Himself - or perhaps this is an issue with all men.

We're talking about cooking here, folks. Now, Himself is really good about doing the cooking - although not always in the manner in which I would do it. But I don't like to cook, so I'll generally eat what's placed in front of me.

What he's not so good at doing, however, is cleaning up. Or, even worse, conserving pot and pan use.

Example - the other night we had chicken, veggies, and sobe noodles in some teriyaki sauce. It was simple, relatively healthy, and tasty. However, this adventure took at a bare minimum of 4 pots - one to cook the noodles in, one to brown the chicken, and two (the pot and steamer basket) for the veggies. Which *I* then end up washing - by hand, of course, since we're dishwasherless.

OTOH, were *I* to do the same meal - I'd do it quite differently. The veggies can be "steamed" in the microwave - a tupperware is much easier to wash than that blasted steamer basket. I don't argue with the usage of anything else, I guess. I just hate washing that blasted steamer basket. And I've told him this, and I've showed him how to steam veggies in the microwave. But, here we are three days later, and the steamer basket still hasn't been washed.

Perhaps it's the "tool use" phenomenon? We all know that men like to use tools - at least that's the stereotype. Perhaps they enjoy cooking more when there's something manly involved - tools, or fire, or whatever. Perhaps it's Alton's scientific method of cooking that has more men experimenting in the kitchen. I'm not sure what it is. I like the results (well, mostly!), minus the steamer basket issue.

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. I've found a man who cooks for me and does laundry. In the grand scheme of things, having to wash out a steamer basket isn't a huge deal, I suppose. But where does it end? Is this the tip of the iceberg? Will I find myself, shoulder-deep in dishes after a meal of bacon and eggs? What will happen when we actually have table room to really entertain? I don't think we even own enough pots and pans to do a major meal, at least if he's doing the cooking.

Will this madness ever end?

Probably not - unless I convince him to do the dishes.

Every four years, the world comes together to celebrate it's athletes in the Olympic Games. Each country send the best of the best to compete in such events as gymnastics, ice skating, and running.

Every four hours, however, our little neighborhood holds it's own form of Olympics - Barking.

The contestants?

Brigid - the current champion and reigning queen of the bark-a-thon. Brigid is a 5-year old Australian Shepherd originally hailing from Durham, NC. Although small and lithe for her breed, she had fierce, powerful lungs - and knows how to use them.

Coming in with the silver is another Aussie - originally from Raleigh, NC - Penny, the Dog Next Door. Penny is approximately 6 months old, and still hasn't grown into her bark yet. With the installation yesterday of a brand new fencing system, she suddenly has full view of both Brigid and our bronze medalist. Her bark is less frequent and quieter, but this commentator predicts that, as she grows, she'll be in strong competition for the lead.

Side note: to the untrained eye, these two athletes look just the same - both are tri-colored Aussies. However, Brigid is taller and leaner, whereas Penny maintains the "standard" Aussie physique of being lower to the ground, a bit stockier, and a lot fluffier.

Coming in a distant third is Spike - the chow two doors down. Spike only occasionally joins into the bark-o-lympics - but when he does, his bark is deep, rich, and powerful. Think the James Earl Jones of barks. Spike, however, is constantly breaking loose from his run, though, so he dosen't have to bark to get attention… he simply saunters over to play. It used to piss me off. Now I'm used to it.

All three of these contestants, when out in their respective outdoor areas, now have full view of each other. This should be interesting.

*grin*