Gardening fun

Yesterday we spent most of the day in the back flower beds.  We pulled out the pansies, which were on their last legs and replanted the beds with salvias and celosia.  I also got a couple of Asiatic Lilies and planted them.  There's one already in the flower bed, so the two we bought just compliment that.  We also got some peppers and some basil, along with a tomato.  I'm happy to have my garden in.  I've really missed getting my hands dirty!

This is what the flower bed looked like before we installed the plants and the mulch I went out and picked up.  I got Cedar mulch because it has "bug conrolling properties" and it smells pretty.  That, and it'll help improve the soil from everything I've heard.  

While digging toward the back of this bed (where the light green bush is at the back of the picture, toward the grass), I found some sort of volunteer plant.  It looks like it's some sot of bulb grown plant.  We'll see what it springs up into.   I decided not to pull it out.  I'll see if it grows anything wonderful when it sprouts.

We also planted a couple of pepper plants and a dill plant in this flower bed.  The dill is over by the house, near the golden plant at the back of the bed.  I hope it'll do well.  We planted it because we like to eat salmon with dill and it's nice to have that fresh dill in the garden.  I'm also going to plant some basil and enjoy that.  The tomato is in a pot by itself.  I hope that I get some good tomatoes from it.  I bought the plant based on what the container said, that it can grow well in a container.

I

This evening's walk

Back to training!!

I am sooo excited!!  After over a month off, I'm going to be back into my martial arts training as of tomorrow!  I'm going to the dojang to practice with one of the head instructors.  This is making me VERY happy and very excited because I'll be able to get back into working out and getting my mind wrapped around the idea of being a martial artist seriously.  I'm literally jumping up and down for joy.  I'm happier than I have been about almost anything.  There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, I'm thrilled as anything to be able to get back into martial arts!!!  

I am a little apprehensive as well, but I don't think I'll let it bother me much.  The one leg I have been having problems with since I was kicked is a bit sore, but I need to make sure I get myself using it.  I'm going to start stretching tonight so that I can start working on building muscle strength.

School play

The fourth graders put on a play tonight called The Empty Pot.  It was a really neat play.  The kids acted it out, narrated, and played music, along with singing.  It was really a cute play.  I read a review of the book at Amazon.
The music teacher said that the kids read the book in the third grade and that they wanted to put it to music.  It was a lot of fun.
The little guy was one of the "Proclamation readers" along with our real estate agent's daughter.  That was kind of neat.  She's really tall and he's still short, so it was an adorable mix.  I kept hearing a couple of kids behind us talking about my little guy and the young lady.  What's really funny is that the young lady doesn't really talk to the little guy at school and yet they did this play together.  
I didn't get very many pictures that were any good because we were in the bleachers and I didn't have my camera with a good range with me.  The little camera I had does the trick for close up and bright light shots, but not for distance and low light.  I'll see what I can salvage later...like tomorrow.

 

Duck Wrangler

Our new house is in an awesome neighborhood.  There is a park across the street and there are lakes in that park.  There is a huge profusion of ducks in the area.  We always see them in someone's yard as I'm taking my daughter to school.
This morning we were treated to a fun sight and giggles.  As we turned onto the street, we had to slow down because there was a lady in the street, trying desperately to shoo a pair of ducks out of the road.  The ducks had taken possession of the street and weren't budging whatsoever.  This lady had left her car idling on a side street and was trying to shoo them to the curb.  They were determined that they were ducks and as such, they owned the street.  We sat in the car until she'd gotten both of them up on the curb.  It made for a fun morning because we got a good laugh at the thought of our neighbors being "duck wranglers".   The street the ducks were on faces the park and the lakes, so there are *always* ducks out in the grass and in the yards facing the lakes.  Everyone has to slow down and we do have a "duck crossing" sign on the side of the street to warn people that there are ducks there.  
Amanda and I giggled and laughed all the way to her school.  We were laughing so hard, in fact, that I drove off after dropping her off and let her forget her backpack in the car.  I had to turn around and take it back to her--I was halfway to work when she texted me "MY BACKPACK!!  YOU HAVE IT!!"  
It's a good thing we have cell phones, I guarantee!

I'm still smiling at the thought of the people wrangling ducks.  It's too funny and made for a lovely way to start my day.

Killing time

I'm at lunch, at work, killing time.  By this time tomorrow, I'll have the Internet back at my house, if all goes well.  I'm not going to spend all day online though, because I'm still unpacking.  The master bedroom is loaded with boxes, the living room, where the piano is, is loaded with books on the floor.  I haven't finished finding the kids' rooms.  I've managed to misplace a set of keys belonging to my daughter.  I have to look for those.  That's on the list.
Lots of things "on the list".  LOL.

I should be able to slot some time to upload pictures tomorrow night and will share them with people.  I'm really enjoying the "toss" and "keep" options of organizing.  Makes me appreciate people who organize things for a living!!

I haven't disappeared!!

We don't have internet at home and I refuse to go to Starbucks for another session with the wireless.  I need to spend time getting my house in order.

Pictures will be forthcoming.

The great outdoors

We took our first walk tonight in the new neighborhood.  Our daughter had a friend over (they painted her room, including the blinds and the window sill!!), so while they were taking a break from the painting, we went out and took a walk.  There's a park across the street (to the west of us), so we walked over there.  They're in the process of putting in a Veteran's Memorial in this park.  It's really neat.  I have to get some pictures of it and post them.  The memorial has 5 marble pillars, one for each branch of the Armed Services.  Behind each pillar is a wall that has bricks inset into it with the names of servicemen who have either passed away or are still living.  There were a couple of them that were involved in both World Wars.  To me, that's incredible!  One of them had been in the Army in WW1 and joined the Navy for WW2.  

The weather was perfect for walking.  It was cool, but not too cool.  I loved it!  I can easily make my mile a day without any issues.  (That's a doctor prescribed thing that I'll mention later.)

We're still moving things and packing.  The oldest has to go through her closet, I'm tossing books out to the half priced book store and the cat is confused.  All in all, we've had a highly productive week.

Wish list

Since we haven't had a house to live in for many years, I'd forgotten all the FUN one can have in making it a home!

I've starting a wish list for the house:

Lawnmower (electric only, no gas)
Edger (electric)
Weed whacker (same, only electric)
Extension cord to handle the electric weed whacker (the guy at Lowes told us what we need)
A million dollars (in my dreams!!)
A lawn service (that would be ME)
To be moved in NOW...(We're doing it slowly to do it right)
Cleaning service (oh yeah, me again)
A new shower enclosure (the door is kaput on the one we've got...but my bathtub is a whirlpool bathtub with a jet!  WOOO HOOO!!)
A fully seeded and green lawn (we have to plant the seed sometime soon)
Unlimited funds for landscaping
A pickup truck for the hubby (this is because his stupid car bit the dust last week! AGAIN!!!!  Alternator this time and it was pricey!!!)

Here it is....

Introducing....

 My new house.  This picture was taken last Sunday, after it had snowed on the first day of Spring.  I think it's actually kind of neat...the owners put the house on the market and got a picture of it on a snow day in February, we saw it the Monday after it went on market, offered on it by Thursday and...now we're getting ready to move in.  I'm so happy about this!!

Closing!!

I am now a homeowner!!  Woo hoo!!!  I'm so happy and excited!  I'm extremely giddy with excitement!! We signed all the papers at 1:00 and by 4:30, they'd funded the loan, so it's official!  I own a house!!

I'm so happy to be able to get out of this apartment!!  I've had more than enough of strange things here.  This apartment has charged me for an "allocated water" bill, which meant that whenever someone moves out, the rest of the community gets hit with the water they didn't pay for or use.  I'm actually looking forward to finding out what my "normal" water consumption will be now that we have a house. We have a sprinkler system, but may not run it that often.  I know that is a huge water use. 


We've started packing and purging.  My kids are learning how to pack and purge.  My daughter went through a bunch of her things, tossed out things she knew she wasn't interested in anymore and is a lot happier.  My son is just annoyed because we packed up the video games and he won't get to play them for a week or more.  (OOPS!!)


Sunday the 28th is the start of our move.  I'll take my vacuum over to the house and clean, then get busy and tape off the teenager's room and get it ready to paint on Monday.  I also have someone coming out to measure windows for replacement on Monday.  On Tuesday, we get the washer, dryer and refrigerator.  Things are moving along!!

Countdown to closing

One of the hardest things about this house buying journey is over--the loan process is complete.  Now it's on to the packing, cleaning, purging that goes with getting rid of 7 years of living in this apartment.  I have so much stuff to throw out, I'm surprised I haven't filled a thousand trash bags yet.  We have started, but haven't made much of a dent in the packing.  My husband wants to wait until mid-April to move in, but...I'm impatient and want to start moving in NOW.  If i had my way, I'd go ahead and close early, then move in tomorrow.   I have to wait another two weeks though.  Oh well.

This will give me a chance to weed through my books.   I am book collector.  I love to read, and don't visit any libraries except my own these days.  I will probably end up with 5 or 6 boxes full of books.  I think that will be my packing project for today.  If I can get my books packed up, I feel like I will have accomplished something. 

I also have to pack up the contents of my closet---I have all the belts I earned at my old martial arts school in the closet.  When we get to the house, I'm going to design a belt holder (or buy one if I'm too lazy to build it myself) and put my belts out somewhere on display.  I think I have something along the lines of 9-10 belts, not including my black belt.  In my old school, the belt rankings started with white (every school does, I believe), then went to yellow, yellow with a black stripe, orange, orange/black stripe, green, green/black stripe, brown, brown/black stripe, red, red/black stripe, blue, blue with a white stripe, blue with a black stripe, half black/half blue and finally, black.  I'm presently using my blue belt at BTK because our Dan belts are navy blue. 

 

Everything is coming together

We've now had the house inspected and all the bickering little details back and forth from each side--Side A says "fix this, this, this, this and this."  Side B says "No, we'll either fix this OR we'll fix this, this, this and this and leave out this."  Side A says "You fix this, this, this, this, this and we'll go half on this."  Side B thinks a bit, then says, "Okay, we're good with this."  So now the frenetic packing and cleaning is on.  I told a good friend that buying a house is much like gambling.  Nothing is 100% guaranteed.

Here are a few pictures of the inside of the house:

 

The dining room 

 
 

This is currently the playroom for the present homeowners.

 

The front door

 
 

The family room

 

The present homeowners are still in residence, so this is their stuff.  The walls are painted a sage green.  The kids' bedrooms are pink and white striped and blue.  We have had a "request" (demand??) to paint the pink and white room purple with yellow.  NOT *my* first thought of nice, but who am I?  I'm just a crabby old lady who doesn't want to change it.  Since we're talking about painting that room, the young man wants HIS room painted in the colors of the University of Texas.  I'm sorry, but orange is not an ideal color for a bedroom, so he gets stuck with it being blue.  I got the idea to get some cammoflauge netting like hunters use and tack it up to the walls.  That way it would stay blue, but would be slightly more masculine.  I guess we'll see.  I'm not ready to paint two rooms.  It's already going to push our move in date back to mid-April.  I'm a bit annoyed with that too, but I'll deal with it.  I want to move in as soon as I possibly can.  Unfortunately, it's not always possible to do what I want to do, as I'm very well aware of.

This house purchase is a huge step and one that I HOPE will let me finally rest the demons that have been plaguing my martial arts training.  I have taken a month off to not think martial arts, to just BE, not to train.  I am trying to put aside the hurt I felt from a friend who told me that I was really too heavy to do the things I was talking about doing (running).  I have to learn to like myself and one of the things I'm finding cathartic about moving is that I can try to purge all of my feelings of discontent that have plagued me for over a year.  I've let little comments from my loved ones ("Mommy you're 'phat'.  Not "fat" but 'phat', which is a good thing!") ("Honey, you KNOW you have to work out more and eat less to lose weight.") get to me.  
I've had a lot of self doubt, which has lingered.  I finally wound up writing my instructor an email to tell him why I wasn't showing up for class.  He pointed out that I'm not letting myself have fun (hyper critical me knows this but needs to fix it). He said I need to let go and have some fun.  I'm going to work on that.

I think the house is impetus to get my stuff together and decide what I want to do for the rest of my life.  I can either sit and be critical of myself and "boo-hoo" about how I'm not going anywhere (which is what someone else said to me recently), or I can DO something about it.  The choice is mine.  

House

I have pictures of the interior of the house posted up at Picasa.  If you want to see them, please let me know.  I'm really excited about it.  We have it under contract, paid the title company, paid our earnest monies and are on our way to having it inspected.  The next step in this process is an appraisal for the value and then we're on to closing.  We don't close until the end of March, but still, it's happening.  I'm a bit apprehensive, especially in light of finding out that there's MORE expense involved, but the hubby tells me that's my nature and I'm never going to change (gee, thanks dear!!).  I'm a natural born worrier, I guess.  I just don't want anything to go wrong!!

The oldest child wants to paint her room purple with yellow XO's on the walls.  I'm not pleased about that combination.  I don't want her to go Goth.  I guess that's one of those "get over it" things.  I'll just pick my battles and deal with it later. Right now, I've got to start collecting boxes and cleaning.  I decided that I was going to clean as I pack.  That way I don't have any issues with anything and will know what I've got to do.

HONEY I BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!!

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!!

Details later.  We offered, they countered slightly, we accepted, we're waiting for them to say "cool, good, inspect."
Now to worry about packing!!

Intermittently around

I'm here...just haven't been in a writing mood lately.  Facebook has sucked me into a void with silly games.  We're still hunting for houses.  We found another nice one...it's just that I'm having issues with the thought of moving my son from his school and his very good teachers.  I know that I'll find other good teachers, but...I don't want to move him!!

There are other things going on too...some "me" issues I'm dealing with.  It's affected my mindset so I've not gone to karate for a while.  I'm letting other things happen.

If  I can get online for a short time (and not be distracted by the Olympics!), I'll write and update things.

Food for thought

We have been looking at houses lately.  We started out just out of curiosity, then poked around a little more and found a few we liked.  We found one on the other side of town that's an older house.   It wasn't too bad--from the outside.  We couldn't stand the interior of the one house...it was shades of the 1970s.  We're talking sunken living room here!  That was not our idea of a nice house.  It was even worse that we found that the floor was slanted, as if there was a huge foundation issue.  It was quickly marked off our list of potentials.

The one house we found that we really like is more than our budget can afford.  We've been pre-approved for x amount.  That's really a good thing, all things considered.  We had a few problems in the past, which might reflect poorly on our record.  Hopefully we're rebounding from that.  

I've been sick since Monday and wasn't able to go with the hubby to look at a house we couldn't get into on Saturday (the lock was jammed) and another house he was shown.  I want to see the second house.  The house with the jammed lock was okay, he says.  The second house is a little bigger than our apartment.  It seems nice from the pictures.  I want to walk through it and see what it looks like.  It's in McKinney, but is in the Allen ISD, which is good.  I don't really want to pull my daughter out of her current school.  She's happy and doesn't need to be uprooted.  Neither, for that matter, does my son.  


Spending time at home has given me time to think. I keep thinking about whether or not we want to buy a house now or wait until next year.  It's just something that's running through my mind. 

The MRI, take two

I finally went and had my MRI done on Friday.  My regular doctor prescribed a sedative for me, so I was able to sleep through the procedure.  I don't remember more than small snippets of the actual procedure. This is a very good thing, although I now know that sedatives make me totally loopy and not worth anything after taking it!  I slept quite a bit on Friday.  I was moving very slowly when I was awake, which was unusual for me.  Even my chiropractor noticed that I was sluggish when I went in to talk to him.

They got the results of the MRI the same day.  There wasn't any visible damage to nerves or muscles to attribute to the pain I've had in my shoulder/neck area.  The nerves all look great.  Now we get to talk to an orthopedic doctor and see what he thinks is going on.  In the meantime, I'm restricted from pushups (although I'm going to test the boundaries on some things), planks, running, etc.  He did say I could use an elliptical machine, so that may be in the works for this afternoon.  I can go swimming as long as I don't push it.  Nothing that will affect my shoulder.  

I'm going to the Natatorium today.  If I can't do any other workouts, the least I can do is work on getting my overall fitness up.  I WILL be healthier this year!  My goal for the month of February is to lose 5 pounds (and I'm only setting it at 5 because I don't want to discourage myself).  My goal is February 24th.  It was recommended to set a goal that is attainable and that is not unreachable, so there it is.  Now it's out in writing too, so I can't pull it back.

Not today

Went to my appointment tonight, only to find myself unable to have the actual procedure.  I panicked when they put me under the magnetic thing.  I hadn't realized that I was claustrophobic until they slid me up under that thing.

The MRI machine is an "open MRI", which just means it isn't the loud tunnel thing you always see on television.  This one was a table that slide over one magnet thing and under another.  You have to lay face up, very, very still, and they turn on the thing to take the pictures.  

I was fine when I got up on the table.  I was talking with the lady who was going to do the procedure.  We  chatted about a few things, including how long it was going to take (4 of the pictures were 3 minutes, one was 5 minutes).  She put a thing over my face that was there to keep me still and keep me from bouncing around (my head), and that was just the beginning.   Again, I was fine until she slid me under the machine and made adjustments.  At that point, I got very uncomfortable and asked to stop.  They hadn't even taken pictures!  I wasn't happy with the thing being up in my face.  We stopped the test at that point.  I rescheduled, then went home, called my doctor's office and asked for some sort of sedative.  If the doctor will sedate me, I can have the procedure done on Saturday..  We will see what happens.  I am going to be getting a phone call tomorrow with either the news that I'm getting a prescription for 1 or 2 pills (probably going to be $50.00!) or they'll send me to a "standing MRI" where you're not lying flat.  We shall see what happens.

Testing...testing...testing...

Tomorrow I'm going to have an MRI after work.  I've been fighting with pain in my neck and upper back, between my shoulder blade and the spine, plus some odd pain down my left side and in the front of my collarbone.  It's all isolated to the left side, which I found odd.  I visited my regular doctor, who found nothing wrong.  I visited my chiropractor, and he diagnosed a pinched nerve, but it didn't get much better.  I can lift my left arm now, which wasn't possible a few months ago.  Unfortunately, the pain hasn't really gone completely away, which has my chiropractor wondering why.  He's tried to avoid this but finally came down to "we're going to do an MRI".  I'm going in tomorrow after work.  We shall see in a few weeks what's going on.  In the meantime, I don't get to "play" at karate and have to be cautious about what I do with my arm.  One of the guys at work told me it was my poor posture at my desk which is probably contributing to my shoulder issue.   They all have theories about what's causing the problem.  I carry a laptop to work, but that's on my right shoulder and I haven't had any problems on the right side.   Ah well.  I'll find out what the problem is and we can address the issue from there.
I want to get back to karate.  I want to start working on the things I need to work on, like forms and sparring.  I want to get back into weight lifting, so that I can kill off the "bat wings" on my arms.  I guess I need to learn patience.  I just don't want that patience.  I want it NOW.