Tag: spousal relationships

Ad in the Personals Section

I think I’m going take out an ad in the newspaper. We moved out here a year ago and for the first eight months we spent every free moment house hunting. Then when we found a house we really liked, the next four months were spent moving in and making it ours. Now that we are all moved in and winter is coming, there isn’t much to do. Not to mention our work schedules are polar opposites, I work days and he works nights, I get up shortly after he gets home and he goes to work shortly after I get off work. The only evenings we have together are on his days off, which rotate every week, and weekends together happen only every six weeks. That leaves me alone most of the time.

I could take a class, but the last class I took was a yoga class and I turned that into competitive yoga trying to beat everyone else time. So much for relaxing and breathing, I don’t seem to play well with others. I could take up shopping, but then I would need to get a part time job to pay for the shopping. I could take up drinking, oh wait I already do drink, oops.

Hence my reason for the ad in the paper.

I think I’ll start off with:

Wanted: A friend.

“Woman in search of a friend who likes to get up early to greet each day. Someone who has weekends open and likes to explore new and old places. The friend needs to have a warped sense of humor; be able to poke fun at themselves as much as everyone else. The friend can’t take the world too seriously; enjoy life lightly. There are two very important prerequisites: the friend must like wine and dogs, drinking wine, talking wine and trying new wines. The friend must like dogs and all that comes with dogs; dog hair, dog drool and dog kisses.

The friend must like outdoors, hiking and odd adventures. A friend that likes pedicures, shopping and lunch out is an added bonus. Age is not an issue, the friend can be any age over twenty-one, (sorry must be legal drinking age).

Interested parties apply here.”

Another Myth Busted!

We’ve all heard them, the statement of “facts” handed down for ages that turn out to be not true at all. Like the one, “If you swallow chewing gum, it will stay in your stomach for seven years.” Well it won’t, it will pass through looking pretty much like it did going down. Or the myth, “Your hair and fingernails will continue to grow after death.” They don’t, but because your skin starts to shrink, it looks like your hair is growing longer.

Well I have a new myth to bust. Mine is much more relevant than chewing gum in your stomach or hair growing on a dead body. I have through research and “clinical” trials debunked a myth that has plagued women for decades. And I want everyone to be forewarned so as not to get fleeced by this long standing myth.

First off, let preface this by saying I have curly hair. Not only do I have naturally curly hair, I have very thick coarse naturally curly hair. If I were to place one of my hairs next to one of Mitch’s hairs, mine would look like a redwood tree next to a piece of silk. So when I say I have a lot of hair, it is an understatement. In order to have hair that looks somewhat presentable, I wash it every day. Because when I get up in the morning after rolling around in bed all night, I wake up with clown hair. I am not exaggerating one little bit when I say my hair is pretty scary to look at when I jump out of bed. It is sticking out in all different directions with curls going up, down and straight out in a wildly uncontrolled mess and it is not brush-able.

When my children were just three weeks old, they decided it was best to sleep through the night because I was so scary in the middle of the night. Orso won’t get up and ask to go outside in the middle of the night because he has seen what I look like after tossing and turning in bed. Suffice it to say, that thick curly hair does not sleep well.

The woman who cuts my hair told me to buy a satin pillowcase, because it would keep my curls under control and I would wake up with this beautiful head of lovely naturally curly hair with every hair still in place. Of course she neglected to say that I had to have every hair in place to start with. I am the poster child of the “messy hair” look and I wear it well. Anyway, I was willing and eager to try something, anything that might make my clown hair look less clownish.

I found and bought a single satin pillowcase, red of course. My choices were red, zebra print or leopard print so I bought the red pillowcase. I thought that I would just buy one and see how it works and if it did, then I would go back and get more. Well another myth bites the dust. I slept on it and woke up with clown hair. Nothing different than any other day, hair sticking out in all different directions, pretty scary for any unsuspecting soul out walking at four in the morning.

Maybe satin pillowcases only work on straight hair.

Someone Talk Me off the Ledge

I am having a life crisis and need some guidance before I make a huge mistake. Orso is ten years old and our only dog now. He is calm and sedate for the most part, giving way to the eternal puppy inside occasionally, running around like a loon. Those displays of puppy idiocy are few and far between. Life is good, quiet and boring.

Because life is going so well, there are fewer moments in life that are out of control and as chaotic as in the past, when he was younger and we were three dogs strong, AJ, our counter surfer and pantry raider, Charlie, our split personality dog, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Walking them was always a challenge and I had many instances of being the boat anchor, getting dragged after some poor unsuspecting creature of the night. Worst of all I have less and less to write about. No one wants to hear about how loud Orso snores or how he runs in his sleep.

So in an act of idiocy I have started looking at animal shelter websites and rescue groups online for another dog. I am not sure I am ready for another dog, I don’t want to go through the last weeks of Charlie’s psychotic breakdown, bringing a new dog into our peaceful home. I am somewhat gun shy after that and I won’t put Orso through the terror of Charlie’s vicious episodes with a dog that might not be animal friendly. During my recent business trip to Kansas City, I went to a dock dog competition where the local humane society was parading adoptable dogs around. I saw a big boy, an Akita mix, that if I still lived in KC I probably would have taken him home. Then another friend showed me pictures of a litter of Mastiff puppies that are five weeks old. Thank god they are too young to separate from their mother or I might have taken one of them, even though I do not want to go through another puppy phase EVER AGAIN.

My quandary is that I am probably one of the most boring people in the world, so unless I take up some new sport, like rock climbing or trail riding, I don’t have much to write about anymore. We all know how well I would do at rock climbing or trail riding and I think that eventually even Aflac would cancel my policy. That brings me back to my present problem, taking the leap and getting another dog.

I need the voice of reason to slap me across the back of my head and tell me, “Are you out of your mind? What are you thinking? Take up knitting or something a lot tamer, dummy!”

Poor Mitch, he is in so much trouble and doesn’t know it yet.

Day Trip

I wouldn’t normally call a trip to a store a day trip, but then a trip to IKEA is not a normal stop by any figment of the imagination. I used to think that a trip to Sam’s Club after eleven in the morning was crazy enough, but that was before I went to IKEA. Oh my god, is that place a zoo or what? As we waited in line to turn into the parking lot, my first thought was to just keep going, that nothing is worth this madness, but no we waited patiently to turn into the parking lot so that we could drive very slowly about three miles an hour in a long line of cars hoping for the sight of taillights lighting up on a parked car before the guy in front of us did. We circled the building and quite by accident we ran across an empty parking spot next to a parked tractor trailer. Snagging it we then had to walk around the building to the other side to go in the entrance. There were even security guards acting as parking attendants directing the madness and keeping road rage to a minimum.

Once inside it was no better, worse I would say, because now there were all of the occupants in the parked cars running amok in the building. There is even a play center to dump your kids in while you wander around in the maze the store has designed to force you to go through departments you have no desire or need to go to. The playroom for kids was filled to capacity and there was a waiting line, which meant there were kids running around out of control just like their parents, adding to the melee. People would walk along the path through the departments sort of like the yellow brick road until they see something that catches their interest, then they would just stop in these big groups blocking the expanse of the yellow brick road, only it was gray I think. I kept looking for an escape route and Mitch kept pulling me back. He didn’t want to die alone.

I have to admit there were a lot of cool things in there. We found a couple of chairs that were very reasonably priced, I found a desk that raised to a standing position or was easily lowered to a seated position and since I work from home, this was a must. We also found some really cool window panels, but it was the chaos of the crush of people that made the biggest impression on me.

I learned that you never go to IKEA on the weekend, not unless you have already been drinking and then you will end up with a huge credit card bill. Of course that isn’t the worst of the whole ordeal. You pick out what you want, then you have to go to the warehouse where you have to wander through aisles and aisles for the items of choice, (god forbid if you wrote the numbers down incorrectly) figure out how to get the one thing you want off the top shelf then get it to the other end of the warehouse to pay for all of your finds.

After you pay for everything you have a couple of choices, you can either go get the car, drive through the traffic jam to pull into the designated loading area and load your car or you can push your cart out to the parking lot and dodge cars backing up to leave and cars that will run you down to get to the vacant parking spot. We chose the latter and after almost getting run down by another guy pushing his cart out to his car and a man who couldn’t get out of the parking lot fast enough, we made to our car. As we started unloading our cart a woman pulled up and asking if we were leaving, so she could wait for our spot.

What a day.

Crash Kelly Strikes Again

I wanted to go hiking today and decided not to wake up Mitch, so I turned on the computer and searched around for some trails nearby. I found one that was only about fifteen minutes away from our house, so I loaded up Orso and headed out about seven thirty this morning. I left a note that said we went hiking, but I neglected to say where we went. I pulled into the parking lot and noticed a car already in the parking lot. I unloaded Orso and my backpack when I noticed that there was a man just sitting in the car with the engine running. A bit odd, but you know me, once I start on a path I usually just plow on through. As I passed his car he rolled the window down and said something I didn’t hear. I said good morning and kept on walking to the trailhead and into the woods. Yeah I know, not super bright, go into the woods and make it easier for a maniac.

The man didn’t follow us, just my overactive imagination, but I was more aware of any movement I came across. I was disappointed in what I found. The trail was okay, primitive, which was fine, just not much to see. There was a creek and a rickety wooden bridge, but not much else. Maybe because we were too close to civilization or maybe I was just spooked from the guy in the car, anyway I decided to turn around and head back to the car. When I reached the trailhead I saw that the white car was still in the parking lot and there was another car parked between his car and mine. As I got closer to the cars I saw a man in the second car just sitting there. Pretty creepy, so I quickly loaded up Orso, my backpack and jumped in the car and locked the doors. What a scaredy cat. I drove home and decided to wake Mitch up so he could take me hiking.

After he got up we headed out for a second hike, this time farther away. Our destination was Federation Forest State Park, about ninety minutes away. This one turned out to be a bust because the park was closed. Not to be denied, we turned around and found a trailhead along the side of the road, which was part of the park. We unloaded and headed off into the forest. We found huge trees toppled over, some that had pulled out of the ground by the roots. Huge trees that were six or seven feet in diameter laying between other trees or stacked on trees that were crushed under the impact. The trails were a tangled mess of branches and limbs and whole trees that we had to either climb over or crouch down and crawl under.

One such tree that was laying across the path proved to be my swan song. I stepped over it with one leg and as I was clearing it with my left leg, my boot got caught on a small branch still attached to the tree. I went down hard landing on my right side. I hit a root that jutted out of the ground with my ribs under my arm. I thought I was dead for a minute, then when the pain hit I realized I was still alive. I hit so hard I thought I popped an implant. But least I landed so that I saved the camera I was holding and the backpack with the other cameras were not hurt.

Mitch walked up to me and asked if I was impaled on anything before he helped me up. I guess he didn’t want to have any blood gushing out of me. I’m not sure what he would have done if I was impaled on something, leave me and go get help or just leave me. I slowly got back up on my feet and assessed the damage. I think I bruised my ribs on the right side, but none were broken I was pretty sure. There will be a nice bruise in a day or so on my right hip too and I cut the palm of my right hand on something.

I decided I had enough fun for one day so we headed back to the trailhead. As we neared the trailhead we saw a sign that was taped up that read, “Trail closed due to hazardous conditions.” Really I never would have known.

I think I need to do more pre-planning on our hikes.

This is Good-Bye

So long, sayonara, see you later, hasta la vista baby! However you want to say it, it’s good bye apartment. After six long months, we finally found a house. Don’t get me wrong, the apartment is a very nice apartment, clean, large and the apartment management is super, I’m just not cut out for apartment living. I like my aloneness too much.

Soon I won’t have to listen to Big Foot clomping around one floor above me, hammering god knows what, slamming cabinet doors and playing video games with the volume all the way up until the wee hours of the morning. I won’t have neighbors that drag their dried up Christmas tree out and not sweep up the thick blanket of pine needles covering the hallway and stairs leading outside, so that we drag them into our apartment. Most of all I will have a place to walk Orso that is not along a busy street with bicyclists silently whizzing past you from behind startling both of us, causing Orso to bark and lunge at them. No more cars with drivers that don’t know their cars can really go twenty-five miles an hour, they just haven’t tried it.

You can tell when it’s time to go, things happen telling you that you’ve made the right decision. It’s time to move, when two days after you give your intent to vacate, you find a parking violation letter on the windshield of the truck, telling you that you have to move it. Never mind the fact that the truck has been sitting in the same spot for the last six months, but all of a sudden it has to be moved. Then it seems like every little thing is glaring at you, shouting at you, “Get out, run!”

Another clue came when while walking Orso that same day, a woman pulls her car out of the parking lot and stops to tell me that Orso’s urine will burn up the grass. I turned and laughed at her and the absurdity of the statement. I was so tempted to tell her yes I could understand how that could happen since we live in such an “arid” climate. I wanted to say, “Seriously, we are on track to be the wettest winter on record, we are getting rain every day. The damn worms are drowning coming out of the muddy soggy soil and you think my dog’s urine is going to burn up the grass?” Instead I just looked at her, shook my head and walked away.

Then the final hint that it is time to go came sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning when I saw that someone stole our doormat. Can you believe it, someone came and stole our black astro-turf doormat? It’s not like we are on the main floor where you walk right up to the door and out, there are stairs involved getting to our door. I think what bothers me more is that someone was outside our door while I was asleep.

We got a notice from the complex management notifying us that someone would come in and make a “pre-move out inspection” to see what would is needed to be fixed or repaired before the apartment could be rented to someone else. In order to make a good impression, I have washed walls, vacuumed the carpet almost daily, mopped the floors and cleaned the bathrooms. There has been no damage done to the apartment, we haven’t hung any pictures or painted any walls so we’re good there and the dogs are well behaved and don’t destroy or chew up stuff. I even had the warmer on all day to put out a nice red apple scent throughout. What could go wrong?

The notice said “between 9am to 5pm”, and I waited all day for someone to come by. Dinner time came and no one had come by yet so I figured that everyone was too busy and started dinner. In order to clean out the freezer as much as I can before we move, I thought I would cook a steak for dinner. Well we still don’t have a grill yet, so I turned on the broiler in the oven. The steak was broiling away just fine when all of a sudden the grease caught on fire and smoke started rolling out of the oven and when I pulled the pan out flames shot out and climbed over the oven. I blew the flames out, but there was a lot of smoke, which set off all of the fire alarms in the apartment, I did not realize there were three fire alarms in one two bedroom apartment. Of course the fire alarms are screeching that high pitched screech and as a bonus there was a female voice yelling at us “Fire get out” over and over.

I opened the doors and fanned the smoke alarms until one by one they quit screeching. Just as I was about to sit back down to our salads, there was a knock on the door. Fully expecting the fire department at the door, there was one of our maintenance men there to do the inspection. Great, just as I try to burn down the apartment complex someone shows up to inspect the apartment for damage.

Well there goes our damage deposit.

Stealth Mode

Definitely not a term that is ever used when describing a Labrador retriever. Friendly, playful, loyal, gun dog, excellent retriever and most popular family dog are all words and terms used to describe the Labrador retriever, see no stealth mode. The breed originated in Newfoundland, originally called the St John’s water dog and was bred to retrieve in the cold waters. Today the Lab is a great family dog, loyal and playful, always in the middle of everything family.

To describe a Lab, you start at the head. His head is large and square or “blocky” with soft eyes that always melt your heart and make you smile. They have amazing hearing with ears that perk up at the slightest sound of the peanut butter jar lid being turned, even if they are on the other side of the house. A Lab has a big deep chest housing a stomach that can and has eaten almost a whole fifty pound bag of dog food in one sitting. Tip, never leave a bag of dog food unsecured.

At the end of the Labrador retriever is the tail. The tail was designed to be wide at the base and strong, to help steer and keep him afloat in the icy waters. The tail also has to be very large and strong, because that is where his heart is. The tail tells you everything you will ever need to know about a Lab. The happier the dog is faster his tail wags. The faster his tail wags, the bigger his smile gets on the front end. As far as happy goes, the Labrador retriever takes top honors.

With our goofy schedule, I work days and Mitch works nights. I get up at four am to start my day while Mitch is still asleep so I try to move around quietly and get dressing without making any noise. Well no matter how quiet I am, it is all canceled out with the banging of tails wagging, thumping against the bathroom door, the wall or the closet doors. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to give them space to wag in silence, they find a hard surface to bang their happy out. Good thing Mitch sleeps like the dead.

Stealth mode, not in this home.

Sightseeing

Mitch had a rare Sunday off and with the upper elevations getting tons of snow, we opted for a day at the Space Needle and the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum. We thought that since it is the last weekend before Christmas, the new Star Wars Movie opening and the Seahawks playing at home the crowds, wouldn’t be too bad. It was cloudy and chilly but it wasn’t raining while we were at the top of the Space Needle. I was able to get some shots that I thought were pretty good.

I couldn’t believe the beauty of the glass sculptures, true works of art and oh so delicate. I’m here to tell you, I walked around from room to room, keeping a lot of distance between the glass pieces and me. Anyone that knows me knows just how graceful I am and walking among pieces of fragile glass valued at tens of thousands of dollars each, was a disaster just waiting to happen. I have a gift and I had no desire to be the lead off news story of the evening.

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Taking Stock

Christmas is just two weeks away and this year is so different from previous holidays. This year instead of planning and preparing dinner for one son, his wife and daughters on Christmas Eve and doing it again on Christmas Day for the other son, his wife, daughters and the rest of us. Christmas Eve was usually prime rib and Christmas Day was chicken parmesan with spaghetti and meatballs. Two whole days spent cooking and baking, cleaning and making sure everything was perfect. A bit obsessive, maybe but I love cooking and baking and creating food that people enjoy eating. This year will be a lot different from our past holiday dinners, this year Christmas dinner will be something quick and easy, maybe pizza, maybe leftovers, it will be just the two of us and Mitch will have to leave to go to work.

I have been feeling a bit off, a long way from everything known, routine and comfortable, not that I don’t love where I’m at now and what I’m doing, it’s just a lot different, out of my comfort zone. Since we are still in an apartment, the majority of our belongings are still in storage, most of my cookware, all of my Christmas decorations and cookbooks are not here to put up or use, so I feel like we’re living in an extended stay hotel. Not really home.

Up until now I hadn’t been lonely, even though I work from home and the regular outside contacts I have are my hairdresser I see once a month and our realtor who is patient beyond belief trying to help us find our dream house. Our friends that live here are wonderful, but with our crazy work schedules, social life doesn’t exist, not that we had much of a social life before. So I’m not missing out on that here.

At first I couldn’t put my finger on it, what my problem was, then it dawned on me, I have no problems. I have a husband that loves me, two dogs that make me crazy and would eat anyone that tried to hurt me, (I am the giver of food) and living in a beautiful wonderful place that I get to make new memories. We won’t have the hustle and hectic days of cooking and cleaning, but we will have each other, and that’s what really matters.

Yes, it’s been a very chaotic year with so much upheaval and change, but maybe that’s what you need sometimes, great change. Life, like water that doesn’t move grows stagnant and complacent, forgetting the truly important things in our world. Our family may be thousands of miles away and I won’t be there to cook for them, or watch them open their presents, but I can call and talk to them anytime, not just on Christmas.

The year is coming to an end and the New Year brings promises of hope and change, yes there must always be change, not all changes are good but all changes are not bad either. I embrace the future and all the changes to come.

A Trip to the Coast

Mitch is such a good sport and maybe even a bit of a saint. He definitely has the patience of Job, he has to, he puts up with me. We are on vacation this week, which normally this is our pheasant hunting week, but this year we are a two and a half day drive to Nebraska so we decided to skip that this year and do some exploring here in Washington. Every day this week we have tried to make the two and a half hour drive to the coast so that I could take pictures of the Pacific Ocean and let the dogs run around in the surf. Today was the day we finally were able to go and guess what, today was the day that the big storm hit the coast moving inland with heavy rain and high winds. Yep perfect planning, that’s what I do. Mitch was still game so off we went.

We got to Ocean City about noon, and as you can see by the photos, it was brutal. Mitch deserves the saint of the week award. Maybe tomorrow I can get him to take me to Mount Rainier and play in the snow.

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