Life By Lindsey Rae

I have something important to share.
This has never happened before and will probably never happen again, so be prepared to be amazed.

So, back in June, I looked out the window and saw a lizard on the back patio. Jerrod was at work at the time and so I took this picture of it and emailed it to him.


He wrote back saying, "Did you catch it? I want to keep it as a pet."

I'm pretty sure he was joking....I hope. I don't think he really wants a pet lizard and of course, I would never touch that thing!

Of course, I am pretty terrified of all creepy/crawly things...mostly bugs, but I am not a fan of anything that isn't cute and cuddly. I have held a tiny frog in the past, but normally, I don't touch anything that does not have fur.

But, the other day, I was over at my neighbor's house, watering his tree's (because he lives in California half the time, we help keep the trees alive while he is gone), and I bent down and saw something moving in the mulch around the tree. At first I thought it was a frog, since we've had quite a few of those around recently, but then saw that it was actually a teeny, tiny lizard. It was only about as big as the tip of my finger! I never have seen one that small before.

So, I panicked! I wanted to show Jerrod really badly, since he had teased me about catching the other one I saw a couple months ago, but he was at our house across the street and all I could think to do was grab it!

I couldn't believe I did it! I touched that thing! I ran back to my house holding it and saying, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!"

When I got home, since I had it in both my hands, I couldn't open the door! So, could only kick it and ring the doorbell with my elbow and started yelling, "Jerrod! Jerrod! Come out here quick!" Unfortunately for the lizard and I, he was upstairs, with the TV on, so he didn't hear.

I kept thinking about how my mom used to say, "You can't yell like you are on the farm when you are in town!" And I felt I was embarrassing myself in front of the neighbors.

But, like I said, this was the first time I had ever done anything like this couldn't risk accidentally letting it go by opening the door. So, I just kept banging and yelling and holding my lizard.

You know, I always think that if you ring the doorbell multiple times, it makes the person inside less likely to want to open the door...they probably want to make you wait outside longer for being so impatient.

Anyway, Jerrod finally heard me and came out and of course, was irritated with me for kicking the door, ringing the doorbell multiple times and yelling at him. But, when I showed him what I got, he was pretty impressed and surprised. I told him it was a present for him, because I wouldn't have done it otherwise.

We took some pictures of me and my lizard. Please appreciate these, because it will probably be the last ones you will ever see of me with something like this. I don't do these things on a regular basis. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you all.



We did returned that lizard to the neighbor's yard after we were done playing with him and don't worry...I washed my hands after about 10 times in a row.


Good story, eh? I bet you'd think it'd be a better story if I told one about having my CD finished, but believe it or not, that's far more complicated one.

As I mentioned previously, I was building a dry stone wall along one side of our property. I finished it about 2 weeks ago, but I still have a few small things that I want to do to improve it.

I still need to post pictures of my work! I have some now, but Jerrod took so many for me and I still have to go through them and pick out some good ones.

So, I was getting my rocks from a lot of the nearby construction sites, but those houses are getting closer to being done, and as they get closer to landscaping, they've removed a lot of the piles of dug up rock from the surface that made them so accessible.I gathered lots of rocks for my wall piled up around here.
And, even though my wall is finished, I really wanted to get some extra rocks for repairs that might need to be done as it shifts with the seasons or maybe for an edge on a flowerbed in the future. They have huge piles one or two blocks down, at the edge of the subdivision, but when you are carrying a wheelbarrow full of a couple hundred pounds of rocks and it's 95 degrees outside, you don't want to walk any further than you have to (especially on hills). So, I've got to take advantage of the ones I've got here now before they are gone!

My neighbors across the street are a retired couple who spend a lot of time sitting on their front porch smoking their cigarettes. I believe they have quite enjoyed sitting out there day after day watching me carry 50 lb rocks around. I feel like I provide a form of entertainment or something. They always are telling me that I "work too hard" and I'm "so strong" and this sort of thing, which I think is absolutely hilarious. They make sure to mention this to Jerrod too. And my cousin, Steven, when he was over. I'm sure then both totally agree! haha.

Tonight they told me that they are starting to worry about me now that I am still gathering yet more rocks.I pretty much broke the first wheelbarrow from putting too much weight in it. We got this new one, which works pretty well. It's still holding up! I tried to explain why I was doing this and they just insist that I am doing too much all the time, (again, haha) and that I am too tough and I am going to seriously injure myself if I keep lifting rocks. I told them I don't exercise and I am pretty scrawny, so it's a good work out for me.

I probably won't get more though, because I am running out of places to put them. I just think it's better to have them while they are available, so I'm stocking up! Searching for the best rocks for your wall becomes a bit addictive, maybe....when I see see good ones that have been dug up after the fact, it makes me want to rip parts of the built wall down and re-build it with better stones to make it more stable. After you've already gone to all that work, it's tempting not to! I had to make lots of rock piles around the house...and then get them moved quick enough that they didn't ruin the grass!
The thing is, after you put so much time and effort into something, it's hard to leave it alone when you know how to make it better. Now that I have made one wall, I think I know how to make the next one better!

I think I'm supposed to be in bed right now, 'cause I have to "help" in the yard tomorrow.

We have to do lots of work tomorrow....We have been digging a trench through our back yard to put in a pipe to carry rain water that is causing some drainage problems. Only problem being that the only thing we can dig through is rock as top soil appears to be non-existent. We're digging about a foot down and 8 inches across. You should see some of the big rocks we pulled out in only a few feet of digging. We're probably going to need at least 60 ft more...It's pretty crazy.
I don't mind my job too much yet...I just scoop the dirt/rocks out with the shovel, but I don't dig to have to break rock...that's J's job.
Before we started, I told J he was too ambitious about this digging stuff and for once he finally agrees with me, Only took about 2 feet of trench digging for him to actually admit I was right.

So, we have to do something with the walls in our kitchen, because, they are painted with flat paint and it's the same problem as in the bathrooms where the high moisture areas don't do well with it.
I was wanting to do a tile back splash because I think that the kitchen walls can get stuff on them so easily, even if they are painted with a glossier paint, having tile will keep it cleaner looking...and be easier to clean up. I mean, it almost seems necessary to have something on the wall: you just get one single small splash of something greasy up there and it's done for. If it's too oily, you have to re-primer before you re-paint.

I told Jerrod I thought it would be a good idea, but he didn't seem to care either way. Then suddenly last week he became convinced he wanted one. So, we did some looking around....I have done quite a bit of looking around, because I know exactly what I want (surprisingly for once!) and I'm trying to find something decent priced. I want a mosaic with a glass and stone blend. I need to have glass, because I do mosaic art and I am a bit of a glass freak. But, in the case of this kitchen, I think some stone it will look good too. The blended look is really nice. We actually found something, but it's more expensive than I had hoped. Now I have to do a lot of research to find a better price!

I was able to snag a sample today from a tile-shop downtown and it looks pretty good in in the kitchen. The above picture is the sample. More browns in it than I would have thought I'd want, but it seems to work.

Tonight I'm working on starting to paint a bathroom. The builder painted the house in one color, which was an upgrade (anything more than white is) but it is all in the contractor-grade, flat paint, so it does not stand up well to any moisture. Easy to touch up, but easy to mess up too.
So, we decided the bathrooms definitely needed to be redone, as well as the kitchen. After only 3 months, we already had some stains that show through that flat paint, so we need something that is more washable. I think I got some hair gel or something like that on the wall just after we moved in, and it wasn't possible to paint over it. It kept showing through. So, we also had to do some primer on those spots. Kind of a pain, but fixing it now and using a different type of paint will prevent those kind of things make it easier in the future.

We already did the master bathroom a few weeks ago and so now we are doing the guest bath. I thought I would keep the color the same in this bathroom, but at the last minute when I was buying the paint today, I changed my mind. That was quite amazing in itself, because I usually can't make a decision to save my life and I actually made one today.

I think these color chips aren't really that accurate from my recent experience...the paint always turns out lighter. Although, I had heard in the past that you should always expect it to turn out darker.

After this, I want to do the kitchen for sure to get rid of that flat paint and then possibly the dining room. But, the dining room mostly just to change things up a bit with a different color. I'm not looking forward to doing the kitchen though.....with all the cabinets there will be so much trimming to do and I am very, very picky about it. I just hate those uneven lines some people do. I am not happy with some of the spots in my own house. They should just be more careful! It's tedious but I do all edges with a small artists paintbrush. It's kind of crazy, I know, but at least it keeps it nice and clean...and that causes me much less stress later on.

(P.S. I'm not supposed to do any of my art painting inside...Jerrod thinks I'm going to get some on the carpet or something like this. So, this is the only painting I'm allowed to do in the house...I really don't see what the difference is.)

We've been thinking we needed to get some dirt to fill in some areas in the back yard that got trampled when the neighbors behind us put in a fence. The workers make huge trenches in our yard because it was rainy and muddy when they were doing it. We called the builder and asked them to come fix it, but they did a really mediocre job and we needed to do more to make it better. There is also a lot of water that runs back there into a drainage area when it rains so we needed to build up the dirt and work on re-seeding it to get the grass to grow after the damage.

We saw that some other neighbors behind us were putting in some new stones for a patio and they had dug up some of their backyard and made a pile of dirt. Jerrod saw them and asked if we could have it and they were very happy to give it to us, since they weren't sure what they were going to do with it anyway.
So, we spent awhile shoveling it into some wheelbarrows and hauling it over (not too far, thankfully, and closer than if we had borrowed it from elsewhere). It was just enough to fill the spots we needed, so it worked out pretty well. I learned that dirt is really heavy. Dirt in Tennessee is mostly hard clumps of clay and rock and is not easy to spread and break up...

It was good to meet these neighbors. They seem pretty nice. I wasn't really sure who they were, but as it turns out, they are a young newlywed couple. We talked with them for awhile and funny story, they told us that the night before when they were putting their patio stones in, they had some friends over helping them until late at night and had their cars parked on the street...so guess who got parking tickets?
They got three of them! $60 worth! They said they didn't even know about the no-parking-on-the-street-after-1:00am law. So, they were quite shocked and surprised to hear that I had recently got a ticket too.

I have an announcement to make:

After two and a half months of living in my house, I have managed to keep my side of the closet clean. It has not been messy yet! Even Jerrod acknowledges that I am doing a good job with it, and I think he is very surprised about it, considering my past track record.
Since I started sharing a closet with Jerrod in this new house, I knew I would have to try harder to keep it clean to prevent excessive stress on his part.

It's funny to me, because I hadn't even thought much about it until recently. Now, in the past couple of days I've realized that after I started hanging up my clothes, it magically stays clean!

Today was a little warmer, finally. Not that you can expect much in January. Even in Tennessee it gets chilly in the winter. But, today was alright for January weather. I have been waiting for a day when I could spray around my house for bugs and took the opportunity to do so today.
You may think that there would not be bugs this time of year, but in Tennessee, there is. As soon as there gets a semi-warm day, they are out and about and coming to find me. As I have mentioned before, I have a deep and intense fear and hatred of most insects, so I have to prevent them from coming near me and my house whenever possible.
I have some pretty good bug spray that I got at Wal-Mart a few couple ago. It was only about $7 for a huge jug of it and I used to drench the outside of my apartment with it. It seemed to help more than when I would get the apartment to send their pest control people over. I put it around the doors, windows, baseboards and pretty much anywhere else that the instructions say to and I could think of. Hopefully this will keep them away. It took awhile to do the entire house inside and out, but it will be worth it if I don't have to see them...especially the ones that I am really terrified of. Hopefully those ones only live in Nashville and not Mt. Juliet.

Jerrod and I also went for a walk around the neighborhood. There is still a lot of construction around here and we like to see what everyone else is doing to their houses and what options they are choosing. I'm still convinced that we got one of best lots and that we made some of the best choices we could have for options.
When I look at some of these houses and at the colors some people choose, I realize a lot of people just don't have an eye for these things. It kind of baffles my mind a little bit how they can mess these things up when all the choices are just neutral, but sometimes, they just do. Just the way I need help with technical and logical things as an artistic person, people who are not artistic need artistic help with these sorts of things.
It pains my soul to see it happen. They just need someone with an eye to tell them, "No!"

Oh, another funny thing: we just had a neighbor move in behind us and one of the first things they did when they got here was install an outdoor ceiling fan on the patio. It's so funny because they keep turning it on when the temperature was practically freezing. (It is January). I guess they're really trying to cool it down outside!

Ok, so this is a little late, but I since I did not have any internet and no ability to write or post any pictures about Christmas, it just so happens that it finally makes in here in January. But, I am always late with everything, so this just fits in with me, I guess. Although, this time, it really wasn't my fault I was late!

This is what Christmas looks like when you are living and settled in one place (a.k.a. Our house 2005...we were in Canada in 2006, so we had no tree that year...2005 is as close as it gets):



This is a picture of what Christmas looks like when you have just moved into your house 4 days before (a.k.a. Our house in 2007):



Notice all my presents are in a black garbage bag. I just closed my eyes and Jerrod put them in my hands for the surprise. I kind-of-sort-of wrapped his, by putting them in gift bags. The only wrapped gifts we had came from my mom. After all that packing and having boxes everywhere, the last thing we felt like doing was finding wrapping paper to wrap presents. So, into the garbage bags they went!
We definitely didn't want to bother setting up a Christmas tree. Where would we have put it among all those boxes cluttering the floor? Luckily, Jerrod in all his creativity had made this little tree out of hangers and garland in past years, so we did have a tree...kind-of-sort-of.

So, that is the late breaking news of Christmas at the new house.

Exciting news! We finally have internet access again! I have felt completely disconnected from the world in the last while, so this is very good for me right now. It has been so difficult to get so much done that I've needed to.

We had to wait until January 2nd get an appointment to get service, but on top of that, there was problems. As it turns out, it seems that apparently the wiring needed for this street is either all, or at least partially, under our driveway. We think that what happened was that the builder asked the service provider to come out several times to move it, but they never did. So, since there was such a time crunch getting our house done, finally, they just poured concrete over top of it and figured that they would just have to come back and fix it later. Now there is a big hole beside our driveway with some newly laid sod all dug up. It's lovely.

We knew there would be some difficulty because of our past discussions with people not knowing what was going on,and of course, if you call and try to find out what's happening, you end up talking to someone in a call center in California, who has no idea.
Needless to say, they did not show up when they were supposed to on the 2nd and after being without the internet for 2 weeks I was already in no mood for delay. So, yesterday morning(and yes, I was desperate enough to actually wake up and get out of bed for this), on the 3rd, I got on the phone with some lady in customer service after being on hold for about 40 minutes, who told me that she would just go and reschedule my appointment for January 9th.
I promptly had to get into my fighting stance by this point and told her that January 9th would not work for me, because I needed internet, like, yesterday, and not a week from now. (Actually, I would have preferred to have it about 2 weeks ago...but, at least by yesterday). She gave me to her supervisor who got on to tell me that the lady was just saying what she was supposed to say, but now the supervisor would handle it and call me back later and let me know what was going on. The supervisor never did call back, but a few hours later 2 vans with internet service installers showed up and connected me back to the world.

Now I have to go research prices and sales again. I am so cheap...(did I mention that I used a 10% off coupon to save $0.04 cents at Jo-Ann a few weeks ago? I know...that's a little extreme, but at first I didn't know they were only going to take 10% off that one thing...the cashier told me I should save it and use it for something more expensive, but I always have a lot of coupons so I used it anyway.I'd only have to do that 25 times and I'd save a dollar. haha. Just kidding. I thought it was funny to save $0.04 cents afterwards!)Anyway, I like to research stuff before I buy it to see where the best sales and prices are, but I couldn't without being online! And when you get a new house and move there are inevitably so many things you have to end up buying....you have to know where the sales are....

The last week has been very busy and exhausting.I only have a moment to write, but I thought I better write something since it has been over 10 days since the last time I did.
We closed on our house on the 21st and we have been moving the last 5 days. We have got most of the stuff we need at the new house, but there are a few things left at the apartment as well as some cleaning to do and some of my unfinished projects. (I finally finished grouting my mosaic table this afternoon!)
We also don't have any internet service at our new house and won't have any until January 2nd. (This is because of a combination of having to wait for an appointment to get it set up and also what seems to be a minor problem between the service provider and the builder and not getting the wiring out to the new neighborhood like they should have.) We have our computers at our old place still and not having any internet and TV at our main residence makes me feel like I am camping.
Christmas didn't seem like it normally does yesterday. We spent a lot of the day sleeping then unpacking, opened a few presents...and more unpacking. Kind of strange for me, but I think next year will be better. You do what you can do at the time and if you have to move on Christmas, then you have to move on Christmas.
Our new house is nice...but in chaos right now as we are attempting to organize. I am going to try to post new pictures of the finished place when I get the time and the internet back!

Our house is almost finished. Jerrod went by yesterday and it was fortunate that he did, because when he got there he saw that they had put the wrong carpet in! And they had finished it throughout the ENTIRE house! It was actually the original standard carpet we had picked, but then at the beginning of September, before anything was really started, we told them we wanted to upgrade our carpet to something different and a little bit better. Initially we had thought we didn't want to pay for the better stuff because we don't plan on living in this house really long term, but after thinking about it, we decided the upgraded carpet will probably last longer and we won't have to replace it when we move out after 5 years like we might with the cheaper stuff. We thought we'd rather enjoy the carpet rather then putting in new stuff later for only someone else to enjoy.
Anyway, for whatever reason, the design studio did not pass that information onto the builder and so they didn't know that we had paid for that upgrade and they just put in the standard stuff that comes with the house. So, now they have to rip out the entire thing and replace all of it. Sucks to be them! Good thing we go by often enough to notice these mistakes to get them taken care of ahead of time, as our closing date is going to be the last day before Christmas; its tight for time. They had also put in a track light that we had requested they not do, because we are going to install our own (that we got for $11.98 at Lowes, regular $78. Good deal!) and so we asked them to take that down and re-patch some of the holes it left on the ceiling. It's better to have them do it so we don't have to. I think that was a message that was supposed to have got to them around the same time as the carpet, so someone, somewhere, didn't pass those things along. Oops.
Oh, and when I went to my house today it had lights and heat for the first time. It was sooo nice. I actually had to take my shoes off when I went in (as opposed to usually walking on the concrete floors that sometimes had mud and dirt and dust on them.) I'm always cold and in the last little while it's been a little chilly for me. But the new heated house is much better!

Yesterday I went up to our apartment Christmas party to get myself some free food. I always appreciate anything free. I guess that's why we pay the big bucks to live here. So we can get "free" food once a year. While I was there, I did see my neighbor, George, who is the elderly guy that lives in my building whom I mentioned a few weeks ago. Last time I saw him he was being carried away in an ambulance, and I hadn't seen him since, so I wasn't sure if he made it or not. But, I saw him yesterday and he told me that he had just spent nine days in the hospital from a staph infection. He didn't looks so good. He also seemed to have his speech slightly slurred, so I was wondering if maybe there was something else wrong with him. I didn't talk to him very much though because he said he had to get going so he could "talk to all the other pretty girls." And then he ran over my foot with his wheel chair.
As it turns out, tonight there was once again an ambulance, fire truck and two police cars that were by our building, I think come to take George back to the hospital. It's too bad.

Tonight was another free supper with Jerrod's work party. It was at the Opryland hotel once again this year. They did have a thing where they had a photographer taking pictures of everyone to give as a memento and you could pick up the printed picture after a few minutes. After much persuasion I was able to convince Jerrod to take a picture with me. Unfortunately, we both didn't think we looked good in it and now I am afraid I will never have any hope of getting Jerrod to take a picture again. Seriously, it's a concern. I don't know why it has to be so difficult, but it is.
When we were leaving the party, I saw my friend, Manami, working at the front desk of the hotel. I hadn't seen her in awhile and so I was really happy to run into her. I know she has been working there a lot, but hopefully when she has a day off I can get together with her again soon.
(Manami is from Japan and has done translations for my Japanese songs for me.)

Speaking of food, we also bought our fridge today. This is the one we got, excpet in black.It's an expensive little purchase, but it seems to be a necessary one. We got a Samsung with french doors.We were going to get the side-by-side originally, but decided on this one because there is more room for bigger things with French doors. Like, you can't really fit a large pizza box in the side-by-side. Although, I do prefer the side-by-side because it has the water dispenser on the outside of the door (along with lots of blue glowing lights). Ours does have the water filter/dispenser, but it's inside. Not as convenient for someone who drinks water all day like me, but I guess unless you have endless funds and can get your own custom made refrigerator, none will be absolutely perfect. You just have to balance the pros and cons with these sort of things.

But, only because I finally had to. I knew I needed to do it, but I kept thinking, "Oh well...I'm moving soon anyway, I'll just do it then". But now that time has actually came. I had to start packing because I am moving and therefore I was given orders yesterday that my task for the day was to clean my closet: Summer clothes in one bin; winter clothes in another bin.That's what he said.
And then, I felt pretty good that I could show off my newly cleaned closet after one day, when Jerrod had expected it would take at least two.Now that I'm on the closet subject, Jerrod and I are going to be sharing a closet at the new house. Does anyone get the same feeling as me that this could be a problem? Not so much for me, but...maybe for someone who might be on the side of slightly very organized...

Why does Sunday always come so quickly? It seems like as soon as we get home from church one week, it is almost time to go back again the next day; like the week always disappears somewhere in between.
We went over to Providence for a few hours this weekend and had a little lunch. (Cracker Barrel!! My favorite!) And then we also spend a few minutes window shopping. I went to TJMaxx/homegoods store and Jerrod ran over to Best Buy. While I was there I saw a Japanese family and heard them speaking Japanese. I decided to get brave and asked them if they spoke English, "eigo hanashimasuka?" And the Mother replied, "yes." So we ended up talking for awhile about then and me. I told her that I am a singer and she suggested she might like me help her daughter with some singing lessons. I told her that I'd also like to help her with English if she'd just speak Japanese with me. I need native speaker friends to practice with.
So, I gave her my card and will hope that she calls. It would be fun to meet to new Japanese people around here again!

Here's the all wonderful house pictures....kitchen is getting to look quite a bit like a kitchen. I really love the counter tops. They are almost my favorite thing! Kinda dirty right now, not too much to see, but anyway...

We went to our house today and saw the builder while we were there. He said that we will be able to close on our house this month after all. It will probably be either the 19th or the 21st. It's really soon! I can't believe we are going to be moving in 3 weeks!
This past week they put the cabinets and counters and some flooring in and were working on more of that; including pluming fixtures today.
We had also paid for extra outlets in our cabinets so we could install some under cabinet lighting ourselves later on, but as it turns out, they made a mistake on it. This is good news for us because and so now the builder is going to install and give us our lighting for free. (Normally it's not an option they offer.) So, that will save us a few dollars that we were going to spend on that. I don't know if it will be exactly what we would buy ourselves, but I'm all about getting the free stuff whenever possible.

Overall, it was a pretty uneventful holiday. We didn't really do any big dinner thing. We hadn't really planned anything and didn't get any invitations to anyone's house this year, which has been the case for me in all the years I have previously lived here. Although, we did go over to Reco's in the evening so Jerrod could help him set up some stereo stuff that he is selling to him and ate some of their leftovers.
Speaking of Thanksgiving, I did not realize that Americans took the holiday so seriously until I moved here. Of course we have Thanksgiving too, but in some ways I think that they made a bigger deal out of it than they do Christmas. At school, people would ask me if I was going home for Thanksgiving and when I would say no, that I was not planning on going all the way to Canada for a one day holiday, (which by the way happed more than a month ago in my country) they would be absolutely shocked.
Earlier in the day we went over to Providence and saw our house. Amazingly enough, it has been painted! Well, partially. The first layer. The trim has been put up and painted also. I think that next week the cabinets are supposed to be put in. Jerrod talked to the builder last week and he said they are still attempting to close in December.
It's so crazy to me, because every time I think about moving, I can't even imagine it. I feel like I have lived at this place forever and the idea of moving in less than a month is just really unfathomable. There is (almost literally) a million things to do before then. All the packing and organizing. I am hoping to downsize my stuff and go through and get rid of what I am not using, which will definitely be a project. Then there are all the art things and the daily music stuff, recording, etc., to keep up with. It's overwhelming to think of it. A person needs to pick and choose their battles, but it's hard to choose when they all seem necessary.


On Friday, I did get up and go do the Black Friday shopping thing. I didn't buy much of anything, but I got to the mall early enough to get a free $10 mall gift card. Actually, the stores were pretty dead, all things considering. Looked like a kind of normal day at first. However, I think the real evil is when you go to places like Best Buy and people are trying to snatch all those limited quantity big-ticket electronic items. Some of the other stores really don't do any better on their "biggest" sale than any other sale, in my opinion. I really wish everyone would just rebel against this whole early morning thing too. I mean, why can't they have a sale that starts at 10 am rather than 4 am? Wouldn't it just be better for us all?

Today we went on a drive down to Birmingham to pick up an eBay auction that Jerrod won last week. It's some high-end audio that was being sold on behalf of someone by SnappyAuctions and they had somewhat mislabeled it and were charging a huge shipping fee for it, so Jerrod ended up finding it and winning it for really cheap. He has some of the stuff already and is going to re-sell it. Since they wanted so much to ship it, we went to pick it up. It's about a 3 hour drive. We pretty much went there and then turned around and came home. We did stop in Franklin and did a little shopping and looking around in Cool Springs on the way home. Not that we can't do that anytime; it's only 30-40 minutes away, but we don't go over there a whole lot because it's normally out of the way for us. But, it wasn't coming back from Alabama.

Our house is coming along further. We now have drywall and siding too and a finished ceiling too.
We stopped by today to take a look at it and take a few pictures.
This was all supposed to be done last week, but apparently there was some kind of siding shortage/delay and then, they couldn't put any drywall up until the siding was on to prevent moisture from getting in. So they said that put them eight days behind. We may now be closing in January instead of the targeted December 19th. They said they will still try to push it through, but, we'll see. We'll just have to wait until we get closer to know for sure.

So, this morning, we had (what was to me) a very early morning with an 8:30am meeting with our builder. It was a pre drywall meeting where basically you do a walk through of the house before they do the drywall to make sure they have everything right in your house.
So, as I was trying to figure out what I was going to wear today, the thought crossed my mind that I maybe should be more casual than usual and wear my running shoes in case we were outside of the house at all. It's still kind of hard to walk around there because there are a lot of big rocks and dirt piles and this sort of thing.
But then I almost wore heals anyway. I have probably 50-60 pairs of shoes and only about 4 or 5 of them are flat shoes. I don't like flat shoes. I don't care that I am almost 6 feet tall...and definitely am over 6 feet when I put my shoes on. I also don't care that my husband is at least 2 to 4 inches shorter than me at any given time. (Although he does). I just think my high-healed shoes are cuter. I saw a few minutes of that Victoria Beckham "Coming to America" show a few weeks back and in it, she mentions that she is also anti flat shoes. There was one scene where she is out practicing driving before going for her driving test and she gets pulled over by a cop in the process. Afterwards, when talking about the incident she says, “I was completely shocked and devastated because I was wearing flat shoes." I thought that was the funniest quote, because I've often tried to explain to Jerrod that this is how I feel when I don't wear heals, except, I never could explain it quite so dramatically.

Anyway, I finally did decide to go with my running shoes. The thought crossed my mind: "There will be another person there. If I am crawling around a construction site and injure myself because I a wearing high-heals I will look really stupid." So I wore the flat shoes.
Jerrod bought me running shoes when we were at Disneyworld. He thought I was going to get blisters if I walked around for so long without proper shoes for this sort of thing. He forced me.
But, I guess they come in handy for times when you have to crawl around construction sites, right? Not so true actually.

It was all fine until after the meeting when we were done, Jerrod wanted to walk across the street to the neighbors house to see how far along they were. When we came out and walked out the driveway, there was a pile of gravel they had poured in the driveway and I slipped on the gravel, with my flat running shoes and fell completely backwards. I hit the edge of the curb, smack down right on my tail-bone.
It really hurt. I cried. I thought maybe it was broken. Maybe it's ok, but I am sore. I have fallen on concrete before (in a choir concert, in front of all the people) and on ice, but none hurt so much as falling on the edge of a curb, actually.

So, the point of my story is that I am completely shocked and devastated that I was wearing flat shoes and after all the times I walked around there in skirts and heals, it was the time I was wearing jeans and running shoes and purposely tried to prevent falling that I actually fell!

On Saturday we went to Providence to see our house. And to our surprise there was progress- substantial progress, to see. About a week before I was so discouraged because I had driven by seen that there was once again WAY more done on all the neighbors houses rather than ours. (Even though we were supposed to be one of the first 5 finished). I was doing the math in my head and with the amount of time left until December 19th, when they said was the latest date we would close and then calculating what was actually done and how long they said it would take to complete the next steps, it was not physically possibly that it would be done. In fact, I could not figure that it would be done anytime before mid to the end of January. So, I sent and email to the builder and asked about this.
He replied back and said that it had taken longer to get the building permit for our house because we are beside an empty wooded lot, but that he still thought it would be possible to close by the 19th of December. I don't know how...the math still doesn't add up. Maybe they plan to work faster then usual.
When we went by this Saturday, the house was standing! A week before it had been only a foundation. Now it is a completely framed and even had a roof. Next time we go by, there might even be siding.
I took some pictures, and here they are.

(We are a little dressed up because we were going to a wedding after. I try not to dress like this while walking around new construction. It is surprisingly hard to climb up to the house in shoes like I wear.)


Jerrod upstairs in the (his) bonus room. I say "his" because that's one of his rooms he gets to "decorate." Decorate will include putting the TV, speakers, cables and stereo stuff...basic boy things. I think the Meerkat painting will also go there too. :) He also gets his office and the garage and I think the kitchen. haha. But I think I will put some nice things in the kitchen (when he's not looking.)



Standing in the hallway. The kitchen and dining room are to the right and a closet and bedroom are to the left...you can pretty much see everything when you don't have walls.


Me in my room: My place where I will put all my scrapbooking, art and music stuff...and attempt to keep clean....more so than I do now...that's what I'm saying.


Looking out the back door. So I guess that's what the backyard will look like...sort of...except hopefully a little better with some grass and without construction materials in it.


Living room windows. It looks so nice out them with the trees for neighbors. Very excited about that as always.


More potential walls. I know, it's just a bunch of boards and only exciting to me and Jerrod, but I'm showing it anyway, because it is exciting for me after many months of wishing to see a bunch of boards.


Hard to believe that we will be able to live here in two months. I am happy. My neighbor upstairs is not nice and I want to move! It's not so great to be stuck waiting in your apartment and having to pay an outrageous amount of money for month to month rent, especially when you have walk on egg shells around your mean neighbors.