The weather outside is frightful

No improvement in the weather today, in fact its worse than yesterday. I made a conscious choice to stop talking to the animals though. Thats a good sign.

I may brave the weather to dig myself out to get the mail and visit the craft store. I have no idea what the roads are like beyond the end of my driveway but I saw our road is covered in packed snow, which really is nothing new.
This might also mean that I might put on makeup for the first time in days. I started Proactive and because of this I have tried to abstain for makeup in an effort to let the Proactive do whatever it does. Usually my face gets super dry when I wash it, especially in the winter. Since using the Proactive its been oily. Oily like I havent washed my face all day. I wont be reordering it. I havent seen much of an improvement in the last couple weeks. I'll just go buy some good quality facewash and maybe new makeup.
Its been a source of constant frustration because its so new to me.

Oliver and I have big plans tonight. Hes going to finish reading his book(only 300 pages left), and Im crawling into my snuggie to craft and watch it snow sideways.



The view of the barn from the house today

The Big Move

Not a new house.

Just a new bedroom.

Oliver suggested last night that we give up the Master Bedroom to A and JD since you know, all we do in our room is sleep.

We need all the kids to have more space in their rooms to play.
Why do we need them in to play in their rooms more?
Not because I dont enjoy seeing their bright shiney faces.
But because during the course of one evening Oliver and I are constantly bellowing "OUT!" while we try to take 2 minutes in the kitchen to talk, steal a kiss, etc. If we are in any room, the kids are directly behind us listening.
This is just a side effect of having kids I suppose.

But A and JD would get to spread out in the huge room, C and JR get to move up to a bigger room, and that leaves Oliver and I with the little room.
I mean LITTLE
Postage stamp little.
With a King sized bed.

Oliver swears the bed, dresser, and grandmas special chest will fit but I stood in that room today and I just dont see it.

Im afraid.

Maybe we wont hear that they cant play in their rooms because its too messy and they own too much crapthere is no space. Maybe they will actually hang out up there with their video games, and toys, and computers. I think this whole theory is far fetched but Oliver seems convinced.

So next week we will start the move and if Im lucky, while no one is looking I can throw out some stuff.

Christmas Shopper Extraordinaire

Have I mentioned lately that Oliver is the man of my dreams?
Well he is and the reasons why just keep piling up.

Its no secret to anyone who knows me well that I have pretty severe anxiety which has no topic or situation discrimination. This is something that is well controlled without medication but I have a tendency to loose it completely sometimes.

We all know that Christmas is a trying time for even some of the most sane people.

And then theres the people like me.

The hustle and bustle of Christmas starts to wear on me quickly and usually by about the 15th of December(thats today) Im avoiding all retail stores completely.

Oliver is a master Christmas shopper and buying just the right gifts for people makes him almost giddy. So does the word "SALE". The man has basically taken over Christmas shopping this year for everyone. I actually went into the closet yesterday to pull everything out and take inventory of what we have because I cant keep up with everything hes bringing home.



As I pulled out shopping bag after shopping bag and my list got longer and longer, I kept having to turn and ask Oliver what toys went to which kid. That is, until I couldnt see him anymore because the gifts between us were piled so high and I started to have to yell over the pile of bags and gifts.

I know hes not done which is scary. The scary part is actually that both of us hate wrapping gifts and theres soooo many to be wrapped. Im hopefully going to start this weekend with the wrapping and spread it out over a week so I dont get burnt out too fast.

Hes asked me to keep him out of the stores because as we get closer to Christmas and things start getting marked down.... well he cant help himself. Short of hiding his keys, freezing his debit card in a block of ice, and chaining him to a radiator, theres no way to stop that man from doing whatever he wants.

So hows your shopping going?

Irrational Fear #11

HO-LY SHIT KIDS!

I found out last night that I am very irrationally afraid of bats. In the house bats.

We had a bat interupt our netflix time late last night. I did some screaching and hiding under the blanket while Oliver took off to catch the bat.
His commentary like "Its SO FAST!" and "It just keeps flying at my FACE!" didnt help my anxiety much.

Here comes the Irrational part...

He cornered it once it flew into the basement. All of the sudden I hear that little noise bats make... you know the one, and I yell "OH MY GAWD I CAN HEAR IT!!" Followed by me diving back under the blanket.
Oliver yells from the other room to tell me he had it in a towel and he was going to bring it in to show to me. I know he was joking, I could hear him opening the back door. Logically I know hes joking, I can hear it in his voice.

I wasnt feeling very logical though.

I started sobbing.

"Really? Sobbing?" you might ask because you and I both know thats overreaction at its finest.

And to you I say, Yes sobbing. I was shook up for a good 15 minutes after the bat left.

You know how the old saying goes, "You learn a new irrational fears everyday".... or something like that.

Wood Burning Woes

Ive never lived anyplace with a fireplace or wood stove. In fact when I was purchasing a house some 3 years ago, I refused to even look at homes with either because of the crazy hike in homeowners insurance. Plus the fact that I had small kids and was terrified something awful would happen.
So now Oliver and I have one. We spent a week chopping wood to stack outside the back door. Easily one of my least favorite chores, second only to moving leaves.

Now we need to stove cleaned so it can actually be used without burning the house down. Then I need to have a long conversation with the kids about the wood stove rules or before long I'll have a 2 year old trying to add wood to the fire for me. Its getting colder and colder and the house is getting colder and well frankly, Im a crab-ass when Im cold. God bless the men in this house for putting up with me while we wait for the chimney guy.

It will be at least the second week of December before he arrives.

Oliver and I had a long conversation about Christianity in the car this morning. We share very similar core beliefs and both agree that organized religion is a crock. We attend a non-denominational church every Sunday and we have both spent a lot of time studying world religions and were both raised in religious homes, his Catholic, mine Christian Reformed.

I think it began this morning while listening to something on NPR and I pipped up and said I felt bad for Muslims because they as a whole get a bad rap just because like 1% of them are nutty extremists.
Oliver likened it to persecuting all Christians because theres a terribly small percentage who run around bombing abortion clinics.
We concluded together as we pulled in the driveway that perhaps true Christianity is doing the right thing because its the right thing, not because you have a fear of not going to Heaven.

P.S. Have you heard the story of the fig tree in Matthew? Jesus was hungry and pissed off. I mean, I can sympathize but still.....

Did I just move into a gang war?

I thought I got away from the sound of gun fire when I left the city.
Wrong.
Hunting season is opening!
Oliver is explaining hunting to me. Well the finer details anyways, like when which seasons start, and how to not accidently get shot mostly. These are things that would have been good to know BEFORE I went tromping through the woods yesterday to explore(I found trees).
I've made Oliver promise me that there will never be any dead deer hanging upside down in our yard ever. EVER. He looked uneasy but he promised.

Everyone has comfort boundries. Mine are somewhere just before dead animals strung from trees.

Fishpond: 1 Me: 0

Last week Oliver brought me home a gift.

Leather work gloves...

He used to bring me home flowers. *sigh*

This morning he was gone so I decided to put those work gloves to use in the yard. A shower, 2 shades of eyeshadow, and 4 different kinds of hair product later(hey a gals gotta look good), I was ready to go. To go get coffee anyways... You see I don't make great coffee. I make good coffee. Oliver makes the great coffee and hes not home. Coffeeshop you say? Well thats easily going to take me 45minutes round trip. Gas Station coffee it was!

I put on my work gloves and drank my coffee. All good work gloves should first be broken in with a good relaxing cup of coffee. While surveying the yard I decided that I could start raking leaves and then burn them. I hate raking and Ive never in my life burned leaves. This would require building a fire.

So I managed to get a fire started without starting myself on fire, or falling into the fire. No one has ever left me build my own fire. This is personal growth people. I got about 2 piles of leaves together and started burning them by the time Oliver got home. He had a sparkle in his eye. That "shes doing yard work!" sparkle.

I went to work around the little koi pond disgusting wreck of pond scum. The pond area is about my second favorite place in the yard. Its a little pond surrounded by rocks and plants. Its been filled with disgusting pond scum and a wooden floating duck since I got here but my goal is to fix it up so it looks nice next year. So I started moving the rocks around and pulling weeds. I got this brilliant idea that I needed to reline the edge of the pond and the garden next to it with rocks. A little voice in my head spoke up and said "If you mess with that pond you're going to fall in". I of course promptly told that voice to shut it and went about my business anyways. Well, it was right. I did fall in. Just a foot, but do you know how bad that one foot smells? Like pond scum, or crap if you're unfamiliar.

This whole time Oliver is blowing leaves around the yard and Im pretty focused on my new little rock garden. Oliver will tell you I was playing with rocks to avoid doing leaves. I of course know that is ridiculous.

In my archaeological conquest in my new found rock garden I dug up all kinds of stuff. Someone did think it was appropriate to bury broken pottery. If history has taught us anything its that pottery survives. This stuff doesn't compost(oh compost, thats coming isnt it?). I don't know what they were thinking but I learned to not garden without gloves. Ok I don't garden. I cant keep anything alive. Like I said, dirt's not my thing.

Eventually Oliver sucks me into using the leaf blower right after he teaches me how to use it. This is about the same time as the kids get off the bus and come up the drive. I couldnt hear them but I know they were begging Oliver for a turn with the blower. But alas, I blew leaves for an hour. That does not do good things to your body. Why do people use those things! My arm still feels crazy from all the vibrating.

I told Oliver about my trip into the pond tonight around the fire. He laughed so hard I thought he would fall over. Im glad someone thought my smelly foot was funny.

I was also informed that theres a giant angry woodchuck out back that Oliver is going to shoot very soon.

Oh boy