buttercup

We found out Wednesday that we have to be out of the house by, basically, this weekend. This whole situation is stupid, and that's all I have to say about that.

Anyway, so now we're throwing stuff in boxes willy-nilly, and I know I'm going to regret this when it comes time to unpack everything three months from now and I can't find an effing SPATULA, DAMN IT! because it's mixed in with the VHS tapes.

This is how it's going down: three or four months at the House of Madness, where I will go insane because, after all, there's a reason I moved out of my parents' house, then we move on to our own personal house after it gets moved (yes, it is mobile, no, it's not what I thought of when I envisioned my future home, yes, it will get us out of debt very very quickly, no, I no longer have any delusions about the way life works). I'm not even really all that sad about the temporary move; it's so much better than where we're at now that it's not even funny. Unless you've developed that sort of sense of humor that allows you to laugh at these things, and I'm not there yet, although for survival purposes, I should be arriving soon.

About all those exclamation points in the posts below, yeah, I'm sorry.

I swear I'm not drunk.

I could not resist, damn it. I bought this pretty painted wooden box for Rabbit from steakiswack.com. I've been looking for a little box for her keepsakes for a while, and couldn't find anything, and that box is perfection in a . . . box.

Yes, I could paint one myself, but I'm trying not to be one of those moms who pushes all her handmade stuff onto her daughter. Not until she shows that that's what she wants, anyway. I make her stuff, sure, but I'd also like to introduce her to the work of other crafters/artists.

This box I'm in love with came from OmGurl Designs—on the OmGurl site, there's an old-school desk with a unicorn theme that looks like it could cheer up anybody. So pretty.

The fundraiser (for Sasha Farm) is being hosted by Melissa/lekkner, by the way. Another site of tastiness! My Favorites folder cannot handle it all!

It's a brand new baby blog! Too Many Pages good english is where all my book reviews are going from now on. I know some of y'all are bored by books, and I am kind, so there you go!

No, I'm totally kidding, I just wanted to have a blog to cross-reference. Heh.

(The address, for you visual sorts, is good-english.blogspot.com.)

5,000 pastors can't be wrong, right?

"Mr. Gibson said he showed [the movie] to one agnostic friend, 'and the next day, he read all four of the Gospels.'
The crowd gasped.
'Like he saw the movie, and that made him want to read the book,' Mr. Gibson said."

Um, thanks for explaining that, Mel.

One of my coworkers to a customer: "It was a really powerful movie. I've already seen it three times." Does the number of times one's seen it reflect on the depth of one's Christianity? Because that's what half the people who talk about it seem to think. Blood and gore and violence + popcorn = religious experience.

I hope the box office luck and all the praise and glowing reviews from parents who take their children to see this movie stroke Mr. Gibson's ego satisfactorily.

'Idol' Judge Decries 'Lackluster' Talent

This is what passes for "news" on my Hotmail homepage. That and "5 Healthy Briefcase Breakfasts."

It's nice to know someone's on top of these things.

Buy handmade goodies and help animals.

Anything I say will sound too fawning-ish, so just go and see for yourself. You will want to buy everything—just a warning.

Love it.

Thus ends my pimping for today, since I have way too much slack-preventing work to do.

Is it weird that I read over my posts and edit or delete them based on whether I still care about whatever I posted about earlier? (That was some beautiful explaining there, I know.) I do it on this site, and I do it on message boards, and I think it may be a little too Type A. I'm becoming quite particular in my old age.

(Just so this isn't an entirely meta post: check out Zoe Trope's LiveJournal. Zoe is intriguing.)

Dear faraway FOX affiliate whom we can tune in with rabbit ears in the middle of the woods for some unknown reason:

I am so grateful to you for showing "Smallville" around midnight on Saturday that I am almost willing to name my second child Fox (maybe I'll name a kitten Fox or something — will that suffice?). I've been having to make do without any HoYay! for a while, and though that was not an especially HoYay! "Smallville" episode, it will do. The prettiness made staying up that late worth it. Keep on bringing the "Smallville" (and "The O.C."), and we will be BFF! Maybe I'll even watch an episode of "Forever Eden."

Probably not.

xoxoxoxoxo
karen

***

Hey, you trees that block reception:

No, we don't have DISH anymore. Does that mean you need to block all the basic cable channels? Bitches.

P.S. Thanks for the three fuzzy channels. They're better than watching Blue's Clues and Dora videos over and over. I guess I won't let an army of sharp-toothed beavers loose after all.

- k

When I said I was doing crafty things again, I meant: "I am making marble magnets." I miss my craft supplies. They are all packed in a room waiting for the move that hovers mirage-like somewhere in the future, and I told myself I would just leave them alone until we're in the new place. I am in withdrawal.

I did break into them and steal an old Italian Sing-a-Long record to mess around with this weekend. But that was bad and evil and I repent. I've already been punished — the room the craft supplies are in right now has been taken over by mice (I hate this house) and I had a creepy feeling the entire time I was in there, as if I were in a giant hamster cage and the hamsters were readying themselves to pounce on me and devour my flesh. (We're moving the boxes of stuff into a different non-hamster-smelling room, but we haven't gotten to the craft stuff yet. My books were my priority; half of my paperbacks were nibbled apart for use as nesting material!)

It's really getting bad, though: I bought some sheets of glittery felt yesterday. Does felt come in sheets? The last time I used this stuff was in K-5 when I made my mom a picture frame for Christmas; I can't stand working with it because it feels like I'm snagging it with my fingernails or it's sticking to my skin every time I touch it. I love felt, basically, only when other people make things out of it. But it was cheap! And glittery! And it's not something I already had, because I can't buy something I already have, that would be wasteful, right?

I also bought a pack of blank bookmarks. It's just pre-cut cardstock. Yes, I could easily get cardstock cut at work, but I was trying to stop myself from buying too much felt, and it worked.

So now the craft supplies I can work with until we move are: three sheets of glittery felt (pink, black, white); two sheets of regular felt ("lemon mist," hehe, red); 36 blank white bookmarks; glue; marbles; magnets; magazines; a stash of colored knock-off brand Sharpies. I'm actually pretty excited about this, even though I don't sound very enthusiastic. There are so many things I'm planning to do with this stuff already! I love the way spring makes things happen.

You should really check out Crafty Ass Chick. Kelley is very cool and one of those people who make the world nice enough that I refrain from destroying the universe with my superpowers. And her stuff is pretty, too.

I have been thinking about this: the reason I link directly to Amazon.com pages when reviewing a book is because I'm usually doing the typing from home, during one of Rabbit's fifteen-minute naps, with dial-up, and don't really have time to do a lot of browsing online for interesting articles pertaining to the book I'm talking about. Also, I like it when people directly link to the Amazon pages because then I can read the reader reviews, which are a source of great comedy most of the time. Not that this is a literary blog or my book reviews have a massive fanbase; I just thought if I wrote about this I could stop thinking about it. We'll see.

Without getting into too many boring details, I will just say: being yanked around by a mortgage company for six months? Sucks. Loan consultants who allegedly do not get messages (no matter how many we leave or which phone we leave them on), do not call when they say they will, act as if they are doing us a favor by doing their job? Frustrate me to no end. Damn it, we just want somewhere to live. That's all.

And, lesson learned which I will share for the world to enjoy: say someone sells you a piece of land and gets it all set up for your house. Say your land is on a wooded lot, and say a lot of trees have to be cleared before the lot is ready for said house. Maybe you talk to the guy who sold you the land and discuss what will be done with the cut-down trees, and maybe he says that he has no problem leaving them on the site, that that's what they do anyway, and that sure, you will have more than enough firewood to last you a long long time because the trees will be left on the lot. Get it in writing or I will personally come over and kick your ass. We did not get it in writing. (Ben and I have learned a lot of things over the past six months, and most of these lessons have come about as a result of us putting too much faith in other people.) So this is what happens when you don't get it in writing: one week, you go to look at your land, and you look at the piles of trees around you and decide that you really only need one pile for firewood, and you can sell the other two giant stacks of good quality hardwood to get a little cash. When you find out that you're going to have to come up with some money for another land payment because the loan that was supposed to take it over still hasn't been closed on because you're being yanked around by a mortage company, you take comfort in the fact that those giant stacks of wood should get you enough money to make that payment. (The land pays for itself! It's a beautiful thing.) You take a trip that weekend to relax and look at the land and remember what all this stress is about: a little house in the woods. You get there and are confused; there are no logs. Anywhere. Not even a little stack left for firewood. NOTHING.

Ah, I'm getting tired of the third-person stuff. We got really pissed off and tried to figure out what had happened. Had a neighbor sold it? Had the contractor who cleared the land decided to make a quick buck and sold it himself? We called A, the guy who sold us the land and organized the clearing and everything, and asked him. "Oh, I thought you said you didn't want anything left on the land." Oh my god. Are you kidding? "I might be doing too many jobs at once and getting confused." This is a joke, right? "If you guys want, I can send you a pile of wood from another lot I'm clearing." Hahahahaha. It's brilliant, I will give him that. He sells about $600 worth of good hardwood and gives us a pile of cheap wood to replace it. And since we didn't get it in writing, there's nothing we can do but chalk it up to another expensive lesson learned.

Man, 2004 has been a really crappy year so far.