ah, there she is. my new obsession. i've been riding my mountain bike since the husband bought it for me in college. it's time for some speed and some more distance. a road bike is on my horizon for next spring.

cool story. i'm biking along a lonely road tonite and a truck pulls slowly up next to me. i was a little creeped out, but then i looked over and saw a nice guy kind of trying to say something. he had a yellow lab in the back. everyone knows men who drive around with yellow labs can't be serial killers, so i took out my headphones to see what he had to say. he asked me if i would like to join a biking club, and then told me about a group of people that meets twice a week to ride. they also do a spinning class at the wellness center (which is just across the street from the rental). we talked for about 2o minutes. i'm signing up for spinning tomorrow. my new friend said he'd give me all kinds of tips on road biking, and he told me where to go get my bike and who to ask for. i was pretty excited. i told him i wouldn't join the biking club until i had a road bike (otherwise i'd be too slow). he said next spring would be the perfect time to start. then he told me i would probably go TWICE as fast on a road bike.

that's when i decided to start saving. isn't she pretty?

these pictures are a little bit like "where's waldo?" with little j popping into each one.

so monday the guys told me the windows were in and they'd get them up this week. i turned the corner after school yesterday to check things out and they had nearly finished the whole house. i think bobbi is right. these guys just might be angels!

yesterday i got a little surprise when i stopped out at the new house to get the mail. which is a funny story in itself. we have our mailbox out there because our postman in montrose told us not to confuse the mail by moving and then moving again in four months. so we put a mailbox out there right about the time they were putting up walls. most days i try to ride my bike out there, which is a 15 mile round trip to get the mail. as bobbi says, it's a bit like the pony express.

but i digress.

i stopped out to get the mail and there were workman all over the place. i peeked inside and was delighted to see the finished staircase. i walked down them to the lower level and stopped in my tracks. i think i said something along the lines of "holy smokes" because seven hammers stopped in mid-air and seven faces in seven stages of beard growth looked at me apprehensively.

they had the whole basement framed. all of it.

which is great, except for the fact that we were going to finish off the basement ourselves sometime in the next couple years. long story short, we got some free walls. i couldn't believe they had that much done in one day...too bad i didn't stop out after they had the drywall taped and textured. he he.

anywhoo, it's coming along. they are going to put the windows in this week, and that will be cause for a new round of photos. i'll keep you posted.

i don't really have anything exciting to say, i just figured you were all tired of reading about cat pee. the weekend was good. friday night was spent watching high school football and a nephew who's QB for a little town close to here. i do love football (when the weather is nice).

then i went over and had a slumber party with my friend sara. we got up at 5:45 to go ride in the 50 mile bike for breast cancer ride again. last year it rained the whole way, this year was gorgeous but a little on the windy side. we got passed like we were standing still on our mountain bikes and ended up coming in AFTER all the cookies were gone (pretty much my sole motivation after mile 40). it just might be time to check out those fancy road bikes. the 60-year-old lady riding with us said they would help :)

the boys and i also went to a party for some friends--the son and the mom were both celebrating birthdays. there were inflatables and a magic show and i don't think the boys could have had much more fun. i also had a chance to sneak over and say hi to rani and her beautiful family. we hope they come visit us soon. insert hint here.

this week seems like it might be a little less nuts than the last two. i might actually have time to go volunteer in the classrooms at school. kinda always wanted to do that. do you teacher-types like it when moms help out, or is it a pain? just wondering...

have a great week.

the crabby gray cat is retaliating over the move by peeing on a corner of the carpet. there is nothing in the world worse than cat pee. nothing. she has been been permanently relocated to the enclosed front porch, and i really don't know what to do with her. she does this when she is mad. i can't let her do it in a rental house, and i will NOT let her near the insides of my new house when it is built. i have scrubbed with all kinds of concoctions--the latest being a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, detergent and baking soda. i don't think anything ever really works on cat pee short of ripping out the carpet and the pad and sanding down the subfloor. seriously.

so.

what to do? i am thinking she becomes a garage cat in the new house, but you know what? i really don't want her peeing in there either. she could become an outside cat but what about winter? no one would want her if i tried to give her away. the final option is to put her down. she's 12 years old, and the peeing thing has always been an issue. fortunately, this is the first time she's done it to carpet. in the past, i could just throw the rug or the comforter or whatever away. i know it seems harsh and i hate the thought of it. but truly, what would you do?

gotta brag up little j. last night he rocked the kindergarten soccer world. he he. i kind of watched him play with my mouth hanging open...mostly because when he plays sports, i am reminded of how easily life comes for little j. everything just rolls his way, always. that soccer ball was no different.

the thing about watching him play sports is how HARD he plays them, how fast he goes, how red he gets, how much he sweats and how much dang fun he is having. he is just so fun to watch.

the other thing i think of, in a sad mommy kind of way, is how much it would suck to be his older brother.

sigh.

not my favorite day as far as days go.

it started out with a small j boy's horribly persistent cough (the one that lasted all weekend and made him miserable enough to ASK if he could go to the doctor.) the cough was still there. just a solid little dry cough...cough...cough...no hacking, no fever, no runny nose. just two miserable little eyes and a cough...cough...cough that made ME hurt.

i looked at my insanely huge work pile, sighed and called the doctor at 8:12. we made an appointment for 11. the doctor looked and listened, put him on a nebulizer and sent us to the HOSPITAL for chest x-rays. which took us up until 2. then back to the doctor's clinic for evaluation and dispension of an inhaler and two different kinds of meds and an appointment tomorrow with a pulmonologist. i still am not sure why, exactly. the x-rays came out clean, but i guess she's just being cautious. i'm sending the husband tomorrow since i have a scary meeting with a Marketing Task Force full of professional adults who wear suits. a meeting i really am not all that prepared for. why can't we all just agree to wear sweat pants? really. it would make everything so much more cozy.

anyway. back to the cough story. the worst part of the cough story. apparently one of the meds tastes really bad. little j cried and refused and pleaded and whined and screamed and yelled and turned red and things got really hot around here for about two hours while we waited for him to choke down two teaspoons. he is a stubborn one. after two hours, he probably downed a quarter of it. we finally gave up, all of us exhausted and crabby.

so.

i sit here at 9:39 pm, looking at that big pile of undone work. i realize the day that has not been my favorite is now going to become a late night that will not be my favorite.

good thing God invented tomorrow.

what would karen do?

here i am in this semi new town. i find myself looking around so much, it's a wonder i haven't wrecked the car. that, combined with the fact that there are stop signs and yield signs all over the place--we didn't exactly have those in montrose. i think i'm going to wear out my car brakes.

anyway, i'm looking at everything, trying to get it all figured out. mostly, i'm trying to figure out who might like to be my friend and who might like to be friends with my boys. it's pathetic. i check out moms and kids at school. i check out moms and kids at soccer practice. i was excited to see the moms and kids i know from hockey at sign-ups last night. i am not an overly social person. i don't need a huge social calendar (in fact, that would freak me out). but finding a person who likes the things i do, with nice kids, would be good. it took me FOREVER to find good friends in montrose. i am a slow friender, i guess. i know that karen would have phone numbers and coffee dates by now, and she'd be on her way to trading recipes and finding someone to help her paint. i am on a "hi" basis with about four new people, but i have no idea what their names are.

it's a good thing i have such a treasure of "old" girlfriends out there. just thinking about making new ones makes me tired.

karen, how in the WORLD do you do it?

the house we are renting is owned by the hospital across the street. they told us that the nuns were going to rent it once the owners moved out, which is why i had an apartment all lined up. the nuns came to look at it, and decided it was "too much." not too much money, but just a little too much to handle...what with there being a jacuzzi tub and all. i personally think there is nothing wrong with a nun or two in the jacuzzi, but i guess these nuns didn't want to indulge. anyway, they backed out and we were able to rent the house...as you can see, the boys have no problem at all whooping it up in a giant tub full of bubbles.

this was about a week ago...walls going up


this is the back...


that's the husband watching the crane put a truss up on the roof. he's just itching to get in there and help. this was monday of this week.

this is the view out our dining room window. the husband's dream deck will go right outside this door. it's the only "room" he really cares about.


and this was last night. they put the front porch on yesterday and started shingling, all the plumbing is in and i just got back from meeting the electrician. these boys are definitely making up for lost time. i'm excited for them to cut all the windows out so we can really see what it will look like.

the only bad part is, at this rate we will be MOVING again shortly. so far, we have only brought three beds and my computer desk into the rental. the less we bring in, the less we have to bring out, right? so if you stop over to say hi (ANYTIME) , you might want to bring a chair....

well. we're here!


the rental house is going to be just fine, and our new house is going up like crazy so far. pictures tomorrow, i promise. (i'm taking the husband to eat in the "dining room" tonite for his birthday...which was yesterday, spent hauling and sweating and lifting and cussing)

as first-time movers, we made a few mistakes:

1. dragging one small boy's bike down the road for miles and not knowing it.
2. spending a night in a house with no refrigerator, stove, beds or food and then getting up and cleaning it until after noon.
3. moving with trailer loads over the course of weeks and days instead of throwing it all in one big truck.
4. getting to the rental to move in, only to find the old people weren't exactly moved out.
5. the heart attack caused by the Internet provider who told me carey@writebraincreative.com was not a possibility. (several phone calls later, we got it all straightened out. schwew)
6. one very agitated cat, who howled and tried sitting on the brakes the entire drive here.
7. a black and blue toe, caused when the bed was dropped on it.
8. not being able to find a blasted thing once we got here.
9. not getting instructions on how to run the electronics in this joint. they have surround sound speakers, but how oh how do they work?
10. having wayyyyy too much stuff in the first place.

that's about it. now i need to get back into the groove of life here and start settling in.
no more moving stories. no more chaos. i promise.