The car pictured in the (old) header image above (EDIT: I have since changed the header pic so it’s a little more anonymous than it was) .. that’s Zombie Car II… yes there really was a Zombie Car I. Scary, I know.  Well, we had to use it as collateral  for a loan back in March I think. It was before DH had received his promotion and my job hadn’t yet come through with the raise, so we were still trying to live on about half of what we make now.  So, the last payment is due next month. I’ve been looking forward to paying it off and selling the car.. well, we can’t get it running, so selling it will be difficult, and unfortunately we need money before Wednesday.

I was dumb and overspent on eating out with the family and stuff for the house, and the van was in the shop three times.  Our rent is due today, the electric is past due and they’re going to cut off my internet on Wednesday if I don’t pay the past due amount by then – and I’m overdrawn. So, I don’t really have much choice but to renew the loan. Fortunately, the loan company is one we’ve used since way back in 2000 or so.  I’ve made very sure to have payments to them in on time everytime, so they like having us come back. All I have to do is call them in the morning and tell them we want to renew, then DH and I can go sign it on his lunch break and get the check. Easy as that. I guess that’s how people with excellent credit and banks get along – maybe someday I’ll know. But I doubt it.

The good thing about getting the loan to pay these bills is it still frees up DH’s check this coming weekend for the regularly scheduled bills, as well as the big Fall Festival we go to every year in my home town.  I’m really looking forward to the festival. After we spend the day there, we’ll take the kids to my in-laws house and then head back to town for our 20th yeah High School reunion.  DH and I graduated the same year from our highschool. So did Friend, who said he’ll be there if he can get his wife to attend. Won’t that be fun?

Speaking of Friend, I’m supposed to go meet him for lunch this week. We had originally said the next time we meet for lunch, to do so at the park by the river.  Friday he said he was really looking forward to it, but since it’s getting to be cold weather, we’ll have to find a way to keep warm… This is going to be an interesting week.

I have been asked to post pics of my living room that I talked about in yesterday’s blog. I am such a perfectionist, I’d have never considered posting any until it was perfect but that’s not going to happen, so I’ll take pics as it is now. Complete with dog hair on the couch and a dirty carpet because my vacuum is broken.  I’m not happy with the wall over the brown loveseat. I want to eventually put up my kids school pics in gold frames there. Or maybe the Japanese prints will go there after I buy a second book shelf to put to the right of the TV. It just kind of happens as it happens. I can’t plan too much. I just start doing it, and it all works together.

My living room as seen from the kitchen.

Another view of my living room. I love the ottoman.

Living room as seen from front door entryway.

The Chinese cabinet in the entryway. I cropped out the clutter! LOL

My china cabinet and Japanese prints and my coffee-table-now-tv-stand

Our collection of pieces from around the world. I love the red walls.

Thought I'd add a couple pics of the Gazebo. Still needs pumpkins!

The gazebo as seen from the bottom of the front steps.

Hope these are OK. As I get the entryway decluttered and get my kitchen cleaned up, I’ll add some of those too.

Ok, I’m going to quit promising photos because I seem to be completely unable to remember to take them.

I managed to get the garbage dumped by letting 16 drive the van to the dumpster and dump it without me going along. She only has her permit, but it wasn’t really on a road, it was inside the park which is technically private property. I also got 12 and 10 to clean up the rest of the yard by taking the big resin toys over to the shed area to store them. The summer is over and 6 never really plays with them anyway. The bench is handy for the summer yard toys like badminton rackets etc, but she never really even looks at her kitchen set. It’s a shame really. I’d have killed to have something like that as a kid. They just don’t appreciate things in this day and age. Maybe she needs to watch reruns of Mr. Rogers…

I LOVE watching HGTV. There are very few shows on there I don’t like. My Parents House is one I don’t like. However, I LOVE House Hunters and Colorsplash and Designed to Sell. I have learned so much from watching the staging shows and the redecorating shows. The new Rate My Space is awesome too. I know from watching all of them, that my style (and my husband’s) is Eclectic. I love to decorate with emotion. I want things that I love around me even if they don’t really go together. I still like to color coordinate as much as I can, and currently the living room is all golds and browns and red. Really pretty. There is some black too, like the ottoman and the Chinese cabinet and the huge TV. We have Egyptian art alongside Japanese prints and Indian wood carvings. (India the country – DH’s dad lived there til he was 19), plus dragons and gargoyles and even a Buddah. Plus all my Mom’s china which is on a cherry bookshelf kind of between the kitchen and living room.  To me, it all works. In fact, I am finally happy with the room (other than the floor- next phase is hardwood floors).

I had a smile moment this evening. For some reason 6 invited the new boys that moved in a couple doors down to come look in our front door. I noticed they were there and was about tell Zoe it was time for them to go home and she needed to come eat dinner, when the boys went “Wow! This looks really nice!” big grin Yeah I guess it does look pretty good. I’m proud of how the living room has come together.

One thing in the living room that was really bugging me was the Chinese lacquer cabinet we have by the front door where we are supposed to put keys and DH’s wallet etc. You literally could not see the top of the cabinet from all the stuff on it. It had two baskets on it overflowing with papers and all kinds of junk. One of the baskets looks really good there since it has a curled wrought iron handle and the clock above it has the same curly wrought iron accents. So, the basket is good for holding the keys and wallet and pens and change etc without it laying all over the cabinet top. But the other basket had to go. So after getting rid of the clutter (half filled a trash bag!) and the extra basket, I washed the cabinet top, and placed the good basket back on it alone with a couple of DH’s dragons that he collects. They looks really nice with the Chinese theme going on there. So, I had this other basket, and it occurred to me that it was the perfect size for DVDs, and there was a perfect place in the floor by the coffeetable-that-is-now-the-TV-stand. It looks really nice there. I put a gold painted basket that has been floating around with no real purpose, on top of the TV and DVD player to hold more DVDs (like current rentals), and then I put a red lacquer Chinese tray DH had before we got married and has been sitting around gathering dust – in the center of the new black ottoman. Some glasses with narrow bases cannot really sit on the soft ottoman top, so the tray is a perfect place to set a glass, and it’s colorful and pretty.  I would actually prefer to have a nice big red-stained wooden tray to set of the ottoman instead.  I saw one on HGTV tonight I loved and would be perfect. So, sometime when I’ve got extra spending money, I’m gonna take a trip to Pier1 and grab one. I can almost 100% guarantee they’ll have one. (gold will work too if red isn’t avail.)

The kitchen table and one chair are still piled with stuff that had been hiding in the old entertainment center cabinet. I know it’s a pain and I hate looking at it when my living room looks so nice now (the kitchen is connected to the living room). But until I can get that other bookshelf, it’s how it has to be.  I have decided though that since a lot of the stuff piled up isn’t really something I want to look at on a book shelf (old kids’ school papers, files, etc) that I’ll just take all our books out of the Chinese cabinet and put that unsightly stuff in it, then put all the books on the bookshelf. Who knows, maybe we’ll start reading them again!

So this past weekend was the time we had set aside to fix things and get the mess cleaned up. Well, it’s partially been accomplished. We got the toilet replaced, and discovered the floor wasn’t as bad as we first thought. It actually didn’t need any fixing. We did put down the new vinyl tiles and then put the toilet down with the wax ring etc on top of them, so it looks SO much better. And I love the new tiles. I haven’t had a chance to finish the floor in there yet, but hopefully this weekend.  I’m also going to look at the salvage place for a new vanity.  The living room was cleaned up and I got the family to stop bringing clothes in there instead of folding them at the dryer. Actually now they don’t do laundry at all, but that’s better than having it all over the living room. I got an EXCELLENT deal on an ottoman through a catalog. It was clearanced to 50% off then I got a coupon for an additional 33% off! So even with shipping cost, I got it for 80 something, and it’s defintiely worth a lot more. So I’m thrilled. It’s quite big, round, 3′ in diameter and pretty tall. Taller than most footstools. In fact it’s taller than the seats of my couch. At first I wasn’t happy about how big it is, but the family has gathered around it more than before we got it. It’s a great place for movie popcorn or to play a board game. The kids even do homework at it I’m really happy with it now.  And I can NOT wait til we get the wood flooring to replace this nasty carpet in the living room. I’m hoping I can talk DH into using our anniversary money for it.

Of course since we got the house all cleaned up and some new stuff, I wanted to make sure we didn’t let it get back to how it was when I was sick. We divvied up the dishes among the girls. I think I may have already talked about this. It works really well… when they’re reminded to do them. Twice now, I’ve come out to the living room on my lunch break and found piles of dishes. DH has been here, but it’s as if he’s not. I even told him tonight it’s like this is a one-parent household. He had the nerve to tell me it was my fault because I told the girls they had to take a bath! WTF? I dunno, the man is beyond me.  He’s just a child in a 38 yr old body, but I am not his mother so I can’t tell him to do his chores. … Oh I can try. believe me, I do.  You should see the pile of garbage by the front door!!  It makes me SO mad!  I have asked him nicely, I have told him it needed to be done, I have told him he HAD TO DO IT, because I was SICK OF IT… it’s all still there, and it’s piling up nightly.  I bag up the kitchen garbage each night during lunch or when I get off work and take it outside to the can (which is in the middle of the piles of garbage bags.  The idea is I should be able to put a bag of garbage in the can for two nights before it needs to be dumped since it can hold two bags easily, and sometimes we can fit a third if we have to.  But the kids don’t take it when told or wait and let us forget all about it, and as I said, asking DH to have the kids do anything is ridiculous. I might as well be telling a brick wall. I will take a pic of the piles of trash tomorrow and post the pics (as well as the other part of the yard I never did get pics of before when the rabbit cages went away)  so you can see it,  then I am going to load it into the van and go dump it myself.  I am not going to get yelled at by the landlord again and have my excuse be that I can’t get my lazy husband to do anything around the house.  (He’s not really lazy, he works 45-60 hours a week at work). ..  he just won’t do anything I want him to do.  I think that’s a conscious decision.  I dunno.. I mean he did replace the toilet for me, but he sure was bitchy about it.  I even took him out to dinner as a thank you and he was upset the Italian restaurant was not open.  I’ve gotten to be an expert at rolling my eyes and ignoring stuff.

For those wondering about Friend, I’ve been so busy I haven’t talked to him much, and I think that’s healthy.  It lets him squirm a little bit, you know?  In fact, I’ve gotten a few emails about “We haven’t talked in forever, I hope you’re ok”  and if I don’t reply to an email immediately, he’s like “What happened??”  He actually found out from his Dr that his blood pressure is getting worse, his kidneys are having issues and he has gout in one foot. He’s too young to be falling apart!  I do miss seeing him. Maybe I’ll see about lunch again next week. A picnic by the river perhaps? It’ll be getting cold weather soon, so it would be nice.  I’ll let you know.