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Oh, is it Thursday night already? Well, let’s see if we can make a graceful exit from the week. I know a place where you can find supplies if you are lacking serenity:
Fly away from the worries of the past week and be free!
Yep, I’m ready to let the sun set on this week.
Do you have anything exciting planned? My M.O. is the usual: good food and lots of relaxation! No time to blog, big plans for the weekend and it starts tonight! My sister is flying in at this very moment, and after Mark and I pick her up we’re planning to stop by the Houston Museum of Natural Science for a midnight visit to Lois. The rest of the weekend we are having a little Lone Star State family reunion with our parents, who sold their house in under a week and are now posted deep in the heart of Texas (clap-clap-clap-clap).
How about you? Anything exciting lined up for the weekend? With my big vacation for the year fast approaching, I did a little shopping. If you recall, I was in the mood for a stack of gold bangles. These were exactly what I had in mind, but the $100 price tag was not working for me:
I haven’t resolved the gold flip-flops issue. It seems like all the pairs I like the most have terrible reviews on Zappos. My sister says Havaianas are worth the price, but I’m still thinking. I used to have rubber flip-flops in a rainbow of colors, but hours of Stacy & Clinton convinced me it was time to start wearing real shoes when I’m not at the beach, and I got rid of almost all of them — so now I wear leather flip-flops around town all summer, instead. I like to tell myself they’re slightly more respectable. :) I was ready for a change:
If you need a curl guru in Houston, go see Alan at Traci-Scott! Barring some miracle, Julia seems to be telling us that she is ready to go. We will spend tomorrow saying goodbye, and then our vet (who is fabulous, by the way, in case you ever find yourself in possession of a Houstonian kitty) will make a house call. I told you a little about Julia before, but indulge me and I’ll tell you more. My sister and I found her at Petsmart over the Thanksgiving holiday of 2002, not long after I’d graduated from college. I was living at my parents’ house in VA but had just accepted a job in NJ. Obviously I was going to need a cat, and when we saw her, we knew she was the one. We called my then-boyfriend and bribed him into agreeing to keep her until I moved into an apartment. I filled out the application and heard back from the sponsoring rescue within a day or two. I requested that they groom her before I picked her up, and there was some kind of fiasco that kept delaying it. Finally, she was mine!
so skinny! I think I drove her up to PA that same night, to her temporary home. I visited on weekends until I moved to NJ (my boyfriend thought I was visiting HIM, ha!), and then I brought her over. My apartment was underneath a man who sold drugs and abused his girlfriend. It was not the best environment for a nervous cat (or her owner), but we kept each other company and she kept me sane. At first, she would wait until I was asleep and then climb up onto my hip. Before long, she would go to bed with me and stay on me or next to me all night. There were growing pains, though. Julia is a very particular cat. The food and the litter had better be just right, or you will find out that they are not. As much as I loved her, I had some times of serious frustration. I was encouraged by at least a couple people to start over and try again. My aunt, a big pet lover, said that “there are lots of good kitties out there.” But I knew she was a good kitty, we just hadn’t figured each other out completely. When I bought a townhouse in a quiet neighborhood, she was obviously happier, but some of her issues persisted. I figured things were as good as they were going to get, and learned to work around her. No rugs. No unsupervised bedroom time. I developed the ability to smell fresh cat pee from a different floor of the house (some people have more useful talents, but this one is mine). Mark is a dog person and was never thrilled about living with my neurotic little cat, but his superior housekeeping skills brought some much-needed order to her life. It was like things clicked. They even developed an appreciation of sorts for one another. When we moved to TX, to a much larger home, the transformation was complete. She became a much more mellow cat, comfortable with rules and even interested in visitors. I’m sure Mark will never be fully converted to a cat person, but he has come to love her for who she is, and to appreciate what a cat can contribute to a household. He has taken extraordinary care of her (and me) this week, administering subcutaneous fluids and feedings and even a bath (THAT is love, my friends). When she leaves us tomorrow, it will be with all the dignity that a cherished companion deserves, and there will be a considerable void in our home.
Julia seems to be improving, albeit very slowly, so I am a little preoccupied tonight. I still have the final installment of our DC trip to share, but not tonight. Tonight I just want to share a few shots from our flowerbed. Last year we never got around to planting anything and this year wasn’t looking much more promising, so we decided to go simple. We bought a Texas/Oklahoma wildflower seed mix, and Mark seeded and mulched the flowerbed a month or two ago. They have really taken off, and look better every week. They smell amazing. There’s just something about coming home to flowers at the end of the day that relaxes you. We’re considering getting another bag or two and guerilla-seeding the vacant lot next to us, among other blighted transitional areas of the neighborhood…
The end of February in Houston signals the start of rodeo season, which kicks off with a huge barbecue cookoff, a charity 5k/10k to benefit the HLSR Educational Fund, and a parade. This was the second year that I ran the 10k. I was a rower in high school and college, but despite my athleticism I was never much of a runner. I have tried very hard to like it, but I think I’m just not built for it. So I can’t explain why I would voluntarily do a 10k twice, except that my employer is a major sponsor, it’s a good cause, and the memory of the pain prevents me from registering for something that I’ll hate more. And what’s 10k, if even retirees take up marathoning these days? Surely I can run 6.3 miles. Last year I trained a lot. This year I trained less often, but at a much faster pace. On race day, my miles averaged two seconds faster than last year — hardly the payoff I was hoping for. Also, I really, really did not enjoy the last half, not even a little. So if I participate next year, I’m moving to the 5k event. What I do enjoy, however, is strength training. I naturally gravitate toward sloth, so I have to love a sport that involves more rest time than work time. Mark has a long history of powerlifting, so when we moved to Houston we decided that we were going to buy some nice equipment. Our home gym is only about 140 sqft, so of course we bought a power rack that fills a quarter of that space. The rest of the space contains an erg, a cycling trainer, and some kettlebells.
The other thing Mark got me is a weight belt. Once I passed bodyweight on deadlift, it seemed like a good idea. He bought me the same kind that he uses, but since I’m a girl, mine is pretty:
We are the first owners of our home, which came with some nice features, but nowhere to put books. We decided to have some bookcases custom-built in the living room. This is what the living room looked like when we moved in: So who was going to build these bookcases? When we moved to Houston, we immediately registered for Angie’s List. If you haven’t heard of it, you must not watch television; if you haven’t used it, you’re missing out. We’ve found a number of excellent service providers through Angie’s List, and we always contribute reviews of local businesses/providers that we love (one month we were the top contributor for Houston, and we got a gift certificate to a local restaurant!). You have to pay for it, but I figure we have saved the membership cost many times over by finding providers who do good work. Angie’s List has categories for everything, so we started with cabinet makers. We saw a lot of photos and read a lot of reviews, and got an estimate from DJ at Quality Millwork (nothing to see there yet, but if you’re in Houston and need something built, there’s your contact info). He told us how much business has increased since he started getting ratings on Angie’s List, which is good incentive for me as the customer to write a positive review for someone whose work I like. Anyway, he took measurements, did a sketch, wrote an estimate, and we sent the deposit. We went out to his workshop to see the bookcases before they were painted and give him the paint chip, and we were pretty excited. Finally they were painted and the day arrived for installation! Then we hit the first snag. The bottom cabinets were installed, but the workers couldn’t get the shelving sections around the angles in the stairs that go up to the living room. There was nothing to do but cut them apart, hide the seam with decorative molding, and try again another day. This was not what we had expected or wanted, but devoid of other options we agreed, and waved goodbye to the bookcases as they headed back to the shop. There is a famous quote about laws and sausages — that it is best not to see them made. I would amend that to ‘laws, sausages, and anything you’ve hired someone to do to your perfectly good home,’ and after overhearing all sorts of power tool sounds from the safety of my bedroom, I would add that is best not to hear them being made, either. This is what we looked at for the next week:
Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. The size incident was a lucky mistake, because we really like the look of the molding that frames out the bottom of the display area. The electrician that DJ brought did right by us too, by suggesting the right kind of bulbs to suit our needs and positioning them so they wouldn’t shine in our eyes as we sit on the couch. That’s the kind of overlooked detail that thrills me when someone else thinks of it. So, without further ado:
This is Julia (you may recognize her if you’ve ever viewed my ‘About Me‘ page):
Julia is about ten years old. She’s been with me for seven. She’s a cancer survivor (she saw both a dentist and an oncologist last year in addition to her vet, which is more medical attention than I had!) and a very gentle, shy little creature. She follows me all over the house and sits right outside the bathroom if I’m thoughtless enough to close the door. When I lived alone, she slept perched on my hip every night, but she was banned from the bedroom when I got married. That was before we moved to Texas, so she has never been allowed into the bedroom in this house. A few times she tried to sneak in, but she got called on it and wisely skittered away. Most of the time, her manners are excellent — she’ll sit right outside the door watching me:
I can even disappear from view, into the master bathroom, with the bedroom door wide open. She will edge right up to the carpet, but she won’t cross that line: Houston has been very cold lately (where very cold = 50s; hush, I’m a Southerner now and wear socks to bed if the temperature is below 65) and the other night Miss Julia found a creative way to snuggle up and steal some warmth from us without exactly stepping into the bedroom:
I guess sometimes you just have to know how to break the rules. A couple days after my sister and I tore up Harwin St., we went for round two in the Heights. I got a couple hot tips from Taryn over at A Peine For Your Thoughts, and our first stop was Oolala. I love supporting local and independent artists, and Oolala has a fun selection of jewelry and clothing at very reasonable prices. So reasonable that I had to check the tag on this set a couple times to be sure:
We also checked out Hello Lucky on Taryn’s recommendation. It reminded me of Parts & Labour in Austin, but a teeny fraction of the size. Nothing we needed this time, but fun to look! Next we headed to the Historic Heights shopping district, which is a couple blocks of antique stores, thrift stores, and boutiques. We eventually wandered into Retropolis, which is kind of a black hole of old stuff, 90% of it being (IMHO) either crap, or utter crap (partial jars of pomades from the 60s: as nasty as they sound!). I don’t do a lot of thrift shopping because you really need patience to find the good stuff, but this time I scored with a few yards of fun fabric:
It has GLITTER!
You’re probably thinking this means I will sew something. I do make things, which I will show you when I (one day) have a craft table again, but none of those things are clothes. I asked my mother to teach me to sew when I was much younger, and I hated it because there is just way too much stuff to do before the actual sewing. Once in a while I convince myself that I want to learn to sew, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather just be the idea person, so I texted my mother and let her know I had a project for her! She and my dad are a little busy trying to sell their house so they can move to Texas, but as soon as they get settled here, I am hiring her for all the little bespoke dresses she can handle. Because I’m all about buying local. :) |
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