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We are turning the home I lived in with my ex for 7 years into “our” home.  Even with the strange dynamics, it’s exciting and fun.
The easiest way to change the look of the home without spending a fortune on new furniture is to paint.  There are a lot of weird things about old homes… like the fact that there are no bathrooms on the main floor of ours but there’s a bathroom in the unfinished basement.  But, a benefit to an old house is that the rooms can serve many purposes.

There really isn’t a “master” bedroom like we think of them these days which allows for some creativity in space design and planning.  We chose the bedroom with the best windows for our “master.”  Years ago, I painted it organic green.  It’s a great color but we need something fresh and new for our transition.  So, we chose Ashford (Rodda)… it’s like a pewter gray color that looks fresh and clean with the thick white trim which will also get a fresh coat of paint asap!  The natural wood blinds totally warm up the room and the antique brass fixtures (that I once hated) actually work really well now.  It’s gonna be so fantastic with our furniture.

A sun porch that has served as a playroom, nursery, then bedroom over the years will now become the office.  It was a celedon color and now it’s the color of Hershey’s chocolate… seriously it was like painting with chocolate syrup.  There are 8 windows on three walls which bring in amazing light so the small room can really handle the dark, rich color.  I can’t wait to move furniture in and get the office organized.

We plan to paint the entry and living room but probably not until after we move in… there is just not enough time to get it all done.  The living room will end up the same color… the most perfect color in the entire world for that room… Ralph Lauren Khaki.  I can’t even imagine it any other color.  It really is perfect.  The entry will remain a great neutral… probably Ralph Lauren Barn Owl White.  A few years ago, when my entire world was falling apart and my baby has just started Kindergarten, I started painting our long hall upstairs.  I love the color and started the project and never finished… we literally had a ladder with paint stuff at the end of the hall for nearly 6 months.  I just couldn’t finish it.  It was the sign that I’d given up hope.  Last week we put the final coat on the hallway and it looks amazing!  The dining room has a neutral cream that my ex did when we were trying to sell.  It’s adequate but not great.  At least it’s fresh.  That room can wait for some TLC.

But, Ugh… the Kitchen.  The house we’ve been renting has the most amazing kitchen, completely remodeled with a fantastic, six burner professional range.  I have thoroughly enjoyed it.  Now, I head back to my walk in closet of a kitchen.  So, imagine a hundred year old house with a kitchen that’s been sliced down the middle to make two (remember the house is a duplex).  Thankfully, our side has a dishwasher and butcher block counters (the saving grace of the entire room).  But, still, it’s rough!  Years ago I painted it a sunny yellow.  I wanted the kitchen to be cheerful even though it’s small.  It’s gone through many transitions over the years but it’s still that cheery yellow… not so cheery anymore.  For a while, I had the red and yellow toile with coordinating checks.  Then, we had the Rooster years where I added vintage prints and lots of rooster tchatchkes.  It was fine but for a tiny room, it was packed FULL of stuff.  Now, I need it to be clean and uncluttered… not cheery & chaotic.  So, tomorrow I venture again to the paint store for the perfect white… I am thinking Pale Face (Rodda) and maybe a trip to IKEA for a stainless steel pot rack.

The kitchen is the heart of our home… even our tiny kitchen.  My love and best friend, Tigg, has been an amazing partner and valiant in his effort to work with me to make the house fresh and ready for our new start.  But, tomorrow I will start on the kitchen alone.  It’ll be therapeutic for me to clean it out and get ready to start over there.  Let’s see how much nesting I can get done in a day…

We are moving again…

Last year at this time, we were just settling into a house we would rent and now we are heading home.

One of the biggest decisions when divorcing is what to do with the family home.  In our situation we own, in the loosest sense of the word since it’s mortgaged to the hilt, a big, old house that on the bad days was called the money pit and on the good days my dream home.  It’s 100 years old, classic and beautiful but very needy.  When I say needy… I mean like it still has knob & tube wiring in parts.  It was built in 1910 and gracefully remodeled into a duplex in 1923 therefore the moulding and trim work match the original and it was a very solid, beautiful transformation.  The “story” goes that the original owner lost his family’s fortune gambling and the wife refashioned the home so she could continue to own/live in it with her family while having boarders on the other side, thus the duplex was born.  We were the 5th owners and purchased it from a family who’d been there 25 years.

I loved this house.  It’s a head turner with incredible street appeal and a giant wrap around front porch complete with swing.  But, it needed work; it still needs work.  In fact, it needs a major overhaul to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  When we first looked at the house during an open house on a Sunday afternoon, I had just given birth to our 2nd child.  My first thought was that it was a giant, life-long project and I did not think we were the kind of people who could take it on.  We were not super handy and not the DIY type.  My ex was more inclined to hire someone than to figure it out on his own.  But, after I got the hang of the whole two kid thing, I felt up for a project.  9/11 had happened and the seller had taken the home off the market.  Through the grapevine, we heard they might list it again.  So, we put a note on their door saying we were interested. The house was five houses away from where we currently lived and I had spent the last 6 months walking past it and dreaming of all the things we could do to make it beautiful and our home.

The whole house story is too long to include here and it’s completely worthy of it’s own post on another day.  Long story, short… we bought it and moved in when our firstborn was 4 and baby 2′s First Birthday Party was the first of many parties on the front porch of our old house.  Unknowingly, I was already pregnant with baby 3.  She is now 7 1/2.  I was a stay at home mom for all those years in that big, old house making memories with my children in their yummy years.  I love that home and the memories there.  Ironically, it’s also the place where my marriage fell apart.  Therefore, there’s a sadness in my heart when I think of the promise I felt when we moved in compared to the despair I felt that led to me moving out.

When we decided to officially separate, having a duplex made it fairly simple.  I moved to the other side and he stayed on the original side.  The kids stayed in their rooms that were in between us.  It was a perfect set up for a while but eventually we both needed further separation in order to keep things amicable and to enable us both to move on.  I can’t afford the house on my own and I wanted a fresh start.  So, I rented a smaller house 10 blocks away.  It’s worked out well.  Unfortunately, we are in financial dire straights like the rest of America.  Everything we have is tied up in Real Estate hell.  We’ve tried, unsuccessfully and at a loss, to sell the family home.  Although we are still tangled up in a business, properties, & the house we co-own, each of us has moved on in relationships and life.  After much deliberation and discussion, I am moving back into the house and he is moving out.

The house is huge, 9 bedrooms & five bathrooms, all together over 7,000 square feet.  The plan is to dissect the house a bit further and rent out the duplex side and the entire top floor which up until now has been included in our living space.  It’s ironic that the original owners split the house up and had boarders in order to keep it and we are essentially doing the same thing because we can’t get rid of it.  Hopefully, the rental income will help with the financial burden, the kids keep their bedrooms and we see where all this leads us in a year or so from now.

It feels like we are moving backwards but I see how it’s the right thing to do.  We are being particularly mindful of how we go about the whole situation because my boyfriend who’s lived with me and the kids at the rental house will be moving with us… and so the plot thickens, new boundaries are drawn, and life moves on.

I realize it’s not technically Summer yet.  My children reminded me this morning as they got ready for school.  But, I got burnt to a crisp this past weekend, our 1st sunny day in like FOREVER, so I feel that it’s official to me.  Just for the record, my kids did not get burnt because I dutifully applied their sunblock and carefully oversaw self application for my nearly 12 year old (L) who did not need my help. Then, feeling like I had “done” the whole ten minute sunblock application session, we spent the afternoon in the wonderful sun at the nearly 9 year old’s (D) LaCrosse Tournament.  

In fact, the lovely weather was the topic of much conversation due to the continual rainfall we have experienced here in Portland. Yes, I know it’s what keeps us green and blah, blah, blah… but, enough with the rain already.  Anyway, in those conversations I mentioned that I don’t usually burn and the kids are lucky that they aren’t SO white that they have to worry about the sun constantly.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am pretty good with forcing sun block pit stops during sunny days but I don’t have to obsess about it.  However, around 2 pm, I started feeling hot, like really hot.  Realizing that I was neglectful with myself, I applied sunblock.  I re-applied.  Then, re-re-applied.  But, the damage was done.  I look like a lobster.  So, once again, the Mom takes care of the kids but forgets to take care of herself.  I can almost feel my nose start peeling at this very moment and I will never again say that I don’t burn.  I do. 

So, back to school…

I need to brag for like one minute that I got straight A’s & made the President’s List all three terms.  I know it’s just Community College.  But, I just REALLY love getting A’s.  Oh, and I can actually speak Spanish now and I can write it even better which is TOTALLY cool and I am really proud of myself!  

And now…

It’s Summer.  I will take a couple of classes  online.  It will be so nice to not have to BE anywhere.  I mean obviously I will be running the kids around here and there for camps, outings, and fun but I won’t have homework on the back of my mind 24/7.  I will get to read just for fun.  We will sleep in.  We will get to play games and cards in the evenings after dinner instead of homework.  All of this means that I now change into my “Julie” from the Loveboat persona… orchestrating, photographing, and keeping track of all the fun.  This makes me happy and I am pretty good at it.  

There is an interesting thing I heard last week as we wrapped up our final Spanish class.  The most difficult aspect of Spanish seems to be learning the millions of verb tenses.  Just as you feel confident in one, another is introduced.  After a year of this, it’s almost like you forget the most basic tense that you learned at the very beginning… the present tense.  As our class discussed this concern over losing what we’ve already learned, our professor said that’s the amazing thing about language acquisition… you sometimes set aside what you already know in order to learn something new.  It may feel like you have forgotten but what you already know is the foundation upon which this new information is based and it comes back to you.  I think life and the acquisition of wisdom is like that as well.  Sometimes it feels like I’ve forgotten some things that I use to know and be good at doing while I have taken on new challenges but thankfully, it does all come back in a new way… and it feels good when that happens.   

And, that brings me to the topic of Party Planning because I use to be REALLY good at it.  I realize that I am still good at it but I will save those details for their own post.  

Happy Summer!

It was a gorgeous day and I felt inspired.  It felt so good that after my run, I walked the hill a few times just to guarantee a good burn.  And, um, it worked… I am so pathetically out of shape that I could hardly walk the next day and the day after that and even the day after that.  You know it’s gonna be bad when while laying perfectly still in bed, your thighs hurt… before getting up!  

Well, those painful days passed and we did some good walking (not running, I know, but it was something) over the weekend.  We even went for a brisk evening walk after dinner on Monday night for over an hour.  So, Wednesday morning came around again, time for speech class for Adds.  I cajoled my partner in crime to join me.  We walked/ran & walked/ran for 40 minutes and it felt good!  Guess who is sore this morning!  Not me, but HIM!  

We even started our food diary to help us not “forget” that yes we indeed did eat lunch a few short hours ago and do not “need” an afternoon snack of candy.  I am famous for the 4 o’clock sugar low and desperate need for candy… preferably, swedish fish or something gummy and sweet like that.  I’ve been known to dump out the scary contents of my handbag entirely in my desperate search for a lone skittle or gummy worm.  But, in my newly, inspired state of consciousness I beat the 4 o’clock sugar demon.  Actually, I grabbed my wallet and walked all the way to the cafeteria during my class break to get my usual sugar fix.  I was in line to pay for the peach, gummy thingies when I realized that I would HAVE to write this in the food diary.  Be shocked and amazed…. I got out of line and put them back!  I know, I am the queen of self control (at that particular moment)!  And, back in class, the girl in front of me offered me the rest of her red vines (another fav) and I said, “No, thanks.”  So, I’m feeling pretty good about that despite the drinks and nachos that followed class.  Baby steps!

Needless to say, the summer birthdays are coming around again (well, not quite yet BUT they are being talked about already) and I am DETERMINED to have really great ones to make up for my failings of last summer.  

Our winter birthday girl who turned 7 in January went to the Great Wolf Lodge with her dad and siblings.  Then, the following week spent a long weekend @ Disneyland with her dad and siblings.  On her actual special day, she was with me and Tigg and her sibs and we made a special evening and had a really good time.  Although it didn’t equal the two fabulous trips she did with her dad.  Now I know in my head that things are not going to be equal.  And, I am totally okay with that.  But, the fact is that my heart wants to do something special just for her that only I can do.  I may not be able to pull off a weekend getaway, but I can certainly pull off a really great party.  

So, with all that background… we have been talking about all the different ideas for three months now.  We finally settled on a “cooking class” birthday.  She chose 5 friends that she wants to have over to my house.  They will each get aprons and chefs hats and I will do a little cooking demo and then they will get to do the cooking.  Don’t worry, Lauren & Tigg will be here to help so no one will be in danger.  

THE MENU

Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

Homemade Chicken Nuggets

Macaroni & Cheese (not the kind from a box!)

Fun Veggies

I am pretty confident in my skills and my girlie is pretty good in the kitchen so I feel like it will be fun but not too difficult.  My mind has been running nonstop about the cute aprons & invitations & party favors & decorations.  She has also asked to have one friend sleepover… I said yes.  This is a big deal as she hasn’t yet had sleepovers.  But, her big sibs have and she is certain that she is big enough now.  

So, with the planning underway & a tentative date… my baby will have herself a party.  Who cares that it’s four months after her actual birthday!  

BUT… this morning she tells me what she really wants is a swim party… AHhhhh… that is the last thing I want to do.  Ugh.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no chance that was going to happen… after school I must deliver the news.  I will have to use all of my creativity in wording that conversation right.  A cooking party is WAY more fun than a swim party, Right?  

In the end, I just want my girl to feel special and loved on her special day no matter what actual day it’s celebrated.  As soon as this party has passed, big sister is set to start planning the “Amazing Race” birthday that we started working on a year ago.  

Unfortunately, jeans a black t-shirt or sweater over a long sleeved white or gray t-shirt with boots EVERY SINGLE DAY gets boring.  So, I went thru my closet today and tried to come up with something new.  This is what I realized: 

I MUST start running ASAP.

I own approximately 32 black sweaters.

I have 22 pairs of jeans.

I have four dresses… three of which are the exact same dress in different colors.

I have two pairs of brown cords… only one pair fits.  

I have TONS of clothes that I will only wear when I feel better about my body.

This has been the most stressful year of my life and it’s obviously taking a toll on my body.  It’s not like I am obese or anything but I just don’t feel comfortable in my own skin.   

Today’s reality check & resolution:  the running commences tomorrow, I commit to weighing myself every single day, and I will quit stress eating.

The new year brings a new schedule and routine to our lives.  It’s somewhat comforting to know that the foreseeable future holds the opportunity for this “new” season every three months or so as I work my way towards my education goals.  Three months is a manageable time period.

This term I am taking 17 credits; classes every day.  I anticipate the biggest challenge might be with my Spanish immersion intensive.  Learning Spanish has been a goal for years so it’s exciting.  School comes easily to me.  The reading, studying, homework, and classes… I find it stimulating.  Plus, how fantastic is it to have someone give you a grade based on your hard work, effort and dedication!  I love the personal satisfaction an “A” brings; I’m a nerd like that. 

Oh, and the syllabus… I love the class syllabi!  I wish I had a syllabus for all the other parts of my life.  Just think for a moment about the components of a class syllabus. 

• Expectations
• Mandatory textbook
• Additional materials needed
• Assignment schedule
• Assignment guidelines
• Exam dates
• Instructor contact information
• Objectives
• Additional resources
• Grading criteria

This information would be super helpful in life, especially when considering the fact that you’re graded based on your performance on the specific objectives clearly listed… no surprises.  It would be such a luxury to receive a syllabus for life’s lessons. 

MARRIAGE 201.  Classes held @ your home, 24/7.  Prerequisites: Marriage 101 & 121.  Successful completion of Marriage 201 & 202 is required before registration for Parenting 101.  Attendance is mandatory.  Tardiness is not permitted.  Plagiarism is not tolerated and will result in a No Pass grade and referral to the Dean.  Purchase the following mandatory textbook and read the first chapter in preparation for the next class.  Attached is your assignment schedule and guidelines plus a list of additional resources that may prove helpful.   Late work is not accepted.  Approximately 50% of students fail the mid-term and/or final.  Due to the challenging nature of this class, please give careful consideration to your ability to successful complete the class at this time.    It may be advisable to take it at a later date.  If you decide to drop the class, submit the proper form to registration no later than the 2nd week of the term for a complete refund.  The objectives of the class and grading criteria are clearly listed.  Even if you meet all class goals, your successful completion is questionable.  My contact information and office hours are also included for your convenience. 

 Yes, I really, really love the syllabus. 

As I organized my homework and syllabus for my Spanish Immersion class, the word IMMERSION jumped off the page.  So, I will end with a note on the meaning of Immersion.  It seems to perfectly summarize my personality… immersion is much more fulfilling than distraction and boredom!

im⋅mer⋅sion

#1  Do more of the nice things that I think of doing… instead of just thinking about them…. actually DO them…. ACTION.

#2  Be a RUNNER, once and for all. 

#3  Go to Church… which means, finding a church that I actually want to be a part of.

#4  Breathe more fresh air.

#5  Say what I mean and mean what I say.

#6  Don’t be such an overachiever.

#7  Complete 45 college credits…. w/ a 4. but that is the overachiever in me… see #6.  

more to come…..