the golden goose

I almost named this post "to blessed to be stressed," but then I remember that I seriously dislike those kinds of platitudes and cliche sayings.  So I didn't.  But in reality, that's kind of how I feel.  Like, I'm totally grateful for this house and space but I'm also so totally overwhelmed and stressed.  And my brain is like, stop being stressed because things are good, lady!  Remember how you begged for this dang house for months years?  But then my eyes see the stuff in the boxes and the empty rooms and the mint green paint in the kitchen and I'm reminded of how much work there is ahead of us.

I have always lacked patience.  It may be my worst quality.  (If you have another suggestion for "my worst quality," kindly keep it to yourself.  I'm not impatient for that information.)  My utter lack of patience is the reason why I have trouble sticking with diet & exercise plans.  It's why I have trouble finishing my scrapbooks.  It's why when I do chores, I wander off and start working something else before I finish the first thing, all the while being exasperated that nothing is finished.  In short: I like results and I like them quickly.

Ideally, moving day would have gone something like this:

All of the boxes are packed perfectly and labeled.  All of the purging of the useless junk has been done - by someone other than me - and hence there is nothing in the perfect boxes that lacks purpose and meaning.  Everything was dusted and polished before being boxed up.  The books were organized by genre and then alphabetized.  You get the picture.  The friendly movers move all of these boxes and furniture into the house, and Wes and I share a bottle of wine and smile knowingly at each other in our new home.  Then, a quirky coming-of-age song plays over a montage of us unpacking boxes, laughing while putting away dishes, raking leaves, painting, putting tile up in the remodeled bathroom, and hanging curtains.  At the end of the song, the house looks like a Pottery Barn/Etsy collaboration and absolutely no time has passed in real life.

In reality, moving day weeks have gone like this:

Things are haphazardly thrown into boxes, trash bags, and laundry baskets.  Every time a piece of furniture was moved by the movers, seven cubic feet of cat hair emerged.  All of our things are coated in a protective layer of dust.  Instead of sorting through junk drawers and piles, those are just dumped into giant Ziploc bags to be dealt with at a later date.  A closet door is opened and a mover is suffocated by pounds and pounds of cat hair.  Despite having already boxed up nine hundred pairs of socks and 14,000 t-shirts, they continue to multiply like Gremlins.  The boxes continue to pile up in the house yet there is no furniture in which to put the things that are in the boxes.  There is one box filled entirely with cat hair.  Six weeks later, I still can't find any socks or baking sheets.

To keep my sanity, I have decided to focus on small things at a reasonable pace.  It's seriously hard though, because, you know, patience.  I don't have any.  At all.  But in an effort to give it the 'ol college try, here are some little things that I am really loving:

This big comfy chair that is my chair despite its furry tenants.

This tile in the downstairs bathroom.

All of these cabinets!

Seriously, more cabinets that I've ever had.  Ever.

Our little waterfall.

The little hook outside of this kitchen window where I was able to hang this fern.

A Tale of Two Cats

So, we aren't fully moved in to the house yet, but we are totally staying here.  I mean, obviously, right?  We almost slept here on the floor Friday night after closing but decided against it since we had a day of moving ahead of us.  We aren't 20 years old anymore, amiright? And since we are here, we had to bring the cats!  They are both doing fine now and seem to enjoy their new house.  However, their initial reactions to coming here could not have been more different.  I think we could learn a little something from both of them.  That's right, learning from cats.

Scout

Scout is a lot like me.  Trusting.  Open.  Sometimes to a fault, which can lead to embarrassment or hurt.    For both humans and cats.  Scout was plopped down in the new house and she instantly trotted out to explore.  She wasn't suspicious at all.  We knew that she was safe in the house, but she didn't know that.  She brazenly scooted from room to room as if every room was filled with Friskies and catnip.  Not a worry in the world, seemingly unaware that there may be people out there who don't have her best interests in mind.  She ran down into the dark, unfinished basement and poked her fluffy little cat face into every corner, and then ran up to me with whiskers filled with cobwebs.  She let it all hang out in one of the upstairs bedrooms (see above) without knowing who might be looking.  Scout jumped in to this new house experience with all four paws.

Ollie

If Scout is more like me, Ollie is more like Wes.  Extra, extra cautious.  Nervous.  Deliberate.  While Scout immediately set out to explore, Ollie made himself as small as possible and trusted nothing.  He spent three hours smushed behind a piece of insulation in the basement studs.  In the dark.  With bugs.  He then spent 48 hours underneath the bed (see above), refusing food and water.  He was seriously dramatic.  Nothing could pry him out from underneath that bed, as he regressed into a downward spiral of worry and dread about what horrors lay before him in this house.  Much like my sweet husband, Ollie just needed a little prod to get him over the anxiety hurdle.  Not one hour after we took the bed apart, giving him nowhere to hide, he was trotting around the house like he had been living here for years.   Like he's asking us, "what were you guys so scared about?  This house is great."  

So what have we learned?  As with most adorable animal stories, we learned that the place to be is somewhere in the middle.  Just right.  Not too hot, not too cold.  You know the drill.  From Scout, we can learn that new beginnings can be exciting.  From Ollie, we can learn maybe you shouldn't just shove your whiskers into unfamiliar cobwebs quite so soon.  Spend a little time checking things out, but open yourself up to new experiences after that short period.  Little bit of country mouse, little bit of city mouse.  Position yourself somewhere between full belly exposure and extreme insulation immersion.

Like I said, Wes and I are a lot like these stinking cats.  Despite having been burned once by the housing market (thanks financial collapse!), I have been more than ready to jump into homeownership again with all four paws.  I've been completely trusting that everything will be totally fine this time around (and, fyi, it will because this time I have Wes).  Nothing can possibly stop me from my dream of  domesticity - not interest rates, not radon mitigation systems, not holes in the roof, and not closets full of random extension-cords-to-nowhere nailed to the wall.  (That's for serious.)  Wes has always approached things with pragmatism.  He is concerned with boring things like "paying the bills" and "structural soundness" and "insurance."  We make an excellent team, however.  I dream the dreams, and he makes them happen.  Like, actually makes things happen.  While I'm running around frenetically, shoving my face in every real estate listing that pops up on homes.com, Wes patiently removes the cobwebs from my whiskers and saves money and researches mortgages.  We like to think that the end result of our two drastically different approaches has had a pretty fantastic ending.  We seriously love it here.

Also: never, ever go on a hunger strike, even if it's just for 48 hours under someone's bed.  That's just ridiculous.

Those Old Georgia Pines

I wanted to share this awesome picture that my uncle took in our almost-backyard this past weekend when we had family in town from Alabama.  I wasn't able to show them the inside of the house, but we spent some time touring the outside!  The only thing missing in this picture is Wes.

It's the Final Countdown

Oh, if only we had G.O.B. here to commemorate this final countdown!  Although we don't, it is true that we are a wee five days away from closing.  This is not the same as being five days away from moving...but it's still pretty cool.

We did a walk-though this weekend and, while it went pretty well, there were still a few items that need to be addressed by the seller.  We are confident that these items will be addressed this week before Friday's closing.  If they aren't, we may have to wait just a little longer.  And this will be me.

(sidenote: Have you seen the Sad Cat Diaries?  I am obsessed)  I'm pretty sure we will close on Friday, though.  Literally the first thing that we have scheduled after we close is the installation of...wait for it...internet and cable!  Seriously, you guys don't even know how hard it is when our internet is so slow that only one of us can engage in an online activity at a time.  I cannot tell you how many times I have been forced to play Candy Crush on my phone using 4G instead of my iPad using wifi.  The screen is so much smaller!  What am I?  An ant?!

A Bicycle (Key Rack) Built for Two

I have officially bought the first item for the house.  Huzzah!  While feeding the monster this weekend, I came across a pin featuring this awesome key rack from Etsy:

It's totes adorbs!  See, bicycles built for two (bicycle built for twos? whatever.) are an unofficial "thing" for me and Wes.  Actually, it might be an official thing.  It started at the beach in Hilton Head in 2008:

We were babies!  Just kidding, we look the same.  I still have those pants.  We have continued our tradition in St. Simon's:

 In case you are keeping score, doing something twice still counts as a tradition.  And in our defense, we intended to do it in Gulf Shores last year, but couldn't find a rental place and also it was raining and we may have spent too much time at the bar.  It's still a tradition, though!

Our awesome rehearsal dinner actually had a bicycle-built-for-two theme.  It was pretty great, and we scored this personalized print!  This may be hung over the key rack, who knows?  The possibilities are endless!

The Pinterest Monster

We are less than one month away from closing on the house.  I am going to spend the next month having that feeling you have on Christmas Eve when you're so excited you can't fall asleep.  Y'all still have that feeling in your thirties, right?  Anyway, we are excited.  I'm so excited that I have already created approximately nine Pinterest boards dedicated to various areas of the house.  This is me:

When Pinterest attacks, it is mighty.   It starts out as a friendly, harmless let's-just-browse-while-drinking-my-morning-coffee, and then all of a sudden it's an hour later and you're late for work.  True story.  Pinterest is at the same time wonderful and terrible.  Pinterest will teach you how to make delicious chicken.  Pinterest will revolutionize your relationship with broccoli.  It will show you amazing outfits with perfect accessories that in a million years you will never own.  However, Pinterest will also trick you into making a banana omelette by telling you they are pancakes.  Pinterest will convince you that ridiculous things are ingenious, like taking your bagel to work in a CD case and the classic using-a-dustpan-to-fill-up-a-bucket trick.  It will tell you seven hundred ways to a flat belly, none of which will make you look like that girl in the picture.  Pinterest also makes it very easy for misattributed quotes to "go viral," as the kids say.  (P.S., Olivia Wilde said that one.  In Cosmo.)   And don't get me started on parties.  Pinterest will unapologetically almost spoil a sweet boy's first birthday party.

But perhaps Pinterest's worst transgression comes in the form of home decor.  People don't live like this this, right?  These kitchens are not real.  No one has the thing where the cutting board pulls out and has a little hole for the trash to go straight into the trash can.  It's exhausting to see these things when you live in an actual house that regular humans inhabit.  Not a house with a tiny built in playhouse under the stairs.  (really? is this a thing?)  Or this house which is totally photoshopped and if it isn't, I'm moving tomorrow.  How is it possible to browse those boards without going completely insane?

See generally here, here, and here.

So the challenge here is to keep the Pinterest Monster at bay with a healthy dose of realism.  I have a great house to work with, but we don't live in a fairy tale.  I'm pretty sure that I can't DIY myself into a treehouse filled with endless wine fountains and an infinity bathtub.  Pretty sure...I haven't run all the numbers yet.  But even if I can't plant a tree in our master bedroom and construct a bed out of natural wood and a hammock, I am not a failure.  Our house will still be lovely.  But in the meantime, dear readers:

Here I am!

Apparently I am blogging just enough lately to keep me from completely deleting this blog.  Throughout the many iterations of this blog (I keep reinventing it...sneaky or indecisive?) I have come to learn several things about myself:

• I started blogging in my twenties.  I am no longer in my twenties.
• I like to alternate between blogging about mundane things and making sweeping, profound observations on Life (capital L life - big stuff).
• I'm probably trying to be a little profound in this post, but just be cool, everyone.
• I like cats.  I am obsessed with my cats.
• I can't run.
• Weight ain't nothing but a number...that tells you how much you weigh.  And is directly related to your cheeseburger and potato chip intake.
• I just can't blog unless I have something to blog about.

So I'm here to tell you that...wait for it...at long last I have something to blog about!  I know that you just breathlessly uttered "what could it be?"  (You've been waiting for this!)  Well, since you asked, it's a little place that looks like this and in one short* month will be ours!

Inside this sweet little gem (which I like to think resembles the house from Father of the Bride...I said resembles, people) awaits numerous poor paint colors, outdated bathrooms (including: The Bathroom Without a Shower and a Toilet So Close to the Tub that Your Knees Touch the Edge and Did I Mention It Has Carpet), more questionable carpet, a sprawling bonus room adorned in peeling wallpaper, and a plethora of what will be empty rooms until we can afford to fill them up.  You, dear blog readers, will be in for a treat as I document each delightful and probably-most-of-the-time boring step as we transform the inside of this home to match the beauty of the outside.  Which is totes amazing.  If you think about it, it's kind of like the opposite of the Biggest Loser.

Also, I plan to talk about our cats.  You're welcome in advance..

*This month will probably feel like agony.  Two-bedroom-apartment based agony.