The Best Dinner

I made, perhaps, the best dinner ever tonight. Well, the best dinner I've ever made anyway. I always like reading about other people's meal plans and such so this is what we had for dinner:


Pulled Pork with this BBQ sauce on these whole wheat rolls.


When it was all assembled, it was nothing short of perfection. OMG - best pulled pork I've ever had. Since I slaved making all those things from scratch, we had steamed corn and frozen fries on the side. But seriously, if you love pulled pork like I do, try this!

Melancholy

I like that word.


I'm having a melancholy night.


I finished Dear John tonight. It's been over 3 years since I first read it. Many of the details had become fuzzy in my memory, but I had a feeling that it wouldn't end happily ever after. I like happily ever after. I'm a total sucker for it. Books and movies are always better, in my opinion, if it ends the way I want it to. I don't like crying. I don't like being reminded of how fragile life is, of how the choices we make affect everything, of how things sometimes don't work out how we would have liked.


Not only does Dear John leave me a little weepy, but it's all about the freakin' Army. When it came out in 2006, Brian and I were a very new couple. We did not become a military family until 2007, so when I first read this book, I appreciated the military aspect, but not like I do now.


I know deployment #2 is coming this year. Hell, we're about to be apart for a month with little to no communication while he's off training in high altitude. Where did the last year go? I totally took it for granted.


I think a combination of finishing the book and a couple sad songs I've been obsessed with have gotten me down a tad.


I really did have a good day today. I just want to work on living each day and stop looking ahead all the time. I feel like I'm missing things.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Good:

• I went to the library this morning. I've had a stockpile of books for months, so I hadn't needed to visit the library in some time. I love libraries. I love books. I got a couple books for me and a few books for the kids at work.
• Our oven is fixed! It needed a new heating element (like I thought) and should be good as new now. Yay!
• I was in and out of Walmart in less than 30 minutes. And it was only moderately crowded!

The Bad:

• I had to stand around at the self-checkout at Walmart waiting for someone to retrieve my $1 off coupon from the coupon slot because the woman manning the self-checkouts stuck it in there even thought it had not given me the $1 credit. If you're over-seeing the self-checkout lines, you should know how they work. Just sayin'.
• The roads around here. Ugh.
• Tail-gaters. I can - and will - slow down if I can't see your headlights in my rear view mirror.

The Ugly:

• Almost everyone in Walmart.
• The Miley Cyrus clothes being sold at Walmart. (They were on the aisle...I promise I did not seek them out!)

Insert Witty Title Here

I got on here to write some rambling nonsense and noticed I have 3 new followers.


Hello new followers!! Welcome to my crazy little corner.


I'm not sure what makes any of you read what I write, but you do. Thank you.


Brian has been working non-stop and it's starting to get to me a little bit. It's gotten to the point that I'm lucky if I see him after PT in the morning. He definitely can't get home for lunch anymore. If he gets home before 7PM, I'm doing a little dance for joy! Where is he right now? In the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday? Working.


I finally got our claim in for our water damaged furniture. We'll be making $340 after the deductible. Now I just need to figure out the best way to clean/kill the mold growing on my less-than-a-year-old furniture. Oh, did I fail to mention the mold? Yeah. We have mold. I'm pretty sure it's salvageable. Well at least I think I can make it work until we move.


I broke down and ordered a dehumidifier today from Amazon. There are still some damp spots in the carpet. Plus, who am I kidding? It's Louisiana. It's always humid. The house could probably benefit from some dehumidifying.


Know what else I ordered? The entire Harry Potter book set. It just seemed like something I should have in my book collection.


I'm still getting back into the groove of work. I sure didn't want to get out of bed this week, but most of the students I work with make it worth it. One of them made me a card. It had a bunch of random letters inside. When I asked him what it said he looked at me like I was stupid and said, "I can't read!" Totally made my day.


Well, I gotta get off the couch and into the kitchen. I'm making dinner tonight without help from my oven which is broken. I'm starting to think this house is trying to kick us out. Oh well, we're stuck here for a while longer. Happy weekend everyone! :)

Decorating

We've been living in this house for over a year. I am still unhappy with almost every single thing hung on the walls. I've been having this urge to fix that. We now (most likely) have less time left in this house than we've been living in it and I want to be happy with all the decor before we pack it all up again.


My number one trouble spot is the area over our couch. Right now I have a big collage of picture frames (without anything in them - oops!) there right now, but I'm not loving it anymore.


I've been thinking about getting a few of my wedding pictures printed on canvas to hang over the couch. I've narrowed it down to these images:

I think I like them. Now I just need to come to terms with spending the money.

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Do you ever have one of those days/weeks where nothing seems to be going your way?


The last week has been very trying for every member of this family. It seems all kinds of things have been going wrong both big and small.


I'm tired. I can't seem to catch up on sleep.


In the last 24 hours, I burned my hand on the oven and nearly burned dinner beyond recognition. I bit the inside of my mouth 3 times in 15 minutes (ouch!). The oven nearly set the house on fire. I'm sorta convinced that it's probably broken. Tiny had an accident in the house. I forgot to use $6 worth of coupons at the commissary. We spent about $150 on stuff for Brian to take with him on this big month-long training thing next month.


Surely we should go buy a lottery ticket because our luck must be changing. We've had enough bad stuff happen, right?


There's still alot to do as a result of THE FLOOD. I need to get all the insurance claims forms completed and take pictures so maybe we can get paid for our messed up furniture. The laundry room still needs a coat of paint. Nothing is in its proper place. It's like we just moved in. AND we have a naked Christmas tree in the corner of the living room because it's box was destroyed in THE FLOOD. I need to order a storage bag for it, but can't decide which one to get.


Sorry this is so Debbie Downer. I'm really hoping for a happier, more prosperous week. And it'll start with me getting my butt to the gym!

Dreary

So here I sit. Staring at the rain falling outside. It seems as if I can't escape being wet. As soon as my house is about 90% back to normal, the rain gods descend on central LA. I think it's supposed to be like this all day. Fantastic!


I got all the claims forms we need to try to get reimbursed for our living room furniture. I also, luckily, have all the receipts! I was a little nervous that I would have thrown one (or more) away thinking "I'm not returning it....so I can throw the receipt away...". I would have been so pissed at myself! But, alas, I have both receipts for all the wood living room furniture. Now, I just need to take pictures showing the water damage - easier said than done!


Know what else I need to do? Attempt to do some laundry in my washer/dryer. I haven't used them since before THE FLOOD and I'm a little nervous that they're done for. The water came cascading down on them, particularly the dryer. Those things are my babies! If they're broken, I'm going to be pissed! And have a lot of dirty clothes. I think the neighborhood center has a laundry room. :-/


This last week has been long. I can't tell you the number of worker men that have gone in and out of my door. If I wasn't waiting around for them, I was working or taking Brian to get his wisdom teeth out. I had been doing so good at my exercise-120-days-this-year new year's resolution, but it's been shot to hell now. It's not a lost cause, but I gotta get my butt in gear. As a result of this lack of exercise, I feel fat. No girl likes that.


Alright my blogger friends, I need to go throw some clothes on so we can head to walmart. I loathe walmart. Hopefully it won't be too crowded.

Drama Drama Drama

It seems that the drama is following us around.


My house now smells like mildew. Lovely.


The carpets are still not dry. Not even close.


I started back to work this morning. Not much has changed there.


I'm working tomorrow instead of Thursday so I can accompany Brian to get his wisdom teeth out. I'm not sure if I'd rather be working or waiting for him at the hospital. It might be a draw.


Brian hasn't gotten home before 6:30 yet this week. Today he didn't walk into the house until 7:30.


There's major drama going on with one of his soldiers. He's having problems with his wife. He's staying in our guest room for the second night tonight. I feel bad for him. I don't know what the answers are, but I think both Brian and I feel some need to make everything better for him. I'm just not sure if that will be possible.


Brian really didn't need this on top of everything else going on at work. Did I mention he's doing the job of someone much higher ranking for the next two months? Yeah. Talk about stressful. Suddenly he's in charge of 20 guys instead of 8. He's tired and worn out and it's already Tuesday. I need to remember to thank MLK for the 4-day this weekend. Maybe he can recover not only from his wisdom tooth surgery, but mentally as well.


They're coming to start our sheetrock repair tomorrow. Whatever they do will need to dry before they finish it completely. I'm interested to see how well it dries when the humidity in the house seems to be holding steady at 95%.


The humidity? Totally making my hair look like crap. Awesome.


Because the carpets are still so wet, we're still camping out upstairs most of the time. Tiny hates it down there and I do too. I walked on the wet carpet in bare feet today - NEVER again. It was one of the grossest sensations I've ever experienced.


I keep waiting for things to calm down and start looking up around here, but it doesn't seem like we've turned the corner yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed regardless.


So how are you? Hopefully much more relaxed and stress-free than I am at the moment.

The Great Flood of 2010

The last 24 hours have kinda sucked.


I got a call around 1:30 yesterday afternoon from the housing manager telling me that a pipe froze and burst in our unit or our neighbor's unit and there was water in our house. We were 4 hours away from home at that point. Remember we drove 16 hours in 48 hours this weekend.


We got home around 5:30 to soaking wet carpet and a giant hole in our laundry room ceiling - it was definitely our unit with the broken pipe. There was no note and no one around to tell us what was going on. Someone had supposedly cleaned the carpets, but they were still extremely squishy. Our belongings were all over the place. They still are all over the place. It was freezing in the house despite the heat being on. The gaping hole in the laundry room was letting cold air into the rest of the house like crazy.


We tried to prevent any further damage to our wood furniture, but all the living room furniture has water damage. Every single piece with damage is less than a year old. Rugs are hung over our fence. I have no idea if they've dried out any today or not.


I called our neighborhood office this morning at 8:15 to demand someone come out and suck more water out of our carpets. They showed up by 10:30 and sucked another 20 or so gallons of water out of the carpet.


To top it all off, I haven't been feeling very well. I think the long and exhaustive weekend hasn't agreed with me. I was down for the count this afternoon with a headache and fatigue. I think about everything that needs to be done downstairs and I shudder. Somehow I need to make us something for dinner in the super cluttered kitchen. There also is no word on when the big hole will be fixed.


We have the better part of the next year to live here and I am afraid I will constantly be watching for mold. We live in an extremely moist state where mold is a problem under normal circumstances. I can't imagine how we could avoid having mold after this catastrophe. I almost want to demand a new unit somewhere.


We also have to figure out the process of claiming our damages items on our renter's insurance. I'm really hoping it's not a big hassle.


So, to say the last 3 days have been stressful would be an understatement. My house is a big mess, we can't really function downstairs yet (until the carpets are dryer), I feel like crap and I have to start back to work tomorrow. I could surely use a recovery week.


To end, I'll leave you with a few pictures of the visible damage. (Water damage is extremely hard to photograph, I found.)

^^Our washer/dryer are under those boxes.

^^The thin copper pipe below those wires is the one that was replaced. Water was apparently "gushing" out of that pipe into our laundry room.

^^Damage to the paint along the back wall beside our dryer.

Let The Marathon Weekend Begin!

Today:
1. Pack.
2. Wait for Brian to get off work.
3. Hit the road by 6 (hopefully).
4. Drive. A lot.


Tomorrow:
1. Arrive in the wee hours in Hometown, TX.
2. Sleep.
3. Exercise maybe?
4. Run an errand or two. (I melted my fav. spatula this week. Oops. Need to buy a replacement.)
5. Shower & get ready.
6. SIL wedding at 5:15. Still not sure if I need to be there early or not.
7. Reception.
8. Crash.


Sunday:
1. Wake up early.
2. Drive another 8 hours back to LA.
3. Wonder where our weekend went.


Wish me (and my sanity) luck.

So This is 2010...

Is it already the 4th? Of 2010? Wow.


We've been back in LA since Wednesday night. We had a low-key New Year's Eve at home. We didn't watch the ball drop. Brian was actually playing his new video game when I noticed the time. We opened our bottle of sparkling cider and toasted to the new year.


Saturday was the 1 year anniversary of Brian coming home. We went on a date to celebrate although I didn't really realize what day it was until halfway through dinner. We saw Sherlock Holmes and followed it up with a hearty meal at Wendy's. What can I say? We're a classy duo. We both really enjoyed the movie even if the theater here leaves a lot to be desired. It'll be nice when we live somewhere with a decent theater that has more than 6 screens. Just sayin'.


It's weird that I can finally remember things that happened a year ago and Brian is included in the memories. It's been a very long time since I was able to do that.


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I generally don't make resolutions for the new year, but this year I decided to make a couple. I've vowed to exercise on 120 different days this year. I've set a goal of doing some form of exercise (walking, wii, dvds, or gym) 3 days a week. If I stick to that then I'll hit my goal easily. I have also vowed to read as many books as possible. I've started a list on the right side of my blog of books I've read in 2010. I finished my first one today! I'm really interested in seeing how many books I read in a year. I know it's a decent amount, but I've never kept track.


Hopefully a year from now I'll be well-read and physically fit.


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So, we've got a quiet week around here. Brian's back to work and I'm just trying to get the house in order. I'm behind on laundry and such. I keep blaming the holidays! This weekend will be crazy for us and I'm sorta not looking forward to it. Well, I'm not looking forward to the travel anyway. Brian's sister is getting married on Saturday. This requires us to drive into the night on Friday and return on Sunday. It'll be nice to see my family again so soon, but it'll suck to do all that driving, especially after Brian works all day on Friday.