Happy Birthday, Catie!!!

Happy birthday, CATIE!!!

love this girl.. happy birthday, catie!!! ♥

As it should happen, whilst cleaning yesterday, I found an ancient artifact dating back to the reason I met Catie, nearly a decade ago...

wow... just... wow.
#flashback #itsoverthankfully

^ Remember that? There was a day, believe it or not, when I worked for Kiss 107, and that's where I met Catie. Only those who worked in that place will ever be able to fully understand the.... chaos that was life with CC, but I'm thankful to have shared that experience with Catie... hahah :)

Here at home, it was a day of rest, relaxation and prayer that this sinus issues I've been having for the past four-ish days now will go AWAY, so I don't have to take it with me to Panama. [Any and all prayers are gratefully welcome!;) ]

Sydni, to make me feel better, arranged a "concert" in my honor, performed by the cast of her MLP girls:

my thoughtful girl... and her dolls 

She's so thoughtful.. ♥♥

Here's to a solid start to the work week for all of us, and to everyone out there staying healthy!!
Happy Sunday!

xo | cmd

All For the Sake of Feng Shui

Just for the record, I knew today was going to be a productive day when it started off like THIS:

it is... saturday morning... 

Uh-huh.

So there's this recurring set of stories that my parents could easily share with anyone who's interested.. they're about me, and how I became obsessed at a young age with regularly rearranging my room. From what I can remember, to as far back as I can remember, I was doing this on average at least once every 3-4 months. I think because it was a change I could control, and also because it gave me a fresh perspective on something I saw daily, I loved to do it, and would spend hours tearing my room apart and putting it back together in a different order.

I am so thankful in hindsight that I had parents who supported my creative expressions. There were limits, yes, but they gave me that space to call mine, and let me have free reign over how it looked. ♥. It's like they knew me! ;)

Anyway, fast forward 20 some odd years, and here I am, in my own house doing the same thing. I'm so fortunate to have Rob, who is quite like-minded in that respect; we decided on a whim today to take some drastic measures against our living room.

before. 

^ Ok, so this was partially into it; please don't think my house looked like this all the time.. haha.

And thennnn.. a few hours later, and after some lifting and creative measures of reorganizing the basement to accomodate some of this stuff, this was the finished work of the day!

after!

^^ And please excuse that pile of stuff in the corner; that's our neat-ish pile of stuff for my trip out to Panama, and Syd's vacation with Nana & Pappy. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy :)

To celebrate a day filled with cleaning, dusting, cleaning out, donating, more cleaning, rearranging and redefining our upstairs living space, we pulled ourselves together and headed out for a close dinner date at APG.

my handsome date!
[not the chapstick... or the glass of ice... ;) ]

^^ Ladies, this one's off the market. I scored such a knock-out, and I'm grateful every day for him.. even if he does look like he's holding a tablet instead of a cell phone... haha... #ANDROIDLIFE.

We're home now.
We're exhausted.
G'Nite!

xo | cmd

Farewell for Brittany | Night Out With Trish!

The good news from today: 

- Lawn is mowed. 

- Gardens are weeded, cleaned and trimmed. 

- Boat is clean. 

- Cars are washed. 

- House is vacuumed.

- Laundry is done. 

- Dogs are [sorta] clean. 

Basically, we got gross today before we prettied up again. It was well worth it, and in some ways, overdue. 

We managed to clean ourselves up in time to head to Brittany's for her going-away party. This gal is moving to South Carolina for work and I'm super happy for her. Congrats, Britt; thank you for letting us share in your going-away festivities! We are coming to visit you, also. Just so you know :D. 

After Britt's, it was down to good old OTR to rendezvous with some faces I haven't seen in way too long. The usual suspects, Keith & Nader were among them, but the gaps of time that lapse between visits with TRISH proved to make tonight a great opportunity to catch up. 

thanks for hangin' with me, pretty mama! 

I don't know where my mind was tonight; I didn't have my camera out at all at Brittany's, which I attribute to the fact that we were all having too much fun to worry about pictures. It's a miracle we got any decent pictures at the end of the night, too.. and Rob decided to photobomb nearly all of them. Awesome :|. 

Anyway, that's not a bad start to the weekend; I'll take it! 

xo | cmd 

Productive Day? Not So Much..

Okayokayokay.

I've had a few more days in my time that were more productive than this. I'm neither ashamed nor proud to say that I spent a lot of my day parked in bed, burning daylight and ignoring housework.

There, I said it. Haha. Today was definitely a lazy day. In my defense, these days happen about once every... 18 months for me, and I compensate on the others by doing ridiculous things like climbing trees - or walls, playing in and on the water, etc. I'm not a sloth, I promise ;)

Ironically, as I sat doing all of nothing today, I stumbled across the footage of Kacy Catanzaro dominating at the ANW finals in Dallas. As a spectator, I'm always torn between ANW and the Crossfit Games, but I think it goes without saying that this chick deserves a huge round of applause.
 

Amiright?! She's a beast, and certainly a reference point of inspiration the next time I check in for a solid workout.

 

The upside here is that we didn't burn the entire day; Rob eventually went into boat-selling mode for some prospective buyers, and spent a few hours detailing the thing before they showed up. I took that time to do some meal prep for this upcoming week, for which I'm preeettty excited.

meal prep, let's go!



& lunch is ready for the week!

We just took taking it easy to a whole new level today, but hey - we'll make up for it this week!

 

Have a great week, friends!

 

xo | cmd

And Then, It Was EMPTY!

I've been so focused on arranging and preparing the new house, that I've neglected any specific updates on the old digs. Welllll... 

then & now..
cleaaaaaaaaan & clear!

The main room at my old house feels so much bigger without anything in it, which I realize is generally the case with any room. I don't care though; I finally cleared out the last photo frame nail from the wall and have officially cleared out all signs of inhabitance from the back half of the old house. Save for our temporary sleep set up, "WE GONE!" [yiiiiieee!]

And, on an entirely unrelated note, I'm also declaring publicly today my affection and affinity for continued healthy eating. This little shoutout is really more for myself than any audience, but a little public posting never hurts when I'm trying to keep myself accountable.. 


greek yogurt + honey + blueberries
who says office life has to be all junk food!?

... I'm bent, folks, on a healthy 2014.

Right now, I'm more excited to [almost] be down to one house, instead of split between two. Home stretch!!!

xo | cmd

12-HOUR CLEANING

Q: Wanna know what I did today?

A: I made friends with all my cleaning supplies..................................

............................ for twelve hours.

Literally. 

hello..... clean house.

I spent the night at Rob's house last night for the first time in a while; we moved one of his vehicles back to his house and took some of my leftover things to store in the basement. I opted to take a day off work today with the sole intention of cleaning the house top to bottom before the landlords came to do my checkout.

Mission accomplished, baseboards and all. Two full bathrooms, four bedrooms, living room, hallways, kitchen, basement, laundry room and garage: DONE. This girl......... is SPENT. I even relocated the robins nest that was situated above the porch light [I wore gloves, and carefully re-positioned it in a nook of the tree where we always spotted mother robin; I hope she continues to tend to these little eggies!]. I know there's a risk there, but the nest really couldn't stay, but the last thing I wanted to do was harm any of the beautiful eggs. Cross your fingers with me....

no makeup... exhausted, but done!

I'm tired. I am.. super tired. I smell like pinesol and windex. I have some bleach spots on my knees from cleaning the bathroom floors, and I'm pretty sure I will wash out a full layer of dust from my hair when I hit the shower tonight. 


I picked Rob up from work and helped him put the bed cover back on his truck, also loaded up with some of my things, did a final walkthrough of the house with the landlords, and pulled out of the driveway for the last time. It's been a little bittersweet leaving that place, but I'm looking forward to this next chapter of my life, too.

I've done nothing but clean and reflect all day long today, and I've come to the conclusion that life is too short to be anything but happy. It really is that simple. I'm dedicating myself now to looking forward, not back. To seizing new opportunities and making the best of the ones that are just residual runoff from a life from which I am now liberated. I see people around me with so much less than I have, even in my current state, and I know that I'm blessed with more than I deserve, but less than it's worth if I don't take the steps to make the most of it.

I have my faith, and a Savior who does not disappoint. EVER.

I have a beautiful, healthy daughter.

I have a job.

I have family, friends and colleagues.

I have my health.

I'm stressed, but I'm happy.

I'm cleaning out more than a house, from here on out. (:

[[[ I'll keep ya posted ]]]

xo | cmd

L Y S O L

Nobody tell my mother about this. I can already hear her offering the loving yet inevitable reminder that chemicals [especially aerosole-based] are unecessary, unhealthy, and just flat-out bad for everyone and everything. I'm not mocking her, because I really do believe that's true; we don't use harsh stuff like that at home. We're the vinegar cleaning solvent type of family, but that's a whole other tale for an entirely other day. As it currently pertains to work, we are a big proponent of regular, full out germ extermination.

It's probably because we cross paths with anywhere between 10-40 people per day, in our office confined space, who come bearing who-knows-what little bug just waiting to pounce and put one of us out of commission for a few days. Luckily for us, we've got Meagan, our full time patrol[wo]man of the icky folk, our resident Lysol-er. She's all over it.

c l e a a a a a a a a n . . . . lol

Today was one of those days that reminded me how real her affinity for Lysol really stretches. I got caught with an associate today whose bronchial cough seemed to go unnoticed by ONLY her, and she didn't mind forgetting to use so much as a pinky to cover her random fits of hacking and wheezing. I could feel my toes curling by the time we had finished the interview; but I should've known that Meagan was already waiting with a finger on the trigger of our industrial-size Lysol can. We proceeded to sanitize nearly every square inch of my desk, the chair, half my computer, my chair, a large portion of the floor, a few spots on the wall, and ourselves, accidentally moreso than purposefully. I may or may not have ended up with some remnant overspray in my eye, not to mention layered on thick inside my nose. Hah. It was probably overkill. Oh well. Haha.

I said all that to testify that even though I'm not an avid supporter of chemical sanitizers, I sure do appreciate the comic value that can be brought to any day by a hilarious little southern gal armed with a huge can of Lysol. My coworkers are stellar :) :) :).

Tomorrow, my office undergoes a mega update on the software and hardware side; here's to our sanity during the process! :-X

It's juuuust about time for The Voice (night #2); I think it's about time I get to texting Nancy :). See ya'll in the morning!

xo | cmd

It's a Small World

Today I turned the corner into our cul-de-sac to find a slew of little kids trotting and/or wheeling around the driveways. Joe and Sydni were right in the middle; I slowed to a near crawl and crept into the garage. As it turns out, Joe had finally made contact with one of our neighbors. We've been meaning to get around to this as a family, but it so often seemed that the only time that the three of us were in a presentable state as a whole unit was during the week after 6pm. That's kind of an odd time to do door-to-door intro's, so it's been one of those re-re-re-re-re-postponed things, unintentionally.

As it would be, the neighbors we met tonight happen to be in the midst of a work-related relocation out of the state. Their house was for sale at the time as the Rainers', and I'd always been curious as to what their story was. It turns out they are incredibly friendly people: a young couple with four adorable kids in tow. Through the course of conversation, we realized that the wife, Skye, had worked with Bonnie Prescott over at Whiteside. It's a small world, isn't it? [Plus, it was funny that they had originally thought Joe was a bachelor who just had parties every weekend.. haaaahaha].

Whatever the case, it was a welcomed crash course on the who's who of the cul-de-sac and a brief intro into everyone's background. I'm really looking forward to meeting the rest of our neighbors.

Once we'd finally gotten back into the house, I was off on a sprint to get the grocery shopping done for small group, conquer some laundry, clean the bathrooms, and get the kiddo to bed before 11pm.

I WON.

It's time for this one to celebrate sweet victory with some [hopefully] sweet dreams.

xo | cmd

Clean Clean Clean!

I'm not sure where I was for the majority of today, because the bulk of it flew by so quickly. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong, but it's the days like this that keep me on my toes for hours afterwards in fear of having forgotten to complete some crucial task. *Ohhhh well.

When work let out, it was straight home to clean up around our house, in preparation for Joe's mom and aunt coming to visit us this weekend. I'm excited to see them; it's been a long time since we had a good visit with Joe's mom, and I know she misses Sydni.

So clean clean clean it was, and then we waited.

This place is spotless!

*WHEW.

Company comes tomorrow. Yay! :)  

xo | cmd

I Love Earthworm

So my parents are coming in town tomorrow morning. I'll pick them up at Lambert around 10am, and they'll be here through Tuesday. I cannot wait to see them. Somewhere in my excitement, I made the stupid decision to postpone all my cleaning until the last minute. Typical.

Anyway, Sydni and I got home from work and daycare and tackled the tasks of laundry, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, shelving dishes, emptying trash, and fixing beds. I don't know how people can do this for a living, but major kudos to them. The good news: we found about a half dozen random toys and/or toy parts that we thought had disappeared for good, so they're now safely back where they belong, and the house is clean.

I owe it all to Earthworm. I know for a fact that my mom will ask what I've used to clean all the reachable, cleanable surfaces in my house, and, save for the pledge I used on our wood furniture, Earthworm supplies took over the rest of this place. I also know for a fact that that will delight my mother's heart to know that her daughter has followed her teachings well in straying from using harsh chemical products in liveable airspace.

The clothes are all hung.
The beds are all made.
The rooms are all clean.
The cleaners are tuckered out.

Nana & Pappy will be here, soon! ♥

xo | cmd