Sucker Punch

I know, I know. It's been a while. But I've been busy. And as the end of the month nears, stress levels rise for me...not to mention we've been a veritable hotel around here with friends and family in and out all month (which we loved, but it makes for little time for blogging).

First things first, and please ignore the mess.

Guest room/library...still not finished

My office/craft room. The closet is full of my art supplies and to the left is my sewing machine.

Guest bathroom

Master bathroom, sorry, not pics of the walk-in closet. But there's a jack and jill sink as well (two).

Stairwell

View of living room from stairs. There's a fireplace on the right.

Kitchen from stairs.

Fireplace

My giant kitchen! Again, excuse the mess, it's a weekday!

Master bedroom

More master bedroom

What's that you say? A cat? No, surely you're mistaken. That's not a cat in those pictures.

Oh wait, maybe it is.

Meet Maddie.

 She's 3 years old, fully fixed, microchipped and freakin' adorable.

She sings to herself in the middle of the night in our bathroom. We think she likes the acoustics. Luckily, her meowing in the middle of the night is still adorable. Give it a week.

She's a super snuggler. Last night I dreamed I couldn't breathe, and woke up with her being very close: sleeping on my chest. She luuuuurves everything, and is quite the talker.

Oddly, she hates the camera. I had to take about a hundred pics to get one that wasn't blurry. She loves the attention, but not the clicking noise! She is our precious girl. Even boyfriend is a sucker. He picked her out, after all.

We went to just "look." He was in the doghouse, which is pretty much the only reason he agreed. I was confident that I could just look at the time, as the kitties we met initially, while precious, I felt no great attachment to. Then boyfriend found Maddie in the corner, purring away and doing "cute kitty tricks" and he was suckered. I picked her up and all she wanted to do was snuggle.

Now that she's warmed up to us, she's a great deal more independent and has a feisty streak (she spent a lot of time attacking our feet last night), but her number one priority is to still be in our laps whether we want it or not, and to be loved, adored, and the center of our attention every possible minute.

Goal number two is finding the most bizarre hidey holes.

Her first night here we went out to dinner and came back to find her chilling in her litter box. Now that she's used it for its purpose, she curls up under the sink next to it. Her other favorite place is in our closet under boyfriend's hanging shelves. There's a little nook there that she's a fan of.

But her most hilarious attribute is something boyfriend and I have dubbed her "sucker punch." She is quite determined in her quest for attention, and is a big fan of headbutts. She's almost taken out my teeth a couple times by leaping into my lap while I was taking a drink of something and head-butting my cup. That's not the sucker punch though.

The sucker punch is what she does in the middle of the night when you twitch just enough that she thinks you're awake. She head butts your face. Hard. At two a.m. it feels like someone's sucker punched you.

It's adorable.

Really.

Luckily she so damned cute.

Another funny story about our girlie is when we were bringing her home. The shelter ladies put her in her carry box about ten minutes before we were taking off, to give her time to settle a little before we picked it up and carted her off. Five minutes in the box and she had already busted a paw all the way to her shoulder through this tiny slit in the side of the box. We laughed, because she'd reach it out and swat any of the other kitties who were passing by.

"These boxes are supposed to be indestructible!" one of the shelter caretakers laughed. "Don't worry, she can't get out."

As we pulled into the parking lot of PetCo to supply our new lady with the critical items she needed, we heard a pop in the back seat. Little miss had busted her whole head and part of her shoulders through that tiny slit.

We briefly considered super-heroine names before concluding that there really weren't any good ones.

Boyfriend kept going to check on her to make sure she hadn't Houdini'd the rest of the way out of the box while we were in the store (and don't worry, we were responsible parents and cracked the windows and parked in the shade and were in the store for all of 15 minutes). Luckily, once she had reached a semblance of freedom, she was pretty content to stay in the box.

Anyways, I gotta go get ready for work now.

Ciao,
kc

Cramping my style

So the plague is seriously cramping my style. It makes me tired. It makes me cranky. More importantly, it makes it harder for me to be a tough salesperson.

My numbers suck. I mean, I'll make quota, but I'll finish middle of the pack this month. Problem is, I set a rather high bar last month.

Ooops.

Did I mention I made employee of the month for February?

It's because I'm a badass.

I'm off to get my act together so I can do it again.

Ciao,
kc

Almost

So we're almost settled. Last weekend I got to play house and spent a bunch of money at Bed, Bath & Beyond — which is still very very very low on my list of places I enjoy shopping. It's incredibly easy to get overwhelmed in that place. Bottom line with that is that we now have curtains, new towels, and a shower curtain.

I must have bought other things too, I just can't think of them right now.

We hung the curtains the other night, which was nice because now it means that our bedroom stays darker longer and I'm no longer up with the dawn (or up all night because certain neighbors can't figure out that their porch light should be turned off after a certain point in the night and said lights shine directly in our lovely windows). Funny how having trees and living in the woods makes the dawn a little later.

Yesterday, I spent the day home on trays as I got hit by a ton of bricks of plague. Literally, felt fine when I went to bed and woke up at 3 a.m. with a fever, aches, and snot. It was an effort of herculean proportions that I managed to make it down the stairs yesterday. I'd taken four naps by noon and subsisted on tea and Emergen-C.

Today, I woke up feeling better, though still tire easily. My task today is to organize my office so that I can finish certain projects I'm working on and generally get my life in order.

Obviously, I managed to get my computer up and running.

Anyways, I just wanted to check in.

Ciao,
kc

Addenum

Postscript to previous post as the iPad, while awesome, doesn't believe in letting me scroll.

What I wanted to add was this:

"I suppose I shouldn't really be complaining about my barely two-car garage because (a) I have one, and (b) little sister pointed out rather dryly yesterday on the phone that she's paying in rent what I have in square footage and her Boston apartment could probably fit in my new master bedroom."

Dear Mommy...

I guess I didn't realize just how much certain people depend upon this blog to find out how I'm doing until I stopped for like the last two weeks. In my defense, I've been busy.

Mom and Dad came to visit two weeks ago (or was it last week? I can't remember) and Dad tried valiantly to infect us all with the plague, which had him down and out (poor guy) for most of the trip. As with my boyfriend, you know it's bad when they don't so much as budge from a prostrate fetal position while the snow (or surf for that matter) is known to be kick ass.

The past two "weekends" of mine have been spent moving into my new home. Which, now that he's fully realized the implications of two stories and 2.5 baths, boyfriend is fully on board with and full of enthusiasm about.

1. He doesn't have to be super super quiet in the mornings because I am sleeping UPstairs and more than just a door separates us from his noise.

Although I discovered that with the garage door directly Under the master bedroom, the noise of it opening and closing is akin to the noise of the Enterprise landing. On top of me.

Awesome.

2. With 2.5 bathrooms there is bound to be one where he can leave the seat up and I won't notice.

The new house is wonderful. We're still working out logistics, but I am a huge fan. The only downside is that the two car garage is that, but only barely. And we have a lot of crap. But thee kitchen is nice and big, with an island and a breakfast bar, and those pulley-outy shelves in the cupboards that allow you to use up all the space without killing yourself. It's nice and bright, beautiful windows, etc. It's an easy walk to the grocery store (Mom, think Chester house to Murphy's, maybe closer), an easy run to Pilot Butte, and I'm going to run east today to see if there are trails that way too (like boyfriend says there are).

Now, I've got some cleaning to do at the old house and some unpacking and as I'm typing on my (really cool, awesome iPad that I don't normally get tonplay wih because someone thinks it's HIS iPad) and typing on a touch screen is fine for texting but not really intended for blogging...

So in short, I'm going to leave you now, but I promise to take pictures once I get everything sorted again.

Ciao,
kc

One, two, three...

So my life has been crazy busy. Couple of notables that I thought I'd update you all on really quick:

1. I was number one in sales for a couple days, I'm still hovering around 1 and 2. If I finish out the month in the top 5 I will be beside myself with joy and accomplishment.

2. My boss will be pretty thrilled too. The new kid rockin' the house.

3. We've found a new house that we're moving to! Hooray!

4. There were a few bumps in the road.
    a. Boyfriend got momentary cold feet. At a poorly chosen moment: right when I got home from work. We all know how well I handle issues when I'm tired. Drama ensued. Poor boyfriend.
    b. A foreclosure notice appeared on the front door of the new place. Uh oh. We have since worked this out, and no worries, we're good.

5. We're moving the first week of March! We're moving in to Bend, which is pretty exciting. The last couple days it's been dumping snow like none other and every time I have to drive through it from home to town, I just think about how great it will be to not have to deal with such a treacherous drive every day.

6. I'm sure my mother will sleep easier for it, too.

7. I don't know why these are numbered, it just seemed like the thing to do.

Ciao,
kc

The things in my life

First of all, my boyfriend is amazing. I think we all know that I'm madly in love with him already, but when he does things like make me coffee in the morning even though he doesn't drink coffee...well, it takes it to a whole new level.

Secondly, it's snowing again! Hooray! Though it does make running a bit more challenging.

Thirdly, I have a couple fun things to tell you, and show you!

Last Friday was the first Friday of the month, and ever first Friday, Bend has a First Friday Art & Wine Walk. It usually consists of bad free wine and some art. If I even get to see art. Thankfully, this time, I actually got to see some really beautiful pieces (we were a little more inclined towards the art part and less towards the wine part this time, considering the debauchery that had me laid low last week). I'm cursing myself right now for not taking pictures, but it felt blasphemous to do so at the time without the artist's knowledge.

One of the most memorable art galleries boasted some really beautiful bronze pieces. Very whimsical and gorgeous pieces of animals mostly. I really wished I could have bought one, but with ticket prices starting at $4,000 I could only sigh and hope that someday someone will pay that much for my work.

Anyways, that's not the point.

Our wanderings took us to a little boutique that specialized in consignment and used cowboy and cowgirl attire. After sighing over a myriad of cowgirl boots that I would probably never wear with prices higher than I'd ever pay for cowgirl boots, I wandered over to the $30 sale rack.

Lo and behold, I saw these.

Frye boots in a less-traditional style. A little stained and a little worn, which is why they were on the sale rack, but Frye boots nevertheless and in hardy condition still, as they're meant to last. Aiee! Totally an impulse buy and on the heels of what I'm going to show you next, I hemmed and hawed more than I'm prone to over them, but in the end, they're Frye boots and they're adorable and they were only thirty dollars.

Boyfriend is now under strict instructions not to let me shop for a while. Wish him luck. I may have a problem. At least I tend towards the thrifty though. Like, not spending full price on Frye boots.

Okay, next up.

This was not an impulse buy. The pros and cons were carefully weighed. They began when it was brought to my attention that we have a new quota on tablets at work. Meaning, if I don't sell them, I don't get paid. Well, as much, anyways.

Now, I have a hard time with tablets. Especially the iPad. I have a really hard time seeing the value in them. They don't have a USB port, so you can't hook them directly to a printer. They don't have a camera, but you can put pictures on them, which makes no sense to me. Basically, they're a very large, over-glorified iPad. But for some reason, everyone I know who has one absolutely adores it.  And Apple just released the statistic that 72% of people who handle an iPad in a store will purchase one.

72%!!! That seems ridiculous.

Then, one of my managers (the really nice one who let me leave a couple weeks ago) told me about how she just bought one because she was having issues seeing the value in it too, and as a salesperson, it's important to see the value in what you're selling. Also, now that she has one, she adores it.

I wouldn't sell a phone that I don't see the value in unless a customer refused to listen to all reason. So, with that reasoning in hand I will be welcoming the newest member of my family either today or tomorrow. Hooray, iPad.

Somehow, boyfriend thinks I'm buying it for him.

The money I am paying for it says, "I don't think so."

Ciao,
kc

TODAY: 4.68 miles
YESTERDAY: 30 min treadmill, 30 min elliptical