…and that they have milk in their refrigerators.

Tonight as I was a-making the dinner, I decided our meal needed some mashed potatoes.  I ashamedly admit that I needed to pullout the cookbook for this, but I did, and I was sorely disappointed to see that the recipe called for milk.  We were soooo out.  I did need to go to the store, but the chicken was in the oven and the baby was sleeping, so that was not going to happen.  I still really wanted to make the squished spuds so I called my neighbor to see if I could borrow some, but she was unavailable.  Dang it.  I began to consider other options.

Well, I do have some milk I could use… EEEWWWW!  I was seriously contemplating pumping my own self for some lactose action, for some mashed potatoes, people!  Turning down that option quickly, well okay, not really quickly, I turned and stared at my no-milk-not-even-of-the-powdered-variety pantry.  I do have some baby formula…  Eeww!  Sick!  That stuff smells like cardboard!

And then it dawned on me.  The internet.  The internet would have no-milk recipes.  I was just about to get sucked into the void of the world wide web, once again , when thankfully she called me back.  And my wonderful friend and neighbor had just enough bought-from-the-store-milk so that everyone was spared from eating Stephanie’s Dairy Taters.

Motherhood does weird things to the brain. 

I have had some requests for house pictures.  So here are some of the things I like (and don’t like) about our house in the Rainy Place.

The view from the street:

The previous owners left this pig on the front door step.  I’m not sure if I like it or not.  Kind of cute.  Kind of ugly.

But my door mat is really cute.  I got it from the tar-jay.

Let’s see, so here is a shot of my dining room: 

Notice the light fixture, it used to have another layer, but before we put the furniture in Charming kept hitting his head on it.  Of course, before we took off the alternating glass and plastic pieces it did match this better:

Notice the tree outside the window?  Beautiful!  More than I can say for the chandelier.  And speaking of ugly lighting:

These are sooo going as soon as I sell the other house!

Let’s see, what else?  Oh well, we have my pretty room:

The place where we watch tv:

I’ll take suggestions as to how to deal with the window coverings.  I HATE mini-blinds.

My strangely painted, pink countertopped, love the huge bathtub, why isn’t there a shower, master bathroom:

(yes the walls really are yellow…)

We have a toy room:

  It will be cutely painted someday, but this is pretty much all you see anyway.  Oh and you must see the shelf I just bought and put in my office:

And now, what you have all been waiting for:

Yes, the curtain is hiding the big hole in the wall.

 Yay, HOUSE!

All right, it is the much awaited birthday, recap post!  Hoorah! 

Well, so the big event was on Monday.  I turned 27.  The big 27.  Over the weekend I went to visit my parents.  Somehow, we managed to con my dad into taking Engineer and Sugar on a fieldtrip, and I ended up having some girl time with just my mom and Spider.  Mom bought me some much needed "professional woman shoes" and I love them, love them, love them.

While we were gone, my darling sister housesat for us. She fed my kitties and made sure no one came in and remodeled anything for us.  Although, we could definitely use some improvements around here.  When we got home, she had left these for me:

I love floral surprises!  

Then the actual day came.  My sister-in-law sent me a sweet talking card.  It was a surprise since she had already sent me a card.  But this one made me laugh:

We got our new fridge, finally, only to find out that it didn’t fit in the space.  I am not going to post a picture, but with a little drywall removal, it fits fine.

I spent much of the day feeling sorry for myself that our house hadn’t sold, and I tried to go out and talk to people about Mary Kay, but I chickened out.  So that was a bummer, but then just before I left for my unit meeting, I got a call from my realtor with a contingent offer, so that was pretty good.  When I got home, I got to open my only gift– a present from Kathryn.

I didn’t get my cake until Tuesday when my sister brought it over for our "official" birthday celebration. She had made it in a hurry after work.  She didn’t have time to let it cool before she frosted it, and she wrote happy birthday on it just before covering it with saran wrap. So it ended up saying something in Hebrew-ish language.  Not sure what it said.  I’m hoping it was "happy birthday" and not "a curse on your house this night" or something equally ominous.

It tasted good though.  So I guess that’s all that matters. 

And we put seven candles on the cake.  Engineer was mad about it, but hey, we didn’t have enough for 27.  The package maxed out at 24.  I guess I am officially old.  But not too old to puff out my cheeks ridiculously while being photographed blowing out the candles!

A really great birthday post is coming….I am just too busy right now to write it.

But!

My sister gave me the movie Evan Almighty for my birthday, and I really liked it.   If you have been afraid to see it because it might be too sacreligious or anything, see it anyway.  It actually has a really great message about life and God and priorities.

I just have to share my favorite part.  Evan (Steve Carrell) is talking to God (Morgan Freeman) and he is telling him that building an ark doesn’t fit in with his plans.  God starts laughing.  "I’m sorry," he says.  "Your plans…" and then hysterical laughter again.

It’s just so true!  Anytime we make "plans" there always seems to be something else that God has in store for us.  And I kept thinking throughout the whole movie when Evan is concerned about losing his job or looking stupid, that if God was asking him to build the ark, then God would take care of him in the end. 

And that is a reminder for us all.  Stop worrying.  It has always worked out in the past, so why wouldn’t it now.

Anyway.  Good movie.  Very funny and very tender. 

Okay, well Erin and Beth both know me from real life.  And they guessed that I am….  27!  Cheaters!  Oh, well, they will still get their prize, which is… Mary Kay eyeshadow!

BUT!

The good news is, any of you can get a free eyeshadow too!  All you have to do is…

…go to my personal Mary Kay website and place an order of some kind today or tomorrow and you will get a free eyeshadow!

(I know, totally shameless, but hey, I’ve got a HUGE sales goal this week and it was my birthday yesterday…)

Besides, these would make really great holiday gifts:

Happy birthday to the girl in this picture:

Okay, it’s me.  And if you can correctly guess how old I am turning on Monday, then you get a prize!

Yesterday was a day of much festive cleaning around here.  Kathryn came over to my house with her brood for day one of the cleaning swap.  Today, I will take my clan and go help her house sparkle like mine does.

But hopefully we will not have another incident.

We were having such a good time, DYM and me.  We were getting so much done!  My house was so clean!  The laughs!  The good times!  I guess we were a little too distracted.

Spider came down the stairs with hair all over her back.  I brushed it off and said, "Oh, you’ve been playing with Rosie, have you?"  I thought nothing more of it, and with our cleaning wrapped up, Kathryn went to retrieve her children.

"It’s not Rosie, Stephanie!" came the cry from the playroom.  "Sugar is a bald man!" she declared as I walked upon the scene. And there they all were, Laylee in the barber chair, Magoo looking like a refugee, and Sugar ready for Nascar with her mulletousness.  (All choice phrases from the Daring Young Mom herself.)

And then I peed my pants. Well, almost.  The situation itself combined with the way Kathryn described it, was too much.  I excused myself and when I returned I was still laughing too hard to express my seriousness to the offenders. 

This picture doesn’t even do justice to what the hair looked like.  But don’t they all look so guilty?  As I uploaded the pictures this morning, I asked Sugar about what happened.  

Me: Who cut your hair?
S: Laylee.
Me: Who cut Magoo’s hair?
S: Laylee.
Me: Who cut Spider’s hair?
S: Laylee
Me: (Aren’t you guilty of anything?)Whose hair did you cut?
S: Laylee’s.

As Kathryn was leaving I told her I was sorry and hoped she wasn’t mad.  She said, "at least none of my kids has a mullet."  And it was true.  We have always struggled with Sugar’s hair being mullet like, and our little Barbershop Quartet did nothing to keep her out of the trailer park.  They cut only the top and left the back as long as ever.

Mulleted.

And I was left no choice.  I made an appointment for her and Charming and then I left for a meeting.  I wasn’t even there for the cut.  Not there as my baby’s ringlets fell to the floor.  Not there as they chopped off her girlish locks.  My first glimpses of the new style were as Sugar lay in bed asleep.  I stroked her little head and cried on the inside.  Her beautiful, crazy curls, gone.  No more pigtails.  No more twisting fingers in the baby-fine softness.  No more brushing and combing exchanges with Mommy and Daughter. Just this:

But at least she’s smiling. 

Dear Method People,

Thank you for the lovely party with the other Seattle Mom Bloggers.  It was great.  

Thank you also for the new t-shirt.  I love it.  However:

I could not find a clean room in my house to photograph myself in wearing said shirt.  I am a mother.  The example above is how I clean.   Therefore the phrase "Cleans Like a Mother" though clever and funny, may not be the best ad choice as it does not necessarily indicate a high level of cleanliness. 

Just thought you should know. 

I am also grateful for this:

This fine lady was in my backyard this afternoon for a few hours hanging out with a friend of hers.  And I learned something very interesting about deer today– after a doe (maybe buck, too, who knows) decides to umm… relieve herself on your lawn she reaches back and licks herself.  Yes.  The place where the ermm… relief came from.

Hence the title of this post. 

…just so you know.

I was reading some other blogs tonight, and I was thinking, "wow, they are so… deep."  And, "wow, look at the dramatic life experiences they have had," and "wow, good writer."  And I was thinking, I don’t really blog like that.

I am a much better editor than I am a writer, and since I don’t always read my posts before I click the publish button, my blog is not my best work.  I can be deep, but I am not always on my blog.  And my life?  Not that dramatic.

Truth be told, I live kind of a charmed life.  It’s true that I drive a ten year old minivan that we bought with a dent in the side and never fixed it.  It’s true that I shop with coupons.  It’s true that I buy generic toilet paper.  My shoes are from Payless and I do my own manicures, and yet I am incredibly blessed.  I have health, beautiful children, a supportive husband, great friends and loving extended family.  I have it all.

And the most dramatic thing going on in my life right now, is that my finances are falling apart.  I am rapidly going into debt because I own a beautiful house in Utah that no one wants but me.  And I own a someday-beautiful house in the Rainy Place with a mortgage the size of the Titanic.

I miss my house.

It’s not that we haven’t gotten offers on it.  Oh no.  It’s just that people keep trying to swindle me out of my first home.  They offer like, 50,000 less than market value so that they can get a deal.  Or make an investment.

That house is not an investment to me in the financial sense.  The only thing I invested in that house was my heart and these people keep making disgusting offers and it hurts.  There is a real person on the other end of this transaction, why can’t they see that? There is a real person who not only has feelings, but also needs the equity from that house in order to survive this more ummm… expensive town.  I mean, that was my first house.  We picked out the cabinet colors and the tile and the carpet.  We picked the upgrades.  We painted it pink.  I spent waaaaayyy too much money on cute border wallpaper in the kids’ room.  Two of my children were babies in that house.  And even though I cried when we bought it because it meant we were going to be in Utah for awhile, I loved that house.

Moving back to Utah was one of the hardest things I have ever done.  Moving to the place where we bought that wonderful house was a humbling and difficult experience, that turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life.  I found greater happiness there than I had found in a long time.  I made some of the dearest friends.  I had my best birth experience.  I started three businesses.  I had a wonderful time there. Hard to believe that moving there was one of the hardest things.

Moving back to the Rainy Place, beloved home of my childhood, was harder. Is harder.  But I love it.  I love seeing my sister twice a week.  I love the weather.  I love the scenery.  I love the Teriyaki.

But I don’t love the fact that we are bringing in a six figure income, and I don’t have money to buy groceries.  Thank goodness for credit cards. The debt I have worked so hard to be free from, is definitely gonna suck. We’re making more money than we ever have and are poorer financially than we have ever been.  Every time I open a bill and it is eight times more than I thought it was going to be, I bawl my eyes out.  I’ve been good.  I’ve been.. prudent.  I have avoided debt at all costs.

We felt like moving up here was the thing the Lord wanted us to do.  

And now, I am not so sure.

I know things will work out, like they always do.

But I am not so sure.  Not so sure at all.