Such Is My Life!

It's not new news, but it's news.  I just cannot speak of this on Facebook.

There might be some progress on our house in the near future.

Yes, I know we already live in a house.  However, said residence is co-owned by Fred and his two siblings (who live far, far away), thanks to a bequeathment and, well, I had to sign a prenup and sign away any potential rights to the place to get them to STFU about the handfasting and my supposed appropriation of the house should I outlive my husband.

Cue the eyeroll.

Seriously, this house has been passed down through Fred's family for several generations.  Their shit is still here, even.  It's like living with ghosts.  I have repeatedly voiced that I am only here, because Fred is here, but if he weren't, I wouldn't be.  It has fallen on the in-laws' deaf ears.   They're afraid that their children won't be able to inherit everything to which they're supposedly entitled.

Whatever.  Cue another eyeroll.

So, a couple of years ago, Fred devised a plan to convert one of the farm's outbuildings to a house that would be ours.  Just ours.  And he can will it to me, thus voiding the current prenup agreement.  Plans have been drawn up and we have a space to work with that is sizable, to say the least.   While the walls, well, need replacing, the foundation is surprisingly solid and it will be nothing to hook it up to the existing water and sewer as the building is just across the driveway from the house.

And maybe, just maybe, life will finally cut us a bit of a break, so that Fred might finally start working on this thing.  Seriously, I want to be out of this place before his family descends in July for their annual visit.  I cannot live in that camper, again, for two weeks with all the cats.  I will lose my freaking mind!

Still, it's better than listening to everyone bitch about how evil the cats are.  No, I'm not kidding.  They are positively insufferable to live with, I swear.

So, hopefully, within the next month, rebuilding can start.  There really isn't anything we won't be able to do ourselves, so we will save a boatload by not having to hire people to come in and build this thing.  Fred can do wiring and plumbing and both of us have some woodworking experience (even if mine is a bit rusty).  I have bits of experience with drywall from helping with the craft room remodel, so it's doable.  Daunting, but doable.

I just hope I won't be old and gray before it starts.

Off to peruse some more ideas.  We've been compiling magazines and clippings for a while and I am sifting through them to see what is still relevant.  I want to create posterboard montages for each room to illustrate what I had in mind for color schemes.  Fred is the builder, but I'm the decorator.  :)

Catch y'all, later!  Hopefully, there will be some progress to report!

First of all, where did 2014 go?  I feel like I blinked and lost a year.  The seven months' unemployment went by in a blur.  I don;t think I let myself be idle the entire time.  I am glad to be back to work, though, and feeling useful again.

I am not letting myself procrastinate on holiday anything.  The Holiday Wishes list is almost caught up.  I think that is a first for me being it is still early.

My RL card list is nearly done, as well.  Yeah, I know.  Go me!  I just have a couple people that I needed addresses for, like my Aunt Marion who was moved into an assisted living facility right before my handfasting.  Still, I almost spaced and sent a card to her old house before I caught my mistake.  Old habits, you know.

Fruitcakes are baked!  At least, twelve of them are. There's enough dried fruit for another batch (each batch is three 8" x 4" cakes).  Six are spoken for.  If I feel up to it during the week, I'll plug away at the sweet breads for the goodie boxes.  I wanted to get a start on the rum cakes and freeze them, but I neglected to get 2-gallon freezer bags and I wasn't desperate enough to go to any store this weekend and get them.  Also on deck for baking:  cookies, mini pumpkin pies, and fudge.  I want goodies!  By January, I won't want them fifty feet near me.  LOL!

Presents are mostly bought.  It is gonna be a broke-ass Christmas, this year, but that's okay.  None of us really need or want much of anything.  Fred and I are having an especially hard time coming up with wants/needs as our birthdays were about a month before our handfasting.  We're gifted out!  Basically, we and Mom are getting each other one thing and calling it good.  Fred wants cookies and slippers with some kind of tread.  Easy, easy.  He'll likely get more cookies than he'll want, but they freeze.  LOL!

Then there's the conundrum of our Christmas.  Last year, we started a tradition where we communally buy things with a theme of sorts.  Last year, we bought a stack of discount DVDs, a hot chocolate set for two, and a couple of fleece blankets and had a movie night for Christmas.  We bought a bunch of boxed appetizers, he inflated the air mattress, and we camped out in the living room all night.  Good times.

This year, we already have part of our present, a Blu-Ray player.  I think we're going to round it off with some TV trays and more fleece blankets and call it good.  Actually, we should get another air mattress.  The cats sharpened their claws on the other one when we didn't put it away soon enough.  Guess what won't inflate anymore?  We had a back-up, but when we temporarily set up in the large camper for two weeks this summer (to escape his family), the cats took that one out, too.

Well, that's all I've got.  I need to scrounge up something that resembles dinner and crash.  Later!

Being unemployed has given me more time than I know what to do with.  During the summer, I decided to start putting that time to use, other than frying my sanity on wedding planning, by mapping out the genealogies of my mother's parents.

Now, I was pretty familiar with my maternal grandfather's family.  However, the Frink family's details were all oral, so keeping things straight was kind of a bitch.  I created a Word document that outlined the history back to 16th century England and it includes all of us in the current generations, including my younger cousins.

My grandmother's history was a tad more elusive, but when I figured out that my great-grandfather was born here in Vermont and not in Quebec, Canada as my mother and grandmother had thought, it came together fairly smoothly.  Eventually, his family traces back to 19th century Ireland before the trail goes cold.

My great-grandmother's family, however, snaked back so much further.  One of her female ancestors unlocked a myriad of royal lineages, one that stretched back to the B.C.s.  It was just nuts.  Like the Whalley line (my maternal grandfather's mother), my great-grandmother Greene was descended from Charlemagne.  Actually, most of the eastern United States could likely trace their lineages back to this man.  He and his wives bred worse than rabbits.

My mother was happy with all this family history, but I was only partially appeased.  It only represented half of my genetic line.  I wanted to know about the other half of my gene pool, but for that, I had to cross over to the dark side.

My father or as I call him, the sperm donor, has a reputation of sleeping around.  Not only has he been married three times, but rumor has it that he has a slew of illegitimate children. I am one of those illegitimacies.  I'm not bothered by it, per se, but not knowing him one on one has made finding things out a tad difficult.  About three weeks ago, I bit the bullet and tried, one last time, to find where his family came from.

I had to try a different tactic, though.  I knew it was no use to try to find the line via birthdates and birthplaces for I didn't have that info and my guesses had all proved fruitless.  So, I went on FamilySearch.org and tried looking up records, instead.

I finally found what I was looking for!  I found the sperm donor's birthplace and birthdate through a marriage record and, also, the names and birthplaces of his parents.  Six hours later, I had exhausted each branch.  HIs mother's family traces back to French Canada.  His father's family goes back to County Sligo, Ireland.  That would have been the only thing I would have asked if he ever had the guts to acknowledge me.

You know he lives, like, two towns away right?

He lived one town away for most of my youth.

And it gets more pathetic.

He works at Bond Auto in Bethel.  Fred goes there, often, to get parts for the cars.  Apparently, they used to chat quite a bit.  Well, during a visit, last year, Fred mentioned that he was getting parts for his fiance's car.  Fred was asked who is fiance was and Fred answered.  Since then, whenever Fred goes into that establishment, the sperm donor literally flees out the back door.

I wish I was kidding.  Really.  I mean, this is supposedly a 65-year-old man we're talking about, here.

So, I found the other half of where I come from.  Now, I am in the process of linking the two halves, an ardurous process, and I'm not done, yet.

The hubby's family needs mapping, next. :)

I'm baaaaaaaack!

Yeah, I just glanced at the date on my last, full entry and, yikes!  Guess, I've just been a slave to Facebook.

So, for those that aren't privy to my Facebook announcements, I'm married, now.  Two months, though it feels like three years.  I joke with Fred that we've been married since I moved in three years ago, it just wasn't legal on paper until two months ago.  The honeymoon has been over a looong time.  LOL!

Also, I'm unemployed.  Hopefully, that changes soon.  I haven't worked since April when I walked out of that cesspool of a job I hated with every fiber of my being.

We have seven cats in the house.  I say it's why we can't have nice things, but the furballs aren't so bad.  Little Lucky just needs to learn how to use a litterbox and we'll be golden.  In all fairness, though, her almost four-month-old self has only known outside until last week and her legs are still too short to climb inside the "giant" litterbox (even with the "steps" we added).

That's all I can think of that can constitute as news.  So, if you're on my f-list and are reading this, comment with a greeting, so I know you're around.  I haven't been here in so long, I don't know who's here and who's not.

The woodstove has heated this room equivalent to the surface of the sun.  Seriously, it's warm in here.  The kitten is absolutely loving it.  The rest are upstairs, on the bed.  I hope there's enough room for me, later, and when Fred gets home in the morning.

I asked it, "Will this move actually fucking happen?"
It said, "Yes."

Yeah, of course it says that. It doesn't have to pack my stuff.

Enough stalling. Back to work.

What Your Shamrock Says About You

You express yourself well - you are very verbal. You are good at perceiving the world and understanding people. At times you can be moody and lack direction. You have an artist's temperament. You consider yourself a lucky person. Luck always seems to be on your side. You are traditional, easy going, and appreciative of the simple things in life.

I promised you all a pic of my Wall of Cards Project.  The photo has been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks, but it sort of became buried under stuff.

Anyway, here it is:



I put in cards from RL friends, coworkers, Mom and the cats (Yes, I got cards from the cats.  LOL!).  There is one card is missing, beckigurl7's.  Nothing personal, but it didn't arrive until about a week after I took the pic.

Well, I have some publishing web sites to browse through, so I'll catch you all later!

Originally I was going to type up four chapters of handwritten notes today.  Oooh, ambitious!

Then, I couldn't get my ass in gear and I knocked it down to two.  Okay, that doesn't totally suck.

I have just knocked that down to one chapter.  Eleven freakin' pages!  Pathetic.

Did I mention that I had ten chapters that I wanted to finish by Saturday night?  Why in Hell do I always procrastinate when I am bound to a deadline?  Oh yeah, because my brain sucks.

Back to book notes.  Oh, how joyously freakin' exciting. </sarcasm>

bttfbabe Halloween party:

a_pioneer_girl dressed as Karl Rove.
anonymoose_au dressed as Woodrow Wilson.
applescruffs85 dressed as a disturbing self-made character called "Cheeseball Barfmouth".
arthurwright dressed as a substitute software reinstaller.
basketcase1980 dressed as a hockey.
branger23 dressed as a fusion.
dazeofgrace dressed as the love child of Rush Limbaugh and Connie Chung.
deepinblue dressed as Optimus Prime.
doclathropbrown dressed as a bottle of Estrcit.
docsgirl dressed as a fullback for the Broncos.
farrissc dressed as a leather widow.
fayet16 dressed as Michael Jackson.
foxywriter dressed as a rainbow fish.
futureboy88 dressed as Elmer Fudd, though it looked more like the Lord of Blue Ridge.
hiddensun dressed as a outfielder for the Expos.
hockeydude55 dressed as the Duke of Morgraf.
ingridiana dressed as Adriana Lima.
janeausten dressed as the Governor of Indiana.
kawanee dressed as a elk.
ladyjessica1 dressed as a drunk goblin, though it looked more like the Cardinal of Osbusdale.
magick_jrnal dressed as a pimp.
mammie82420 dressed as a Lyons-Gallaher UtilitiesInc. employee.
martyfan dressed as Janet Reno.
memoryanddream dressed as Kirsten Dunst.
militarychef dressed as Heidi Klum.
missnickers dressed as a new member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Vulgar Ambassador.
old_biff dressed as the Duke of Holt.
pyewacket_1975 dressed as your father.
rackstraw dressed as Cameron Diaz riding a dog.
reality_bites23 dressed as Paris Hilton.
reginawessells dressed as a character from "Almost Famous".
revison_doc dressed as a zombie.
scarybaldguy dressed as Chekov from "Star Trek".
shandy789 dressed as someone who just poked themselves in the eye.
shonasheastwood dressed as the President of Bahrain, though it looked more like a new superhero: Snow -wave.
stargurl137 dressed as a Level 11 fighter.
thatchopsguy dressed as a bear.
thecrazymermaid dressed as a skeleton.
thirdstringpal forgot to put on clothes!
timewanderer dressed as a 1970's disco child.
vivycakes dressed as a character from Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Miami.

 

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