new stuff

a little piece i did last week.
sometimes the day to day kicks in
and you just need to remember.
it was quite fun to do!


this is a little piece i made for my friend jill.
she is going to hang it in her little boy issac's room.

this is my pal S
she lives next door to me now.
last week she came over.
well, she comes over a lot.
to say hi
or borrow salt
or introduce me to her friends
or to escape family members who are being weird.
and when you are 10
they are almost always all weird
all the time.

but last week she came over
and she looked at my scrapbooks
and declared,
"miss cara! you are so good!
if you taught a class,
you would make a
million dollars!"

i tried to tell her that
the lovely and talented
miss elsie flannigan
already has that market cornered
and that i will happily settle for being
a good psychotherapist and her cool next door neighbor
who wears fleece lined slippers in the middle of august.
but she is 10.
and none of that really means anything to her.
she remains convinced
that there are none above me
and that if i would just get my marketing act
together, herb and i would be rich
from all of the money
i would make from teaching
my one little class.

and for that,
she can come over anytime she wants!

and on this particular day,
she made her first ever scrapbook page.
she didn't have any pictures,
so i told her to think about a word
that she wants to be able to use
to describe herself by the end of 6th grade.

she is such a cool kid.

if we were to get married again . . .

i would want these invitations this time!
so beautiful!

anatomy 101

cara: "I found a growth a few weeks ago."
(translation: "i am nearly positive that i have a tumor and i am going to die young, which is clearly unfortunate because i have yet to leave my opus to the world.)

doctor: "nope. you just found your cervix, that's all. it's a good thing it's there!"

well, there you go!
happy tuesday.

***still no photos***

what a week.
not as we expected.
there was still work to be done.
well after we hoped to stop the clock.

we knew that there will
always be some work to do
on the house -
such is the nature of
being landlords -
but we were not done
with the work
we wanted to do
before the moved in.
and that was
discouraging for herb.

discouraging
might be an understatement.
i actually had to hide
tools and window anchors
in an effort to enforce a
non-negotiable break.

it didn't work.

you know what
i have to say about that?
c'est la vie.

yep.

it is okay.
o
k
a
y

at this point
most of the projects
are herb projects
but i am doing things
like
laundry
groceries
and generally trying
to restore us
and our home
to a state of normalcy
and health.

we are tired.
we are quiet.
we have not quite
put our feet back down on the ground yet.
but we are doing little
things to help.

like, i finally made
an over due doctor's appointment
and i bought a new daytimer.
i am going through
weeks
of
emails
and
bills
and rectifying my lack of response.

herb is no longer working until 2am.
and this morning, he sat in his jammies
until at least 9am.
and then
he took himself
and his newspaper
out to breakfast -
the ultimate act of
self-pampering
for this guy.
so good.

my heart is heavy.
this happens
when i am tired
and out of my
routines.
my tummy is anxious
with its list of undone's
looming over it.
my body is shaky
and tired
but doesn't
quite know
what it wants or needs.

herb's commands to the
neighbor dog
to
be
quiet
have acquired
a new level
of
agitation.

this is apparently
what life for us
looks like after three
months of house buying
and remodeling.

the countertops
finally arrived yesterday
and they are beautiful!
more updates
and pictures soon.

our neighbors came
on wednesday.
they are equally
frazzled and tired.
moving is tough.
especially with
three
young
kiddos.
yikes.

but we had dinner with them
last night.
and it was really fun
to watch their children
laugh
&
play
and to talk with jodi.
and then i got to
cuddle my sweet man
while his exhausted little self
fell asleep so fast last night.

shared meals
and funny kids playing
and good conversation.
and comforting my man.

life is coming back again.

no no no

when you get to
the end
of a big project
like
remodeling
a house
some things begin to drop away.

here are some of those things
as we are experiencing
the beautiful journey of a remodel:

no picture for your blog
no shower every day
no cooking or grocery shopping
no weight loss
despite all of the physcial labor you are doing
and the state of clinical
dehydration
your body reaches
on a daily basis
because you are eating take-out
all of the time
and you feel entitled to things
such as
but certainly
not
limited
to
milk shakes
and onion rings
no married-person-snuggling
no exercise
no attention paid to your real jobs
no payment of bills
no lack of whining and crying
(and that is just herb!)
no pleasant under arm odors
no clean clothes
no one scrubbing the bathroom floor or toilet

nope
none of it.

from "cute butt" to laying fake wood flooring . . . these jeans have served me well

first, a shout out to my cute art table:
dear cute art table,
i miss you.
sorry i have been gone so long.
i have been so busy next door
getting the villa on corona
ready for the Adams to move in.
but i will be back soon.
a week and a half, tops!
can't wait!

love,
cara


(sadly, what the cute art table doesn't know
is that there is a slim, trim, hot
orange metal desk on CASTERS
out in the garage waiting to replace it.
and as soon as we are done with renovations
next door, our office/art studio
is going to be completely
revamped and reorganized.
which means big cute art table
is going away soon.
sad.)


OKAY . . .
onto the regularly scheduled post.

SO, yesterday
my goal was to
paint the stairwell
going down to the basement.

yesterday,
I painted
the stairwell going down to the basement
AND i laid another big chunk
of floor in the laundry room.
halfway done!

i intended to take pictures
to prove that i have done more
than simply paint.
that i have worn more than just
my pink painting t-shirt
and painty paint paint covered jeans.

jeans, by the way, which used to be
my "look hot and go out jeans".
the ones i spent a little extra on
at the GAP instead of Old Navy
just because they looked so good.
the ones my friend megan said,
"ooh, your butt looks hot in those jeans!"

you have to love your girl friends
that are so close that
it is not only their privilege
but their responsibility
to monitor
and report
when your buns
look hot in jeans.

but that was four years ago.
and i have long since
replaced my
:"look hot and go out jeans"
with others.
and now, the old ones are
covered in paint.

this, friends, is the cycle of life.

ouch!

earlier this week
i insisted -
in
sis
ted
- that i do more
than simply paint
during this renovation.

so last night i laid floor
in the bathroom
and part of
the laundry room.

i don't like to complain . . .
well, i do like to complain
but i don't really
LIKE that i like to complain . . .
BUT when you get an
adhesive product
on your knee
that is so sticky
(the adhesive, not your knee . . .
well, your knee too now that
it has touched the adhesive)
that if you place
said sticky knee
onto the floor to kneel
and then try to get up
and it rips skin off
of your body . . .
well, then, i feel like
a little bit of
complaining is okay.

and i think that is
precisely what i just did.

have a happy happy friday!

Today i will be
painting the stairwell
down to the basement!
after that and the trim work,
we might actually be done
with the painting!
then tomorrow, back to the
laundry room floor!

pretty***cookies

last week
i felt pretty

important mostly because
this was one of the few
moments in about three
weeks
that i felt pretty.

most of the other moments
i had my hair pulled back
in a ponytail
and wore one pink t-shirt
and pair of jeans
that have been worn
so often
and washed so infrequently
that i think that
if i can't find them today
it will be due to the fact
that they have picked themselves up
and walked through the back door
across the back yard
out into the back alley
and into the garabage dumpster.

seriously.
gross.

i painted again last night.
i think we are ALMOST done with paint.
i mean after i touch up with the green
in the kitchen that i ran out of.
and paint that one area of the ceiling
that we forgot about.
and the stairwell walls.
oh, and the two cabinet doors
that just bugged me so much
that for some reason
they just didn't get painted
with the other TEN
cabinet doors.

yep, almost done painting.



i made some cookies last week.
mostly important because it is
among the few creative things
i have done in the past month.
unless of course you count
priming and painting the
bathroom at the villa on corona
creative.

and i hardly call baking creative.
i am sure there are many
who might disagree.
but i feel like if i don't follow
the directions perfectly,
the recipe will be a bust.

but, you take what you can get, right?

being a slum-lord, lohan, prayer, and lingerie

we are still cranking away over at
our sweet rental house,
“the villa on corona”.
today, i repainted the front bedroom
because, apparently dark colors
are not the only colors that require
two coats sometimes.

we still have A LOT of work to do
before they more in on the 15th of august.
i mean, A LOT A LOT!
can’t wait to learn how to install the flooring
in the bathrooms and laundry room!
stuff like that totally excites me!

i am SO proud of herb and myself!
the place looks like a completely different house!
we have both worked really hard;
pushed ourselves.
and tried to be kind and patient with each other
in the process.

when we bought it, it was dark and old and outdated.
and now it is bright and clean and beautiful.
it is a home.
and i am so happy to have
a home to offer our family of renters.

11 more days until they move in!
it is also really fun because i have been praying
for quite some time now about our need for a community
of folks to walk along side in life
and things like these friends and their children moving in
NEXT DOOR bring
sweet promise and hope of answered prayers.

other things have happened too –
like a supper club with three other couples
who all decided, “yeah, it WOULD be great to meet every other week
rather than just every 3 or 4 weeks.”

add to this the rekindling and healing of other relationships.
god continues to be good to us
even when we don’t see it.

today i stumbled across tristan prettyman's silly song about lindsay lohan while i was on this girl's fun blog.
“lindsey, you can drink the Coke
but don’t snort the coke.”
it cracks me up.
especially because we saw her in concert
about a year and a half ago,
and she really did
talk about lindsay lohan the whole time.
hilarious.

it was sort of hard to tell after listening to this song,
but she seemed to really have a bit of a celebrity crush on the lohan.
i mean, have YOU seen her in "the parent trap"?
can you blame tristan?
having seen the film myself, I submit the following:
“no, no ya can't!”

in other news,
i learned the hard way today
that unless you REALLY know the person well,
don't buy lingerie for another person.
ever.
never.

even if the invitation to her bridal shower
suggests that she wants lingerie.
if you don't know her, bring some lotion.
Bring a candle.
heck – order her a case of massage oil if you need to
feel like you are contributing to their marriage bed experience.
and I don’t
not any more than i support healthy sex in all marriages.
but i got a little excited.
and i bought some stuff.
it was sexy.
and i am afraid,
based on the look on her face,
and a little conversation i had with her,
it was a little TOO sexy.

hmmm.
i felt a little silly.
and maybe just a little slutty.
and not in a good way.
oh well.

tgif

when you have called on the world wide web gods and goddesses
(no, i don't really believe in gods and godesses, it is just funny)
before 8am
just to check out pictures and the birthdate of your celebrity twin
because you are only 99% sure that
your mom didn't actually have twins
and give the other one away to an aunt or a nice co-worker
well, you know it is a good thing today is friday!

what are YOU doing this weekend for fun?
(i'll be busy printing out new pics of maggie g. and hanging them on my wall. just kidding.)