Just got this e-mail from an HR Info site, and I laughed out loud when I read it:

Emerging Claims in Lifestyle Discrimination
Accredited Webinar:
- Can you require an employee to hide her tattoos?
- What if a male employee insists on wearing a bra -- outside his shirt?
- Can employees claim they have a right to visit porn sites at work?

Can someone please tell me what lifestyle requires you to wear a bra on the OUTSIDE of your shirt? I'd love to know the answers to these all-important questions, but since the webinar costs $200, I guess they will have to remain a mystery for now.

A - Attached or single: Very attached
B - Best Friend: Girl-Amanda; Boy-Matt; Dog-Abigail
C - Cake or Pie: Mmmm...pie
D - Day of the Week: Friday, 'cause it's freedom!
E - Essential Item: Chapstick, or as I like to call it, lippy stuff
F - Favorite Color: Green
G - Gummy Bears or Worms: Bears
H - Home town: Katy, TX
I - Indulgences: Anything I buy from Sephora
J - January or July?: July-I love the sun.
K - Kids: Nope.
L - Life is incomplete without: Cheese
M - Marriage Date: July 8, 2006
N - Number of Siblings: 2.5
O - Oranges or Apples: Apples, with cheese
P - Phobias or Fears: fire
T - Tag Three: Mrs. Juicebox, On The Verge, The Kate Effect
U - Unknown fact about me: well, if I told you it wouldn't be unknown
V - Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: wow, that's a loaded question
W - Worst Habit: I'm very fidgety and don't realize it most of the time.
X - Rays or Ultrasounds: Ultrasounds. They seem less bad for you.
Y - Your favorite food: cheese
Z - Zodiac Sign: Gemini

Tonight, for our early anniversary dinner, I made these along with charcoal grilled New York Strip steaks and salad with baby portabelas, tomatoes, and balsamic vinaigrette dressing. I highly recommend the sweet potato fries...they were delicious. We also enjoyed a bottle of Family Red from the V. Sattui winery we visited in Napa Valley this past January. It was the perfect celebration after a long day of unpacking and working on the house.

Tomorrow Otis leaves for Portland. He was so sweet and worked all day to get plumbing and connections for the washer and dryer, dishwasher, and bathroom sink working before he left. I am so grateful and amazed that he desired to leave the house extra-livable for me before he left. It definitely makes this first time alone in the house less ominous. (Dear God, please don't let anything break while he's gone).

I got a good chunk of the unpacking done today, and our kitchen is actually usable/not oppressive. I think I've also come up with a color scheme to make it attractive until we can afford to remodel it in a couple of years. It's finally starting to feel like a home. Imagine what it will feel like when we have pictures on the walls!

This story on CNN is, well, I don't believe there are words to describe how disgusting and appalling it is.

This paragraph especially blows my mind:

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which oversees the hospital, released a statement Tuesday saying it was "shocked and distressed by this situation. It is clear that some of our employees failed to act based on our compassionate standards of care."

I'm sorry, but I believe it is clear that your employees failed to act as HUMAN BEINGS. The lack of compassion in the above statement only serves to explain why the employees acted the way they did. I can not believe institutions like this still exist in this country.

This morning, after a late night of shower plumbing repairs, Otis and I slept in a bit and then, wait for it - we took a shower. In our very own bathroom. It was truly glorious. I've decided this is why life royally bites sometimes. Otherwise how would we ever be able to appreciate the simple things in life, like not having to bathe in a kitchen sink?

I haven't posted anything for a while because over the last week we have been scrambling to get the house put back together and get moved into it. As of noon yesterday we are officially moved out of our apartment and the house is now our home. Or at least the place we sleep at night. I'm struggling to feel much at home in it. We still haven't finished putting the bathroom back together, and the kitchen is virtually unusable. Although I did make some mighty fine tater-tots in our gas oven the other night.

On Sunday evening we finally tested out our bathtub drain and the shower plumbing. The drain works perfectly. The plumbing, well, I almost can't even say it. We think it may have a small leak. We are checking it out again tonight, and are praying that 1) it wasn't a leak but instead what we saw was water splashing through the holes since we hadn't yet put the faucet plate on yet, 2) was a freak occurrence, or 3) if it was a leak it has miraculously fixed itself and we won't have to take out the dishwasher and rip out the wall on the kitchen side of that wall to fix it. Ripping out the tile in the bathroom is not an option. Or if it is, I have already informed Otis that I will be staying somewhere else while that happens and we pay someone else to fix it. Because I can't do that again. We are both really praying that this will be something we don't need to fix or is something that will be super easy to fix. We encourage you to join us in that prayer.

Thank you to all of our friends and family who have helped us get this far. We could not have done this without you. Seriously. I may be dropping off the radar screen for a bit. I'm overwhelmed with the state of our lives right now, and I feel like I can only operate in a tiny microcosm of my life if I hope to get through this without a breakdown.

I would just like to tell the world that we have placed all the tile in the bathroom. Every. Single. Last. Piece.

Behold.

Also, we now have a toilet, which means we could actually live in this house. Grouting and caulking will be completed this evening. We should be able to use our shower by Saturday!

Can't do tiling at the house because they're refinishing the floors today. Instead stayed home to do laundry, dishes, and pack. Can't do laundry or dishes because the water is off in our complex until noon.

Part of me feels like I'm wasting a day off work. The other part of me is so glad to be sitting on my couch watching Law & Order and doing nothing.

The home improvement continues, blah blah blah, you're tired of hearing about it I'm sure. It's T-minus countdown as we are supposed to move in a week. All we really have to get done to move in is get the bathroom tiled and the toilet in. Speaking of bathrooms, people are so paranoid about water. In the bathroom. THE BATHROOM, PEOPLE. Did you know that in Asia they have bathrooms you can completely hose down? With water! Now THAT is living on the edge.

My parents are driving me crazy with the waterproofing this and water barrier that. Geez! If water is SO horrible to have in a house, why do we even have indoor plumbing? I'm so annoyed with all the paranoia that I actually considered, if only for a brief moment, building an outhouse. Because that would solve all of these problems. After question number 582 from my dad about did we do this to waterproof the floor and did the sheet rock guy do that I finally said, "Hey, it didn't have X on it before and it lasted 60 years just fine. I'm not planning on even being alive in 60 years, so I think it will work the way it is."

At this point my life is so deeply entrenched in home improvement that even my fantasies of ending it all and putting myself out of my misery involve things like drilling a screw through my skull. Is this what it means to be an adult? Because if someone had told me that being an adult meant visiting home improvement stores at least once a day I would have lived my younger years a lot more dangerously.

I'm just going to come out and say it - remodeling the house has been hard. Much harder than I anticipated. So hard that I now feel that raising kids will be a breeze compared to this. I'm sure reality will slap me in the face with how brazenly stupid that comment is some day, but for now I'm going to find comfort in it.

The complete insanity of all we're doing and how much time we have to do it in has taken a toll on me, and let's just say I haven't dealt with it well. As in the last couple of days I feel like I'm one very fine line away from being committed to a psych ward. Yesterday, after a series of disappointments and roadblocks, I completely lost it. Once the tears started flowing I couldn't turn them off, and I've been either crying or on the verge of crying ever since. Maybe it's just the stress. Or maybe it's hormones. Whatever it is, I don't like it. I hate feeling out of control of my emotions, and right now I feel like I'm not just out of control, but that I've spun off into space with nothing to stop me from being propelled straight out of the galaxy.

Don't get me wrong...good things are happening and things are getting done. We're even under budget (yay! and knock on wood). People keep telling me I'm going to be so happy with it when we're done. I know they're right, and I'm trying so hard to find hope and energy in that. So, if you're praying, pray for my perspective to change to a more positive one and for us to find a way to get the work done so we can move in.