Strangeness

Hey guys! I can't believe our super long holiday weekend is almost over! We have been so incredibly productive this weekend and I am thoroughly exhausted.

Friday we worked on our house all day, then got cleaned up and drove past some of the houses we'd picked out on the 'net to see if we liked the neighborhoods/neighbors. Since we have SO many crappy neighbors right now the neighbors are almost as important as the house. If we hear dogs barking we keep on driving. There have been 3 or 4 houses we've marked off simply because the next door neighbors have yappy dogs. From about 17 houses we crossed off quite a few and then stopped at this super cute little neighborhood Mexican joint called the Rosepepper. We got a great spot on their outdoor patio and chowed down while we watched a great lightning show south of town. For some reason all the rain stayed south of us and never moved into the city. Brent ended up with an entree called "muy caliente" which for some reason he thought meant "very good". I was pretty surprised when he told me he was getting that, since I know "muy caliente" means "very hot" and Brent's not huge on super hot stuff. But I thought "whatever, he seems pretty into it". We had ordered a margarita to split, and I guess my exhaustion and the fact that I'd been in the sun a lot that day painting our front entryway and really hadn't had a lot to eat started kicking in. I was tipsy. Off HALF a frickin' margarita. So sad. So Brent's food comes and it's hotter than hell, his head is sweating and I'm having a GREAT time. That's when he told me what he thought "muy caliente" had meant and when I told him he was wrong. I tried to get a picture of it on his cameraphone but I was so out of it I ended up with my finger in front of the shutter. The truly sad thing is that Brent took 2 years of Spanish in high school and I had 4 years of German. Anyway, we had a great time and I'm so excited that this little place will be within walking distance from wherever we end up at.

On Saturday we did more house fixing up stuff and I totally disrupted Pippin's little schedule. He has a very complex sleeping schedule that takes him around the house throughout the day, following the sun. In the morning he sleeps in various spots in our living room or bedroom, in the afternoon he moves to the dining room, and in late afternoon he moves into the stairs/2nd story catwalk area. He's like a little sundial or something. In the afternoon I started steamcleaning our dining room and he was PISSED. I ended up locking him in our bedroom where Brent was doing some painting and he was NOT happy. Once I was finished I blocked off both entryways with chairs and other random crap but the little bugger still found ways to get in 3 or 4 times. So, I gave him a bath just to make him madder (and so I could get the upstairs bath a good cleaning). Afterwards he wanted to sun himself on the stairs but that's where I was vacuuming, dusting and doing some spot stain cleaning. He really wasn't happy with me, and was probably pretty glad when we called it a day and went out to Lowes and Target to pick up some more home repair stuff.

Sunday we did more cleaning and then headed out to see if there were any open houses. I guess the realtors took the holiday weekend off because there wasn't a single open house! We used the time to drive around the neighborhoods more and really figure out what locations we like. We've decided we like the Lockeland Springs community, so that's where we're focusing. We've picked out about 3 houses that we really like and want to tour this week. One is a pretty big fixer upper, but the price is great so we'd have a ton of money left in our budget to fix it exactly how we want. It's about 2 blocks from the park, so that's perfect. The second one is already fixed up, but we'd probably want to repaint the outside and tear out some of the carpets for the hardwood underneath. It's about 3 blocks from the park and very close to the golf course. The third one would likely need quite a bit of fixing up as well, it's on a great street and is also just a few blocks from the park. They all have a lot of the features we're looking for, and without seeing them we're leaning towards the big fixer upper just because we can do what we want with it. We've done a LOT with this house - tiling, flooring, crown molding in every room, tons of woodwork details, crazy painting projects, etc etc - so we're not afraid of some work and we're pretty dang handy for a couple of yuppies. At this point we know which realtor we're picking and we're calling her tomorrow to list our house asap and take us through these houses.

So Sunday night.......we were invited to a party hosted by a coworker of mine. Her parties are always pretty interesting because they have a massive open bar and most of our coworkers are rednecks so they get PLASTERED. Last night was no exception. It's so strange to just sit back and watch people as they get all wound up. One coworker of mine was already tipsy off half a Bahama Mama and by the end of the night she was flailing everywhere as her MUCH older husband just sat in a corner smoking cigars all night and trying to keep her from embarrassing herself. But BY FAR, the strangest moment of the night came when the running coworker of mine went to leave and was telling my coworker's husband (the stripper) good-bye and somehow it came up that he sings in his church choir. So the stripper says "Sing me something!" and so.....in the middle of a party where 75% of the people are off their asses......he starts singing church hymns. Someone heard him singing and the general crowd started chanting for more music. Brent and I are not drunk or even remotely tipsy so I am laughing so hard I am starting to CRY. Then coworker starts belting out Amazing Grace......in the middle of the party. And not just Amazing Grace - but a JAZZY rendition of it. I was trying SO hard to be mature but I'd catch Brent out of a corner of my eye and just lose it. I ended up with tears rolling down my face and mascara everywhere. It was quite possibly one of the strangest moments of my life. There were many, MANY other moments from last night that were awkward (like terrible dancing, even worse karaoke and one drunk guy telling us all we work for the best company in the world) but the singing......I will NEVER forget that moment. The worst part is I didn't even bring my camera, I could've at least snuck some audio!

Well, it's time for me to get to work and do some more steam cleaning! We don't have much to do left on our house (yeah!!) and hopefully we can finish up fairly soon and take Pippin out to the dog park this afternoon. We haven't been there in forever!

Happy Memorial Day everyone!!

Rae