Update!

Today I decided to update my profile for this blog. Originally it was about John and I planning our wedding but now that I'm an old married woman the blog's purpose has shifted. Currently it is about our life together and my random thoughts. As always, I will strive to be as honest as possible. I think people try so had to put out a perfect image of their home, family, life etc. that in the end they do themselves an injustice. I think the more honest we are with ourselves the more honest we can be with each other. And the best thing I've learned from John is that being truly, openly honest is the most freeing feeling in the world. No one's life is perfect. Everybody fails at some point. People make mistakes. Its life. Don't worry about everything working out the way you think it should or they way other people say it should. Sometimes the people who seem to have it all really have nothing. Like a model home. Yes, new and beautiful, but somehow cold and hollow.  So, to put my money where my mouth is, I'll be honest. No, my life isn't perfect. Far from it. We struggle. Life at times seems to be an endless race with hurdles.  But you know what, it certainly keeps things interesting. And each time we finish a leg of the race we get to celebrate.

The Unbearable Closeness of Condo Living

We have a circus variety of neighbors living next to, across from, underneath and above us. Never a dull moment around here. Below I've listed a few stand-outs of my cast.

The fat man we call Leather Chest. In the summer he spends his days at our pool. He sits in his lounge chair, his stomach getting darker from the hours in the sun and bigger from the beer he puts away one after the other as if in a trance, all the while staring and ogling all of the women. He doesn't have a type, he stares at all of them. Younger girls in skimpy bikinis, old ladies in skirted bottoms. To him it doesn't matter. The pool is his buffet of women to visually feast upon, some dishes better than others but all worth the taste of a stolen glance. There is also the fat man in the next building over who cooks bacon outside on his deck. He does this shirtless and everytime I see him I wonder if his big stomach gets burned by the sizzling grease. It took me awhile to realize this is the same man as Leather Chest. 

There is the lady across the common ground from us. She occasionally has crazy outbursts where she kicks and punches the walls of her townhouse while shouting "rot and burn in hell". She rarely leaves her home. She chain smokes outside all day, everyday. In the winter she sits out there with a blanket around her shoulders like an American Indian with a peace pipe. I think to myself at least she's not smoking inside.

The nice, older woman across the hall from us. I walked John out to his car one morning and upon returning realized I was locked out. She invited me inside her home and offered me coffee and her cell phone. She works from home and has a little tray table and chair set up in her living room facing the tv where she sits to do her work from her lap top. Her place is a mirror image of our place. Her life looks a lot like mine. Drinking coffee in the morning, watching the news, working from home. She even has a large persian cat. The only differnce is I have John, Bauer, and TWO persian cats.

There is the man who lives above us that is a real life Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. One day he is nice as can be, making pleasant small talk then the next day ranting and raving and yelling things we can't even understand through his deck floor down to ours. I believe he is an alcoholic and I think this is why we see such conflicting personalities from him.  Often times we hear him fall down. One time he fell on the stairs going up to his place and knocked out part of the railing. John hates him. I feel sorry for him. He seems very sad and lonely. My dad always taught me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so I tell John we should kill him with kindness. John thinks my kindness is wasted on him. He might be right.

Good neighbors, bad neighbors, either way I can't wait to move. John and I are counting down the days until we can move out and into an actual house. Our owns walls, ceilings, and floors. Ahhhh such bliss. Bauer is getting bigger every day and needs more room to play. We are planning on starting a family soon and god willing we will need more room for that as well. Life is good, better in fact than this time last year when I was heartbroken from my company closing. Change is always scary at first but in the end you look back and see it was for the best. Sometimes you just need the distance of a whole year before you can see things clearly.


Ps Today is 11/11/11. Cross your fingers, hold your breath, and make a wish.

Love,
Tina

Blood, Sweat & Tears

  Yep, that pretty much sums up the summer so far.  The blood from John when he, against my warnings, decided to jump off the dock at Innsbrook into very shallow, rock infested water.  He scraped up his back pretty bad.  Luckily he had about a six pack's worth of beer in him so the pain was minimal :/  More blood might be spilled if John keeps it up with his creepy monkey.  He's taken to randomly putting it in places to scare me.  Wow this sounds really bad.  This morning I wake up and open my eyes and the monkey is staring at me.  John was very pleased with himself.  Still not sounding any better.  Refer to the Drennen Family Weekend album on my facebook page to see the monkey.  That damn thing ended up in more pictures than I did.  And scene.

  The sweat portion is obvious as we have had a never-ending heat wave upon us, which honestly I rather enjoy.  It makes me feel like I live in some tropical paradise.  I like to pretend there is a beach nearby but like most locals of tropical cities I never get to see the good stuff.  Too busy surviving day to day life to get to the lush beaches that all the spoiled tourists overcrowd.
 
  And lastly the tears.  Shamefully, I admit I've shed a couple this summer.  The frustrated kind.  Two words: Potty.  Training.  No, I don't have a toddler that I'm gently introducing to the notion of using a toilet.  I have a puppy that I am using guerrilla war tactics against to potty train.  Does anyone else think of Captain Ron when they hear the word guerrilla?  "You said GOR not GUER, there is a very big difference!"  Anywho, recognizing him as the enemy was difficult as he does not wear a uniform but instead an adorable costume meant to trick us into thinking he's innocent.

Know thy enemy.

 

 

   Leading the charge with Cesar Millan and the Monks of New Skete and armed with plenty of paper towels and disinfectant, I finally emerged victorious.  Actually I'm being a bit over dramatic.  Shocker.  Aside from that one day where I could swear he was doing it on purpose, its been a pretty easy process.  From the day I brought him home he has always been very good about letting us know when he needs to go out.  Any accidents that happened were our fault for not listening to him.  So in reality, he trained us.

  This 30 lb. evil genius is named Bauer.  He is a black lab/english mastiff mix and he will be three months old tomorrow.  He learned to sit in less than 5 minutes at six and half weeks old.  When he grasped that so quickly we began teaching him other things.  He can now sit, stay, come, lay down, roll over, shake and hi-five.  We are very impressed.  Clearly I'm bragging right now.  To be honest, he generally won't do these tricks unless treats are involved.  We are working on weaning him off the treat dependency.  Although I'd sure want a treat if someone asked me lay down and roll over.  Hahaaa.  Too much? 

So yes, the summer is chugging along and I couldn't be any happier.  John and I have been married for 9 months now and we're about to celebrate our six year anniversary.  I really can't believe I've been with this guy for SIX YEARS.  I know to some folks that's just a blink of an eye, but to me it means everything.  We both have the same outlook on life, albeit mine through rosier colored glasses, that we should live in the moment and have as much fun as possible every day.  And that's just what we've been doing.

Tah tah for now,
Tina

ps. I'm getting back into the soap making business, stay tuned for upcoming posts about my progress!

Friday Night at the Feager Household

So I haven't posted in awhile. My last post was even about how I hadn't posted anything in awhile. I realized what the problem was, I don't like sitting down and making lengthy recaps of what's going on in my life. So from now on I'm going to make shorter, more frequent posts.  Yay.

Its 3:20pm on Friday afternoon. John should be home from work in about an hour and tonight we are having a Skip-Bo championship and cocktails. Exciting right? Actually for us it is, we take card games very seriously :) There is nobody I'd rather hangout with than John. This is why I married him. Well, its the other reason I married him. So yes, tonight its on, he won the last championship so now I have to redeem myself. I'm VERY competitive and HATE losing.  If I'm losing I turn into a toddler which starts out with loud sighing and huffing and eventually ends in tantrum card throwing. Sometimes this makes John laugh and sometimes it scares him.  I need to remember that the fun is in playing not winning. A voice in my head tells me that this is something losers say.  I need a therapist for this compulsion to win and maybe also for the voices in my head.

I need to clean the house, go to the grocery store, and make myself pretty-pretty by 4:30. I can't wait to give the big guy a hug and a kiss when he walks through that door. Cheers, dears!