Life Update
Tuesday, May. 21, 2019 4:03 PM

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor. —Eleanor Roosevelt

I don't mean to disappear like I do. Life has a way of getting in the way, especially when there's more on my To Do List than ever before. Every time I mark something off the list, another five items magically appear. It's keeping me extremely busy, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.

Update

In January, I spent time with my brother while he visited for the first time in years. It was a good visit, but by the end of the week I was ready for him to go back to Oregon. He was ready to return there, as well. It felt like all we did was eat, but that's because there's restaurants here that aren't anywhere else in the world.

In February, we celebrated my dad's birthday. I spent the majority of the month working on tax returns and helping my mother around the house.

March came and went real fast. I finished up the tax returns and closed on the house I had built. It's definitely my dream home. All I've ever wanted was a home like this. I have three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a third car garage, and no basement. One bedroom is for guests, one bedroom is my office, and the master bedroom connects to the most beautiful master bathroom. The master closet is a safe room for tornadoes and literally locks up like a giant safe. I can store all my valuables in there when I go on vacation and not worry about them.

My third car garage has a wall between it and the two car garage. I call it my basement because it's intention was to be a storage room for all the stuff I would have put down in the basement. Starlumber did most of the work, and they did a beautiful job. The tile work is gorgeous, the cabinetry to die for, and the windows are huge. They let in so much light. After living with Kent for years in an always dark house, I feel like I can sing that one song, "I can see clearly now."

I went with a mix of colors, picking out things I never thought I would. After months of research on Sherwin Williams website, I went with Willow Tree green on the walls. It goes with everything. I'm not kidding you. The trim work and the cabinets are Pure White, with the island ending up being a charcoal gray color. The granite I used in the kitchen is called Salinas White, while in the bathrooms I went with Sparkling White quartz. On the floor, I went with vinyl since my cats are geriatric age. In the kitchen/dinging/living area, I went with a grayish brown luxury vinyl that looks like real wood. In the guest bathroom and laundry room, I used an extremely pretty vinyl with a decorative design in it. It pops the color black with toned down grays and browns. In the master bathroom, I chose a simple tan colored vinyl with a diamond design in it that matches the carpet I put in the bedrooms perfectly.

Around the sinks in the master bathroom, I chose a very pretty tile with silver and different shades of blue. The colors in the tile make the colors in the quartz pop. In the walk-in shower, I mostly put in Fawn colored subway tile with a large area done up in the same tile that's around the bathroom sinks. The best part is, I saved money by picking out two separate mirrors at the At Home Store. They are gold and very eclectic looking with a curvy design up top. They go well with the gold plumbing fixtures I chose. Yes, you heard me right. I went with gold even though there's a lot of silver in the quartz and tile. The gold plumbing fixtures brought out the gold specs in the tile and it was all tied together with the light tan floor.

In the kitchen, I used the same Fawn subway tile, except above the range. Above the range I picked out this very pretty square tile that's fawn colored but with an intricate design using white and light and dark grays that are found in the Salinas White granite. In the guest bathroom, I picked out a tile that's black with a mix of silver and light gold. The mirror I hung up in the bathroom came from the house I spent my high school years in. It was an expensive mirror made in 1977, the year I was born, so I found it fitting to put it up there. My mother and I painted it a light gold and splashed a little silver on it. The plumbing fixtures are polished nickle in both that bathroom and the kitchen. And all my appliances are stainless steel. I got a "steal" on them. I bought my fridge real cheap at a factory outlet store because it had a minor dent in it, and I ended up getting my range really cheap because the place forgot to put the 1 in front of it. So basically, I paid $699 for a range that should have cost me $1,699. The best part is, it's the kind of range that doesn't protrude in the back and cover up the pretty tile.

I went with Riverside style doors, even with my front door. My front door only has three windows in it, though... and I had them put in the glass that you can't see through. As for the outside of the house? I painted it Jubilee Blue with Pure White trim. I had them paint the garage pure white, as well, as I prefer that look when a home uses white trim. Because I didn't know what to color my front door, and I had a very specific aztec blend for the brick, I spent weeks skimming through colors. I found the perfect paint called Outer Space. Once my front door was painted Outer Space, the rest of the house just fell into place color wise. I had wanted to go with Banana Cream Yellow, but the HOA denied it. I think they saw the word banana and didn't even look at the color online. It's the prettiest cream color I've ever seen, and it would have been beautiful with my aztec blend brick. They said I could paint my front door that color, but I said no. Why they let me paint the outside a blue color that sometimes looks lavender is beyond me, especially when purple should be out of the question long before a creamy yellow should be. I'm the only house on my block that's not brown or taupe. Then again, I'm the only house in the entire neighborhood that's a flat slab.

Every house I've ever built has been unique in the neighborhood in some way. In my first neighborhood it was the colors I chose outside. Since it was a patio home, we were very limited. I did red brick with gray siding. Of course, I went all out on the inside doing Mediterranean colors when most people stuck to tan or gray. I still love the carpet I had chosen there. It was called Chinese Tea Green. The second house I built was mimicked in a lot of ways to the model home, but I made the outside look like a cottage. It's the only house in the neighborhood with a window on the side of the garage and with the cottage look to it. The inside was painted a minty green color since I let Kent pick out the trim. He chose a chocolate brown trim, which I hated and still hate to this day. People often comment on my choice to use green paint on the walls. A lot of men are negative about it, while a lot of women love it. The men seem to want tan or gray walls, or that new color that's out that blends gray and brown together. I think they call it greige. I believe every room should have something green in it because it's a beautiful color, so I was extremely happy when I found Willow Tree Green and discovered it went with every color of the rainbow. It doesn't matter if it's pastel or dark, cold or warm... every color seems to go with it. I often lean towards fall colors or what I call Easter colors, so my house is very much a mix of it all.

The best part is, my bedspread is an apple green quilt with white polka-dots. One of my night stands is a grass green color. The blanket at the end of my bed is a paisley design with lime green and light blue in it. One of my furniture pieces is a butter yellow, and I have a white chair with red flowers and dark green stems on it in the corner. Most people wouldn't put these pieces of furniture together, but somehow it works beautifully. I bought a see through green lamp to put on the night stand that's a dark brown, while I put my Grandma's antique flowered lamp covered in pinkish red roses on the green night stand. I hung up pictures on the wall in red frames, and I found the prettiest butter yellow sheets at Target. It is my sanctuary, my eclectic looking bedroom. I absolutely love it, and I've gotten many compliments on it. In fact, even from men who worked on the house... I've gotten many compliments over all my choices. The builder even wants to copy my choices in future homes. It's probably because it's okay to blend metals and colors. Not everything has to be gray, tan, taupe or white. Yes, those are neutral colors, but I think people really enjoy the rainbow.

Enough about my house. I didn't meant to spend an hour rambling on about it.

I spent most of April going back and forth between my place and Kent's. I had to get him to sign documentation giving up his rights to the old house so we could sell it. Then I had to drive up there and give him his proceeds of the sale and have him sign another document stating he received it. What I thought would only cost me $500 through the lawyer ended up almost costing me an extra $1,000. This was the most expensive experience of my life, therefore I plan to never get married again. Then again, you always hope a marriage will last and that it will be forever; and, by me saying that, I'm basically implying that I don't think any relationship is forever. On the bright side, we sold the house from hell. It was at a loss, but it's sold. It's no longer ours and that lifted a humongous weight off my shoulders. Once that sold, I had to wait until this month to take out a mortgage on the new house to pay my dad back for buying it. I'm a lot deeper in debt now than I ever have been before. All the proceeds I received from the house went to paying Kent alimony, giving him half of the proceeds and paying off any debt we had incurred together, which was mainly to my parents, paying off the mortgage to the old house, and paying off the people who helped fix the house up so we could unload it.

On the bad side, I need to find a job. There are a ton of people looking for someone to do their bookkeeping, which is about the only thing I'm skilled at besides writing. However, I'm scared of applying for any of those jobs. I'm scared because it pays way less than what I've been getting. I'm scared because it would require me to work for someone else when I've only ever worked for my dad. I'm scared I'm not as skilled as I should be and that I would let the new employer down. I'm scared about a lot of things. I've gone through so many changes in the last year. Huge changes. Major life changes. And now I have to go though another one right after I just finished putting myself further into debt with my dream home. It's definitely not my dream location, but I'm not sure where my dream location is anymore. I'm so used to taking care of my parents and being a care giver, that I'm not sure if I'm living for myself or if I'm living to take care of others. This would be an opportunity to do something I love and care about. The scary thing is, most places want someone with experience in editing and writing. I don't have that. What would I show them? My online diary that is very personal to me?

I'm at a crossroads in life once again. I know, no matter what happens, the universe will find a way to get me to where I'm supposed to be. It's just really scary getting there and being in flux.