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Learning to grow

A blog by Briannah in General

  • Entries

    140

  • Comments

    285

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    50,574

About this blog

This is Bree's journal talking about how life changes, and how you grow with them (probably with the occasional freakout, I'm good at panic mode too!).  Life has been hard since day one, and not doing it alone is the key!

Entries in this blog

Adventures in Spa land.

So I was warm for something like 11 days.  10 really, the second day of the drive home was cold and insanely rainy and foggy depending on where we were.  Managed to not fry my skin or drown in the spa.  Seriously, that was nearly a thing.  We got the spa access package this cruise which we never do, but Nikki's injured back benefitted greatly.  So we tried new things.  Here's how that went, feel free to laugh.  ​1) Heated Ceramic Loungers - big ceramic lounge chairs designed by a chiropractor t

New Neighbor story. Short, but this is my weird life.

So.  The neighbors.  Again.  Yes.  One of the many reasons I'm not sad that Nikki pushed the moving idea.  I have a trick for large item trash to avoid paying fees.  I put the times out the day AFTER trash pick up, so they have roughly a week until the next one.  And only once has it failed me and the item did not 'just wander off on it's own!".  So we found out that Yuriko had been peeing behind the filing cabinet I had for years to organize.  She died of brain cancer, but no one knew she had

Living on hope of vacation.

So Nikki's back has been out for a while now, so I dragged him strait to the doctor Friday, based on the pain response from limb manipulation test, they think at this point it's an inflammation problem rather than an injury from all the physical labor we've been doing.  (I'm sore as anything too, but I still have full flexibility and only sore-pain not crazy pain like after the surgery I had or what he's feeling so I'm sure I'm just tired) and they gave us anti-inflammatory pills that are helpin

Just life.

Life evolves.  The original plan was only moving if Nikki found a job out of town. Which as of yet has not happened, but it's always a potentiality.  Unfortunately, I got curious, and I looked at towns around our area and asked NIkki what the maximum commute was, as apparently there are several choices in a city a half hourish south of us that would put our mortgage at a third to half of what we pay  now.  Let that percolate a moment, yeah.  And the houses are bigger and nicer.  One is so flat o

WIsh me luck - Youtube Hair Idiocy. :)

So I watched about a billion youtube videos about doing the fairly simply, layered haircut I favor yourself.  And it is actually fairly idiot proof, you basically let your head do the work for you.  Ponytail it all at your forehead instead of your crown, cut teh ponytail at the desired length, and take the band out.  Voila.  The natural spaces on your head arrange the hair at different lengths as it takes further from the nap to your forehead than mid-head and crown, etc. etc.  It's faster, no a

We have stairs! And some Bree rambles.

So there is a still a lot of work, I swear the cosmetic parts are more work than the actual structural parts, but the decaying and failing runners have all been replaced by new ones, that are deeper (the come out a but further, giving a larger space for the foot) with new pine runners.  Nikki did an awesome job, sawdust is everywhere (sawdust smells good, I forgot that), and w'ere ready to start worrying about making it look nice now.  I forgot how QUIET stairs are when they're not...well...anci

Sometimes people make me sad.

So I got the new webcame to skype and roll20 game with my son now that he's moved, and I Thought, ya know what?  I wanna say hello to the world.  Omegle, here I come!  So I loaded it up.  Now, I FULLY expected to run into a lot of pervyness.  I went into it with the realization I will see things, there is no way around that, the next button is my friend.  But I had it in my head that there were other normal people who just wanted to talk to the world, and after I waded through the unspeakable th

Spousal Perspective of tools.

How Nikki sees the new tool kit we got today (because I broke the drill, don't ask) - Ooh, cool, I can do cool things like built in book shelving and better closeting!  I can be all sorts of productive!  These things are kind of dangerous though. How I see the new tools: Hm..if anyone breaks in again, I could totally kill a person with those....and not have to worry about a cord.  I wonder if it would get stuck in the bone? Some days I think there is something really wrong with me.  In my defens

Unexpected and Unwelcome News.

Nikki's therapist, his younger than me, super healthy therapist, had a heart attack and passed away this weekend.  I can't wrap my mind around it.  She has been so helpful working everything out, and such a huge part of our lives (Nikkii's directly, mine through the effect she has on our life) that i just am floored.  So far Nikki is okay, but I don't know how this works for a patient.  If my former therapist had just died, it would have really messed me up, I can't even imagine.  And she was so

Anniversary

So it was a rocky year, but we made it out okay.  Today was our 18th anniversary, and we had a great day.  And the weather was almost nice!    We had a nice brunch out(Nikki is trying to live on my schedule during staycation, silly sleepy boy so we didn't wake up til 11), my aunt stopped by to drop off my birthday card since I was busy yesterday only she actually forgot the card on her counter, then we packed up more tubs and moved them to my moms and stopped and my aunts on the way home, grabbe

I'm 45 today.

It's after midnight, that makes it my birthday!  LOL  And even better, NIKKI HAS AN INTERVIEW!  And while I fully comprehend the difference between an interview and a job offer, it's still good to see him get a nibble less than two days after he applied.  It's done wonders for his confidence, and I'm proud of my Nikki.    It was amazing news. And if it does work out, both GREAT and OH MY TURTLES IT"S GONNA GET CRAZY.  LOL  

Just rambling.

I think I grew up a bit more somewhere along the way.  I'm at the post-stressout phase and tired, but Nikki's wish to leave isn't as scary as it first was.  I still have a lot of fears, but I think they're valid fears.  What if he can't get a job, the unemployment rate in Ohio is still bad, what if we can't sell the house, what will my mom do since my son is moving out of state next week and then we're leaving too (I know, on the one hand she's pretty much made her bed with me, but on the other

Tentatively at peace wtih the new possiblities.

So more talking occurred, and it seems that making moving the focus is pretty much the desired outcome.  Which will mean a lot of job hunting on Nikki's part, and packing/cleaning/repair work on mine.  And a discussion that I'm not overreacting if Nikki wants this to happen.  Now is the time we have to do all the preparation work, so that if things do fall into place we are ready and not having a financial crisis making this happen.  So Nikki got on board with my 'we prep now, since either way i

Nikki dropped a new bomb on my head.

SO....Nikki turns to me today and tells me that he's seriously job hunting in Dayton, has done research in the cost of living and it's lower and the salaries are the same as here so we can live better.   And he has a pocket ace in the hole, he's looking to move to the town that one of my closest friends lives in.  And apparently the child knew before me.  *headdesk*  After a lot of talk the current consensus is this is something Nikki is fairly serious about and we should actively work towards. 

Wish me luck, the renovations didn't wait!

So much for best laid plans.  Thanks to a sick cat spewing over the ENTIRE staircase top to bottom, Nikki and I had a quick meeting to figure out how best to deal with this mess, and the staircase IS on the renovation list...so... RENOVATIONS HAVE BEGUN!  I repeat, they have begun! This is not a drill!  Grab your emergency breathing masks!  *laughing*  At this point it's easier to just start early and toss the carpet than to clean that up, poor cat really didn't have a good night last night.  Th

Need help conquering financial and organizing kitchen like Bree? Read here.

So, in my ongoing quest to improve the new budget and live better on what we have now, and my growing fear that Trump is going to throw us back into 2009 or worse when all the jobs vanished, I have been working on one of the biggest expenses that IS mutable, unlike the mortgage, internet, etc.  And that is...food.  Most advice seems to always stem around don't eat out, cook yourself, but groceries are stupidly expensive, and the whole process of fitting cooking into a busy life isn't that intuit

Follow up reaserach on artilcles really pays off.

No one here will be surprised when I mention my need for information to make ANY life choices, small or large, and vacation is not an exception.  I really don't understand my head here.  Researching the options = fun and entertainment to my brain, but actual specific planning sends me into a tailspin of resentment for my time and energy being sucked into the process.  So I'm always reading new things about everything I'm into, including cruising, and I like to read those 'things I wish I knew" a

I think I"m making some moderate headway in habit changing.

So usually my add and natural personality has us living very by ear.  Planning is SO not my thing, and it has been an herculean effort to start developing that skill.   But the staycation and vacations after peak season are important to Nikki, downtime after that crazy work schedule, so I'm trying to be more organized about it to further reduce the stress on Nikki. Easier said than done, but I'm definitely making headway.  I have a menu list for staycation, no more arguments about what to eat. 

Slightly mind blown.

So..had those amazing flourless chocolate cakes before.  They are awesome, I love them.  Something that awesome had to be complicated...but...you can make a version with three ingredients and it's awesome.  Basically it's like a really chocolately dense souffle, made from eggs, chocolate and butter.  That blows my mind.   I have a tendency to overcomplicate a lot of things, and simple things blow me away.  Now if you'll excuse me, I require some chocolate chips to make a cake apparently.

Scary wind.

It's shaking the house, and the fence was just at a really odd angle to the ground.  ti's a six foot wooden privacy fence, not a little flimsy decorative fence I mean.  I'm glad we had the roof finished last year from the windstorm that tore it up and made it look like someone ran a giant sander over it, because I think chunks would be gone tonight and smacking the neighbors house.  Don't like the neighbors, but I still don't want their home to get hit by my roof chunks.   One year I got hit in

Cold Weirdness

Watching Unusual Suspects while waiting to get sleepy(Deadly Women auto qeued this) and I think the cold medicine is making me wonky, but the murder victim's name is Brianna, and despite it being a pen name, it's really creepy to keep hearing "And he murdered Brianna..."  Mr. Plus Turtle says he'll defend me though.    I'm not sure I like cold medicine anymore.  I couldn't take anything for years, most of it contains pseudoephidrine, and you can't mix that with the daily powdered asthma control

Let's talk biology vs. modern life.

So.  It took me 12 years of alarm clocks, schedules, and struggles with insomnia and exhaustion to get my body to a roughly midnight to 8 am sleep schedule.  Where I still needed the alarm clock, but most days I woke up without it or just before it went off.  But there was that knowledge that it wasn't fully reliable and I had better have that thing set so I didn't get fired.  And it's taken roughly...four weeks to end up back on my native 4 am to noon sleep habit.  And now I get tired around th

What I learned from TV today.

There are some broad tendency (probably from social upbringing) differences between men and women.  And one of those differences is staring at me from catching up on Deadly women (and other forensic shows, I have some weird obsession with forensics, I don't even know why).  This is in regard to premeditated murder, not heat of the moment kind where everyone male or female has just lost their minds for a minute. When a guy is going to kill you, most of the time he just does it, and fairly quickly

Cranky

I have Nikki germs.  Decided to share the cold germs with me, ah the joys of marriage.  MEH!  I'm going to go whine at my favorite stuffed turtle for a while. 

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