The Casa kitchen reno starts tomorrow. It is going to be quick and dirty, which is how we like our reno work.
It is also how I like these:
Which I apply liberally to soothe renovation woe.
Coincidence? Probably isn’t.
Just sayin’.
Tag Archives: humor
Who I was when I was here before.
The scary-ass truth of the whole mess is that this town made me who I am – I am forcing it to own up, even if it doesn’t want to.
Because before I was the walking mound of dorkbomb awesome I am today, I was Tiny Me – one half of the town fixture set of sweet little blonde twins riding bikes and going to dance class and selling Girl Scout cookies and generally doing our gleeful little girl thang in the Colorado sunshine of our safe and friendly hometown. (Gosh we were cute.)
Time passed – and I was Teenage Me. Not really a bad thing, unless you are my mom (sorry, mommy… love you. Seriously.) Even then – in all my teenage angst – I was still very connected to our growing burg. I sat on the Coordinators’ board at the local teen center from 6-12th grade. Hell my graduation speech was about how our little town had grown up with my class.
I got to try on all the different identities that appealed to my fickle Gemini teenage girl self – here where mountains-meet-prairie-meet-civilization they all made perfect sense.
-Wanna-be College Kid Me, in her Birkenstocks and wool socks baking in the sun over a cup of coffee and some pretentious novel on University Hill, nursing the broken heart of my College Boy first love lost and buzzing back and forth to Boulder in a rusted out $600.00 Honda Civic covered in political bumper stickers. All “student council VP” and “I’m SO testing out of this class and graduating early” and overwhelming desire to get things started already.
-Angry New Wave Me, bangs spiked straight up in the air with a mixture of egg whites and Aqua Net, Smiths t-shirt and worn out Vans cast off from the skater boy next door – smoking cigarettes under the street lamp in the middle of our tiny street with the rest of the suburban hood rats trying so hard to rebel. (Gasp! SMOKER!! Don’t worry – grown up Keri did give it up.) So much attitude and black eyeliner, I am lucky both came off as I got older.
-Country Sunshine Me, cowboy boots and boot cut jeans and the reason the Bull-Riders Only logo (about 1 inch big) is tattooed on my left shoulder – not that you notice with the others that have come along since. Throwing my overnight bag in the back of the Cherokee and hauling up to Cheyenne with my oldest friend for some family hospitality and country boys, Thelma and Louise style. (Well, sans the whole “death” thing… you know.) Hitting up the tiny county rodeos with my dad, farmer tans deepening as we walked the stalls looking the livestock up and down.
And a bajillion little mini-personas that came and went, no-harm-no-foul, as we all went through our days growing up here. Convening at the Country Kitchen Cafe, or the 7-11, or (for the most private and sacredly secret conferences,) the hill where the water tower (now towers) presides over the town spreading out before it – where we could stand and stare out and speak into the drop off, not looking at the other person, knowing the wind might well blow the words away if we weren’t quite ready to have them truly known.
If you consider all of those versions of me – then City Me Current Me, makes perfect sense. An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a sarcastic comment, peppered with tattoos, cozied in a cardigan, rocking a pair of well worn-in cowboy boots.
I may be marinated in 17 years of city grit, but I am the monster they created here.
When I think of it like that – it is actually REALLY easy to want Jr to have every bit of the same.
Awww – she got sappy. LAME!!
( Add that to the description: “wrapped in sappieness.” I am uncontrollably, unabashedly sappy – and it is always a sneaker, Ninja-style Sap attack that leaves people going “awww man, she did it AGAIN! I need another beer if she is gonna get that way about stuff.” I know. I just don’t care.)
Filed under musing
You are my Everest, Mega Coon – Just Sayin’.
Some people fear intruders. Some fire, some worry over freezing pipes or furnace woe or leaky roofs.
I know my home ownership nemesis all-too-well, for I have looked into his beady, evil eyes.
He has mask-like markings, and is the size of a station wagon.
TROUBLE, THY NAME IS MEGA-COON!!
Call me Ishmael, because this will be an epic battle- mark my warning. But I must win, or decend into madness trying.
Just Sayin’.
Filed under Uncategorized
On brunch and babies and laminate counter embarrassment.
Yesterday we invited friends over for brunch, which is kind of like, the highest honor we can bestow upon someone (Because you totally care if you get some of my egg casserole and one or two of The Mr’s impossibly strong and spicy Bloody Marys right? No? Not about you.)
Anyway – this isn’t about our reverence for brunch, or even my obsession with being the hostess (which is a neurosis for another post,) really.
It was inadvertently kind of a big deal, though. Because as it turns out, we have had exactly NO ONE over since we moved in.
Well – no one other than my family, The Mr’s mom, and one dear family friend who came into town from The ATL and was our first overnight guest – but that is family and doesn’t count because they know all your shit anyway, and you know theirs, so any judgements cast would be kind of a chicken fight, ya know?
This particular awesome couple is 7 months along in their first pregnancy (“their” HA!! HER, in HER first pregnancy….. and he is there being supportive too, but seriously, whose bladder is that foot really jabbing?) I was anxious to see them and share the joy and offer up any baby gear they might want to pick from the pile in the basement storage unit too (because kids are EXPENSIVE, and even though a baby swing may very well save your sanity in the beginning of things, that moment is fleeting, and then you are left with a lot of expensive, barely used stuff.)
It just made sense to have them out to the house, even though “house proud” isn’t exactly our family motto quite yet. Actually, they will be one of the few to experience the kitchen pre-reno, since after they departed, I drilled out the holes for the new hardware that will go on after the cabinet refinishers do their thang at the end of this week, followed quickly the next week by the granite guys with our counters. Things are coming along, but we are FAR from being finished with the de-generic-ifying of the abode.
Either way, in they blew, up the highway from the city and into our outbound work-in-progress.
No really. They blew in. Because it is so freaking windy out here, like, All. The. Time. that I have to bite my tongue to keep from belting out the chorus of Oklahoma! every time I walk out of the house. SERIOUSLY – I do NOT remember it being so G.D. windy here when I was growing up. No wonder I used so much cheap hair spray when I was a teenager – it must have been a war keeping those 90’s bangs at full staff.
The Traitor Mr. extolled the virtues of life within spit-ball distance of the foot hills, and the slower paced, wide-open-spaces existence he has become the poster-husband for; while I eyeballed how little OJ I could get away with putting in my mimosa and still be able to call it “a mimosa.”
This particular growing brood isn’t actually long for the urban jungle themselves, setting their sights on the ‘burbs on the south side of the city in the not-oh-so-distant future, so at least we could skip the long-winded explanations about that decision. (Since when did I EVER skip being long-winded about anything, though. Really.)
It was good to see them. It was good to have them, have anyone, in our space again, actually. To remember that the road goes both ways and most people don’t actually think like I did when we were in the heart of it all (I was seriously put out if I had to drive to even one of the outer ‘hoods. What up, lazy? Clearly, I’m working on it.)
So I guess the new house is officially open for business when it comes to entertaining.
Blow on in anytime, friends – the construction is ongoing, but the Bloodys are strong, the Mimosas are kissed with only a hint of pesky OJ, and if you hoist a bed sheet you can probably sail your car right off the highway and into the subdivision and save the gas.
Reluctantly Suburban 