It’s official. Our home is up for sale. The sign is in the yard, the info is on the internet and I am waiting for people to start beating down the door to see our lovely home with all it’s new carpeting. At this moment in time I just want to see our home ASAP and get the hell out of Indy and start a new life on the East Coast. When we get to the East Coast I know I will be kicking myself for moving and I’ll be missing my house and Indy so bad that I’ll cry a river.

If you want to see pictures of my house with all it’s lovely brand new carpeting, follow this link:
Daisy’s House Pictures

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Have you ever seen those tags on your mattress or pillow that says “do not remove under penalty of law”? I have to admit, I don’t remove those tags. Somewhere in the back of my mind I am afraid that the mattress police are going to come and take me away to a 4x6 prison and feed me only stake bread and tepid water. I sort of feel that way about other material things in my life as well. For instance, my laptop. I have had this particular laptop for over a year and I still have not taken the advertising stickers off the front of it. If you have a laptop you know the sort of stickers I am talking about. They are the stickers that advertise to the buyers the fabulous delights that the laptop has to offer. Turion64 technology! Lightscribe! 100gig hard-drive! Buy me, buy me, buy me! As I sit here typing this, I am waiting for a knock on the door from the tag police. Yes, I have finally removed the advertising tags from my laptop. I keep waiting for alarms to go off and unmarked police cars to come to a screeching halt in the driveway. So, if you never hear from me again, you will know the tag police came to take me away. Hmmm….I wonder f they give you butter with your stake bread?

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It’s always been my experience that when the carpet installer shows up at your door giving you excuses from the very beginning, you are pretty much screwed and not in a nice dinner and flowers sort of way. (I’ve been reading too many romance books, but I digress). Yesterday morning a van pulled up in the driveway and dumped all of our new carpet on our driveway in the snow. Then this beat up caddy pulls up and out steps the carpet installer’s wife. Seems the carpet installer had been in a bad accident that weekend so she was filling in for him. That would have been fine, but SHE SUCKED! I asked her at 1pm how much more they had to do, as I was trying to gage if I was going to make a certain appt or not. At least a couple of hours she said. No problem. I can deal with that. Thirty minutes later she comes to me and says “I’m done.” Wouldn’t you be concerned? I couldn’t really see the carpet because of all the scraps on the floor. But after vacuuming I was clearly able to see the very poor done seam in my bedroom and in each of the doorways. And there was the fact that she didn’t even bring the 6 feet of metal striping that we had bought. Some areas looked like they had raw edges. Why did we pay an additional $38 for metal striping to go in the bathroom doorway and by the kitchen? I don’t know but I would like my $38 back. That would just about pay for one really nice lunch for my BFF and I. I ask her to look at the seam as she is leaving. “Oh all seams look like that” she explains. “It takes about a month before you can’t see them anymore.” Okay, but how does that explain the piece that is coming up in one corner of my bedroom? I called the owner after she left and he is coming over this morning with “an installer” to finish up the job right. One thing that really concerns me though is the large amount of carpet left. Seriously there is enough left to do our dining room and still have lots left over. I’m not going to do our dining room though, as they are hardwood floors. But you get my point, we paid for a lot of extra carpet that we won’t use. Money down the drain. It’s a shame that all this happened because the carpet looks super awesome. I just wish it had been laid correctly.

So in the middle of all that, I go to my chiropractor appointment yesterday afternoon. I started going there about a month after my car accident. Yesterdays appointment was with their massage therapist who was supposed to “manipulate” the scar from my spinal fusion. I was thinking it would only be about fifteen minutes at the most. Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I found out it was actually a full body massage for an hour. By the time I left there I didn’t care how bad my carpet seams looked. And the best part? My medical insurance paid every penny of it. I didn’t even have a co-pay! Sometimes life can be pretty darned good, eh?

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I’ve been keeping a secret. And you thought I couldn’t keep a secret didn’t you? Hah! Silly reader, of course I can keep a secret. Of course I did have to tell my writing group, and my BFF, and my neighbors, and my doctor, and the clerk at Hobby Lobby and of course you guys. But I swear, I can keep a secret! What’s the secret? Well you already know (even though I CAN keep a secret) but I’ll say it again anyway. The hubster has been considering a job on the East Coast near our hometown in Maryland. He wanted to keep everything under wraps until the deal was sealed. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. He didn’t even want to tell his mother or our kids to know, or anyone. I was fortunate he told me! Now the secret can be told because when we went to Maryland over New Years, the hubster officially accepted a position with a company on the East Coast. So we will be moving within two months. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were renting our home. But we own it so therefore have been busting our backs prepping it for sale. The “For Sale” sign goes up in the front yard next Friday.

Since we have lived in this house for twelve years you can imagine the massive amounts of junk I’ve we’ve amassed. Being a recently reformed shop-a-holic hasn’t helped matters any either. I swear I was going to get around to fitting in those size 6 jeans one of these days (I am far from a size 6), and they were 75% off when I bought them 8 years ago so it would have been a crime not to have bought them. Don’t you agree? And how could I pass up buying the five Christmas trees over the last several years? Okay, I bought three of them after last Christmas. But come on, I mean, we had to have the 7foot tree in the living room, but then the TV room would have looked bare if we hadn’t bought the 4 ft red tinsel tree for it. And the 4 ft green tinsel tree was 90% off so they practically paid me to buy it. And you know my granddaughter really wanted a small tree in her room here to make her surroundings look festive. And then there was the tree I bought for the den. One of these Christmas’s I’ll get around to putting all those trees up at holiday time, I will! And don’t get me started on chicken. Yes, chicken. The hubster swears I am a collector of chicken. But when they have boneless skinless chicken breasts on sale for $1.99 a pound, how can you not buy twenty packages? As it stands right now we have about thirty packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the freezer. I guess I am a collector of chicken.


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So with the upcoming move I have been instructed not to purchase any after Christmas bargains. I tried, I really did. I held firm to my promise and didn’t go to Hobby Lobby after Christmas, not even when I got the insider email stating that everything was 80% off. But today when I went to Meijer’s I couldn’t help myself. All Christmas items were 90% off! I didn’t want to buy anything but I was forced too because everything was practically free. So I was really being frugal by purchasing ten boxes of Christmas cards (one of them Hanukah even though we aren’t Jewish. But you never know when you might want to send a holiday greeting to a Jewish friend), four assorted mismatched Christmas stockings, a snowman wreath missing only one eye and his carrot nose, a sheep Christmas ornament, five slightly smooshed bags of bows, three large wrapping paper assortments, a Dannica Patrick Christmas mug, and (drumroll please) a 6 foot tall snowman lawn ornament.


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I brought my loot home secure in the fact that I could easily find an “out of the way” place to stash all my junk treasures. But with “decluttering” our home for sale and packing up everything considered nonessential, I didn’t count on the fact that there isn’t an out of the way place to hide place my purchases. So I did what any red blooded reformed shop-a-holic wife would do. I hid stored them in my teenage sons bedroom closet. I am, after all, female and you know how highly intelligent females are (we think with both sides of our brains you know). What I forgot in all the hubbub was that we are having new carpet put in all the bedrooms on Monday. So the hubster (who only thinks with one side of his brain) has to pull up all the carpet in the bedrooms (and the bedroom closets) this weekend. Wouldn’t you know he started with my teenage sons bedroom today. I suddenly remembered this flaw in my plan about an hour ago when I heard a loud “what the hell?” coming from my sons closet. Oh crud. I thought quickly though and rapidly answered “what the heck has that boy bought now?” Yes, when in doubt blame the teenager. Sometimes thinking with both sides of the brain is a good thing.

The biggest oops of all? Googling your old high school flame and finding his name on the sex offender registry. I don't think I want to look up any more high school flames. In fact, I'm not sure I want to move back to my hometown anymore. Speaking of the old hometown, our flight home was uneventful even though I had gotten the worst cold in the world while in Maryland. But once we landed the hell began. We left almost 70 degree temps to come home to 7 degrees here in the Midwest and a full blown snow storm. The topper? A dead car battery in the airport parking lot. It took us 3 hours to get home after our plane landed. What a nightmare.



One of the joys of my hometown was sharing the worlds best sub with Jas. If you are ever on the East Coast try a Red Door sub and a birch beer. You won't be sorry. Hmmm....moving back to my hometown is suddenly sounding better!