see ya, november!

So the long-awaited Thanksgiving holiday was everything I'd dreamed it would be-- long and relaxing and full of family and food. Really, what more could a girl want? I had so much fun playing hostess and Statham Tour Guide Extraordinaire to my grandparents and dad. We spent Wednesday through Sunday morning in Augusta and did little more than eat, sleep (I took 2-3 hour naps EVERY SINGLE AFTERNOON. How I survived work today without one is a miracle), chat, and hang out/clean at my brother's new house. He closed on his first home on Wednesday morning! Similar to us, he picked a nice, new-ish (2005) foreclosure in a very nice neighborhood about 5 minutes from our parents' house (haaa suckaaahhh) (just kidding, I would love to live 5 minutes from my parents. Seriously). The house is in great shape in general, but it was DIRRRRTY! As in...heavy indoor smokers who left the place REEKING of their vice...silly string everywhere, including the TWENTY FOOT CEILINGS in the great room. Umm...had to hire professionals with scaffolding to clean up that hot mess. But other than that, he's going the DIY route and took advantage of lots of fam in town to help out!!

So here's his new place!! Very nice-- much larger than our house...but then, so is his income. Ha!



Here's my pretty mama, vacuuming baseboards.

Jake patching holes in the kitchen as Poppie supervises and takes care of Goliath.

When we weren't over there, we just hung out at the parents' house. Whenever Lola took a break from running like a mad dog in the backyard, which wasn't often, she would take the opportunity to look super cute in the beanbag. Once, Goliath joined her-- this is the closest I've ever seen the two of them without World War III starting!!

So I thoroughly enjoyed my six days off. Unlike my co-worker, who waltzed in to lunch today proclaiming how rested and ready to work she was after the break, I could barely convince myself to crawl out of bed today. I am counting the minutes until Dec. 23, which is the next day I get off! Luckily I have other things between now and then to look forward to...starting with DECORATING for CHRISTMAS!! Wahoo! And SHOPPING! I decided to take advantage of our sad empty "nursery" and make it happy by setting up a wrapping station in there! That way I have a nice space to wrap gifts and don't have to put everything away every time I wrap something. I'm excited to start using it!

And, just in the interest of Keeping it Real here, this is what my guest bedroom currently looks like. I'm horrified to admit that I have let it come to this, but I've been going through all my decorations and putting up what I can (we don't have our tree yet) and somehow it's just not the neatest of procedures. But I don't want to put it all back away because I hope to get our tree this week! So this is the messiest that room will ever be....and I'm putting it here for all to see. And I hope you like my poetry. :)

Well, time to get back to decorating and listening to my beloved Mariah Carey Christmas CD. That is definitely Matt's favorite part of the Christmas season...the man GROANED as I pulled out my Christmas CDs!! What a Scrooge!!!

one day more!

One more day of work, that is, until my super fabulous, long-awaited, ultra wonderful Thanksgiving Vacation begins!! I am only moderately enthused, as you can tell. On Monday around 5:00 my dad and grandparents should be rolling into Statham and I am SO EXCITED!!! We will hang out here until Wednesday morning when we'll head to Augusta to join my mom and brother and his girlfriend for the rest of the weekend. YIPPPEEE!!

So all I've been doing this week is planning and cleaning and planning my cleaning and cleaning my plans (???)...and...yeah. Not such the socialite this week, but how could I be when there are baseboards to be scrubbed and a new and fabulous cleaning product to be bought? May I introduce you to the latest member of my personal (and always growing) Swiffer family: The Swiffer Dust and Shine:

Sorry for the poor picture quality...couldn't Google Images do a better job of alerting you to which picture would be the best for ganking and putting on your blog? Geez. But alas, I am too lazy to try another one, so you will just have to go to Target on your own and purchase a bottle of this fabulous product. Dusting everything in my house was nothing short of pure delight due to the intoxicating scent of this stuff. I got the "Allergen Reducer" flavor (they also have a variety of Febreeze scents and flowery smells) and it smells like heaven ought to. It has seriously made me consider taking up huffing...isn't that what it's called when you get high off of aerosol stuff? Whatever, I'm just saying. You should buy this stuff, it smells awesome. And it's safe to use on laminate floors, which I'm pretty excited about.

So our weekend has been pretty low-key, but we've enjoyed hanging out at home and gearing up for a week of being surrounded by people. Since we're both introverts, sometimes we have to really mentally prepare ourselves for the emotional drain of day after day of 24/7 people!! But I am so excited to do it!

I also just addressed my Christmas cards and have every intention of driving 10 minutes up the road to Bethlehem, Ga the week after Thanksgiving to mail them. I mean, living 10 minutes from Bethlehem...it seems like it'd be a crime not to get that Bethlehem postmark on my Christmas cards. So I hope that everyone who receives them pauses to notice that. :)

Oh yeah! I meant to mention that I did give in and buy some Mr. Clean Magic Erasers since so many people swore by them . So far I've used one of them and I have to say...I was impressed, but not blown away. I used it to clean the microwave (YUCK chore) and then several doors/doorframes/baseboards (how do those things get so dirty?? YUCK.). It did about as good as regular cleaning spray + a sponge in the microwave, but did a really good job on the door stuff...however, it died pretty quickly. It just got really dingy and started falling apart after like 20 minutes...so that was disappointing. I guess I felt like it was a little too expensive to only last 20 minutes! Anyway, I still have one more, so what should I use it on? What will really wow me? What displays its magical powers the best? And is the Magic Eraser Mop worth getting? Oh my gosh, I am such a sucker for cleaning products. LAME.

SUYL: Pets

There was no way I could pass up a Show Us Your Life dedicated to PETS!!! As you well know, as a married-but-childless couple in our *ahem* mid-twenties (I can still say that, right?), our world frequently revolves around our fur baby, Lola. We adopted her in late September of 2008 and she was about 8 weeks old and of indeterminate breed. As the Humane Society we adopted her from put it, she was destined to be yet another Georgia Black Dog...apparently there's lots of these mutts running around! She stole our hearts (although we'd been planning to get a dog for quite awhile...she wasn't an impulse purchase or anything!) and we took her home and just prayed she wouldn't be too huge.



Here's the day we brought her home. Awww.....

Oh I'm sorry, is the cuteness making your heart explode?? Yeah, me too. Here's a few more for good measure.

This must have been a few weeks later...she's bigger. And her ears got more and more lopsided!!!

Last Christmas. She LOVED laying in front of the fire and hogging all the heat!!

At Watson Mill Bridge State Park in January. We take her on all of our family trips!

And here she is, fully grown, a few months ago, dragging me on my roller blades. :) Big dogs are useful for things like that. And thank God she never got that big...she tops out around 50 pounds. Fifty pounds of the softest, silkiest fur you have ever felt. Fifty pounds of pent up labrador-something jumping on you when you visit our house. She's very smart, but the not-jumping thing is really not her forte. Yet.

Obviously I could go on and on about Lola for days...but that's probably not necessary since nearly all of my blogs do include her in one way or another (I notice that the Lola category seems to have more posts than any other!). What you may not know about me is this: I have another pet. The red-headed stepchild, so to speak... (what an awful expression, by the way...)

Quite a few years ago (approximately 2003) my roommates-at-the-time and I adopted a pair of teeny baby kitties that had been abandoned at a local vet's office. We wanted a pet and when a friend who worked at the office told us about this boy-girl pair of siblings, we immediately fell in love with them and adopted them. I mean...look at these pics from their first few days in our lives. How could you NOT love them?!?

We named them Aidan (the orange one) and Nadia (the calico)...palindromes, you may note. They were the sweetest things. As the years went by and roommates moved in and out, it ended up that I was the one left with them. They spent the first 3 years of their lives living inside our townhouse, but when I moved in with a friend who was allergic to cats, they got a quick introduction to being outside cats. This worked out pretty well for Aidan (the orange boy), but after a year or so Nadia got adopted/kidnapped (a fine line there) by some neighbors who took a liking to her. I couldn't get too mad...they actually took her to the vet and let her sleep inside (even while she was still mine!), which is more than I can say for myself at that point. :)

This was probably in 2005 or so. They were the cutest pair ever.

So for the past 3 years or so it's been just Aidan, and he still lives outside. It took us almost a week to capture him after we moved this summer...he's very skittish and only came up to our porch in the early morning and evenings, so we had to keep going back until we got lucky and caught him!! After we moved him to our new house, he disappeared for a few weeks, but as he always seems to do, he found his way home eventually. He now lives in the lap of luxury on our front porch and flowerbeds and spends most of his days roaming the woods behind the house. He and Lola have a love-hate relationship fueled by curiosity on both of their parts, so they both spend most of their time on the look-out for one another (although Aidan never comes inside and Lola is never outside off a leash). A favorite pastime for both of them is for me to open the front door (leaving the glass storm-door shut and locked!) and let them stare/bark/hiss at each other for hours on end.

So that's my family. Matt, Erika, Lola, and Aidan. What is it with people naming their pets person-names, anyway? Obviously I fall into that category, but seriously. If you didn't know they were pets, you could easily think we had 2 kids!

Join in on the fun-- do a blog about your pets! It was very enjoyable to browse through millions of pictures trying to find the *just right* ones to post! I could probably actually make a coffee table book or something out of all the kitty/puppy pics I have...somehow we just don't take as many pics now that they're "grown." Baby animals (and humans) are just so much cuter!

exclusive

First of all, I would like to state that, for the record, I had a good day today. AT WORK. I enjoyed my job today. I was smiling when I left work.

I need to get that in writing so that on other days where things don't seem quite so shiny, I can look back and remember that some days, I like it. So it's worth noting.

Now, moving on.

Apparently I am pretty hot stuff.

You may have suspected this for quite some time, but in case there were any doubters amongst you, I think what I received in the mail this afternoon should close the case.

A large black envelope. About the size, shape, and thickness of a wedding invitation. Who would send a black wedding invitation?, I wondered to myself. Oh, a black wedding invitation addressed to me...using my maiden name. My confused mail-lady wrote a big question mark next to the maiden name...bless her heart, she thinks I've been a Bates forever. But that's not important to our story. I can't wait to get inside and see what awaits me.

Well, it's not a wedding invitation. Thank goodness.

It is the verrrrrry exclusive invitation to get my very own Visa Black Card.

*gasp*

In case you're not aware of what all this entails, let me just tell you. It's all written right here on the lovely black invitation, so I'll just copy it for you. My personal commentary will be italicized like this.

GET YOUR EXCLUSIVE BLACK CARD NOW.

*Limited Membership
*24-Hour Concierge Service [okay, I'm intrigued. So you'll come to my house, day or night, and be at my beck and call? You've got my attention, Visa.]
*Exclusive Rewards Program [second time they've used the words exclusive. I'm feeling special!]
*Luxury Gifts [like what? a yacht? a 12-carat diamond from Tiffany's?]
*Patent Pending Carbon Card [ummm...why? So that eleven billion years from now, archaelogists can carbon date it and determine that I was a very important person?]
*Annual Fee $495 [WHAT???!! This better be a pretty sweet yacht, then...]

Those are some pretty convincing bullet points. Let's see what else they have to say for themselves. And I quote...

For those who demand only the best of what life has to offer [definitely sounds like me], the exclusive Visa Black Card is for you. The Black Card is not just another piece of plastic [yes, I believe we established already that it is carbon...]. Made with carbon [ahh, there it is], it is the ultimate buying tool.

The Black Card is not for everyone [hence the use of the word "exclusive," I suppose...]. In fact, it is limited to only 1% of U.S. residents to ensure the highest caliber of personal service is provided to every Cardmember. [that's why I needed to blog about this...I'm guessing the rest of you average joes are in the unlucky 99% that weren't offered this exclusive card. They must not have enough concierges to go around.]

Become a Black Card member today and enjoy our 24-hour world class Concierge Service ready to assist you with all your business, travel and leisure needs. [examples of my needs: Business-- "hey Concierge, could you wipe the snot off that kid's face?" Travel-- "Concierge, would you please confirm our reservations at my mother's house for next weekend? We want the guest bedroom with the most recently laundered sheets, please." Leisure--"Concierge, would you please map the most efficient route between yard sales in my extremely rural community? Thanks..."]

So while I obviously have a great need for this Black Card, I'm going to have to go with a no thanks, Visa. I'm not sure what formula you used to determine that I was amongst the 1% eligible for this (could it be my steller credit history with my one other credit card? the one with an average balance of $50 that is paid in full every month? clearly, I'm the type the credit card companies want!). You almost had me with your tempting offers of butler service (is that what a concierge is?) and luxurious gifts, but that $495 fee was a real turn-off. You must think I'm made of monies, and I'm not. If I were, why would I need a credit card? Wouldn't I already have my own team of butlers following me around? Let's think about it, Visa.

So...anyone out there jealous? Anyone actually a Black Card member and you want to share stories of your luxurious gifts and concierges? Anyone want to front me $500/year so I can experience it?...I promise I'll blog about all my luxurious experiences!!