What to do?

This cat has an owner but the owner doesn't let him in the house. He's been outside in the pouring rain all week, the freezing cold in the winter, and 100+ during summer heat waves. I pulled 5 ticks off him the other day. He hasn't been fixed, he's all cut up on his face from being beat up, and we feed him a few times a day.





We're trying to rehab him, get him use to the indoors and figure out what a litter box is.. but he wants to be outside. His personality is frickin amazing. Seriously. He loves people, the dogs love him, and him and Bear are best friends. They actually hang out together on the back deck.
We can't leave him behind. He needs to go to a home. We've even discussed keeping him. I'm getting ready to report his "owners" for neglecting their dogs to the point that another neighbor has been stepping in to care for them. So he needs a home.

I know there are a lot of animal lovers the visit here, so if you have any thoughts, ideas, whatever, please do share. I need advice on helping him adapt to indoors, and advice on reporting these people and making sure they don't go out and "rescue" more animals.

Oh, and here's a couple journal spreads I did recently. Plain Jane but paint can be messy and time consuming so I packed it until we are settled in the new place.

These are pictures I found in the attic. It's our very 1st house when the kids were still little.



My butterfly bush is growing like mad. I'm going to miss it.

Picture test from phone

ETA:
I'm setting up my phone for text and picture updates during our move, since we may be without internet for a week or 2. Not the best quality pics, but it's nice to know I have this option.
I love technology.

Simple Art Journaling

Moving can certainly keep a person busy, especially when moving to a house half the size of the one you're in. None of us are clutter-bugs, but damn, where did all this stuff come from? I have sorted through truckloads worth of attic boxes and closet stuff. Giving away, selling, throwing out... it feels soooo soooo good. It's weird, I was stressed before, but the more I get rid of the better I feel. I should be more stressed now, but I feel this weight being lifted off my shoulders.

I also decided, for now anyways, that during this transition I was going to do some easy art journaling and not keep digging out the paint and brushes. I just keep my huge book and a bag of photos, glue, tape, scrapbook papers and a bag of pens and colored pencils. Nothing wet that I have to wait for layers to dry, and no messy cleanup, so I can slap some papers on the page, stick down a photo or two and write my thoughts. Here's the first spread I did the simple way.



That was after a long day of running errands. Check out the picture I took in the parking lot of a Lowes near the new house...



That's right, a Gold's Gym. An 80,000 square foot Gold's Gym. Only 7 minutes from the house. SEVEN. About a minute down the road is a mall. A real live mall near our house. No goats, no tractors driving down the street. There's a Michaels, a Pier 1, a Best Buy... Don't worry, I wont go shopping crazy, I just need to be near the city. Seven. Seven minutes. That's how long it takes me to get to the mailbox at the end of the driveway right now.

Here's another simple spread I did the next day. As much as I'd love to set aside an hour to practice getting use to a paintbrush, I just don't have the time to invest right now with all the sorting and packing. I bet I invested 10 minutes ripping, glueing and taping. I get my creative fix for the day and it doesn't kill my schedule.



Here are the pictures from that spread.

I just set up mobile blogging from my phone so i can keep posting updates during our move. I wish i had a qwerty phone!

Rambo

Today Brandon brought some boxes down from the attic and we started sorting everything into bins. KEEP, GIVE, and THROW
Tony and Ashleigh came over and looked through the stuff with us, and Tony was real excited to find Brandons sword collection. Yes, that is a purple dog leash around his head.



Here's video proof of his craziness. My camera was not cooperating but I just had to get him in action.



While he was going all Rambo in the dining room it woke up the poor kitty. Alex is deaf so he can't hear a thing, but he felt Tony jumping around all excited.



Well I've closed up my Etsy shop until May when I unpack my sewing machine and fabric and papers again. I'll try to keep coming back until they shut off our internet due to overactivity. Is that a word?

The last few days

I figured it's safe to come back to my blog since I'm a little less frazzled. Is frazzled a word? Anyway, we still have a whole bunch of junk we haven't sold yet, like the pool table which yes, I'm still stressing over, but I probably wont throw up over it until next weekend, which is suppose to be our last weekend in this house. That is if all goes smoothly, which I hear it may not because someone called us up and said "Hey the appraisal was suppose to be ordered 2 days ago" and what he should have said was "I was on vacation in Vegas and didn't make sure everything was done before I left, and now you might be screwed by a few extra days." Fun fun.

Anywho, let me share some bright spots instead of bitching so much.

I've had a few good laughs by paying the last bill to a company that I won't be dealing with after the move, like Amerigas, and laughing at the guy who offered me $10 off my $200 a month satellite bill per month if we use them at the next house NOT. I actually laughed out loud and told him half the reason we were moving was to get cable. Then they sent me this this morning:

DISH Network has been made aware that your bandwidth usage over the past 30 days is approaching the Usage Threshold. As a result, we suggest that you decrease your usage of the service to ensure that your service speed is not lowered temporarily, in accordance with the FAP.

Goodbye suckas! We've downloaded a few videos this week so we have something to watch while we are in between tv services, and apparently their system can't handle it. I'm talkin Youtube stuff, not DVD quality. The biggest one was 9 minutes long.

Tony seems to be doing better, and I saw Ashleigh this weekend. Larry told her to lay off the yoo-hoo's but we all know there is a 4 inch tall baby in there! That's what it says on the baby chart at the bottom of this page. Only about another month before we find out if it's a boy or a girl. We should be all moved in and can start thinking about getting ready for granbaby!!

I was checking my email today and saw I sold 2 books sometime in the middle of the night, like an hour apart. Not sure if I hit the front page again but I'm very thankful for those sales right now. I'm getting ready to close up shop in a few days, mostly because if anyone even buys anything I may have to hunt for it. Monday I think I'll be busy, getting orders out and paying some bills. We only have (after yesterday) 1 more payday before closing and it looks like we are going to make it. I was sweatin bullets over that one. Mostly for the fact that we just found out we didn't qualify for the no money down loan just a week ago. Now we can stop worrying about finances and worry about stuff. Lots of stuff.

This morning we had some errands to run and while we were out we visited Larry's boss's goats. Here's the mom, the dad, and a few babies that are only a few weeks old. There's a little black one that somehow has figured out how to get in and out and I guess he does it fairly often. Larry found the dad loose once and was nearly violated.








This big guy here was down the other end, but I just thought he was pretty.
He has a cool "goatee" *snickers*



So tonight a bunch of people got together to go to some last hockey game of the season and Larry and Brandon both went. I have the house to myself :) I was instructed to take it easy and watch tv or rest somehow, and I assured him I would sit around and do some art journaling. So, that's what I'm getting ready to do, atleast until it gets dark out and I get freaked out by the Texas chainsaw massacre guy. I swear he watches me from our backyard late at night. Y'all know we live in the sticks, and just incase we forget, people who manage to visit us way out here usually remind us as they enter our house. So the TCM guy only has 13 more nights to come get me and then I'm gone. He knows noone can hear me scream way out here, and maybe the one lady who spies on us with her bionic ears and binoculars wont be paying attention. So if I never post on my blog again, you'll know the country finally killed me. But, I'm hoping for the best. Maybe I'll be like Jessica Biel and finally escape to the city.

Oh hey, one of our fellow bloggers got married today, or is getting married? I don't know what time it's set for but today is her wedding day! She swings by here every now and then and I've seen her on some of your blogs, but if you don't know who I'm talking about it's
Brittany of Not Your Everyday SuperGoddess
Congrats Brittany and Adam!

Can I just cry?

My head is pounding, it's one thing after another. I sat down this morning and did some art journaling, just to write it all down. I always feel better when I do that. The page turned out nice, just a simple spread but simple is where I want to be right now.



Instead, here is where I really am.



It doesn't show the ringing phone, the stack of paperwork, and the broken down vehicles.. but you get the idea.

The first big ticket item has left the house

Sold the truck last night. Now Brandon has more money toward a car (cause this is way too big and hogs gas) No one ever drove it either. It just sat in our yard as a project that never happened. I'm glad to see it gone. One less thing to worry about. One step closer to our goals.



We still have to sell the pool table and one of the hot tubs. I'm worried about the pool table. It's worth some money and I don't want to see it go for beans.

Brandon helped me bring my marble top tables outside yesterday and get some decent shots of them without boxes all around. They so pretty...





I just don't have much room and they didn't really serve a purpose other than decorative. I thought about using the biggest one in the entryway under a huge mirror but Larry mentioned putting some of my photos on the wall, so I have it all worked out in my mind... the paint, the trim, the mirror and photos, how to blend it all together so it flows smoothly and looks like it belongs together, but the table doesn't match up with the design. Not to mention the entryway is not very spacious, and anyone with a waist over 30 inches might have to squeeze around it, so I'm letting them go.
*sniff sniff*
Oh, here's info incase you are local and interested:
Measurements are 17x50" and 16x33"
I purchased for $300, will sacrifice for $100

I know I said no inside photos of the house just yet, but this area isn't that messed up so I'll show you what I'm talking about. This is the view of the entryway from sitting in the livingroom. It's a bit dark cause the shades were closed. The wall on the left Larry is planning to open up some how, maybe an open pass-thru window to the kitchen. That hallway is where the front door is, to the right, and the mint green color is the wall I'm gonna put my mirror and photos on. I think that box there might be a door bell, not sure what I'm gonna do about that. So yeah, the table might get in the way of traffic, specially when I'm coming through with groceries.



Anywho, only 16 days left. The stress is high, mostly due to the large amount of money we found out we needed down, and the race to get all this "stuff" cleared out. B has no car and he's using mine while looking for another, he's been out of work for almost 3 weeks now with all the changes at work, he can't really get another job cause he has no vehicle and is in the middle of moving out of town. He may wait until we are actually in the other house. He's also stressed about the truck because he wanted to give it to his brother but that didn't happen. I talked to Tony last night and I'm starting to worry about him. He sounded pretty upset with what's going on with the economy. See he was in construction also but they cut more than half the company so he went back to selling cars a couple months ago, and there aren't many people buying right now. So he's working 12 hour days trying to sell and not getting very far with it. He's got that new apartment and a baby on the way and he's just feeling overwhelmed. I wish we could help him but we are struggling ourself, trying to budget everything to make sure we can get into this new place.

We also noticed one of our neighbors moving in the last few days. They just moved in last summer so have only been in the house for maybe 9-10 months. I don't know what their story is, but I can guess it might have something to do with how much it costs to live back here.

So yeah, I'm feeling stressed and sad and worried (I think we all are) but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I just feel like there's a lot of work involved in getting there.

Ok, too much sadness so I'm making a list again...
Today I am happy for:
1. The truck being sold
2. The grass getting green
3. Leaves growing on trees
4. The packing and sorting is half done
5. My arm not stinging any more
6. The possibility of an $8,000 home buyers credit
7. Making the Etsy front page 2 days in a row
8. My wonderful bloggy online friends
9. Saving the life of a mousy

Junior caught it, Bear stole it from Junior, I let it loose before it got hurt. Heck I don't care! We won't be living here next month! Run and play little mousy, just stay out of my scrapbook paper drawer.