The Great Merger

As you might know, Chris and I just moved in together. I have had a lot of time off work recently, which was needed in and of itself, but it's also helped to make the move go smoother. We still have to finish up cleaning out the old place to get the deposit back (hopefully) and we have until tomorrow. I should be over there right now but I'm too excited to a) have had the cable guy install internet here this morning, & b) actually have some internet TIME while not at work or on a schedule. :)

It's so interesting to merge two houses full of furniture and belongings together. I feel like I suddenly have a huge DVD library. Chris found several old photo albums of his that I got to look through and relive this little piece of him and his family that I had never seen. I showed Chris the first lock of Chelsea's hair that I cut off in her first hair cut and the red plastic welfare card I had 17 years ago when I first applied for AFDC with a new baby and no job or insurance on her. There are so many fractions of our lives held within the things in our closets and garages under that which we use more frequently

Part of me (the part who's mother is a pack rat of the worst kind - sorry mom but you know it's true) wants to purge everything! Simplify, simplify, simplify! That part wants to rid the house of all that is unnecessary. If it doesn't fall within the two categories of Form or Function then why keep it around?

I think on some level it's clinging to the past. Some of it is obligation. Maybe to foster a sense of personal history or to look back and remember. When I was cleaning out my closet there against the wall was a little white dress with long sashes and beaded smocking on the chest. It wouldn't fit anyone I know but it's not only a dress that was hand made by my aunt Becky for her daughter, it's the dress Chelsea received her first communion in. Do I toss it in the goodwill pile to satisfy my sense of order and simplicity? What am I keeping it for anyway? Why do I have a 12 year old lock of my daughter's hair, or and unfinished quilt that my grandmother was making for me before she died, or a heavy box full of crystals my family and I "mined" at the crystal mine in Hot Springs Arkansas during the family reunion in 2003. What would I run into a fire to save if the place was burning down? Nothing. It's all just stuff that I box up and move with me every time I move. And every once in a while I can show these things to someone who doesn't know their history or their value and get a little fraction of my past back for a second, just to share that part of myself, my belongings.

So our walls will be covered in pictures of our family to tell our stories. That and James Bond movie poster prints (which I secretly kinda love the idea of.) We'll have two tv's that we don't know what to do with, two cork screws and cutting boards and sets of dishes and tea kettles and spice racks and dresser drawers and desks and couches and old photos and dogs. (Fortunately Honey and Stretch love each other and get along well.) We'll have to sift through the stuff, the belongings, to decide what belongs and what does not. We have to determine the value of our things and explain the value to each other hopeful that they'll see the value too.

There will be a lot we can sell. Our beautiful empty new garage where we parked for about a day is already starting to fill up and only one car can park there now. And we have only scratched the surface of Chris's house. We've given ourselves the summer to have his house empty, decide on a house plan and have a builder hired for the project. That's really not that much time sitting here on May 30th. I'm really not one for keeping a whole lot but I do have things I can and will get rid of. I just had to be out of my apartment and theres some stuff I would like to see if I can sell or if my family might want.

As I sit here with boxes piled up around me and the knowledge that more boxes will be arriving daily until the Wildwood house is empty I have to admit a sense of satisfaction. It takes a huge amount of effort to hoist all your belongings onto your back and move them to a new location. In the unpacking will come more of decisions about what to keep, surprises about what's actually there that had been long forgotten, and memories of our lives-past to share with each other.
So on that note I make my promise not to question or judge any of the belongings to cross the threshold of the merged house and to keep myself open to learning what has value to Chris and add that to the combined value of us as a couple.

LOVE

checking in

This is just a post because I happen to have a few moments in front of a computer with internet access! I won't have long so this post will be short. Chris and I are officially moving in together this weekend and we've been packing like crazy. We have one day left before the movers get here - that's tomorrow. I'm thinking of calling for help on that one. Chris has been amazing. He single-handedly disassembled and loaded up his & Colin's beds from his house yesterday. This morning he packed Colin's legos and his massive - 6 boxes - DVD collection; plus cleaned out his fridge of everything - it's ready to go. While he did that I packed my whole desk except for the computer, plus all the towels & linens, completed the majority of the laundry, finished packing my bathroom, threw out two more bags of trash, and a few more boxes of stuff from the bedroom. My living room is now more boxes than anything else and we'll probably clear out this dining area next for piling boxes tomorrow. Then Tuesday the movers come but Chris has to work. I also have to get an appointment to switch our internet/cable service to the new place so once we move, unless I'm at work, we won't have the internet at home.

The new place it so great though! Since we had the beds there we spent last night at the new place and it was great to wake up this morning in the new rent house with Chris. Also, in the middle of the day we took a break and went to our new neighborhood pool. It was very cool! Lots of kids. Chelsea and Colin will love it there. In fact, I had the thought today that once we have the new house built we might actually miss the neighborhoody feel of the rent house. Our street ends at a trail along a green space and you walk 3 blocks to the park and pool. We've walked that trail every day since Friday when we got the key after the gas man showed up (not till 3:30! tho). So it's exciting and exhausting all at the same time.

I'll post up some pictures soon. Chelsea's spent the last two weekends away - last weekend was her twin friends' birthday party for the weekend and this weekend is her annual get-a-way with the Williams'. She comes home tomorrow and she's going to help pack! It sure would have been nice to have her this weekend just for her babysitting skills because Chris and I have had to have Colin with us the whole time and save room for him in loading our cars with stuff every trip. Yes, we're getting movers but there's some stuff we've taken already. Also, the movers are mostly for clearing out my place because my lease ends and the only things they are getting from Chris's are the washer, dryer, & fridge - unless we have more stuff ready. But we plan to use my living room stuff, Chris's bedroom stuff, obviously we'll need both Chelsea's stuff from here and Colin's stuff from Chris's. Anyway, we've taken several loads over to the new house already. Okay I realize I'm babbling at this point. And we need to leave. It's after 11 and we're sleeping at the new place so we have to go there. I'll be back here tomorrow morning.

Take care all
LOVE

Tidbits since the Weekend

It's been a sleepy week and busier at work than I've ever been there. I've worked overtime (read comp time) every day in the pay period that ended today. Which is okay because I need the last week of May off for the move so I can use up a fraction of my accrued comp time. I think I have 70 hours last time I looked. And I've even stopped counting the times I work through lunch. I'm now accruing comp time on top of working through lunch and it's still not all getting done. Also, just yesterday, my new boss told me that he's not going to approve hiring a new secretary even though the department already approved it and we can easily justify the need based on the volume of people my staff supports. Everyone is overwhelmed and we're not going to get any support from this administration. I'm sad about my job because I used to like it so much. I liked driving to the island and I liked the people I worked with. Now, there's a new hierarchy being established with an unprofessional woman who holds a personal grudge against me and one of my employees. The politics that ensue are driving me to reconsider my place of employment yet again and I feel like I just got there. Some of this is driven by the massive number of deadlines that have all hit at once and I'm hoping things calm down as we move into June. So, this week at work, sucked.

However, this week NON-work was a fabulous contrast to that. Except for the fact that we've gone out 4 times this week - including tonight. On Wednesday night we were up til about 2:30 AM and up past midnight every other day.

We are just starting to pack some stuff. I keep freaking out that we're not nearly ready enough and that we're not gonna be packed in time. To which Chris continually replies, Yes we are! I can pack like a packing fiend. I'm only cautiously optimistic that this will be an eventuality. Tomorrow we're going to get boxes in the morning after getting the cars cleaned out and an oil change.

Dawn called yesterday and she and Jim were chosen by a birthmother who is having a little girl in August. The birthmother is 22 and a red-head. She chose them because of James' red hair. Also, she is apparently adopted and thought that Dawn looked like pictures of her own birthmother. Dawn said she and Jim are very excited. That Jim can't keep the grin off his face that he's going to be the daddy of a little girl. That it's all been totally worth the wait. That it's like all her dreams came true and her prayers were answered.
I'm sure.

On Tuesday night, Chelsea had a date with David. He took her to his band banquet at the Hilton on Clear Lake. You know, the one where that crazy lady ran over her cheatin' husband after catching him with the other woman, and then backed back over his body after running him down the first time with their daughter in the SUV. That one.
Anyways, she looked absolutely beautiful as you can tell from the picture. I'm attaching two. One is of Chelsea and Colin - he thought she should stand under this flower bush but then stood in the shot with her which is cool.

The second one is Chelsea with her boyfriend David, who seems like a nice enough kid. He's smart and good conversation. He seems to like Chelsea well enough so that's cool.



This was our appetizer at Sushi Coast tonight. And I regret not snapping a photo of the actual entrees we ordered because they arrived with such presentation it was tantalizing but at that point I had chop sticks in hand and no time for cameras. What a delight a night out for sushi is for me and Chris. I'm so deliciously full. This appetizer is called Sushi Coast Nachos and included "magic spinach" in the middle. Each piece had some magic spinach inside as well. They were tunas wrapped around spinach and encrusted with crunchy goodness and topped with spicy goodness so that in the end each one was full of goodness.
So that's it for now. I'm going to be in packing and moving mode for the next two weeks. Please forgive any one-track-mindedness this blog may take on. That or my absence.

LOVE

Mother's Day

I love Mother's Day because Chelsea has always made me breakfast in bed. She's getting fancier! This year she enlisted Chris's help in buying a bottle of champagne for mimosas. I also got brie cheese, a strawberry and blueberry parfaitti, & chocolate croissants! Mmmmmm. You can bet I was a happy Mommy today! After my feast and mimosas I went right back to sleep. Chris and I didn't get out of bed until around 2:00 pm today. But we needed our rest because yesterday was laboriously fun!

We left the house around 10:30am yesterday and didn't return until about 11pm. We stopped at HEB for food supplies, ice, & drinks to sustain us for both the annual Art Car Parade and a performance of Madame Butterfly by the Houston Ballet at the Miller Outdoor Theater.

We collected an assortment of cheeses - a wenslydale with cranberries and some spreadable ones with crackers. Plus we got strawberries, cherries, nuts, and of course drinks - water, root beer and some cranergy drinks for the kids, beer and sangria for Chris and I. Chelsea brought her boyfriend David and David brought his sister, Amanda who was visiting for the weekend from college. She's a student at Stephen F. Austin. Yesterday was also the day we met Rhonda's friends the Bulgarians - Iskra and Itzo who were super nice and a lot of fun.

We didn't get a spot under a shade tree like I wanted but we claimed a pretty large part of the median with our chairs that we barely sat in the whole time. We were positioned such that facing in one direction we saw half the parade and eventually the beginning of the parade drove down the other side so we just had to turn around to catch the beginning. It was wonderful! Chris says this is the best parade in the northern hemisphere. At some point during the parade our friend Carl showed up so that was fun. He came with us to Star Pizza after the parade.

We liked Iskra and Itzo a lot! I'd like to have another chance to get together with them some other time. After the parade we went for pizza at Star but they left to go home afterwards and missed the rest of the evening. We also ran into Amber and Carlos at Half Price Books on Westheimer where we stopped to kill time between Star Pizza and the Miller Outdoor Theater.

Once we claimed our place on the hill and could sit for a minute I think each one of us crashed out for a bit. We were exhausted from the heat and being outside and probably not enough water. For whatever reason, I honestly thought we were going to the MOT to see an opera. I LOVE opera. If I had known it was a ballet I probably would have wimped out too. We all would have been at home asleep because I'd have given up and been on my way. So I guess it's a good thing that I read it all wrong because, man, what an awesome way to end a perfectly glorious day! The ballet turned out to be stunningly beautiful and the sun had gone down eliminating the burden of heat, night breezes swept up the hill. It was, in all ways, perfect. I was nestled between Chris and Rhonda with Chelsea, David, and Amanda behind us on the blankets. We drank a bottle of sangria and ate more cheese and crackers, hummus and pita bread, and wasabi nuts. Nothing but rich foods all day!

Chris and I took a stroll along the golf course beside the Miller. It was a beautiful walk in the quiet of night under the stars with soft grass under our feet and the swell of the music from the orchestra drifting in the wind from the hill. It couldn't have been a better day.

Then, this morning, I woke up to breakfast in bed, a lovely nap, and a perfect walk in Seabrook, Chris and I went berry picking! We have NO idea what we'll do with all the berries we brought home - I'm thinking of possibly making a pie. Today we had ice-cream with the berries.

Also, today, there was some really sad news related to the Art Car Parade. Apparently the curator of the Art Car Museum was struck by a car and killed right after the parade yesterday. It's the saddest news - here's the story.

Chris and I are both scratched up from berry picking. He said other families walking along the paths in Seabrook would be scandalized from hearing me cursing in the bushes. But the thorns! The stickers! The thicket of entangled prickly berry vines! Curse them! I look like I have some type of rash but it's just scratches from the berry vines. Each welt is a personal triumph for the delicious pile of berries now rinsed and sitting in my fridge.

Here are some of my photos from the Parade, Star Pizza, and the Miller Outdoor Theater.

LOVE

This is Temporary

I'm sad and a little angry for a little boy I love. You know, Chris and Colin have been living with me and Chelsea since last July when they returned from vacation in California. The plan with last year's move was to rebuild Chris's house so that we could all fit in one house. But we've been having too much fun just living our lives, going out, playing disc golf, taking trips, and dealing with the daily things of life to bother with that just yet...

So this year's plan is to move in together to a 3 bedroom rent house, thereby merging our belongings anyway, while rebuilding Chris's house. It's almost exactly like the original plan so don't think too long about what were the differences.

However, the other night Colin got to drive by the new place and Chris said he talked to him about the new plan and the rebuilding. We don't know if the whole scene that ensued was directly related to rebuilding the house or if it was some type of child-of-divorce drama to play Chris against his ex-wife or what but Colin had a fit. A scary fit. The kind where parents sit across from each other staring helplessly into each other's faces not knowing what to do and suggesting that he might need to see a counselor - he's obviously broken and needs fixing somehow. Colin screamed and cried, hit walls and threw things. He said he wanted to live with him mom because she made him a quilt and gave him more back scritches every night.

I was so very torn as to how to feel about this freak out. Part of me wanted to get in line behind Chris and Chelsea to take turns trying to calm him down like the line that forms behind the hysterical woman in the movie Airplane. Part of me wanted to have a little fit right along side him because I had not had a good day that day at all. In fact, the whole way home - about an hours drive - I had been dreaming of getting in and asking for a little attention myself. My feet were swollen up and I had started my period and wasn't in a good mood. Colin was getting all the attention and I felt like competing with him for about a split second. Part of me wanted everyone to just leave him the hell alone because he didn't really need the added attention and would probably have calmed down a lot quicker if everyone's attempts to calm him had not fueled his outrage. In the end, this is what happened. He cried it out and hiccuped himself to sleep. The next day Colin was completely fine and behaved as if nothing had ever happened. He was his usual 8 year old boy self, laughing and getting into little discussions about monsters and legos and giving out hugs and telling me and his dad how much he loves us. In fact, he is falling asleep right now and the last thing he said was "Melissa, I love you!" as he sighed to himself.

So why the outrage? What is going on with him? Was it a ploy for attention? Was he really sad about the house he hasn't lived in for the last 10 months getting knocked down? Had he just had a really bad day and started coming up with anything and everything he could think of to be angry about to play out the fit? I wonder if he has these fits at his mom's house and if he's ever told her that he loves his dad more.

I don't have a lot of experience with divorce. My parents are still married and I've never been married so obviously never been divorced either. But I do know people who are divorced and it never seems like it's a good thing where it concerns children. Sometimes when I think about James and giving him up I get a little sad. I think I would have liked to mother him and could have done a good job of it somehow. Sometimes it gets to me and I think that it was my last chance to have a baby and I threw it away. But when I think about the realities of keeping it him it always comes back down to a few key points and one of the main ones was Noe.

There is no way in hell I would have wanted to be linked to Noe via a child for the rest of my entire life. The child support battles and the visitation bullshit and the birthday parties with two families and worrying with him off on trips to Mexico to visit with his biological father's family. I've never had to deal with any of that with Chelsea's father because he's so much of an asshole that he's never even met her. But Noe, asshole that he was, at least kept up with all his kids and supported them (at less than he should have with the money he made) and visited them. He also had to deal with their mothers and it sucked. I did not want to be involved in that at all. So I can sort of understand what it's like for divorced people because I actually gave a child up for adoption to, on some level, avoid that whole scene. Maybe that's callous but everyone has to decide for themselves what they can live with.

I think that people need some type of support system with kids - like training wheeels - something to lean on if we think we're falling that helps to steady us so that eventually balance can be achieved. Training wheels for life. The element that I plan to keep with me and remember for the next outburst like that is that this is temporary. Just like 2 year olds get cranky when they are too tired, or 3# year olds get cranky when they've had a bad day at work - the next day everything will come up roses again.

a reflection and photographs of a walk

My birthday just passed me by in such a whirl of gifts and food that I haven't had a chance to blog. For my birthday I wanted to get off of work early and go sit on the beach to write but I had to work the whole day. So now, I'll think about the ocean and the beach and the sky.

As I move forward into my 3#th year of life I have to say that I'm very happy with everything - sure I could be a lot thinner and it would be nice to have some more money and more time. I wish my heels were smoother and the ends of my hair weren't split. My boobs could be a little more perky and I could certainly be farther along in my ever-continuing novel that I so rarely have time to work on. But physical imperfections and personal time management issues aside I've never been happier. I have had a good year since my last birthday - my relationship with Chris has grown a lot and we have plans to continue far into the future so I suppose things are working out well. Chelsea is doing great in school and has a budding new relationship of her own that keeps a smile on her face.

We're moving in 18 days and haven't packed a thing but today I started throwing stuff out which is the first step. Yesterday we found an absolutely gorgeous house. I knew there was a reason that the other house deal fell through - because there was a better house that we were meant to have! This one has windows galore! OMG the windows in this place are completely amazing. I took a video as we were going through it - I uploaded it to youtube HERE.

Today we took a walk along some trails in Seabrook and saw a multitude of wildlife including two different kinds of snakes, some wild boar, many frogs, some turtles, and a couple of bunnies and later in the day - while driving actually - 6 deer. Chris nearly stepped right on a water moccasin which tripped him out for the rest of the walk. There were berry bushes LINING the paths! I can't WAIT for them to be ripe! We'll go with a bucket and fill it to the brim with mulberries and dewberries; take them home, sprinkle with sugar and pour on some cream and eat them! Chris and I ate all the ripe purple ones we could find - some were fat, plump and sweet and others were a little small and somewhat too tart but we ate them anyway. It was a glorious walk and I can't wait to go again!

Here are some photos of things we encountered on our walk. This photo set will grow once I get the pics from Chris.

Just thoroughly enjoying life right now.
LOVE