10/29/2010

Halloween Scrapbook

Here is a Halloween scrapbook (a real one) that I made two years ago:

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Cheer up, it's Halloween!

It's almost Halloween - my favorite holiday!! I'm trying to get myself psyched up to have fun and enjoy it. Despite my social failings, I do have plans for the weekend. Tonight, my roomie invited me to go to a haunted house and see a scary movie. Then tomorrow there is a beer festival during the day and then a Halloween street party in Ketchum at night. A bunch of us are going to the street party: me, my fiance (Henry), some of his friends, my friend Kira, and my roomie and all of her friends. All of the bars along the street will have music and costume contests. We might head down to Hailey later to the Hailey Hotel, because Henry and I had a blast there two Halloweens ago. I've still gotta try on my costume and see if it looks OK. It's a little skimpier and tighter than I'd like. The dogs have costumes too: They both have bee costumes. I think that will be cute - a little bee and a big bee. Rocky also has a little headless horseman costume that makes him the horse with the little horseman riding him. I'll post pictures of all the costumes and fun later on. For now, I'll post a Halloween layout (below) that I created. It was mostly created using Chaos Lounge's ESS October Color Challenge kit. The creepy girl and the "Witching Hour" word art are from other designers. I'll do my best to find and post their information soon. Hope you like it :)

Yes, I'm still alive.

I am down in the dumps, and have been neglecting all of my social duties while struggling to just stay afloat emotionally. I feel like a terrible friend. I only see the people that I have to interact with on a daily basis, but I haven't made any effort toward hanging out with friends, and I feel really guilty about it. I rarely return phonecalls, and hardly ever respond to emails. I recently made two new friends via email/blogger that I was really excited about. Well, I guess it wasn't recently; it was more like several months ago. But my grip on time is really tenuous. One day I just stopped writing back. I kept telling myself that I would do it tomorrow, but kept putting it off. Now I'm afraid that they think I stopped writing because I don't like them or because I'm mean. Neither of those is the case. But I'm afraid that no excuse or explanation will be acceptible. I also have a good friend who is a mother to two boys and lives 20 miles out of town. I have to go to her if I want to see her because she is so busy with her kids. It feels like such a chore to get myself out there that I haven't seen her since early summer. I wish I would pick up the phone and call her and apologize, but I feel too paralyzed to do it. Someday I will - I just hope it won't be too late. I hope my friends won't give up on me.

6/04/2010

It's been a really long time since I've posted. I turned 31 a couple weeks ago, and it was pretty uneventful. That also means that Henry and I have now been engaged for a year. We moved out of our house on Memorial Day weekend. It was a long and difficult process, taking up every waking hour of three days. We're still in the process of unpacking and organizing. He moved back in with his parents, and I moved back in with mine. We'll both be closer to our jobs, so hopefully less stress, but neither of us relishes the idea of living back with the 'rents. This spring has been really cold, wet and dark, and I'm really ready for some summer weather. I haven't been taking many photos lately; I'm trying to get back into that. Below are a few random shots:

Me loving sleepy Rocky

Rocky fell asleep in my arms. He never does that!

My Birthday



12/28/2009

Christmas

Christmas Eve we went to my parents' house. Shadow and Rocky had a blast playing with their cousins. Here they all are, waiting expectantly for scraps from dinner:

After dinner we opened stockings. The dogs got theirs first. They were pretty excited:

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Rocky helped Henry open a gift:

Shadow was actually a really early Christmas present from me and Henry to ourselves. We just decided that if the right dog came along, we wouldn't wait until Christmas and let the opportunity pass us by.

My parents got me and Henry snowshoes, which is pretty awesome because mine are really old and Henry doesn't have any. Now hopefully we'll get a chance to go soon. Henry still needs snow boots to wear with the snowshoes.

When we got home, I decided on a whim to put up some last-minute Christmas lights. It was really cold outside and I froze my butt off. The wood stove helped out with that. Note our stockings hung by the fire. Henry got me a hand-made one with Tinkerbell on it.

We stayed up late drinking cocktails and watching Elf. Henry made popcorn for the movie, but we can't make popcorn in the kitchen because the popcorn maker always blows a fuse, so he made it in the bathroom:




Christmas morning we opened presents at home, which was really nice. Our first Christmas together in our own place. Henry got me Sketcher's Shape-ups, and I got him a Blu-Ray player. He also got me a beautiful blown-glass necklace. Then we headed to Henry's parents' house where we had Christmas dinner and even more presents. After that, we headed to the bar where Henry works because his bosses were working and we hung out with some of Henry's co-workers while his bosses waited on us for a change.

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10/27/2009

Life in the Country

It's been interesting living out in the Sticks of Shoshone... We don't have central heating, so we've been relying on our wood stove to keep us warm. We haven't been able to make a firewood run, so we've had to make do with scrap lumber received through a personal connection. So far so good, but it hasn't been incredibly cold yet. It's been interesting standing on the porch late at night and sawing up long scraps to fit in the wood stove. There is a wild kitty that comes to visit me while I do that. I've been feeding him because our landlord trapped and moved his mother and siblings, and I worry that he's lonely and hungry. He is not afraid of the saw and often gets right in the middle of what I'm doing. I call him "Kiki." I think he's maybe two months old. The box is his little house so he can get out of the elements. I'm thinking about taking him in to get him neutered and vaccinated since I've started feeding him and sortof become responsible for him. The other night when I was cutting my wood, another kitty came out of the darkness, and it appeared to be pregnant. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do about her if she keeps coming around.

It's nice to have animal company on these late nights when the fiance is working. In addition to Kiki, we've also added another canine to our menagerie. We thought Rocky was getting lonely having moved away from my parents and their dogs, so we thought it would be a good idea to adopt another dog. A local shelter was having a Halloween event to promote vaccinations and show off their dogs, so we went to check it out. We ended up taking a juvenile German Shepard/mix on a trial basis to see if he and Rocky would get along. Rocky actually hated him at first, but now they're getting along pretty well. Shadow (new dog's name) is much more of a puppy than I thought, and he peed and pooped in the house and has been chewing everything. I think he's already getting close to being house-trained, though, which is great! He's also a super-sweet mellow teddy bear. I think he will fit into the family just fine, and we've already decided he's a keeper.

Rocky (left) and Shadow (right)


Rocky and Shadow keep me company all night, which is nice, except that Shadow wakes me up every hour or so wanting to play.

We finally got some basic channels to come in on our TV after much research and about $100 spent on an antenna and a converter box. It's really nice to just have the babble of the TV in the background while I'm futzing about the house.

We got a dryer but still have no washing machine, so it looks like I'm going to make the trip into town tonight to do some laundry. Unfortunately, the washers there are a little rough and have ruined several items of the fiance's clothing already.