You may have all been wondering where in the dickens I’ve been lately. Probably not, but I’ll console myself with the delusion that all my thousands of readers have been checking daily, nails gripped into their mice or laptop touch pads, to see if I’ve graced my blog with another dose of Rogue-esque thoughts. And I’m sorry to disappoint you all. Maybe if you commented more, I’d have more inspiration to blog. But probably not, so please don’t feel guilty for the sparseness in comments on my sites.
So what have I been up to? I’ll tell you.
First and most obvious, I have been working my fat little butt off. Which would actually be nice to work that off, but unfortunately my job includes sitting in front of a computer screen and entering data and the most exercise I get at the gallery is an exercise in patience with small children trying to steal semi-precious stones or get fingerprints all over pretty pictures. In May, I got about seven days off total. Which isn’t that bad, considering traditional jobs only provide you with eight to ten days off a month. May was a little tedious. But now it’s June. And June has brought this blogger to the point of mundaneity (the opposite of spontonaiety) where I can’t remember what night it is and when I walk out the door at night I can’t recall whether I locked the front doors five minutes earlier or if the memory I have is from last week. Add to this the announcement that after 20 odd years in the mall, my father is finally closing his gallery. Some people, like me and my father and probably my manager, are cheering. Other people, like most of the customers, kind of cock their heads and make pitying noises and disappointed noises and shocked noises against the evilness of mall rent raises and greedy construction plans. We are “officially” closing the beginning of August. All of the other artists have been notified and are beginning to take their works elsewhere; so it’s already beginning to look a little sparse.
For me, however, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. I will be spending most of August finishing up wedding planning and helping my father transfer his business to another location. He’s moving in with a floral and home decorating store owned by a friend of his. This same store also bought all of our marble and onyx pieces from us. A sale of almost $10,000 – none of that profit, unfortunately. Our back room has been slowly transformed over the last year; a new paint job, some rearranged furniture and a hefty dose of spring cleaning has prepared it for its last transformation to a printing room for my father. He wants to move both the macs (the iMac and his new G5) along with the huge printer back there so he can stay up late into the night printing up pictures and whatnot. I’m sure my mother will be thrilled, considering the den adjoins their bedroom.
This may not be a problem for long though. My parents have also, (apparently in a life-change mood or something, it’s a bit late for a mid-life crisis) decided to sell the house this fall. Which came as quite a shock to most of us children. There is a fair amount of renovation which needs to happen first. Our roof has started leaking in several areas, and my mother wants to finish updating the bathroom and get rid of the ghastly hole in the back yard where we had to dig up our septic tank on Christmas (yes Christmas) break. I’m not sure if they will actually move this fall or will put it off another year or so until K gets a bit more settled. They won’t move far, considering this area is our family’s livelihood. Probably just a few miles closer to my mom’s school or at least inside the city limits. I think with me moving out in September and K in October they will just feel a little lonely with just lil old C to keep them company. And C isn’t looking forward to it either.
During the past month or so, I have also been reading like mad. The librarians finally recognize me at MCL, and I have been visiting almost every week, maybe every 10 days. And you may have noticed a bit of a step up in my frequency of book reviewing. Or not. I doubt this pace will last much longer. But at any rate, I must be getting smarter from reading all these classic books, because I wasted ToG when it came to my initial BrainAge score. I won’t tell you how badly out of respect for my intended. And because I love him and it was the DS’s fault for not recognizing his voice anyway.
Other activities lately have included taking care of my new cat Kiki, fighting with Moose over who is smarter – dog or man – and helping ToG pack for his move to a new apartment. Yes, we are finally moving away from our two sets of evil neighbors. His (almost our) new apartment is pretty much a townhouse that we pay rent on and don’t have to take care of the yard. It is two stories, with basically three bedrooms and two bathrooms. However, we are only paying rent for a two bedroom because the third bedroom contains our washer and dryer. We’re getting a new paint job (standard) and new carpeting (not always standard). It has a fireplace and a loft and a miniscule kitchen, but I suppose I’ll make do. So come September, I will be a Richlander for the first time in almost 20 years. I am not sure how I feel about that. Being a Richlander, that is.
And finally, wedding plans. Whoever said planning a wedding was hard was way too stressed out. So far, everything has a (pardon the pun) piece of cake. After the initial freaking outness of “i have to do all THAT?” I’ve realized I don’t really have anything to do that is really that important. Our guest list is 98% finished (if you have a myspace message from me requesting an address, please provide one or you won’t get an invite. i’m serious) and our photographer and caterer and everything seems to be done. We’ve started the whole premarital counseling thing, which is a lot different than I expected. And according to our pastor, it’s turning out a lot different than he expected too. I’m not sure what that means…We’re ordering invitations this week and have met with our decorator. Pretty much…I don’t have anything to do right now but brainstorm a few more ideas and address five or six more save-the-dates before buying stamps. So either, everyone I have talked to that has given me advice based on their wedding experience was way more detailed, or I’m forgetting to do a heck of a lot of things. *shrugs* Either way, I only have a few more months as the me I know and then I turn into a Me-aden. Haha. Get it?
