The Many Faces of Being A Homeowner

Wow! There is a lot they don't tell you when you sign up to be a grown-up.... I am learning something new everyday. Following the advice of many many people I am taking the house settling nice and slow, one project at a time, not trying to tackle the whole of it at once. I can see where these wise folks are coming from in their advice, man its exhausting! Don't get me wrong our house is plenty livable and we have done a lot to make it ours, but my dreams are soaring and there is so much more I want to do! In the meantime however I seem to stumble across many projects; some weird, some tedious, & some enjoyable, but projects none-the-less.

 Did you know that it takes days, days, DAYS to clean all of the doors in your house. Have you ever cleaned your doors? Give it a shot, it.is.exhausting. I kid you not my hand was so cramped I couldn't bend my fingers for a good 20 seconds. Not something I have ever envisioned myself doing, cleaning doors. Well you know what, they needed a good cleaning, and honestly probably need a follow up (the previous owners had three kids, two dogs, and two cats, you can imagine the love these doors got) my hands just cant take it right now!

 On the flip side there are the daily jobs that I truly love doing, I told y'all my J(o)CD's would come into play! I am obsessed with all things Method and clean my kitchen counters at least once a day. I find it makes me verrrryyy happy to think that I could eat off of those bad boys! Then there are the mundane chores like vacuuming, I do my best to bet my husband as often as possible. When he looses I get a vacuum job! Win-win if I don't say so myself! Some jobs take no skill at all, like killing the trees in our backyard. We seem to excel at that! No amount of miracle grow, soaker hose, or watering seems to bring these babies back to life. Clearly I haven't tapped into my green thumb yet! 

I must say by far the weirdest home owning job I have come across would be related to the birds who seemed to have wanted to duel for ownership rights of our eves. Now before you get all judgey and call us cruel animal haters let me just start off by saying they found the weakest link of this Janes family (me) and honed in on her. So here goes the story of the Backyard Bird Bullies... We were minding our own business oblivious to the world when two sneaky birds built themselves a cozy little nest in our eves. Being the great people that we are, we chose to let these birds continue on with their duty of bringing more cute little baby birds into the world. So the egg hatching process goes according to plan and two fluffy little babies were born. They were so cute that we chose to overlook the pooping mess they made on our porch. Well these little birds grow their wings and successfully fly away (thank you! I kept telling them they better not fly until they are ready because I just wouldn't be able to deal with a baby bird who plummeted to his/her own death). HubsMan and I clean the nest off and go on about our home owning life. Well these greedy birds show back up or they told their friends and they came by and started to build themselves a nice little nest. Oh no mama is not gonna play that game again! So sneaky old me waits until they are gone and takes down the beginning stages of the nest (no worries, no birds were harmed, nor eggs made, the nest wasn't even half way done). To make a long story short these birds continues to try and try with all their might but we were just to quick for them. I spent many of my days sitting outside makings loud noises to keep them away. Yes the neighbors may think I am crazy, heck I was pretty sure I was loosing my mind for a while there - these birds made this battle feel very personal, but guess who doesn't have a bird nest in her eves!?!? This girl!! Julie-1 Birds-0. 

Then there are the fun and surprising tasks that fall into my lap, like decorating for fall!!! Who doesn't love fall? I personally like to pretend I am up north, its chilly, the leaves are the most vibrant colors, and I am snuggled up with a good book in front of the fire. When in actuality I have some soup of the moment going on the stove, it is 90 or so degrees outside, we do have a fireplace (but would be crazy to light that bad boy right now), and the trees, well that is a story in its self as you can read from above. However, I did mange to procrastinate from my daily to-do list and create quite a cute fall wreath, not to toot my own horn, but I am blown away at my skills, blown away! 

The list goes on and on with the many hats that we as homeowners are wearing, but I can honestly say that I wouldn't have it any other way! I love the life we have started and cannot wait to keep it all going!

A little, as the cyber world calls it, throwback to when we officially bought the house! Whoop Whoop!! From May to September how the months have flown!

A closeup shot of the house (taken 9/18). Note the LSU flag, the Black & Gold/Purple & Gold flag, & the fall wreath. Gotta represent NOLA! Also ignore the brown parts of the grass, we are still getting a hang of this whole lush grass situation...but do note the nice straight lines, way to go HubsMan!

My distraction turned... Uh so cute! Fall Wreath!

It Has An Official Name!

Anyone who has spoken with me in the last two weeks has inevitably heard the drama that is my hip saga.... well I can happily and with relief say I have medical jargon to support my ramblings. It appears I have something called "-6 degrees of femoral retroversion." Simple right!?! Well these little words basically mean that my hip is not facing the correct way and needs to be surgically corrected. The surgery will be called a derotational osteotomy. Makes perfect sense right? To Learn A Little More About Osteotomies click on this link. This article is insightful, but does not entirely cover my specific case. However it was helpful in my understanding a little more about what's to come. 

In a nutshell two years of hip pain, numerous doctor visits, 5 MRI's, countless X Ray's  and a CT scan later we have answers. To say I am relieved is an understatement. Apparently I was born with this and it took one very smart and kind hip specialist to tell me what it actually was. So thank you Sir! Come September 24th I will be heading to, as tourists so lovingly refer to it, The Big Apple. It just so happens that three of my very best friends live in New York and I am beyond excited to get to see so much of them, silver linings right folks? As any new development arises or I stumble across any other interesting hip articles I will pass back by here and drop a line. In the meantime thanks for the love & support, it has not gone unnoticed!

Haha - I hope for all your sakes, he correctly fixes my brakes (hip) and doesn't make my horn (voice - ability to talk incessantly) louder...