It's been awhile since I posted! Things have been pretty busy in our lives.
First thing's first, I'm excited because two weeks ago I ran and completed a 5k course on a whim! :) It wasn't a competition, just me challenging myself to run an entire course without stopping......and I did it! It may not be a big feat to many people, but I was proud of myself! I think I made pretty good time too! When I finished I felt invincible. Like I could climb a mountain. Jump up and touch the moon. Live in a large nest on a cliff's edge and raise a baby bald eagle by feeding it Alicia Silverstone style while images of the American flag appear in the background. Me shouting, "fly, eaglet, fly!" while God Bless America plays on repeat. Run, Tracy, run! I also kind of felt like this:
Not sure if that makes sense, but it's how I felt. I've had that song stuck in my head since then. My body was super sore the next day. I haven't attempted to run the course again. :( I need to keep practicing and then pick a race, hopefully next month.
I thought I was having a crappy week, but then I came home last night and found this:
Awww :( Evidently a bird swooped in and pooped right on the center of my poor, innocent puppy's head. Sad, but I will say the timing of that bird's poop is absolutely stupendous. Bullseye!
When I saw Ruby cluelessly running around with shit on her face, I cracked up, felt a little bad for her, then cracked up some more. Oh, but she got me back! Don't you worry!
I got sidetracked with doing things around the house, so I forgot to wipe the poop from her brow. Later, I was sitting on the couch when Ruby popped her head up onto the cushion. Absentmindedly, I grabbed her face with both of my hands, leaned down and gave her a little smooch on top of her head. Because I always do that. But she's not always wearing a dried turd for a hat when I do this. Yes, with one kiss of the lips, that poo all but dissapeared. Fantastic.
I know Ruby had a bad day, but she didn't have to rub it off on me.
I took my shoes off under my desk and a little while later looked down to put them back on. Why, hello mismatched sandals!
I discovered this 30 minutes before the end of the work day. This, of course, was after I walked downtown for lunch and stopped to chat with a friend. All while wearing mismatched shoes. Sweet.
Please excuse my months old pedicure. I think this incident is actually a cry for help from my toes.
Can't wait to see how the rest of the week turns out.
We took a trip to Lake of the Ozarks over Labor Day weekend with 5 of my 11 closest girlfriends from high school and their significant others. In high school my friends and I lovingly referred to ourselves as the "dirty dozen." 'Cuz we awesome. The whole dirty dozen was invited on this second annual trip, but not everyone could make it. Sad face.
After screaming and jumping up and down in excitement upon arrival Friday night, we went to bed and woke up Saturday raring to go. We had reserved a boat to use all day but scrapped that idea due to the imminent threat of rain. So what would a group of 12 adults do when their boat plans get canceled? Go play Lazer Tag? Yes, my first thought too, but surprisingly that's not what happened. The overwhelming response to this dilemma was to make a game out of 12 dice and a paper plate.
Just a short post and some pictures to recap our weekend. We had BEAUTIFUL weather here and it was the first weekend in about a month or so where we didn't have plans or need to be out of town. Awesome.
Wow! It's been awhile since I've posted. I'm already slacking on this blog!
We've had a lot of activity around our house since I last posted, including a recent trip to the Lake of the Ozarks with some friends over the Labor Day Weekend. I think I'll save the Ozarks trip for a future post. Let's just say there were mermaids involved.
So, to get everyone up to speed:
#1 I felt like there was a baby living in my chest all last week. It felt like there was someone sitting on my chest--or living inside of it. There was a lot of pressure going on. It's starting to feel better though! No baby yet!
This was me last week except without the smile. I'm not sure if the baby was smiling.
#2 We had our fantasy football draft (cue eyeroll from most readers). Now, please stick with me as I explain this trainwreck of a day (yay!).
For those who are unfamiliar with fantasy football drafts, here's a super quick explanation: we are a ten player league=ten people managing their own fantasy team. Draft day consists of each person picking real NFL players for their fantasy team one at a time, following a preset draft order. It gets serious because we play for money. Dolla dolla bill ya'll. We put some time into deciding who we think are the best players out there. You can totally overthink it too (ahem, my brother-in-law). Drafting should be a simple process, but we like to make it our life's goal to make things as difficult as possible! High five!
Just getting started. This is serious business.
I also wanted to point out that this is our garage and not our home. Just in case anyone was getting ideas.
Well, we decided to keep up with our annual tradition of inviting three other league members over to hang out during the draft. Ryan made his famous chili (YUM) and I had my infamous anxiety attack about not studying enough for the draft. We got online with Yahoo messenger and our mic and also via phone call with the five other league members. Time to get this party draft started! Since we are upstanding citizens, our draft day also consisted of:
shouting
imbibing copious amounts of alcohol
petty name calling of league members aka our friends and family
lots of inflated egos *sideye to the men*
plenty of swearing
speculation on the size of other league members' body parts
listening to everyone's "expertise" on playing football, coaching football, the NFL, and general comments on athleticism
more shouting
laughing
consuming more alcohol
partaking in too much of the above and drafting a subpar player when it's your pick of the draft
repeating for hours on end until everyone's rosters are filled or one by one people are too incoherent to function (usually a combination of both in our league)
Basically, it's a man's typical outing with friends---except with some females in the mix (myself and two others). It. Was. A. Disaster. We had one person in the hospital and instead of, oh, I don't know, letting that person be in the hospital and allowing someone else to pick players for her, we thought it would be prudent and down right sensical to call her at the hopsital for her draft picks every round until she was finally released. I'm sure the doctors wanted her out of there because they were tired of overhearing our phone calls and the mess which is our league. The mics kept messing up on the computers (a lot of "huh? what did you say?" going on.) We also kept losing phone service thanks to a big storm moving through. Frustration levels were climbing because all of this was slowing the draft down. There was angry shouting. We ran out of beer. We ran out of chili. We had broken beer bottles, broken hearts and broken dreams.
Orange and pink posterboards to keep track of picks on draft day. We're legit.
Draft should have taken two to four hours at the most. Our draft took EIGHT HOURS. Classic. I'll never get that time back.
My team logo
After the longest day of our lives, Ryan and I dragged ourselves to the couch and ended the night with this awesomeness:
Holy moley, the television programming they have for babies these days! The baby inside my chest loved it. We all drifted asleep sucking our thumbs with dreams of a fantasy football championship dancing in our heads.
P.S. Did I mention I'm a two time champ and have made three fantasy bowl appearances? Oh, I didn't? You bet your sweet butt I was bringing it up on draft day. Repeatedly. Possibly excessively.
The champ's plaque. Yes, Tom Brady was decapitated by the end of the night.
So, according to Ryan, we made some sort of "blood oath" about a year ago when I talked about starting a blog. Apparently, this alleged agreement specified that if I started a blog, then Ryan could get a new tattoo on his chest. And not just any tattoo, but this gem:
You do not even have to explain to me how this tattoo and a blog are completely unrelated. I get it. I get it so much, that I'm absolutely certain I never agreed to Ryan getting a steamy, puffy, bubbly "fart" tattooed on his chest.
In the past he shared with me his overwhelming urge to get a "fart" tattoo in puffy, girly (wth?) letters. I told him a tattoo like that could be legitimate grounds for divorce. I remember conversations about the tattoo, but I did not agree to this tattoo as a condition of starting an online diary blog!
So last night our conversation went like this:
Me *glowing with optimism*: Hey! I found a blog I started last year and I'm going to try posting again!*cheerleader move*
Ryan: What?! You started a blog? *slow smile spreads across his face aka foreshadowing*
Me: Yeah! Didn't I tell you when I made my first post?
Ryan: No, you didn't. Do you remember our deal?
Me *huge sense of dread in my gut*: Um, no?
This is when Ryan explained our so-called pact and referenced the "fart" picture above. It was drawn by a friend over a year ago and has been lovingly pinned to our bulletin board ever since (classy).
Me *panicked*: I didn't agree to that!
*wild gesturing*
Ryan: *huge sense of dread in his gut*: (fart escapes pants)
Me*sideeye at Ryan*:Shit.
So, two things:
#1-subconciously I must have remembered a conversation about the tattoo and blogging (don't tell Ryan), because I didn't choose to tell him about my first blog post.
#2-There is no way in hell I want Ryan to get that tattoo.
It would be equivalent to seeing this every night:
No disrespect, Roseanne. I love you.
Basically, this
Plus, this
= gangsta super creepy
Let's hope they don't start making scratch and sniff tattoos.
Well, it looks like I've done a mighty fine job of keepin' up with the ol' blog here :) Since I didn't have any readers before, I probably don't need to explain that things have changed since my first post: Ryan and I tied the knot and have been truckin' along through married life and enjoying every minute of it! Things are pretty darn good.
Now, to the other meaning behind this post's title.... I wanted to share the project I've been working on for awhile. I transformed an old gray (yellow?) buffet into a black beauty.
"I've seen better days"
Well, at least I think she's a beauty.
Fresh and clean
The buffet was full of loose papers and junk and had been sitting in the dining room for a few months. I really wanted to free up some space in my kitchen cabinets by relocating some serving pieces to the buffet, so I got down to bidness! It took a lot of hours and involved sanding the top down, giving the whole thing a quick rough up with the sander and then painting and staining. I ran into some trouble when I sanded through the paint on top and found the veneer....which had several water stains. I tried my best to cover the water spots with gel stain, but you can still see them. bummer. My master plan is to cover the spots with strategically placed junk decorative items.
Sanding hotness. This picture was from a different project, but I used the same stance on this project. It's my go-to stance.
I also applied gel stain to all the nooks and crannies in the buffet, which took massive amounts of time and cussing. I also changed out the old hardware on the cabinets and drawers. I could NOT find any cabinet pulls to match the original holes, so Ryan ended up drilling new holes for me.
The best part is I've turned her into a little bit of a bar too :) I fit all of our bar glasses, shakers, straws, shot glasses, cocktail napkins and other goodies into the drawers. The cabinets have all of our serving pieces for parties and gatherings :)
Yea, we put all these bad boys to use.
After everything was dry I rubbed on Minwax furniture wax for protection and some shine. All in all, it was fun to work on and I'm really excited about how it turned out. I love having the extra storage! The updated buffet has now prompted us me to repaint not only the dining room where it lives, but also the adjoining living room :)
We're still trying to pick a color. Don't judge.
And I printed this cute 1'x3' photo of our wedding party to hang above.
