I'm Fine, We're Fine, Everything is Fine.

I have a couple friends who reminded me yesterday that I enjoy writing and that the infamous blog is woefully out of date, so, thanks to L & M I’m back with a vengeance. Well, probably not quite a vengeance, but we’ll see. Warning: language here may be a bit saltier than usual because, well, life. You’ll see; you’ll get it.

So… I see that my last post was in April. Oh my. Would it be okay to say that nothing much has happened since then in an effort to pretend I’m still sane? Oh right, lying is bad. Got it.

Well, to start with, I think it’s important that you all know that I finally took the plunge and did something I’ve wanted to do for probably ten years. I got a decent pillow. Changed my life. And I don’t just mean one that costs more that $3. We’re talking $30 of ergonomic bliss. Not gonna lie, it took a couple nights to adjust to, but holy crap my old bones are loving it now. I’ve been falling asleep faster and everything.

I went to get a massage a couple weeks ago and it was divine. I scheduled the massage on a Friday as I sat working in the dining room on a twenty-five-year-old chair at three in the morning. I took a deep breath and hurt my back, so something had to be done and I’d like to offer a big ‘thank you’ to the internet for making that possible. The masseuse didn’t explicitly say that my back was the worst she’d seen lately, but it was quite apparent that was the case. She kept asking me if she was hurting me and I responded, “No,” but what I really wanted to say was “I don’t care if it hurts, just fix my frickin’ back.”

She had all these crazy suggestions like I should drink water, sleep more, roll around on a tennis ball and you know, just generally take better care of myself. The audacity of this woman, I swear. We were about 10 seconds into the massage and she felt the very top of my neck and said, “Oh my, how frequently do you get headaches?”  She also asked how long I had been like this and I wanted to say, “I don’t understand- is this not what living should feel like?” I joke, but she really was great, and I will be going back because let’s be real, there is still plenty of work to do.

She did her best and sent me home to take an Epsom salt bath. A bath, people. I haven’t had a bath since our car accident back in ’05. Shit, I’m old. Anyway. Y’all might be aware that my parents have a soaker tub, but this lady was very clear in her instructions and said you can’t use Epsom salt with a jetted tub or they will clog. Fine. Whatever. Fortunately, my parents have tub options. So, there I headed to the normal tub. And by normal, I mean that the part intended for bathing is approximately 45” long. So, most of you know what I look like. For those of you who have forgotten or just don’t know me that well, I’m at least 5’10” and the inseam on my jeans is 35”. Dan saw me walking to the bathroom and he asked, “You’re using THAT tub?” And then he laughed. Dan’s spatial awareness is not his greatest strength, but even he assumed I wouldn’t fit in that tub. Shocker: I didn’t. Appendages everywhere. It was like a clown car was vomiting limbs.

But do you know what? It really was relaxing, and I quite literally passed out afterward. So all in all, a win? I’m still not really sure. It was all quite surreal.

We successfully sold our house, made a profit and left South Dakota at the end of May. Dealing with moving, finishing the basement, working from home, home schooling, house viewings and contract signings was 100% the giant nightmare it sounds like. What a terrible time to sell a house. That being said, we miraculously rocked at keeping our house spotless for about six days. The place looked fantastic. Truly as immaculate as a house can get while a family of four is living in it. But it was NOT FUN. It was so not fun that afterward, we didn't go back to normal, oh no no no. We went straight to absolute filth. It was like when they mucked up the fish tank in Finding Nemo.

We moved in temporarily with my parents while we finished buying our house, which we closed on at the end of June and started renovating with aplomb. Yes, aplomb. And for a moment, it was going great. Remember when my biggest problem was pet fur in the paint? Ahhh. Those were the days. I remember them well and look back on them fondly.

Well, that was in JULY and now it is OCTOBER. Some of you might be wondering why I’m bathing at my parent’s house. Funny you should ask! And thank you for your interest and concern regarding our current situation!

I don’t even know how it happened anymore; I think we wanted to move the toilet location, so we brought someone in for an estimate and learned that we needed about $20-25K of HVAC work done. Yes, you read that right. TWENTY TO TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS needing to be spent on nearly the most boring bit of building. The only thing more boring would have been foundation work. And then we found out there was asbestos on the ducts as well. AWESOME. You know what? We weren’t even surprised. It’s just like, okay, might as well just sprinkle some lead paint chips on our cereal and get on with our day.

So our HVAC work was done by the end of September and our plumbing will hopefully be done this week, so that’s good. And we have most our kitchen installed. By the way if the thought of assembling something from Ikea makes your stomach turn, I would advise that you not get a kitchen from them. There was just a garbage bag full of hardware delivered to us. I know a guy and we paid him to do it, which was the plan all along and money well spent. So once the kitchen arrived, it was pretty smooth sailing. And ordering it too, was awesome, thanks to the aforementioned guy. So easy.

Delivery was a bitch. And kept getting bitchier. We had deliveries coming via FedEx and another like third party delivery service or whatever. Try arranging a delivery with multiple companies who don’t want to talk to you and who somehow have your wrong phone number AND address. And then, after updating the information, the delivery company straight up frickin’ lied and said they tried to call and that they waited outside for fifteen minutes with no response. NO. NO YOU DID NOT. We were literally watching the road and the phone all damn day. But yes, we thought it would be fun to pretend we weren’t there? We absolutely loved wasting eight hours waiting for you while you supposedly called and knocked on our door. Because we have time for that. Sure.

So, we still need a full bathroom remodel and the guy who hasn’t been in contact with us FINALLY just called about 30 minutes ago, so that’s good news. I’m still dreaming hard to be in by November. HA. Just leave me alone and let me believe what I want.

Oskar has obviously started at school by now. He is doing a hybrid model, so 2 days in person, 3 days at home. We just had his conference and apparently it’s going well, though it really doesn’t feel like it most days.

Elena is in preschool/daycare full-time and only about a two-minute walk from my office and she LOVES it. It is going really well, and I love picking her up afterward and hearing about everything she learned. Also, now I have a buddy for my half hour commute, which is nice, but I feel bad that she’s wasting so much time in the car. And no, the half hour is not because of traffic, it’s just that far to travel.

I had a dream, back during quarantine, that made me laugh. And I’m going to share it right here with you all now because it’s so stupid.

I had been listening to Hamilton a lot while working so I had a dream that there was this Hamilton sweepstakes thing and our neighbor across the street won. And what they won was a meet and greet with Lin Manuel Miranda. I’m no crazy fan girl or anything, but I saw the giant tour bus pull up and I saw him get out and I thought, wow, that’s pretty cool, it’d probably be neat to meet him. So he was walking around the neighborhood, looking in windows and calling all the neighbors out to meet him, so I’m like “Hell yes I will come out and chat, it’s not at all strange that you are literally peering in to people houses, I’ll be right there.”

So, the thing about real life during quarantine is that it was all about comfort, am I right? So, I LIVED in my Comfy. If you don’t know what it is, look it up and then buy one because they are amazing, and you will not regret it.

In real life I had fallen asleep in my Comfy on my couch, and in my dream, I woke to a big ass tour bus rumbling down our crappy road, still wearing my comfy. So, upon being invited outside, I decided, I haven’t really gotten dressed in like a month, maybe I should do that now that I will be interacting with people in real life. I could go into detail here, but I think all you really need to know is that I definitely missed the whole event because I forgot how to put on a bra. This made me angry, and somehow I thought chasing the damn tour bus down the street would fix it. And then I woke up. And I laughed.

Quarantinis anyone?

Raise your hand if you've spent your entire time in isolation just hoping and praying that I would post something on here. No one? Well, regardless, it has arrived, and you're welcome. Go get yourself a drink and settle in for happy hour. This is the very best we can do.

I'm gonna be honest with you; nothing in life has properly prepared me to deal with what we are going though right now. And I suppose most people would agree with me on this because let's face it, life is weird right now. It's hard enough to have both Dan and I working full time from home while being responsible for educating two children and keeping them busy throughout the day without just running movies and video games all day long. BUT like perfect fools, we have decided to pick this time in history to sell a friggin house! This means that we have four people (two adults and two tornadoes of activity), essentially trapped in a house 24 hours/day except when someone comes by for a viewing and we somehow have to keep it spotless during it all! In my defense, this has been the plan for a year or two now, but seriously, do we know how to time a move or what? When we have a viewing, we escape to Dan's office, because what the heck other option do we have? I'm all about silver linings though, so at least it's not flooding this year. Yay! AND can we all just take a minute to be thankful this is happening during Reese's egg season? I mean come on! Bring on the Quarantine 15!

To catch y'all up, Dan has officially submitted his resignation and we are on our way back to the Twin Cities. I will continue to work for the same company in our office on the west side of the cities and he has been on the waiting list for placement up there for over a year, so hopefully he gets some bites soon. The kids are doing well so far with the transition. They are very excited to be closer to all their cousins and a set of grandparents, but Dan and I have started to worry that Oskar won't get the opportunity to say good-bye to his friends here with the schools being closed. The school year here typically ends in the middle of May and the current plan is to go back on the fourth (hooray for star wars day!) but who knows if that will actually happen. His teacher is using a video sharing website though, which has been a lot of fun for him and has allowed him to see his friends during this time. It's just short videos, but it's something and we appreciate the effort.

Chinese food and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Oskar had a program scheduled for April 7th where he had a small solo, so I'm sad that he won't get to do that and that we won't get to see it, but I assume he will have more solos in the future. We (Dan and I) had planned to go to Hawaii on April 13. That's obviously not happening, which is fine. It's all fine. We understand and we are adaptable, but if you know us- you know we don't go on a lot of trips. We finally schedule something and the world starts on fire. Again with the impeccable timing. Good grief.

The first two weeks of working from home were embarrassingly awful, but here in week three we are starting to figure it out, even with the sudden interruptions caused by showing our house. I stole my chair from work and brought it home and it has made a sizable impact on my productivity, so at least we're heading in the right direction. Also on the work front: I recently received notification that a hospital project I've been working on that was 95% complete is now changing to an airborne infection isolation ward because of all this COVID-19 crap. Do I know how to design an AII ward? Heck no! Does that matter? Heck no! Though I suppose lack of knowledge has never stopped me before... should be interesting.

She looks so prim and proper when she's not yelling at me.

Elena continues to frustrate us to no end. Four year old extroverts have a hard time understanding why we can't go anywhere. Fortunately, she is also clever and amusing and provides some levity these days:
-We were watching Brave the other day and Elena looked upset. I asked her if she was crying and she responded. "I'm not crying. I'm just worried and it's coming out my eyes."
-She tried on a dress the other day that had a halter strap. "Ahh! I love it when my arms don't have wrappers!!!" Don't we all?
-"I can't wait until I'm older and I can watch scary movies where people get died with ropes." (We don't let her watch the hangings in Phantom of the Opera, though even with this knowledge, that is a bleak statement.)

"I'm not tired!"

Thanks for reading! Happy isolation everyone!

The Louver Poll Conclusion

My name is Dorisa, I am 33 years old and I have brown eyes. Most of you know these to be facts, as did I until 11:30 last night. Imagine my surprise when upon looking through some old photos that I discovered that my eyes are in fact, NOT brown. Yea, shocker. My mother assures me that they used to be very brown, but they haven’t been for a long time because the photo I saw it in was from 2006. Don’t ask me how I didn’t notice that I was lying. I have no idea. Apparently eye color changes in about 10-15% of the adult population, so if you have just been assuming you know what color your eyes are, check again; you might be wrong. Let me know what you think my new eye color is. There still is brown in there, but it's definitely not the dominant color anymore.

Meanwhile, while Oskar is out spreading rumors and telling people I sleep all day, Elena is my champion.

Elena: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Sitting and relaxing.”
Elena: “I didn’t know you could do that!”

Well, the louver poll is closed and while Dan technically won, it’s safe to say that we are both losers here. With statements like: “Everybody knows what a louver is!” and “No one knows what a louver is! You only know because of your job!” we would have needed more than a 3 vote difference to say either one of us was right. Anyway, all y’all who don’t know what a louver is? Please educate yourselves.

I caved and Elena has recently started ballet and tap. She loves it so much and despite me not wanting my kids in so many activities at this age, she is doing exceedingly well in both dance and gymnastics. Besides thinking gymnastics is a race, that is. She’s still not hurting for confidence either. We got a save the date the other day and she pointed to the guy in the photo and goes, “Is that the silly boy who loves me?”

Putting her awesomeness aside, we may need to get a psych evaluation done on her someday. I mean, she’s had a couple creepy moments previously, like when she randomly said the sun was burning out (technically not wrong) and when I told her not to choke me and she responded by saying, “Not yet,” but she did a couple drawings lately that had me cringing.

The first isn’t as bad as I initially believed, it is apparently a camel, but I definitely thought it was her having a bonfire on the couch. Though she just clarified that someone sprayed fire on it, so yea, this here is a picture of a camel… on fire:

Alright, moving on. Next picture. Here I thought she had drawn a baby in a hot air balloon. Cute, right? 

No. No, it wasn’t. Because I had it upside down.  It’s a girl. A girl on a mountain who is sick. Okay, so that’s fine. Kind of sacrificial offering in depiction, but whatever. “She’s going up into space!” Well, that’s pretty cool! Why is she going up into space, sweetie? “To get kill the aliens and get died.” Well that’s just great.

Add all this to her comment about refusing to play a game that doesn’t include eating or killing and I am becoming a bit on edge around her. I mostly joke, but seriously, if any of you all are licensed professionals in the art of understanding children and I have any reason to fear for my life, please let me know. She’s often quite a sweet child, but she does enjoy hurting with hugs, so add that to your evaluation.

Oskar is a trouble right now and Dan has admitted he is to blame for passing down his behavior and ADD (currently being assessed). I am struggling because my brain works so much in the opposite direction of his that we are having major communication issues. We are fortunate so far as any issue he may or may not have has not yet impeded his academic progress and he continues to do well in school, even with the lack of focus and distraction. We really struggled (Oskar and me) with communicating when he was three(but who doesn't at three?), and at the time if we both just stopped yelling at each other and I gave him a hug, we were able to figure it out. That method has unfortunately gotten less and less effective and he has gotten infinitely louder, so, yea, it’s been rough lately.

My favorite breakdown recently ended with Oskar screaming, “YOU’RE TREATING ME LIKE THEY TREATED MARTIN LUTHER KING JUNIOR!” To clarify, we were doing no such thing. Fortunately, even he saw the absurdity of his statement and didn’t make it through the sentence without laughing. I was seriously appalled that he thought to even utter such a phrase and I was caught somewhere between laughing and crying. I’m so, so glad that we were at home and no one else heard this. After a lengthy conversation explaining that even his largest plights as a middle class white boy would never compare to those of anyone fighting for civil rights, I knew the lesson hit home when he responded by saying, “You can’t ring the liberty bell.” So Dan said, in summary, “That’s right, you can’t ring the liberty bell and you can’t compare your struggles to civil rights leaders.” There are so many things we say as parents that just ought not to be said, but then there they are, and there’s no going back. A couple days later he jumped on me in bed saying, “That man who killed Martin? We can infer that he was a VERY bad man.” Thank you, Oskar. That is very important information to tell me first thing in the morning. Excellent use of ‘infer.’

Now here's Oskar to sing us out:

A little something to finish up the year

If anyone knows what the hell happened to the last 4 months, please let me know because I lost them. This is going to be a rough one, buckle in.

After 2 months of nearly constant studying and testing, I successfully completed the last part of the Architectural Registration Examination on August 4th. The “paperwork” took another two months after that, but I finally got my license. It’s behind me now and I am so glad to be done.

Regarding puppy chow, she says, "That looks dirty."
"Do you want to try some?"
"Mmmm. That is bery delicious."
(She can't say very.)

The day after I passed my last test, I hoofed it out of town with a good friend of mine and we trekked all the way out to Laramie, Wyoming, where another friend was waiting for us. Meanwhile, Dan took the kids and his parents to family camp. Last time I “vacationed” to family camp I came back even more exhausted than when I left. I did not want to go again. This was the longest I have ever been away from my children, and while I missed them, I was fine with it. It’s nice to remember that you are an actual individual person, not only a servant/bodyguard. We had a great time in Wyoming (and on the road to and from) and took some particularly inspired pictures. My friend is a creative genious and we went to Carhenge TWO TIMES! Changed my life. When we were there I laughed harder than I had in years. It was absolutely amazing.

Be a bear!

Now pretend your arms are tusks!

Labor day weekend brought with it the usual craziness of the state fair and the renaissance festival but we also added in the Bison game at Target field, because how could we not? My little Bison were adorable, and I think Oskar now legitimately considers himself a fan of the team. Elena was exhausted and quit midways through the 4^th quarter, so we carried a very sleepy girl all the way home on the light rail.

We hit renn fest on the perfect day where weather was crappy in the morning and lots of people gave up trying to get in when they got stopped by a train so it was not at all busy and absolutely wonderful.

In an effort to try new things, we convinced Oskar to try out of the Christmas Carol at the high school. We talked about it on and off for a while to get him prepared and as I was about to turn off his light one night, he goes, “I think I’m going to be one of the skating penguins…” “Oskar, I told you that’s not the right Christmas Carol. ” “Or a rat.” At least we know that he is watching the right movies. I had fully intended on showing up and getting in and out of this tiny audition in 15 minutes, quite unaware that everyone and their brother would also be auditioning. All he had to do was sing The First Noel, which he absolutely nailed on the way over there. After waiting in line for an hour however, he lost his focus and didn’t sing nearly as well as he did in the car. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still proud of him for trying, but I would have appreciated if he hadn’t yelled out, “Finally we can get out of here!” as he left.

Pretend campfire.

I took Elena to Arby’s last night and on the way over she said, “I don’t want to bleed again.” About a month and a half ago we went to Arby’s and she fell into the window mullion, slicing open her gums above her front teeth. Holy moses did that thing bleed. It was gushing for probably 5 minutes. Thankfully there was no permanent physical damage, but apparently the trauma remains. She will not be sitting by the window in Arby's any time soon.

I didn’t get bronchitis or pneumonia this year!!! Even with passing the ARE, I consider this my biggest accomplishment of 2019. I’m so happy. In other news I’m trying to get back into my hobbies and projects. I’ve started writing again (obviously not talking about the blog, we know that’s not going well) and I have a couple t-shirt quilts started in the basement. Some of the t-shirts I’m using are shirts with quotes on them from high school. I cracked up reading them the other day. For the most part I can’t remember who said what, but as a group I must say we were kind of funny. Whoever said “Don’t steal Dorisa’s food or she’ll kill you”? Yea, that’s still true. Good work. After those quilts are done I’m going to get into my photo organization and get some family yearbook type things made. And no, none of these are resolutions, just me trying to take care of myself. Basic human maintenance things that have been haunting me and I'm sick of it.

Had this idea for a photo. Turned out okay, but not the best.
I might try an redo it, but as she gets taller it's loosing the effect I was going for.
 Standing there posing for this shot though? Yea, painful.
My body definitely isn't the same as it was when I was dancing and I'm sure the 20 year old shoes didn't help.