I saw this over on Margie’s blog & thought it sounded like a lot of fun, so I’m joining in!

The first seven people to respond to this post will get something made by me. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

• What I create will be personalized and intended for you.
• It’ll be done this year (2009).
• You will have no idea what it’s going to be. It may be knitted, sewn, embroidered, papercrafted, beaded, waxed, or even a mix CD. I might even bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that’s for sure!

The catch? You have to put this offer in your journal as well, and make seven things for your friends! (If you have already done this, then I will happily add you to the list.)

Are you game?

1. Margie
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7.

We pretty much got everything done by last Saturday night. I’m still working on the nit-picky details, like hanging pictures & organizing things. I got all of the DVDs in order yesterday, not that I expect they’ll stay that way, but they look good for now & I know how to find them all. Today, I think I’ll figure out where I’m hanging all of the pictures & start working on that. We’ve never had the wall space to hang everything up before now, because it was covered by the entertainment center & Troy’s computer hutch, so I’m pretty excited about it. It’ll be nice to have things hanging where they can actually be seen. If I manage to get all of that done, I’ll keep working on the cleanup & organization & try really hard to get the floor ready to be vacuumed.

I never did get to pass out for 3 days & honestly, I didn’t feel too badly when  we finished the bulk of the work, of course, I did a lot of sitting & directing & let Troy & Erin do the heavy stuff. The space in here is so much better & more conducive to actually living in here & not just spending a few hours in, if that make any sense. The room feels so much bigger & put together now. I actually want it to be clean & nice looking & have been inspired to work on it to make it that way.

Healthwise, I get better & feel stronger every day. I was starting to feel like I was never going to feel like myself again for awhile there. I think that forcing myself to just get back to doing things & stop hibernating may have helped more than anything else. I’m hoping that I feel like going out to get groceries tonight when Troy gets home, but if not, I imagine we’ll figure something out or wait until Sunday morning.

We have kind of a stressful week ahead of us, Erin’s court date is Tuesday & he may be going to jail at that time. That’s a hard thing to come to terms with & I’m sending Troy to court with him & I think I’m staying home this time. I’ll probably end up going, just so I can see him if he goes, but right now, it’s about the last thing I really want to do.

I’ve also made a decision about the pets. I love all of them, but I think that as they pass from our lives I’m not going to be “replacing” them, not until we have a place of our own. I feel like I’m raising a houseful of toddlers most of time & it’s really starting to wear on me. So, while I won’t be rehoming the fur-babies we currenty have, they will be the last we have for awhile.

Our new TV will be here tomorrow, that means that my entire living has to be rearranged between now & then. My living room that hasn’t really been cleaned since I got sick after Troy got home from the hospital. I’m all alone until Saturday, so most of this will have to be done by me, unless Troy helps out tonight when he gets home. It’s going to be a fun couple of days. Not.

1. Clean off coffee table & actually put stuff where it belongs, throw out the rest.
2. Clean off end table, put everything on it away or throw it away, wash table & move it out of the room.
3. Clean off round table, put stuff away & take it apart.
4. Clean underneath all of those tables.
5. Pick up pets toys, put away & move toybox out of the way, until we decide where it’s going for good.
6. Clean up the storage until next to Troy’s hutch & take the junk off the top & put it away.
7. Clean top of Troy’s hutch & shelf area.
8. Clean area in front of DVD storage, find a place for guitars & such and put them there.
9. Clean space in front of entertainment center, box up Game Cube & take to bedroom.
10. Unhook VCR and stereo, box up VHS movies, CDs & Playstation games.
11. Take everything off top of entertainment center & box it up or find a new place to put it, cause it’s going away.
12. Clean area by recliner, move altar box to craft room, move scratching posts.
13. Vacuum center of floor.
14. Move furniture to new places & vacuum as you go.
15. Assemble TV stand, go to cable company & exchange old box for HD box.
16. Set up TV & connect DVD player, cable box & XBox 360.
17. Pass out for 3 days.

I’ve about had it with two of the cats. I’ve never had any that just refused to get along like these two, honestly. I haven’t really mentioned Buster a lot, mostly because I don’t really look at him as “our cat.” He was a stray kitten last summer or fall & another, much larger & meaner stray attacked him under our house after I told Rhi we couldn’t keep him. He had several large holes in his chest & side when it was all said & done, so I took him to the vet, paid the bill & we nursed him back to health. We agreed to keep him until we could find a good home for him, but he ended getting attached to Erin (and Erin to him) and so he continues to live here.

Buster has been terrified of Kaji from day one. Anytime they’re near each other, Buster starts hissing & growling, which of course, cause Kaji to start a fight with him because he really doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on if it isn’t a fight & before I know it, they’re going at each other like two motorcycle accident attorneys in a court room. I get up, yell at them, they stop, sometimes they start up again as soon as I leave the room, sometimes they really are finished. We’ve never had this go on for so many months before & while they really haven’t hurt each other (much), ut just gets annoying, listening to the hissing & growling all the time. I’m really hoping they’ll, at the very least, learn to tolerate each other.

I did a bit of organization on my blogroll a few minutes ago. If you have a blog hosted at blogspot, I moved your link over to my blogspot blog (the exception being Post Secret). If I don’t know you in real life & you haven’t posted since October, I deleted you. If you can’t be bothered to post, I can’t be bothered to check every day to see if you have. I deleted a couple of things that weren’t as interesting as I originally thougtht they’d be, too. It’s nothing personal or anything, just cleaning house & trying to make things easier for myself!

The other day we were setting everything up to play Rock Band 2 with Erin, which involves getting the drums all put together, adding the cymbals and all of that. Erin was getting the computer chair fixed so the back didn’t wiggle & we all got to talking about whether they make a chair or stool you can buy for the drums, which turned into me talking about a cool ottoman that has a built-in storage area for the instruments & microphone and all. We got distracted when the dog knocked the Xbox 260 off the place it was & gouged the game & the ensuing chaos from that, so we forgot about it.

I was looking at the weekly sale at Best Buy, hoping to get a few ideas for future gifts & I wouldn’t want to miss out on a great deal. I found a few cool things that I would have liked to have for myself, but I wasn’t supposed to be looking at stuff for me. So I looked around a little more & guess what I found? A really cool Gaming Drum Seat. I couldn’t believe the great price they’re offering it for, too, including shipping it’s under $30.00, which honestly puts it among the lowest priced accesories I’ve considered adding to the game. I think that I’m going to see how much we have left this week after bills and gas & if we have the extra, I’ll show the ad to Troy & see what he thinks about it. If he likes it & thinks it’ll add to the game in a positive way, I think I’ll order it.

I spend a lot of time playing games on Pogo, it gives me something to do when I’m bored or lonely & the games are fun, too. If you’ve never played anything on Pogo, they’re like chat rooms with a game, so you can play & chat, just play or just chat, so no matter what I’m doing, I see a lot of usernames. I got to thinking about them last night, as I was playing bingo & started wondering what people are thinking when they give themselves those names. We had a sxydolphin and a one that was something about what a freak she was and so on. Who thinks a dolphin is sexy & why would you want anyone to compare you to one?

There are tons of women who use their child’s name & mom, or mommy, some who use their grandchild’s name & nana, or granny or whatever. They also use their hubby’s name & wife, or woman or baby.. oneyesterday used her brother’s name & sis. I love my kids, husband & brother, don’t get me wrong, but I am so much more than a mom, wife or sister & when & if i ever become a grandma, I’ll love my grandkids, but I’m not going to stop being me just because I’m a grandma. I probably won’t become a sexy dolphin, either, or anything else like that. Maybe I’m the freak, because I never made my kids or my husband the whole of my existence, but I always felt like it was important to still be me, no matter what else I was. I never wanted to be defined by my marriage, children, looks or sexuality, because there are so many other things that I think are important about me. (says the woman who uses her renaissance faire name as a username *L*)

I really need to get off my laptop, get dressed & get everything together that I need for the rest of the day & head out. I’m obviously not, because I’m still posting here. I’m such a procrastinator, even when it’s stuff I actually want to do. I wish I understood why I do this. I bought my hair dye over a week ago & I still haven’t done my hair. I know part of that is because I can’t do it by myself right now, and the rest is that I hate doing it. I love the end result, I just hate the process.

Other than that, though, I really want to go to Dawn’s house & hang out with my friends. I enjoy their company & spending time with them. The sooner I stop procrastinating, the sooner I can go over there. Maybe they make a supplement to make it all magically better, they could call it Procrastiphedra or Antiprocrastizore or something. Speaking of supplements, I never did research further into Fenphedra or the like, because right around that time was when Troy went into the hospital & when he came out, our lifestyle had vastly changed, from what we ate on up. I’m doing remarkably well without any help!

I noticed the other day, when I drove into the trailer park I live in that they had installed security cameras up near the office. I do get the necessity of good security these days, but I’ve lived here for 5 years & we’ve never needed anything like that before, so I’m not feeling all that safe here now.

Just the other day I’m pretty sure that a guy was going to break into my house & I’ve never been as sure of something like that as I was then. Erin went out to go to his friend’s house (who lives in this trailer park, too). There was a guy right outside, on our driveway that immediately started walking towards an RV that’s stored at the end of our row, acting like that’s where he had been headed to begin with. About 5 minutes or so later, Tiny started barking like someone was at the door, I yelled at her & she ran to the front window, still barking. I looked out & it was the dude, walking out of our driveway very quickly & heading towards a vacant space across from us. I had never seen him before that day & I haven’t seen him since. I was very thankful we had a dog & I’ve been nervous ever since. Maybe I need to install a camera on my porch, it might dissuade a repeat!

In the next few weeks I really need to remember to make an appointment with my eye doctor. I was due to get new eyeglasses last year & we never seemed to have to money for me to get in & get any. My lenses are so scratched up & I know for a fact that my prescription has changed because I can barely see even wearing these. I’d like to get new contacts, too, but I can’t really justify getting any right now, since I don’t really wear them that often. I’m pretty sure Troy needs to have his glasses replaced too, he’s waited as long as I have, if not longer.

I’m enjoying not being financially responsible for the kids’ medical bills anymore, it helps take the pressure off of us, especially since we got all of Troy’s hospital related bills in the mail yesterday. It ended up being under $1000, which we’re very thankful for, but still, it all has to be paid for, you know?