Relaxation Station

My girlfriend and I bought a house together this past May. It’s a little three bedroom house in Monett. It was my grandmother’s house at one point in time. We painted before we moved all of our stuff in and let me tell you, that was an experience. We painted pretty much every room in the house over a three day period. We certainly learned a lot about how to paint. My brother got red paint on our kitchen ceiling. It’s still there. I haven’t painted over it yet. I need to. I look at it every time I’m in the living room. I just tilt my head up and chuckle a little bit to myself. How could he have done that? We also installed a water heater on our own and cabinets. The water heater was a bit of a challenge. We bought the house and it has a gas water heater, but neither of us really like gas. It makes her nervous, so we decided to go ahead a put in an electric one. We had internet at our house before we had hot water, but that was okay. Installing the cabinets was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I cut the counter tops myself. We still have to install our dish washer and the counter top over that, but I don’t think that’s going to be too hard. I want to finish the garage. I’ve purchased all of the insulation that I’ll need. Next step is dry walling, but I’m going to have to get help for that. My uncle has done a lot of construction so I’m going to see if he can give me some tips and pointer. I love that we bought a house that we can do a little bit of work on, but not too much. We didn’t want to overwhelm ourselves. 

Dark Tower Power

My girlfriend is a big fan of the Dark Tower by Stephen King. She’s been telling me that I need to read it for the entire five years that we’ve been together. I tell her all the time that I’ll get to it. I’ll eventually read it, I’ll pick it up, but I haven’t yet. I really do want to. She says that it’s the best series that she’s ever read. She has two tattoos dedicated to the story, so I think that it has to be pretty good. Sony is making a movie and tv series based on the books. I think that she told me it is going to be released in January of 2017. She is beyond excited. She called me while I was at work when she first saw it announced. I thought something terrible had happened, but it was just her excitement. She gets really excited anytime she gets to talk about it. It makes her face light up.  One of these days I really am going to read it. The story that she’s told me makes it sound like it’s going to be really interesting. I wonder want I’ll think of it. I don’t want her to ruin it for me though. Sometimes she starts to tell me something really important that happens in the series and she stops herself.  I know that she really wants me to read them. I want to too, but I have this sense of dread, I think. I’m not sure that’s the right word for it. I don’t want to be disappointed in it, because I think that would make her sad. I don’t want to ruin that for her.  I told her when she reads the Halo book series; I’ll read the Dark Tower books. I think that is a pretty fair trade in my opinion. 

Holidaze

It’s getting close to Halloween. I have never really cared much about the holidays. We never decorated. We didn’t really celebrate anything but Thanksgiving and that’s because everybody in my family, myself included, loves food. Anytime we get together, there is always a lot of food.  My girlfriend loves Halloween and Christmas. For the last few months she’s been picking up random withes and ghosts and pumpkins. Every time I get home from work, there’s another decoration up. It makes her so happy to have a house to decorate. It’s so different than what I grew up in. Her favorite holiday is Christmas. She starts her shopping in July. I always tell her not to get me anything, but she always does. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her that I don’t want anything, that I don’t need anything. She loves getting gifts for everybody. She’ll put our tree up on December 1^st and it’ll be up until she feels like taking it down, usually in the middle of January. She keeps talking about getting decorations for outside. I have to put lights on the house this year. She told me that as soon as we bought the house.  I like seeing her happy, though, so I’m going to put up lights, and decorate the tree with her. I like starting these new traditions with her.  I know that it’s something that is going to get a little bit crazy when she and I have kids, but I’m looking forward to seeing that, too. She always talks about all the things she wants to do around Christmas. She wants to make advent calendars, hot chocolate, watch Christmas movies on Christmas Eve. I still am not a huge fan of the holidays, but they are certainly growing on me, the longer we’re together. She just has so much holiday spirit. 

Word Pictures

I used to really love to write. I don’t do it as much as I used to. I like to tell stories. I have a lot of stories that just kind of circulate around in my brain. Sometimes I write them down, sometimes I just tell people; anyone who will listen. This assignment has kind of kick started my brain a little bit. I’ve been writing more, and I think I’m starting to like it again. It was hard at first. I didn’t want to sit down every day and around about something. I could not think of anything to write about. I didn’t want to write about what I saw. I wanted to write something original, something that gave people a better sense of who I am as a person and as a writer. I hate busy work. If I’m writing something, I want it to be important or personal. I want it to be something that people want to read.  By blogging, I think that I’ve awakened a part of my brain that I didn’t realize was asleep. I think that by being out of school so long I have just been really out of practice. I don’t think that I have written since the last time I was in school. I’m getting a lot better about it though. I am enjoying it again and that’s such a big deal. It makes this assignment much easier. I’m glad I’ve been keeping up with it though, because I can feel myself getting better. I want to continue to write, maybe not every day or every night, but I want to write at least twice a week. I want to make this a habit. I really want to start putting all these ideas that I have floating around my head down on paper. It’ll make it easier to tell people about them. 

Familia

I want to have a family. I have three younger brothers. I was raised by a single father, and he is one hell of a guy. He does everything for his family. He is always there for me when I need him. I love my dad. He’s been with me through everything, he’s supported me every step of the way in my life. I’ve found a girl that I love and I’m really excited to be starting a family in the future. It’s interesting to look back on my life, from where I am now.  My girlfriend and I have a house. We have a perfect dog. We’ve been together for five years, on the 8^th of October. She wants to have a family, too. I love being able to know that I’ve got a future with her. We have names picked out and everything. I want to have three kids. I know that I’ll be a good dad. I love kids. I’ve got a big family; lots of cousins. I love to play with kids and I love to teach them. It’s so cool to see this tiny little child learn and understand something for the very first time. I used to coach mighty mites. I loves being able to help kids learn something that’s going to help them later in life. I’m excited to eventually be a father. My girlfriend wants our kids to have red hair. I tell her that she’s crazy. I hope they have anything but red hair. I guess that we will just have to wait and see. I hope that everything works out the way we have planned. I’ve never been much a planner. I just hope that I can be the kind of father that mine is. I would be so lucky. 

ERMERGERDFERDS

I love food. I tell everybody that I only care about two holidays; the Supberbowl, and Thanksgiving. Sometimes it is so hard because I’m a diabetic.  I love to eat. My girlfriend loves to bake, too, so that’s really hard sometimes. I can’t eat everything that I want to and I can’t eat as much as I’d like. I’ve been diabetic for 12 years. I’ve learned how to deal with it. I’m on two different insulins; they keep my blood sugars regular, right where they’re supposed to be. I know that every once in a while I can have a candy bar or a sucker and it’s not going to kill me. I think that it’s something that a lot of people don’t think about. I know that sometimes I forget about it. I’ve lived with it for so long that it’s just normal to me. I know that sometimes it freaks people out when I pull out my insulin and give myself a shot. It’s kind of funny to watch people’s reactions sometimes. I want to educate people that give me dirty looks. Taking a shot is something that I have to do, 5 times a day, every day, for the rest of my life. I do love food though. Comfort food and Mexican food are my favorites. I want my Mexican food as spicy as you can make it. I want tears coming down my face because it’s so hot. I’m a meat and potatoes and literally everything else kind of guy. I love Brussel sprouts and asparagus. I love to experiment with different recipes and ingredients.  I love when people tell me about how much they loved this food that they tried and then going home and making that food. I want to taste something from all over the world. I think that if I were to ever travel around the world, it would be so that I could taste all different kinds of authentic food. 

Pets Pet Pets

I never really had pets growing up. I always wanted a dog, but anytime I would get one it just never seemed to work out. They either ran away or we had to move to a play where pets weren’t allowed.  I have never liked cats, but I liked dogs. When my girlfriend first moves in with me, she asked if it was okay if her dog, that she had had since she was 7 or 8, and I said yes immediately. I fell in love with that dog. She loved me so much. Her name was Branwen. She slept on my side of the bed every night. She would always come sit on my lap when I would come home from work. She was more of my dog than my girlfriend’s dog, we would always joke. She was a wiener dog. She died last February. We were both devastated, heartbroken. Branwen was 13. She lived a really good life. We decided that we missed have a little dog around the house, so we found another little wiener dog. We named her Zelda. She is spoiled rotten. We love her more than anything. We still miss Branwen and we really wish that they would’ve been able to meet, but Zelda is such a sweetheart. She sleeps between my legs and she’s always so excited to see me when I get home from work. My girlfriend and I are talking about getting another dachshund. They are the best dogs. I don’t ever want to get a different breed.    Zelda likes to take naps with me. She always fights to get under the blankets. She’s really friendly and outgoing. I hope that we can find another wiener dog to buy. We’ve talked about maybe breeding Zelda. That would be a really cool experience.