I'm a bonafied grown up

That's right. A GROWN UP. I have high schoolers. Back in the day you were an old hag in polyester pants and a bouffant hairdo if you had kids in high school. Well, bust out the poly's and Aqua Net, 'cause I'm one of them now. They are in high school. I am tripped out in every sense of the word. I think today was even harder than the first day of kindergarten. At least in kindergarten they would let me walk them to class, slap some mom spit on their freshly combed hair, and even let me plant a little kiss on them before sending them into the classroom into the arms of a loving teacher with colorful butterflies on the walls. Sending them off to high school is very different let me tell you. Your kid muster a "I already said good morning, mom. Can I have some lunch money and I need a check for PE clothes".

Then it's off to the car where I had to bribe the kid with his lunch money for a picture of he and his brother together on their first day of high school. This is the best I could get and I wasn't in the mood to get a better shot at 7 am in the morning (and if you will notice Twin engine in the yellow The Clash tee is glasses free. He got fitted for his very first pair of contact lenses on Saturday. The kid is uber stoked) So, we get to the school and the parking lot is gridlock. Seniors in their beat up VW's, Toyota's and pop's cast off Buick Le Sabre's and new 9th grade moms in gigantic SUV's such as myself, effing up the drop off line. Good times. We get up to the head of the line, the boy's jump out and yell "Later, Mom!". Soon they are swept into the sea of mangy high school students. They're gone. It is anticlimactic. They have walked into young manhood in a split second. This is much harder than I expected. I am certain sending them off to college will take me to full breakdown mode complete with me holding on to their ankles as they enter the school.

Now, onto Mi Casa.............. (a GROWN UP'S casa, may I add)

Cabinets are in
(Kinda hard to see but, check out that sunset!)

Another view

Flooring is going in right now as I type. Appliances should go in this week as well and countertop will be going in the week after that (hopefully). Nothing ever goes as planned, so I will see a finished kitchen when I see it. I am SO ready for this to be over. My contractor is a dick. He messed up a cabinet and refused to replace it. That's OK, I am taking it out of my last payment. So there Mr. Dickhead. Other than that we should be on the home stretch with this project. We have another phase to do (the master bedroom) and we have decided to put it off for a while.

Aye Dios Mi.

Twenty

20 months under our belt.

Argh.

Love, sweet love

Our cute hotel, The St Lauren. We were on the 6th floor with a HUGE partio (yes, I meant PART-IO). See, up there with the umbrellas. Good times.

Our view

Monkeying around. Literally.

More monkeys. More fun.

My diet for the weekend

Modes of transportation an the island. Only a few cars are allowed, so golf carts, mopeds, vespa's and bikes are the best way to get around.

Darling little row homes

Walking to the site of the wedding

The site of the ceremony

The view was breathtaking

The reason we were all there.......pure love

Tootles

We're heading out for a few days of R & R. My BFF is getting married here and the wedding party is making a long weekend out of it. Love, friends, a beautiful place........who could ask for anything more?

Sunday, bloody Sunday.

This made my day. I pulled up to my inbox and found this nugget from no one other than my mother in law. She's good like that. I think I'll keep her (my MIL not, turd girl). This has probably been swimming around the internet for a while now but I just got wind (ha) of it. How funny is THIS??? I have been in a bit of a funk, and this made me hysterically laugh.


What didn't make me laugh was the fact that my dog ate a half order of buffalo hot wings. Last night I went to an engagement party and bought pizza and hot wings for the boys before I left. Since we have no kitchen our outside patio table has become the new dining area. Well, unbeknown to us the twin engines 'forgot' to bring in the leftover food from the outside and Bailey helped herself to hot wings and pepperoni pizza. Fast forward to 7am this morning..........my Homie and I are awakened by the most unusual sound. It sounds like a muzzled cat riding a Moped. This strange sound is coming from somewhere our room. We look around all there is is a sleeping dog. We shrug our shoulders and try to fall back asleep. The sound again, we listen it is getting louder and weirder. Then came a smell that would knock a buzzard off a shit wagon. Ewwwww! I look at Homeboy and he immediately says "That was NOT me". I'm like "Right" and roll my eyes. We follow the smell to the culprit. My 75lb bassett hound processing the 18 tablespoons of cayenne pepper and mozzarella cheese. She drops another bomb and I apologize to my Homie. Poor baby. I know she will be fine because this is not her first attempt at people food. She has eaten in her lifetime: a box of Bi$quick, a giant bag of Halloween candy WITH the wrappers, Victoria $ecret underwear, numerous Lego$, a pair of Charle$ David sandals, 5 Beanie Babie$ and one year a christmas present. She has an iron gut apparently. I am keeping an eye on her but you can tell where she is by the smell of her swamp ass nearby, and nearby is right next to me tootin' away.

Bittersweet Olympics

I am watching the opening ceremonies and I am in awe. It is an amazing display of the Chinese culture and tradition. Truly AMAZING. I am, however, watching with a big lump in my throat. When we were logged in our agency predicted we would be traveling right around Olympic time (they told us to expect an 18 month wait at most). I remember being panicked because airfares would be sky high and we would most likely have to miss touring Beijing because of the hullabaloo surrounding the games. Well, here I am sitting here watching the opening ceremonies with my best bud, Hank (my dog), not traveling, not getting prepared to travel, not even close to looking at a picture of our daughter. I sit here with my dog, wondering what our future holds. Will I ever see her?

Two days were referred this month. Hence the lump.
Damn, this is hard.

Switched On

It doesn't take much to turn me on lately. LOOK at my new switches and outlets!!! A Dimmer! Can you flippin' BELIEVE IT?

So here is the progress so far

Insulation

More insulation and where I eat my dinner

Look, even Bailey is sick of construction. Okay, she always looks like that, but still.

Drywall (that corner was my old kitchen, or the cooking closet)

Yay, more drywall

A refrigerator always looks nice in the middle of the room, but it has DRYWALL!

Fireplace drywalled

Are you sick of drywall yet? I'm not.

With paint and electrical done

See all of those boxes? Those are my cabinets. Whose bright idea was it to get them at Ike@?

It was my bright idea. Homegirl wanted to save a buck. Now Homegirl wants to save her marriage (Homeboy is not all stoked on having to putting them together). I kid. Sorta.

The joys of demo. I am getting used to the look of stucco shrapnel and busted up lawn furniture in my ghetto yard with dead grass. We have had two 40 yard dumpsters so far and another one comes next week. Nice.

Do you have any idea what it's like to eat micro'd lasagna from Co$tco for the 8th week in a row? It's not pretty. I found a website for 'no kitchen cooking'. Who knew you could make gumbo in a rice cooker. Too bad it tastes like ass.