How I Spent my Summer Vacation
By: Cathy Gurski

I had a very exciting summer vacation this year. I spent one day a week searching for jobs and filling out at least two applications so I could continue to collect Unemployment. I also spent about 20 minutes a day following my dogs and picking up after them then carrying around bags of poop while they frolicked around the neighborhood, peeing on any vertical surface. There were also several days where it was simply too hot out so we all hid inside with the lights off and curtains closed, AC blasting, watching the same episodes of Supernatural, Las Vegas, The Closer, Cold Case, Law and Order, and Bones over and over again. I killed my little garden of Verbena by not pulling up the grass that decided to take over the box. I did laundry, cut the grass, scooped litter boxes, did dishes, and occasionally I actually cooked. I spent a lot of time thinking about how much weight I need to lose, but lost my motivation to, I don’t know, try to lose it. I spent a lot of time thinking I should study and get some professional certifications that might help me get a job, but lost my motivation to, I don’t know, study so I could pass the test. I spent a lot of time looking out the window at the nice garden bed we built, which is now overgrown with grass and weeds. I lost my motivation to do something about it. I thought about writing short stories, I even had some great ideas. I immediately got writers block and lost my motivation to keep trying to write. I thought about starting a photo blog. But I lost my motivation to seek out places to take the pictures. I smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank a lot of Appletinis. And wine. And White Russians. It was a very good summer vacation. I can’t wait until next year!

Okay, sorry. This isn’t as funny as I wanted it to be.

The way this works is I have been gradually increasing my dose of Chantix since last Friday. In theory, the Chantix plays with the same receptors that attracts the nicotine in the cigarettes, keeping them happy so I don’t have as many urges to smoke. I’ve been following the prescription and taking the medication just like I am supposed to. So today is D-Day, zero-hour, my Quit Day. I am supposed to try very hard not to have a cigarette. If I fail, that’s okay. I am supposed to just pick up where I left off and keep trying. My doctor expects me to be down to at most one or two cigarettes a week in 12 weeks when I go back to check in with her. My goal is to be done. Completely done.

Today has been a little hard already. My smoking trigger is basically anytime, anywhere. So not having that cigarette when I first got up today has left me feeling a little weird. Like my body expects it. It’s not really that I want the cigarette itself…Just the fact of not having one is odd. I had a handful of pistachios during a particularly difficult moment and that seemed to help. We’ll see.

See you next week!

The first house we went to was…small. Everything felt smooshed. There was no basement, no attic, and very few closets. The owners have cats though. One of them looked like it had swallowed a basketball. It was a normal-looking cat except for the very, very round middle. I thought it looked like it had a tumor. Mike thought the damned thing was a tumor.

The second house we went to was pretty big for a town house. It had large rooms and was on a huge lot. Much to our surprise, it is being sold as-is. The listing didn’t say anything about that, but I guess that isn’t really important information. The living room and dining room are pretty big. They need wall paper removed, a fresh coat of paint, and new carpeting. Not much else. The stucco ceiling is only slightly out of date but is in good condition, so we don’t need to worry about it yet. We moved on to the teeny powder room on the main level. It’s a toilet and a sink, which is all you really need except that the door to the sink cabinet is on its last hinge. Literally.

We then saw the kitchen. The flooring is not horrendous, but is ugly enough to warrant being replaced. The cabinets make no sense. They are squished against two of the three walls (are are really ugly) and someone removed all the knobs from the cabinets and drawers. Someone also installed a “breakfast bar” against the third wall. It was done pretty badly. The height was off based on the cabinet height, and they actually covered a cabinet. The configuration of the cabinets and counters isn’t bad. There is plenty of counterspace in the important places, i.e. next to the sink and stove, but the thing is so ugly the kitchen will have to be gutted.

Next came the “partially finished” basement. What this means is someone tried to build a wall. They did it badly and they put it in a really retarded spot. So that will have to come down and the whole basement will have to be completely finished. The basement door also has a lot of glass in it. This makes it too easy to break a pane and gain access to the house. Door’s gotta go.

We moved on to the bedrooms. Halfway up the stairs I burst out laughing (as did the agents showing us the house). It was about halfway up the stairs that I saw the piss-yellow shag carpet. This carpet is in the hallway and all three bedrooms up there. The bedrooms were actually of decent sizes. The master bedroom has two closets of a smaller size than I would like, but they are useable. The bathroom. The master bathroom is pretty small, but it does have its own shower. The shower had the largest grime stain I have ever seen. I swear nobody had ever cleaned this shower. It was black. The thing needs to be taken out and burned it is so bad. If we decide on this house, the shower has got to go before I will set foot in it again.

The yard is pretty nice. It needs a fence, but that’s not hard to do and doesn’t need to be done right away. I would like to know why there is a waterfall of ice hanging off the garden hose holder. I’m hoping someone just left the spigot on. Mike saw an extension cord when we were leaving and decided to follow it. He followed it around the corner and up the wall to a spot light. Mike and I are very sure that little baby ain’t up to code. The realtors agreed. At least they used an outdoor extension cord.

The third house was also an as-is. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were a little on the small side, but still useable. The living and dining room had gorgeous laminate floors that were in excellent condition. The dining room also had a sliding glass door that leads to a patio. Not too bad. The kitchen had gorgeous stainless steel appliances. The cabinets were all falling apart. There was no bathroom on the main floor.

We went to the basement next. It was fully finished. Someone built a small room in one of the corners by putting up wahfair theen walls. The light switches were over by the sliding glass doors that exit out to the back yard. You have to walk across the dark basement to turn on the lights. The wood-burning stove was a nice touch, but then I saw the bathroom. There was carpet on the walls. It wasn’t piss yellow shag, but still. We were able to look at the back yard. It has no grass. I think this is because none will grow thanks to the very large pine tree.

We finally made our way up to the bedrooms. The master bedroom was not too small. Instead of a master bathroom, there is a private entrance to the upper level bathroom. The other bedrooms weren’t too bad. Every single closet door was broken in some way.

The last house we looked at was okay. It had a nice yard and looked well maintained. It had a nice sized patio. Big enough for a patio set and a grill, but not so big as to take over the whole yard. I thought it was a little odd that there was no step down from the patio, but that’s minor. It isn’t a tall patio. There seemed to be a little rot in one area of the rail part, but that’s also easily fixed. We went back in and the agent showed the condensation inside the glass of the door. A broken seal means that whole door will have to be replaced. The living room is fairly large, but long and a little narrow. The dining room is also a good size. They cut a window in the wall between the kitchen and dining room for a pass-through. Not a bad idea, but they cut it too small, in my opinion. The odd thing about this dining room is the suspended ceiling. We can’t for the life of us figure out why there is a suspended ceiling with some really crappy fluorescent lighting. The hallway to the kitchen and front door has gorgeous linoleum tile that looks like stone. The walls have wood paneling. With nails not in all the way and not finished. Rush job on that one, but not that much work.

The kitchen has the same linoleum tile. Floors look beautiful until you really look at them. And see the half-assed job someone did of laying it. The kitchen is large, but the flooring was done badly so that needs to be redone. One of the first things you notice about the kitchen is the cabinets. They’re nice enough, but the seller bought them off the shelf at some discount place. Nothing fits! They hung the upper cabinets too low, so when they had to put the fridge in they had to move a cabinet up so there is one cabinet that isn’t level with the rest. There are gaps in between cabinets and walls. The pass-through has part of a cabinet covering it on the left side and a huge amount of space between the opening and the cabinet on the right side. It’s as if the seller thought the old cabinets were so bad that they could do a really bad job in replacing them to overprice the house by at least $20,000. The whole kitchen will have to be redone in this one.

The upstairs has three decent bedrooms, a master bath (small, but nice), and a shared bath in the hallway (gorgeous tile job on the walls around the bathtub/shower combo). The basement was…interesting. It was partially finished. They built a wall in a goofy way. They divided the basement into two areas. The finished part had odd angles because of the way they built this wall. Instead of a nice rectangular room, they created something that looked like the “Z” shaped pieces in a Tetris game. The other side was unfinished. This is where they have a laundry area. There’s also the most effed up sump pump I have ever seen. A hole in the ground nowhere near a corner and what looks like a vaccuum cleaner hose that goes straight up and out what used to be a window. Is that even up to code? I have no idea but I hope an inspector makes the seller do something about that before the house is bought.

All-in-all it was a productive day. I actually really like the second house we look at. It needs a lot of work, but it’s nothing that can’t be done over the span of several years. I really like how big the rooms are and the size of the yard. I could see us living there for a while. Even if we have a kid or two it feels like it wouldn’t overcrowd too quickly. We’re going to look at 4 more houses next week. Maybe we’ll find something just as big but that requires a little less TLC.

Let’s hope I can keep finding such great deals!

We left Costco, and he said “Where to next” and I told him Costco was the only place we had to go. So he said we can go to that mall by Democracy Blvd. (Montgomery Mall, an okay but not great mall). I asked what was there. He said they only store in the area besides JC Penney that carried Moissanite, and that we should go look. We’d been talking about Moissanite instead of diamonds for months, but nothing ever became of it, so I said “But I shouldn’t read anything into it.” He always says that when he wants information but doesn’t want me to get my hopes up. He said yeah. So we went to the mall, found the store, and looked at their meager (but beautiful) moissanite solitare collection. I immediately loved the first one I tried on, but tried on a couple of others just to see. Mike asked “Is this the one you want?” and I said “Well, yeah but…” He cut me off to tell the girl “We’ll take it.”

At this point I’m in shock and I said to him “Did we just…?” and he said “Yeah but you have to wait until Christmas.” So we had the girl box it up and he carried it out. I didn’t want to wait until Christmas, but I was willing to. I was so shocked. On the way home, Mike pointed out that we hadn’t eaten. Since we had some expensive items in the car we decided to go home and drop stuff off. So we got home and started charging the new camera and trying to figure out dinner. I was on my laptop and he was on his, sitting next to me on the sofa, and the TV was on in the background. Business as usual, you know? He turned to me and opened the ring box and said “Cathy, will you marry me?” And I said “Over and over” and made him put the ring on my finger (he was trying to give it to me put on). Then we took a couple of pictures and went to Hard Times Cafe for dinner and I made him call his mom when we got home because I really wanted her to be the first to know. Then we just started showing people the link to the pictures and letting people figure it out for themselves.

It was a perfect moment. So us, you know? I’m amused at myself. I managed to be surprised even though I picked out the ring!

I said the bad, so that implies that there is good. There is. My wonderful boyfriend of 6.5 years put a beautiful ring on my finger last night. I absolutely adore him and am looking forward to being his wife. There aren’t any details yet, I decided to give myself a couple of days to recover from the surprise. We took pictures of the ring, of course.

Merry Christmas everyone! I can’t wait for the New Year, it’s gotta be a better year than this one was…It’s starting to look that way already.