Pinterest, Sewing and Other Fun Things

When I was a kid, I loved sewing by hand, but eventually I stopped. When I was older, we got a sewing machine and I loved that too, before my mom decided it needed to live in the basement, out of the way. A few weeks ago, maybe a month, I decided I wanted to get back into sewing.

A couple weeks later, my best friend sent me a link to a "pin" on Pinterest. She, along with the rest of my friends, loves coming up with ideas for my wedding. It's the little girl in us all coming out again. Every little girl plans her wedding. The first girl to get engaged in any group of friends gets a lot of help planning her wedding. So she sent me a link to some wedding invitations. I explored Pinterest and fell in love. I started by looking at wedding ideas, photos and DIY tutorials for weddings and parties. Then I realized that people were posting home ideas. Everyone knows that I'm really big into things like that. I'm a furniture junkie with a love of buildings, and a love of colors. A few days after I started pinning like a mad fiend, I discovered a lot of people were posting..... wait for it...... SEWING THINGS! Patterns, tips, ideas, product reviews on sewing machines. places to buy cheap fabric.


I really need a sewing machine, but in the mean time, Jeffrey's grandma is letting me use hers whenever I want. I've already got a few simple projects I want to try, and some complex ones that I want to try but that need to wait until my skill level increases.

And I've got a new favorite website that provides me with a never-ending supply of ideas for sewing projects, and home ideas. And wedding ideas. And a lot of other things (recipies! <3 ). I'm happy.

H is for Home (or lack there of)

When I moved into my apartment last month, I was so excited. Glad to finally have my own space again, my own home. Somewhere that I simply loved, was proud of. The apartment is everything I wanted in on. Counter space in a kitchen (not even a kitchenette, but an actual kitchen), a good sized bedroom, and a bigger living room. The bathroom is pretty big, so far as bathrooms go. I have 4 closets.

But after living there for a month, unpacking, settling, it still doesn't feel like "home" to me. My apartment in Radford last year felt like home. I don't know what I'm doing differently. Is it because we aren't totally settled yet? Because our pictures aren't up on the walls? Is it because I haven't spent enough time there to really let it grow on me? Is it because when I am there, Jeffrey and I never sit down and do stuff together, it's always one of us or the other doing stuff? Is it because my upstairs neighbor is super-loud so I hear everything going on in their life, and it doesn't feel private, like my own corner?

I don't know what it is. I don't know why my home isn't... homey. I want it. I want to sit on my couch and feel totally at home there. Totally comfortable. I just don't. I wonder why, I think about how to fix it. We planned on living in this apartment for two years. It's the perfect location. 5 different school DISTRICTS within a one hour commute, for when Jeffrey gets his teachers certification, it's near-enough the highway that we can get on it easily, but far enough that we aren't listening to it. It's right near my college. Right near the mall. Right near several grocery stores. Everything is right there. It's perfect.... but it's not. And I don't know why. and it bothers me.

Big Things.

There's something big that I've been leaving out. I think I may have mentioned it a time or two before, but it's really BIG now.

My Dad lost his house.

The house itself is no big loss. Several years ago, before we moved in, he was renting it out. His tenant moved out in the middle of January with no notification to my dad, and with no oil in the tank. The pipes froze, brust, and defrosted. My dad didn't find out anything about it until March, when he finally went down to demand his rent. Of course the tenant stopped paying rent when she moved out.

Most of the house was ruined. The plumbing all needed to be re-done. The wood floors were water damaged. The walls were growing mold and mildew. The former-tenant had left most of her things in the house too, all of which were ruined. And the few things that weren't wet/moldy were flea infested. She had left food in the fridge when she left. Trash in a trash can. Pretty much the only things she took were her clothes and her dishes.  The house was absolutely DISGUSTING. So my dad rented a dumpster, threw out all her things, and tore out the kitchen and bathroom, the two most damaged rooms.

Meanwhile, he was slowly losing his other house, the one we lived in at the time. We had to move into the ruined house, long before it was finished. We moved in before he had put the house back together. It only took him about 2 days to get the new plumbing running in the bathroom, but it was months before he finished the kitchen.

About a year after we moved in, my uncle got married, and we went to California for a week. Apparently, while we were in the Santa Barbara sun, our home was hit by a big storm It ripped half the roof off. And our house was once again filled with water.

Thankfully, this time it only ruined walls and floors, and not the plumbing.

The insurance company never gave my dad the money they owed him.

My father works in construction, and this happened when the economy had hit it's worst point. No one was dropping loads of cash to do a nice project. The jobs my dad got were always bare-minimum work. Things that the customers absolutely HAD to have done (ie replacing a broken window in the middle of december). Small jobs that gave him 50 or 100 bucks at a time.
He couldn't afford to fix the house.
He couldn't afford to pay the mortgage.

Fast forward to now. The roof was never put back on. The house is in bad shape. We have a little more in the way of walls than we did when we moved in, but the house is no where near done. For the amount of money that would need to be spent to fix it, you might as well tear it down and start all over.

But that was still a place for my dad to live. Now he doesn't have anywhere to stay. I have known for months that he was losing his house. It wasn't until recently when he told me the date he had to be out by. Previously, he had told me "sometime in september. Maybe early august" Turns out, that the real date was June 9th. He got a few days extension, until today, and he has a place to stay tonight. Tomorrow he's going to VT to build my uncle a deck, which is fine. My uncle will put him up for about two weeks while they finish that.

After that, who knows. My dad has hardly even looked at getting an apartment. I'm worried for him. He's 55 years old. Needs one minor and one major surgery. Has no money saved up. Has no retirement plan, and now has no where to live. I want to help him but I don't know how.

I'm stuck somewhere between needing to talk about this, and not wanting to think about it. Thus, the large back story to a very tiny bit of info. Sorry about that.

Inspirational People

Sometimes I think we forget to thank the strangers who inspire us. Thanking the people you love and are close with is easier. Today I'm going to tell the story of a stranger. I do not know her name, so I'll call her Maria.

Maria was a 30-something year old twin. She had a 7 year old son, a 12 year old daughter, and a boyfriend. She was pregnant with twins. She had a job, and some cats, and she rented an apartment from my father. It was one of the smaller buildings of my fathers. Just two apartments.

After she had her twins, she went back to work. Her boyfriend didn't have a job so he stayed home with the kids usually. One day she came home early, and opened the door just in time for him to throw one of the crying infants across the room. Thankfully, the baby was fine. Maria broke up with her boyfriend, and kicked him out.

She got laid off soon after. Single mother of four out of work. My father gave her some extra time on the rent, provided she kept him informed of her job searching. Before she could find a job her twin sister and sisters husband died in an accident, leaving behind three more kids. Those three moved in with Maria. There were no other family members for them to go to.

Maria found a job as a truck driver, and they paid her when she was in training learning to drive the trucks. She was making twice as much as she had been before. She got caught up four months of back rent, in only two months. My father thanked her, but told her that he was planning on putting the building on the market, and if it sold she'd need to move. She told him she'd buy it. She took out a loan, and the house was hers. She turned it from a 2-family-apartment into one big family home.

Every one of these events happened within one years worth of time.

A few years later (I think in 2005) she sent my father a letter thanking him for all he did for them, by giving her breaks on the rent, and selling to her. All 7 of the kids were doing well. She had just sold the house and moved to Kansas because of a new job opportunity.

So even though I only met her once or twice when I was about 8 (she gave me a kitten. Oh thats right, right after her sisters kids moved in, one of her cats gave birth. She got the cat from a shelter, and was told the cat had been spayed. Oops.) this woman inspires me. Even when things were at their worst, she didn't give up. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly low, I remember this woman. I wish I knew her name, so that I could look her up and find out how things are now. So that I could thank her for reminding me that people are strong.

Sometimes, we need to give a little more credit to the strangers.

NO BATHROOM IN MY BATHROOM!

Yesterday was crazy, up and down. I wrote lots of half blog posts, and then I came home, and realized that my bathroom had no bathroom inside.

Apparently, at around 1pm my landlord decided that they wanted to replace the floor in my bathroom. Apparently my toilet had been leaking underneath the linoleum and it was rotten. How they figured that out, I don't know. But it was true. So they took out the toilet, soaking my bathroom (again!) and getting sewage on some of the laundry that I had left in there. I guess this is why hampers were invented. Jeffrey was home for about 5 minutes but had to rush off to a meeting. They didn't talk to him, or even let him get the clothes out of the bathroom.

The maintenance men leave at 5pm. So does the landlord. We got home at about 5:15 to find the bathroom door in the living room, the toilet in the bathtub, dirty clothes in the sink. A dirty bathmat on the living room floor. And no note. And nothing covering the toilet drain. You ALWAYS cover the toilet hole. I learned that when I was about 8 years old. If you don't cover it you house will fill up with methane.

Not. Cool. I thought "maybe they went out to get a new wax ring for the toilet," my dad said "maybe they took a dinner break." We called the emergency maintenance line (no one answers the regular line after 5) and got no answer. It becomes 6pm. Then almost 7. We decided to go out. Somewhere with public bathrooms, since we couldn't use one at home. Fast food. Wal-mart. 9pm the maintenance people FINALLY call us back. What if it had been a REAL emergency? They told us they'd pay for a hotel. It was late. We decided not to bother.

It sucks that we have no toilet and no bathtub. I do not approve.

On the bright side, yesterday my new ipod came in the mail. And so did the new sim card for my cell phone. YAY!

St. Albans

So my internet has been a bit spazzy lately, which in Boatkickerland means its been broken more than its been working. Thanks Verizon! I really appreciate all the times you’ve stood us up, and I just love that we’re paying for a service that works LESS THAN HALF THE TIME! It’s great!

Okay. All done being bitter. Mostly because I’m not home right now, and the internet here at the mall is just fine. It’s hard to be angry at non-working-internet when you have great internet.

Jeffrey invited me to go to one of his classes with him yesterday, because they were having a medium come in. The class was Religion and Death, incase anyone was wondering.

Anyways, I thought it was pretty cool. Some of the stuff the medium said was really interesting. Other parts, in my opinion, were total crap. Do I think spirits might be hanging around any given place at any given time, sure. I’m cool with that. Do I think scribbling on the mirror is going to call evil spirits into my home? Nope, that seems ridiculous. And unlikely, considering how many scribbles have been all over my own mirrors over time. If random marks called evil sprits in, I’d have had a lot more problems to deal with in my life.

Oh. Wait. Maybe that explains everything. Hahaha.

The medium (I’ve forgotten his name. Woops.) mentioned this place near here called St. Albans. Apparently it used to be a mental hospital and before that it was a boys school. The building is, as far as I know, standing empty right now. Local legend says its haunted. The medium described a room that is covered in papers with kids hand prints all over, finger-paint style. He said he was creepy. A student in the class confirmed that it was a creepy room, and mentioned some hallway that “seemed out of place” in the building. The medium then told a story about how he met with the spirit of a former student in the attic/bedroom area and the boy was looking for his mother and playing on a dumbwaiter.

Does this sound like an awesome setting for a book? For some reason, despite all the medium said, and the supposed “Creepiness” of the hand print room, it doesn’t feel like a horror story to me. Of course I’d have to go there myself to be sure, but Jeffrey said he might take me there. I think that would be totally awesome. I’d love to see the hand print room. The whole place seems like it would be interesting. I plan on doing a little research on the place sometime this evening. I tried to last night, but the internet was down. This place had definitely sparked my interest. I have a thing for old buildings. :)