I'm not organized enough for this....

Well....its a gloomy Ohio day, fabulously overcast and I am sitting here groggy at NOON still from oversleeping.  So excited was I rambling at a computer screen (man, blogging is a narcissistic endeavor), that I stayed up too late and in turn rose from my bed late.  That will need to change if I intend to take care of my household duties (cleaning, dog care, puppy entertainment and inquiries regarding puppies) and ALSO work on the house everyday.  Now, these things can completely FILL my day since cleaning a home in rehab is a job in and unto itself....then add playful dogs deciding to bring sticks in from outside and you have someone NEVER having time for anything.  So, essentially I WILL become superwoman.


Speaking of dog care, one of my dogs has diarrhea and I do not know why...so additionally I need to keep a watchful eye on him today.  I'm a parent whether or not I have a human child.  If it doesn't resolve in a day off to the vet we shall go and tomorrow or the next day no housework shall be down.  So fingers crossed for a new resolution to this poo situation.  

Anyway, today I hope to sand and add another layer to the drywall in the front entryway, and also start the ceilings in our living room (taping joints and filling the screw holes...HAHA it does sound like double entendre!!!) but this may be a little optimistic.  This project will really improve our downstairs...and I have skillfully ignored it for many months (likely years).  The drywall was added by my husband and his dad in December 2008....you do the math!

So off I go to the front entryway...Pandora on and my doggies trying to follow...later I must take a break to poop scoop and play fetch with them.

Here is a pic showing you the dustiness of finishing drywall. Now, imagine that landing on you while you are sanding the ceiling and you will understand my reticence to try to do the ceilings prior to now.  I imagine the pic of me at the end of the day will be a sad face.  If this were on facebook I would write DISLIKE beneath this status update.  That's right, my language skills have devolved to FB speak.
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I have finished the entryway and at 4:46 I am taking a break.

I mused on dreams today, both literal and figurative.  Nate and I watched a documentary on dreams recently; the part that interested me most was learning that you not only dream in REM but also in NREM sleep.  These terms just basically mean differences in the types/amount of brainwaves you are having, but until recently they believed you only dreamed in REM.  Now, they say you can relive things in NREM sleep that you did during the day, for instance, if you worked hard at volleyball practice that day, you could dream about it.  People who dreamed about skills they worked on that day would improve markedly the next day.

Here is where I should say, SADLY I did not dream of drywall finishing last night.

But I did have REM sleep.  REM sleep dreams are the more odd dreams you have, with story-lines, fantastical things happening, and frequently in which there is a challenge or is somewhat stressful.  They hypothesized that this stage was to explore future possibilities and help you be prepared for things to come.  They also said you could tell yourself prior to going to sleep what you would like to dream of and some people could control their dreams that way....that is NOT what happened to me (I asked to dream of babies and a new house).

 Last night I dreamed I was the worst soccer player on a team, and everyone felt I really shouldn't be on the team...in addition to living in a kick a$$ house...but I am thinking that it of no relevance (or perhaps I had a partial answer to my new house +babies request?).  A feeling of inadequacy and failure was the over-reaching feeling.

I was analyzing this dream wondering what would elicit this feeling and decided it is because of my breeding of dogs.  When I do something, I WANT to be the best at it.  But breeding dogs has many nuances outside of our control: genetic diseases not easily avoided, land-mines so to speak, and a plethora of breeders ranging from NO testing of their dogs to testing their dogs for everything under the sun...and everyone has reasons for what they do.  I have to choose my defining characteristics, and really it isn't a team sport (ever seen Best in Show?  The people act more like animals than the animals!).  In fact, it seems many breeders choose to dwell on the negatives of others, rather than celebrate their positives.  My outlook on life is along the lines of "you draw more bees with honey than vinegar".  However, I have been lucky enough to meet a few individual breeders who are super-cool...so don't get me wrong I am not saying all breeders are made from the same cloth.  Regardless, I feel a bit inadequate as I learn more and more about the wide world of poodles, and dogs in general.  I have many breeding goals and continually attempt to improve myself....but that is a different blog.  But that too is a Love Story.

Here I will say to you and to myself....YOU CANNOT PLEASE EVERYONE and stay true to yourself.  You just cannot please everyone period.

How do our literal dreams affect our figurative ones?  This is something to ponder...and there may actually be science behind it (science is cool).

That leads me to the OTHER sort of dream, or goal in life.  My how dreams can change!  Just three years ago I wanted to be a physician of some sort: a psychiatrist, neurologist, or perhaps an ER doc.  Now today I want to be a multicolor standard poodle breeder who shows for conformation, agility and perhaps even uses her canines in hunting trips.  I also want to own a boarding facility adjacent to my home so I can supplement our income.  How did it change so much?

Med school is incredibly grueling and stressful.  They encourage you to have outside activities in order to retain your sanity.  Flippantly I decided I would purchase a standard poodle and give breeding a try.  I have always thought breeding would be a fun activity, and I was very right about that.  It is also time demanding and addicting.  While struggling through my first year, I had NO hobbies (but I was in the top 10% of my class), and then beginning of my second year I got a dog and bred a litter....and was still struggling along in med school.  Eventually my drive to be a physician began to fade with dreams of doing what I was beginning to love full time: being with dogs all the time and having happy puppy faces filled with kisses to care for.

Here there should be another note....another motivation of breeding dogs was to hold off the inevitable desire to have a child for years to come.  Who can have a baby and go to medical school full time and then be a full time medical resident in a hospital?  So the ticking of the uterus clock would need to wait.

There were other reasons I left my dream of medicine for the dream of poodles....OTHER DREAMS.  What can I say, I guess that I am a dreamer.



Well, now I am listening to the audiobook of Robert Jordan's Eye of the World that my hubbadub was so kind as to get for me.  So I am thinking no more musings....but some ceiling drywall shall be done, no fear!

This is where I stopped.  Not as much as I would like done, but that is the story of rehabbing a house.
 This is the Ceiling that needs done.

This was all the progress I made today.

Which leads me to CON #2 of rehabbing:

2.  Nothing happens nearly as fast as you believe it should.

• think of how long you expect it to take, and multiply it by THREE.  That is how long it will take.  Unless you have done it before, you will likely run in to problems.  Even the simplest things have snarls.
• This lack of progression of projects in the house is frustrating to say the least.  When something you think should take a half day take 3 days...you nearly want to kill someone.  You'll see your hubby taking a break from work to yet again eat (yes, my husband forages like a bird, who eat more than their weight in food a day) and want to bite him.  I have thus far managed to curb this sentiment, but for how long?

This Con #2, reminds me of something my mother told me when I was a teenager worrying about weight (this has a smacking of very anti-feminist sentiment, you are forewarned).  She told me that she read a famous celebrity she liked maintained her thin weight by ordering the food she wanted at a restaurant, deciding how much she wanted to eat, and then would divide that by half twice (I dunno why she didn't say by a fourth) and that was what she would eat.  She then told me I should do that if I wanted to remain thin.  Oh my!  Of course, this is nearly the reciprocal of the planning for your rehab though so yeah...its a pointless point.

Peace out y'all.