Barbie? That bitch has everything.

It was another hectic weekend of house stuff. Garages were cleaned. Decks were stained. Ceilings were painted. Mental breakdowns were had.

And through it all, Foxie Doxie kept his usual vigil in the backyard. He secures the perimeter, keeping us safe from all manner of squirrels, chipmunks, and bunnies.

But yesterday? He met a new foe.

Foxie found a turtle. And had no idea what to do with it. So, he stood over it, barking. When My Guy and I went outside, Foxie looked up with relief. Finally! People with thumbs who should be knowledgeable in the management of such critters!

My Guy picked up the turtle and put it on the other side of the fence, into the yard of a neighbor who doesn’t have dogs. And my sweet boyfriend smiled as he came back into the house.

“That turtle looked just like Beep Beep!”

Now, I am tired. Really tired. But I knew something was up. “Beep Beep?” I asked. “What’s that?”

“I’ve never told you about Beep Beep? Oh, man! He was my pet turtle!”

Get this: as a young lad of about 8 years old, My Guy found a turtle in the backyard. He named it Beep Beep and painted “BEEP” on the critter’s back with red nail polish.

Beep Beep lived in the yard and My Guy and his siblings would feed it lettuce. When it was really hot, My Guy obsessed about setting water out for Beep Beep. But in the heat of the summer? My Guy and his sisters put Beep Beep in the Barbie Dream Pool.It was at this point in the telling of the tale that I morphed from delighted to insanely jealous.

Not only did he have a turtle, but his sister had the Barbie Dream Pool! It came with a shower and a slide. And only the most awesomest Barbie Dream Pool ever also had a real, live turtle swimming in it.

Color me green with eeeeeeeenvy. Although I will say that my Malibu Ken did have the sexy hooded robe sported on the box of the Barbie Dream Pool. Oh, yeah.

So, Beep Beep would turn up every year for a summer of lettuce and chillin’ by the pool. Until one year when Beep Beep didn’t show up and My Guy’s mom convinced the kids that he was just living in a neighbor’s yard … sort of the turtle equivalent of a nice big farm with plenty of room to run.

This part of the story caused My Guy to droop a bit. But maybe the neighbors had the Barbie Dream House.

Image courtesy of 1000barbies.com.

Things I've learned this week.

1. If you ever need to restain your deck, shell out the whopping seven American dollars for a paint pad. It's sort of like a Swiffer, but you use it to effortlessly spread stain on your deck so that your deck doesn't look homeless. Today was so hot that even my sweat was sweating, but the deck? She was cheap and easy.

2. Mike Holmes is officially the sexiest man alive.

My mom already knew this.

There's nothing like attempting your own home improvement projects from hell to make you appreciate a decent contractor. I love his show. And I will say ... My Guy had a certain Holmes on Homes aura about him last night as we demoed some drywall. Something about the way he wielded that hammer and crowbar just made me see him in a whole new light. Or maybe it was just the dust.

Did you know that Mike Holmes started a foundation that gives scholarships to people who want to learn construction trades? Stop being so damned sexy!

3. Lil' Frankfurter is my hero. Realizing that his mama is covered in way too many bug bites from way too much time working outside, he just ate a mosquito that had landed on my arm. That's love, people. Big love coming from a tiny dog.

Image courtesy of hgtv.com.

We're gonna need a montage.

With all the flurry of home-improvement activity, My Guy and I have determined that our stage-two-houses-and-get-them-on-the-market efforts need two things:

1. A theme song
2. A montage

My Guy immediately nixed "Eye of the tiger" for our theme song, which sort of sucks for me. It's my go-to theme song for gettin' shit done. So, the jury's still out on the theme song business. I think we might just need a staging houses mix tape. After all, how could any one song encompass the drywall, the paint, the confused dogs? I'm thinking we need a variety of 80s rock anthems to get us through this trying time. Maybe:

Livin' on a prayer - Bon Jovi
Anyway you want it - Journey
Roll with the changes - REO Speedwagon
Working for the weekend - Loverboy
Crazy train - Ozzy

Other ideas?

As for the montage of us gettin' shit done ... well, we have a lot of inspiration.

There's the montage song from South Park and Team America ...

Except I don't know crap about puppets. And if it's one more thing that I have to paint, you can freakin' forget it.

And, of course, we could go with a theme like the training montage from Rocky IV. Because training in Siberia for a boxing match is a lot like touching up paint in your kitchen in 96-degree Midwest weather.

Except I don't think we can line up Talia Shire to stand around, looking concerned about our home improvement.

I must admit, though, that last night, after realizing that repainting the trim around my house is not just a big project, but a gargantuan one that will require physical pain and contortions seen previously only in circus performers? Well, I felt a bit like the agony of defeat guy from the classic Wide World of Sports montage.

This is actually a pretty accurate portrayal of my skiing skills. Hmm.

But really? Maybe it's the recent remake, but I gotta go with The Karate Kid montage as my biggest montage influence. Maybe it's because I feel like Daniel, standing around with my mouth open.

Seriously. Does he have some sort of jaw disorder?

Transition and muscle aches.

It's been Festival of Home Improvement here.

Saturday, My Guy and I each ended up organizing our respective basements. It wasn't planned - it just happened that the moons of Jupiter aligned and it was Clean Up Your Damned Basement Day.

Sunday, we landscaped like we have never landscaped before. I showed up at his house with a car full of mulch and potting soil and hostas and plants galore. We ripped out a cruddy old planter, and then I went to town weeding and mulching and planting and hosing everything down. Basically, I was a landscaping diva while My Guy cursed home ownership while cleaning his gutters.

Did I mention it was 96 degrees and humid?

We were dying by the end of the day. Dying. So My Guy made us the dinner of champions: Kraft mac and cheese and purple Kool-Aid.

Seriously. It was beyond awesome.

But why the flurry of activity?

We've decided to put not one but both of our houses on the market right after Independence Day. Because we are insane. And the housing market scares us in a it-might-take-72-years-to-sell-these-houses sort of way.

When I got home last night after the landscaping death march, I found myself almost disappointed. Why do we own two houses? We have two, TWO houses to stage! Oh, for the love of Pete! Whoever Pete is!

But tonight, as I'm finally sanding and prepping the woodwork in my kitchen ... my kitchen that I remodeled three years ago and just lived with the chipped woodwork? Well, my heart is a bit heavier.

First of all, whoever painted the trim with the cheapo paint? You suck. I can't sand without the paint peeling off in cheapo strips. Buy the expensive paint - it is so worth the extra $10. So. Worth. It.

But also? My heart is a little funky because I'm so excited to be with My Guy. It's just that simple - I want to be with him. I want to live with him, even though he doesn't know the proper way to fold sheets or towels. I love him even though he dowsed my bag of gardening gear not once but twice yesterday with both water from the hose and the crap that comes out of gutters and smells like turtles.

But my house? I love this house. It's going to be hard to let go of this house. It's the only place I've ever lived where I had the ability to make it any way I wanted. I painted my closet pink, for Pete's sake (again - who the eff is Pete?). And buying a house was a huge accomplishment.

When I decided to leave Ex-Ex and his wicked ways, I had exactly $25.35 in my bank account. This is not an exaggeration. I was building my freelancing business and I was brokity broke, broke, broke. I moved into a slightly shady apartment that approved me because they checked my checking balance on exactly the right day, after the deposit but before the bills cleared.

Less than two years later, I bought a house. Because I could afford it. Because I was wildly successful in my freelancing career. And so, I left The Apartment of Shame behind for a house that I remodeled and tweaked and smudged with sage. My intent for this house was peace and prosperity.

And so it has been.

And so it shall be in the fab, new, yet-to-be-determined house that I will share with My Guy. And our (gulp) four dogs. Although Lil' Frankfurter is really more the size of a ferret.

My mom popped the heads off the Hungry Hungry Hippos and tried to convince us that it was more fun to play the game that way.*

I have blogger guilt. It tastes like sour milk and shame.

I haven't been writing a ton lately, and that seems to reflect me in the three-dimensional world.

When I get stressed, I tend to turn inward. All the recent craziness with layoffs at Corporate Behemoth meant that some days, I literally did come home and take to my bed. It felt very Southern Recluse in a most Tennessee Williams sort of way.

But even when really wonderful, good things are happening? Well, I tend to play it pretty close to the vest. I'm scared to jinx it. There's part of me that is prepared to be disappointed and deeply hurt. And then there's another part of me that accepts that happiness is natural and welcome and expected. And sometimes, those two parts of my personality duke it out like Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots.

Or Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Or the violent 80s toy of your choice.

But sometimes? Sometimes, I just let it be.

So now, I will tell you what's really going on, because it feels like the elephant (or hippo) sitting on my laptop.

There has been talk. About houses. And futures. And jewelry has been selected. And this weekend, parental blessing was obtained. And now I'm just sort of floating along, knowing what is coming but not knowing when or how or anything.

This all feels so easy and right.

But don't ask me about it. I don't want to jinx it.

* I think she was having one of those "You're the reason Mommy drinks" sort of days. It's cool.

Images courtesy of Amazon.

Elegy.

As I've mentioned before, I have a real issue dealing with incoming mail. As in, I hate it and I'm not good at it. Typically, I'll flip through for anything that looks personal or urgent, and the rest gets dumped in the mail bowl. I've started getting my mail by walking through the garage, which means I pass the recycling bin. This has significantly cut back on the paper actually entering my house. However, the mail bowl? Umm ... still a shameful and prominent feature of the home.

So, that explains why I was reading a three-month-old alumni magazine like it was hot off the press. My alma mater puts together a nice publication, but I almost pitched this copy into the recycling bin without glancing at it. However, something made me pick it up. And I'm glad I did.

I always like reading the class notes section, even though I usually don't know anybody. I like reading the notes about the graduates of the 30s and 40s. It always makes me think of a note on a golden graduation reunion message board when I worked for the university. One man scrawled, "Came here with $40. Lived in a chicken coop. Left rich."

And that is the true meaning of higher education.

Anyway ... the class notes section. A familiar name popped up in the alumni deaths column. My friend Lynn passed away in December. I had to read the announcement several times to make it sink in. Lynn was old enough to be my mom but one of those eternally young people who defy age.

I met Lynn when I was 22, working for the university and trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wore button-down shirts, dress pants, and chunky oxfords. I looked like a Republican ... especially in comparison to the vintage jewelry and "I swear this is a dressy t-shirt" look I typically rock now.

I didn't know who I was, but I knew on some level that I wasn't happy. Oh, and I worked with these two crazy people who screamed at each other all day and sometimes successfully pulled me into the fray.

When I met with Lynn for a project, we immediately identified each other as kindred souls. Lynn took me under her wing while simultaneously treating me as an equal - no easy task, especially when dealing with a freaking out 22-year-old.

Lynn took everything with a grain of salt, and taught by example that this was indeed possible. She was filled with joy over finding the love of her life in middle age and marrying for the first time. She told hilarious stories about her basset hound puppy, and whenever we met for lunch, she always had a book en tow, just in case she needed to wait for a few minutes. Lynn squeezed all of the life she could out of every moment.

Mostly, she made me feel like everything was OK. And I am eternally grateful.

There's been a scholarship set up in Lynn's memory, and I'm going to make a gift there. But I feel like the greatest way I can honor her and her life is to pay it forward. It seems like such a simple thing to befriend a young person who is finding their way, but holy cow, it sure made a difference to me. I learned so much, and I am so, so thankful that our paths crossed. Lynn was a blessing in my life. And she probably never even realized it.

Who's been a surprise influence to you? How do you honor that gift?

You knew this post was coming.

I know I'm a little late to the party, but have you seen Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It?

It's a preview of the rocker's newest reality show, wherein he lets us all in on his home life with his babymama and two daughters.

Sound familiar? Gee, I wonder why. I had this little brainchild a few weeks ago, but I called it "Leave It To Bret."

Whatever. I ain't hatin'. Basically, I'm lovin' this show, which started production before Bret's recent rash of health issues. vh1 promises that the series will air this fall, and that they will replay the preview 267,983,468 times between now and then.

As much as I was enthralled by all the skanks on Rock of Love Bus, and as much as I really hope Bret will host Slut Rehab to reach out to the ladies displaced by the end of that television franchise? Well, I'm even more enthralled now with Bret. Not in a creepy stalker way. He just seems like genuine guy.

Need proof? Check out Bret chilling with his infamously gassy 4-year-old in one of those plastic kiddie castles.


"I spend a lot of time in the castle. Jorja learned how to swear while Daddy was building the magic castle ... "

It's my life dream that My Boyfriend Dave Grohl will one day have his own reality show. But until then? Well, I'm counting down the days until Bret's show is my own personal Weekly Television Event.

You know, like a miniseries from the 80s. But better.