Sunday 1/28, I woke up around 8 and decided to get a jump on the day so I ate some breakfast and hit the road into Issaquah. First up was Home Depot to pick out some paint for around the windows, Crème Brule is what I ended up with. I primarily chose it because the name sounds delicious. Next I hit the grocery store then home where I started cleaning the living room out and unhooking everything in anticipation of the carpeters coming Monday. I began the process of taping off my window section which required a lot of precise measuring. S and I disassembled and moved the dining room table into the kitchen, then moved the couches into the dining room. This gave me a lot of room and I continued to do stuff there until 12:30, which is when I called Kay-See to make sure it was ok that I was heading over to her place. There really wasn’t parking so I just picked her up and off we went toward Queen Anne to see some open houses. We were having fun in the car just talking and enjoying the beautiful weather. Since we were a little early for the open houses we decided to park and walk down to Starbucks for a little treat then walked back to the car and headed toward our first open house. We ended up finding one of the ones on my list totally by accident from following a random open house sign. It was the $4.2m one with four floors, an elevator, amazing views and decks, a beautiful kitchen and a great cheese plate and cookie spread. We decided to move on to the next one and were trying to get our bearings, which was made harder by this hot dad playing Frisbee with some kids in the street. We ended up driving around the block like three times and we felt a little embarrassed because that hot dad clearly knew we were smitten. We thought that we had found it at one point but instead we found a $3m Greek monstrosity. Well, it wasn’t just Greek to be fair, it was a little bit of EVERYTHING. The most random and non-cohesive interior I’ve ever seen. We both commented that the crest above the front door should have been our first clue. We laughed about that house for the rest of the afternoon. We were walking back to the car when we saw the hottest guy in a Porsche Cayenne though he never asked either of us for our phone numbers. Hmpf. We got back in the car determined to find this mystery house (especially after meeting another same sex couple who had been driving all around looking for it) and ended up figuring out that we had already walked right by the street when we went to the first open house. Literally, right by it. We went in and it was much smaller and for $3.5 it was a little disappointing, though the views were pretty amazing. We decided to head over to Discover Park afterward and made it there pretty easily. It was sunny and beautiful, but COLD. So cold in fact that we didn’t really stay long, just long enough for me to say, “See, isn’t this beautiful? Look there are trails and army houses and lots of grass. Ready to go?” so we did. We drove back through CH and I dropped her off. When I got home I busted ass while listening to Hogan Knows Best in the background. Unfortunately the cream color needed two coats so it ended up taking me much longer than I had anticipated. I ended up being late for dinner, stuffing my face with enchiladas and taking off again without getting any of Mom’s fresh peach cobbler. Wahhh! At home some little neighbor dog ran into the garage and refused to come out for his owner. I snatched him right up though and secretly think he’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I talked to Mom and Dad on the phone then continued to tape off for the main wall color and started on that. K and S came home and moved the rest of the furniture out of the room for me, though after I was done painting I had to rearrange much of it. I painted until a little after 10 then had to clean up and do touch ups, do a bit of vacuuming up and finally headed up to bed. My whole body felt drained of all energy, but at least I got it all done.

Saturday 1/27, I woke up around 7:30 and had trouble going back to sleep but eventually did. I woke up again at 9:30 and decided to get up so we could try to get to breakfast by 10. Wishful thinking. Kassie takes FOREVER and we didn’t even head out until 10:30. We went in to Issaquah to the Issaquah Café, put our name in and walked over to the Mad Scrapper shop where I picked up some cardstock to make a couple more collages. We walked back over and got seated for breakfast. I had a veggie scramble and Kassie ordered some French Toast for the table to share. After breakfast we went home and they took off. I called Beth to see if we were still hanging out but she was exhausted and couldn’t deal with company so I offered to watch the baby anytime and just take him out and about around the Hill if she ever wanted to have some time alone or to clean or whatever. She asked me if I had any tips on how to balance having a baby and keeping up with the housework and hygiene and stuff and I told her the secret is to have lots of other kids that can take care of the younger ones. Somehow, I don’t think that will be a tactic that she ends up using. Since my afternoon was now looking very open I decided to go on a walk because it was BEAUTIFUL out. I was only going to do my short one but once I got in the sun and got my blood pumping I wanted to do the long one I haven’t done since summer and it felt so good. Plus some guy honked at me, yes! I showered when I got back and got dressed and eventually headed over to Mom’s to see Alix off to Tolo. Her date was cute, but that Harry, her date from last year and her friend’s date this year, is Y-U-M-M-Y. Kassie said he brings out the pedophile in her. Me too. Plus he’s 17 and apparently that’s the age of consent according to Alix. How or why she knows this I do not ask, but I’ll take her word for it. He was like “I’m Harry” and I said “Oh, I know who you are” and I’m pretty sure mortified Alix a little bit. That’s what I’m here for! All of us hung out and Skylar and Kassie invited me to go out to dinner with them and Skylar’s friend Spencer so I decided to go. We went up to CH and had a little coffee / hot chocolate at Vivace and though Teal wasn’t working, Kassie and I figured out we have a Teal connection which thoroughly cracked me up. We picked Spencer up and decided to head downtown where it was so packed we drifted toward Queen Anne instead and ended up at Crow. We had a wonderful dinner and I had the best gnocchi of my life, true story, and we all shared a delicious peanut butter and chocolate dessert. The conversation was great and Spencer is a really cool guy, but always on the move with traveling so no love connection there. They took me back to Mom’s after that to get my car. At home I read through my blog some more to edit and corrected some typos. I fell asleep kind of early, like 11.

Friday 1/26, I fell asleep after work for maybe a half hour, but that’s all it took for me to feel rejuvenated. Susan invited me to come over early so I got there a little after 11 and we headed over to Chop Suey around midnight. It was so cold out so we busted ass up the hill. After getting in we spotted Brett and Willy right away then Sonia and Jason. Susan and I decided to go out and dance with Ely but I got cut off in the crowd and had to take a detour and ended up right next to Jeff and talked with him for a couple minutes. I made it out to Susan and Ely and he was seriously cracking me up. He’d get really serious and put his arm on my shoulder as he’s standing across from me and look through his bangs at me and say “sexual” and other random things and I could not keep a straight face for the life of me. I think he thought it was funny too because I’m pretty sure he cracked a smile at least once when I was snickering. I couldn’t help it, it was so funny. We saw Thomas and I got a nice hug from him and he said “You look really good tonight” well thank you Thomas, I love you. So we’re still dancing with Ely and he leans over and asks “Where’s your man?” and I answer “I don’t have one…where’s yours?” and he looks stumped for a moment, looks around, taps some guy on the shoulder, leans in and kisses him, then smiles at me slyly. Boy that was easy, I thought. We continue dancing and Jeff comes over and kind of dances by us and informed us that unfortunately Teal would probably not be showing up, booo! At some point the inevitable happens: a drink got spilled on me. And not just down my shirt and pants this time, no, right in my face, hair, THEN down my shirt. Fantastic. This is why I dislike Comeback, every gd time I go I get something spilled on me. This NEVER happens at Neighbours and people respect your space (unless it’s a Saturday night)…I’m over Comeback again. Imagine that. There were some pretty good songs to dance to so that made up for it a little but I was pretty tired and it looked like Richie and Neil weren’t going to show so I took off at about 1:20. I said goodbye to Thomas outside then ran to my car and drove home. Kassie and Skylar were there and in bed and called me in to talk for a little bit and we made plans to have breakfast.