Messy yards and jewelry
2008-01-14 - 4:55 p.m.

We had another house showing this past Saturday afternoon, and as a result of that, we finally found out which house these people are saying is "trashed." It's the house next door where the father died about a year ago...the one with the ham radio tower that supposedly is going to be taken down.

The house itself looks fine to me, but the yard is messy. The leaves were never raked in the front or back and various things are kind of laying around, like toys and yard equipment. Like I said, it's messy, but it's certainly not "trashed." That's just ridiculous to say that. Why are people so picky??

We haven't really started the next painting project yet. I tried to get started on it yesterday but I didn't know what a pain in the ass it was going to be, trying to paint the trim around the ceiling without getting it on the wooden beams. (This is in the den, where the paneling is, and it has kind of a Swiss chalet look with wooden beams stretching across a white ceiling.) B spoke to our realtor again today and she gave us a great suggestion. The house she lives in down the street is the same layout we have and she said they painted the wooden beams in their den white in addition to painting the paneling, so that's what we've decided to do, too.

We ultimately decided not to move the TV into the livingroom because there's really not a good place for it. It's just too big. Instead, we took some things out of the den and moved the TV and sofa away from each other to open up the room, and it already looks much bigger. With the paneling painted, I know that will make it look a lot bigger in there, too.

I never did hear anything from my mom after her birthday in early December or during the holidays, so B convinced me to email her and ask if everything is okay. I wasn't planning on getting in touch with her because I just didn't feel like it (terrible, I know), and I figured if I hadn't heard from her, she just didn't feel like getting in touch with me, either. So we'll see what she says, if she answers. I do hope everything is okay with her.

I'm trying a new diet, which I started yesterday. It's an apple juice diet and it's actually something B came up with for himself years ago. He was having so much trouble finding anything he could eat that he just drank apple juice for 5 days and then introduced food back into his diet one thing at a time so he could figure out what things were causing him problems. In the process, I think he said he lost about 10 pounds, and you know I can't lose weight by regular means, so I thought I'd give this a try.

I'm not feeling desperate to lose weight, but I thought it might be interesting to try this. It's a challenge. I did eat some oatmeal for breakfast yesterday, before we went grocery shopping and I got some apple juice, but I haven't had any food since then. I was afraid I might not be able to sleep for my stomach growling, but I didn't have any problem with it last night. I'm not sure yet how many days I'll do this; I guess as long as I can stand it or until I stop losing weight, because my body will inevitably adapt, as it always does.

I got a jewelry catalogue from JCPenney in the mail and I've spent the last few days looking through it over and over again, trying to decide if I wanted to get anything or not. They had some really pretty cubic zirconia rings. I got a pair of princess cut cubic zirconia earrings last year from them and they're really nice, so I figure their rings would be just as nice. I finally gave it and ordered a few things today. Here's what I got if you want to see. I suppose this was kind of a frivolous purchase, but I think I'm really going to love these rings. Edited to add: I forgot to tell you that unfortunately, there is no wallboard behind the paneling; just brick. It was original to the house when it was built in 1972 when paneling was very much in vogue. We could tear off the paneling and put up wallboard or put wallboard up over the paneling, but that seems like way too much trouble.

�