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I know that I've posted quite a few times about taking a vacation, and one of the places that I am always talking about going for a vacation, is wanting to be able to afford to go and rent one of those really gorgeous Outer Banks vacation rentals in North Carolina.
Carolina Designs has one of the most awesome, most amazing looking rental homes for just such a vacation.
I mean, just look at the outside of the house, this big, beautiful house right on the Outer Banks.


The house is called SEAHAWK, and it's just yards away from the beach.












It has five bedrooms, and two of them are master bedrooms.
It also has a private pool and a hot tub.
There are 10 tv sets in the house and three VCR's, two DVD players, and a video library so there's always something to watch.
It has a stereo and a game room with a sports bar and a pool table.
It also has an Xbox for you and your kid's video gaming needs, a wet bar and a gas grill, and tons of parking spaces for you and all of your guests.
(If you choose to bring people with you. *wink wink*)

Here is a view of the private pool and the living room.




























Here is another view of the living room, one of the master bedrooms, and the room with the pool table.









































This home is just so beautiful, isn't it?
This is the exact kind of vacation rental home that I would want to stay in.
I hate camping, and hotels and motels are OK for short stays, but if I could truly afford to go on a really nice vacation for two weeks or more somewhere in the US, I would totally go for this exact place, or this exact kind of place, and definitely in the Outer Banks.

I have been hearing for years and years now, about just how awesome and gorgeous it is in the Outer Banks, about how beautiful and peaceful it is there, and that's exactly the kind of vacation that I want to go on.
Somewhere truly beautiful, and somewhere truly peaceful.
This house, the SEAHAWK, just looks so beautiful and so peaceful.
It's nice and big, clean looking, it looks really comfortable, "homey looking", and it has some incredible views of the area that even just looking through the pictures, it makes you want to go there because of how beautiful and peaceful looking it is.

This house is available to rent year round, and of course during "season", it's going to cost more to rent, but the weekly rental rates aren't that bad actually.
I've spent more than the weekly rental cost on airfare to fly the three of us back to Maine for 2 weeks, so it's really not that bad at all.
I don't know why, but I always thought that I couldn't afford to take a vacation to the Outer Banks, but looking at just this home and the rates, it is something that is totally do-able for me to do some one of these days.
Yeah, it's always nice to fly home and visit with family, but I really want to take a vacation some day that is just away from it all, away from everything, just go to a place that I want to go, no stress, no mess, just go and stay in a big, beautiful home, sleep in as late as I want, stay up as late as I want, go for long walks on the beach whenever I would want to, and just relax, just really get away from it all, and leave all of my stress and troubles at home for a week.

I really love this house, I would totally love to stay there for a week someday, just me and the teens taking a relaxing vacation for just one week in a gorgeous home like this.
Some one of these days, I will.
I really will. 

I posted back on April 16th on my other blog, how Mark accidentally broke the handle off of the bathroom faucet, it was an old faucet, really has probably been in this duplex since the house was built in the 70's, but looking at it day after day is starting to get on my nerves.















I have not told the landlord yet, I know that I should, but I hate bothering him.
It's not because he's a mean landlord or a jerk or anything, it's just he works 6 days a week as a sheriff, and he only gets one day off per week to spend with his wife and two young kids.
I think they aren't much older than 9 or 10.
And it's really not that hard to install a new faucet, just shut off the water, unscrew the old one, screw on the new one and use some plumbers' tape, and turn the water back on.
It's literally like a 20 minute job at the max, but I don't want to bother him on his one day off a week.
He is still working on the empty unit next door, they trashed it so bad in there, it's been over 7 months, and it's still not clean enough to start showing it to new tenants.
 
Anyway, I think I'm just going to go find a nice new faucet, like a nice but reasonably priced  Kohler faucets, and install it myself, or help the teens, or maybe even ask Dustin to come help me, because it would require me getting down on my knees under the sink, and shutting off the water, and doing some other work under the sink with the plumbers' tape and stuff.
I think I'm just gonna go check out the faucet selection at the hardware store, see if they have anything on clearance, and then just do it.
I just hate the idea of making my landlord do more work when he only gets 1 day off and still has the unit next door to do.
I feel guilty asking him to fix stuff, especially small stuff like this that I can fix myself.
Just buy the parts, do it, and give him the receipts, and he takes it off of the rent.
He never complains about me doing that, and he actually has thanked me several times for just doing it myself.

Sorry, I just don't see it.
I logged into Myspace a couple days ago, and had 3 messages from 3 different guys.
Each one of them said I reminded them of Meg Ryan.
I really don't see the resemblance at all.
Here's one of the messages;
"Has anyone ever told you that you look similar to Meg Ryan , who I think is they sexiest woman alive ... I had just ran across the picture of yours and thought I would let you know."

The picture of me is the exact picture I use as my main profile pic on Myspace, so that is the one they are seeing to make the comments.
I honestly do not think I look like her.
At all.
Don't get me wrong, I think Meg Ryan is beautiful in these pics, not so much anymore since she had all that plastic surgery and has major fish lips now, but I just don't see how people can think I look like her.

I'll take it as the compliment it was intended as, but I still don't see it.

I've been going through every box, bag, and piece of luggage that contains all of my pictures, every single picture of everything ever taken, and it's amazing just how many places I put pictures.
I never put them all in the same place.
Why do I do that?!
I'm so freaking un-organized!

But I have to get them all, find them all, and go through every single one to find the most awesome pictures of the boys to use for the picture project that Christine and I are doing for the boys scrapbooks.
I'm really trying to get organized in my whole life, not just for this project, but every area of my life.
I want my home to be totally organized, I wish I could hire one of those organizer people, the ones who just know how to do it all so well, that once they get done organizing your home, you see how so very simple it all is and that you may have been able to do this all along if only you had known how.
I want to learn that, I want to learn how to be perfectly organized.
Like Bree from Desperate Housewives, I want to be anally organized in my home and life.

I'm posting this over here because even though the teens know I have this blog, they don't know the url off of the top of their heads even though it's my name.

Anyway, they are trying to make me fall in love with the cat, Carmine the lover kitty, by telling me every 10 minutes how awesome he is, how loving he is, how cute and well behaved he is, and taking a lot of pictures with my camera of Carmine the lover kitty.

I keep it on the table that is right next to my desk, but because of how I sit, it's always right in front of me.
I looked over a little bit ago and my camera wasn't there so I asked for it back.
When they gave it back, they said they took some pictures and I should look at them.
I figured they took just a few pictures, but no, they had filled up quite a good chunk of my micro sd card.
The way I have it set up, it takes pictures at 640x480, and it can hold 7,785 pictures.
They took 293 pictures of the cat.
Pictures of Carmine laying on Mark's bed, sleeping on Kali's spot, sleeping on my bed, eating cat food, drinking some water, sniffing Nova's butt, using the litter box, and all kinds of other crazy and totally mundane things that cats do.

They have fallen in love with him in just the few days that he has been here, and they want me to fall in love with him too.
Mark especially.
When we first moved here, we got 2 cats, Kali and her brother Mufasa.
Mark was only 6 years old, The Lion King was his favorite movie of the time, and Kali's brother kitten looked like Mufasa.
A light color orange tabby with big fluffy long fur, a huge sweeping and fluffy tail, and so Mufasa was his name.
Just a few years later, when Mark was 10, Mufasa escaped out an open window after having torn a hole in the screen, and was hit by a car and killed.
Carmine reminds him of Mufasa he says, his coloring, his long fluffy fur, his mannerisms, and Mark is right, this cat is so much like how Mufasa behaved.
Both are lovers, love to be held, hugged, cuddled, pet, snuggled with, love to have their butts gently smacked to get that elevator butt thing going on.
Both love people food, cat food, playful, and sweet.

Every time Mark looks at Carmine, he gets this look on his face of great sadness yet great joy at the same time.
He was all teary-eyed this evening while we were watching a movie after dinner, and I looked over at him laying on the couch with Carmine laying on him, nose snuggled right up against Mark's chin, one paw outstretched across Mark's chest like he was giving him a hug, and Mark looked over at me, a tear sliding down his right cheek, and he said, "Mom, he's so much like my Mufasa, I love him for that. I know we are looking for his owner, if we find them we have to give him back, but Mom, I really hope we don't find them, I love this cat.
He sleeps with me like Mufasa did, he licks my face like Mufasa did, right under my chin, his face is the same, he hugs me Mom, he wraps his paws around my neck at night and hugs me like Mufasa did", and then he broke down in tears.

He was laying on the couch, giant tears rolling down his cheeks, hugging tightly on this cat who reminds him of his beloved Mufasa who was his best friend for 4 years.
He was just weeping and I felt so bad for him, the loss of Mufasa was so devastating for him.
Mufasa was his best friend, he played with that cat every day, laying on his stomach on the floor playing with his Batman action figures, and Mufasa would be laying right there watching him play, meowing like he was part of the imaginary action, he'd knock over the action figures that took Mark time to make stand up, and I'd hear Mark say things like "Mufasa! Stop that, it's not time for Mr. Freeze to get his butt kicked by Batman yet, you have to wait till I say so!"
He talked like that cat could understand him, like the cat was actually playing along with him.
Mufasa was his whole world and the morning he died, Mark crumpled into a sobbing mess under the carport when the cat's body was brought to us by our old roommates at the time.
He was so distraught, he couldn't go to school that morning, he just cried and cried all day.
My sister had to come over and promise him that Mufasa was going to be taken to the vet and buried in the pretty cemetery near the little pond with all of the flowers around him.

Carmine reminds him of Mufasa in so many ways, and he is absolutely head over heels in love with this cat.
Had I known that this would be the effect of taking in this stray temporarily, I don't know if I would have done it.
If and when we find his owners, it's going to break Mark's heart to hand him over.
I'm not quite sure how to handle this situation.
I know Mark will get over it, that he will deal with it, but seeing him cry so much tonight broke my heart, and I don't know how either of us are going to deal with it when and if we find the owners.

I was digging around in my phone's pictures, and I found this pic I took of myself in the hospital.
That's the first brace I had right after surgery.
It was so uncomfortable and painful to wear, even though I was laying in bed the whole time with a pain pump.
And it smelled funny.
Not funny good, but funny gross.
I actually got nauseous a few times when I caught a whiff of it.
The nurses would come in and give me a bath with this awesome smelling body wash, and my whole body would smell really nice, and then just like 5 minutes later, I'd catch a whiff of the brace, either the plastic parts of it or the padding parts, but something on that brace just really stunk badly.
So between how it smelled and how painful it was on my chest, they switched me to another type of brace.

You can see how swollen my face was too.
My left eye was swollen and black and blue underneath, my left cheek was swollen, my top lip was swollen, basically, my whole face and neck were swollen up.
I also had that bandage on the side of my head from the bolt holes where they bolted me to the table for the surgery.

Just thinking about having to go through that again makes me kind of ill.