Updated Pics of the New Place. and An Unexpected Deluge of Family Stuff

Hi guys!

I know, I know. Two posts in like two hours?!? How obnoxious! How do you stand me? :p

I went around and took some updated pics of our new place.

My new office.

I'm thinking about putting up my shelves on the wall to the left of the window. I want a de-cluttered office, so I'm keeping my office supplies in the hall closet, which is huge!

There's even more storage up top. Oh Storage, how I love thee.

There's a bath right next to the office, which is "mine." Ryan is using the master, which is in our bedroom and has a shower, not tub. I wanted the tub!

Our bedroom is still pretty much a blank canvas. Did you catch what I did on the dresser? tehe...

Porn cam! :p

I'm so completely joking. I did that as a joke for when Ryan gets home. He he.

Kitchen is pretty much the same. Notice all the red!!!

The dining room is waiting on its new furniture.

Our view of Mt. Helix from the front window.

The living room currently still has our old couch in it. (Cannot wait until the new furniture gets here!) It also contains our old dining room table, which actually, looks rather cool right there in the corner. We might leave it for a game table for guests or something. I love it.

Obviously, we've still got boxes here and there, but we're getting there. This is our bookshelf. Ryan and I agreed that we shouldn't completely cram it full of books as I'm wont to do. :p I'm a writer... What can you expect?

"This is what it looks like to fall in love." This is a (dusty) drawing my friend made for us. She drew it from a picture. We were first dating at the time, and I love how you can tell that we're falling in this pic. :)

Wedding pic.

Another wedding pic and an oil painting that a reader of my blog on Obesity Help painted for us, also from a picture. Isn't it amazing?

Our wedding invitation.

Can you tell we really like to look at ourselves? :p

This is my brother's senior picture. He's a muscian, a true tortured artist. I don't think he'd mind me telling you the story behind the image. Today, he's a recovering addict, but at that time, he was a full-blown one. A few hours after this picture was taken, he drove his truck through a brick building and disfigured his face (among alot of other injuries). I got the call late, maybe 10 or 11 that night. I was studying at a coffee shop. My best friend took one look at my face and began stacking my books. She took them home with her and I drove like a mad woman to Indianapolis, where Britt had been taken by helicopter.

When we saw him, it was devastating, unbelievable, yet somehow, he was conscious. He was black from head to toe, which at first, we thought were burns. It was blood. I didn't want him or my parents to see me visibly shaken, so I went to the bathroom to throw up. They hadn't even stiched him up yet. It took everything I had not to cry. Can you imagine getting your face stitched up? In addition, he had damage to his spleen and various other organs, a broken arm, something wrong with his foot, etc. While he was in the room, his two friends that had been with him in the truck also arrived. They both had minor brain damage, though at the time we didn't know the severity. It was so scary.

Addiction is terrifying. I wish I could say that was the last time he almost died, but there were many many many more times. Many more hospital visits. Many more calls in the night. Many more moments where you look at your cell phone and see its your parents and wonder if this is the night that they tell you he's gone too far.  

But, all that's to say, drug addiction and food addiction are not that much different. I nearly ate myself to death at 343 pounds. It took a doctor telling me I might only have 5 years left to live to really wake me up. The older I get, the more I realize how right Ms. Maya Angelou was when she said, "We are all more alike than unalike."

Wow. That was possibly too much, huh? How's that for a "deep" blog? Here you were thinking I only think about food, decorating, and writing. ;-)

PS. If you are just here for the daily Silly Survey post (and I can't say I blame you), go here. xoxo