Definition - Lifestyle

There has been a lot of talk around about lifestyles, and "alternative" lifestyles.  This makes me wonder, do I have a lifestyle?  I have a fairly predictable schedule at this point, but lifestyle?  Lets look, shall we kids?  According to thefreedictionary.com  a lifestyle is

"1. a set of attitudes, habits, or possessions associated with a particular person or group

2. such attitudes, etc., regarded as fashionable or desirable

3. NZ

a.  a luxurious semirural manner of living

b.  (as modifier) a lifestyle property"

 

Hmmm.  This is making no sense to me.  It seems that the word "lifestyle" is the same as decor groups, this is Mediterranean, this is beach cottage.  I don't see the world in terms like this I guess, so lets see if we can delve deeper into this rabbit hole.  

Lifestyle Magazine you would think is a good place to start, but I' not so sure.  The website states "
Lifestyle Magazine offers a close look at health, relationships, finances, and other real-life topics. It is informative, moving, and sometimes disturbing, but always relevant! Lifestyle Magazine provides help and hope for the challenging issues of today’s world."  Maybe that's what kind of lifestyle I have, disturbing.  But it sounds like they think a lifestyle is everything involving life.  Interesting.  Hypothesis - Lifestyle is the style in which you live your life.  Problem - How would you qualify that?  Or quantify it?  

 

The choices we make determines our lifestyle, according to Lifestyle-Movement.  This leaves me asking, and?  What does it all mean?!?  

Lifestyles seem to have no direct definition of types, at least none that I can find.  I've heard reference to the Gay Lifestyle, Bohemian Lifestyle, and Alternative Lifestyles, but these seem to be air words, or words that actually have no meaning.  As far as I can tell, these phrases of nothing are here to divide something interesting and involving many layers and quirks.  Oh, yes, I'm talking about the American culture.  Can we stop having these air words now?  They do make me crabby. 

Fix one problem and find 5 more

So, you saw some of the pictures of weirdness.  This trailer has been nothing but weirdness.  I take something out or fix it, and then its another disaster.  We unhooked and moved the dryer from the bathroom, and found where the floor was kind of soft.  Then, we tried to take out the washer.  Oh dear gawd.  The water was spraying everywhere inside the walls and the floor was mostly melted with a nice layer of filth on top, like a nasty doom cupcake.  After we cut up the carpets in the back room, we realized it had 2 pads underneath.  The hall carpet had... more carpet underneath.  That's right, when we lifted the carpet there was another layer under it.  It looks like that in the kid room also, like they just threw new carpet over the filthy stuff they already had.  There was a built in dresser in the kid room, we had to dismantle it when I realized the sub-flooring was stained with feces of some kind.  I'm not sure why, but they also glued the carpets to the underneath of the paneling.  So my 2 week maybe a month cleanup is not even half done.  The kid room is almost totally kilzed, as is the back bedroom.  The backroom floor isn't started yet, as I'm still cutting carpet out of the walls.  OUT OF THE WALLS!  Augh.  The bathroom isn't even started.  We have to take out most of the floor, the cupboard, peel the walls, cover the walls and ceiling with kilz, rebuild the floor, kilz it, and cheer a victory against scary nastiness.  In fact, I'm leaving in a few minutes to go do all of that.  In the heat.  Ugh.  It will be worth it when its done.  I can't wait for it to be done. 

Hepatitis Trailer

We are making serious progress.  The ceiling is kilzed, and we got a lot cleared out.  The falling apart pantry is gone, as are the dishwasher (whoever heard of a gas-run dishwasher?), washer and dryer.  Quick fact - if you list something for free on a site where most people are selling things for outrageous prices, people will jump on it like kids at fat camp on a cake. Thank you facebook! 

Marcus hauling off what used to be the scary front porch

This is the weather stripping on the back door.  Yes, that is cardboard and staples.

Pudding cup in the walls.

Terrifying ass goblin Marcus found behind the refrigerator. 

Where the wallpaper used to be!

SuperFluffy peeled it all off!  It was 8 billion degrees in there.

Terrifying geese painted on the kids room wall

I was sad I had to paint over all of this, but the walls had to be sealed.  There was so much filth that it had soaked into the walls and sub-flooring.

Cool right?

You can see some of the staining here.

It was pretty bad here.

Moose, our new puppy helping.  He's 9 months old and 65lbs.

Chewy happiness.

Bridget, my brother's dog, is not amused by Moosey Wolfson.

Luckily, they used vinyl paint for the inside of the medicine cabinet so I was able to use a phillips screwdriver to get the screws out, rather than the allen wrenches I would normally need. 

Medicine cabinet after I took it off.  I'm going to clean it, kilz it, and use it as a shelf.  Bam!

Top layer = vinyl paint.  Middle layer = contact paper.  Last layer = actual wallpaper.

I think we found the leak.

Possible shackles found in the yard.

PRT - What is that smell?

Floor cleared!  Mostly.

  After clearing the floor, at least mostly, I started on the walls.  I never really thought about washing walls before, I would wipe corners but I never really felt the need to scrub walls from top to bottom.  Of course I haven't lived anywhere for more than about 6 months at a time before.  Of course, I never thought that I would be cleaning feces off the walls either, but there you go.  I started in the living room, and just went in a circle around the whole place.

 Can you see the nasty?   Anty, Fluffito, and Oleander all helped me deal with this mess.  Anty braved a scaey ass murderous spider.  It looked like this.  AUGH!  I saw 3 of them.  I swear that one had a bandanna on and a shiv in it's hand.  TERRIFYING!!  So we took some TSP to the walls along with some 20x orange clean stuff.  Took it right off!  My camera is angry right now, but pics will be posted soon.  

Project Restoration Trailer Day 1 - Making A Path

So Marcus and I were able to score a mobile home on the cheap.  Whoohoo!  Of course, that means it needs some love and care.  It wasn't abandoned so we don't have to try to evict wildlife.  I love how we are peeling away at this place, one layer at a time.  The outer layer is, in a word, filth.  Like so:

Do you hear the sound of serial killers in the bushes?

This was taken after a day of cleaning and the left side of the porch was cleared.  As the layers come clear, I can see how it is coming together to become a nice home for us!  Can you tell I'm excited?!?  I've never lived somewhere I could even paint before.  Now, I can do whatever I want, and the landowner is letting me go nuts on landscaping!  Whooo! 
 

Living room when we walked in.  The cleaner of the rooms.  Popa Bear gazes in amazement.

The smell of animal feces and urine slapped us as we walked in.  Oooof.  Popa Bear, an avid non-smoker, asked me to light a cigarette to help with the smell.  I've been using cheap face masks from the hardware store and they helped a ton!  My mom used to threaten me with taking a snow shovel to my room to clean up the clothes and books.  She literally used a rake and a snow shovel  to clear an amazing amount of this stuff.  All but a layer of silt, anyway.  I was able to finish it up with a vacuum and some baking soda pet smell eater carpet sprinkle.  Now we can walk on the floor!  Yay!

Book

I've started writing a new book.  I've gotten a bit burned out on the first one for now.  Its post apocalyptic and the main character stabs a guy on the second page.  Not quite Jenny Lawson's masterpiece (which involved running into a skinned deer) but I'm having fun with it.  Ive seen a lot if old demons this week and it reminds me of things I've lost and gained.  I want to put my experiences into it, but what to put?  Even a true life story wouldn't include every detail, but my life is weirdness in the details.  Perfection in the details.  I get lost in details.  Where am I? 

Marcus and I got a house!  We are staying with my mother (homicidal mommy unit) while we fix it up a bit.  Some paint, a couple of throw pillows, and just like in Young Frankenstein it'll be just like home.  My incredibly generous grandparents gave it to us, and we are so excited!  I walked into this project knowing one thing, I want a yellow happy sunshiny kitchen.  I have no idea how to do anything really with building or remodeling besides paint.  I've helped do the actual painting and that is it.  I tried to put together a bookshelf from a big box store once, and it was, well, .  A fucking disaster is more accurate though.  I'm having fun on the DIY Network and Pintrest getting ideas for what I want to do.  I decided on a coastal cottage theme, and I'm loving it!  For neat-o things I want in my house click here!  I also have a new landlord that owns the lot.  He seemed like a nice, clean-cut yuppie type, and offered to pay for any landscaping I want to do.  My jaw almost hit the floor.  I can grow anything I want?!?  Ya'll that is the first time I've heard that from any landlord.  Of course since we own the trailer its most likely that we will be there for a while.  Oooooh I'm so excited!  I'm gonna have strawberries, and tomatoes, and all kinds of fun stuff!  I would love to have a cherry tree.  I'd like to have one tattooed on me too.  Like this one.

That is not taking care of things

So I slept all day.  I woke up this morning, laid in bed with a book, and then took a nap.  Marcus told me not to worry and he would take care of everything.  I guess taking care of everything now means "I'm going to eat the rest of your cookies and play xbox."  TOTAL DICK MOVE.  Plus the laundry i folded is still where i left it which means nobody put it away.  Technically I'm supposed to do that but I wanted it to be someone else's job today. 

In other news, things have settled in my life in an unexpected fashion.  I am now a stay at home housemother.  I am rather enjoying it.  Lots of work but it opens the ability for me to awesome stuff, like the following picture of my boyfriend's cat that is too fat and lazy to care if I dress her in crazy shit.  PuffyFluff is interested in ham and not much else.