Mama cut out pictures of houses for years from “Better Homes and Garden” magazine, plans were made and concrete poured, nail by nail and board by board, Daddy gave life to Mama’s dream…

Last week, I went with my mother to a furniture store.

We went to look for a maroon love seat for the study.

This new house is really becoming exciting. When all of this mess began, I was pretty psyched for her because it was kind of fun talking about all the fun things we would maybe have in this new family home. But then there were a lot of repetitive questions and I lost interest. And then I started to feel bitter because this was replacing our home. This brand spankin’ new house was going to make us have to get rid of the house I grew up in. And that made me sad. So I ignored all the new-house stuff. I became really irritated when conversations turned to all the “fun stuff happening with the house” because I really didn’t like this new-house stuff.

But the house is almost done. It has to be done by September 24 for the parade of homes. It’s gorgeous.  And now it’s super exciting for everyone.

So with everything coming together, we needed to find a maroon love seat for the study.  And we were going to just look at bedroom furniture for the room intended for Drew.

I was really, really helpful. Like when Mom asked me to go re-measure something because we forgot the dimensions, I went to the part of the store that had the dresser Mom was looking at for Drew’s blue room.  But then I saw this:

THAT BEAR IS WEARING A BASKET LIKE A BACKPACK. OF COURSE I WAS GOING TO WANT TO OWN THIS PIECE OF ART.

Hello! I LOVE BEARS! (And dinosaurs. But there were no backpack-wearing dinosaurs. Sad.)

So THEN I found THIS:

What a precious little bear face! I immediately wished that “my room” hadn’t been painted a perfect yellow color and that all my furniture and bedding wasn’t already decided upon. I wished I could change the design concept of “my room” to BEAR LAND.

And then I found THIS and knew that we had definitely made the wrong choice with the yellow.

DANCING, HAND-HOLDING BEARS. I was IN LOVE. How can you NOT love that?!!? It’s hilarious and precious! What an excellent conversation piece!! THIS IS ART!!!

I obviously was taking way longer than she had anticipated, so after a while, Mom came looking for me. I had been running around like a ninny, looking for all things bear-shaped/themed.

I found this gem when Mom found me:

It reminded me of the time I murdered one of God’s creatures. And Mom wondered what the fuck I was doing.

I told her I had a brand new design concept for any room of the house. I told her bears would look glorious in any room, or that we could spread them out throughout the house.  I told her that they would be great conversation starters and that if no one else would appreciate them, I would appreciate the bears enough for everyone on earth. Because I loved them.

But then she scolded me, reminded me I’m an adult and t0ok my phone away.  I followed behind her, dejected, as we made our way to the place where she paid for her maroon love seat and Drew’s bedroom furniture.

Looks like I did a lot more looking than she did. And the bears remain at the store.

I have the best Christmas Present ideas….!

nobody knows where they might end up, nobody knows, nobody knows where they might wake up, nobody knows…!

So, I think I mentioned this before but my mom is building a house. Well, obviously she is not the one doing the hard labor and constructing a dwelling deemed livable. There’s just no way that could actually happen. But you know what I mean.

Because of this new house, my mom is basically a basketcase and walks around life like a ninny. (I really wanted to use that word!) She has been trying to get her house “ready to put on the market” which means making repairs and throwing all of our random shit away.

None of this would really be worthy of telling you about except it is now encroaching on my life. I have been told that I must pack up all of my childhood books and the rest of the crap in my bedroom that I haven’t taken with me anywhere. Okay, fine. I can do that. But the repairs?  At least give a girl some warning!

After a night out terrorizing East Lansing with a couple of my best gals, I awoke this morning at 6:50 am (ish) to hear my mother fluttering around the kitchen and down the hall as her heels clicked against the hardwood floor. I immediately rolled back over and continued right on sleeping. Much too early to be awake. THEN, a text woke me up (thanks a lot, Nikki- lol just kidding! love you!) around 9:30 am or something. I deemed this a suitable time to rise. So after texting back and forth a for a while, apologizing to a couple people I happened to inappropriately drunk-text, and deciding I needed to watch an episode of Dawson’s Creek, I heard someone walkin’ around downstairs. I assumed it was my mom. (I have this joke with her lately that she just never goes to work anymore- but it’s totally a joke. She does go to work. And she loves her job. FYI. hahaha)

So, because I assumed it was my mom, I got out of bed, opened my door and took a first few tentative steps out into the loft before saying something snarky to Tam (my mom) about how she’s a slacker and never goes to work.

Oh. It totally wasn’t my mom. Whoever it was totally heard me get up and was like, “HELLO!?!”

Uhm. That’s a man-voice. WTF?!

Uhm. Hello?

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE SAID?! (Maybe I should have gone with something like “WHO DERE?!” bahahaha at least I crack myself up…)

“I’m John,” said the odd man in my home.

Suddenly, I was thankful I put pants on. I almost didn’t!

Uuuuuum, I’m Katie?

“I’m just putting up some drywall here for your mother?”

This is when I just retreated towards my room. I would hide until he was gone. My hair was huge and completely weird shaped. The X drawn on my hand in permanent marker from the bar last night was probably now transferred to my cheek. I didn’t need to know what this man looked like or what he was doing. Just. Go. Away. But he sounded busy, so I figured I’d wait it out.

Oh. Okay.

I hightailed it back to my room, closed the door, took my pants back off, and crawled back into bed. I texted my mom “it’s not awkward at all with this random man in my house or anything…” but she didn’t care enough about me to text me back.

It seemed like I was waiting forever. After an episode of Dawson’s Creek that I pretty much slept through, I decided I couldn’t live like a prisoner in my own home anymore. So I grabbed my clothes and tip-toed to the bathroom. After showering and getting dressed, I got the f outta there and ran my very-important errands. Yeah, right. I basically invented a reason to gtfo of my house for at least an hour.

HE WAS STILL THERE WHEN I GOT BACK. AND HE LOOKS LIKE SANTA CLAUS.

AND HE CONVERSED WITH ME AS IF OUR AWKWARD INTRODUCTION NEVER TOOK PLACE.

meredith grey knows what's up

So, I went right along with it. I pretended this morning never happened, just like the annoying thing that happened last night. And the awkward thing that happened yesterday after work.  If Santa can handle avoidance behavior, then I’m just gonna continue living my life “under a banner of avoidance.” Really, this just instills in me the idea that being “dark and twisty” and an avoider is okay. This all just really reinforces my belief that if I’m any one character from Grey’s Anatomy, it is indeed Meredith. And if you watch that show, she’s not exactly… stable. But whatever, she gets help and becomes bright and shiny. Maybe someday I’ll be bright and shiny Meredith too. Change does happen, you know. I used to be very Cristina, but as I just told you, I’m not so much anymore.

This got very off-topic. Where was I?

Oh yes. Santa. (Sidenote:  As I was writing Santa, I almost wrote Satan. Interesting.)

Santa Claus just continued on merrily, putting up drywall or something. And then he finally left, but not before asking me if it was okay to leave his ladder here since he would be returning at 9 am tomorrow morning.

I can’t wait. Maybe I’ll ask him for a pony tomorrow. Or maybe not since horses freak me out.

Oh, I know. I’ll ask him for a boyfriend an *NSYNC reunion tour! Ooh, or for Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears to bury the hatchet and get their love-fest back on. Or for Mel Gibson to not be so terrible and make him go away. (I could do this forever.)