A Prodigal from Pittsburgh returns.

Hi, everyone! Glad to be here again! When I was active with DDs a few years ago, I had a precious beautiful Dollfie Dream standard I adored and named Rose (DDH-5 head, Yukino), learned a lot from the former DollfieDreams forum (hi, #baldylox, and I don't expect you to remember me)--and then a big financial downturn for me and my family, and I had to sell what I could get good $$$$ for fast--and so I had to sell my darling Rose. I cried off and on for two days when I shipped her off, even though she was going to lovely people who loved her almost as much. Later, when I got a good job again, and we dug ourselves out and up, my doll priority #1 was getting my Rose back! I didn't need that exact doll, but that exact sculpt and model, yes. But VolksUSA was out of stock! Which is how I ended up with Miki "Aoi" (DDH-3?)(another standard) to hold me over...then a blank DD3 head...then a lovely painted DDh-3 I put on an Obitsu 40 cm...finally I gave up on the USA store and ordered my "Rose" from VolksJapan. So after just one DD, I eventually got my new Rose, Miki, Amethyst (the Obitsu hybrid), and 2 Smart Dolls: a tea Twilight  and a tea Ebony). I think I may have slightly overcompensated, esp. with my budget! 😉 Glad to be here! Live long and prosper. 🖖🏼

Edited April 30, 2020 by charlieriley
corrections

Rose is such a pretty name~

I hope you’ll share photos with us eventually! 

I will! Glad to show her off, once I can get some decent light (rain, rain, rain..).

Here's my Miki, who's tired of the rainy stay-home days. 

Edited April 26, 2020 by charlieriley

Hey, I remember you, welcome back. I remember because I used to live in the Pittsburgh area. I also had a long period of financial issues, and now I live in Johnstown because it's cheaper here, and my mother lives here too. It's happy when the budget opens back up to be able to replace what you had to sell.

Hi! I remember you, too! 😁 I've been to Johnstown, but it was a while ago. A former colleague of mine heads the Nursing program at Pitt Johnstown, and a  late friend grew up there. I like your signature pics--beautiful girls! I need to get my girls all in one pic. Good to hear from you! 🖖🏼

Thank you. My signature shows the plastic kids that I had adopted before financial difficulties hit, and I had gone rather inactive for a while. Now that I'm sorted out, my population has more than doubled, and I really need to update all of my pictures. I haven't had time yet because I bought my new house last October, and I've been working overtime since January. Hopefully soon I'll have more time.

I looked at your doll list on your profile--wow! So many gorgeous girls! And congrats on buying a house! Overtime, though--ugh. Yay, money; boo, no time to enjoy it. 

Haha, thanks. My doll population sort of exploded when I lived with my parents for a year while I was between houses. They didn't charge me rent or utilities, but I was working full time.

The overtime money was definitely good, and it really helped me with buying new furniture and supplies for repairs for my house. Right now I'm saving up to have a pro cut down some dead trees that are too close to the house. They're big and my backyard is small with a steep hill behind it, so it'll be pricey.

Since my company is closing the overtime offerings for now as of next week, I'm taking that week off to relax some and get more things done. I never finished painting, so I haven't gotten to unpack my craft room yet.

Welcome! hope to see more photos of your ladies. 

15 hours ago, Jezrah said:

Haha, thanks. My doll population sort of exploded when I lived with my parents for a year while I was between houses. They didn't charge me rent or utilities, but I was working full time.

The overtime money was definitely good, and it really helped me with buying new furniture and supplies for repairs for my house. Right now I'm saving up to have a pro cut down some dead trees that are too close to the house. They're big and my backyard is small with a steep hill behind it, so it'll be pricey.

Since my company is closing the overtime offerings for now as of next week, I'm taking that week off to relax some and get more things done. I never finished painting, so I haven't gotten to unpack my craft room yet.

OMG lucky ducky for no rent for a year! I'd probably do the same. 😇

Do you have a fireplace for the wood? And do any Western PA backyards not have a damn hill?!? I lived in a house that had a flat postage-stamp backyard near here--but it was walled up for a parking pad, and the rest of the street's yards had sharp downward mudslides. Where I live now has the usual roly-poly front and back yards, and the front is a hazard to mow. 

I think you definitely deserve that week off! But don't work yourself so hard that you need to recover from the week off. I've done that. No good.

 

Edited April 28, 2020 by charlieriley
typos

I know, right? Although my step father and I clashed some while we lived together, overall my parents treat me well and have really helped me get back on my feet. He's also on call for emergency favors, like when a big branch fell out of one of the trees in the last windstorm and landed on my roof, slid off, and was then dangling in my backyard. This is why those trees need to come down. 

Sadly, I don't have a fireplace or wood burning furnace, so the pros will have to haul them away. One of the trees is likely bug infested, though, since woodpeckers attack it regularly. 

I spent the past two weekends chopping down the overgrown hedge row in the backyard so that the pros will have room to work. The hedges were ugly anyway. Luckily I happened to finish in time to have the dead hedges picked up from my yard by the township, in the once a year curbside brush pickup program.

I definitely plan to spend at least half of next week relaxing, because otherwise I could end up working eight hours a day every day on projects. I set a goal of finishing painting the beadboard in my kitchen white, and then painting the 70s wood paneling in the basement white. The room used to be a 70s gameroom, complete with bar, wood paneling, and orange shag carpet. I already took out the carpet and taped off the edges of the room, so if I can finish the painting, I can install the new carpet tiles I already have, and then my craft room can finally be unpacked. There's also still some craft related boxes at my mom's house that need to come over when I get to that point. I'm excited because it's a big room, so I plan to have the crafts on one side of the central pillar, and a photo area on the other side. It'll be the first time I have space for a permanent photo area, so maybe then it won't be such a hassle and I can take more pictures. 

Btw, sorry if I'm rambling, I'm now living alone and working from home so I don't get much socialization. 

Oh, believe me, I know about needing to talk--ramble away! My husband works from home right, now, too, and closes the door to keep cats and noises out. My son keeps artist/actor's hours, and his girlfriend is here, so forget talking to Mom. I've been at home for two and a half years, and I'm mildly annoyed with having this many people around and underfoot. But damn, I still want to have an adult conversation every now and then. 

I'm excited about your craft room, too. I had to laugh at that orange shag carpet. I had a boyfriend, early in college (I was a 70s teenager), whose father had just finished remodeling his basement--he was so proud: neon lit bar, darrrrrk (cheap cheap seconds) wood paneling, a HUGE 26" tv!, and neon lime green shag carpet. I imagined that room for your room with orange shag! That room gave me headaches; the whole thing was a color-bomb nightmare with screaming neon!  

I started working from home about a year and a half ago, when I moved to Johnstown. My office is in Monroeville, but I rarely have to go in, and obviously not at all right now. I'm supposed to shut the door and keep distractions out, plus I work with people's personal information so it can be a security issue. But since there's no one here but me and the cats, I don't bother. My smallest cat sits on my lap while I work.

Oh my goodness was the basement ugly when I first moved in. I'm going to paint the walls white to brighten it up down there, and I've got gray carpet tiles. I prefer gray neutrals to beige neutrals. My craft room furniture that I brought from my previous house is also white. Then, I'll hang my collection of anime posters and wall scrolls for color.

Most of the rooms in the house had paneling of some sort. In the rooms with beadboard style paneling I'm painting it white (I don't like brown). The living room has fake brick paneling on one wall that was previously painted white, and it actually looks pretty cool so I left it. But the dining room had the dark brown 70s style asymmetric paneling, which I don't like, so I pulled it down. Unfortunately in some places it pulled off chunks of the original plaster wall, which I can fix, but also left streaks of 45 year old glue that I have to figure out how to remove when I have time and motivation. There's still lots to be done, and I'm handy, but it'll probably take me a couple of years to finish in my spare time. It took me just over a year to pack up and then repair my previous house before I sold it, even working on it on nearly every day off. Probably about 9 months or so of that time was cleaning, throwing things away, and repairing. To be fair, though, I had just gutted the main floor half bath, so that had to be reinstalled. I had also taken out the carpeting to expose the hardwood floors, but the living room was in bad shape and I had to refinish it. It turned out really nice, though, and helped boost the sale. That house sold in three days. My current house had been on the market for about six months when I bought it for a little over half of the previous house's sale price. I think no one else wanted to tackle the ugly paneling, but I really love this house. It also had hardwood floors under the carpet, which I've now exposed. My existing furniture is also fitting in like I bought it for this house.

Oh, no, your cats might steal someone's info! 😸 When the University actually got a digital student info system (about ten years after every other comparable school...), we were told to sign out and turn off our terminals completely if we had to leave our desks. SsuuuureNO. It took three minutes to get it to shut down, five minutes to get the thing booted up, another 3-5 to get the system running, 2-5 to sign in, and another 2-5 to type in the code to get the info. We all figured out fast than we could either turn off the monitor or throw a scarf or something over the screen. I refused to waste 20 minutes of my time (even while paid) every time I need to pee or talk to someone. Oh, damn, I just realized that that was 30 years ago this week. 🙀 

Wow, that's a crazy lot of work you have already done on your house. It's going to be beautiful when it's all done! This house was in move-in condition when we bought it. Now it's starting to look like Boo Radley's house. Hey. We mow the yard every couple weeks. That's good enough. Right? 😇

When we were looking at houses, every time we asked "What's under the carpet?" the answer was "A hardwood floor." No matter that I could stomp on it and know it was just crappy cheap plywood flooring; I guess that means "hardwood floor" in real estate listings. One "New Yorker" during that time had a really funny (for us) cartoon: a couple is gardening in their backyard, and the wife, who was digging, says to her husband, "There's a hardwood floor under here!" 

 

Haha, that's funny about the hardwood floor comic. I didn't ask what was under my carpet. It was in fairly good condition but it was beige, which I don't like. Also, my cats are hard on carpet and are better with hardwood or other solid floors. I had four cats until recently, when one had kidney failure rather suddenly and had to be put to sleep. Three out of four of them were overeaters who regularly got hairballs. I switched their food to hairball formula and got them a feeder dish so that they can't scarf their food as easily, and it seems to be helping somewhat. But anyway, because of them I decided to check the corner of the closet, because other houses in the area definitely did have hardwood under the carpet, and I lucked out that it was there. The sellers didn't say anything about it, but they were selling their mom's estate and I think they just wanted it off their hands. They didn't counter my initial offer at all.

I took the week that I moved in off and worked eight hours a day every day, with help from my mom and step dad to get a lot done to start with. I did this because we always have a busy overtime season in January at my job, so I knew that I wouldn't have as much free time within a couple of months. Our required overtime was in January only, then it became voluntary after that, which I signed up for to make up for having bought a house and a new washer and dryer for it. I was lucky in that I got to take advantage of Black Friday sales as I was getting things I needed, like those machines, and also a new dehumidifier that is much quieter than the one that came with the house. It was loud, and right outside the room in the basement that I use as my office. I think it'll be nice when it's all done. I should bring over my step dad's niece, who was my realtor, when it's done, because although she agreed that the house has good bones and was worth buying, she also seemed kind of skeptical of the house's overall style.

Don't feel bad about house maintenance. I'm doing all this now, but I can't say that I won't let it get worn out later and leave it that way for a while before I decide to do something about it. I do enjoy getting a big project done that really spruces up the look of the room, though. I'm allergic to cut grass, so I only mow my lawn like maybe three times per summer, just enough to keep code enforcement off me. That's why I don't mind that my current house has a small yard. I also do enjoy gardening some, but I can only stay outside for a few hours in the spring and summer before my allergies make me sick. I get along better with fall. So anything I plant needs to be fairly low maintenance. I still want to get rid of my grass entirely though. Maybe next year I'll be able to save up and get gravel or rubber mulch, something fairly long lasting, to replace the grass.

I turn my computer off when I get off work, but I only lock the screen when I go on break or lunch. In the main office, everyone only locks the screen all the time, even overnight, so they have to be reminded to reboot their computers periodically to load updates from IT. My work from home computer is a little different than the in office computers. It doesn't have a big tower, instead it uses a mini less powerful computer called a Thin Client. This is because we also have to keep both a modem and a decent sized router on our desks to be able to connect to our company installed business speed internet line. We also have an internet based phone, because my job deals with customer service. The phone is also our time clock device. I used to take phone calls, but now I answer emails. I still have to call people with bigger issues, though. The Thin Client isn't powerful enough by itself, so it accesses the company servers to create a sort of copied virtual desktop. It still pretty much functions the same, but it has a double log on process, and if you don't shut it down overnight and then start fresh the next day it acts weird. It takes about 10 minutes to start up and get all of my necessary programs running and logged in to, so I definitely wouldn't want to do that more than once a day.