Our Cone Zone

Kelly’s Lost Superpowers

October 28, 2007 4 Comments

Well, it’s happened. Jesse and I finally decided to skip church on a Sunday. I can’t tell you the last time that happened-probably when I graduated! Jesse usually goes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and although I can rarely join him because of work, we don’t intentionaly skip it, and certainly never on Sundays.

But that was before I got old.

Yes, it has happened. I, Kelly Marie Cone, have lost my superpower ability to survive on little sleep. YES, IT HAS HAPPENED!! For 4 intense years, I was able to get by for months on only 4-5 hrs. of sleep a night. Of course that means I took power naps during the day, that I occasionally fell asleep in my cornflakes, that weekends were a time of sacred sleeping in for 50 hrs. straight. Of course that means that I would kill people on the flag football field, simply due to the fact that I should have been on my fifth dream at 1pm on a Saturday instead of eating grass and mud.

But now, I’M OLD!! For goodness sakes, it’s like the minute one’s 22nd birthday approaches, you can’t operate on anything less than 9 straight hours!! At first, I didn’t quite catch on since sleep is sort of an accidental addendum to my life. But now, I simply have to fall asleep at 10pm in order to even STIR at7am!! This is scary since most of the time I need to be out of the door by 7:30.

Not to mention the napping. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays I have a 2-3 hour lunch break due to scheduling. This would be a great time to take care of my shopping, workout, or even the household chores. But no. I nap. That makes my grand sleep total per day add up to around 11 hours.

And I’m still getting ill from all the exhaustion! So far I’ve had the flu twice, sinus headaches, a cold, and the most recent and ongoing, migraines that threaten to make my eyeballs pop out of my head. This is what has ailed me for the past 72 hrs, and nothing, not even overdosing on every painkiller I can find has helped them. Jesse is worn out from life and caring for his sick wife and crazy cat, so he is taking a much deserved sleeping-in-time.

So there it is. One more has joined the ranks of the aging and the dying. One more spastic teenager has lost the residual effects of her youth and joined the assembly line of Capitalistic America. One more American will be joining her coworkers at Starbucks hourly for her much needed jolt back into reality.

October 21, 2007 7 Comments

Well, I am not ready to take pics of our apt., but due to Jason’s request I will post a picture of our new couch that we bought for $200 off of Craigslist. It’s sweet- it totally fits our “Anthropologie” house theme.

https://ourconezone.com/48/

Dallas Pictures

October 12, 2007 6 Comments

So I finally unpacked my camera cord and decided to upload some pictures I’ve taken of our 2 months here in Dallas.

First, some of the kids that I teach at Bending Oaks High School:

Haley and Victoria

Jasmine, Kristi, and Ali

Here’s a random sampling of my day to day challenges:)

Some of our still new, but already oh-so-dear friends:)

Noll’s birthday party at PappaDoh (an upscale seafood restaurant)

Here’s Christiana and Katy being…well, themselves!!:)

Here’s a random sampling of the scenery around here:

My drive to work:

Here’s what I was greeted with when I got to work one morning at Flower Mound Montessori. I walked in the door, and there was a dancing……molar!!! Apparently, they were having a “don’t-be-afraid-of-the-dentist” happy fun day! Ironically, all the kids were crying. I died a little bit inside from trying not to laugh.

The apt. we were at for 1 month. Hey, it ain’t bad for $500/month!!

The midget cat I spoke of earlier.

Compare that to our apt. complex now!!

This is a neighborhood that I teach piano in. All of the houses cost around 800k.

This house was actually in our price range (100-150k) when we were househunting:

Last but not least, here’s where we go to church! You can’t even imagine how COVERED with iconography of bible stories the walls and the big dome in the middle are….

That’s it for now!! More of our apt. when I feel that it is presentable enough:)

Ugly-ette

October 1, 2007 3 Comments

So here we are at our little “Homeplace Inn + Suite”. What a lovely name. There were some major selling points in choosing this place, like the abundance of ants, the grubby neighbors knocking on the door at ungodly hours of the night, the low-on-juice smoke alarm that keeps beeping in a random manner, the room deodorizer that can’t decide whether wants to cover up the moldy smell or one-up it, their lack of tolerance for pets of any kind, oh, and the lowest price on the market.

One of their biggest selling points is that their rooms include a “kitchen-ette”. Such a lovely word. Like a dinnette, for instance, is a nice word for a nice thing- a small, cute, European trademark. Or Paulette. Reminds you of that sweet diner waitress who served your first Georgia waffles and called you “Hun”. Adding ette onto the end of a word should automatically imply that it’s fancy or wonderful in a modern way. It’s referring to the fact that precious things come in smaller packages. Things that have “ette” on the end should have unrealized, undiscovered potential.

Let’s look at the suffix “ette”. Here are the definitions that I found.

-ette

suff.

1. Small; diminutive

2. Female

3. An imitation or inferior kind of cloth

I would have to say that our “kitchenette”(let’s just call it this for lack of a worser name) takes after #3, minus the cloth part. Our kitchenette is just enough of an imitation that it feels like a joke, like it’s mocking us with its semblance of potential without any of the usual perks, like convenience or usefulness. We have just enough cupboard space to make me want to put stuff away, only to realize that none of it fits. There’s also enough counter space on which to rest a teaspoon, but of course, that would be exaggerating.

Basically, this kitchenette is like camping without the trees. Like a slip-n-slide with just a belly flop. Like Oreos without the lard.

But all in all, it will get us by for five days. As long as we can hide Mirabelle and keep her from sitting on our windowsill (THAT would be a dead giveaway). Perhaps we need to see the potential as it lies in the future- the promise of our nice, luxury apt. awaiting us on Friday. Perhaps all of this is meant to be dissatisfying to make sure that we appreciate what is to come.

And so, until then, we will continue to stuff all the food we can into our refrigerator. Or should I say, “refriger-ette” .