What’s “33% more free?”  Is that like when you’re in college and your girl/boyfriend goes out of town?

Today I work at night so I went downstairs to read in the sun by the pool for a bit.  For the record, it’s a Thursday,  I was there from 2 to about 3.

As I read, the pool area filled up.  A guy with a styrofoam icechest of beer.  2 chatty girls talking about their nail salons and so, like, did she break up with him or what?  Another girl with a magazine.  Another guy with flip flops and 2 Coronas.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AND WHY DO THEY ALL DRIVE BEAMERS AND LEXUSES AND ACURAS?

This morning as I was thinking about the house vs. apartment situation, I thought it might be fairly obvious to anyone who read my last blog post that perhaps I don’t want the house.  I got super excited about cheap awesome apartments!!  (You’re right, Pam, I didn’t post the link.  People of the world, if you want the link to the best apartments in Houston, e-mail me.)

The thing about getting a house is that even if we got a nice house that was $300 cheaper than we’re paying now, do you know what else we’d need?  A lawnmower.  A washer and dryer.  A dining room table, plus chairs.  We’d probably need a bed, because sleeping with a mattress on the floor of a modern apartment with concrete floors- that’s minimalist and chic.  In a house, that’s ghetto.  We’d also need another mortgage to fund Jen’s Gardening Habit, which would run unchecked with all that yard.  “All that yard” being any amount of yard space whatsoever.

So this morning when I realized I was putting more energy into a new apartment than a house, I went into the bedroom and woke up Dave and said, “I don’t want a house.  I don’t think it’s in our best financial interest.”  He said, “I dreamed we got an apartment.”

So that was that.  We didn’t need the mortgage lady to call and say that due to our credit sins, a mortgage in the price range we wanted wasn’t feasible at this time.  But she did and we were already okay with that.

So as pimp as our apartment is, it’s ass-expensive.  We knew this and made the choice to renew our lease 2 months after I moved in.  But it’s ridiculous and they’re raising rent again this year.  So, come September 1, we’ll be out of here.

I did some math and played with a mortgage calculator and on HAR.com and it turns out we could afford a decent house in a decent location and still pay at least $3-400 less than we’re paying now.  Plus, the apartments we’d been looking at weren’t that much cheaper than a house anyway.

So we filled out an app for a pre-qualification for a loan.  Man, it feels like freakin Judgment Day.  As I wait to hear from her, I’m afraid she’ll say, “About that loan, I’m afraid I won’t be able to give it to you until you say 100 Hail Marys, 200 Our Fathers and pray for the souls of every single person on the continent of Africa.  Don’t forget Madagascar.”

My credit is decent but I do have quite a bit of debt (which is what is propelling us to move in the first place- so we can pay that stuff off) and I’ve fully accepted that this may not be the time to buy a house.

It might be the time we get rid of some of the furniture and move to a cute one bedroom in Montrose with no balcony, no pool, no covered parking and no gym.  And pay half the rent we were accustomed to paying.

So on any given day, depending on how optimistic I’m feeling, I will either browse houses or apartments online.  To find apartments, I used to use the Houston Press until that got overrun with scams and shady apartment brokers.  So then it was Craigslist, but now you can’t find a single posting from a landlord, it’s all businesses that post something ridiculous like “2-bedroom with hardwoods and washer/dryer, central a/c, dishwasher and covered parking close to Rice University- $550.”  And then when you call, they’re all, “Oh, we don’t have that particular unit available, but . . .”

So I was like, Man, where are all the cool kids getting apartments??  Anyway, I found the website.  And I fell in love with about 50 apartments last night.  Even Dave got excited about moving, and that’s saying something.  It’s too soon to contact them, but at least I know where to look in about 2 months!

I mean, unless that whole house thing works out.

So I’d been lamenting that there’s no Lush in Houston. And I’m out of bath bombs but can’t justify a Lush expenditure right now. Especially since the last time I went into a Lush store I walked out $100 poorer. Ooops.

I also don’t have a current perfume. Smell is very important to me (understatement!!) and after I used up my Green Irish Tweed, I was at a loss. It was spring/summer and I needed something fresh but not sweet. Summery but not fruity. Clean but not medicinal. High quality but not expensive. My, I am hard to please.

I decided to just go to Aveda and get one of their little Personal Blends, a bottle of perfume base that I could add drops of one of their 20 versions of essential oil mixtures to. It’s like $25 and smells decent, so okay.

And then. THEN! Oh, you can’t wait for this, can you? We went to eat lunch at Mi Luna (don’t get their paella, stick to the tapas) since it was freaking beauuuuutiful out yesterday. The Village was of course crowded since it was nice out and Houston does what it does best on a nice day- shop. So we had to park far away in a place I don’t normally park.

Across from a bath+body store called Naked. It sells a lot of items similar to Lush’s, only with more natural ingredients. They also give complimentary foot soaks. And you can blend your own scents into some of their products. And they seriously have like a million oils to choose from. Well, the website shows about 75, but I think there were more in the store. (No, I’m sure of it, I think they had double the scents in the store.)

Forget Aveda and their pretentious “personal” blends! Dave and I stood at the oils for about 20 minutes just creating scent-combinations on little cards. He liked the Silver Mountain Water with Grapefruit. I liked everything. They have an oil called Spicy Lime that I added to every scent concoction I made. Green Clover Aloe with Spicy Lime with Honey. Spicy Lime with Grapefruit and Cucumber Lettuce. I ended up getting a .3oz perfume with blends of these oils: Tomato (for something musky but not sweet), Spicy Lime (because, well, it’s me) and Lychee (sweet but not annoyingly fruity). Dave found the tomato a little overwhelming so we added Cucumber and Lettuce, and then a little more Lychee.

So yes, now I smell like a salad. A delicious, fresh summer salad! In fact, I named it Summer 08, because by the time I’m out of it, I’ll probably want something fall-ish, like Leather with Cinnamon and Clove. (Don’t try that at home, I’m just making things up.)

And since it’s only .3oz, I won’t get tired of it and be like, “Ugh, I made the commitment to this ENTIRE bottle of perfume.” I’m far more fickle than my mom, who has been wearing Estee Lauder’s Beautiful ever since I was aware of perfume’s existence. I can only wear an entire bottle once and that’s it. In my perfume graveyard are CK One (isn’t it in everyone’s from the high school class of ‘96?) Eternity Summer, Elizabeth Arden’s Green Tea, Gucci Envy, a little $10 bottle of perfume by Hard Candy I got at Marshall’s that smelled to me like pineapple and I actually liked it, and most recently, Green Irish Tweed. I never got more compliments than when I wore Green Irish Tweed, from strangers even (is THIS why it costs $200? [$50 on eBay]). The good news is that Naked has an oil called Green Irish Tweed so I can go back to it if I like.

So I walked out with a true personal blend for half the price of Aveda’s and 3 bath bombs. All for under $20.

And guess what else? It’s only in Houston! Take THAT, New York, California and London! I know they just felt that and got a little shiver of fear. Actually London didn’t hear me and California paused, then continued her conversation over an organic, vegetarian lunch in a café and New York looked me dead in the eye and said, “We have 26 of those kind of shops AND that wasabi ice cream you loved. Remember? Oh, and don’t forget the goat cheese and mushroom crêpes you were ready to leave Dave for.”

Bitch.

Anyway. Camille, I’m sure you have something similar in Austin, only it’s owned by hippie earth goddesses. And Pam- next time you’re here, man. For reals. They even have Fresh Cut Grass as one of the scents.

In other news, I made Cilantro Lime ice cream and it’s delish.

Hey guys, WordPress just posted this theme and I considered changing my Origami blog to this theme.  What’s cool about it is that the background color is always different- it’s automatically generated to compliment the photo you’re looking at.

But I kind of like the starkness of the current design and the fact that you can just scroll down and see all of them.  Actually, I’ve kind of decided that I’m not switching.  BUT I think that that new theme is cool as hell and I wish I had a use for it.

Let me know what you think.  I could still be convinced to switch.

It’s Tuesday. A normal day would have meant me getting home before 5, maybe a meditation, maybe a home cooked meal, probably a Jon Stewart rerun, some reading, etc.

Today I was given some free tickets to a fashion show put on by . . . it doesn’t matter. It was a yuppie event for yuppies by yuppies. It was the kind of thing I used to go to years ago. They had a silent auction for various prizes (dinner, teeth whitening, wine, makeup, personal shopping experiences), free food and booze and a fashion show. Dave and I put on our shiny clothes and went.

Afterward he said, “This is fun, but I really feel like I don’t belong here. I mean, I’d come back to something else like this . . . but only as a photographer.”

On the plus side, the goody bag included a bottle of wine and 3 Laura Mercier lipsticks! Score!

Since we were hungry, we went to the Flying Saucer for dinner and beer. We played Dave’s favorite game, Spot The Mexican. Nobody won, there weren’t any. Jen’s Racist Comment for the Day: “It’s not really fair playing this game here- on the main television they’re showing basketball, not soccer.” Funny trumps racist!

As we were waiting to get our check, we heard a glass break and turned to see a guy leaving, his face with streams of blood running down. His (ex?) girlfriend chased after him screaming with that panic near-shriek in it, “Wait!! Come back!” He didn’t. He dripped blood out the door. The people at the table near him said he’d cracked his beer glass over his own head.

The (ex?) couple had been passing notes, we read them because we have no respect for other people’s privacy and dignity. Okay, that’s not true, but if you’re going to pass notes and then BREAK A GLASS OVER YOUR HEAD IN PUBLIC AND BLEED OUT THE DOOR, I might take a peek at the notes you passed. It looked like someone had been seeing someone else and the other party was asking about the level of intimacy those 2 might have shared. I felt like I was reading it on PostSecret.

When we left and headed to our car an ambulance was in the middle of the road, but the attendants were treating the guy on the sidewalk. Police were questioning the girl. There was a considerable amount of blood on the ground.

And that’s all I got for that story. I mention it because they were our age, maybe same tax bracket.  Maybe a couple we’d pass at Whole Foods or Brasil.  And I don’t know the details, but I think the girl should leave him, and FAST. Though it appears she has already.

Last night I told Dave I’d make dinner.  An hour later, I was still on the couch.

So Dave made me that photo.  Comic Sans and all. Yeah, we went out to dinner.  There was no dinner making.

But I made up for it today by making quinoa with fresh pesto (minus the pine nuts) topped with sea scallops and a side of salad.  I even put flowers from my basil plant on the salad to tie in the flavors. I would have totally fallen in love with myself if, you know, I wasn’t already.

I got my car back on Monday.  I had the Dodge Caliber for a week- it was nice.  I don’t love its design, but I liked that it had a regular outlet on the console.  How handy is that?  Dave got to charge his iPhone in the car without a car adapter.  I could take trips and if I had cramps, I could plug in my heating pad!

I also liked the whole 4-door hatchback thing.  I used to think hell was a place full of 4-door automatic vehicles.  I still don’t like driving an automatic, though I apparently got used to it, judging by how many times in the last 2 days I’ve attempted to take off from a stop in 4th gear.  But 4 doors are totally handy.  When I was single, the front passenger seat was all I needed.  Purse, groceries, library books- everything went there.  Then I got this husband thing and now we’re folding back seats and unloading the trunk.

Anyway, even though I got my car back, I did not have a radio.  The insurance lady had not called me back even though I’d faxed her my stereo info.  And called her and left a voicemail almost every day since.

I’m still in amazement of how many times my brain sends the signal “turn the radio on” while I’m driving.  It’s straight wiring in my subconscious.  Because I KNOW my radio isn’t there.  But I’ll pull up to the light and in the quiet my brain says, “Turn the radio on.”  Between 5 and 10 times per car trip.  I don’t reach to turn it on, because that’s conscious.  This is me noticing my more subtle brain patterns.

It reminds me of meditation retreats when I can’t move for an hour and I can feel a hair brush across my cheek.  My brain thinks, “Brush it away.”  But I don’t.  I just notice the sensation and its impermanence.  So my brain whines, “Brush it awaaaaaaay.”  I still don’t, I just observe.  You know, what I’m supposed to do regarding everything in my everyday life.

I could use my lack of radio as a tool to observe my sensations and strengthen my equanimity.  Perhaps I did a little.  That said, I’m super glad the insurance people sent the radio-installing guy to my work today.

This week I had a rough week at work. It seemed like the negative energy was coming from every angle. Angles I’d never have suspected could possibly cause conflict. So I didn’t blog. I didn’t want any of that coming across.

Last night I logged on to check my stats, expecting them to be at like 2 or 3 and just from random searches. But on Tuesday I had 250 hits. Whaaaaat? That’s SO MUCH MORE than my 5 faithful readers, 4 of whom I’m related to.

But check this out: I’m totally famous. Out of the 10 best Marfa links, mine’s number 1.