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Thursday, January 31, 2008

I guess this mostly ended up being about Scout. Again.

Yuck. I had to get that whiny post out of the top spot. Dichroic was right: I needed to go to bed. Anytime I start to feel that way again for the rest of my life I am going to remember that sage advice. Everything looks better in the morning.

(Even if the poor dog DOES get so anxious when we leave that she just HAS to poop inside. Hey, at least she holds the pee! We take her for SO MANY walks, trying to get her to do her dirty business outside, but it just seems like her body clock schedules that second poop of the day right during any meetings we ever have in the evening. I am studying up on how to housetrain an adolescent dog. I'll let you know how it goes.)

OK, that's the only scatological reference in this entire post; no need to leave.

Speaking of the dog, she went to the vet on Monday as aforementioned. She is approximately eight months old, is not spayed yet (but she will be), and is most likely a Queensland/terrier mix. I really thought there was pinscher in that face, but the more I looked at her, the more I remembered a dog my grandpa had when I was a girl -- Jenn and Debi, do you remember Patches? This was Patches' dad -- who was a Queensland and who had exactly the same coloring. He was just larger and stockier, with a slightly shorter face, which of course is where the terrier comes in, in Scout's case. The vet says she doesn't think Scout is even a bit of pinscher. Which honestly eases my mind a little, what with Scout sleeping practically on my daughter's face most nights. I know, I know, it's more nurture than nature, but still.

Also, I really REALLY think she wants a small doggy companion, but T says NO. Quite emphatically. So I guess she'll have to *snif* be lonely *snuffle* for the rest of her natural life. *sniffle*.

Yes, as a matter of fact, T does read my blog! Hi, T! Love you! Smooch!

The parallels between having a dog and having a baby are many, really, when you think about it.

OK, on to something else. Enough about the dog. The weather! Is still lame. Even my children are sick of snow, and that's all that needs to be said about that. We actually had a nice sunny day yesterday, which was good, except that it was also so cold that you couldn't go for a walk without a balaclava and fur-lined gloves. (OK, or maybe it was a knitted hat and mittens. But a scarf would definitely have helped.)

In other news, I have no clue what to make for supper tonight, and said supper has to be made in an hour and fifteen minutes. No. Clue. Yay for the tax return because I think we're going to the little neighborhood store for fried chicken. I am definitely not tracking today's food for my nutrition instructor.

Speaking of scarves (well, I was, up there), I am knitting one. I think I mentioned that before. I pulled out the foot or so that I had done and started over because I wanted to do the edges differently. Then I figured, what the heck, and pulled out the front pieces of the cardigan I am making for C to start them over with different edges too. Here's hoping that the new edges work out; otherwise I'll be making these projects for my grandchildren.

And that is all. I cannot bring myself to bore you all any further this afternoon, although you know I could if I wanted to.

Monday, January 28, 2008

ugh

It's been a really long time since Nameless Dread kept me awake. Well, it HAD been, to be precise.

Part of it is the new dog. In a very small way, it's like having a newborn -- you can't communicate with her, she can't tell you what she wants, there are constant Excretory Issues to be dealt with, you lose sleep, she upsets your household in just about every way, and over everything else there's this keen sense that I have REALLY got myself in for it now and tell me again what was so wrong with life before we decided to do this? So there's that. It's not that we aren't glad to have the dog, or that we don't like her. It's just that claustrophobic PPD-ish feeling you get when you look at the long years of your life to come and can't imagine that any of them will not contain the stress that you feel this very minute.

And then the weather doesn't help. It's positively dreary, and almost unrelentingly wet and windy and cold. (This makes taking the dog out to go potty tons of fun.) In our happy and careless Renting Days, a few weeks of weather like this made for an adventure, even if by the end of it your kids were attempting to tear each other limb from limb what with the whole cabin-fever-all-summer-in-a-day kind of crabbiness. It was a great opportunity to wax rhapsodic about sitting by the fire with a purring cat and Jane Eyre. Remember that? But now we have this very big investment (pardon me while I have an Official Mortgage Freakout) standing out in all this wind and weather, and everything is our responsibility. If a tree falls on the roof, or the water pipes at the well freeze under the snow because the stupid shed keeps blowing away and we can't build a real well-house until the stupid weather lets up (and what the heck kind of people have a well just sitting out in the open for all these years anyway?), or if the roof leaks (when the roof leaks, I should say)... there's no landlord who's going to call a contractor to come and fix it while we sit back and watch, no sirree. I used to love winter. Now I can't wait for 105-degree days when the sun comes up at five and doesn't go down until nine, because that weather isn't going to break my house, so there's much less need to sit up cringing all night waiting for disaster to strike.

Add in a bunch of small stuff like T deciding that we're going to leave the congregation where we've been for eight years (not to be hard on T -- it's a difficult decision for him and he's doing the right thing, painful as it is), and worry about whether the kids will ever find the kind of lifelong friendship that I wish they could have, and the irrational fear that I am being a terrible mother and doing an awful job and that people who said homeschooling was bad for kids must be right, and the state of the world and the direction we're heading as a culture, and whether tomatoes and apples will ever be both good and cheap again, and here you have me, blogging aimlessly at one o'clock on a Monday morning with a mass of unease settled deep in the pit of my stomach. Which is stupid, because LOOK AT MY LIFE. But there it is -- Nameless Dread never claimed to be logical.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

is this... heaven?

First the dog, and then THIS:

I mean, what more do kids need?

(This was before breakfast. It's pitiful and patchy and ugly now.)

(Also: holy cow, that boy is growing.)

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Meet Scout

(as in Jean Louise. In other words, she's a girl.)

Another dream realized: We knew that when we finally lived outside of town, we wanted to find a smallish (so she can travel with us if desired), friendly, short-haired dog who would be happy both indoors and outdoors. So today, thanks to Craigslist and a nice woman named Carly who lives in a sad kind of Dog-Dumping Hot Zone outside of Fresno, we did.

The vet is closed today (it's her horse-riding day, how cool is that?), but tomorrow we're calling to make The Appointment. We don't know if she's been altered or not, and we know she'll need shots, and I have this vague consciousness that dogs require more expenditures than cats, for things like heartworm pills and licenses and who knows what all else.

We also don't know what her genetic makeup is. Any guesses as to the breeds that give her that sweet face? Here are some body pictures, too. She's about sixteen inches tall at the shoulder, although she genuinely DID NOT LIKE it when I brought that stick over to measure her. I'm thinking someone was not very nice to her with a stick at some point in the past. Poor girl. Her tail is longish -- it was between her legs here because this was not long after Smokey had attempted to assert his dominance over this New Big Thing that had come into his house. Poor girl again.

Please submit any and all guesses, because we are truly curious. I'll withhold my own completely uneducated guesses until after I've seen yours.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

ok, a FEW pictures.

I finally realized why I thought I had taken more Before pictures of the house than I had. I SWORE I remembered looking at pictures of the kitchen and the bedrooms as well as the very memorable two-kinds-of-linoleum-plus-stained-smelly-carpet 'great room' area, but they were nowhere to be found. Then I remembered that I was thinking of the pictures that were in the real estate listing. I wonder if the realtor still has them? I truly do wish I could show them to you. Hmm.

Oh! I just found them on the Internet (who knew there were SO MANY MLS sites?). The problem is that they are embedded in a slideshow, and I can't just link to the thing here because it will give everyone in the world my physical address which is not a great idea. (Although I recently discovered that many of my halfhearted efforts at privacy are in vain, thanks to whois. You'd think I'd have thought of that. Oh well.) So if you're a person I know, and not just a random Googler, leave a comment or drop me an email and I'll email you a link, if you're interested in the infamous Before pictures. I won't even bother with the couple of lame ones I have of my own.

OK, without further ado: the After (or, erm, maybe During) shots:

The living room from the front door. Notice:

• The kids are watching The Love Bug. Y'all, we know what's good.
• Bookshelves! (they were built in, but I painted them. Of course.) Spot the Annes? Also, the fabric-y mess in the middle section is the curtains for the kids' rooms (let's see: who gets the camouflage and who gets the purple?), which are sewn, but I don't have the hardware up yet
• C heard the lens cover come off and knew it was time to pose. LT, not so much.
• "White muslin curtains give a house such an air." Yes, an air of "at $3 a yard with a coupon for 90-inch widths, I just could not say no."

The living room from a different angle, featuring the brand-new woodstove sitting on the floor protector whose tile was laid BY ME. (This, by the way, was the only DIY project I took on in this whole process that was interesting and fun enough for me that I might willingly do it again.) Also, more Love Bug. And you can see the blue (and I do mean BLUE, wow. It's a little more subtle than that in real life) that is the master bedroom, but that's all you'll see of that room (or any of the bedrooms) until I get it (them) de-boxed.

From behind the TV. Notice the boxes in the utility room. There are A LOT MORE where those came from.

Hello, kitchen! I love you. We had the black refrigerator already, so the decision was made to go with all black appliances. (The stove and dishwasher are new). I was dubious at first, because I thought they would stand out like large sore thumbs against all the yellow and white, but I think the darker floors help make it OK. Right? right? And since EVERYONE asks, the brass hardware on the cabinets came with the house. We removed it all to paint (and paint and paint and paint) the cabinets, and then put it back. Everyone asks this as if it's far too nice to have been chosen by me, since I have no taste whatsoever. (I do not debate them on this.)

Behold the dining area. For ordinary use we keep the table against the wall, to save space and clutter. When we have company, we can pull it out from the wall and use the bench that's stashed under it.

Mary: mistress of all she surveys. This is her new favorite place. (Smoky is more partial to the empty boxes. He certainly has a variety from which to choose.)

Next time: bedrooms. Maybe. :)

politics (no need to flee)

The Internet is chock-full of candidate-matching quizzes this time of year, but none has satisfied me as much as glassbooth.org. Most of the ones I've tried just give you a list of candidates in order, but this one goes into detail, complete with quotes from candidates on issues, and does a very good job of assigning weight to the issues that matter to you.

(I wound up with pretty nearly a four-way tie among four candidates, one of whom surprised me. The one who'll get my vote might surprise you. Any guesses?)

(waves at Kat, who has been so diligently supplying the knitting-and-literary blogworld with politics links. Hi Kat!)

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

la la la, no pictures, la la

I KNOW. I am SO SO BAD.

The thing is, is there are BOXES. And there is no WOODSTOVE (although that should be remedied tomorrow morning, for-reals this time, or else, and hi! we don't have any wood! It is all at Mom and Dad's. We are planners, that's us), so you would not get a sense for what the room will really look like. Plus it's not like I took a whole lot of Before pictures [Rachel smacks head repeatedly], so you would have only the scantiest point of reference for how very different everything is, and what if you looked at the pictures and thought they WERE Before pictures, and I just couldn't handle that, so. No pictures. Yet. Maybe tomorrow.

But this is a post! And we are actually living in the house, and have been since Friday! And our DSL is completely wonky and I am hoping it is our DSL modem because that can be replaced, and not just the badness of the DSL connection in this area, which would make me very, very sad, because selling the house is, as I have mentioned previously, only happening when I am no longer around to have to be involved in the process because HATE HATE HATE. Even though right now it takes approximately four hours to do an upload that used to take thirty minutes, which is extremely unsatisfactory what with the whole Librivox addiction and the fact that I can finally indulge it again, only to be thwarted when I attempt to upload the files. Last night when this was discovered there was much growling. (Downloading and ordinary Internet surfing are only a tiny bit slower than normal. Whatever...)

Um, what else. School! School has started. I am not yet fully enthusiastic about it, but the whole moving/taking-on-mortgage/unpacking freakouts haven't quite run their course yet, so that's understandable; my mind is otherwise engaged. I have an online nutrition class, as well as a once-a-week history class at the local high school, with the same somewhat flaky generous grader I had for my very first college class a year ago. He was not glad to see me, seeing as how I was rah-ther annoying the last time he had me in class and he has no way of knowing that I've learned in the intervening semester to keep my mouth shut when someone else is talking. (I know! What a strange concept!). I thought about walking in with a piece of duct tape across my mouth, but I was afraid the joke would be lost on him, and plus, have you ever had to remove good-quality duct tape from your face? It hurts. I know this. (The things country kids do to amuse themselves.)

I know that I have been a terribly dilatory correspondent, and I will try to do better now that things are -- dare I say it? -- actually starting to settle down. Note that I said try...

Saturday, January 05, 2008

to answer Susan's question

Dearest Susan, yes, we are wet wet wet. Also, it was windy enough last night to blow our wellhouse-shed-thingamabob away from the well and end over end a few times. (Granted, it was not anchored down at all; we had just moved it to cover the well so that people wouldn't drive over it and we could offer it SOME protection from freezing weather). Also, our roof leaks, just a little. All in all, nothing to complain about, especially compared with what some people have going on (or, say, with what Charley dealt out to Susan a couple of years ago).

You may have noticed a lack of photographs. This is because I haven't made the curtains yet; that's planned for Monday. The phone people are hooking up our line on Thursday, so next weekend is slated to be the time when we officially begin, you know, LIVING in our house. With BEDS and everything.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

a good way to start

Today, for the first time, my house looks like a place where a family could actually live. From the front door, anyway. (There's no bedroom furniture in it yet, as we are still using that here.) The painting is DONE (pardon me while I run outside for a quick barbaric YAWP). The floors are also DONE (thank you friends!), and they are lovely gorgeous floors of cherrywoodlike laminate wonderfulness. The appliances are in, including the washer and dryer which I truly thought would not fit but did, and the dishwasher that was supposed to fit fine but almost didn't, and the range which is lovely and black and new and not hooked up yet because we forgot that it has to get converted to use propane instead of natural gas.The storage unit was emptied much more easily than I envisioned -- I was picturing a three-trucks-three-trips-each kind of thing, but it only ended up being two trips with Dad's truck and small trailer (the second trip just for two couches), and one trip with our truck, all accomplished on Sunday while the people who knew about installing the floors were assiduously installing floors. (Conversely, the floor job was something we thought would take part of one day but it took a total of about twenty-four hours of work, divided into three days. THANK YOU AGAIN FRIENDS!) I bought curtains yesterday, but when I put them up today I hated them, so I'm taking them back tomorrow to try again, along with three or four unused boxes of flooring and some tubes of caulking that were labeled very clearly as CLEAR but which contained caulking that was in fact very very white. (We used quite a lot of it, hoping it would dry clear like Elmer's glue. It, um, didn't. Good thing it is now covered by trim. But the unused tubes are going back to Lowe's in disgrace.) Tomorrow, after I've installed curtains which I hope I will not hate, I will take some photos and post them because I know you all are just longing for photos, right? Right?

All in all, this makes for a very very happy (and grateful) start to 2008. Everyone come look at the place before it gets messy!