There's a hole in the ceiling, but the leak is fixed.  I have a referral to a guy "that looks like he should be on that Duck Dynasty show, but don't worry about that. His work is good and he's priced fair."  Dude, that's half of my family.

This morning I get in the shower, "adjust" the shower head, and it breaks off in my hand.  Oh, and by that, I mean the pipe broke off in the wall.

Fan-fucking-tabulous!

Now it looks like we may have gotten a lucky break, so to speak, and it's going to be a fairly easy fix.  We hope.  We hope.  We hope...

It turns out you only have to go batshit crazy in your office to either get fired or only work four days a week.  Me?  I now work 4 days a week... but really, it's amazed I didn't get fired.

So, you ask, what do I do now on my Fridays off?  Sleep in?  Get spa treatments?  Oh dear no.  Usually it's helping to get The Force ready for school and picking him up when it's our weekend.  But today, it's waiting on the plumber.  Yep, shit like that.  Because some days start out poorly.  Like when your husband calls and says, "There's water coming out of the ceiling in the library," and he doesn't mean the public library. So, no running water, no toilet flushing, etc, until the plumber shows up.

He's already called to say he's "backed up" already and won't be here until between 11 and 1.

Yay.

A little game of Catch Up

So, it's been a while, huh?  I spent some time looking through some old bits on the blog, and MAN AM I FUNNY!  Seriously, I don't remember writing a lot of it, but I know I did.  Going back and reading over it made me laugh, and it made me miss blogging.  I have become a Facebook junkie, and now I'm used to recording my life in snippets.

So, lots going on here since, well, forever ago.  Here's a new thing:

This is Sweetie.  Sweetie used to live on a chain. ON A CHAIN!!!  She is 3 now (we adopted her in April), and until we took her, she lived chained in a backyard by an owner that would leave town for 3-7 days at a time.  He had an automatic feeder and waterer, but she would get so lonely.  Once she was big enough she learned that she could pull on the chain long enough and hard enough to break it, then would run around the neighborhood to find people and pets to love.  She always wound up at a friend of mine's house, and they finally convinced the owner he should surrender her.  Long story short, there will never be a chain on this dog again.  She is amazingly well named (came that way) and is one of the dearest dogs I've been around.  She reminds me so much of Pooh King.  Sometimes I look at her and wonder if he stays close by so she'll know how to be the best dog.  Sweetie and Lulu are best friends and go everywhere together.  Oz thinks it's pretty awesome to have her here, too.

And then there are these:

It's no secret that my exercise habits were flushed down the toilet with our move to the new house.  I work long days, the gym is 15 minutes away (which doesn't seem like a lot, but at the end of a 10 hour day it's A LOT!), and, well, I'm lazy.  I was walking the dogs every morning for a while, but the cold and dark of winter has put the brakes on that for me.  So, new shoes.  Isn't that the answer to every rut?  I did my first workout yesterday and by the time 10pm rolled around I could barely stand up.  Now, why in the world would I do such an extreme workout the first time out?  Oh, because it wasn't extreme.  It was basic.  I'm just THAT out of shape.  Thank God that six hundred milligrams of ibuprofen twice during the night has returned me to a "normal sore" today.  Got my second workout in today, but holy shit.  Round is a terrible shape to be in.

I wish I could still tell Chris Leeder I'm sorry about the Rose Bowl. 

Go Spartans.

Well, since Student asked, the turkey was awesome.  I did good, really really good.

Then Christmas was nice, St. Patrick's Day was quiet, and Easter was full of Cadbury eggs!  Exactly as I hoped it would be.

Our kitchen was the victim of a broken pipe, which sent us into our first homeowner's claim.  Whoopee!  And while the kitchen was under renovation our heat pump went on the fritz.  GREAT.  I guess this is what everyone means when they congratulate you on buying a house by saying, "It never ends, you know."  Yes, I know, but it's still better than thinking about renewing leases or moving all the time.  Gah.

This is what it looked like the day it happened...

That's where the sink used to be...

We changed the floor color when they had to sand, stain, and refinish it.  Now my goal is to paint the kitchen a lighter color, paint the trim white and paint the cabinets (a yet to be determined color).  I started out with the goal to do all of that this spring, but I've revised it to be "by fall".  I'm not a procrastinator.  Nope, not one bit.

Now it's spring time, and my green thumbs are itching.  First up was the replacement of the old mailbox with a new post and everything.  I hated that old mailbox.  Then I put a ring of stone edging around it, filled it with dirt, and planted daylilies from my Gram's garden and pansies in it.  This weekend I'll put some Lily of the Valley bulbs in there, too.  Then some mulch, and my little mailbox garden will be complete.  Hopefully the bees won't bother the post carrier. And I want to make some raised beds for veggies... I have about thirty-eleven other things I want to do outdoors, but you know, until I win the lotto (or you do and give me some money) I will have to take it one thing at a time.

Turkey Day

We're hosting Thanksgiving at our house.  For my in-laws.  Ma and Pa King  were supposed to come, but poor old Pa King is laid up in the hospital after spine surgery #4.  No turkey for you!  Just kidding.  He's struggling, but hopefully this is going to help decrease his pain and keep him mobile.  I will put him in a tryptophan coma next year.

So, the real reason we're hosting Thanksgiving?  Because my mother-in-law doesn't do Thanksgiving like my Mom does.  Shhhhhhhhhh, don't tell.  The first year I ate with them it was cold turkey and peas from a can.  Last year it was hot turkey, but no stuffing.

Cold turkey, canned peas, and no stuffing?!?!

There should be a law.

Of course, come tomorrow evening I may be eating humble pie.

We shall see.

Lazy Sundays

Jason and Luke go to church.

I sleep in.

Then I watch a movie or tv shows that they don't watch. 

It is glorious.

Most of the time, when they get back, I haven't even showered yet.

It's now a day of chores and preparation.  I figure I have to take it slow, because these days, Sunday hosts the best night of television!  The Walking Dead, Homeland, Boardwalk Empire and, well... Breaking Amish. 

Don't you judge me.

Some pics...

 Here it is!

 We sold our 6-8 seat table in favor of a 4 seater that can expand to 6 with the hidden leaf.  It suits the space much better.  Now, I'm still not in love with the wall color, but it's the 2nd one, so we're going to stick with it for a while.

 Despite having 600sqft MORE than our apartment, somehow we lost space.  Without a mud room or pantry, we're struggling to find spots for everything.  I added this little sideboard to house more pans, though I'll probably switch it to pantry items this weekend.

 See the backsplash?  Yep, I did that myself!

 We have a beautiful bay window!  And the silestone countertop was a gift from our wonderful friends.  I removed a DISGUSTING gray laminate top and used the silestone to create a breakfast bar area on the island.  LOVE IT.  And got the two chairs to complete the look... plus they can be used at the table if we expand it for company.

Mom loaned me this sofa table after the fire.  When we moved in here, I didn't have a place for it and told her I'd give it back.  Then I realized it would fit perfectly into the bay window (whose space was totally unutilized).  Now I'm not giving it back.  Plus, it's Otis's favorite place to lounge and be the neighborhood watch.

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness!

I'm having coffee and blogging from my house.  MY HOUSE.  So exciting!  We're still finding places for everything, but it's coming along.  We've painted most things (haven't made it to the bathrooms yet, maybe next weekend), and yesterday I tiled the kitchen.  By myself.  It's awesome and I can't believe I did it.  Today I'm in search of storage solutions for the kitchen and bathroom before coming home to start my garden.  Actually, I'm sprucing up the garden that's here, and I'll really do a garden next year.

Lulu loves the fenced yard, and she's spent a lot of time running around, chasing a soccer ball and chewing sticks while I grill, sit on the step, or drink my coffee.  The cats are scoping out their favorite windows.  Poor Otis, the window sills are narrow and he is wide, so I put the screens in yesterday and left the windows open.  It's a cool, beautiful morning (again) so he's getting fair window time in.  Oz can balance her little self anywhere she'd like, and I think she lords that over him.

I promise I'll post pictures soon.

The inspection on our house is Thursday, and the appraisal on Friday.  Hold happy thoughts!

In which I reveal the things I won't talk about.

Sharing my life with Jason's ex-wife and her new fiance is, well, pretty weird.  Believe it or not, I'm a pretty private person.  I don't like to discuss a lot of things with anyone.  Sometimes it's hard for me to discuss things with Jason.

Take, for example, my struggle with debt and spending.  I'm ashamed of it, so I won't discuss it, I just work on it.  After the house closes, I'm working with my bank to consolidate and decrease my debt load.  If I didn't have the debt I carry, we could have afforded a home closer to The Force.  (But I still wanted to keep my job, which couldn't have happened if we had moved to the same neighborhood, but anyway.)  They are living in one of the most expensive areas in the new town.  Houses START at $300k there.

Take, for example, my apparent infertility.  Heard me talk about that?  No, not so much.  After trying to have a baby for 6 months with no success, I saw the OB (since that's what magazines say you should do when you're of "advanced maternal age", like me) and found out I don't ovulate.  Enter some medication, and now I ovulate like a champ, I just can't get pregnant.  If this keeps up, I'll be in a new house doing some new kind of treatment that may or may not work.  I have a hard time talking to anyone about it, so I just don't.  I don't want to talk to my best friend, or my family, or really, even my husband, about how disappointing this all is, and I prefer if they just don't ask me about it.

So imagine having to pack up your life and move to a new place so you can stay close to your stepson.  We chose a place close enough to him to maintain our custody agreement, and close enough to my current job that I won't have to get a new one.  We had the amazing fortune to find a house right off the bat, that's well within our affordable range, and everything seems to be moving along swimmingly.  Today her fiance (who is a very, very nice man, and I believe has no ulterior motive) comes and sits next to me at the t-ball game and asks to see a picture of it.  Asks if it has room for an "expanding family" and says he imagines us with a little girl who likes to play dress-up, and that the extra room in the home would be perfect for that.  (He has a boy and twin 5 year old girls, by the way.)

I just say, "that would be nice".

Holy shit, I'm a grown up.

Holy shitballs, Batman, we're buying a house!

The decision has been made to move to stay closer to The Force, as he moves with his mother and her new marriage.  We looked at renting first, but the area where we want to live doesn't have much in the way of rentals.  Then we figured out how we could buy a house, and we're doing it.  Holy shit. 

In 2 weeks we have gone from internet searches, finding a lender, finding an agent, then to seeing our top 5 picks.  We saw 5 houses in 1 day, and put an offer on our favorite 2 days later.  The owners countered, and we accepted.  Holy shit.

We're going through the bank stuff now.  Holy shit.

We close on May 23.  Holy shit.

I'm going to own a home at the ripe age of 37.

Holy shit.

I highly recommend checking out your local community theater groups.  Jason and I went last night, and it was great.  The food was okay, but watching our southern friends try to pull of a British accent was priceless.

Priceless.

Bulldog blues

So, Lulu, she's been big on the vet lately.  Not that she's really into it, but she's had to go several times in the past 2 months. 

As soon as we got her home, she broke out with some kind of rash on her belly.  Got it fixed up with a steroid shot and an antibiotic shot.  Then in October, she started to break out in hives and developed a urinary tract infection.  More steroids and antibiotics.  Hives cleared up most of the way, and as soon as she went off the antibiotics they came back again.  A short course of steroids and antibiotics with some improvement, and the knowledge that she probably has some allergies that needed diagnosed.  Her skin didn't improve a whole lot that time.

So, we did the allergy testing and found out she was allergic to some of the things in her food as well as some grasses, trees and weeds, several molds, and dust mites.  Good, well now we know what to attack... with doggy allergy shots.  First round of allergy shots lasted 3 injections and she had a reaction to them.  The ramp up with fast and hard, and she just didn't tolerate it well.  So, a week off and back onto them with a slower ramp up.

But all this time, she's looking worse.  Her hair is falling out and she's getting bald spots in addition to general thinning.  The skin around her eyes and mouth have turned a ruddy pink.  And her knuckles are balding.  KNUCKLES.  The allergy medicine really wasn't helping her much.

Then on Tuesday at doggy daycare, Speedy (who I love) nipped Lulu in the eye.  It looked like he just got her lower lid, so I wasn't too worried.  But it didn't look so good Wednesday morning, so I took her into the vet to have it checked.  I saw the 3rd vet in the practice.  He's never seen Lulu before.  He checked her eye, declared it to be fine, then asked what the hell was going on with her skin.  We went over the history: rashes, steroids, antibiotics, mange checks, allergies, allergy shots, scaled back allergy shots.  Seriously?  What else can be wrong with this poor little dog?

He asked me if he can scrape her to check for mange.  Again.  The third time.  Okay, if you think it might give you more information, go ahead.  I told him I was committed to staying the course of recommended treatment, but I wasn't sure we were fully on course yet.

He literally scraped her face with a razor to make it bleed.  It's how you check for the mites.  Lo and behold, there it was.  A demodex mite.  My girl has an inherited type of mange.  It's not transmittable dog-dog except at birth, and isn't contagious to humans.  But it's causing her a world of trouble.  He put  her on antibiotic therapy, a yeast medication, and a bath/dip combo.  He told me to come back after a month of this treatment for a check-in so he could make any changes in her treatment plan, and assured me that she would be doing much better. 

Finally, I feel like we might have all pieces of the puzzle.