As though wallpaper on ceilings (which sounds to me as horrific as snakes on planes!) weren't bad enough, I realized that lost in the translation (and my ranting) is a very important fact not known to most people.
Dave's 5'7 and I'm 5'5 (ok probably only 5'4 but I really wanna be taller, so lemme win just this time).
So a recap:
For anyone who might be in the market, I have just one tip about buying a house. It's very simple. I'll even put it in bold, and all caps.
NEVER BUY A HOUSE THAT HAS WALLPAPER ON THE CEILING. NEVER.
NEVER, EVER, EVER EVER.
No matter how pretty the house is, or how perfect it is otherwise. Run away. Do not buy it, simply run away. Such wallpaper is the work of the devil. It will cause you to invent swear words at an alarming rate. It will not only defy gravity butall laws of decorating decency, and mock you as it stays in place despite your hacking at it with a scraper and dousing it with vinegar and water.
This is even more the case when the previous owner who did this work (now known colloquially as "fucknut" or "jerkface" or "asshat") put a fresh coat of polyfill down before putting the wallpaper up, WITHOUT ANY PRIMER so now it just becomes on sticky, gooey, annoying, piss-off.
For now, I'll get back to my margarita breakfast (yes, really) before the dogs are successful at drinking it on me (yes, they've tried), and back to stripping wallpaper off the ceiling and helping Dave with the re-plastering job, which, when it is done, dried, and sanded, we will paint and prime like normal people.
(you may or may not be able to tell from the above title I read way too much of mad and cracked magazines as a kid)
So, Saturday night we decide to blow our little popsicle stand in the 'shwa and go visit Jodi and Andrew in swanky-town (aka Burlington). There, being the lovely people they are, they have a lovely new house with lovely new fence, lovely patio furniture, and landscaping. It was Jodi's birthday, and a little get-together was planned. It's so nice catching up with friends, having a few laughs and relaxing in the gorgeous weather we've been having. We reminisced so much about our undergrad days together in rez that Dave said "wow I really wished I'd lived in residence" the next day.
When you see their house all you hear is the chorus of angels going "aaahhhhhhhh!" and everything is all sparkly and clean and new. Then you see our house and hear a combination of frogs ribbeting, swampy noises and the porch monkeys down the road belching and swearing.
So, not surprisingly on the way home, the little green monster snuck up on me, and since then I've been barely able to speak a sentence that somehow didn't involve us getting a patio.
I am hell-bent that we need to blow out our dining room window (which I like to imagine would make a Kablewie! noise) and replace it with doors (otherwise we'd have more animals than we currently have and likely be breaking some kind of by-law, to say nothing of moral codes) and build a deck. Where we can drink booze! And grill things! And have friends over! And tie people to posts for using too many exclamation points in blog posts!
I've had this thought before, and I think it's a completely do-able idea, given that the window is pretty big, I think it'd be about the right size for just such a project.
All of a sudden, reality hits though. It's not like we have nothing else to do in our house that should take priority. Or, I dunno, about 8 weddings including our own to plan/attend.
We have MOST of the wallpaper stripped from our front and upstairs hallways (save the tall bits which require a ladder which is something we do not own, and the ceiling), but some serious plaster work needs to be done after that's done, then sanded, then primed and painted.
Our kitchen? We think it's original to this 1942 house. Apparently they didn't care to do things like actually store goods in kitchens back then. I am dying to get a new kitchen (and even have a line on a place for granite countertops for cheap!) and know it'd be a good investment when we officially grow out of this house.
The basement? Lately it seems that it's barely a step above a dirt floor. It's been a bit weepy and in dire need of some measures to make it un-leaky. I've already done some patching with quick mixing concrete (which, if you're wondering I will remind you mixes to a solid REALLY fast, so don't turn your back on it for even a second, or you'll have sore arms for a week from trying to stir solid concrete, and a hoarse voice from swearing at the damn container of solid concrete), but it's in dire need of more attention, and, after that, some painting over it to add another moisture barrier.
The living room/dining room? Still BEIGE! We're not beige people (gah I hope we aren't!), but we're living in a very beige house. We're actually hoping to have the woman/genius who re-did my parents' house come over and give us some colour ideas, but so far? Still beige! Also on our big to-do list. There are parts of the ceiling that need work as well.
The original hardwood floors? Look in some spots like a hungry beaver inhabited the house for a while. Neighbour down the street gave us a SWEET price on re-doing them and I know he'd do a fantastic job. Sadly we'd actually have to leave this place for 3 days and find a spot to put the crap that's currently occupying the living room/dining room/front hall in the meantime while they were being re-done.
The bathroom? Yeah there's still vinyl wallpaper in there. It really would be a one-weekend job to strip, paint and prime it along with the ceiling, but we seem short on weekends of late so that has yet to be tackled.
But right now? I'm still obsessed about having a deck and place from which we can enjoy our under-used but full-of-potential back yard. Think of the margarita parties! We could have sangria! Think of the vines I could try to coax to grow along the top of the deck to create shade! Think of the extra living space we'd have a few months a year!
I spent last night obsessing over the home hardware catalogue/web site. I got my tape measure out, looking at how big our deck should be (I've decided! 16x10 so it'll almost be the exterior width of the house! (and yeah, our house isn't actually much more than 16 feet wide. Yes, that is probably smaller than your garage). I am also in love with the idea of having a roof that's just posts across the top like this trellis, only spaced further apart. Then, we get clematis, and other viney plants to scrawl across the top of it giving us interspersed shade (something I'm big on as a pastey person with a family history of skin cancer). And, think of all the cute little patio light sets there are out there! The possibilities are endless, and my mind is racing with every one of them at once. Ooh how it would be nice to sit out on hot summer evenings and relaxing.
Dinner last night (which I thought was especially yummy) could be repeated regularly. We had grilled zucchini strips (about 1/8th inch thick) with olive oil and salt, grilled corn on the cob, and I had a grilled portobello mushroom while Dave had locally raised organic beef. With that we had warmed bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil for dipping. Leftovers for lunch today were SO good.
So, I think the new goal is to get the other work done on the house between now and early next spring, when some true kablewie work can happen to replace the window in the dining room with a patio door (or maybe french doors!) and a deck can be built.
Hmm anyone in the GTA feel like a good old fashioned deck building party next spring? They're almost as cool as barn raisings, only without the manure smell!
______________________________________________________
*Dave maintains this is properly spelled "kablooey." I say he's wrong. Jury says? My blog! I win! :P
Dave said at Crappy Tire that we should pose for a photo he'd have called Oshawa Gothic. We were standing in Canadian Tire, having bought a shovel for the garden, a push broom, a bag of grass seed and a sprinkler. Yay for marrying a BFA kid who makes jokes like that.
I got a new pair of running shoes and running capris (they were cute! and on sale!) and took both for a spin tonight. I didn't go far or fast (4k in 30 min) but it was still good to go out. And now, I'm gonna plunk myself into the tub and use a little of the Uplifting Mandarin bubble bath from The Body Shop we were given cause it's the closest thing I can afford to a slice of heaven.
Dear Air Conditioning Repair Dudes,
We called you because it was a bajillion degrees outside the other day, and, funny enough our A/C (the one that came with the house and is practically new and was given a clean bill of health by two different inspectors less than a year ago) wasn't working.
So, you get here, you putz around, tell us it's the thermostat within 15 minutes and leave with our cheque for $100. Gee thanks. So very helpful of you. You want $300 to find out what's wrong with the almost new thermostat? I think we'll pass, thanks.
Dave then spends the entire afternoon playing "which wire goes where" on our lovely programmable thermostat, but still! No workey!
We think "maybe it's the thermostat itself!" even though it's only a few months old. Return it to crappy tire and try a replacement one, but funny enough, still no workey.
Buy an entirely new thermostat, thinking maybe it's the brand. Install it. Still no workey! Blood pressure rising.
We call again about the whole "100% customer satisfaction guarantee." Yeah, not satisfied here. In fact, highly dissatisfied. I'm no rocket surgeon, but after two new thermostats, I'm guessing it's not the thermostat. Thanks for the misleading information though, which led to us spending two days trying to get three different thermostats to work! We have nothing better to do, really!
You say you'll happily send someone to repair it and all will be tickety-boo within 4 hours. Great! We like tickety-boo.
We wait, not leaving the house lest someone shows to give us AC again. After five hours, we call. It's dark out. Is someone coming or did we just waste an entire night waiting around for nothing? After 11:00pm someone called and said they'd come tomorrow, while neither of us are home. Thanks jackasses!
So far this story doesn't have an ending where the AC works yet. But, it may end in some punchey punchey if it's not fixed tomorrow.
________________________________________________
And, not to start a theme with every post about me somehow injuring myself, but I'm a klutz. And, everyone likes to laugh at the klutz. Be forewarned, though. The loveliness and excitement of owning a sleek black Starfrit Supreme Slicer should NEVER cloud your judgment when using it. This will lead to situations where you are excitedly slicing zucchini to grill lovingly on the BBQ, basted with olive oil and salt, and decide to slice it JUST ONCE without the fancy guard on it to see how it works. This excitement WILL LEAD TO DISASTER. The directions even say, in several languages, that you shouldn't even think about using it without the handle to hold whatever you're slicing.
Dave now calls it the manicure machine. Luckily I have all my digits, but one of my fingers will be hurting for a few days. I'm starting to think the blog should be subtitled "public confessions of a klutzy moron."
But MAN does grilled zucchini (two colours of it!) taste wicked good, and it was totally worth the pain. I was so excited at how much nicer the zucchini turns out when you use the fancy-pants machine that I made oven fries, which were also wicked good if I do say so myself. I was so excited I bought yams today to I can make my wicked cajun lime sweet potato fries. Yeah, 'cause turning on the oven for forty minutes when it's a bajillion degrees outside and your A/C isn't working is a GREAT idea.
____________________________________________________
I can now officially confirm that writing 40 thank-you notes for wedding shower gifts and printing and addressing wedding invites, reply cards, and directions for 150 people WILL turn your brain to a wet, chewed up newsprint consistency, and, not being able to find one measly envelope you know you've addressed or a roll of stamps will lead to an urge to punch things and/or cry. I don't recommend anyone try it. But, glad to have those monkeys largely off our backs!
Last Saturday I was lucky enough to have my mum, sister, and bridesmaids host a wedding shower for me at my parent's place. After all the renovations they've done to their house I barely recognized it (they put balloons out front just in case I didn't). Before the shower Dad and I hit the farmer's market to find someone we could buy gladiolas from for the wedding.
I had friends rent cars to drive from Ottawa, friends who left in the wee hours of the morning to catch the train from Toronto and friends and future family who drove up from Windsor (4 1/2 hours away!), Burlington, and parts in between.
When the invites went out I was kinda uncomfortable with the whole "here! show up and buy me stuff" thing that goes along with showers, so I asked people to consider making donations to their favourite charities, which some people did, and I think it really added to the shower. (Plus, I got cool stuff too!)
After the shower I went out with friends in TO (who I don't see often enough) where we had a great Thai dinner (man was I hungry) and came home exhausted. I was asleep shortly after we got the highway (luckily Dave was driving)
I already knew something was up for Sunday. There were only so many times my mum and sister could tell me about a possible "mother of the bride" dress from my mum and sister before I decided to call their bluff and they finally fessed up. Turns out my parents' families were hosting another shower for us, and I had to be there shortly.
I'll admit to being weirded out being made the centre of attention, but it was so cute to see my cousins' kids running from the laneway to the house to alert everyone that my sister and I were there. Wasn't it just last year I was the one running out the laneway to say "they're here!"? They were all so cute in their little sundresses. When I was a kid I hated it when grown-ups said "oh my you're growing" or "I can't believe how big you are" so I won't say that about my little cousins, but man, the years fly by. My great aunt even made a corsage for me to wear!
We got lots of fantastic stuff for the house that we desperately needed. It'll be so nice to be drinking out of things other than our 3 plastic ikea cups, drink wine out of non-acrylic wine glasses*, do laundry with baskets that don't cut our hands, make toast in a toaster that won't burn it, and play with our new salad spinner (what a great toy!). I'm still working on thank you cards.
After the shower we went to visit my grandfather who's been ill and in hospital lately, and my mum and sister drove me back to my place. When we got there I realized I forgot my purse at my grandparents' place, more than an hour away.
I could have survived wallet-less, but in my purse were the keys to the house. I also knew Dave was out with friends, more than an hour away. A car full of shower gifts, my mum and my sister needing to go home, and no way into the house.
Luckily, our kitchen window at the back of the house was open, so I borrowed a neighbour's ladder to break in. The kitchen window is the very top corner of this picture. Notice how non-close to the ground it is.
The ladder barely reached. So, I ditched my flipflops and asked my mum and sister not to make fun of my undies which were plainly visible up my skirt as I climbed the ladder. I managed to pry the screen off, and gingerly reached one leg through the window.
Ah but the other twist here is that the kitchen floor is a good jump down from the window, which is about 4 1/2 feet off the ground. So, while straddling the window sill, I was figuring out how to get my ample butt through it, and do so without falling and knocking myself unconscious by hitting my head on the stove. Fun times.
All the while Rhett the cat was in the kitchen meowing at me like "Hey! I'm hungry! Hey! You're home! Hey! I'm hungry! Hey! You're home! Hey! I'm hungry!"
The ridges on the window sill left giant purple zebra stripe bruises on my leg, I think 6 in all. I scraped my elbow, but all was well, and my sister and mum were free to go, no longer stuck waiting around and holding the ladder while I apologized for my stupidity.
I don't talk about my job much on my blog. There are TONS of hilarious stories that happen in court, but the whole solicitor-client privilege thing gets in the way of me telling them. (Stupid ethics.) In any event, I now have new-found respect for people who are charged with break & enter into a dwelling house to commit an indictable offense and charges like that, because, man, that's hard work!
_______________________________________________________
*I know this is indefensible. I am a wine snob. But, when most of my wine glasses fell victim to "moving" last year and we hadn't bought new ones.
(How sad is it that I'm excited about this shit?)
No more knob and tube circuits (there were only two though), and no more supid fuses and trying to figure out which one had blown (in the dark, of course). I could never, for the life of me tell the difference it seemed from a blown fuse and one that wasn't blown. Plus, you had to pull all of them out to figure . And it only cost us an arm and a leg!
Oh, and here's a list of things NOT to look for in an electrician:
...and apparently approves.
Both the couch and chair were delivered (late), and barely fit through our narrow front door on Saturday. We love it.
The problem with chocolate brown is you can pair it with almost any colour - a warm bluey green? robin's egg blue? sage green? taupe with red accents? pink? I'm at a loss because the room is so small it's hard to pick a colour scheme, knowing it will probably have to work with the dining room as well.
I can't live with beige walls much longer. I'm convinced that beige is not a colour, it's a way of life, and it's not my way of life.
The sad part of this story is that frankencouch (which, to be clear, is a frankenloveseat) did not fit into our basement, no matter the amount of tugging, shoving and near finger-sever-ing, it just would not fit. It's sitting at the curb, hoping for someone to take it to another home.
We actually rented a carpet steamer Tuesday night, and got around to using it Wednesday night. We just have the basement carpet to clean, since the rest of the house is hardwood floors. The carpet was getting dingy from both "muddy dog paw" and "boys who helped us move in during a rainstorm" stains. Since we had to return it tonight, I decided while Dave was at work that I'd finish off the job.
It was easy, really, once I figured out how to work it. Yes, it really did take me a minute or two. After that, I packed the steamer and the mostly useless upholstery brush up and lugged them upstairs and out to the car.
Carpet steamers leave carpets pretty wet. So, we thought turning up our trusty little dehumidifier on Wednesday night would help things dry out by morning. It sounded fine, and, having just bought it in August, I didn't suspect a problem until we found it still making all the right noises but with no water in its little bucket this morning, despite running all night.
So, I figured no big deal, I'll just take the dehumidifier back to the big box store from whence it came after taking the carpet steamer back to the grocery store.
I thought I'd cleverly stashed the dehumidifier receipt in its box in spite of the chaos that was going on at the time. We had just combined households for the first time, in the middle of a rain storm (before this we lived 500 miles apart) and had the added fun of his dogs and my cats mingling for the first time. Apparently I hadn't done the clever stashing as planned since the only thing I found in it was some styrofoam and the cats' nail clippers, which, while a great find, wasn't the receipt I was looking for. I lugged the dehumidifier into the box and upstairs to the car.
Since it's not yet flip flop weather here yet, I went upstairs to put socks on before heading out, only to step in something wet upstairs in the bedroom. Prometheus (Yep, Russian dog, Greek name) looked up at me sheepishly as I yelled (not at him) all manner of obscenities about what this new wet liquid on my foot could be. I even asked him but, being the type of creature who eats entire bars of soap (and is also fond of eating my underwear) he had no answer for me. I even told him later that the wet goo was probably a result of his kleenex eating habits, and that kleenex was not part of the doggie food groups but got the same blank stare I got earlier. I stopped wondering and swearing long enough to wipe the goo off my foot in disgust (with a kleenex he likely ate after I left) and threw a pair of socks on, only to realize by the time I got downstairs that there was still an icky wet feeling between two of my toes.
At the grocery store I found myself being stared at by a woman in the paring space beside me who looked like she would rather eat a bowl full of cockroaches than get out of her perch in her van. Her husband (I assume) was exhaustedly slugging the boxes of pop and tv dinners they had bought into the van while she sat there with the van running, barking orders at him. She looked at me as though I had horns, and pity like she wondered what I'd done wrong not to have a pop and tv dinner slinging man of my own. It was truly a 'shwa moment. I lugged my wallet, cell phone, car keys and the big lug of a carpet steamer and its hoses into the grocery store from whence it came. Her van was still running with her in it when I returned to the car. Apparently not everyone got the whole "fossil fuels are bad for global warming" memo.
I hit anonymous big box store, lugged the humidifier in the door and explained I had no receipt but could they please take back the defective humidifier and give me a new one and I'd be happy to get out of their hair. After some deliberation and calling in some reinforcements from another department they agreed and the guy went to get a cart to bring a replacement dehumidifier out to me. When it arrived, I thanked them and grabbed the box (almost the size of my arm span but not really that heavy) from the cart and walked with it out the door to the car.
I had planned to do much more tonight but ran out of steam, hence the title not really fitting this post. Here's hoping the list in court tomorrow is short and I can spend some of the afternoon getting housey crap done before the new couch arrives Saturday!
Out of nowhere the other day a huge flock of starlings decended on our front lawn like crazy; I'd never seen anything like it. I snapped these out our front window while the cats chattered from the window sil.
My parents have a spa in their house that they use most days to relax and unwind after a long day. The jets massage my already flabby back to butter, the noise of the jets drowns out whatever your brain is still screaming about from work, in short it's the perfect way to relax after a hard day's work.
We often crave a dip into my parents' spa after a long day's work, but the 35 minute drive there makes it a not-so-practical solution. Add in the fact that after about 15 minutes in the spa you're ready to sleep like the dead, which makes matters worse.
This makes us perfect candidates for getting a spa of our own.
Unfortunately, we're not the sort that can afford a spa, unless our grand plan of winning the lottery unexpectedly pans out there will be no spa in this house.
Reality gets in the way again when you consider that there'd be nowhere to put it in our tiny house, it wouldn't fit through either doorway, and the old wiring in our house probably wouldn't power one anyway.
The 'shwa is known for being a pretty ghetto, blue collar town and I think it's starting to rub off on us. To remedy our spa-less situation we've come up with what I'm sure would be viewed as a wonderfully ghetto solution.
We fill up our tiny bathtub (which takes up half our tiny bathroom) with water and bubbles (it at least gives the illusion of wonderful pounding jets) and just soak. We take turns on who gets the "bad side" which means sitting with a faucet in the back. It's a great system. Sometimes, we even break out the dollar store inflatable bath pillow. When it's been an especially bad day, we bring up our plastic ikea glasses and open a bottle of the finest Barq's diet root beer.
I think we'd impress Mr. Darwin with our quick adaptation to our new environment.
I've complained before about the amount of pet hair in our house. It's ridiculous, almost unbelievable. We have dog hair tumbleweeds rolling across our floors no matter how often we sweep, vacuum, or mop them. It's bad enough that I think the hair tumbleweeds get some secret pleasure torturing me and jumping out just when I think I've gotten them all. To make it worse they seem to all congregate together and know just when we have people over to give the impression that we've never heard of this new fangled thing called "cleaning" or we're trying to re-enact a prairie field in the dirty thirties.
I have, however, thought of a genius way to make some moulah out of our hair tumbleweeds. [Well actually Dave thought of it, but I'm claiming it as my own.]
I think we should use collect the excess hair from the dogs to make Santa Claus beards for mall Santas. The hair is soft, and it's probably long enough to be able to make a pretty decent fake beard. Any stray black or golden hairs could be ones that just hadn't turned white yet, making our dear mall Santa look more authentic, maybe even a bit younger. Santa can blame the dog smell on reindeer, cause really, could you tell the smell difference between reindeer and dog? I think it'd add a great touch of authenticity really.
I have no idea how much a real-looking Santa beard would go for but I am sincerely hoping it'll be enough to help us out with our early retirement plan (which so far is made up of us crossing our fingers when buying lottery tickets). I figure each dog could churn out six beards each per season, maybe eight in the spring (ie now) cause of all the extra shedding. Anyone know how much a deluxe Santa beard goes for nowadays? I have high hopes.
This week Dave's off work for the March break. Since I've just started a new job I really couldn't get time off and vacations aren't an option on account of our "not exactly rolling in the dough" status.
I really thought he should spend this week relaxing and recharging. He's a teacher and his class is, to be generous, a challenging group. You know it's a bad sign when countless teachers came up to me at the staff Christmas doing impressions of students in his class. He totally deserved a break to relax. I joked that I was going to make him a honey-do list for his week off, but I know after quitting a job I hated and the week I had off before starting my cool new job that he probably needed a chance to recharge more than anything just as I did.
Instead of just bumming around and relaxing this week, he's taken the disaster area that was our basement and cleaned it up so that it's an organized and tidy place.
The day we shacked up I moved my things in with the help of my family, and then Dave arrived with his crew (for those up on their geography I lived in Ottawa and he lived in Windsor, about 500 miles apart). It had POURED rain when Dave and crew were loading up the truck, and shortly after they got here it began to pour rain again. In an effort to just get everything in the house most of it just got piled into the basement.
We both had entire households of stuff before we shacked up, but Dave's had been largely boxed up for a few years so we didn't know what was in some of the boxes. From the weekend we moved in (we got here Saturday and both of us were at work Monday) until after Christmas I think we had 2 weekends where we weren't out of town, off visiting friends or having people over, so needless to say lots of the stuff just sat there in boxes in the basement.
It was complete chaos down there. Dave knew it was driving me nuts to have such a crazy cluttered basement (it might have been me saying "we have GOT to tackle the basement this weekend" every 5 minutes that gave it away). Instead of relaxing this week he's worked for hours to clean up the basement. He did a ton of laundry. He even assembled shelves to put things on. He cleared boxes off the floor. While it's not totally done it looks a thousand times better than it did.
I'm a lucky chick I tellya.
Christmas day we had a leaky basement this year. After some mild panic attacks on our part it turned out not to be too serious. It was caused by the downspout outside not being properly connected to move water away from the house, combined with buckets of rain that were falling and a tonne of snow melting and a patch that a previous owner had applied and was starting to fail.
We didn't worry about it much, but my parents provided us with "some anti water leak cement stuff" to fix it up. Being that this week I'm between jobs (and REALLY looking forward to starting new one Monday) I've decided to cross a few things off my list, and repairing the previous owner's patch in our leaky basement is one of them.
Now, those who know me know that I'm not a girlie girl. I have no fear of getting dirty or operating power tools, or in this case mixing some cement compound. I built a bird house when I was 5 with my dad, and I was the one operating the jigsaw. So, last night while Dave was at work I decided to tackle the patch job.
I swiftly and almost effortlessly broke up the old patch with a hammer, taking layers of paint with it. (ok I'll admit it was even a bit cathartic!) After sweeping it clean I went upstairs to mix the cement.
Now the can says to get it to a "putty like consistency" and I did just that. There were no lumps in sight and it was perfect putty. I brought it downstairs, ready to pour it, and thought "hmm I should get some more of the peeling paint away so it has a better chance to bond to the floor surface. I ran, full tilt upstairs to grab the wire brush and came back down, brushed the paint in a couple of spots and went to pour the cement. All of this took less than a minute.
I turned the container upside down, only to discover my "perfect putty" was perfectly solid.
A few swear words and a great deal of elbow grease later and I had at least the top part of the container back to putty consistency, even though it was much lumpier this time, and the bottom was solid as a rock. I poured it over the area, and smoothed it with my putty knife.
So can anyone tell me why I, an allegedly smart person (two degrees, relatively handy with the repairs) didn't think to consider "cement = gets hard really fast"? Seriously!
Oh well, it looks good for now, and I'll probably put another patch on top to be sure it's well covered and won't surprise us again.
I'll be the first to tell ya that our dogs are, well, quirky. To that end Daedalus (again Russian dog, Greek name) has recently developed a fear of stairs. Not just any stairs, but the ones he's been going up and down daily since August. Seriously.
I've spent this week stripping a gajillion layers of paint off a door, and doing a ton of other 'housey' things which have led me to move things out of the way to the upstairs landing. From our upstairs hall there are 3 stairs down, a landing with a 90 degree turn, a bunch more stairs, another landing and one more stair down to the front hall in our house.
Now, to be fair these dogs have trouble with hardwood floors. They're HUGE (90 lbs) and have a pretty high centre of gravity, so stairs can be tricky. Every so often we hear a big pile of kerthumps when they come down the stairs, but when we rush over to investigate the kerthumping they just look at us like "what? what are you doing here? What's all the fuss?" and move on like nothing's happened and we're the idiots for making sure they're okay.
Daedalus, though, has decided that when there is ANYTHING on the landing he can't go down the stairs. Putting ONE object on the landing made "go downstairs" an irretrievably different process, like the simple command "go downstairs" had been turned into "solve an algebra equation" or "write a memo explaining secured transactions."
This new-found fear is accompanied with a great deal of whining and whimpering, pacing (accompanied with some sad eyes), louder whining and whimpering and, just once, a frustrated bark. Anyone hearing the whining would think that we had stopped feeding him weeks ago and he was finally on his last legs(admittedly our dogs actually LOOK like we've stopped feeding them weeks ago, it's just the breed though, they're borzoi. Rest assured they eat by the bucket full).
Now I'm not a total meanie - I get up and hold his collar and let him do the walking past the landing and all is well, as if the combingation of me touching his collar and his whining, pacing, whipering, sad eyes and bark had now magically turned the stairs, once again, into the same old stairs he had always known.
I think he knows I'm blogging about him because he just farted. I swear our dogs are like that campfire scene from blazing saddles when they want to be.
I'm sweeping our hardwood floors (an advantage to owning an older house though they're not in perfect shape) and have decided that we need another animal in this house.
But not just any animal - I want one that eats the hair that falls off the other animals in our house. Now, like most people, I have a pretty strong aversion to tampering with nature, and we already have a house full of animals, but if they could make an animal that eats hairs from the other animals I'd actually look past the tampering and overcrowding and be the first in line to get one.
Heck, we could probably feed an entire pack of animals that subsist on hair.
Now there are some criteria here - it'd have to be quiet, and get along with the other animals, and hopefully not take up much space because our house is pretty overrun as it is with animals. Also, if it could not look like a rat or have a rat-like tail Dave would be much happier; he's really not into rats.
So, if there are any budding geneticists who could create something like this we'd be really grateful.
In the meantime I am pushing for us to register for a Roomba, which, while expensive, looks like it'd be perfect for our house. Assuming we keep the rest of our crap off the floors so it could do its job.
So when we got up this morning I found it cold, but that's really not unusual; I'm always cold, so I thought nothing of it. Thing is Dave found it cold too. So, he checked the thermostat and it turns out it was 11 degrees in here!
After some fiddling to try to find out why the furnace wasn't on and heating the house (with the help of a super bright flashlight from my sister) I was moments away from calling the (probably very expensive) repair dude when we re-positioned a wire on the new thermostat and lo and behold the house is slowly warming up again.
The other good news is it's snowing outside- no more looking at snow turned to ice patches on brown grass! We aren't supposed to get much, but any snow is welcome at this point.
I was thinking Christmas this year would be fairly quiet without too many stories to share. Pretty naive of me, eh?
We had planned for a quiet morning at our house, the rest of the day at my parents' place with the family all coming over for Christmas dinner. Finally, we would come home and pass out from all the delicious food mum and everyone prepared and tired after a full day.
Unfortunately the homeownership gods decided to play pranks on us. We got home, stuffed and tired, and very much looking forward to bed. Knowing we were heading out tomorrow morning to see Dave's family we started to clean up the house and I was cleaning the litterbox upstairs, but it needed more litter so I went down to the basement to get some.
Our basement is unfinished, and full of boxes so I couldn't see that well and went to turn on another light when I noticed a distinct squishing sound under my foot. The squishing sound was complemented by a cold, wet feeling on that foot. I foolishly took another step, and lo and behold my other foot was wet now too.
At this point I didn't know what it was. I kinda swore and thought "not pee again!" but then realized that the area that was wet was bigger than all our animals' bladders combined. The water was up and over top of my toes.
After some humming, hawing, and swearing we decided the carpet and underpad (you know, the one I spent $30 cleaning not a few weeks ago) wasn't salvageable so we started tearing it up with an exacto knife and putting it in big garbage bags. In the process we uncovered the source of the leak; a crude patch applied by a previous owner. When you stepped on this patch it squeezed up a bit of water. I feel like calling up the guy and thanking him for the Christmas present but Dave said I'm not allowed.
Dave sopped up water with the mop while I ran around to the neighbours hoping one of them would have a ShopVac we could borrow. Sadly no one was home save the creepy drunk weirdos 2 doors down. (the good news is that their place looked empty so maybe we're getting a new year's present- new tenants there)
We continued with the mopping and cutting of carpet and underpad. We've left the patch on for now but will take it off when we get back from visiting Dave's family on the 28th. I'm just glad to have had the chance to scrub my feet clean of the basement water cocktail.
Hopefully the fans we have going and dehumidifier down there will get it drier. Ah the joys of homeownership. We're really lucky to have a house of our own, I just wish it didn't come with a leaky basement. On the plus side Dave says "Yay we have our own swimming pool!" Just not the one we had in mind.
Is there anything cuter than a little chickadee at your feeder flying in to grab a seed and scurrying off to the cedars? I think not.
