When Did I Become So....

Domestic???

I guess it happened 3 years ago when we moved into our first Home. We lived in apartments before that. Some nice, some not. Some is fancy neighborhoods, some in decidedly bad neighborhoods. We were sorry to leave the last one. It was a beautiful place, the landlord was great, and it was in a decent neighborhood. But there comes a time in one's life when you feel the need to take on massive debt to live in a place that will be all your own after you pay the bank about half a million dollars. Insane? Yes.

SO... we moved into a big house in a pretty good area. The catch is that it's a very old house, and while it is big, it's set up so that it's a terrible waste of space. Ah well, it's ours!

We've changed a lot of stuff in 3 years. Got rid of the awful carpet on the first floor in favor of laminate. New appliances. Lots of paint. A backyard. When we moved in, the backyard was covered over in cement. The 127 people who lived here were using it as extra parking. So we had that torn up and we put down dirt, grass and a swing set. DH built a nice new porch.

But the one thing we kept were the ridiculously hideous vertical blinds. It seemed like such a chore to get rid of them. But UGH they looked so, so... institutional! Like a cheap hotel convention center! So I am pleased to announce we have real curtains now!!!!

And my concern is, when exactly did I start getting excited about freaking curtains? Looking back to the first few apartments (and I use the term loosely) that I lived in, I did what every young, broke person does... I threw some sheets over the windows. Yep, tres ghetto. But that's what we did. I don't think I ever purchased curtains before this. Eventually we moved into apartments that had mini blinds, so I left them alone. Mini blinds are another thing I never want to see again, right along with glass block windows. But, I digress. Here are the new window coverings!!!!!! And a really cute kid who got in the picture.

Next problem - as soon as the new curtains were up, I decided it's time to get rid of the red furniture. The first floor now has more blue, light wood, and green so the red is way out of place. It never ends!

Also - notice the absence of a Christmas tree?? Ever since we got the artificial tree, it comes down right after New Years!

A Ha! and Other Dog Thoughts

This is our dog, Eva. She's a rat terrier/Boston terrier mix. A very expensive mutt disguised as an "all American mixed breed" or at least that's what the pet shop said. I kicked myself for shelling out the dough to buy her, because I could have adopted a dog that needed a home far more than this pampered thing. But alas, I saw her and fell in love.

Eva listens pretty well (sometimes) and has (mostly) gotten past her chew on everything within reach stage. When she was little, before she was crate trained, she ate a dining set and 4 chairs, a bathroom vanity, numerous shoes, and ripped the linoleum off the kitchen floor.

Now her last bad habit has been "inappropriate elimination" which is what the trainer euphemistically calls it when the dog uses the house as her own personal latrine. It happened at night, so I had to keep her in the crate. After a few hours she'd start to bark, so I'd have to stumble downstairs to let her outside. At least twice a night. It was like living with a newborn all over again.
Well, I've been on vacation from work, and the last thing I wanted was to get up twice a night to let the dog out. So I decided to let her stay out one night. I let her sleep on her doggie bed in the living room. She had a crap fest on my kitchen floor.

Next night, I let her stay upstairs in our bedroom. She dove right into the bed and made herself comfortable. She takes up a lot of space for such a small dog, and she snores and grumbles in her sleep... BUT she does not get out of bed to go crap on the floor! She will wait until morning to go outside only if she gets to sleep in our bedroom. It's a trade off, to be sure, but it's worth it to me to allow the furry gal to sleep upstairs so I can actually sleep all night.

Aside from that A Ha! moment, I fell down some stairs yesterday and yeeowch, that hurt. Stepped on a dog bone. On the first stair. It wasn't my dog who was so cavalier about human safety, but my mother's dog. I don't like her quite so much today.

Bad Shower!

Well, New Year's Eve didn't come without pain. Didn't I say it was all downhill??

Was trapped in a car with my cranky mother for about 2 hours.

Belly fell down in the shower, resulting in quite a nose bleed and tears aplenty. DH got some ice and that stopped it, but not before Belly proclaimed the shower to be "bad" and told it that it will get one more chance to be nice. Afterward, he decided he wasn't getting back in there because the shower was trying to beat him up. I think he still has soap in his hair.

Later, as we were partying hard with our sparkling grape juice, Golden Boy thought it would be funny to dump confetti down everyone's pants. When we did it back to him he bucked like a bronco and smashed his face into a table. More tears. Many more tears.

However, right now the kids are falling asleep and all is well with the world. They're happy, so we're happy. Hope you're happy, too.

Unexpected Good News

First of all, I slept until after 10am today. Upon waking at such a late hour, I immediately convinced myself that Belly had been kidnapped in the night - no way he'd let me sleep so late. Ran to his room to find him tangled in blankets, blissfully asleep. Nice!
Then I called a stinking government office about a very large sum of money they're trying to collect from me, that I've been fighting since 1996. Know what they told me? They granted me a waiver! I don't have to pay them!
When I was sure I'd just used the last of my good luck for the day, my co-worker called me. At home. That's not normal. In short, my co-worker has to attend a funeral this week. I'm scheduled to work only ONE day this week, since the kids are still on Christmas vacation. Anyway, my boss agreed to let me switch my days off so that I could work on the day my co-worker must be out. The catch - I get to work from home!!! So I don't have to go into the office at all this week!
So that's my fantastical day so far. It can only be downhill from here....

My favorite movie quote this week: Now be gone, before somebody drops a house on you, too!