Motivation

Me, on a Monday night after work: I'm going to whip my house into shape as soon as possible. I'm going to work on ceiling fans, paint cabinets, and finish painting a wall. I'm going to place my house for sale as soon as possible so I can move on to the next phase of my life (another house).

Also me, an hour into my motivation: I think I'm going to take a nap.

Pickle juice.

Text message I tried to send: Pickles looks exhausted.

The message, auto-corrected: Pickles is jaw baskets.

Yes, indeed, she is jaw baskets.

Life in photos

Penny kisses.

Just blind dog stuff.

I had a big ass tree removed. Sweet.

Sweet dreams, Pickles.

The horsey jackets kill me every time the kids wear them.

Is this hamburger missing something?

On things breaking

A part that I had replaced on my car six months ago broke the other day.

As a result, I could not shut my car door. 

College did not teach me what to do when your car door will not shut. 

This is a story about how life doesn't always go as planned. This is also a story about how you just have to roll with it sometimes.

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Nine days ago, I bug bombed my house. I cannot hire a big fancy company to bug bomb my house because I just paid a big fancy company to give me teeth.

Priorities, people. 

I spent a whopping $5 on a DIY bug killing kit, and I asked my Dad for some help early(ish) on a Saturday morning.

Killing bugs apparently involves turning off your pilot lights, which for me, means my hot water heater.

For the record, I was told to not mess with the pilot light. Also for the record, I didn't listen.

That night, everything was fine. My bath was hot and my house was bug free.

Life was good. 

On Sunday morning when I woke up, I had no hot water. None, whatsoever, not even an ounce of it. 

I did what any adult woman would do in this situation...I called Dad.

One trip to the store and a lit pilot light later, I had hot water. 

The next day, nadda. I had ice cold water.

Like I whined to my Dad: Why do you need an appliance to heat your water? Hot water heaters are the most inefficient things ever. Why isn't the water just naturally hot? This is the dumbest thing ever to spend money on.

The men in my life gave me that 'you're an idiot' look, and then said something like, Hey, stupid. Water comes from the ground and it's not usually hot when it does that.

Whatever, men. 

I had the privilege of of showering at my Mom and Dad's house that week. Because every adult woman does that, right? 

I bought a new hot water heater and my Dad came over on Saturday to install it. I woke up to my house smelling like gas, and I noped out of there so hard I could not have noped harder. 

I chewed all of my nails off that day. 

You guys, I have a new, shiny, brand-spankin'-new hot water heater. I think he looks like a Frank, so that's officially his name.

He's a sexy beast, that Frank.

tl;dr: I saved $100 by bug bombing my house by myself and then spent almost $500 on a new hot water header. And that part in my car is still broken. 

Almost 31.

The other day I ripped some threads off of a scarf I had hanging up. I thought I threw the wad of thread in my trash can in my bathroom.

It turns out that I missed.

The next time I was in the bathroom, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a wad of something. It was huge, and looked like it had legs.

OH MY GOD IT'S A SPIDER.

I'm almost 31 years old, but when I see spiders, I tend to act half my age.

I screamed like a 15-year-old girl.

It turns out, that spider was just that wad of thread, sitting next to the trash can.

Did I mention I'm almost 31, and I own my own car and house?

This is 30

A conversation I had recently:

Me: I have a lot of space in my house, but it's all really stupid space. I loved those built ins when I looked at the house. They were beautiful! Now all I do is dust them and they're always dirty.

Friend: I loved my pedestal sink when I looked at this house. It's so pretty! Now I'm like, "There's no fucking storage in here!"

Dad advice is usually good advice.

(Note: This was written yesterday. My arm also hurts. A lot.)

I was talking to my Dad last night, in a hospital nonetheless (neither of us were the patients, calm down), and I showed him some impressive cuts and bruises on my arm.

I've been working on the cat pee room in my house. That room is the attic bedroom that I eventually want to turn into a craft room. I tore up the nail strip that held the carpet down over the weekend.

Me and nails don't really mix well together. My arm and one of my knees took one for the team, and are cut up.

This conversation happened in the hospital last night:

Dad: Do you know what happens if you get an infection and you don't get a tetanus shot?

Me: No, actually I don't. What happens?

Dad: I don't know, but it won't be good. Get a tetanus shot.

I sometimes take Dad advice seriously. As he pointed out, even though I've cleaned that room, there's probably still remnants of cat urine and feces everywhere.

Better safe than sorry. I'm getting the shot later this morning.

Dad advice is usually good advice.

The tentative plan for that room, which will probably change, involves painting the walls this weekend and the floor the week after that.

After bruises, blood, and a tetanus shot, maybe that room will be ready for me to use in a couple of weeks.

It's progress!

The case of the missing dog food

This week did not start out good.

On Sunday, I had a funny feeling. Like, that feeling you get before you get majorly sick.

On Monday morning, my suspicions were confirmed. Very, very confirmed. 

It was not a good day.

In the quest to get my dogs to my outside, my little Raven spilled her food dish on my back porch. How she managed to get her food there from my kitchen, well, only she knows that.

I was so sick on Monday that picking up the spilled dog food was not an option.

So I just left it there. 

It was there on Monday night, when I let the Pugs in. When I got up Tuesday morning, the food was gone.

My first thought: Um, did someone break into my house and clean it?

My Dad didn't do it. He thought maybe cats ate it. But my back porch is enclosed, so there better not be any cats in there.

If anyone has any idea on the mysterious case of missing dog food, let me know. 

The Unfinished Posts

Below are the beginnings of what I intended to be great, life-changing blog posts.

Instead, they're just sitting in my poor unpublished folder, all lonely and sad.

Here you go, you blog readers! (Hi, Mom!)

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Anniversaries are supposed to be fun, but sometimes the not-so-happy anniversaries are hard to deal with.

I still remember the closing date for the house I originally tried to buy. It's next month.

I remember what I was doing at this time last year, how hopeless I was about the whole house process and how I thought it would never happen.

One day I'll get over it, but that day is not today.

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I'm living the dream.

I thought about that dream a lot recently, as I was on my hands and knees in my garage, scraping oil and grease off of my garage floor.

The thing I hate more than scraping oil off of a garage floor is scraping ice off of my windshield in the mornings. So, I continue to work on my nasty garage floor, in hopes that it will be usable one day, pretty soon from now.

Everything I do to my house costs twice as much as I thought it would and takes five times as longer.

I hope I'm not the only person who has this problem. Gah.

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The past couple of weeks have been pretty good.

New music, especially good new music, always makes me happy.

As I tweeted last week, I would consider Chris Stapleton's music life changing.

I'm a total bandwagon fan, but oh my God.

So good!

I don't know if it gets any better than "Whiskey and You."

Creepy crawlies and walls.

A year ago, I couldn't stand spiders.

I would scream and make someone else kill them if I saw one.

Being a homeowner changes things, though. I still don't like spiders, but I don't usually scream when I see them. I sometimes kill them with my bare hands.

Just call me Chuck Norris.

Last week, I saw an especially creepy spider in my house. I was bending over in my bathroom closet, trying to get some shoes out of the dark closet corner.

I saw something.

Ew! Naturally, as I was surrounded by shoes in the closet, I started throwing shoes at it. Here's an important fact: The light was not on in the closet.

So I'm standing there, or rather squatting there, trying to kill this spider with random shoes. My Pugs are kind of scared of the noise, and they don't want anything to do with me.

The stupid spider wouldn't die!

I finally stood up and turned the light on in the closet.

My "spider" was an imperfection in the wall. A stain, maybe old wallpaper, who knows. But it was definitely not a spider.

Let me tell you how stupid I feel for throwing shoes at a wall for a few minutes.

Oh well.

House stuff.

There are certain things I never pictured myself doing in life.

Such as:

• Vacuuming a basement ceiling. Twice.

• Throwing carpet out of a window, then having said carpet get stuck on my roof.

• Using a Jesus Stick to get the carpet off my roof. (Thank God for Jesus sticks!)

• Getting a splinter underneath my fingernail while tearing out staples. Ouchie McOuchie Pants.

• Sitting at home for days in a bronchital fog, and not unloading the dishwasher once. Meh.

• Putting ice packs on various bumps on my head because I'm not used to low, angled bedroom attic ceilings.

That leads me to my current dilemma. I have an upstairs bedroom, an attic space, that I've been working on. The cat carpet is finally gone, and I can be in that room without gagging. Hooray!

I stood in that room last night and just looked around. Um, guys, I have no idea what to do with this room. The walls need painted, but what color? Do I do a crazy color up here? A neutral color? Do I put in bookshelves where the ceiling curves down?

Everyone else who lived in this house used that room as their master bedroom.

I have no idea what to use it as. Any ideas, tips or suggestions are welcome.

It Wasn't Me.

Last Friday night, after taking the most glorious of naps, I went out to get a few groceries.

It was pretty late, around the time when a popular bar in town closes. Said bar happens to be a handful of blocks from my house.

I was hanging out in my kitchen, eating cherries late at night, when I heard a commotion outside.

My window in my kitchen needs to be replaced. It doesn't really shut, which means I can hear people outside perfectly.

A group of women were arguing. I could hear how drunk they were, and I wondered if I should call the police.

Nah, I thought. I'll just let them fight it out and enjoy every second of the delicious drama I heard.

One woman thought the other slept with her man. The other woman denied it. They went at it for a long time. The first woman claimed she saw it.

Question: If you're caught in the act, how do you deny it?

(In my head I was singing the lyrics to Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me.")

This wonderful drama played out for about 15 minutes, until the drunkards went home and left me in peace. Deep down, I was just happy someone else's life is more dramatic than mine.

So now you have a scoop on who's sleeping with whom in my neighborhood.

FYI - I didn't really want to know, either.

Starting out right.

This morning started out right.

I walked out of my house, locked my front door, and starting walking towards my car.

A car came driving past me and stopped at the stop sign in front of my house. The music was blaring, and whatever the song was had the lyrics, "Fuck the haters!" in it.

So that was my Monday morning.

Fuck the haters!

Oh, my little eclectic neighborhood. I love it.

House!

I've been in my house for more than a month now.

I made my first mortgage payment this week. Hooray, I'm officially a grown up!

Here are some random thoughts and observations.

1. My dog doesn't like trains.

2. My dog doesn't like locusts.

3. My dog loves her backyard. It's her domain.

4. Houses are expensive.

5. When I fix something, five other things go wrong.

6. Chainsaws are kind of fun.

7. I'm pretty sure my Dad knows everything, and has a tool for everything. 

8. My Mom knows a lot, too.

9. I'm pretty sure I hit the parent lottery.

Laundry, water, plumbers. In that order.

My life never works out the way I want it to. I'm getting more used to it as time goes on.

The other night I decided to be brave and go into my basement by myself. My parents were Pug sitting, and I had a pile of laundry to do.

Plus, I needed to wash clothes to wear to work.

I got this!

My basement is unfinished and mildly creepy. It wasn't the creepiest basement I toured while house hunting, but it's definitely not my favorite part of my house.

Anyway, I dug out some cool old jars to clean up, threw a load of towels that I killed spiders with into the washing machine, and headed upstairs.

An hour later, I went downstairs again.

My towels were clean, but my basement was filled with water.

Ah crap. Life never works out as planned.

I did what any other adult would do. I called my parents. Multiple times. And when they didn't answer, I called my brother, who did answer and came right over.

He cleaned it up and we both decided the water was coming from the toilet downstairs, not the washing machine.

Yes, that's right. Somehow I managed to wash clothes and flood my toilet at the same time. But my brother made a good point: "It smells like soap, not shit. I think it'll be fine."

I called a plumber first thing yesterday morning morning, and he spent a couple hours making really ominous sounds in my basement.

A plus, though, is that I got to clean and sort more while he was working. I pulled out my checkbook as he was leaving and he stopped me. I'll be billed, he said.

And then I made really ominous noises.

Oh well. Clean clothes are pretty important, so I'll open my checkbook up for that.

Who knows what other problems my house has. I don't really want to talk about the cat pee carpet upstairs, the gross garage that needs about a week of deep cleaning, the phantom ceiling fan that doesn't shut off, or the wonky electrical issues going on.

And to think, this is only week one. Hooray home ownership!

"Art"

When I was closing on my house, it was broken into and spray painted.

I never asked the realtor specific details about what happened. It was probably just kids being stupid. The other day, though, the realtor did tell me that it was black spray paint.

The sellers fixed the problems and I never had to worry about anything (I'll write a blog post later about how awesome the sellers were).

I was driving to the store the other day, and I saw something spray painted on a garage. It was black, and I thought hey, they got it too!

And then I realized it was a giant spray painted penis.

I laughed, then didn't think anything of it.

On my lunch break earlier this week I drove back to work and saw another spray painted garage door. This time it was a white penis.

Part of me wants to know if my house had giant spray painted penises in it when I was closing on it. But how do you ask that age-old question to your realtor?

"Hey, were there ever any giant penises in my house?"

I might keep that question to myself.

House update!

As of Friday, the final inspection hasn't been done yet on my house.

The loan hasn't gone through, either.

I emailed Mr. Bank Guy on Friday, asking him nicely if this is actually going to happen on time. Yes, he says, it will be done this week.

We're cutting it close here, people.

In the meantime, I'm trying to line up helpers and movers, a trailer, and I bought some furniture that's going to be delivered this weekend. 

I hope I have a house this weekend. My fingers are crossed...