Frog and Goat

Happy Halloween! The pumpkins are turning into ooze so I’m very glad today is Halloween because those pumpkins need a one-way trip to somewhere other than our porch.

I’ve been pretty productive already today so I’m not too broken up by the time change. I’m sure I’ll feel it on Monday morning but this morning I’m feeling very satisfied with everything that I’ve gotten done before 8 am (laundry, bill paying, reconciled the checkbook, dish washing, reading).

Yesterday included the following: installation of a garage door (and the frustration that goes with that), a sighting of a snake in the backyard (the first time we’ve seen one back there in forever), dinner on the porch since it was so warm, drinking some mead with dinner and going to bed early (since I didn’t sleep the night before—I got back into bed at 5:45 am to catch a nap).

Today will include: finishing the last bit on the first garage door and starting and completing the second door, and a visit with friends tonight for some Halloween pizza.

After work today my sister and I are going shopping for household goods. We’re in the market for rugs, lamps, candles…anything that will make my house warm and inviting. Because normally what makes it warm and inviting is my stunning personality but since I’ll be absent when realtors bring prospective buyers over, we must resort to props.

One store we’re going to is Garden Ridge. This is good news, actually, since I’ve been in Garden Ridge’s parking lot a lot lately but haven’t set foot in there in a while. Garden Ridge is not too far from the airport and is a convenient place for me to meet people I work with. I was joking with one of those people on Thursday that my sister and I were finally going to go in there. My co-worker commented that it is a wonder we’ve never been stopped since it looks like we’re doing a drug drop. What makes it worse is that the last time I met that co-worker I did hand her money and she handed me an envelope. I was forking over some cash for Boss’s Day and she was getting me to sign the card for the Boss. To anyone else it probably did look a little shady.

I had three weird trips in the elevator today while at the contracting gig.

On the way up to my floor, I was in the elevator with two other people. One person got off on the first floor (you get in on the street level, ride past several parking levels and then get to the first floor). The other person rode to the third floor and although I took a step away from her she never moved once and she hummed for the two floors we were alone. Not a hum that had a tune just a hum. She got off and I said out loud “that was weird”. I get the irony of this.

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And, so I spent the morning using the lawn sweeper and the rake and managed to rid the yard of all the leaves. I made a pretty amazing discovery that in addition to all the spider webs all over the house we also have a serious number of spiders living all over our yard. Which I know could be a “duh” moment but I was stunned by the number of spiders roaming about the yard.

The real reason for staying at home this morning was to wait for the B-Dry sales guy to come by and write up the job to finish the 12ft of our basement we didn’t get done in March. How silly it seems now that we didn’t get that section done back in the spring, but we really thought we were staying put. He didn’t get to the house until 12:30 so instead of having to knock off with the leaf raking I was forced to finish the entire yard. I had really hoped he would roll up in the driveway and give me a reason to stop.

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The poor boo-boo kitty is all stressed out and has taken to ripping out his hair. He occasionally does this because he is psychotic. Seriously he is touched. Or as they say around here “he’s a little teched”. I took off out of the office early today to head over to the pet store. When I got home, I gave him a squirt of some anti-itch (which he just loved–actually after getting over his fear of the squirt bottle he enjoyed the cool rubdown). Then he had to lick some of that hairball malt stuff off his paw. Because where there’s this much hair all over hither and yon there will be the ritual hacking up of hairballs.

He also got half a pack of Whiskas moist tuna which he hoovered down and then he lolled around on his new catnip bag. Life is good for our non-stop itching-scratching freaky cat. At least until he remembers to scratch, scratch, scratch and lick, lick, lick again.

Weekend Recap-hooray!

The Niece and her mama came over for dinner on Friday night. We made stuffed shells on Thursday night, let them soak up the sauce and flavors overnight in the refrigerator and heated them up for dinner on Friday. When asked if she liked the shells, the Niece replied, “They’re not my favorite”. So it goes.

Saturday we replaced the kitchen faucet. It took all day. Our hats are off to plumbers everywhere. What a pain in the arse.

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The better-half finally got to use the blow torch today. He had to cut the kitchen faucet pipes off so that we could install a new and improved kitchen faucet. I stood by with the fire extinguisher. I read the 3-step instructions a dozen times because who wants to freeze up on pulling the pin, standing back 6 feet and then discharging a few ounces of foam or whatever it is that comes out of our little extinguisher. I’d hate to have to explain to the insurance company that yes I was standing right there with the fire extinguisher in my hand but I just couldn’t figure out how to put out the fire. Oops, sorry. Here’s my big whopping claim. Get cracking on cutting me a check.

My apologies to everyone who has ever spent the night at my house on the World’s Lumpiest Mattress™. After sleeping in our guest bedroom for about 5 days due to all the painting in the master bedroom and the smell of the caulk on the new shower door in our bathroom, I’m so happy to report that we have finally moved back into the bedroom. Oh how I’ve missed my firm mattress. My promise to everyone who has slept in that guest bedroom is that we have plans for upgrading the mattress in there. I swear.

Last night the better-half asked me if I ever mentioned here that we’re in the process of preparing our house for sale. I told him sure all that stuff is over in House Proud. He pointed out that some people may never look at House Proud (shocking as that sounds) and that I may sound like a nut because of my rants on Lowe’s (damn them).

Here’s the news. We’re selling our house. Our realtor gave us “home” work to do and we’ve been working like dogs. We’ve seen 3 other houses and made 2 offers both of which fell through. The first offer was for a house I really liked and I was bummed to hear that we didn’t get it. The other one I was on the fence about but I think the better-half was a little more disappointed. Neither of us were that passionate about it though.

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I despise Lowe’s. There I’ve said it. I despise them and their total lack of customer service. Why oh why did we buy garage doors from them? Oh yeah, we went there looking for lights since we’ve pretty much exhausted Home Depot’s selection and decided to get the garage doors from them. I called today to see if they were in since they are due in some time this week. I called the number on our order page, got voice response and then pressed the number I was given. The phone rang for more than 2 minutes and 33 seconds and I hung up. I hate them. Come on to Mechanicsville you asshats. I’m not going to shop at your store even if the store plopped down 2 feet from my house. Just give me my garage doors and I’ll try to never ever darken your door again. More than 2 minutes before someone, anyone could take the call?

And, since I’m on a “customer service that sucks” rant, whatever you do, don’t be swayed by any magazine claims of renewing your floor with stuff called Hope’s Floor Renew. I ordered that from a flim-flam company and their customer service has sucked the life right out of me. Finally today I cancelled the order. I’ll drive around until I find the stuff locally. Kiss my big ass.