Spiced Wine

Today is 4dpo or 3dpiui and I’m pretty sure time has ground to a complete halt. I am not sure how I will make it through the next 10/11 days…

In other news it was snowing today, enough to stick on the ground for only the second time this winter. I celebrated by experiment with a new spiced wine recipe I found online – it was delish and smells even better – while burning my pine candle. Made us some tastey green bean casserole and honey mustard chicken for dinner which was perfect cold weather food. We even hauled my MIL up out of her apartment to eat in the living room and we watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer over dinner.

I’m not decorating this year. Not even a bit. My MIL was pestering me in the subtle way she does the other day about putting up a tree and bringing out the decorations. I flat out replied “what’s the point, no one is coming to our house, we’re the only ones who will see it, and then I just have to clean it up.” lucky for me she’s still got a broken arm and is somewhat confined to her efficiency apartment in the basement or I’m sure she’d be decorating for me. Since she had the handyman haul three things upstairs already I told Hubbin she’s more than welcomed to decorate her own area but I’m taking whatever she dumps up in the living room as an indication she doesn’t want it and it’s okay for me to just move it on our to the curb at the end of the season.

The thing is 95% of our Christmas decorations are hers from her house that she dumped at our house when we moved in when she was cleaning out her attic. And like I said to my mom “I know I’ve not been all into decorating but I’d kind of like next year when I just have ONE job and my bank account isn’t close to empty – to pick out my OWN decorations, things I like, to decorate my house” not random stuff from someone else’s house. Plus I’ve been totally inspired by pinterest. — well, this post started out all festive but now I sound like quite a scrooge. Anyway, if you need some old Christmas decorations I’ve got 4 bins in the garage.

Not too shabby

The meeting with our real estate agent and her boss went pretty well last night, not nearly as bad as I expected. I was expecting him to tell us that we would never be able to get out of this house more than we originally paid for it — forget the random improvements we made.

I think he genuinely liked our house, he was drooling not only over the refinished hardwood floors but thought we (it was all Hubbin) had fantastic taste in furniture and chose excellent projects for improvement. So while I don’t think we’d make a profit by selling our house, he did talk about listing it for $34,900 more than we bought it for 4 years ago. I don’t know exactly how much we’ve put into it since we bought it… but it’s probably close to that. (Paved the gravel driveway, new furnace, new hot water heater, new attic insulation, new ‘styrofoam’ insulation throughout, refinished hardwood, new kitchen floor — I’m sure that takes us mighty close to $30,000) The sad thing is I don’t think anyone will ever make a profit on this house ever not because it’s not a beautiful house, but because it’s ~20ft from a main road. Part of the reason we would be hesitant to put on an addition or something like that.

I love my Husband he was completely cracking me up last night… I’m not sure I uttered more than 5 sentences the whole night (I’m the quiet one) but he was rattling on and on about everything as per usual and our real estate agents boss offered him a job, lol. So I guess if he ever leaves teaching we’ll have to put him straight into sales. Either real estate or there was one time we were at a BMW dealership (checking out the new minicoopers cause Hubbin looooooves him some cars) and he was telling me all the features and they offered him a job there on the spot too.

Anyway — so the meeting didn’t go bad and the agents essentially said our house can go on the market as is and they’re fairly optimistic.

Shopping

Since Hubbin announced  that they think his mother has Alzheimers he’s become a bit more serious about the possibility of us buying a newer or bigger house and her moving in with us. We went through this phase last summer with this house we liked a mile or so away from us… but she wasn’t ready to move out of her house. Now she’s game so Hubbin’s been shopping around a bit and there’s a house we both like (MIL hasn’t seen it yet) and we’ve been to see it now with our temporary real estate agent…

Today though is the moment I’m dreading… The real estate agent is going to come take a look at our house, and tell us what we’ve got to do to try an sell it. Why I’m dreading this? Because I do believe our house was on the market >1year before we bought it and I think it’s going bring our dreams of buying this new house to a screeching halt while we wait for someone to take an interest in our house.

I’d love to move, I’m not crazy about our house for many reasons I didn’t think would be important to me at the time we moved in. For instance, our house was built in the 1870s and as such has only makeshift closets, 1 full bathroom (well technically it has two but the one is in the dungeon like basement with the man eating spiders — right next to the laundry) our kitchen is oh… 12×7 with approximately 3 square feet of counter space. The house we went to look at is one Hubbin found online. Also an old house… but more like 1920/30s so it’s considerably newer. It’s essentially a flipped house by some dude that works with a construction company and likes restoring old houses. I saw it for the first time last night and frankly, it’s swoon worthy. 2nd floor laundry! Squee! new kitchens and bathrooms! — he clearly made two of the bedrooms into bathrooms. He finished the attic to make a 4th bedroom and the second full bathroom. New furnace, new windows, new floors on and on…. the two big draw backs are 1. no attached garage (he would build a brand new detached one on as part of the sale conditions) and 2. Its right nextdoor to a funeral home (which I would mind much less if they didn’t keep their gigantic parking lot roped off round the clock…

I was chuckling last night when Hubbin was describing to his mother where it is in relation to our house and it does *honestly* sit right next to the funeral home and then a block on the other side is the cemetary 😉 lol… His mother said “well good you can just wheel me next door then when the time comes”. Hubbin did tell her it’s right down the road from an assisted living center also if she gets too rowdy :-p

The other draw back… okay so three I guess… is that this does not have a finished basement apartment like the one we looked at last summer or the more expensive one we looked at two weeks ago so my mother in law would either take a portion of the second floor or it would be possible to close off the living room area for her on the first floor. So that’s obviously not ideal… however it would be favorable to her living in our current dining room that you have to walk through to get into or out of the house. So well see….

I’m making an effort to post this now before the meeting tonight just because then there’s less to update… plus it was definitely favorable with the temperature “issue” a couple weeks ago to do a play by play rather than try to summarize 3 weeks later when I finally remembered to blog about it.

Oh So Manly

Like previous falls it seems a few young squirrels have found their way into our attic. And like past falls we’re actively setting traps so we can relocate them two miles down the road to the lake/park.

Today I walked into the garage to get something out of my trunk while Hubbin was at work, and I heard a rattling on one of the shelves and saw a spazzy young squirrel had fallen for the old peanut-butter-in-a-trap trick and found himself locked in a metal cage. I sent Hubbin a photo and a text praising him as Hunter Gatherer Man of the year and my how manly and brave his hunting skills are.

I was upstairs folding laundry at the top of the stairs when Hubbin got home and he came inside and called “Frau!” jumping to the third step landing putting his fists on his hips and puffing out his chest “have you seen my trophy squirrel?!” looking side to side chest out with mock pride.

Not to worry squirrel activists, the little guy will be released in the park two miles away unharmed albeit majorly wigged out.

A Photo Post

 

 

 

For Christmas Hubbin is repainting my study room from Paint-to-Sell Beige to a Cranberry Red. I talked my mom into buying me that potterybarn desk I’ve been lusting over for a full year now and we’re going to go with the white furniture and dark paint.

In other news this is a photo of the Christmas outfit I’ve concocted for the tegu Christmas card this year! A sneak preview just for my online friends!

Uhoh

Well I have definitely got to work on this whole getting-up-early when there’s nothing really to get up for concept. I have today off, technically, but it’s one of only 3 days off work I have before our next test. So even though the next test is not till after Thanksgiving studying today still kind of counts as cramming… this is a weird concept or what?

Anyway I set my alarm to get up and start studying at 8am but it’s a rainy, dreary day and it was awfully hard to drag myself out of bed knowing it was only to sit and read my med-surg book.  So now here we are at nearly 9:30 and I’m still kind of putzing around trying to motivate myself.

The good news is Hubbin called me from work this morning to let me know that he’s set up our furnace they will come and install it before the weekend 🙂 Because let me tell you, getting up for the day in a house that’s 50 degrees is awfully low on my list of enjoyable activities.

My week-o-orientation starts tomorrow. I’m going to be oriented out the wazoo I think… I envision them giving us compasses and telescopes and sending us off… I expect reality will be a lot less interesting.

No more!

I’m done in the lab! Wahooo!

Emergencies here I come!  ….and no more of the “I need 300 slides cut by Tuesday” emergencies.

I interviewed my replacement on Friday before I left, she seems perfect, my boss had already left for the day so I left her a note saying I thought she was perfect.

In other news, remember my perfect desk?  I think I’m going to buy it for Christmas and talk my mom into giving me $ for it for Christmas. 🙂 Hubbin and I spent some time tonight discussing how we want to redecorate the study room. (I’m all about white furniture)

Extraction

This is PART 2… go read PART 1 first!

And a big time sensitive reader warning on this one…

Last night was the big night. I promised Hubbin’, who I would say has the constitution of a normal human being, that if he gathered the gear and set everything up that I would get them all out. (He was threatening vomit and I’d rather deal with a dead body than puke.) He maintains that this will have no bearing on whether he will be able to be present in the delivery room someday in the future. Should we believe him?

He cut up a big yard trashbag and laid it out over our gas logs (turning off the pilot light of course) and duck taped around the edges so everything fell into the center. I brought an extra pair of scrubs home from work. I used those big yellow cleaning gloves and we made a special trip to home depot to get a heavy duty face mask. I pushed to spend the extra $3 to get the goggles as well. (I’m very glad for those) In accordance with the bargain he got it all set up, only once making the mistake to look up and seeing the dead legs dangling. Then he went upstairs to use the computer.

I opened the flue and very ungracefully pulled the first two out (read: in bits). I’m glad we waited so long to do it because they were sort of dry and brittle, and the opening was small. Plus my biggest fear was one of them would bite me or I would grab one and it would start to move or chirp (someone’s watched too many horror movies) The third one I couldn’t get so I had to make a trip down to the basement to get some extra tools. After I wiggled it around for a while I finally figured out I did NOT have the flue completely open. The third one just fell out whole.

That’s when it started. I poked around another minute, and found another dead bird. Then another. That’s when I started making some of the traditional expletive comments, causing Hubbin to shout down the stairs and ask if everything was ok. I was only expecting 3, because I’d seen three before I even started.

I clearly needed more tools. I got a gardening claw from the basement.

After about 30 minutes of poking around and bravely reaching my hand up past the flue to feel around, I had removed 10, TEN… That’s right, TEN dead bodies from our chimney.

Darwin’s finest.

Hubbin’ who completely had the willies dubbed me GREATEST WIFE EVER last night for being willing to pull the dead decaying bodies out of the chimney. I previously earned the title of GREATEST FIANCE EVER, for permitting him to buy xbox 360.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but it just didn’t gross me out. I was paranoid one of them would still be alive, but I wasn’t grossed out. Honestly there was only one I pulled out that even had a whiff of death about it. So I packed everything up and took it outside and declared everything clear.

“This house is clean”

I called my parents to issue the report. Dad asked if I had ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I said “No, but I don’t really feel like I need to now”

The Birds

So part of the reason I’m hesitant to tell this story is because we let it go for so long… and I’m going to have to issue a sensitive reader warning.

A week or so before we left for Germany Hubbin started complaining that he thought we had an animal living under our chimney. When we got our gas logs put in they had problem after problem with our old house so they ended up running the new gas line outside the house, then back up into the fireplace using the old coal chute. I assumed that we had a chipmunk or squirrel that decided the old coal chute might be a nice place to live. We had several conversations about how to block up the coal chute and what we could fill it with.

Then we heard it chirp.

Just a few days before we left for Germany we realized the shuffling noise we were hearing was actually flapping. I was sitting along in the living room watching TV and looked over and saw sunlight was hitting the fireplace *just so* so I went over and peered in. I looked up at the flue and saw legs. Two sets of bird legs, sticking down the edge. Then I looked at little longer and saw the bird that was making the noise poking it’s beak out at me, chirping and flapping. I was horrified. I called my parents and made references to the end of the world and Alfred Hitchcock.

When Hubbin got home that night we talked about how to get them out. And ultimately decided that we should just wait till the last one dies. We don’t want any angry wild animals loose in the house and be trying to hunt them down after they’re released from the chimney. Plus we honestly weren’t sure if they could fit through the flue opening.

We left for our trip and came back to a quiet house. (Although my MIL did comment that one day when it was warm she smelled something) We talked about getting them out that very weekend, but were ultimately too jet lagged and couldn’t get our act together.

To be Continued………….

Weekend Project Update

A few months ago we installed a gas log fireplace in the hopes that it would allow us to keep the living room above freezing and still be able to afford groceries. After we installed the fireplace we realized that the thermodynamics of a 130 year old house with big rooms and 10ft ceiling aren’t really ideal. The dining room seemed to be the biggest heat loss since it’s all windows so we decided to install a door between the living room and the dining room. Here’s a photo. My father and husband installed it, and it literally took them all day because there is not a single right angle to be found in our entire house. I’m quite pleased to report that even when we’re not using the fireplace, shutting that door still keeps our living room several degrees warmer. I love warmth. Mmm

For months, months, months we have been calling electricians begging trying to get someone to come out and install a vent in our upstairs bathroom. Because of our mold problem. No dice. A couple months ago my father and husband took matters into their own hands and installed all the duct work. They did well, and no one fell off the roof in the process. (I was a nervous wreck all day, I decided I prefer having paid people on the roof rather than relatives)

Now that it’s January we were finally able to convince an electrician to come over and wire in the vent. They estimated the project at 2 hours, SWEET! We also pulled the “hey while you’re in there” would you mind installing another electrical outlet as well? I don’t know where my dad found these guys, but we’ll call them Tweedledumb and Tweedledrunk. They came in our house, surveyed the situation and told us they needed to go buy some wire and came back smelling of booze. (I’m very reassured at this point). Three hours into the project they tell my husband that the electrical wiring in our house totally and completely out of date and to do everything it will be a $3,000 to rewire it. We’ve decided for the time being that the electrical uses upstairs (lightbulbs & alarm clocks) don’t warrant the $3,000 upgrade. We’ve made an appointment with them next weekend to redo the wiring to the TV/Computer and the kitchen.

The big hangup was them cutting through our second floor bathroom ceiling. Ceilings these days are made with 1 layer of drywall. This is what they were expecting our ceiling to be made of. Instead, our bathroom ceiling was made of not one, but two layers of drywall, a thin layer of cement, and a layer of tongue and groove wood paneling. (No wonder all the floors in the house are sagging) Tweedledumb literally did chin-ups holding onto our ceiling to demonstrate how strong it was. They just don’t build homes like they used to. They broke three blades trying to saw through it. ….and clearly by the photograph, they did not measure prior to trying. Said homeowners are more than a little miffed by that.

This turned out to be an 8 hour job. The good news is the vent seems to work. The bad news is the patch job that needs to be done on the ceiling and the outlets! Good god, wait till you see these outlets. Somewhere after he told us that we really just need to rewire the whole house I started to tune out the project because it was just too overwhelming. So after they left at 10pm Saturday night, promising they would be back next Saturday to continue we went up and this is what we found: 1 new apricot colored outlet. Classy.

And 1 new white outlet that is three quarters of an inch from the wall? Now that’s really classy. And Safe! I’m sure that’s real safe!