Mission accomplished: exterior paint!



Before

After

Before

After

Eleven years since we moved in and began this monstrous remodel project, the house is finally painted.

You've come a long way, house. Such fond memories...

2004

2005

2006

2011

Next major project: a garage! Here's hoping it won't take another eleven years to get there.

Lovely spring days

One of the things I will miss when I get a real job (if I ever do, heh heh) is my current ability to plop down in a chair in the backyard and enjoy the flowers, sun, and breeze of Central Texas springtime. Texas spring is a very short-lived and unpredictable month (two months if you're lucky). Most years it's sunny and pleasant, and we all rush out and do our gardening before miserable summer gets here. Occasionally it will even rain.

Bloom, wisteria, bloom! Summer's around the corner!

Yes, that's agility equipment in the yard. Star and I have been practicing, now that the weather is nicer. Star's problem is not so much in the doing, but in which obstacle she should be doing. She happily does them all, in any order she pleases, rather than pay attention to my hand signals, commands, or body orientation. The cheese she receives for doing things in correct order just isn't enough of a motivator; I'm tempted to try a squeaky toy, but I'm worried that that will be a little bit too exciting, and her pea-brain will explode.

Worst of all, Star is no working dog. Although she enjoys agility at first, she quickly gets tired (usually within 15 minutes), and her performance degrades significantly—to the point where she walks around or even through jumps. She knows those bars fall out, so why would she jump them when she can just push them over? So, I have a very short window during which to engage her.

Although Star is not really an agility dog, I think the agility is good physical and mental exercise, so we keep it up.

Too... much... agility... zzzzzzz....

The crib mattress has been very popular—so popular that I bought a second one. Dozer and Star are roomies, but no matter what Star thinks, they are NOT friends. Dozer refused to share the crib mattress with Star. If she picked a spot beside him on the mattress, he immediately moved to the floor. This defeated the whole purpose of the crib mattress, which was to provide a soft sleeping place for Dozer's old bones.

So I got a second mattress, and the dogs each sleep on one. Yes, Dozer is spoiled rotten.


"Mooooom, her mattress is touching mine!!"

The raw feeding experiment has come to a halt. I ran into several difficulties, compounded by the dogs acquiring a stomach bug (not related to the raw food). The major problems were the fire ants and flies that were immediately attracted to the food, mere minutes after the food appeared outside. Fire ants are a particular problem in Texas and Dozer is allergic to any kind of insect sting. The only way to avoid the fire ants is to raw feed indoors, something I have determined is just not sanitary. I also ran into some minor difficulties, including Dozer not wanting to chew bones (he prefers soft foods nowadays) and Star spitting out any and all attempts to balance the nutritional value via eggs, fish oil, veggie mash, or anything else. When the dogs got the stomach bug, that tipped the scales, and I put them back on the expensive allergy-free kibble so that I could get back to a "last known good" configuration. I will probably retry raw feeding in the future, but I need to figure out how to deal with the peculiarities.



"You will throw this. Now. Pleeeeeeeeese."

Dozer had his annual vet checkup the other day, and tests came back with borderline low thyroid. We are going to watch and see if it crosses into hypothyroidism. Byrd has hypothyroidism so we already know a bit about it. Speaking of Byrd...

What is he doing to our back door? Well, because the house isn't painted yet, the unpainted door and doorframe have been exposed to the elements for a zillion years (okay, five). Consequently, both door and frame rotted.

I would just like to state for the record that I WAS RIGHT. I WAS 100% RIGHT.

Last week....
Me: Honey, the doorframe looks icky. I think it should be replaced before the house painters start.
Byrd: Haha, oh sweetie, you're so cute when you try to talk about manly things.
Me: No, really, when I tap on it, it sounds hollow. I think it's rotten.
Byrd: Nonsense, I know everything about houses, and there's no way it could be rotten.
Me: I'm sure you're right, but I'm so dumb, I just don't get it. Can you please demonstrate to me how it is not rotten?
Byrd: Of course, dear. Look how solid this wood is.
(Pokes doorframe with screwdriver, which sinks straight into rotten wood.)
Byrd: Well, it wasn't supposed to do that...
(Pokes doorframe again. Doorframe crumbles.)
Byrd: This doorframe is rotten!
Me: No way! That's impossible!

And so, we replaced the door.

The new door lacks a window, but once the house is painted (in one week!!), I intend to get a screen door. That will make it easier to enjoy pleasant Texas spring weather!

Professional accounting

The University of Texas has accepted my application to the Master of Professional Accounting program.

Looks like I'm going back to school for yet another degree that hopefully won't be turned into yet another means to do more volunteer work whispers my husband. Aw, how did he guess my plan?!?

I mean, my Technical Communication degree got me a great freelance position as a copyeditor... and... helped me webmaster for a local animal shelter and create my own websites that I spend ungodly amounts of time working on...

I promise, sweetie, I'll get a job as a tax accountant and help corporations with their taxes and by corporations I mean nonprofits and by job I mean volunteer position.

I mean, we didn't really need that $30K tuition for anything else, right? :)



Don't look at me, all I get are hand-me-down toys.

 Buns of Steel

At the time, I thought punching my husband in the buttocks was a very righteous thing to do, especially after he mocked me about something-or-other (my haircut? my ridiculously low Sleep Number? I can't recall anymore).

So I snuck up behind him while he was brushing his teeth, and gave him a solid whack in the behind.

Now, I'm not a total idiot. I knew, for example, that 300 lbs > 100 lbs. And also that I punch like a... girl who can't punch. That was why I fully intended to run for my life after committing the act.

My fist struck what felt like a slab of marble: solid, unyielding, unbreakable. Rather than flee, I doubled over clutching my sprained wrist.

Byrd looked up from the sink, toothbrush jutting from his lips, and appeared to notice me for the first time. "Hmm? Why are you crouched on the floor?"

Solid as a rock + feels nothing = ROBOT HUSBAND.

More Remodeling

This happened over the Christmas break:

Buns-of-Steel Man putting up new siding

You're probably like, "So what?"

Here is what the house looked like pre-holidays, from the back yard.


We have been re-siding the house in phases. The first phase was around 2004 ("lower" house, left side in the photo), and the second phase was in 2007 (two-story section, center). But the back addition (right side) was still undone.

The siding on the back addition was barely hanging in there. This was the original wood siding from, I dunno, 1970. A good portion of the siding had fallen off, or was hanging by a nail. And then there were the ancient single-pane windows with black trim. For years, the addition has looked like a trashy little shack, a nagging reminder of what the whole house used to look like.


 Ironically, the re-siding has taken such a long time, the lumber store doesn't carry the white Hardi-Plank anymore. So we had to reside the back addition in a yellow color. I lamented that our addition still doesn't match the rest of the house. Byrd says the yellow kind is "primed" for paint and it will all match and look fine after we paint it.

Decisions, decisions

Happy New Year!

The holidays gave Byrd the opportunity to re-side the back part of the house. We're finally ready for exterior paint! (OMG OMG OMG)

The only question is, what color? We're partial to the green one.

Dozer was predictably naughty at the vet, for his eyelid surgery. He pulled out the IV when no one was looking. The techs ran a new IV, with a special cuff to hold it on more securely, and he pulled that one out immediately. At that point they decided to wait until he was asleep before running the IV. Anyway, the surgery went great, and Dozer's eyelid is almost healed already. Despite the success, Dozer was a whiny, pathetic baby for three days afterward. He has to get the stitches removed in a few days... I suspect that will be the most difficult part of the whole affair. Sharp implement + eyeball + squirmy dog = disaster.

I couldn't have two more different dogs. Star thought her dental cleaning at the vet was an amazing vacation. I dropped her off in the morning and she ran off with the vet tech, tail wagging wildly and ridiculously huge grin on her face. She didn't even look back at me. In the afternoon, she came out of the back wagging her entire butt despite her groggy stupor; crashed into a wall, the door, and the side of the car (with the same giant grin on her face); and did drunken zoomies in the backyard before collapsing on a dog bed to sleep it off. The dental was well worth it--she no longer has breath that would cause buzzards to circle.

I hope you all had a great holiday season! Here's hoping 2011 is a good year.

Mouse in the House

We acquired a mouse in the house. It was not a boring old house mouse with little beady eyes and a slinky body. It was an adorable mouse, because it had enormous doe eyes and a soft round body. I think it was a Texas Mouse.

Byrd spotted this cute little creature late one evening as we were getting ready for bed; it scurried under our dishwasher as he entered the kitchen.

One flashlight, two screwdrivers, and several minutes later, we peered under the dishwasher and saw the furry little thing staring at us like a deer in headlights. I love deer, and I love little fuzzy things. The giant eyes on this little mouse seemed to plead "Help me! I shouldn't be here! I want to be outside but I can't find the way out!" Byrd thought the mouse's gaze was much less innocent and adorable, apparently, because he immediately decided to rip the dishwasher out.

I interjected with a bit of reason before Byrd went all out. I proposed to place a cereal box along the baseboard of the cabinet so that if the mouse ran out from under the dishwasher, it would run into the box. Then, a second cereal box (flattened) could be lowered over the opening, trapping the mouse inside. The box could then be stood up and taken outside where the mouse could be released.

I set up my cereal box immediately.

Byrd did not approve. In fact, he made fun of my box idea. It was not action-packed enough, I guess. Furthermore, I was a tree hugger for wanting to save the mouse. But in exchange for nonstop mocking of my box trap, he consented to catch the mouse alive.

Byrd's plan: Rip the dishwasher out of the countertop. Use the vacuum to suck up the mouse. Take the vacuum bag outside and cut it open, allowing a half-suffocated mouse to stagger meekly away.

Needless to say, I saw a lot of flaws with Byrd's plan. Undaunted, Byrd got started.

As our kitchen became more and more unusable, I dryly observed that Byrd was doing more damage and disruption than the mouse was likely to do.

But the dishwasher finally came out. We looked behind it. The mouse had smashed itself into the farthest corner, hiding in terror. In this picture you can see its little butt sticking out from behind a piece of 2x4.

Here is the video of what happens next. Basically, Byrd decides he can shove the mouse into a milk jug. And guess what really happens? (Warning! There's profanity!)

I am sad to report that the camera wasn't angled properly to catch the exciting conclusion, during which the mouse ran into the box for a SECOND time, and Byrd--whose middle name is Impatience--failed to follow my plan as outlined, e.g. by covering the box opening before picking up the box. The mouse therefore leapt from the top of the box as Byrd was moving the box upwards through the air, with the net result that Byrd practically threw the mouse on me. And there was much more screaming.

The newly emancipated mouse quickly found a hidey-hole under the oven. The oven, unlike the dishwasher, could not be torn out of the wall, much to Byrd's disgust and frustration. And that was where the evening's adventure ended.

The next day, I quietly set a mouse-sized live trap up in the kitchen, along the baseboard near the oven. It is a plastic box that tips shut when a mouse goes in; there's peanut butter in the back end as bait.

I am pleased to report that it worked as intended (albeit a few days later), and shortly thereafter I tumped a disoriented, peanut butter-covered, owl-eyed mouse out of the trap into the grass in our backyard. He was gone in a blur.

(The dogs, by the way, were useless throughout the whole event. They slept through most of the kitchen chaos, including the screaming and cursing tirades. Some days later, Star brought the live trap to my side of the bed at 3 am, when the mouse got trapped inside... though her intent was to chew into the trap, not to alert me or anything helpful like that.)

I survived last week... but...

Okay, I'm still alive and my nerves are (mostly) intact. The last week was... um... what is the word I'm looking for? "Insane" doesn't seem strong enough.

Unfortunately, it didn't end with last week.

This week heralds the dawn of a new age in our house. It is the age... of STAGE 3!

We have been remodeling our house since the moment we moved in (nine years ago). The house was nearly unlivable when we acquired it. It had no A/C or heat, the strangest floorplan imaginable, two additions that didn't quite attach to the original house (we discovered old asbestos siding buried within two walls), and a mosaic of flooring that appeared to have been chosen based on what was on sale at the hardware store--pink, white, and aqua tile, black linoleum, pink and tan carpet.

Stage 1 involved demolishing and rebuilding the original house while we lived in the two additions. This took years. We ate and breathed sheetrock for longer than is probably healthy.

Stage 2, which we started last summer and are just now winding up, was the exterior remodel. This included the front yard (sprinkler system, gardens, landscape), siding, fence repair, and so forth.

Now we are at Stage 3: demolishing the crappiest addition (pier and beam with known rotten walls and floors) and entirely redoing it. The good thing about this project is that the addition has a single access point, a hallway that can be closed off with a door. So the debris should be contained.

Also with Stage 3 comes the total revamp of the A/C system. We are getting a new A/C unit, installing the interior unit in the attic rather than under the stairs, and redoing the vents. The reasons for this are two: one, the A/C unit we installed way back when we moved in was small and cheap, and was only supposed to be a temporary fix to keep us from dying in Texas summers. Nine years later, that temporary fix really, really needs to be swapped for something more efficient. And two, the upstairs loft portion of the house relies on a window unit for A/C at the moment. It's time to get some vents cut so we don't need the window unit anymore.

Stage 4, I believe, will involve the backyard, the back porch, and possibly the garage. We do not have a back porch or garage, but we plan to build one of each. The backyard needs to be leveled, fenced, and landscaped as well.

Right. So as of this week, I will be dealing with construction, once again, inside our house. Starting Thursday, we will have guys in here redoing the A/C.

Also this week I have three doctor's appointments; I am getting another book to copyedit; Star has obedience class; and I have standard household chores to deal with, complicated by the construction because the laundry room is... well... it's in the addition that's being torn apart.

Oh yeah, and on Saturday, my family is getting together for Moussefest, an annual event wherein everyone tries to make mousse that's better than my dad's. (So far he has retained the title and the trophy.) Byrd insisted on entering the contest even though neither of us have ever made mousse before!