Saturday, February 12, 2011

Peanut Butter and Sprucing up the Place

Yesterday, I mentally composed a list of why I "love" our house.

1a. The delightful way the tub and toilet fill with bubbles when we run the washing machine.
1b. Even better, when KJ flushed his old contacts down the bathroom sink, they ended up in the bathtub just hours later when I began washing clothes!
1c. While putting tolietries away and wearing my new socks, I stepped into the bathroom to find that the sink, bathtub and toilet had overflowed. Yay us! The plumber is coming this week, by the way.

2. The very welcome ants that began infesting the bathroom, but apparently have moved across the house to the living room. They been Raided, Ant-trapped, etc. Apparently they are brilliant, winter loving ants. Props to them for survival.

3. The evidence of many memorable instances of vomit and hairballs on the carpet.
Side note: Scotch guard is no joke. If you have animals, make sure you have a carpet that you can clean. Moving into a house with the cheapest, worst carpet on the plant... was really lucky on our part.

4. The way that the builders really maximized their usage of space. Yes, build three bedrooms that you can barely fit beds into! And we can call them bedrooms because they all have closets! Are your closets smaller than a miniature porta-potty? Ours too! I get to put my clothes away in three separate locations - it really mixes up my day and keeps it interesting.

5. The lovely way that the sink in the kitchen occasionally leaks/floods into the cabinet underneath. Of course, we just realized that a part is broken. I think we'll have the plumber look at that too...

6. The carefree, white trash way we've been living - with our Christmas tree still in the backyard, the beautiful hammock FROM COLOMBIA that the squirrels destroyed still semi hanging from the tree, and 10+ bags of trash that need to be taken to the animal hospital (we don't have garbage pickup). Oh yes, and the tarps that are frozen to the ground that we threw in the backyard that never actually got put away after we got our "new" couch.

Why did I start thinking of all this? Yesterday, KJ and I had a free day off from school. Because of the crazy third year schedules, our class ended up with a day of no class - due to some classes ending and the others not starting until next week. So we took advantage of this and decided to "be productive". We've been a little lazy in some regards... since the new year... And yes, like I mentioned, our Christmas tree was still in the backyard. And yes, we did have 10 bags of garbage in the backyard. We borrowed KJ's parent's truck and put everything in it - our backyard is now empty and wonderful again. YIKES. A little embarrassing to admit, but I'm so happy it is all gone. And no joke, the squirrels came halfway the tree in the backyard and screamed at me when I took down their broken hammock. I was afraid to look up in fear that they'd throw squirrel trash at me. And then... we cleaned. We cleaned like there was no tomorrow, paid bills (KJ is no longer allowed to pay bills because... they don't get paid and the water gets shut off. Oh my gosh, is this really my life?), and made the house super pretty. I even cleaned out some cabinets and came across THREE semi-empty jars of peanut butter. Plus a fourth full jar. I combined them, labeled one "Bubba's jar" and kept the full one for the humans. Bubba gets diphenhydramine twice daily - partially because of his allergies, and partially because he had a grade 2 mast cell tumor removed from his scrotum last year. Killing two birds with one stone - and he LOVES his daily doses of peanut butter. Because I had two almost empty jars of peanut butter, I thought - what better treat for the pups? KJ locked them in with me in the kitchen while he vaccuumed and this is what Bubba did the whole time:

(My first attempt at posting a video):


My genius pup attempted to push hers into a corner, so I helped her out a little.


Ben was just pathetic with his peanut butter jar.




I love my pups - they are such characters!

3 comments:

  1. Your pups are so cute! And don't worry, I think we all get very behind in normal household chores such as cleaning and laundry these days...

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  2. Your place sounds like our 1st apt in Maine. We found sight unseen, a 2 BR that was right near the downtown harbor. There was a coffee house a block down and a brewery across the street. let me tell you those 2 smells should never be combined when burned.
    Our floors were all leaning b/c there used to be a steel mill nearby and it rocked all the oundations wobbly. Our bedroom had such a lean that the bed had to be propped on one corner with a 5 inch stand. Really classy.
    But...they allowed dogs!! So we stayed ;)
    Glad you got a day off and could feel productive. That's a good feeling that just keeps paying off. And thos PB pics are priceless!

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  3. I love the PB video. I don't think I've seen pictures of your pooches before; they are super-cute.

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