Old Homes: High on Charm, Low on Comfort

So Joel and I live in a cute cape cod home that was built in the 1950's. When we moved in we thought it was the cutest place we'd ever seen (well, besides all of our neighbors houses who happen to look exactly the same). My little brother told us it looked like a house that would belong to a grandma, and he's right. It's got cozy little bedrooms with nooks and crannies everywhere, wooden floors throughout, a great fireplace and mantle, a nice back porch, and the original old cabinetry. What it doesn't have, however, is decent size closets, a living room big enough to hold a Christmas tree, and most importantly INSULATION. Insulation is very important my friends, and I know this now. Between the living room, dining room and kitchen when the weather drops below the 50's I can't keep the blasted house warm! I go downstairs for breakfast and instantly my feet hit ice once I step off the bottom step. We tried getting an area rug to make it a little cosier in the living room, but all that's done is given us a softer cold spot to put our feet on. Over Thanksgiving my mom gave me a space heater, but it's no where near strong enough to compete with my house and it makes the power go out. Joel is still in love with our house and would stay in it forever, but during the winter I curse this house every day.

On a happier note, Christmas is coming and so is all of my family! My parents and Garet are coming up from Florida, Hanna and Charles are coming down from Northern Virginia and we have a couple of other friends/family members that are going to rotate throughout the holidays. I'm so excited! And as a bonus we'll have more warm bodies in the house, which means warmer house, right? Well, one can only hope.

Merry Christmas Everyone! Stay warm out there!

Ah, Welcome to the New Art of Tagging

So my first tag--I feel so honored. I really don't see how any of this could be interesting to anyone else, but I LOVE reading what other people write (maybe I am a busy-body), so I'll give it a whirl.

Rules:
1) Post rules on your blog
2)Answer the six "8" items
3)Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 Favorite TV shows:
- Gilmore Girls
- What not to Wear
- Jon & Kate Plus 8
- Ace of Cakes
- Most of HGTV
- Most of Food Network
- Some of TLC
- Darn, that's only 7

8 Things I did yesterday:
(Booooring!)
- Went to work
- Came home from work
- Did some work from home
- Ate a burrito
- Went to gym
- Read some of "The Host"
- Kissed my hubby
- Kissed him again

8 Things I look forward to:
- Thanksgiving!
- Christmas!!!
- Seeing my little brother
- Weekend with my sister and her new husband
- Seeing my mom & dad
- Selling our business
- Paying bills (weirdo!)
- Sleeping in!

8 Things on my wish list:
- A house.
- A kid.
- Money to pay for house and kid.
- Time to go hiking again.
- A really nice large bathtub.
- A personal masseuse.
- Umm
- Umm

8 people to tag:
(who would read this??!!)
- Duck
- Duck
- Duck
- Duck
- Duck
- Duck
- Duck
- Yvonne - hehe!

So You Want a New Story, Eh?

Someone requested that I make a new post, but I'm failing to come up with something interesting to write about.

Hmmm . . .



hmmm . . .



(clock ticking, listening to slow leak in the bathroom)


hmmm . . .


Oh, okay, um, Joel and I went on vacation last week. Fabulous for us, but very dull for the rest of the working world. We went to a B&B in Middleburg, VA. Very cute! Well, cute if you don't count the foil wallpaper on the walls and the mis-matched furniture. The four poster canopy bed had a headboard screwed into it that was a completely different style and stain, so even the bed didn't go with the bed. Great eggs benedict, though!

One of the days we were there we decided to drive up to Gettysburg, PA and tour the National Battlegrounds. Joel was enthralled, and I enjoyed watching Joel being enthralled. At least I felt like I had filled my educational requirements for the week. I'd show you pictures, but really they are more boring than my telling you about it, if that's possible.

Overall, a great trip--we really hating coming back and facing reality again. It was the first time we actually got AWAY from the business! The whole reason we took the trip in the first place was to celebrate our first and second anniversaries--so far we've never been together on our actual anniversary and it's all because of this silly business.

I hope this suffices your curiosity!

So Who Wants to Visit?!

Current fly count in vaccum: 235

Come visit quick before the rivers turn to blood.

Let My People Go

I am living a real life Bible story, except I'm on the wrong side. I'm not sure who Moses is, but Joel and I are Pharoh and the Egyptians.

So far this year we have lived through ants, camel crickets, and mice (see previous blog)--and now we have flies. Not kidding. I wrote the post just yesterday about mice and then I came home to a house filled with flies. Well, I guess I wasn't really alarmed at first. When I came home 17 flies (ha! yes, I counted) were crawling around on the living room window, but I opened the window and shewed them out--done deal. I went to the gym, made dinner, did some bookkeeping and then went upstairs to take a shower. When I stepped out of the shower I noticed I forgot to get a towel and went to get one out of the hall closet. [Insert shreiking girl noise here.] Swarming. Yes, swarming flies everywhere! On my bed sheets, on my pillow, circling the lights, crawling on walls and windows. I called Joel immediately, who of course, had all the windows down in the car and had the radio blasting so he didn't hear his phone. Not that he knew what to do. When I talked with the landlord a few minutes later he said the same thing happened to them and it lasted a week. (You mean I've got to deal with this for a whole stinkin' week!) All they could do was put up fly paper and vacuum up the pests. So when Joel got home a few minutes later that's what we did. Luckily we were able to attract them all to just one room by shutting off lights and leaving only one on. We should have been counting how many we caught, but I'd say 50 to 75 is a pretty good estimate. Joel took the lead with the vacuum hose and I followed behind carrying the the vacuum cleaner wherever he needed it. I was so scared to go to sleep last night because I was sure I would suck down a few flies myself. Unfortunately, I don't think this is over yet.

So I'm not sure exactly what the Lord is trying to tell us. Maybe after I'm done battling a few more flies tonight it may be time for some good introspection and scripture reading so I can prevent the tempests and the storms from coming next.

Stalkers

Okay, for the two of you that found me out here, I'm still a little freaked out, but I'm also laughing. How did you find my one little lousy post?

Hmmm . . . so I'm trying to think of something that would be interesting to write about, and all I can think of right now is mice. Yes, we had mice in our house ladies and gentlemen. We had been hearing scratching noises for a little while, but I was just ignoring them until one night I saw a few brave mice faces and that was it! Our landlords took care of the problem right away, but not before we had discovered that the mice don't like sugar--they like nuts. At the time (we have since aquired a storage unit-yay!) all of the candy for our business was sitting out in our sun porch, but nothing had been disturbed. Then as I was clearing out clutter in our dining room I found a bag of boston baked beans (just plain candy coated peanuts) ripped open and a pile of empty candy shells in the corner of one of our chairs. (These shells were also accompanied by "droppings" of sorts, but we won't go into details here.)

Well, the mouse traps came in and those smarmy little pests have all been evicted. All was forgiven, or so I thought. This last Saturday afternoon I was waiting around for Joel to get off the computer so we could run some errands and I decided to sit down at the piano and tinker around. I noticed that the keys kept sticking and was really upset at myself for neglecting to ever have my piano tuned or maintained. Then I decided to see if I could see what the problem was and opened the lid. Low and behold, it was a mouse smorgusbord. Yes, the mice decided that the best place to eat their candy coated peanuts and leave their droppings was INSIDE my piano!!!! I was livid! I wanted to find the mice and choke them while telling them that the piano was not a play toy! I vacuummed up everything I could find, but there is still tons of sticky candy shells and droppings all in the small parts I couldn't reach. Joel says he's going to take it apart himself and see what he can clean up. What a mess!

So how is that for a post my happy blog stalkers?!

Testing, Testing

Not sure how this blogging thing works. How did I get dragged into nerd land yet again?