Maybe My Favorite Thing Ever

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Back from the Dead

I feel like I'm back from the dead. The past week has gone by in a blur. We all got sick with a horrible cold - congestion, headaches, bronchitis, body aches, and fever. No, it wasn't swine flu. (Although when we went to the doctor last Thursday there was a big sign in the waiting room stating that if you had any flu-like symptoms and had traveled to infected regions to please put on a face mask and use the provided hand sanitizer before signing in.) Even though it wasn't swine flu, we were pretty darn sick and miserable for several days. Eric even took a few days off work, which he NEVER does. 10 days later, I'm still sick - I now have a sinus and ear infection. Antibiotics, here I come! All this is to explain why I've missed blogging about getting a new dog, celebrating Sawyer's birthday, and two great episodes of Lost. Time to play catch up.

Welcome Home Penny!

The long-awaited day is finally here! Last Saturday we brought home our first family dog, Penny (full name Penelope Widmore Hume. :D )


She's a 2 or 3 year old Redtick Coonhound (not sure if she's purebred or a mix) and we are adopting her through the wonderful folks at PAWS Rescue of Northern Virginia. She was rescued from a high kill shelter, where she was on death row after being picked up as a stray. The lady who rescued her has a real job but spends virtually all of her personal time rescuing dogs and finding homes for them at what I can only imagine is great financial cost in addition to a huge time commitment. It's amazing what she does and we are so grateful to her!

Unfortunately, on her first trip to the vet Penny tested positive for heartworms. She received the treatment for it a few days before we picked her up, so she is still recovering from that illness. As the heartworms die off they have nowhere to go since they're in the circulatory system, so the only option is to wait for the body to break them down (gross, huh?) and there is a high risk of embolism so we have to keep her quiet and calm as much as possible. After a month of rest she'll go back to the vet to be spayed and the adoption will be finalized.

She's still adjusting to living in a house - we're fairly certain she's never lived inside before because she's very afraid of normal indoor things like ceiling fans, flushing toilets, and stairs (we have yet to be able to coax her upstairs or down into the basement.) She's not housebroken but is crate trained and so she's only had one accident in the week we've had her - and that one was totally my fault because I forgot to put her back in her crate when I went upstairs to give Sawyer his bath. When she's in her crate she is very good about holding it until we take her out. She is a different dog outside, she instantly becomes playful, happy and relaxed. I'm hoping in time she'll adjust to being an inside dog and learn that the ceiling fan/toilet/stairs are not out to get her.

She is such a sweet dog. Sawyer can't get enough of her and she is incredibly tolerant of his hugs and kisses.


The other day she was looking longingly out the window by the front door (we had just come back inside and it wasn't time to go out again yet) and Sawyer kept bringing her his toys to make her feel better. After a few minutes there was a big stack of books, stuffed animals, and Lincoln Logs next to her. I think she appreciated his concern.

Happy Earth Day

Sawyer and I weren't feeling well today, so we stayed home and celebrated Earth Day by watching part of the Blue Planet series from the Discovery Channel. It's fabulous and kept Sawyer enthralled for much longer than I expected it to. He especially got into the parts about penguins - he's been on a penguin kick lately. According to Sawyer a penguin says "Eek!" in a very high pitched voice. I have no idea if he's right or not. Anyone know what a penguin really says?

I'm not the best at making environmentally friendly choices (I drive a Dodge Durango for heaven's sake!) but I have tried to change a few things in the past couple of years. Learning to make soap and other bath products was a big eye opener for me because I now know what's in most commercially produced products and it's mostly not good. I'm much more stingy in my use of heating/air conditioning than I used to be. And when we had to buy a new washer/dryer we opted for an energy friendly choice even though it was more expensive.
Probably my favorite change I have made is a really simple one - using reusable grocery bags. I bought a bunch of the Wegmans bags (99 cents each) and I love them. I'd use them even if they weren't "green" because they're so sturdy; the groceries stack up perfectly inside, they don't spill all over the back of my car, and since they're so much larger than the plastic bags, I can get a whole week's worth of groceries into 3 or 4 bags rather than 8 to 10 plastic ones.

So that's my attempt to save the Earth. Kind of lame, I know, but big changes start with small ones, right?

Before and After

After a lot of work and some camera drama (USB cables got lost in the move) I finally have some before and after pictures of the decorating we've done to the house.

First here's the kitchen before.
All the cabinet knobs were shiny gold, which really didn't go with the gray/white/silver quartz counters. And the wall color was much too warm and light.

This is after changing the cabinet hardware and before painting:


And the finished product. Well, almost finished. I still want to replace the sink and the appliances.


The walls are Restoration Hardware's Silver Sage. I got the cabinet pulls very inexpensively on eBay (less than $60 for all of them.)

Next, the breakfast room, which is next to the kitchen. Before:
Notice the lovely circa 1980s brass chandelier. Not my fave. In this room I painted, replaced the chandelier and got a new table and chairs. After:


I got the chandelier online, the table from Ethan Allen, and the chairs, believe it or not, from Walmart. They are surprisingly well built and sturdy, and they were much cheaper than buying them from a furniture store (or even used chairs on Craigslist). The walls are Silver Sage just like the kitchen - the color in these is much more accurate since they're daytime shots.

And finally, the family room. This one took the longest because we had to cover up the cranberry red on the walls.

Here's the room after three - that's right, THREE - coats of Kilz primer:




The color we chose was Restoration Hardware's Flax. I painted the mantel white to make it look more continuous with the trim and to "pop" more against the darker walls (incidentally, I don't think it's possible to talk about decorating without using the word "pop." Just watch HGTV for 5 minutes.) I got the drapes from JC Penney and curtain rods from Target - since this is our TV room we needed a way to block out sunlight from the wall of windows


We still have a lot to do in here - we're going to mount the TV above the fireplace on a tilt mount and install surround speakers. We also want a couple of new couches to make a U-formation around the TV/fireplace. And I can't wait to get rid of the huge white and gold ceiling fan, as well as move Eric's hideous (but extremely comfy) recliner into another room. It's really nice to have the red walls gone. I like red, but it was just too much since it's such a large room. At night time it felt like we were sitting in hell.

So that's phase 1 of my decorating plans. Next on the list is the 2 weird bedrooms (the tiled one and the sewing/craft room), my soaping space in the basement, and the bathrooms. I'm going to take a break first though.

Flight of the Conchords Live

Last night Eric and I went to see Flight of the Conchords perform at Constitution Hall. It was so much fun. Eric's not as big a fan as I am, but he loved the show, and we were both laughing from start to finish.

Kristen Schaal (Mel from the show) was the opening act and she was hilarious. This is her tribute to Law and Order SVU.


Bret and Jemaine came out (inexplicably dressed as robots) and gave a rousing rendition of "Too Many D*#$s on the Dance Floor" - adult language notwithstanding it was hilarious. Then they removed the robot costumes and settled down into acoustic mode for a long setlist, not in this exact order but including:
"The Most Beautiful Girl (in the Room)"
"Stana" this one was new to me - it's a Johnny Cash-style story about a man whose name is an anagram of "Satan." Really funny.
"Hurt Feelings (Tears of a Rapper)" - the clip is from last night's show and opens with dialogue about how they've been wondering how DC is doing since they were here last year, but they've been unable to find out since we're never all in the same place at the same time. Best line: "The day after my birthday is not my birthday, Mum!"

"Bowie"
"If You're Into It"
"Carol Brown" - girls in the audience got to sing along with the chorus
"Motha'uckas" (with Bret on drums)
"Not Crying"
"Robots"
"Jenny" - one of my all-time Conchord faves

"Hip-Hopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros"
"You Don't Have to be a Prostitute"
"Bus Driver's Song" (this was new to me too)
"Business Time"

On a lot of the songs they were joined by what they referred to as the New Zealand National Symphony Orchestra - otherwise known as a guy named Nigel who plays the cello. The cello added a lot to the arrangements of the songs and sometimes doubled as a bass. Well done, Nigel!

Some of the funniest parts were the banter between songs. At one point lots of people were yelling out requests and Jemaine went into baby-talk mode to tell everyone to shush. (I took this video on my iPhone, which is why the quality is so bad.) He went on like this for a while, and Bret finally said "Seriously, if you don't listen to him he'll carry on. He did this for 45 minutes in Orlando."

Later in the show Jemaine said "Hmm, this isn't going very well. We shouldn't listen to you when you tell us what to play. Sometimes democracy doesn't work, DC." Several people cheered and he continued, "Ah, I see we have quite a few fans of dictatorships here tonight!" Another time when people were yelling out requests someone yelled "Free Bird!" Jemaine said "I've always wondered - is there one person in every town whose job it is to yell 'Free Bird'?" Bret: "Or is it the same guy, following us around?" Jemaine: "Do you even know 'Free Bird'?" Bret: "Never heard it."

And my favorite of the night - a medley of "We're Both In Love With A Sexy Lady" and "Sugalumps." It was not only hilarious but also really cool musically. Near the end Bret reached out into the audience to touch the hand of a girl near the stage - but right before she got close enough he jumped back and called the bouncer over to get her. So funny!

The Scoop

Thanks to some friendly/gossipy new neighbors (my favorite kind, as long as they're not talking about me), we've learned the history of how our house became a foreclosure. The couple who lived here were in their 60s. He was a retired naval officer and very handy - he had a wood shop in the basement and he built the deck and fenced in the backyard himself. She was a seamstress (one of the bedrooms is a sewing room) and showed dogs (poodles I think) and she had about 10 of them. That explains what the tiled bedroom was all about - it was the doggies' room. And that's why all the carpet in the house is new; I guess the dogs weren't house trained very well. Apparently the hubby told her "it's me or the dogs"...and she picked the dogs. So when they went to try to sell the house, hubby discovered that it was only in wifey's name and that made him so mad that he decided to walk away. She was unable to keep up with the payments, hence the foreclosure. So our house is the product of a bitter divorce. It sounds like the owners were interesting and fun people (bitter divorce notwithstanding) and they definitely took good care of the house - they even left us a note to let us know the code to the garage door opener. I'm just glad no one died here.

Updates

So, some stuff has happened in the past couple of weeks. 1) We bought a house. 2) We moved into it. 3) We made our first ever trip to the ER with Sawyer, who had croup. 4) We've tackled several home improvement projects with mixed success. 5) And last but certainly not least, we have watched two episodes of Lost on our new TV. Yep, Eric talked me into it. We got it at Circuit City's going out of business sale so it was a good deal, 60% off the retail price. Not as good a deal as just keeping our current more moderately sized TV, but whatever.

1) The closing process went more smoothly that we ever could have hoped. The inspection went great (very few problems, especially considering that it was a foreclosure), the appraisal came in high above our price (that was a relief!), and we ended up needing less cash at closing than we had expected (more money for furniture! Woohoo!)

2) Moving went well, although it was a stressful 3 days. Eric took boxes over in five trips on Thursday and Friday, and Saturday our wonderful Elder's Quorum came to help with the heavy stuff along with Eric's dad and brother. Thanks to them it took less than an hour! We spent the rest of Saturday cleaning the empty townhouse and filling in nail holes (ugh).

3) On Monday night Sawyer suddenly started wheezing during his bath. He kept saying "It's scary!" I wasn't sure what he was talking about - he has had a lot of new fears come up during the process of moving and he's been saying a lot of things are scary. A couple of minutes later he was breathing normally and seemed fine so I put him to bed and left his door open so I could hear him if he needed us. A couple of hours later I could hear him coughing and crying and he seemed to be gasping for breath. We called the nurse's hotline at the hospital and they said to bring him in to the ER. The triage nurse could tell right away that it was croup. We felt a little bit sheepish for rushing him to the hospital late at night, but they said it was a good thing we brought him in because his oxygen levels were low. He got an epinephrine nebulizer treatment (and hated every second of it) and felt much better. We got home a little after 2 a.m. I guess I'm being paid back for making my parents take me to the ER countless times for my childhood asthma attacks. It was always in the middle of the night.




4) I've replaced half of the kitchen hardware (the other half requires drilling new holes in the cabinetry and I'm scared to do it without Eric's help), painted big squares of sample paint on the walls, and installed a new chandelier in the breakfast room (with Eric's help - that was definitely a two person job!) I have new door knobs coming this week. Little by little we're getting rid of all the shiny bright gold fixtures. Before and after pictures to come!

5) LOST! I loved the past two episodes. Reactions/recaps are also forthcoming. Since there is no new episode next week (why?! WHY?!?!) I'll have time to play catchup.

Not Always Right

Someone on the soap forum I frequent posted a link to this hilarious blog: (The Customer Is) Not Always Right It's a collection of exchanges between customer service employees and crazy customers. I laughed so hard reading some of them. If you've ever worked in customer service you'll relate!

Lazy

I should have done several posts over the past few days, but since I'm feeling lazy, here's a summary.

-I chopped off the tip of my thumb making Valentine's Day dinner for Eric. I was chopping on an angle so it cut off a lot of nail and just a tiny sliver of thumb, but it bled forever and hurt like crazy. I completed the meal using only one hand with my thumb wrapped up in layers of sterile gauze.

-After we had decided not to get each other gifts (since we're buying A HOUSE in less than two weeks) Eric surprised me with an iPhone. I thought "no gifts" actually meant no gifts. Hence the pressure I felt to finish cooking dinner, since that was my only present for him.

-The dinner turned out great despite the inadvertent amputation. Roasted racks of lamb marinated in Herbes de Provence and garlic. (When I asked the girl at the Wegmans butcher counter for marinade ideas she suggested "Herbs de Providence." I thought that might work better for Easter.) Roasted garlic mashed potatoes and sautéed green beans on the side, and Symphony brownies for dessert.

-I really, really, really love my iPhone. Beyond all reason.

-Eric claims to be happy that I didn't buy him a present, because now he can use my guilt as leverage to get a new plasma TV. Apparently our 42" LCD that we bought 2 years ago is now a useless relic and would be an embarrassment in the new family room.

-I chose a paint color for the new kitchen, only to discover that it's currently the most trendy/popular color in North America. Trying to decide if that means I should pick something else, or if I should just give in and admit that I'm becoming a yuppie.

-We started packing. My soaping equipment, all our books and movies, and most of Sawyer's toys are done. I hate (HATE) moving. The whole process overwhelms me and stresses me out. I have never coped well with change, even when the change is something really exciting and good. So maybe spacing things out over a couple of weeks is the way to go. Or maybe we're just prolonging the agony.

My Religious Blog

This is my new favorite blog: My Religious Blog It reads a lot like an LDS version of Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts." Here are a couple of my favorites.

Misunderstanding
I thought I overheard a couple of guys badmouthing the Church this morning and I got really mad.

But then it turned out they were actually just badmouthing the Lurch (that guy from the Adam’s Family), so I wasn’t really mad anymore.

Because man, I hate the Lurch!

Ideal Meeting Time
Some people think the best meeting block is from 9:00 – 12:00 because they like to take a nap after church.

Other people think the best meeting block is from 11:00 – 2:00 because they like to sleep in on Sunday morning.

But I think the ideal meeting time would be 11:30 – 12:00 because seriously…

King of Spain

You know how when you run into an ex you always self-centeredly hope your life is going better than theirs? No such luck for this girl. (There's a bit of adult language right at the beginning.)

Good News

We bought a house! We've been looking since late 2008 without much success - with three separate houses they sold or were pulled from the market right before we could make an offer. We thought it was a buyer's market, but apparently that doesn't apply to foreclosures in our area - they are selling like wildfire when they're at the right price. My sister Megan is our fabulous realtor and she took us to see a listing, a foreclosure that had just come on the market on Saturday. We fell in love with it as soon as we walked in the front door. There's almost nothing we need to change, and it's big enough that we can potentially stay there forever (assuming I don't have sextuplets next time we do IVF.) The yard is large for the neighborhood and already landscaped. We were anxious when we heard that there were other offers but figured if it was meant to be it would work out. We heard from the listing agent this morning that we were tied with someone else for the highest offer, so we increased our offer by just a little bit hoping it would be enough. Apparently it was, because we got it! We're closing in February.

And now you know why I didn't blog about it before, because the details of real estate transactions are only interesting to those directly involved with them.

Here are some pictures - that's less boring, right? I'm already thinking about how I'm going to decorate. Once we save up some money after blowing our life savings on the house itself.

Exterior

Front hall staircase

Living/Dining Rooms

Kitchen/Family Room

Kitchen

Breakfast Room/Solarium

Deck/Backyard

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Learn Your Rules

My favorite bit from last week's Office. Instant classic!


And a great rendition from some cute kids (not mine).

Like sand through the hourglass...

I was talking to my mom the other day about how crazy the past year has been for our family. To protect the innocent I won't go into (too much) detail, but let's just say there have been lots of surprises and enough drama that any soap opera writer would be inspired.

One of the recent developments happened after my brother participated in a deep roots ancestry DNA study. The results of the test tell you where your distant ancestors came from. Since my mom is an amazing genealogist, we have our family history going back for years, and as far as we knew all our predecessors were straight up European. So it was a little surprising when my brother's results came in and revealed that he was one eighth Native American. That means one great-grandparent was full Native (or multiple great-greats, or even more great-great-greats, and so on.) Despite her thorough research, my mom had no idea we had any Native American ancestors, so naturally she was curious about where that lineage could have come from. She remembered that my great-grandfather (her grandfather) Fred used to talk about his father working with the Indians in Colorado. And thus her theory was born. She thinks Fred was actually Native American and adopted. There's no proof of this yet, but the pieces seem to fit; he was dark complected and in pictures he looks nothing like his siblings who were all fair. At the time it was normal not to talk about a child having been adopted, especially a child of another race. Fred ran away from home at the age of 15 and had no contact with the rest of the family after that – my grandfather never even met his aunts and uncles even though they lived fairly close to them.

Here's where it gets juicier (and, coincidentally, ties into a recent post.) My grandfather's brother married a girl who happened to be their first cousin. They were shunned by the family and pretty much cut off all contact, especially after they had a child who was born with Down Syndrome. If my mom's theory about great-grandpa Fred being adopted turns out to be correct, they aren't really first cousins at all – in fact, they would have no blood relationship whatsoever. So the whole family drama would have happened for no reason. Does that sound like the plot of a depressing turn-of-the-century novel or what?

We may never know the truth, but my grandfather is waiting for the results of his own DNA ancestry test to determine if the Native American line goes through him. If not it may come from my dad's side. Either way, if the test is accurate I may have a whole line of family history I never knew about. Which is really cool. As long as I don't find out later in life that I also have an evil twin in a coma.

How to tell good from evil.

Last night's episode of "24" confirmed something I've always suspected:

Clean shaven = good.



Scruffy half beard = evil.

Slumdog Millionaire

Eric and I don't go to nearly as many movies as we used to since finding a babysitter is always a challenge, so when we get a chance to see one we feel pressure to make it a good one. On Saturday my dad offered to babysit and we went to see "Slumdog Millionaire." We weren't disappointed. It's hands down the best film I've seen this year. And since it won a bunch of Golden Globes last night (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score - it won every category it was nominated for) it should be around in theaters for quite a while.

The story is about a young man named Jamal who grew up in the slums of Mumbai, India. Now working as a chai wallah at a cell phone call center, he gets the chance to be on India's version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." He surprises everyone by answering every question correctly, right up to the final question. Convinced that he must be cheating (he's completely uneducated and even doctors and lawyers haven't made it that far in the game) they arrest him and question him. During the questioning we see flashbacks of his life, and the things that happened to him that allowed him to know the answers to the questions. It's a love story, a coming of age story, and it transports you straight into another world. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Something New Every Day

I learn some pretty wild things at ChaCha, in between questions about penis length and Twilight movie trivia. The other day someone asked me where it's legal to marry your first cousin. I was surprised by the answer. I grew up hearing jokes about West Virginians marrying their cousins, but as it turns out, it's illegal there...and legal in Virginia! First cousin marriage is legal in 21 states: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. (http://www.ncsl.org/programs/cyf/cousins.htm)

I also learned that the US is virtually the only country in the western world to prohibit cousins from marrying - it's legal in all of Europe, Mexico and Canada. Apparently the chances of birth defects in the children of cousins have been grossly exaggerated in the past due to some spurious studies in the 1800s - the chances are almost as high when you marry someone of your own race. One source says that 20% of the world's current marriages are between first or second cousins, and nearly 80% of marriages in human history have been cousin marriages.

I also learned that Eric doesn't like to hear about cousins marrying each other. I started telling him about it and he told me to stop IMMEDIATELY. Like with so many other things, no matter how good the science is, it's hard to get past the "ick" factor.

Readers

Someone posted this on my soap forum and I thought it was really funny. (Warning: he drops a couple of F bombs right at the end, so it's not kid friendly!)



It's nice to know there are men other than my husband that appreciate women who read. Although, for the record, I do like Harry Potter.

Back to my roots

For some reason I've been thinking a lot about the origin of my blogging career (using the term "career" very loosely, since my posting is sporadic at best, and no one is paying me. I have to pay people to read it. Usually with favors.) When I first started blogging, it was about our adventures with infertility and IVF. Since Sawyer is now 3 1/2 we've had a lot of people asking us when we're going to do IVF again. I've brought the questioning on myself by being way out of the IVF closet, and by announcing openly that we were going to transfer our embryos last year - before we found out our insurance was cheaping out on us. Anyway. It's really hard to explain to people that I'm just not ready to go through the whole process again. I know my kids (if we're successful) are going to be several years apart, which is probably not optimal, etc, but...I just can't bring myself to make that phone call to Dr. A right now.

Part of the problem is that people don't realize what the IVF process entails. They think of it as a one-time visit to the doctor, one procedure, and then you find out if you're pregnant or not. In reality, it's a multi-step, months long process of painful testing, invasive procedures, lots of money spent, more needles than I ever thought I'd see in a lifetime...and the whole time no one knows whether or not it will even work.

And I haven't even experienced what a lot of IVFers do. We have an official diagnosis - at least 10% of IVF patients have "unexplained" infertility. Knowing what our problem is (bad sperm) actually makes us feel better about going through the treatments. Our first IVF cycle worked, which makes us extremely lucky and probably means I shouldn't complain about the process at all, given that a lot of couples I know have undergone multiple cycles with no success. I must be a wimp, because just that one cycle (and the testing/surgery) that preceded it makes me terrified of doing it again. Maybe terrified is too strong a word. It's more of a big, fat, "I don't want to."

Of course the end result is worth it. Of course. I would go through 100 IVFs to have Sawyer again. But when the best chance anyone has of success is 30% (much less for a frozen cycle, and less now that I'm over 30) it's difficult to be excited about going through it all again. I definitely want to give our frozen triplet embryos a chance. And doing a transfer only cycle will be a lot less stressful than a full IVF cycle, in theory anyway. It's just going to take me a little while to work up the courage again.