I painted my ass off today. Almost literally, it seems, since my pants damn near fell down. As it was, I was totally hip-hop-cool whilst I painted the Boy's ugly robin's-egg-blue-meets-grey room. I know I was hip-hop-cool because I wore my jeans slung halfway down my butt, showing off my spiffy black and white undies. I was stylin'!

Stop laughing...I was stylin'!

In other news, because my in-laws are so wonderful (They are! They're letting us use their truck!), we're going to start moving stuff into the house this week and by this weekend we hope to have just the big stuff left. Like beds. And the hutch. And entertainment center. And the cats.

And my pants almost fell off!!!

• The Boogers were surgically removed from the walls
  
• Without anesthesia
  
• And yeah, that’s Boogers with a capital B
  
• Because it was that gross
  
• We have decided the house was not cleaned especially well because the owner has arthritis and may have just not been able to do any more than he did to move himself out
  
• Because I have arthritis too, we are being sympathetic now
  
• Sort of
  
• We’re snarky, too
  
• I thought about posting a picture of the freshly painted room
  
• I realized I didn’t want to blind anyone
  
• That room isn’t just white, it’s WHITE
  
• I may play the Nice Mommy and paint the Boy’s ugly robin’s-egg-meets-gray room this weekend.
  
• If it blinds him, I’m not paying for a doctor
  
• Because I’m mean that way
  
• Met a neighbor today
  
• His name is Chris and I think he’s a cop
  
• He offered to help us move stuff in if we need help
  
• I think I like Chris already
  
• Petco had a huge sale today
  
• Buy 2 cans of cat food, get 1 free
  
• We saved $24 on cat food
  
• Then spent $35 on a new cat toy for the new place
  
• Are you still reading? You’re not bored to death?
  
• You deserve a cookie for reading this far down
  
• But you’re not getting one, because I’m dieting
  
• Sucks, eh?
  

Please, please please...if your kid is a nose-picker, check to make sure he's not leaving boogers stuck to his bedroom walls before you move out of a place. The next tenants will greatly appreciate it.

Here's your daily thrill...you get to peek at the house.
Only a couple more weeks until we actually move in!

I woke at 4:30 this morning to something I haven’t woken to in a very long time: Max curled up next to the pillow, his paw tapping my nose. As I stirred awake he started to purr and inched his way closer; my hand automatically went to his head and I scratched behind his ears, hoping that’s all he wanted.

That was it, but he wasn’t content with 30 seconds of attention. No, at 4:30 in the morning Max wanted a full-on head rub, complete with chin skritches. I humored him for 10 minutes or so, and as I drifted off again he set his head on my hand and went to sleep.

This matters. It’s not so much the annoyance factor, but it’s on a list of the things he used to do but hasn’t done in a very long time that he’s now doing again.

The 3 a.m. singing; that’s back with a vengeance. In fact, he talks all freaking night long. Like he used to.

He sits in my lap as much as possible; he hasn’t really done that since we left Ohio. If he’s not sitting, he’s standing on me, shoving his nose up mine or rubbing his face all over my glasses, his wet nose leaving skid marks. He’s realized I find his rubbery lips on mine incredibly gross, so he makes an effort to get that in on a daily basis.

Begging for dinner and snack starts 2 hours early.

We’d thought he was back to 100% before, but with the return of some almost forgotten behaviors, we realize he wasn’t. And that he may have felt a little off as long as a year ago. Long before Buddah.

I do worry what moving again is going to do to him; stress is obviously not Max’s friend. Hopefully by keeping him on the antibiotics 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off, we’ll make it as pain free as possible…but for now he’s Full Throttle Snarky, and I may never get to sleep through the night again.

Who would have thunk that there are 1,253,567 shades of white? Eggshell white, Antique white, Plain White, Brilliant White… And that’s just at WalMart! I stood there in the paint aisle this afternoon, transfixed by all the brightly colored containers that held nothing but white paint. If I had gone to a paint store, I would probably still be there, suffering momentous indecision, trying to decide if I want the bedroom to be white, bright white, brilliant white, blinding white, holy-shit-that's-white white, or ecru. What the hell is ecru, anyway?

I settled on brilliant white. The bedroom bespoiled by dog pee was, evidently, also the bedroom the owner’s 6 year old slept in, and the walls are wonderfully decorated in hand prints, hand smears, foot prints, foot smears, grime, dirt, sweat, and crayon. Even after I scrub them clean, they’re not going to look clean, hence the paint.

Last night I waged a mental war over colors: yellow, blue, deep red, two toned, do an accent wall, channel Jackson Pollack and just splatter the heck out of the walls…but in the end I figured white was less of a hassle, and I can always paint it another color some other time.

It’s a small room, after all.

And yes, it’s mine. I get to choose the colors and what goes in it, because I do, after all, need a place to hide when the Spouse Thingy is snoring at decibels so high a freight train could pass under the window and no one would realize. I’m such an adventurous person that I opted for white.

Brilliant white, mind you.

But white nonetheless.

I’m so exciting…

Dear People Who Live Upstairs,

Congratulations on your new baby! It’s nice to know that your kid has these wonderfully healthy lungs, even at 2 in the morning. I’m sure you’re appreciating that more than I am. Since your new child’s room is directly over my not-so-new child’s room, my child usually appreciates your child’s lungs even more than I do, but tonight I am getting a special appreciation for them. In fact, I am impressed. Your kid has lungs that quite possibly stretch all the way into his/her feet. Those are the lungs that will enable your child to one day stand in the toy aisle at WalMart and scream “Iiiiiiii waaaaaaaaaannnnnnt iiiittttt!!!” fifty two times without taking a breath. Trust me, other people will appreciate that, too.

Since you are normally very quiet—as opposed to the 3 a.m. headboard bangers that previously occupied your domicile—I find the sudden burst of activity up there kind of amusing. I can pretty much tell what you’re doing. Like tonight: the baby had a blow out, right? I base this on the sound of those lungs, the hurried footsteps back and forth, followed by the sound of water flowing into the bathtub, as well as the washing machine kicking on ten minutes later.

I don’t mind it. It’s necessary noise, not selfish I-don’t-care-about-the-neighbors noise.

You’re probably not going to get a whole lot of sleep tonight, and in an hour or two you might be crying, too, pleading with your spawn to please go to sleep, just for a little while. You might want to take a deep breath and sit back with the kid held close against you, and enjoy it, lungs and all. You’re not going to get much sleep anyway, and since we’re all going to get to hear him/her sing out through the night, there’s no point in getting upset about it.

There’s music in all of that. Proof of life.

I’m just glad it’s you and not me dealing with it…

The carpet cleaning guy called me this morning; he wanted to meet at the house this afternoon so he could take care of the doggy pee smell. I figured Yay! He’s professional, he wants to take care of this ASAP, the room won’t stink! He’ll fix it and I can do a happy dance across the front lawn, thus assuring I will meet the neighbors!

So I met him at the appointed time; he walked in with this little spray bottle in hand and proceeded to mist the entire upstairs carpet with it. That was it, he wandered around, squirting his little bottle of pink stuff, letting it settle from the air onto the carpet.

Um, yeah. That’ll fix it.

I got his card and if it (the carpet, not the card) stinks later…I suspect he’s gonna get tired of having to come over.

Exterminator Guy showed up a few minutes early to take care of the mouse. He shoved poison into a space behind the washer (after assuring us it has no secondary poisoning effects; if a mouse eats it, comes out and dies and one of the cats eats the mouse, they will not get poisoned) and placed glue pads in the pantry.

Opening the pantry from now on is the Spouse Thingy’s job. I do not want to see a poor stuck mouse that’s died stuck to the pad. I have been assured that they go very quickly because the stick their little noses to the glue and then cannot breathe, but somehow that feels worse… But if it’s them or the cats, the mousies have to go…

Oy

So. We got the keys to the house today. Property Manager Guy met us there at 10 a.m. to walk through and make note of everything that was wrong and what needed attention. And there was a lot.

Evidently, the owners were pressed for time in moving out. So pressed that they didn’t really clean. The walls are all scuffed up and have smudges on them and the kitchen is kinda gross…but those are things I can handle. I intended on cleaning before we moved our stuff in, just not quite that much.

However.

They apparently housed their dog in one of the bedrooms while they were moving their stuff out, and apparently the dog was not happy out it. So he peed. Copiously. The owners had someone come out to clean the carpets, but they did a piss-poor (no pun intended) job. Aside from the vivid yellow stain, the smell is unbearable.

So the owner is having them come out and re-do it. When, I don’t know, but it needs to be soon. And I suspect that in the end, the room will need new carpet. I’m not living in a house that smells like dog pee, and if it smells like pee, the cats will surely decide to leave their own little imprint.

While we were there, and after Property Manager Guy had left, a mouse ran across the kitchen floor. Not exactly what one wants to see in a house they’ve just rented, but I suppose it’s better than seeing the mouse after all our stuff and the cats are there (though Buddah would love hunting a mouse, and then presenting it to someone at 3 in the morning…)

So tomorrow we meet exterminators there…

Property Manager Guy says he can get reimbursement from the owner for the time and effort it will take us to clean thoroughly… I really just want the pee room taken care of. And the mouse problem. If they can take care of that, I’ll be happy. Plus it would be nice to not start off with an antagonistic landlord/tenant relationship, no matter how much in the right we are (not to mention when we move out, we won’t feel so compelled to have it white-glove clean…)

We have the keys, though… Good thing we weren’t planning on moving in this weekend!

It’s Not Thmbr, Dammit

I wanted personalized license plates. Laugh if you want, but as an early birthday present to myself, I got online and ordered a set in July. Three months ago.

In Saturday’s mail was a notice from the DMV that my plates were ready for pickup at the local office. Yay. It took freaking long enough, but I was going to be stylin’ in my spiffy black ragtop with my very own Thumper plates.

Getting an appointment was going to take about a week an a half, so today we braved the chance of a Very Long Line and just showed up, old plates and registration in hand. And we were happy, there wasn’t a long line. Heck, there were chairs to sit in. We could wait in relative comfort.

Twenty minutes later they called our number. Yay! I was =this= close to my spiffy THMPR plates.

The clerk went to the back to get them, and when she returned, I watched as she slowly pulled them from the plain brown wrapper. Yay! My plates.

The Spouse Thingy peered over the counter and said, “They’re screwed up.”

And dammit, they were.

THMBR.

So for the next 45 minutes, this poor clerk tried to get it straightened out with the main DMV in Sacramento; in the end, it’ll probably be another 3 months before I get the correct plates.

Another clerk suggested whoever made the plates couldn’t read my handwriting. Nice try, but I applied for the plates online, and the receipt that came in the mail had the correct spelling listed.

You can bet that the DMV had my money 5 minutes after I ordered the plates, and it’ll be at least 6 freaking months all totaled before I see them.

=sniff=
I want my spiffy plates.

• It's not even 9:30 p.m., and I'm already sleepy.
  
• If I go to bed, I'll wake up and be that way until 4 a.m.
  
• The kitchen sink plugged itself up (no help from us, I swear!) and we can't use it or the dishwasher until we can get the apartment people to fix it.
  
• The bedroom is already 75% packed up to move.
  
• Buddah was a big help in filling boxes.
  
• Yes, I am rolling my eyes.
  
• Max keeps glaring at me like "Oh no we are NOT...!"
  
• Surely he does not really remember the last move and the 4 days in the car...?
  
• I now have 2 cats crawling all over me.
  
• They want their snack half an hour early.
  
• I am so owned, they're gonna win...
  

wOOhOO!
We got the house; we get the keys next week and can start moving our stuff in. We won't move the big stuff until the first weekend in November, but the lease is signed and the deposits are paid.

Only downside: we have to buy our own refrigerator. Not an expense one wants on top of moving expenses, but none of the houses we looked at came with a fridge, so we were going to have to do it no matter what.

I suppose I could stick a "Donate To The ThumpaFridge Fund" PayPal button on my blog and let the rest of the world pay for it... ;)

So...yay! No more apartment living after November!

The house was as nice as we'd hoped, with laminate floors downstairs and carpet upstairs. Three bedrooms, with a small loft, 2.5 baths, living room, family room, dining room... We really liked it. The cats will love it: lots of windows to see out of and stairs to run on. And that's what really important, right? That the cats are happy...

So, we put in an application to rent... I hate this part, wondering if something is going to pop up and trip us up. I get horrible butterflies in my stomach--whether it's trying to buy a car or rent an apartment or a house. I always worry there's *something* that will hose the whole thing up.

I'm gonna have a tummy ache til we find out (yes, say "awwwwww" right now. I want sympathy.)

So, cross your fingers again. Hopefully we'll find something out tomorrow.

There are some truly gross looking houses for rent out there... and at least one that (from the outside) looks amazing.

We have an appointment to look at it tomorrow; keep your fingers crossed that it looks as good on the inside and that they'll rent it to us.

It would be nice to live in a really spiffy house for once...

Dear Lee Spencer,

Congratulations on your foray into the wonderful world of buying a home. Or at least in your attempt to secure information on mortgages. The Internet is a wonderful thing, eh? Go online, and in one fell swoop you can contact 32 dozen different mortgage lenders and ask them to send you information regarding their services.

However.

You may be wondering why none of the participating companies has contacted you yet. You’re probably sitting there by your phone, sweat dripping off you in fine beads of anticipation, your heart racing each time it rings. And every time you’re disappointed because it’s only your mother or best friend calling to see how you are or if you want to go out for pizza and beer.

I can tell you, though, that the mortgage companies are very interested in your inquiries. The problem is that when typing in your personal information, you gave them the wrong phone number. How do I know this? Because you gave them MY phone number.

For the past couple of days the phone has been ringing with amazing regularity, and because my Spouse Thingy works nights and sleeps during the day, I haven’t been able to just let it ring and let the answering machine pick up. So far I’ve had to tell at least 10 companies that Lee Spencer does not live here. One person even asked me if I knew what his true phone number was. Sadly, I did not have that information to impart.

So don’t feel badly, Lee Spencer. Those companies do want to lend you money, but it does them no good to talk to me instead of you.

I just thought you’d want to know.

And please email me your phone number. I will give it to future mortgage callers, and I might even call you up myself and let you hear this new musical piece I’ve written. It’s called Symphony of Airhorns.

It’s quite lovely.

I swear.

Wanna know why it sometimes (not often) sucks to be me?

Well, I’m going to tell you anyway.

It’s because I never know. Not that I never know anything, but I never know how I’m going to fare from one activity to another, and that bites.

The other day the Spouse Thingy and I decided to take a walk…sans the wheelchair. We headed for WalMart (just as a destination, not to shop) which s about a mile away. No sweat! I made it that far, we bought a diet soda from the vending machine by the front door and pressed on, through the parking lot, past Sports Authority and Michael’s, to the road, and on towards another shopping center.

At about 1.75 miles, my back and hips suddenly decided spoke in unison “We are going no further! Stop! Right now!”

So I stopped and sat on a brick retaining wall outside Safeway while he went home to get the car (and subsequently we said “screw it” to dieting for the rest of the day and went to Chevy’s for fajitas…)

I would have felt like a failure, but it wasn’t an endurance issue; it was a pain thing.

So today I wanted to go for a walk while the Spouse Thingy sleeps off his night shift. I headed for the Factory Outlet stores (in the car) thinking that if I just walked around there, I would always be close enough t the car that I wouldn’t be stuck somewhere.

I walked around and around until I hit 1.5 miles. No pain. I felt fine, could have gone further if not for the rather large diet drink I’d consumed along the way.

I just never know from one day to the next if I’ll be able to go half a mile or 2 miles, or at all. And that sucks, especially when a year ago I was doing 3.5 miles in an hour (I blame the Evil People for that…)

Um, yeah.
Boo Hoo.
Poor baby, and all that…
I hear ya.

Most of the time it’s so good to be me, but the not knowing, that bites.

How To Piss The Wabbit Off:

Or more accurately, how the Wabbit family can piss themselves off.

We put in notice yesterday that we’re vacating the apartment. And we gave them about 45 days’ notice—that should be good, right?

Wrong.

We should have checked the lease; they require 60 days notice and they’re holding us to it. The Spouse Thingy is already set with time off from work the beginning of November to move and the Boy has arranged the muscle for us to move…so we’re moving. Hopefully we can find a place, but we’re moving the beginning of November and we have to pay rent here through the 2nd of December.

Oh yeah, we were ticked beyond belief, but mostly at ourselves for assuming that just because every other place we’ve ever lived only asked for 30 days notice that it was the same here.

How To Tick The Cat Off:

Take him back to the vet for more blood work. We were prepared this time; yesterday we stopped by there to pick up a sedative to give him before his appointment this morning. Ideally he should have been nice and mellow and not giving a damn about what was about to happen.

He still fought like his life depended on it, and he still pooped all over the table. The vet asked the Spouse Thingy to leave him there for a while so they could dope him up a little more (Max is a surprisingly strong cat and is not afraid to use both his teeth and back claws…) and then draw the blood.

After the Spouse Thingy left the doc decided to wait a little longer and see if the drug we gave him took better effect; it did and spared Max the shot. So they got the blood, added to the humiliation factor by bating his backend, and sent him home, where he’s walking around like a little drunkard, barely even able to control his inner eyelids.

He’s royally ticked off; we’re laughing our asses off at him.

I suspect the lab results will be favorable; he acts like he feels fine (and the fact that he put up a fight even while under the influence shows it) but realistically we know we’ll be doing the pulsating antibiotics thing, potentially forever.

Small price to pay to keep his Snarkiness alive and as happy as one so snarky can be.

A finger pointed accusingly at me from email. In my head I could see it jabbing, just missing the tip of my nose. It was excited jabbing, not mean-spirited, but ya know even friendly jabbing can poke an eye out.

You’re Fat Kat! I know you are! I saw that blog and then your Spouse Thingy mentioned he was dieting, and it fit. Thumper is Fat Kat!

It wasn’t a secret, exactly. I simply wasn’t hanging from the rafters shouting about it. Yep, the Spouse Thingy and I have embarked on the road to healthier living. After so many false starts, I decided to just jump in with both feet and give NutriSystem a try (because, after all, I am inherently lazy and it seemed like an easy way to get real food in front of me) and after a week or so—knowing by then the food really is edible—the Spouse Thingy decided to join me.

It is as easy as I’d hoped and it’s something we can stick to. I started the other blog for 2 reasons: I had this really cook graphic of a cat on a scale I wanted to use for something, and I wanted to have a place to talk at myself about it, to keep myself accountable, more or less. But mostly, I wanted to use that graphic.

It’s mind numbingly boring, but you can play along if you want.

Oh, and I hate that men lose body fat faster than women. It’s just not fair…