Chris' Catastrophe

This morning, I got an email at work with the subject line "I broke the shower." I knew it was going to be a long day.

It turns out that in his early-morning stupor, Chris tripped in the shower and pulled the soap dish out of the wall. I'm picturing a destroyed wall needing feet of new tile, and yet another check going out to a deserving tradesman cleaning up our mess. As you can see above, it wasn't that bad. I was still ready to call our local tile guy to have the dumb thing fixed. But Chris, my wonderful and resourceful husband-to-be, said, "Don't we still have that tile stuff from when they re-did the shower?"

We did. And while I walked the dog, Chris re-mortared the soap dish into the shower. A small feat for some, but the little things that don't require the checkbook around here seem huge. A photo montage of the night's revels below:

Why is the soap dish in the tub? Maybe we do need one of those rubber bathtub lines for old people...

If you can't call him handsome, you can at least call him handy. And messy.

This is Chris reading the directions on the mortar AFTER using it. Sometimes, I swear he exists to give female comediennes material. "Come on, ladies, why doesn't your man read the directions?" Hey, at least it's done!

Just because no post is complete without a shameless Penny Pic...

The Fabulous Life of Penelope

Well, it's fall and things with the house are pretty slow. Chris is back to studying for the CFA exam (don't ask), and if it doesn't involve cleaning or food, I'm pretty much not doing it. Some things have gotten done, like locks on the bulkhead and the shed doors, but most everything else is waiting for spring.

So I've decided to take a moment this week and post about our dog. Most people know by now just how happy we are to have Penny in our lives. I don't make snarky comments at the radio anymore aimed at commercials claiming that dogs decrease stress. She really is a wonderful addition to our family and we are so happy to have her. But you know what? She has a pretty sweet life. Here's some hard evidence:

I often break rules for the dog, mainly in the cemetaries near our house. We live in a pretty dense and trafficy area, so it's nice to get off the main road and walk in a quiet place, even if it is with dead people.
I also allow the dog to attempt to climb trees, even though it just makes her mad. It's just too darn cute to disallow.
You can't see it in the picture, but her tail is wagging furiously. This is her "Are we going outside? Are we going outside?" stance.
We took her to the Fells Reservation on Sunday for a wee hike. She loved it! She even made friends with some other local dogs.
You can see here that she's lost a lot of hair - I was told at the vet that this was normal post-pardom behavior for dogs. Especially dogs that were breeding machines like our Penny. It seems like the shedding has calmed down for now and her hair is actually growing back. Phew! I was worried we were looking at a Chinese Crested for awhile there.

Penny also LOVES the car, especially trying to help Chris drive his. He is not amused.
When I take her to the park to work on her fetching skills, her toys usually do this.
While she does this. In this case, focusing on high school boys playing soccer instead of keeping her eye on the squeaky pink prize. We're working on it.

Penny's head got cut off a little, but still a great shot. For all her weirdness (who sleeps in laundry?) our dog is a great fit. We plan on loving her this crazily for however much longer she gives us!

Our First Halloween

Last week, I ended our post with a snarky comment about my "decorating" for Halloween with a very lonely pumpkin. Well, I was out and about yesterday and came across these awesome pumpkin string lights that I thought would be perfect for my original plan. The first time we looked at this house, we both fell in love with the three-season porch that also serves as our front entryway. I immediately turned to Chris and said, "I could get string lights for every season!" He sighed heavily. With the onset of these pumpkin lights (which, I can tell you, were extremely affordable!) I can begin to realize my dreams of being that crazy, tacky neighbor that everyone hates but really secretly loves...

Christmas Cows, here we come!!!

An inside view of pumpkin lights...and no, we still haven't done anything with that 3'x4' mirror that you see wrapped in cardboard in the background. Working on it. Sort've.

Chris and Penny were extremely impressed, as you can see.

Happy Halloween! Almost!

Calming Down and Heating Up

It's been a bad month for posting. Between finishing up the house for winter, adapting to dog parenthood, and planning a hectic wedding, I've hardly had time to recall the fact that a blog exists in our lives. At our engagement party this weekend, however, people kept saying "Ooh, I can't wait to see this picture on the blog!" Oops. Better get on it, Jeannotte. Luckily, things are calming down to the point that we have no plans this weekend. That's such a delicious statement that I think I'll say it again. We have. No plans. This weekend. Awesome.

But I digress. We've been having a lot of fun. Chris has been doing an awesome job teaching Penny how to play. Her old life didn't involve a lot of playing (it was similiar to Michelle Duggar's, except that Penny got to go outside of the basement once a day), so Chris has taken on the task of teaching her to be easy and appropriate with her playing. She's doing really great, and will even suprise us with a "sit" once in a while. We are so completely in love with this dog.

A big thing tonight is that Chris and I finally figured out how to set our thermostat. I had been mentioning over the last couple of days that the temp in the house was dipping dangerously during the day. Normally, that ain't no thang for us. Those of you familiar with our Woburn apartment recall the year we spent heating the house with the oven. Chris is adamant, however, that the dog be comfortable, and her shivering last night was enough for him.

Our heating system has been a long time coming in itself. The house came with an oil tank from the 1940's that looked leaky at best, completely corroded at worst. In our optimistic mindsets, we decided that oil was not in our future - everyone kept telling us how easy the gas company made it to convert from oil to gas. We got some quotes to convert and were shocked. $8000 was the cheapest quote we got to do the conversion, even with help from the gas man. We decided to just look into oil heating, and found that our furnace was brand new and an oil tank was relatively cheap to replace. The oil man came and quoted us $2000 to fix up the whole system, and he had himself a deal. He also told me that our nasty, cast iron heating vents were worth money on eBay. I'm still not sure about that, as they are pretty nasty, but I guess it's good to have an emergency plan. At least they all work!

Anyway, the funniest part of all of this is that I found it strange that the oil man did not measure during all of this consultation. Whatever. Chris told me not to call and ask, to trust that the guy knew how to do his own job. Well, when they came to install the new (top of the line, energy efficient, etc etc) tank, guess what - it didn't fit in our basement. This was when I was home over the summer and you had better believe that I wasn't paying extra for a different style tank, nor was I accepting an old cast iron one even for half the price. What ended up happening was that a $4000 European tank was installed in our basement. I paid the original quote. And I'm sure the guy measures every basement now.

Between our history with heating (cold noses at 3am? space heaters?) and the snafu with the oil tank, it was so nice to program the thermostat and finally feel warm and comfortable for once. Bring it on, winter!

In other news...even though our engagement party was designated as being a No Gift Zone, some people insisted on being generous anyway. Lori and Marty got us this diesel tablecloth. She had no idea that I had already picked something like this out for the registry and I just love the way it looks on our table. Thanks, you guys!

Oh and...I decorated for fall. Enjoy. :)

Slowly but surely...

We've spent most of the week wrapped up in this:

As of right now, Penny has transitioned flawlessly into our lives. A week in, it seems as if she was always here. We are both incredibly crazy about her even with her idosynchrasies. In her previous home, she was loved by someone and beaten by someone else - it's easy to tell because she is the most loving and affectionate dog, but one false move and she's ducking for cover. She isn't aggressive with us, ever, and she even waits for permission to come up on the couch. We are so happy to have her as an addition to our household. It really makes our house feel like a home.

As far as the home goes, we've been doing some fine detail work over the last few weeks. For instance, the gaping duct hole in our bedroom ceiling finally got a cover.

With cover!

Without cover.

Also, Chris' study got set back up so that he can resume studying for his big test in December. It's a really nice cozy room and it took us a long time to get it right!

And last but not least, Chris and my Dad spent a marathon Sunday flipping doors a couple weeks ago. It was not as easy as either of them expected - my Dad said, "Oh, we're almost done" at 8:45am, and he didn't head home until 3:30pm! It was a really tough process and we're so glad to have people like my Dad who are not only qualified and good at what they do, but willing to spend their precious weekend time helping us out! And at the end of the day, it may not look pretty, but our bedroom door finally opens the right direction. What a relief. :) Next up: crazy Columbus day weekend! Will we get the hallway painted? Who knows?!