Unwanted House Critters

Well, it appears that I’ve got signs of at least one unwanted house critter — though you know if there’s one, there’s more.

The clues:

• Some thing’s definitely been imbibing in the bird seed I’ve got stored in the basement and it’s not the birdies I bought it for, which makes me very grumpy.
• Needy and Pugly have both been interested in some thing beneath the stove.
• Pugly has been barking at the wall between the kitchen and the living room for no apparent reason. (There goes my theory that he’s gone insane.)
• Two nights ago, Needy was very interested in the skittering of
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  Tags: mice, rodents, rats, little red house, the cats, the puppy

  2 comments See also in My Life, The Cats, The Puppy, Little Red House

Project 365 (Day 5): While I Was Eating

This is the view from my kitchen table. I love watching the birds lunching at the bird feeder outside in my front yard while I’m eating. Being able to watch t.v. too is nice too.

Tags: project365, photo blogging, photoaday, oneaday

Thursday Thirteen Things I’d Like To Do In 2007 (#18)

So this is the time of year when everyone is doing New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer not to do “Resolutions” because they’re generally broken and joked about by the middle of January and forgotten by President’s Day. Then, next January, they’ll be resolved again.

So, instead, I usually try to use the time to reflect and think about the things I’d like to work on in my life, changes, improvements, and so on. I don’t make myself any impossible promises though. I know my limits and I know physics. There’s no way I can lose 60 lbs in 2 months, for example; nor is it likely that I’ll be getting up at 5am any time soon to exercise 3 times a week.

Anyway, here is my list of things I would like to do in 2007, no promises, but I’m working on it. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, bloghopping, meme, New Years Resolutions, gardening, knitting, debt, weight, health, writing, Green Living, housekeeping, dysfunctional family

The Real Post-Christmas Question On Everyone’s Mind

“How am I going to get the tree down into the basement without taking the lights off or taking it apart?”

Or is that just me?

Seriously, it’s been on my mind since I pulled the tree out of the box and strung those lights this year. This is the first year I’ve had a basement to store it in rather than a niche hidden by a hanging sheet in my bedroom corner. If I could figure out how to get it back down in the basement without damaging the paint on my walls or killing myself on the basement
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Tags: Christmas tree, basement

Moving Right Along

O.K. Now that I’ve gotten someone (my mother) to admit that I’m probably right (the movers probably did take things from my house during the move for whatever reason — to sell on ebay), I’m ready to move on. I just wanted someone to admit that I wasn’t crazy and that there was just too many coincidences for me to somehow to just be overlooking these items in the house.

I finally got my mother to stop saying, “Well, you know, there’s still stuff I haven’t found from our move 5 years ago…” by cutting her off with “But I
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Tags: little red house, ClosetMaid

Paranoid Or Pattern?

Seriously.

There are at least seven items missing from my house after the move.  I shall describe them for you.

• 2 floating shelves, walnut in color, bought originally at WAL-Mart, still in their original packaging with hardware, never opened.
• 2 curtain rods, black with decorative crystal balls on the ends, originally bought at the Christmas Tree Shoppe, still in their original packaging with hardware, never opened.
• 2 Large U-shaped floating shelves, walnut in color, bought originally at Target, didn’t come in any kind of packaging or with hardware.
• 1 decorative Christmas card holder, silver, shaped like a Christmas tree, originally bought at WAL-Mart, still in
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  Tags: paranoia, robbers, movers, ghost, the puppy

  comments See also in My Life, The Puppy, Little Red House

From Within The House

I’m totally freaked out this morning.

Last night, on one of my gazillion trips downstairs to pee, I was sitting on the toilet (too much info?), when I heard the oddest, distinct sound of a phone off the hook.

O.K. Well, the cats do have night wanderings.  One of them could have possibly knocked one of the phones off the hook, right?

So, when I’m finished with my personal business, I go to the only phone in the house that isn’t connected to the world by a button.  It’s sitting securely in it’s cradle.  The only other phone in the house is one
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Tags: little red house

Snow Day @ The Little Red House

As promised here are some pictures of today’s snow fall around my new house.

Here’s the Little Red House.  I wonder if someone can Photoshop those powerlines out so that can be made into a Christmas card or is the shot too blurry, do you think?

The view from my front window:

The view from my kitchen window:

The view from my Dining Room:

Tags: snow, Maine, little red house, photo blogging

Yellow Snow

Those of us in the Little Red House woke up this morning to discover that a blanket of snow had covered our yard overnight.  (Pictures to follow tonight when I get home.)  How we discovered it is that I woke up to take little Pugly out for his morning pee-pee, put my Crocs and coat on and led him on the leash to the backdoor, which when opened revealed a great white cold from the back steps to the pine trees.

I blinked.

Pugly blinked and took a few tentative steps onto the snow covered stoop.

You must recall that little Pugly was
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Tags: Pug, the puppy, snow, little red house

First Oil Bill — Jinkies!

I got my oil tank filled for the first time in my new house yesterday. It was about 1/4th full already and they added about 188 gallons. The cost of oil according to the bill was the same as filling my gas tank yesterday — $2.29/gallon.

Go ahead, do the math.

I spent $40 filling my gas tank yesterday. I owe my oil company $430! Jinkies! Holy Global Warming, Batman!

So, I’m wondering how long that’s going to last.

My house is heated using baseboard heat with water, though the water is heated using
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Tags: heating oil prices, little red house

Discombobulated Thoughts — 12/5/06

• I cannot seem to keep my eyes open today. I’m doing that head bob thing.
• I’ve got to buy a bathing suit by next Tuesday when I start Water Physical Therapy. Apparently, it’s required.
• Do I have $1.20 in pennies to get me through 2 more trips through the I-95 toll?
• When will my new toll tag come?
• Those people behind me at the exact change toll were pissed this morning.
• I couldn’t find my mittens this morning when I went
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  Tags: Home Depot, the puppy, discombobulated, tired, bathing suit, toll road, I-95

  2 comments See also in My Life, Wellness, Discombobulated, The Puppy, Little Red House

Greedy? Too Generous? Thoughts That Count

I know it’s supposed to be all about the giving, especially this time of year, but as I was making up my Christmas card list last night a sneaky, greedy, nagging little thought occurred to me.  Over the years, I have tried to be very generous with my friends; when people moved into apartments and homes and left for college or moved away, I always tried to make up care packages of things they would need for their new adventures.  I’ve helped people move; I’ve even helped them move out-of-town.  I planned birthdays, bridal showers and Christmas parties and sent
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Tags: dysfunctional friends

Back To Normal?

So, my parents departed moments ago.  Pugly is back in doggy daycare.  My space and my routine are theoretically my own again, even though it’s an entirely new space that isn’t quite sorted out yet which requires developing something of a new routine.

Back to semi-normal, maybe, I guess.

I love my parents.  I do.  Granted we have some issues.  Some conflicting quirks.  I think they still see me as twelve a lot of the time.  A twelve year old buying her own house, having her own job, trying to live her own life.  So they treat me like a twelve year
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Tags: alone time, little red house

My Brain May Explode

I wonder why my brain doesn’t explode from the sheer insanity of contradictory messages I get from my parents sometimes — mainly from my mother.

Mind you, I write that with love and thankfulness for all the help they both have been the last few weeks. I know that I could not have done everything that’s been done regarding the move without their help.

However…with closer, constant proximity, comes more regular contradictory messages and I suspect wrinkle lines on my forehead from the almost permanent perplexed expressions on my face. Certainly the strain on my forehead and brain has not
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Tags: dysfunctional family, move, little red house, credit card debt

So, Where Were We?

Oy.

So, the day of the big move, somehow while he was in his kennel so he wouldn’t chase around the movers, Pugly got a-hold of the power cable to my laptop, which wasn’t plugged in, thank goodness. He chewed it up until it wasn’t recognizable, rendering it useless. He just wanted to be sure to express his unhappiness at being in his kennel while such interesting things were going on.

Around 5pm, we realized that the phones weren’t working at the house and while the cable guy was installing cable and internet the night before Thanksgiving — a humongous
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Tags: little red house, moving, homeownership

Discombobulated Thoughts — 11/17/06

• I am so behind on my packing.
• Pugly is getting a bath today at doggy daycare. He so needed it.
• Rain, rain, go away.
• Thank God, my new house has a garage. I am so over getting soaked coming out of my house to get into the car in the morning.
• I wish this Wordpress Amazon Wishlist would let me set up two wishlists on this site so I could display my wishlist for the house as well as my personal one.
• Supernatural is so much
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  Tags: discombobulated, Supernatural, Amazon wishlists, rain, the puppy

  comments See also in My Life, Books, Music, Movies, & T.V., Geekery, Discombobulated, The Puppy, Little Red House

Little Red Floorplans

I snagged the floor plan graphic out of the appraisal report and edited it because he had the rooms all labeled wrong and was missing a closet. The missing closet actually messes up the bathroom doorway when added back in, I’m sorry to say — possibly why he left it out.

So, here is what I’ll be moving into a week from Wednesday. (Click the graphic to enlarge.)

A couple of corrections:

• The shed is actually cut in half by a wall and there are two doors on the outside and one door on the inside of the garage near the
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  Tags: little red house, floor plans

  comments See also in My Life, Little Red House

I Can’t Put It Off Any Longer

The flippers have agreed to fix the window with the broken seal before closing. It was added to the list of items that have to be completed that includes fixing the fire code issue in the basement, installing the smoke detectors, checking the exhaust fan for the oven/stove, and fixing the light over the back of the garage among a few other minor things like adding a garbage disposal.

So…I’ve put it off as long as I can. The packing boxes that I ordered online and thought would be delivered by today won’t be here until Tuesday, but I
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Tags: packing, moving, Freecycle, Office Depot, Office Max, luck

You Can Take The Girl Out Of New Orleans, But…

So yesterday I was applying for homeowner’s insurance. That’s one of the ga-billion things you have to do when you are trying to buy a house. You have to know all kinds of interesting details like the year your house was built — 1960, the square footage of the living area, which doesn’t include the unfinished basement — 1536 sq. ft., not the 1600 sq. ft. advertised by the way, where the nearest fire hydrant is — 10 ft. from my driveway, which is reassuring, how many sinks are in the bathroom — 1, what kind of wiring
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Tags: flood insurance, homeowner's insurance, buying a home

Thursday Thirteen Discombobulated Worries This Week (#11)

My brain is way too scattered and full of anxiety to focus on one particular nifty topic this week. So, now you get to see the really true discombobulated, highly anxious me.

Thirteen Things about N. Mallory

1. What if the sale on the little red house falls through and I don’t get it?
2. What if the sale on the little red house doesn’t fall through and I do get it and it turns into a money pit?
3. What if those nice flippers are taking advantage of me because I’m a naive first time buyer and I don’t know what I’m doing?
4. What if my dog is depressed? He’s been lethargic and hasn’t been eating at home, but the doggie daycare folks say he’s hyper and playful there. Maybe he just hates me.

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, meme, bloghopping, anxiety, home buying, acid reflux, IgAN, autoimmune kidney disease, discombobulated, the puppy

14 comments See also in My Life, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, Wellness, Discombobulated, Anxiety/Depression, The Puppy, Acid Reflux/Gastro B.S., Thursday Thirteen, Memes, Little Red House, IgA Nephropathy