jennanddave.com

Henry and I hitched a ride with some friends yesterday and hightailed it out to RB Winter State Park where we spent the better part of the day splashing around in the water (Henry) and sitting in a chair, sipping water, and generally trying not to move too much (me). Despite the liberal application of SPF 5 bazillion on the usual susceptible locations, not to mention later reapplications, I still managed to get quite the sunburn in various awkward spots. I tried my best. Next time, I will not be wearing a halter swimsuit top because it sure hurts today, what with all of the wearing of non-halter-tops I'm doing right now. Henry had a swimmingly grand time. This afternoon we headed to Target to get him a fish shaped inflatable swimming tube so that next time we go I he can float.

A lot of bills for all of the various work and phone changes that have been going on around here have hit within the last five working days. I have only this to say: sheesh. It sure costs a boatload of money to save some money.

Posted by Jenn at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave called and canceled our land line today. We are now, for better or for worse, reliant on our cell phones. I say worse because Dave's having a little trouble figuring his out. So far me and one of his students have helped him set it up, including his voice mail which I'm still not sure he knows how to check. A couple of weeks ago I sent him a text message. He didn't know that I had, and when I mentioned it to him later his voice got all panicky and high-pitched while he asked why in the world would I send him a text message; he has no idea how to retrieve it and what on earth was I thinking? etc., etc. It's funny when technology makes a scientist sweat.

After his field hockey game on Tuesday, he called my phone to let me know he was heading home. I was putting Henry to bed so I didn't have time to get to the phone before it went to voicemail. I called him right back and when he finally picked up he said he had a little trouble with the call waiting. Here's a transcript of the voice message he left me: "Heya, it's me. I'm just calling to let you know that I'm on my way home and to see if you want me to pick anything up-oh wait, I'm getting another call...I think it's you.....*beep*....Hello?....what the....hold on....*beep*....Hello?....wait...*huff*....d****t!"

Getting Dave a cell phone could be the best thing we've ever done. I'm certainly enjoying it.

Posted by Jenn at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I don't really remember going through a nesting phase when I was pregnant with Henry. This time around, however, there is little doubt that something out of the ordinary is afoot. I'm managing compelled to keep the house somewhat clean and clutter-free (with the exception of the bathroom; I'm nesting, not insane) because lately the sight of something out of place makes me twitchy. Unfortunately for Dave, he's also been put to work, doing some of the things that have been on my personal "to do" list, the latest being finishing painting the three doors at the end of our 1st floor hallway. One of them I did a while ago, the other two had problems I just didn't want to deal with. After two weekends spent getting reacquainted with his palm sander and a paint roller, Dave finished the job and frankly, the level of satisfaction I feel when I look at them now is almost equal to what I'd feel if I'd done the work myself. Which, fortunately, I didn't.

Yesterday we hired a guy to refinish the wood floors in our living room, back hallway, and study. He also offered to buff and put another coat of urethane on the dining room floor that Dave and I refinished ourselves a couple of years ago so it will blend in better with the living room. The best part was he said he'd do it for free. His quote came in about $500 less than a quote we got for the same work from someone else two years ago, so that was an unexpected surprise. Fifteen minutes after he left, our heat pump/electrician guy came by with the contract for the work he's going to do for us. We're having to get our box upgraded to 200 amps before the heat pump can go in. He'll be here Thursday to do that, then on the 30th he'll be back to install the heat pump. We've decided to go with natural gas because it's a lot more efficient than oil, and it's cleaner burning. The bonus of hooking up to gas now means that our dreams of a gas fireplace insert and a gas stove will be much easier to realize.

Although these are fairly minor (albeit sort of expensive) changes that we're making to the house, I'm completely giddy with excitement. I've grown really attached to this place in the six years that we've lived here. When we almost bought a house in the Spring of '08, one of the factors that made me change my mind was being completely unable to imagine anyone else living here, and it's still true. I love driving up to it when we come home, I love how Henry refers to it as "the yellow house", and I love our yard, including the insane not-necessarily-in-a-good-way flower garden. Hopefully the house loves us just as much.

Posted by Jenn at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Friday morning we closed on our HELOC. Since there's been a huge downturn in the economy, which I'm sure you've heard about by now, we didn't get as much as the bank initially was hoping to loan us because the value of our house has decreased since our last appraisal in Spring '08, but we did get what I had originally asked for. It's good for ten years and here are our short- and long-term goals.

Before the arrival of Chocolat:

1. Heat-pump so we can have some humidity-reducing, life-saving A/C pumping through the veins of our little house, with the added bonus of not having to spend another winter worrying whether our dinosaur of an oil furnace will poop out. In January. In the middle of a deep freeze. I hear old furnaces have a history of doing that.
2. Having the rest of the wood floors on our first floor sanded and refinished.

Sometime in the next year or so:

1. New fence around our backyard with actual gates.

Sometime, somewhere, over the rainbow:

1. Pergola over our patio.
2. Front porch
3. Additional bedroom over the front porch.
4. Small kitchen remodel, the brunt of which is opening up the wall between kitchen and dining room.
5. Some other stuff we haven't thought of yet. Consume consume consume!

Of course, now that we have the HELOC, what I'd really like to do is buy a new, smaller, neutrally-colored sofa that isn't a behemoth sectional that looks like it's eating our living room, as well as some lovely Flor carpet tiles. But I won't. I promise to be a good girl.

Posted by Jenn at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

...of things that broke down while we were on vacation and after we got back home.

1. Our cell phone. We're not entirely sure what happened, but one morning while we were at the beach it decided it was moving on to the Great Cell Phone Pasture in the sky. What was really tragic was Dave had spent the previous two weeks going back and forth with the University's Verizon rep, trying to pick out a family plan that would work for us. Were we not two indecisive Libra's, we probably would have been the proud owners of two new phones by the time we went to the beach. It was weird not having a phone, mostly weird in a good, disconnected way. We do now have two lovely new phones, plus Dave is the proud owner of his own phone number. Our plan is to nix our land line and our long distance thereby whittling our number of monthly phone bills down from three to just one. I'm really looking forward to that.

2. Our washer. The night we got back, I washed the sheets that were on our bed so they'd be nice and clean and dust-free for those of us who have allergies (ahem), then I threw in a nice big load of vacation laundry. The washer pooped out in the middle of the agitation cycle. We tried a couple of different things to get it going again, but ended up wringing out the wet clothes and bailing out the water. Dave instrument of choice for doing this: an 8oz. cup. I suggested perhaps something bigger might get the job done quicker, but when he's made his choice, he's made his choice. (Which is why, in the end, he went through with marrying me despite possible better judgement.) We've been itching for a new washer since we moved in six years ago because the current washer just didn't seem quite up to the challenge of cleaning our clothes. We headed off to Sears the next night and picked out a lovely new energy efficient model. We also purchased a small chest freezer which we have high hopes of filling with all sorts of frozen dinners that we can pillage and reheat once Chocolat arrives. It's something we've been talking about purchasing since we found out we were expecting and this seemed like as good a time as any. So our new appliances will be arriving June 9th. Perhaps needless to say, we spent some serious quality time at the local laundromat on Sunday.

3. Kitchen ceiling fan. I was vacuuming the fan blades when I managed to shatter the glass light cover. We talked about replacing the glass bit, but then I suggested it wouldn't be horrible to get a new ceiling fan altogether, perhaps one that gave off more light. Which is what we did. Now when you turn on our kitchen light, you're practically blinded. It makes me very happy that I decided to go ahead and paint the walls a few years ago because I can only imagine how dingy the room would look if I hadn't.

Now we're sitting around waiting with baited breath to see what the next thing to go will be. I think Dave's hoping either the fridge or the dishwasher. I'm hoping it's the wall between the kitchen and dining room, but the likelihood of that giving up the ghost is probably pretty slim.

Posted by Jenn at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)