86'n It

I promise, I'm not slacking on installing the doorbell. Problem is, we need help finding a doorbell. It needs to be the wired kind, and non-lighted. We prefer a mod looking one and Marc (the metal snob) insisted that it is either brushed stainless or brushed/satin nickel.

I like this one ok, but with shipping it is $40, which I find ridiculous when you can buy doorbells for $4 at Lowes. But don't get me started on that, or I'll be forced to reenact the embarrassing fight that Marc and I had in Lowes last weekend.

With the horror that is our house, who could have guessed that the biggest fight since the 30th-birthday would be over a $4 doorbell. I think the preparing food in a "kitchen" with one plywood wall, 1/2 a ceiling and a hot plate that can't boil water is finally getting to me. (Sometimes, I just need pasta, ok?)

Anybunny, please help us find a doorbell before we have to go back to couple's therapy or I maim a home improvement store employee. I'm leaving it in your hands.

It is confirmed, we are those people who feed their cat thru a feeding tube.

What can I say? She's worth it. Sigh.

Tuna is doing very well, considering. She ended up having a ping-pong ball sized abscess on her small intestine. If you don't know what an abscess is, you are about to wish you still didn't. It is a ball of pus that surrounds an infection. Ew. Ew. Seriously Ew. Even the vet said, "That was disgusting" after they removed it.

She can eat on her own, but because we have to keep her hopped up on kitty morphine (no joke), we have to supplement her nutrition by pumping food mixed with water into her tube and therefore into her esophagus. It is just about as fun as it sounds.

One good thing is that it has given Marc and I a fast forward to what we would be like as parents. Me scolding him for picking her up the wrong way, and him sticking his finger into the food mix to make sure I didn't make it too hot. It sounds stressful, but it has actually been quite hilarious. How can you take life too seriously when your cat all the sudden sounds like Darth Vader? (The feeding tube somehow amplifies her purring.) Or when her huge pink neck bandage makes her look like an African woman from a neck-stretching tribe?

Her incision is pretty gruesome because it is closed up with what I am pretty sure are #10 standard staples, but we've just taken to calling her Zipper.

The vet told us that what happened was she most likely ate something that poked her small intestine causing the infection and abscess. We should get the biopsy results in the next couple of days. I'm really hoping that the cause was not 86'n it construction debris, or we are going to feel really guilty.

Even more brutal was the 3 hours right afterward that we spent at the vet with our sick cat, Tuna. She has a mass in her stomach that is getting removed tomorrow, so please wish her the best!

Vote over there --------------------------------------->

My Doorbell - The White Stripes











Ring My Bell - Anita Ward











More Cowbell - Christopher Walken








Knock 3 Times - Tony Orlando & Dawn

Anybunny, while Marc was slaving away in the kitchen mudding & taping in the heat, I was sunning myself in Florida by the pool while on "labor duty" for my sister who is 38 weeks with child. It was a tough job, but I was up to it. No baby so far, but judging by the morphing alien shape of my sister's belly, it won't be long. We tried to get an estimate, but unfortunately, when your older brother yells thru your mom's stomach "Baby Owen, what are you doing in there??", it doesn't compel you to do more than roll-over and karate kick your mom's bladder.

Until I get the camera mailed to me, old photos of my nephews being cute and crappy cellphone photos are just going to have to suffice.

I decided that while the flip clock is really awesome, ultimately it is just a knick-knack and we don't need it. What we do need is a doorbell, specifically a doorbell that you can upload music to. And of course, because this is 2008 and even my In-Laws have ipods (they are so hip!) such a thing exists.

Most days my job is really fun. I work with interesting, funny people. I sometimes get to go to the liquor store. I get to design things that are to be built with other people's money, and they do get built without me every having to lift a hammer.

But some days I have to venture into places where I am pretty sure they filmed parts of Silence of the Lambs.

Places where you are breathing in asbestos pipe wrap and 11 different kinds of mold. Where you see an actual bathtub of weird brown liquid just like in SotLs, AND an undiscovered species of albino spiders that are not translucent white, but completely opaque white (seriously), AND weird rotting wood walls that look like cages complete with scratches on the inside. (And people wonder why I shutter uncontrollably when they jokingly quote that "Bring out the gimp" line from Pulp Fiction.)

I'll spare you the photos, but this place made my house's basement seem like it just had both the Clean Sweep & Design on a Dime TV vans pull away and give us a post-renovation toot on the horn.

(p.s. I just went to the bathroom at work and noticed a bug crawling around in my hair. I think I need delousing. I am soo getting reimbursed for that.)

Well, besides finding out my exam results on Saturday, I also managed to run 11 miles! I haven't run that far in one stretch since high school probably. It felt great to do and now I feel more confident that I can actually do the Blue Ridge Relay in less than 2 months! I was already starting to get really sore, so Saturday was a bust for working on the kitchen. We decided instead to see the local Roller Derby. OMG. It was so fun! I highly recommend it. Asheville beat Charlotte and it was pretty wild! Check out the Blue Ridge Roller Girls for more info. Next match is August 9th I think.

Sunday we actually managed to get some stuff done. I pulled a million nails out of the dining room ceiling joists while Marc pretty for taping & mudding the kitchen.


Then, while he was mudding, I was reinforcing the dining room ceiling joists with plywood because they are sort of springy. I only got 3 done (of 11), but crap! I was still sore from running.


Hopefully I can finish the plywood and Marc can make tons of headway in the taping and mudding department so we can measure for cabinets!!!

Let me tell you, I've been nervous about the results to all my exams, but this one was the worst. It took over a week longer to get the results and I had myself all psyched out that I had failed. I even made a bet with Marc that if I passed, he could redo the kitchen light well like he wanted. He must have been extra confident in me, because I came home on Friday and he had already re-done it! Good thing I did pass, because if I didn't, I would have been in such a foul mood, I might just have made him tear it out.

Anyway, so Saturday we walk to my office to check the mail. I spotted the letter and started shaking and Marc said I went ghostly white. I was so dang nervous that when I saw the word "passed" I burst out bawling right in my building lobby!

The next and last three tests are graphical, and 6 hours long! I've just got to keep my whits about me and plow thru!

There, I said it.

Unfortunately, I said it to my new coworkers too. So they promptly issued me The Great Shoe Challenge. I have to wear all 73 pairs (including the work boots and hot pink patten 80's prom heels) with no repeats.

Seeings how I live in a house with a room called the "scary room" & plywood for a door AND a window, I'm always up for a challenge. But man, I under estimated it because this has been HARD. It will take over 3.5 months (workdays only) and I'm only 28 pairs in. The added complication is that I walk to work and MANY of my shoes are pretty damn uncomfortable (beauty is pain people!). My flip-flops have been traveling the path to work pretty often.

Drywall is complete! But to do so, we had to loose a door. Marc has been in the hunt for a new one that matches the one that we got for the hallway, but with no luck. So for now, it is klassy plywood for us.

It doesn't bother me, but Tuna just doesn't get it. Here she is sitting in front of the plywood, meowing for us to "open" it and let her out. Poor kitty, livin' in the crack house is crimping her style too.

So we decided to do my first real backpacking trip this weekend and it was a blast. I've spend plenty of time in the woods day hiking, car camping, short walk-in camping and even carried a HUGE backpack around Europe for a month, but never had I done the full-on carry all your stuff on your back and purify your own water deal.

This trip was in Avery County, NC in the Brown Mountain area and stretched over 3 days. (Hunt fish falls & Gragg Prong to be specific.) I highly recommend it. I think we did 10-12 miles round trip with one KILLER uphill part.

Here's some photo outtakes. The first of Marc filtering water & the second of me with my relatively small backpack on. Everyone else's was much bigger I hate to admit! But hey, Marc bought it for me.

Your nephew is turning 6 (!) and he wants a skateboard. So you think it would be cool to tag it for him. But you are 30 and you don't know how to tag despite the fact that you live everyday with this.

So you do what any geeky 30 year old aunt would do. You go to dafont.com, find a good graffiti font, make a stencil and spray paint it in your back yard at 3pm.

Yeah, wow, I'm pretty lame and certianly no neckface.

(p.s. aren't my nephews the CUTEST ever?)