In our neck of the woods...

TODAY...

I woke up early so that I could let the contractor in to our home... thinking that we'd get some more work done on our master bath. He was scheduled to come and install an overhead fan in our bath, and move over our AC vent. The attic access is in our office closet. Our office was housing our 10 or so boxes of crap that emerged from our masterbath cabinets. I began moving them all over to our guest room (a room that is filled with a tarantula, a water tortoise, and a king sized bed mattress currently... and has little to no room to walk into.) The box additions didn't help beautify that room any! It seems that these home renovations only clutter the already disheveled.

Our contractor no-showed.

Our dryer stopped working last night. The man came today and for two and a half hours, I listened to him talk his way through the project. I wasn't in the room. He wasn't trying to involve me in anything... just talking to himself. It was uncomfortable. I felt like Mel Gibson... Like I'd been given a chance to hear someone else's thoughts. For the 2nd day, he "thinks" he's found the problem. Tonight, I'm going to put it to the test.

I took Freebie (my cat) in to the vet today as a "last chance to live with us" attempt. Over the last two months, he has been "marking" areas of our home. It started with the dog beds and I just figured that they had pissed him off in some way.... 3 sets of beds later, he was still at it, and had added peeing on Matt's feet WHILE HE WAS LAYING IN OUR BED to his list!!! We kicked him out of the house. ARGGHHH! Last night, I allowed him to come back inside for only a few moments to eat dinner. I turned my back to put some laundry away, came back out to the kitchen and smelled something. HE PEED IN MY PURSE! -- Which just happened to be lying on top of all the proposals for the work that's being done on the house. I called Matt and told him - through tears - that it was time to get rid of my cat. Matt called the vet this morning and they said that for a cat to change their behavior that drastically after 2 years, there's probably something medically wrong, and to bring him in.
The dumb cat cost $118 today for a UA test and a little bottle of antibiotics. They don't have the results of the test yet (tomorrow we'll know) but there HAD BETTER be something wrong with this cat. Or Freebie just got very expensive during his last days with us.

Speaking of medical stuff, I had to have a chest Xray done today to test for TB. The school makes you have a test every 2 years, and my time had come. When I went to the lab they would not do the injection in my arm. They seemed almost afraid of sticking me, since I tested positive before. What would the reaction have been I wonder? I bet I would just have shown positive again. It was eery the jumpiness of the ladies. Hmmm.

The firepit grout is beginning to dry and it looks awesome! The past few days we've had this cold front and it's making me want to light a fire SO BADLY! I can't wait for smores in my backyard. Check it out... I know you'll love it too!

Friday, we get to add a "sealer" to it so that the rock and the slate tiles' color really show up (and it protects it from weathering... but you can tell what I think is most important!)

The landscaping is completed finally as well. It only took our guys three tries at guessing the right amount of grass. I guess our yard is deceptively large! It really looks fantastic and the dogs don't know what to do with themselves. They are just elated to have grass after a long "rock-hard dirt" year. They go outside and just roll and roll.

I feel like such a grown-up with all these big projects and decisions.