Home is Where the Dogs Live

Well, Dear Readers, here it is. Our house. Our cute, little, cape cod house in Connecticut. Isn’t it just the most adorable thing in the world? It’s like a little piece of heaven in Stratford, CT. Its a great house, but I had no idea how much you had to go through before buying a house.

Have you ever had that dream where you’re standing naked in front of a crowd of people? That’s pretty much what a mortgage approval feels like. You basically go to a bank, meet with the mortgage rep, and then proceed to pour your financial guts onto the table for God and everyone to see. They want salary amounts, debt amounts, loan amounts, credit reports, social security numbers, your grandmother’s birth date - everything. And then they take 48 hours to judge how much that says you are worth. I’d rather poke my eyeballs out with bamboo skewers than go through that again.

But through some miraculous twist of fate, they approved us. When our mortgage originator called us to tell us the good news, I couldn’t believe it. I almost said to her, “Did you see that Chris is in THEATER and I am in EDUCATION?” I mean, you know the real estate market is bad when the primary breadwinner is in EDUCATION and they can afford to buy!

We don’t officially own the house yet. We are still under contract, but our closing date is June 27. Mark your calendars because I will be posting one heck of a celebration post on June 27. Then I will most likely disappear for two weeks while we take care of important things like finding the right place for the tupperware and connecting the cable.

In addition to buying the house, I did manage to graduate this past weekend. My incredible and crazy family made it up to celebrate with us, which was so above and beyond because they will all fly up here in two weeks for Chris’ graduation, too.

My Dad, Chris, Me, My Mom, and My Sister, Ginny

Can you see the relief in my face?

My favorite study-buddy.

All in all, its been a pretty good month so far. We’ll celebrate Chris’ graduation and his getting a fantastic job in two weeks when everyone and their mother (literally) will be in town as he graduates from Yale Drama. But for now, I’m trying to allow myself to stay in the moment. To be excited about what I have accomplished with my masters degree, and to relish the fact that Chris and I are on the road to homeownership.

I am also allowing myself to think of all the hardwood floors that Molly will now be able to chew and scratch. It’s a beautiful house, but what were we thinking? We just bought a house made of wood for our giant, fat headed lab to destroy. What are you gonna do though? Home is where the dogs live.

Highlights

Can’t post.  No time.  Graduating Sunday.  Thesis killing me.  Bought a house.  Work sucks.  Chris found a job.  Family coming to town Friday.

Will post next week if I’m alive.

Molly Stinks

We haven’t bathed our dogs in a while and Molly is starting to smell pretty potent. But she doesn’t really smell like a dirty dog. Today she smells kind of…nutty. Like peanut butter or almonds. Yesterday she smelled like yeast. Lucy won’t go anywhere near her and I think its cause of the smell. Molly, however, feels the need to be very close to us right now. She wants to sit in our laps (REMINDER: Molly weighs about 60 lbs.). She wants to lay on our bed. She wants to cuddle on the couch. And we would, but she smells like peanuts.

Maybe its time for a bath.

House Hunting and Other Marital Joys

You know you’ve been living as a student for too long when you tell your real estate agent that your basic criteria for a house is 3 bedrooms, 2 bath with washer/dryer hook ups and a parking space. I actually said this this weekend and our agent laughed out loud at me. “Where would you live that didn’t have washer/dryer hook ups?” she asked, laughing her head off. Obviously this chick has not lived in student residential areas before where washer/dryer hook ups and a parking space are equivalent to living it it up Vanderbilt style.

This weekend we met our real estate agent for the first time and actually went looking at homes. I had so much fun! If you find shopping of any kind amusing -dress shopping, shoe shopping, grocery shopping - house shopping will put you over the edge. I wanted to make offers on every house we saw. Including the first house, which in hind sight is just plain insane.

The first house she took us to was this adorable cape cod in a great neighborhood. The landscaping was perfect, the backyard was perfect, the back deck was perfect. The inside? Not so perfect. But I saw potential. When I originally spoke with our agent and told her what we were looking for, I mentioned that Chris was a carpenter and so we were not afraid of something that needed a little TLC. This house was the poster child for TLC. It was owned by what one could only assume to be a crazy old couple who were professional yard sale shoppers. The entire contents of their home looked like one giant yard sale in backwoods Alabama. There were paintings of every president from Abraham Lincoln on up stuffed in one corner. There were three fake fire places that hung on the walls by a nail and plugged into the wall so that they glowed like a real fireplace. There were baskets handing from the ceiling in almost every room.

But being the HGTV addict that I am, I reminded myself to look above all of this junk and see the real potential in the house. And I saw it. Despite the fact that there were about 1,000 rooms in a little over 1,000 sq. ft. Despite the fact that the only entrance to the half bath was through the garage. Despite the fact that the front door opened into a tiny, private office instead of oh, say, the living room. Despite the pink tile bathroom and avocado green shag carpet. I saw potential.

I walked around saying things like, “We could just knock these two walls out here and make this one giant room” or “We could just close this doorway here and add sliding glass doors to the other wall” or “We could easily finish this attic and make it a nice reading room if we just put down a floor, added walls and insulation, and put in a couple windows.”

Once we walked out of the house, we stood on the front lawn and the real estate agent asked if we wanted to keep this one on the list. “Definitely,” I said. “I think it has lots of potential.” At which point Chris turns to me and says, “Then I’m leaving you.”

In the end, Chris was right. Why go through all that effort when we could just buy something that’s ready for us to move right into? I guess I got all caught up in the excitement of looking at houses. I have to say though, Chris was a rock star. He asked all kinds of questions that made me feel like a 10-year-old kid. I would ask something like, “Where are the grocery stores around here?” while Chris would ask something like, “When was the roof replaced?” He suddenly seemed so much older to me. At one point he asked something about a property line and I had to literally fight to urge to laugh out loud and punch him in the arm saying, “OOoohhhh….PROPERTY LINES…. Aren’t you smart…”

I looked at him instead and thought, “This is the same person who used to steal his dad’s car and sneak out on school nights to see me and now here we are talking to a Connecticut real estate agent about property lines and recessed lighting.” Its funny that I should realize today that I am actually married to a grown up because tomorrow is our 9 year dating anniversary (not to be confused with our June wedding anniversary). 9 years ago tomorrow we were sitting on his dad’s porch swing and he asked me to be his girlfriend. We were 16 years old. And, ironically enough, tomorrow, 9 years later, we will be meeting with our mortgage specialist at the bank for approval to buy a home. Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?

We’re going out again later this week to see more houses. At the end of the email that our agent sent us, she made sure to note: “And every one of these houses has washer/dryer hook ups and parking.” Boy am I glad. I mean, I do have my limits.

Pomp and Circumstance

I went to school today to pick up my cap and gown because - HURRAY! - they are actually going to let me graduate in May. I get to the bookstore on campus and found my place in the loooong line of tired, graduating students. When I finally got to the front, I was met by this highly attractive European undergraduate student.

Well, hellooo….

I smiled sweetly and said I was here to pick up my cap and gown. He looked me up on the list (while I silently panicked that maybe there had been a mistake and they weren’t actually letting me graduate) and he found my name. But then he said,

“You have an Organizational Management degree? How strange.” Not exactly the words you want to hear as you are a week away from graduating. Suddenly, my attractive European friend was not quite so handsome.

“I don’t have robes for the Organizational Management program. I have Education, Social Work, and Law. Which one do you want?” Which one do I want? How about the one I worked for! He is not attractive at all. I don’t even like his accent now.

“Well, none of those are my degree, so what else can I do?” I ask.

“Um…you can have a PhD robe if you want.” Now is he unattractive and stupid and if he doesn’t stop talking in that accent I’ll strangle him with that tassel.

“Well, I’m not a PhD candidate either,” I say slowly, as if I’m talking to a child.

Blank stare from my foreign friend.

“Is there, maybe, a manager here that I can talk to?” I ask.

“I’m the manager,” he says. Ugly, stupid, European brat! GIVE ME MY ROBE!!

“Okay, well. I guess I’ll take the Education one and just call my department tomorrow. Thanks for your help.”

“Yeah,” he replies.

And there you have it, friends. The future of America.

The 5-Year-Old Philosophy

This weekend Chris and I went to a park with some friends and our dogs. We figured there was nothing a little sunshine and frisbee couldn’t solve. We ended up climbing trees. Like 5-year-olds. And you know what? It was awesome! I suggest if you have any stress or anxiety in your life you take 5 minutes out of your day and climb a tree. I guarantee you that you cannot climb a tree as a grown adult and not crack a smile.

Decision-Making 101

There are lots of decisions that young, married couples get to make together. There are decisions that we make when I really love having someone to help decide - I like if we want beef or chicken for dinner, if we should get the generic oil at the Jiffy Lube or if we should get the good kind, if we want to go see a movie or watch one at home. Then there are the decisions that I wish I could just make by myself and not have to consult someone - like if we should go to Subway for lunch instead of McDonald’s, if we should renew our AAA membership or not (I say no, he says yes, by the way), or if we should lay around napping on Sundays or work in the yard.

And then there is the third category of decision-making as a young, married couple that can get a bit…tense. These are decisions like where are we going to live, should we buy a house now or later, or should we join Netflicks or Blockbuster? As a young, single person these are hard decisions to make. But as a young, married couple they become a wee smidge harder.

As a young, single person, you can be as successful as you want to be. You can go anywhere you put your mind to go. As a young, married couple, you still WANT to be as successful as you can be. You still WANT to go anywhere you put your mind to go. And you still can do these things, but it takes an extra step because you have to make sure that your successes and goals are within a reasonable commuting distance from your partners.

This might be the hardest part of being a young, married couple. And maybe its the hardest part of being any kind of married couple. Or any kind of couple, for that matter. Making the decisions that will balance each of you while still being able to come home to the same house at night. Much harder than it sounds. We are still trying to find the answer to this, but I am fairly certain that at the heart of whatever the answer might be is the simple truth that we chose to go on this ride together and at this point, the lap belts are securely tightened and we are pulling away from the platform. No turning back now. So we just grab eachother’s hands and get ready to scream, laugh, get flipped upside down, and maybe even puke along the way. As hard as these decisions are, at the end of the day there really is just one question to answer.

Is the person strapped in next to you the person you want to ride with for the rest of your life?

My answer is yes.

The Laundry is Back

It is happening again. Laundry is taking over my bedroom, my house, and my life. I literally have run out of clothes. I have been accused once or twice in the past of crying wolf when I say I have nothing to wear (usually while staring into my closet busting with clothes - some with the tags still on them, but that’s a different post). But this morning, I woke up and for the first time in my life I actually, literally, honest to God had not one pair of pants to wear. I grabbed a skirt, got all the way dressed, and realized I had run my last pair of tights last week and even though it LOOKS like spring outside, it is still only 50 degrees so you can’t go without tights yet.

Fighting the urge to just crawl back in bed and call in to work naked, I took a moment to survey our house.

Clothes were everywhere. On our dining room table (those were clean, just not folded yet), on our side table (those were socks, which Molly has stolen half of and I still can’t find where she’s hidden them), on our coffee table (those were two socks I actually caught Molly stealing and took away from her). They were inside, on top of, and in a 4 ft. radius around the hamper. There was a pile of pants on my dresser that I pulled out last week to take to a tailor (thanks to a suggestion from a lovely reader of this humble blog). There was a pile of dry cleaning clothes in the chair in our bedroom, which Lucy has dug a nice tunnel into and is now living in. There were clothes so deep on our floor that I had to dig a path to my closet and then I had to dig an area around the door so that I could open it.

CLOTHES ARE EVERYWHERE!

Let me tell you what this does to me. Physically, it has tripped me on multiple occasions and has caused me to stop speaking to my worthless husband until he helps and does a load of laundry (well, he’s not really worthless, but I’m mad at him so I’m allowed to embellish). Mentally it is just exhausting. I come home after a long day and it is such a depressing sight to see. Just another something I need to take care of.

Well, I can’t take it anymore. If I come home today and the situation isn’t any better, then I’m packing it all up and dropping it off at the cleaners. For $100 they’ll clean, iron, and starch my stress away. Chris may divorce me, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Chivalry is Dead

Katie:    If there was a monster loose in New York City and you knew I was in danger, would you come find me and save me?

Silence.

Chris:    How big is the monster?

Dirt, Digging, and Dogs

Yesterday was a perfect day. It was the kind of day outside that makes you feel guilty for staying inside. Usually on days like that, we take the dogs to a park or field or something outside so they can run and play, but Chris had different plans this weekend. He convinced me to stay home and to work in the yard with him. Now, my gardening skills are about as good as my baking skills. I just have no interest in it. I don’t like to get dirty or sweaty. I don’t like bugs and I try to avoid as much manual labor as possible. Take me for what I am.

But I agreed to at least stay outside and play with the dogs while Chris worked in the yard.  First, I made Chris pick up all the doggy “calling cards” in our yard so that I could run around out there safely.

After that, I decided to check out the dog’s hideaway. They have this corner of the yard that they like to hide in.  We call it their fort. They get behind this bush and I don’t know what what they do - make bird feeders out of milk cartons or plot to take over the trash cans outside - I don’t know what happens back there. So I decided to find out.

Here is the bush/fort:

Its actually not that interesting, but I did find a few holes that they were digging under the fence. Now I know they are going all Shawshank on me out there. Bad dogs. So I blocked their holes and moved over to see what Chris was doing. So did the dogs.

Lucy helped Chris rake:

And not to be outdone, Molly was right behind her:

We (and by “we” I mean “Chris”) put up a little picket fence around the vegetable garden so that the dogs didn’t get in there this year and eat all the veggies. Last year, they thought we were growing a regular salad bar out there for them. A few hours after the fence was up, Molly decided she was over the fence thing and wanted to check out the cucumber situation:

Then she got in trouble:

A little later in the day, Molly came to say hello to me and I had my first casualty of the afternoon:

After this, I figured, “What the heck?” and I jumped into the flower beds with Chris. He gave me a pretty new, shiny hand shovel and I planted some bulbs. I felt like I was contributing.

Later that night, Chris took me out to dinner and to Barnes and Noble to reward me for being so helpful (I can be a bit of a child about things like that.  But what’s wrong with needing a good, healthy reward system???).  I’ll work for dinner out somewhere any time!!