skills, surprises, and cats behaving badly

i have learned that, despite my moderate skill as a photographer, i am terrible at photographing houses. i might actually have to change out my favorite 60mm lens for something with a wider angle to it, as the house's layout makes it almost impossible to capture an entire room with my usual equipment. as such, i seem to have defaulted to utterly useless close-ups on things like wallpaper and radiators that no one but me would ever possibly care about.


some of our insane wallpaper


gorgeous dining room floor detail


But anyway.

with exception to the cashier's check for the largest sum of money we will likely ever lay hands and eyes on, our settlement was fairly painless. Our sellers were chatty about the house's little nuances, and how they left us a ladder, a vacuum, and miscellaneous other useful things to ease our transition into homeownership.

My dad came with his truck to help us move our furniture, which is mostly comprised of thrift store finds and dumpster diving treasures that seem to gain weight with each move. Being of limited use in moving scenarios and even more limited upper body strength, I stayed out of the way and instead hefted small boxes and our fat cats.

We had decided to corral them in one room for several days to keep them out from underfoot and away from open doors and precariously leaning boxes. Somehow even though neither cat minds her carrier or travel, the instant they were back together in a new place it was as though their furry little lives were ending. i have not heard so much hissing and crying from the smallest darkest corner of a room since the last time we moved. Callie gets upset more by Panda than by life, but Panda is a shelter rescue so every change of scenery is some manner of cataclysm to her. But we deafened ourselves to their pathetic mewling and kept on task.

When the hauling and grunting was finished for the night some friends came over to check out the new digs. Gerry, a good friend and the owner/brewmaster of GG Brewers (our favorite local microbrew and food spot) came over with wine glasses and a bottle of chianti we got him in Italy in 2008.



After the toast we enjoyed our first thunder storm from out beautiful front porch slider chair while I began the uphill battle of washing laundry (it is still novel after two weeks; all my clothing smells clean when i wear it now!).

Brian and I spent our first night at the house filled with a mixture of pride, exhaustion, and elation. He inflated the air mattress and quipped with alarming accuracy, "Ready for the worst night's sleep of your life?"

I was not.

We woke early the following morning to the ruckus of backhoes, trackhoes, and all manner of diesel monsters that go beepbeepbeep when they reverse; our rear neighbor's lovely construction crew apparently rose with the sun, whereas we sleep into midday whenever possible. Brian struggled futilely against waking while i made the most of an early start with coffee in a ceramic Canucks beer stein (the only mug we had so far found to unpack) and wandering around with my camera to take the aforementioned mediocre pictures. I documented some of the very cluttered "before" state of the house and tried to calm the cats.



Panda had found this spot to sulk in, while Callie was sleeping in the litterbox.

By night #2 the fridge housed half a pizza, a case of beer, and some bottled water. I had already run five loads of wash while taping the kitchen in preparation of painting. i had also broken several pieces of decorative trim held on with nothing but chewing gum and the prayers of a children's choir, but the soundtrack to my labor was Motown and i was in fantastic spirits.

When Brian got home from work i was filthy and several of our friends had arrived as though lured by the scent of beer on the wind. We gave many enthusiastic tours before settling once more on the porch to whinge about being tired and muse over how fabulous our asses and thighs would be in a house with three floors and four flights of stairs.

Painting, organizing, and unpacking were forgotten in favor of resting on shaky laurels and tackling the beer supply. When the night grew colder we moved inside to settled on the lone couch or the floor and contemplate home design until the night became morning again. Other than that brief respite, our first weekend was a havoc of packing, driving, moving, sweating, and swearing. Our kitchen was a barely contained dust storm from all the sanding, but with one exception was ready to paint.

That exception, fondly remembered as house surprise number one, was discovered when i was pulling nails from the walls prior to patching. over the doorway the previous owners had left a cute little eucalyptus wreath. Not our style, but adorable nonetheless. I pulled it off the wall and found it was more function than form, and had been concealing this awesome snarl of wires:



In my mind, no sane person would hang dried plants on live wires, but there is no guarantee that our sellers were sane OR that my mind is a reasonable gauge for normal human activity. Now we own a device that tests for current just to be sure, and upon finding them harmless we cut the wires pack, taped the exposed ends, and shoved them back into a hole. Now that it has been patched over and painted I can pretend it never even existed except in humorous anecdote.

Speaking of patch, I should buy stock in that color-changing patch compound; it is the most awesome home improvement tool i have discovered so far. We used almost half a tub on the kitchen alone. I should also buy stock in the Home Depot for the amount of visits we have made in the last two weeks and the money we have spent there, but at least that was expected. My uncle came through in awesome form with an alarmingly large stack of gift cards and coupons, so the hit to our bank account was far smaller than it could have been for all the things we have needed so far. Satisfied, we went to bed early Sunday night, eager to sleep on a mattress after three nights of sleeping on a glorified balloon.

We woke bleary and confused to the enthusiastic chime of the doorbell to our back door (why does the back door need a doorbell?). Brian donned shorts and a shirt and trudged down the creaking staircase while i swallowed my curiosity in favor of nestling deeper into my pillow. When he returned and reported that it was 6AM and there was no one at our door, I shrugged it off as ghosts.

Our first full week in the house was a mix of going to work, moving the last of our stuff, painting the kitchen, replacing door knobs and lock cores, replacing a broken 15' section of gutter, and moving as much junk from the downstairs as we could because another problem had arisen. Our turtle, Froedrick, had somehow escaped his temporary housing and was loose in the house. As he is partly maimed from cannibalistic attacks by our other turtle Vincent, we were fairly certain he had not made it to a different floor. Still, he somehow eluded us for almost a week before finally turning up behind a bread machine, trying to make a break for the back door. Don't let the tortoise and the hare confuse you into thinking all amphibians with shells are slow--aquatic turtles are fast as shit. Even gimpy ones can get a fierce scramble for freedom on when the mood suits them. But amazingly, he was alive and well despite nearly a week without water or food. Little bugger.

Now that the turtles were safe, sound, and accounted for and the kitchen paint was dry, we let the now destressed and thoroughly curious cats loose on the house to slink about in cautious wonder and try out every window and perch they could find. This included exploring the recently used tub, which led to a hilarious trail of muddy pawprints on all manner of counter tops and surfaces they know are off limits.



Callie is very small for a fullgrown spayed female cat (Panda porked up like a fatty when I adopted her and had her spayed, and I expected Callie would do likewise), so she finds her way onto small precarious spaces like railings:



Panda, while less agile, is considerably smarter and somehow figured out how to pop the bedroom door open while I was in the tub today, so I discovered this adorably naughty scene.



Brian is mildly allergic; they are not allowed in the bedroom and definitely not on the bed, so naturally it is their favorite place to be if they can manage it. Just to mock me and my inferiority, she trilled cutely and did a lot of stretching and rolling to demonstrate her ownership of our mattress before I hitched up my bath towel and ejected her from the room.

Obviously, we have achieved home internet. Happily, this has not yet distracted me from Getting Things Done, at least not as much as the joy of soaking in the tub and food preparation in my new kitchen have. I have made myself a number of lovely salads to lunch on at work, and my coworkers are having a good laugh at a 26 year old with a lunch box. I also made perhaps the best sandwich ever today--Toasted roll, avocado, red onion, roast beef, and horseradish cheddar.

To recap:
I cook a lot.
my cats are monsters.
we have made the following repairs and alterations
-fixed the toilet so we no longer need to jiggle the handle
-repainted the kitchen
-replaced locks
-started a compost barrel
-replaced gutter section and installed a rain collection barrel
-planted some plants, and started the war on our creeping ivy

adieu!