House Update

My friend Ali told me when all this began that in his culture, people would say that someone had put the Evil Eye on us. I'm beginning to think they might be right.

The Good News:

1) We've ordered cabinets again, and they will be shipping Feb. 16. They will be delivered within 2 weeks of that, and then they will be installed at some point. So, we are looking at having kitchen cabinets sometime in March. Yay!

2) We've ordered countertops again. We have to wait for the cabinets to be installed before we can actually get the granite, but it's all in process.

3) Our pool is fixed again. It has broken every month since we've lived here. Let's see how long it makes it this time!

The Bad News:

1) We filed a lawsuit against our contractor on Dec. 19, but for some reason Dallas County has still not served him with papers. More waiting...

2) Our 4-month-old mattress developed a huge divot that was causing us some back pain. I mean, what are the odds? We had to schedule the furniture company to come out and take a bunch of pictures and measure the divot. It was big enough and the mattress was new enough that they just exchanged it for a new mattress on Friday. Thank goodness it was that easy, but seriously, the easiest thing would have just been for the mattress to do what it was supposed to do.

3) We had the HVAC guy come out to do an estimate on replacing the vents in the front of the house. It's not that expensive, but with everything else, it's just a big pain.

4) We had an electrician come out to do an estimate on fixing all the wiring (none of the plugs or overhead lights work in the front part of the house). It was very expensive, and I think we need to get more estimates. But this just takes up a bunch of time and money as you have to pay about $150 a pop for estimates.

5) Because of the big freeze this week, they didn't pick up our bulk trash, and it's still all just sitting out in front of the curb!!! I really hope they don't just put it off until next month.

So, we're pretty frustrated right now, but at the same time, we feel like stuff is sort of getting done around here. I don't know. Things are better, but they're just really not good. I guess I'm glad things are moving forward, but it's really hard to have patience when you have lived in a house for 6 months and still don't have a kitchen. Anyway, there it is.

Bulk Trash Day

A few weeks ago, we did a load of yardwork (the previous owners of our house had obviously not pruned or even raked the yard in the entire 11 years they lived here!). It's been sitting in piles in our yard since then, and this week is our bulk trash week. We spent the morning hauling it all out to the curb along with a bunch of construction trash our contractor left piled up in our garage. Here's the final result:
As you can see, the pile of brush is higher than Jon's waist! Whew! I'm glad it's over.

Doggy Steps

Truly Scrumptious

I realize I just posted like an hour ago, but then I got "Truly Scrumptious" stuck in my head and I started thinking about all the vocabulary words I learned just from that one song. I'm posting the lyrics here, because they're so adorable, and I've loved this song since I was, like, 6 years old. And it really did teach me good vocabulary! Plus, I love the rhyme "delicious" with "our wishes." It taught me a little something about poetry, too, I guess. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (The Musical!) is coming to Dallas this summer, and we have to go. I cannot forget or decide to be lazy. Please, friends, remind me that I want to do this or I will regret it!

Toot sweets sound like what they are
So do lollys in a lollypop jar
Gingerbread men have a gingerbread sound, we've found
Sugar plum cinnamon and lemon tart
Tell you what they are right from the start
And your name does the same for you

By coincidence, Truly Scrumptious,
You're truly, truly scrumptious
Scrumptious as a cherry peach parfait
When your near us, it's so delicious
Honest, Truly, you're the answer to our wishes
Truly Scrumptious,
Though we may seem presumptuous
Never, never, ever go away
Our hearts beat so unruly
Because we love you truly
Honest, Truly, we do.

Truly scrumptious,
You two are truly scrumptious.
Scrumptious as the breeze across the bay
When you're smiling, it's so delicious
So beguiling - you're the answer to my wishes
Truly scrumptious,
You two are truly scrumptious
And I shan't forget this lovely day.
My heart beats so unruly
I also love you truly
Honest, truly, I do

First Day of Class Again

I had my first day of class for this semester: Contemporary American Novel. There is a list of 13 books, most of which have won the Pulitzer in the last few years. Everyone in the class was talking about how they had already read like nine of the books on the list. I have read exactly one book on the list. And I read it last semester. But who wants to read Pulitzer Prize-winning novels when you can be reading "Twilight" instead?

So, in class, my professor asked the rhetorical question, "What was the first book printed in the West?" Meaning, Western Civilization, not the American West. The girl next to me was like, "The Bible?" I said, "The Fall of Troy," because being so close-minded as I am, I always take West to mean England because really that's where all the good stuff happened. And I actually placed my little grubby hands on a first edition of the Fall of Troy last semester at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, so yeah, I kind of know that's the first book ever printed in England. You can imagine my astonishment, then, when my professor proceeds to answer his own question saying, "Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur." WHAAAAT?!? That is just not true. He is just plain wrong. I wrote my Master's thesis on that book, and it was not the first book printed in England, much less the entire West. No, no, no. Maybe if by "book" he meant "novel" you might have an argument, but even that issue is hotly contested (well, you know, as hot as those contests get). What should I have done? Should I have corrected him so the room full of my fellow grad students would not be grossly misinformed? I'll tell you what I did do. I turned to the girl next to me and whispered, "That's not true!" in a scandalized voice and then just stopped listening.

Another Dream About Babies

So, I barely remember this one, but I do remember that Jonathan told me he thought I was being stubborn about not having kids, and I got really mad at him for not telling me that he wanted them. Then he said something like, "Well, I changed my mind." And I was like, "Don't you think that's something you might want to mention to me before you start accusing me of preventing you from doing things you want to do?"

Anyway, I'm definitely not pregnant or anything, but, Mindy, you're right. It's very weird that I'm having all these pregnancy/baby dreams. I had another one a few days ago that I didn't blog about. Curiouser and curiouser.

Vacation Plans

I had kind of thought that this year we would not travel anywhere. We were out of the country three times last year plus the trip to Cleveland which is a lot of travelling, even for us. However, we are still having fun thinking of places to go. Jonathan is attending a work conference in Seattle the first week in February, and he arranged to stay over the weekend so that I can fly up and join him. I have never been to Seattle or even Washington, so I am excited. Everyone I know who has been there has said it is a fun place.

Then there's still the possibility of going to Morocco this summer, but I haven't talked to my friend about it in a while. Iberian Airlines is running a sale, though, from Dallas to Morocco of ALL places. For our exact time frame. I am taking it as a good sign that we'll end up going.

Right now we are gearing up for what Jonathan has begun calling our "Staycation." I start school again on Monday, so J is taking Wed-Fri off this week, and we are holing up in The Half-House for the weekend to play video games. So geeky, I know, but we've got this huge pile of games - some of which we've had for years - that we have never played. Or we've played for like an hour, quit, and never played again. So, we have set up both TVs in the living room with all four video game consoles. We've made a list of the games we want to play and ranked them. Tonight we are going to go buy snacks and drinks to live on for the next five days. Barring the installation of our new security system tomorrow morning and a possible trip to Home Depot to finally buy our kitchen cabinets, we will have uninterrupted game playing for three days.

We had planned on getting a hotel room or something and just staying in Dallas to get away from The Half-House, etc. before I went back to school, but I think this will be better. No "what do you want to do?" or "where do you want to eat?" conversations will be had. Plus, constant entertainment. Plus, we don't have to get anyone to watch the Toad. Plus, we don't even have to change out of our pajamas if we don't want to. Plus, we can sell a bunch of our games back and buy new ones because we won't have a huge stack of unplayed games making us feel guilty. It's perfect, really. Let the games begin!