carded.

To protect my new stove - er, our bright and shiny new house - Mr. KK and I put in an alarm system.

We don't live in a high-crime neighborhood, but we do live off the main street down a long, dark driveway, surrounded by eerie woods. Even writing that sentence gave me the creeps. You see, Mr. KK's grandmother used to live here, and on the night of her husband's wake, she was robbed. The lessons here are:

1. never advertise in the newspaper that you will be away from your house for, let's say, a wake or funeral, or even a honeymoon. (and certainly don't post it on a blog!)

2. the world is filled with asshats

I'm a neurotic door-locker, so an alarm for those times that Mr. KK works late or is traveling made sense. Plus, this house was robbed before! What if they're casing the joint again??*

*they're not.

The only issue with having an alarm, is having a dog who likes to jump on furniture and into the new window seat we built for him and set off the motion detectors. The first time we set the alarm, we weren't 10 minutes down the road and the alarm company called us. We pulled an illegal U-ey and headed back home, and begged them to un-dispatch the police.

So obviously there's an issue. So I called the alarm company and requested to have someone come out and see if we could lessen the sensitivity or something like that.

So on Friday at 4pm I watched the nicely-marked XYZ Security van come down our driveway, and smiled as the nice man in the XYZ Security t-shirt came to the door.

"Hello. Do you have picture ID?" I asked him.

He answered with a dramatic and - what I would say utterly exaggerated - sigh, and walked back to his van. He rummaged around for a bit and came back with a badge.

And, in an exasperated tone says to me, "Here it says XYZ Security. That right there is my name. And there's a picture of me." He left a silent, 'Satisfied?' in the air between us.

I replied with a sweet 'thank you' and we got to work.

I felt my request for ID was a legitimate one. After all, I was inviting him in to help me work on the security of my house. Maybe he hijacked the REAL security guy 2 blocks away, looked up my address, and came over to attack me.

Or maybe I watch too much CSI.

yep. i'm back, baby.

If I were to describe the last two months in one word: ridiculously insane.

(okay, that's two words. but that should only prove how truly crazy it has all been)

The big news is: WE MOVED INTO OUR NEW HOUSE!

This also means that:

1. We sold our house. It's never a good sign when your realtor says, "In my 30 years of real estate, I've never experienced selling a house quite like this." Besides the FOUR times we were under contract, we dealt with radon, termites, a possible underground oil tank and asbestos. But we got to kiss* our shit-ass neighbors good-bye!

*Our kiss was in the form of one specific and slender finger being extended upward in the direction of their house and crappy caravan.

2. I have fallen in love with my orange beast of a stove. It's amazing. So far I've only used 3 burners at a time. But wait until Thanksgiving - 8 burners and 2 ovens will be fired up. We won't have to heat the house for a month!

3. I lived out of my car. Shameful, but true. Between keeping our valuables away from all of the strangers walking through our house, to packing up our lives and not knowing where anything was, I became the girl with the Trash Car. You name it, I was driving around with it:

• diamond earrings
• marriage license
• leftover tiles to be returned to Lowe's**
• makeup and hair products
• sneakers
• bills and checkbooks
• vito's leash

**still in there.

4. I have 2,357 mosquito bites. Buying more acreage = bug city.

5. I'm no math wizard, but when you move from a larger house with lots of storage to a smaller house with less storage, something doesn't add up. For instance, in our old house, we had a built-in cedar closet in the basement, where we would house all of off-season clothes. Now, all of my sweaters and boots are in boxes piled up in the spare bedroom. We lost an entire room of furniture, which is conveniently in the garage***

***the garage, which should be filled with our cars, is bursting with large tools, furniture, boxes, wall hangings, and more furniture.

6. I'm a hot mess every morning. I still don't know where anything is. My poor shoes are in boxes, and I never have time to dig through to truly find 'the right pair' to wear each day. We didn't find the iron until last week, so I was wearing just a select few outfits to work, since everything else was a wrinkled mess.

7. A to-do list a mile long:

• paint the mudroom
• scrape, prime and paint the study
• put bars and shelving in closets
• make butcher block counter top
• organize basement
• make yard look less Sanford and Son
• convince Vito that we aren't going home, we are home
• hang stuff on our barren walls
• clean out garage
• remember what cabinet the dishes are in

And yes, even with all of my complaining, it was truly worth it. We couldn't be happier. I couldn't love my kitchen and its 47 cabinets any more. And we couldn't miss our old neighbors any less.

(I missed you, blog world!)

Age over matter

I celebrated a birthday recently.

It wasn't a milestone birthday in the sense that they had a selection of cards in the store calling out my numerical age. But is was a milestone because It was the first birthday I've had that I've felt OLD.

My bones are creaking and cracking.
My eyesight is creeping away from 20/20.
My metabolism has packed up and left town.

But I still have my wit, right???

In honor of my - ahem - 37th birthday, I have composed a list of little wisdoms I have learned.

1. Shoes make the girl
2. Mascara works wonders
3. It's okay to ignore a friend request, especially if they're not a 'friend'
4. You only drink like you're 25 once...when you're 25
5. Nobody puts baby in the corner. Ever.
6. Saying you're going to exercise only counts as exercise until you're 28, then it catches up to you, and you actually have to get off your ass
7. You can always count on your parents
8. There's a lot of truth in the answer you give when someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up (my answer: a writer)
9. Dress for your body
10. Have one interest that you could lose yourself in for hours

Happy birthday to my fellow Aries!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

apologies

apparently my work computer is not blogger friendly. so my last post appears a really long paragraph. it's ugly, i know, but worth reading. (sorry!)

how to put up a backsplash and stay married

It seems it's easy to do home improvement projects in harmony as a couple. I watch A LOT of HGTV. I see the naive couples look at each other and say, "We can totally take down this wall and open up the kitchen!" Cut to the scene where the man is trying to hold up a wall with his back while the Sheetrock rains down on him, the woman holding a sledge hammer, shaking her head with a look of disdain. I'm proud to say that this weekend, that was NOT me and Mr. KK. Oh, we've had our share of - ahem - renovation fun. In fact, we're such big house nerds, that since we've lived in Boston we have "Home Improvement Fridays", which pretty much means that we stay in, order some food, and tackle a project. In our current house, many times that project was hanging something on the walls. Now, let me preface this by saying that once I paint a wall, I'm rather* selective as to what goes on it. Also, I hate putting holes in a fresh wall. Case in point: 75% of our second floor is bare walls. We've lived in the house for over 5 years. I have issues. *VERY Also, our house is old and has plaster walls (read: they crumble like feta the minute you tap them with a nail). Hanging something on plaster walls is maddening. I think that as a new form of punishment for crimes, felons should be told they have to hang 100 pictures on plaster walls, perfectly straight. We are renovating a house that it seems we will NEVER move into (separate blog post to discuss THAT ridiculousness). We're at the point when all of the big stuff is done, so we spend weekends filling in nail holes in the trim with plaster (with my small fingers, which haven't seen a manicure since DECEMBER), painting (and re-painting) the walls and...the back splash. It was back-breaking work, but for 6 hours on Saturday, we harmoniously created this:

reason #389 why i love mr. kk

Yesterday we exchanged the following texts:

ME: "Katie Perry is going to be in concert in June!!! Would you go and see her with me?"

(read: will you go to a concert with me that is going to be filled with women and 12-year-olds singing 'baby, you're a fiiiiiirework...come and let your colors buuuuurn')

MR. KK: "Sure!"

(read: yes. and I will even use an exclamation point because i know it will make your day.)

I want my $2.00!

I love the grocery store. It's like my Mecca. I love nothing more than strolling the aisles on a Saturday morning around 7:30am, tea in hand, planning my weekly menu before the rest of the world wakes up.

This past Saturday morning, Mr. KK was up and wanted to join me.

So together we headed out. I don't want to sound like a senior citizen, but can you believe the price of groceries these days?? Pretty soon I'll have to choose between electricity and pork chops.

We grabbed a bag of frozen raw shrimp, something I always have in the freezer. The jumbo 21-25 count were on sale for 15.98, $4.00 off.

After we checked out and dropped a small fortune (seriously, why can I NOT escape the grocery store for under $100??) I was reviewing my receipt and saw that they only took $2.00 off the shrimp, making them $17.98 instead of $15.98.

KK: "I'm going to the service desk. The shrimp rang up wrong."

Mr. KK gave me that look, the one that says 'oh good lord you're going to embarrass me'.

I know it was only $2.00, but it was about principal.

Standing in line at the service desk, Mr. KK looked like as happy as he would were he waiting for a rectal exam.

KK: "Why don't you start putting the groceries in the car...I know how uncomfortable this makes you."

I'm not sure I even finished my sentence before seeing the back of his head.

When it was my turn I explained the situation. The girl first checked the circular (no luck), then called the seafood department. Twice.

SERVICE GIRL: "These aren't the ones on sale for $15.98. The smaller ones are."

KK: "These are the size on the sign. In the bin."

I'm a writer. I read EVERYTHING.

We have a staring contest until she says, "I can give you the $2.00 difference even though those aren't the ones on sale."

KK: "I will take the $2.00, since those ARE the ones on sale."

I proudly took my money and walked out.

When Mr. KK saw me I flashed the two bills.

And I would have waited twice as long for half the amount of money.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad