Squeak Update

I was on edge all day yesterday, my plan was if I saw it, me and Little A were going to be out the door in seconds flat. I didn't see it all day, but the anticipation of seeing it was almost worse! I scanned the baseboards of every room every time I entered, I carefully opened doors and looked at the counter tops. Nothing. I hoped maybe this was a one time visit and that I would get a good night's sleep last night.

Just to be on the safe side, M put out two peanut butter filled traps in our bedroom since that's the only place we heard it. He had band practice last night so I was alone when attempting to go to bed, except for my mother who was coaching me from distant lands. I used her advice and slept with our lamp on so that it would stay wherever it was, I didn't hear a single peep. Until 230 when Miss A woke up. I am not sure if that agitated it and it started squeaking or if it had been softly squeaking and I hadn't noticed. Anyway, I heard it and M didn't hear it at first. To me, it sounded like it was right near our heads below the bed. M finally did hear it after an especially loud squeak and we both jumped to the middle of the bed (this occurred even with the lights on).

We pulled the bed away from the wall, nothing. We could hear noise like it's little claws against the wall but we could not see anything where the sound seemed to be coming from. We are considering the idea that maybe it's in the wall, but the one thing that makes me think it's actually in our room is that I found a little wad of shredded paper near my closet....it could be Clete because he's been known to do that but it could also be our rodent perp.

We have yet to see anything...it's so irritating. After we tried to go back to bed last night, I could hear it's chirping/squeaking through the night and other random noises, like the sound of it messing with possibly a lamp cord and then another sound like it was moving some other things that are on the floor. Both traps remain empty....

M is going to vacuum our room today (it's been awhile) so that we can tell if there is more shredded paper showing up. Here's to hoping tonight is better....I know this tired feeling all too well from when A wasn't sleeping through the night. Hopefully this is a short reprieve from the wonderful full night's sleep we have been getting.

Things That Go Squeak in the Night

So last night, it was not baby A that woke me up at 224 am. It was a weird squeaking noise....I listened for awhile longer and am so sure it's a mouse! I woke up M and of course the critter was silent for about fifteen minutes but then he heard it to. Of course, because I was up, I had to pee so I had him escort me to the bathroom.

Once I was safely back in bed, he decides to check out his closet which is where it seems to be coming from. He turns on the light and simply stares into the closet, as if the mouse is going to be standing atop his mountain of clothes flashing a sheepish grin. Of course, he doesn't see anything. Plan B, get the cats. He first brings in Boigie who would be scared of his own shadow, so back downstairs he goes to get Clete while visions of carnage are flashing through my head. On the other hand, I would like to go back to sleep without listening to 'squeak squeak squeak' all night. The cats settle in on the bed for all of a second while the critter is quiet, they get bored and after a scuffle with each other, they both want out. Thanks for nothing!

I didn't hear much after that and eventually fell asleep. I woke up again around 445 and heard it again but somewhere else in the room. M, trying to make me feel better, said it might not even be in the house but in the wall. Or it might be a bird. Yeah right.

So far I haven't seen anything amiss this morning, I keep looking over my shoulder though.....I'm operating on high alert today folks :)

Nesting or Cleaning?

People ask me if I'm nesting, honestly I don't think I am. I'm catching up on all the things I've neglected because of school. Today was a banner day....we have the BBQ coming up this weekend and there was lots to be done, especially with everything still sitting in our bedroom from when the flooring was laid.

My accomplishments for the day:
5 loads of laundry mostly due to destruction of 'the mound' on M's side of the room
Swept steps
Reorganized my closet
Rearranged dining room for party
Put out some of the plates/utensils for the party
Added some things to the hospital bag pile
Studied
Ran to the library to donate books
Put away pillows and extra blankets
Put pictures in office that are going up on the walls
Stored empty picture frames

Accomplishments earlier this week:
Placed all the books back on the book shelf, now located in the office instead of our bedroom!
Moved printer back to office
Partially organized desk

Les Fleurs

A few weekends ago we finally made time to get our hanging plants and shade plants for the side of the house. The bottom picks are on the side of the house where the sun don't shine...so M wanted to create various beds with shade plants. This is the attempt at the first bed, we are entertaining the idea of doing some edging at some point but we'll probably save that until all of the beds are planted, with our luck Home Depot will discontinue whatever we start with. M could tell you the names of all the plants, but aside from knowin that there is a fern or two in there I'm clueless. Enjoy the pics.

Friday Happenings

Today's plans include:

• Not working!
• Sleeping in (only till 745a but that's what happens when you can't make it up past 10)
• Treadmill (done!)
• Listen to diabetes review podcast
• Meet S and S for lunch
• Study
• Call Costco to see where M's birthday gift is....I ordered him a composter on 5/9 and recieved an email saying it went to 'fulfillment' and have heard nothing since

Leaves, Leaves, and More Leaves!

We got behind in leaf removal in the last two weeks or so....and boy did that come back to bite us in the keister.

We decided yesterday would be the day, I told M it would only be an hour or so and we could carry on with our day. Well, it was nearly a full day job, which my dear husband completed mostly solo.

I participated for an hour or so and got overwhelmed when he said we were going to do the front AND the back. The front is one thing, but the back is littered with pine needles, pine cones and acorns. The other thing to note here is that M is a perfectionist. I was instructed that I needed to also do leaf removal from the shrubs and the flower bed areas. I tried to use the excuse that the rake would pull the mulch up and we had to be careful of our tiny rose bush! No go, he said it had to be done.

I stuck with it for a few minutes longer and then thoughts of lunch started clouding my brain. My legitimate excuse was finishing my presentation for class on Tuesday, which I thought that just needed a light buffing but I ended up working on it for the rest of the time that M was working on the yard.

We also met the neighbors across the street. They are probably in their 50's, they mentioned having kids in their 30's and they are grandparents now. They seemed very nice and told us that if we needed anything to let them know. Nice neighbors!

Another Adventure

Tonight, my plan was to bake Lemon Cheesecake Bars with Fresh Blackberries after my trip to the gym and the grocery store. Steps 1 and 2 went well, I was just beginning to crush my graham crackers for the crust when M came upstairs telling me he smelled gas.

I went downstairs and I also caught a whiff of it, then just like that, it was gone. We thought we were going crazy, gave our noses a rest and then went back down a few minutes later. The central air had kicked on and we both smelled it again. We decided to call the gas company who told us to leave everything as is until the technician got there.

They sent someone out and he couldn't detect a leak, he soaped up the pipes three times and couldn't detect anything. So, if it happens again we're supposed to call back....

My cheesecake did get baked, with some trepidation, a few hours later than expected. It's just chilling now, no berry application tonight. If I were a morning person, I'd get up 15 minutes earlier and prep them. Because I'm not, the packaged berries will be accompanying me to work and I'll do it there :)

The Eagle Has Landed

The move is complete. The unpacking, far from it. The movers arrived at 730 sharp and left our house at 330. Wow. I blame M, he has tons of shelving units and they wrapped each shelf seperately. Kidding aside, the estimate was dead on to the actual charges, they estimated it would take 6-8 hours, loading took 4, plus 2.5 hours transit time for them, plus 2.5 hours unloading.

There are a sea of boxes to grow through obviously, but I think we know where the most important ones are even if we haven't unpacked them yet. Most importantly, I remembered to quickly locate some clean sheets and towels for us to know so that when we were ready to keel over, we had a nicely made bed to do it on.

One wierd thing, as the movers left the apt today, probably not more than 30 seconds later because I remember still hearing the truck, I heard someone yelling hello. It didn't sound like the movers but since I could still hear their truck I assumed it was them. I was on the phone with M at the time telling him I was leaving. I go toward the doorway to the living room, and coming up the stairs was this somewhat disheveled tooth lacking man asking if I was the owner. I thought he was going to complain about the moving truck or something. I told him no, that we were the renters. He then asked if we were moving in or out and I said out, he said he wanted to rent it. I told him it was already rented and kept moving towards him wondering 1. how freaky that this guy just decided to walk into my house 2. why were we having this conversation at all 3. had he been watching the movers because as soon as they left he was in my house. He kept telling me he wanted to rent the apt and asking if the owners lived downstairs, what real estate agency they used. Tons of questions, I took quite a disgruntled tone with him but he wasn't getting it. Finally he left. The movers had been great about shutting all the doors again when they were done using them but inexplicably left my front door and screen door wide open. the whole thing was really unsettling. I checked all the doors again and everything was locked, I looked outside and couldn't see him walking down the street or driving away so I was a little skeeved out to leave but all was ok.

In other suburban news, our mailbox that has been repaired earlier this week, or was it late last week, was facing straight one minute as M was looking out the window then was suddenly facing sideways with the flag knocked off the next. All this as two prepubescent boys on bikes circled around it and looked up at the house. M didn't actually see them do anything but it's kind of fishy..we're not sure if they accidentally hit it while riding bikes or what, but it's not like it's that close to the street so who knows.

I'm off tomorrow, the fridge is finally coming and so is the town to update our water meter. And unpacking, lots of unpacking.

Packing, Spending, Repairing.

One short commute left....

The move is this Tuesday. It seems like it has taken forever to get to this point yet we still have a fair amount of things to pack up. We have taken a lot of things up to the house in our cars and trying to save the furniture and the big bulky boxes for the movers. We have taken some clothes, shoes, most of our dishes at this point, all of our dried goods and spices up there. I still have to clean out my closet, which is clothes, bags, and photo albums. We have a few things left in the attic to bring down.

Tomorrow the carpets are being cleaned at the new place, so I'm going to head up there by 9am while M stays home to continue packing.

Oh, before I forget, as if we didn't have enough expenses...M's check engine light came on last weekend. He took it in and let's just say both members of the Y family have new front breaks. I also decided before we leave our current town I should go to the eye doctor since it's about two minues away. $300 later I have new contacts and new glasses which I'm picking up tonight.

We've had our first home improvement issue. Last night, as we pulled into sweet suburbia and were noting the little bunny passing in front of our car, we looked the other direction toward our house and noticed that our mailbox had toppled over. It was barely attached to the post anymore, we don't know if someone hit it or if it just fell over. It's pretty top heavy, I think that's probably what happened. Of course, this is approaching dusk and mere days after we both switched our addresses with the post office so all the mail is coming to the new address now. Luckily,M was handier than either of us expected him to be and was able to brace the bottom of the post with some brackets and nails and get the mailbox standing upright again. It's not too bad as long as you avert your eyes from the shiny metal brackets at the bottom of the post. It was better than spending another $100+ to get a new box and post so until it keels over again, eye aversion is the name of the game.

Dwindling Days

We spent the rest of the weekend bringing more stuff to the new place. Since the previous owners did such a great job cleaning, we've been able to bring boxes up, unpack them and get a little bit organized, bring the boxes home and repack with something else.

I've started organizing the pantry and some of the kitchen cabinets. Today, I put our coats and sweatshirts in the hall closet, yes! we have a hall closet! No more leaving everything at the bottom of the stairs.

Yesterday we bought a fridge from Lowe's and did a 12 month 0% financing deal. Today, we returned and bought our new electric lawn mower. As our luck would have it, we get all the way home to discover that it's defective so poor M had to drive all the way back to exchange it. Luckily, the second time's a charm.

We met our neighbor's wife and his son today, the whole family seems very nice. It was a really nice day today, weather wise. I had the patio door open and was enjoying listening to the wind rustling the leaves. Not really any other sounds....yeah suburbia!

We have only 6 commutes left from our apt. which I am making a mental note to savor this week. 9 more nights sleeping in this apt. Suburbia here we come :)

1st 4th.

We spent the 4th up at the new house and somehow managed to host a few friends. We discovered that people watch the fireworks from a nearby strip mall parking lot, so rather than deal with an unknown traffic situation we joined them. There's nothing like seeing a fireworks display over the neon signs of a Hallmark Store and Fantastic Sam :)

I had heard that our new town had a pretty decent fireworks display and this turned out to be true. It lasted about 30 minutes and had a great finale. Definitely worth going to see.

My friend L and her friend came over, they were the first that got to see the new pad. We had a great time sitting on the back deck, we lit some candles to line the back railing and had a citronella candle to stave off the massive amounts of mosquitoes. We lucked out and really had no problems with mosquitoes. Aside from being ill prepared i.e. no fridge, very few cups, no knives, no plates, no chairs it went off without a hitch!

House Stuff

I'm interrupting the recounting of the trip to tell you that we closed on our house this morning. I was prepared for a much larger stack of papers from what people were telling me but it wasn't that bad.

We hauled some boxes up there in order to try to pare down our moving costs and brought up some cleaning things. The sellers left us a bottle of wine and a good luck note, we met them last night and they were very nice. The man was so proud of all his craftsmanship, the woman had to remind him that we already bought the place and he didn't need to keep trying to sell us on it.

We took pics of the place totally empty, brouht in our boxes and made a list of things (already) to get from Home Depot. We decided to replace the locks, we got a darker knob than they had. All of their fixtures, handles, knobs etc are gold so those are going to slowly be going. Of course, as I was taking inventory on exactly how many of these things we need to get, I also counted that for each door there were 3 hinges that would be required, because of course, those are all gold as well. So needless to say, this will be a slow process....

We also noticed that as we put on the new locks the knobs are just a smidge smaller, small enough to see that the sellers hadn't taken off the hardware when they painted and now there is a ring of white around the front door (it's painted blue) where the old knob outline used to be. We are going to try to find something that comes close enough for now, eventually we'll repaint the door since it's peeling in some areas and get new shutters. They have a medium blue up there now, it's not something I would have chosen...

We had our first visitors. Two gentlemen named Marco and Frencesco (9 and 8 respectively) who incessantly rang our doorbell. When I answered they asked where our children were and could they come out to play. They were crestfallen when I told them it was just me and M but stayed long enough to tell me that when we do have kids they should be careful playing in the streets because they aren't as safe as they used to be, that Marco used to have a parrot named Cuchi Cuchi who was naughty and his mom gave it up for adoption but then felt bad and got it back...there was something else but I forget...