Chooch Shame

Except for when he’s eating sanitary products and entire tubs of vaseline, Chooch is actually fairly (fairly) well behaved.  Fairly.  The one thing that turns him into a ravenous demonic crack head dog is window treatments.  At the house we just left, he destroyed 3.5 sets of blinds and 1 window pane– so because of him we’re pretty much prepared to be getting about $7.12 back from our security deposit.

We thought we’d be, I don’t know, turning a new leaf with the new house– but apparently it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog to FREAKING QUIT EATING THE BLINDS CHOOCH.

He is lucky that he is so darn sweet and adorable… and that our first reaction was “Well at least we can submit it to Dog Shaming!”

Enjoy the Chooch love and I’ll be back with more soon– although my fan base (AKA my mom) informs me that they are sick of me making that promise only to disappear for another 7 days.  Pinky swear this time!

Hi

Greetings from the greater New England area where  your intrepid narrator is traipsing around this weekend, celebrating the extremely happy occasion that is our very very good friends’ wedding.

More when we return! I am at the rehearsal and crying already.

Let’s Talk About Hair (Slow News Day)

Here is where I out myself as a true failure of a twenty-something chick: hair maintenance is extremely far down on my list of priorities.  I cut my hair… twice a year.  No joke.  Only once a year do I splurge and get a cut and highlights at an actual salon place, and then about 6 months later when I start to look like Garth Algar I go to Hair Cuttery for a trim.  ($15 GUYS!).

I swear… it’s the same.  I don’t know what others’ thoughts are, but my experience with hair is that its level of attractiveness is more proportional to the amount of time I spend with it in the morning than how much I spent the cut.  If you are too lazy most days to spend more than 93 seconds with the hair dryer (me), no expensive cut is gonna bail out yo slacker self.  Conversely, if I actually bother to bust out an appliance of some kind, I can usually walk out the door feeling OK about my head.  So $15 it is.

I also abhor the process of getting my hair cut.  IT’S SO BORING.  I am simply too hyper to sit in a chair and gaze at myself in the mirror for 45 minutes.  You try to read and they just yell at you to pick your head up.  Or you are subjected to the worst torture of all, 45 minutes of small talk with the cutter.  Holy God.  Last time I had to suffer through that I walked out with this stylist’s life story… childhood.  Sister’s divorce.  Death of first dog.  Current dog that they can’t bring themselves to put down but it’s probably time.  House remodeling.  Neighbors they don’t get along with.  Complaints about the bad benefits from the salon.  None of that was hyperbolic or fabricated for the sake of jest. TRUE STORIES, ALL OF IT.

So… anyway.  I skipped my annual highlights treat at the salon this summer (umm, did I mention the part about walking away from my job/income when we came to PA?) and my hair has deteriorated rapidly from cute blond to rodent blond.  Very un-cute.  I’m quite leery of cheap color for a lot of reasons.  Dye is probably low quality and full of 4,000 carcinogens and illegal in 12 states, much higher stakes if something goes wrong (you can’t blow dry your way out of a color disaster), etc.  But desperate times call for… extreme cheapness.

So I was intrigued when we got a coupon in our new mailbox for $10 off a color treatment (“a $40 value”) at something called Cost Cutters.  $30 for highlights? Hot diggity! Also… $30 for highlights? Meep.

So what is this Cost Cutters?  Is it like a poor man’s Hair Cuttery? (Repeat: MEEP).  I asked Google for some reviews and here is what Shanksbbygurl94 has to offer…

I… umm… guys…. I… just can’t.  This may be slightly irrational, but with my ego already fragile right now, I can’t help but worry that Cost Cutters will lead me down some kind of slippery slope wherein one day I’m a respectable woman, and the next day I’m picking outa picturr and asking for high lights everyware.  Except then I walk out looking likea lion.  (Actually my first pass at that I was like ‘What’s an ikea lion?’)

Sorry you had to read all this about my hair.

New House Preview

As I indicated before, agreeing on a house across state lines was a-freaking-nnoying.  Picking out a place is also hard, isn’t it? Going in I said I had only one thing on my must have list– hardwood floors.  We have them now and I pretty much want to make out with them on a daily basis.  Two primary reasons:

A) Hardwoods are attractive.  If floors were people, hardwoods would be, like, Michael Phelps, and wall-to-wall carpet would be… I don’t know… Martin Short.

B) Germaphobe friendly! I get a sick delight out of cleaning the wood floors because you can see the grossness getting vacuumed up and scrubbed away.  Makes my heart pitter patter.  Carpet? Who knows what is or isn’t getting cleaned by the vacuum.  Can you ever truly trust a vacuum? I’ll let you ponder that.

In the end, the house that was right for us was chock-full of carpet.  Beige carpet.  From the window to the wall.  Till the… nevermind.  I made about 3 minutes worth of whiney faces/noises when this reality sunk in.

Then I did a very effective thing and I pictured what would happen if I tried to tell a group of poverty-level Bangladeshis about how hard life would be trying to live with carpets instead of hardwoods in my pretty little suburban house.  They would probably have either LOLed in my face or clubbed me senseless, depending on their mood that day.  I haven’t whined about the carpets since.  I highly recommend this reflection.

But I am still taking measures to make the house sexy like Michael Phelps, so this week was the Paint-a-thon as mentioned.  Here are some before and afters so far!

Living room:

Kitchen:

Bedroom:

The last picture is kind of crappy, but that’s sort of a plum on the walls.  I was just excited to take a picture of the pretty trees!

Now it’s back to DC for four (!) more days… tomorrow is transition session 1 of 2 with my successor at work, who in an awesome twist of fate is actually a good friend of ours! (Yo Maggie!) In all this hysteria it’s so nice to know my boss and colleagues are being left in terrific hands.  And then by this time next week we should be back here and all moved in… wagh!

Home Sweet Pennsylvania

Yo, homeslices.  Remember when I promised to fill you in on my life updates that turned me into a slacker blog-tender? Here is one nugget for you.

The Becker household is on the move! This has actually been in the works for some time, but paranoid me needed to wait till there were signed papers to feel ready to make it blog public.  Jeff, super smarty farty pants, received a terrific job offer in our homestate of Pennsylvania.  Meaning we are moving about 15 minutes away from my family, and about 2 hours away from his.  (An hour+ closer than before, and now connected via a route that doesn’t involve The Highway That Shall Not Be Named, but the one that rhymes with schminety schmive.  GOOD RIDDANCE 95, YOU SOUL CRUSHING DEMON ROAD I HATE YOU).

So, since May, Jeff has been spending his weeks at his new job (crashing with my family in my childhood bedroom, bless him) and driving back to DC over the weekends (where I have been flying solo all week… without our car… whine).   We are finally in the process of re-settling and I will be very happy to be done with this transitory crap, cause it’s been sucky.  Whine again.

This would then lend itself to another fun announcement…  we bought a zoo! Actually no.  Not a zoo.  Just a regular house.  We bought a house.  Almost as cool! And let me tell you that was a joy trying to do from two different states.  But I will spare you that saga.  The end of the story is that we now have a snuggly little townhouse waiting for us.  It’s nothing terribly exciting but it’s ours and I love it so.  It’s so darn precious I wish it had a cheek I could pinch.  But it has siding and stuff.

We “closed” yesterday (omg I hate being a grown up) which was terrifying and of course very much over my head.  I am not kidding when I say the first thing out of the guy’s mouth was “If you’ll turn your attention to line 801…”.  I tuned out and dreamt of paint colors.

Here I am with the paperwork heading in for the first time! Do you love my old lady get up? Again, I was kind of scared of the process and disguising myself as a responsible adult.

Back to PAINT COLORS! That is what I have been busying myself with this week.  True confession: I always totally rolled my eyes at home decor bloggers who would go on and on about the lengthy decision and research process they followed to choose between paint colors.  Like… did you really just write 2,000 words about Nautical Horizon vs. September Mist vs. Cornfield Cerulean? Because they look a lot like blue, also blue, still blue.  You’re a freak.

Y’all, I’m a believer now! I have never been closer to touching heaven than I was beholding a wall of paint samples at Home Depot.  SO MUCH FUN! I excitedly made selections and then on the way home, Jeff and I heard REM’s “Orange Crush” and delighted in switching out Behr colors in the chorus.  (I’ve got my spine/I’ve got my… Coconut Husk.  Bicycle Yellow.)  (Yes.  Married people are this lame and more.  Deal with it.)

I just finished Operation Paint day 2 of 6, and have completed about half the first floor.  It sucks badly, but at least I feel like I am earning my homeowner stripes.  Jeff will help me over the weekend and then it’s back to DC, where I have another 4 days to clean and totally pack our current place.  Then he comes down one last time to load the truck and drive our wordly possessions North.

It’s a lot going on and  this isn’t even half of it.  (More later).  Right now I am clinging to my mental health which is pretty much a full time job.  Which works out, since this development of course means I had to leave my job.  Again, a story I will get to another day.  I’m still very much working on processing the adjustment.

Smooches to all for your patience with me.