A pleasant surprise

While at work Wednesday night John text me saying Winston came down the stairs all on his own. No coaxing, no whining at the top of the stairs, he just came down.
 Hoping that it wasn't a fluke I waited to see if he'd come down tonight. Just a few minutes after we sat down and flipped on the tube he was making his way downstairs.

After about an hour John went back up to make us dinner and Winston decided to follow. Being so proud and happy I yelled to John that Winston was coming up. With his progress of coming down I was delusional and thought he could handle it himself. That was a big no.
I heard him falling and rushed to help, but I was too late. Luckily it was only a few steps, he landed on his feet and he got right back up, but our wall took a beating.

Not sure what part of his body hit the wall and I felt terrible. I shouldn't have let him go up alone.
John helped him back up while we got dinner ready and I was worried that the small progress made was all ruined and stewed about it all through dinner feeling guilty.

We made our way back down and waited to see if Winston would follow. And he did! And then threw up his dinner on the white carpet.

We're trying to not build up hope, but yay for good Winston news!!!!

If it's not one thing, it's another

This morning I was at work joking around with my co-workers, doing my job when I got a frantic call from my neighbor telling me that water was spewing out into my front yard.
I made an equally frantic call to John and away I went speeding to my house.

I was thinking the worse while I drove. That our whole completed basement would be flooded and destroyed. Of course it would be because we had finally saved up our money after 2 years of things getting in the way to get the fish tank finished and I had scheduled to get it done just the day before. I also was planning on booking our NYC apartment today.
All of that was going to have to wait if the basement flooded because the thing about being on high risk home owners insurance (because of the break-ins) is that you can't really file a claim. You file, you get dropped and then your mortgage isn't happy and fines you until you can find new insurance. So every single penny would have to go towards fixing the basement. It's just our luck, I was sure that's how it would be.

When I pulled into the driveway John and our neighbor were standing in front of the house, but no water was shooting out so I took that as a good sign. When I walked up to John he was soaking wet and him and the neighbor explained what had happened.
When we bought the house John asked if there was anything we need to do with the sprinklers to winterize them. The home flipper said that he put in the system and that there were drains at the end of every pipe so they winterized themselves so we never worried about it.
Turns out he lied. The stop and waste valve apparently needs to be shut off every winter and because we didn't, it burst. John had to borrow our neighbors "key" (a long metal pronged rod) and stick it 4 feet in the ground to turn it off.

Luckily no damage was done to the house, but I'm sure that when spring time comes a lot of our sprinkler line will have to be replaced because of this. John's ecstatic.

In other news, we have this light switch for our basement family room. It was installed 2 years ago and we've loved it. So nice to be able to dim the lights with the remote control when we want to watch a movie.
Well yesterday morning when I got up to let the dogs out I noticed that the family room lights were on. I worried that John had fallen asleep on the couch so I rushed down to see. No John, so I clicked the switch to turn it off. They didn't turn off. They went through the dimming motion like they really wanted to, but then they just stayed dim. I messed with the switch and the remote for 20 minutes until I gave up and finished getting ready for work.

Later that evening I showed John and he messed with it for at least an hour. He flipped the breaker, rewired the switch, moved around light bulbs and it still didn't want to turn off. I told him to call the manufacturer, Lutron,  to see if they could help fix the problem.
After doing everything they told him to do with no luck they put him on hold. He came back up to tell me that he thought we'd just have to buy a new switch, but I wasn't having that. I told him that if they didn't offer to send us a new one then tell them too.
It didn't come to that though, when they came back on the line they said that the switch must be faulty and that they'd send us a new one.

We seem to be skating by our a slim amount of luck lately and I really hope it'll last. John and I usually seem to get the short end of the stick in life. I'm not being negative, I'm just telling the truth. So if life is going too good, which it has been lately, something bad will happen. I'm crossing my fingers that it won't!

Home - The first four months

I bought January - April's Home "O" block last weekend and busted out my paints, glitter and brushes. After I finished each one I'd hold it up and exclaim to John that it was adorable. He'd agree, but I think it was really just to please me.

FAVE!!!

This kit even came with a cupcake that you can set out for someones birthday. I'm sure it won't get used until we have kids, but it's still pretty cute.

I try to be as cheap as possible with these. The only thing I bought were the wood cut outs ($12) then I used what I had on hand. The paints and glitter are all from my college art classes, the gem stones are left over from my black swan costume, I'm not sure why I had wire for January, but hey I did! and the ribbons...sigh the ribbons...I have a sick fetish with ribbon and will buy it just because it's cute. So I vowed that I would only re-use for this project.

The silver ribbon on march is Christmas ribbon, the purple on April is from the leftover supply from making our wedding invitations (8 rolls left!!) and the blue and yellow on the cupcake, well that's from October's "O".

I bought a Valentine's set while at Wood Connection , but I have so many other projects in the works that it's last on the list.

Winston in January

Winston's hasn't really changed since last month. He can still walk...not gracefully though, still has energy to run around the yard barking at nothing and will still eat.

Saturday evening really put our patience to the test. Winston would not settle down, meaning that it sounded like a heard of elephants upstairs. Then he'd walk to the stairway and cry and cry because he wanted to be with us, but didn't want to come downstairs to do so. We begging, pleaded, bribed and nudged until he decided that he'd come.
Twenty minutes later Winston decided that upstairs was where he wanted to be, he even made it up halfway before I made it to him to help him. John and I had a short conversation about what we're going to do with him. Nothing. He'll be with us until he's in pain or can't walk or looses control of his bowels or all of the above.

When I was brushing my teeth Winston threw up in the hallway, maybe the plastic hanger he ate a few days ago didn't agree with him, but it did seem to help him feel better for at least a few minutes. We knew that sleeping was going to be difficult with this pathetic behavior so ear plugs went in.
I think he just really wanted to be with us because he laid by the closed bedroom door and cried most of the night. John got up three times to make him go back to bed and said that once Winston was back in his bed he was quiet for a few more hours.

I think all the late night activity finally got to him and he slept all day Sunday.



Sunday everything was back to normal and Winston wasn't as needy. I just wish I could do more for him, but we really did all we could. I just have to keep saying that loving him, feeding him and giving him a warm bed to sleep on is enough for him.

I'm glad we did the gold beads because that means that we didn't give up on him .

2012 moving onto 2013

I'm not going to lie, 2012 sucked. The world ending on the 21st of December would have actually been a highlight. I won't bore you with the details, just know that it was poopy and John and I are glad we made it through alive and our marriage intact (not that there was any worry it wouldn't).
I hope that this means that 2013 will be full of wonderfulness.

 plans for 2013:

• swamp cooler off the house (finally) and skylight put in
• backyard garden worked on
• seamless rain gutters installed
• fish tank done!!!!!
• vacation to NYC (if we can get our pennies saved)
• craft room re-modeled (this is just a wish of mine, who knows if it gets done)

Happy New Year everyone and party like it's 2013!