Oh, the joys of a house.

 So, our main drain line is busted & leaking down in the basement every time we shower/flush/wash.  Thank god for maintenance guys!  They were here for a good 3 hours last night finding the leak, & they're coming back today to replace the line.  I will have a big hole cut in the wall of my kitchen, but thankfully it will be covered by the cabinets.  And considering the walls in the kitchen are an ugly-ass black & white sponge faux finish nightmare, it'll be painted soon anyway.  (Blue, if you want to know... "French Court" by Behr.) 

Put DOWN the sponge...

The living room walls above the chair rail will be painted too, a plain tan to go with the sage green bottom half (right now the top is a metallic gold faux finish nightmare with added palm tree wallpaper border hideousness).

The 70's called, they want their metallic paint back.

The maintenance guys, bless their hearts, also found where the dishwasher was leaking - ok, not so much "leaking" as "dumping" - the drain line had been taken out of the utility sink & tucked up out of the way when the basement was painted, so it was draining straight on top of my brand new washing machine.  Yuuuuuck.  I had to run an empty cycle with vinegar in the dispenser to purge the grossness.

To add insult to injury, Jake has stress-peed on the carpet in the living & dining rooms lord knows how many times now, since the carpet is dark tan and we can't see it.  But we can smell it for sure.  Amazingly, the cats haven't done the same.  I think I'll try a good coating of baking powder first before renting a steam cleaner, just to neutralize the smell.  We use a baby gate on the stairs at night to prevent more accidents and are getting him back on a set potty schedule too.  He'll snap out of it soon - this has happened with each move so we know the drill now.

Keep up the shenanigans, mister, and you WILL wear a diaper.

We have to put in a temporary fence in the backyard to keep Jake from visiting the neighbors - he's on a cable tie, but it's a bit too long.  Plus we found out that the property lines in our neighborhood don't go from driveway to driveway, but that part of our backyard is actually the neighbor's.  They don't care, thankfully, but our plans to rip out the overgrown area under the tree now have to be approved by them.  Argh.

And of course, our garage floor is still gravel.  It's only been 2 weeks so I know we need to be patient, but B's tools are still in our storage unit and we have to have a place to put them by the end of the month so we can close that expense out.  We're probably going to have to put some planks or sheets of plywood down in the garage or something.

My mantra right now is "Our lease is up in a year, just a year..."

Surrounded by Boxes

Between the somewhat more time-filling schedule at the bookstore than I had anticipated, plus the scramble to find a place to live in Akron so B didn't have to commute 45 minutes every day, and then the subsequent move... I'm away from my desk, please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.  If you need immediate assistance, press 1 for the operator.  Beeeeeeeep.

Long story short, we looked at seven different places in Akron, the first being awesome but too expensive, some in the middle that were just meh (and some that were yuck), to the last one which, strangely, has the same floorplan as the house we rented in Toledo.  It felt like home right away.  It has its downsides though - no fenced-in yard, so Jake has to be on a cable; fully carpeted; sump pump right in the middle of the basement floor (yick); neighbors literally rightherenextdoor; and no central air.  Which we thought would be manageable with the massive attic fan upstairs - open the windows at night & turn that sucker on, and in rushes the cool air... but unfortunately this only works when it's actually cool at night.  So we bought a portable air conditioner.  Emphasis not so much on the portable really, but easier than a window unit for sure.

But we're settling in, slowly but surely.  The cats stayed at B's parents' place until last night and are now exploring happily, Jake has "christened" the living room carpet already but at least it's a darker color so it doesn't show, we had some mildew on a few things from the storage unit that had to be cleaned, we finally got the basement carpet dried out after the homeowner's valiant effort with a steam cleaner, but most importantly, the beer glass collection is put away in the china display cabinet (which are almost identical to the ones we had in Toledo too).  We're still unpacking (the heat slowed me down a lot, plus the aforementioned crazy work schedule at the bookstore) and we have a wedding to attend this weekend so we probably won't get much further with it until late next week.  I'm off to Chicago for NeoCon on Monday & Tuesday, and B's new job leaves him wiped out when he gets home, so the non-essential stuff will just have to wait I guess.