Please forgive me for being terrible at taking pictures.  Basement pictures below.  Good luck figuring out how the basement is set up from the photos you're about to see.  Over the fact that it's not my strong suit?  Good, now we can all move on.

Being a homeowner is really odd.  Sometimes I pause and think 'We live here.'  Kind of incredulously.  And then it immediately follows 'I own this house.'  And then I scratch my head, say 'huh' to myself, smile a little and continue on with whatever I'm doing.

I will say, I have a lot of new respect for homeowners.  And very little respect for the homeowner who owned this house before me.  It appeared to my mom on move in weekend that she never cleaned.  It also appears she didn't take much pride in the house.  The french doors featured yesterday have glue on every single windowpane.  It takes a little time and a razor blade to get the glue off.  And then they look like new.  From what we have learned about the house, those doors have been there since 2004.  Six years of dirty looking french doors?  I'm not even a very clean person and I find that impossible.

Basement picture extravaganza!  Try to remember the last picture show.  I managed to fail at taking that same perspective shot and am too lazy to go downstairs and fix it (no access from inside the house, have to get a key, unlock the door, etc, etc).

From the bottom of the stairs looking west.  That rough bit of floor is where the stairs used to come down.  The bookshelf is an add on from the foreman, a way to hide a jumble of ceiling pipes that turn in to the utility room at that point.



From the bottom of the stairs looking south.  Door on the left is the bathroom.  On the right is utility room.  Notice the height different of those doors and then weep a little inside for loml's head and any tall friends of his.

From the bottom of the stairs looking east.  Loml makes his first very sinister actual appearance on this blog, if you don't count his feet from the first picture.  In the picture it looks like he's walking in to the laundry closet (to his left).  To his right is the "rec room" where the TV/couch will be.

From the bottom of the stairs looking north.  Floor drain!  That rough floor is where the shower closet was.  You know, the closet with a wooden door that you opened to a surprise shower.  Complete with drain that has no plumbing.

"loml's room".  Will have a bed in that nook and lots of gear in the rest of the room.  Today he actually purchased a $4 prize to hang on a few walls in there.  You should ask him about it.

The bathroom.  First left will have a vanity.  Second left is a toilet nook.  Up to the right, to the right of the window is our custom shower.

This is what it looks like when you have a wall that doesn't say "family a journey to forever":

And this is what it looks like to have a front entry way with stuff in it (including cat):

Still settling in.  Probably will be for the next month.  I promise I will get pictures of the basement again, hopefully tomorrow.  Slight hitch to that plan is that the contractor is coming tomorrow and we are going to have to argue a bit about the bathroom door - so I may be in a tizzy and full of hate for the basement.  But soon, I swear.

Not to make this all about the cats, but WOW yesterday was a doozy. Boku needed antibiotics, like I said yesterday. I tried on my own to grab her and give them to her and received quite a few hideous scratches on my arms and hand (keep in mind she only has back nails, this was some acrobatic freaking out).

Then, later in the day, loml's dad donned protective gear and loml and I followed him around with syringes. She freaked out, cornered herself in the litter box and became FERAL CAT FROM HELL. Hissing, spitting, growling, doing cat acrobatics to avoid being grabbed, etc. He only got ahold of her once and when I put that syringe in her mouth she went mental. So. Boku has had no antibiotics or painkillers.  Hopefully her missing tooth will not get infected.  But at this point, I don't feel like I'd blame myself even if it did.  We tried.  Really, really hard.

Cut to last night. For a few hours, she sporadically came into our bedroom meowing loudly, angrily, needily. I don't know what was wrong. At one point loml got up to see what she needed. Came back and she was quiet for a bit. Then she started up again.  I went out to see what I could do for her (I showed her food and water in case that was what she couldn't locate). Got back in bed. She was quiet again, for a bit, then came back.

Me: It's like having a baby.
Loml: A fat, toothless baby.

Eventually she stopped wandering around meowing. I think it was around 5:30. Somehow though, last night I got the best sleep I've had here yet. Getting used to the new bed/new house has taken a bit. And now I have to return to work tomorrow, unhappily.

Next time, hopefully no more about the cats.

I live here now. Here as in, the house I purchased. 

***

I'm currently preparing to grab Boku and force antibiotics down her throat. She's finally come out from hiding in the following places:

1. The litterbox
2. The very back of the closet
3. Under the couch

She's taking antibiotics because she has very few teeth these day, specifically one less than before her trip to the vet and three less than the last time I saw in her mouth.  The canines fell out somewhere in the apartment.  I already missed my chance to grab her - she's wandering around now, curious, finally.  She just found the front door, where she can see nature.  It's a whole new world here.  I think nature scared her, I cannot find her again and antibiotics are still in a syringe on the coffee table. 

Mona did fine, came out yesterday to get some loving and then hid behind the bed in the guestroom all night.  Baby steps.

Someone found the food/water and someone used the litter box, so all in all, cat acclimation is going OK.

***

The move went really well.  Nothing got broken, everything found it's place and there was only one fight.  Miscommunication between myself and loml caused Drama with a capital D when it came time to pay the movers.  But, that fight lasted only a very short time.  Then we were busy fighting about the cats.  Kidding, kidding.

I still have quite a bit to do around here.  When the basement is done, then it will fall into place.  And suddenly we won't have nearly enough stuff to fill this house.  But right now?  There's enough stuff.  I have to continue to put it on shelves and ferret it into corners.

I'll try to get some pictures and update on the construction in the next few days.  Now though, I have stuff to dust and windowpanes to clean.

As I'm packing up the piles of junk, I found my "scrapbook" for senior year of college.  And by scrapbook I mean, an empty scrapbook and piles of pictures.  Only three pages had pictures selected for them (individual piles of pictures stuck between pages).  The rest was just a pile of the year.  And wow.  Looking through all my crap (and I still feel like there are one too many piles of crap sitting around) has been illuminating.  And scary.

Senior year of college I look so...young.  I was heavier then, but my body doled that weight out differently than it does now, so my stomach isn't so bad, but my cheeks!  Wow.

Then there are the pictures of dancing on poles.  Katie drunk face everywhere (this just means I have my mouth open wide in wild, drunken laughter).  And then there's the incriminating picture of me with a stripper all up in my lap.  I'm laughing, clearly mortified and I look like I might be about to poke his chest like "is this real?".

Lessons learned:

1. Go back to the gym, lady.
2. Never allow your friends to take a picture of you when there is a stripper in the room.
3. Never attend anything involving a stripper in close quarters again.  I do not need to have that experience ever again.
4. Look through old pictures more than once every 6 years.

I have an irrational, ridiculous hate for the word ablution.

Out of all the words to hate, I realize it's not a real winner.  I read romance novels, so I know how many terrible words there are out there in the world (or I know how many terrible words there are to describe sex and anything sexual).  I mean.  Quim.  Mons.  Member.  Bulge.  Sheath.  Explosions.  

And yet, I read ablution and want to throw a book down in disgust.  Just wipe it up, nothing fancy.