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Not In My Backyard

June 28, 2011 By

When we were expecting the realtor to come and list our house, Mister and I went on a cleaning spree. One of the things I did was clean up Greta’s potty area in the backyard. I’ve cleaned it before, but it’s not something I do every day since dried poo is much easier to pick up than not so dried poo.

Ever since I cleaned the backyard, Greta has pretty much refused to go potty there. I don’t know why, and like I said, it’s not the first time I’ve cleaned things up out there. I also didn’t clean it any differently than usual. But for some reason, it just warped something in her little doggie brain and she’s taken to using the living room again. We’re back to square one with her and the potty training.

Honestly, I think she’s holding out for more walks. She LOVES going for a walk – she gets so excited when I get her harness and leash out, and paws at the harness like crazy when I’m trying to put it on her. I took her out this morning (why oh why does it have to be 90°F at 6:30am?) and she did her business happily. I took her out last night – still over 100°F after dark – while she happily pranced and peed all over the neighborhood. Lazy Mommy doesn’t like having to go out in this heat, but lazy Mommy also doesn’t like cleaning up the carpet multiple times every day.

I guess I need to sweat it out and take her for more regular walks. But she still needs to start using the backyard again, too.

Filed Under: Dog

Snooze

June 24, 2011 By

noun /sno͞oz/ 
snoozes, plural

1. A short, light sleep, esp. during the day
* – he settled in the grass for a snooze

Snooze is such a weird sounding word, isn’t it? It’s one that most of us use every day, but lately I feel like the more I see the word, the less it feels like a real word.

Not so long ago I was jolted out of a deep, peaceful slumber by the alarm clock. Since I’m often tempted to go back to bed, I also use my phone as a backup alarm clock. The actual clock has a button to switch it off, and my phone has two buttons that appear on the touch screen – snooze and dismiss.

When I do fall back asleep in the morning, which is pretty much every morning, I fall asleep hard, and the second alarm is more difficult to wake up to than the first one. I fumble for my phone, look at it, somehow, despite the fact that my eyes are still mostly closed and everything is blurry. I look at the choices – snooze or dismiss – and take a few seconds to contemplate whether or not those are real words and what their meanings are. I then try to bring my other hand up to the phone in a massively uncoordinated effort to hit the screen in the right spot to make the damn noise stop. It doesn’t matter which one I hit, since my phone allows multiple alarms and I have them all set, knowing I could unwittingly choose to dismiss the alarm instead of hitting the snooze button.

Later, when I’m at work sucking down copious amounts of the life-giving elixir known as caffeine and trying to be productive, a reminder pops up and a new orange tab in my taskbar starts flashing. It’s a meeting reminder. Again, I get the choice to snooze or dismiss. Why does this sound familiar? Can snooze really be a word? Wait, haven’t I been through this before? Did my alarm go off this morning? Ok, remind me 5 minutes before meeting start. Snooze.

Am I the only one who goes through this every time the word “snooze” is in front of them?

Happy Friday, everyone. No need to hit the snooze alarm tomorrow.

Filed Under: Sleepy

Next!

June 22, 2011 By

I think most people who have been reading blogs for awhile are familiar with the use of a blog reader. For those who aren’t, a reader is a place where you can subscribe to updates from your favorite blogs (and other websites as well) and read them all in one place. It’s much better than chasing down all the sites you want to read to see if they have an update.

For years, I’ve been using Google Reader. It’s pretty darn good, and even has features that let you categorize, publicize and share the items in your reader. I haven’t tried any other readers, and I wouldn’t want to. I have my reader set up to read the oldest item first, and when I’m done it tells me so.

Then I came across a way to make my blog reading experience even better – the Google Next bookmark button.

I’m going to let you read this post on Whoorl because it says everything I want to say about the Google Next button, but better.

I immediately installed the button and have been using it ever since. Here’s what I like about it:

  • It lets me read the blog post the way the blogger intended it, which is on their blog
  • It makes commenting and pinning easier, since I don’t have any extra clicks
  • I will have a better sense of who each blogger is, since the generic Google Reader layout doesn’t allow for personalization
  • I actually read more rather than skim, but at the same time I get through everything quicker

And there are a few things I don’t like:

  • The button brings me to the absolute newest item in my reader. I like to read the oldest first, and if I’m behind or the blogger has items that should be read in chronological order, I can’t do that. It’s a small inconvenience but nothing I can’t live with.
  • If a blog happens to be down or unavailable at the time I try to read it, I can’t read it. But I find that having my iGoogle page up, which has the Google Reader widget front and center, helps since the item will be readable from there. The pictures are still unavailable in this situation, though. Again, small inconvenience, but I found a way around it.
  • I have no way of knowing how many blogs are left in my reader without refreshing iGoogle in a separate tab. Being the kind of person who hates not knowing where I’m at, this probably bothers me the most.

Overall, I’d say the whole Next button is a plus. Go check it out – go to your reader, click on Manage Subscriptions, then click on the Goodies tab. Drag the Next button to your bookmarks toolbar. And while you’re at it, drag the Subscribe button there as well. It will save you having to figure out how to subscribe to your favorite blogs.

Filed Under: On the Internet

For Sale

June 20, 2011 By

Our house is for sale. We’re moving, but I don’t know where to just yet.

How our house got on the market is a long, drawn-out story, so I’ll give you the condensed version here. It involves the drama that I mentioned way back when.

April 2008 – We bought a house.

Early December 2008 – Mister is hurt at work. He informs his boss, sees his doctor, and keeps trying to work through the pain.

Long story short, Mister was fired while out on Worker’s comp. We got an attorney, are not pursuing the wrongful termination since it would cost a fortune and not have a very good return on investment, but are still, two and a half years later, litigating the the WC case. We’ve had to fight for every single benefit that Mister has received, and we’ve gone a long time on just my income.

When we bought the house, we were well within our budget. We paid just under $200K for our home, and we qualified for about $300K. We got a 30 year conventional, fixed rate mortgage with a good interest rate. But Mister made more than twice what I do, so paying the mortgage depended largely on his income. If the tables were turned and I was the one without an income, we’d still have no troubles paying it. But that’s not what happened.

We had a decent amount in savings, but over the next year we wiped that out trying to keep up with the payments and hoping that the WC case would get resolved. In May 2010, we stopped paying. We didn’t have a choice. My income allows us to pay all the other bills, but the mortgage payment is about 70% of my take-home pay. It was either/or, and we decided to keep up with everything else instead. Because of his injury, Mister wasn’t eligible for unemployment, since he’s unable to look for work that he has traditionally done.

We don’t have any other debt at this point. Our cars are paid off – my car is a 2005 Ford Focus, and Mister drives a early 90′s pickup truck. The credit cards are also paid off, so we only have living expenses. We don’t live extravagantly and don’t feel the need to have the latest and greatest.

We got our foreclosure notice, met with a different attorney who could walk us through the state’s mediation program, filed our request for mediation in early November 2010, and waited. Then we waited some more.

We finally went to mediation this week. Basically it’s just us and the bank at the table, along with a mediator, to try to work out an agreement. Since my income won’t support much of a mortgage payment at all, and Mister is still dealing with the WC case (he just had back surgery in May), we weren’t eligible for a reduced interest rate or principle reduction. So we’re doing a short sale.

It’s all just a matter of circumstance. The house is worth over $100K less than we bought it for. We did all the right things when we bought it, we tried hard to keep up with the payments, but we just don’t have the income right now. This is the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, regardless of the state of the economy. Heck, if the economy was good we’d have been able to sell the house, at worst broken even, and found something more affordable, all while keeping our good credit scores. But it didn’t happen that way.

The last 2 1/2 years have been stressful, to say the least, and it’s not over yet. Though I’m not sure how much more I can take without breaking.

Filed Under: House, Talking About Myself

Aqua Addiction

June 10, 2011 By

I’ve been pinning like a madwoman lately, and if you were to look at my Pinterest boards, you’d see an overabundance of aqua. I’ve already declared that aqua is my favorite color, and Mister and I even got into a discussion on a post about turquoise about my love for the color wherein he declared it to be aquatealquoise. It’s been known as that ever since.

aqua + teal + turquoise = aquatealquoise

Did you know you can search for things on Pinterest? I searched aqua, teal, turquoise and a few other terms to find kindred spirits who also have boards dedicated to this wonderful color. I followed them to enable myself to feed the addiction for all things aqua. My favorite, though, has to be this:



I think I shall crown myself the Queen of Aquatealquoise.

When I see something aqua, my first thought is, “Oooh, pretty!” followed by a closer inspection of the item. As I look at it, I can feel the happy growing inside me, then I try to figure out how to incorporate this aquatealquoise item into my life, even if only in my dreams. Do you get this reaction to your favorite color? Or am I the only one?

Filed Under: I Like Things