"Colorado Babe"

I’m sitting in one of my favorite little coffee spots in downtown Denver, the Market on Larimer Square.  I’m just doing a little people watching and remembering all of the different people I’ve sat here with in all of the different phases of life.

Really, I’m thrilled just to be out of the house.  I’ve had the crud for the last two weeks. Solid.  I’ve been disgusting.  You know how it is, pink, drippy nose and low, almost-sexy-voice-but-not-really-who-am-I-kidding?, because of a deep cough.  And though my sleep numbers on my “misfit” (read that- poor man’s fitbit- it tracks sleep and number of steps) are AWESOME right now, my steps seem to be sadly lacking (yesterday was the first time I’d hit my goal in the whole of the last 14 days).  What I’m trying to say is, cabin fever had truly set in, so when I had the opportunity to join my Big Strong Man downtown while he went to a meeting, sit in a coffee shop and then join him for lunch, I jumped at it!

It’s been snowing for the last several days, it’s as though Denver finally remembered that it’s winter.  I’ve loved our weather this winter.  It’s been pretty mild, with lots of 60 and 70-degree days, and a few actual winter days sprinkled in, (you know, with snow and cold).  I love it when it gets cold; it gives me a chance to dress in what I call my “Colorado Babe get-up”.  I have Sorrell boots for the first time this year, and a Patagonia down sweater parka, a cute wool scarf and gloves that my sisters picked for me on a trip to New Zealand, and two super cute beanies that were literally custom made for me by a client.  What could be better?

It also gives me a chance to make lots of yummy soups.  In the last two weeks I’ve made a Potato Soup, a Beef Stew, Cajun Red Beans and Rice, and Homemade Chicken and Dumplings.  I’m cooking again, or maybe this is the first time in my life?  I don’t really remember, but the kitchen in the Pinkhouse is actually getting used and I’m not afraid of using Sawan’s kitchen stuff (that was a problem for awhile) and I’m really, really enjoying it.  I love how cozy my little house feels when I’ve had soup bubbling on the stove all day. 

Standing on the platform in 15 degree weather to ride the lightrail downtown.  Burr.

So overall, even though I’ve been slightly yucky feeling and gross, I’m loving life and I’m happy.  Just thought I’d check in and let you all know.

2014 in Six Words

I think I’ll take a quick minute to fill you in on what I’ve been up to for the last year or so.

2014 was a pretty great year. 

Winter highlights:

I got out of town twice.  The first trip was to Arizona to watch my dad participate in Colorado Rockies Fantasy Camp.  It’s always so much fun to watch him play baseball, to enjoy the awesome weather, and to meet some of the old players.  Would you guess that Ryan Spillbourghs, (read that, Noey’s pretend Rockies Boyfriend after Matt Holliday) is actually kind of shy? 

Ellie and I watching a game

Dad in catching the game

shade, a book and a dirty monkey=heaven

The second trip was Mexico, baby!  I try to go once a year, and it used to be a “Girls Trip” but this time my dad wanted to crash and so we decided to let him.  Even though I was 35 years old, he was still Protective Dad and didn’t want to let me run on the beach by myself (I was regretting deciding to let him join us on our trip) but, the compromise was that he would either workout in the workout room with me or go for a run on the beach with me, and that ended up being one of the biggest highlights of the vacation for me.  I wasn’t much of an athlete until about oh, four years ago (ok, still not an athlete, just pretend like I am with a 45 minute run 5 days a week), and he was not in the best of shape for most of my adult life, but started working out regularly about two years ago, so if you had told me five years ago that the highlight of my Mexico vacation would be working out with my dad, I think I would have fallen over laughing at how preposterous that was for both of us.

Spring/Summer:

If I had any spare time in the spring or summer of 2014, it was either spent watching the Rockies lose, or in the yard at the Pinkhouse.

Rockies game with one of my favorite parts of 2014, my new friend Mary Kate.  She's ducking down in this photo.  In real life she's 6'1" of awesomeness.

Literally a $hit-ton.  Free compost.

Let’s talk about the part of that last sentence that’s more fun than sad.  I completely re-landscaped my front and back yards.  We’re talkin’, I completely tilled up all of the weeds and grass, laid sod and a sprinkler system, and xerescaped the front so that it’s now xeric flowering plants.  I did it all by myself.  Not really.  I had lots of help from my Mom, both in the design department and in practical help.  My brother pretty much did the sprinkler and sod, and then random friends (even my baby sister who never likes to help came more than one day and participated!) helped out both in practical ways (tilling, digging, laying out sod) and just in encouragement (stopping by with me filthy from head to toe and enjoying turkey burgers and beer post-workday).  It was such a huge project though, that it had already snowed once before I got the final tarp with the materials moved from the front of my house.  In my vanity I have to admit that my favorite part of the Pinkhouse’s makeover was the makeover to my bod- everyone was asking what I was doing to get the muscle tone in my arms.  I told them manual labor (hauling gravel around is heav-y!).

Before.  Weeds.

After.  Gabe watering the sod.

Fall/Winter:

In September I half-ass quit smoking.  It was just time to say goodbye, I had decided.  But I kept smoking every four or five days.  You know, just for fun and to make myself completely crazy.  I quit for real in November (as in, I haven’t had a cigarette since November…*sigh*).  I miss it.  It was one of my favorite things, like one of my best friends.  It was surprisingly linked to comfort in grief.  I find that since I’m not taking that few minutes for myself, especially at the end of the day, I’m not talking to Sawan like I used to.  I miss that, too.  I would always talk to him with the last cigarette of the day.  But, I don’t know, maybe it was time to say goodbye to that as well.

Also in November, I met a man.  Well, I meet lots of men, but this seems remarkable because I found one that for now I want to spend quite a bit of quality time with.

And that pretty much hits the major points.  My year in a nutshell.  I could have done it in fewer words:  Mexico, Baseball, Yard, Quit Smoking, Dating. 

Ta-Da!  Not a bad list of words right there.

Now that I’ve caught you up on what’s been going on in my life in 6 words, I’m not really sure what I’m going to write about next….

My Poor Neglected Little Blog...

Ah, my poor neglected little blog.

I spent my whole month of January doing another major renovation at the Pink House.  It was only slightly dramatic, because how could it be my life if it wasn’t dramatic?

The project was simple enough, but as with anything I do, it snowballed.  In my house that was built in 1900, I have plaster walls.  There were a few holes in the plaster in the stairwell.  But the stairwell and the upstairs hall are connected, and between those walls and ceilings I had at least five different mismatched textures.  So, as long as I was having the plaster repaired, I might as well have the texture smoothed out as well.  And as long as we were doing it in the entryway and stairwell, I might as well do it on the whole downstairs level, since those were a mess, too.  And as long as we were doing the walls, I might as well have them scrape the popcorn ceilings and smooth that, too, right?  (Whoever decided to put popcorn ceilings in a Victorian 1900 house should be horsewhipped, but I’m sure their 1980’s brains were thinking, “Oh, our house looks so modern now!”)  And then I had someone working in my house for the entire month of January.

I had a 24 hour period where, in true Noel-the-Drama-Queen fashion, I was sure that I had exposed myself, my dog, the guy working, and anyone who would ever come to my house in the future to asbestos and we were all going to die.  I made a late-night phone call to a friend of a friend who owns an asbestos abatement company.  He totally talked me out of a tree and sent his guys over to test first thing the next morning and when he called me with the good news that my house was free of asbestos, he teased by telling me, “Good news.  You’re gonna live.”

The great thing about the guy that I had do the work on the walls is that he would let me work with him, which saved me some coin, plus I learned a lot, but it kept me super busy.  I cleaned up plaster dust, I painted, I cleaned, I painted, I cleaned up plaster dust, I shopped for light fixtures, I cleaned up plaster dust, and then I cleaned up plaster dust some more.  And now I’m done with projects for a very long time.

Thanks for not giving up on me.  I neglected all writing for the last two months, so it feels good to flex that muscle!  Love to all of you!

A quick shot of my smooth living room walls and ceiling.  I haven't put any art back up yet, I'm just enjoying the smoothness!  Plus, isn't my gray just lovely?

Happy New Year!

Wow, here we are at the end of another year. 

2013 was a year full of the duality that makes widowhood such an adventure.  It was full of a growing sense of contentment, and a serious sense of loneliness and longing.  As we pull it all to a close, I can’t say that I’m sad to see it go, but mostly it’s because I’m looking forward with hope to what’s next.

As I look back over the year, some really cool stuff happened.

I got a brand new car.  I’ve never done that before.

I took my first college course (Creative Non-fiction).  I got an A.  It was so much fun, and I think that even though it didn’t help me generate much material for my book, like I was hoping, it helped me to be a better writer, so it was definitely not a waste of time.  I loved it.

I did a major home improvement project and I lived to tell about it.  I love my new bathroom and finally got moved in to the “new” master bedroom!  My brother and dad helped me build a closet and it’s pretty amazing!  I’m getting ready to start a new project, wow, am I a glutton for punishment or what?

You know my furniture-painting obsession?  I refinished eight pieces of furniture this year.   Here’s the really cool, easy to miss, widowhood bravery piece of that story: I live alone.  Furniture is heavy.  I work out every day to make it possible to carry that stuff all by myself, and I have the strength to do it. 

This year, for the first time, I got out my old Christmas stuff.  This felt like a huge accomplishment.  The last time it was put in those boxes, Sawan and I put it in there together, and I just couldn’t bear to unwrap the stuff.  But, I felt ready this year.  I felt ready to greet my old things and face that sadness.  I had a friend come over to help, and I was surprised by how it made me feel.  I was prepared to sort things into a box of “things I’m not ready to get rid of but don’t want to see again for a long time” and instead, I hung those ornaments (like our “Just Married”) on my tree.  Sometimes I shock even myself.

The biggest changes of the year are the subtle ones that are hard to quantify.  At some point, I think that I really started to choose life this year.  At some point, the memories of Sawan became something that I enjoyed again.  It was no longer too painful to remember even the sweetness of him.  Now I can enjoy the sweetness, and the enjoyment, even though it carries the sting of his absence, is worth it.  The sadness that I feel now is the sadness of missing him, the loss of what we had and the loss of all of my dreams for our future, but it also carries with it a sense of longing for what’s to come.

And so, I say, bring it 2014.  I’m ready.

Love to all of you, thank you for reading my words, for being with me for another year.  I wish you all the best in the New Year!

Upstairs Bathroom Project: Complete!

This summer we should really have re-named the Pink House “Renovation Land.”

I have two bathrooms in my house, which is not common for a house built in 1900, so I am uber lucky. 

My upstairs bathroom, however, left much to be desired.  I don’t know anything for sure, but with a house built in 1900, it’s possible that the bathroom was an afterthought, a retrofit (meaning that the original house had no bathroom at all).  It certainly looked that way.  All of the plumbing was wadded into one corner.  The bathroom had been updated in the fifties, so I had a fifties era tub and homemade vanity, and then the tile had been updated in the nineties.  It was esthetically tacky, to say the least.  But, also, I am 5’3”, and would hit my knees on the vanity when I sat on the potty, so I can’t imagine what it was like for someone taller.  The way that they had retrofit the tub to accommodate a shower had a weird extension on it, which was also crowded into the corner with the toilet and sink, with only about a six-inch gap from the toilet.  I would be aware of this during the day, but when I would get up in the middle of the night to go potty, would usually forget, so I had perma-bruise either on my knee or shin.  I was so over it. 

I wanted to not just remodel the bathroom to make it more user-friendly, but I also wanted to restore it, to make it look like it belonged in a house built in 1900.  In addition, there is no master bedroom upstairs, with an en suite, so I wanted to add a door to the bedroom next to it, to give it a “Jack and Jill” type entrance, where it made one of the bedrooms seem like a master, but still gave access to the hall and the rest of the house, as it’s the only upstairs bathroom.   All of this required moving everything around, plumbing wise, ripping everything out, moving the current door, moving the lights.  Phew.  It was a tall order.

So, the contractor that I hired started in mid-July, and quoted me two and a half weeks to get the job done.  We finished last Friday.  That’s more like ten and a half weeks, if you do the math.  Nothing went according to plan.  The guys that did the initial work had to do a bunch of stuff over again.  I eventually had to call in back up (thanks, Dad) to get them to follow through on what they said they were going to do.   It’s been an emotional roller coaster.  It made me feel really widowed.  I had to keep remembering that even if my husband were alive, I would still have been the one dealing with the contractor, because I was better at it.  I felt like I was being taken advantage of because I was a woman with no man around to back her up.  I also felt like it sucked that I’m 34 and a half years old and what it took to finally get it right was to call my daddy and have him talk to them.  I realize that it’s more like I’m smart enough to know how to use my resources, and in the end, the job got done (my dad is a construction engineer who deals with contractors on a daily basis, so even if he were just my friend, he’s exactly who I would have called to support me on this). 

It was a long ten weeks.  I got so tired of plaster dust, of having stinky men in my house, of having to be up with a bra on at 9AM every day (even if they didn’t show up by then, which was the norm).  In the end, I got the bathroom of my dreams and I’m so excited!  (I can’t wait to finish painting the bedroom next to it and move into my new “Master Bedroom!”)

Arthur and I in the "new" vintage tub.

Before.

...with everything ripped out.

This is the before shot of tub that I refinished myself.

...and the "before" shot of the vanity that I refinished myself.

"After" of the vanity, shown through the new pocket door.

"Happily Ever After."

Not just leaves are falling at the Pink House!

I’m loving fall! 

Not just leaves are falling at the Pink House.

Here’s a brief catch up on what’s going on in my life:

My bathroom project finally wrapped last week.  We started July 16th, I was told by the contractor it would take two and a half weeks.  It took eleven.  Maybe I misheard him...I think he meant two and a half months?  Either way, it’s finished, and it’s beautiful.  I’ll post some photos soon.

Nothing ever goes quite as planned in an old house, so I had planned to be finished and moved into the new bedroom suite by Labor Day.  Now if it happens by Christmas I’ll be stoked. 

Falling Ceiling Fans:

Phase two was finishing the bedroom.  I had it painted last weekend.  The paint I chose is Morning Fog.  Wouldn’t it be fun to be a paint namer?  Or a nailpolish namer?  That’s what I really want to be when I grow up.  Anyway, Morning Fog is a lovely shade of gray.  My friend Steve is the best painter ever, and will also help with random handyman stuff, so he also installed a ceiling fan for me, and I helped.  We had had three beers at that point, so we only dropped the old one, not the new one, luckily.  The whole room looks updated and much better.  

Falling Shelves.  Falling Workers:

I have been working on the closet, which is the last phase of the project before I can move in.  Over Labor Day my friend Rachel came to help me demo the old closet organizer (if you can call it that, it was a warped shelf with a rack that was at about 48”, not enough height to hang an adult dress from without it dragging on the floor) and we narrowly escaped a trip to the emergency room.  (Note to self:  When demo-ing, remove the boards with rusty nails from the floor before moving on to the next one.  How I landed in between those rusty nails without imbedding it in my knee is beyond me.  I felt that I was so lucky, I bought a lottery ticket.  Alas, I used up all my luck on the closet.)  I had to do some major plaster patching, and we painted it turquoise.  It’s lovely.  Last weekend my brother and I started installing an organizer from Ikea, but, with lathe and plaster walls, over brick, it was much more involved than we thought and will require another day to get it finished. 

Other than home improvement stuff, I’m still working full time and going to school two days a week.  I am constantly making lists of stuff that I need to get accomplished, so that I can keep up.  I have given myself lots of space to let items not get crossed off.  (How important is a clean car, anyway?)

It’s a glamorous life I lead, what can I say?

In honor of fall fashion, here's a photo of Arthur, sportin' his hipster bow-tie.

 Happy Fall, Everyone!

A new outfit for the Pink House

When I was house shopping in 2011, I pulled up to what would soon be affectionately called the Pink House, saw it in all it’s pink glory, with its little white picket fence, and thought, for the first time out of all the properties I’d seen, “This might be my house.”

After walking through it, with its original hardwood floors and its gabled ceilings, I was convinced.  Eventually, it became mine.

After living in it, though, there were some things that really bugged me.  For one thing, it’s a classic Victorian, but with it’s trim painted two shades of turquoise and two shades of sandstone, it looked like a Victorian that was trying to be Southwestern.  Now, I love me some turquoise jewelry, I just didn’t love it for my house.  So, this summer, I decided to give her a new outfit.

I just finished having the exterior painted.  It was quite an undertaking for the painter, he told me he used twice as much paint as he normally uses for a house this size, partially because of the detail and partially because it was so torn up and needed so much love.  I chose colors that make it look like a dollhouse.  I told my mom recently that I never had a dollhouse growing up (I did have the My Little Pony stable, it’s not like I didn’t have any cool toys) so I have to have one now.  It now looks like a Victorian trying to be a Victorian.  The body has a cooler shade of pink, as in less warm, more of a bluish pink, less of a yellowish pink, and the trim is now a darker shade of pink, plus two shades of taupe, and a classic white to top it off.  There’s also just a hint of that old green (the color that chips off of every old window frame on any old house that you ever see) under the eave.  It’s beautiful.

I didn't get a good "before" photo, because we had painted big spots of the new colors on it before I got a chance.  Here's one with Samuel in front of it, but you can definitely see the ugly trim.

After.  My little dollhouse.

I’m also three weeks into a remodel of my upstairs bathroom.  Since they said it would take two and a half weeks, and they’re nowhere near done, it feels like they’ll be done…well, never.  It’s not like my story is different from any you’ve ever heard, but it’s taking longer than expected, the contractors don’t always show up, when they do they’re smelly and they use my downstairs bathroom in a manner that makes me have to clean it before I can use it, everything is covered in an inch of plaster dust, and I’m so over it.  I complain about it regularly, but it makes me feel like one of the cast of Bravo’s Real Housewives, a show I can’t stand because they are constantly complaining about their First World Problems.  I put the back of my hand to my forehead and say, “My house is covered in plaster dust because they’re giving me the bathroom of my dreams!”  So, overall, I know it will be done eventually and I’m so lucky to be getting to do it.  I’ll post bathroom photos if it ever gets done.

The Treadmill of Life

I feel restless to the very core.  I feel like everyone else’s life is moving, and I stay in the same place.  Like I’m running on a treadmill as fast as I can, and everyone else is jogging past me on solid ground, waving.  Some of them are cheerfully enjoying the exercise, others are complaining about how tired they are, but their lives are still moving past mine while I struggle and sprint and still stay in one place.

I’m lonely.  I have finally chosen to live.  And yet, I feel like the life that I would choose if I could involves a husband and a family, and I have to wait in order for that to happen.  What does choosing life look like apart from that? In this season where my heart lies fallow, I’m trying to learn.  I’m trying to give up on planning, just surrender the control that I long to have and let life happen. 

There are things in my life that are going supremely well.  I am super thankful for the blessings that I enjoy.  While there is no man in my life, there are women!  Holy cow, are there some amazing women!  I have budding relationships with women that are blessing my socks off.  I am spending my days thinking, “Huh.  People like me.”  I recognize that that’s a pretty good place to be, all told, and eases the loneliness in a huge way.

Then, I am able to do some really fun projects starting this summer at the Pink House.  First priority is the upstairs bathroom.  It’s such an awkward space; the arrangement of it is such that I have permanent bruises on my knees and shins from running into the bathtub after going potty in the middle of the night.  Those days are almost over, my friends.  Plus, when I looked at the house initially, I said that it was pretty much my dream house, it only lacked a claw foot tub and a fireplace.  I get to put in a claw foot tub now, so it’s getting even closer to the space that I dreamed of even as a little girl.  How lucky am I?

And, baseball has started.  It’s so good to have the game on in the background; it makes loading the dishwasher so much more fun!  I went to the home opener, and had beautiful weather, but since the opening weekend, Colorado has seemed to have forgotten that it’s supposed to be springtime (I’m looking out at snow-globe snow right now) and I seem to be the definition of a fair-weather fan.  I don’t want to go and sit at a game in the freezing cold.  I’ll wait until it’s a bit warmer, thank you very much.  Until then I can watch it from my warm living room while I multi-task by getting it very clean.

And yet, with all of this to be thankful for, I still feel restless.  In search of silver lining, I guess I know that I am getting in great shape running on this treadmill.  Someday I’ll get to get off and jog alongside everyone else.  Hopefully.  But, I guess that’s the crux of it.  I do have hope that I will get off someday.

I never have to do that again...

My big resolution for 2013 (or we could call it a “goal,” I don’t really like “resolutions”) was to have no more rooms containing boxes in the Pink House.  After two years, I don’t think that was really too overambitious.

On Friday, my mom came over to help me tackle it, by motivating me to do the last room, the office.

Now, I want to say something in my own defense.  This was no ordinary office.  It contained boxes that hadn’t been unpacked, or even looked at, since the condo.  It contained stuff of Sawan’s that I hadn’t seen, boxes full of emotional landmines.  I needed to open up the file cabinet and box up the old files to be kept for tax purposes for a couple more years, stuff with his handwriting on it, stuff that he had just “stashed.”  After he’s been gone for three and a half years, I finally felt ready to face it, mostly because I could no longer handle my hoarder style filing system and want to move on, so that I can get my taxes done for this year.

I steadily moved through the stuff.  I was prepared for it to be an emotionally taxing day.  I thought I mostly knew what I was going to find. 

There was a basket that we had kept by the door, his sort of “catch-all” full of jewelry, change, pocketknives, his AA chips.  I threw things away that were trash, kept the things that I wanted, and when I finished, I thought, “I never have to do that again.”  I cried, but I mostly felt good about it.

Then, I found our financial planning binder.  In the front pocket was a sweet little note in my handwriting, “Baby, here’s how the monthly payment broke down.  I love you.”  And in his handwriting, the form filled out for his life insurance, which he went as far as to even have the exam for, but never signed the paperwork.  I have never been as angry as I was on Friday.  I sobbed.  I wanted to throw things.  I have been angry about this particular issue a lot in the past three years, but seeing the actual papers made me feel it in such a tangible way.  I guess you could say that it’s a good thing he’s already dead (and, the fact that I’m able to make a joke about it, already, only three days later, means I’m starting to do a little better).

In spite of all of the pain, there were love letters from me that he had kept, and it was so good for me to see, in my own handwriting, how much I loved him.  He was an amazing man.  He was full of flaws, human, like all of us, I guess, but I really loved him.

I only got about 60% of the office completed, but the rest should just be the filing that has not gotten done in the last three years because I was afraid of my filing cabinet.  So, it won’t be emotionally charged and should be tedious but not overly taxing. 

Here’s to no more rooms with boxes in the Pink House!  Hip!  Hip!

How I saved a thousand dollars and got a fabulous new look for my dining room...

About a year ago, I saw a chair in the window of my favorite home store, Five Green Boxes, that’s on the same block as the salon where I work.  They have amazing painted shabby-chic furniture, and I own a few of their originals, but they’re a little on the expensive side.

A few years ago I tried to replicate the Five Green Boxes shabby-chic look on a dresser and nightstand after reading a few tutorials on-line, and while they turned out “cute”, they look to me like I did them myself.

I’ve done a few projects since then, and my skills have vastly improved.  So, when I saw the pink chair in the window, I decided I was up for a new challenge.  I “inherited” a nice Ethan Allen dining set a few years ago, but the chairs were in need of covering and really, they needed some love, so I thought that this might be a fun project.

I found a fabric remnant that I loved for $8, bought a pink paint to match, and left it in my storage area for a year.

Then, my mom took a class on Annie Sloan chalk painting about a month ago.  She pretty much wants to paint anything not moving, so after she had completed a few projects at her house, she informed me that we were going to do my dining set.  She knows me so well.  This is exactly how I operate:  I won’t ever get anything done without a little motivation so the promise of help, company and a completed project is exactly what I needed.

Annie Sloan doesn’t make hot pink chalk paint, plus, I had already bought the right shade in regular old Behr flat paint, so I did a little Pinterest research and found that I could make it into “chalk paint” by adding plaster of Paris.  We decided that we might as well try it.

We painted and sanded them, then Mom waxed them while I changed the fabric on the seats.  It took us the whole day on Friday and the evening on Saturday, but we got lots of good visiting in (don’t get me wrong, by the end of the evening on Saturday, we were over it) and got completely done. 

When I look at them, they look expensive, not like I did them myself (or asked my mom to do them for me).

The chairs that I saw cost around $200 per chair.  We figure we had spent about $50 in materials.  So, we saved me $1150, and I have a fabulous dining set!

I only painted the chairs, not the table, and, I’m embarrassed to admit the reason why:  I figure if I get married again, no man is going to let me have a hot pink dining set (mostly because Sawan never would have allowed that).  I had thought that I would only be a day and a half into painting the chairs a different color if I needed to change them, and that doing the table would make it too difficult, I’d be too invested, so I needed to keep it simple.  Here’s the thing:  I don’t have a prospect on the horizon, so I’m going to paint the table the way I want it, and enjoy my pink table.  Plus, as my friend Sondra said, as soon as I paint my table pink, Mr.Right is going to come along.  It’s a win-win.

Before.

Line up, Men!

After.

At my not-for-long brown table.

Stunk!

The pink house has had a bit of a skunk problem (or “stunk” as my oldest nephew used to call it).

About a month ago, I was standing in the back yard and saw, for the first time in my life, a skunk on all fours, not laying on the side of the road “taking a nap,” as my family likes to call road-kill.  I hurried inside and tried to forget about it, convincing myself it was just passing through.

A couple of weeks later, I was once again in the backyard, this time with Arthur by my side, and he chased it into the garage.  This created much more cause for concern.  The skunk had escaped into the garage, but if Arthur had been sprayed, it would have been quite the ordeal.  I felt that I had seen my life flash before my eyes. 

So, I arranged for the wildlife control people to come and take care of the issue for me.  It's not exactly free, but I am totally willing to pay whatever fee so that I don't have to deal with it myself.

The traps in the backyard have caused us some upset to our routine; Arthur has to be on a leash in his own backyard so that I can keep him from setting off a trap.  He’s turned into such a “yard dog.”  He had been leash trained when we first got him and lived on the 7^th floor of a condo building, and would go potty on command, but now he takes his sweet time going potty because, well, he can.  After 10 days of living this way with no catches in the traps, I was about to call the people to come and pick up their traps when I woke to a strange smell and thought that maybe someone had gone ahead and made me coffee already (weird, right, that I associated skunk smell with coffee?  Gross.).  I went downstairs and noticed that the trap looked different than usual.  Success!  We had caught one!

Sorry, Pepe.  He was not quite as plesant as you.

I called the guys to come take care of it, and found out that it was a male, which is good news, because hopefully that means it was just him and no momma and babies, but all I have to say is, I’m ready for this “stunk” issue to be over and get back to normal, sweet-smelling life at the Pink House!