Happy Birthday Chelsie Belle!

Today is Chelsie's 7th birthday...I can't believe I have had her for nearly 7 years! She was 9 weeks and 15 squirming pounds of black fur when I brought her home to Portland St. The first thing she did upon arriving in her new home was to jump up right onto the couch. :)

Despite our struggles early on (she was a TERRIBLE puppy to housebreak) she has matured into a wonderful adult dog, and is the best companion in the world. She knows what she loves, and loves what she knows...some of ther favorite things include:

- Her mom
- Timbits from Tim Hortons - she thinks every drive thru is Tim Horton's
- Extreme Ball Chasing - her red kong ball is her favorite, esp on Thursday nights in the spring and summer when the softball boys throw it for her (repeatedly, until she is about to have a heart attack)
- Going for a walk
- Riding in the car
- Swimming
- Her morning kong (I freeze vanilla yogurt in it)
- Putting on her red therapy dog jacket and going to "work"
- Agility (definitely the cookies she gets for doing a good job)

Some of my favorite things about her are...

- She is always happy to see me when I get home - whether I have been gone for 5 min, 5 hrs or 5 days, I get the same joyous reaction when I get home
- Her appreciation for the simple things in life - I walk her on the same route most nights (when it is not 3 outside) and she looks back at me as if to say "isn't this great mom?"
- Her exuberance for life in general - I tell everyone she is 60 lbs of pure exuberance
- How she does lab laps around the coffee table with a toy in her mouth when I get home and then abruptly sits down, a sign that she is ready for her breakfast/dinner

Some big milestones this year...

- Earning lots of agility titles - she finished the year with 184 MACH points and 8 double Q's
- Continuing to do very good work at Dodd Hall on Wednesday nights
- Being a very good girl at Aunt B's house when we go see Bryce and Teagan - you have learned to supervise bath time very well and are a very good girl around Bryce and Teagan

Two of mom's favorite memories of this year....hearing Naomi Monroe cheer for us at The Barn when we were getting ready to take out turn and a visit from Alexis Titas at your crate after one of your runs in Cleveland.

Happy birthday Bean!!! Mommy is so proud of the wonderful girl you have turned into and the good work you do - and coming home to you, anytime, from anywhere, is always a highlight in my day!

Invaders

Well, some viral something or other has determined it was necessary to enter my body. I was not feeling well on Wed night or all day Thursday and today it exploded into ear ache, sore throat, cold, etc. The girl at Target looked at me when I checked out today and said "you must not feel well" - you think girlie? What gave it away? The Mucinex? The Nyquil? The Chloraseptic?

Just as a gauge as to how bad I feel...I did not even play soccer tonight. My game was at 10, my legs ached and my throat burned...so it made sense to skip. So the burning question is this....WHY THEN DO I FEEL LIKE SUCH A PANSY????

The Basement Saga

So, all of my loyal blogging friends and Facebookers know that I have had some issues with my basement over the past few months. Brief recap was that I found moldy drywall providing a haven to termites (live ones) in the fall, the result of a crushed drainpipe backing up and running water into the basement.

The time has come to start putting the mess back together. I took advantage of the fact that the basement was going to be a mess and decided to pull off all the beadboard that really dated the room. Well, it proved to be the gift that kept on giving - when I pulled off the first piece, I found this:


Suspicious looking on a good day. Clearly, the drywall had been wet at some point - not shocking, given that there is no plastic for insulating purposes and the insulation they are using is STYROFOAM. The studs are 1x 4 (as opposed to 2 x 4 - proper code) and are not mounted to the basement floor, only to the floor joist above (in short, the whole wall moves in its current state) Freakin awesome. So after pulling off the rest of the beadboard, this was the only "suspicious" looking spot. Treatment? Pull off bottom half of the drywall in this wall. All appears to be ok behind it.

So then it is on to ripping the rest of the drywall down in the basement. Initially, we had ripped off to where we thought the termites had eaten. Clearly, you can see we were wrong. This is after we discovered mold in the drywall we tore out from under the window. The window leaking is no longer an issue, because there is glass block there now. I came in from carrying up a load of trash and this is what my brother showed me. NASTY. So, we had to go buy a wire brush to get all that nastiness off the wall. We also found cracks in the wall, which we closed up with silicone. It was determined a coat of Drylock was necessary, as depicted below.

Drylock is unlike any other type of paint I have ever worked with. Thick, sandy, gritty and gross...and some teenage sniffing freak's dream. Joe and I were definitely ready to leave that room when we were done. It gets all over you too...got all over one of my favorite pairs of pants, so I got a link ball scraper to try and get it out. Sort of helped...and I took a lot of flack from it from my dad, who told me to go buy a new pair of pants. I informed he I liked these and would find a way to make them appropriate to wear in public again.

Funny aside...Joe was pounding nails out of the concrete, when I heard him say "Oh, expletive"...just as I felt something fly by my head. I chuckled out loud just thinking about it. He was not amused and said "Nicole, it is only funny because it did not hit you" - DUH????

This is a small piece of the mess in my unfinished basement. Those of you that have the pleasure of knowing me know that I can't stand a mess and have displayed OCD tendencies to avoid them. You all understand why I CANT STAND THIS....

End result of my brother's hard work last weekend. Properly framed and insulated. He framed, I insulated. It would take some effort to demo this...he properly drilled the base into the concrete.

And finally, to where we are today. Its amazing what proper insulation does to the temperature down there. The HVAC does not go in the basement, so the temperature moves with the weather. Already, you can feel the difference when you walk in that room....

I have to thank my dad and brother - esp my brother. Joe showed up at my house at noon on Saturday and left at halftime of the second football game. He worked his little heart out and really wants to make sure it was done right. My dad helped him drywall today, and my mom will have her turn on the action when she helps paint all the trim, chair rail and crown molding in the office. The ceiling in the office makes the crown molding a necessity. The chair rail in the living room area is also necessary - I had to apply a pretty heavy coat of paint to get it even at the beadboard. I am sanding away as much as I can, but chair rail will definitely take care of the problem. Carpet to match the upstairs will be the last part of this project.

This project has turned into WAY more than I wanted. I was very frustrated last week to find the additional termite damage....I work so hard to maintain my house, replace things as necessary, give it tender loving care and then to find that was a little upsetting. To all you DIY'ers out there - know when to hire out.

So...what have we learned from all this? Next house, I will pay a little more of a premium for a house that has been updated. I will still have plenty of opportunities to use my girl tools, but this pushed me over the home improvement edge...I will keep everyone informed as we continue to progress!!!

My Dating Pool

I am going to go on a rant here, and you are all just going to have to listen to me.

All of you married people out there...you tell me all the time God has a plan for me, to be patient, that right one will come along. I listen and think to myself- easy for you to say. That very phrase absolutely causes my blood pressure to skyrocket - and I will have all of you know that I am not the only single person out there that wants to vomit every time someone says that. I had lunch with my friend Eve yesterday who said the very same thing, unprovoked. Had the both of us not been in a public establishment, it is likely we would have had a breakdown.

So, in my attempt to try and take the bull by the horns in the situation, I recently decided to try Match.com again...thank God I have only joined for one month. After getting a wink from a user named "pimponesmiley", I quickly decided that they had just cashed their last check from me. Seriously? Has it gotten down to the fact that my options are someone named "pimponesmiley"? And that this individual seriously thinks someone is actually going to respond to that??? I hope this is not the best the guy up there can do for me.

Go home and hug your husbands tonight and make sure you never, ever take them for granted.

Out of the House...FINALLY...

For the past week or so, it has been so miserably cold, snowy and icy here, I really have not been able to do much more than let poor Chel out to do her business. This has resulted in her going a little stir crazy - and who can blame her? What is means is that I have picked up several (MANY) of her toys just about once a day for the last week.

Finally, tonight...it was Wednesday. Dodd and agility night - last Wednesday was the night we got our big snowstorm in Cbus - it took me 90 minutes to get home and we were not going anywhere after that. I think she was so happy just to get out - I picked up her red working vest and she got so excited....I felt bad for not being able to get her out.

I really could have stayed home tonight - it was a long weekend working on the basement (I know I still have to post about that but I am too tired) it is cold, my body aches and I am tired. But we went...and I am glad we did. It did not seem like we saw very many patients tonight...but we done good for the ones we saw. In the last room we were in, I thought one of the patients was asleep, but she wasn't...and she was just so darn excited to be able to see Chel and pet her for a few minutes. And she did so well tonight...we were in a few of the rooms for over 10 minutes, and she just sat there and was a great sport. She was asked to "shake" a lot tonight, which is not always her favorite thing to do, but she did it just about every time someone asked. Good job, Chelsie, mom is very proud of you.

After that it was off to agility. Agility did me some good tonight, I really like a few of the people in my class - Harriet and Stacy always make me laugh, and tonight was no different. We did have a little scare on the A frame...she must have slid going down it, and dragged one of her feet over the slats - made an awful sound. She seemed no worse for the wear and went right back on, so I will have to watch her to make sure she is ok. She is resting peacefully on her half of our king sized bed...

We hope everyone is staying warm!!!!

If you don't have this, you need one

Ladies, how many times have you gone to war with the lid on a jar? All the while swearing at whatever MAN put the stupid lid on there? My coworker got married in Sept and had one of these on her register - being the BBB browser I am, I had never noticed it in any of the 1000's of times I had wandered among these gadgets. I asked Jaclyn what it was and she told me. Recalling that I curse the jars of salsa regularly as I open them to try and put them in my taco soup, I thought "What the heck?" and asked Santa for one in my stocking.

I used it for the first time this morning, and I tell you, it is the best $8 you will ever spend. My wrists did not have lactic acid burn up, my hands did not feel like they were losing the top layer of skin, my hear rate was steady and no beads of sweat were on my forehead. With your 20% off coupon and tax, your total should be less than $7.

Well worth it. In 2009, I am all about making my life simpler, and this is a good start.

Benefits of the Frigid Weather

If there is one good thing about the cold weather besides increasing my job security, it is that you don't have to worry about leaving groceries in the car. I had to go to Walmart before soccer (Chelsie was out of peanut butter cookies) and picked up some frozen food - I had no worries about it thawing out while I played two soccer games. I think this exact moment is the first time I have really been chilled and am having a hard time warming up....