That Face

Like I said yesterday, I never really have time to sit down at my computer and actually DO THINGS. So yesterday I made a point to get some stuff done. I uploaded a bunch of pictures from the last month or so... So here's Calli at the end of March:

Hanging out on the back of the couch.

pew pew pew

She destroyed that toy in about 30 seconds, and she still loves it.

My mom still has my nice camera, so I think most of these were taken on the other one. Ugh. We gave her some money towards a camera for Mother's Day. Get on it, Mom.

Here's two of my favorite pictures from her first trip to Ocean City. Next weekend I'll be taking pictures of her first encounter with the ocean. Those should be awesome.

Caught her at the end of a bark, but she looks so serious

Sleepyhead

Here's some pictures of Calli yesterday:

These were taken outside, with the good camera. So the quality is much better. Except the last one, that damn cloud came out of nowhere. She likes to be at my moms, because she's allowed to run around free (when we are there, mom doesn't trust her). At our house right now she has to be on a leash outside at all times because our yard is too small, not fenced and too close to a trafficky road. Sad.

And, because I feel like a bad mommy. Here's pictures of my boys:

My little tiny baby, Leonidas:
Gigantor, aka Atticus:

I love them all

Side Note: Face Lift

I switched a few things around.

Mainly, the background. Obviously.

I want to create a new title picture, but that means I have to actually sit down at my computer at home and make time to do that.

Considering I can't even make time to clean up anything in my house right now. The plain title is going to have to suffice for now.

That is all.

Matchy Matchy

We went to a wedding on Sunday. It was very pretty, and we had a blast.

Well, I had a blast. D.Soup sat around and watched me act like a fool. He was not enthused.

It might have had something to do with the fact that he really didn't know anyone, as it was MY coworker's wedding.

Anywho, I'm killing two birds with one stone here. New pictures of my hair (sort of... it's up) and pictures of D.Soup and I.

The usual: Me dancing with no shoes on.
The entire time I kept saying "why are you so TALL!?"

The Soup Family.

Mr. D.Soup looking dapper.

Nice.

Please note: I do not condone the fish face. Somehow I can't stop myself from making it. As you can see, it's really not a good look. But I wanted you to see us in all our matching glory.

It's moments like this that I pat myself on the back for buying D.Soup all those different colored button up shirts years ago when I was tired of him wearing blue all the time.

I do think he was mildly embarrassed with how many comments on how "cute" we looked and all the multiple "look at how perfectly matched you guys are" we got.

I loved every second of it.

Excitement!

I made my first sale on Etsy! These were my most popular item, and they finally sold today! I'm so excited!


The only problem is I have to go make another pair because I gave this pair to a friend a few months ago. Not a big deal :)

Maybe this will inspire me to get busy knitting more. I keep starting projects and getting bored with them.

I'm so happy :)

Side Note: The verdict

We went to the shoe store tonight... I walked around barefoot for the guy to gauge what kind of shoe I would need. He recommended these:
Mizuno Inspire Running Shoes.

They are now mine.

They are so light it hardly feels like I am wearing shoes. We didn't have time to go running tonight to test them out, but hopefully tomorrow!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Once upon a time...

Before we moved into our house, another family lived there - I will dub them "The Old's Family". This is usually the case. It was a family of 4, 2 parents and 2 grown children - one just out of high school and the other finishing up that year.

Our house has 3 bedrooms, and one bathroom. At times its too small for D.Soup and I... Who am I kidding, it's almost ALWAYS too small for us.

I think all the time about how those two "kids" were living in the two rooms that we now call the computer room and the exercise room. I wish I had the actual room dimensions to give you. You would feel bad for them too.

I'm sure I am going to spend a ton of time listing off all the things that were wrong with the house once we were physically there all the time, and you are going to be thinking to yourself "Really, Mz.Soup? You spent all this time to complain about... what, exactly?" And then I'll be sad because you don't understand.

But whatever, continuing on.

And maybe, just maybe you'll be on my side and completely understand why I tell people all the time "I really dislike the people who lived in our house before us."

*crosses her fingers*

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The first time we ever saw the house. Before we bought it. Our realtor called 30 minutes in advance to let the owners know that we would be stopping by.

You know, so they could get out of there... because who wants to walk around a potential house with the owners following you around breathing down your neck??

..............................................

We walk in the door... And there they all were. In the house. With us.

Awkward? Yes.

Especially when Mr.Old started following us around and explaining each part of the house to us

because that's not what our realtor was there for or anything.

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The closet. Oh god our awful closet. I knew it was awful the first time we ever walked in there, during the incident with the previous owners. I'm fairly certain my first words were: "This is going to need to be changed" even then.

Of course, we're just now getting around to doing something about it, but that's beside the point.

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The paint (part 1).* There are three real rooms on the first floor of our house.

Kitchen, Living room, Dining room.

Our living room and dining room are connected (well, all three are technically connected but just for visual sake). Two separate rooms, but connected. They were painted the same color. Tan. Oh, so was the stairwell. Tan. Almost everywhere was tan.

This tan to be exact: Now, don't get all "oh it's not that bad!" on me. Two full rooms of that. Hundreds of feet of wall space covered in THAT. It was awful. And it took us almost 3 years to be completely rid of all of it. Ugh.

The only other room in the house that was painted something other than white... was lavender.

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The floral wall borders (part 1). Three separate rooms.

All. different. border.

Maybe it's just because I'm not much of flower person.

(I made standees of D.Soup and I as centerpieces for our wedding because I did NOT want flowers)

Two rooms downstairs: Living Room and Dining Room (again, attached) each had their own special borders. Then the one room upstairs, the only other non-white paint room in our whole house - also wall bordered.

-------------------------------

The floral wall borders (part 2). Removal.

We started in the dining room - super excited about getting rid of at least one border and armed with a wall steamer. We did fairly well, only minor cursing and a few steam burns. And we got very skilled at maneuvering around the room on our dining room chairs.

We got three quarters of the way down. And discovered another. layer. of. wall. border. UNDERNEATH the first, with a layer of paint in between.

Who does that?!

I believe this is the first time I uttered "I HATE the Old's"

.................................................

Here is a picture of the wall the way the Old's had it (after the border was taken down -- note the TAN, and the back of D.Soup):

we got rid of that fan too, it's just not one of the necessary "I hate the Old's" memories

Luckily the other two rooms were no where near as bad. In fact the day we started working on the living room, we were dreading the wall paper removal... and I went downstairs and pulled the whole thing down - sans steamer - in almost one full piece.

It was a thing of beauty.

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The paint (part 2). I'm not the best painter, I understand that. Even on my worst day, I am 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times better than anyone in the Old's family. In every room that we have painted since we bought our house, we have had to cut the electrical socket plates and light switch plates from the wall.

Because the Old's painted right over them. Socket and all.

Which meant paint running down the wall after they were finished from where it had globbed on the corners of the plate. And paint in the holes of the sockets.

We had to sand the wall around each of the holes where there were sockets, because the paint was so thick that there was a ledge.

We have purchased new electrical sockets/light switches and covers for every room that we have painted.

(You're next, kitchen)

-------------------------------

The doorknobs. Every. single. doorknob. upstairs. was. different. Even knobs attached to the SAME DOOR. The front would be gold and the back would be silver.

WHAT?

that is all.

-------------------------------

I wish that I would have had the forethought to take more pictures of this stuff before we got rid of it. But at the time I just wanted it GONE.

Gah.
I hate the Old's.

I feel better now.

*Now I understand that paint color is a preference thing. I'm sure whoever buys our house from us is going to COMPLETELY hate us too. Because I have bright (read: "crazy") color preferences. And D.Soup is color blind so I pretty much can choose whatever I want. So I get that. But Tan and Lavender are NOT something I would choose. And they were both ugly versions of their designated color family. And for that I blame you, people-I-shall-not-name-but lived-in-the-house-before-me. The end.

East Bound and Down

My mom and I are going to Ocean City this weekend. A Mother's Day celebration and SPRINGFEST.
Hence why I was packing a bag last night. We are leaving today.

I'm pretty excited.

Side Note: Really, Could you be any lazier?

I just unpacked the suitcase we filled with "souvenirs and extra stuff". From our honeymoon. In October.

You now have my permission to be as disappointed in us as I was.

And go.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

See Mz. Soup Run

I, obviously, have become quickly addicted to blogger-dom.

I've heard, briefly, about the Couch to 5K (C25K) program before, but don't really enjoy running that much and never considered it something that I was interested in.

Yesterday, Jenna from ThatWife posted about her C25K experience. Getting a chance to see someone who considered them self "not a runner" - like myself - document her progress, her descriptions of each month, the trials she faced... That was all really cool, interesting and actually very helpful.

But the most important thing: the results. She's shared the charting of her progress with us, and I can see first hand how much it helped her. She had nothing but good things to say about the experience...



So last night I started the program too.

We finished making dinner, and even though I wanted to lay down on the couch and take a nap (because I'm STILL exhausted all the time) I went upstairs and grabbed some workout clothes and headed to the gym with D.Soup.

C25K app

Jenna also recommended the C25K app. So I downloaded it onto my iPad (its a iPod app, so it doesn't fill the whole screen, but I was okay with that). It gives you verbal instructions each time you're supposed to switch between walking and running, and allows you to create a playlist from any music that you have on you iPod. You can also make journal entries after each run to keep track of yourself. It was pretty cool.

Week 1 Day 1:
Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Check.

It wasn't even hard. I just didn't have the motivation to talk myself into it before. Fake watchers started the motivation, now lets just hope that I have the energy to keep up with it.

I'm pretty sure I'm in need of new shoes though. I think I've had mine for about 5 years. And while they didn't get a whole lot of use in that time, I feel its time for a replacement.

D.Soup and I are going to this cool shoe place in Annapolis recommended by 2 friends of ours now... The people there watch you walk, pick out a few pairs of shoes that could be a good match, and then throw you on a treadmill and tape you while you're running to analyze your needs better. So that you get the best shoe available for your running style.

That all sounds really cool. Until you get to the part where they are going to video.tape.me.running. I don't rightly know if that's something that I want to witness, I might never run again...

Day 2:
Tomorrow.

Sad Panda

It's been an average week.

So average that I haven't had anything really interesting to write about (not that my previous posts have been interesting, but whatever....), so I just haven't been writing.

Things that have happened this week:
1. Calli had her surgery
2. We changed out the slats for the new plywood under the bed
3. I made some cool shirts and put them on Etsy
4. D.Soup's birthday was yesterday
5. ........................

Seriously, half the days I couldn't tell you WHAT happened.

I could have written about numbers 2 and 3, but that would require me uploading pictures. And I'm lazy. There will be posts about both. Sometime. In the future.

I have a few things, mostly Calli related, that I've been saving up. I'll go ahead and combine them into one post.

Like this:This is Calli post surgery. She did great, and everything went fine. But as soon as she woke up she started licking her belly and where her dewclaw (read: freak toe) used to be. So they slapped the cone on her.

The photo was taken in the car on the way home. The ladies at the vet's office said as soon as they put the cone on her she completely forgot that she could walk. And stood, feet planted awkwardly and braced as if the world was ending, staring at the floor.

WHAT IS HAPPENING?! What have I done to deserve this?? And where did my legs go?!

She assumes this exact position every time it goes back on too. Once she remembers her motor functions, she runs into everything like she had absolutely no knowledge of them existing pre-cone. WHAT IS THIS?! There was no DOOR there 10 minutes ago! She also holds her head so low that the cone gets stuck on anything that's on the floor. Getting her in the crate is impossible. Putting the cone on when she's in the crate is even more impossible. Bedtime has been interesting for the past week.

Last night was the first time we decided we should test run sleeping without the cone. She was fine until about 4:30 this morning, and then D.Soup wakes me up...

I think Calli is licking her belly.

Now mind you, I'm half asleep and it's PITCH BLACK in our bedroom. So I really can't see her to verify what exactly she is licking. But I can hear the distinct *slurp slurp slurp* of her licking something. I can also just make out her silhouette, and it looks like she might be curled in a way that she could, possibly, be licking her belly.

But at this point I could be looking at her ass and thinking its her face so obviously we can't expect my idea about her position to be anywhere near accurate.

So I did what any normal, half asleep, person would do... I banged on the crate, told her to knock it off, and threatened her with the cone. I had no intentions of actually getting up and putting the cone on her, but the threat worked for about 2 seconds.

*knock knock knock* Calli, cut it out.

Mom? You're awake now. Okay awesome, let me out. (Which actually came out as her breathing very close to my face, and her tail banging against the crate)

No. Calli really, stop. Go back to sleep.

*whining*

Then she started licking or chewing on the crate bars.. *slurp slurp slurp* *scregy scregy*, THEN she found her squeaky dragon toy. Which sounds similar to a surprised duck *schrrEEEEEeeee*. And for a minute I actually had serious thoughts of getting up and going through with my threat about the cone. I don't cope well with being awake when I don't want to be.

But then I passed back out, and I'm assuming she did too.

I think, overall, we were victorious in the non-cone bedtime, minus the morning snafu. I'm not sure how long she's not allowed to lick herself. I've caught her a few times and stopped her... but her belly is looking better so I think she should be alright.

---------------------------------

Also,

D.Soup played golf over the weekend. Sunday, I think.
(like I said before... can't.remember.what.happened)

Anyway.

While he was gone, Calli and I went over to my parents house. My mom hijacked my good camera, and any time I need to take decent pictures of what I've made I have to go over there. She also had buttons and things of that nature that I wanted to add to some of the shirts I'd made.

So while I was there it started raining. Of course, Calli wanted to go out like 49,080,654,380 times. So she was in her crate quite a bit -- Grammy's not down for a giant wet puppy running around her house and getting on her furniture. The point is, she had a bunch of pent up energy by the time we were ready to go home.

Since my mom lives really far back from the road, I'm comfortable taking Calli out sometimes without a leash. And most of the time she's really good about staying with me. MOST of the time.

This time it went a little like this:

Come on Calli, let's get in the car...

O.M.G. I'M OUTSIDE. I LOVE TO RUN. I'M GOING TO RUN EVERYWHERE. I LOVE CIRCLES. LET'S RUN IN CIRCLES. MOM THIS IS SO FUN. YOU CAN'T CATCH ME. THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER. YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY! FJOEJBLRMBKSJKFMKAJHFKEJGKFVKAFKEANKNBANKFLJEALVMKR.
...............Wait, what's that?"

At this point she would get distracted by something on the ground. Probably grass. Because it's not like everywhere she was running had grass or anything. I would start walking towards her. And she wouldn't notice me. And I would get excited because I was going to catch her. And I would get 3 steps from her. And see her eyes twitch towards me just a little. I'd been caught... Then she would take off running all over again.

Did I mention it was raining?

Finally, after 10 minutes of "I'm not going to chase you around," I finally caught her. And we were both drenched.

We got in the car and started to make our way home. I got out of the driveway and halfway down the street before I realized that my cellphone was missing. So we bust a U, and head back towards moms. As I'm walking up the sidewalk, I glance over. There, in the grass, where I had latched on to my psychopathic dog, was my cell phone.

The worst part is I couldn't even be mad at her.
She was having such a fantastic time.