The New 'Hood

 I thought you might want to see where we landed!

 This is the view in our new neighborhood, as I walked the dogs on a clear day. "Walked the dogs" is purely a technical term here, as my Labs have 2 speeds: drag and dead-stop. There are plenty of new and exciting smells for them to explore here, one of which we discovered early one morning as I stumbled up to the street in my sweatpants to walk them and I stepped in a gigantic pile of bear poop. Yup, you read that right. Bear poop.

 We traded meth-head neighbors for bears, but hey...at least the bears take care of their kids, don't steal my neighbor's tools, and don't have the cops visiting them every other day. Granted, they both go through my trash, but I'll still take the bears any day.

Quick Meal: Whole Wheat Penne with Red Pepper Vodka Sauce

 We finally had the refrigerator delivered, which means I could shop for real food, the kind of food that wouldn't be found in a bomb shelter. Oh perishables, how I missed you! It's going to be a very long time before I want to bring home any type of pre-made meal again that is wrapped in paper, has a handle or comes with its own drink.

 For our inaugural homemade meal in the new house, I made this pasta and served it with crusty bread and a simple romaine salad with homemade ranch dressing....and you know when I say "homemade" I mean I mixed up a package of Hidden Valley Farms ranch dressing mix. Yes, I know Martha Stewart would say I should mix my own with my supply of buttermilk (which I have never bought, ever) and herbs growing on the windowsill, but seriously? The only thing I've ever successfully grown is a sunflower, and that was completely by accident because I swept all the excess sunflower seeds the squirrels knocked over off the deck. The rain and sun did the rest.

Whole Wheat Penne with Red Pepper Vodka Sauce
 Boil pasta according to package directions. While that boils, saute 1/2 diced onion and 3 cloves of minced garlic in 1 tsp. oil and 1 T. butter. Once translucent, turn heat to medium and add 1 can (about 14 ounces) of crushed tomatoes and 1/2 tsp. of crushed red pepper flakes (use 1/4 tsp. if you're wimpy, 1 tsp. if you're daring), sea salt to taste and a few dashes of fresh black pepper. Add a 1/4 c. of vodka and 1/2 c. of half and half and simmer for a few minutes before adding the crowning glory--a few heaping T. of fresh Parmesan. Serve over drained pasta and get comfortable for the happy carb coma which follows.

Product Review...Eureka "The Boss" Power Plus Vacuum

 Whew. That's a long title, not just for a blog post but for a vacuum cleaner.

  A few years ago, before Dyson-mania took over the world and introduced "cyclonic action" into everyone's lexicon, I splurged and bought some fancy-pants Hoover vacuum with 3(count them, 3!) reusable filters and a supposedly awesome pet brush feature that was designed to eliminate all evidence of the pair of Black Labs that run my household, and whose sole purposes in life are to shed and steal my bed covers. The pet brush sucker-upper attachment never really impressed me but dang, that thing picked up everything in its path and then some! So it was a truly mournful day when my Hoover decided that it's molded plastic casing really didn't need to stay in one piece and just sort of fell apart, roller brush over there, wheels over here. After many layers of duct tape and a few years later, it finally just sort of sighed and decided that its vacuuming days were over.

 I didn't want to get rid of my Hoover, but it went to the curb and I went to Wal-Mart to find its successor. Considering I now lived in a place with mostly hardwood floors and a few area rugs, I figured I could get by with a cheaper, less hearty vacuum. I found a few under $100 and being an intelligent, Consumer Reports kind of girl, I immediately ignored all the information on the signs and went for the one that had the cutest color combination. Tah dah! The Eureka "The Boss" Power Plus vacuum! I bought it, brought it home and assembled it (I lie....my kid helped me assemble it because I stink at following instructions) and went to attack the blobs of Black Lab fur stuck to my red area rug.

 The pros: this vacuum makes an impressive amount of noise, enough to make one of your dogs run for their life and hide under the one piece of furniture that will provide her the least amount of protection: in this case, the coffee table. This may just be my experience though and your dog may have more intelligence than my less-than-genius Lab.

  The cons: this vacuum couldn't pick up a hooker in Amsterdam, never mind a dust bunny. Pet fur will congregate and laugh at you as you try to run over it, again and again, in hopes that maybe you just aimed wrong the first time. Dirt scurries under the roller brush and sprays onto your shoes. Any wayward pebble, piece of Lego, or God forbid, something metal like a paperclip will clang around in your Eureka and sound like a grenade in a foxhole. The power cord is woefully short and the plug will invariably get tugged out of the electrical outlet, whip around the corner and lay at your feet next to the fur blobs. Oh, and in case you're still trying to get this thing to perform, don't bother leaning it back to get under a chair or sofa, because once you lean it back, the canister pushes down on the power button, shutting the damn thing off.

 I can't for the life of me figure out why this vacuum is called The Boss, let alone why Eureka tacked on the clearly misleading "Power Plus" moniker. The best use of this machine is as a dog deterrent to my bedroom, where I park it in the doorway to scare off Miss Genius. Lesson learned: cheap vacuums suck. Or don't, as the case may be.

No fridge, no shirt, no service

 We have moved into the new house. There is a mountain of cardboard boxes behind me as I type and I still haven't found my comb. You can imagine what my hair looks like.

 When we arrived on Thursday in the U-Haul, we jumped out of the truck with the new house keys and excitedly unlocked the door. Everything was clean, spacious, lovely!--then we looked at the kitchen and realized there was no refrigerator. Say what? Now, we have a fridge at our old place and technically could have shrugged and said, "Oh well. Let's go get our old one," but here's the real story:

 When we moved into that house, it came furnished. At first we were thrilled, not having much furniture and not having money for new appliances. Months later, we realized the fridge was making a sound a little like a garbage truck and was leaking enough water to support a small family of ducks. Still, we limped along until we had the money to buy a new one. Armed with a limited amount of cash, we set out for the Big 3 (Sears, Lowe's and Home Depot) and found a modest unit on sale and set up delivery. We went home, measured, and realized it wouldn't even fit through the front door. We measured again. It wouldn't even fit through the front door even if we removed the door as well as the doors of the refrigerator! So back to the store we went, to buy a smaller utilitarian unit that boasted the following bells and whistles: a shelf, a lightbulb, and enough cubic feet to properly store and chill a gallon of milk, a week's worth of yogurt and enough produce to rot by the end of the week, reminding me that I'm a terrible household manager who doesn't feed her family enough salad.

 Not wanting to go through the whole removal of house and appliance doors again, plus navigating up and down a set of stairs to get the fridge out of the old house and into the new, we now have to wait a week for the landlord to deliver his old fridge (which he didn't think we'd need) to this house. In the meantime, I have a cooler which holds a head of lettuce for my bearded dragon, 3 Coke Zero's, a fistful of cheese slices, and a tub of Earth Balance butter. I can say with a new-found authority that no, you cannot feed your family without a fridge. Don't even try to convince me that pasta and canned soup is adequate or that plenty of people in the world live without refrigeration. I miss Greek yogurt, chilled almond milk and Morningstar Farms veggie sausage! 5 days and counting...

8/28: Hey, we're moving on up!

 I guess if you put things out into the Universe, the Universe will then reward you! Or in my case, if you complain long enough, your family gets sick of listening to you and they decide that yes indeed, it's time to move!

 This week, I get to load all of my crap into a U-Haul and navigate the wonky, crooked steps down into my new home. It's twice as big as this house, with actual closets (I have learned that when you buy a house that was built during the Great Depression, you should be prepared for all the charm of a house with absolutely no conveniences.) I am hoping that this new adventure will transform me into the person I should be: a master chef! Homemaker extraordinaire! Mother and wife of the year! :::snort:::

 Pictures on Thursday of the new abode.

Anyone hate where they live?

Anyone?...anyone?
So I looked around my living room last night and I was struck by how brown it was. Wood everywhere. Not good wood, either--just old, dusty, distinctly un-charming wood.
My house has potential. I don't mean to complain, I really don't. It's just that between the wood and the nonexistent closets and the sloping floors, added together with the crackhead, drug-dealing neighbor...well, let's just say I'm not feeling the love.
This morning, I looked around and realized my lack of love was leading me to ignore basic housekeeping. Like, the kind where your mother in law would call Code Enforcement on you if she visited. Thus, I got off my bum and started scrubbing the kitchen. I found petrified Cheerios under the microwave and I haven't bought those in at least a month. Later, I went out and bought flowers to spruce up the place. Tulips. I love tulips.