We bought a house yesterday!!!

Let the fixing-up begin!!

Dear Short-Sale-Pre-forclosure- Contract-Signing for the House People,

I am tired of waiting for a yes or no answer.

It is a SHORT sale for a reason.

You have made it LONG.

Please decide ASAP.

yours Truly,

Aris

What a day!

For the first time in my life I made pie crusts from scratch.

Now, while I admit this doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal, please consider the following:

– As I began to pull out all of the ingredients for the crusts, the
apple, cherry and pumpkin pies… I notice the flame on the stove that
is heating my teapot. It is low. Which wouldn’t have been bad, IF I had
set it to low.  So I check both pilot lights that we have in the
house. OUT. OF COURSE. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, I am
responsible for making homemade pies that have to be baked TODAY and
(incase you didn’t know it already) the Propane is GONE. Which poses a
pretty significant problem since our stove is run by propane. ( Not to
mention it snowed almost all day and the next two days are highs below
freezing. YEAH our heating system in our house is also run on propane,
so is the hot water… you get the point.) So, I call my loving
husband, to let him know that his efforts of preventing the current
situation had failed. ( He had called a month ago, two weeks ago, and
last week to remind the propane company we were getting low.)  In
case you didn’t catch my first couple entries after we first got
married, being without propane is NOT FUN.

Of course my loving husband comes through for us, and he calls to tell me the propane is coming soon.

-So I begin making my pie crust dough. And I look up to see Prize (a 22
year old whitish-gray horse) walking by. Not an uncommon occurrence.
What was uncommon… was that I saw red on his lower stomach. So I take
off my apron, put on my boots and go outside to Prize’s stall. Sure
enough… a HUGE wound the size of my palm, is dripping blood. I’ll
spare the rest of the gory details.

I called Ian and Sally to let them know, hoping that they were still in
town (because they were supposed to go out of town till Sunday). Ian
came down to check it out, and as I thought…. it was bad. Here is the
blessing in all of this… had I not looked up, had the wound been on
his other side, we would not have found it until tonight when I fed
him. (Or IF that, because the angle is such that I may have not seen it
then either.) I am just very thankful Ian was home and able to call the
vet.

After I regrouped from that, (being the animal lover that I am…
seeing a wounded animal is painful for me. I mean, I mourn every
unidentified road-kill we see on the interstate) I came back inside,
put my apron back on and continued working on the pie-crust dough.

Somewhere between my no-sugar-added cherry pie, made with splenda (the
ONLY non-homemade item, and which coincidentally tastes like bad baby
food- which I only bought because the other cans of normal cherry pie
filling were sold out at Walmart last night, AND of which I only found
out how bad it tasted once it was in the oven.) and my totally from
scratch apple pie… which I peeled all 8 granny smith apples and
madethem fit into the tiny pie shell that barely fit …
               
            a knock on the door.
Propane lady and Ian were standing there. Ian asking when we think we
will be leaving the guest house and me trying to explain how we really
don’t know for sure until the bank signs our offer. Then the lady and
her husband/Propane guy come back into the house. She wants a full tour
while taking pictures on her cell to show her sister to see if she
might want to live there. I don’t even know if Ian had offered.

               
         Did I mention I was in the
middle of cooking? Oh and Charlie was going BERZERK!
But we got the propane and the nice propane people finally left. And I returned to my baking.

Finally, I was taking my last pie… my perfect pumpkin pie… out of the oven.

Exhausted I decide to have a glass of apple juice. (From the
concentrate I had used in my apple pie recipe.) It tastes like it was
on the verge of being fermented. Not exactly bad and NOT good.

So… great. My splenda cherry pie tastes like very yucky nastiness,
and I made an apple pie with possibly fermented apple juice. My only
saving grace is the pumpkin pie…

               
              
              
     of which, only 3 people coming to Thanksgiving
dinner tomorrow, will even try.

I will never be asked to make the pies again….

            
           
           
           
           
           
           but at least my crusts were from scratch.

If you work in an elementary school, for any small amount of time, you
will experience something that you had previously never expected. (Or
if you did expect it, maybe you hoped it would never happen.)

Last week was one of those weeks for me.

And it was only four school days long.

Monday, a child greener than St Patrick’s Day, threw up all over the
table next to the teacher who was testing him for report cards. He
missed the report cards, but guess who had to walk him up to the office?

Yours truly.

Nevermind that this is just disgusting anyway. But remember that I had a paralyzing fear growing up of people throwing up.

Tuesday, another child pooped his pants. How did we know? (Because he
certainly didn’t tell us… according to him everything was fine!) The
smell infiltrated two classrooms and only dissipated once his class
went to the library. Guess who had to ask him/get him to confess and
then help him get his nasty undies into a garbage bag to take home?

Yours truly.

Oh, and this wasn’t normal poop smell. This smelled like something crawled up and died in the bowels of this child. (Gag)

Oh…. but it doesn’t end there!

On Wednesday a 1st grader broke his arm at recess. and it wasn’t a
normal break either. I didn’t see any bone sticking out. but the bone
was broken so badly that his forearm connected to his hand wobbled, as
if he were dangling his wrist… just halfway up his arm.
And guess who took him up to the nurses’ office??

Your truly.

I am so tired.

And grossed out.

Hard to believe, but I start back to school on Monday. I am resuming my job as a Paraprofessional for a full day and two half day classes of kindergarten. I can’t believe the summer has passed so quickly!!

I didn’t get the biggest project done that I had wanted to… however, successfully maintained a clean house.

Yes.

Jared and I are currently house shopping. We found two that we love, and have to pick one this weekend and make an offer on it in the beginning of next week. (We are SO excited to be owning our own home!!!)

Internet has been scarce this summer. (Dial Up AND on 10 hours a month) So I will be back full time on Monday!!

Heck YES!

It is so hard for me to believe that July 1st is TOMORROW. Crazy days.

I have lots to say about alot of things…

However, I shall resign myself to say only this:

                6 weeks of summer left!
                A LOT can happen in 6 weeks.
                Bring it on.
                  

So, the yaks that we are taking care of… have been getting out of their fenced-in area almost DAILY now. There is Yak poop all over our “yard”. And it is a bit disconcerting to wake up in the morning and walk outside to find Bubba staring at you in the face.

But there is a silver lining.

Yesterday, Bubba kissed my hand! It was pretty much the funnest thing ever 🙂 (He licked Jared’s hand too… but mine was first.)

Spring Break is in 11 school days!

A funny story…

Yesterday I arrived home from work to a quiet and warm house. I popped a bagel into the toaster, and when it was finished, sat down on the couch to enjoy my snack.

But the sun was shining in through the window.

So I got up to close the blinds.

As I am looking out over the land (that I pretend is ours… but really isn’t.) I suddenly find myself staring at Bubba…the boy yak.

He is about 4 feet from the window… sitting in the sun…. on our front porch.

This caught me WAY off guard, since as far as I knew he was supposed to be confined in the generous pen… with a gate… and a lock… to keep him INSIDE.

SO… I go and get the big stick. (Used for keeping Bubba in line) And I fearlessly approach the buffalo sized mammal. (I was surprised to see his female counterpart Tessa Babe standing a few feet from him.)

Bubba and I have had our moments. He can be a tender beast… who likes his ears scratched. And other times he can be a royal pain in the patootey.(And ornery as all get out.)

Today was a gentle moment. When vocalizing that I wanted him to move didn’t work, and shaking the stick at him didn’t work, I went to get hay.

That worked. 🙂

They both followed me around the side of the house… with a small fight-intermission…(Tessa tried to hit Bubba in the behind) and then finally to their large gated pen.

The world can sleep soundly tonight.

GO ME.

I can handle Bubba!

Today is my three week anniversary.

The time has passed SO fast!

And every minute has been an adventure. I think the key phrase for my
life these past few weeks would be “It didn’t happen the way we
expected.”

On our honeymoon, the trunk of my car broke and we had to break the
broken bit out. It would not close… and now it won’t stay open.
(Someone has to hold it up while the other person unloads. ***Remember
this for later)

I got a UTI on the honeymoon too, which was very painful and has, only yesterday, finally subsided.

Though we were very blessed to be in Glenwood Springs on our honeymoon
(the only part of the state that DIDN’T get snow dumped on them…. we
returned to Larkspur, to our new house, to find the drive way to our
secluded bungalow had not been sufficiently plowed, 2.5 hours later and
getting my car stuck once, Jared’s jeep stuck twice, and hauling our
belongings from the car (which we had to hold the trunk open while we
unloaded) at least 30 yards in knee high snow…. we went to Red Robin
for dinner. We were blessed with help to get our cars unstuck, and help
getting our things to the house. Which was nice.

The next day we left for Albuquerque… Jared’s jeep was still stuck.

ABQ was GREAT!! I had fun sharing someone else’s traditions. 🙂 Except, Jared started complaining of  ear pain.

We returned home in the worst driving conditions… it took 1 hour to
get from the bottom of Monument Hill to the top. Stupid Semi trucks
that didn’t put chains on.

The next morning, we found out that our supposedly half full propane tank, was 0% full. No heat. No hot water. No stove.

We had our microwave and a couple of space heaters that we got from Ian
(the guy we are renting from). And we took showers at the campground.

We got lucky that Jared’s ear started to get better, and before his
insurance ran out…. it got worse. We went to the ER on Saturday the
30th at 11:45 pm. He had an ear infection. They gave him meds, a
prescription, and cleaned his ears out. Later that evening, at home,
his eardrum burst… and we woke up to blood on our new white pillow
case.

New Year’s Eve was really chill. Jared and I started a new tradition of
making s’mores. The candle we used didn’t work, so we ended up
microwaving them. IT was fun!

New Years Day was fun too! Just before we left for the store… Jared says ” I think the horses are out”
“What makes you say that?” I say.

“Because they are standing outside our window,” he said.

So we had to wrangle two horses back into their stall. We did it pretty well too! Jared and I make a good team. 🙂

We went to the store after the horses… and got our two new additions
to our family. Little Sugar and Spicey, our two female Chinese Dwarf
Hamsters. They weren’t the kind I wanted, but I am glad we got them.
They are so different, and you can tell they each have a unique
personality. 🙂

January 2nd at 8pm… we FINALLY got propane! (5 days after we ran
out.) Jared’s ear is doing much better. We both started working
again… and I got to tell you, it is pretty cool playing house “for
real”. I love coming home to someone at night. Jared has been really
wonderful. I couldn’t have chosen a better match for myself.

The Adventure Continues…

This is my last entry as Aris Haines.

                       So long single world, it has been a most excellent ride!

Aris Greene….

Bring it on.