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There isn’t anything I can do about Gross Closet until maintenance sends a plumber or whatever, so I figure I won’t dwell on it. I’m going to take all the linens out of it and forget it exists.

Symphony always asks if she can hold Georgie and after two seconds she’s like “OKAY YOU CAN HAVE THIS BACK NOW.” Oh and please pretend you can’t see my packed-full-of-dog-hair vacuum back there. I was right in the middle of cleaning the foyer when I took this.

Kichou still isn’t friends with Georgie, whenever she tries to play with him he sits in the bedroom closet and sulks. Last night she curled up next to him to sleep and he stormed out of the bedroom in a huff and didn’t come back for the rest of the night! This is basically the only interaction they have:

I love the way the force of her chirpy little barks causes her legs to fly out. Of course this incessant barking isn’t behavior I want to encourage, so today I’m going to make a penny can (get a can, put pennies in it, seal shut) to shake at her when she gets too barky. I wish someone had done that with Kichou when he was little because he is NOISY.

In case you thought life in my house was all puffy puppies and funshine, it is so not. I decided to take advantage of naptime to get some stuff done around the house, including cleaning out the bottom of my linen closet. When I took everything out, lookit what I found:

UGH WTF. The baseboard is totally deformed and discoloured and as you can see has totally pulled away from the wall in one place. It feels clammy and smells mildewy to boot. This is my hallway closet, and on the other side of that wall is I believe the pipes and what-have-you for the geothermal heating system, part of which is obviously leaking. Or maybe moisture is seeping up from the ground- I am in a basement suite. Either way, GREAT JUST GREAT. I called the management office and they’re going to send over the maintenance guy “just as soon as he’s available.” DOUBLE GREAT. Meanwhile I’m dying from black mold over here.

EDIT: I printed out the picture and took it to the management office and they sent the maintenance guy over right away. There’s an access panel in the wall right above the grossness, and when he opened it out he found a cold water pipe next to a hot water pipe and mad condensation going on. AWESOME. So they’re probably going to come back with a plumber and maybe even tear the whole wall out!

Say it with me:

GREAT.

JUST GREAT.

I’m really getting a kick out of the interaction between Dougal and Georgie. She’s not afraid of him anymore, so she’ll try to play with him. He is really gentle with her and seems mostly bemused by her silly puppy behavior.

Georgie is committed to literacy

Uglies42/104; Pretties43/104; Specials44/104; and Extras 45/104

These are some of my favorite books! I’ve read them a bunch of times. Unfortunately when I stashed the boxes of books under Sym’s bed I made them pretty inaccessible. I really felt like reading them again so I did the only logical thing: bought them all for my kindle! It’s worth it though, because these are young adult novels are about teens living in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future AKA MY FAVORITE THING EVER.

The first three books take place like three hundred years in the future, in a society where upon reaching the age of 16, everyone has massive, Heidi Montag-style plastic surgery makeovers to become pretty. The fourth book (which used to be my least favorite but I’ve recently developed a new appreciation for it) takes place three years later in a city that runs on a “reputation economy”: everyone over the age of say, twelve, has a personal “feed” where they can post pictures, videos, stories, whatever they want, and how popular a feed is determines that person’s place in society. DOES THIS SOUND IN ANY WAY FAMILIAR? I was lolling my face off about it.

ANYWAY you should read these books.

I forgot to take a picture of this before we started eating so it looks a little depleted

I adapted this meal from a recipe in Real Simple. I only made 2 chicken breasts, grilled them instead of using a skillet and I didn’t bother with measuring the spices- I just sprinkled them ~freehand~. For the couscous salad I left out the basil and I didn’t have any lemons so I used one of the limes left over from the last Popsicle Party. The chicken was okay, but the couscous was awesome! Why did no one ever tell me that couscous was so great? And it is LITERALLY the easiest thing in the world to cook, too. I foresee a lot more couscous in my future.

… now with puppy.

Puppy time has been great so far. She’s had a few accidents in the house but I mean, she’s a puppy; it’s inevitable. I’ve come up with this ultra-efficient dressing system for sleeping so that I can get her to the yard to pee really quickly if she wakes me up: I got to bed in underwear and a dark, non-see-through shirt (I don’t have time to “bra up” before going outside and I live in the middle of the most densely populated part of North America. No need to put everything out on display!), and leave shorts beside the bed that I can pull on one-handed (she’s less likely to start peeping on the carpet if I pick her up right away*). On Saturday night I wore a long sleeve top and last night a tank top, and I found the former worked better because I didn’t need to put on a sweater.

*The exception to this came on Sunday evening: She pooped in the hallway and then ate it before I got there. I was cleaning up the leftover poop-crumbs and she came scampering over to investigate so I quickly picked her up and she peed down my leg. OOPS.

For this weekend’s popsicle party Sym chose Lime & Limeade for the flavour. I figured I would take her literally, so I bought a bottle of organic limeade (Santa Cruz Organics, the same brand as the lemonade I used last weekend) and some limes. I bought six but I ended up only using three because I just have an old-timey reamer and juicing limes is hard work! I was worried they’d be too sour so I also added a little sugar syrup (I just melted like, eight sugar cubes & a tablespoon of water).

You know what goes with popsicles? PUPPIES!!

Somehow I misjudged the amount of liquid I’d need and I only got six popsicles out of this batch. I also forgot to take pictures while we were making them but these are pretty simple and all my measurements are ~guestimations~ anyway.

Also if anyone is interested, there are THREE THOUSAND MILLION more pictures of Georgie on my flickr, including this never-before seen picture with her red glitter collar.

It has a rhinestone G. She’s so fetch.

puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy

Eight million more pictures pending.

After having one nice day yesterday, it’s gross and rainy out again. These pictures from Saturday evening help to remind me that it WILL be sunny again.

I mentioned last week that I found a dresser in the alley. Well, I’ve confirmed that the building it came from DOES have bedbugs, although I don’t know for sure if the dresser does yet. Either way I’m continuing with my decontaminate-and-refinish plan because last night I found a desk as well:

These are cool pieces of furniture! They just need a little diatomaceous earth and some tlc and I think they’ll be good as new. Of course it’ll be easier to clean and fix them up IF IT EVER STOPS RAINING OMG.