Thanksgiving

I love, love, love Thanksgiving. Tomorrow morning we're leaving bright and early for my family reunion in Tennessee. Unfortunately, as many of you already know, my grandparents won't be joining us this year. My grandfather fell down Monday night on his slick porch and hit his head. In doing so, he got a gash in his head that needed stitches, and he also cracked his vertebrae, which led to surgery yesterday afternoon. The surgery went well, but he is recovering, and will be for several weeks. Thanksgiving won't be the same.

Happy turkey day to you all!

Vandalism at the Lake House

You heard right, folks. Our porch and backyard were vandalized Friday night/Saturday morning. My brand new beautiful backyard was trashed, and worst of all, we think the neighbor's kid did it.

We woke up Saturday morning with the intentions of raking the yard and cleaning house. Z went out the back door onto the porch, then immediately called for me to come outside also. I got my robe on and went outside in the freezing cold. I couldn't believe my eyes. Everything from our porch – a chair, bench, wooden porch swing, long rug we'd used for moving, cooler/radio, step ladder, and a ton of other stuff I can't think of right now – had been tossed off the porch, knocked over, scattered all across the backyard. Our large gas grill had been dragged into the side yard then knocked upside down with the propane tank ripped off. Two rakes and a box full of grill tools (spatulas, etc) were gone (although we didn't realize this at the time). We checked our cars, which up until this weekend we'd been leaving unlocked at the house. They were fine and everything was still in them.

I was in shock, but then I got really mad. We haven't been rude to anyone, we haven't left trash sitting out, we don't have any animals that bother the neighbors, we don't play loud music. I just didn't get it. I went inside to take a shower while Z called the police. It's a really small city, so before I was even out of the shower and dressed, the policeman had come and gone. He thought the same thing Z and I thought: since nothing large was stolen (like the brand new step ladder) it was probably just neighborhood kids acting stupid.

Well that's not good enough for me. Z and I were raised to be responsible for our actions, and either one of us would have been punished for doing something like that to a neighbor's yard. So we decided we would go around to the neighbors' houses and introduce ourselves, explain what happened, and ask if they saw or heard anything last night. As soon as the police officer mentioned neighborhood kids, though, I had a really sad thought – our neighborhood is mostly full of retired people. The only "kids" that aren't small children live directly behind us. It's a family renting the home, and we didn't know anything about them. Any time we'd seen them, they didn't really seem interested in speaking to us or welcoming us to the neighborhood. They wouldn't even return my wave when I passed them in my car. But I'd seen them often, and knew there was a mom, dad, a boy who looked about 3, a boy who looked about 12, and another who was possibly 18. (I don't know who exactly the smallest child belongs to. He might be a grandson.) Anyway, we'd never met any of them, and we thought maybe we should pay them a visit.

Meanwhile, the whole time we'd been walking around in the yard, getting upset, showing the police officer everything, and cleaning up the yard, the middle kid from next door was in his yard half-way watching us. He took turns shooting hoops and lounging on top of his father's pickup truck. (Keep in mind it was about 45 degrees that morning.) We thought we'd gotten everything picked up, and then I noticed that our two rakes, which had been leaning against one of our trees, were missing. Since nothing else seemed to be missing, I assumed they'd been carried off somewhere, possibly tossed into the lake. Considering we just bought a nice rake, that made me pretty mad. Then something caught my eye. Our box full of grill tools was on the other side of the fence – the neighbors' side. That was it. I yelled to Z what I'd found. We weren't going to just walk into their yard to get it, because we didn't know these people and didn't want to assume they would be reasonable. A few minutes later Z notices the two rakes flat in their tall grass, almost totally hidden. I was completely pissed. The kid was back inside by this point, and we head over to ring the doorbell and talk to his parents.

He meets us at the front door with a grunt. This kid is dressed like a thug and speaks like one too. His whole demeanor said What do you want? You're not coming in my house. Z asked if his dad was at home. We got a "Naw" in return. We glanced at both vehicles sitting in the driveway and said that we just wanted to introduce ourselves, but we'd come back later.

We sat down on our back porch, which faces the side of their house and yard. There was no way we were going to let him take our things and hide them before we got the chance to talk to his parents. The boy came back outside on his cell phone and walked up and down his driveway, which runs down the side of our house and yard, saying very loudly into his phone that his parents were gone until Tuesday and he had to go to basketball practice in a little while. I highly doubt he was actually on the phone with anybody. I think he was just trying to let us know that we should just give up and leave him alone. It was freezing outside, so after about 20 minutes we went in to eat some lunch, but we stayed at the windows and never took our eyes off our stuff in his yard. The boy started playing basketball, and our things were in plain view of him. I know he could see them, but he couldn't move them because he could see us watching. The whole thing was so silly, but we didn't want to talk to him without his parents and have him simply claim he didn't know anything.

After lunch, there were still no adults around, so Z finally decided that he wanted to rake the yard, dammit, so he went marching over to talk to the kid. He immediately saw Z and met him at the fence (I'm telling you, he was acting very defensive). Z asked again if his parents were home, and when the kid said no, Z told him the mess we'd found that morning. Then he asked why our stuff was in their yard. The kid didn't even try to look surprised, he just said he didn't know and walked over to pick up the two rakes and the box, then he handed them over the fence to Z.

Then he launched into an elaborate story about how that had happened to their yard a while back, and he thought it was a man "up the road near the car wash" that didn't like him. Then he said that same man had broken his dad's truck window with a rock and blamed it on the kid. Then he changed his story and said he thought it was a kid down the road. He said he wouldn't have that kid over to play anymore and he was also going to "tell his mom." Give me a break.

So we figure, OK, he's a liar, but he seems sort of harmless, and at least none of our stuff was broken. We'll just talk to his parents when they get home. We start raking the yard and a different neighbor walks over to meet us and chat. He's the husband of a nice lady who had also already come over to greet me a few weeks ago while I was painting one night. He and Z started talking about what happened, and he seemed pretty surprised. He admitted that the kid had some problems (we learned he goes to an alternative school, does badly in school, and his family moved from Montgomery because he was getting into too much trouble), but he had never done anything like that before.

Right about then, the boy's parents both walk out of the house, get in their two vehicles, and drive away. The little kid (Mike) was in the truck with his dad. Z and I, along with the nice neighbor (Harold) all waved at them as they drove by. None of them even looked at us. So of course, Z and I look at each other and say, "I thought his parents were gone until Tuesday." So that confirms that he's a liar, whether he's the one who trashed our porch and yard or not. And he clearly has something to hide. So Z says, "Well, I guess his dad's taking him to basketball practice. When they come back, I'll just go over and introduce myself and explain what happened." The neighbor told us the dad's a night manager at Wal-Mart and the mother is the manager of Dollar General. The pieces were coming together for me. He has parents who work full time at strange hours, a cute 3-year-old in the house, and he has school troubles. Sounds like he's starving for attention to me.

The dad returned about 30 minutes later, and Z put down the rake to go speak to him. He practically ran into his house when he noticed Z walking toward their yard. Then he got back in his truck and drove off a few moments later. What the crap? So we still haven't spoken to his parents…

That afternoon we went into the city to buy blinds/curtains for our back door and kitchen door. We were going to do that eventually anyway, but by that point we felt like it was imperative. The whole ordeal makes me think the fence we thought we couldn't afford is higher on the priority list now, as well as the security system we were putting off. And instead of getting a cute puppy, maybe we should just get a man eating dog…

Sunday afternoon, after church (and my baptism – another post for another day), we watched Mike as he used loppers about as big as himself to chop down all the muscadine vines on his fence (they're renters, remember?), then turned the loppers onto the lower branches of a couple of fruit trees. When he couldn't reach anymore, he got a step ladder and started chopping down larger branches high over his head. He looked like an accident waiting to happen. About 2 hours went by with no adult checking on him, and he nearly cut down the whole tree. Then he proceeded to drag all the limbs and clippings and heave them over the fence. Then he glanced up at our windows and walked away. Their fence is crooked though, and it's not truly an indicator of their property line. So, he didn't really drop them on our property, but he clearly meant to. Uh, are we living by Damien?

Harold told us something else that bothered me. He said that Mike occasionally comes over to their house to ask to use things. Don't get me wrong – I'm neighborly, and I'll give a cup of sugar, but that's not what I'm talking about. He said that Mike would come over in the middle of the night (where were his parents?) to ask to use the phone, saying their house phone was cut off. (Remember, I said he was using a cell phone this weekend. So… why would he need the neighbors' phone? And who does he need to call in the middle of the night anyway?) Harold also told us that he didn't know anything about the dad's truck window being broken out. (Do you know any retired men who are still young enough to be in their yards often? If so, then you know that they know everything about their neighbors. They see and know all. I believe if the truck window had really been broken out, Harold would have known about it.) He also said Mike sometimes comes over and asks for gasoline for their weed eater. That's an expensive favor, and what kind of able-bodied man would have his maybe-12-year-old son bothering the neighbors about gasoline for the weed eater? We're in town. Gas is walking distance away. (For that matter, they have two nice vehicles. We're not talking about a poor boy who has no parents.) I am generally a positive person, but it seems to me that if you've got a troubled kid coming over to your house at all times, he might be checking out what's inside of it. Or trying to learn when you're home and when you're not (or maybe just when the man isn't home). Or who knows what. After talking to this kid, he truly doesn't seem like he can be trusted. It honestly gives me hesitations about getting a puppy or kitten. If he can come onto our porch in the middle of the night and steal and ransack, is he violent? I have no idea. After watching how destructive he was Sunday afternoon, I truly dread Christmas break when he's at home, bored, all day. Heaven help us. And the remaining fruit trees.

We're Home!

I had a long, exciting weekend, but I was almost completely unable to enjoy it. Thursday night my sneezing and sniffling morphed into a full-blown head cold complete with unstoppable sneezing, insane sinus pressure to the point I thought I would throw up, and the total inability to breathe peacefully. In a word, I was miserable. But Z's parents were coming over to move furniture on Saturday, so Thursday and Friday were our last days to prepare. (Our goal was to get every single item out of the apartment that we could carry ourselves – including dresser drawers – because sometimes they can be a little difficult, and we wanted their part of the move to be as quick and painless as possible.) Thursday night we tried to move our office. We have a rather large computer desk that has to be taken apart. It has six large drawers, a six-foot long top, and two columns that are very unstable once the top is removed. So we knew we needed to move that ourselves, along with the computer which is still less than a year old. Even though they're family, sometimes other people just aren't as careful as you'd like them to be with your belongings.

Anyway, Z injured himself several times throughout Thursday evening, and I was so sick that I was literally praying to God to "just take me now." Needless to say, it was a long night, and I finally decided (around 10:30 when my cold medicine finally kicked in and I could think straight) that I would call in sick Friday to prepare for Saturday by (1) recuperating a little and (2) moving items to the house. I knew I wouldn't totally be out of commission like with the flu, but that I couldn't go to work sounding/looking/feeling like I did. So I might as well be personally productive.

So Friday I packed and took 3 carloads of boxes/clothes/lamps/dresser drawers, etc. to the house while Z was at work. I had a fever and felt horrible, and it was an unusually warm and muggy day, but I knew that the more I did then, the less I'd have to do with Z's parents. After Z came home from work, the two of us made about 3 more trips. That night (our last night as apartment dwellers!) we further prepared for his parents' early arrival: we took apart as much furniture as possible, including the bed and we slept on the mattress directly on the floor. They showed up bright and early Saturday morning with biscuits (if only I had an appetite – still sick). We began the move with the behemoth: Z's weight machine. He had already completely disassembled the thing that morning, but it still took two full hours for us all to load it on the trailer, drive it to the house (10 minutes max), move it in, and re-assemble it. It's a beast and I hate it. Once that was over with, we made one more trip before stopping for lunch at Steak and Shake. After lunch, we returned to the apartment for our last trip of the day and went back to the house to finish up the move. After just one minor accident (while putting the bed together, the footboard collapsed onto the bed railings and cracked one of them completely and scratched up my beautiful sleigh bed) we were totally finished with all the furniture. It was 4:00 and we had moved a weight machine, couch, recliner, wing-back chair, three coffee tables, washer, dryer, queen-sized bed, mattress and box springs, chest of drawers, dresser, nightstand, large TV, entertainment system to hold said TV, large gas grill, porch swing, writing desk and chair. Quite a feat. I'm very glad we had already moved all of our possessions as well as some furniture (kitchen table and all chairs, computer desk, etc.) What a day.

We all collapsed onto the couches, but then I realized what time it was. Z and I had to leave to go to Hoover for my grandmother's and cousin's joint birthday party that night. We were a little bit late, and my cold was transforming into a horrible cough instead of an annoying sneeze. This made me sad because another cousin was going to be there with her baby who I rarely see (they live farther away than anyone else), and I didn't want to make her sick.

We had a fun time there but got home (our real home!) around 1:00 Sunday morning. We did try to make it to church that morning, but we wound up leaving after Sunday School because neither of us could keep our eyes open, and I felt very rude for yawning all through class. I knew we'd probably fall asleep during the sermon. So we went home for a nap. Well, Z napped but I had a coughing fit and couldn't sleep. I went to the grocery store that afternoon for a huge shopping trip (I hadn't cooked a meal in more than two weeks) and cooked chili for dinner. We went to the apartment for about 20 minutes to get the rest of the stuff from the fridge and pick up a little. We'll have to return to clean it, but then we'll be finished with that place!

This morning it was pretty awesome to wake up and have a cup of coffee looking out at the lake covered in fog. Pretty awesome indeed.

*Oh yeah, our builder totally fixed the dishwasher last week. The little tube connecting to the disposal had a plastic covering that the installer had forgotten to punch out. So he fixed it. He's pretty cool.

Anniversary and Veterans Day

Last night, after Z gave me a dozen beautiful red roses, we went to dinner at a great seafood restaurant. We'd never been to it before, but it was phenomenal. The place was nice, the bread was good, my tilapia was excellent, and then we ordered crème brûlée, which was also really great. All in all it was a very nice evening.

Today Z is off work for Veteran's Day, so he has scheduled for the cable company to hook us up with cable and internet. He spent the day at the new house waiting for them, and tonight he is leaving for Wednesday morning court. He is also handling our dishwasher situation. We ran the dishwasher the other day and discovered that it is not draining properly, so Z called the builder today to get the name of the plumber who installed it. The builder will be coming over this afternoon or this evening to check it out though, because he said that it was inspected. Probably he has installed that model in lots of homes (I can imagine he has his favorite appliances that he usually picks), so maybe he'll immediately recognize the problem. Also, since the refrigerator installation guy told us to throw out our first two gallons of water and first two loads of ice from the fridge due to dust and drywall in the water line, it only makes sense that perhaps that same dust and drywall didn't get cleared from the dishwasher's water line. But I sure as heck don't know how to go about doing that. Anyway, since our builder is about the nicest guy around, I'm sure he'll take care of it.

First Anniversary

Today is our first anniversary. It's hard to believe that we've been married an entire year already. Sometimes it feels like that was just yesterday, but then I remember that we've already lived in Prattvegas for six months, and that seems strange too! It's an incredible feeling to look back at a whole year you've spent with a person and be just as happy as you were on your wedding day. I must say that when I got married I didn't know what to expect. I can't count the number of times people warned me that "the first year is the toughest." Well, I'm not sure if they meant meshing your lives is tough, or being around each other all the time is tough, or giving up your family's time for his family's time is tough. But, given everything we've been through this past year – his graduation, his job search, my quitting my job, our move here, our period of unemployment, two new jobs, the house hunt – the first year has not been "tough." It's been purely amazing. I love him more every day and sometimes I find myself simply wondering how we found one another. The J and the Z of five years ago probably would never have worked, but we met at the right time and clicked at the right time. God truly does work in mysterious ways. Tonight we have dinner reservations at a seafood restaurant which should be very nice, and hopefully it will be a wonderful, relaxing break from the half-furnished house and completely torn up apartment.

So this weekend we got tons accomplished at the new house. We fertilized the yard (with winter guard), had our beautiful fridge delivered and set up, unpacked tons of boxes, had my family over to bring me the antiques and wedding presents from their house, washed all the china and crystal, planted daffodil and tulip bulbs, did a trial run with the dishwasher and discovered it isn't draining properly, made at least 5 trips back and forth with our cars loaded down. All that, and Z had time to go fishing for about two hours! We are exhausted! Friday night we used the gift card the builder gave us to Longhorn Steakhouse and saw the police questioning a bunch of people. Even though we had to wait outside for about 30 minutes for a table, we never could figure out what was going on. In the house, we now have almost the entire kitchen, the fridge, the table and chairs. In the living room, we have a loveseat, a rocking chair from my dad, some decorations on the mantel, and the marble-topped table from my dad. In the guest bedroom we have the frame of my old canopy bed, but no box springs or mattress on it yet, and in the master bedroom, we have one antique chair from my dad. Other than that, all the furniture is still in the apartment. Z's parents are coming over this weekend to help us move that stuff. Meanwhile, our goal is to get every other item out – all our clothes, food, bathroom stuff, everything. Thankfully the house and apartment are less than 10 minutes apart.

Closing and the Rest

I left work at 11:00 on Friday and went to meet Z for lunch before closing. We raced over to the attorneys' office for our appointment and spent the next two hours or so signing papers and joking around with the builder, our agent, the seller's agent, and the loan officer. The attorney must have thought we were the craziest bunch of people, because I'm guessing most people take this process more seriously than we were. We were just so relieved, and the builder was such a nice man that we were all having fun. Afterwards, the builder gave us a $50 gift card to Longhorn, our agent gave us a $40 gift card to Home Depot, and the mortgage company gave us a set of cooking utensils with their name on the handles (?). Then we went to the apartment to change clothes and regroup. We headed to the house after that to clean and prepare for painting. We washed all the windows inside and out (nose prints were everywhere!), I sort of cleaned the bathrooms (not the bathtubs yet), stuff like that. Then we headed out to Lowe's to purchase blinds, paint, and a mailbox, as well as the supplies for everything. That took two buggies and a couple of hours, but then we had to decide on our fridge. After driving around to different stores in different cities, we wound up at Lowe's again to order the first one we'd liked. It'll be delivered next Saturday. After that it was getting pretty late, but we went to the house to get ready to paint the next morning. We started taping the baseboards, ceiling, etc., and laying drop cloths. We were there until about 12:30 that night.

Saturday morning came early, but we were meeting my sister at the house to start painting the bedroom a beautiful blue. We all got started around 9:30 or so, and worked nonstop until lunchtime when we took a Zaxby's break. After that, my sister and I finished painting the bedroom while Z hung blinds for the whole house (quite a feat). Then we moved to finish taping up the kitchen. Since we have tray ceilings and a chair railing in the dining room, that's a lot of taping. My sister left around 5:00 or so, and Z and I took a dinner break. We went to the apartment for about an hour to rest and he watched the beginning of the Texas/Texas Tech game before we decided to go back to the house to paint the bottom of the dining room. We'd decided to do a darker green on the bottom and a lighter green on the top as well as the rest of the kitchen. That area was so small we decided to go ahead and knock it out Saturday night. It took about an hour and a half though to paint and clean up from the whole day, so we got home around 9:30 I think. I don't even really remember going to bed.

Sunday morning we got up early for church (8:30 is too early for Sunday School). After church we changed clothes and headed back out to start painting the rest of the kitchen with the lighter green. We knew it was going to be tricky to paint around all those cabinets and in tiny places, so we took our time and were very careful. Z had to leave to go buy a ladder at one point so he could paint above the cabinets. Around 5:30 we had to leave for a while because Z was headed to Huntsville to be in court first thing this morning. So he had to change clothes and get packed, and we were only in one vehicle. Around 6:30 he left and I went back to the house to finish the kitchen. I am a scaredy-cat though, and I was having a hard time staying there by myself in the dark, especially after one of the neighbors rang the doorbell and scared me half to death. I kept my sister on the phone with me while I wasn't painting so I'd have someone to talk to. I finally wound up leaving around 8:30 once I was done because I was so tired and creeped out.

Tonight after work we went over to the house to remove the tape from the kitchen and clean up our painting mess. We brought 4 or 5 boxes to the house and swept in the kitchen, but we were too tired to do anything else. Also, during this time we've been totally neglecting the apartment, so I really needed to do some laundry tonight.

A few more pictures