The Fourth Week: A Real House

This week was kind of a holding pattern on our part, waiting for the flooring to be done. In the meantime, we had three inches of rain in an hour and a huge sinkhole opened on the main road in front of our townhouse, so that's fun.

The tile man got the initial tile laid in both the laundry room and the bathrooms, but none of the grouting (and whatever else he has to do to finish it). Then he had to take a break so they could put all the chemicals on the hardwoods.

Also in the mean time, while we were up at 3:00 am giving Doki a bath after a recurrence of her irritable bowel disease, I noticed Mike was in and out of the litter several times. Friday night, he did it again and the second and third times there was very little urine. SIGHHHHH. Off to the emergency vet we go.

He had a pretty good time at the vet, I have to say. He was very affectionate and friendly and wandered around exploring the room and meowing. Also, somehow we got out of there only spending $270, and all three cats transitioned to eating his new specialty food with no drama, so it was about the best emergency vet experience possible.

Papaya has been ripping out her fur too, by the way. I've experimentally given her both Xanax and Zyrtec but neither seems to have much of an effect.

Since we couldn't get in the new house, we started packing the old one. I found a scrapbook and discovered I used to save all my old movie tickets.

Business cards from my first two jobs!

Doki is on the mend now.

On Memorial Day, Jarek the floor man called and said we should come over and choose a stain. We'd told him general guidelines and he picked several for us to look at. I wanted the third one, but Ben preferred the one on the left and because I am VERY nice I agreed.

Then we went home and packed up all the books in the living room. Only twenty boxes.

Then we went back to look at the stained floors. We couldn't walk on them, so the only part we could see was from the laundry room into the kitchen. I almost cried with joy.

We were in the middle of a few days of tropical rain and the yard is really just amazing. It's going to need a lot of work to clean up some of the wild shrubs but that's not on the priority list at present.

The floors are now finished. I went to look at them this morning.

The little stairs still need painting to fix them up.

We are really itching to do something about the lighting, which is just horrible. The light fixtures in all the rooms are somehow really bright without actually illuminating the rooms.

It's really unbelievable. This house is a normal house now, that normal people would buy.

The tile guy is back at work today and thinks he'll be done tomorrow or Monday. Then we have no excuse but to finish the last painting bits and pack the rest of our belongings!