That one time we bought a house…

We closed on our house yesterday. It only took 36 minutes. Because of the $3000 grant, all we had to pay was $463. What?!? And the office had candy and snacks everywhere. A house AND munchies? Score!
The sellers are renting from us for thirty days so we’ll have the keys by April 5th. Mart’s taking a week off of work so we can clean, paint and get all of our shit in there. I’m kind of debating on having a moving sale to see if I can rid of some of the furniture we don’t want/need. I’m pretty excited because our seller sold me their dining set for $100. The table isn’t anything special and needs to be refinished but the chairs are really funky. Of course, Matt keeps bitching about it because he can’t see a good deal when it’s staring him in the face. “Waa, that isn’t exactly what I want but I refuse to tell you specifically what I like in a dining set.”
My next mission is finding bedroom furniture. I saw some possible contenders on Craigslist today. Now I just have to run them by Mr Pickypants.

Things I would say to February if it was a person

Suck a bag of dicks.
Your sole purpose in life is to make people hate you.
You’re supposed to be the shortest month, why do you NEVER FUCKING END?
Seriously, what are your redeeming qualities? Valentine’s Day? Shut up.
Statiscally, depression levels are at their highest when it’s your turn on the calendar. (Statistics reported by myself and two friends.)
Cold, wet, gray. Awesome. Real crowd pleaser.
Did I already tell you you to suck a bag of dicks? I’m telling you again, my hatred for you warrants it to be repeated.
Basically, I really despise you, February. March may be cold and wet as well, but at least March is never an asshole about it like you are. Get out of here and quit bringing everyone down.

*My Kindle kept autocorrecting ‘bag of dicks’ to ‘bag of ducks’. Haha.

Der

Matt went and got one of my headlights replaced today. He spent $62. On a headlight. That’s a sucka move right there, friends.  This is the first thing that appeared when I entered ‘sucka gif’…I’m going to roll with it.

The jibba jabba stops here

The last few times I’ve gotten the headlight replaced, it cost me $15 the first time and $0 the second. $62 my ass.

Seriously, Matt? $62?

 

Doppelgänger

I created these pictures about two years ago when Tommy was about one. It seemed wherever I went, someone would tell me that he looked like Andy Richter. Which delighted me to no end. So one evening, I decided to do some side-by-side comparisons. This is one of the best things I’ve ever done. I mean, aside from having kids and all that crap. So to you, internet, I once again present The Richter Files…(I apologize for the horrible quality and editing. Stuff like that is not my thing.)

Xanaduuuuuuuu…

I love Xanadu. A lot. I proudly own it on DVD and I have the soundtrack on CD and vinyl. I also have a poster that my wonderful friend Emma bought me in NY. Is it one of the most ridiculous movies ever released? Absolutely. But come on! Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly AND ELO? That’s my holy trifecta! (Don’t worry, Michael Beck, I haven’t forgotten about you.) This is one of those movies that I watched constantly when I was growing up. Abby wanted to watch it today so of course I obliged. When I achieve my dream of becoming a lounge singer, I’m going to include all of the songs (minus one or two) in my catalouge. Or maybe I should JUST do songs from Xanadu. I’ll be a one-man tribute band. It’s going to be magical.

If that doesn’t make you want to dance, I’m going to roller skate over your face. Because you have no soul. Also, can we take a minute and talk about how much I love Jeff Lynne? He’s pretty awesome.

“Thanks, Anne. You’re pretty awesome too. Let’s go shopping for sunglasses together.”

I didn’t realize he was from England until a few years ago when I saw a documentary on The Traveling Wilburys. Awesome fro, sweet shades, English, scribe to the best movie soundtrack ever, leader of one of my favorite bands and a member of one of the greatest supergroups of all time? Yeah. You fucking rock, Sir Lynne.

Oh. Man. I just found this. Where do I sign up to become a member of the Xanadu Preservation Society?

The rebirth of Michael Myers

I suggest you listen to the theme from Halloween while reading this post…Abby wanted to bust out the easel today and paint. Fine with me. It keeps them busy for a good chunk of time and, miraculously, they always get along really well when painting. So I set them up in the kitchen and take my designated place on the couch and enjoy the relative peace and quiet. A few minutes later, I hear Abby saying “Ooh, blood everywhere. That’s good.” Okaaaaaay…then she asks me how to spell Dracula. I see where this is going. I think some of her friends at school have been talking about vampires recently, she’s been acting like she’s an expert. Please. Talk to me after you’ve watched Lost Boys and read Salem’s Lot, six-year old. You don’t even know. She takes a few more minutes to perfect her masterpiece and this is what I see when she gives me the grand unveiling…

Blood girl. Garden. Dracula. She was really proud of herself for getting it to look like blood was dripping down from the letters. “Does my picture scare you, Mom? Maybe you’ll have nightmares about vampires tonight.” Or maybe I’ll have nightmares about you ending up on Dateline. I just hope Keith Morrison is the one to report it.

Kitchen shiz

The kitchen. The damn kitchen. I love it because it’s open and a pretty decent size. However, there are a few things I want to change once we move in.
Here’s what the kitchen looks like now (this is all the current owner’s stuff)…

I’m so excited to have a built-in range. I’ve always wanted one. The bummer is that it’s electric, but word on the street is that it’s an easy switch to gas.
My biggest issue is color. We have a black and white kitchen now and I am not a fan. If I had an extra $6000 laying around (ha!), I’d buy a fridge and oven from Big Chill in a funky color. But unless a bag of money magically appears on my doorstep, overpriced appliances are not in the cards. So I think what we’ll end up doing is painting the cabinets. I’m envisioning something like this…

I LOVE the idea of multi-colored cabinets. I think it would make me happy to have something like that in my kitchen, when I’m barefoot and chained to the oven.
I also like how much room there is for extra storage. I just need to get some cheap shelving units from garage sales in the spring. And then we’ll be golden.

Lions and tiger and bears…

One of my long-standing fears is that I will one day be confronted by a large predatory animal. Specifically a lion, tiger or panther. Bears are pretty scary too. But my big phobia is big cats. I’ve had multiple dreams about being stalked by them. I once had a dream that my house was surrounded by lions, tigers and bears. It was terrifying. And the really weird thing is that my mom has had that exact same dream. Like, EXACTLY. I don’t know why I have this fear or where it came from. Maybe it’s because they’re gigantic killing machines who are really good at hiding. I used to be terrified of regular cats too. It wasn’t until I was about nineteen that I could be around them. I would get really scared, my heart rate would go up and the only thing I could concentrate on was not being in the same room with it.
I’m watching a documentary right now about the man in Zanesville, Ohio who released his 56 exotic animals into the wild and then committed suicide in 2011. That is literally my worst nightmare. I was obsessed with this story for days when it happened. Imagine living in that town and looking out of your window and seeing a mother fucking tiger. Or two. Or six. Plus some lions. And a few bears. And maybe a wolf or two. FUCK THAT SHIT. The only individuals who should be allowed to own a wild, predatory animal on their private property is NO ONE. People be crazy. So, so crazy.

I did my hurs…

Time to color my hair! I last dyed it right around Xmas, with less than ideal results. I bought a foam coloring kit (I don’t remember the brand). The color was supposed to be a dark blond, which is a shade darker than what I had been coloring my hair. But they didn’t have my regular color at the store (of course) so I went with what I thought would be the next best thing. It gave my hair an olive-ish tone and was significantly darker than I thought it would be. Meaning that for almost two months, I’ve hated my hair. Honestly, I wish I could just stop coloring it and accept my hair for what it is. But I can’t. Because it sucks. I just look better with lighter hair.
Last night, I saw an ad for Garnier’s new hair color line, Olia. I was intrigued because it has a 60% oil blend formula and it’s ammonia-free. I also liked that it’s a creamy formula. I’m notoriously idiotic when it comes to anything with hair, so the more fool-proof, the better. That’s why I like the foam kits, because even I can apply hair color easily and it usually turns out looking good.
I purchased the medium golden blond color. I was tempted to get one shade lighter but most of the reviews said the result was pretty true to the color on the box, I didn’t want to risk going too light. The formula smelled really good. So good that I was thinking “I wish I could find a lotion that smells like this.” Application was easy and even because of the creamy mixture. I had read that people didn’t like the bottle because the teardrop shape made it difficult to hold. Those people must not have very good small motor skills because I had no problem at all. And the black gloves made me feel quite fancy indeed. It rinsed out easily and the conditioner made my hair sooooooo soft. When I color my hair, I usually find a ton of strays in the drain catcher but with this, it just looked like a normal day after a shower. Definitely some strays but but way less than I was expecting. And I’m happy with the color. It’s not as light as the picture on the box. But I figured the end result would be a bit darker anyways, so I’m fine with that. It almost has a strawberry blond hue to it. All in all, I’m very happy with this and plan on Olia being my new go-to brand. Although I think next time, I would buy the next lighter shade.
*I was going to put up before and after pictures but my phone is the biggest piece of shit and takes horrible, horrible pictures. I NEED A SMARTPHONE.*

I almost forgot…

We have something else that comes with the house…

When we first saw the house back in December, this husky little fella walked right up to us while we were at the front porch. He was not scared at all. He almost came in and took a tour of the house with us. I hold a soft spot in my heart for fat brown squirrels. But I admit, I was a little freaked out because, you know, it’s kind of weird for a squirrel to prance up to you and be like “Hey, did you watch that giant squid documentary last night? That shit was cray!” Fast forward to last week when we had the inspection. We were inside taking pictures of the living room and he moseyed on up to the window. As if to say “Hey guys! I’m still here. And I’m still adorable. And you should probably just leave me food when you move in. Because clearly I’m not leaving.” And that’s fine with me. Actually, now that I think about it, the squirrel is in the only picture we took of the house on our first visit…

See him (her)? It’s on the handle of the toy car. Chillin’ like a villian. I need to name him. But what?