Two Americans in Paris

... and London (with an unexpected stop in Newfoundland and Labrador and extra time around Dulles): We're home, after a breathtaking holiday in Europe, ringing in the new year together.

Instead of working on the house, I'd sort of been preoccupied with planning the trip -- though not without encountering some glitches, and not completely ignoring the house (basement pics to come soon, too). But we're home now with a few goals in mind as spring approaches at the HoB.

Here's a taste of the blog posts to come in the next week or so.

 

Tiny updates

So it's been a while.

Bich has reasons, though not any worse/better/busier than anyone else's. Sometimes life just gets in the way. Or Penn State football gets in the way, or scandals, or whatever. Let's not talk about that.

Very minor updates, though, before Brooke restarts the basement project. (Last week, the Irene cleanup was completed, and repainting of the once-repainted section can commence this evening, or whenever.)

-- This morning, we had our 41-year-old boiler maintenanced. Yep, we're hangin' on to that puppy for as long as we can.

-- Our lawn has come in quite nicely -- nicely enough, in fact, that Brooke went apoplectic when she discovered that a very unneighborly pet owner let their obviously large dog defecate on the new sidewalk. Four signs were then added to our stretch of grass, with the following messages: "Your dog did his duty. Now do yours: Pick up after your dog"; "Please leave your address so I can let my dog dump on your lawn next"; "Be a good neighbor -- pick up after your pooch"; and another in that line of thinking.

-- We need a new camera. For some reason, the one we have stopped working, which meant no new pictures, which meant no blogging. Guess I'm back in the market for one.

Pickup, 41 Claire

Since we moved into the House of Bich at the end of July 2010, we have gotten rid of an extraordinary amount of stuff with the help of:

-- Two free township bulk pickups (one in May, one in October)
-- One appointment for a township pickup, $30
-- Two appointments with 1-800-GOT JUNK?, somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 total (this included the removal of an old refrigerator and a "work bench")
-- Rich and Leeza's trip to the township dump

Those include nearly 80 years of accumulated crap in the basement, the carpet we ripped out before we had the wood floors restored, everything we took out of one of the crawl spaces, stuff from the shed, detritus from the walk-in closet upstairs, crap we've accumulated over the years, boxes from stuff we've ("we"=Brooke) bought ...

It's been a lot.

This morning, the township picked up the old sink we destroyed with a sledgehammer, a table from my parents' old kitchen that was nearly 20 years old and had, unfortunately, come down with a case of post-Irene mold, and a lot of shrubbery that we'd cut down before we redid the lawn.

Everything. They took everything.

I love Woodbridge.

Bich tries to eat ice cream

After a long day of furniture shopping, grocery shopping, yardwork and grilling in the backyard, Bich decided to get dessert. The choice: everyone-goes-to Rita's or local-favorite Colonia Dairy Maid? Bich picks Dairy Maid.

Brooke (thinking of the recent Saturday drive to nowhere past said establishment, which looks awesomely old and classic): Think it's cash-only?

Rich: Who the hell does cash-only anymore? I doubt it.

B (checks Internet, which yields no answer; not convinced): Okaaaaaay ...

20 minutes later, after waiting 10 minutes in line.

R: It's cash-only! Do you have any cash?

B: Of course not!

R and B (blaming each other, choice swearing in car; philosophical debate about "attitude," "you said 'who the hell does cash-only anymore' so it's your fault," etc. etc.)

Bich decides to take equal blame in this disaster; heads to Rita's.


Three seconds after exiting car.

B (signs of food poisoning suddenly make themselves violently clear): Honey ... we need to go ... NOW!

30 minutes later. Walking out of Quick Chek with pint of Haagen-Dazs lemon sorbet in hand.

R: Want to see if Walgreens has anything better?

B: No. No. No.

Conversations

Brooke (kissing Rich on the forehead as he sleeps on a friend's couch): I'm off to work. It's 10 minutes to 9.

Rich (smiling): I want to live in Hoboken.

Brooke (also smiling): A bit late for that, but yeah, me, too.

Rich: Let's move to Hoboken.

Brooke: Go to work.

Rich: Look how short your commute will be today.

Brooke: Look how broke we'd be if we lived here. (Thinks of previous night of drinking and debauchery with Jen at Bin 14.)

Rich: . . .

*****

Coming up on HoB:

• A video tour update of the house as we approach the one-year mark of our purchase. It's part of an assignment Brooke has for her HTML class (embedding video into her website, set to launch in a little more than a month).
• Small updates on yardwork. Once the weather finally breaks, we'll get to work raking and fertilizing, cutting down a few dead bushes and small trees, and planning which greenery will join the backyard. It already looks completely different from when we bought the house.
• Pictures of the basement as Brooke tackles the cleanup. Currently, it's a box jungle, which the cats love. Hopefully, by the fall, the basement will be nearly empty, cleaned, painted white and will finally be home to a new utility sink.

Spring, and budgets

While the coldest (and snowiest) winter I can remember probably has another month to live, now's the time to start making phone calls.

Major house projects, in order of priority (for me, anyway; Rich disagrees):

1. Sidewalks, concrete work, masonry, tree removal. I'll be sad to see those trees go, but go they must. They're old and I fear another icy winter will do us all in. Besides, the township is repaving in the neighborhood this summer ... can't hurt the curb appeal. Not that we're moving anytime soon, promise.

2. Windows. It's possible this is a tie with No. 1. I'm ready for those energy bills to take a dip.

3. Gutters. This one's relatively easy and clearly cheaper than the others, and I foresee this one being done rather quickly.

4. The porch. Ah, the porch: That one's tied with the windows. After that, we can tile, paint, etc. Kittehs should be excited.

Yeah, yeah, we know -- "welcome to homeownership!"

We're under no delusion that buying an 85-year-old house would be easy ... then again, that's probably why we did it.

I need a vacation just thinking about it.

Philosophies

For different reasons, the past year and a half has been, I suppose, a year of introspection for the B in Bich.

We've dealt with a lot of change, and at the end of the year, I looked back and thought, Wow. We did OK. And there are a lot of good people in our lives who we could have never gotten here without. That's pretty awesome. It makes you grateful.

A few other thoughts:

-- Perhaps seeing something take shape that gives you great comfort despite all of its imperfections, the work that goes into it, and the simultaneous joys and frustrations really is the reason the American dream is to own a home. I kinda get it now, this desire to own something. Hell, even owning an 11-year-old car that's being held together with duct tape gives me a perverse pride.

-- I'm not who I once was. Who is? Would I even want to be that person again? Sure, I'd love to have the courage of my college days again, the surety in the freedom of my 20s. The stability we have now is of a different kind: Rich and I have each other. (And three cats and a house we love, despite the leaks and the cracks.)

Despite all of the changes I've tried to make in myself, there will be countless more -- sort of making myself a project, like the house. And what I want to change in my life is up to me; what you want to change is up to you. Blaming others or being upset with them because of how they treat you or feeling that life has shortchanged you -- well, we can't control other people's behavior. But I can decide how much I can take, and how much energy I'm going to waste on them.

I've watched one of my best friends publish his first novel, another keep pushing herself toward achieving her dream of becoming a children's book author, another put herself through nursing school, another find his calling and a new home. All of them inspire me to want something more out of my life.

Most of all, I've been inspired by my husband to do better, learn more, work harder. Rich has even found in himself reserves of strength he didn't know he had. All of these people -- Todd, Leeza, Kristi, Mark, my workaholic husband -- make me so proud, and make me want more.

Snowed in

A blizzard welcomed Bich home to Jersey after our trip to Ohio and Western PA for Christmas. Stan was a real trooper through the snow, but we have definitely decided that our next car will have all-wheel drive.

Rich was still off from work, and I couldn't get Stan dug out of the snow to make it to work (and braving the roads would probably have been pretty stupid). So, real snow day for the ladies of Woman's World. At least we had time to shovel.

Brooke, seen through the front door

Two feet. Yep.

The front yard

Well, it sure made HoB look pretty.

The roads of our neighborhood. We were pretty lucky and saw a plow or two early, 

but this was the best it got.

Stan, completely buried (and we didn't even arrive home until after the storm had begun)

This required creative shoveling.

Our driveway (gimme a snowblower!)

This was the most shoveling we got done in the front; the plows left a massive pile at the corner we would have never gotten through, so we didn't bother. Some very good person, however, ran a snowblower through later. Yay!

Did I mention Woodbridge got two feet?

HoFB

That's House of Football -- otherwise known as the House That Joe Built. Well, during football season, anyway.

It's the most wonderful time of the year again, kids, and I'm currently resisting the urge to paint our bedroom in Blue and White stripes. (Yes, the caps are correct.)

Football football football football football.

I love football. I love watching the team run out of the tunnel at Beaver Stadium after JoePa. I love watching them after the drum major has landed his Roman flip. I love the Blue Band. I love watching teams get destroyed by my Nittany Lions. (Not that it happened the last time we were in attendance, against Ohio State.) I love that I am now one of those alumni who begin tailgating at 7:30 a.m. I love State College, Zeno's and that we got married on campus.

I hate Pitt, Michigan and Iowa, in that order. I hate it when people talk crap about JoePa. I hate losing.

On Saturday, we play Youngstown State in the home/season opener, and the wonderful Amy Farkas

is putting us up (she was also our hookup for this year's season tickets, which we just could not resist despite the fact that we bought a house three months ago). We've got some really awesome friends in Happy Valley -- K-Fo, Ali and Amy among them.

It's too hard to focus. I am so excited!!!

To top it off, Bryan and Lisa are visiting this weekend. Woot! What a great end to summer.

Happy football season, everyone.

Gettin' crafty

Let's take a break from the HoB, shall we?

It's no big secret that I ... oy. How does one say this tactfully but honestly?

Me and babies don't mix.

But despite the fact that my blood pressure rises when I hear a whining, screaming child -- one was in the office the other day and I swear, my head almost spun off my neck -- and I rarely hold a baby, I do not hate children. Or babies. I love my nieces and nephews and my friends' kids. I enjoy watching them grow up, seeing their personalities develop and change.

And when family or friends are expecting, I am truly happy for them. Then I go home and have a large glass of wine and hang out with my cats.

Or, in the case of Christine, the wife of Rich's best friend and best man at our wedding, I go home and make a diaper cake. See, their circumstances are a little more unusual, their journey a little longer and more arduous than most. And because Mike and Chris made it possible for me to pull off the yearlong project that was Rich's birthday scrapbook, making a diaper cake for her shower on Sunday seemed like a no-brainer.

WTF is a diaper cake, Brooke?

Heeeee.

I rolled five dozen diapers, built them into tiers and decorated it appropriately. I'll only say this once: Thank you, Woman's World, for providing a very cute craft project.

It took me a little while to track down the right ribbon -- emerald green and white. A few onesies, some socks, little Jets booties ...

I didn't have room to place the clothing into the tiers, so I just used double-sided tape to stick them on the corners.

A few little baby toiletries and a pacifier.

I don't think I have too many of these in me. Usually I give gift cards to baby mamas -- not because I'm lazy, but because I think new parents should use them for whatever needs they get surprised with after the arrival of the baby/babies. But for fellow sports fans ... eh, baby Jake will get gift cards for his birthdays from Crazy Aunt Brooke With the Cats and Uncle Richard.