The cuteness never ends...

Last weekend was a special treat. My parents came to visit. (I have no pictures of that.) Sure they wanted to see the new foundation in all it's glory. Doug was compelled to install a dimmer switch in the dining room (thanks, we love it!) and noodle with a couple other projects. We had a couple nice meals out together and just generally hung out around the house. My parents are pretty chill, so we like hanging with them. But Mom really wanted to get a little face time with the cutest baby on Alameda! So last Saturday we had Dan, Irene and little Natasha over for dinner! Maybe I'll get some more pics when Mom uploads hers. 

Now, while I must agree that Natasha is by far the cutest human baby we've had in our house.... We have gone against all rational thought and were totally sucked into bringing our own little baby home this weekend. We made the terrible mistake of stopping by PetCo on the way back from dropping the parents off at the airport. All we wanted was a new litter box! Of course the crazy cat rescue ladies were there. Of course they had a whole herd of little kittens on hand to tempt us with. And of course we had to pull out this little black ball of fuzzy cuteness and hold her.... 

You'll notice the beautiful hardwood floors underneath the kitten? That's because we adopted her!!! She's sitting in our office room right now! OMG she is the friendliest, most adorable little buzzing kitten ever. Jonathan suggested that we name her Pandora, since we figured that all hell would break loose as soon as we took her out of the box inside the house. Well that was a good prediction 'cause as soon as we brought her in, MuShu (our 3 year old Maine Coon) went straight for the jugular. It was a little scary, so we put Pandora in the office room in the back and we're just going to give them time to get used to each other through the door. 

Later on we showed Lucky (our oldest) the kitten and she totally didn't care. MuShu on the other hand is acting very put out. She actually threw a tantrum yesterday, crying and pounding her paws on the carpet in the dining room in front of Jonathan. Wish he had caught that on video. MuShu is calming down a little after a couple days. We hope that by the time Pandora comes out of quarantine MuShu will at least tolerate her enough to bond. The idea is that MuShu and Pandora can play and then MuShu will leave Lucky alone more. Lucky is too old and sick to play anymore. Lucky has been starting to act a little more normal and started coming out of the closet a bit since the foundation work stopped. We're very happy about that. 

So as soon as we brought Pandora home we noticed she sneezed a lot. And the snot coming out of her nose was not clear. When we adopted her, her foster ladies told us that the dry skin on her ear was just a little dry spot that would clear up and that the discharge from her sneezy nose was from the dry air and the fans they had been running all day in the room. (all the kittens that day had snotty noses and eyes) They assured me that she'd been to a vet and she had a clean bill of health. I admit that my internal radar saw red lights flashing but she was SO FREAKIN' CUTE. And we adopted MuShu from a different Petco rescue in Southern CA before with no issues at all so we gambled on this one.

Well, Pandora is now living up to her name. She was continuously sneezing when we brought her home, yellowish-green stuff coming out of her nose. And the dry patch on her ear (which was totally visible BTW) was getting worse. 

A trip to Providence Veterinary confirmed our fear that she had a fever, some kind of viral infection AND ringworm! Great. The vet was able to figure out the ringworm by waving a black-light over the skin. Apparently it glows! So now she gets to stay quarantined for 3 weeks while we give her baths and antibiotics. DRAG. Plus there's the mild threat of exposure to my husband, me and the other two cats in the house since ringworm can, in some cases, transfer to humans. Not common but it happens. (FYI, ringworm actually has nothing to do with worms. It is a fungus like athletes foot.)

Now, I understand that these things happen. I understand that non-profit animal rescues do the best they can with the limited resources they have to work with. I understand that the sweet, wonderful selfless ladies who are fostering the cats do the best they can as well. They are awesome and I salute them for the work that they do. I just think that maybe you need to be 100% sure that the kitten you are adopting out has a 100% clean bill of health. Not just the FIV test and some shots. I would think that ringworm would be easy to spot by someone who fosters a lot of cats or at least easy to spot by the vet who checks out a lot of foster cats. But like I said, these things happen. It's not the end of the world but it was an unpleasant surprise. 

Of course we're keeping little Pandora, and we're ok with taking on the extra cost and work to make her well. That's what a responsible pet owner does. We love the new addition to our family and can't wait to let her out of her room so she can socialize with MuShu and Lucky. I think in the long run it will be good for both of them. MuShu was definitely too territorial. 

More pictures to come!

Foundation Wrap Up

The foundation is DONE! Yay! Just a few last minute things to put back together and life goes back to normal for us and the kitties. Here's a couple pics of the concrete being poured. 

And here's the finished foundation! This is what $25,000 worth of concrete looks like. I think it should be a little more shiny for that kind of money but apparently we're just supposed to be happy it keeps water out of the basement. 

Of course we had to add the final touch. :)

Jonathan's Birthday

This last Sunday we hosted our very first BBQ at the house!It also happened to be Jonathan's birthday last wednesday, giving us the perfect excuse. It took 3 shade structures and 2 slip-n-slides to keep everyone cooled off! Thanks to Dan and Irene who brought the three lane slip-n-slide! Too bad the boys popped it. Good thing we had a spare! I think for the next BBQ we might try making one long slip-n-slide... heehee! There was much food, a 2 layer cake, some beers and great friends. Pay special attention to the East Bay Rat making BUBBLES! And check out the slip-n-slide VIDEO!!!

The Foundation Saga...

...continues. 

The kitties have been acting WEIRD since we started construction on the foundation. They don't really understand all the noises and vibrations going on beneath their feet. It was pretty bad the first couple weeks but they seem to be getting slightly more accustomed to it. they act more annoyed now rather than scared. Lucky still spends most of her days in the cat tree or the closet. Mu-shu is still being kind of aggressive toward her. We'll be happy when this is all over and they can be comfortable again.

So here are some pics of the progress in the basement. There was a little drama when the guy heading the construction told another client she could come over and help herself to our bricks. she wasn't super polite about it and it really kind of bothered Jonathan and I. 

But it was all cleared up eventually and we were able to go through the bricks and pick the ones we wanted to keep. Here's the neat pile of 300+ bricks I set up in the back yard. I think I will pay the neighbor kids to clean them. I certainly don't want to do it. I would like to use them to build a little fire pit in the back yard eventually. Then we let our awesome neighbor Benny come over and grab all the bricks he needed for his driveway. THEN we told the construction company that they could do whatever they wanted with them.

Here's the back door entrance to the basement. They hadn't pulled the bricks out yet so it was kind of neat to see them there. I must admit that the mortar between the bricks seems to be very sandy and loose after 115 years. I'm sure the house would be ok in a small to medium earthquake with the slab and cap that we already had, but in a really big one we might have been in trouble. 

Here's the outside of the house. you can see the trench under the house where the bricks used to be. And there's thew supports under our bedroom. It's a little weird inside the house when Jonathan walks around a little heavy the whole place shakes just a bit. 

Last Friday we woke up and there was a Bobcat in our garage! They were hauling away dirt, bricks and concrete. I tried to get Jonathan to go out and get a pic from the front of the house but it was "too early" so he just look one from the window. ;)

Here's another image of the trench from the rear of the house. This is where the laundry and the old toilet usually live. You can see the water and sewage pipes. 

Here's a pic I took of the front of the house. Hey, it looks a little like the place Ted & Heather are buying! heehee! The guys had to remove the garage door so only big heavy plywood is keeping the place safe.... except for the part where the entire lower part of the house is missing all the way around and anyone can climb right in. Good thing we live in Alameda! Low crime!

Here's Jonathan in the basement surrounded by bricks and open trench.

So one of the things that we'll actually be able to SEE after this whole thing is finished and we've paid the big huge bill is the mud-sill. The mud-sill is the pressure treated piece of wood that lines the whole bottom part of the house and sits between the wood and the concrete. this is the old one before they pried it off.

And in this picture you can see the new mud-sill! Notice the lack of splintering and rot. 

That's all for today! They tell me it should be all wrapped up in the next couple weeks. We're soooooo glad that things will be getting back to normal. 

Foundation, Doorways and Fine China

Gwydion found this awesome little settee at a garage sale over by his place. We swooped in on it and now have a spot in the entryway for people to take their shoes off! The kitties like it a lot too. 

On Saturday we invited Dan, Irene and Natasha over for dinner. We used the wedding china and glassware for the first time! It was pretty. Not as pretty as Natasha though! I got a good couple hours of play time with her. It's so awesome living close to our friends. 

And the doorways are finished! the door from the entryway is all framed out. We did not splurge for the molding. It would have cost way too much. Maybe later when we have money again. The old front door into the living room is now covered over as well. Andrew actually made the lines in the panel by hand with a dremmel so that it matches the rest of the living room and dining room. Very straight lines. I think we can start entertaining the idea of paining in the near future. Joanthan and I have some ideas. But we have to scrape off A LOT of bad paint first. It's peeling off the wall in sheets all over the place.

And this week we started the foundation! Well, Carroll Construction started the foundation. They spent this week shoring up the house from underneath, taking the first couple layers of shingles off and pulling a few loose bricks out.

They had to take out my laundry sink. BOOO! I went to the hardware store and got a garbage can so we can still wash clothes during construction. The washer needs to drain somewhere! Then I get to take the water out back using a smaller bucket (one bucket at a time....) and dump it in the lawn. Not much fun but still serviceable. 

Critters And Cutting Grass

Jonathan found a really nifty baby tarantula on the side of our house last week! At least we THINK its a baby tarantula. We looked online to see if it was a brown recluse first. Just in case we needed to kill it. But it didn't match up to any of the pictures we found online so the little bugger got to go on his merry way. The kids across the street thought it was pretty cool! I'm slightly more inclined to let the spiders stay now since I care more about all the damaging bugs that could possibly take up residence in my beautiful new house that has ZERO pest damage.


















This pic probably isn't all that interesting since it's just a white wall with shingles on it. But its a pretty big deal to us. The second doorway leftover from the duplex is now covered up on the outside. We now officially have a single family residence! There's still some work leftover to do on the inside but it should hopefully be finished this week!


















Part of being a responsible howmowner means not letting your yard become an eyesore. Mind you I've never had to deal with this kind of thing before. We realized pretty quickly that we'd have to start mowing our grass on a regular basis if we were going to continue watering our lawn. So I picked up an electric lawn mower from Amazon. It arrived on Friday and we immediately started mowing our lawn for the first time! Jonathan is pretty unthrilled about the "stupid cord" situation. Yes there was a bit of dancing around with the cord at first but we got the hang of it after a while. Press play to watch the exciting video of Jonathan mowing the lawn! Heehee!

1 Year Anniversary!

Last weekend (May 3rd) was our 1 year wedding anniversary!

I cannot even believe we made it into a house before our anniversary! We're so lucky! And happy!

So since we're broke and already bought each other a really nice house for an anniversary gift, we decided to keep it close to home for this year. We hit the Alameda Antiques By The Bay and found these awesome little antique chairs! One of them needs new fabric but the carvings are great and the rocking chair is just my size. The kitties loved them immediately.

What's an anniversary without a little animal sacrifice?

Jonathan REALLY wanted lobster for our special dinner but there's the whole "broke" thing. So we went to the store, bought ourselves a couple sea bugs and threw them into the pot! No screams. I think it's a myth.

The unpacking continues. We're REALLY slow... The kitties are helping once again by letting us know which clothes have too much cat hair on them.... and then they rub some more on!!!