Spring Visit

My mom came up for a long weekend this past weekend. Haven’t seen her since February. You know, for a chick with cancer, she looks pretty damn great! Colin was tha-rilled to see Grandma. We had recently hosted Oma and Opa in town to help us corral Colin while we moved, so he’s been in grandparent heaven this last month.

While Mom loved the new house, the never-ending stairs were a bit of a chore. But she didn’t take us up on our offer to have Rob sherpa her up and down, so I guess it wasn’t too bad.

We mostly did what we do best. Lounge around and go shopping. It's nice to not have to have a activity agenda since the 'rents have seen a lot of what Portland has to offer. And since Mom likes me best, all I have to do is be myself to make her happy. (just seeing who's paying attention) And we had a nice weather tease and were able to actually go outside for a while. My blindingly white skin didn't know how to react.

Luckily we now have an actual guest room, with an actual bed in it, so she had a comfy spot to sleep. Rob’s folks had had to make due with our (albeit nice) inflatable bed. But that was better than the big stack of cardboard boxes we could have thrown some blankets on, so you know…it’s all relative. And next time they’ll, along with any other guests *hint hint* will have a comfy bed too. Although in fair warning, our concierge has a fondness for pouncing on guests with a full capacity diaper and a hearty GOOOOD MORRNINGGG!!!!

In hindsight we did cross off a few big items on my Laura-do list in between all the wine and sleeping in. Not that those two were necessarily related to each other.

The weekend went by too quickly and we had a tearful parting at the airport. Colin had WBLS (wobbly bottom lip syndrome) for most of the day as he looked around for Grandma. But we’ll be heading south next month, so not too much time will pass. We’re actually heading north too to the see Oma and Opa. Can’t get too much of grandparent time!

I let Tax Day (cue the theme to Psycho) come and go without a diatribe on paying taxes. But really, what’s there to say? I’ve had to pay taxes for most of the years that I’ve been filing them. Sure, it sucks to write that check. But then again, getting a big fat refund means you’ve been letting the gov’ment use your money for free. So we strive for that elusive no owe, no refund mark. There’s always next year to beat the Man! And besides, I tried pouring out my tax day woes to my mom when she was here and I got The Look and a hearty “quit complaining.” So we moved on to shopping therapy and it was all good.

More house biznets

I was asked to post some pics of the new house, so here we go. None of the rooms are really done yet, so just think of these as V1.

We have a lot of stairs. See?
L to R - from the garage to the house, from the first floor to the second floor, from the street to the house.

Rob said that if we bought this house he would bring my groceries upstairs. Rob’s a liar.

We have a lot of windows (just like this one on our upstairs landing!) but not a lot of neighbors. Which is good, since when you aren’t used to a lot of windows, one (and you can guess which one) tends to forget that walking around sans pantalones might not impress someone who isn’t legally obligated to play grab ass in the hall.

We have a big garage. Rob is happy.

We have a play room. Colin is happy.

We have a big kitchen. Laura is happy. You get a picture of the cupboards, because Laura also has a lot of frickin kitchen to clean. She's also talking about herself in the third person, but that's a post for another day.

Here is the north side of our backyard. We shall dub this the Back 40. This is the site of my future vegetable garden. To the right is a play area where Colin's toys are destined to go.

This is our, I don't know, um, a conversation area. I have a rug ordered that will make it a bit more cozy.

So that's it. Blogger is pissing me off with working with pictures.