I’ve never been more excited for internet in my life!! Let’s see… there’s been a whole lot of this going on lately: Other than staring straight ahead and/or at our one corner of fall beauty, we have beeeeennnn umm, what have we been doing? I think this is pretty much all we do. I have two rooms left of boxes that I can’t bring myself to face. They are all books and I have no more bookshelves to put them on so here is my dilemma. One might say, just go get some cheap bookcases and problem solved however, one would need a car to pick up said bookcases and Greg has the car all day so voila – the rooms remain unpacked. I shut the doors and pretend there is no problem, and go back to staring at my fading tulips. Greg let me go get some plants for out front of our stark little house. Here let me show you the before… the after will soon come but it still looks awful so we’ll have to wait ; ) One may say Ohhhh it’s cute! but that’s just because you aren’t here in person. Those pillars are plastic and have a row of small nails sticking out of them. The windows have previously been described but we did find out they are ripply because they are in fact melting! The giant holes in the grass are from where the previous tenants dug up the shrubs and sprinkler system (I’m thinking out of anger considering there was a petition put out against them by all the neighbors to get them evicted).. With patch jobs like these, it’s hard to see why anyone would want such a thing. Yes, their fridge was too big so the obvious solution was to cut the counter and fill in the space that I’m assuming used to be for a dishwasher, with a piece of jaggedly cut painted plywood. And yes, that is a single nail holding that bit of cupboard up. The cabinet door was also cut and hung back up, complete with a wobbly lopsided shelf nailed inside! My mom got the giggles when she saw this. Luckily, this strangely sized hole could be the perfect spot for a wine fridge someday! I asked our landlady if we could take down these lovely cupboards and she said “NO! The opening above is just open – it would look ugly!” Yes, cause clearly, this looks fantastic. Anyways, so Greg let me get some plants to try to help with the starkness of the front area (probably also to make me stop crying since I also lost my glasses the night before and am back to my fuzzy way of life… boooo) anddddd he let me get the twirly plant I’ve always wanted since I was a little girl and went to a millionaires house and they had them by their front doors and I was smitten and have coveted them until this day, when I got my own in a pretty pot! Except when we got it home and put it on this lovely “stone looking” tile, all of a sudden it didn’t look so good anymore. I do love that they didn’t even try to stager this lovely stone pattern. It’s just plunk plunk plunk. We done! But look! Now I have a vine! It still doesn’t look pretty from the front yet (hence no after photo : ) ), but it sure does make me happy to look out on it now! I also met lots of neighbors whilst planting. One neighbor, Diane, loves little Bentley and brings her dog, Mr. Darcy, to come play with him. He’s a therapy dog and is awfully sweet. He’s teaching Bentley good manners since we can’t seem to get that through to him. I find us screaming to each other, “THAT’S NOT CALM AND ASSERTIVE BEHAVIOR!!” as he continues to plunge his razor sharp teeth into our flesh, gleefully getting the desired, frenzied reaction from us. All that to say, his training collar is coming on Thursday and then he’ll be a good dog. I’m very excited about this new method cause I saw it work on little red and quite frankly, Cesar’s “be calm and assertive and the dog will respect you…” doesn’t seeeeem to be working like it does on his tv shows. Until then he can continue being Darcy’s shadow. Diane’s awful sweet. She brought me one succulent plant and one daffodil bulb and one tulip bulb to welcome me to the neighborhood : ) She has no teeth. Our landlady decided that since the shrubs are now gone, rocks were a good idea. Because that’s every gardeners dream. I’m still working on picking the hundreds of them out. Oooo! and Greg mowed the lawn this weekend for the first time! It looks significantly better. Just in time for AT&T to come dig it up. Actually, they put it back quite nicely : ) Let’s see what else… I took Bentley to the beach for the first time. He loved it and ohh man, I did too. I miss the ocean so much. We went down to Seal Beach and I parked in the cutest neighborhood.. everyone was out on their patios, entertaining.. it did my soul good : ) Here’s Bentley’s first encounter with a wave. I kept trying to get far enough away from him to take a video but he’s my little shadow and likes to be right next to you. Preferably under your feet. In other news, I’m starting to realize we are crazy. It started to sink in as I watched Greg describe our situation to a sweet young couple – “We just moved here.. for my new job.. we just got a new puppy.. and actually just got married 8 months ago..” I see them glance at each other nervously, both realizing they have stepped into a giant hole of need. So, hopefully, having realized this, we can find time to slow down and settle a bit.. enjoy this soon to be good puppy and savor the last couple months of our first year of marriage. And on a depressing note, I shall do my best to savor my last week as a twenty five year old. Sad day. Have a wonderful Tuesday everyone!