April Update

Wow. We've really been slacking.

It's been awfully hard to want to do much; the weather finally got nice, and while we should be taking advantage of it to do house work, I don't think anyone believes it's really here and just wants to take advantage of it to have fun while we can!

We did manage to finally decide on a paint color. We ended up going with the darker color on the right and the darker, browner red.

The green/taupe/khaki color for the brick; the cream color for wood trim; the red for the eaves and prob frint door; maybe also windows. Haven't totally decided on that.

I'll have to post a pic later of the column that we mocked up to make the final decision. We wanted to try to claim the last of the depreciation, so we had to go ahead and buy the paint, even though the weather isn't quite paint worthy yet.

We were going to use the Lowe's Valspar Duramax when we planned to paint during cold weather since it goes down to 35º. But now that it looks like we can wait until summer, we decided to go with regular Valspar Ultra Premium. It still gets great reviews from Consumer Reports, and we've certainly had good luck with it so far. And it's about $50 per 5gal bucket cheaper. Bonus.

So anyway, we went ahead to try and get it before our depreciation deadline and to take advantage of what we thought was a rebate offer; it was actually only for indoor paint. But no matter-- we got a great deal anyway...

See, when we got there, the paint dude told us he was out of the stuff he needed to do 5gal buckets of one of our colors in the ultra premium and that he could do Duramax for $50 more. Well, we discussed it, and decided to just get single gallons instead; we really didn't need the Duramax. While we were shopping for other stuff, the paint guy found us and told us he'd given the paint to us for the same price as 5gals. Awesome!

We go to pick up our paint and...uh oh. There's been a misunderstanding. He thought we wanted single gallons of Duramax (which kind of defeats the purpose, but we did get fewer gallons, 8 instead of 10, and I think he must have thought we were saving money by getting less...I dunno.). They are all labeled at $29 each, which is the 5gal price, but still more than we wanted to pay. We tell him there's been a misunderstanding and without blinking, the guy says, "Oh. Ok, No problem. I'll just give it to you for the cheaper price."

And not only does he give it to us for the price of Ultra Premium, he gives us the Ultra Premium 5gal price-- $17.90 per gallon. Holy CRAP.

Did we get a wicked deal or what?!? We kept apologizing to the guy, but at that point, his alternative was to put it on the mistint table for $5, so I guess this was better all the way round.

I hope we can get to this in the next few weeks. Honestly, all my time is being sucked up by animals; the new puppy is quite a handful. I'm actually thinking about starting another blog to track her training progress. We found her wandering around our neighborhood for several days and finally took her in as the sleet started coming down, the beginning of a mega snow storm. We looked for an owner, checked for a microchip, left a description and our phone number with the Humane society. Nothing. She was underweight and had worms. She's finally settling in, but we have a long way to go with her...


She is scared of everything. She barks at people and things that are unfamiliar, and cowers and gets stock still if she's scared and thinks someone's going to handle her (the vet). She was spayed and then had a bad reaction at the suture site, so the increased vet visits and handling didn't help matters. She also doesn't really know how to share her things with us-- she gaurds her toys and balls and bones (in fact NO MORE BONES for a while-- yikes!). Thing is, I already have a fear aggressive dog, and do not want another one! So most of my time is spent with her at the park, clicker and treats in hand, teaching her to be calm around unfamiliar stuff, or playing games of trade with her toys. She's super smart and sweet, and warms up to new people pretty quickly (treats help!), so I'm optimistic.

And that's the news around here! If I do start another blog, I'll post a link to it here, for any of you dog enthusiasts. It's sort of taken over my life-- I'm reading animal behavior books and scouring training forums and researching holistic remedies for any and all problems. I never thought it would be so fascinating to me, but there you have it!