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Another Big Bite

Another Big Bite

Category Archives: Grossology

Welcome to Colorful Colorado

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by anotherbigbite in Being a Grownup, Fixing Up the House, Grossology, On the Road Again, The "Joy" of Parenting

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

buying a house, colorado, colorado springs, diy, home, moving

It was a journey 37 days in the making, folks…  But we finally made it.  Alice had taken to calling ever male she had contact with “Daddy,” so it could not have come soon enough.

photo 1 (12)

I ‘spose there is a bunch of catching up to do, huh?  We finally arrived in Colorado just under two weeks ago.  After spending three nights in a hotel, we got the call from our title company out in Ohio that everything was good to go.  Both Nathan and I were just waiting for the other twelfth shoe to drop, but surprisingly, nothing else went wrong out in the Midwest.  We closed in Ohio at nine in the morning and had our final walk through scheduled on our Colorado house at 2:45, followed by its closing.  Of course there was a botched wire transfer that almost derailed us out here, but after (temporarily, no worries!) draining the kids’ savings accounts, everything workout just fine.

Almost.

We got to the house just in time after stopping by Old Navy to pick up a new pair of pants for The Finnster.  He had an accident while we were killing time at Garden of the Gods out here in C.Springs, and I wasn’t about ready to see our new house for the first time in person and meet our realtor with a littlin smelling like pee.  We changed him in the car, hopped out and crossed the threshold into what would be our new house in a few short hours.  My first impression was fine – it is smaller than our old house, but we had so much space that we never used in Ohio.

Oh yeah, and it was FILTHY.  And there were nail holes everywhere.  Like, check this out; how many times do you need to pound a nail in to hang it in the right spot??

photo 3 (10)

There are nail holes in places I would never think a sane person would ever hang a picture.  The floors were appalling.  They clearly wasn’t a single DIY bone in the previous owners bodies.  And apparently they had no shame when it came to putting thier house on the market covered in a layer of dog hair and grime.  Oh, and the brass light fixtures?  EVERYWHERE.  Libarache would have loved it here.

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Finn got to pick out his own room – and he is a little man after my own heart; “I want this one.  I can see the mountains from my window.”  Once again, the little guy has the best view in the house.  Just as we were getting ready to walk out the door and sign the papers, we hear little whine from upstairs.  There, poking out from between the railing is a little penis – Finn’s, obviously.  He had his coat on, his shoes on, and his pants around his ankles.

“Mom…  I need help.”

Oh.  Shit.

Literally.  The poor little guy was so excited, running from room to room, that he didn’t quite make it to the potty on time.  He almost made it…  Two more feet and we would have been in the clear.  There, in the middle of the floor in the bathroom, is a giant, stepped-in pile of poop.  There was poop tracked into the carpet, all over the floor, up the front of the toilet, down Finny’s legs, caked into the soles of his shoes, all over his pants…

Have I mentioned the water had been turned off?

We cleaned up as best as we could, changed him back into his peed-in jeans and headed off to closing.  There was no backing out now.  You can’t just refuse to buy a house that your son has shit all over.

Before long, our stuff arrived.  I was expecting a giant Mayflower truck to pull up in the driveway, but instead, we were greeted with this:

photo 4 (7)

I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty exciting.  Like, I was all ready to have the Lost Ark carted into the living room.  Unfortunately, all that was in those mysterious, exciting looking crates was our crappy furniture.  So, as every catalogued possession I owned came through the front door, I got to check it off the list.

photo 5 (5)

While I was frantically trying to find the number 267, Finn took it upon himself to start unpacking his stuff.  It was like the second coming of Santa.  He was actually gasping with joy as he pulled things out of boxes.  I forget how long two months is to a little person.

photo 1 (13)

Before the ink had dried on the deed, we were ripping up the carpet.  Ugh, I can hardly explain how disguising it was.  We decided to put in cheap, Ikea laminate floors after we discovered how expensive our tastes in hardwood were.  I’m still not sure how Nathan kowtow’d to my request for the white floors…  Once we get settled and have successfully ruined these, we’ll put in real wood.  That’s our five-year plan, anyway.

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We are sorta settled now.  We’ve located the closest park and have been spending a part of every day there.

photo 2 (12)photo 1 (14)

I think Finn likes Colorado.  Alice doesn’t much care.  She’s just glad to have the right guy to call Dad.  Finn was really getting to be a major terror, and all of a sudden, he has taken to putting himself to bed.

photo 3 (12)

My living room is looking a little bit better, though we haven’ unpacked any of our books, and I can’t really feel like I’ve moved in until the hardcovers get on the shelves.   My propensity for white furniture is really become a bit of a shock now.  Everything is all in one room.  It kind of resembles a hospital waiting room, but that will get better.  Soon. I hope.

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I’m hoping we’ll paint the living room and install the base trim this weekend.  I might even get around to changing up the brass chandelier over the dining room table.

As for the kids, they just had a first – even though it’s blurry, we caught it on film.  As we were getting changed into jammies tonight, the hugged each other.  At the same time.  And liked it.  And holy crap, so did Nathan and I.

photo (4)

Signing off from greener pastures, this is Lisa from Another Big Bite.  Oh, hell yeah, Colo-freakin-rado.

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Tedium ad Nauseum

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by anotherbigbite in Bitchfest, Grossology, My Two Cents, The "Joy" of Parenting, TMI

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

selling a house, shaving a dog, stress, tedious tasks, toddlers

Ohmygod. I feel like I just ran a month-long marathon. Without any clothes on. While trying to recite the first 415 digits of pi.

Lemme explain… No, lemme sum up.

This whole house-selling business is for the birds. Nathan and I were so unbelievably stressed getting the house completely remodeled and buttoned up. It went on the market. For two weeks, we I kept the house spotlessly clean and had dozens of complete strangers clomping their boots into my house, using my bathroom and drinking my coffee – most of whom I never laid eyes on. They peeked into the most private areas of our lives, then left, leaving only their scent. Our stress levels were through the roof.

Then we got a buyer! Yippee! But with that came more stresses; working out the dollars and cents of things, having a home inspector nitpick through every inch of our house, discover that we were living with (just barely) elevated radon levels for the last two years, calling insurance companies and roofing contractors because our new roof wasn’t up to code and doing ridiculous yet easy repairs that the buyers requested. They find tightening the bolts on one of the toilets above their pay grade, I guess.

When the appraiser came, we got a pretty good feeling from him that everything would be alright. No news is good news in that arena, and it has been a week.

Getting Nathan moved out was another major hurdle, but that went off without a hitch. His first day at his new job was today – he didn’t sleep in or wear the wrong shirt or step on any toes. Good news.

And now that our radon levels have been mitigated, our roof vented, and our toilets tightened, I have finally mentally exhaled for the first time in about a month. I’ve taken a hiatus from major house cleaning. Yesterday, I actually found myself with nothing left to worry about and nothing to do but laundry. And feed the kids. And wipe butts. And repeat exactly why you shouldn’t touch the tip of a hot glue gun. And explain why the following is a fashion faux pas. In short, same as every regular day.

The faux pas I am referring to is wearing Halloween underwear at the end of November.

What did I do with my time? I did the most mundane, brainless tasks I could think of. I am officially on a mental health holiday.

For starters, I took one of Finny’s old shirts and removed the embroidered crest off the front so it would look more girly for Alice. For what seemed like (and probably was) hours, I snipped and pulled roughly a bazillion little pieces of thread from a tiny white shirt. There is something liberating about turning your brain on auto-pilot, giving the kid an iPad and slouching on the living room floor while performing a task that a gorilla with really great fine motor skills could do.

Later, I decided to shave the dog. This is one of my least favorite things to do EVER, mostly because it takes forever and Violet hates being shaved, so I hate putting her through such an ordeal that she shakes like a leaf for two days after. And then pees on your bed. Nice.

If you have ever wondered what it is like to shave my dog (c’mon, I know you would have been too embarrassed to ask), it is kind of like shaving a chicken… In the sense that Violet is such a chicken-y scaredy-dog but also it’s akin to shaving actual poultry. Or so I would think. Imagine giving a buffalo wing a buzz cut… That’s about the gist of it.

Admit it. You’re jealous.

Shaving the dog was something that needed to be done, and it is a mindless chore that makes the time pass in the blink of an eye – before you know it its midnight, you’re covered in wispy white hair and your beloved family pet is aching to urinate on your down comforter.

How many of you are DYING to have a sleepover at my house right now, by the way?

At the end of the day, my head was clear, my bones ached and I slept like a baby – which is to say I woke up twice but didn’t have a care in the world. Other than smelling the distinct odor of dog pee.

SIDE NOTE: Alice took her first steps yesterday! And thankfully Nathan only missed it by a few days. He did get to see it on Facetime, though.

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Probably the Most Disgusting Thing You’ll See All Weekend

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by anotherbigbite in Grossology

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

biore pore strips, biore strips, chinese crested dog, gross

Unless you are a nurse, then this may only tie for third place.

It has been about a decade since I purchased those snazzy little Biore Pore Strips. I happened to pick some up yesterday, and let me tell you… Ugh.  It was gross.  But that isn’t what I am about to show you.

Reader’s Digest Version: Hairless Dog with Bad Skin + Biore Strip = HOLY CRAP.  Yu-UCK.

Meet Walter.  He is our Chinese Crested dog, and yes, he is bald.  He is also chronically grumpy, but so is Nathan; I’m thinking male pattern baldness might be a contributing factor to their attitudes.  Walter isn’t just bald, he has really bad skin.  Let me put it to you this way; if Proactive made a product for dogs, Waltie wouldn’t even qualify as a spokes-dog because there is no way in hell he would ever improve enough to get his fellow canines to pick up the phone and order a free 30 day trial.

I don’t much care that you think he is ugly; most people do.  I know everyone thinks it, but I simply cannot see it AT ALL.  To us, he is adorable.  We love him.  I look at him and all I see is naked-blackhead-covered cuteness.  So be it.

Nae and I always joked about putting a Biore Strip on him, just to see if it would help. After I used one yesterday and was totally shocked/awed/grossed out at what came out of my skin, my thoughts turned to poor Waltie.  I think he saw some kind of evil glint in my eye, since he totally went running as soon as the lightbulb went off in my head.

If you a squeamish, this is the part where you look away.  I’m not kidding.  If you are eating; try back when you are done scarfing that bowl of Capt’n Crunch.

Here is a close up of the worst part of his skin (most of the rest of him is as smooth as an old man’s liver-spotted head):

And then this happened:

Not happy, Bob. Not happy.

And then I let out an audible gasp of equal parts horror and amazement.  LAST CHANCE TO LOOK AWAY….

Yes, those are tons of little blackheads from my beloved pooch. Poor, poor Walter.

I don’t know why I chose to share this with you.  I think it is one of those things like “Oh, this smells like death!  Here, you smell it.”  It warranted an immediate text to Nathan.  To which he responded (only half jokingly) that we should make him a body/mummy cast out of pore strips.  Nathan and I really are cut from the same cloth.

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Pene Rosa: Not Your Mother’s Takeout (or maybe it is!)

19 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by anotherbigbite in From the Kitchen, Grossology, TMI

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Tags

pene rosa, penne rosa

Oy.  All I wanted to do was make dinner.  What started out as a weakness for Noodles & Company’s Penne Rosa ended up in Sex-Toy-Ville.

via Pinterest – And for the record, not half as good as N&Co.

Just the other day, I was checking out this hilarious post from Meredith over at Pile of Babies.  Short story even shorter; Meredith’s husband has rechristened Pinterest with the moniker The Gingham Dildo.  (Read the post and you’ll see why.)  I laughed my ass off, but I never realized how topical The Gingham Dildo could be.

I had remembered seeing a pin with a recipe for Noodles & Company’s amazing spicy pasta, Penne Rosa.  I punched “pene rosa” in the search box, and there it was.  With something else…  A bunch of pink baby teethers.  Closer inspection revealed they weren’t baby teethers.  They were various vibrating (shield your eyes, Grandma, Aunt Sue and all readers under the age of 18) cock rings.  Oh, yeah, and then there were a mess of giant, pink wieners.  I am NOT talking the Oscar Meyer variety.

Nope. Not a baby teether. And though my Spanish is pretty rudimentary, I’m certain that the pink dildo (With balls?  Really?  Who even likes balls?) is “very smooth, hypoallergenic and  some kind of safe.“

I suppose “pene rosa” is Spanish for “pink penis.”  Oh, and it is peNNe with two N’s for that delicious type of pasta.   But in all honesty, do they make vibrating baby teethers?   Because this teething shit with Alice is killing me.

So, that is what I get for spending too much time on The Gingham Dildo (thank you, Meredith’s husband), I mean, PINTEREST.  The one place on the internet that I thought was safe from porn.

Nope.

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The Naked Chef

24 Thursday May 2012

Posted by anotherbigbite in From the Kitchen, Grossology, The "Joy" of Parenting

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I cannot help it if my kid wants to be naked all the time.  I can assume that this may have started when we began potty training; using the bare-from-the-waist-down approach.  However it began, now the little man likes to hang around the house with his little man swingin’ in the breeze.

There comes a time when a mother has to put her foot down, though.  And that moment came today.  I was not about to allow Finn to bake mini apple pies naked.  So I made him wear an apron.  Gratuitous, blurred-out nudity in 3……2…..1…..

I must admit, this is a lesson I have personally learned the hard way.  You needn’t know the details, but I will impart this one piece of wisdom to the world; NEVER COOK BACON IN THE NUDE.  ‘Nuff said.

I’m betting y’all are clamoring to come over to my house and partake in our naked-baked apple pies, right?  How about another dirty secret?  I didn’t even remember to make him wash his hands.  I know.  Gross.  But we ate them anyway.  They were delightful.  I even went all fancy and made my own crust from scratch and put little lattice tops on those bad boys.

Just in case you want to make your own naked-baked apple pies, I found the recipe on Pintrest; you can find it here.  If I were a bettin’ gal, I would put my money on the creative minds over at Little Bit Funky being properly clothed while baking theirs.

Now I pose the question to all (three) of you…  Who is coming over for dessert?

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