American Domesticated Shorthair Nadine

This past week has been full of things to improve the home.  It’s really boring to normal people, but I spend a lot of time at home and I like it to be clean and look really pretty.  I really like where we live!  Now it’s getting even better.  Here are some improvements that have happened lately.

1.  TV in the Bedroom


Since we moved into this place in June we have only had cable in the living room.  Then Mike’s mom bought a big ass new TV for her living room and gave us her old one so we put it in the bedroom.  I pouted “what’s the use, we don’t have cable or even a DVD player in there.”  And boom, Mike called the cable company and the guy put TV in there for me.  I love it because I can watch shit in bed.  For a full week after getting cable in the bedroom, I made that room my new damn office.  I took calls, ate meals, took naps, internetted, wrote for my book, entertained gentelman callers and all the rest.  I fall asleep so much easier with the TV on in the dark.

First movie from bed: Due Date

2.  Trip to Christmas Tree Shops!


Do you know what Christmas Tree Shops is?  If you don’t know, and you just heard the name of it, you would likely assume that it is a store that specializes in holiday decor, right?  You might have passed it and said aloud, much like my good friend Foley did “Gee, I don’t know how they stay in business all year round.”  You’d be wrong.  Christmas Tree Shops is like Home Goods, but better.  It also has a Harmon Face Values section in it, there’s some grocery food novelty items, and just a lot of neat home decor items and knick-knacks for cheap.  Even better is that you can use your Bed Bath & Beyond coupons there!  Yeah buddy!  I got a gift card to that store from Mike’s mom because she is really awesome and shares the same interests in home decor that I do.  I had a coupon for $10 off of $50.  I also had $45 worth of “house money” which is what the change jar collects, so long as Jaclyn doesn’t steal it.  She tries to steal our change jar every time she comes to my house.  I got down to business.  I went there on an afternoon so I could just wander around by myself with no Mike for as long as I wanted and not be rushed along.  It was great… except for 2 things.  1.  I had the farts and I was just farting along in every aisle of the store.  2.  Shopping-followers.  You ever have that thing happen where you seem to be parallel shopping with another person?  They’re shopping at exactly the same pace as you are and essentially following you around the store and being all in your way in a very annoying manner?  You’d think with all my store-farting that I wouldn’t have someone following me.  Anyways, here’s my haul:

  • 10 Picture Frames
  • 1 iron plant stand
  • 1 fake fern (I will kill every plant)
  • 2 decorative plates with plate stands
The cart is full… do I get another one?
Decorative plates arranged nicely on top of my cabinets.

3.  Carpet Shampooer Machine

What is it with apartments and beige carpet?  It will always look like you just upholstered all your floors in rags that you rinsed diarrhea off of.   I have a cat, sometimes he throws up, and then I clean it up but then the carpet will eventually still look shitty no matter how well I clean it up.  I use an ottoman by the couch constantly, and my scooting it back and forth to get up has left that area of the carpet dingy.  Mike has a bunch of allergies, and we like our stuff to look nice.  We ordered this bad mamma jamma:  Hoover Super Carpet Filth Sucker Washer.  It did a really good job.  I moved all the furniture all by myself, I shampooed the carpet, and I like that it has a “rinse” feature so I can go over it after I use the cleaner.  It also dried really fast which surprised me.  It’s got that super suction.

4.  Floor Merkin


You know that spot on the carpet I mentioned about me moving the ottoman back and forth?  It’s been wearing it down to the underground.  I don’t want us to lose our security deposit for whenever we move someday, so I figured we should get an area rug for the living room.  I had the bright idea to go to Ikea one night after Mike got home from work.  We could have meatballs for dinner, buy an area rug and then go grocery shopping after that.  When we got there though it was 8PM and they closed the cafe.  So we were hungry and cranky and arguing over rugs.  Good times.  In the end though, we picked a nice merkin for our living room.

5.  New Coffee Grinder


The other morning I was putting coffee beans into my coffee grinder and literally was thinking “I’ve had this thing for a few years and have not had to replace it and it still works very well.  I take good care of my things!”  Then when I went to unscrew the cap to put the ground coffee in a filter, I dropped it, spilled my only ground coffee all over the floor and broke it.  Way to go, idiot, don’t ever think about how good you do at something, such as taking care of your belongings, because you will fail at everything.  The next step was figuring out how to grind coffee in my house without a grinder, so I put all the beans I had into the blender and did that, just in case I couldn’t get to buy a new grinder soon.  Mike and I went the very next day to Bed Bath & Beyond for a new grindey mc jigger and it works great and looks nicer than my old one.

Coffee Grinder of Broken Dreams

6.  New Objects to rest our Hineys


The sofa and chair we have in the living room has served its purpose well but now it is too worn out to love.  The sofabed part of it is falling apart at the seams, and everything is just so sunken in that it’s hard to get out of it, and hard to get comfortable.  Mike decided that we’d get a new living room set in the new year, and last week we went to the furniture store “just to look.”  It was my idea to look so we can start getting an idea of what we want.  It was Mike’s idea to buy right on the spot when we found a set we liked and it was 50% off. Sold!  It will arrive in 4-8 weeks and then my butt will have a new home in the living room.  In the furniture store, I farted on like 5 different couches.

The couch & chair in the sienna brown, pillows and ottoman in the print.

7.  Why am I Even Doing This?


I had an idea last week that one of these days I was going to reorganize all the kitchen cabinets for maximum efficiency.  Last night after we had gotten home from a strange day of mattress shopping with another dude (Mike’s friend getting a new bed) I just started taking everything out of the cabinets like a zombie and moving things around.  It was a pain in the ass but I think it’s better organized.  I know that it will be a while before I really remember that I moved everything around.  I was so confused this morning when my half-asleep self opened the cabinet that formerly held coffee mugs and was greeted instead by soup and pasta.  I just stared at it for a full minute trying to understand what happened to my stuff.  I should have just put a coffee mug out the night before, I’m too old for this shit.

8.  WHEN WILL THIS LIST END OH GOD WHY


After I reorganized all the cabinets, I made a backsplash for the wall behind the stove and by the counter with the coffee maker.  It gets all shitted up way too easily and doesn’t wipe clean and I hate seeing spots on the wall.  I see enough spots just having floaters in my eyeballs.  So I got a bunch of cool patterned placemats from WalMart last night and I used velcro and some tacks and double stick tape and it looks really good.  I don’t have a picture of that yet though.  I was so tired at the end of it… I don’t know why I keep doing things like this late at night.

Tomorrow, a repairman is coming to fix the stove since the oven gives me an error message when it gets too hot.  Someone was by last week and fixed the smoke alarm so I haven’t had to behead anyone with a wicked katana blade or anything.  I’m busy making a nice little crabitat over here.

6 Responses to “American Domesticated Shorthair Nadine”

  1. Nicole

    I loveeeee Christmas Tree Shop….got stuff to make my centerpieces for the wedding there at HALF OFF…i can’t wait to have my own house and make it all nice and perrty like you

    Reply
  2. Jaclyn

    I thought this was going to be about your new haircut, but house stuff is nice too. Also? Shout-out to me for making sure you didn’t get a fucking Bissell.

    Reply
  3. D

    Can you come decorate my house next?

    You said Merkin… heh heh. I didn’t know what that was until a week ago, Missy told me… and I had to look it up!

    Reply
  4. puravida

    I definitely need you to come to my house and scramble my cabinets. It will be like a brain puzzle, preventing me from developing early onset Alzheimers.

    (My sister drags me to the Christmas Tree Shop on Route 22 everytime I come home…and I try to fart in at least 80% of the store)

    Reply
  5. Nadine

    Oh mah gah. That’s the one I go to! What do you mean “drag” you there? I skip to my loo all the way there.

    Reply
  6. Mandy

    Next time I’m in Jersey you must take me to both Ikea and the Christmas Tree Shops.

    The nearest Ikea is an hour and a half away and we don’t have the latter.

    I are sad.

    Reply

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