After the dust from moving had settled a bit, Nick and I discovered that our house has a smell. And not a good smell. It's somewhere between 50-year-old-paint-in-a-vacant-house and dead rodent. On Tuesday, we caved in and bought a Glade Plug-in. We had never tried one before and spent a good 20 minutes in the isle of our grocery store scratching and sniffing the various boxes. Finally we chose Passion Fruit (or was it mixed fruit? Well, something fruity.) after determining that Fresh Air was far too mild. The device is really quite advanced. It has scent intensity levels. We set it to level five and now can't decide which we like better: intense fruit or mild rodent.

On Saturday, my parents drove up for a visit and gave us an oriental rug that used to be Grandmary's. It's a pretty rug, but it reeks of oldness and smoke. We spent Saturday morning hosing it down and scrubbing it before rinsing it about 94 more times. (It's wool, and it retains moisture and soap beautifully. Also the smell of nicotine.) Finally, after letting it dry on the porch for 3 days, we moved it inside only to discover it smells worse than rodent and fruit combined. It smells like a very large wet dog. Perhaps a pack of dogs.

Enough rambling for now.
...And as a reward for your patience,
some interior house pictures!
(Please ignore all of the little piles...we're working on them!)

Today we were told the final amount needed for closing tomorrow. Turns out to be less than we anticipated. This may mean we will be able to get a washing machine sooner than expected. I am pushing for the one posted above that we saw at McCall's Pumpkin Patch two weekends ago.

If you look closely in the second and third picture you can see a batman action figure.  Is this the mark of the electrician? Or has Gotham lost their hero to another occupation?

What do you do with a General? When it stops being THEIR General...

Because the General was built in 1951, it's a bit different from modern homes. It has been painted almost annually for the last half a century, and all the seams (baseboard to wall and door-frames) are entirely non-existent and smoothed over. The doors are real wood with horizontal moulding. The bathrooms have cast-iron towel racks, one of which was built into the yellow-tiled shower. The tub is metal and coated in white enamel, which is chipped in a few quaint and artistic places. In the master bedroom, Ivy has almost completely obscured the window, save a few filtered dots of sunlight in the morning.