Scrub.

I had blogged that we have been here four months about a month ago - but I miscounted - Tomorrow marks the four month mark, I guess with everything happening so fast it seems like we've been here a long time. David continues to work on the outside while the weather is good, he's been completing the decking and the siding, the roof will probably wait til spring. Yesterday I spent the entire day cleaning, I do that every 2 or 3 weeks because when you're constantly under construction and living in part of the house it's hard to keep it clean and organized. At this point we're utilizing about half of the kitchen, one bedroom, bathroom, living room and dining area, the rest of the house is various stages of completion. Storage is limited, David pulled out most of the kitchen cabinets and counters, the attic and eaves upstairs are full of rat and mouse poos (we have the doors blocked shut til we can get to it), etc.... so a lot of our stuff remains in containers until we get a little further.

I get asked a lot about the cat pee, people seem to think if a house is saturated in cat pee it's done for. It's not. There are a lot of products on the market that work well, the only difference between you and me is I buy it by the gallon and I have a method that takes a couple of weeks to complete - but it's very effective. Some of it is just scrubbing - I hand wash all the floors because it saturates them better. We use no sponges - that just pushes it around and then you have that filthy sponge to deal with. I have a stack of about 2 dozen microfiber washcloths which work wonders and you can toss them in the wash when you're done. Our mop is a spin mop with a replaceable head, we've found those work the best along with constant emptying of the water bucket - nothing grosser than slopping the same dirty water over the floor. And I've seen vast improvement, yesterday I only emptied the bucket four times - when we moved here it was closer to a dozen. And my favorite - lemon oil - in a bottle not a spray. I wiped down the entire bathroom with it yesterday - it brings out the shine in everything and smells so good!

People from the neighborhood stop by to see the progress, I'm hoping by Christmas we'll be fairly completed, I'd love to have all the neighbors over to see it. It is weird sometimes sitting at the dining room table knowing that four short months ago this was not a place anyone would have wanted to sit - the bugs, the dirt, the smell - and now we have friends over for dinner and Brandi and the girls are going to try to come for Thanksgiving which I'm so thrilled about. They will be visiting ME, in MY house - how great is that! 

Pizza Night

Since the kids were small every Friday has been Pizza night,we were not big fast food eaters so it was fun for everyone to know one night a week we could indulge in junk food. Since we're from LI which is a hop, skip and a jump from NYC the Pizza Capitol of the World we were used to eating pretty great pizza. When we moved to WV that was a problem - you might not be aware of this but WV is NOT known for great pies. But when we lived in Maidsville oddly enough a store opened down the road - it was a trashy, cider block building sitting on the edge of a drop off, but boy, the food they made! You did not want to look too closely at some of the employees - Jackson went in to get it one day and told David the woman making the food looked like a very crazy witch, the rest of them were college students. They did deliver and at first it was great, we tipped well because we knew most of them were college students, but then it took longer and longer. THEN the owner yelled at David when he called one night to order that we were too far away, blah blah blah and that was the end of that. 

But it's a college town so we had Little Ceasars, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, and some family places - life in the hollar was good. The Poconos are near NYC so when we lived there - no problemo! And now we are here. In Clatskanie, population about 2,000 and only one pizza joint in the place. We are not crazy about it and depending on who's working it can occasionally be undercooked - or overcooked. The past two weeks I've picked it up in Washington trying different places. I did Papa Murphys last week, that is an interesting concept. You buy what ever you want but it's uncooked and it only takes about 20 minutes, it's pretty good and you can store it in the fridge if you don't want to eat it right away. On my way home last night I saw Little Caesar's so I stopped in there. It turned into Dinner and A Show. 

The guy behind the counter was a bit disheveled looking but since Little Caesar's is pretty much premade and he was upfront, not a big deal. He was cheerfully inputting everything wrong, I heard a sigh from the back and girl stomped up and starting fixing it, muttering that's not how you do it. I was told 10 minutes so I sat with Words With Friends. The Guy continued to to take orders incorrectly and very slowly telling each person I'm New - I was wondering why if he was so new he was left upfront by himself. The girl came back followed by the manager - I kind of got the feeling it was more of an idiocy problem than a being new problem. The manager scowled his way through fixing a bunch of orders, then took the employee in the back who now was claiming he was sick. The manager yelled at him Sick? REALLY? We thought you went out and got all fucked up with your old lady last night.......the conversation went down hill from there. The pizzas were done and we all got them and scurried out before the manager turned his eye on us. The pizza was.....ok, a bit overcooked which given it's pre-made was a bit of a surprise but it was ok. I think we will be staying with Papa Murphy though, we can burn it ourselves.