Happiness is somewhere to call your own

Now that we have a house to rent that is PERFECT!, I am an extremely pleasant person to be around. I'm even excited to move from the wonderful 'burg. There are still things that I am going to be sad to lose (Safeway two blocks away, everything in walking distance, endless supplies of parks, trails, and ridges to walk or hike, a great community feel), but now I feel like I have so much to look forward to. The PERFECT! house is waiting to be nested and my mind is already reeling with the possibilities.

The best feature of this house is one that will improve my already lovely marriage a million and a half percent. Two. Bathrooms. TWO! PERFECT! BATHROOMS! I have never had my own bathroom before, and I feel like this is my opportunity to create a sanctuary where pretty smells abound, the toilet seat will always be down, and I can put my god damn hair straightener wherever I want. These two bathrooms, they smell of peace and freedom. Well, at least mine does, his probably smells like farts and magazines.

Lame. Left. Lab.

A couple of weeks ago my poor poor dog made a quick stop-turn while faithfully retrieving a ball and somehow injured himself. After a couple of days of the lameness not improving, I took him to the vet where they poked, prodded, x-rayed, and to my profound horror, I discovered that dogs sometimes expel poop-like goo from their anal glands when scared of being forced to lie still in the face of giant x-ray machines.

After I wiped my dog's disgusting ass (seriously, Mennonite vet tech, is it somehow against your religion to clean up the mess you scared out of my dog? Because for as much as I paid for that x-ray, you should have cleaned, perfumed, and waxed that sucker Brazilian-style.), I was relieved to find that there were no breaks that they could see. What I needed to do was restrict his movement as much as possible, keep all walks on-leash, and keep those to a minimum. Ha! This vet doesn't understand my dog's major compulsion: he doesn't poop unless you take him somewhere other than our house. You have to walk him or he won't poop. He'll just drop bombs that are enough to fumigate our entire house for a year. Apparently he took the saying "don't shit where you eat" very seriously and very literally.

All in all, it's been a stinky couple of weeks around the house, punctuated by regular pacing. Usually, Cole and I will do at least 3 miles a day (and he is off leash running like he just discovered the wonderfulness of life, so he does more like 7), so we have seen a drastic increase in his restlessness. He's finally starting to get better, so if the weather would just start to cooperate, we could go hiking!

Homeless?!

Being the (sometimes) overly-detail-oriented/compulsively organizing person that I am, I have been anxiously tying my own stomach into knots about finding a place to live for med school. For the past few weeks, I've grown more and more convinced that we are absolutely not going to find a place where we can have our dog, a yard, bike to school, not get shot/stabbed/murdered/kidnapped, or anything else that would make it remotely possible for us to succeed in school. Ok, you caught me, I'm a worrier when it comes to certain things like a secure roof over my head. Yes, I know school doesn't start until August and it's still very newly May, but the threat of homelessness it almost too much to bear. Overly dramatic? Maybe. Anxiety warranted? Maybe.

However, today I found a post on Craigslist that looks like it just might fit our needs. Maybe. If someone doesn't snatch it up first. So we will go take a look at it as soon as possible, and sign on the dotted line if it really looks like it will work. A teensy bit of my worry is replaced by hope and excitement, because the more unknowns I can solve into organized details, the happier we all shall be.