Dave’s cat Beaumont reminds me a lot of Kris’s cat Toby (who, sadly, passed away about a year ago). Both cats have got a very loud, mournful-sounding meow, can’t ever seem to get enough attention, are total food scroungers – don’t leave anything on the table/counter if they’re in the house – and they’re both kind of uncoordinated goofballs. Overall, very sweet and endearing cats, except for the fact that Beaumont drools when you pet him. But when Toby sat on someone’s lap, he’d grab a piece of his or her shirt in his mouth and nurse on it (we always suspected he was separated from his mother too early), so with both cats, whoever doles out affection ends up with some kind of wet spot on them. Ick. The funniest thing about Beaumont is that when he wants attention, he doesn’t just rub the side of his face along your leg like most cats do. Instead, he full-on head butts you. It’s the weirdest thing, but it’s so funny. So I’ve now started head-butting Dave when I want attention, since it seems to work for the cat. For some reason, it seems to annoy him less than my playing Punch Bug every time we pass a VW Beetle on the road.
We got more accomplished this weekend than I was expecting. The living room and dining room are totally painted now, which was the goal of the weekend. The light sage green looks awesome, too. We made two trips to Home Depot – yesterday’s was by far the biggest trip to HD yet, because we got all the flooring stuff (22 boxes!), a circular saw, and 400 sq. ft. of plywood because we have to shore up the new floors to make them level with the existing floors. At some point, Dave had to go get a nail gun (for the plywood – we got the easy snap-together floors), and rather than pull the several-hundred pound flatbed cart o’ stuff across the store, I just waited in the main aisle for him while he went to get it. Here’s something I learned: You don’t ever want to be the girl standing next to a huge cartload of stuff in Home Depot. I got more unwanted attention in that 5 minutes than I’ve gotten in a loooong time. I had a few Home Depot guys come up to me asking if I needed help – ok, fine, that’s their job, but it felt kind of sexist. Like oh woe is me, how am I ever going to pull this big wheeled cart around? And then a few guys walked by, eyed the flatbed’s contents and made comments like “Wow, that looks like quite a project!” Yeah, it is. Now go away. I imagine the fact that I had a sinus headache and that Home Depot tends to suck my energy out of me didn’t help my attitude.
Anyway, we started on the floors when we got back from Home Depot. I have to say, I’ve never used a nail gun before, and it was SO COOL!! I can’t really explain why. I think it’s because I’ve lived in apartments for years, so I’ve always had to be cautious about my noise level. But the nail gun is so loud, and Dave’s nearest neighbor is far enough away that they can’t hear anything – it was cool to know that I could make as much racket as I wanted, and it was fine. I was heady from the rush of power tools. 🙂 So we got part of the dining room started, and we’ll finish it sometime in the next couple of weeks. Dave’s birthday is on Sunday, so we’re taking a weekend off from home renovations. We should have enough time to get it all done before the gorgeous new furniture shows up.
Sunday evening, we chilled out, watched the season finale of “Six Feet Under” (my god, that was great), and then we played some XBox game (I can’t remember the name of it) where the objective is to crash into as many cars as possible. Now, 99% of the video games out there, Dave could easily kick my ass, because I’m just not a hardcore video game chick. But if the game is to figure out who between the two of us is the worst driver, I am SO winning that one. Out of 8 games, I won 6 and Dave won 2. Yeah, baby! That was fun.