Painting!

During break Ryan and I have been taking the time to really clean our apartment- sort of like a spring cleaning! We're emptying out all of our cabinets and spraying for bugs (darn those grease ants!). We're going through all of our stored food to make sure that it hasn't been infested by any meal moths. Then we sort everything and put it all back! We've also been reorganizing our bookshelf, our bathroom cabinet, and under our bed. Since we have a tile floor, dust and dirt tends to collect in those areas not swept very often- like behind our couch and under our bed. Yuck! The place looks great though- we've removed everything from under our bed (we used to have our suitcases there) and put all of our shoes into baskets. We rearranged our living room a bit, and have gotten rid of some food. I did find a VERY gross collection of food behind our set of drawers. There was a LOT of half eaten bags of food that wasn't from us- and we don't think it was from the people here before. We have no idea how old the mess was but it had certainly attracted cockroaches. YUCK! That's all gone and the whole area was cleaned and sprayed, so the cockroaches are gone, thank god!

We're not the only ones making things look nice. Our landlord has been working on painting the building, and has been working very hard over break. Our little house guest, Rowdy the dog, is not too impressed with men working right outside our door when I'm in the apartment alone! He doesn't seem bothered when Ryan is here, and our neighbors say that he is pretty quiet when here alone, but when it's just me he will growl and bark at the door. He's a funny little dog that we will certainly miss! The painting is looking really nice! I was surprised that the building was too be painted because I thought that it looked pretty nice. I didn't really see any marks or anything on the wall, but it must have been worse that I thought, because now that the painting is progressing the whole building looks much, much brighter and better cared for. We'll have to post some new photos of the apartment building!

I do have to share a funny story about Rowdy. We went down to dinner at Jen and Neil's the night before Justin and Grace were leaving. Since we had to leave Rowdy all day, Jen and Neil were nice enough to say that he could come down for a visit. We decided to bring him down, and if Neville (Jen and Neil's kitten, remember?) was at all stressed out or upset, we'd bring Rowdy RIGHT back upstairs. Well, things didn't work out QUITE the way we planned. Neville hadn't seen a dog since he was about 4 weeks old (and on that occasion he and his sister both hissed and snarled), and that was Facundo, our friend's laid back dog. Since Rowdy's well behaved we thought that it would be good for Neville to meet him. Neville agreed. He was FASCINATED by this other creature, and kept creeping closer and trying to sniff Rowdy and check him out. It wasn't Neville that was scared, it was Rowdy. Rowdy cowered in my lap, whimpering, whining, and SHAKING. I finally took the poor dog back upstairs so that he could escape the "evil demon kitten"! Poor little Rowdy- scared of a kitten! Neville at least loved it- it just kind of reinforced in his mind that he's a pretty darn special cat- which he is!