according to anna

my girls

On Wednesday, I met some of Matt’s co-workers’ girlfriends for dinner.
I had so much fun. It made me remember what it was like to have girlfriends close by!

All my girlfriends are far away…and I can talk to them online or on the phone, but it is just not the same.
There is only one other girl on my team and we chat about work and stuff, but I never get to hang out with a bunch of girls. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed it!

So how about it girls? Wanna move to Kansas City?

the zoo that is our yard

1. bobcat
2. coyote
3. turkey
4. snakes
5. moles
6. fox
   
7. squirrel
   
8. deer
   
9. racoon
   
10. opossum
    
11. really big spiders
    

psycho kitty

Our cat Lugnut is crazy.

First off, he is always seeking attention — especially in the morning. He will make noise constantly until one of us gets out of bed. Our bedroom furniture has those hinged (knocker) pulls, so between him hitting those and meowing it is impossible to stay asleep. For awhile, I would put him in another room and shut the door…but I started feeling guilty about doing that. We’ve also tried to just lock him out of our bedroom, but then he will paw at the door and meow. We’ve tried to pick him up and hold him in bed with us, but he gets restless after a few minutes and jumps out.
I know that we should just ignore him so he will learn not to do it… but at 6 am, it is easier said than done. Lately, if I just get out of bed and go downstairs he’ll be happy for awhile, even if i just go back to sleep on the couch.

Its like he has ADD…he always has to have something to play with. If he doesn’t, then he will get himself in trouble.
He loves to play with my hair bands, but as soon as he looses them under the fridge, he’ll start playing with our blinds. That is extremely annoying when you are trying to watch TV.

He can also get kinda aggressive with Tina. At first they will be playing just fine, but then she’ll start to squeal in pain. He is twice her size, so he can easily overpower her.

So…considering all this, I thought that perhaps he didn’t have enough to play with. We finally broke down and bought some cat furniture. We’ve been trying to reward him for playing/scratching with the cat furniture in hopes that he will opt for that over anything else in the house. So far, I think that the cat furniture has helped a little, but it is hard to tell.

Lately, he has started to jump on our stereo speakers. He is so fat though, that when he jumps off, the speaker falls over. Look how fat he is!

His big belly swings back and forth when he walks. He’ll eat anything in sight. We had to move him to light food and monitor his portions. He even licks his and Tina’s bowl when they are done eating.

Tina loves to jump on top of our kitchen cabinets (on the very top). This is the one place that Lugnut can’t go because he is so fat! The last time he tried, he barely made it to the ground safely. His belly was too big to get over the edge.

bummed

I found out today that one of my favorite people is moving away…far away.
Since I switched jobs and we bought our house, I haven’t been able to see her as much as I’d like. And now, she is moving her family out of state for a new job.

I am excited for her. It will give her a chance to do some things that I know she has been wanting to do. But, I’m bummed that I am never going to see her. She is the best project manager I know and now that I am sorta managing a project, I could really use her advice.

Anyway…I guess I’ll have to deal with the occasional phone conversation & email.
I’ll miss you Pam!

How long would you wait?

Back in May, I submitted an appeal to our HOA so that we could paint our house a color that is not on the pre-approved list. A couple weeks later, I called the management company. They said that the HOA committee meets the 2nd week of every month and that they weren’t able to get to it in the May meeting. She said that ours was the next on the list.

So, I called back last week. The management company says that they requested an update from the HOA, but they haven’t heard anything yet.

Question: How long would you wait to hear from them?
I’m afraid that this is going to take as long as it did to get our satellite dish approved — 1 year!

The house really needs to get painted. Before they paint they are going to replace some damaged siding…so we really need to get that done.

How long would you wait before you just hire the painters?
Theoretically speaking, if we went ahead without the HOA and they found out about it, they could charge us a penalty fee or make us repaint…which would cost a lot of money!
I suppose the other option is to become a pest…and keep calling the management company. It sucks that I don’t have any one person to talk to. I can complain to the management company, but they are really just the middle man.

what would you do?