New Things in Life

There are other new things in our lives besides Vinny.

• Microwave. Our microwave, which we'd had for more than 8 years, started emitting arcs of electricity instead of microwaves. So we bought a new one. We got the 2006 equivalent of our old one, which was pretty fancy at the time. This one is pretty cool and has special buttons for cooking all kinds of different things. I ordered it online, but when it arrived it had a huge dent in it. So I sent it back and they sent us a new one, this time without a dent in it.
  
• Clothes washer. The day we got home from the hospital, our washer decided it was the right time to break down. The repairman declared it "totalled" so we bought a new one. Our new washer is the same brand and matching model to the dryer. It's a really nice washer, and quite an improvement over the old one. One nice feature is that it has an optional extra rinse cycle, which they recommend using for baby clothes. The only "problem" is that the washer is white and the dryer is bisque. But I don't really care about the color. I'm just glad to have clean clothing.
  
• Dining room decor. The previous owners of our house had... interesting... tastes in decor, to put it diplomatically. They had painted the dining room with the "faux bistro" look -- painted fake bricks on the walls, one wallcovered completely with these bricks, and other walls attempting to look like the bricks were sticking out of plaster... yes, very ugly. Anyhow, we figured it was so garish that a million layers of paint wouldn't cover it up, so we'd bought some wallpaper to cover it up. But, the wallpaper hanging went awry, so instead we decided to paint the room and use the border from that wallpaper. Unfortunately, the color we picked out of that border to paint the wall was too ugly so we instead ordered a new border and new paint. We went with a sunflower border and off-white paint above the border and shamrock green at the bottom. We finished painting the dining room before leaving for the hospital but hadn't gotten a chance to put up the border. Dad and Marvis put it up after we got back from the hospital. The dining room looks great now!
  
• Vacuum cleaner. In Illinois, we had a central vacuum system. We had hoped to install one here, but it looks a little too complicated for us to do ourselves. So we had meant to buy a vacuum cleaner but just hadn't gotten there yet. Dad and Marvis decided that they didn't want their newest grandchild living in filth and squalor, so they bought us a vacuum cleaner. I haven't yet used it myself, but it seems to work pretty well. (They also bought their grandson a very nice new dresser.)
  
• Decorations. As a surprise for me, Jeff, Dad, and Marvis conspired to decorate the house when we brought Vinny home from the hospital. They put up streamers, balloons, tropical fish streamers, and posters of Elvis in the living room. The baloons have deflated a bit but the rest of the decorations are still up.